August 2011
135 posts
“Who are the most ruthless capitalists in the western world? Whose monopolistic practices make Walmart look like a corner shop and Rupert Murdoch a socialist? You won’t guess the answer in a month of Sundays. While there are plenty of candidates, my vote goes not to the banks, the oil companies or the health insurers, but – wait for it – to academic publishers. Theirs might sound like a fusty and insignificant sector. It is anything but. Of all corporate scams, the racket they run is most urgently in need of referral to the competition authorities.”
—
Bless you Mr. Monbiot.
In the short term, governments should refer the academic publishers to their competition watchdogs, and insist that all papers arising from publicly funded research are placed in a free public database. In the longer term, they should work with researchers to cut out the middleman altogether, creating – along the lines proposed by Björn Brembs of Berlin’s Freie Universität – a single global archive of academic literature and data. Peer-review would be overseen by an independent body. It could be funded by the library budgets which are currently being diverted into the hands of privateers.
THIS. THIS. THIS.
(via randomberlinchick)
Listen
THE OSMONDS - One Bad Apple
45 rpm single
oh this takes me right back to the minute the schools in my town in NC were integrated and black kids and white kids did battle during the lunch break over whether or not The Jackson Five were cooler than the Osmonds … hahahahahaha!!
okay, i can laugh now but back in the day, this was a serious debate.
After The Dance
Fourplay/w El DeBarge
Fourplay (Feat. El DeBarge)/After The Dance (Marvin Gaye Cover)
So That Happen'd....
On Doctor Who, Hitler “accidentally” shoots the angry black chick and she regenerates into the exciting white woman.
Okay, then.
AWKWARD MOMENT IN DOCTOR WHO LAST NIGHT:
When the little midget people implied that River Song’s crime was worse than Hitler’s.
Yeah, that was very cringe-worthy.
