:: looks sheepishly down at feet ::
I’m sorry … I won’t do it again, honest!
How do you stop people from posting who think they do know the right answer? Especially for something like the border crossing, where practical experience is relevant.
Do I need a birth certificate to cross the border? If anyone has ever done it without one, the answer is NO, right?
Oh fury!!! A wrong answer in GQ!! A WAG in GQ!! A SWAG in GQ!!
You should be scarlet with rage! Shake your puny fist at those who would dare to hazard a guess in GQ!! That’s right, shake it good and hard at the ass talkers! Shake, shake, shake!
Guilty as charged :smack: But he was kinda, sorta asking for opinions <can ya see me squirm???> - and I did give out the usage that most of us Brits would be familiar with.
I’m 100% with Chefguy on this.
Reducing GQ to This is the question / This is the answer would make the SDMB redundant. You may as well just use Google.
The SDMB provided factual answers, and that is good. Even better though, is that a good GQ thread will provide the OP with the answer, but also with a personalised and diverse touch that search engines and encyclopedia site do not give.
When I post a question in GQ, I assume I’m getting educated guesses and personal experience in with pure facts. If I want the official line and only that, I google for it.
I tend to think it’s lazy and a waste of hamster sweat to post things like “what’s the Muslim population of Botswana” in GQ. There are a ton of sites where I can get that.
To me the SDMB helps me interpret that sort of data … ie. “Are the Muslims in Botswana very observant?”
… But Tapioca Dextrin the knowledge of the 90% 10% divide, then lets us ask; “If I get turned back, can I dirve to the next crossing point and try there?” would a person be automatically be caught trying to do this, or would they have another 90% chance of getting through. You see how knowing the chance is 90% getting through, makes this a potential solution to someone who has no chance of getting the official required document (wheras if the chance were 10% of getting through this would be a most likely fruitless idea).
Those wrong answers were bad though, I agree. But someone who can say that they went through post Sep 11th, with just a driving license and work card and was able to persuade the boarder guards to let them through even when asked for passport or birth certificate would be useful information.
It must be faced that though the boarder guards are meant to treat everyone equally, someone of European heritage, with a strong Canadian accent, and a work permit showing they have a professional job in Canada, might well be considered safe without proper paperwork.
I suggest we follow the example of our Exalted Master, and combine humor with a correct, understandable answer. Therefore, humorous answers are in, but wrong answers are out.
Shake your booty
Actually, I like Mark Morford’s motto: “Lube up, lean into the fire, and laugh.” Are you planning on stalking me on the board? A boring pastime, I assure you.
No worries, mate. That’s not my style. I only ran across Tapioca’s errant answer by the happy coincidence of it being recent and in a thread that I had an interest in.
By the way, Tapioca Dextrin, I retract my assessment of you being a “humorless wanker”. Your confession was done in good humor (humour?), which is really all my point has been all along.
What’s a motto with you?
HA! I kill me!
On the Tapioca Scale Of Truth that statements scores a meagre 50% 
I won’t be posting here for a while, some us have to get to work - in my case it takes around two days :eek:
Exactly! There are a lot of questions whose answers depend on where the poster is from, and individual experiences may vary. In the passport/ID one, it would be wrong for someone to say, “No, you never need documentation to cross a border,” because it would depend on the border and (perhaps) where exactly one is crossing it. I think it’s okay to provide anecdotal responses to a factual question, as long as you identify it as such and don’t proclaim it to be the be-all, end-all answer that fits all scenarios.
Oh, Christ.
I am the poster who stated that 90% of the time, the border guards on the US-Canada crossing don’t check for birth certificates/ID. I stated that through my personal experience in crossing the border. I know you can’t find that cite on the internet. That’s because it’s my personal experience.
Let me explain. I live less than one and a half miles from the Lewiston-Queenston bridge. In fact, I drive under the bridge every day going to work. I drive over the bridge about once a week into Canada, usually to do research at the University of Toronto, and for a while to play cricket at St. Catherines. Sometimes, because the bridge is crowded, I drive down to the Rainbow Bridge, or the Whirlpool Bridge, but the Whirlpool Bridge is now closed for modifications. In short, I know my border crossings in this area.
I know that the law says that you have to have a birth certificate or valid passport to go over the border. For this reason, I carry my passport every time I go. Most of the time, I wonder why. I’ve only been asked specifically for either document five times, once going into Canada and four times coming back to the US. Several times I have offered to show the border guards my passport, only to be told, “We don’t need to see that.” When my parents came to visit, both got through with an invalid passport.
What would happen if I didn’t have my passport and the border guard asked for one? It hasn’t happened to me, but it has happened to coworkers and friends around here. One of two things has happened. Either the person called a relative to meet them at the border with their documentation. Or–and this is the kind of thing that makes me suspicious of security around here–they’ve just turned around and driven to the next border crossing south.
No internet cite is going to tell you this. Why would they? We passed tough border security measures and the law shows this. But the law is not being followed on a day-to-day basis. The law is black-and-white, but border guards are human. Many times when I’ve crossed at Lewiston, there’s been a 30-minute wait. I don’t know if the border guards get tired of waiting while people dig their passports out of purses or glove compartments. I don’t know if they’re lazy or jaded or what. All I know is, they’re not checking 80-90% of the time.
I did not post my answer as a “correct” one. I stated quite clearly that my “90%” figure was based on personal experience. I even said that Magayuk ought to follow Tapioca Dextrin’s advice. (I’m sorry if the “knowledgeable fellow” business sounded too jokey. I was trying to say that Tapioca knew what he was talking about!)
I said there was an element of “risk” involved in going without a passport. However, crossing the US-Canada border without a birth certificate or passport is NOT illegal. From Tapioca’s own cite:
My advice, again, was based on personal experience, and the knowledge of what Magayuk was dealing with–an emergency situation. I think this is a case where, although there is a “factual” answer, there is also an answer based on personal experience and knowledge about how the system actually works, not about how it is supposed to work.
In short, if you’ve all followed me this far: Cites, however much we call for them, are only of limited use. Believe me, as a D.Phil student of history, I would love to believe you could prove anything with enough footnotes. But sometimes sources only tell half of a story.
The 90% was certainly not directly at you Duke. It was I pulled right out of my own ass**
This is why I hate posting to the Pit
Though you can’t exactly expect a cited answer to “What does fuzzy mean in england.” It’s a factual question, but I can’t imagine any reference is going to describe all the connotations of the word, and the only answer is to get english people to describe how they’ve heard it used.
The difficulty I have is not with the posters’ offering their own experience (which, I agree, may be helpful in determining whether or not someone without the proper documentation should chance their arm anyway). It’s just that in a number of these threads, posters have tried to counter the factual answer provided with their own experience as if to suggest that their own experience is definitive, and the law doesn’t need worrying about at all. “You won’t need a passport because I didn’t need a passport” is the message that comes across. Maybe it’s the ex-immigration paralegal in me, but I find that highly irresponsible.
Not accusing anyone in particular and I haven’t even read the thread Tapioca linked to, but there have been about a dozen or more of these threads over the years and that frequently is what takes place in them.
Exactly. Once more Cecil leads by example.
My problem is those who attempt humour with an incorrect answer, assuming that all readers will recognise and appreciate their answer as just humour.
Those who offer inaccurate personal anecdotes as facts usually get exactly what they deserve in GQ. But for some reason the unfunny idiots get tolerated.
So next time you go to press that reply button ask yourself; what would Cecil do?
But that’s part of the issue. The question Magayuk asked was “Do I need a birth certificate to cross the border?” The immigration laws, as cited by Tapioca in the thread, state that a birth certificate is one of the documents which can prove citizenship, and therefore be used to cross the US border.
“You won’t need a passport to cross the Canadian border” is a misleading statement, but it’s not factually or legally incorrect. The statement “You won’t need a passport, but if you don’t have one you need a birth certificate and photo ID” is a factually and legally correct statement and good advice. “You need a passport or birth certificate to cross the border, but I’ve gotten through without one” is legally incorrect, but, for better or worse, factually correct. Bad advice, but the truth nonetheless. In an emergency situation only, such as the one Magayuk described, I would put that statement out there, though with reservation, as I did.
PREACH IT Brother.
My most recent beef was with a question about liberalism and college faculty. It was a question that deserved a factual answer and there were factual answers to be had. And in fact, factual answers were needed because the OP referenced (indirectly) some studies that have been given attention in the press, but at least one of which had truly flawed methodology. It was an excellent opportunity for a good discussion and an exchange of information about the topic. A chance to clear up misconceptions, explore surprising findings, and fight some ignorance.
Instead, we got anecdotes, references to opinion pieces, and the like. So much so that they ended up moving the goddamned thread out of GQ.
This was very irksome to me. Being the queen of irrelevancy and pointless yammering, I have the knowledge/expertise to contribute meaningfully to about one GQ thread in ten thousand. Finally one comes around. And it happens to be one that is getting attention from at least one of our moronic state legislators. It’s timely. It’s topical. There’s data out there. Yippee! But so many people are guessing, or worse yet yanking sweeping statements out of their asses, that the thread was utterly derailed from fact. A mod soon sent it over to Great Debates.
Argh. Double argh.