Diversity of Everything but Thought

McGentrix wrote:

I guess even Thomas Sowell has fallen prey to the same ol' indiscretions that Foxfyre has fallen prey to.

"Even"? Another Townhall columnist? Why would that be a surprise?

Now if you could find us a source, just one, any source, that's not from the conservative echo chamber like Blatham describes - then you might be able to use the word "even" with some reason.

You know, like he said: anything verified, officially investigated, whatever - just anything showing that systematic indoctrination of conservative students you folks are talking about thats NOT from some conservative column / opinion piece.

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dyslexia wrote:

Everyone knows that the only thing college will do for our youth is indoctrinate them into wicked liberal philosophy and immoral behavior. That's why the red states feel it is so important to keep their kids out of these bastions of depravity. The Top Ten We Don't Need No Education states are all red, led by West Virginia, where only a little less than 16% of people age 25 or older have a Bachelor's Degree or more, followed by Arkansas, Wyoming, Oklahoma, Idaho, Mississippi, Tennessee, Kentucky, Louisiana, and Nevada.

By contrast, the Top Ten I've Got An Alma Mater states are dominated by blue states, starting with Maryland at over 37%, followed by Virginia, Massachusetts, Connecticut, New Jersey, Vermont, Minnesota, New Hampshire, and Rhode Island. Only red Colorado managed to crack this list.
http://www.oregonherald.com/n/radicalruss/20041212_red-state-moral-values.html

Disagree with ya here, Dys. I don't think the reason you quote - the belief that "the only thing college will do for our youth is indoctrinate them into wicked liberal philosophy" and all that - is why the red states you list happen to be trailing in percentage of people with higher education. Or why states like Vermont, Massachusetts and Maryland are leading. I think it has to do instead with poverty, with opportunity. But then I'm a leftist, you know - I think it's to do with social environment, rather than some kind of innate culture.

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So Nimh, could you recite your credentials that make you credible as Thomas Sowell's critic?

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Have you presented any actual FACTS to review yet, Fox?

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Lots of them ehBeth. None constitute absolute proof but the sum total of them definitely provides a case for the possibility, if not even a probability, of a problem existing. So far, nobody has given anything other then their own personal experience to dispute that/

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Foxfyre wrote:

So Nimh, could you recite your credentials that make you credible as Thomas Sowell's critic?

Just remarking that yet another conservative columnist is hardly the thing that qualifies for noting that "even" he believes the meme about liberal indoctrination, Fox.

Or are you saying Sowell was not writing that piece as a conservative Townhall columnist?

Or, wait - are you saying that, if a columnist is a highly educated professor in something, we should consider each of his columns as credible as if they were his academic treatises?

We've been here before, haven't we. Yes, you do go on the columns you like as if they were as solid a reflection of cold, hard fact as any actual news report, I seem to remember. And you think that the further biographic credentials of the columnist "prove" that yes, every idea he jots down by ways of column must be as reliable as an academic treatise. After all, he's an academic, right?

I'd say something about the nature of columns and op-eds still eludes you. But - we've been here before (good post to re-read in this context, btw, if I say so myself).

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nimh wrote:

McGentrix wrote:
I guess even Thomas Sowell has fallen prey to the same ol' indiscretions that Foxfyre has fallen prey to.

"Even"? Another Townhall columnist? Why would that be a surprise?

Now if you could find us a source, just one, any source, that's not from the conservative echo chamber like Blatham describes - then you might be able to use the word "even" with some reason.

You know, like he said: anything verified, officially investigated, whatever - just anything showing that systematic indoctrination of conservative students you folks are talking about thats NOT from some conservative column / opinion piece.

I care not to familiarize myself with the liberal dogma that would be needed to satisfy your request Nimh. I fear any source I would find would be cast off with the same nonchalance that has been demonstrated previously in this thread. So, why should I bother?

Would it change your mind anyways? I doubt it.

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There are some commentators, both liberal and conservative (and I have posted from both) whose opinions I consider well researched and informed and are worthy of serious consideration. Thomas Sowell is one of those. William Raspberry, a devout liberal pulitzer prize winning writer, is another and he doesn't have anywhere near the credentials that Sowell has.

Those too blinded by their own prejudices to be able to consider any conservative point of view or observation as credible are precisely the problem suggested in this forum.

Once again I will try to explain that Townhall neither hires or pays Thomas Sowell or any other writers they feature. Townhall is a dedicated conservative forum, sponsored by the Heritage Foundation, that GATHERS and reprints conservative writings.

Thomas Sowell is hired by and paid by Creators Syndicate who in turn sells his columns to prominent newspapers and magazines across the country and those include from time to time The New York Times and Washington Post as well as the Albuquerque Journal, and the LA Times, all who endorsed John Kerry in the just completed national election.

If you want to paint Creators Syndicate as a bastion of poorly researched, repetitious, conservative echo, good luck.
http://www.creators.com/index2_about.html

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McG, it might change my mind. I've already conceded that you might have a point in suggesting that the social sciences lean heavily left. If you could just show me how that means that it's impossible to get a good education in this country, or at least how that is harmful to students, I'll be on your side. And if you could do that in some way other than copying and pasting someone else's opinion, I'd be that much more convinced.

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I've been meaning to post the link to "Rate My Professor" for a while now, but kept forgetting (was going to put in the "Teaching" forum -- and may still).

What reminded me is when I looked up Professor Woolcock...quite a few other students mirror the Kuwaiti kid's impression of him.

One of my Cali friends has just emailed me a bit about this junior college (Foothill). It's just up the freeway from that elementary school in Cupertino that was recently in the news for not being able to teach the Declaration of Independence because it has references to "God" in it.

Anyway -- check out "Rate My Professor". (I had one very similar to Woolcock, but that's a story for another day).

http://www.ratemyprofessor.com/ShowRatings.jsp?tid=173363

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Here's the rating for Nicholas De Genova, who teaches anthropology and Latino studies at Columbia. The Chronicle of Higher Education calls him "the most hated professor in America."

At an anti-war teach-in last year, he said he wished for a "million Mogadishus," referring to the slaughter of U.S. troops in Somalia in 1993.

http://www.ratemyprofessor.com/ShowRatings.jsp?tid=174751

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DrewDad wrote:

... "That" refers to the idea that one must prove one's own argument to be true before it is possible to impeach another's argument. We have addressed this particular issue many times; you are free to have a different opinion but I will call "bullshit" (or in this case, "pigshit") every time you try to present that particular fallacy.

Boy, I have sure failed to communicate. I never stated what "one must prove." I never stated a condition for what was required "before it is possible to impeach another's argument." I'll try again.

I claim one can provide evidence to support both negative and postive propositions. I also claim one cannot prove anything to a certainty without assuming at least one thing that cannot be proved to a certainty.

I define a debater who refuses to provide some evidence to support her/his argument, while demanding that the other participant provide some evidence to support theirs, to be a timid debater.

Furthermore, I define a debater who refuses to state what she/he thinks is true, while arguing against what someone else believes is true, to be a scared debater.

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Well in truth, in formal debate, the judge would give no points at all to the debater who simply insisted that his opponent had not proved his/her case without showing evidence that in fact his/her opponent had not proved his/her case. Generally each side is attempting to prove an opposite side of an issue.

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Speaking of flying pigs, how many pigs would one have to throw out of that plane in order for some to believe that in all probability, pigs can't fly? And would there come a point that anyone could conclude absolutely that pigs can't fly? Personal experience is only good to show that something is possible; it can't prove that something is always possible or even usually possible. It certainly does not prove that something does not exist or even probably does not exist.

I have used the analogy of a black sheep in the field in other forums. If you drive past a field and see a black sheep you cannot conclude that a black sheep exists in the field. The best you can do is to be certain that you seemed to see in the field something that appears to be a sheep that is black on at least one side at least some of the time.

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Let's get clear on a few bits of lousy thinking going on here...

McGentrix wrote:

Come noe Drewdad, you can hardly expect anyone to believe your anecdotal evidence, can you? It has been demonstrated repeatedly in this thread that unless you can provide a scientific journal with at least 3 verifiable sources that your word means nothing. Who are you anyways? Some anonymous poster on a chat forum. You may not even be human. How can you actully expect anyone to believe a word you say unless you have VERIFIABLE FACTS to back you up? Hmmmmm?

What is the problem with anecdotal data?

An Iraqi citizen is held by American troops for questioning. Over a period of time, he is shifted around, being held in several locations, and being guarded/questioned by 30 different American minders. One night, a soldier tortures him with a lightstick. When released, he goes to the arab media and says, "I was tortured at prison X, The American tied me down and said my mother was a whore and he violated me with a light".

Sitting around an Iraqi coffee house with that arab newscast on tv, a group of eight men who had themselves been held in custody by American soldiers for similar periods, and moved about in the same manner, look at each other and say "Nothing like that happened to me."

The problem with anecdotal data is sample size. And the danger of accepting a compelling narrative as representative.

In the first case, the prisoner had one prisoner/guard experience out of thirty where there was a problem. In the second case, the eight men had some 240 such experiences with no problem. Total, 1 bad experience compared to 269 without a problem. And the numbers stretch out FAR more if you don't limit the count to prisoner/individual guard, but total number of actual interactions (interviews, questionings).

So the numbers in our imaginary case won't support a premise such as 'torture is endemic'. But the compelling nature of the narrative ("they held me down, it was awful...") becomes a ready tool for propaganda - for the suggestion that torture IS endemic. Just find a second or third case and pump them for all they are worth.

One way this relates here is to recognize that when the large number of us discussing this issue who HAVE attended four or more years at university and who have neither experienced nor witnessed such events of political suppression, we are dealing with a sample size of MANY THOUSANDS of student/professor interactions.

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In my never-to-be-considered humble opinion, anyone who graduated college prior to say 1990 cannot use that particular personal experience for what the climate is like on university campuses now.

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Foxfyre wrote:

In my never-to-be-considered humble opinion, anyone who graduated college prior to say 1990 cannot use that particular personal experience for what the climate is like on university campuses now.

OK. I will assume that I have won the debate then, for my final semester at UT was in 1994. Very Happy

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Foxfyre wrote:

In my never-to-be-considered humble opinion, anyone who graduated college prior to say 1990 cannot use that particular personal experience for what the climate is like on university campuses now.

Well, once again, as your criterion does not include me, nor a bunch of the others here, it begs the question of just where the heck you get your opinion from.

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Tom Woolf, whose new novel about a college campus was recently heralded on Fox News (and by other conservative voices), is old enough to be my father. And I'm old enough to have college grads for kids.

What was that point again?

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D'Artagnan - I don't know about Fox, but C-Span did a 3-HOUR interview with him a few weeks ago.

How old is he, do you think?

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