What would you say ...

There was a talk today at work, by a chap who has been a professor (not emeritus) in the same institution, for 56 years. (That means that when I was born, he had already been doing research for longer than I've been doing research now.) Anyway, that's not the point of this entry, but I thought it was interesting, so I popped it in.

He did research on predictors of behavioral problems in teenagers, and looked at risk factors (like having friends who smoked or living in an area where there were gangs) and protective factors (like having supportive parents and friends who disapproved of taking drugs). His conclusions were (very approximately) that not all people turn out bad, even if bad stuff happens, because the protective factors can protect them. But that's not what I wanted to write about.

The thing that I found most interesting was the end of the talk, when someone asked what the policy implications were - if he had the ear of the president, what would he tell the president should be done? The speaker replied, and said that while George Bush was president, there was no point telling him anything, because he didn't listen and he always believed he was right.

I'm surprised that people feel that they can express such strong political opinions in an open arena like this - I never heard anyone say this sort of thing at University of Prior Employment (or any other university), at least not so completely unsubtley. And this is, don't forget, at CoCE, not a university, a place that originally grew out of the military.