najirama

Your unfunny, offensive, 'parody' page, full of 'n-bombs' and a picture that is nothing if not racist, tidily explains your summarily trollish and unintelligent comment.

#1 - You're treating the quoted text as (I quote) "a quote". It's not. It's a small piece of a much larger whole.

Hmm - last I checked, a small piece of a larger whole IS a quote. Webster's definitively settles this in my favor.

#2 - No - there is no subjectivity involved in the claim that his lyrics are 'juvenile' and 'simple' especially when the man himself has said so on several occasions, both in verse and out. (See the song: Moment Of Clarity) If the artist himself says he 'dumb downed' his lyrics, I think its purely factual to then say his lyrics are 'simple'.

#3 - Pardon me, you don't know a damned thing about me or how I grew up. So no, your assumption is not fair. I've seen the gutter in my life. I've lived in places that I gather you are only familiar with through Jay-z songs. So forgive me if I take a particular offense to this comment.

Situational empathy? Are you kidding me? I suspect this kind of careless, 'there are are few better options' mentality stems from a brutal ignorance of what inner-city life is really like. So let me just help you out by saying there are thousands of kids from these terrible situations, (many of whom I work with weekly), who do not deal drugs, who stay in school, who pursue scholarship, who do not idolize Jay-z and his calling cards, thug-culture, gun violence, promiscuity, drugs, and death. Unfortunately for all of us, these kids are in the vast minority.

#1 - You contradict yourself implicitly with this defense. If a quote needs more context to have impact, then it is a shitty quote, which is what the OP said plainly.

#2 - 'Juvenille' and 'simple' are synonymous in this context. Period. Jay-z lyrics are more often then not, ridiculously vapid of substance or depth. Musical kool-aid.

#3 - Jay-z is a man who made his money ruining the lives of thousands by selling drugs, and millions more by being a horrific influence. He is a man who has admittedly attempted murder on more than one occasion. He is a man who has used and debased women proudly. He is a man of many transgressions. And I could look past all of them if he did not glorify them so.

Yet he does - so shamelessly in fact that its revolting to witness. His wealth and the adoration of the mindless sheep who buy his "music" are the justification he uses to continue to do so.

He says he'll always rap about variations on the same themes: drug hustling, business boasts, luxury hopscotching from Gucci to Louis Vuitton to the new Dior suit he says is a perfect fit.

I'm sorry his money and "accomplishments" and his poor excuse for music do not make this a praiseworthy man.

Thanks for sharing.

Are you suggesting that the wealth and GDP of a continent are positively correlated with its area? How bizarre...

I guess somebody forgot to tell Antarctica.

...and honestly - I feel the guy.

We humans have a tendency towards the shameless worship of heroes. We seem to need to create legends and demigods and to praise and glorify acts that upon careful examination are little more than the progeny of good fortune and timing. Providence itself isn't worthy of our praise nor our consideration - which makes the ascension of men of 'lesser stuff' a bitter pill to swallow for those few 'in-the-know'.

I think back to first grade, and recall how desperately I wanted to be a scientist/composer/hero/great man/demigod. I had no idea what these things were really, but in my mind, they were the people who knew; and what they didn't know they sought. They were the gatekeepers, arbiters, discoverers, and composers of knowledge, truth, and frankly most of what mattered. A few years later, when asked who/what I wanted to be when I grew up, beyond my father I could think only of Newton, Einstein, Maxwell, Bach, Beethoven, Chopin, et al...

My, how quickly things change. The pursuit of knowledge and beauty for its own sake is an ideal which has perhaps never existed, or existed in so few men as to have practically never done so. But we're waaay past that. A man not too long ago solved Fermat's Last, how many know his name without Wikipedia? What impresses us now? What is deemed worthy of our 'shameless worship"?A man not too long ago solved Poincare's; beyond the story about his rejecting a million dollars, who gave a shit?

No one. We save our shits for the pirates of Silicon Valley these days.

That, if I am ever blessed with a son or daughter, and they are one day asked in their youth who or what they want to become when they grow up, and in turn respond with Gates, Jobs, Zuckerburg, et al, we have all failed. And I, them.

It was my rudimentary understanding that Lamarckian inheritance had been debunked; how else then could such precise knowledge of a cockroach's neurological functions have been passed on to the subsequent generation from the primary generation whence such a technique was first employed?

But you provoke interesting questions; Is it possible to mitigate or eliminate tribalism on any level, anywhere in the world? And if so, can software be integral to the process, or in any way accelerate it?

My reading of history tells me that favorable outcomes are possible in regards to both questions, however the form of such software is at the moment beyond my conception.

Regarding #3 :

This is an excellent but intractable idea. The sheer number of languages in that region is too staggering to capture even a majority percentage in such a manner; and it would be of little use to any but the academics in linguistics or cultural anthropology.

Better would be a tool that completely encapsulates the vocabulary and grammar of the main languages in that region, so that they may be learned online. There are no sufficient tools that do so at present, either online or in bookstores - and the children of the diaspora, and their children and so forth, could/would make great use of such a thing.

Sir, with all due respect, kindly speak for yourself.

I find your post offensive to good sense, pragmatism, and sensibility.

If, and when a person chooses to share their lives with the entire world, they must then also live we the consequences of that sharing, good or bad.

Patio11 has done exactly this - he has quite literally given a piece of himself to the world and for that he has both been praised and psychoanalyzed. He is by all accounts an adult, and I am sure he is aware of the nature of this beast.

I enjoyed lionhearted's analysis, if only as an intellectual exercise. Is that not why this damn site exists? For the stimulation of intellectual curiosity? If this kind of post is not acceptable here, then by all reasonable measures 95% off all front page articles ever, do/did not belong here.

Where is this melodramatic over-reaction when the myriad of critical PG, Zuckerburg, Gates, Jobs, Hansen, Arrington, and Calcanis posts hit the front page? Why haven't the writers of those blog post been similarly singled out? Your needless "defense" of patio11 is more an affront to him then the post of which you disagree! If you're going to engage in high-school melodrama, at least be consistent about its application.

"Let's keep HN sacred."

HN isn't sacred for goodness-sakes. It is a place for intellectual discussion; the subject of which can be anything or anyone. Remove the 'sanctimonious' from your thinking - please.

"...secret squirrel double-plus alpha unrelease..."

Mind if I use that? It would be a terrific title for an animal fighting game I've been itching to make.

Let us call a spade a spade shall we? Asians have a considerable and measurable white bias when it comes to aesthetics.

http://edition.cnn.com/2002/WORLD/asiapcf/east/05/13/asia.wh...

http://articles.latimes.com/2005/jul/26/local/me-whitening26

Couple the skin-whitening phenomenon with the double-eyelid surgery explosion with the open-air admission of the Asians' who elect to do these procedures that the so-called "Hellenic" features are more desirable than their own - and you have more than circumstantial evidence for the proposition "The Japanese draw themselves as white."

...And that isn't even mentioning the fact that the characters they draw, by any reasonable appraisal look about as white as Christmas in Nebraska.

If the truth offends your sensibilities, then it is your sensibilities that need adjusting.

Who comprises this 'our' that you so easily reference, and what matter is their assumptions to the actual truth of the OP's thesis?

Cringe-inducing groupthink, in excelsis. Careful you don't lose yourself in pursuit of community.

It seems you haven't even taken the time to follow your own proposition (Intelligence, especially as operationalized by standardized testing, is as biological as height and athleticism.) to its logical conclusion; for if you had, you wouldn't have followed it with the statement, If I were a teacher in DC and the majority of my students were not from middle+ class families, I would quit ahead of time...

Last I checked, "middle+ class" wasn't a genetic trait. So either you misunderstand what 'biological' means (dubious), or you yourself cannot separate intellect/scholastic achievement from environment/socio-economic class.

If it is the latter, then you directly contradict your proposition about the biological immutability of intelligence. If it is the former, perhaps you can clarify what you really meant when you wrote biological.

I find the drone puts me into an almost trance-like state where my focus and concentration abilities increase dramatically. I imagine I'd quite like having these things blaring while playing on such a grand stage as the World Cup.

I am no fan of Mahalo, but before you run around telling people that they are wasting their time on shit, how about you make sure you aren't excreting any yourself.

I don't know if its the tunings or something in the recording/mix process; nevertheless I'm going to seek out the cd recordings - thanks for sharing.

Sure, creative work recorded to some medium is protected by copyright - however, transcribed discussion is not by the standard measure, "creative," (i.e. derived for some rational and/or aesthetic purpose, such that it has the ability to be appreciated and admired on its own merits, for its own sake.)

I say publish the comments consequences be damned. If any commenter has issue with their words being published hardcopy, they will have a hell of a time trying to justify why they wrote them in a public forum in the first place.

In any case, given the indignation that is ever-present here when a software I.P. story gets posted, at least you will have outed the hypocrites among us... ;)

Does his sexuality erase or amplify the work he has done? No.

Let's move on.

That is certainly sound science - certain wavelengths of electromagnetic radiation cause cancers. Why do you think people are advised to avoid prolonged exposure to sunlight (ultraviolet spectrum), or are given lead protection when receiving X-rays (x-ray spectrum)?

Your post is an excellent example on how superstition and ignorance spreads; when someone spouts nonsense and falsities with an air of incredulity. Please, if you do not know what you are talking about, do not speak on it.

Imagine if our judicial branch worked that way, would that lead to a sustainable society? Absolutely not. You couldn't legitimately punish anyone for a crime because what is a 'crime' to you may not be a 'crime' to the perpetrator. And so on, and so on...

Bottom line, if an action is evil, it is fundamentally evil. The nature of an action doesn't change according to who commits it. The day humanity stops "cringing" when faced with apologist behavior is perhaps the day when humanity dooms itself.

This isn't a question of whose 'wrong' is right or even whose 'wrong' is a little more right. It is a question of 'is it wrong at all?' And it is. It just isn't possible to argue that Hitler effected a positive (or even net neutral) change on the world - hence he is worthy of no admiration, regardless of what nation it comes from.

That's basically what it comes down to - 'Is X praiseworthy?' If X is not, then ultimately it doesn't matter a bit where the praise comes from. To say otherwise is to be an apologist for evil men and evil actions (as being evil makes an X not worthy of praise.)

The proof by Daniel Levine is absolutely "logically sound." The idea that what was shown was the conditional, "if y=y then x0=0" and not "x0=0 is true" simply ignores the fact that the first proposition in the proof was NOT an implication or derivation - it was an axiom.

Because it is an axiom, we are guaranteed that the argument is sound (and the conclusion true under whatever interpretation allows proposition #1 as an axiom) as soon as we prove that the argument is valid. Which is exactly what Levine set out to show. Logic 101.

If the point-system rewards shallow group-think, and punishes truth - 'What is the point of it?', I must ask.

Heck, this has now become my new standard for judging content quality - let me see how many provably true, on-topic things one says in a thread, so that their score drops below unity.

1. "I have said several times that I'm not talking about discrete classes, yet you insist on arguing that point."

Regardless of whether or not you meant to be "talking about discrete classes," you were. Socio-economic classes ARE discrete classes. So if you are talking about some other type of class, it is a mistake of comprehension on your behalf.

2. "I do not think that race can predict whether someone is lower, middle or upper class."

An explicit contradiction. I'll quote you directly:

"In America, skin color is a good predictor of class."

So which is it? Is race a good "predictor" of class or is it not?

3. "I do think that race can predict income."

This is the same thing as predicting class. Income is both necessary and sufficient for determining class, so if you could predict income by race, you could predict class by race. But you cannot do this (remember that guessing 'middle class' over and over is not allowed as it isn't information providing.).

4. "...you haven't even tried to disprove my assertion that households earning $55,530 and $34,218 will likely have different behaviors."

Ummm...that's because the opposite is taken for granted in the model of class. The middle class interval is traditionally considered to be from 30K to 75K - the class intervals are chosen precisely because the buying power in each strata is considered to be effectively equivalent. Again, if you don't understand this, then you do not understand the nature of classes - it just is what it is.

5. " If my assertion is true, then race is a valuable predictor of behavior."

No. Even if your assertion is true, all it shows is that income is a predictor of class. Well, duh - classes are defined by incomes. Behavior has no relation to any of these variables - that is, bad behaviors are distributed in equal proportions across the class strata. Income may predict risk-levels associated with bad-behaviors, but not necessarily their frequency.

6. "No, I don't think black families and white families with the same incomes will have significant differences in criminality."

Exactly. So then, there is no predictive ability that race has for any arbitrary class strata. It immediately follows then, that race has no predictive ability in terms of class. QED.