Assistant Professor Goes on a Killing Spree

Colpy

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Nov 5, 2005
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Most of the common people I know who were raised right don't require a lot of training in objective thinking - they were taught common sense at an early age. Some of them were even Christians, who learned about "Thou shalt not kill" through their church. "Thinking objectively" is a skill that can be learned many different ways, even though most of them are obviously unfamiliar to you.

Ted Kazinski (sp), Amy Bishop, Valery Fabrikant....just off the top of my head....I bet academics have a higher incidence of commiting mass murder.......
 

SirJosephPorter

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Nov 7, 2008
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Developed has very little to do with income. So what if China is 97th, maybe the price of rice there ranks 98th.

Sorry JLM, but income is the only meaningful standard with whch to judge the economic prosperity of a country. GDP of India is less than a tenth that of USA, its population is more than three times that of USA.

As far as I am concerned, India is very much a third world, developing (if upcoming country). But you are entitled to your opinion. If you think that India and China are developed countries and USA and Canada are not, it is all the same to me.
 

Cliffy

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Nov 19, 2008
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The economy of any person or country is not a measure of anything tangible or real. Money is a worthless fiction. A poor person who is satisfied and happy with what they have is richer by far than any millionaire who will not be satisfied until he is a billionaire.
 

countryboy

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Nov 30, 2009
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Sorry JLM, but income is the only meaningful standard with whch to judge the economic prosperity of a country. GDP of India is less than a tenth that of USA, its population is more than three times that of USA.

As far as I am concerned, India is very much a third world, developing (if upcoming country). But you are entitled to your opinion. If you think that India and China are developed countries and USA and Canada are not, it is all the same to me.

SirJP - You seem to be making big jumps in logic today.
 

JLM

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Nov 27, 2008
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To expand on the direction this thread is going we should look at it in more general terms. It doesn't matter who we are, if we just followed all the good things we were taught, there wouldn't be this kind of incident occuring. It's no different with scientists, they also get into trouble when their emotions take over from their brain. Except for psychopath, we all have emotions and I doubt if academic learning mitigates our emotions.
 

Nuggler

kind and gentle
Feb 27, 2006
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Well, off the top of my head, I can think of Valerey Fabrikant,(an academic, but a man), a faculty member at Concordia University who shot and killed 4 collegues and wounded a staff member.

Then there's the police woman in London Ont who shot her lover, (another cop) and then herself. Now here's where statistics get interesting, this incident was listed as two victims rather than a female villain - male victim domestic dispute. Since there was only one other domestic murder that year, and committed by a man, that put the statisctics at 100% male upon female, where it is in actual fact 50/50, (which is pretty close to the national average). It is also the woman who is more likely reach for and use a weapon more often than a man in fits of anger or passion, but stats are likewise skewed to not reflect this fact for reasons that suit those with an agenda.

As I've said in other posts, I have been a party to the gathering and dissemination of statistical data and know how it is done to achieve a desired result. Statistics govern your expectations of a certain demographic? Trust them at your peril.


There be lies, damned lies; then, there's statistics!!

8O


I don't think it's a matter of being a scientist or not being a scientist. I'd guess 95% of us are scientists to some degree. But even pure scientists put the tools away at 5 o'clock and do such things as go to the bar, chase women and all kinds of other activiries that can under certain circumstances get the emotions running rampant.

If I become a scientist, do I get to do that?? Going back to school for sure.
 

SirJosephPorter

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The economy of any person or country is not a measure of anything tangible or real. Money is a worthless fiction. A poor person who is satisfied and happy with what they have is richer by far than any millionaire who will not be satisfied until he is a billionaire.

We are not talking of who is satisfied and who isn't Cliffy. We are discussing here the economic prosperity. Acording to all indicators, India and China are very much third world countries.

Now, if you are arguing about intangibles, if you are claiming that Indians and Chinese are more satisfied and happier than Americans or Canadians, we have no way of checking that. But we are discussing economic prosperity here.
 

lone wolf

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Nov 25, 2006
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We are not talking of who is satisfied and who isn't Cliffy. We are discussing here the economic prosperity. Acording to all indicators, India and China are very much third world countries.

Now, if you are arguing about intangibles, if you are claiming that Indians and Chinese are more satisfied and happier than Americans or Canadians, we have no way of checking that. But we are discussing economic prosperity here.


Do you have news of any academia nuts going postal over there?