Son of SoTI

If we were all the same this wouldn't be an issue.

My social networking practice has diverged. I use Twitter for work and professional commentary with the occasional policy-related excursion into fields beyond learning technology. I use Facebook for personal, mostly local, Oxford-based social and political activity. Although I have a LinkedIn account I don't much use it; I have found some old college classmates there. I have posted recordings of poems on mySpace and follow a few local bands.
I follow Twitter and Facebook (and now LinkedIn and mySpace) using TweetDeck. I use TweetDeck to post to Twitter, but I usually post to Facebook on the Facebook site. I rarely update mySpace. I accept and occasionally offer LinkedIn connections but rarely update my status there.
Now, I am wondering how to manage these networks?
My question arises for three reasons.
1) Many of my contacts blanket cover three of these services: Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn with the same message. They update their status once and splash it to all three. Since I follow all three networks there are a lot of duplicated messages.
2) Other friends do what I do only in reverse. They use Facebook for professional contacts and Twitter for personal stuff. So, I find my personal Facebook space getting hit with work stuff. But if I want my work-related updates to reach those people who use Facebook for work, I have to post work stuff to my social stream. This leads some people to post - well let's just say queries, like what's all this "rubbish".
3) TweetDeck enables all four networks to be monitored, and you can post to one or all. I could easily update all with the same messages.
As I said at the beginning, if everyone just did what I do there would be no problem ;-)
I am thinking of culling people from Facebook who just duplicate their Twitter postings. I have "hidden" their posts on Facebook, now. I want to see if hiding also hides them from the TweetDeck column.
I won't duplicate posts - except rarely - to multiple networks. I will try to dignify the difference between my networks
Twitter will remain my professional social networking outlet with the occasional political rant. Facebook will be for personal, social and political stuff - I mean heck, it is wired into the CIA, why make it hard for them?
I will monitor all the streams so I will see posts from those work colleagues who use Facebook. I can comment and respond. But they may miss my invaluable opinions on Twitter. I suspect, somehow, they will survive.

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After a lifetime of being wishy-washy about the serial comma, I’ve reached a decision: I’m going to use it all the time.

Such a momentous decision is, of course, a deeply personal matter. The pros and cons are widely, frequently, and hotly debated.

Here is some information that may enable you to make the decision for yourself, if you haven’t already done so.

serial comma: (also Oxford comma) n. a comma used after the penultimate item in a list of three or more items, before ‘and’ or ‘or’ (e.g. an Italian painter, sculptor, and architect). –Penguin Writer’s Manual.

Oxford comma: n. [after the preferred use of such a comma to avoid ambiguity in the house style of Oxford University Press] a comma immediately preceding the conjunction in a list of items. –OED

Some writers call the Oxford comma the “Harvard comma.”

Here’s a sentence with a serial comma: The Three Stooges are Larry, Moe, and Curly.

Here it is without a serial comma: The Three Stooges are Larry, Moe and Curly.

PRO serial comma
The Chicago Manual of Style (2009)

When a conjunction joins the last two elements in a series, a comma—known as the serial or series comma or the Oxford comma—should appear before the conjunction. Chicago strongly recommends this widely practiced usage, blessed by Fowler and other authorities… 6.19

The Elements of Style (2000)

In a series of three or more terms with a single conjunction, use a comma after each term except the last.

The stated rule seems ambiguous to me, but the examples that follow it are clear:

red, white, and blue
gold, silver, or copper

Gregg Reference Manual (1993)

When three or more items are listed in a series, and the last item is preceded by and, or, or nor, place a comma before the conjunction as well as between the other items.

CON serial comma
 AP Stylebook (2009)

Use commas to separate elements in a series, but do not put a comma before the conjunction in a simple series:
The flag is red, white and blue.
He would nominate Tom, Dick or Harry.

AP does allow a comma before and when ambiguity would result without one:

Put a comma before the concluding conjunction in a series, however, if an integral element of the series requires a conjunction:
I had orange juice, toast, and ham and eggs for breakfast.

Penguin Guide to Punctuation (1997)

Note also that it is not usual in British usage to put a listing comma before the word and or or itself (though American usage regularly puts one there.) So, in British usage, it is not usual to write The Three Musketeers were Athos, Porthos, and Aramis.

On the fence regarding the serial comma
Penguin Writer’s Manual (2002)

It is becoming more common in British English (and is usual in American English) to place a comma before the and that precedes the final item in a simple list (numbers one, two, three, and four).

Fowler’s Modern English Usage (1965)
In promoting the use of the serial comma, CMOS observes that the usage is “blessed by Fowler” among other authorities. However, when I looked up the topic in Fowler (1965 edition) I found this remark, which seems neutral at best:

The more usual way of punctuating such an enumeration as was used as an example in the preceding section is French, German, Italian and Spanish; the commas between French and German and German and Italian take the place of ands; there is no comma after Italian because, with and, it would be otiose [having no practical function; redundant; superfluous]. There are, however, some who favour putting one there, arguing that, since it may sometimes be needed to avoid ambiguity it may as well be used always for the sake of uniformity.

So there you have it. My choice is to travel the path of otiosity for the sake of uniformity. What’s yours?

 

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University plans 100 ‘targeted’ job cuts while increasing student numbers.

The ISP will begin a trial within days to monitor 40 percent of its network in order to gauge unlawful file-sharing levels. Virgin Media is to monitor its customers' data packets in an effort to gauge the level of unlawful file-sharing on its networks. The company announced on Thursday that it would perform a trial of deep packet inspection technology from Detica to gauge the levels of unlawful file-sharing on its network, on behalf of music companies and other rights holders.

Something bad, sad and mad is happening in the UK. Bad for the quality of our democracy. Sad for freedom of thought. Mad for common sense. As is so common in life, it is driven by honest sentiments and by people who have stronger hearts than they have knowledgeable heads.

Our government and its lower layers is becoming obsessively prescriptive about how UK universities should behave. This is damaging. It will do the reverse of what is intended. The latest attempt is in the design of something called the REF. This will be unreliable and is suitably named – I write this article after the handball, missed by the referee, by Thierry Henry that put Ireland out of the World Cup.

The acronym stands for the Research Excellence Framework. I don't know about you, but when I read words like "excellence framework" my head and heart always take an unhappy turn. Such phrases make me think of the days of the Soviet Union (a country and system known, in the data used by researchers like me, for producing exceptionally poor mental health among its citizens, and a lot of tractors in the wrong place). I expect the later sentences in any such document to reveal mostly the reverse. On inspection, and I have just read it, the REF document that was recently released to universities, telling us how to score goals and avoid a red card, has that predictably Soviet-ish feel.

In my life I have met about 30 Nobel Prize winners. They spanned disciplines, but one thing I noticed about them was an extreme disregard for waffle. This is because you make waves in academic life by getting on with fine work not talking about the need for elite-sounding, technocratic, puffery titles for organisations.

The REF is to replace the RAE (the research assessment exercise). From assessment to excellence in one movement by the UK, you may think.

After 2012, according to the current proposal, this REF will be used to allocate research cash to universities. Its central innovation is that it wishes to reward impact outside academia, and the plan is to put 25 per cent weight (in other words to allocate a quarter of UK university research-funding) according to this impact.

This is illogical and dangerous. It will get universities to put a lot of effort into doing things that they are not meant to do.

Universities are not firms, or newspapers, or quangos. UK universities are good at what they do, especially given the level of resources available to them, and should be encouraged to stick disinterestedly to discovering what is true.

It sounds strange, but universities are not meant to influence the world – not, at least, in any remotely immediate sense. If you are sitting on the Islington Omnibus, you may think that an odd and incorrect line to argue, but it is important to be clear about why it is.

Human knowledge rests on the discovery of fundamentals – on what we might call basic truths. Your Omnibus is running, right now, because of scientific research done decades ago by people with no interest whatsoever in powering your bus. They cared about differential equations, about the crystalline structure of glass, about the coefficient of friction, about the science of braking distances, about the inside of hydrocarbons, about more things with long Latin names than you and I have had salad lunches.

Our problem here is ultimately with politicians. They feel obliged to be busy doing things in arenas where they have no expertise.

A little while ago, I was invited, with three others, to go and see one of the UK's best-known political figures. It is always interesting to meet a household name (I do not mean that is what he was thinking, I fear). This man, who certainly has a terrific brain, asked us in turn what he should do with the UK's universities. Every time I explained "leave them alone", he would listen courteously. Then he would think. Then he would turn to me. Then he would go back, each time, to a sentence that began something like, "But we put all this taxpayers' money into universities, and I just feel...".

Universities are not meant to be practical; other organisations are for that. If you think UK universities are meant to have "impact", you have not thought about the issues hard enough.

The writer is Professor of Economics at the University of Warwick.

Alan Cann del Departamento de Biología de la universidad y quien dirigió la investigación, señaló que “los departamentos académicos involucrados en el estudio quedaron tan impresionados con la captación intuitiva de Twitter que lo han ...