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occamon My Institutional Review Board Nightmare

Tuskegee syphilis experiment, ok. However, as bad as that was, no one was injected with syphilis.

occamon My Institutional Review Board Nightmare

Who has ever done that?

occamon The British Ruby Conference has been cancelled

"Not all meritocracy is bad."

This is a reasonable thing to say now. We've come a long way.

occamon Holy Terror: The Rise of the Order of Assassins

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mohammed_Bouyeri

occamon Secret language

"Top of mind" doesn't quite sound native to me. The use of the ampersand like that seems Indian too. Finally the exclamation point is slight evidence.

occamon Understanding and dealing with overbearing Asian parents

He has described symptoms well, but his explanations only make sense if you ignore other immigrant groups. Latin American immigrants come from similar range of poor, politically unstable backgrounds, yet their children aren't being driven to academic excellence by their parents. In fact, instead of outperforming the white American natives, they substantially underperform them. Why the difference?

Let me give an answer: it appears to be genetics. Why else are the very different experiences of mainland Chinese, Chinese Hong Kongers, Chinese people from Taiwan, Chinese people from Singapore, Chinese people from Indonesian and Malaysia resulting in only minor differences in average outcomes in the USA?

occamon Secret language

OK, but to be fair to MS, this appears to have been written by a nonnative English speaker. Indian, I think. So there's another factor at work.

occamon The dark side of Dubai

I have a hard time believing this about Australians:

"...Madam made me work from 6am to 1am every day, with no day off. I was exhausted and pleaded for a break, but they just shouted: 'You came here to work, not sleep!' Then one day I just couldn't go on, and Madam beat me. She beat me with her fists and kicked me. "

occamon Why I won't be at my high school reunion

but if you're suggesting

I'm not.

occamon Why I won't be at my high school reunion

I wasn't France in WWII, I was Britain.

Off topic: actually France and Britain attacked and declared war on Germany. So probably neither works as a metaphor for a victim of bullying.

occamon Ask HN: Objecting to stories being killed

Which item in the guidelines does this blogger's writing violate?

occamon Ask HN: Objecting to stories being killed

Of course you don't have to vote it up. But why was it killed?

occamon Ask HN: Objecting to stories being killed

http://paulgraham.com/say.html

occamon Ask HN: Objecting to stories being killed

Allen, everything from that domain is autokilled. Try it yourself. Here's one you can submit: http://isteve.blogspot.com/2007/01/reasons-for-being-cheerfu...

occamon Ask HN: Objecting to stories being killed

Yes. But the article is question doesn't seem to be about politics: http://isteve.blogspot.com/2009/07/medias-bias-toward-englis...

occamon Ask HN: Objecting to stories being killed

I just tried submitting another article from his blog and again it was [dead] by the time I was redirected to the 'new' page, i.e. a few milliseconds. Here it is: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=686436

Try posting something from his site yourself, like this one: http://isteve.blogspot.com/2007/01/illuminating-map.html

occamon Ask HN: Objecting to stories being killed

No, the article was auto-killed. The blogger is probably blacklisted for being racially insensitive or something. Yet here is an example of one of his posts that did well on HN and generated much interesting commentary: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=280544

occamon Ask HN: Objecting to stories being killed

Yes, and thank you for reading the article. It is an interesting and important point.

occamon Ask HN: Objecting to stories being killed

What is the political slant of that article?

occamon Ask HN: Objecting to stories being killed

Can you point to one of his articles that is trollish, instead of just unPC?

occamon Ask HN: Objecting to stories being killed

There's also politically correct censorship going on, amazingly. This morning I submitted this: http://isteve.blogspot.com/2009/07/medias-bias-toward-englis... . It was dead on arrival, marked [dead] immediately, presumably because that blogger is "divisive" and "racially insensitive". Please read that and judge for yourself if it is interesting.

occamon Nate Silver: Does race affect votes?

Yes, why did he choose 1996? 2004 is the more obvious choice.

occamon Nate Silver: Does race affect votes?

Wrong. The most rural and white states in the country voted more for Obama than Kerry. Look at Montana, the Dakotas, Vermont, etc.

The people of Appalachia voted for McCain for the same reason blacks voted so heavily for Obama. He is one of their own in a way that Kerry was not. McCain is beligerent two fisted Scots Irish. http://isteve.blogspot.com/2008/11/mccain-scots-irish-champi...

occamon Icelandic logic behind the meltdown

Sailer agrees with you about the male/female thing. He's saying it doesn't seem to be a factor.

occamon Icelandic logic behind the meltdown

Sailer agrees with you about the male/female thing. He's saying it doesn't seem to be a factor.

occamon Icelandic logic behind the meltdown

A rebuttal: http://isteve.blogspot.com/2009/03/bubbles-and-sex.html True, but it's still a great article.

occamon Why English speakers dominate sprinting events

That doesn't explain why west Africans are so strong at sprinting but very weak at distance running, while east Africans are the opposite (dominant in distance running, very weak sprinters), nor why whites are somewhat competitive in the middle distances but not sprints and long distances.

occamon Google launches white space offensive with new web site

I thought this was a new web design for Google. Too bad it's not.

occamon As Program Moves Poor to Suburbs, Tensions Follow

Who is killing slightly controversial comments here? What's wrong with the following dead comment?

They have tried this extensively. Inner city block grants, subsidizing business, etc.

The idea that you can 'fix' another person's neighborhood is equally as racist as the policies that caused blacks to concentrate in those neighborhoods in the first place (they were chased out of the countryside in the KKK era and left with few alternatives to the city). What if the government started offering grants to 'fix' your neighborhood? How demeaning that is, and how absurd! As though subsidized bike shops and coffee shops are going to pressure crack dealers to go away.

As for the police patrols and condemned properties, do you think that there is a functioning local government in these areas? Look at DC and Detroit! The local city government is so corrupt that they can't even provide basic services, or basic levels of non corrupt policing, much less an effective attempt at crime reduction. On my way to work in DC a few years ago I would see the same police officer asleep under the same overpass every single day. This was right next to the highway, so maybe 2000 people would see him every morning, and yet he would sleep away, sometimes with his face pressed on the drivers side window. Do you think a bagel shop can fix that!?

occamon New tech by Nissan: Tactile feedback in gas pedal to help you save gas

If there's one thing I'm certain of, it's that there is no such thing as excess acceleration.