So yesterday I watched the new Doctor Who-episode (Who-pisode?).
I was quite excited for it, also because it had been promoted as being somewhat James Bond/Jason Bourne-like. It wasn't like that at all, though.
Seriously, the Doctor can't be like James Bond - the only character in the episodes I have watched so far that can make claims to being somewhat Bond-like would be Ian, the 30-something science teacher in a suit (but willing to dress in funkier outfits) and JFK-haircut who, together with Barbara and Susan, was one of the first companions back in the 1960s (I do have a bit of a weak spot for the Ian character).
But I quite liked the episode, apart from a few things I am all too willing to overlook. Except for Clara. I don't like this version of her. I liked her as soufflé-girl, and I liked her as Victorian Clara, but current-day Clara is just odd. She seemed to be trying too hard to be feisty but missing the actual spark to be feisty. A bit too-cute-to-be-true, in a sense (also, didn't she call him 'Doctor' before he'd properly introduced himself as such? Might have to re-watch).
Monsters in the WiFi, heck yes. Nicely done, too, with the Spoonheads and a creepy CEO-type lady.
Motorbike - why? He's got a bloody TARDIS. Seems a bit contrived and just a plot-thing to have the Doctor drive up the side of the Shard, which seemed slightly off. I watched it going "WHAT." in my best Tennant-imitation. Slightly deus ex machina - "You can't enter" "Well I can because this motor bike that I've been driving around because somehow I thought it wise to leave my TARDIS on the South Bank and that no one has ever seen before can suddenly defy gravity". Yeah No.
Seriously, that could've been done much more easily with the TARDIS, without having to stick in a deus ex motorbike - "Say Clara, let's have breakfast" "Did you just park the TARDIS on the pavement in the middle of London?" "Yes I did" "Awesome" - breakfast - "Oh No, I have to be in the Shard!" - TARDIS - "Hello creepy CEO lady".
But in general I liked the episode. Nice pacing (which is what has me screaming at my laptop about the early episodes - mainly going "seriously Ian, DO SOMETHING!"), nice baddies, nice TARDIS interior, nice purple coat (purple is cool).
I watched the episode expecting it to be part of a bigger whole, which is why I am willing to overlook things - if they bring back the motorbike for something that can't be done with the TARDIS later on in the series, I'll drop all my complaints about it.
The only thing I felt was truly missing was something of a transition between the Christmas special and this episode. I know the prequel is there, but it's not sufficient. Hope they'll come back to that later in the series also.
In general, therefore, nice opening for a new (half) series but only if the writers are willing to wrap up a big number of loose ends.
Very much looking forward to next episode, if only because 'Akhaten' reminds me of the name of pharaoh Akhenaten, which is cool because Akhenaten was not only the heretic king but also the father of Tutankhamun (who really isn't important but his treasures are still cool) and the spouse of Nefertiti - which is cool because we already saw Nefertiti in Dinosaurs on a Spaceship.
Besides, Akhaten seems to translate to something having to do with the solar-deity Aten (whom Akhenaten made the focus of his monotheistic religion) and pharaonic effectivenes, or something of the sort.
The summary on the BBC website says "The Doctor takes Clara to the Festival of Offerings, but the Old God is waking and demands sacrifice!". I've seen the preview and trailer, and there's definitely a fiery planet or even star in there, so that works too. Of course it's in space - but who's to say Akhenaten's religion didn't travel?
So, definitely something with Gods, and Festival of Offerings sounds quite like something that fits with the religions of the Egyptian and classical world. Cool. Fingers crossed that they're actually putting in allusions to Ancient Egypt, for that would forever solidify my fanship of Doctor Who. They've already done vampires and Napoleon, after all.
Showing posts with label Opinions. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Opinions. Show all posts
Sunday, 31 March 2013
Saturday, 30 March 2013
Time
Seeing as tonight sees the broadcast of a whole new Doctor Who episode, this might be the right moment to write about one of my greatest problems with the show: Time. And time travel. Especially the Earth-centricness.
I don't have any problems with space travel, mainly because space travel is just covering distance and whether covering a certain distance in little to no time passing at all might well be possible when technology improves. Sure, if one travels by coordinates - as the Doctor seems to be doing - one needs to be extremely specific in order not to land halfway in the ground somewhere, or stuck in a ceiling - one would need to know the exact location of every atom in the general area of where one would want to land (which, so I've been told, is one of Physics's major practical problems in making teleportation possible). But I'm sure the TARDIS is perfectly equipped for this, and there appears to be a Galactic Zero Centre (http://tardis.wikia.com/wiki/Galactic_centre), like our global coordinates are at 0 where the equator crosses the Greenwich meridian, just off the coast of Africa. Such a zero point is an agreed-upon point and so not an absolute, but can still be used to measure against and so base travel upon. There need to be no extremes known - you don't need to know the "end", just keep on counting. It does not even need to be a Galaxy-widely held convention, even if only the TARDIS would use such a zero point, it can be used for travel, as long as elevation or at least a third dimension is taken into account.
But Time. Time does not truly exist, does it, other than as a purely abstract idea to mark the duration of a sequence of events. Time, as a concept, is a human invention - the basic notion is the rotation of the Earth and the orbiting of the Earth around the Sun, nothing more. A day is the duration for one point - or line, the Greenwich meridian - to move from a specific location relative to the Earth's axis to that same location relative to the Earth's axis, or from Midnight to Midnight. But that's a modern invention, as for instance in the Ancient world, if I remember correctly, a full day lasted from sun up to sun up and so the duration of a day varied. But an agreed duration for a day is good, so humans could divide it by 24, and then by 60, and then by 60 again, and so forth, to find out hours and minutes and seconds and miliseconds. There wasn't even a unified time per country until railways demanded it, and then it still took a while for everyone - it took especially the French very long - to agree that time is to be derived from the Greenwich meridian.
A year is just the same, the number of days it takes to orbit around the Sun - 365.24... something, so we need a leap year every four years except some. To us, that is, because to the Ancient Egyptians a year was 360 days (12 months, 30 days per months, 3 weeks per month, 10 days per week) plus a festival of five days for the Gods, which fell outside the year.
And what is our zero for years? Some Pope decided that the birth of Christ was supposed to be zero, so he calculated zero, and still got it wrong, so that our calendar begins at a completely random point in time. Fair enough though if we can all agreed that that random point is zero, but then the Jewish are currently in the year 5773. And we can't even agree on the point when the year should begin - Midnight at the start of the 1st of January? Or later, in late January/early February, like the Chinese New Year? Roman New Year did not start until March, while Ancient Egyptian New Year was some time over summer.
Fine, so let's say the TARDIS travels by Gallifreyan time - one could presume that at least the Gallifreyans would agree on one time, some of them being Time Lords, after all.
Travelling forward in time should perhaps not be too difficult, if one can teleport or travel really really fast - something with time running slower than elsewhere, something Einstein, something relativity.
But travelling back in time should only be possible if each event, or each sequence of events, is stored in some dimension, and that time passing is just - I'm going fairly metaphysical here - our consciousness passing through those dimensions. A bit like our consciousnesses are watching a stop-motion film, but then they are part of that stop-motion film. I guess this could be possible with parallel universes etc., quantum physics and what not. Schroedinger's Cat and that.
Besides, time travel should only be possible if one can map time against something - but against what?
But perhaps I'm taking time too much as a linear thing and instead it is "a big ball of wibbly-wobbly timey-wimey... stuff".
Anyway. What I did realise is possible was what I realised yesterday as I was trying to fall asleep. Basically, we only see parts of the Doctor's adventures (most notably the Eleventh Doctor suddenly ages from 900-something to 1100-something over a series, and we don't really see what happens in the 200 years in between), so at any point in time, if the Doctor were real, we humans could meet just about every incarnation - a TARDIS could appear right here in the grad lounge and the First Doctor could come stepping out "hmm"-ing (or, more interestingly to me, the Tenth could step out brandishing the sonic screwdriver). Of course that would also mean (I haven't watched any episode yet in which the Doctor meets himself, so bear with me) that a Doctor with little to no hang-ups about crossing his own timeline could easily meet himself in an earlier (or even the same - but hang on, he did that more or less when Rose wanted to save her Dad) regeneration. I'd love for the First Doctor to meet the Eleventh and go all "hmm" and "my boy" and patronising and all that until the Eleventh points out that he is him but - hilariously - older.
What if time passed faster in the TARDIS (or any other other dimension) than it does in the outside world? It would explain why suddenly the Eleventh Doctor is 200 years older, for I doubt he'd travel without the Ponds for 200 years while the Ponds were still free. If one is used to a human pace, and time moves faster in another dimension, what would seem like a month could indeed easily be a year, or even two centuries.
It would also explain why some Doctors (especially the Tenth and Eleventh - I've yet to observe Two to Seven) seem a bit hyperactive compared to a human pace.
Sort of reversed relativity.
Perhaps it WOULD, in case of reversed relativity of time, be possible to travel back in time. Perhaps the pace of time inside the TARDIS can be altered so that travelling in time both ways is made possible. I don't know.
Hang on. Time goes faster on the inside than on the outside.
The TARDIS is Narnia.
That, or the Eleventh Doctor spent 200 years in Narnia.
Either one is cool.
Fascinating stuff, time. I just have difficulty grasping it - I do wish I hadn't dropped my science courses in secondary school. The upside of all this is that if time was a stop-motion film observed by our consciousnesses, I'd be totally right in believing there is no Truth and all there is, is our observed reality.
Physicists, do feel free to step in and answer my questions...
PS I love this: http://imagine.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/ask_astro/answers/970401c.html. I'm quite terrible at the whole sine/cosine/tangent bit of mathemathics (only mathematics test I failed back when I was still good at maths), but let's ignore that bit. This bit: "The Earth is doing a lot more than rotating, although that is certainly the motion we notice most, because day follows night as a result. We also orbit the Sun once a year. The circumference of the Earth's orbit is about 940 million kilometers, so if you divide that by the hours in a year you will get our orbital speed in kilometers per hour. We are also moving with the Sun around the center of our galaxy and moving with our galaxy as it drifts through intergalactic space!". Pure Epic. Basically, it tells me that there should be four basic units of time on Earth: a day (rotation), an Earth year (orbit), a Galatic year (moving around the centre of the Galaxy) and an Intergalactic period (a distance in drifting through Intergalatic Space). Yes, I *am* ignoring time derived from atom clocks etc.. So basically, the TARDIS would not only have to have a sort of internal library of the positions of every atom - impressive enough to start with - but also of every atom's movement through time - and surely this must include 'paths not taken', i.e. unrealised futures and disregarded pasts.
Whoa. Time Lord technology must be truly awesome. No wonder the sonic screwdriver can do lots of things that seem like deus ex machina plot-tricks to us mere humans...
I don't have any problems with space travel, mainly because space travel is just covering distance and whether covering a certain distance in little to no time passing at all might well be possible when technology improves. Sure, if one travels by coordinates - as the Doctor seems to be doing - one needs to be extremely specific in order not to land halfway in the ground somewhere, or stuck in a ceiling - one would need to know the exact location of every atom in the general area of where one would want to land (which, so I've been told, is one of Physics's major practical problems in making teleportation possible). But I'm sure the TARDIS is perfectly equipped for this, and there appears to be a Galactic Zero Centre (http://tardis.wikia.com/wiki/Galactic_centre), like our global coordinates are at 0 where the equator crosses the Greenwich meridian, just off the coast of Africa. Such a zero point is an agreed-upon point and so not an absolute, but can still be used to measure against and so base travel upon. There need to be no extremes known - you don't need to know the "end", just keep on counting. It does not even need to be a Galaxy-widely held convention, even if only the TARDIS would use such a zero point, it can be used for travel, as long as elevation or at least a third dimension is taken into account.
But Time. Time does not truly exist, does it, other than as a purely abstract idea to mark the duration of a sequence of events. Time, as a concept, is a human invention - the basic notion is the rotation of the Earth and the orbiting of the Earth around the Sun, nothing more. A day is the duration for one point - or line, the Greenwich meridian - to move from a specific location relative to the Earth's axis to that same location relative to the Earth's axis, or from Midnight to Midnight. But that's a modern invention, as for instance in the Ancient world, if I remember correctly, a full day lasted from sun up to sun up and so the duration of a day varied. But an agreed duration for a day is good, so humans could divide it by 24, and then by 60, and then by 60 again, and so forth, to find out hours and minutes and seconds and miliseconds. There wasn't even a unified time per country until railways demanded it, and then it still took a while for everyone - it took especially the French very long - to agree that time is to be derived from the Greenwich meridian.
A year is just the same, the number of days it takes to orbit around the Sun - 365.24... something, so we need a leap year every four years except some. To us, that is, because to the Ancient Egyptians a year was 360 days (12 months, 30 days per months, 3 weeks per month, 10 days per week) plus a festival of five days for the Gods, which fell outside the year.
And what is our zero for years? Some Pope decided that the birth of Christ was supposed to be zero, so he calculated zero, and still got it wrong, so that our calendar begins at a completely random point in time. Fair enough though if we can all agreed that that random point is zero, but then the Jewish are currently in the year 5773. And we can't even agree on the point when the year should begin - Midnight at the start of the 1st of January? Or later, in late January/early February, like the Chinese New Year? Roman New Year did not start until March, while Ancient Egyptian New Year was some time over summer.
Fine, so let's say the TARDIS travels by Gallifreyan time - one could presume that at least the Gallifreyans would agree on one time, some of them being Time Lords, after all.
Travelling forward in time should perhaps not be too difficult, if one can teleport or travel really really fast - something with time running slower than elsewhere, something Einstein, something relativity.
But travelling back in time should only be possible if each event, or each sequence of events, is stored in some dimension, and that time passing is just - I'm going fairly metaphysical here - our consciousness passing through those dimensions. A bit like our consciousnesses are watching a stop-motion film, but then they are part of that stop-motion film. I guess this could be possible with parallel universes etc., quantum physics and what not. Schroedinger's Cat and that.
Besides, time travel should only be possible if one can map time against something - but against what?
But perhaps I'm taking time too much as a linear thing and instead it is "a big ball of wibbly-wobbly timey-wimey... stuff".
Anyway. What I did realise is possible was what I realised yesterday as I was trying to fall asleep. Basically, we only see parts of the Doctor's adventures (most notably the Eleventh Doctor suddenly ages from 900-something to 1100-something over a series, and we don't really see what happens in the 200 years in between), so at any point in time, if the Doctor were real, we humans could meet just about every incarnation - a TARDIS could appear right here in the grad lounge and the First Doctor could come stepping out "hmm"-ing (or, more interestingly to me, the Tenth could step out brandishing the sonic screwdriver). Of course that would also mean (I haven't watched any episode yet in which the Doctor meets himself, so bear with me) that a Doctor with little to no hang-ups about crossing his own timeline could easily meet himself in an earlier (or even the same - but hang on, he did that more or less when Rose wanted to save her Dad) regeneration. I'd love for the First Doctor to meet the Eleventh and go all "hmm" and "my boy" and patronising and all that until the Eleventh points out that he is him but - hilariously - older.
What if time passed faster in the TARDIS (or any other other dimension) than it does in the outside world? It would explain why suddenly the Eleventh Doctor is 200 years older, for I doubt he'd travel without the Ponds for 200 years while the Ponds were still free. If one is used to a human pace, and time moves faster in another dimension, what would seem like a month could indeed easily be a year, or even two centuries.
It would also explain why some Doctors (especially the Tenth and Eleventh - I've yet to observe Two to Seven) seem a bit hyperactive compared to a human pace.
Sort of reversed relativity.
Perhaps it WOULD, in case of reversed relativity of time, be possible to travel back in time. Perhaps the pace of time inside the TARDIS can be altered so that travelling in time both ways is made possible. I don't know.
Hang on. Time goes faster on the inside than on the outside.
The TARDIS is Narnia.
That, or the Eleventh Doctor spent 200 years in Narnia.
Either one is cool.
Fascinating stuff, time. I just have difficulty grasping it - I do wish I hadn't dropped my science courses in secondary school. The upside of all this is that if time was a stop-motion film observed by our consciousnesses, I'd be totally right in believing there is no Truth and all there is, is our observed reality.
Physicists, do feel free to step in and answer my questions...
PS I love this: http://imagine.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/ask_astro/answers/970401c.html. I'm quite terrible at the whole sine/cosine/tangent bit of mathemathics (only mathematics test I failed back when I was still good at maths), but let's ignore that bit. This bit: "The Earth is doing a lot more than rotating, although that is certainly the motion we notice most, because day follows night as a result. We also orbit the Sun once a year. The circumference of the Earth's orbit is about 940 million kilometers, so if you divide that by the hours in a year you will get our orbital speed in kilometers per hour. We are also moving with the Sun around the center of our galaxy and moving with our galaxy as it drifts through intergalactic space!". Pure Epic. Basically, it tells me that there should be four basic units of time on Earth: a day (rotation), an Earth year (orbit), a Galatic year (moving around the centre of the Galaxy) and an Intergalactic period (a distance in drifting through Intergalatic Space). Yes, I *am* ignoring time derived from atom clocks etc.. So basically, the TARDIS would not only have to have a sort of internal library of the positions of every atom - impressive enough to start with - but also of every atom's movement through time - and surely this must include 'paths not taken', i.e. unrealised futures and disregarded pasts.
Whoa. Time Lord technology must be truly awesome. No wonder the sonic screwdriver can do lots of things that seem like deus ex machina plot-tricks to us mere humans...
Friday, 25 January 2013
Opinion: In Defense of High Heels and Corsets
Today, a friend posted something on his Facebook wall about an article in which he'd read that high heels were designed to keep women from running away et cetera - in any case, the article perpetuated the myth that high heels are supposed to be painful. In many ways, this is similar to the myth that corsets are supposed to be constrictive and painful.
As a some-time wearer of both, I can contest to the falsehood of these myths. Of course, anecdotal evidence is far from scientific, but as there are online guides to wearing both these garments, I am fairly certain I am not alone.
I own a range of heeled shoes, heights varying from 2 inches to 5, and two corsets, one which is supposed to give me a 4 inch waist reduction and one supposed to do 8 (when fully closed).
I like heels, for a number of reasons. The main one is that they make me look far prettier (or so I'd like to think), and because, in a country such as the Netherlands, I'm fairly short, being 5 foot 7. Of course, there are practical downsides; they take training to walk in, and wearing them in icy weather is a sign of stubbornness far beyond stupidity. I don't wear them often here in the UK, because the pavement is fairly irregular and somehow I'm no longer short, but average. You don't have to wear heels every day to be able to walk in them, but you do have to know how to, first: High heel training
Corsets come with a similar set of pros and cons, the main pros being that they make me look much thinner (especially in the case of the 8 inch one, which I can't close fully and with the 6 inch reduction I *can* achieve already looks somewhat ridiculous... like heels over 5 inches also start looking ridiculous) and their rigidity does tremendous things for my spine. Like heels, you can't just put on a corset and expect to be comfortable with an immediate 6 inch reduction; you have to train yourself. Also, indeed, you can't really bend over in them or do anything else that requires upper body flexibility. In fact, there are websites devoted to helping people train their waste - this does rely on wearing corsets often for a permanently altered waist, but the same goes for just being able to wear them: Waist training
Corsets and heels suffer from the same disadvantages, but they both do wonders for the way one looks.
And yes, they will be painful if you don't train yourself right. If you start out wearing flats and suddenly switch to 5 inch heels then yes, you'll feel like you're ready to topple over any time and after a while your feet will hurt like hell. Seeing as I haven't worn any heels lately, I can't take 5 inches now either; I'll stick with 4" maximum, and even then it's a little painful. Same with the corsets; there's a reason I can't achieve that 8 inch reduction, and it's not because I'm fat (though that plays a role, too). It's mostly because I don't wear corsets often enough (because of their lack of practicality, which is the same reason I hardly wear heels in the UK) to train myself to actually be able to take those 8 inches without suffering pain.
Wearing heels and corsets is about knowing yourself and knowing your limits and wearing what you like best regardless of what anyone else thinks, which is, if anything, empowering. Regardless of whatever patriarchal and misogynistic ideas led to the conception of both these types of garment. If it hurts, don't wear them. If you don't like them, don't wear them. But not wearing them because although you like them, they were originally supposedly designed to keep you from running away or to cause you pain? Screw that, and wear them as much as you like.
And now, for some shoe porn:
(and if the good people from Christian Louboutin wish to thank me for featuring a pair of their shoes on this blog with its massive audience consisting of my parents and friends, they're absolutely welcome to do so with a nice pair of heels ;) [also because if I ever become an academic, I won't be able to afford a pair of 500 pound heels... pity me, Louboutin-people!] )
As a some-time wearer of both, I can contest to the falsehood of these myths. Of course, anecdotal evidence is far from scientific, but as there are online guides to wearing both these garments, I am fairly certain I am not alone.
I own a range of heeled shoes, heights varying from 2 inches to 5, and two corsets, one which is supposed to give me a 4 inch waist reduction and one supposed to do 8 (when fully closed).
I like heels, for a number of reasons. The main one is that they make me look far prettier (or so I'd like to think), and because, in a country such as the Netherlands, I'm fairly short, being 5 foot 7. Of course, there are practical downsides; they take training to walk in, and wearing them in icy weather is a sign of stubbornness far beyond stupidity. I don't wear them often here in the UK, because the pavement is fairly irregular and somehow I'm no longer short, but average. You don't have to wear heels every day to be able to walk in them, but you do have to know how to, first: High heel training
Corsets come with a similar set of pros and cons, the main pros being that they make me look much thinner (especially in the case of the 8 inch one, which I can't close fully and with the 6 inch reduction I *can* achieve already looks somewhat ridiculous... like heels over 5 inches also start looking ridiculous) and their rigidity does tremendous things for my spine. Like heels, you can't just put on a corset and expect to be comfortable with an immediate 6 inch reduction; you have to train yourself. Also, indeed, you can't really bend over in them or do anything else that requires upper body flexibility. In fact, there are websites devoted to helping people train their waste - this does rely on wearing corsets often for a permanently altered waist, but the same goes for just being able to wear them: Waist training
Corsets and heels suffer from the same disadvantages, but they both do wonders for the way one looks.
And yes, they will be painful if you don't train yourself right. If you start out wearing flats and suddenly switch to 5 inch heels then yes, you'll feel like you're ready to topple over any time and after a while your feet will hurt like hell. Seeing as I haven't worn any heels lately, I can't take 5 inches now either; I'll stick with 4" maximum, and even then it's a little painful. Same with the corsets; there's a reason I can't achieve that 8 inch reduction, and it's not because I'm fat (though that plays a role, too). It's mostly because I don't wear corsets often enough (because of their lack of practicality, which is the same reason I hardly wear heels in the UK) to train myself to actually be able to take those 8 inches without suffering pain.
Wearing heels and corsets is about knowing yourself and knowing your limits and wearing what you like best regardless of what anyone else thinks, which is, if anything, empowering. Regardless of whatever patriarchal and misogynistic ideas led to the conception of both these types of garment. If it hurts, don't wear them. If you don't like them, don't wear them. But not wearing them because although you like them, they were originally supposedly designed to keep you from running away or to cause you pain? Screw that, and wear them as much as you like.
(and if the good people from Christian Louboutin wish to thank me for featuring a pair of their shoes on this blog with its massive audience consisting of my parents and friends, they're absolutely welcome to do so with a nice pair of heels ;) [also because if I ever become an academic, I won't be able to afford a pair of 500 pound heels... pity me, Louboutin-people!] )
Friday, 5 October 2012
Opinion: Criminology as a Field
The introduction to the Oxford Handbook of Criminology describes Criminology as being extremely inter-disciplinary, as actually being a field rather than a discipline because the uniting characteristic is the topic rather than the methodology.
Of course I agree there; whenever I look for Criminological explanations I find them often in the fields of law, behavioural economics, politics, psychology, anthropology, history or, in rare cases, linguistics.
Why does the law have the effect is does? Well, because the linguistic properties of the law make it what it is, and what it is makes it a sort of contract, and that sort of contract attaches possibly undesired consequences to socially undesired actions which makes most people wanting to keep to that law (unless the law is about jumping red lights on a bike or something, because there the chance of being caught combined with the fine makes for too small a consequence to outweigh the convenience of being three seconds faster). Linguistics, law/politics, economics/politics/psychology (the risk-averse person).
If the Oxford Handbook and I are both right, I would assume I am right in concluding that Criminology is one of the ultimate liberal arts fields in social sciences.
That said, I would go on to state that plenty of Universities are wrong to put it in the departments of either Sociology or Law; Criminology is neither and thus deserves its own department (yes, I am aware that this reasoning would go for a number of other fields as well) or should have its own track in University Colleges like Roosevelt Academy.
There is a fragment of self-interest in there too; if given the chance to ever teach this at a Uni, I would lobby for making it a separate department (and I don't even have a desire to be a Head of Department, I don't like office politics, but I just feel that Criminology would benefit from having its own dept) or, if at a UC, I would lobby to make Criminology have its own track within Social Sciences.
Practical example: if (IF) I do ever manage to teach Crime & Law Enforcement at RA and RA hasn't given Criminology its own track by then, I WILL lobby for that - besides, the massive over-subscriptions for law and psychology courses would surely guarantee that at least the costs for two more crime courses will be covered, thus actually allowing for a full track. That would also make it easier for students who wish to go on and do Criminology masters in the Netherlands, where one of the requirements is still to have done a certain amount of ECTS within the field of Criminology (because if they do want to go on and do Criminology, the Netherlands and Britain offer, apparently, the best masters. For Criminal Justice, the US is apparently really very good - and yes, there is a difference).
But who knows what the future will bring.
Of course I agree there; whenever I look for Criminological explanations I find them often in the fields of law, behavioural economics, politics, psychology, anthropology, history or, in rare cases, linguistics.
Why does the law have the effect is does? Well, because the linguistic properties of the law make it what it is, and what it is makes it a sort of contract, and that sort of contract attaches possibly undesired consequences to socially undesired actions which makes most people wanting to keep to that law (unless the law is about jumping red lights on a bike or something, because there the chance of being caught combined with the fine makes for too small a consequence to outweigh the convenience of being three seconds faster). Linguistics, law/politics, economics/politics/psychology (the risk-averse person).
If the Oxford Handbook and I are both right, I would assume I am right in concluding that Criminology is one of the ultimate liberal arts fields in social sciences.
That said, I would go on to state that plenty of Universities are wrong to put it in the departments of either Sociology or Law; Criminology is neither and thus deserves its own department (yes, I am aware that this reasoning would go for a number of other fields as well) or should have its own track in University Colleges like Roosevelt Academy.
There is a fragment of self-interest in there too; if given the chance to ever teach this at a Uni, I would lobby for making it a separate department (and I don't even have a desire to be a Head of Department, I don't like office politics, but I just feel that Criminology would benefit from having its own dept) or, if at a UC, I would lobby to make Criminology have its own track within Social Sciences.
Practical example: if (IF) I do ever manage to teach Crime & Law Enforcement at RA and RA hasn't given Criminology its own track by then, I WILL lobby for that - besides, the massive over-subscriptions for law and psychology courses would surely guarantee that at least the costs for two more crime courses will be covered, thus actually allowing for a full track. That would also make it easier for students who wish to go on and do Criminology masters in the Netherlands, where one of the requirements is still to have done a certain amount of ECTS within the field of Criminology (because if they do want to go on and do Criminology, the Netherlands and Britain offer, apparently, the best masters. For Criminal Justice, the US is apparently really very good - and yes, there is a difference).
But who knows what the future will bring.
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