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Beware carbon fibre tripods (1 Viewer)

StevePreddy

Well-known member
if you're considering purchasing a carbon fibre tripod, you might want to read this piece of "research" from Anna Hickey-Moody of Goldsmiths, University of London.

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/273793754_CARBON_FIBRE_MASCULINITY

It's a little heavy going, so I'll attempt to précis it. Carbon fibre is used to make prosthetic limbs. Oscar Pistorius shot his girlfriend. Oscar Pistorius also had prosthetic limbs made of carbon fibre. Therefore, anyone using carbon fibre technology is a misogynist and a potential murderer.

This "fact" has been staring everyone in the face, and yet we've all missed it. We all owe a huge debt of gratitude to Anna Hickey-Moody for her discovery. Ban carbon fibre now, before it's too late.
 
So we don't use carbon fibre ,all because some nutcase shot his girlfriend?Is this a wind-up?Get real.

Steve.
 
I am conflicted, is it a good thing that human society has reach such a zenith that we can afford to pay people to produce guff like this or is it a bad thing that papers such as this are the climax of 1000s of years of intellectual progress.

Or is my insistent dichotomising just part of the problem?
 
Looks like quite a fun paper, although a skim through revealed that they're still going about cultural construction. That's so last century.
 
It would appear the author has an agenda, and sprinting isn't her favorite sport.

My grandfather was a POS drunk wife beater, he would come home from the bar and wake all 4 children up from bed. He would sit them all on the couch in the living room, then proceed to beat my grandmother into a bloody pulp...making the children watch. She was taken to the hospital many times, but literally feared for her life,,,and the welfare of her children. As time passed, the said POS ran off with the 16 yr old babysitter...to live in some twisted manner of bliss, never sending a penny nor caring about his young and innocent children.

I've always refused to use an aluminum tripod, because said POS drank beer out of aluminum cans...the correlation of said aluminum tripod could cause a unforeseen fit of rage, thus my 30 yr old son beating me into a bloody pulp.

I use carbon tripods, and allow my wife to use the bathroom unmolested anytime she chooses,,,it's worked out fine so far.

PS:Years later said POS showed up to rekindle his relationship with his "loving" family, and was sent back the way he came immediately. Later we found out he was slowly dying in the hospital from cancer, against my mothers wishes I sent flowers,,,black roses, with a note:From your family, Rot in hell...it cost me $85, and was worth every penny.
 
Is this a wind-up?

Sadly not. This first came to my attention via a tweet from Richard Dawkins. There's now a bit of a twitterstorm surrounding it, and as a result the author seems to have been lashing out left right and centre, accusing her critics of disrespecting her paper because they don't understand it (and not because the paper is a pile of nonsense, no ... that couldn't possibly be the reason).

There's a famous paper written by a physics professor, Alan Sokal, which was submitted to a sociology journal, accepted and published, and then exposed by Sokal as a hoax: see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sokal_affair. Sadly it doesn't seem to have led to such journals raising their game and apply a decent degree of critical scrutiny the material submitted.

Anna Hickey-Moody is planning to publish a version of her paper "for the layman" in the New Year. Looking forward to it already...
 
Sadly not. This first came to my attention via a tweet from Richard Dawkins. There's now a bit of a twitterstorm surrounding it, and as a result the author seems to have been lashing out left right and centre, accusing her critics of disrespecting her paper because they don't understand it (and not because the paper is a pile of nonsense, no ... that couldn't possibly be the reason).

There's a famous paper written by a physics professor, Alan Sokal...

Anna Hickey-Moody is planning to publish a version of her paper "for the layman" in the New Year. Looking forward to it already...

Quote from Sokal's book is applicable here:
"If the texts seem incomprehensible, it is for the excellent reason that they mean precisely nothing."[6]
 
This article is from a somewhat theoretical journal of interdisciplinary humanities. I work in a related academic field, and make no apologies. Pistorius and the somewhat forced logic aside, this line might apply to birders as well:

"This article is concerned with instances in which carbon fibre extends performances of masculinity that are attached to particular kinds of hegemonic male bodies."

So, as a hegemonic male body (i.e. upper middle class white guy) intent on testing this proposition, I took my Christmas gift, an Induro CLT-103 with Manfro RC-128 QR head, out for a spit with my son, and indeed, we quickly found some late Pintails and Shovelers, showed them to passers-by, and left convinced that my lowly Celestron was really a poor man's Swaro and that carbon fiber (uh, fibre) was a game-changer.

Admit it, CF is a status material. Very much a first world material, to be blunt. So, what then? I am donating my old Bogen 3001/128 to Birder's Exchange:

American Birding Association
c/o Birder’s Exchange
P.O.Box 744
Delaware City, DE
19706

Happy holidays,

David
 
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