I don't recall Uncle Ken's story of the Berkeley arrest but some aspects of couch sitting sound familiar. Maybe he already told it, maybe he didn't, but that's the nice thing about stories, the way they are told a little differently each time. Some details are dropped, others are added, and this was a good version of the tale.
As soon as he mentioned the first rock thrown by a hippy I thought, Uh oh, a police provocateur. Infiltration of radical groups, by either informants or undercover cops, was not uncommon in those days and they have been known to start a lot of trouble. Or so I've read, but maybe it was part of the fake news of the day. Group behavior can get screwy very quickly and I bet that they never found the guy who threw that first rock. It would be different today with plenty of video footage for all to peruse, with some goofball perpetrators uploading their misdeeds to Facebook. "Look what I did today! The cops will never catch me!" as they wonder who is pounding on their front door.
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There seems to be a consensus that thought precedes language but I'm wondering if language determines how we think about things. My inner dialogues are always in English except when it comes to problem solving. If I get stuck on something my thinking involves images or symbols in addition to language and it's not something I can control I let ideas wander a bit and see where it takes me because strict logic or linear thinking doesn't always lead to a solution. Then I wonder about folks who are multi-lingual and fluent in many languages. What language do you suppose they think in, one of them, all of them, or what? And then I wonder about languages that are based on symbols as opposed to an alphabet, say Chinese compared to German. Are the thought processes the same when the users are thinking about things or solving problems? We might not know until AI research is further along and then we can determine if the Chinese AI is smarter than the German one. If the AI already knows all the languages I wonder if the answer will depend on the language of the question that is asked.
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...because neither dawg seems interested in liberals.
I just don't like the word; it is too limiting for me as are most one word descriptors. Being liberal is a quality and a matter of degree, I think. Even the most right-wing conservative may have a little bit of liberal in him when it comes to certain things and I don't know where you draw the line. Using single word descriptors is a handy way to marginalize people you don't like or agree with. Commie! Fag! Spic! Democrat! It just doesn't work for me and I find that it is lacking in the advancement of meaningful dialogue. It's a sign that one's mind is already made up and further discussion is likely to be pointless but I could be way off base on this. There's a distinction between being open-minded and empty-headed and I sometimes fail to tell the difference.
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I didn't get around to having any black-eyed peas today for good luck in this new year, but maybe it only works if you're living in the South. I maintain that pickled herring is a worthy substitute for us Northern types; I just made that up but traditions have to start someplace, don't they?
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