Re: Metallurgy in SF (was Re: Ancient Astronauts in SF)

On Jul 25, 5:21 pm, Kurt Busiek <k...@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On Jul 25, 3:01 pm, veritas <khogan...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:



http://www.vw.vccs.edu/vwhansd/HIS122/Presidents_Top10.html
There, you big baby.  My goodness.

And how hard was that?  I gave you the URL for the list I provided --
but you're whiny and petulant about showing the same courtesy.

In any case, we can see from your link that, as usual, you've misread
and misunderstood what you were looking at, and got your facts wrong.

To start with that's not a University of Michigan list, it's from the
Virginia Western Community College.

Second, the list you cited isn't a survey of historians' opinions,
it's a straight popularity poll from USA Today.  You might have been
tipped off by the words "A 2007 USA Today/ Gallup Poll," or by the
fact that the list is called "America’s Ten Best Presidents: According
to Public Opinion."

That's "Public Opinion," you'll note. Not the expert opinion of
historians, as you claimed.

The article even says there are presidents on that list who "are
considered merely average (or worse) by scholars."

Later in the article, they do list "America’s Ten Best Presidents:
According to Leading Scholars," and not only is Ronald Reagan not #2
on the list, he's not even on it.  The twentieth-century presidents
they have on that list are FDR, TR, Wilson, Truman and Eisenhower --
identical to the top 5 on the list I supplied.  So the list you say
proves your point actually backs up mine.

It looks like they're working from the Ridings-McIver poll, published
in 1996, but they don't say (and if so, they mixed up Polk and
Madison).

In any case, you've confused a popularity poll for a poll of
historians, ignored or missed what the piece you linked to says about
actual historians' opinions, and inadvertently backed up what I said,
not what you said.  And gotten it from a community college, not UMich.

No doubt you will consider this nit-picking, too.

kdb

Then you do the search. But Reagan will still go down as one of the
best presidents of the last century, and historians, (I do count) are
appriciating his contributions more, and FDR's less. He didn't do
that much, but like someone else we know had "hope, and change" .what
we never knew, besides to try and pack the Supreme Court. Ken Hogan
.

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