Xref: utzoo comp.ai:2738 talk.philosophy.misc:1648
Path: utzoo!utgpu!attcan!uunet!husc6!mailrus!cornell!rochester!pt.cs.cmu.edu!cadre!geb
From: geb@cadre.dsl.PITTSBURGH.EDU (Gordon E. Banks)
Newsgroups: comp.ai,talk.philosophy.misc
Subject: Re: Artificial Intelligence and Intelligence
Message-ID: <1830@cadre.dsl.PITTSBURGH.EDU>
Date: 29 Nov 88 21:25:32 GMT
Reply-To: geb@cadre.dsl.pittsburgh.edu (Gordon E. Banks)
Organization: Decision Systems Lab., Univ. of Pittsburgh, PA.
Lines: 30

From: ok@quintus.uucp (Richard A. O'Keefe)
>In article <1821@cadre.dsl.PITTSBURGH.EDU> geb@cadre.dsl.pittsburgh.edu (Gordon E. Banks) writes:
>> but at least here
>>a child of working class parents can become a professional
>>without having to learn to disguise an accent.  
>
>(c) A child of working class parents cannot become a professional in the
>   UK without having to disguise an accent.  Maybe I disbelieve this
>   because I studied in Edinburgh, but I visited friends in Oxford where
>   there were N different accents, _and_ working-class students.

I agree that this probably isn't the newsgroup for this discussion,
but I will just make this one explanation of what I said.
I didn't mean this as a universal absolute about the UK but intended to mock 
the spirit of Cockton's stereotypes of the US.  I also studied at Edinburgh and
at Newcastle-upon-Tyne.  My statement was based on my personal experiences
in the UK.  I met professionals from the working class who had
changed their accent.  I remember one chap that as he drank more beer
at the pub his accent changed from "BBC" to Geordie.  There was definitely
the idea that a proper physician simply could not speak with a working
class accent.  That certainly is not true in the States, where some of
the most prominent neurologists I know have strong New York City accents,
for example.  Others sound like the Southern sheriff in "Smokey and the 
Bandit".  While a Scots accent in Edinburgh was fine, I wonder how it would 
play in London?  I found British society to be an order of magnitude more
class conscious than that of the US, and accent was the main way you were
typed.  This may have all changed since I was there (1976), but I doubt it.
No one should get the idea that I don't like the British.  I had a great
experience and made a lot of friends, but all cultures have their faults,
not just the US, ok?