# Dio, at it again and raising the bar **URL:** \ **Category:** The BBQ Pit\ **Created:** [June 20, 2010, 6:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dio-at-it-again-and-raising-the-bar/543888 "2010-06-20T18:19:23Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 21
**Author:** ![Fenris](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fenris/32/498_2.png) [@Fenris](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fenris)\ **Post date:** [June 22, 2010, 11:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dio-at-it-again-and-raising-the-bar/543888/401 "2010-06-22T23:39:34Z")
> [@Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](#): > > No I didn’t. For everyone BUT Dio: He backpedaled towards the end of the second thread (like he does every time his trollery starts getting to the point of catching a mod’s attention) and claimed that he’d been talking about education or some such crap all along, but the argument he started with and clung to like a starving rat to a piece of cheese was that “Whites and Blacks have brains that work differently” and it’s clear in the first thread that he’s talking about neurological differences. I urge everyone out there to read the two threads and see what his first position was before he decided he’d probably gone too close to hate-speech and tried to avoid a warning. For Dio only, “Yes you did”\*infinity+1" I’ve now won the argument on a level you might be able to understand. > [@](#): > > Stop lying. Stop trolling. ---
**Author:** ![MsWhatsit](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/eb8c5e/32.png) [@MsWhatsit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MsWhatsit)\ **Post date:** [June 22, 2010, 11:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dio-at-it-again-and-raising-the-bar/543888/402 "2010-06-22T23:40:41Z")
Yeah, sure. If that’s really what your answer was about, then why did you directly quote the question, “You think white and black brains work differently?” and then respond with, “There is scientific evidence backing it up” without bothering to explain that you were actually answering a different question than the one you specifically quoted? ---
**Author:** ![Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e99b99/32.png) [@Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Diogenes_the_Cynic)\ **Post date:** [June 22, 2010, 11:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dio-at-it-again-and-raising-the-bar/543888/403 "2010-06-22T23:43:13Z")
I don’t know. I probably didn’t read what I was quoting carefully enough (and it was clear what the study we were talking about said). I made it clear throughout those threads that I wasn’t talking about genetic differences, though. ---
**Author:** ![Fenris](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fenris/32/498_2.png) [@Fenris](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fenris)\ **Post date:** [June 22, 2010, 11:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dio-at-it-again-and-raising-the-bar/543888/404 "2010-06-22T23:43:54Z")
> [@Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](#): > > Read the whole thread. It was about brains being _trained_ differently, not about genetic differences. [http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?p=9743260](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?p=9743260) > [@Two and a Half Inches of Fun\[/quote](#): > > How about his [Rev. Wright’s] bullshit statement that white people use their brains to learn like this (logically) and black people use their brains to learn like this (creatively)? > [@Dio](#): > > What was “bullshit” about it? > [@John Mace](#): > > You think Whites and Blacks have brains that work differently, per the quote above? That sounds like nonsense to me. > [@Dio](#): > > There is apparently scientific evidence backing it up. Neither one of us is a neurologist or an expert on brain physiology, so neither one of us is in a position to say the study is “bullshit.” It actually makes a lot of sense to me. It explains why black people are better at music, for instance. “Brain physiology”. Not “learning styles” or “training”. “physiology”. Troll. ---
**Author:** ![Fenris](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fenris/32/498_2.png) [@Fenris](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fenris)\ **Post date:** [June 22, 2010, 11:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dio-at-it-again-and-raising-the-bar/543888/405 "2010-06-22T23:44:55Z")
> [@Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](#): > > I don’t know. I probably didn’t read qhat I was quoting carefully enough. I made it clear throughout those threads that I wasn’t talking about genetic differences, though. So…you think a brain’s “physiology” comes from what, exactly, if not genetics? ---
**Author:** ![Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e99b99/32.png) [@Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Diogenes_the_Cynic)\ **Post date:** [June 22, 2010, 11:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dio-at-it-again-and-raising-the-bar/543888/406 "2010-06-22T23:46:18Z")
Brains respond physiologically to training. Physiology does not automatically mean genetic, and I made that clear in those threads. You’re grasping at straws. Trying to accuse me of racism is fucking pathetic. ---
**Author:** ![Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e99b99/32.png) [@Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Diogenes_the_Cynic)\ **Post date:** [June 22, 2010, 11:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dio-at-it-again-and-raising-the-bar/543888/407 "2010-06-22T23:49:30Z")
> [@Fenris](#): > > So…you think a brain’s “physiology” comes from what, exactly, if not genetics? The physiology of the brain is not fixed forever at birth. It changes. I make it clear in those threads (and the study I reference makes it clear) that genetics has nothing to do with it. The study was about how the brain responds _physiologically_ to diffrent kinds of pedagogy. Brains can be trained just like muscles can. The races in that study were irrelevant. They just incidentally broke down that way in the samples. ---
**Author:** ![Fenris](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fenris/32/498_2.png) [@Fenris](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fenris)\ **Post date:** [June 22, 2010, 11:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dio-at-it-again-and-raising-the-bar/543888/408 "2010-06-22T23:54:34Z")
> [@Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](#): > > Brains respond physiologically to training. Physiology does not automatically mean genetic, Physiology is the study of “how organisms, organ systems, organs, cells and biomolecules carry out the chemical or physical function that they have in a living system” So…a diabetic could respond to purely mental training and get his insulin levels up? You’d fit right in with the Stormfront crowd with the arguments you made. Stop backpedaling, ‘man up’ and own your racist trolling. > [@](#): > > Trying to accuse me of racism is fucking pathetic. Not as pathetic as trolling a thread from someone who’s grieving from a loss of a child\* because you want attention. Not as pathetic as the time you told a woman that she was mentally ill because, in the event of a tie between her and her husband, she would defer to him, all other things being equal. And not as pathetic as your backpedaling from your racist statements. Maybe you should be renamed: **Diogenes the CyniKKK** , trollboy. \*It’s exactly the same as if he’d wanted to adopt a baby and at the last minute the adoption fell through. ---
**Author:** ![elfkin477](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/a9a28c/32.png) [@elfkin477](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elfkin477)\ **Post date:** [June 23, 2010, 12:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dio-at-it-again-and-raising-the-bar/543888/409 "2010-06-23T00:00:06Z")
> [@Duke](#): > > You’re right, but probably not in the way that **Dio** wants it to be right. He’s just like most parents, who say it can’t happen to them. Unfortunately for **Dio** and “most parents”, a belief isn’t correct just because it’s widely held. 4,317,119 babies were born in the US [in 2007](http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/mar/18/birth-rate-us-baby-boomers) - [1.1](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiple_birth)% were twins or higher order multiples = ~8,500,000 individual parents (let’s assume that the rest were Spring cases with more than one baby-momma per daddy) Average number of U.S. child hyperthermia fatalities per year since 1998: 37 [cite](http://ggweather.com/heat/), 24% of which are typically infants under age one = 9 So, out of over 8 million new US parents of infants, only 9 of them have this “it can’t happen to me” incident happen to them. I think that’s close enough to make the claim that “It wouldn’t happen to me” applies to most parents absolute. ---
**Author:** ![Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e99b99/32.png) [@Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Diogenes_the_Cynic)\ **Post date:** [June 23, 2010, 12:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dio-at-it-again-and-raising-the-bar/543888/410 "2010-06-23T00:03:31Z")
> [@Fenris](#): > > Physiology is the study of “how organisms, organ systems, organs, cells and biomolecules carry out the chemical or physical function that they have in a living system” > > So…a diabetic could respond to purely mental training and get his insulin levels up? How the fuck do you get that? No the brain itself can be physiologically affected by external stimuli. Different stimuli trains the brain differently. I didn’t say the brain affects the physiology of the body, you fucking half-wit. > [@](#): > > Not as pathetic as trolling a thread from someone who’s grieving from a loss of a child\* because you want attention. There was no child. There was no pregnancy. That OP was trolling. > [@](#): > > Not as pathetic as the time you told a woman that she was mentally ill because, in the event of a tie between her and her husband, she would defer to him, all other things being equal. Jesus, you are really stuck in like 2003. Yeah, I told a woman she was messed up if she thought she had to “submit” to her husband on decisions.That thgread was about Promise Keepers forcing their wives to submit. What do you have against women making their own decisions, you fucking misgynist pig? > [@](#): > > And not as pathetic as your backpedaling from your racist statements. I’ve never made any racist statements, liar. ---
**Author:** ![woodstockbirdybird](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/woodstockbirdybird/32/7905_2.png) [@woodstockbirdybird](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/woodstockbirdybird)\ **Post date:** [June 23, 2010, 12:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dio-at-it-again-and-raising-the-bar/543888/411 "2010-06-23T00:08:14Z")
I don’t know. The belief that “black people are better at music” is arguably racist. ---
**Author:** ![Labrador\_Deceiver](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/7c8e57/32.png) [@Labrador\_Deceiver](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Labrador_Deceiver)\ **Post date:** [June 23, 2010, 12:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dio-at-it-again-and-raising-the-bar/543888/412 "2010-06-23T00:24:35Z")
> [@Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](#): > > It wasn’t a miscarriage, it was a false pregnancy, and his thread title was “my baby died.” Not only was there no baby, there wasn’t even a pregnancy. What a piece of garbage you are. They were 12 weeks into a confirmed pregnancy when they found out that the yolk sack was empty. There was nothing trollish about that OP, and you even apologized after realizing what a dick you were being. ---
**Author:** ![PlainJain](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/5daacb/32.png) [@PlainJain](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PlainJain)\ **Post date:** [June 23, 2010, 12:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dio-at-it-again-and-raising-the-bar/543888/413 "2010-06-23T00:47:12Z")
> [@Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](#): > > If you think I’m trolling, report me. Wow, poking the mods with a stick by proxy. Genius! ---
**Author:** ![curlcoat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/ea5d25/32.png) [@curlcoat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/curlcoat)\ **Post date:** [June 23, 2010, 12:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dio-at-it-again-and-raising-the-bar/543888/414 "2010-06-23T00:55:46Z")
> [@Meyer6](#): > > And how would you figure out you were capable of zoning out? By doing it _just once_, right, and then learning your lesson from it? But that _just once_ is enough! Seriously, I’m beginning to wonder if you or \*\*Dio \*\*even read your own posts. Just as I begin to wonder if you understand anything you read. As I said, making sure I never leave a dog in a car to fry is so important to me that glancing in the back is part of leaving the car every time, not just when I remember bringing them. > [@](#): > > The brain fart involved in forgetting something like this is only for one instant. The fact that they then left and time passed does not negate that. At that point the parent was not thinking about the kid in an immediate sense because in their mind the kid was at daycare. It’s not like for several hours they thought about their children every few minutes and wondered where they were and then just blew it off. Shrug. You aren’t going to change my mind that something that is supposed to be sooo important to them is so easy to forget. Besides, that wasn’t my point, which was I cannot believe how all you loving parents rush to excuse the actions of these people as natural or whatever it is you think. > [@](#): > > Nobody has said that ‘all parents love their children’ It’s implied in “The suffering of a parent in these circumstances is surely more of a burden than any legal punishment would be.” You appear to believe that the death of a child would cause any parent to suffer more than whatever legal punishment they might get. It is also implied in the attitude here that the only reason that a parent could possibly forget a kid in a car to fry is because of some scientifically proven brain fart excuse, and not because they don’t really care about the kid all that much. > [@](#): > > The fact that you are trying to conflate true child abuse and deliberate negligence with the subject at hand tells me that you either don’t really understand the subject or that you don’t intend to argue honestly. No, it means that I feel that leaving a child in a car to fry is negligence, tho not necessarily deliberate. I just cannot conceive of that level of forgetfulness aimed at something that important, plus I’m amazed at the number of people that support it. [QUOTE=Meyer6] So if that doesn’t jive with how they actually are, it’s really your fault, not mine. [/QUOTE] Yeah, right - I’m responsible for your ability to read and understand… > [@](#): > > You are such a dumbass. This is possibly the stupidest argument yet in this thread, …and right into a great example of the above. That was sarcasm dumbass. ---
**Author:** ![Rand\_Rover](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/db5fbb/32.png) [@Rand\_Rover](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rand_Rover)\ **Post date:** [June 23, 2010, 12:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dio-at-it-again-and-raising-the-bar/543888/415 "2010-06-23T00:59:09Z")
Wow. This whole thing reminds me of the Liberal meltdown (or, I should say, at least one of the Liberal meltdowns). Dio, you’ve really shown yourself to be a complete shit-sack. ---
**Author:** ![curlcoat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/ea5d25/32.png) [@curlcoat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/curlcoat)\ **Post date:** [June 23, 2010, 1:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dio-at-it-again-and-raising-the-bar/543888/416 "2010-06-23T01:00:43Z")
> [@kambuckta](#): > > Yeah, seriously, once **curlcoat** comes into a thread, you know it’s downhill all the way. Nothing at all to be gained by hanging around. > > It’s a shame really…what could otherwise be a lively (albeit heated) debate about [_insert any topic at all here_] ends up with our fave narcissist blithely sticking her virtual fingers in her ears whilst secretly enjoying the scorn she so richly deserves. And of course, the thread ends up being all about her, just as she planned at the outset. Ya know, it’s amazing that you all can blame all of this on me when you display the same things. Plus, I’m not the only one who has expressed doubt that a loving parent can forget their kid that easily - where is the distain for those others? As for the thread being about me, this one is moving so fast that I’m not bothering to keep up, so it appears to still be about the subject. But you keep on making yourself feel better by trying to drag other down, 'k? ---
**Author:** ![Fenris](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fenris/32/498_2.png) [@Fenris](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fenris)\ **Post date:** [June 23, 2010, 1:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dio-at-it-again-and-raising-the-bar/543888/417 "2010-06-23T01:24:01Z")
> [@PlainJain](#): > > Wow, poking the mods with a stick by proxy. Genius! He’s just breaking out another one of his “I’m not quite on the wrong side of the trolling line so nyaah-nyaaah to the mods” routines. Haven’t you seen that one before? It’s an attempt to circumvent the mods from warning him: He seems to think if he does says that and then a mod then warns him, he’ll look like a martyr and/or he’ll have a ‘case’ that the mod was biased from the poster’s report. I don’t think it works, but hell…as often as he tries it, he certainly seems to. Two examples just from a quickie search: [If you think I’m a troll](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=5518635&postcount=156), [report me](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=11858093&postcount=237) (one of those threads has a bunch more of those comments and he’s done it elsewhere too. .) He was apparently warned today though, so all the people a few pages back who said “Golly! Something must be wrong with Dio! I don’t remember him being such a douche!” will see a return to the non-trolling version of his persona for a month or two until he thinks he’s fallen below the mod’s radar again. . ---
**Author:** ![Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e99b99/32.png) [@Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Diogenes_the_Cynic)\ **Post date:** [June 23, 2010, 1:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dio-at-it-again-and-raising-the-bar/543888/418 "2010-06-23T01:29:00Z")
Jesus, you have quite the vivid imagination. I’ve never thought ANY of that. ---
**Author:** ![Measure\_for\_Measure](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/measure_for_measure/32/557_2.png) [@Measure\_for\_Measure](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Measure_for_Measure)\ **Post date:** [June 23, 2010, 1:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dio-at-it-again-and-raising-the-bar/543888/419 "2010-06-23T01:29:49Z")
> [@Fenris](#): > > So…you think a brain’s “physiology” comes from what, exactly, if not genetics? What does a finger’s physiology come from? Why do identical twins have different fingerprints? ## A: Variations in the pre-natal environment (eg Fetus A sits across from Fetus B, while Fetus B sits across from Fetus A) can affect physiology. More generally, what some characterize as “Backpedaling”, I would call “Clarification”. Typically, the back-story is pretty apparent to me when I read Dio’s initial comments, but then again, I only read them after they’ve been linked to in pit threads. I don’t hang out in MPSIMS that often. ---
**Author:** ![Measure\_for\_Measure](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/measure_for_measure/32/557_2.png) [@Measure\_for\_Measure](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Measure_for_Measure)\ **Post date:** [June 23, 2010, 1:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dio-at-it-again-and-raising-the-bar/543888/420 "2010-06-23T01:37:19Z")
> [@elfkin477](#): > > 4,317,119 babies were born in the US … So, out of over 8 million new US parents of infants, only 9 of them have this “it can’t happen to me” incident happen to them. I think that’s close enough to make the claim that “It wouldn’t happen to me” applies to most parents absolute. Thanks for this work. I see that the background incidence is something like one in a million. This doesn’t really tell us though whether what share of these adults had a 1 in 40 lifetimes bad day, and what share truly applied improper procedures. I agree though that it’s reasonable to infer the latter, though I’d argue the case isn’t yet a slam-dunk. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dio-at-it-again-and-raising-the-bar/543888.md?page=20) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dio-at-it-again-and-raising-the-bar/543888.md?page=22)