Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!think.com!samsung!olivea!oliveb!bunker!hcap!hnews!129!89!William.Wilson
From: William.Wilson@f89.n129.z1.fidonet.org (William Wilson)
Newsgroups: misc.handicap
Subject: Re: blind politics
Message-ID: <16540@handicap.news>
Date: 28 Jun 91 14:48:07 GMT
Sender: wtm@bunker.isc-br.com
Reply-To: William.Wilson@f89.n129.z1.fidonet.org
Organization: FidoNet node 1:129/89 - BlinkLink, Pittsburgh PA
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Index Number: 16540

[This is from the Blink Talk Conference]

Jeff,
     I don't usually leave messages just to show my agreement with
someone on an issue, but I have been in total accord with you in most
everything you've posted to date, and figured I could cover it all in a
single message, so why not?
    As others have said, I understand your concerns over your use of
violence against that hooligan who was pestering your dog, but agree
with them that there is just as good a chance you thwarted him from
messing with one of us in the future as there is a chance he will take
it out on one of us.  Likewise, I can totally empathasize with your
defensive nature concerning your four legged companion, as I am the same
way!  Heck, I get pretty nasty when someone has provoked a little squeel
of pain from LeeRoy quite by accident, like stepping on his tail in the
dark, I don't even want to think about how ugly I would get if someone
was intentionally trying to hurt him.
    Finally, your message to Beth about the misuse of statistics sounds
much like what I've put out in a paper or two in my college days!  Not
only are the statistics being casually thrown out in the echo concerning
pornography, however, they are being just as casually dismissed when
they don't support a position that people want to take!  For example,
when statistics suggest that on the average braille reading is slower
than print reading, the methodology  of the experimenters is assumed to
be at fault, but when one wants to believe that blind people can exit an
airplane crash as effectively as a sighted person, statements like
"statistics show that blind people can open an emergency door as quickly
as sighted people" are made.  Tell me, can you even begin to conceive
what it would involve to design an experiment to compare the safety
factor with the single variable being whether the person sitting in the
emergency row were sighted or not, and whose findings would be
statistically significant?
    Yes Jeff, I am very glad to have your board as our northern link,
and definately, very proud of your origin line!
                                                        Willie

... BlinkTalk, Dr. Deb and Silver in Pittsburgh!

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