Remember when the liberals said that there were no WMDs

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Without taking sides in this thread, I will say that I went to UC Berkeley as an undergrad, and most students there are fairly apathetic about political activism. Sure there is a strong liberal activist community there, but one can find this in many colleges and universities in the United States. The stereotype being thrown around here about Berkeley grads comes from Cal's reputation in the 1960s, and the campus now is a far cry from the 60s heyday.

I went to Cal because of the strength of the chemistry department, its close location to family, and as a California resident, it was significantly cheaper than most other schools. I did not go to Cal for politics. So don't stereotype and try to put a label on me and all other UCB grads just because of where we went to school. Not everybody from UCB has the same line of thinking, just as not all Aspies think the same way, and not all people in general think the same way. Please be more careful, thank you.

If you couldn't speak ape, fool or gibberish, you wouldn't be able to talk, let alone post idiotic garbage on the internet.

I admit I'm beginning to lose interest, mostly because you keep repeating the same tired insults, and the joke of you refusing to acknowledge the facts that I rubbed your face in two pages back, has gotten old... even your fellow liberals aren't coming to your defense against me. Seriously - if I was out of line, I'm sure peebo for one would be all up in my junk, and probably a couple others with him.

So anyway.

DISPROVE THIS FACT: The USA, armed with the highest GPD of any nation in the world, the world's strongest military (through technology and manpower if not superior training), and a national debt that, when compared to the GPD isn't as high as it was during WWII, is not just A superpower, but THE superpower.

If you can't do that, I'm done with you.

In this topic, that is. I'll be glad to hand you your ass anywhere you deem it necessary to open your fool mouth.

I read up on the wikipedia article about Berkeley, and admit I had the wrong idea, considering I got most of my info about Berkeley from a website called ZombieTime, the webmaster of whom entertains himself by taking pictures of rallies and Berkeley "eccentrics" (read, nudists, polyamorists, etc). In retrospect I should be somewhat chagrined - I get tired of being called a neokkkon by various leftists who assume the worst the instant they hear my beliefs, so I shouldn't do the same to Berkeleyans.

It's not my fault you missed the pun, big boy.

Then it baffles me that you persist in responding to them.

As I told you before, I don't take you the least bit seriously.

Namely because you are unspeakably uninteresting, even for a conservative.

Perhaps when you've shown more interest in facts than in proving that you know how to converse with dogs, fool.

Eh, if you're anything like the guy you use as your Avatar you probably just make up things too.

So in other words, you admit that I'm your intellectual superior and you're not worthy of licking dogshit off my shoes. Excellent.

We're done here. If you want to try and salvage your credibility you know where to find me... you'll never outsmart me of course, but you can always at least admit you're wrong and stupid and gain a modicum of respect doing so.

If you guys could just make your disses rhyme, this would be 1st class battle-rapping!

eg.

So in other words, you admit that I'm your intellectual superior and you're not worthy of licking dogshit off my shoes. Excellent.
We're done here. - McJeff

your a whack emcee, your flow is inferior
its plain you can see, im your intellectual superior.
your not worthy of licking dogshit off my shoes,
f**k it, i dont even have to reply to this abuse...

I would take whatever is on wikipedia with a grain of salt.

So, is one of you better then the other yet? If so, what do you feel?

Wikipedia is very accurate most of the time. Even if you distrust it, it still is a good source as it often has links to other sources. The thing about Berkeley is true, it is in wikipedia, not only that but wikipedia also has a link to The Daily Californian, a local news source that backs up wiki's claim. Wiki at the very least is a good source of information for informal debate, as it is usually accurate, it is very accessible and it usually ends up being inaccurate due to jokes, which are easy to spot, or due to unethical debaters which are somewhat rare and I don't think there are any here.

The Daily Cal does not speak for every Cal student, just as every published material has its own bias and perspective on things.

Keep in mind that Wiki is essentially a secondary source of information, as it contains fundamentally no new information of its own, but rather collects and summarizes information pulled from other (sometimes primary, sometimes not) sources. In science, it is always best to cite primary literature and not review articles and opinion pages, and I don't see how it should be any different outside of science. Wiki summarizes information, but you don't know if that is all the information available on the topic, as the article itself may be written with a clear and distinct bias. Go to primary literature for more reliable information. The best information yet is to observe with your own eyes, i.e. go to UC Berkeley and judge for yourself.

Yes, in fact its downright insane. I was using this statement to show just how ludicrus Griff's position was, which he gladly admits:





I don't lean towards any side. I judge each issue on its own.

Nobody is stating that wiki is the best source nor that the Daily Cal is perfect either. The only thing is that going to UC Berkeley is not a practical option in any sense of the word. We must rely on whatever is available and practical in order to prove our point. In our case it is better to get an outside source that may be biased but still possibly has information than to rely on internal bias alone. Wiki is more likely to be less biased than our personal opinions.

It's not as impractical as one might think. All one would have to do is take a vacation to San Francisco, and then make a quick hop over to Berkeley and visit the campus. It will not give one the same perspective as actually being a student there would, but it will give one some personal perspective, and it is better than having never visited the campus at all. Yes, we do rely on what is available and on hand to make judgments, but understand that your points are only as strong as the information you use to back it up, and secondary sources of information are frankly not as strong as primary sources. Primary sources have the strength because they contain the data and the first-hand observations that are used to make conclusions and points in the first place. And I don't think it would be safe to say that Wiki is "more likely to be less biased than our personal opinions." I think, rather, that Wiki is best used like other secondary sources of information: to help pinpoint you to primary sources where the real meat of information is.

Except that I am not planning on going to San Francisco in the near future. Going there is very expensive for me, so therefore it is impractical. As well, visiting a campus once or twice won't tell too much, in order to have accurate information one would need to take a statistical survey, otherwise one might just come across a gay pride rally or come across a young republican rally. The issue ends up being that there are few good sources of absolutely accurate sources. There are likely no statistical surveys on Berkeley's student population on the internet, therefore there is the possibility that all sources on the internet are biased with wiki likely being the least so due to the competition of forces attempting to keep it conforming to a neutral viewpoint. Therefore, given the nature of internet debate wiki is very valid for a supporting source as it tries to avoid bias whereas other sources are less likely to attempt at objectivity.

The wiki article on Berkeley actually cites a campus-newspaper article as a source in regards to the drifting towards center and lowering amount of political activism.

The idealist in me likes to think that it indicates that people, in general, are tired of the extremists and line-towers, and that this is part of the same thing that's causing the right-wingers to move away from the Neo-Conservatives.

Whether anti-Americanism and unconditional appeasement are better or worse than a Big Brother government and extended theological military campaigns can be debated, but few people would claim that any of them don't suck.