Speaking of the Fatty Arbuckle scandal and it’s similarities to the execrable Duke “rape” scandal (yes, we were), here’s James Thayer, writing in the Weekly Standard:
Roscoe Arbuckle was billed as Fatty, though he hated the nickname and his friends never called him by it. In 1921–back when a plumber earned about $2,600 a year–Fatty Arbuckle signed an unprecedented million dollar per-year contract with Paramount Pictures Corporation. More Americans could recognize Arbuckle’s perfectly round face than President Harding’s.
Two years later, Fatty Arbuckle’s career was in ruin. The media and public had turned on him and he faced the prospect of the gas chamber, having been accused of the vicious rape and murder of a young actress. Most historians and analysts now believe the charge was entirely false, and that Arbuckle had nothing to do with the woman’s death.
The similarities between Fatty Arbuckle’s travails and those of the three Duke lacrosse players accused of rape are eerie and instructive. And for anyone interested in justice, they are alarming.
[…]
So let’s compare then and now.
The press then: The New York Times ran front page stories on the Arbuckle scandal. One of the headlines: “Arbuckle Dragged Rappe Girl To Room, Woman Testifies.” David Yallop, author of The Day the Laughter Stopped: the True Story of Fatty Arbuckle says, “The New York Times, which was to become a relentless critic not only of Arbuckle but of any person or group who tried to help him. . . competed daily with the tabloids, lending authority to the attack.” The Hearst newspapers ran extra editions. Writing for Hearst, Lannie Haynes Martin said Virginia Rappe’s “every impulse was said to have been wholesome and kindly,” and compared Arbuckle’s St. Francis hotel party to “the corrupt saturnalia of ancient Rome.” William Randolph Hearst later said that the Arbuckle scandal sold more newspapers than the Lusitania sinking.
The press now: Newsweek’s treatment was typical: on its May 1 cover, the magazine ran mug shots of two of the accused Duke lacrosse players, with the headline, “Sex, Lies & Duke.”
Public reaction then: A dozen policemen had difficulty controlling members of the Women’s Vigilante Committee, who appeared at the courthouse for Arbuckle’s trial. As Stuart Oderman writes in Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle: A Biography of the Silent Film Comedian, “At a signal from their leader, who cried ‘America, do your duty,’ the committee . . . covered Roscoe with spit.” Movie director Henry Lehrman said he’d murder Arbuckle if he were acquitted. Gloria Swanson said Arbuckle was a “fat, course, vulgar man.” Theater owners across the country announced that Fatty Arbuckle films would no longer be shown in their places of business.
Public reaction now: On March 26, a group of citizens performed what they termed “a wake-up call,” standing outside the Durham home where the alleged Duke rape occurred, banging pots and pans. Duke University suspended the lacrosse team, later reinstating it for next season.
The changing story then: The Arbuckle prosecution was based largely on the testimony of Maude Delmont, who admitted to the grand jury that she had consumed ten drinks of whiskey the day of the party. “Maude Delmont was known to be a woman often hired to get compromising photos of men for the purposes of manipulation or blackmail,” says Howie Tune of the Reno Gazette-Journal. Delmont told the grand jury that Arbuckle and Rappe were in the bedroom an hour, and that she (Delmont) heard Rappe screaming. She claimed that when Arbuckle emerged his clothes were wet and clinging to him.
But Maude Delmont changed her story each time she re-told it, and eventually the prosecution deemed her not credible. She was never called as a witness.
Another young lady at the party, actress Zey Prevon, initially told the police, “When I walked into the room, Virginia was writhing on the floor, and in pain, and she said to me, ‘He killed me. Arbuckle did it.” But later, before the grand jury, her recollection was different: “I didn’t see very much, and I was repeating what Maude Delmont had told me.”
The changing story now: The alleged Duke lacrosse team accuser originally told police that 20 men had raped her. Later she said it had been three men. Raleigh-Durham station WRAL reports that a police report stated the accuser first said she was groped, not raped. She repeatedly altered her account of how much she had drunk that night. Washington Post columnist Ruth Marcus says the accuser has changed her story six times now.
The other dancer that night, Kim Roberts, first told police that the accuser’s account of being raped was “a crock.” She said she was with the accuser all the while the accuser was in the house except for five minutes. But Roberts later said a rape might have occurred.
The prosecutor then: District Attorney Matthew Brady prosecuted Arbuckle. In Hollywood: the Pioneers, Kevin Brownlow writes “An intensely ambitious man, he planned to run for governor. Here, presented to him in the most sensational terms, was the scandal of the century–an apparent open and shut case.” One of the guests at the St. Francis hotel party, model Betty Campbell, testified that Brady threatened to jail her if she didn’t testify against Arbuckle.
The prosecutor now: Mike Nifong is the Durham prosecutor. He is running for reelection in a heavily African American district. The victim is an African American, as is the other dancer. Nifong told the Raleigh News & Observer that he has given 50 to 70 interviews regarding the case. In the election for district attorney on May 2, he defeated two Democratic opponents in the primary. No Republican had filed to run against him, but several are now considering it.
The physical evidence then: The prosecution argued that Arbuckle’s weight (somewhere between 250 and 300 pounds) burst Virginia Rappe’s bladder during the rape. Yet the defense lawyers showed that such an occurrence–a bladder bursting from this kind of external force–was almost an impossibility. The defense also introduced evidence showing that syphilis or cancer could have cause the rupture, as could coughing, sneezing or vomiting. In Frame-Up, Andy Edmonds writes that Dr. William Ophuls was called by the prosecution and Dr. G. Rusk by the defense, and both agreed that “the bladder was ruptured, that there was evidence of chronic inflammation, that there were signs of acute peritonitis, and that the examination failed to reveal any pathological change in the vicinity of the tear preceding the rupture. In short–the rupture was not caused by external force.”
The physical evidence now: The nurse-in-training found the Duke accuser’s body to be normal, with no bruises, Newsweek reports based on medical documents quoted in defense pleadings. The nurse determined the accuser had swelling in her vaginal walls, which can be caused by normal intercourse. Fox News has said the victim acknowledged having intercourse with three men before the party. The Washington Post’s Ruth Marcus reports that the accuser told police she had performed using a vibrator several hours earlier, which could also have caused the swelling.
Reviewing this and other evidence, Newsweek’s Evan Thomas and Susannah Meadows conclude the district attorney “had very little evidence upon which to indict three players for rape.” On April 10, results of the DNA tests taken of 46 Duke lacrosse players revealed no connection between the players and the accuser.
Arbuckle’s first trial resulted in a hung jury. So did the second trial. At the end of the third trial, the jury deliberated only six minutes, during which time they wrote an apology to Arbuckle which said, “Acquittal is not enough for Roscoe Arbuckle. We feel that a great injustice has been done him. . . . There was not the slightest proof adduced to connect him in any way with the commission of a crime. . . . We wish him success. . .”
It wasn’t to be. Buster Keaton never deserted his friend Fatty Arbuckle, and in the years ahead gave him a few directing jobs, which Arbuckle did under a pseudonym. But Arbuckle never reclaimed any of the glitter or the money or his reputation. He died June 29, 1933 at age 46, of heart failure, the medical examiner concluded. Buster Keaton was more accurate: “He died of a broken heart.”
No one knows how it will end for the Duke lacrosse players.
And that, in itself, is both a tragedy and a travesty.
I haven’t written very much on the Duke case, because to be honest, the political opportunism and raw cynicism exhibited by Nifong, several feminist groups, and the collection of ever-ready race and class hustlers—all at the expense of the accused, whom they see as nothing more than a privileged “type” in need of symbolic punishment—is enough to make me despair for the direction American culture is taken.
In fact, it is difficult to examine this case outside the prism of identity politics, the social and political ascendency of which I have been an especially vocal blogospheric critic (particulary insofar as it redounds to the academy in the social sciences and humanities; and if ever there was circumstantial evidence for the validity of such a critique, the fact that 69 permanent Duke faculty members condemned the accused in advance of a trial—many of them content to use the plight of the accused students as nodal points for their own pet academic theses—is it, and exemplifies the knee-jerk anti-intellectualism of today’s progressivism).
And that is, ironically, precisely the reason I’ve refrained from commenting much: I don’t wish to be seen as exploiting the travails of the accused in order to push a particular ideological agenda, even though I remain very interested in the particulars, and very much convinced that the political pressures of interests groups are the driving force behind the stresses on the individuals involved.
Which is to say, I see this as a predictable continuation of a troubling trend—and in a small way, a battle for the soul not only of our justice system, but for the soul of classical liberalism itself.
(h/t Dan Collins)
New century liberalism only want’s to capture classical liberism’s soul so it can finish killing it.
That’s a damn stiffer post than the pop tart thing.
A lot of this seems to center around today’s news media structure where being first to report is seen as more important than being complete or fair in a report. That may be part of the questionable use of “analysis of the facts as they happen” because more often than not you are given lees information than needed to present a story so instead you get sensationalized conjecture that they later have to back up with facts.
Why is the Duke rape case a greater sign of the collapse of culture than the Arbuckle case (80 years ago) was?
If it’s not, can we say things are really going downhill?
Because it’s 80 years later? And we’ve had 80 interceding years of media naval-gazing and epistemological critiques.
Not to mention, we now have sound in our films.
Here’s what may be the saddest part:
80 years from now, there will still be jackasses who believe that those Duke guys raped that girl, no matter what the outcome of the trial. We’ve already seen that there are still jackasses who believe that Arbuckle raped and murdered Rappe.
Human nature doesn’t change – at least not over such a short time span as “recorded history.”
We try (and fail) to build our societies to compensate for the downsides human nature without hobbling the upsides too much.
It’s nice that I grew up in one of the least-failed examples of those attempts. We’ll see how it goes from here, but in a way it’s comforting that we survived (though Arbuckle didn’t) that failure 80 years ago.
I imagine we’ll survive this one, too. That’s not a reason to sit back and NOT criticise or cry for justice, however, because that’s part of the process as well.
It may not be a greater sign, but it is sure happening at a faster pace. Radio was a baby, TV did not exist.
People believed Arbuckle did it because he was a course, fat man.
People believe the Duke lacrosse members did it because they’re rich white kids who thought they can get away with anything.
When Arbuckle was being tried, few people looked at fat people and thought, “He may be a rapist, too.” The same can’t be said now, with people looking at other rich white kids.
I hate my misspellings. “coarse”, not “course”, of course.
Why crabs can never climb out of the bucket, and the victim class is ever the willing tool of those with more sinister, yet to them, loftier agendas.
Jealousy of the masses; venality of their handlers.
The bell-curve will always have a left side: by any standard of measure, half the population is below average.
That’s the best thing written on this whole fiasco so far. I’ll pay you a nickel in royalties every time I quote it.
Actually, you’re not quite correct there. It’d be more accurate to say, “by any standard of measure, half the population is, at best, average.”
(no, we weren’t)
SB: aid
and abet
And, BTW, by definition, half the pop is below average.
SB: your
turn
Math nitpick:
Look at the following numbers:
4, 6, 6, 6, 6, 8
The average of these numbers is 6.
The idea that there are three numbers that are less than 6 in the sequence above is false.
Let’s not overlook another very, very important detail. Someone raped and murdered Rappe. A crime was actually committed, though clearly not by Arbuckle.
In the Duke case, we have virtually no evidence that a crime was committed at all, other than one drunken stripper’s ever changing word.
I mean, the Arbuckle case at least had a body.
Phil Smith sez:
Every time anyone looks at their records, they’re going to find an arrest for rape.
How’d you like to find yourself explaining how that was all a big misunderstanding to a prospective employer or lover or to the cops who pull you over with wine on your breath?
What I think is interesting is the evolution of the cult of the camera lens.
In Arbuckle’s day, Hollywood was called a ‘movie colony’, and so traded itself on the carefully molded perceptions it built into its publicity photos and film shoots. But that was just it; it was all about perception while it refused substance.
When Arbuckle was set upon by the confluence of ambition, media, and public scandal mongering, his peers–who knew both Arbuckle and Rappe–abandoned him without a second thought.
So let’s add another dimension to the analysis: does the culture of the camera exert an influence that is equal to or greater than the identity-politics issues that we are ascribing to the Duke case?
Without the camera, there would be no force to charge the Duke Lacrosse team even as there would have been no force to follow Arbuckle’s case if he was not a movie star. In our world, we can all become impromptu reality TV stars if we have the unfortunate luck to rack up all of the interesting angles in a story.
This goes hand-in-hand with the rape case that just ended at the Naval Academy. The accused was their star quarterback, who led them to a bowl game this last season. It went to trial, and he was acquitted of the rape charges yesterday, ‘though found guilty of two lesser charges (conduct unbecoming; disobeying an order). Today, the jury recommended no sentence for the other charges. He may still lose his commission and have to pay the tuition for the Academy back.
It turns out the gal who accused him had been heavily drinking, had a history of being sexually agressive, and had invited him to her dorm. She started coming on to him shortly after he arrived, and they started to go at it. According to him, she passed out, and he stopped when he realized what had happened. He left, and then called later to apologize. He clearly didn’t want anything that was in any way unconsensual. He left a tearful apology on her answering machine. This was used as evidence against him. During the trial, the judge ripped into the gal’s attorney for presenting such a weak case. The jury took less than a day to return the verdict.
Needless to say, the local press (thank you Washington Post and Baltimore Sun) had him hung out to dry. He was pilloried here. Mistake in judgement on his part? Yep. Rape? Not by any definition I’ve ever run across. He’s screwed, though. He’ll have to live with this for the rest of his life, and will be lucky if he gets to serve. Which is all he really wants.
Both cases have been a big deal here in Baltimore. WBAL radio has been giving a lot of fairly objective coverage to these, especially during the talk shows.
Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.
Below median. Not average.
While I appreciate your support, actus, you’re also wrong. See my example above. Just the statement that half of the sequence is less than the average (six) is false, so too is the statement that half of the sequence is less than the median (also six).
An interesting point, one that seems bolstered by my local paper’s published Code of Ethics. Their code goes to great lengths trying to assure the public of the non-interference of the ad-selling side with the editorial side, but that’s pretty much the extent of it. That’s fine as far as it goes, I guess, but nowhere at all does it mention that they strive for accuracy in either their reporting or their editorial content. It shows, too; as near as I can tell, their editorial writers actually lie more than they tell the truth.
So, bottom line appears to be that newspapers don’t really care much about being accurate. They just want to sell papers so they can sell advertising. And, of course, the more papers they can sell, the more they can charge for advertising.
Fatty’s career was destroyed by the scandal but I’ve never been able to figure out if he was likely guilty or not, the evidence seemed pretty circumstantial. But a scandal like that is enough to ruin any man.
I’ve seen a few of his movies and they weren’t all that great, really. Buster Keaton was much MUCH funnier, I think.
There is a play of Eurippides, The Archanians, in which Pericles, the first citizen of Athens, has levied sanctions upon the Megara. Eurippides pillories Pericles.
His version goes that Pericles kidnaps a Megaran whore and so the Megarans steal three of Pericles’ whores from his wife’s house of ill repute, shall we say, and so Pericles kicks out all of the Megaran traders from the Athenian markets and so the Megarans are starving. This leads to eventual war with Sparta as Megara was a member of the Peloponnesian League.
It sounds silly, but it took until the rise of Rome to reverse the damage down to Pericles reputation among the Greeks. TWO CENTURIES.
I sometimes compare Eurippides to Michael Moore (my first pup was named Pericles; my father was a hellonphile and I was 3), but slander is slander all around.
Less than or equal to the median, then.
Dan Collins I condemn you.
Hey does anyone know if Confederate Yankee is having a DOS attack? Can’t get through for hours.
hellonphile= Helenophile, whatever man, I just work here.
Gotta Know, the mu.nu blogs have been flaky all day.
Aha, thanks, now that you mention it I’ve had similar problems with Ace’s site.
Tks Pablo.
Interesting post.
This is tangentially off-topic, but there was a local case in the 1980s where a state trooper fabricated fingerprint evidence to frame a suspect who ended up being killed while resisting arrest. The suspect was probably guilty of murdering a family in Dryden, NY, raping and sodomizing the daughter, and burning the home to hide the crime. Two state trooper were convicted and sent to prison.
While I’m happy this guy is gone, I don’t like the idea that the law was bent while getting the bad guy. I didn’t lose any sleep over what happened to the troopers. There are lines that cannot be crossed.
Enter Nifong. Unless there is a lot more evidence than has presented publicly, the DA should be disbarred. I don’t know if he can be criminally charged in any way, but he should be. The Lacrosse guys have had their reputations ruined, been given bad grades, stuck with large legal bills, and in general lost a significant part of their lives to further Nifong’s political ambitions.
According to what I’ve read, that a crime was committed at all is in dispute.
The medical examiners report said she died of peritonitis caused by a ruptured bladder. He also found that it was not caused by external force.
Way off topic, but statistically speaking:
average or mean is the sum of values divided by the number. 2+12=14, the average is 14/2 = 7
median is the middle in in an ordered sequence of values. In Johnny C’s example, (4, 6, 6, 6, 6, 8) 6 is the median value.
mode is the most frequently occuring value in a set. Also 6 in Johnny C’s example.
TW: girls. I’ve known average girls and I’ve known mean girls… Shoot me now, please.
It’s several kinds of impossible that any of those 69 are less “privileged” than any of the accused, and improbable that even one of them makes less money than any of the kids’ parents, as university faculty average nearly three times the American median household income (which is why when academics plead poverty, it’s hard to resist doing illegal things to their necks).
The one accused kid I know anything about has a fireman for a dad, and big-city firemen are paid a lotâ€â€but not compared to Duke professors.
One for the lefties:
The school and government’s deflection of (real, existing) Durham resident rage-at-the-oppressor away from themselves and onto these three random powerless scapegoats is a textbook example of _________.
Come onâ€â€fill in the blank.
‘Cause if you don’t, your not doing so is proof of your _________.
Anyone?
I have some books by Malcolm X and W.E.B. Dubois that you can borrow, since it looks like you’ve forgotten whose side you’re supposed to pretend to be on.
And Mark D while we’re at it:
In a normal distribution, which a bell curve certainly is:
mean = median = mode
That’s a fact, there’s no way around it.
You are correct, tink. My mistake due to insufficient reading.
But at least there was a body. At least there was reason to wonder, though certainly not enough to convict.
In the Duke case, not so much.
I’m so saving this link. What? What? Verc is not the Greatest Person that has ever lived, anywhere, at any time?
Indeed, Pablo. Indeed.
Actus / Johnny Catbird,
I hate to pick statistical nits here, but if we assume a population mean (not literally true since we don’t have an infinite population, but the difference is probably diminimous), then the probability of any member being at any one point on the distribution is zero. Also, for sufficiently large samples (and assuming a normal distribution), the median is an unbiased estimator of the mean. So, we can absolutely say that half of the population is below the mean (P(x=mean) = 0)
That’s what I said, Bill. And btw the probability of a point being somewhere, anywhere, cannot be zero, even in an infinite universe.
Gee, when are mu.nu blogs NOT having problems? However, I understand that they’re all moving to a new platform . . . I thought yesterday, but maybe it’s taking a day or two longer to work out the kinks. Just FYI.
I’ve just been thinking, since this whole thing came up at Duke, “Geez, wouldn’t this all fit in *perfectly* at ‘Dupont University’?” – the school in Tom Wolfe’s “I Am Charlotte Simmons”. I wonder if he thought of putting a fake-rape-and-prosecution scene in it – he certainly hints, just a tiny bit, at town-and-gown issues, sexual issues along with academic dishonesty make up the core of the book, and star lacrosse players are featured characters in the story—he’s already said how it’s almost impossible to parody modern life! And although Dupont is set in Pennsylvania, it reminds me of Duke more than any other major elite school. Anyhoo.
Gotta know–
Thanks for the condemnation. Makes me feel . . . alive
The moral of both stories, kids, is to stay away from women of, ummm, loose morals.
I had an unpleasant experiance with a stripper also. After a VERY short time haggleing with her, after which (or witch, and that rhymes with bitch) I declined her services. The digruntled cunt called the cops and falsely claimed I robbed her. Only after three days in jail with a $45,000 bond, five court appearances, passing a lie detector test, and $5000 in attorney fees, was I able to get the charges dropped. It also helped that the ho in question had a history of prostitution and lying to the police, while I have a very respectable boss that I’ve worked for almost 20 years, and he posted the bond. Plus my record was pure as the driven snow. Of course the whole ordeal is still on my record.
Needless to say, I go nowhere near strippers these days. I advise everyone else to do the same. I’m also suspicous of women that are sexually agressive. I mean, I do have a huge Johnson, and am devistatingly handsome, but still…
Incidently, my first court appearance was postponed because the court suddenly closed for the day. It was 9/11/01.
Every man is a potential rapist.
I can’t claim to be above the average on this one, as I believed the initial story, or at least I believed it was possible enough to be likely. I await your condemnations and condemn all of you who fail to do so.
Tubby two,
Fast women are like fast cars. They’re the most interesting when you’re young, you can’t afford them till you’re old, by which time you’ve probably lost interest…
The opinion of a guy who’se been happily married for just about 30 years. Your mileage may vary. No warranties are expressed or implied by these statements. Any stories about whatever happened 30 years ago are true, to the best of my recollection. My recollection has been diluted by copious quantities of Kirin beer. Those girls might have been better than I remember, and my memories are pretty spectacular!
The statute of limitations on any thing I might ever have done wrong has long since expired in Japan, Korea, the Philippines, Taiwan, and the United States of America. I admit to nothing.
am*nda’s brain,
By your logic, every woman is a potential whore. What’s the point you’re trying to make?
Bill Dalasio:
“diminimous”? Very diminim-like?
De minimis. It ain’t just a river in Egypt, or something like that.
MarkD, “am*nda’s brain” is just parodying the real Amanda at www dot p*ndagon (* = a) dot net. And when I say “parodying”, what I mean is, saying what she actually believes, except with far less spittle, fewer instances of the word “fuck”, and the comparatively mealy-mouthed qualification “potential”.
My recommendation is that unless you are a particularly healthy middle-aged dude, don’t bother reading her site, as you may experience either serious blood pressure issues and/or head implosions. I shit you not: people around here throw around the term “batshit crazy” for members of the left a lot, but Amanda really is it. If you really want to see for yourself, I recommend you google the famous “laundry basket” post; I won’t link to her here.
There will always be a left side of the bell curve, and by any measure of intelligence, half the population will be on the left side.
MarkD
“Fast women are like fast cars. They’re the most interesting when you’re young, you can’t afford them till you’re old, by which time you’ve probably lost interest…”
Heh. Also, they attact police attention, are not very reliable, and they’re dangerous.
Every man is a potential rapist.
Yeah, especially at Duke.
<i>There will always be a left side of the bell curve, and by any measure of intelligence, half the population will be on the left side.
There’s a joke in there somewhere but I’m too tired to find it. Y’know, left, measure of intelligence…
Let me say that whoever comes up with it, I condemn it.
Dan, care to take a crack at it?
I don’t know any jokes about Bell curves, but I think the problem (at least with IQs) is in assuming that IQ is a discrete whole number. There is no a priori reason to believe that everyone who scores, say, 100 on an IQ test has the same IQ. We just are required by the nature of the test to assign a whole number to each exam taker. Plus, of course, the score for any individual will most likely vary around his/her true score over many exams or even taking the same test.
I see no reason why, with enough exam questions, you couldn’t resolve *all* individuals to a different number on an IQ scale, even if you had to go to the 100th decimal. That is, every single individual in the US would have a unique IQ number. Even if it was 100.000…….1.
THEN, whatever the median and the mean were (and they’d probably be verrrrrrrrrry close but almost certainly not identical), one-half the population would, indeed be below them, +/- 1. Close enough for me.
Stats are fun, and using them loosely can result in some silliness, but really thinking about them requires a lot of good definitions.
I am just pleased as punch, reading through, I neutered Actus…at Patterico’s on this subject.
It’s surprising TownHouse didn’t send better guns. really.
<Stats are fun, and using them loosely can result in some silliness, but really thinking about them requires a lot of good definitions.>
I agree, Jorg. I’ve never plugged a book before, but this one is worth it for anyone in a position to make an argument on stats, or countering an argument on stats (meaning, more or less, all of us), or even thinking about any research results whatsoever:
<a href=”
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0812975219/sr=8-1/qid=1153568916/ref=pd_bbs_1/102-9502871-6785709?ie=UTF8“>”Fooled by Randomness,”</a> by Nassim Taleb. He has written an op ed or two on the war on terror so it’s not just abstract statistics.
And I swear, I’m not him. Or his housemate.
Confession time:
At great risk to my credibility can someone please explain to me how to use the “indent” feature that people use to lead with quoted text? I’ve tried using the little “i” key to no avail.
I deserve condemnation. Dan are you up yet?
As a nitpicky statistics person myself, under normal methodology, repeating these sorts of questions will not produce a single number answer. What you’ll end up with is something like ‘this person’s IQ is between 98 and 103, with 95% confidence’ rather than ‘this person’s IQ is 100.54393…’.
In addition, when speaking of average intelligence, people are generally referring to a range of values. It’s like with economic statistics. We don’t say that mean household income is ‘middle class’, and anything below mean is ‘lower class’. It’s just that with household income they don’t use ‘average’.
Pedantic nitpicky rant finished.
Don’t stop yet, Civillis. Can you please tell me how you indented your first paragraph? It’s driving me nuts.
Gotta, it’s a
tag. If you looked at the HTML source of this page, you would see that’s how it’s done.
Gotta know,
See the little row of buttons above the posting window?
Highlight the part you want to indent, the same way you highlight anything in Windows. Then push the button marked “quote”. HTMagicaL!
You can do the same thing for boldface, italics, or underlining.
If you do it, be sure to use the [PREVIEW] button to check that you got what you want. If you didn’t, delete all the “<”, “>”, and everything between them, and start over.
You can do it manually, too, but use the buttons for a while to see what they do and copy that. It isn’t as hard as it looks, but it does require learning.
Regards,
Ric
Thanks Daryl and Ric, I’ll give it a try after breakfast.
A guy called the Larry Elder show not long after the Duke story broke and said that he worked as an “escort” for strippers. He said this was a common tactic and he was surprised that it hadn’t been mentioned. A stripper will go to a private party and do a few minutes of dancing, then tell the customers that’s it. If they want more, they have to pay more. If they refuse, she may call the cops and cry rape or other abuse. Standard tactics for escort services.
When the DNA news came out, the legal expert on Fox News (the guy with hair down to his eyebrows) commented that Nifong now had a clear case of filing a false police report against the stripper. It’s amazing that this has continued but the Baran case in Massachusetts has gone on for 21 years. That guy got sentenced to three life terms on flimsy evidence of child molestation, similar to the McMartin case around the same time. He just got released when a judged granted him a new trial.
Ambitious prosecuters.
Another thing about Fatty Arbuckle; the Delt fraternity house at USC, when I was a student 45 years ago, was Arbuckle’s old house. It was on Adams Blvd. I believe there is a new Delt house now but in the same location.
We see ruptured bladders from time to time and they can be due to someone being so drunk they don’t empty it. Chronic bladder obstruction stretches it but an acute distention can rupture it. Sort of like ruptured stomachs from over eating and drinking too much beer. German students used to drink lots of beer and then take bicarbonate of soda, which releases lots of C02 when it hits stomach acid, to make bigger belches. They would blow out their stomachs sometimes.
Gotta know–
Sorry. Your official condemnation is in the mail, so this one will have to do:
Thus do I condemn thee, O block quote not-maker! Consider thyself condemned!
Once this gets resolved – in their favor, I assume – they will be able (after whater NC law dictates as a suitable period of time) to have the arrest expunged. If they have no other record or such, that is…
Still, it is a problem and will be for a while.
Yes, I’m all for the little guy, wrongfully accused. Don’t know and don’t care about Fatty; those were dicey times. About these Duke lacrosse players: they’re morons from the get-go. How such little Richie Riches were stupid enough to get themselves tangled up in this mess in the first place is testament to their mental deficency, and therefore, a justification to their misery. Stupid people are constantly called to answer for their stupid behavior; why are these guys victims?
Wahh, wahh, sis boom bah.
What does their money have to do with being wrongfully accused?
I mean, no offense: but if stupid behavior warranted being accused of rape, your comment would get you indicted.
I don’t think you understand the meaning of being “all for” something, or else you’re confused about what it means to be “wrongfully accused.” If they didn’t do it, then they were wrongfully accused. If you are “all for” them, then you’re not going to brush them aside due to “dicey times”(?) or having money.
Being white men doesn’t make false accusations any less wrongful. Being fat & vulgar, or athletic & vulgar, does not make false accusations any less wrongful.
So right there, I’ve exposed your lie. You want to claim the mantle of justice (being on the side of wrongfully accused persons) but you also want to side against them, because of their race/gender/class. So you don’t really believe in justice, you believe in affirmative action taken to its extreme (but logical) conclusion–a state of war on rich white men.
What the hell does “dicey times” mean, anyway? White people were really racist and men were really misogynist, so anything against them is justified? Or do you have some other explanation?
And this business about “morons” getting what they deserve? The whole world is dog-eat-dog for white people, but minorities/women/poor people should be encouraged to whine as much and as loudly as possible?
What I really see is not someone trying to make a valid argument, but someone taunting victims, which is just as ugly as if some blogger had started a thread mocking actual rape victims (or, say, Ann Coulter’s insults against 9/11 widows). You want to get our blood up, but it doesn’t work, because we see right through you. Another troll. Yawn. This is the internet, cynn, and you’re just background noise.
How such little Richie Riches were stupid enough to get themselves tangled up in this mess in the first place is testament to their mental deficency, and therefore, a justification to their misery.
Your class envy is evident.
However, given this “logic” the many silly, ignorant liberals in America who support stupid ideas and engage in stupid behavior supporting them deserve???
Ace –
I’ve read that last sentence about twenty times and can’t quite decipher it. Am I just really tired, or is there something missing?
Yeah, given your reflexive response, ace, you effectively cloud the issue. It might have something to do with status; I am referring more to the privileged mind-set that lets certain “self-defined” echo-chamber types define the daily outrage. It’s fungible.
And then question one who whoud defy the mere suggestion that someone of quality could possibly commit a heinous sex crime. The assumption here, I think, is that a person of color or questionable history has no standing. And that’s unfortunate.
Oops, I meant “would deny” above, if aught cares.
Ok, you armchair whup-ass libbie smackdown wannabees, please allow me to clarify. The sign-language interpreter wasn’t available, but I’ll do the best I can. Here’s what I mean:
The alleged (or not) Duke rapists are moronic rich kids motivated by a sense of entitlement and immunity. Who knows what will happen [twiddles fingers; waits]
Fatty Arbuckle was an obnoxious pig who had a bad PR guy because he couldn’t talk the rape and murder accusation into solid gold. End of tall tale.
so people you assume to be obnoxious/moronic/rich should be falsely accused of things. into every life a little rain must fall. got it.
I say no such thing; merely that even with the goggles of history, the rich are better off than the infamous.
I say no such thing; merely that even with the goggles of history, the rich are better off than the infamous.
Does the actua, you know, evidence enter in to your calculations? Or do you just total up the race and “class” of the accuser and accused to determine who you think is at fault?