Best College Stories

My college stories are pretty boring, but I’ve only been here for seven weeks…

There were a group of friends who I played two games of A&A with late in my freshman year. One of them got a financial aide P/T job at the E campus laundromat/lounge. Officially that building would close at midnight. Unofficially, the one working there would close up at midnight, and reopen it for strategy games around 12:45 AM on Friday and Sat morning. I did my laundry there, and found out about the gaming group on my way back to the dorm after the Central campus library closed at midnight one Friday. Some of them were brilliant at strategy games, but they did not spend enough time at school. Half had dropped out, flunked, or transferred away by the next year, and only one other member of that group managed to graduate with me.

A&A was not their only game, they also had Shogun, Diplomacy, Supremacy, …etc. They also did a lot of random things with existing games, like modified extended techs for a tech intensive A & A. I did not play with them every week, which is probably why I graduated. The other graduate was a major whiz kid.

There were 10 of us, and 7 regulars. My arrival from the library often got me there after they had already set up the game of the night. They would have let me in if an extra was needed (about 1/3 of the time). Other times, I’d peruse the strategies used for about 45-150 min, and then go home for some rest. After one night when I joined in for the #2 A&A game of the morning, I joined them as they retired to the gangleader’s dorm. He had a 486 which was top of the line for that time, and tons of strategy games, and even some early network campaign games. They continued to game on that IBM until lunch. A&A was the only game I did decent on against these guys. I won 2 regular games and was losing when we quit the teched up version. I got nuked in Supremacy and stabbed in Diplomacy.

I find it ironic that greeks who drank away their weekends managed to graduate while most of my gaming friends did not.

In my junior year, late night lab sessions at the computer cluster would be kept lively by groups in one corner coordinating their play of NetTrek or some multi-player tank game. These were not my friends. By then most of my on-campus strategy gaming had to do w/Civ.

I find it ironic that greeks who drank away their weekends managed to graduate while most of my gaming friends did not.

you dont have to be greek to drink your weekened away

I’m proudly the one geek who doesn’t drink my weekend away…

… at the #2 beer school in the country no less.

GREEK…not GEEK

Well back in 1989 at UCLA at my Anthropology class which had the most left wing wacko professor you could ever hope to meet. Anyway we had to split the classroom into two groups and research a position pro and con regarding the state of Africa and its various economic plights. This was a class of about 100 students so about 50 people were placed to research and discuss various topics within the malaise that was 1980’s Africa. To cut to the chase… when it was my turn along with my report i had vigoriously advocated a return of Africa to a status of European colonialism and defended it with a bounty of supporting points. I had the entire class standing and cheering me on while this “professor” was so distraught that she left the classroom and let her “teacher aids” conclude the days class. I had countless students and all 3 aids say something along these lines “You said exactly as i felt about this issue but was afraid to say anything because i didnt have the guts.”

I think before the board was hacked there was another right winger who also claimed some moral victory because he “proved his professor wrong”… I think it was HFW, but i am not sure. It seems to be something that the right wingers are very proud of though.
More interestingly, here we hear an anecdote from the end of the Cold War. The person has not changed its view, regardless of how much the situation has changed or how much new research has been done on the topic. On the other hand, i have the gut feeling that the same person would not use such a firm stance insisting on most surely outdated research when it comes to things like global warming or the like.

I think this anecdote is a very fine example of how having attended college does not necessarily lead to scientific thinking, and not much more.

I think before the board was hacked there was another right winger who also claimed some moral victory because he “proved his professor wrong”… I think it was HFW, but i am not sure. It seems to be something that the right wingers are very proud of though.

grow up falk. and stop labeling people (that goes for IL and all the rest as well). even though you cleaned up the language, and abstracted this a bit, its still plainly an attack on IL.

also: the poster who had an anecdote about proving a professor wrong was SHP (HFW may also have done so at some point).

I stand corrected, it was not HFW but SHP.

I dont take anything personally from Falk because after all we are in a forum and its about adults playing with toy soldiers and little tanks. How serious can it get! Also i dont take him seriously either to tell you the truth and that is not a slant. By the same token he should not take me serious either. The events happened as i have stated but falk missed the point. I didnt do what i did to piss off the professor…it just happened that way because of who i was at that moment, while to me i seemed alone in my views but what made the moment so special is everyone agreed with me because after many sessions of getting lectured on “multi-culturalism” “the plight of the poor people of X” and " too many people w/o adequate care and their human rights". I just unleashed hell and for a moment reversed to whole chain of events in a single moment to demonstrate that the study of Africa should not be viewed with the filter of “apologists” to blame western society and stop the labels of them as “victims” . They have only themselves to blame period. That was the nail that slammed every piece of garbage spewed by the professor back to her book of bad ideas. I was very shocked at the students response to say the least. I didnt care about the professors concept .

BTW Our team won that debate but i only got a “B” on my portion. Oh well you cant win them all.

I stand corrected, it was not HFW but SHP.

Not quite read the following

also: the poster who had an anecdote about proving a professor wrong was SHP (HFW may also have done so at some point).

But you and others missed the essential point of this. I did not “prove” a professor wrong, but refuted/rebuted a claim they made. It is entirely possible to to do so and not reject the totality of ones conclusions. Conversely, one could make an unreproachable argument that is incorrect b/c it is based on a flawed tautology to begin with. The point is not to prove/disprove someone, but rather to “trim the fat” of their intellectual produce to leave only the meat. Academia is founded on this very notion which is called discourse. Just because someone disagrees with a point one makes does not mean they reject it in its entirety. This is absolutely the black and white logic with which I got tired of from here. The neo-cons are right that liberals politicize virtually anything they can which will tend to support their overarching beliefs. I vehemently detest the activist anthropologists IL describes but that doesn’t mean these people are completely wrong, or even that their ends are wrong, only the means. Just the other day I got into an heated discussion with a grad student explaining why the label genocide doesn’t apply to the history of AmerIndians, but since “liberals” see history are something only to prove the righteousness of their democratic crusade they fail to even be able to comprehend anything to the contrary. This is teleological and bad science in my view. Liberals especially in America have failed to see that the reason for their collaspe is not b/c of democracy failing, but b/c of the failings of democracy, namely that it is innately deviscive and incapable of including “manufactured” ethnicities/minorities b/c they are made for the cognitive benefit of the “majority”.

That is all I had to say, so please do not go throwing my name around in regards to these types of claims b/c I think it greatly misrepresents what I stated and only serves to undermine the persons credibility that does so.

The neo-cons are right that liberals politicize virtually anything they can which will tend to support their overarching beliefs.

Ah, I love hypocrisy. To deny that the party of Karl Rove doesn’t use anything they can as a political issue is simple denial. Can I quote you one of his creations?

“Would you be more likely or less likely to vote for John McCain for president if you knew he had fathered an illegitimate black child?”

Not to mention Valerie Plame. Hell, Rove made Bush the first postmodern. He even said “It doesn’t matter what is fact, it matters what people think is fact”.

Yeah, only the liberals politicize virtually anything.

Liberals especially in America have failed to see that the reason for their collaspe is not b/c of democracy failing, but b/c of the failings of democracy, namely that it is innately deviscive and incapable of including “manufactured” ethnicities/minorities b/c they are made for the cognitive benefit of the “majority”.

There is no such thing as the “liberal collapse”. The Dems have a good chance at taking back the Senate in 2006, or at least making progress toward doing so. A “collapse” would be going under 41 votes in the Senate.

The Republicans have won the last few elections because they have plays in their playbook that the liberals did not (and hopefully won’t have in the future, but they are going to fight fire with fire). Plays like voter fraud, misinformation, and deceit. Read the link at the bottom. It’s begining to look like 1972 all over again, and you can blame Karl Rove and friends for that. It scares me.

Ah, I love hypocrisy. To deny that the party of Karl Rove doesn’t use anything they can as a political issue is simple denial. Can I quote you one of his creations?

Uh Where’s the hypocisy? This sort of relativism is exactly what I see unfavorably. That something could be seen in such relativistic terms is ludicrous, and incidently its the argument neo-cons use to justify their unjustifiable acts. Its the neo-cons who say things like “everything is political”. This is scary indeed.

Yeah, only the liberals politicize virtually anything.

I think if you read again you would see that I didn’t say “only” liberals do.

There is no such thing as the “liberal collapse”. The Dems have a good chance at taking back the Senate in 2006, or at least making progress toward doing so. A “collapse” would be going under 41 votes in the Senate.

I disagree b/c for all those years when the GOP lacked a majority it was always able to exert a great deal of pressure on the left thereby moderating its positions. At the same time I see the recent success of the neo-cons as due largely to their ability to co-opt traditional “liberal” positions thereby precluding leftist political oppositions. Largely this attests to the inherent centrist leanings of the left in the US. Democracy promotion as a means to spread neo-colonialism is a great example. The left in the US has been unable to adequately position itself as against the ideology of the war in Iraq. They use vague anti-war rhetoric b/c essentially the democracy promotion in Iraq by Bush echoes the political stances of Carter, Johnson, and Kennedy.

The Republicans have won the last few elections because they have plays in their playbook that the liberals did not (and hopefully won’t have in the future, but they are going to fight fire with fire). Plays like voter fraud, misinformation, and deceit. Read the link at the bottom. It’s begining to look like 1972 all over again, and you can blame Karl Rove and friends for that. It scares me.

Except that I don’t buy that interpretation at all. The notion that the GOP wins by lying to people is exactly the kind of elitist arrogance that has lead to GOP victories. The left in the US are the blue blood east coasters that the GOP has been able to demonize until that changes I don’t see the political landscape being alters. Essentially, I see the Democrats weakness due to their inherent east coast provinciality. The last real person from the hinterlands of the midwest to be of real prominence in the Democratic party was probably Mondale or McGovern and the last person of real importance was probably Wallace which is going back a ways.

IMO the GOP in many ways mirrors fascistic positions in that their politics are based on loosely defined ideas which are superficial and based around anti-cosmopolitian, pro-petty bourgeoisie, and results over content. Because this speaks to a large segment of the population the answer for the Democrats is to become less elitist and more egalitarian and spread real leftist ideology that the far right cannot coopt from them.

So I expect that the GOP will win in 2006, and use that to issue many blanket policies which are even more extreme than anything we have yet seen. In fact b/c of what I have mentioned above I think that but for them losing control of either the senate or the House they will see this as a victory b/c it shows that even when they completely F*** up they will still hold on to their plebiscite. Theirs is a ideology of appeasing their base, not governing for the majority so long as that base remains in tact they will remain in power.

To keep it simple:

The Republicans will gain ground (or hold steady in 06) and will win again in 08.

Why, because the Dems are far too fractured and believe in nothing.

The far far far left (who vote in primaries) are already pushing for anti-war this or that. Yet no anti-war candidate will EVER win a general election.

Could a Dem candidate push for stronger boarder control? No, way in heck.
(not that a Rep would either)

Dems Solution for the Economy? (which btw just had another good quarter of growth) Higher taxes.
sorry, that ain’t gonna do it.

Reps are a party of “the rich” (I disagree with that but…). Fine, what is the Dem solution? A welfare State like New Orleans, which they controlled for 60 years. We all saw what a disaster that city was.

You can’t demonize people and expect to win.

Sure you want to hit hard, but you need solutions to the problems to follow up. And the Dems have none.

I seriously would like to know what the Dems foreign policy is?

I get the part about Bush is evil blah blah blah, but that is irrelevant now. We are in Iraq and in Afghan, pushing Iran, Syr, and NK, plus their is China and Russia and the EU.

Please someone state a prominant Democrats (who could seriously get the nomination) foreign policy with some detail.

I’m being completely serious, I follow politcs and I have no idea what it is.
Just imagine what a casual voter thinks.
That is why they lose and will continue to do so.

I guess I really didn’t keep it simple. :D

To keep it simple:

The Republicans will gain ground (or hold steady in 06) and will win again in 08.

Why, because the Dems are far too fractured and believe in nothing.

Searching now for what an upper-classman told me last week…

… ok, couldn’t find a list of seats. But chew on this:

a) Every poll shows President Bush’s approval rating at or below 40%. No more coattails for Republican Senators to ride. In fact, they are more likely to rebuke the President’s plans and vote more moderate due to election worries.

Source: http://www.pollingreport.com/BushJob.htm

b) The public hates the Republican Congress even more than they detest the President. If the election were held today, 39% of Americans would vote Republican, 48% would vote Democrat, and 10% remain undecided.

Source: http://www.pollingreport.com/2006.htm

Just because Rush and Sean say it, it isn’t neccessarily true.

Just because Rush and Sean say it, it isn’t neccessarily true.

Lol!

But Yanny, Rush is documented to be right 98.6% of the time. :wink:

Again, those numbers are fine an dandy but don’t mean a thing.

Why?

1. Bush isn’t running and can’t run.
2. Yes Rep Congress numbers are bad, but the Dems #'s in Congress are WORSE.
3. Polls only take a brief snapshot of an instant in time, and the only instant that matters is the first Tues in Nov.

I’m trying not to argue for Bush here, I’m just saying NOBODY gets elected by being negative and saying “look at how bad the other guy is”, you HAVE TO OFFER SOMETHING (read some sort of agenda) as well. Go back to Clinton in 92, he was VERY UPBEAT and POSITIVE and ran on something.

If the Dems can’t figure out a coherent strategy to defend the US, they will never win another Pres election. It won’t matter if the Reps approval is at 20%, saying stuff like the UN is the answer or the US causes more problems that it solves won’t get you elected no matter what.

Polls won’t help no matter how bad they may show Bush or Reps. People don’t go into a voting booth and vote on a poll, they vote in this order:
(in post 9/11 world)
1. Defense of country
2. Their pocketbook/Economy - do they have a job
3. Tax cuts (although this could go with #2)

Then comes stuff like:
Boarder, Judges, and everything else…

#1 and #2 are NEVER going to change.

I’m trying to help, the Dems need coherent policies, not name calling or some other nonsense.

Other than Bill in 92, 96 they have lost EVERY other Major Election:
94 - Dems lost
96 - Clinton re-elected
98 - Dems lost
00 - Dems lost
02 - Dems lost
04 - Dems lost

Notice a trend. This is no fluke and until the Dems realize why this is happening they will never be able to stop it.

I’d even be willing to argue that the current make up of the Dem party makes it impossible to stop.

That polling data is a rather small sampling (around and under 1,000) people nationally in many of them. I dont trust polls anyway, because Republicans usually dont want to be bothered by wasting time with a annoying phone call, while a democrat will broadcast his love for the donkey 24/7. Plus most of the democrats are not even registered to vote because they are lazy and wont go to make any change unless their is a “real crisis” That threshold has not been crossed inspite of NPR and DNCs’ best efforts. Its too early to even be polling for this anyway.

@Imperious:

a democrat will broadcast his love for the donkey 24/7. Plus most of the democrats are not even registered to vote because they are lazy and wont go to make any change unless their is a “real crisis”

am i the only one who finds this a little bit contradictory?
The dems will broadcast love for their party without bothering to vote for it? Is America the only nation where this makes any sense?