Re: Is my CS instructor nuts?


Gerry Quinn wrote:
In article <1150676570.962112.235180@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
spinoza1111@xxxxxxxxx says...
Gerry Quinn wrote:

As I posted elsewhere in the thread just now, Giles' reported
description of events do not entirely coincide with those of RAFO.

Now you libel Giles by posting a negative fact without argument which
will later found to be either a symptom of your illiteracy or your
dishonesty, since in the latter case, you will rely on your auditors'
inability to renarrate...to even comprehend the concept of
"constructive" termination. I've explained it to you but you don't
understand.

Nope, I just made an observation which indicates that even if Giles and
RAFO have the whole truth between them, which seems unlikely, they do
not themselves appear to agree precisely on the facts.

Sure, go ahead and undercut with the snide and the accusation. You have
no case and therefore have to resort to gutter tactics.


Gee alert the media...Bubba here has discovered that despite the
consensus of modern biologists that human beings constitute one
species, homo sapiens sapiens, there are "innate" differences which are
"well supported"...which if innate would constitute the need to rewrite
even those biology texts which don't address the issue, but merely
contain a single species entry for all humans alive today.

That human beings constitute one species has never been in serious
dispute. That, however, is not the assertion you made. You are
claiming that unlike other species, humankind does not express sexual
dimorphism, or variations between geographic lineages. This claim is
palpable untrue.

"Variations" have been consistently used by undereducated scientists to
conclude that policies should recognize these "variations" including
immigration "reform" and racist IQ testing.

However, these "variations" are statistical and so feeble as to be in
fact unscientific as a predictor of the abilities of any one human
being, therefore their application is a violation of human rights.

ALL measurements are statistical - and the evidence of genetic
variation between geographical lineages of the human species is utterly
overwhelming. Are you genuinely attempting to deny that the obvious
inherited differences in colour and body shape - the physically obvious
differences that have been noted since prehistory - don't exist? Of
course there are numerous less directly obvious variations too - blood
group, lactose tolerance, etc.

What's interesting about these "differences" is that they have no
theory to back them up except racism.

In speaking of "obvious" differences in "color and body shape" you are
unscientifically reasoning from pictures of standard individuals when
the very idea that a representative "type" of the "Asian" or "European"
or "African" is of recent, and 19th-century racist, provenance. Prior
images had emphasized differences in dress and custom. Even in the case
of Africans, Renaissance art and literature was in fact more aware that
there was a smooth gradation in color from north to south (the
smoothness of gradation being a fact which argues against "innate"
differences, by the way).

That is: the differences have been noted in different ways. Shakespeare
and his contemporaries explained blackness as a LaMarckian, acquired
trait, acquired by proximity to the sun. But in fact, these
"statistics" of "lactose intolerance", "the bell curve", etc., since
they are unconfirmed by THEORY, are themselves Lamarckian and hence
fallacious. It is understandable that Renaissance men made the mistake:
it is obscene that "scientists" should "prove" these differences today.


When "Orientals" in fact change to a Western diet in conditions of
Western affluence they tend strongly to look less like the picture
books from which you and your racist authorities reason. I played world
football in Shenzen against a company of large Chinamen who could have
played American football because the middle class in China is getting
larger and their body types are now "Western".

People are surprised to learn that Keanu Reeves is "half" Chinese and
many German daughters of German mothers and "black" American GIs get to
choose their race: the differences by which you set such racist store
are bred out in a single generation!


Or are you asserting that these may exist, but some force prevents
inherited factors having an influence on specific other phenotypical
properties? What force might this be? And why are statistical
variations found even after its presumed operation?

The statistical variations have to do with colonial oppression.


A person who speaks of "variations" is a racist because he's addressing
a phenomenon which has so many cofactors, including such historically
confirmable cofactors as the brutalization of Africa by Europe, that
any talk based on that phenomenon is bull***.

It seems we must choose between being 'racists' according to your
individualistic definition of the term (which apparently includes
recognition of the fact of racial variation), and being liars. [Or, if
we are not liars, clinically insane.]

Yes.


Human beings share the same genome, therefore "variations", even if
observed and confirmed under controlled conditions (an impossibility
given self-reflexivity, that is the knowledge of the observer that
she's being observed, an impossibility given history which means that
no starting conditions exist) have no explanation EXCEPT, in the case
of negative variations, history in the form of colonialist and other
forms of oppression, and no predictive value because fortunately,
colonialism is not a given.

If the expression 'genome' is used in the sense incorporating the
variations shared by the human race, then humans share the same genome.
But obviously this does not in any way contradict the notion of
variation!

IF they share the same genome, THEN they are a single species and the
"variations" can only be explained by physical environment and by
history.

All human beings produce melanin and white folks still try to look like
black folks even with the ozone hole. Skin color is no more "innate"
than different color fur for the animals.


The Hong Kong education authoriries and the British educational rules
REQUIRE that the text and the class discuss the issue of innate racial
differences in biology classes and, based on established scientific
results ("theories" only in the professional's sense of "true theories,
with evidence, that like Newton's laws will not be so much superseded
or outmoded as incorporated in a more encompassing theory") these
systems require the teacher to reject all talk of "innate" differences.

The Hong Kong and UK education authorities are at liberty to prescribe
what is to be taught in schools, whether it be true or false.
[Erstwhile, we were discussing whether the authorities at Roosevelt
University have related, though more restricted rights.]

The problem is that Roosevelt DID NOT PRESCRIBE: they only fired.

Douglas Giles was given no mentoring in how Roosevelt wanted the class
to be taught. My guess based on my experience as an adjunct at
Roosevelt and DeVry is that he was given a syllabus prepared by an
earlier instructor and an assigned textbook.

Then a failing student complained because this is what failing students
have done since China's cultural revolution: they join a passive and
frightened administration in ganging up on the instructor.

The university, with no clear vision of education since its president
Rolf Weil fired the brilliant and popular left-wing historian Staughton
Lynd in 1968, was at that point reactive, concerned only to keep its
"customer" happy, and the instructor took the fall.

He took the fall when he was confronted by the choice to mention or not
mention the issue of Zionism in a world religion class!

Think, for a change.

IF the instructor must be instructed in the content of instruction
at-will by the university administration, if in other words the
university administration has at-will the reserved right to change the
delivered syllabus in cases where the instructor's peers (other college
professors and disciplinary experts with the appropriate post-BAC
degree) would consens that the instructor was on track (defining
"Zionism" for a student who asked "what is Zionism" in a world religion
class, not devoting hours to "Zionism" in a computer science class),

THEN,

the instructor is no longer an instructor.

The students are not being taught.

This is FRAUD. And, if Roosevelt uses the Post Office, it's mail fraud.


However, it is not given to these authorities to adjudicate on what is
or is not scientific fact. By standard definitions of science, nobody
can.

You know where I've heard this piece of bull***?

The pages of the Wall Street Journal, in which two "professors" at an
unknown institution funded by energy companies, who loudly proclaimed
that the authorities, imaged as politically correct cry-babies, could
not legislate scientific fact.

Who then proceeded to "prove" the falsity of global warming theory...

By displaying a moronic chart which omitted global temperatures before
1981.

When I added 1981, their "cooling" trendline switched to
warming...because, as any mathematician knows, small data sets are
sensitive to this behavior, and as any geologist knows, global warming
is a geological phenomenon, which is proved by larger data sets (but,
as research into Arctic ice cores shows, can cause overnight
catastrophes).

In fact, it IS "given to the authorities", as a practical matter, the
privilege to adjudicate scientific fact.

The US patent office does so every day. It refuses applications to
patent a *perpetuum mobile".

And, of course, the authorities world wide have to legislate what can
be in textbooks.

Which means, unfortunately for you, that you can't be a moron, and sit
back in your barcalounger, and "suspend mah jugement", and have another
beer, and get another teacher fired because that teacher looks BEYOND
the shitty little horizons of the local school district, or Roosevelt
University, and reasons that because biologists agree about evolution,
or because world wide "Zionism" is recognized (mostly as a problem),
then of course he is going to listen to that consensus...not what the
local Imams say.

Science, to be applied, has to be "legislated". It can't, as Feynman
pointed out, violate the laws of nature as agreed upon by a community
of scientists which excludes fools.


Note, incidentally, that the actual content of the paragraph above
indicates not that the HK authorities discuss the issue of innate
differences, but that they prohibit discussion of the issue.

Again, you are lying. The approved texts raise the issue and the
teacher's guides recommend that time be set aside for discussion.

However, there is one right answer: that biology confirms the Universal
Declaration of Human Rights, and finds NO scientific reason to credit
ANY talk of "innate" (which is to say, confirming a coherent theory)
differences.

In other words, boo hoo, science is Leninist. It doesn't allow morons
to continue to believe racist garbage.


We already know that American biological education has been moronized
given Creationism, so perhaps it is permitted to be silent on the
interpretation of biological data. Of course, the "apolitical" teacher
then, precisely because she is "apolitical" knuckles under to the
requirement that she teach Creationism. Human nature, including the
human nature of morons and thugs, abhors a vacuum.

Indeed, mandatory teaching of creationism or evolution are other
examples of how educational authorities may prescribe what is to be
taught in schools - but cannot thereby cause their prescriptions to
rewrite science.

If biology is to be taught correctly at all, then evolution has to be
taught and is mandatory. It is mandatory in all civilized countries
(the US may no longer be a civilized country). As a logical corollary,
it is MANDATORY to be silent about Creationism, although if I ruled zee
verld, vee vould have a special day set aside to laugh at Creation
science.

Until, of course, science discovered that God created all the cute l'il
old bunnies like it done be said in de Bible.

This WON'T HAPPEN. It WON'T happen because legacy scientific theories
like those of Newton remain tenable within a frame of reference and
spawned Einstein. If evolution were "refuted" it would be found to
operate universally in the preconditions narrated by Darwin. Which
would leave the proposition "homo sapiens sapiens evolved from monkey
***" TRUE.


Secondly, even in the hardest of sciences, silence==death. Absent a
discussion of the politics of evolution in biology, teachers are
defenseless against Creationism.

Ironic, but perhaps you intend it, because you refer to the politics
rather than the science of evolution. Just like the creationists, you
believe that evolution does not apply to the human species; that it
stopped when our species diverged from other hominids. [You propose
this for political rather than religious reasons. This gives you a
problem - religious anti-evolutionists can at least assert that the
purported cessation or non-existence of evolution is the work of an
omnipotent named entity, whereas anti-evolutionists of the political
kind can only bluster and shriek and attempt to change the subject.]

Oh, so perhaps you believe that white geeks represent a higher form of
humanity?

'Higher' expresses a moral or aesthethic rather than a scientific
judgement - if I were to make that claim I would have to justify it on
grounds unrelated to science. And in fact I do not make it, nor do I
believe it. I do believe that the the average values of many human
qualities we value vary between the geographical lineages, with no
lineage having pre-eminence in all or even most.

Spoken like a true Creationist sleaze, not that you're a Creationist:
but in the register "oh, I am such a CIVILIZED person, I am so myself
EVOLVED, that I have rediscovered innate differences, but I will be
ever so nice about it.:

Someone who valued the qualities possessed by 'white geeks' (whatever
they are) above all others would probably believe that white geeks
represented a higher form of humanity. As would somebody who believed
that white geeks possessed all desirable qualities in special
abundance. Both - irrespective of the correctness or otherwise of
their judgements - would be described as 'racists' in the conventional
sense of the word, in that they make moral distinctions between
identified races.

Modern racism in fact evolved from "scientific" and "value free" 19th
century theories.


[Logically, both descriptions could entail equivalent sets of views - I
distinguish between them on the basis that the qualities they value
most may differ, and that insofar as their beliefs are honestly come
by, one might attempt to alter those of the former by means of moral
argument, and those of the latter by empirical argument.]

(1) Stephen Jay Gould shows us that evolution can go back. Are we not
men? We are Devo!

Jay Gould was mostly famous for a theory of sudden evolutionary jumps,
nowadays in less favour. He is a poor name to bring up, as his
contributions to the debate on human variation were often dishonest.

Fucking sleaze bag. You haven't read THE STRUCTURE OF EVOLUTIONARY
THEORY so you call Gould a liar. You are scared of a man standing up to
an unjust "letter of non rehire" so you call him a liar.

Liar, liar, liar: the dead-end charge of the intellectually bankrupt.
It's a charge which stops the "debate" and turns it into a personality
campaign, because logically, if your opponent is a liar, why did you
debate him (cf Gadamer).


(2) Given our knowledge of the genome, if there was any evidence for
evolution within homo sapiens sapiens, I'm sure it would be like
details at eleven. Unfortunately for you it is not. All you have is
statistical evidence which has to be interpreted by thugs and morons
ignorant of colonialism to lend ANY weight to ANY claim of further
evolution.

As I've said before, ALL evidence is statistical. For those interested
in science, it IS like 'details at eleven'. [I presume you mean
evidence about particular evolutionary matters - the fact that humans
have evolved and will continue to evolve is undisputed among scientists
other than those committed to 'intelligent design', and perhaps a few
other cranks.]

This is the racist proposition at the heart of much California "new
age" thinking, thinking that has created nothing more than cults and
mass suicides: that SOME people, mostly Nordic whites with a California
tan and beach property, are oh, so evolved that they represent a new
species, or will as soon as evvabody drink de Kool-Aid that the guru
has whipped up.

Unfortunately, it is disproved when any Asian or African understands
human mathematics.

You've failed to notice that species can't communicate any more than
they can mate except in very controlled situations. Your problem is
that Asians and Africans need only the in-principle (not "statistical")
ability to beat your ass at chess or software in only ONE instance to
prove you wrong.

Apes may have in fact a highly developed Chomsky-type language, but one
based on behaviors other than the production of speech. But no one ape
has ever made the cut in the sense that Ramanujan understood Hardy.

The UN Declaration of Human Rights declares we are one species because
every day, human beings communicate in a way that has a theoretical
basis in the shared human genome, and only shitbag racists are unaware
of this.

(3) God forbid you should teach biology.

Perhaps the Hong Kong education authorities would forbid me from
teaching biology. But that doesn't say anything about biology.

I don't believe this ***. The problem is that world-wide, students at
inferior universities, like Roosevelt in Chicago, are being taught in
fact by people like you, who believe that there are "innate"
differences and that "Zionism" is a dirty word. The result is that
people with inferior degrees can no longer speak to the elite and are
instead manipulated, for the convenience of the elite, into Fascist
spear-chuckers.

India has just legislated the removal of any reference to the eating of
cow in textbooks by ancient Hindus because Hindu fundamentalists can't
stand the idea that their ancestors may have had a few cow burgers.
Before you get another hard-on, you should realize that leaving the
reference out, keeping it in, or even having a page labeled "yo, did
our forefathers eat beef, or what?" is LEGISLATING SCIENCE.
Unfortunately for the Hindoo fundies, dotty British archeologists
(without an axe to grind) had discovered that ancient Indians snarfed
cow...and that Buddha was a real guy.

Let me note, however, that I started off by saying precisely that this
subject was likely to be unsuited to introductory biology classes, just
as Zionism is unsuited to introductory courses on world religion.

Exactly wrong. It's the introductory classes where the ignorant have to
be enlightened. The discussion has to be in 101, otherwise the students
are damaged.

Among the ignorant, discussion would generate more heat than light -
since many are wilfully ignorant, these subjects are difficult to
discuss even when a substantial shared body of knowledge is available
to all participants, but there may at least be a chance of progress.


- Gerry Quinn

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