G8, issues, and familiarity

[Faustine]

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.