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Speaking of the British

c.moreover.com

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Re: Speaking of the British

#31

Post by lhnz »

This article is complete bullshit:

> Nor is workaholic study encouraged. A South African relative of mine started his first “supervision” at Cambridge by confessing that he hadn’t read every single book on the reading list. “Good God,” said his supervisor, “nor have I. I put them down hoping that you’d look at a couple, and tell me what they said.”

That's just completely untrue. Just talk to some student from Oxford and you'll find that many of them are massive workaholics and very intelligent. It's not simply all 'talk'. You can't succeed in that environment simply by being good at talking!?!!

Re: Speaking of the British

#33

Post by bluekeybox »

patkai wrote: post #27
bluekeybox wrote: post #16

As the old joke (fact?) goes, Sir Winston Churchill was giving a speech in the House of Commons and someone nearby noticed that there was a handwritten comment in the margin of his notes: "Weak argument: talk loudly."

Meaning that Sir Winston Churchill had a great sense of humor.

Unlike Tony Blair and Margaret Thatcher.

Re: Speaking of the British

#35

Post by ErrantX »

bluekeybox wrote: post #16

As the old joke (fact?) goes, Sir Winston Churchill was giving a speech in the House of Commons and someone nearby noticed that there was a handwritten comment in the margin of his notes: "Weak argument: talk loudly."

Churchill was not the smartest (from a technical perspective) cookie in the cookie jar, he was not a careful quiet thinker, he was a bit racist, from the "old school" and rather stuffy. But he was very very very very good at two things; patriotism and rhetoric.

Which, when you are in a war, is a good thing. The generals win the battles. The politicians win hearts and minds.

Think of the "talk louder" (I have heard to story too, and I think it is true IIRC) as simply a technical aspect of his ability, akin to the hacks, short cuts and pieces of useful code we programmers have hanging around to get things done faster :)

Re: Speaking of the British

#36

Post by ErrantX »

raffaelc wrote: post #5
srgseg wrote: post #4

"Anyway, running a country on eloquence alone hasn’t worked out disastrously – or at least not yet" Good grades are certainly not enough, but they are almost always required. Oxbridge only invites the best students to interview, and even the top 5 most academically competitive schools in the UK struggle to send more than a third of their students to Oxford or Cambridge in a good year.

"Anyway, running a country on eloquence alone hasn’t worked out disastrously – or at least not yet" The largest empire the world has ever seen whittled down to its homeland, a naval base in the med, and some godforsaken islands in the south atlantic. I'd call that pretty disastrous. It'll only get worse. In an increasingly technical world, the brits have the wrong culture of Snow's two cutures running the show.

Yes... but all of the aforementioned was built by people even closer to the caricature he paints.

So I am unconvinced the problem is as described :) The problem is that the world became suddenly a lot smaller and social perspectives changed very very quickly.

Re: Speaking of the British

#37

Post by wyclif »

corin_ wrote: post #29
wyclif wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You mean RP: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Received_Pronunciation

I've never actually heard that term before, though I am familiar with it being called the Queen's English, and BBC and Oxford English. But commonly it would be considered "upper class" within England, and probably considered "English" outside the UK.

Yeah, I've heard it called that, but my Brit friends usually call it "posh." Incidentally, we have our own version of RP in the States, it's called the "Mid-Atlantic accent", many talking heads on news and radio are encouraged to imitate it if they come from the South of the US or New England.

Re: Speaking of the British

#38

Post by gruseom »

ErrantX wrote: post #35
bluekeybox wrote: post #16

As the old joke (fact?) goes, Sir Winston Churchill was giving a speech in the House of Commons and someone nearby noticed that there was a handwritten comment in the margin of his notes: "Weak argument: talk loudly."

Churchill was not the smartest (from a technical perspective) cookie in the cookie jar, he was not a careful quiet thinker, he was a bit racist, from the "old school" and rather stuffy. But he was very very very very good at two things; patriotism and rhetoric. Which, when you are in a war, is a good thing. The generals win the battles. The politicians win hearts and minds. Think of the "talk louder" (I have heard to…

Churchill was also a master of English prose - quintessentially English prose. He is like Dickens in this respect.

Re: Speaking of the British

#39

Post by regomodo »

swombat wrote: post #7

I went to Oxford. I studied Physics. Yes, I learned to "wing it". If you can maneuver your way through a "tutorial" (2 students, one tutor) where the person evaluating you is one of the smartest people in the world and an expert with 40 years more experience than you, and you're hungover and didn't really study the material properly, and still come out looking ok, you can deal with almost any situation where you need…

Small case-study I know but I work with somebody who just came out of Cambridge and did a CS-like degree.

He cannot program for shit and talks like he does but show him a bit of C(++), PHP, javascript (even bash or Python) and his eyes just glaze over. I was teamed with him but he was forever unable to get anything done. In the end I was left with it all and made much better progress and he was left to book to overheads.

I'm certain he's an edge case though, I've met a few others who went to Oxbridge and they are definitely on the ball. However, I've found those who went to Bristol, Imperial or Loughborough are people that are the smartest.

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