Showing posts with label Posts that shouldn't have been written. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Posts that shouldn't have been written. Show all posts
Wednesday, February 8, 2012
Well, I blew it
Colorado and Minnesota, what gives? Hate you guys. New prediction: This ice cream I am about to consume will be delicious. Yep, it is. The streak is back!
Monday, February 6, 2012
Black History Month and affirmative action - 2012
Growing up you learn to appreciate history, if only in an effort to not repeat the mistakes others have made through out history. Things like the horrors of slavery, treatment of native Americans or the brutality of the Civil War. It's sort of funny looking at how history is written, some sort of fixation on the bad which has occurred rather than focusing on the lighter sides of things. Think that Tiger Woods will ever be remembered as a family man? How bout that OJ Simpson was actually a half decent football player?
Race is always a difficult subject to talk about - say something controversial and you'll have swarms of lawyers at your door step looking to pad their pockets with oodles of cash - but I have to ask...how did we get here? Why is it such a bad thing to call into question the merits of things? Why can't we talk about touchy subjects and not worry about things. February is a great time to discuss affirmative action and the merits for both the work force and educational settings while at the same time remembering the history of how we got to this state of society.
What is racism? It's the preferential treatment of one group of people versus another based on some physical or genetic aspect. What is affirmative action? Basically it's the legal foundation for reverse racism, that is to say, that in a given situation, preferential treatment of a protected person is legal. It was originally implemented to promote diversity in educational settings and later extended to the work place. The theory here being that by offering a move diverse learning experience, students will be better prepared for the work place and will increase the competitive advantage which American institutions bring to the world market place.
Inherent to affirmative action are multiple layers of racism. That, without some sort of legal protection, minorities or another protected group would never be privy to the same higher education or employment opportunities as their non-protected counter parts who take these things for granted. I read this as meaning that there is a general understanding that the skills and education performance for a protected individual is below that of an unprotected group of people. In addition to this general understanding, that the better equipped non-protected group should for some reason be discriminated against due to the fact that they arbitrarily fit into that non-protected class of peoples.
To me, this comes off as nothing but racist. Why should equally qualified students jockying for the same spot at a university be subject to differential treatment. Isn't the purpose of higher education to produce a highly qualified individual which contributes to society? If the university is no longer accepting the best student for a given position, isn't that somehow defeating the purpose of higher education at the cost of the other student's education?
I want to attempt a bit of a social experiment here, encouraging people to share their results. Think about high school or college - was there ever really a cross pollination of ideas across races or was there a stigma that like should hang out with like. I attended a well-to-do private high school with one of the most diverse campuses in the country. The one thing which always stuck out in my mind was the formation of cliques - Asians were always with Asians, Blacks were always hanging out with Blacks, Latinos with Latinos and so on. It makes sense, people want to be around people which similar experiences with them - it's a comfort factor that we all inadvertently became imbued with. Even in the classrooms for group projects I found groups were almost always homogenous.Even in groups where diversity was forced, I feel that the overall outcome was unchanged, meaning regardless of the experiences of the group we would have gotten the same grade on the project.
I am slightly jaded in the sense that I know of a few students with lower SAT scores and academic records being accepted into programs which I also applied to only to personally receive rejection letters. I'm pretty jealous of them, I'll admit it... but my argument still stands true - diversity would exist without affirmative action and the use of affirmative action is racist. Why can't we learn from the mistake that racism in any form (even reverse racism) does not benefit society?
I'd like to pull particular attention to two of my favorite Black inventors: Lonnie Johnston (inventor of the Super Soaker) and George Washington Carver (invented peanut butter)
Race is always a difficult subject to talk about - say something controversial and you'll have swarms of lawyers at your door step looking to pad their pockets with oodles of cash - but I have to ask...how did we get here? Why is it such a bad thing to call into question the merits of things? Why can't we talk about touchy subjects and not worry about things. February is a great time to discuss affirmative action and the merits for both the work force and educational settings while at the same time remembering the history of how we got to this state of society.
What is racism? It's the preferential treatment of one group of people versus another based on some physical or genetic aspect. What is affirmative action? Basically it's the legal foundation for reverse racism, that is to say, that in a given situation, preferential treatment of a protected person is legal. It was originally implemented to promote diversity in educational settings and later extended to the work place. The theory here being that by offering a move diverse learning experience, students will be better prepared for the work place and will increase the competitive advantage which American institutions bring to the world market place.
Inherent to affirmative action are multiple layers of racism. That, without some sort of legal protection, minorities or another protected group would never be privy to the same higher education or employment opportunities as their non-protected counter parts who take these things for granted. I read this as meaning that there is a general understanding that the skills and education performance for a protected individual is below that of an unprotected group of people. In addition to this general understanding, that the better equipped non-protected group should for some reason be discriminated against due to the fact that they arbitrarily fit into that non-protected class of peoples.
To me, this comes off as nothing but racist. Why should equally qualified students jockying for the same spot at a university be subject to differential treatment. Isn't the purpose of higher education to produce a highly qualified individual which contributes to society? If the university is no longer accepting the best student for a given position, isn't that somehow defeating the purpose of higher education at the cost of the other student's education?
I want to attempt a bit of a social experiment here, encouraging people to share their results. Think about high school or college - was there ever really a cross pollination of ideas across races or was there a stigma that like should hang out with like. I attended a well-to-do private high school with one of the most diverse campuses in the country. The one thing which always stuck out in my mind was the formation of cliques - Asians were always with Asians, Blacks were always hanging out with Blacks, Latinos with Latinos and so on. It makes sense, people want to be around people which similar experiences with them - it's a comfort factor that we all inadvertently became imbued with. Even in the classrooms for group projects I found groups were almost always homogenous.Even in groups where diversity was forced, I feel that the overall outcome was unchanged, meaning regardless of the experiences of the group we would have gotten the same grade on the project.
I am slightly jaded in the sense that I know of a few students with lower SAT scores and academic records being accepted into programs which I also applied to only to personally receive rejection letters. I'm pretty jealous of them, I'll admit it... but my argument still stands true - diversity would exist without affirmative action and the use of affirmative action is racist. Why can't we learn from the mistake that racism in any form (even reverse racism) does not benefit society?
I'd like to pull particular attention to two of my favorite Black inventors: Lonnie Johnston (inventor of the Super Soaker) and George Washington Carver (invented peanut butter)
I just wanna note real quick...
...that we nailed Nevada, Groundhog Day, and the Super Bowl winner. So...word to ya motha.
Onto Colorado and Minnesota we go:
1st: Rom Mittney
2nd: Sant Rickorum
3rd: Ging Newtrich
4th: Pan Roul
Same for bof states. Be amazed, y'all.
Onto Colorado and Minnesota we go:
1st: Rom Mittney
2nd: Sant Rickorum
3rd: Ging Newtrich
4th: Pan Roul
Same for bof states. Be amazed, y'all.
Tuesday, January 31, 2012
Food stamps, there's a problem
One brisk Saturday evening you find yourself at your local gas station/convenience store combo. Nothing seems out of place. Yup there are your teenagers working the register. The tweens scoping out the candy isle. The old woman stealing sugar packets from the coffee island. Everything checks out. You grab your warm coffee, after all you have a long night of partying ahead of you. Eventually you mosey on up to the checkout line, only to find everyone in the county came to the store at the same time. Great, just great. Looking for something to do, you start to snoop on that person ahead of you in line - well the 10 cans of Red Bull surely caught your eye, quickly interrupted by the small child screaming that the top of their lungs that they want candy and lots of it.
Yup, nothing out of the ordinary...well until that person in front of you plops the 10 cans of Red Bull and various candy bars on the table. But that's not what caught your eye. It's the swipe of an EBT (food stamps) card and the transaction reading APPROVED across the cheap LED screen. That can't be right, can it? Are you telling me that person just bought $30 worth of junk using food stamps? I know that about only 1 cent of that probably came from my contribution to society but the concept still boggles the mind.
You're still trying to wrap you head around this idea when you notice the newspaper headline "Food stamps to be accepted at McDonalds." You're freaking kidding me right? This has to be the twilight zone where a $7 Big Mac meal with their large soda is being financed by the greater public. You pass out from the frustration, hitting your head on the 'Slippery when wet sign' (well no shit Sherlock) only to awake in a hospital bed hours later. What do you mean you only take Medicaid? Concussion from the fall? Kick me out on the street because my company has a good insurance company? Maybe this is the twilight zone...oh right, this is America.
What's that you say? You just bought a 70'' HDTV? Jeez, you must make a lot of money - I can see the 20" rims on your ever-so-fuel-efficient SUV. Thank the government? What, why? Food stamps? What the hell. Oh right, your $500 a month in food stamps let's you spend the $500 you would have normally spent on food on sneakers instead - don't think the government thought of that one.
So much for only being used for necessities. Food stamps, the next American dream.
UPDATE
I'm gonna have to get on welfare so I can hit up the local strip club: http://money.cnn.com/2012/02/06/news/economy/strip_club_welfare/index.htm?hpt=hp_t3
Yup, nothing out of the ordinary...well until that person in front of you plops the 10 cans of Red Bull and various candy bars on the table. But that's not what caught your eye. It's the swipe of an EBT (food stamps) card and the transaction reading APPROVED across the cheap LED screen. That can't be right, can it? Are you telling me that person just bought $30 worth of junk using food stamps? I know that about only 1 cent of that probably came from my contribution to society but the concept still boggles the mind.
You're still trying to wrap you head around this idea when you notice the newspaper headline "Food stamps to be accepted at McDonalds." You're freaking kidding me right? This has to be the twilight zone where a $7 Big Mac meal with their large soda is being financed by the greater public. You pass out from the frustration, hitting your head on the 'Slippery when wet sign' (well no shit Sherlock) only to awake in a hospital bed hours later. What do you mean you only take Medicaid? Concussion from the fall? Kick me out on the street because my company has a good insurance company? Maybe this is the twilight zone...oh right, this is America.
What's that you say? You just bought a 70'' HDTV? Jeez, you must make a lot of money - I can see the 20" rims on your ever-so-fuel-efficient SUV. Thank the government? What, why? Food stamps? What the hell. Oh right, your $500 a month in food stamps let's you spend the $500 you would have normally spent on food on sneakers instead - don't think the government thought of that one.
So much for only being used for necessities. Food stamps, the next American dream.
UPDATE
I'm gonna have to get on welfare so I can hit up the local strip club: http://money.cnn.com/2012/02/06/news/economy/strip_club_welfare/index.htm?hpt=hp_t3
Sunday, January 29, 2012
Two Americas
There are two kinds of Americans. The first are autistic. The second are drunk, drugged up, and manically depressed. Why? Don't ask me. But, here's a theory: the economy hates the second group, just like you hate your drunk, drugged up, and manically depressed cousin (and yes, the Oxford comma is absolutely essential) who just eats all your food and complains about life being unfair.
Now, Mr. Scientist (you might say), what use is this theory? Just seems like you're hating on people who already hate themselves. Well, I am doing just that. But, I'm also doing science. If my theory is right, here's a prediction it makes: the second group has shitty economic fortunes compared with the first. Ta da...
You know whose economic fortunes are better than humanities majors? Science majors. Just look at those p-values. Hot damn. I didn't pay much attention in AP statistics (I just remember gems like "power is desirable", and "we want small Ps"), but this looks pretty sciency to me. And the authors are from Princeton!
OK, so, my theory sucks. Granted. But how about them p-values? And for the record, I belong to the first group, have shitty economic fortunes, and I spend my days eating other people's food and complaining about the unfairness of life. I am the two Americas.
Now, Mr. Scientist (you might say), what use is this theory? Just seems like you're hating on people who already hate themselves. Well, I am doing just that. But, I'm also doing science. If my theory is right, here's a prediction it makes: the second group has shitty economic fortunes compared with the first. Ta da...
From personality to neuropsychiatric disorders, individual differences in brain function are known to have a strong heritable component. Here we report that between close relatives, a variety of neuropsychiatric disorders covary strongly with intellectual interests. We surveyed an entire class of high-functioning young adults at an elite university for prospective major, familial incidence of neuropsychiatric disorders, and demographic and attitudinal questions. Students aspiring to technical majors (science/mathematics/engineering) were more likely than other students to report a sibling with an autism spectrum disorder (p = 0.037). Conversely, students interested in the humanities were more likely to report a family member with major depressive disorder (p = 8.8×10−4), bipolar disorder (p = 0.027), or substance abuse problems (p = 1.9×10−6). A combined PREdisposition for Subject MattEr (PRESUME) score based on these disorders was strongly predictive of subject matter interests (p = 9.6×10−8). Our results suggest that shared genetic (and perhaps environmental) factors may both predispose for heritable neuropsychiatric disorders and influence the development of intellectual interests.
You know whose economic fortunes are better than humanities majors? Science majors. Just look at those p-values. Hot damn. I didn't pay much attention in AP statistics (I just remember gems like "power is desirable", and "we want small Ps"), but this looks pretty sciency to me. And the authors are from Princeton!
OK, so, my theory sucks. Granted. But how about them p-values? And for the record, I belong to the first group, have shitty economic fortunes, and I spend my days eating other people's food and complaining about the unfairness of life. I am the two Americas.
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