Today in English class Professor Red Ink finally dispensed with the MLA nonsense and got down to the real deal.
That's right folks. We talked drugs today.
Because drugs are apparently number one on the prof's agenda, he laid out his plan for fixing the system. First, legalize drugs across the board. But only make them available in government regulated stores, similar to the ABC liquor stores. Physicians would work with the government to decide how much of any given drug would be safe to sell at a time and boom. You've got a relatively drug-free nation. Now this was not a divisive issue among my classmates. Really, the class was divided in half between those who supported heavier enforcement of our current drug policy and those who supported legalizing so called 'softer' drugs like marijuana. And then the professor, who forced us to argue his policy.
Someone raised their hand and said that many drugs are extremely dangerous and addictive and therefore should not ever be legalized. He called that government propaganda and then read us 'the best' statistics available about people who become addicted to drugs. From an ambiguous number of people surveyed, he quoted the percentage of those people who had tried a given drug (ex. 10% of people surveyed had tried marijuana, 3% had tried crack cocaine) and then gave us the percentages of those who actually became addicted to the drug (ex. 2% became addicted to marijuana, 0.01% became addicted to crack cocaine). The problem was that the second set of relatively small percentages he took from the whole population, not from the sample. So he claimed that 2% of the whole population became addicted to cocaine, instead of giving the more realistic (and less misleading) statistic that 65% of people who had tried cocaine, became addicted. Imagine what would happen if you completely legalized all drugs. More people would have access to them and more people would become addicted.
All of the statistics above are just for example, but you get the gist. There were many, many more holes in his argument, which I will address later.
Showing posts with label Professor Red Ink. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Professor Red Ink. Show all posts
Tuesday, September 20, 2011
Wednesday, August 24, 2011
Sexist Language
My impression of the overall philosophy of my microeconomics class is still up in the air. My opinion of the overall philosophy of my argument-based research class however, is firmly in place.
Mr. English 112 proudly and loudly declared on the first day of class that he didn't believe in grades, the attendance policy, or Capitalism. We subsequently found out about his lack of belief in power relationships, red ink (naturally too reminiscent of power relationships) or absolute truth.
Well then!
It was definitely a good waker-upper for my sleepy eyed self at 8 AM, I will give him that much. I don't know why I was surprised though, since the Communist Manifesto was listed as required reading in the catalog.
Now this is English 112. Argument-based research. Not supposed to be too philosophical, just your basic level 1 course. Not today however! When everyone's a brainwashed Capitalist, you can't expect Professor Red Ink to waste time teaching basic paper-writing skills. There are more important things going on, such as drugs, man! and sexist language!
Ah sexist language. Second day of class, we walk in. I'm terrified because I haven't read the text (Amazon's fault, not mine. Still waiting on the package!) so I sit down in the front row, expecting to be called on by Professor R.I. And then I get a 75 minute lecture on the dangers of sexist language.
Now I thought when people spelled women with a 'y', (womyn) they were just trying to be all medieval, like when you say 'thee' instead of 'you'. Kind of annoying of course, but very quaint and adorable. Unfortunately, I was wrong. You see, when you replace the 'e' in 'women' with a 'y', you rid yourself of that pesky word 'men'.
So that's what I learned on Tuesday. That any word that references or sounds like it might have any connection to the word 'man' or 'men' is a naughty, naughty word. This coming from the guy who explicitly told us we could say the d-word or H-E- double hockey sticks in class.
More on this tomorrow, I have a quiz and a three page paper due tomorrow and it is already past 11.
Mr. English 112 proudly and loudly declared on the first day of class that he didn't believe in grades, the attendance policy, or Capitalism. We subsequently found out about his lack of belief in power relationships, red ink (naturally too reminiscent of power relationships) or absolute truth.
Well then!
It was definitely a good waker-upper for my sleepy eyed self at 8 AM, I will give him that much. I don't know why I was surprised though, since the Communist Manifesto was listed as required reading in the catalog.
Now this is English 112. Argument-based research. Not supposed to be too philosophical, just your basic level 1 course. Not today however! When everyone's a brainwashed Capitalist, you can't expect Professor Red Ink to waste time teaching basic paper-writing skills. There are more important things going on, such as drugs, man! and sexist language!
Ah sexist language. Second day of class, we walk in. I'm terrified because I haven't read the text (Amazon's fault, not mine. Still waiting on the package!) so I sit down in the front row, expecting to be called on by Professor R.I. And then I get a 75 minute lecture on the dangers of sexist language.
Now I thought when people spelled women with a 'y', (womyn) they were just trying to be all medieval, like when you say 'thee' instead of 'you'. Kind of annoying of course, but very quaint and adorable. Unfortunately, I was wrong. You see, when you replace the 'e' in 'women' with a 'y', you rid yourself of that pesky word 'men'.
So that's what I learned on Tuesday. That any word that references or sounds like it might have any connection to the word 'man' or 'men' is a naughty, naughty word. This coming from the guy who explicitly told us we could say the d-word or H-E- double hockey sticks in class.
More on this tomorrow, I have a quiz and a three page paper due tomorrow and it is already past 11.
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