Comment Tough questions are part of college debate (Score 1) 1819
Asking pointed questions is part of college. In my many years of college and part-time continuing education I've been in protests.
I happened upon a Latino-American group complaining about lack of Latino representation in an upcoming PBS World War II documentary tonight and had to ask them why in over a hour of talking, the lack diversity they mentioned was Latinos, Latinos, Latinos, Latinos, and Latinos, they mentioned Native Americans just once, and they never mentioned anyone else, ever. No one like the Chinese Americans who came to work on the Transcontinental Railroad (setting for the tv series Kung Fu) or Filipino Americans like Leo Giron from "little Manilla" Stockton California who was dropped into occupied Philipines as special forces because he looked like fit in there, or Jewish-Americans, or any other of many groups I named.
And like Kerry before the police jumped on the guy asking real questions, they were willing to entertain a discussion with me so we went on for 20 minutes, then I stayed to talk to people individually after the meeting. They didn't drag me away after a minute and a half, and a minute and a half is not "going on and on". I took many of them over 30 minutes to finally get it, they their one race isn't the only one in diversity. The grandson of the only Mexican-American to be awarded a Navy Cross, the person they wanted interviewed in an upcoming PBS documentary, was there, and he had to agree with me that diversity is more than one group. He's half Chamorro (the people from Guam). The entire clip of the guy asking real questions then getting grabbed by police is less than 4 minutes. They give him mere seconds to react, not enough time for a person new to the experience to comprehend the dynamics of the changing situation and definitely not the 30 minutes you slashdot posters get to pontificate analytically about what "he should have done".
The reason 90% of the people at the meeting applauded when the police led him away is because of the self-selection that takes place at them: people who go to meetings are interested and fans of that being presented. So 90% of the people in the room were Kerry fanboys. At the meeting I was at tonight, there was one white guy, one black lady, and every single other person was Latino, specifically, only Mexican Latino.
I may work full time understanding computers with an M.S. in software engineering, but in my counseling classes we learn that a counselor that gave someone so little time to react to changing situation would lose their license. The police's language "Let's Go" is incompletely specified phrase structure tree and would tip off a counselor as being a sign of limitations in a client's model of the world (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transformational-generative_grammar). Did you notice, they didn't say to him which direction to go, yet as English speakers you know that the destination or direction is a standard parameter of the verb "go"? That's why he asked "Are you arresting me?" and backed away. They didn't have grounds to arrest him at that point and didn't tell him they were only evicting him from the event, which is all they would have been doing. I've watched a Bolivian in tears be evicted from a then first lady Hillary event asking why she and her friends couldn't get foreign work visas in the U.S. when all the local business needed help. Here, the police created the situation by not telling him directly which way to walk and that he was being kicked out. Ambiguous body language and assuming the other person can read your mind is not admissible in court, yet I'm sure he'll be told he was the sole contributor to the situation.
The sad part is really the comments and commentors here. In articles about Microsoft installing updates without your permission, you lambast being the mainstream and using non-open source Microsoft products in this virtual world, bits onto a slashdot platter, where your words really don't matter. Yet when someone in the real world asks questions off the mainstream, you all say he was an @$$ who deserved to by tasered for it. Management students would know, that's what causes groupthink. That's what got us into Iraq. That's what will get us into Iran.
And if the off-the-mainstream question was at a state government meeting about using some 1% minority operating system called Linux, should he get tortured for giving over 90 seconds to that consideration too? Would those 90 seconds be enough time to cover the background and statistics needed on reliability, total cost of ownership, and scalability to open the state government for giving it any real consideration?
And is debate not part of college any more, or is it 30 seconds of back-patting from fans, not tough questions that bring new understandings and ideas?
I happened upon a Latino-American group complaining about lack of Latino representation in an upcoming PBS World War II documentary tonight and had to ask them why in over a hour of talking, the lack diversity they mentioned was Latinos, Latinos, Latinos, Latinos, and Latinos, they mentioned Native Americans just once, and they never mentioned anyone else, ever. No one like the Chinese Americans who came to work on the Transcontinental Railroad (setting for the tv series Kung Fu) or Filipino Americans like Leo Giron from "little Manilla" Stockton California who was dropped into occupied Philipines as special forces because he looked like fit in there, or Jewish-Americans, or any other of many groups I named.
And like Kerry before the police jumped on the guy asking real questions, they were willing to entertain a discussion with me so we went on for 20 minutes, then I stayed to talk to people individually after the meeting. They didn't drag me away after a minute and a half, and a minute and a half is not "going on and on". I took many of them over 30 minutes to finally get it, they their one race isn't the only one in diversity. The grandson of the only Mexican-American to be awarded a Navy Cross, the person they wanted interviewed in an upcoming PBS documentary, was there, and he had to agree with me that diversity is more than one group. He's half Chamorro (the people from Guam). The entire clip of the guy asking real questions then getting grabbed by police is less than 4 minutes. They give him mere seconds to react, not enough time for a person new to the experience to comprehend the dynamics of the changing situation and definitely not the 30 minutes you slashdot posters get to pontificate analytically about what "he should have done".
The reason 90% of the people at the meeting applauded when the police led him away is because of the self-selection that takes place at them: people who go to meetings are interested and fans of that being presented. So 90% of the people in the room were Kerry fanboys. At the meeting I was at tonight, there was one white guy, one black lady, and every single other person was Latino, specifically, only Mexican Latino.
I may work full time understanding computers with an M.S. in software engineering, but in my counseling classes we learn that a counselor that gave someone so little time to react to changing situation would lose their license. The police's language "Let's Go" is incompletely specified phrase structure tree and would tip off a counselor as being a sign of limitations in a client's model of the world (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transformational-generative_grammar). Did you notice, they didn't say to him which direction to go, yet as English speakers you know that the destination or direction is a standard parameter of the verb "go"? That's why he asked "Are you arresting me?" and backed away. They didn't have grounds to arrest him at that point and didn't tell him they were only evicting him from the event, which is all they would have been doing. I've watched a Bolivian in tears be evicted from a then first lady Hillary event asking why she and her friends couldn't get foreign work visas in the U.S. when all the local business needed help. Here, the police created the situation by not telling him directly which way to walk and that he was being kicked out. Ambiguous body language and assuming the other person can read your mind is not admissible in court, yet I'm sure he'll be told he was the sole contributor to the situation.
The sad part is really the comments and commentors here. In articles about Microsoft installing updates without your permission, you lambast being the mainstream and using non-open source Microsoft products in this virtual world, bits onto a slashdot platter, where your words really don't matter. Yet when someone in the real world asks questions off the mainstream, you all say he was an @$$ who deserved to by tasered for it. Management students would know, that's what causes groupthink. That's what got us into Iraq. That's what will get us into Iran.
And if the off-the-mainstream question was at a state government meeting about using some 1% minority operating system called Linux, should he get tortured for giving over 90 seconds to that consideration too? Would those 90 seconds be enough time to cover the background and statistics needed on reliability, total cost of ownership, and scalability to open the state government for giving it any real consideration?
And is debate not part of college any more, or is it 30 seconds of back-patting from fans, not tough questions that bring new understandings and ideas?
