"The emperor has no clothes!"

In My Humble Opinion
1

You all know the story. Silly, vain king king is convinced by dishonest tailors that his nonexistent suit of clothing is actually made of “magic” cloth that foolish people cannot see. Rather than admit he is foolish, the king pretends he can see the clothing and walks around nekkid. Everybody else in the kingdom is told about the “magic” clothing and plays along, fearing that they will be considered foolish if they admit to not seeing anything. Finally, a little boy points out what everyone else is thinking: the emperor really doesn’t have any clothes on. And, since a little boy is too innocent to be foolish, the whole kingdom realizes they have been had.

Now, I realize that this is just a story and may not have any correlation with how people behave in real life. Still, there have definitely been moments when I’ve felt like shouting out “the emperor has no clothes, you morons” at the top of my lungs. For example, every time I go to an art gallery and listen to people blather on about how wonderful “modern” art is, saying things like “true artistic genius is painting a stripe of that particular shade of red next to that particular shade of green.”

Of course, I don’t say anything aloud, since I don’t want people to think I’m foolish…

So, hows about it? What are the things that make you want to say “the emperor has no clothes”?

Regards,

Barry

2

“king king”? :smack:

3

In much the same spirit as your modern art example, I find it hard to buy:

  1. Talent-free actors discussing their preparations for a role
  2. Talent-free musicians discussing their influences
  3. Credential-free TV newspersons waxing eloquent on some topic that’s obviously not even understood by them
  4. 98% of commercials
  5. New Age concepts
  6. pseudo-science “explanations” of things

Don’t get me started…

4

Actors/Actresses discussing their political agendas as if we care.

5

There is a particular breed of college professor.

Most college professors aren’t bad folks, and they teach what they are paid to teach, the subject that the class is supposed to be about. Some are downright brilliant. Others are extremely good teachers. Some are simply competent. A few suck.

…and then you have the ones from an alternate universe.

I’ve had several since I returned to school. Ghod knows why they are allowed to teach.

It works like this: Let’s say, for example, we have a class called Viking Pottery. The catalog will describe it as “History and practice of Scandinavian pottery during the Viking period of history.”

Sounds pretty straightforward, right?

The professor will have a PhD. Only PhDs are allowed to be Alternate University Professors. People with masters’ degrees have to actually teach the subject.

Now: On the first day of class, you will get a syllabus. The syllabus will give an overview of the class, the books you need to buy, and a class schedule, explaining what you’ll be doing every day in class, right? Sounds good, yes?

In an ORDINARY class, the professor will lecture about Viking Pottery, usually more or less in line with the reading assignments out of the book or books about Viking Pottery. You will be doing the things on the schedule more or less on the days that they are scheduled. Tests will be on the days scheduled. Might be quizzes, too. Maybe a project or a paper to write, about Viking Pottery. Then, finally, a Final Exam. If you pass, you are now assumed to know about Viking Pottery.

…and now… we have the Alternate University.

You get a syllabus, complete with schedule, list of books required, and an overview, same as before.

…but the professor will soon begin to lecture about… say… Early English Basket-Weaving.

Huh?

The next day, you get a lecture about Aztec Parrot Breeding.

The reading assignments are straight out of the book, of course. You, being a good student, read the book about Viking Pottery. A good thing, too, because when the first test happens, it is straight out of the assigned chapters. Not a damn thing about English Basketweaving or Aztec Parrot Breeding.

As the semester drags on, it gets worse. The best examples of this kind of professor pretty much throw out the schedule after the second week of class, and there is no damn telling WHAT you’re going to be doing from day to day, or when you’re going to be doing it. Tests can and will be rescheduled, at the professor’s whim, with as little as 24 hours notice. Lectures can be about anything on ghod’s green earth, up to and including what his children did last night after supper.

A hallmark of this kind of professor is that he takes absences VERY seriously. He does NOT like the idea that you may be skipping his lectures simply because none of his pet material will be on the test. He is also VERY testy about the idea that you might not be LISTENING to him in class; don’t you DARE break out a magazine or whatever.

In short: Passing this class is proof positive … that you read and understood the BOOK. Your class time is essentially wasted.

…now here’s the kicker. If this idiot teaches in the EDUCATION department… teacher education… you get to grit your teeth and not say word one about him. You can barbecue him on his evaluation, but that’s about it. You see, at the college I attend, professors are supposed to be evaluating YOU, to determine your fitness for the teaching profession. If they don’t like you, you can get “green flagged.” A couple of those, they actually call you up before a committee to determine if you should be permitted to remain in the program.

…so you get to SMILE and pretend you LIKE hearing what his nephew got for Christmas last year, and what his kid did in school last month.

…and if you complain to the department about it, you’re taking your scholastic career in your hands.

Not only does the emperor have no clothes, but you can get executed for saying so…

6

I’ve been doing it a lot lately.

Mostly with people who are very quick to slam me as not having anything to teach them, as not being the Great Wise Man who is the only one allowed to point out their foibles, as being far less experienced as them and thus, not worthy of their time.

7

Only slightly off-topic:

A few years back I got a Christmas present that had wrapping paper that (to me) looked like one of those “magic eye” paintings. I thought it would be funny to frame it and name it “The emperor’s new clothes.”

I was very disappointed when I shared this with the group and people were like “You mean ‘The emperor’s new groove’”

8

When I was in undergraduate school I had an experience similar to what the OP described.

One of the required courses in the School of Business was statistics. The teacher I had was still working on his PHD and his dissertation must have had something to do with Freudian psycology because he spent most of the class time talking about it and even required us to write papers on it. There were even test questions about it.

That was the strangest class I ever had but I did manage to learn statistics even though I had to pretty much do it on my own.

9

The dot com bubble. It was very clear to me that people were buying companies whose services or products they didn’t understand at all.
I stayed with an uncle who watches CNBC all the time. I still see a lot of naked emperors.

There are few companies wose stock does well because they make a certain semiconductor chip, or transistor that other companies use. Most people who have that stock don’t know what the part really is, how it works, what it’s used for, or most importantly whether it’s about to become obsolete or undercut by discovery that lets another company maufacture the same part more cheaply.

Compaq stock was always doing well. I’ve worked tech support and so have plenty of my friends. Compaq pcs are bug-ridden pieces of crap.

Even after the dotcom crash, Amazon stock did well. Why? It used to be that they sold at discount, but the cost of shipping made the final price the same as buying from one of the local Borders etc. Then, they stopped selling at discount. Cost is now the same as your local bookstore plus s+h.

Re-Art
There was an episode of Murphy Brown about this. The works included-

   a clear plastic shower curtain hung on the museum wall

   a pile of SweetNLow packets with a single sugar packet buried underneath

 a print of DaVinci's Last Supper with the faces erased and the food replaced with Chinese take-out.

 I thought that these pieces were a great parody of the art culture.

 Then a friend,a student at the Pennsylvania University Of The Arts, informed me that they were real as were the prices they had sold for.
10

In education, the more removed you are from the classroom, the more decisions you get to make. So when members of the school board are waxing eloquent about lofty goals, my eyes glaze over.

11

I run into this all of the time at high tech companies here in Silicon Valley. Managers with little or no scientific knowledge make decisions completely divorced from reality, logic or good judgement. I have lost several jobs for pointing out this sort of conduct, even when many other people agreed with my assessment of the situation. An example or three:

Attempting to sell a process to a vital and hugely important customer (an industrial giant with a three letter name) for all of $60,000 dollars, knowing full well that this identical customer had done exactly the same research on a previous occassion. I was the only one in a room full of managers and PhDs who protested this unethical conduct. I (vainly) pointed out how much more productive it would be to perform collaborative research while having access to their incredibly more advanced metrology and analysis facilities. At a big convention several weeks later, a salesman let slip the relatively simple equipment configuration involved and the deal dissolved instantaneously. This process could have been a fabulous feather in our cap and made millions once it was proven out.

Including a (used) $250,000 wafer handling robot cluster tool that was desperately needed for continued laboratory research in a package being sold to a foreign academic institution where there was little to ZERO chance of a follow-up sale or any likelyhood that backflow of research information would occur. Critical lab work was crippled by this sale and the entire machine netted ~$100,000 in total. This does not even come close to helping replace the now-missing tool.

PhDs and other managers actively fighting and suppressing a design that has repeatedly proven itself superior to their own solutions solely because a technician came up with the concept and not them. Outside customers continue to request this option due to superior performance and yet the production program is still challenged on a routine basis. The alternative designs are less reliable, poorly constructed and take ten times longer to install. Once installed, these other designs deliver lower quality results and affect the machine’s overall performance.
And people wonder why this place is starting to be known as Sili Valley.

12

Christina Aguilera. And in her case, it’s not just a metaphor.

13

You mean she really is an emperor? I had no idea…

:wink:

Barry