Winter is here and Ariel University has received its first snow. The blue metallic angular contruction in front of the library may be something but ask and I'll say it is ugly. Domine Gratia, no one asks. Students look like Rumanian bandits, what they are but for the Grace of God.
15 comments:
Are those CRT terminals on the desks? I don't think I've seen a CRT monitor in the US for years now. American college students for a time each carried their own laptop computers to class but then the professors realized that the students were doing crossword puzzles and such rather than paying attention to the lectures, so many of them have banned them from class, so says my daughter at MIT.
K
We are poor and so is the equipment. Most of the lab was built in house. The air conditioner worked only for cooling, it took me half an hour to understand that it was becoming too cold in the room. The environmental art is poor. The students - as you see - are no more attentive to the teacher than in the MIT. I dont blame them. Somehow they end as functioning civil engineers. Yesterday called me a former student, is managing a large school project in the Shomron, and asked me for a proposal. I find my former students everywhere working and progressing. It surprises me when I see them as respected professionals, I dont know how it happens.
I was a good student but started to study seriously only when I started working and see money coming in. Then when I started to teach, then I really started to work on the books.
Some of the physical plant at MIT is antique - the main building is almost 100 years old. Although it has been modernized inside, the overall aesthetic is "utilitarian" as befits an engineering school - there are no drop ceilings in the hallways so the pipes and wires are exposed. The campus was originally in an industrial area and as it has grown, they have bought out many of the former factory buildings and used them for labs, etc. - again these have a very utilitarian aesthetic. Some of the newer buildings are "fancier". What impressed me most were the "toys" (they say that the difference between boys and men are the price of their toys) - a nuclear reactor, a tokamak fusion reactor, etc. These are NOT cheap items.
But what is really important is not the physical classroom but WHO is sitting in the classroom. In Philadelphia they have built some new public schools that look like palaces, but almost no learning goes on there - it's what Feynman would call "cargo cult" education - mimicking the forms of a civilization is not the same as HAVING a civilization.
As far as computer stuff goes, I think the problem is that the computer industry is on a very short cycle - a 2 year old computer is already obsolete, but there is no way that a large institution can afford to throw out its perfectly functioning hardware every two years just because something better is on the market. But CRTs have been obsolete for maybe a decade now, so that is pushing it.
K
Ariel's University was originally planned and built as an Industrial Center and it looks like that. Till today is not budgeted as a legitimate university and gets by like everything else in Samaria on the strength of occasional, ad-hoc support. You can see the plaque on the lab wall, some South American donor gave the money to but the whiteboard and the backpain-causing plastic chairs. And the monitors, which are perfectly serviceable. The building carries the name of Asseo, a Saloniki Jew who made good in Argentina. The upper campus is named for Milken of the bonds fame. No one yet, however, donated a tokamak.
MIT's tokamak is not a "donation" either but funded by Federal contracts. The Administration keeps threatening to pull the funding for it and use it to support the larger ITER international tokamak project in France. But Congress keeps putting the money back in the budget. How nice of them to be so generous with money that they don't have.
K
I wouldn't invest a lot in physical plant in Samaria either. It may come to pass that Israel has to give this territory back as part of a settlement. All the money that was spent on physical plant in Gaza was totally wasted. Even Hamas didn't benefit since the locals tore the facilities to shreds so they could sell the scrap.
K
saloniki jews did quite well in Brazil, ever heard of Silvio Santos? Media and Bank in single show every Saturday.
Saloniki Jews did very well also in Argentina.
Simply love the 'cargo cult' metaphor; once you understand it, you just see it everywhere, hear it everywhere.
No wonder so few people can actually solve problems, let alone problems they haven't encountered before.
Anon.
I cant see the future but it seems that Ariel is to stay. The political atmosphere that allowed the creation of Gaza has changed. After thirty years of nonstop growth, it is fair to say that Ariel is permanent. As permanent as any other city in this Middle EAst.
We're all "cargo cultist".
No, Ariel is not copying MIT. We could have built a cargo cult tokamak from wood and mud, but we didnt.
A wood and mud one would work as well as the real thing. Despite having spent billions on this concept over the last 40 years, no one has generated even 1 watt of net power. I have the feeling that the approach is fundamentally wrong, and like Langley's steam powered airplane, it will never fly. Even if it can be made to work experimentally, it won't constitute a commercially viable technology for power generation (you could build a natural gas powered plant of the same size for 1% of the cost) , and if it isn't, what's the point? I have the feeling that our top universities are being turned into a sort of yeshiva, where learning is done for its own sake and nothing of practical value is created. But at least lots of graduate students have (ill paying) jobs.
K
The trend in Israel is the opposite: the universities are being commercialized. All the universities, Ariel included, have created marketing arms for their patents and discoveries. The Weizmann Institute receives a steady stream of royalties from its research. Necessity is the mother of commercialization. 25% of Israeli PhDs are in the USA, seeking a more relaxed work atmosphere. Most cant stand the stress here, but they will never say so.
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