Re: Philip Emeagwali Exposed!

blmblm_at_myrealbox.com
Date: 07/11/04 

Date: 11 Jul 2004 06:51:01 GMT

In article <MPG.1b5a7016b948b107989771@news.indigo.ie>,
Gerry Quinn <gerryq@DELETETHISindigo.ie> wrote:
>In article <2lakm5Famhc3U1@uni-berlin.de>, blmblm@myrealbox.com says...
>> In article <MPG.1b59f5b24892f569989768@news.indigo.ie>,
>> Gerry Quinn <gerryq@DELETETHISindigo.ie> wrote:
>>
>> [ snip ]
>>
>> >As for Gore:
>> >"During my service in the United States Congress, I took the initiative
>> >in creating the Internet." - Gore
>>
>> Origins: No, Al Gore did not claim he "invented" the Internet, nor
>> did he say anything that could reasonably be interpreted that way. The
>> derisive "Al Gore said he 'invented' the Internet" put-downs are
>> misleading distortions of something he said (taken out of context)
>
>In other surprise developments today, a defendant repudiated his alleged
>confession to murder. "I did NOT say I pushed my wife out of a window",
>he asserted. "What I actually said was 'I took the initiative in
>pushing her out the window', which is a completely different thing for,
>uh, some reason."

I don't find this a useful or apt analogy. Pushing someone out a
window can easily be done a single person and presumably often is.
I don't know that much about the history of the Internet, but I
feel fairly sure it is not a single-person invention, or creation,
or whatever word you like.

>I take it you are okay with put-downs saying "Al Gore claimed he created
>the internet"? I'm sure anyone who has hitherto used 'invented' would
>be just as happy with 'created', which is semantically similar enough,
>even if it lacks the alliterative qualities of 'invented'.

No, I'm not okay with such putdowns. I admit to a bias in favor of
Mr. Gore, but I think you have to be equally biased in the opposite
direction to seriously take Mr. Gore's words as a claim that he had
anything to do with the technical side of creating, or inventing,
or whatever word you want to use, the Internet --- and it seems to
me that the ensuing ridicule carried the subtext that he had claimed
to be involved in the technical side. I guess if you think the man
is a total sleaze with a poor grasp of reality, you might believe
that's really what he intended. I don't know enough to comment on
the man's integrity, but I just don't believe he's that dumb.

Anyway, I didn't really mean to start a flame war about something
off-topic. It's just that when I read the posting to which I replied,
I thought "hm, that's funny, I don't remember www.snopes.com taking
such a dim view of Mr. Gore." So I looked up and re-read what they
had to say, and it seemed to me that by quoting only the part most
critical of Mr. Gore you were doing a bit of misrepresentation of
a source many people find highly credible.

I'm pretty sure I'm not going to change your mind even a little bit,
and you're probably not going to change mine, and I think I've said
what I had to say to other readers on the topic of Mr. Gore and whether
he was misquoted -- namely, "read the whole entry on www.snopes.com
before making up your mind."

So maybe we could get back to arguing about how to describe how Java
passes parameters? 

-- 
| B. L. Massingill
| ObDisclaimer:  I don't speak for my employers; they return the favor.

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