Any knowledge relevant to firehouse operations should have been available to study at the firehouse, for free.
So the tests should not have included contradictory information in books you had to buy.

interesting take on the lone hispanic to pass the test, he came in 6th.


Bias Suit a Test of Resolve for Hispanic Man

NEW HAVEN — The two dozen firefighters who packed into Humphrey’s East Restaurant were celebrating a coming marriage, drinking and jawboning in the boisterous style of large men with risky jobs, but Lt. Ben Vargas spent the evening trying to escape the tension surrounding his presence.

During a trip to the bathroom, he found himself facing another man. Without warning, the first punch landed. When Lieutenant Vargas awoke, bloodied and splayed on the grimy floor, he was taken to the hospital.

Lieutenant Vargas believes the attack, five years ago, was orchestrated by a black firefighter in retaliation for his having joined a racial discrimination lawsuit against the city over its tossing out of an exam for promotion that few minority firefighters passed. (No arrests were made in the attack, and the black firefighter vigorously denies having been involved.)

When the Hispanic firefighters’ association and its members — including Lieutenant Vargas’s brother — refused to publicly stand behind him, he quit the organization.

Lieutenant Vargas, who posted the sixth-highest score on the exam, was ridiculed as a token, a turncoat and an Uncle Tom — all of which, he said, “made my resolve that much stronger.”

When the United States Supreme Court ruled this week in the firefighters’ favor, Lieutenant Vargas, 40, the son of Puerto Rican parents, found himself celebrating amid an awkward racial dynamic: As the lone Hispanic among the 18 plaintiffs who had challenged an affirmative action policy, he had also challenged an appeals court decision joined by Judge Sonia Sotomayor, the first Hispanic nominee to the Supreme Court.

“She’s from Puerto Rico, and I’m from Puerto Rico,” he said. “She obviously feels differently than I do.”

The Supreme Court’s 5-to-4 decision is expected to have repercussions on employment discrimination law that go well beyond fire departments, where minority groups have been woefully underrepresented, particularly in leadership positions. On the steps of the federal courthouse in New Haven on Monday, a lawyer for the firefighters, Karen Lee Torre, said they had “become a symbol for millions of Americans who have grown tired of seeing individual achievement and merit take a back seat to race and ethnicity.”

For Lieutenant Vargas, the ruling will probably mean a long-awaited promotion to captain in a 350-member department that he has admired since childhood but that has been plagued for decades by racial tension and recriminations.

“I consider myself an American — I was born and raised here,” he said in an interview on the porch of his home in the wooded suburb of Wallingford. “I love my people. I love my culture. I love our rice and beans, our salsa music, our language — everything my parents raised us with. But I am so grateful for the opportunity only the United States can give.”

He grew up in the troubled Fair Haven neighborhood of New Haven, a complicated city known for Yale University but also for urban decay, high crime rates and failed prospects, roots he sees as similar to Judge Sotomayor’s in a Bronx public housing project.

His father was a factory worker, and his mother took care of the couple’s three children. (In addition to his brother, David, who did not respond to interview requests, he has a sister who now lives in Puerto Rico.) The family spoke Spanish at home, making his adjustment to school “traumatic,” he said.

Lieutenant Vargas decided to follow the path of an older friend, John Marquez, whom he looked up to. Mr. Marquez had worked his way out of the neighborhood by joining the Fire Department.

“I used to tell him, ‘You know where I came from — if I can make it, anyone can,’ ” Mr. Marquez, now a deputy chief in the department, said in an interview. “ ‘But don’t expect anything to be handed to you. Work for it.’ ”

But Lieutenant Vargas’s aspirations were stymied by a 1988 lawsuit, filed by black firefighters, that shut down hiring for years. The lawsuit challenged a written test that relatively few nonwhites passed. In 1994, the city agreed to disregard the test, over union complaints, and hire 40 firefighters — 20 white, 10 black and 10 Hispanic, according to The New Haven Register.

Lieutenant Vargas was among those hired. That later led some people to criticize him as trying to shut the door that welcomed him, though he maintained that it was impossible to know how he would have done under the old hiring process.

the rest at-

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/03/ny...r.html?_r=2&hp

__________________

"The captain has turned off the `No Dubbing' sign. You are free to speak any language you choose."

Now I see why you are so helplessly confused. You are confusing test taking strategy with actually studying for the content of the exam, there is a HUGE difference.

Please list these tests you have supposedly taken "just for fun" and what tutoring you took that enabled you to do well on them without knowing anything about the subject.

NO amount of coaching is going to help someone who is "ignorant of the subject" to pass, let alone do better than someone who does actually know the subject. Coaching is only useful at the margins, and does not yield significant results, and certainly won't enable someone that doesn't know a thing about the subject to do extremely well:

SAT Coaching Found to Boost Scores -- Barely
Study Results Run Counter to Test-Prep Course Claims; How Colleges Fuel Industry


So, the preeminent SAT coaching services boosted scores by only about 2%. Hardly the dispositive difference you are silly enough to believe that coaching on standardized tests results in.

__________________
"It's a good feeling to shoot a bad guy. Something you democrats would never understand. Americans are homesteaders, we want a safe home, keep the money we make, and shoot bad guys!"

----Denny Crane

The "contradictory" information was nothing of the kind. The example you gave was that of a firefighter who did not know the answer to a question about the best way to park a firetruck because the trucks they happened to use it did not make a difference. But not all firehouses used those trucks, and with regard to equipment where it DOES make a difference, there is a generally proper way to park the truck. Given that parking it a certain way (the way identified in the correct answer to the test) is essential in some instances, and makes no difference in others, I want firefighters who know that it makes absolute sense to always park it in the way that some trucks require to be parked because that way you will never run the risk of parking any truck in a manner that DOES make a difference.

Suppose the firefighter from the company with the trucks that can be parked in any direction without it making a difference has to be redeployed to another company where it DOES make a difference which direction the truck gets parked. Who would you rather have parking that truck, someone who thinks it doesn't matter, or someone who knows it MAY matter, and knows the direction to park trucks in the event that it could matter? DUH


The things you have asserted throughout this thread have ranged from unsubstantiated, to demonstrably stupid and foolish. At best you have no clue what you are talking about, at worst you are lying Bottom line, and after this I am through with you because I suffer fools lightly, you may think it is UNFAIR that people who actually bothered to study did better on the exam than those who did not, but that does not make it unconstitutional.

__________________
"It's a good feeling to shoot a bad guy. Something you democrats would never understand. Americans are homesteaders, we want a safe home, keep the money we make, and shoot bad guys!"

----Denny Crane

Who says it wasn't?Who says it did, and who says it was contradictory?

Also:

"the test to be derived from purchased material that they were told was not necessary"

Who says it was derived from purchased material which they were told was not necessary?

Oh, man, this just too funny.

Yes, halon systems have been around a long time. My experience with them is on board Navy ships.

Of course, a quick perusal of your recent posts reveals that you were not talking about halon systems. You were talking about halogen systems. I'm not aware of any halogen firefighting systems.

And, please, don't make yourself look even more foolish by claming it was a "typo" or anything like that. You repeatedly said "halogen". Even when you made a pathetic attempt to make your point, you said "halogen", and then provided a piece containing "halon".

Damn, just admit you were wrong, that you don't know what you're talking about, and that you're woefully unqualified to discuss the topic, and we can move on. Until you're able to be a man and do that, you're only going to be ridiculed.

Because you've earned that...

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For those who have fought to defend it, freedom has a taste the protected will never know...



If it wasn't for double standards, liberals would have no standards at all...

The New Haven Airport doesn't have its' own fire department...

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For those who have fought to defend it, freedom has a taste the protected will never know...



If it wasn't for double standards, liberals would have no standards at all...

Dismissing the "halogen" for a second, what race cars have installed halon systems in them?

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For those who have fought to defend it, freedom has a taste the protected will never know...



If it wasn't for double standards, liberals would have no standards at all...

True, fire departments don't design fire fighting systems.

But they have to approve them.

Ergo, they would know about the different systems. Also, a variation does not make for a completely different system...

And you've proven your "experience" equates to absolutelsquat...

I don't believe that for a second...

So, enlighten us. If a simple standpipe water delivery system isn't used at a place like a refinery, what water delivery system is used in a refinery?

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For those who have fought to defend it, freedom has a taste the protected will never know...



If it wasn't for double standards, liberals would have no standards at all...

It's also the line officers who conduct inspections in their first due in most jurisdictions, but don't tell Maat222 that....

Matt

I am amazed than an "expert" such as yourself doesn't know that foam is used many places apart from airports.

In fact, AFFF systems are very common on fire engines, and have nothing to do with airports.

That aside, we were talking about CAFS. Surely your vast experiences has included exposure to CAFS?

Matt

While information about certain gases the pressures at which they become dangerously volatile would probably not be used very often, even if it will be used 1% of the time, it is still preferable to have someone who knows about them vs someone who does not, all other things being equal.

Maat probably thinks that "AFFF" stands for "Aquaman Frequently Flies Free"...

__________________



For those who have fought to defend it, freedom has a taste the protected will never know...



If it wasn't for double standards, liberals would have no standards at all...

Wrong.
You don't know anything about the subject.
First of all, the tests were not based on the material at the stations, so did not use proper procedures in their questions.
Second is that it is well known it easy to double the score of many test takers.
Here are some of the tips:
What you do first is skim all the easy questions, so that you don't miss them by running out of time.
Then you do back and eliminate the answers you are sure are wrong.
Then you flip a coin on the two remaining possibilities that you don't know about.
On almost all tests, I can get over 80% right without any special knowledge.
But what tests I have passed is personal, and you should not ask that.

So what exactly is your firefighting experience, Maat222?