Re: questions about a Free Software Symposium presentation

[John <johnpf@atnet.net.au>]

Alvin Oga wrote:

> hi oleg
>
> donno about the speifics of the tokyo paper but...
>
> the guy ( christoph ) that runs telemetrybox is a bright guy
> and happens to be sorta religious too ...
>
> and he is/was a teacher/professor at a theological university
>
> i like to argue with him (in person), why one can believe in god and yet
> be scientific about engineering/sciences   :-)
>
> have fun
> alvin
>
> <comment>
> university of phoenix and other online type university will take
> almost anybody willing to pay the tuitions </comment>
>
> On Sun, 27 Oct 2002, Oleg wrote:
>
>  
>
> > Hi
> >
> > While I was reading http://telemetrybox.org/tokyo/ (a paper about Debian 
> > based on a presentation), a few things cought my attention:
> >
> > The last line of the author's academic credentials reads:
> >
> > "Ph.D. Candidate, Fuller Theological Seminary, 2003(?). Divine action in the 
> > context of Scientific Thinking: From Quantum Mechanics to Divine Action. "
> >
> > I'd like to know if this is a joke or a prank (seriously)
> >
> > The paper also mentioned that the author, Christoph Lameter, is a faculty 
> > member of the University of Phoenix. I'm a Ph.D. candidate myself (at 
> > Columbia), and I thought one could not be a faculty member (anywhere) without 
> > a doctorate degree (at least). No?
> >    

No, I was a Faculty member whist still an undergraduate, though not at 
any institution you mentioned. It's worth mentioning that the 
Universities in the USA are structured and run very differently from 
those in The Rest of The World.

Reality is that if someone will (1) work for peanuts and (2) has the 
academic ability to contribute, most Faculties will take them on 
regardless of whether they have a Doctorate. There has been a major push 
in many Faculties to have a Doctorate as the minimum qualification, but 
in many disciplines it can be very hard to find PhDs who are willing to 
work for 20% of what they'll get outside in the real world, so they'll 
take anyone who can actually do the job.

JPF