Jordan Sneakers

http://www.statesman.com/news/local/crowds-waiting-to-buy-nike-shoes-turn-unruly-2052564.html

http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/world/nike-decries-violence-over-air-jordan-shoes/story-e6frf7lf-1226229978791

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4aVDFbtc4FY

It happened all over the country.  People arrested, trampled, pepper sprayed, stabbed, in sum, general mayhem at malls all across America all because black people have an irrational addiction to Jordan sneakers.  Of course none of the articles specifically reference the race of the Jordan seekers, but it doesn't take a genius to figure it out.  Why doesn't this happen at Apple stores?

Why don't ghetto black people understand that they are the victims of an elaborate value-transference scheme created by Nike that sucks wealth out of the black community?

All this senseless violence for the privilege of paying $180 for a pair of sneakers.  I just don't get it.

Infinite Jest

100 pages in and I am still confused.  I am putting it to rest for a while and focusing on reading the rest of Haruki Murakami's books which are in the mail and should be arriving tomorrow.  I can't wait.

SWPLing, The Art of Living Local, Thinking Global

The day started out innocently enough.  I consumed a package of Quaker oatmeal that I had purchased from Costco along with a small Dole banana (the banana was smaller than my fully erect penis).  I washed this healthy breakfast down with a glass of fortified 100% store branded grape juice and burped.

I left my cell phone and computer at home since I did not want to be distracted by technology.  Is our constant need to stay connected a disease that can be cured?

My recently bought blue Korean car needed gas so I drove to the nearby Shell station to fill up.  It only cost $26 and I was pretty low on gas.  I love new car.  I had to drive downtown to take care of some work related business but other than that I had no other obligations for the day.  I decided that I would forfeit my personal sense of agency for the day and instead let myself become the subject.  I would let adventure act upon me rather than seek it.

I cruised down the highway, windshield wipers steadily wiping away the steady fall of rain,  more than occasionally checking my instrument panel to make sure that I was conserving gas.   A recent obsession that I can't seem to shake.  I would constantly check the average MPG and get a rush of joy whenever it soared to 40 MPG and feel glum when it plummeted below 35 MPG.  Korean cars are quite efficient.  I am a person who cares about the environment.

I finished my business and felt strangely free.  I decided to go to the public library as I had to return a borrowed copy of Haruki Murakami's Norwegian Wood, a fine novel that I had finished in one day.  I dropped off the book and thought about staying in the library to read and people watch, but decided against it.  The homeless people  didn't smell so great today.  Besides, I was in a spending mood.

I had been ordering two books a week from Amazon and checking one book out from the library for the last month or so as part of a project to satisfy my literary hunger.  But today, I decided that I would support a local business and not give my money to the soulless corporation enslaving Chinese and Indian programmers known as Amazon (which ironically enough, I own stock in).  Reflecting back on my recent book buying binge, I experienced a twinge of hypocritical guilt.  My paycheck is dependent on people who have made the commitment to shop local yet I was taking their money and not doing the same.  So I decided to go to the last independent book store (and one of the only ones remaining in the US) in town to purchase a book that I had been eyeing on Amazon.  It was available for the low price of  $11.76 with free two day shipping, but I knew I would have to pay much more at the book store.  I drove to the book store, parked, and walked in.

There were a lot more people in there than I expected.  I presumed the unexpected flurry of activity was caused by the holiday season.  I was on a mission to find a book so I headed straight towards fiction W and found a bright display of the book I was looking for complete with a miniature handwritten review from one of the store employees.  Oh, the joys of independent book stores.

I quickly scanned through the pages and then proceeded to the registers, where I was promptly helped by a smartly dressed white girl manager who I will bet voted for Obama and supports socialism.  People who work in bookstores, especially independent ones, are like that.  She was friendly and charged me $17.99 plus tax for the book.  I  was very satisfied with paying that premium amount as I knew part of that money would go towards helping the nice liberal employees there pay for their weekly organic groceries.  Go Local!

I walked out shielding my new book from the rain and sidled back into my Korean car.  What to do next?  I drove out of the parking lot and went to search for a good coffee shop where I could finish reading Haruki Murakami's The Wind Up Bird Chronicles.  I've been on a Murakami tear lately, if you can't tell already.

The first independent coffee shop I hit up didn't have any parking spaces so I decided to venture out to another one of my favorites by the lake.  Who would ever buy stuff from the evil corporation Starbucks in this town when there are so many superior INDEPENDENT LOCAL options?  I parked my car and walked into the coffee shop.  I was instantly hit by the romantic scent of roasting coffee beans. A fat girl with pink hair took my order after fumbling around with the espresso machine.  She apologized for the wait and I told her it was OK (it was not OK that she was very fat, however).  I exchanged $6.00 for a bottomless cup of coffee, a cookie, and $.76 in change, which I promptly deposited in the tips jar, out of pity for the fat pink haired girl.

Mug in hand, I wandered over to the coffee containers to select a flavor.  I decided on a bold blend that had both Colombian and African beans which meant that I was helping both poor Campesinos and Negroes.

Inside or outside?  It was raining but the temperature was mild so I decided on outside.  There, I could take in the view of the lake and the expensive houses on the hill.  I whipped out my book and started reading all while keeping an eye out for lonely attractive Asian gals (Unfortunately I am a ethnocentric racist and am not sexually interested in non-yellow women).  I figured I looked pretty sophisticated and attractive reading Murakami while sipping ethical coffee.

It's a good book, you should read it.  I read for four hours and covered two hundred and fifty seven pages.  There was one Chinese girl wearing a strange rectangular shaped backpack that caught my attention.  She was meeting her Chinese girlfriend who was not surprisingly enough dating a white guy.  At least, that was my impression.  She looked decent from a distance, but as I got a better glimpse of her face and body, I became disappointed.  Her face was too big and her ass flat and wide.  A 4 at best.  Damn.  I returned to my book which was far more sexually intriguing.

I left the coffee shop at around 8 and headed for Whole Foods Market.  It's one of the best places to people watch and good or bad, I always run into people I know there.  I drove to Whole Foods and parked in the basement.  There were a lot of people.

I aimlessly walked around the store checking out items and people.  I didn't need anything in particular.  Jeans and dress shoes seem to be a growing trend here in Austin.  There was one thickly built bald man who wore a long leather coat who I liked.  He was an interesting character.

Then I found what I was looking for.  A display of $14.99 (originally $24.99) Threads 4 Thought hoodies made of recyclable material.  How cool.  Of course they were unisexually sized, the only gender-proper way of doing things.  Did you know that physical separation of apparel items into gender categories is part of a violently oppressive scheme by non-progressives to socially construct an gender inelastic world?  In essence, by designating a garment "For men", a company is submitting to an oppressive gender construct and being sexist.  Moreover, the article of clothing itself may begin to harbor sexist intentions.  Scary, I know, but it's happening at retail stores all across the globe.  This is why you should buy stock in American Apparel and women should stop buying stuff from Victoria's Secret.  In the future, males will wear dresses and women will wear ties.  Look where progress has taken us so far.  Women, being liberated from the gender-constraining meta-narrative imbued in the dress, now wear jeans and pants.  Women have made significant progress towards equality in the realm of apparel.   When will men be liberated into the allure of Victoria's Secret and start wearing panties?  I'd say it is only a matter of time before that happens (there are actually weird men on the internet who do this...shudder).

I bought this on-sale!  It's a large and fits pretty well on me.

This is my first article clothing that is "sustainable".  I have no idea what "sustainable" actually means but it sounds cool and hip, so I am guessing it must be good.  Clever trick with the "New York City" and "Los Angeles" since that's where all the cool chic people live and work.  I don't get the U.S of A part.  What does it mean?  It's made in Pakistan.  

I feel very socially responsible.  I get to save the environment and help third-world people at the same time!  It doesn't get any better than this.  This is excellent marketing that will be super-effective on white people who shop at Whole Foods.  It worked on me!

I ended up just buying the hoodie and a box of organic vegetarian lentil soup.  It was a good day at Whole Foods.  I am sure John Mackey, the Randian CEO of Whole Foods, was smiling at me from his office.  I like Ayn Rand too. Too bad I didn't see any cute Asian girls during my time there.  

I spent around $50 today living local.  You should try it sometime.  It's actually a fairly enjoyable experience.  Later guys.

Check out the Threads for Thought Website.  http://www.threadsforthought.com/default.html
They are marketing geniuses.  Notice the "support our troops" on the right and the peace sign on the left.  The irony is complete.

If I Were A Poor Black Kid

Gene Marks is a fucking blind and stupid white guy.  He's currently being branded as an evil racist for his article, "If I Were A Poor Black Kid".  For some odd reason, the anti-racist blogger BigWowo is defending Marks.

If I was a poor black kid I would first and most importantly work to make sure I got the best grades possible. I would make it my #1 priority to be able to read sufficiently.   I wouldn’t care if I was a student at the worst public middle school in the worst inner city.  Even the worst have their best.  And the very best students, even at the worst schools, have more opportunities.  Getting good grades is the key to having more options.  With good grades you can choose different, better paths.  If you do poorly in school, particularly in a lousy school, you’re severely limiting the limited opportunities you have.

And I would use the technology available to me as a student.  I know a few school teachers and they tell me that many inner city parents usually have or can afford cheap computers and internet service nowadays.  That because (and sadly) it’s oftentimes a necessary thing to keep their kids safe at home than on the streets.  And libraries and schools have computers available too.  Computers can be purchased cheaply at outlets like TigerDirect and Dell’s Outlet.  Professional organizations like accountants and architects often offer used computers from their members, sometimes at no cost at all.

If I was a poor black kid I’d use the free technology available to help me study.  I’d become expert at Google Scholar.   I’d visit study sites like SparkNotes andCliffsNotes to help me understand books.  I’d watch relevant teachings onAcademic Earth, TED and the Khan Academy.  (I say relevant because some of these lectures may not be related to my work or too advanced for my age. But there are plenty of videos on these sites that are suitable to my studies and would help me stand out.)  I would also, when possible, get my books for free at Project Gutenberg and learn how to do research at the CIA World Factbook and Wikipedia to help me with my studies.

I would use homework tools like Backpack, and Diigo to help me store and share my work with other classmates.  I would use Skype to study with other students who also want to do well in my school.  I would take advantage of study websites like Evernote, Study Rails, Flashcard Machine, Quizlet, and free online calculators.

 Gene Marks just doesn't get it.  Poor black kids have low average IQ and are unlikely to be capable of or interested in the tasks that Marks suggests.  Even black kids (or kids of any race, for that matter) of average and above-average IQ are unlikely to utilize technology in such a way.  What Gene Marks proposes is that poor black kids become autodidacts, which unfortunately, typically requires a superior IQ, something that is not common even among white/Asian populations, much less black ones.  A more appropriate title for the article would be, "If I Were A Poor Black Genius Kid".  Gene Marks is a RACIST because he practices the soft bigotry of unreasonable expectations.

Every I time I go to the public library (which is a lot) I never see homeless and poor people doing anything productive on the computers or reading books.  Most of the time they are watching Youtube videos and playing games.  Even at college libraries, people are on Facebook 80% of the time.  For most people, technology is not used as a learning tool or for value creation, it is simply a mode of entertainment.

Does Gene Marks actually think that kids use Sparknotes to help them "understand" books?  Kids use Sparknotes because they are too lazy to read the book in the first place (or too stupid).  It is amazing how many kids in this generation simply REFUSE TO READ.  Reading is one of the greatest pleasures in life and it is disappointing to meet people who boastfully claim that they hate reading.  They don't know what they are missing out on.

The insane out-of-wedlock birthrate among blacks needs to be curtailed.  Reestablishing the structure of black families is crucial to reinvigorating the black community and promoting social change (change to the past).  I am in favor of stricter of divorce laws and incentives or mandates that would allow more kids to grow up with both a mother and a father.

If I were a poor black kid, I would either join a gang or spend 4 hours a day practicing basketball.

SAT scores!

Steve Hsu has some interesting data on the SAT and first year GPA with regards to Asians.

A few of my thoughts on the SAT.  The ceiling on the math SAT is too low, especially for the East-Asian demographic.  It is interesting to note that an 800 score is 96th percentile for Asians (including inferior Asians) which suggests that a perfect score would be...what 90th percentile or something like that for superior Asians East Asians.  I had the same (or similar) score on the math SAT as some of my peers who possessed much superior mathematical ability.  If you were to judge our quantitative skills solely on the basis of the SAT, you would think we were equally superior.  But when we took the AMC exams, they could answer twice the number of questions that I could.  I always died somewhere around the 10th question.

I think the ETS should make the math SAT harder.

I also think that college GPA is complicated.  Many students will simply search for the easiest classes to maximize GPA, hence the development of companies like MyEdu.  Your GPA might be higher simply because you were lucky enough to get into the biology class with the awesome Professor Gay and not be stuck with Professor Wang.


College is vastly overrated.

HBD and the Intelligence of Jeremy Lin

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VR7p-vmFp24

Jeremy's parents are short and he is tall.  This is atypical, genetically speaking.  I don't know too many tall people who have short parents.  Maybe Jeremy had ancestors who were tall or his parents are short because they were malnourished. 

Jeremy went to Harvard because he was smart and going to Harvard made him a lot smarter.  But is this actually true?  To me, Jeremy doesn't seem very smart at all in his interviews.  He sounds like your typical dumb black basketball player.  Maybe he just spends too much time with dumb basketball players and has adopted their manners of speech.  Kobe Bryant sounds smart (and I think he is pretty smart too, probably in the top 0.1% of NBA players) while Jeremy Lin sounds stupid.  

Jeremy Lin is also an evangelical Christian and believes Jesus came back from the dead.  Some folks would claim that this is more evidence that supports Jeremy's non-smartness, but I don't think much can be made of his religious beliefs in relation to his intelligence.  One of the smartest people I know who actually went to college with Jeremy is an evangelical Christian.  

Jeremy's dad has a PhD in computer engineering from Purdue and worked in Silicon Valley, so Jeremy obviously has some smart genes.  But my suspicion is that Jeremy is not quite as smart as his father.  Regression to the mean.  

Jeremy only had a 3.1 GPA at Harvard and he majored in an easy subject, economics.  The average GPA at Harvard is around 3.5 so Jeremy was well below the mean.  But then again most Harvard students don't practice basketball three hours a day and also travel around the country to play games.  Perhaps his lack of academic success can be attributed to his commitment to basketball.  Or maybe he just wasn't very smart compared to the average Harvard student.  It's probably some of both, if you ask me.  

In conclusion, I estimate Jeremy Lin's IQ at around 115.  He probably scored around 1300 on the SAT.  I find it highly unlikely that he would have been admitted to Harvard without his basketball playing abilities.  In terms of intelligence, I think that Jeremy probably falls in the bottom 15% at Harvard.   

****

I like Jeremy Lin so don't take this assessment of him as evidence of me being against him somehow.  I just think that too many reporters and bloggers are falling all over themselves to worship Jeremy's Harvard smartness when in reality Jeremy only got into Harvard because he was good at basketball and is not that smart.  

People need to understand that going to Harvard (or any college, for that matter) does not make you smarter.  

IQ, Poverty, and Race

http://blog.american.com/2011/11/maybe-it%E2%80%99s-journalists-who-have-an-iq-problem/

Charles Murray questions the authority.  Notable quote from the deluded journalist who wrote the piece:

In nearly every local system, white students are disproportionately represented, even though most gifted programs explicitly target students with natural talents and aptitude, which are spread evenly across racial groups and social classes.

This reminds me of a lecture I attended a few months ago where the speaker was a Stanford sociologist who specializes in inequity.  What is astonishing and perhaps even tragic about his presentation (as well as his research) is that it is based on the implicit assumption that natural talents and aptitude are spread evenly across racial groups and social classes.  The room was packed to the brim with eager academics hanging on to his every last word, genetics be damned.  Western political correctness has uplifted the fantastic notion of equality to unquestionable heights.  And then you have academics wasting their time away working on explanations and theories that are all based on a very shaky, almost ridiculous, orthodox premise that they have chosen to accept  on faith.  I raised my hand and asked the professor if he ever considered the possibility of genetics being a factor in inequality.  He looked affronted and muttered back something along the lines of heretability of intelligence is very low (it is not) but it was clear that this was not his area of expertise.  His area of expertise was finding non-genetic theories that explain away all kinds of evil gaps.

SWPLbits

"A quick scan of the room and we realized we were the only non-Asians in the restaurant. A HUGE plus for us.We get super excited when that happens because we know the food will be awesomely authentic. "


Read on Yelp.  This shit is real, kids.  Yelp is a fascinating place since it is full of SWPLs.  

The China Conundrum? Chinese Student Reality.

From the New York Times (hat tip Half Sigma).

First of all, why did New York Times choose University of Delaware, a borderline bogus school whose saving grace is a strong Chemical Engineering program.  Oh yeah, chief racist female researcher Linda Gottfredson also teaches there.

Half Sigma learned:

1. Chinese students aren’t very good at learning English.2. Chinese students lie on their college applications, and they will cheat on tests more readily than American students. 3. They stick to themselves and avoid doing stuff with non-Chinese. 4. They study really hard.5. They don’t like to talk in class, and when they do, American students don’t understand them.

6. They pay full price. 

 Wong Chow Mein responds:

1. American students are even worse at learning Chinese and Chinese students are not, as far as I can tell, worse at learning English than any other non-native group.  

2. American students lie on their college applications too.  Chinese students don't even have the luxury of gaming affirmative action.  I am not sure that Chinese students cheat more readily on tests than American students.  I know a lot of Chinese students aren't aware that some their actions constitute cheating in the states.  American students cheat/plagiarize with a clear conscience.  They know exactly what they are up to and know it is not allowed.  

3. Self-segregation is an undeniable fact of human nature.  

4. Yes.  Chinese students study really hard.  Many American students don't study very much at all and instead frolic in recreation centers and drink at fraternity parties.  

5. A cultural difference.  In China, when you talk in class, it means you don't understand, and when you don't understand, it reflects badly on your intelligence.  But in America, professors like kids who speak in class, even if they have no idea what they are talking about or display their ignorance in public.  I don't know what obsession is with "class participation" in the States but I know that I when I participate a lot with original insights then professors love me.  A lot of   American kids just say stupid things in class or ask stupid questions.  They should just shut up.  

 6. They pay full price and American colleges love it because they are non-profit organizations who don't care about money at all.

While Chinese graduate students have been a mainstay of American colleges for quite a while, undergraduate students are a new novelty, and American students have found it more than a bit disconcerting.  Take this hilarious quote from the article:

Last fall, Kent E. St. Pierre was teaching an intermediate accounting class with 35 students, 17 of them from China. Within a couple of weeks, all but three of the non-Chinese students had dropped the course. Why did the American students flee? “They said the class was very quiet,” recalls Dr. St. Pierre, who considers himself a 1960s-style liberal and says he’s all for on-campus diversity. But, he agrees, “It was pretty deadly.”

"They said the class was very quiet" is politically correct code for "I don't like Chinese people".  I am sure if the class was graded on a curve the non-studying American students would be devastated as well due to the superior quantitative genetics and training of the Chinese.   Or it could be that Chinese people smell bad.  I think I smell pretty good myself and don't notice other Chinese people smelling bad, but that could just be bias on my part.  I think Indian people smell really bad but I have the suspicion that this is just a olfactory illusion on my part.

Back to #6.  It's clear from the article that American colleges are cash hungry and Chinese upper-middle class students pay full out-of-state/private tuition in addition to the fact that they pay extra money for ESL prep classes.  But for Delaware, it's not about the money, it's about "diversity".

But Dr. Harker rejects the notion that the university’s recruiting effort in China is mainly about money. “The students from New Jersey pay, too,” he says. “For us it really is about diversity.”

 May I remind you that the University of Delaware strongly supports diversity.  Chinese people will learn that they cannot be racists, only white people can be racists.  But this is something that, Chinese students, growing up in a one-party state, should be accustomed to.  This also reminds me that the article and general sentiment about China-America cross cultural interactions in the US seems to be that America is a country which values freedom of thought and is free from any state-led indoctrination while China is an oppressive state that deceives it citizens.  But those who have taken the red pill can see that the US is not the fairy land of freedom that it claims it is and is not much better than China.  Oh yeah, and we have this unquestionable good called Democracy that gets in the way as well.

More to come.

  

What do you want to be?

Quit asking this fucking pointless question to young high school and college women who have been indoctrinated by our feminist culture to respond, "Doctor, engineer, soldier, president, banker, lawyer, :(:(:(,".

A better and horrifically offensive gender stereotyping (to liberals, in any case)  but not completely sufficient answer would be, "Nurse, teacher, secretary, etc".

But the best answer that you never hear anymore is, "I want to be a stay at home mom with two kids married to a good guy who makes six figures".  OMG SEXISM.

How about, "I want to be sitting on my couch shopping on my macbook with my husbands money waiting for him to come home so I can get fucked good".  Yeah, that's more like it.

Why Science Majors Change Their Minds

From the New York Times.  http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/06/education/edlife/why-science-majors-change-their-mind-its-just-so-darn-hard.html?_r=3&pagewanted=all

Kids drop out of STEM majors because they are hard and non-STEM majors are easy, not to mention the fact that non-STEM courses give higher grades.  The situation even appears at elite schools, such as Berkeley, which, unlike the elite private school thirty miles south, is renowned for its cutthroat academic environment.

Professor Chang says that rather than losing mainly students from disadvantaged backgrounds or with lackluster records, the attrition rate can be higher at the most selective schools, where he believes the competition overwhelms even well-qualified students.

“You’d like to think that since these institutions are getting the best students, the students who go there would have the best chances to succeed,” he says. “But if you take two students who have the same high school grade-point average and SAT scores, and you put one in a highly selective school like Berkeley and the other in a school with lower average scores like Cal State, that Berkeley student is at least 13 percent less likely than the one at Cal State to finish a STEM degree.”

The economics of competition are simple enough.  The confidence of a student who is used to making As in school can be severely shaken when he receives a B- in a STEM course.  Will that B- prevent him from going to medical school?  Is he even good enough to continue battling for grades with the thousands of other students who are just as smart if not smarter?  Maybe it would be better to, um, fulfill his passions in Asian-American Studies instead.

Professor Chang doesn't cover the entire story as he cleverly directs the story away from the issue of NAMs in STEM at elite universities.  Let me preface this discussion by stating that I know NAMs in STEM that are smarter than me and are more than capable of majoring in engineering and succeeding.  But for the most part, NAMs attempting to major in STEM at elite universities are going to be in for a rough ride, and many of them may just decide it would be better for them to be in African-Studies instead, where you can get an A just for being black (not really, since I've actually seen a student who thought this was how the world worked, but became highly irate at the end of the semester when he discovered that this was not the case at all) .  If you are a NAM at an elite school whose admittance to the school was heavily aided by affirmative action, it is plainly obvious that you are not as smart as the general population of the university.  Yes, a 650 math SAT score is well above average and very good for a NAM, but it is comparatively pathetic once you walk into a classroom where 50% of the class thought the math SAT was a joke and scored 800 while another 45% came pretty damn close to 800.  The chances for your survival are not good even with NAM support systems behind your back.  Society is always complaining about the lack of NAMs in STEM.  Well there might be more NAMs in STEM if we eliminated affirmative action/equal opportunity (Orwellian) at the university level so the problem of mismatching would be solved.  NAMs could major in STEM at universities where they actually have a chance at succeeding.

Forget NAMs for a second.  A lot of smart Asians and whites who graduated near or at the top of their classes from generic public schools and go on to top schools to major in STEM will also find themselves in for a hell of a ride once they arrive in the classroom only to be surrounded by kids from Stuyvesant, Exeter, and Cupertino who didn't graduate even close to the top of their high school classes but are a hell of a lot smarter.  Talk about a collision with reality.  Holy shit, they think, here I was under the impression that I was a fucking genius valedictorian with a 1500 SAT score and a 5 on the AP Calculus Exam, and then I met  my roommate Susie Wong from Stuyvesant who was fucking taking linear algebra in high school!  In high school!  Now how is it again that I am going to make an A in organic chemistry when I am battling for grades with the likes of her?

And then there are the kids who are whip smart but find that they don't have "the engineering gene", "engineering aptitude", or whatever you want to call it.

MATTHEW MONIZ bailed out of engineering at Notre Dame in the fall of his sophomore year. He had been the kind of recruit most engineering departments dream about. He had scored an 800 in math on the SAT and in the 700s in both reading and writing. He also had taken Calculus BC and five other Advanced Placement courses at a prep school in Washington, D.C., and had long planned to major in engineering.

But as Mr. Moniz sat in his mechanics class in 2009, he realized he had already had enough. “I was trying to memorize equations, and engineering’s all about the application, which they really didn’t teach too well,” he says. “It was just like, ‘Do these practice problems, then you’re on your own.’ ” And as he looked ahead at the curriculum, he did not see much relief on the horizon.

So Mr. Moniz, a 21-year-old who likes poetry and had enjoyed introductory psychology, switched to a double major in psychology and English, where the classes are “a lot more discussion based.” He will graduate in May and plans to be a clinical psychologist. Of his four freshman buddies at Notre Dame, one switched to business, another to music. One of the two who is still in engineering plans to work in finance after graduation.

Matthew Moniz could easily be me.  In terms of academic background, SAT scores, etc, we could have swapped places, and no one would notice, at least in a hypothetical colorblind society.  The author tries to frame the issue to make it seem like the problem rests with the faculty and administrators for not making engineering interesting enough and teaching it correctly, but I think it is more likely that Matthew Moniz, despite his high SAT scores, just doesn't have the chops to become a good engineer and it's probably a good thing now that he's going to be counseling people instead of designing chips or whatnot.  I sympathize with Matthew.  I am pretty fucking awesome at memorizing equations but I stink at application--and I am not sure that any amount of great teaching could change this as I've been blessed to have access to some pretty damn good teachers.  It reminds of a conversation at had with an older gal who majored in engineering/math at a top school and told me that she hardly ever studied because it was all application and she was fucking good at that.   Oh, it's also funny to note how dismissive smart liberals can be of dumb people, but only in the presence of others who they perceive to be smart, a perception usually acquired by educational credentials though not always.  And intelligence doesn't exist.  Right.  I have pretty high bar for who I consider "smart".  It's generally reserved for people who I perceive to be smarter than me, and that's not too many people, though I seem to meet quite a few of them in my social circles.  Of course when wandering outside these circles I get confused when someone refers to someone else as "smart" when in my honest opinion that someone appears to me to be fucking retarded as I am sure I appear clueless to someone with an IQ of 160 or so.  In short, I have high standards.

And then there's the fact that the STEM acronym is a misnomer.  Biology is not a useful subject!  And neither is any STEM subject for that matter if you suck at it.  It doesn't do anyone any good if you major in civil engineering and you build a faulty bridge that kills your girlfriends entire sorority.

You shouldn't major in STEM if you are white racist pig who dislikes the sight and stench of gooks and kaffirs.  Just saying.  Well, just try to stay away from the University of Caucasians Lost Among Asians lest you end up filming yourself in an angry politically incorrect rant on Youtube.

Why do I bother commenting on this piece?  Not being a STEM major, do I even have any authority?  No.  But I hope you like my insight.

Diversity in Firefighting

http://www.statesman.com/news/local/almost-1-million-to-hire-firefighters-little-change-1944041.html

They spent almost $1 million in taxpayer dollars on achieving diversity in the fire department and failed.  Incredibly, the new initiatives managed to decrease diversity.

"Incredibly, for this overly expensive process, the citizens of Austin received a hiring process of questionable validity and one of the least diverse classes, overall, when compared to other AFD hiring processes over the last 10 years," Nicks said.

I for one, don't care what color a firefighter is as long as HE fights fires.  I don't understand why there is a need for female firefighters since once they become chief they will do stupid things like waste lots of money to increase diversity. There should be no such thing as a "policewoman" or women in the military for that matter.  These professions should by all means be exclusively male.  Having women in traditionally male professions distorts the social structure of male-female relations and undermines the cohesiveness of society.

The plus side of the war against white men in traditionally white male professions is that I'll receive preferential treatment when I apply in the name of diversity.

Looking around

• While riding my bike the other day, I saw a line snaking around a shoe store.  Sure enough, the line was full of NAMs.  What were they waiting for?  Probably some new Jordan sneakers.  While whites protest outside, NAMs wait in line outside to buy overpriced sneakers.  Caveat emptor.  I wonder how many of them are on welfare.  This is value transference.  By selling NAMs overpriced sneakers, Nike is being an oppressive racist evil corporation.  They should start an affirmative action shoe selling program, where NAMs pay less than whites for the same shoes.   I guess when you are poor and want to show off your status, you buy Jordan basketball shoes since you can't afford SWPL.  
• White people eating salad with chopsticks.  SWPL is real.  
• I see a bunch of stereotypical black youths gangsta walking around the mall.  Before I can become an angry racist, I crimestop and tell myself, "they are just a bunch of upstanding young men".  When I walk out the mall, I spot them again.  This time one of them is gyrating like only a black person can whooping and pissing on a car while the other two chuckle and hoot.  Crimestop failed.  Damn.  

Yelp and Demographics

http://www.quantcast.com/yelp.com

The average Yelp user is a female SWPL.

At 9%, African Americans are underrepresented on Yelp but not to the extent that I expected them to be.  Blacks on Yelp are probably more SWPL than ghetto.  It's hard to count on Yelp in the ghetto because there are so few reviews.  I've tried it before and the only review on "Wong's Ghetto Chinese Food" goes something like "Dat some good shit this here kung pao chicken be.  MmmmMMmmm."

At 15%, Asians are over-represented by a magnitude of 3.  This is not surprising given that Yelp is software developed in Asian America.  Asians love things that go beep.  This plus Asians genetic tendency to food review and take pictures of the food leads to Asian over-representation.

Yelp is a liberal forum.  Any conservative opinions are closely monitored and for the most part not tolerated.  Don't even think of voicing an opinion about immigration as Yelpers are dedicated towards a lenient policy so that "ethnic food" options will increase.

Yelpers hate non-hip chain restaurants and will bash them every chance they get.  The positive is that Yelpers have much better taste buds than boring old white middle America who prefer Orange Chicken over Ethiopian raw beef.

Unfortunately, I was banned from Yelp for repetitive violation of the code of conduct, even though I had written numerous popular reviews and was part of the Yelp Elite.  It sure is funny how 20 people can find a review "funny" and then all of a sudden it will be flagged by someone who is offended by my writing and then taken down by the administration.  Is it really that offensive to note that the Asian fusion restaurant that everyone is in love with is full of a certain type of white person when the same offended will go on to write a review about how "authentic" a restaurant was because all the other patrons were ethnic?  Campaigns against SWPLs are not taken kindly by SWPLs.

I suppose I also did cross the invisible line when I slammed the clientele at AYCE buffets for being too fucking fat.  But I think people deserve to know the truth.  Eating huge portions of disgusting food is made worse when you are surrounded by disgusting people engorging themselves without a care in the world.

Books in College

I estimate that only 1 out of 10 students actually completes the assigned reading in college.  At stupid schools, the number is probably closer to 1 out of 20 (stupid people aren't interested in reading books, and if they do read, it's not on the post-modern analysis of revolutionary France ).  You have to possess an unnatural amount of intellectual curiosity to even attempt  completing the large amount of reading in a typical upper-division humanities course at a respectable university.  The average undergraduate does not have the time nor the patience to do this.  And yet, due to grade inflation, they will still likely leave the class with a C at worst and more likely a B or perhaps even an A.  I've never met anyone who failed a humanities course.

Being an overachiever, I foolishly spent hours upon hours pouring over books while my classmates were out having fun.  I thought assigned reading meant assigned reading, but it really means "suggested", and most people just ignore the reading since it does not interest them nor does the act of reading actually improve grade point average in any significant way.  In one of my history classes last year, I was disheartened to find over 12 books of varying lengths on the syllabus.  Last semester I read over 40 books.  I read one a week for the semester even though half of the books bored me to tears--and I was actually interested in the subject.  My hard work did pay off though--I was able to demonstrate my mastery of the subject on the exam--something that people who did not read struggled with.  If you don't read, you don't have much to write about.

Funny story involving racism.  One my classmates who did not do so well inquired about my grade under the theory that the professor was prejudiced against Orientals and would not award us A's.  Bubble burst.

I think the dearth of reading can be attributed to the economics of grade inflation.  I have the impression that most professors do not expect the students to complete all the reading and issue grades based on this knowledge.  If you can have a shot at an A- without reading, then the marginal cost of reading everything (huge amounts of time) is much higher than the marginal benefit (a small increase in grade point average) and it is simply not worth it for many to do the reading.  Of course professors hope that students are actually passionate about the subject and read to satisfy intellectual curiosity (another benefit), but this is very rare.

A high school honor student I am mentoring recently gloated to me about how she received an A+ on a paper that was about a book she never read.  I laughed and congratulated her on the "accomplishment" but was silently fuming inside.  Maybe it is my Calvinistic sense of compunction, but I would never have considered such a thing, and I often wonder how people could do this.  Of course, if Madoff can be Madoff, then not reading a book is a trifle in comparison.  But the slippery slope is there.  The harsh reality of life is that some of those who cheat will eventually learn their lesson.  But others will go on cheating and prospering until they die a rich death in the expensive coffin.  And then there are those who live their lives honestly but still end up falling on hard times.

I find a poor existence devoid of guilt much preferable to a lavish life built on compounded wrongs.  But I honestly find myself questioning the universality of guilt in the human race.  Are there those who steal without looking over their shoulder?  My heart wants to my say no, but experience tells me, yes, yes and yes.  Is this a progressing trend in human affairs?  With the death of God and the emergence of a chaotic and uncertain world, perhaps it is.  

  This scenario also highlights the pathetic state of the American education system.  America.  Where you can receive and A+ in an AP English course without ever reading.  This was not the first time that a student I mentored did this.  More than a few of the high school dumb jock types would just moan about hating reading and brag about how they never read books, but they were in the stupid classes, so it was to be expected.

EQ BABY!

Dali:

I don’t think HBDers actually believe in limits (to an extent) or question an individual’s capabilities, as most of their evidence is purely statistical. Genius black people and athletic Asian people exist, but they are many standard deviations from the norm. However, having an IQ of 70 is definitely a limit when it comes to understanding pure mathematics.

This is an example of a low-EQ HBDer being a bad person.  How could you give up on someone who has an IQ of 70?  Have you ever thought of how that individual came to have an IQ of 70?  If Albert Einstein grew up in terrible conditions in Africa without access to good sanitation and education, he would also have an IQ of 70.  An IQ of 70 is NOT a limit when it comes to understanding pure mathematics because IQ is highly malleable and therefore cannot be a limit.  By providing the correct stimulating environment, we can raise that IQ by more than 55 points and allow that individual to have a chance at understanding pure mathematics.  Anyone with enough EQ should be able to see this.  EQ, baby, EQ!  We are talking about humans here, not superheroes!!!  There is no evidence that genetic limits exist.  There is no evidence that we cannot turn someone with an base of IQ of 70 into a genius.  It has been done and will be done again.  After all, all babies start at IQ=0.  It is a matter of education, not genes.

A Critical Error

James Watson:

there is no firm reason to anticipate that the intellectual capacities of peoples geographically separated in their evolution should prove to have evolved identically. Our wanting to reserve equal powers of reason as some universal heritage of humanity will not be enough to make it so.

Big Wowo:

“Well, if we tested people across different populations, I really doubt you’d get equal results! You’re just afraid to test!”

Indeed, it’s impossible to test across different populations fairly, as one would have to compare populations of equal wealth, education, etc. But even if it were possible…few people think that the results would be equal. If I compared population heights, vertical jumps, IQ, bowling scores, head sizes, or whatever, it’s highly unlikely that I’d get the exact same results. It’s a strawman

At least I think BigWowo is responding to James Watson.  I have never argued this before and I am not exactly sure what his point is here.  He seems to now agree with me that equality would be a highly unlikely outcome in any event.  I have been pointing this out to him over and over again and he would shoot back with the idea that equality is the most desirable outcome and therefore should the burden of proof should be placed on those who claim inequality. No one has suggested that anyone is afraid to test--Africans have been tested and their IQs have been found to be significantly lower in Africa.  Yeah, it's a strawman, and this is probably the first time I've seen someone fail to destroy their own strawman.

. 

A Statistics Problem

A: East Asians are on average much smarter than blacks.

B: You are wrong and here is why.  Thomas Sowell is a very smart man and he is black.  If East Asians were in fact much smarter than blacks, then Thomas Sowell would be Asian, not black.  He looks very black to me.  The fact that Thomas Sowell is smart and black conclusively disproves the racist notion that East Asians are on average much smarter than blacks.

A: East Asians are on average less athletic than blacks.  (In my mind, a controversial statement, it depends on how we define athletic, but let's suppose athleticism equates to success in 100m and 110m hurdles, and even this is problematic, I don't know of any evidence suggesting the greater average athleticism of blacks, only their  much higher propensity for being on the far right of the 100m/110h bell curve).

B: Liu Xiang is a very 110m hurdler and he is Chinese.  If you were right, then Liu Xiang would have to be black.  He doesn't look black to me.

Genetic Limitations

 There is no evidence that people have genetic limitations.


A man who believes that he has no genetic limitations and can fly like a bird then proceeds to jump off a cliff is a dead man.  We all, at present, have a final limitation, and that is death.  The universality of death is evidence of genetic limitations.  Unless that is of course you believe in the whole heaven narrative.


This is assuming that science does not progress to the point where we can in fact fly or perpetually avoid death.  

365 Black. Brutal beating at Manhattan Mcdonald's.

http://newyork.cbslocal.com/2011/10/14/shock-video-savage-attack-at-manhattan-mcdonalds/

This is a great video.  I believe that the cashier did the right thing by beating up the unruly girls, even if he is going back to jail for a long time because of it.  What made them think they could hop behind the counter anyways?  They have now learned a good lesson about the importance of being polite to McDonald's employees who are the bottom of our social pyramid and have been oppressed by the McDonald's corporate structure.

I couldn't discern the race of the combatants, but some of the racist posters suggested that they were black.  I am very surprised.  I know all the racist pig white "HBD bloggers" are going to be all over this event by Monday (especially Half Sigma, since he is the NYC HBD blogger), but I will preempt them and mount an emotional defense of these black victims (they are all victims here).  This is an attempt to improve my "Emotional Intelligence", so bear with me.  Black people are peaceful and innocent-- this kind of violence is out of the ordinary.   While the violence was horrific, we shouldn't blame the black girls for jumping over the counter or the black employee for using the rod to discipline them.   Personal responsibility does not apply to black people. It is not their fault, but rather the fault of white people, who are responsible for the institutional racism that causes these black people to be angry and act like this in the first place.

Mcdonald's tries hard to fight racism with its black 365 program, but it hasn't prevented horrible things from happening at their restaurants whenever black people are around.  We can look back a few months and find the Baltimore Mcdonald's incident incident, when a transgendered thing was brutally assaulted.  In any case, maybe it is time for Mcdonald's to go back to Jim Crow days and refuse to serve and hire blacks?  Then maybe these incidents would stop.  Who knows.

This happened in Greenwich Village, not the ghetto!

The comments on the article are fascinating and very politically incorrect.  A lot of people agree with me and think that the bitches deserved it.  Here are some of the highlights.

Marot

Question: Whats the combined i.q. of the two ghetto chicks? Hint…its in the single digits.

October 14, 2011 at 7:31 pm | Reply | Report comment

rightsaidfred
Those beoches deserved worse than that. WOW people freak out when others decide they aren’t going to let black people get away with attacking them. Hurray for the worker, he should be given an award.

October 14, 2011 at 6:55 pm | Reply | Report comment 

Jakes
McDonald’s is getting more ghetto by the day. Who eats there besides the losers whose entire family lives off government assistance?

October 14, 2011 at 6:11 pm | Reply | Report comment 

 There are many other great comments, but I am not bored enough to read all of them.

All this talk about McDonald's is making me hungry.  I am going to get a Big Mac now.  Bye!  Please pray for my safety.

Byron Wrong

Byron Wrong, AKA, BigWoWo, AKA Jaehwan (?), has been busy deriding HBD on his blog.  Is passive-aggressiveness more prominent in East Asians because of genetics or is it culture?

He claims that HBD bloggers and intellectuals lack emotional intelligence.

“Intellectuals should stop dreading the ever-increasing evidence of human biodiversity and start delighting in it.”

http://www.isteve.com/islovecolorblind.htm

Why hasn’t this worked? Hmm. I mean, other than the fact that there’s no proof of HBD?

I remember him also writing something about pulling funds out of Africa because blacks weren’t smart enough to ever be independent. I’m not sure how he would know this. 

Going to the whole HBD thing, a person with a higher EQ might be able to see beyond a test score, might be able to realize that there are reasons why poor people in dangerous countries might not do as well on test scores. Culture is something that takes EQ to understand (very unsubstantiated declaration here). Plus, related to IR, he might realize that Asian women usually don’t go for buff White dudes–he would see this if he weren’t driven by emotions. (and yeah, they are emotions. Again, I’ll cover this in my final HBD post.)

That’s the thing with EQ. You often miss things if you don’t have it. It’s easy to say a person or group of people can’t do something. It’s much harder to find solutions, which require EQ as much as IQ (?).

So from my view, one cannot dismiss his ideas as low EQ thoughts or blinded by emotion on race. There’s a point in his ideas on that.

http://www.halfsigma.com/2011/10/hbd-and-america.html

“This morning I saw Herman Cain on Squawk Box, and I thought, this guy sounds really stupid and low class. He would never have been promoted by Pillsbury to be the head of a pizza chain if he were white and he spoke like that. This is why it’s rather hypocritical of him to be telling those white Occupy Wall Street people that they are too lazy to get jobs. If any of them were black, they’d probably have no problem getting hired by some big corporation seeking diversity. ”

I don’t know if he’s blogging just to get a rise out of people, but you get what I’m saying. There’s lots of emotion there that causes some real human harm among the people who read his site regularly. Even some of his commenters (many of whom are racist) had to point out Herman Cain’s educational credentials.

The main thrust of his argument is that the only possible reason why anyone would consider such a thing as human neurological diversity as truth is because they are full of hate.  Therefore, a belief in HBD necessarily entails a low EQ.  For him, human biodiversity can never be true.  This is why it is pointless to argue with him, as I demonstrated with an experimental personal comment about his family, he fails to examine reality objectively, and instead relies on emotion.  Which is coincidentally why he would probably consider himself as someone who has high EQ.  From what I understand, what a high EQ means for Byron Wrong is simply a high consideration of other people's feelings.

What does this kind of worldview look like?  It means that anything that causes emotional harm to any group of human beings or individual can never be true, because a characteristic of truth is love.  Therefore a scientific claim like Satoshi Kanazawa's study that provided evidence behind the lesser attractiveness of black women is false on the basis of it being offensive to black women (his methodology was suspect, true, but this does not detract from my main point, no study has been done that I know of which demonstrates the equality of beauty across races).

And I don't see any problem with Half Sigma stating that Herman Cain sounds stupid and low-class.  Half Sigma, more than anyone, probably has done the research on Cain's credentials and probably came to the conclusion that Cain is pretty damn smart.  But the claim here is that he sounds stupid, not that he is stupid.  Cain is just much smarter than he looks/sound.  Is it really that offensive to note that Cain sounds stupid?

The idea of HBD causes human harm to NAMs, therefore it must be evil.

And why does Byron Wrong keep insisting that HBD people vouch for the inferiority of Asians?  If anything, they believe Asians to be superior.

My position on the whole IR deal, specifically in regards to the plight of Asian males, is that the American social structure gives white males higher status which leads to the IR disparity.  I feel that the majority of people are in general, only sexually attracted to those of the same race as themselves.  But on the very margins of interracial relationships, biological differences would give the edge to white males over Asian males.  Ideally, 90% of Asian Males would be married to Asian Females and about a 1/3 ratio with AF/WM having the advantage over AM/WF.  In my opinion, there is too much miscegenation going on these days...