On Wed, Dec 06, 2000 at 05:02:17PM -0800, Tim May wrote:
At 7:48 PM -0500 12/6/00, Trei, Peter wrote:
[ .. ]
Anyone else suspect that the original message (from a throw-away yahoo account) is a troll, and wonder if Tim might have been the author?
I have suspected this in the past over some postings but the ip address in the headers looks legit. Received: from [194.170.1.68] by web901.mail.yahoo.com; Wed, 06 Dec 2000 $ whois 194.170.1.68 route: 194.170.0.0/16 descr: Emirates Telecommunications Corporation Sheikh Zayed II Street P.O. Box 3838 Abu Dhabi United Arab Emirates
Rasha sounds like the typical illiterate student who has to take remedial English upon her arrival at Beaver College. I had a roommate in college who was one of these types, having to take the equivalent of "English for Dummies." He couldn't spell, he couldn't construct a sentence, and he couldn't read worth a damn.
Although I dislike, as ever, Tim's tone in these matters he has, as he often does, a valid point hidden under his bitterness and his experience at an American university is similar to my own, more recent, experiences at English universities. In a basic course that purported to teach "economics" (actually a dumbed down blend of vague sociology and Keynesianism) the majority of students were foreign and had a poor grasp of the English language. The level of debate was poor and the lecturer had an easy job. I am not racist against foreign students and think poking fun at poor English isn't constructive (they generally speak English better than I speak their own language) but there seems to me something basically broken about a system which doesn't teach basic English _before_ trying to teach complex ideas in that language. -- 1024/D9C69DF9 steve mynott steve@tightrope.demon.co.uk gravity cannot be held responsible for people falling in love. -- albert einstein