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[–] 109 points 2 years ago (4 children)

Had a class where the cutoff was 17 years IIRC so it's entirely possible that sources from the 90s aren't accepted in their class.

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  • [–] 22 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    Yeah, I looked at this and wondered what was so surprising about the text; I’m the same age as this incredible paper and I’ve regularly had professors that wouldn’t accept something that old. To be honest, what I landed on is OOP is also a ‘94 baby who’s teaching their first class.

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  • [–] 37 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    Calling 90's "late 1900s" is mega weird for anyone who isn't really young

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  • [–] 20 points 2 years ago

    My partner had to write a paper about some medical procedure that was invented in early 1900s, and they had to use at least two "original research that is at most 2 years old". The whole course was a clusterfuck.

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  • [–] 17 points 2 years ago (2 children)

    I’ve never heard of this and… why? You shouldn’t cite your sources if they’re too old? What? I get that you should try to find more recent sources for certain things, so the age of a source can be relevant if we’ve learned more in the meantime… but having a cut off is stupid. Evaluate the sources and if it’s outdated information criticize that.

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  • [–] 17 points 2 years ago (2 children)

    It's not that you shouldn't cite them, it's that you shouldn't use them as a source at all because they're considered unreliable for the subject you're working on.

    Depending on the point you've reached in your learning career, you might not be equipped to detect and criticize an outdated source.

    Some fields also evolve so quickly that what was considered a fact just 20 years ago might have been superseded 5 years later and again 5 years later so the only info that's considered reliable is about 10 years old and everything else must be ignored unless you're working on a review of the evolution of knowledge in that field.

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  • [–] 102 points 2 years ago* (3 children)

    It depends on the field.

    In an intro to physics course, I've cited the Principia before without issues.

    I've also cited the Cyropaedia in a philosophy course.

    I got a significant penalty for citing a 2013 article for a software design paper.

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  • [–] 30 points 2 years ago (2 children)

    Reminds me of someone asking how to cite the Bible. Whether or not you can just go "John 3:16" or "His Majesty King James VI of Scotland and I of England, Ireland and France - 1611 'Authorised Version' Translation of The Bible - John Chapter Three Section 16"

    Although if you were directly quoting it, I think stating the translation would be more important than if you were referencing it.

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  • [–] 18 points 2 years ago* (1 child)

    The Bible, The Lord; 0 AD

    Be bold, dare your teacher to dock you points for it.

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  • [–] 10 points 2 years ago (2 children)

    What do you do to write for physics, philosophy and software design papers?

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  • [–] 6 points 2 years ago

    Not OP, but attend undergrad. When I was in undergrad I specialized in chemistry, but I still needed to take breadth requirement courses in humanities and social sciences. So I did papers in chemistry, physics, statistics, political theory, ancient Greek history, and English throughout my undergrad.

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  • [–] 93 points 2 years ago (2 children)

    Okay, that is painful.

    However, I think I’m going to start telling people that I was born in the mid-1900s.

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  • [–] 19 points 2 years ago (2 children)

    What's the cutoff? My instinct is 1975 but then that gives a 50 year period for 'mid' and only 25 each for 'early'/'late'. So is the cutoff between mid and late 1966?

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  • [–] 14 points 2 years ago (2 children)

    I feel like early, middle and late aren't continuous, and there's gaps.
    I don't think 1932 is early or mid 1900s.

    Kinda like how young, old and middle aged don't have an immediate cutoff. A 31 year old is neither young nor middle aged, and a 54 year old is past middle aged, but they aren't old yet.

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  • [–] 11 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    Funny how you see gaps. I feel they overlap. For decades Like 31-34 is early 30s, 33-37 is mid, and 38 39 are late. (Late being a smaller interval because everyone likes it that way.)

    I think the about the same proportions work for centuries.

    But I definitely see gaps in being young, old, and middle-age.

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  • [–] 3 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    Hmm, I normally say (since I turned 30) that 0-29 are young, 30-59 is middle aged, and 60-89 is old (90+ is super old/ancient 😆).

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  • [–] 5 points 2 years ago (2 children)

    This hurts nearly as much as the OP.

    Middle-aged starts at 30?! Fuck I’m old. At 53, middle-age didn’t start til 45, 75-89 is old, and I’d put super old at 95+.

    Then again, I may be skewed a bit since my 88 year old dad is sharper than most people I know, still works his regular job in aerospace, and drives Uber in his spare time to keep himself young. He may live to 120 at this rate.

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    [–] 31 points 2 years ago (2 children)

    Automatic F for apostrophe abuse

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  • [–] 4 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    I don't have a lot of pet peeves when it comes to grammar, but pluralizing dates and acronyms with apostrophes is definitely one of them.

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  • [–] 4 points 2 years ago

    Yeah! They should of not used that apostrophe!

    (Fun fact, my phone apparently now won’t even let me type that phrase without it autocorrecting it to “have”. I had to manually “fix” it. Good on you, iOS.)

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  • [–] 30 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    We started Chronicles of Narnia at bedtime last night. The first line is that it takes place when the reader's grandfather was a child. I flipped to the copyright page and did some math. Found myself having to do a lot of prefacing with the little one. "Okay, so there used to be like no electricity at all anywhere ever. Not that long ago. Even though everything you see is electronic.."

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  • [–] 20 points 2 years ago

    My daughter likes the old Looney Tunes cartoons. But there are a lot of things mentioned or shown in those cartoons that don't exist anymore and it's been fun having to explain what certain things are. There was a one cartoon where my daughter asked why there would be a knob on a car's dash that said "choke". I have a very old car that has a carburetor (long story) so thankfully I could show her, but even that old bucket of bolts has an automatic choke.

    Another cartoon had a sort of proto-Elmer Fudd that was taking pictures of wildlife, and I had to explain what all this equipment was he had with him. He had a camera that used a squeeze bulb for the shutter and had a hood to cover the operator.

    For me, I think it's interesting that in the original Star Trek, there were no screens with text on them. There were screens, but they showed video or images instead of text. That's because back when ol' Bill Shatner was on the camera putting commas in places they don't belong, there was no such thing as a computer screen with text. You entered data into a computer with a teletype, and it gave your answers back on a printout.

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  • [–] 19 points 2 years ago (1 child)
  • [–] 19 points 2 years ago

    Yikes, my mid-1900s ass ain't likin' this trend.

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  • [–] 13 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    As the Beastie Boys so famously put it:

    "Ooh, GODDAMN!"

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    [–] 12 points 2 years ago (2 children)

    I have a violent urge to smack this child upside their head.

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    [+] 12 points 2 years ago (2 children)
  • [–] 11 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    I might be retarded but what's wrong with the post? The year is specified quite unconventionally, but that's all i can see.

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  • [–] 35 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    The student implies the late 1900's was very long ago, and the Twitter poster found that hurtful possibly in a joking matter.

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  • [–] 24 points 2 years ago

    Hearing someone talk about a time that you vividly remember as a generic 100 year historical era.

    It feels like someone dropped those decades into an archive folder with the rest of history and left it to collect dust.

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  • [–] 7 points 2 years ago

    Took me like 3 reads, but I cracked up once I realized.

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