Professor Destroys Students Laptop with LN2

DeathFromBelow said:
If you need a nanny to tell you to put your crap away then maybe you shouldn't go to college.

Last I checked I'm the one paying to attend the class. I should be able to use whatever I want to take notes and such as long as I'm not bothering anyone else.
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In many cases, 2/3rds of your education costs, public or private, are being subsidized by somebody (tax payers) or some group (alumni, businesses). In any case, they would be mighty pissed to if they knew their money was being wasted.
 

And thank you! For that unforgetable warning about bringing a laptop to your class, you nut job.
Try touching my laptop and I'll shove your face in that bucket of LN2. LOL
 
And by the way professor, when you are in that classroom, you are not God even though you think you are.
 
Speaking of crazy profs and tenure, I had a interesting conversation the other day about it with a few business school grads. They proposed getting rid of it altogether and railed against it for all the usual reasons. I then asked them what they actually knew about it and the process. They replied well... uh.. it prevents power mad profs from getting fired. Actually, it doesn't. I know from third person experience that you can be fired if you have tenure.

The purpose of tenure is to insulate the individual from the political machinations of the government at large and the stormy microcosm of politics at the academy level. Yes, it also provides some security and rewards years upon years of dedication to an institution; however, that is to compensate for the reinvestment into the system rather than taking it to private practice where you can usually make more money.

What people are really arguing for in getting rid of tenure is full transition of the university from a place of (mostly) learning and growth where you can find what interests you and screw up a few times without long-term negative consequences to a degree farm where it is run like a business and all that is emphasized is what can make the university money. How will such a transition take place?

Imagine if you will a below top-25 university (read:lack of big endowments). Now imagine that all of the instructors there are all on semester to semester contract. Meaning they don't even get the privilege of being fired they just unceremoniously get a letter saying their contract hasn't been renewed. Now imagine that every-time a new dept head or dean of a college is hired or the board of regents get some new blood they decide to clean house and install people who will support them politically. Not hard to imagine since it happens on alot smaller scale all the time. Every few years, the uni will suffer massive turnovers. Sure, maybe the prof you hate will be axed during the latest round but so will the profs and support staff you like. Further extreme examples of politics gone awry effecting academia can be found in Spain under Franco or China during the intellectual purge.

Of course, if tenure is eradicated most post secondary educators will abandon the system altogether. I mean why throw away your intellectual investment on a career path that has relatively crap pay and no rewards when you can get better pay with the same hassles by entering the workforce. Eventually, once that shift happens and believe me it's coming, people will get their wish and their will be a lot less professors around to hire thus most colleges without endowments will be forced to be more efficient and move towards a business type model (they are already) and since most of the liberal arts don't make universities money they will strip it down to the bare bones and concentrate on fields that bring in grants and patents... etc etc: The transition to technical school/degree farm from university will then be complete.

Could this hyperbole happen? Will it be beneficial or detrimental to society? I don't know. But the next time someone complains about tenure just because they had a bad experience it might be worth some thought about how that will effect the decent professors active in the field as well as the far reaching implications of such an action.

/Class dismissed :)
 
Mr. Pedantic said:
I find paper and pen to be still much better than a laptop. I type about 5 times faster than I write by hand, but OneNote is still too awkward to use, especially with anatomy diagrams and flow charts of physiological processes to draw and write out. And everything else plain sucks.
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You haven't seen my handwriting...its terrible. I try to type notes as much as possible, so I CAN READ THEM!
 
TheResidentEvil said:
Egon what have you done!
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I tried to think of the most harmless thing... something that could never destroy us... something I loved from my childhood.

AND YOU CAME UP WITH THAT?

The Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man! He was on all the packages we used to buy when I was a kid. We used to roast Stay-Puft marshmallows at Camp Waconda!

Great! The marshmallows are about to get their revenge.
 
Anyone else thought this professor a bit of a tool? If it was performed as a joke, fine, but he seemed to believe he was truly demonstrating something verrrryyy serious.

What a clown.
 
Dreaz said:
It was staged, but there sure are a lot of "I would have done this" kind of reactions.

Btw,a class syllabus is a legally binding contract. So if he put in the syllabus that laptops would be confiscated and broken, he wouldn't get in trouble. Just like a professor can say any and all work you do in a class is the property of the university's or the class.

And if it was in his syllabus, he would have every right to break the student's property because the student, by staying in the class, implicitly accepted the contract.
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So, if the professor puts in his syllabus that he will cut off the little finger of anyone he catches chewing gum in his classroom, this would give him legal license to do so? I think we are on a slightly slippery slope here...

BTW-I agree with your comment about all the "scary" threats made by those who would appear to be over-reacting to a professor's lame and staged attempt to make a point in what was probably the first meeting of a class. Chill out people! (hehe...I said "chill"...hehehe)
 
Dreaz said:
I'm unsure of your first paragraph, since American companies use contracts to trump the law all the time. For example, companies using a contract to withhold due process of rape victims:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Q5kVbiWnAQ


Besides as someone who has actually worked in education, laptops are hardly ever banned because people are against technology. It's always, all the time, without fail, the student doing something else on the laptop. So if you want them to teach, leave the distractions elsewhere.
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There is no such thing as Constitutional protection in a foreign nation, unfortunately. Contracts have the power the law in the nation exercised gives it.

This issue wasn't about a contract violating the law, but a contract alleviating the company of any civil liability.

However, if you had actually listened to the whole video, you would have heard a judge has ruled that the particular circumstances are not covered by the company's arbitration clauses, since the situation was a criminal act against the employee.

The amendment by Senator Al Franken (Geez, Minnesota is stupid) was to put language into Federal law that excludes such situations so they are not left to a judge or arbitration to decide. Such language is the responsibility of the legislature not the judges to clarify. This would probably be one of the only times in history where I agree with Senator Franken's requests.

Sure, someone can write a contract with anything in it. However, that doesn't mean it holds up in court. Also, doing such things weakens the contract. If the contract violates law, then the other party may not be required to hold their end of the contract as the document is already impossible to hold one party to and it becomes tainted. Most good attorney's will make sure what is in a contract will hold up in court as they do not want their client to risk losing the protection the contract offers them and the hold it has on the other party.
 
Azhar said:
I tried to think of the most harmless thing... something that could never destroy us... something I loved from my childhood.

AND YOU CAME UP WITH THAT?

The Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man! He was on all the packages we used to buy when I was a kid. We used to roast Stay-Puft marshmallows at Camp Waconda!

Great! The marshmallows are about to get their revenge.
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That was RAY not Egon.
 
Lemme guess..... PHD in bitch? Sorry, I'd get thrown out of school for beating his geek ass before that shit ever happened.

Then again if he said no laptops. I wouldn't have a fuckin lap top.

Just sayin.
 
Kalabalana said:
Anyone else thought this professor a bit of a tool? If it was performed as a joke, fine, but he seemed to believe he was truly demonstrating something verrrryyy serious.

What a clown.
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Reminds me of the mindset and attitude of many of my professors in college...I guess I just got used to it.
 
Kalabalana said:
Anyone else thought this professor a bit of a tool? If it was performed as a joke, fine, but he seemed to believe he was truly demonstrating something verrrryyy serious.

What a clown.
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Part of the joke was the ruse that it was really happening. :rolleyes:

But it's probably more fun to bitch about authority figures being power hungry assholes than it is to humanize them and get along well.
 
Wow, I came to [H] for a story and ended up with a Digg post, complete with misleading title...kickass!

Now I can feel two kinds of love at once.
 
Powerage said:
Part of the joke was the ruse that it was really happening. :rolleyes:

But it's probably more fun to bitch about authority figures being power hungry assholes than it is to humanize them and get along well.
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Act reasonably, get treated reasonably. Pretty simple, no?
 
While the video is funny, no way is the laptop a student's. It was probably some old craptop the school and lying around and gave to the prof. so he can show how cool (literally) LN2 is. :cool: And also about not using laptops in the classroom. :p
 
elektronisch said:
I'd love to see a professor, especially one of his stature, attempt this on any property of mine. I'd stick his face in the LN2 then smash it with my fist.

What a waste of resources.
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The only people who make comments like this are those who would would get scared shitless if they were thrown into that situation, and would not end up doing anything.
 
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