First of all… chocolate always goes with peanut butter.
I have no interest in attacking anyone’s character. A fundamental part of my belief system is acknowledging that we are not separate from one another. I think caring about others is a great emotional risk for many, including myself. When I see people turn away from others, or when I do it myself, it seems to be out of fear and discomfort. Relationships are messy, painful, risky endeavors. Some people just don’t want to bother.
I don’t manipulate people with my emotions. I just share them. Because sometimes I need a hug or a kick in the ass or both. Of course I wanted attention and validation. That’s a normal response to human suffering. I think that’s human nature. I’m not proud of the immature things I did in the past, but it’s not like doing dumb shit isn’t an incredibly common experience for many of us. We’re all just muddling through, really.
I almost put this post in the ATMB about banning people from threads, but I don’t want to turn that thread into the Dio show (which it’s already in danger of becoming). So I’ll put the post here:
Let’s use a recent example. There’s a thread about mandatory school lunches in a Chicago school. You came in to make the claim that it’s a bogus news story, based on an uncited denial by the school system (I cited it for you, but the only cite I could find was from the reporter, who maintains that the quote is accurate). You really really wanted to make this the central thrust of the thread–whether the story is accurate–and kept challenging me or other people on it.
After a couple of exchanges, I started ignoring you, because it looked like you were willing to die on that hill, turning the thread into some sort of metaphysical argument about who has the burden of proof or some such nonsense. That’s idiotic, IMO, because the thread isn’t about the philosophical duty of burden of proof, and going down that route is a total hijack.
But it’s possible other folks will walk with you down that hijack. And if they do, it’s likely that you’ll get more and more brusque and arbitrary in your claims, and that they’ll get more and more irritated and snipy with you, and that eventually the thread will get shut down.
My hope is that you won’t do that, and that nobody else will go there with you. But if you decide to do that, then I hope the mods will ban you from the thread, inviting you instead to open a new thread about the philosophical theories behind who has the burden of proof.
You should be prevented from responding to challenges when your responses lead the thread progressively in an ever-more-irrelevant direction (philosophical burden of proof, what kind of sharp pointy pieces of wood can inflict lethal injuries, whether all 25-year-old-men would be frightened of you, etc.)
When I joined the board I really looked up to Dio and I once told him he would teach me something. I don’t think I’ve ever seen him make a proclamation like this before, so for me, as far as him teaching me something, it’s not so much that a man can change, but that he can change. I can tell he’s a good man at heart and if he says he’s going to do something I’ll take his word for it.
Oh, and by the way, get the fuck off Olives. She may have issues but there’s only a handfull of posters here that have a heart like hers.
The school district’s denial wasn’t “uncited.” Are you actually denying that the school district denied it? Weere you ever able to provide any cooroboration that such a policy has been in existence for the last 6 years besides one disputed quote by one reporter?
Just out of curiosity, (and I don’t know because I really haven’t followed that thread since it first started). Did you provide that cite in the other thread or just keep insisting your were correct?
It may be the case that the district has no such policy. The school itself, however, does, and the principal of that school has said that she put it in place.
Bond claimed the principal was misquoted. On what does she base that? She was not, AFAICT, present at the interview with the principal.
A further quote from the e-mail Bond allegedly sent -
Bonds would know if such a policy had existed at this school for the past six years, and it would be stupid for her to deny something that could be so easily validated if true. I think it’s far more plausible that a reporter got something wrong or misquoted somebody (it happens all the time), than that the school district would stupidly lie about something that could easily be proven.
My position in the other thread was that it has not been established as fact that this policy exists, and therefore should not be taken as fact unless and until there is some corroboration from a source other than this one reporter.
[QUOTE=Monique Bond]
that decision is left to the judgment of the principals.
…principals use common sense judgment based on their individual school environments," Monique Bond wrote in an email.
[/QUOTE]
In other words, there is such a policy in place at that school rather than one set by the district.
Ms. Bond is throwing dust in our eyes by denying that such a policy exists at the district level. It does not. It does exist at that school, and has for some years, because the principal who imposed it had the discretionary authority to do so.
Really? You couldn’t answer a simple yes or no question with a yes or no? You have to make it more complicated?
I was just curious and I’m not going to go read a multi-page thread to see if you provided a cite, I really don’t care that much anyways?
First, thanks for providing a cite for the first time ever.
Second, as I said, that’s not the fucking point. You yourself admitted that you don’t know whether the policy is real or not–after you came charging into the thread to say, point-blank, that the story was bogus. You shouldn’t have done that; instead, you should have said that a district’s denial cast doubt on the story. You tried to turn a dribble into a slam-dunk. That’s fucking annoying.
Third, even after you admitted you didn’t know, you started blathering on some dumb shit about who properly held the burden of proof. And when people ignored that and continued with the discussion, you continued poking at this ridiculous issue, trying to turn the discussion back to something irrelevant.
Because here’s the deal: ALL STORIES MAY OR MAY NOT BE TRUE. We carry on all discussions contingent on the story’s veracity. And the interesting conversation we are having in that thread is on the boundaries of a school’s rights to control student behavior in areas only tangentially academic. The interesting discussion isn’t on whether in an argument between a reporter and a superintendent the burden of proof is on one or the other.
Finally, you’ve got to be shitting me when you say that in a dispute between a government official and a reporter, it’s probably the reporter who’s wrong. Well over 90% of a government official’s statements are not intended to be factual.
