That's like getting rid of Jack and the Beanstalk because a Giant gets killed because he chased the thief that stole from him!
And the lines never depict violence, per se. He just says if I was going to confront you, we would be on equal footing.
The 'Threat Assessment Team' which obviously has WAY too much time on its hands is probably because of the whole 9/11 thing and given how often schools get shot up in America... /sigh
I know seriously, I mean what's next? They're going to edit the history books so that they say that no one got hurt and everyone died of natural causes? Are they going to mark down professors for having Genghis Khan posters since he was a murderous maniac? I mean I could sort of get where they were coming from with the first poster but objecting to the second poster is just plain retarded and further reinforces the point it was making.
I say the professor put up the infamous Pol Pot quote "If your life has no benefit then your death has no cost", that's in my bio in Xbox Live and no one seems to care.
I'm not surprised by this. For years university campuses have been making this kind of move, the administration and typical student body both. I don't just mean this kind of over-sensitivity, but just intolerance in general.
Another example, disagree, even intellectually, with people who rally/demonstrate over something. Most don't care how well articulated you are, the instant you disagree you'll be shouted down, and ushered off. So yeah, university campuses are no longer the places of forward, tolerant thinking that they used to be.
Eh, if there are rules against that sort of thing, the guy knew what he was getting into.
Now, if he wants to challenge the rule, sure, but do that beforehand, not as a reaction. If it's a stupid rule, it was stupid rule before your poster got banned.
If there aren't actual rules, and someone just decided it on the spot...sucks.
Here's the really funny thing about that. Because it's a state school, the first amendment actually applies, meaning even if there is a rule, it's invalid on it's face.
It doesn't surprise me. For as much as universities spout stuff like they are a free campus and accepting of all, and have diverse curriculums that give freedom to the students on how to run their college paths, there are major restrictions on everything.
They talk about how their campuses are free thinking for people to be open and develop new ideas and push boundaries. The problem is that students only get to have free thinking, new ideas, and push boundaries, as long as the universities deem the free thinking, new ideas, and pushed boundaries as proper under what the universities want.
Redlin5 said:
Apparently it is a miracle I'm still alive as this show seems to be crucial to the human condition
You better watch it or the men with hands of blue will come and get you. =P
I do recommend watching it. The sad part is I'm not recommending a show that lasted for seven seasons or something.
Firefly was one of those Fox cancellation tragedies(though that is common knowledge), it only had 14 episodes, some of which never got to air, then of course there is the movie. To watch the whole run, it would take up to maybe 15 hours.
The most depressing part is that it could have went on after the cancellation. The Sci-Fi Channel(when it was still spelled correctly)partnered up with the show creator Joss Whedon to buy the show back from Fox to keep it alive, but Fox decided to be a dick and say no.
"Let's be sacrificers, but not butchers, Caius.
. . . And, gentle friends,
Let's kill him boldly, but not wrathfully;
Let's carve him as a dish fit for the gods,
Not hew him as a carcass fit for hounds;
And let our hearts, as subtle masters do,
Stir up their servants to an act of rage,
And after seem to chide 'em."
"The first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers."
For once I don't think the American authorities are being too unreasonable. That poster could be conceived as a threat, and with the US' idiotic gun laws, quite a real one.
The fact that virtually any citizen over the age of 21 can easily access a fire arm, and by extension anyone who can't easily own one can easily steal one, especially from say student housing. Why do you think America has such a ridiculously high gun crime rate? (It's 5th highest in the world in terms of death by fire arm, that's not including any armed robberies or assaults).
So, Switzerland sure is filled with crime with it's massive amount of guns.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_politics_in_Switzerland
Wait, no, in fact it had more knife crime than gun crime. Guns don't cause the crime, social issues cause the crime and guns are simply a tool. There are issues with lack of education, poverty, and other such major issues in the United States that lead to gun crime through illegally acquired firearms. If you magically took away all the guns, the people committing the crimes would still have their reasons, be it greed or desperation, and they would simply find another end to their means.
The reason I used Switzerland as an example is to prove a point, that in a nation with high individual wealth, crime is less likely to happen.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_%28nominal%29_per_capita
Notice Switzerland's rank goes between 4 and 5 on all three measures, compared to the US's rank of 10 to 12.
I am far from a redneck or a crazy person, I personally find going to the firing range and firing pistols to be fun and a good bonding experience with my father. However, if it is not already necessary, a basic firearms safety lesson and background check should be necessary to buy a firearm. I see no reason why a civilian can't protect themselves and their family.
As for the poster, I believe the Chief of Police is overreacting to the situation, but the Professor could be less of a dickhead about it. Instead of a passive aggressive poster he should have gone directly to the authorities and made his case then, instead of lowing himself to petty mudslinging.
I'm not surprised by this. For years university campuses have been making this kind of move, the administration and typical student body both. I don't just mean this kind of over-sensitivity, but just intolerance in general.
Another example, disagree, even intellectually, with people who rally/demonstrate over something. Most don't care how well articulated you are, the instant you disagree you'll be shouted down, and ushered off. So yeah, university campuses are no longer the places of forward, tolerant thinking that they used to be.
So true, they have become ridged. That can be seen in how they add more and more to the college core curriculum, that the core coming close to being more classes than the majors people take, which makes no sense because a major means the bulk of the student's studies.
The US national average for people to finish a four year degree, is 6 or more years. I'm part of that average, it took me six years to get mine. The average would go down considerably if they cut the core curriculum in half and removed unneeded requirements like mandatory Physical Educations class along with a Health class. I took for the vast majority of the time I was in grade school, I had to have P.E. and Health, by the time I'm in college, I am an adult, if I choose not to exercise regularly, that is my decision. Besides, every Health class I've been in, is the same stuff in each class, the same definitions, the same healthy eating lecture, the same bull broken BIM calculation, and the same drugs are bad for you shtick. The only reason they make these classes mandatory is because the amount of people that actually want to take such classes is very small, which means Professors/Teachers of those classes wouldn't have as many classes to teach, which would mean they get paid less, because the work less.
Colleges have become more about the bottom line lets make as much money as we can, rather than we believe that higher education is most important and shouldn't be bogged down by stupid read tape and requirements.
Situations like this are just further arguments for me to use to gather support for stateless society. In a stateless society you wouldnt have this crap going on
Seems logical, what with all the school shootings and whatnot. Better safe than sorry. A shame he didn't think stuff through. You know. Like professors are supposed to do?
Actually, no. School shootings are exceedingly rare. The misconception comes from the fact that when one does happen, it's sensationalized by the media to the point where everyone in the developed world has heard about it. It gets so saturated into people's brains, they begin to think that students are under constant threat of of being shot in study hall. In reality, your chances of being killed from being struck by lightning here in the States, are several orders of magnitude higher than being shot in school. Hell, I'll point out that in the UK, more people were killed in one soccer game gone wrong (Sheffield, 1989), than in the ten worst US school shootings combined. (Also, the worst school shooting of all time actually took place in Russia, and was horrific.)
But, before I derail the thread, ON FUCKING TOPIC:
This is stupid in every sense the word. Here's something for consideration:
Okay, so what would it say if the professor put this on his door? What's the message now, other than the fact he likes Firefly? Gosh, he might actually be promoting whoring it up, or at the very least promiscuity in women. I don't think so, but someone in the university with a stick up their ass probably would. And what is the message of Capt. Mal's quote in the original image? It can basically be summed up as: "I do not needlessly kill people and am not a coward. I will only kill you if you're coming at me." This is far from creating a "threat", as least in terms of an, actually fairly reasonable, ideal espoused by a fictional character.
But here's the worst thing about this: The biggest insult isn't to the individual professor, Firefly fans, or even free speech. The most massive insult in this is to the students themselves. What the actions of the university police are ultimately saying to the student body is "You're such idiots, that if you saw a poster from a fucking television show in your prof's office, you could be stupid enough to think he might shoot you." Either that or: "You're such mindlessly impressionable morons; so incapable of your own intelligent, rational thinking, that this poster could incite you to create violence." That's who should be the most pissed about this; the students. So in the words of Ron Burgundy, Stay classy Go fuck yourselves University of Wisconsin.
For once I don't think the American authorities are being too unreasonable. That poster could be conceived as a threat, and with the US' idiotic gun laws, quite a real one.
No it can't be a conceived threat, because if that poster is a threat than most of the literature taught in college would be a conceived threat. Quotes from Shakespeare that are full of violence and hilarious vulgarity I had seen on the walls of one of my literature professors, under such fascist ideas on what can be put on the wall, he would have had to take them down. Though, since the Firefly poster isn't Shakespeare, I guess it isn't appropriate. Wrong
The problem is that the poster is appropriate, because Miller is a Theater professor. The quote comes from a very popular television show. It is appropriate because it conveys drama, and shows the importance of well structured dialogue. That line shows intimidation, but with a sense of equality because Captain Mal is telling the other character that if he kills him, it will be in a fair fight. It is a classic example of proper evolved writing, the writer doesn't tell the viewer/reader what is going on, the writer shows it.
The violence isn't direct, it is implied, but still it doesn't matter because it is just a poster. It isn't like it is posted on the door of the office of a grade school counselor. The people going to the school are adults, if an adult can't see that that poster is just a poster, there is something wrong with that person mentally, maybe that person's brain didn't develop in childhood, because complaining and taking down that poster was childish.
Edit: At no point does gun laws have anything to do with this. It shouldn't even be on the mind.
I understand the mentality that went into this. Paranoia is like starch; if the heat is on it has a tendency to bubble over. But we all sit here laughing about the world-ending fascist malarky ruining our creative expressivism and yet there are probably one or two people keeping quiet and choosing not to drag personal and national tragedy down to our level in an attempt to rebuke our galloping pig-headedness.
The fact that Professor Miller chose to fight the issue brought against him and had a counter-point poster waiting on standby just proves that he was hoping for some kind of issue to be raised: instead of being logical he chose to be childish and show off to his fellow idiots.
It's a poster, not a teaching aid or a personal philosophy (if it is, you've got bigger problems than people asking you to remove posters from an office space that isn't your property) and all things considered it isn't one of Captain Tightpant's more memorable quotes. If you wanna plaster your house with pop-culture poignancy, then all the power to you, but the Brownshirts aren't going to march on the U of W because they're asking you to have some simple sensitivity to the elephant in the room.
Words like "kill" and "school" should never go together. If only to respect those for whom such issues are no laughing matter.
As a police officer i feel confident when I say:
The original complaint was petty and shame on that chief for wasting her time even worrying about it.
Shame on the professor for doing something immature to retaliate instead of going thru the proper channels in the first place.
Shame on that chief AGAIN for taking the bait and TRIPLE shame on that chief for not adhering the constitution or the letter of the law. I have never heard of disorderly conduct being charged for a sign on a person's own property/space. Get some perspective Lisa.
This is a HUGE waste of the university (and by extension the student's) money shame on everyone.
Oh yeah it's a STATE run school it's going to be hard for you to argue that they can't have freedom of speech.
Sparrow said:
On a lighter note, what in the hell is a "threat assessment team" and why would any university need one?
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