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Edited on Tue Sep-11-07 06:09 PM by igil
don't actually know. They think, they opine, they conjecture, they hypothesize. "Know" is a bit stronger than anything they can actually muster. And that's why nobody that actually has any expertise in the area is likely to ever use the word.
Second, it's not his bailiwick, not his area of expertise, and not why he's there to answer questions. Asking him about home decor is as appropriate. It's more *Warner's* job to know than it is Petraeus'.
When I was asked this kind of question on my comps, questions marginally related to anything I should know (at best), I considered it academic hazing. That's what it was--an attempt to show who really has the power, an attempt to humble and humiliate in the name of ego, to show the disrespect that the faculty assumed their prerogative to give and hoping for a bad reaction so they could punish any disrespect shown them. It was common in my department ... but then again my department was infested with people (I use the term loosely) who made some Auschwitz guards look like sweethearts. It made outside/non-departmental dissertation committee members leery of signing on, and (in my case) made the outside member wonder about the faculty's sanity. Seeing those he considered 'friends' act in that way made him reconsider his friendship.
Then again, the structure of academia is a holdover from feudalism.
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