Chris I completely agree with your assessment of the base-rates of such events and with the reason why some folks felt it necessary to bring weapons to rallies in an attempt to provoke the secret service (which, I might add, borders on stupidity on several fronts). I would question the memory of anyone attending those rallies with "loaded automatic weapons". I don't have such a memory. My memory is of people attending with handguns (holstered- is my memory) and with some long arms displayed- also I do remember more than once seeing an AR type rifle. But it isn't possible to tell that they are loaded or not without specifically checking the chamber (thus the rule of assuming they are when handling them). It isn't possible either to look at an AR style weapon and easily tell if it is automatic or semi-automatic. I realize that I might be picking nits to some folks but the phrasing of some of those things is quite important for political reasons on either side of the gun issue. Tim _______________________________ Timothy O. Shearon, PhD Professor, Department of Psychology The College of Idaho Caldwell, ID 83605 email: [email protected]
teaching: intro to neuropsychology; psychopharmacology; general; history and systems "You can't teach an old dogma new tricks." Dorothy Parker ________________________________________ From: Christopher Green [[email protected]] Sent: Saturday, August 11, 2012 8:24 AM To: Teaching in the Psychological Sciences (TIPS) Subject: Re: [tips] Ever Worry About Your Letters of Recommendation? On 2012-08-11, at 7:53 AM, Michael Palij wrote: But why should we be concerned about such issues, right? These events (i.e., mass murders by graduate students) are rare events, so we can treat the probability of any our students potentially being a criminal or a mass murders as essentially zero, right? To be statistically serious for a moment, it is an event that has such a low base rate that one would almost certainly commit a false positive were one to go out on a limb and predict such a thing, no matter how bizarrely a student (or any other human was acting (short of walking into a crowded building with loaded guns -- and even then, remember the guys during the last presidential election campaign who attended Obama rallies with loaded automatic weapons strapped to their backs with the aim not of killing, but of provoking the secret service into action in order to somehow "prove" that Obama's ultimate aims was to confiscate everyone's fire arms?) Chris --- Christopher D. Green Department of Psychology York University Toronto, ON M3J 1P3 Canada [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]> http://www.yorku.ca/christo/ ========================== --- You are currently subscribed to tips as: [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>. To unsubscribe click here: http://fsulist.frostburg.edu/u?id=13545.bae00fb8b4115786ba5dbbb67b9b177a&n=T&l=tips&o=19657 (It may be necessary to cut and paste the above URL if the line is broken) or send a blank email to leave-19657-13545.bae00fb8b4115786ba5dbbb67b9b1...@fsulist.frostburg.edu<mailto:leave-19657-13545.bae00fb8b4115786ba5dbbb67b9b1...@fsulist.frostburg.edu> --- You are currently subscribed to tips as: [email protected]. To unsubscribe click here: http://fsulist.frostburg.edu/u?id=13090.68da6e6e5325aa33287ff385b70df5d5&n=T&l=tips&o=19668 or send a blank email to leave-19668-13090.68da6e6e5325aa33287ff385b70df...@fsulist.frostburg.edu
