My experience is that people who agree with me are correct. According to me, anyway.
The problem with internet sources is not the source, but the ability of the viewer to determine its veracity or utility. Credulous people, or people predisposed to the views expressed on a given site, will find it informative and accurate (rather like I find people who agree with me informative and accurate). *
However, when one quotes a site as an authority when that site flies in the face of all science, knowledge, and reason etc, then those possessed of science, knowledge, reason etc are justified in dismissing the quoted site as an authority for opinions which contradict all science, knowledge and reason.
Were I a secondary school teacher, I would regard it as a triumph if I could teach all my students to discriminate between rubbish and reliable sites. Regrettably, that is beyond me and all secondary, and tertiary, teachers I know.
*Against that is the repeated experience of science, knowledge etc that received knowledge is wrong. Galileo is a notable historical figure, and on military matters are those who before WWII claimed (correctly) that air power trumped capital ships. One of the best modern examples is the Australian doctors who thought that stomach ulcers were caused by a bacterium commonly found in the stomach; who were widely derided for their opinion; and who demonstrated that they were correct and duly received a Nobel Prize for Medicine for contradicting decades of medical opinion. http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/medicine/laureates/2005/press.html
RS, M’Learned Friend, yes, I did a bit of mooting in my time. I am not familiar with the obscure Irish case to which you refer; I can only say that anybody turning up in an Irish court today pleading that rape was (what should one say ?) “assault with a friendly weapon” or somesuch would never don the wig in this town again.
Not that the obscure Irish case would entirely surprise me - we are a people both litigious and inventive. Not sure whether I mentioned it before, but there was, it appears, a late 19th century civil case in the Liverpool Sessions involving an Irishman. I have been assured that this is not apocryphal. The elderly English judge, increasingly concerned at the somewhat improbable testimony of the Irish witness, felt impelled to warn him, “Mr O’X, to you know what happens to people who tell untruths under oath in court ?”. To which the Irishman is supposed to have replied, “Why yes, M’Lord, I believe he wins !”>
The amount of rubbish on historical topics to which history neophites, including secondary school students, are exposed on the Internet is a matter of concern. I am not free from error in using Internet “pointers” myself - but it seems that my good grounding in History in my early days has generally confined these errors to matters of fact, and minor ones at that. When there is a rat present, I can usually smell it, and qualify my appreciation of the “source” accordingly. The Internet has hugely expanded the scope for impressionable and/or uninformed people to come upon distinctly unsafe propaganda and other manifestations of non-history, and absorb it as reliable. I do not want this to sound condescending or patronizing to the people concerned - but it is a real hazard. How to address it ? In the context of a general environment of freedom of expression and speech (even for purveyors of complete rubbish), I can see no clear answer. Best regards, JR.
Neither was anyone else, but a citation was given. I can’t recall the ratio, or even whether it was on an aspect of the charge or overall.
Bear in mind that this was a moot in the mid-1970s when, in my jurisdiction anyway, I’m pretty sure it was some years before it was held that rape could occur in a marriage (separated couple as I recall, with husband visiting wife and forcing intercourse, maybe early 1980s).
Same here.
Leaving aside ancient and standard defence tactics to circumvent it despite evidentiary rules which are supposed to stop those tactics, the focus for many years has been on, as it should be and as our legislation requires, the basic issue of consent.
I’m still rather fond of a student contemporary of mine, of some Irish descent as am I, being called as a witness in a minor traffic matter and being asked by the prosecutor to describe how the flashing traffic lights were operating. She replied
“On and off”.
The problem is that one either needs to know enough about the subject to recognise that the site information is questionable, or to be sufficiently discriminating by training or experience to be sceptical.
It’s not just history sites, but all sites on important issues.
Common sense says to me that I’ll accept information on, say, vaccination, from major hospital or medical society websites as being scientifically valid, but question the accuracy of a site devoted to all the reasons why vaccination will make my children autistic and die before they reach maturity.
Teachers, or perhaps ‘the education system’ which is imposed upon teachers in government schools by political ministers and bureaucrats happily distant from and frequently with no experience of classrooms, are in the interesting bind that they are required to use the internet as part of their teaching process, which implies to students that the internet is important and reliable. Trying to persuade students otherwise is perhaps rather like trying to run a firearms course and persuade students that the rifle is (a) not accurate, despite hitting the target and (b) not lethal, as we haven’t killed anyone today.
Against that, what made, and increasingly less importantly makes, newspapers any more reliable than the internet? There is certainly no opportunity for any idiot to publish and circulate a newspaper as in the pre-internet era, but the press barons weren’t universally committed to truth and dispassionate reporting, and more so in times of national conflict or when their own commercial interests were threatened. In my time in the final years of secondary school, part of the curriculum in English and what used to be called Clear Thinking (along with Precis and other long forgotten basics) was devoted to the analysis of newspaper articles for accuracy, consistency and logic.
Ummm… at the time I posted, I was merely attempting a bit of levity to the thread, and that should not be construed otherwise. RS*, you are correct, it was not my intention to make a disparaging remark toward anyone in particular. That would not be me as a person. My comment was made merely reminding herman2 not to perpetuate his current conversation on this subject (or, “stick his neck out” to paraphrase pdf27) with the continued use of the word in question, there was no other agenda on my part.
Hi Guys!. I am back from vacation. Did you miss me!!! I had a lot of time in solitaire, thanks to Nick and I do not want to go back in the cooler anytime soon. I am missing out on a lot of valuable conversations going on and 2 weeks is enough that any man can stand. I was so bored, I even began serfing the Van Halen sites out there. Congrats Nick for your new Modship on that other site. How many sites do you Mod? I thought your an aerospace engineer or something like that, (or was that Pdf)…yet you have so much time to Mod so many sites?..Anyways I wish I were a Mod. Maybe one day there could be a new thread called, instead of “What if Germany won the War?”…it could be called…"What if Herman were a Mod?|…LOL…anyways when I have time (yes I do work)…i will be more into meaningful contributions. Just wanted to say hello and give a shout out to all my Peeps!!I missed you guys!!!
I’m the aero engineer (well, I was - I do nuclear fusion now). And Nick has been modding that Van Halen site since before WW2 in color existed, if I remember correctly.
Well I’m not the engineer actually, I’m a milkman and Semtex salesman by trade. In any case, it doesn’t take much time at all to mod - even when I’m not slacking as I have been currently. I think I’ve barely been to the Van Halen site actually lately and am going to get yelled at by one of the owners - who is also a Semtex and vacuum salesman…
I gather that you can deliver Semtex with your milk and that the van Halen site owner sells it door to door with his vacuum cleaners.
Would either of you be able to deliver some det cord?
I don’t care if it comes in a milk bottle or a vacuum cleaner, but a vacuum cleaner is more likely to hold the quantity I require.
EDIT: I require it to deal with exclusive sect Christian nutcase next door, who has recently bought chooks and a rooster which gives all the neighbours the shits with its dawn crowing.
I think some strategically placed det cord should work as a rooster booster and bring peace, and rapid roast chook, to the neighourhood.
