Just realized–is it possible to be kicked out of the Pit for being too polite?
It’s off to GD for you pansy bastards! 
Hapla, I have some serious reservations about your next to last post. I do believe that you’re making unwarrentdly poor comparisions between Americans and others in this context. But, I have other axes to grind.
See, I do have some pit material. I’ve finally been pushed too far: see http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?threadid=57478&pagenumber=2
Wherein grienspice finally pushes me over the top. Perhaps because I am in a pissy mood. Perhaps because he’s finally given me the excuse after rubbing me wrong. I probably will end up apologizing in the end, but for the moment…
To my dear friend:
Okay you dumb fuck, let’s stop pretending. I’ll first say you can lead a dumbass to water, but some dumb fucks are too stupid to drink.
You wanna mock, fine, fair game. I’m eminently mockable, but try to do so when you have a motherfucking leg to stand on. I’ve declined from noting how many times Gaspode and I have clearly explained some fucking basic ass concepts and you still can’t get it right.
To disagree, successfully, you have to address the fucking data you festeringly dense ignoramus, not dance around and make logically inconsistent and factually unsupportable hypotheses which reflect more upon your stunning inability to address some simple observations rather than any feeble reflection by your festering brain.
It also helps not to pull the same fantastically ill-thought out superficially concieved shit which I and others have patiently deconstructed out of your motherfucking ass and pretend this is some kind of novel observation as if those of us who actually fucking read something on the subject are going to fall back on our asses and say, goddamned, never thought of that?!
If its already been refuted, the second time around doesn’t make it any better. Did you go to the Peace school of idiotic repetition?
Now, to the specifics, from the linked thread
Listen you dumb fuck, its well fucking established that fucking diet has major effects on height. Your sarcasm is not only misplaced, it also makes you look even stupider than you already appeared. Fucking moron.
Again, dipshit, try to at least get the sarcasm going in the right direction. It’s infinitely more effective.
Rhetoric? Fucking rhetoric asshole? Fuck you. You can take your fucking stupid drooling “hypotheses” which are barely worth the name and stick it up your ass where they can fester in all their gloriously stubborn and putrid ignorance insulated from the slightest acquaintance with fact or even logical thought. Then, afterward you can shit them out and reexamine them in the light of your own wonderfully putrid fucking ignorance and enjoy the loathsome stench of willful and stubborn igorance.
Rational discussion and inquiry, my stupendously dense and fabulously stubborn moron, are not based on illogical speculation and factually inconsistent speculation divorced from the merest acquaintance with facts and data. No, they are indeed ** based on them **. Ergo, when someone mentions your moronic “hypothesis” is illogical and runs against the data, you might stop to wonder if perhaps by some slight chance you might be basing your ignorant wonderings on a fundamental misunderstanding or two.
And once again you show your utter inability to achieve the vaguest glimmering of an understanding of what has been painfully explained over and over, until I’ve almost come to desire to vomit on you. Your utter inability to grasp the difference between individual and group is stunning. I am in awe of your lack of perception, stunned by your ability to confuse and confound different concepts and then write such drivel, such stunningly irrelevant drivel such as, “debate of nature versus nurture” as if Gaspode and I were making some entirely different argument. I could go on, but I need to sleep. So, in closing, you are an idiot. A ludicrously dense idiot.
Anecdotal Evidence will follow.
Personal observation here. (with some personal biases included)[sub]shoot me, I’m not perfect[/sub]
When I first met my fiance, I noted that she was tall for a filipino. I liked this because I didn’t want to have kids who were 4 ft tall. Then I met her parents, and man…they were short. Hey, no big deal though. Short kids are not the end of the world if you are with a woman you love. Then I met her brother and sister. They are both taller than her. Then I made a couple of insensitive jokes about the “short gene” skipping a generation and us having short children. She threw the nutrition line at me, but it wasn’t until we attended 4 or 5 large filipino gatherings (weddings, birthdays etc…) I saw for myself that the Filipinos raised exclusively in the states towered over those who emigrated.
So…I have to go with the nutrition theory on height.
Look, everyone, the fact is that everyone you meet has a different opinion about just about everything. This topic really brings out the knuckleheads. I should know, because I made the mistake of posting a reply to a thread a couple of days ago and putting my uneducated opinions out in the open (Why are players in the NBA mostly black). Well, I was a jackass. You guys have really given me an education on this topic. Ultimately, though, people are going to say whatever the hell they want to, some through ignorance, like me, and others through hate. As such, if they don’t want to learn, nothing you or anyone else can say will make any difference. So, having placed my apology on the public record, I say tear the bastards a new asshole, because that’s what narrowminded bigots deserve.
The thing is, people rely on personal experience to make up a large part of their beliefs. Whether there is genetic differences between races or not does not matter to many people. By reading these boards and other sources, I have had my views on the race issue changed. I always thought that people should be treated equally, but I guess I didn’t think that people were born equally.
When you look at the fact that blacks generally score lower on most standardized tests by a large margin it makes people wonder why. When you look at the fact that blacks do poorly in school compared to whites it makes people wonder why. When you combine these and other facts with personal observations it can lead to erroneous conclusions.
When I was growing up, I would see blacks segregating themselves in the schools I lived in. They tended to use more grammatically incorrect language than other people in my schools. The blacks that I grew up with exhibited many different cultural traits that just did not seem as intelligent to me. Then everything I would read about Africa made it seem like a completely backward, third world continent. Maybe my own prejudices caused me to percieve something that wasn’t there, but it seemed to me that everything I saw in person, on television, or read about lead to the conclusion that blacks were not as smart as whites.
As I’ve gotten older and learned more, I’ve realized that there is absolutely nothing inferior about blacks. I understand that my previous conclusions were completely wrong and racist. I think that racism does keep blacks down. I believe that racism should be erradicated.
Beyond that, you have to realize that there are idiots on both sides of this issue. There are intelligent, rational people that are racist. The only way to get them to change their opinion is to talk calmly and rationally about the issue and explain why their viewpoint is wrong. Just yelling and calling them a bigot is not going to work, especially when the person who is doing the yelling is the less intelligent of the two.
The thing is, different parts of the country look at these issues in different ways. If you live in a diverse affluent area, you will probably be less likely to have racist ideas. If you grow up near the Mexican border and ninety percent of the hispanics you see are illegal aliens who do not attend school, you are going to be more likely to think of hispanics as inferior. When people tell you differently, right or wrong you will have personal experience that backs up your assertion. I lived in upstate New York early in my life. There was a lot of prejudice between different ethnicities. I always heard things like Pollish people being dumb, or eastern Europeans not being as smart as western Europeans. When I moved to Texas, you never heard anything like this. There was absolutely no segregation based on what country ones ancestors came from. However, their was a lot more segregation between races. When every black you see is poor and doing poorly in school, you are much more likely to think that there is something genetically inferior about blacks.
I guess the only thing I can say is that things people write on these boards do make a difference. Smart, open minded people change their minds when their previous opinions were wrong. I think that people when discussing these issues should be extra careful to not use inflammatory language. For example, if someone asks why men do better than women on math tests, don’t just yell at them and call them a sexist pig. This does more harm than good. If you explain why they are wrong, you might actually change their mind.
P.S. I apologize if I used any terms or language that might have offended anyone.
Collounsbury and everyone :
Thanks for the accolades. You are doing a great job. Keep up the work. I’ll lend a sentence or two when I feel I can be of service explaining the genetics, but I ain’t touching the anthropology.
To put my two cents into this,
Genetics is not easy to understand. Human and population genetics are dependent on heavy-duty statistics and biology, which is knowledge that many people lack. The popular press does nothing to sort out the mess – their common mistakes of terminology errors and misrepresentation of the data do nothing to clarify the picture.
It is all very well and good telling someone to “not judge a book by its cover.” The problem is that in this case, the book cover is so obvious that people assume it must be the judge. This view, that skin color determines potential, is something that has permeated American culture since its inception. The view has been pushed so long that not only the perpetrators but the victims of racism start to believe it. Again, the media usually does nothing except feed into these stereotypes.
The fact of the matter is that we have an uphill battle here. We stand with a simple idea (races do not exist in a biological sense) which directly contradicts what many believe (and what many believe is common sense based on direct observation). The problem is that the justification of this simple idea requires knowledge of things like LOD scores, haplotypes, genetic drift, recombination, Hardy-Weinberg, evolution, allelic frequency, linkage disequilibrium, etc.
These complicated laws give us an accurate description of how 3,000,000,000 particles of inheritance behave from generation to generation and through population mixing and isolation. Only through understanding of these rules can we see that race is a biological nonentity. The most genetically diverse populations may look similar. There are no genetic limits we can draw around the societal classification of “race.” Populations have mixed and adapted since the first humans arose. Humans, being nomadic and inventive, have traveled to the corners of the earth, often several times. The book cannot be judged by its cover.
And, all your base are belong to us.
Col: I’ll start out by saying you are clearly very intelligent, and well versed in theis subject.
HOWEVER (and you all knew there was a “however” coming, right? 
)- you tend to yell at folks and talk down to them. Not to mention the over-use of profanity. Folks don’t really listen when you are doing that.
Next- some of us may not know as much as you do about genetics, but we are not stupid. I do have my degree in Environmental Sci- and that did take a more than working knowledge of genetics. Well, “Races DO exist” and you admitted as such. Yes, yes, yes- the “big 5” (Caucasians, Negro, Mongolian, etc) have very likely no genetic marker that is limited to just one. These "races’- which indeed almost everyone thinks of when one says "race’- do not exist genetically. But, you have conceded that smaller, “population” sized groups very likely do have genetic meaning- and several of these are amoung the "races’ that the “splitters” in Anthropology divided up H. Sapiens. So- there is NO (or very likely no) such thing as the “caucasian race”, but there very well could be such a thing as the “Inuit race” or Ainu race, or Swahili race, etc. But- since you PREFER not to use the term “race” (and with some good reasons)- you have repeated the “there is no such thing as race” mantra over & over- which confuses those of us that know better. True, deep within your postings, you do say as much (without ever using the “R-word”) but you do not make it very easy to dig out.
You are out there, in the trenches, fighting the good fight against ignorance. Perhaps this constructive critism can help.
Daniel, I confess to being a cantakerous bastard. Never denied that.
However, I’m not the sole guy putting this info out there. Our new resident idiot has gleefully ignored, distorted and otherwise mangled the infos the much more patient Gaspode has put forth.
As for races existing… Never mind. I’ll just state for the record I do not agree with your presentation.
My dear Col, over in the late, great & not-lamented “do races exist” thread in GD, I posited, and you agreed, that several of the smaller “population” sized groups have genetic meaning. And, some of these are called ‘races’ by the “splitters” amoung the Anthropologists. I postulated that the Ainu, Innuit, Pygmy, Swahili, bantu etc all could thus be “races”- and you agreed in some cases.
I AGREE there is no such thing as the “big 3” or “big 5” or whatever- as far as genetics goes. But the Ainu could well have discrete genetic differecnes form other “populations”- and they are considered a “race” by anthropologists.
Or do I have to find that post & quote it?
Daniel, I don’t want to argue this again. I believe I fully clarified my problems with the terminology. (And I note that Bantu, being a langauge family is definately not to be included here.)
Yes, you made your point about the bantu before- I have no problem with that (altho Oxford also calls them a 'group of peoples"). Some populations/races, like the Ainu have a better case than others, i will admit.
I will point out that claiming that: "races don’t exist- because I don’t like the word “race’ as applied to smaller populations”- is a bit ostrich-like.
However, will you PLEASE stop saying “fuck”, etc. in GD?
I repeat, I explained why I have problems with the term race in re usage re populations. There is no basis for implying “ostrich-like behaviour” .
And no I won’t stop using fuck in GD, as the Moderators pointed out to peace, its fucking okay. Part of my personal idiom. We each have our style, let’s leave it at that.
We are all members of one species and we are all very very similar genetically.
However, we are members of different races and there are differences between races on many dimensions.
Berdollos, before we have to collectively whup your ass for (a) twice postig in two different threads opinions without factual basis (b) directly dealt with in the very same threads, go read some of the self same threads.
Thank you. Do it again, and I won’t be so polite.
Just a point here - the sports journalist you’re referring to (John Entine) has apparently written a book which was bandied about in the thread you’re referring to. I quoted an article by him early on because it was good background on a data point I find interesting in this discussion (domination of basketball in the 20’s and 30’s by players of Jewish extraction, and some of the same “genetic” arguments being brought forward to explain it as we hear now applied to the dominance of black players). Apparently nobody else considers that worth noting, so be it. I still think that article well written, and for the record, I largely agree with the points you are trying to make about the the invalidity, of racial categorization. I haven’t read anything else of Mr. Entine’s.
I would have made this point to you via email, but you shut off email replies in your profile.
And I haven’t gotten involved in further discussion on that thread as it has segued into Eskimos and so on - I just can’t get inuit.
Yuip, I know. I glanced through the self same book and took some notes. Not impressed as you can tell by my comments.
Not sure what you mean here: if you mean ref. to fallacious understanding of connection btw genetics and transitory dominance in a sport, I think a number of posters have noted the same. Problem, our dear JE wrote a crappy book where he managed to fundamentally misunderstand the topic. See the other thread where I reposted my critique of the same – page two I think.
Fair enough, I don’t know that I read that article to be frank.
Screening… Dunno why I set it that way to be frank. Anyways, its just my user name at yahoo.com.
Oh our Berdollos has brought us back down to the bottom of the mountain again.
It seems to me that saying there are no races is like saying there are no continents. People argue about how many there are, what the definitions are, what the differences between them are, etc. When it comes down to it both continents and races are little more than things we made up to make descriptions easier. While there may be little to no genetic differences between races, saying they don’t exist seems a little strange to me.
I am tall. Other people are short. I may have more in common genetically with a short person than with another tall person. That does not prove that there is no such thing as short people or tall people.
Txspur
It may help to note that whenever myself, Gaspode, Tom and Edwino (almost typed edwion again) are not being lazy or are irritated into brusqueness we specifically note that races have no biological coherence. That’s what we mean by they don’t exist. After that, well we’re talking culture, tradition and genetics doesn’t say anthing about that.
So, in the sense that racial categories are quick and easy descriptors for a bunch of phenotypes, yeah, they’re like continents. Sure, we all know Europe/Asia division is ludicrously arbitrary but its convenient for historical/cultural reasons. There you have my position at least in a nutshell. I don’t care for the application of the term race to populations per DITWD’s usage becuase we introduce confusion. But that’s another discussion.
Hope that clears that up.
Tex & berd: Let me say it again- the lumping together of various “populations’ because they have a few similar external characteristics is purely for convience. There is NO SUCH THING (GENETICALLY SPEAKING) AS THE “NEGROID” OR CAUCASIAN (etc)“RACES”. Yes, at a lower “population” level, (at about the 'tribe” level) there may be some genetic meaning. Some chose to call these smaller groupings “races”, but as Col has pointed out, that term leads to confusion. If indeed, there was some link to “black” skin & athletic ability- one would expect all the “black races” to have it- so name the “Pygmy” basketball or track & field stars, please. There is NO LINK between skin color & “race” or athletic ability. It is POSSIBLE that certain “tribes” are geneticly taller or better at certain sports- but when you lump togehter all the tribes because they have “dark skin” you are commiting a meaningless act. Is a member of the Watsusi who is albino “white”?
It is now clear that there is no connection between the minor external characteristics we use for “race” and genetic groupings. The “Bushmen” are dark, with broad noses & kinky hair. However, they are no more closely related to the “Watusi” than I am. Got it?
Yes- certain “tribes”, like the Innuit are possibly better genetically adapted at living in the cold, etc. But this is only valid at small “population/tribe” sized grouping. Once you group the Innuit into the “oriental race”- you lose any genetic meaning.
I really want to give myself a lobotomy. Am I hallucinating or am I not repeating the self-same arguments/data/information to the very same person? I could be wrong, but I do think that I’m just a gerbil on wheel. Round and round. I mean not even a variation on the argument. Just parroting the very observations from that idiot Elsine w/o an attempt to deal with the critique already made.
And people wonder why I get agitated. (Well, okay, I get agitated in general but still…)