A clear case for my Delete key, me-thinks!
JOHN BIBBY
PS: Away now till September: please cc any urgent emails to
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-----Original Message-----
From: email list for Radical Statistics [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On
Behalf Of PHL
Sent: 18 July 2007 12:31
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Whose freedom?
Hi
For ten years I had the honour and the pleasure to be the Rad Stats
Administrator. With no diminution of my admiration of the work Alison does
in administering the list (a pretty thankless task), the other admin is the
dull routine of receiving and paying in money on behalf of Rad Stats,
responding to requests of all kinds, referring things up to the Troika,
putting the organisation in behind the Conferences, producing the mailings,
etc., etc., etc. A job now ably taken on by someone else. The point is
there is a real material organisation behind the virtual. Serviced by real
material volunteer radical statisticians supported by an administrator.
Something beyond spewing out idle thoughts in an idle moment. I worked for
it because from its inception in 1975 (?) it was and is part of that frail
counter-hegemonic infrastructure that is vital to a (hopefully) better and
more humane human future.
These are bad times but the wheel is turning - a little - again. Meanwhile,
personally I would be ruthless with keyboard jockeys who feel they can
exercise their "freedom of speech" anywhere they damn well choose at no
material or organisational cost to themselves. Especially if we know that
the consequences of their "analysis" is the massive, often fatal, denial of
"freedom of speech" to untold others. But a non-statistician I do take
consolation from the fact that this kind of exchange seems to have an
a\nnual cycle strongly linked to the academic year - notably those brief
periods of lull in activity between marking and results.
Best wishes to my good friends in Rad Stats - as you know, the real work you
do matters.
Pete
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