On Sat, 21 Jul 2001, Faustine wrote:
> Jim wrote:
> >CNN's poll is asking "Are you familiar with the issues behind the G8
> >summit".
> >58% said "No".
> >Perhaps the protesting will help motivate more to educate themselves.
> True, that would be great. But how many of the remaining 42 percent
> consider themselves educated, but are nevertheless content to mindlessly
> repeat mickey mouse platitudes and propaganda spoon-fed to them from on
> high, and who couldn't pass a rudimentary econ 101 test if their lives
> depended on it?
>>That's a pretty simplistic view:
>>If they don't know then it's their fault for not being educated.
Whose fault is it then? Anyone well-off enough to be reading CNN online
hasn't got much of reason not to educate themselves. Nobody gets a free
pass--I take responsibility for my own ignorance, and don't feel the need
to be ashamed of it because I'm actively working to overcome it every day.
Believe it or not, I went from being a high school dropout literally living
on the street to a PhD student with a research job entirely on my own, with
nothing to get me there but will and intelligence: why should I feel an
ounce of sympathy for people with far more material advantages than I ever
had who never made use of them?
>>If they claim they do know then it must be platitudes and propoganda.
No, I'm just disgusted with the majority of the great smug, lazy, and
complacent middle class of America. I find their peculiar brand of
mushheadded apathy to be beneath contempt. One of my hot buttons, I guess.
> More analysis, less rhetoric.
>>Analysis is rhetoric, just better organized.
John von Neumann is spinning in his grave...
>Lies, damn lies, statistics.
Bah! How about this one:
The fundamental difference between engineering with and without statistics
boils down to the difference between the use of a scientific method based
upon the concept of laws of nature that do not allow for chance or
uncertainty and a scientific method based upon the concept of laws of
probability as an attribute of nature. - W.A.Shewhart
There!! :)
~Faustine.