Saturday, July 30, 2005

My stance...

I did say that I would express my opinions about the two things I mentioned in my last post - so here it is!

The first instance involving the policeman annoyed me greatly. It annoyed me because to me it looked like the man was simply stopped because the policeman assumed he was a terrorist because he was a muslim. If that was true then to me it was wrong. Ofcourse there is every chance that I am looking at the situation totally out of context and that I am the one who is actually showing racial tendencies by assuming such a thing - it is just as likely that he was an old man who had just lost something on the train and was simply appealing to the policeman for help. I am quite ashamed to admit that I would assume such a thing. A point to work on...

On the second incident...

"Freedom of speech" and "racial villification" seem to be on either side of a blurry line. I haven't heard the whole story properly and so I don't truely have a stance. If Andrew Fraser says "I have proof that black populations increase crime rates", I want to see that proof. Statistically, his argument seems flawed to me. Sure, you might find a correlation between crime and race, but I am sure the correlation between poverty vs crime and poverty vs race are just as statistically significant. I just want to know if his research took all of that into account. As a former student from Macquarie, what embarasses me more than Andrew Fraser expressing his opinions, is the fact that he would base those opinions on very poorly conducted research!

Andrew Fraser is entitled to his opinion - he is 61 and I can excuse him for having opinions that are different from what most of us beleive in. My opinions differ from my parents! To me it looks like he is using statistics (and a poorly designed experiment) to reinforce his beleifs - this unnecessarily draws the university into the picture because now it looks as if the university is supporting such experimentation when in reality it may not be...

I guess my stance on the issue is still not set simply because I don't think that I know enough about it to say "I believe strongly that...".

Friday, July 29, 2005

Scary...

I have been noticing subtle things that are starting to worry me just slightly...

This morning as I got out of the train to get to the hospital, I saw two policeman at the station. They had with them a man who was dressed in an Afghani traditional dress - cap and all. To me he looked like a perfectly harmless citizen, however, he was stopped by the policeman and the policemen were on the phone.

The man looked extremely embarassed by all this and it made me feel extremely sad and not to mention annoyed to see this.

On a related but different note, I was listening to the talk about Andrew Fraser yesterday. Andrew Fraser (I think I remember his name correctly...), is a professor from Macquaire University who apparently expressed a few opinions that were quite different to those held by the general public. He claimed that the growing "black" population in Australia was not healthy and research shows that places with higher black populations tend to have higher crime rates. The University first allowed for him to express his opinions on the basis of "freedom of speech" and later asked him to tone it down a bit or retire as the university seems to feel that it's reputation is at stake.

Just two random things that have got me slightly worried... I am yet to express my stance on both these incidents and will do it later today once I get home!!

Finished reading "Brave New World" by Aldous Huxley and "Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince" (by J.K. Rowling). Reading "Angels and Demons" by DAn Brown and attempting to read "War and Peace" by Leo Tolstoy (again!)!!!

Better get back to my cells!

Saturday, July 09, 2005

Bye Bye

My parents are both in India now... and I miss them very much :'(

Update: 11:00am on Saturday morning... and I am at the hospital! This experiment had better work!