Author Archives: rusnuvol

This reading wasn’t entertaining in the least. However, i found it to be quite informative. (1 out of 2). I feel it really adheres to the the title of Politics of Research. i was quite unaware of how much went into what what is being researched. It is pretty sad that once again,the driving forces behind most research is money and power. The government want to maintain power, so they throw money in that area. Corporations want to be more profitable so they throw money into what would bring them more money. Meanwhile studies that i feel are just as important or in some cases even more important get left in the cold. Studies like peace, political economy, etc. I feel if we spent more time researching the essentials of what it takes to maintain a family and pull our resources to encourage more families (as opposed to single parent households), a lot of problems in society would be eradicated.

I thoroughly enjoyed the reading that was given. I like the writing style of Badke, particularly how he manages to hold my attention with the sly and mostly humorous  remarks he makes (reminds me of that guy…..me). I also like how he brings his 25+ years of experience into every part of the book. While still maintaining an unbiased perspective regardless of the matter, except plagiarism.  As a certain wise man once said ” A good teacher protects his pupils from his own influence” (name withheld, it isn’t me either).

I found the reading to be quite informative due to the way the author showed a chronological timeline of how (in)accessible information has been over the years. From speech and public demonstrations (section 1.1) to the Africans during their civil war(section 1.1) (note to self: find out just how edible a rose is) to the beginning of the print press by Gutenberg (how old was he when he finally spelt his whole name? i say 27).  To modern day e-readers, all the way up to the Ipad. Now that’s current.

Throughout chapters 1 and 8 he provides us with advantages and disadvantages to the way information is published and the different methods for research. However, in the beginning when listing the way information is made available, i feel he neglected to show us the advantage in memorizing the text for oral transmission. I say this because it’s become a problem in our society today that people can’t seem to memorize the basic things like phone numbers, birthdays,addresses,birthdays, names, birthdays,appointments have i mentioned birthdays? etc. I may be biased in bringing this up because my birthday just passed and some people didn’t know it because it wasn’t in their phone or because i’m not on facebook. I think this is  a bigger problem in that technology has made us lazier as a whole. At this rate we’re heading towards those guys in scooter/chair hybrids in the movie Wall-E (no relation,mine has only one L). He (the man Badke) didn’t have to point out all i did, but he could have stayed the course and provided us with both pro and cons of every advancement, starting with the original method. I believe doing this would make us more cautious and reflect a little before jumping onto the next trendy device (no offense Kindle).