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Iranian MIT student goes home over break, denied return for spring semester

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Re: Iranian MIT student goes home over break, denied return for spring semester

#281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you want to be pedantic, a minority voted for Hillary too.

It's not pedantry. "Minority" is not a synonym for "small," neither in its official definition nor how it's commonly used. And yes, a minority voted for Hillary too. Is that supposed to be some sort of gotcha?

It is pedantry. We are arguing the definition of "minority" when in this context enough people in the US voted for Trump to make him President.

Re: Iranian MIT student goes home over break, denied return for spring semester

#282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not pedantry. "Minority" is not a synonym for "small," neither in its official definition nor how it's commonly used. And yes, a minority voted for Hillary too. Is that supposed to be some sort of gotcha?

It is pedantry. We are arguing the definition of "minority" when in this context enough people in the US voted for Trump to make him President.

If you're going to quote statistics to the tenth of a percent, you should also be very comfortable using terms like minority, majority, and plurality appropriately. This doesn't undermine your position at all, or the fact that Trump won the election fairly as the process is defined. Why argue it? It just makes you look unreasonable and needlessly argumentative.

Re: Iranian MIT student goes home over break, denied return for spring semester

#283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not pedantry. "Minority" is not a synonym for "small," neither in its official definition nor how it's commonly used. And yes, a minority voted for Hillary too. Is that supposed to be some sort of gotcha?

It is pedantry. We are arguing the definition of "minority" when in this context enough people in the US voted for Trump to make him President.

The entire point of the original comment up there is that most Americans didn't vote for him. Nobody was arguing the definition of "minority" until you incorrectly said the number didn't qualify, so if anyone's being pedantic, it's you.

Re: Iranian MIT student goes home over break, denied return for spring semester

#284
post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My understanding of that event is that protestors were starting fires and the police arrested 230 people near the incident. Of those 6 were journalists. I think that's somewhat different than police targeting journalists for their viewpoints, of which I don't see evidence.

You're right we are early into that event. It's still not clear how the arrest played out: (a) they were grabbed along with "rioters" and later turned out to be journalists on the side or (b) they were with media badges and video cameras clearly covering the riots on the ground, then still arrested as a sign of force. Sadly journalists get arrested relatively often, but it's important to insist that medics should be…

um aren't you missing "or c) they were actively rioting along with hundreds of others"?

Re: Iranian MIT student goes home over break, denied return for spring semester

#285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Overall, I don't see this as such a bad thing... But every major decision is going to have its outliers. This is a temp 90-day ban on non-reciprocating countries (and countries of concern), which the FBI said they are not able to properly vet (because those countries will not provide background info on the applicant, and some other reasons). It only affects non-citizens such as visitors, students, or employment visas…

> This is a temp 90-day ban Is 90 days a hard limit, or could another order introduce a further 90 days?

It's an executive order, so outside a court challenge that rules this whole class of procedures on immigration unconstitutional, he can do this ad infinitum. But then of course he also frequently invokes Andrew Jackson, whom history remembers as the populist who told the Supreme Court to fuck off when he was behaving unconstitutionally and proceeded to commit genocide against Native Americans.

Re: Iranian MIT student goes home over break, denied return for spring semester

#286
post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The quality of a democracy is defined by how well it protects minorities.

Trump voters are a minority, they should be defended also. Geek philosophy (let's pick Yoda this time) applies to Hillary and Donald voters: Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering. Attack the policies, not the voters, not the president. Convincing will happen with compelling arguments that demonstrate these policies are flawed.

Implying Trump voters aren't already defended? They are not some oppressed group.

Re: Iranian MIT student goes home over break, denied return for spring semester

#287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How are these polls unlike all the other polls that e.g. predicted Trump will lose by a large margin? Most polls are quite vague approximations, when they aren't just lying with statistics. And you can easily frame them in all kinds of ways by how one asks the questions and how they present an issue.

Those polls were broadly accurate, as has been heavily reported. In particular, the outcome tracked the national polls, and upsets were targeted and involved very narrow margins. But, of course, none of your comment answers the questions I posed. I'm less interested in litigating abstractions and more in the specifics. Care to take a whack at addressing them?

>Those polls were broadly accurate, as has been heavily reported.

The polls about The Donald losing were also heavily reported: http://www.politicususa.com/2016/10/26/polls-shatter-myth-pr...

In any case, unlike you, I'm more interested in abstractions based on large historical body of evidence (for not trusting pollsters in general) than in specifics (evaluating a particular poll, especially in hot political and partisan issues, which presupposes that I can trust what those that created it say, that is not only trusting the methodology as they describe it, but also that they followed it -- and we obviously have no way of knowing the latter).

How did you verify the poll? Because this is not some scientific paper where one can retract the steps and redo the numbers. Just trusting the methodology reported (a meagre page with a 10-mile high view of the procedure and no specifics in the case of Pew Research Center, for example?) and having faith that no poll and/or research center would ever misreport or falsify?

Maybe my mistrust is wrong, but I don't see the trust as being any better, especially with so many off the mark polls that been shown in practice to be so (the actually verifiable and falsifiable ones, like the ones on voting preferences).

Re: Iranian MIT student goes home over break, denied return for spring semester

#288

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not America that did this it's a minority of America. The rest of us feel like prisoners in our own country when faced with this kind of complete and utter insanity.

Many HN readers (and Dem voters) are among the tech elite who at best benefit (and at worst promote) the fundamentalist neoliberal-corporate ideology that has crushed the US citizenry and contributed substantially to the von Clownstick revolt. They were the useful idiots content to keep their heads down, buy shitloads of expensive tech gadgetry, pay the elevated rents that dehomed locals, and obediently wrote code wh…

I'm rather sick of being blamed for Trump's election. How about the people who voted for the candidate from the party of personal responsibility take the responsibility for choosing who they voted for?

Re: Iranian MIT student goes home over break, denied return for spring semester

#289
What are the mechanics of this ban? I see student was denied from connecting flight. What happens if said student travels to, I don't know, Germany first. Spends there a day or two and hops on a flight to US of A?

I ask because I understand ban is for admission of refugees and travellers from seven countries. Not nationalities.

Re: Iranian MIT student goes home over break, denied return for spring semester

#290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>And a very large majority wants no immigration whatsoever from any of those nations affected nor from any of their neighbors save Israel. American immigration policy towards Israelis is essentially the same as towards anyone else. My (Jewish Israeli) coworker from grad-school wanted to work for Google in Mountain View, but the company couldn't swing him a visa. He stayed at Technion to do a PhD. He now says that he…

If you're one the best and brightest abroad, why would you trust staking a future in this country anymore? Even if what we're seeing now recedes and fades. Huge damage to our future of this country, beyond just the "temporary"-so-far order.

I'm not sure it's that easy. For one, it might not be a lot better where you're from. But more importantly, your presence also can influence (small impact on an individual's level of course) where things are going. There's also the issue that depending on your field there's simply more interesting jobs available locally in the US than in a lot of other countries.

I moved to the US ~a year ago, now as a permanent resident. Debating on what to do if things continue going down along the current course.

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