In case you were worried that only in your country tax money is used for useless science, here’s an example from Germany. (If you’re from Germany, you’ll have to find another study.)
In case you were worried that only in your country tax money is used for useless science, here’s an example from Germany. (If you’re from Germany, you’ll have to find another study.)
Wow. Though since it is on nih.gov, does that mean the money came from the US anyway?
This is awesome! It reminds me of my father’s story of the paper presented in the April 1, 1948 issue of The Physical Review, in which the authors, Ralph Alpher and George Gamow, inserted “Hans Bethe (in absentia)” between their names in the byline.
Granted, the date on this paper (7 April 2011) is off by six days, probably because someone mis-read a European-style, handwritten “1” for a “7”. (Note that I have used the European system of punctuation outside of quotes in that last sentence, acknowledging it as logical, if painful.)
I don’t think anything was handwritten or mis-read (see here: it was submitted in February), but it’s certainly a paper that must have started as a running gag at the University of Düsseldorf. I doubt it was directly financed, but the researchers probably did put in some government-financed office hours…
I guess the question it really raises is whether remuneration means the wage-earner ought to render 100% serious, efficient work, or whether a certain amount of goofing off can be tolerated. And in this case, it’s goofing off that got the university some media spotlight.
Then they missed a bet. It definitely should have been published April 1.
In my (admittedly limited) experience, the more leeway a company gives its employees for a bit of goofing off, the better work they get. Lots of Silicon Valley companies know that, and even the University of Rochester Computing Center did back in the 70’s. “Goofing off” not only reduces stress, it can lead to innovation and good ideas.
It takes a certain kind of employee not to abuse that, of course. In the lab where I worked, there were a couple of people who couldn’t handle it, which eventually ruined it for the rest of us.
To me, the question is, how do you encourage people to be the kind of employees who can benefit both themselves and their company through a good balance of seriousness and fun?
On a similar note, I’m looking forward to hearing how it goes with our friend Peter’s company, which just instituted a policy of unlimited paid vacation time….
That’s the problem: in a large enough organisation, there are always those who play the system. Unlimited paid vacation time is great, as long as there is nobody on the team who decides to take an unlimited paid vacation! They must have very clear objectives to justify firing people who stop working entirely, which means it’s a lot harder for management because they have to set those objectives in a fair way that gets the job done. I’ll be interested to hear from you how that experiment goes!
I wonder if the dictionary will ever change the definition of “unlimited”, since it no longer means “not limited” in the American vocabulary.
Interesting thought. We could get chauvinistic and say that it does mean “not limited” in the American vocabulary, but the meaning is diluted on a sliding scale the closer the speaker is in character to a Verizon lawyer. Or we could get philosophical and say that everything in this world is limited, so “unlimited” never truly means “not limited,” and thus the rental car company advertising a rental with “unlimited miles” is using the word correctly, even though time, speed limits, your gas money, maximum rental duration, and national borders may all put practical limits on those miles.
So yes, the folks in sales, marketing, and the legal profession have all done their share to water down the word “unlimited,” but I think for most people in normal usage “unlimited” still means “not limited.” There is a plethora of other unique words I literally worry about more. The enormity of this noisome problem is staggering.
Yeah, the English language is being decimated.
By the way, my dictionary already says something other than “not limited:” it says
It also bears remembering that the conventional limit placed on paid vacation is its duration and its point in time, so lifting those two limitations would indeed make the vacation unlimited in the conventional and contextual meaning of the word, even if the unlimited vacation isn’t unconditional.
Oh, and “unassuming” should mean “not assuming,” should it not?