Nexus, the student mag at the University of Waikato has a background on the weird, weird story of Roel van Leeuwen’s MA thesis on Nazi’s and Satanism.
July 14, 2009
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My, that is good journalism. And in a student rag, no less!
Someone get that chap Josh Drummond on-staff.
L
Comment by Lew — July 14, 2009 @ 12:26 pm
That’s what I thought – strange to find a student journalist that doesn’t think they’re Hunter S Thompson.
Comment by danylmc — July 14, 2009 @ 12:34 pm
It ain’t just the thesis story that’s weird – it just doesn’t get any weirder than this:
…Frederik Toben, who was sentenced to three months in jail in May this year after he breached Australian Federal court orders to “stop implying Jewish people offended by Holocaust denial were of limited intelligence.”
3 months jail for implying people you don’t like are of limited intelligence? If NZ courts get similarly stupid, NZ bloggers and their commentariat will end up doing a lot of time…
I also felt a shameful amount of schadenfreude at the sight of Dov Bing, the man who was so outraged at Uni of Canterbury for doing the right thing with its Hayward thesis, suddenly finding that his own university was willing to take the Bing-recommended approach, only not with the kind of theses he had in mind. Actually, on second thoughts, to others it might have been a shameful amount of schadenfreude but to me it was just a really enjoyable amount…
Comment by Psycho Milt — July 14, 2009 @ 2:06 pm
Psycho: Toben was found guilty of contempt of court, not of making random implications. Not so weird – people get done for contempt all the time. Implying people you don’t like are of limited intelligence (in this case, Jews) isn’t a crime in Australia any more than it is here.
Comment by Josh Drummond — July 15, 2009 @ 3:36 pm
That’s a nice piece of sophistry you’ve got there, Josh. I guess Toben can count his blessings the judge didn’t order him to stop breathing, while he was at it…
Comment by Psycho Milt — July 15, 2009 @ 5:26 pm
The Waikato University Master’s student who wrote a controversial thesis pulled from shelves admitted in an internet blog that the topic was so obscure that he could make stuff up and no-one would be any wiser.
http://www.stuff.co.nz/waikato-times/news/2599549/Student-talks-of-faking-it
Comment by mjl — July 16, 2009 @ 1:53 pm
…if needed to I could make shit up and bullshit my way through difficult bits and no-one would be any the wiser.”
However, he went on to say that the thesis would be electronically available to other universities, so he would not do that.
No doubt he’s saying that tongue-in-cheek, but making student theses available on the web is one of my section’s responsibilities at my university, and there’s no doubt that the prospect of your thesis having its complete text searchable by Google and Google Scholar in perpetuity makes bullshitting a hell of a lot less attractive.
Comment by Psycho Milt — July 16, 2009 @ 7:36 pm