"[T]he linked regimes of George Bush and Ralph Klein."

Now that's funny!

Though desperately sad and pathetic of course - linking a modestly notable provincial premier with the leader of a global superpower. I guess that's the Alberta tinfoil hat brigade's way to "think globally, act locally".

I suppose it could have been worse: linking George W. Bush with the mayor of Bouctouche, New Brunswick in some Freemason/Zionist plot to sell the province to Halliburton or something.

Hilarious!

Wonder how these nutters would cope if the Jews did not exist? To think this lunatic holds a teaching post at any establishment is disgusting, since it confirms his incompetence for such a position.

In the article he called Christopher Hitchens a neo con. I guess that makes him a Neo Commie.

It must drive this truther nuts to live in the oil sands capital of the world. Where after all these years of Conservative rule, another party is finally challenging it. Unfortunately for him the party is more conservative then the one in power.

Speaking of Ralph Kline things have been mighty boring around here since he left.

And given that these guys are so enamoured with Chavez and defenders of Islamism this seems appropriate.

http://wtopnews.com/?nid=25&sid=2029721

Kind of scarey actually.

I'm sure they'll figure out that the floods in Pakistan are because their great and peaceful Prophet is angry with the believers for not fighting harder to rid the world of Infidels and teach that to their students.

May the peace of the chosen ones be upon them.

To think these scumbags are teaching many of our young people. Many of them believe this bunk and it is no wonder many of them are screwed up leftists.

Like my one of my son-in-laws said when he was subjected to this crap at the University of Saskatchewan about fie years ago, " I just ignore it". But how many drink the kool aid?

I just read through Blakeney's unintelligible blog (so you wouldn't have to) and came upon this posting in which he implies that 5,000 residents of Louisiana were shot by the U.S. Military.

What a nutter! Yet, once this twit gains tenure, he'll be on the public dole for life.

Anyone reading this in sunny Alberta should contact their MLA (whether Wildrose, PC or the also-rans) and ask why we are funding these anti western-civilisation marxist loons.

Also demand we defund crap like this. Ask them to sponsor a motion to axe U of L funding by 20% or more, and we will certainly get their attention.

This is not academic freedom of opinion, this is coddling useless imbeciles with public funding.

Your grandma has to wait a year for her hip surgery, but we can fund this leftard hate speech?

Dont accept it.!

Subsidized stupidity.

Could someone please explain exactly what sort of useful contribution, purpose and social benefit does a degree in Globalization Studies afford?
My guess its another completely useless drain on academic resources and for those poor misguided young souls that actually had to sit and listen to those two twats Blakeney and Hall, its several hours of their lives they can never get back.
These men are dangerous and are infecting the minds of our youth... yet another University I must add to the growing list of those my kids will never attend. If your an Alumni - SHAME.

Klein quote comes to mind..."you can slide a lot further on bull sh-t, than on gravel!

Lieberals...so open minded their brains have fallen out!

Klein quote comes to mind..."you can slide a lot further on bull sh-t, than on gravel!"

Lieberals...so open minded their brains have fallen out!

Since you asked, 'Let their funding be stopped' translates into Latin as:

"Permissum suum crumens exsisto subsisto."

Ain't the internet great!

This stuff is nothing more than the internet version of the tabloids one sees in the check-out lines at the grocery store. In the same way that some people believe that everything they read in newspaper is true, some people believe that everything they read on the internet is true. Congenital gullibility is endemic in the population. Very few people are actually capable of analytical thought.

To think that some people believed that access to computers would raise the general level of knowledge and intelligence.

I am not a psychiatry expert but isn't this guy a new sort of nutbar?

None of these bozos has actually ever seen a building which had been prepped for demolition. There would be large bundles of explosives on every supporting column with strands of primaline between them.

How in the world would the thousands of people who went to work that day fail to notice? How would they fail to notice the installation of so much software?

The conspiracy theorists are, in a word, delusional.

None of these bozos has actually ever seen a building which had been prepped for demolition. There would be large bundles of explosives on every supporting column with strands of primaline between them.

How in the world would the thousands of people who went to work that day fail to notice? How would they fail to notice the installation of so much software?

The conspiracy theorists are, in a word, delusional.

The University of Lethbridge has always been Alberta's university of last resort. Blakeney and Hall are a practical illustration of why that is so.

"The University of Lethbridge has always been Alberta's university of last resort. Blakeney and Hall are a practical illustration of why that is so."

Not so but this idiot does the school no favours.

why is a prominent member of the asteroid class dinosaurs being cited here?

oh, I remember, dealing with the hypocritical right wing.

Globalization Studies? That's a new one. Must be affiliated with the English Department. That's Mormon country down there so I don't imagine there would be many takers for that program. I assume that the good prof is an adherent to the Rosie School of Steelmaking. (I believe that that the U of L actually has a Physics Department). I suspect though, that he spends a bit too much time roaming in the coulees communing with the coyotes and howling at the moon.

I quit the program after my 3rd year of Agriculture at U of L because I couldn't deal with my tenured agriculture profs that were openly anti-agriculture and seemed to center their programs around organic food production. Hard to believe that could occur in such an agriculture-based city like Lethbridge.

Tony Hall has been a well-known embarrassment to that institution for decades already. It's not like no one has ever complained before.

One possible interpretation of EBD's entry goes like this. Step one: go to each university and find one or two nitwits in one or two departments or programs or even faculties, and step two: on that basis argue that a political action should be launched in the name of directing students away from that institution and defunding it.

But that can't possibly be what's being argued, because that argument is ridiculous. I can find one or two nitwits in every university, and so that argument would logically entail the end of all universities, which would mean the end of all training of doctors and engineers. Which is ridiculous.

So, my question is: what is being argued here? That a couple of nitwits have been correctly identified? Whoopee! That they should be fired? On what legal grounds? That the problem can be shown to extend across the entire university (which is not shown above) and so then in that case the university should be in some way sanctioned?

Or maybe it's that doctors and engineers and other useful people shouldn't be trained in universities and then we could shut the universities down. Would that make you happy? Or would you just go on to find one or two nitwits in whatever institutions the useful people are then being trained in, and restart this entire argument?

Is the question being addressed here about making universities and those aspects of their existence that exert a positive influence on our lives better, for example perhaps by arguing with their nitwits, in public, or is what's being addressed here simply emotional populist demagoguery a few steps detached from reality?

This is slightly tangent to the discussion but Gates predicts that bricks and mortar universities will face serious competition in the near future.

“Five years from now on the Web for free you’ll be able to find the best lectures in the world. It will be better than any single university … college, except for the parties, needs to be less place-based...only technology can bring that down, not just to $20,000 but to $2,000. So yes, place-based activiy in that college thing will be five times less important than it is today.”

In that scenario, courses that do not require labs will be transferred to e-learning which will free up space and money for engineering, medicine, high tech, applied science, etc. Nitwits like Blakeney will be driven out because they cannot compete with sane and interesting profs. on the internet.

"Maybe it's that doctors and engineers and other useful people shouldn't be trained in universities and then we could shut the universities down."

It doesn't have a faculty of medicine or engineering, Vitruvius. It's a Liberal Arts University.

"Is the question being addressed here about making universities and that aspects of their existence that exert a positive influence on our lives better..."

Yes.

When a University hires professors who in effect blame the Jews - "Mossad agents...celebrating the 9/11 attacks" - for the events of 9/11, then "political action," - oooh - in the form of one person's suggestion that people not send their kids there for their Liberal arts education - is perfectly reasonable.

In a democracy, Vitruvius, anyone is free to either advocate the U of Lethbridge, or to advocate NOT attending the University of Lethbridge. Your opinion on that is every bit as irrelevant as you consider mine to be.

Quite: your opinion on that is every bit as relevant as you consider mine to be.

"Little Eichmann" Ward Churchill changed his name and moved north!! Or is this Allan Blakeney's grandson?

Vitruvious; I normally find your comments interesting, but sometimes you really find a need to talk down to all of us. Cheers

I know of a student that is going to first year at LaLaLethbridge. She never had enough credits to get in and very bad marks. They phoned her school and they managed to scrape up enough credits to get in. I had to explain to her she did not need a U-haul to move her stuff to res because there isn't enough room for a quarter of it. She thought dorm rooms were like a house. That is the type of person the epitome of intellectualism Lethbridge attracts.

It's not really the future engineers or doctors that I'm concerned about having to deal with the "one or two nitwits" instructing in their departments. Some of these universities have become so ingrained with far-left "social science" professors that they end up offering such obviously completely useless degrees in politically-fabricated program studies such as "Globalization Studies".

Which is fine if you don't mind being served coffee at a local restaurant by a Black Bloc-sympathizing, anti-capitalist, global warming alarmist, neo-Marxist, Christian-a-phobe in a Che t-shirt with a degree in "Globalization Studies" from the University of Lethbridge, whose education was hugely subsidized by the people they hate the most.

Defund these universities now.

Wouldn't it be nice if we could specify which faculties our tax dollars should support? I know where mine wouldn't go.

Vίtruvius, can you provide a reference to the other blog posts that have been done that would allow for an interpretation that what EBD is doing is "go(ing) to each university and find one or two nitwits etc. etc.".
If this was the case, then this would presumably be only one in an ongoing series of such posts.
One possible interpretation of your post is that you had nothing to really add to the discussion so you decided to be a pr*ck instead.

My apologies, Mike, let me assure you that it is
simply a case of happy exuberance. G'night, folks.

He holds the Hedy Fry endowed chair for Cross Burning.

I'm embarassed to admit that I studied at the UofL in the late '80s-early '90s - it's my hometown university - and Hall was generally regarded as a crank even then, at that time largely for his frothing-at-the-mouth defense of any and all Indian land claims. He's kind of a mantle figurine for loony left positions and an exemplar of the problems with the tenure system.

Vitruvius- I humbly suggest a Nitwit Detection/Verification Profiling/Assessment Manifest:

Characterization:
-Greying, dishevelled, self-barbered comb-over.
-Unkempt, untrimmed salt-and-pepper beard.
-Wool/tweed sports jacket circa 1983, un-ironed, elbow-patched, and with the obligatory turtleneck.
-Spectacles- normally a decade or two passe.
-Politics- anti-conservative, anti-development, anti-religion, pro-radical, anti-common sense.
-Tenured, pompous, dismissing, superiority air.
-Lingualese- normally the hauty English inflection, despite probably never having travelled beyond their provincial borders.

Oh, and as a pre-emptive, I request I be exempted from any, or the foregoing profiling. Thank-you.

Vitruvius: "So, my question is: what is being argued here? That a couple of nitwits have been correctly identified? Whoopee! That they should be fired? On what legal grounds?"

Oh, I don't know. Most institutions have certain standards that must be met. Hospitals, for example, will not allow quacks access to their patients. They also have an obligation, as recipients of public funds, to maintain rigorous standards of hygiene and stuff. Why should universities be any different? Could we not have minimum expectations for scholarly research? Since when are publicly funded universities expected to be incubators of loony-toon indoctrination? If I was an alumnus of the U of Lethbridge, I'd certainly be letting them know they won't be getting one red cent from me until they clean up their act. The U of S Native Studies department is just about as bad.

Tony Hall is generally seen as a first rate nut bar by most people in Lethbridge. Unfortunately, the U of L has always been a rats nest of NDP types. In fact, the perennial NDP candidate both provincially and federally in this case is a retired U of L psych prof.

There are some very good programs at the U of L, and some very bad ones, just like any University or College in Canada. The rule of buyer beware still applies.

My. God. Listened to about 90 seconds of the youtube interview. Only the CBC would air this nonsense.

I love that "thoroughly debunked" stuff. Poor Uncle
Osama really thinks that his men did it.

Nice bit about Che Guevara. He was one coooooool sadistic killer.

A nice touch: Che's unfortunate victims could
smell him when he entered a room.

As an alumnus of the U of L, I say that actually there are a number of first rate programs there. In Education, Business, Kinesiology, Psychology, Psychics you are not likely to find a better school in Alberta. In my time, only the U of S had a better Management program in Western Canada. The successes normally come from very small classes and access to professors who at that time, hadn't done a ton of research so they could devote their time to teaching.

However, as a liberal arts university it also has some seriously off-the-wall profs (Tony Hall being one of the current examples).

I never much liked the liberal arts courses that were part of the breadth requirement in the first 2 years of any degree but as I have got older, I think that having some wing-nut professors actually allowed me to get ready for the real world.

There will always be people who see the world differently than we do. But everyone needs to learn the skill of identifying the nutbars and handle their opinions accordingly. Hopefully, anyone who gets to complete their degree will have developed those critical thinking skills.

You know I have to agree with Vitruvius. What's up with this air of hostility to Universities anyways? What if say you shut down all social science, and leave science, engineering and medicine? So you'd have no economists, archeologists, or historians. Those are arguably useful people to have in a society no?

Maybe a better solution is to actually oh you know, arm kids with historical and analytical capabilities, the world view you want them to have and the confidence to defend it? Instead of having kids just running around believing every Sarah Palin/Tea Party/Religion of Peace press release that comes out saying "durrr lots of people there must be right!" Every movement is better off with bandwagon jumpers right?

Honestly how many crazy disagreeable person can you defund? You can't defund them all even if you did George Soros and Ted Turner will give all the moonbats 2 dollars for every 1 you take away. :D

M, in light of the fact that I made a very specific - pointedly specific - case, and not a general one, about a particular, vile, and unacceptably politicized and - I would suggest - anti-Semitic faculty at a particular University whose professors think Israel - who else - was involved in the 9/11 attacks, asking "what's with all this animosity to Universities anyway" is like asking critics of Obama or Chavez "What's with all this animosity to human beings, anyway?"

I didn't make one single reference to "universities" in the general sense.

Read Blakeney's article, and the prospectus for Hall's faculty; i's not "higher learning", it's sheer, hard-left political advocacy - nothing more, nothing less. Merely *noting* that isn't a shot at "universities" in the general sense.

Mohammed Elmasry is described as a teacher of microchip design at the University of Waterloo. One would think that he could be more useful imparting his knowledge in certain middle eastern locations where the state of technological progress has yet to advance past rubbing two sticks together. I.e., not Israel, but any or all of the others.

Look yeah it's hard left advocacy but like I said you can't defund them all. You can't honestly say that all universities have to be politically neutral. Always remember it goes both ways. What if someone taught accurate Islamic history. What with all the hot hot sex with children and throwing infidels into rivers. That's awfully bigoted and racist too. That will be the clarion call. The whole point of tenured professors is so that they can say these things without getting fired. Even if it doesn't work out how we like.

Besides the whole Zionist conspiracy junk is pretty widespread anyhow. If it's not this people will blame the j00s for other things, flotillas, accidental explosions on account of bringing grenades to weddings, hamas naval mines floating up to the sea shore and the list of "atrocities" goes on. It's like 10 years and you still see protest signs for a "real" 9/11 investigation. You'll never get rid of these guys, besides everyone knows the jews used an invisible spaceship and blasted the twin towers with an independence day laser. What did Bush know and when did he know it?

Speaking of truthers just look at the CBC the only time I've seen them say 'decide for yourself' is with a whole hour long segment of truther claptrap. Though the CBC should be defunded for other reasons.

Also I say university hate because I get the general feeling that when certain issues come up you get all the crazies with a chip on their shoulder coming out of the woodwork. What do we need universities for? Entitlement generation! blah blah. Golly I'm tired. Apologies one and all for my rambling.

Incidentally, has anyone else noticed how El Presidente Hugo seems to have been dropped like a hot rock by the "progressives"?

Is it possible his nutty and erratic behaviour has become too embarrassing even for them?

M, wouldn't it be great if universities and schools actually taught real Islamic history instead of hushing up any criticism of it. Reading Ayaan Hirsi Ali's books gives one a great insight into the history and mindset of the Islamic world. I could feel the room closing in with the rigid control of every facet of your life. It is the leftist cloud dwellers like Hall and his ilk that attack us for questioning the violence and threat of Islam.

Gives one a real understanding of why Pakistan and India are moving rapidly in such different directions, India into the modern age with ET's middle class and Pakistan dying as just another muslim hell hole.

Watching the students and the aging hippies waving their communist flags and chanting their mantra with their Che t-shirts at the G20 just makes wonder where they learned all this crap. More importantly why do they believe it.

Thanks for pointing this out EBD.
Does Barbie Hall have a brother?

My old university U of W doesn't get any money from me as long as "Every Jew's a righteous target" Elmasary has a job there.

Non Pecuniae Fiant - Let there be no money.

These folks are not just wrong, they are evil. Fire. Them. All.

what a couple of nut job's

Paul in calgary

Ahh, my Alma Mater.

When the U of L was founded (in the mid '60s) as a liberal arts university, it attracted many American communists fleeing LBJ's war. They came to dominate the faculty and propogated the "That's the way it's done here" mentality. I don't think that the U of L has a monopoly on megalomaniacal morons as many tenured leaches at many institutions spew their garbage behind the protection of a job for life with a fully indexed pension.

That having been said, the U of L does have a lot of good things going for it and many faculties are rated as some of the best in the country. The new Neurological Sciences faculty has attracted some of the best talent in North America and they are making a great deal of progress on Alzheimers'. After they conquer that, maybe they can take on the greater challenge of curing Leftist Derangement Syndrome!

Fiat Luxor? Let there be a hotel in Las Vegas? Or let there be an area in Egypt? Just guessing, but maybe the right (or wrong in the case of the U of Lethbridge) expression is Fiat Lux, let there be light.

"Globalization Studies" isn't a faculty at the University of Lethbridge at all, EBD, it's a program, which you would have known if you had read around the links you provided to us, where you would also have learned that said university's actual faculties, schools, and departments are listed here, and that (as Mike has noted) their motto is Fiat Lux, not the Fiat Luxor you incorrectly reported.

No-one is saying that you argued anything about all universities "in the general sense" per se. Nevertheless, you did argue that all parents should "take great pains" to steer all their children away from a whole university, and that the whole university should be defunded, based solely on the behaviour of a couple of professors in one program, the relative significance of which you have not delineated. I simply pointed out that the logical extension of your ill-considered argument would result in a lack of qualified useful people if your inadequate advice were taken.

You are attempting to claim that the entirety of said university is a hotbed of hard-left political advocacy without providing any evidence that, say, there are significant numbers of professors who are so inclined in, say, the departments of mathematics, physics, or chemistry, in the school of science, in the faculty of arts and science. So while you may be completely correct that said whole university is such a hotbed, you have not provided us with evidentiary data thereto, ergo in the interim your demagogic claim is simply libel.

If you had limited your attack to the particular professors or program at hand, I would not have entered into this discussion. However, behaviour like painting a whole institution with the brush of only one of its programs, which is all you have done so far, does no service to the right side of the aisle, be it conservative, libertarian, or otherwise. Rather, your arguments simply illustrate the kind of lack of due consideration that keeps our representatives in a minority position in parliament (or worse), because other members of the electorate, reasonably or otherwise, extrapolate your positions and those of the sanctimonious curmudgeons who hang around these parts as being typical of our side of the aisle, even though they are not.

I am ultra conservative. Liberals and socialists hate me. My colleagues hardly talk to me since i mentioned that Obama is evil. However, I am not so blinded by ideology to not recognize one thing - Conservative politicians lie cheat and steal as much as Liberal ones. ANYONE who believes ANYTHING the convertional media or politicians say is not attuned to the real world. There's lots of things I don't know, but i do know this; If those in power say that islamists flew planes into the WTC and pentagon, it's an absolute certainty that something else happened.

I mentioned the word "defunding" *once*, Vitruvius, and it was in a *quip*:

"What's the Latin phrase for 'Let there be defunding?"

Ha ha. You responded "maybe it's that doctors and engineers and other useful people shouldn't be trained in universities and then we could shut the universities down..."

That's a grossly overreaching and hysterical interpretation of the quip, IMO.

You wrote: "Nevertheless, you did argue that all parents should 'take great pains' to steer all their children away from a whole university..."

It wasn't an 'argument', Vitruvius, it was a statement of one person's opinion, an opinion which you seem to believe puts universities across the nation in peril. If I'd bothered to type out "In my opinion" in front of it, as in "In my opinion, anyone who has kids thinking of attending the University of Lethbridge should take great pains to steer them in some other direction," would you still take umbrage with the statement? If so, that would mean that you would be trying - once again - to enforce a condition wherein any thoughts and opinions that aren't your own are, in your mind, proscribed. If on the other hand the statement "In my opinion, anyone who has kids thinking of attending the University of Lethbridge" etc wouldn't be as offensive to you, then it's merely the case that you are forgetting, to the point of embarrassment, that that every non-factual statement of opinion is just that, an opinion. Take your pick.

Your ornately-mannered, rule-making, pontificating lectures are frankly tiresome, Vitruvius. You repeatedly get angry at others for not seeing the world as clearly and magnificently and comprehensively and logically as you do. You seem to either not accept or not understand that people pick their own spots, and their own fights - I don't tell people what they should do with their fists, or how they should react to those of others - entirely independent of whatever it is you're going on about on any given evening, and it will always remain thus.

The general nature of your tone, not just in this thread but in an ongoing way, reminds me of someone who finds a bar where the customers are, in his mind, not as enlightened and logical as he is, and then goes only to that bar in order to lecture others.

A great number of your responses to other commenters can be summed up in one sentence: "No! That's not my thought! You idiots!"

Which probably explains why you are the only guest blogger who disables comments on his posts.

Vitruvius, excellent posts.

As a U of L grad (and a grad of an Eastern school) I want to defend the school and throw some cold water on this idea that Lethbridge is some hotbed of radical leftists. When I attended, the poli-sci and history departments were very balanced, the student body de-certified from CFS, and the student paper and radio had their fair share of lefties, righties and other hacks. Heck, Preston Manning gave some of his first speeches (before anyone even knew what Reform was) to U of L poli-sci classes at the invite of profs. As others have noted, the school also has some good programs and I know quite a few alumni who have had very successful careers.

To one of the posters above, if you won't send your kids to any college or university that has some wierdo profs teaching nonsense courses then stop saving and go buy something you've always wanted cause that school doesn't exist anywhere in the world, including any technical school.

Arguing that your argument isn't arguing an argument is disingenuous, EBD. Responding to all my comments with varieties of ad hominem categorizations along the lines of "extemporizing" or "rule-making" or "hysterical" is tiresome. Your tendency to turn all intelligent discussions in the direction of fist fighting marks you as a belligerent bully, not as one who is thoughtfully considering the motions on the table. Perhaps, if you can't legitimately participate in and contribute to the discussion, you should get out of the kitchen. And if you think that I repeatedly get angry at others for not seeing the world as clearly and magnificently and comprehensively and logically as I do, then you are simply projecting; I eschew anger. Frankly, a great number of your responses to other commenters, sir, can be summed up in three sentences: "No! That's not my thought! You idiot!"

Perhaps you should turn off comments for your entries here.

INP @12:03 - by that logic, if Bush, Rice and Cheney held a press conference tomorrow confessing that, okay, yeah, we set the whole thing up with help from the Mossad, would you then be inclined to start considering the possibility that al-Quaida may have been involved?

It seems apparent that the main aim of the modern university is to turn out "right-thinking" little Chomskys and other functional Marxists ... er ... postmodernists ... er ... multiculturalists. The hard sciences of the university within the university should not be thrown out with the bathwater but can anything be done to reduce the former without affecting the latter? I say defund the so-called arts and let them pay their own way. Let's start with the CBC.

Vitruvius: Do you consider the following statement to be an 'argument'?

"If I were a parent, I would strongly advise my kids to not eat too much fast food."

Chris in the Bridge @ 11:18 AM: "When the U of L was founded (in the mid '60s) as a liberal arts university, it attracted many American communists fleeing LBJ's war."

Yup. Not just U of L, though. All across Canada. It certainly helped to raise the level of anti-Americanism to pack-of-banshees-screeching status. IMHO, the only hope there is for some faculties in the Liberal Arts is to see these fools retire and hope the up and coming crop aren't as radical in their beliefs.

Just as an aside, about five or six years ago, when I still lived in Alberta, I was in a bookshop in Edmonton that is (was?) close to the U of A. It had stacks and stacks and stacks of Noam Chomsky's books on the shelves. I don't know whether that reflected the owners political persuasion, or if it was a reflection of brisk sales to the university set, an appetite no doubt fueled by social science professors.

Of course it is, EBD. You're arguing that in your opinion it would
be better if your kids did not eat too much fast food. I agree with
you in this case, but that doesn't mean it's not an Argument, n:

1. 1. A discussion in which disagreement is expressed; a debate.
   2. A quarrel; a dispute.
   3. Archaic. A reason or matter for dispute or contention: "sheath'd their swords for lack of argument" (Shakespeare).
2. 1. A course of reasoning aimed at demonstrating truth or falsehood: presented a careful argument for extraterrestrial life.
   2. A fact or statement put forth as proof or evidence; a reason: The current low mortgage rates are an argument for buying a house now.
   3. A set of statements in which one follows logically as a conclusion from the others.
3. 1. A summary or short statement of the plot or subject of a literary work.
   2. A topic; a subject: "You and love are still my argument" (Shakespeare).
4. Logic. The minor premise in a syllogism.
5. Mathematics.
   1. An independent variable of a function.
   2. The angle of a complex number measured from the positive horizontal axis.
6. Computer Science. A value used to evaluate a procedure or subroutine.
7. Linguistics. In generative grammar, any of various positions occupied by a noun phrase in a sentence.

[Middle English, from Old French, from Latin argūmentum, from arguere, to make clear.]

But aren't you getting a little off topic?

As a U of L grad (and a grad of an Eastern school) I want to defend the school and throw some cold water on this idea that Lethbridge is some hotbed of radical leftists. When I attended, the poli-sci and history departments were very balanced, the student body de-certified from CFS, and the student paper and radio had their fair share of lefties, righties and other hacks. Heck, Preston Manning gave some of his first speeches (before anyone even knew what Reform was) to U of L poli-sci classes at the invite of profs.

True. During much of my time there the Poli Sci dep't was chaired by David Elton, who co-founded the Canada West Foundation and was hardly shy about his centre-right perspective.

It's absolutely off topic, Vitruvius, but it's a dead-ish thread at this point.

/:>˚>

Btw, why DO you disable the comments function on your posts?

I have disabled comments in some of my entries, EBD, typically those of the "archival material" variety (such as the Yiddish Radio Project, the The DJ Vitruvius TV Theme Songs Quiz, the Two Fat Ladies, and The Goon Show archives), because in my opinion (in other words, I'm arguing that) I simply don't want to have to put up with the negativity of those who would come in and shit on my rug (if you'll pardon my language). Those who appreciate my work send me email to that effect, and that's good enough for me. In other words, in those selected cases, I prepared the material for my enjoyment, and I'm willing to share it with others who may enjoy it, but I'm not willing to argue about it. That would spoil my fun, as Jennifer would say, and life's too short for that, as Clarissa would say.

(*cough cough*)

Quite. The smoke is so bad in Edmonton right now
that I can't even see across the river valley. My eyes
are watering and I'm indoors. But it smells great!

They say I shouldn't exercise outdoors. Heh. Perfect.

My alma mater. The University of Lethbridge is a great school, depending on your major. And I don’t doubt this posting one bit! It is indeed a cesspool of Marxist socialism, as I regretfully discovered when I had to venture outside of my economics courses to complete my electives. I’m not convinced that there is any Uni in Canada doesn’t have a cesspool of some sort in liberal arts faculties, but I wouldn’t be surprised if the U of L is one of the worst. I’m not sure what was most shocking: the blatant, outright promotion of karl marx by my professors, or the enthusiastic agreement by the bulk of the student body. I can’t remember a time I’ve shook my head so much as I did sitting in those liberal electives. My only allies were a few other economics majors trying to knock off electives, who were clearly just as distraught as me.

I only wonder how David Clearwater managed to keep his name out of all this. My most regretful elective course of all of them! I paid tuition for a “new media” class, only to learn how to “effectively” protest WTO and G-x meetings. Clearwater seemed to be a big supporter of the 1999 Seattle thugs, taking up valuable course time to have us watch “This is what democracy looks like.” Thank you, Mr. Clearwater. What an excellent skill for me to take through life. His blatant anti-Americanism was particularly helpful to me in my quest to discern what qualifies someone as a bigot.

I wouldn’t necessarily warn parents off from sending their children to uleth. It really is a great school, *depending on your major* (as I believe would be the case with any Uni). But better go into those electives with some solid, principled ideologies and a backbone. It’s good to be aware of the level of crazy that is out there, just be careful not to get brainwashed and join them.

Vito, forgive me if I touch on a sensitive point here, but I must ask: do laughing friends deride tears you cannot hide?