PILATE SAYETH UNTO HIM...

[jamesd@echeque.com]

At 12:30 AM 5/24/96 -0500, Jim Choate wrote:
> Sorry but the very fact that I don't agree with you is proof enough that
> there is no absolute 'Truth' as you use it. That is  unless you are
> attempting to claim absolute omnipotence on the point of determination.

Say Jim, did you major in sociology literature:

Here is Dave Barry on college and truth:


   After you've been in college for a year or so, you're supposed to
 choose a major, which is the subject you intend to memorize and 
 forget the most things about.  Here is a very important piece of 
 advice: Be sure to choose a major that does not involve Known Facts 
 and Right Answers.
     
  This means you must *not* major in mathematics, physics, biology,
 or chemistry, because these subjects involve actual facts.  If, for 
 example, you major in mathematics, you're going to wander into class 
 one day and the professor will say: "Define the cosine integer of 
 the quadrant of a rhomboid binary axis, and extrapolate your result 
 to five significant vertices." If you don't come up with *exactly* 
 the answer the professor has in mind, you fail.  The same is true of 
 chemistry: if you write in your exam book that carbon and hydrogen 
 combine to form oak, your professor will flunk you.  He wants you to 
 come up with the same answer he and all the other chemists have 
 agreed on.  Scientists are extremely snotty about this.
     
   So you should major in subjects like English, philosophy,
 psychology, and sociology -- subjects in which nobody really 
 understands what anybody else is talking about, and which involve 
 virtually no actual facts.  I attended classes in all these 
 subjects, so I'll give you a quick overview of each:
     
 read little snippets of just before class.  Here is a tip on how to 
 get good grades on your English papers: Never say anything about a 
 book that anybody with any common sense would say.  For example, 
 suppose you are studying Moby-Dick.  Anybody with any common sense 
 would say that Moby-Dick is a big white whale, since the characters 
 in the book refer to it as a big white whale roughly eleven thousand 
 times.  So in *your* paper, *you* say Moby-Dick is actually the 
 Republic of Ireland.  Your professor, who is sick to death of 
 reading papers and never liked Moby-Dick anyway, will think you are 
 enormously creative.  If you can regularly come up with lunatic 
 interpretations of simple stories, you should major in English.
     
   PHILOSOPHY: Basically, this involves sitting in a room and
 deciding there is no such thing as reality and then going to lunch. 
 You should major in philosophy if you plan to take a lot of drugs.
     
   PSYCHOLOGY: This involves talking about rats and dreams.
 Psychologists are *obsessed* with rats and dreams.  I once spent an 
 entire semester training a rat to punch little buttons in a certain 
 sequence, then training my roommate to do the same thing.  The rat 
 learned much faster.  My roommate is now a doctor.
     
   If you like rats or dreams, and above all if you dream about rats,
 you should major in psychology.
     
   SOCIOLOGY: For sheer lack of intelligibility, sociology is far and
 away the number one subject.  I sat through hundreds of hours of 
 sociology courses, and read gobs of sociology writing, and I never 
 once heard or read a coherent statement.  This is because 
 sociologists want to be considered scientists, so they spend most of 
 their time translating simple, obvious observations into 
 scientific-sounding code.  If you plan to major in sociology, you'll 
 have to learn to do the same thing.  For example, suppose you have 
 observed that children cry when they fall down.  You should write: 
 "Methodological observation of the sociometrical behavior tendencies 
 of prematurated isolates indicates that a casual relationship exists 
 between groundward tropism and lachrimatory, or 'crying,' behavior 
 forms." If you can keep this up for fifty or sixty pages, you will 
 get a large government grant.
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