Re: Current Events

• From: ponyisi <no_reply_at_yahoogroups.com>
• Date: Thu, 21 Nov 2002 21:07:03 -0000
• Message-ID: <arjhtn+kfte_at_...>

...
> since there is already room for current events in a 
> completely academic distribution. Any current events worth asking 
> about would almost certainly fit into one of the academic
categories 
> (history, science, law, etc.),
...

Not a good thing to allow current events questions into "standard"
categories.  I hate to think if packets were written with the science
distribution composed entirely from articles on CNN.com.  (Case in
point: the sudden epidemic of "Quaoar" questions.)  The point that
"worthwhile" current events questions are ones that will be reasonable
to ask in a few years is well taken, but I think removing a separate
category for current events is likely to just shift a constant number
of stupid and badly-aging questions around, except that now people
will run around going "you should keep up with your field better!"

At any rate (and I know there are many schools of thought on this, but
this is my personal opinion) relevancy in the grand scheme of things
is in the eye of the beholder.  If we have to sit through innumerable
Nernst and Kleist questions, we might as well have a question about
the king of Swaziland and his tenth wife.

Peter