Ok, this was the first day of my Pursuation and Public Opinion class.  My professor makes Feinstein look like a saint.  We began talking about media and she starts with "I mean really, aren't we sick of hearing about 9/11 by now?"  This is when my teeth began grinding.  What if someone in the class had lost a family member in the WTC.  This made me think of Clinton referring to our men killed in Somalia as "a few unfortunate losses."  WTF is wrong with these people?  Wait, it gets better!  Then she mentions on line polls, and how she must be far more liberal than most people because she was one of the few minorities that beleived we should be bombing Afghanistan.

Does anyone remember the name of the guy who said "Liberals like to paint pretty pictures.  Conservative build bridges."  I think this quote has some relevance here.

So, the problem is that I have to take this class to graduate.  I'm a second semester senior, if I drop the class I will just have to take it over the summer for about $1500.  I hate to have low expectations, but I think I'm going to have to settle for a grade in the C+ to B- range because there is no way I won't talk both feet into my into mouth in the course of the next 15 weeks.

My goodness! So young to know everything already!  [:P]


Why not try and *learn* something about "pursuasion" and influencing public opinion.  I understand liberals and the media are pretty good at it.

Your education is YOUR responsibility, not hers.  Have fun!  

Just have fun.  Those classes were my favorite.  If the prof is not a total idiot she won't fail you for disagreeing with her.

My son is in the same boat. He has a high school teacher who says the 2nd amandment is for the government and all handgun owners are criminals. It goes on but you get the drift. My advice to him was sit down, shut up and get through the class. He has no other choice since he needs this class to graduate. Yes, I would like to discuss the issue with the teacher, but I learned the hard way 3/4 of the way through college that these jerks win in the end, they write your grade. You have to pick when to and not to fight. Choose wisely.

A second semester college student should damned well know how to spell "persuasion"!
Is this part of the dumbing down of America?
Geeeeeeeez!!!!!

1. Record all lectures and save them.  Prof. Bonehead is bound to make plenty of asinine comments that she'll surely deny later.

2. Look over the lecture schedule and choose you battles wisely.  

3. There'll be plenty of chances to shoot down her idiocy.  But pick the ones that YOU have the best support, data or references to back you up on.

4. Don't be insulting or confrontational with Professor Marx personally, especially in front of the class. That will put her on the defensive for sure (there goes your grade).

5. Be calm and level headed, even humble.  But don't back down.  

6. Use the weakness of her own illogic against her.  Look for self-contradictions, but DON'T be insulting when you point them out.  

7. Spend a few hours studying the many forms of debating/arguing and the logical fallacies involved such as the "red herring", or ad hominem attacks, or appeal to emotion, or fallacy of limited choice, or begging the question, or non sequitor (irrelevant conclusion) or strawman, or statistical fallicies... many more to learn about. Be able to recognize when her argument is shifting into illogical fallacy.

8. Remember the #1 Rule of Debate: [b]He who frames the question wins the debate.[/b]

9. Beware of her attempt to isolate you from your peers or get the class on "her side" early. If you can get even one more student solidly on your side early in the semester, you'll feel much stronger and it will be much more difficult for her to isolate you and turn the class against you.

10. Good luck.


If I think of more, I'll add it.

???? – typo maybe?

Sometimes professors try to say provocative things just to stir things up in the classroom.  (And, frankly, they should!)  However, you’re the guy who’s there; if you say she’s an idiot, I’ll accept your judgment.

Hang in there – you can’t go through life hearing only what you agree with.  

When you disagree, respond.  Don’t shout, don’t interrupt, and don’t belittle other people.  Try to be reasonable and respectful (if grudgingly) of other opinions.  And don’t pretend you know things you don’t – you’ll get your legs cut off!

This is, after all, a course in persuasion.  

Hey sweet heart, have you ever misspelled anything?  BTW, making verbs out of nouns is not proper English.  There is no such verb as "to dumb".

Yes it was a typo, she was not in support of the bombing.

[:D]

Main Entry: to dumb
Function: transitive verb
Date: 1608
: to make silent : DEADEN
Main Entry: dumb down
Function: transitive verb
Date: 1980
: to lower the level of difficulty and the intellectual content of (as a textbook)
www.m-w.com
You idiot.....it certainly *does* have a verb form. Check your dictionary.
And the fact that this kid was misspelling the *course name* was particularly galling.
A second semester senior in college should at least be able to spell the name of the course he is taking.
And yes, go ahead, hate me because I can spell and read.

Thanks raf, I like you too.

LOL. I can't believe you bothered to look that up.

Senator Feinstein [b]is[/b] the patron saint of public opinion...she coudln't get elected on the facts.  And public opinion and persuasion have little to do with the truth or reality.  Only the perception of reality.

Like everybody says, pick your battles based upon what you can support.  But being a public opinion type class, even if you win the logical argument, selling it is what matters in this arena.

Good job honey, now take some pepto and calm down.  I would never hate someone for spelling better than I can.  However, you seem to hate me for my misspelling.  Now before anyone else can, nail me on calling "dumb" a noun and not an adjective.

But perception is everything... sounds like this could be a very useful class.  Unless of course, you need to fix a broken water main or something.

Believe it or not, I was not an English major in college, I was a Biology/Genetics student.
I guess requirements were more stringent back then, as I was taught that one's credibility is directly proportionate to one's ability to use one or more languages correctly.
I didn't mean to make this a personal attack, but when you attempted to correct *my* grammar for something that was, in fact, appropriate usage, I guess I was angered.
Sorry I called you an idiot.
Please learn to spell or use Spellcheck.
Then give that liberal professor hell! [:D]

I do know how to spell, I'm simply human.  Spell check does not work for me on this BB, and Word '97 didn't pick it up when I cut and pasted.  BTW, you got [u]more[/u] pissed when I responded to you.  You seemed pretty pissed from the get go.  But whatever.  I meant for the thread to be a little more fun than it turned out.

Thank you for the apology.

[url]www.newsmax.com/showinsidecover.shtml?a=2002/1/15/140552[/url] Tuesday, Jan. 15, 2002

                              Poll Confirms Ivy League's Leftist
                              Slant

                              It's even worse than we thought: More than 80
                              percent of Ivy League professors who voted in 2000
                              chose loser Al Gore and only 9 percent voted for
                              President Bush, a new survey reveals.

                              Only 3 percent of the out-of-touch eggheads
                              described themselves as Republicans, the poll by
                              Luntz Research Cos. found, and - we are not making
                              this up - the profs picked Bill Clinton as best
                              president of the past 40 years, the Washington Times
                              reported today.

                              "All that this survey shows is what we already know,
                              that the elite universities are subsidiaries of the
                              Democratic Party and political left," said David
                              Horowitz, president of the Center for the Study of
                              Popular Culture, which commissioned the poll.

                              The profs' goose-stepping conformity "disappointed"
                              Frank Luntz, the Republican pollster whose firm
                              conducted the survey.

                              Where's the Diversity?

                              "I think if parents saw the political leanings of
                              these professors, they'd be upset," he told the
                              Times. "I think universities should insist on the
                              same diversity in their faculty that they look for
                              in their students. I have a problem when these
                              faculties have no Republican or conservative
                              representation at all."

                              Here are some other fascinating tidbits from the
                              poll:

                               Seventy-one percent of the professors named a
                              Democrat as their pick for best modern-day
                              president. Only 8 percent named a Republican.

                               Only 14 percent support missile defense, compared
                              with 70 percent of the public.

                               Only 26 percent are pro-choice on school vouchers,
                              compared to 62 percent of the public.

                               Forty percent want taxpayer-provided slavery
                              "reparations" for blacks, compared with 11 percent
                              of the public.

If you want an A in the class, think of what you want to do - and do the exact opposite.  Take her position and expand upon it until you have achieved her totalitarian Communist goal.  That is a much easier way to expose her "intellectual" fraud.

The academic world is as liberal as she is or more so. You can do nothing to harm her, and she can take any revenge against you she desires, including failing you, with no fear.
The U in America is a Soviet camp state.
Keep your yap shut, make up liberal shit-- the more stupid it sounds to you the better she will like it-- and hold the truth in.
Some day after you grad you will see her in a store or freeway rest area or event, at that time is when you begin yelling her hate crimes so that normal free Americans will know what she is.
As you age you will learn the value of defered revenge.
I shut up and talked liberal crap in undergrad, and did great as far as grades. I went the other route in law school when I realized that Michigan law did not fail anyone for any reason ever, but normal Us will allow profs to fail students for their political sppech. I went the hard way even so...but I am hard headed

I recall the socialism-spewing con artist heading my humanities class all the way back in high school, who challenged everyone to find "the Christ figure" in every piece of literature, obscure hidden meanings in Beatles lyrics (which the Beatles probably did not realize even existed), and who used our entire class as guinea pigs for his doctoral thesis.  At first I planned to get in his face at every opportunity.  Then I decided to make fun of him by recycling his own BS back at him to the greatest extreme I could.  The result was an "A" in the class and the fun of knowing that the instructor was my own personal joke and didn't even know it.

I learned a lot in that class, and it was not confined to humanities.

yahll all neid to lear fuken gramur, cause i speake TIN langujies an i spel em all good an i knowe al tha gramurr
i knowe
northe-karolinan
southe-karolinean
keintuckien
mississsssisssissippisn
alabamian
louissississaninian
texusn
and moste off alle arkinsawian

oh........
i hav a digree tooo in amimul housbindry
its wher i meht my ol lady
and i kincount two ashehoal

[b]NEWS FLASH!!!!!! MOST PROFESSORS ARE LIBERAL!!!!! I am a law student and it seems that 90% of my teachers are so far left winged that they think Clinton/Gore were saints and will go down in history for "Saving America" Those communist bastards![/b]
"IF YOUR NOT PART OF THE SOLUTION,YOU ARE PART OF THE PROBLEM!"
Its only up to [b][u]YOU[/u][/b] to save our 2nd Amendment![50]