:dubious: Are you serious?
C’mon, Lib. This is weak. There’s a huge difference between using a metaphor in informal speech or writing and using it in a contract. Even as a joke, this one comes up short.
According to some sources, Thomas Paine proposed several extreme plans for post-Revolutionary political order, and was prone to shout “Up against the wall, Tory motherfucker!”. His comments were never entered into the minutes. Scholars are divided as to the significance, with some suggesting he simply liked to see Alexander Hamilton wet himself.
Hey, when revolutions come, they use REAL walls, not metaphorical ones. And if I had to choose a class of people to throw against the wall, lawyers would be right up there near the top with car salesmen and political pundits. 
Except that the lawyers will convince the brown shirts that the gardeners are the real lawyers; the car salesmen will swap defective guns for the shiny ones at the last minute; and the pundits, well, I don’t think they actually do anything as a profession, so I guess they’re screwed.
No, you didn’t say it was. That’s why I was asking if you wished to explicitly say so. Your decision to insist upon the point (rather than to assert that the other points adequately support your conclusion) might lead one to suspect that you didn’t have much confidence in the other points being up to the task.
Seems he challenged its obviousness more than its factualness. And nobody compelled you to cooperate with the “new debate”. In fact, since you had as much power as anybody to derail that (some might even say “more power than anyone else”), it could be argued that you should be pitting [del]your[/del]thyself, along with Bricker. Anyway, what monstro said, both times.
I’ve got a mixed reaction to your announcement that you don’t intend to stick around. You don’t strike me as quite so dickish as some of our more passionate allies. And you are a newbie, after all, which somewhat mitigates your impulsiveness. OTOH, the prospect of having to watch you get out-maneuvered over and over is exhausting, all by itself.
I don’t think you can’t treat an English sentence like a mathematical formula in that way. Yes, technically he didn’t “say” that but it’s implied well enough. It’d be mighty peculiar that he would bring up the recruitment campaign if the author didn’t think it had a bearing on his school choice. Especially when the the very next frigging sentence is “Thomas was the beneficiary of a similar minority program a few years later at Yale Law School.”
So yes, his cite most definitely SAYS that Thomas benefited from AA at CofHC. Perhaps you meant the cite is weaselly about it?
I don’t think Bricker’s pitting is called for here: we all have our rhetorical peculiarities and we all focus on something other than the main point at times, and Bricker is no exception. If you are going to pit every Doper who posts in ways that are illogical or rhetorically unsound, you are going to have spend all your time in the pit because almost everyone does.
Plus, I disagree with pitting our few conservatives because they serve an important function on the Dope – by challenging our arguments they ensure that the arguments are sound. They keep weak arguments from winning the day by trouncing them. In any message board that values ignorance fighting, as the SDMB putatively does, this is valuable.
Finally, I sense your pitting arises from frustration with dealing with Bricker. The only issues where he is really intractable are issues which are essentially legal in nature. Bricker is a lawyer, he will trounce you in those arguments every time. That’s OK, most issues on the Dope are not essentially legal in nature. The particular argument you had with Bricker wasn’t legal. The simplest way to deal with Bricker in this instance is to point out that you don’t have to establish unassailable legal proof that Thomas was helped by AA, only evidence that a reasonable person acting in good faith would accept as convincing. That evidence has already been provided to you in this thread.
You will never convince some members of the SDMB of the soundness of your argument, but you will convince some if you stay on point and not allow yourself to be distracted, either by people who don’t get your argument and stray onto side issues, or those who deliberately try to lead you to argue side issues because they know they can’t win the main point but can with the side issue. (This is a common technique in debate, might as well get used to dealing with it here, if you intend to debate anywhere.)
Dude: it is quite possible you are right. But you haven’t proved it and really it is somethink that can not be proved without time-travel mind-reading devices.
Yes, Bricker can sometimes be a bit of a dick. But here’s the difference- Bricker is a real expert, and a member of this community. He has contributed massively to the Fight vs Ignorance. I respect Bricker, even though we sometimes disagree.
But you? You can’t even contribute the few bucks for a Membership, let alone some useful information,cites or facts. :rolleyes:
Fie on you, varlet.
Great post Evil Captor. slow clap
C’mon, you know you wanna clap too!
No. It implies it–a rhetorical device that has far too frequently been used to convey an idea that is not true. However, it did not state that Thomas benefitted. In fact, it was the very fact that it was implied and not stated that made the statement suspicious. It may have been weaselly or it may have simply been sloppy writing, but it did not actually state the point.
“Riots began to break out in cities each summer following the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.”
“Serious crime in the U.S. rose following the passage of the Omnibus Crime Bill of 1968.”
“Deaths from lung cancer rose in the U.S. following the publication of the Surgeon General’s report on the hazards of smoking in 1962.”
In each case, the statement is factually true and has been written to imply that the earlier event was responsible for the later event, even though there was no evidence provided that one caused the other and, in fact, the issues were not causally related.
Although the OP was wrong, I find it funny that ascertations such as these go unchallenged in a thread like this.
Cite? And not some guy saying this is so. Give me some hard data that this is true.
Cite? Who has ever said that?
Cite that these institutions are trying to “game” the system. What the hell does that mean anyway? Does it mean mean using race as one of many factors including, but not limited to, grades, GPA, geography, school ranking, extracurriculars, honors, sports, family wealth, family history, etc.? I love how all these people bitch about a black kid with slightly lower scores on a test getting into a school, but few of those same people care that athletes, rich kids, popular kids, and a host of others with other attributes, of varying utility, are allowed in. Why is it wrong to think that growing up as a minority in this country might provide the student body with the same enrichment as being able to throw a good curveball? Sure, not every Black person is going to contribute to their school, but collectively they do. It’s especially ironic to me that those against AA frequently cite culture as the stumbling block for many Blacks in this country, yet fail to acknowledge how this difference in culture could broaden the horizons of an otherwise homogeneous group more than interaction with someone who has an comparable GPA and test scores. I think it’s time we re-evaluate what “qualified” really means in these circumstances. Surely no one would argue that any schmoe should get in to Harvard based on their race or gender alone, but I think we need to really step back and think about things when we presume we can unquestionably “qualify” based on test scores and grades alone.
In trouble with whom? Show me one case of anyone bitching about a dearth of minorities in a field where the pool is so limited. I also, want a cite showing how many Black PhDs there were in recent years.
First, let us not forget that AA is not a helping hand for Blacks only. In fact, women have been the primary beneficiary’s of AA. In addition, many other groups utilize programs including whites, and males. As the article states:
Why do you think this is the case? That an issue like this is framed in a way to make it seems as though Blacks are befitting more than other groups, are not “earning” the positions they are awarded, and are, as a whole, less qualified? The way the issue is framed is the reason why you think you can gain traction with your above statements, but don’t care to acknowledge the dozens of other criteria used to make decisions where race is taken into account. How many people do you see arguing that need-based financial scholarships are unfair because they are biased against the hard working and well off? Why should Donald Trump’s son have less access to scholarship money because *his dad *is rich? Why are athletic gifts, money, etc. on the table while race isn’t?
And again, you accept that grades, and GPA are the only rubrics for “qualification”. That’s a value judgment. One that many (including I) can appreciate, but not something that can be accepted as a predicate without acknowledging it as such. If colleges only accepted people based on how well they would do in class, and how smart they are, they wouldn’t have sports teams, arts, clubs, and other less academically rigorous majors that do little to demonstrate raw intellectual power. Rather, at some point, they decided that having a good football team, for example, that would instill pride in the students was worth the burden of accepting a less academically gifted student quarterback “in place” of another applicant. They also decided that the poetry major that acted in all those HS plays, and starred in all those commercials might be more valuable to them than that other applicant who scored 50 points higher on her SATs. Or maybe they decided that that rich kid, whose father and grandfather went to the school, is a better fit than his friend who has no connections. Or perhaps Princeton just decided that they have too many people from NJ prep schools this year, so they took a “less qualified” girl from El Paso. Or maybe the admin office at MIT decided to take a chance on a** girl **from Texas instead of her White male neighbor. This stuff happens all the time, and few bat an eyelash because few involve underlying circumstances that make us have to relive the terrible racial history this country has. I get that, but let’s not pretend like the issue is as cut a dry as Black people taking jobs/slots in which they are ineffective.
I just can’t pick up the rhythm. I think metamorphosis has set in.
Thanks, brickbacon, for reading my mind, translating my thoughts into words, and putting them in your last post. I won’t even complain that you didn’t give me attribution. 
I should point out that Bricker will not win in points of law every time. He’s very good at framing the discussion, but once you realize how he’s framed it, and point out the lethal flaw, he tends to get very quiet.
I seem to recall being on the opposite side of him twice over the years when he’s done that.
Don’t you mean “metaphormosis”?
Actually, I think I meant rigormortis.
You’re probably right, Lib. I think this thread is pretty much dead.
On the off chance that this is a real attempt at debate, and not just throw out some shit and see if any sticks -
Recent PhD.s -
http://blogs.wsj.com/informedreader/2007/04/02/strains-in-education-phd-programs-hit-black-scholars/
"Disparate impact (racial imbalance) in employee selection constitutes prima facie evidence of unlawful discrimination.’
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sites/entrez?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=7985887&dopt=Abstract
Disparate impact as circumstantial evidence
http://writ.news.findlaw.com/lazarus/20010501.html
"The competition for qualified minority students, faculty and administrators is fierce.’
"Current competition has intensified. Highly qualified minority candidates can practically write their own tickets. ’
http://elo.nps.navy.mil/elo_web/news/index.lasso?id=60&show=one
Outreach
http://users.stargate.net/~zrm/lit/affact.html
Not ‘slightly’
“Herrnstein and Murray reported in “The Bell Curve” [1994]
that, among students entering 26 high-prestige colleges in 1990-91,
the average white-black disparity in SAT scores was 182 points. At
none of the schools was the mean advantage for whites less than 95
points.”
http://www.arthurhu.com/index/afact.htm
" …only by granting preferential treatment to historically disadvantaged groups can society reach the goal of equal opportunity."
http://chronicle.com/che-data/articles.dir/art-44.dir/issue-09.dir/09b00601.htm
Again, come back and post something coherent in response, and we’ll see if it is worth any more bother. Although I am leaving for the weekend, so don’t be disappointed if it takes a couple days.
Regards,
Shodan