Only at Swarthmore: The Bathtub Debates

Colleges and Universities A-Z Swarthmore College
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<p>An example of engaged students and professors. The Debate Society held an event last week based on the premise that, for some arcane reason, only one person could be saved to travel to Antartica in a bathtub to preserve the combined knowlegde of the world -- a science professor, a social science professor, or a humanities professor. Professor Mark Taylor (Engineering) debated on behalf of scientists. Professor Mark Kuperberg (Economics) debated on behalf of social science. Professor Tim Burke (History) debated on behalf of Humanities, followed by questions from the overflow student audience. The moderator was retired Dean Bob Gross.</p>

<p>The link below has video of the debate. It's hilarious. And, probably a good way for specs and parents to get a sense of what some of the really good Swarthmore professors are like.</p>

<p><a href="http://www.sccs.swarthmore.edu/users/09/jsaxon1/bathtub/bathtub.html%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.sccs.swarthmore.edu/users/09/jsaxon1/bathtub/bathtub.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

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<p>Simply brilliant :D I'm watching it now.</p>

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<p>Both hilarious and impressive confirmation of Swarthmore's rep for having those "intellectual vibes." A footnote (because I know him): the first speaker was actually Bruce Maxwell, a computer scientist who will assume a senior post on the Computer Science faculty at Colby next year.</p>

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<p>Oops. Thanks for the correction on Bruce Maxwell. I had a senior moment.</p>

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<p>I've got Burke for Production of History and Maxwell for Advanced Computer Graphics right now, and I'm really enjoying both classes.</p>

<p>It is a real shame that Maxwell is leaving to Chair (or so I heard) the Colby Computer Science dept. Burke doesn't seem about to leave, at least.</p>

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<p>Ahhh, that was so much fun to watch!</p>

<p>I wonder if this is going to be a yearly thing now? Or an every-so-often thing? I really hope that they do it again so I can actually come to one!</p>

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<p>The amazing thing was the turnout. I think that the room in Kohlberg holds 100 people or so. Judging from the standing room only crowd, I'd say that 10% of the campus showed up for the debate.</p>

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<p>Downloading now, for a university system with gigabit (in theory) transfer rates, we sure are slow today.</p>

<p>Bill</p>

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<p>I'd say there were even more than 150 people in that room. Every inch of floor space was filled. I was lucky to get to sit on the floor by the windows, and I got there 10 minutes early!</p>

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<p>My download terminates after the welcoming remarks, after the scroll. I'll try again with the Mac at home.</p>

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<p>That happened to me quite a few times; after the intro several times, and twice after Prof. Maxwell answered the phone. Needless to say, it took me a while to get through the entire video, but I persisted and it was well worth the effort!</p>

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<p>When the movie starts playing, hit the PAUSE button in the Quicktime Player and then go drink a cup of coffee or something. The movie will continue to download to your computer's cache. You can see the progress of the download by the gray bar behind the play position bar. Once it's cached ahead completely (or sufficiently), just click the PLAY button.</p>

<p>I don't think the place where this movie is stored is optimized for streaming video. I'm trying to see if I can grab it from my cache. If I can, I'll upload to another site and post a link here.</p>

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<p>Sounds good, still don't have all of it. And I need Quicktime Pro to save to disk (how I do .wmv movie files from my Scuba buddies).</p>

<p>Bill</p>

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<p>It just worked for me. I hit PAUSE and the whole thing cached to may hard drive. Took a while. However, I can't find where it cached so I can't save it (without QT Pro).</p>

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<p>Yea!!! Got it, listening now.</p>

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<p>To save it, try right-clicking and using "save as". If that does not work, replace ".html" at the end of URL with ".mov" to get the movie onto the full page and use "save page as" or "save as" under the pull-down menu "File" in the browser.</p>

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<p>I think this will work.</p>

<p>Here's the direct link. Click it to open the movie in a window. Or, right-click and select SAVE AS to download it to your hard drive.</p>

<p><a href="http://www.sccs.swarthmore.edu/users/09/jsaxon1/bathtub/bathtub.mov%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.sccs.swarthmore.edu/users/09/jsaxon1/bathtub/bathtub.mov&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p>It's a 320 meg file, so be patient. For whatever reason, it is very sluggish with the "save as" dialog boxes, so don't keep clicking!</p>

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<p>... wow. </p>

<p>Whatever floats their boat I guess.</p>

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<p>Must float my daughter's boat. She said the debate was hilarious. And, that there was considerable partisan rooting interest.</p>

<p>Of course, it was also conveniently scheduled for the two hours before the start of Pub Night.</p>

<p>I was cracking up watching the video. There were some great lines from the profs and the students. "That's totally a novel!"</p>

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<p>I see that a professor at a Pennsylvania university posted a comment about the bathtub debate video on Tim Burke's blog:</p>

<p><a href="http://weblogs.swarthmore.edu/burke/?p=338%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://weblogs.swarthmore.edu/burke/?p=338&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p>
[quote]
Wow, I definitely feel some Swarthmore-envy watching that video. </p>

<p>The sort of joco-serious faux-jousting of the Bathtub Debates isn’t that common in higher education anymore, and in my experience it never happens at bigger universities. To my eyes it suggests a healthy collegiality amongst the disciplines at Swarthmore, as well as between students and faculty (nice to see students in on the joke!). </p>

<p>To follow out the metaphor, though you’re debating who should get to go in the bathtub, the nature of the event the three of you are participating in actually suggests you’ve all agreed to get into the bathtub together, sink or swim.

[/quote]
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