As some of my readers may have noticed I often blog about my pet peeves, Judgmental Christians, Annoyingly stupid propaganda and Segregation. I also blog about diet and things I care about and want to see become better. Positive blogs versus negative blogs.
Interestingly enough these are both important steps on toward the same goal. I always move forward. I'll explain.
Recently I wrote what is essentially a rant about Northern Segregation and how Michigan destroyed it's own economic prosperity by isolating it's primary urban development. At the end of my rant I pointed out how important it is to create racial integration on a professional level. This is something Michigan has not done effectively.
Whenever I rant about something I always define not only what I feel are the inappropriate actions but also what I feel are the appropriate actions.
I have written blogs about how Galileo was employed by the Catholic Church to do the research and how the Catholic Church published the books that eventually led to his trial. I have written about how even today we, as a society, reject new ideas in a similar fashion to the Catholic Church of the European Middle Ages.
I have written blogs about how ignorant people are when the argue that the closed source research conducted by the Western European Catholic Church for the exclusive use of the Western European Catholic Church resulted in a “World Wide Dark Ages”. What is really funny is that a very well educated and very intelligent 1st generation immigrant from India actually made this argument to me. Of course he became a little sheepish when I pointed out that far more open technological development was occurring in the rest of the world, the Middle East, India and China specifically, during this time period. I have pointed out that the closed source software development and the application of copyright law instead of patent law to these important technological developments threatens the world with a new “Dark Ages”.
I have pointed out particularly heinous propaganda and asked people to search out logical fallacies and the descriptive prose that separate objective from creative writing.
I have pointed out problems with FDA approval of dietary supplements and told people to constantly seek out better and less expensive sources for supplements that they take.
I have experimented on myself, posted the results and made suggestions about how people can objectively experiment on themselves.
I have pointed out that medical professionals often have really crappy educations, mediocre intelligence and give advice that might work for some people so you really need to do your own research and learn about your own body.
I don't want to think for you. I don't even want to educate you. I want to encourage you, whoever you are, to educate yourself. I want to encourage you to get out and learn however you can learn about whatever interests you.
You can't know everything. I do not expect you to. I can't know everything. I hope you don't expect me to. I want you to become the best you can be. I want you to make informed decisions and take responsibility for the world around you.
In the end I hope you make the choice to become a better person every day and in becoming a better person ever day I know you can make the world a better place to be.
Sunday, January 30, 2011
Saturday, January 29, 2011
How Michigan Destroyed Itself with Segregation
I have lived in the Detroit area most of my life. As a child my parents constantly argued so I didn't get very much sleep and I would often lay in bed awake for hours. Sometimes I would read by flashlight, but, usually not since the batteries would wear out after a few hours and then my father would punish me for wasting batteries.
I remember laying in my bunk bed above my brother listening to the tanks drive down 8 mile during the 1967 riots. Did that really happen? Did I hear it or is it a memory my mind created after listening to my parents describe it. I was only 6 years old. My life was totally unstable with an abusive father and an alcoholic mother.
During the 1967 riots in Detroit my father organized a neighborhood group to protect our suburb from the gangs of marauding blacks. My father didn't use that word at the time. He used the N word and later, after our maid quit because my father was a racist, he beat me once for using that N word.
Psychologists tell us that kids typically grow up to be the person they are raised to become by their parents. The life of a young adult in their 20's is typically defined by the way they were treated by their parents as a child and an adolescent. The basic rule of thumb is, the worse the young person behaves the worse they were treated by their parents.
http://www.international.ucla.edu/cms/files/corak.pdf (Not quite exactly on point, but close and interesting because it compares the States to other nations)
I behaved pretty badly in my early 20's. By my late 20's I had dated a few women who were either majoring or had majored in Psychology and I had spent about a year in therapy discussing some of the issues that led to my marriage, my break-up and where I was in life. I had also accepted Christ as my savior.
My understanding of biology and psychology tells me that people have genetic predispositions toward some behavior and that those predispositions can be actuated by environmental situations. In other words, you can treat two people exactly the same and if one has a genetic predisposition and the other does not the one with a predisposition will begin acting out.
That was not my problem in childhood. My father loved my brother more and treated him much better than he treated me. My mother divorced my father, primarily to protect me from him, and spent the rest of her life loving him and hating him. My mother tried to offset my father's abuse with rewards. My Dad would beat me, my mother would reward me. I became a modern day human Pavlov's dog.
When I joined the Army at 17 I began learning that I was not the loser my father had convinced me I was. This is also when I figured out my father was racist. My father once asked me how many blacks were in my unit. I have always been proud of the fact that I didn't know and couldn't even guess. He told me that there were more blacks than whites and I should count them sometime. I never did, primarily because I didn't think it mattered and to believe it mattered meant race mattered and I am not a racist.
But I was raised by a racist father and so I had racist ideas shoved into my head at an early age. As I became older I realized that where I was very upfront with people, very out in the open about my ideas and beliefs because my mother created the belief in me that open dialog is the most important factor in developing a relationship, my father and my brother were very different. They would create situations where they were alone with someone before they would express their true feelings or beliefs.
I realize now that this is the way it is for 99% of people, black or white or orange or purple.
I suck at bluffing in poker. My mother raised a son who is about as up front about their opinions and ideas as they can be.
Over the years I have occasionally made stupid remarks that were taught to me by my father in the presence of others and some people have labeled me racist for those remarks. Sometimes they just make me look stupid.
Once when I was in Army I was talking to a black guy working on their car. They had a really great car and there were black mechanics in my unit. We were drinking beer and I was helping. I said something like “this is a really great car, I didn't think blacks did this kind of stuff”. He stopped and looked at me funny and did something really amazing, he turned back to working on the engine and asked, “why would you believe that?”. I said “I guess my father told me once that blacks make lousy mechanics”. He shook his head and said something like “You need to get rid of those racist ideas”. I said “I'm not a racist”. He said something like, “You are if you believe racist things like that. Hand me the ratchet.” I was insulted.
Over the years I have looked back at that and thought about it. He was right of course. As children we believe things our parents tell us and don't even understand how racist they are. We become insulted and we make up excuses for why we should segregate people based on race or religion or culture or even economics.
Quite often I will talk about this and other people, white or black, will engage in a Relativist Fallacy argument. Essentially people will say that may apply to you, but, it does not apply to me so I reject your belief.
As if people do not accept stupid things their parents say.
As we grow older many of us reject many of the ideas that we were taught as children. I have found that quite often people who “rebel” in their 20's end up being very much like their parents in their 40's. Sometimes we grow to reject some of the things our parents teach us.
Some people will claim that I am saying that this idea of learned racism is true because I say it is true when what I am actually doing is offering evidence from my own experiences. There are papers that describe the results of studies on this issue. You are welcome to hunt them down.
In the 1950's and 60's blacks moved into the city of Detroit. By the late 1960's the majority population in Detroit was black and the '67 riots occurred. White Flight ruled the next few years. Without the traditional white people “guarding” voting booths more blacks were able to vote and Colman Young was elected Mayor of Detroit.
Coleman Young was and may still be a Segregationist. As a Michigan Congressperson he presented an education segregation bill. Coleman Young was black and his politics taught me that some blacks wanted to be separate from whites as much as whites wanted to be separate from blacks.
There are differences though and I want to point out one of the essential differences.
In the 1980's when Detroit was trying to develop a metropolitan public transportation system the white suburbs refused to co-operate with the leadership in Detroit.
The leadership in Detroit built the People Mover, a very small system that runs around in a small circle in downtown Detroit. Basically a train chasing it's own tail.
Most of the white people in the suburbs were too stupid to understand the complex metaphor. A mass transit system built in such a way because white people refused to co-operate with blacks. I didn't get it until a black guy I worked with pointed it out.
You see, the Whites had isolated the Blacks in Detroit and were forcing them to chase their own tail around in a tiny little area. This is typical of white segregationist policies. In my experience Black segregationists typically want to maintain their own culture AND associate with Whites on a professional level. White segregationists typically do not want anything to do with Blacks.
If you go back and read about the People Mover there were plenty of “reasons” not to build a metropolitan Detroit public transportation system. I look back at them now and see them for the racism that it is. Ideas that spring from the same stupid well as the idea that “blacks make lousy mechanics”.
I came up from the shop floor. I have worked in many shops. Like many blacks I know I have held two and three jobs at a time. The difference between me and the blacks I know is my race. Because I am white I had opportunities to advance in manufacturing that do not exist for blacks. The higher up on the food chain I have risen the fewer black faces I see.
My father's question of me when I was in the Army taught me to notice when blacks are absent, not count them when they are present.
That isn't the point of my blog though. This has all just been lead up and explaining the experience that leads me to believe what I believe.
The primary economic draw in any area is and always will be the major Urban area. Without access to the resources that an Urban area provides, the population density and labor force, you cannot industrialize. Industrialization and urbanization come hand in hand.
http://www.dhr.history.vt.edu/modules/eu/mod01_nature/context.html
The state of Michigan destroyed it's own industrial economic future by doing everything it could to isolate a black community which also happened to be it's primary urban area and primary area of industrialization.
Across the United States Michigan is known as a hotbed of racism. NAZI's publish their filth in Michigan. McVeigh developed his plan of action in Michigan. Michigan Militia. People in Michigan wonder why and I can tell you right now that a lot is because of Detroit. People all over the world recognize Detroit for what it is, a deliberately segregated and impoverished black community.
It is not because Detroit is a primarily black city. It is because of the way the rest of the state has isolated Detroit, segregated Detroit and left it to die after it became a primarily black city and in doing that Michigan cut it's own industrial economic throat.
Some areas in Michigan have tried to build up enough of an urbanization to support industrialization. The Tri-City area of Grand Rapids, Holland and Grand Haven for example. I won't get into the logistical issues that make this a terrible idea and reduce the economic potential of the region as well as jeopardize the ecology of the Lake Michigan shore line.
I will just point out that fifty years ago Michigan was a thriving industrial state with one of the highest standards of living. Forty years after segregating Detroit and leaving the black community to chase their own tail in a tiny little region Michigan is a “third world” state.
We did it to ourselves. Not with the kind of bigotry that lynched Detroit Red's father in Michigan. We did it with an insidiously evil kind of bigotry that hides behind a thin veneer of acceptance and prevents blacks from leaving the poverty stricken shop floor, from moving into skilled trades and eventually into the white halls of industrial upper management.
We did it because our parents taught us stupid things like “blacks make lousy mechanics” or “it isn't because they are black, we just don't want hoodlums running around our little white oasis”.
We segregated Detroit and Detroit Red made an excellent observation of the why, prejudice is so ingrained in the white culture that white people can't even recognize it when they help build monuments, like the People Mover, to their own bigotry. Prejudice is so ingrained in the white culture that whites would rather destroy their own state than help blacks achieve economic prosperity.
Martin Luther King Jr. grew up in the South where blacks and whites often worked together in the lowest jobs available, picking. For hundreds of year land owners and their families have worked side by side with pickers. Martin Luther King knew Blacks and Whites COULD work together. Detroit Red grew up in the North where blacks worked FOR whites and not together WITH whites. Northern Segregation vs Southern Segregation.
Detroit Red made another observation near the end of his life. The same observation that Martin Luther King made. It is possible for blacks and whites to work together in harmony to accomplish a common goal.
We as a people have to start by working with segregated communities to integrate them on a professional and industrial level. First we learn to work together. Then we learn to live together.
I remember laying in my bunk bed above my brother listening to the tanks drive down 8 mile during the 1967 riots. Did that really happen? Did I hear it or is it a memory my mind created after listening to my parents describe it. I was only 6 years old. My life was totally unstable with an abusive father and an alcoholic mother.
During the 1967 riots in Detroit my father organized a neighborhood group to protect our suburb from the gangs of marauding blacks. My father didn't use that word at the time. He used the N word and later, after our maid quit because my father was a racist, he beat me once for using that N word.
Psychologists tell us that kids typically grow up to be the person they are raised to become by their parents. The life of a young adult in their 20's is typically defined by the way they were treated by their parents as a child and an adolescent. The basic rule of thumb is, the worse the young person behaves the worse they were treated by their parents.
http://www.international.ucla.edu/cms/files/corak.pdf (Not quite exactly on point, but close and interesting because it compares the States to other nations)
I behaved pretty badly in my early 20's. By my late 20's I had dated a few women who were either majoring or had majored in Psychology and I had spent about a year in therapy discussing some of the issues that led to my marriage, my break-up and where I was in life. I had also accepted Christ as my savior.
My understanding of biology and psychology tells me that people have genetic predispositions toward some behavior and that those predispositions can be actuated by environmental situations. In other words, you can treat two people exactly the same and if one has a genetic predisposition and the other does not the one with a predisposition will begin acting out.
That was not my problem in childhood. My father loved my brother more and treated him much better than he treated me. My mother divorced my father, primarily to protect me from him, and spent the rest of her life loving him and hating him. My mother tried to offset my father's abuse with rewards. My Dad would beat me, my mother would reward me. I became a modern day human Pavlov's dog.
When I joined the Army at 17 I began learning that I was not the loser my father had convinced me I was. This is also when I figured out my father was racist. My father once asked me how many blacks were in my unit. I have always been proud of the fact that I didn't know and couldn't even guess. He told me that there were more blacks than whites and I should count them sometime. I never did, primarily because I didn't think it mattered and to believe it mattered meant race mattered and I am not a racist.
But I was raised by a racist father and so I had racist ideas shoved into my head at an early age. As I became older I realized that where I was very upfront with people, very out in the open about my ideas and beliefs because my mother created the belief in me that open dialog is the most important factor in developing a relationship, my father and my brother were very different. They would create situations where they were alone with someone before they would express their true feelings or beliefs.
I realize now that this is the way it is for 99% of people, black or white or orange or purple.
I suck at bluffing in poker. My mother raised a son who is about as up front about their opinions and ideas as they can be.
Over the years I have occasionally made stupid remarks that were taught to me by my father in the presence of others and some people have labeled me racist for those remarks. Sometimes they just make me look stupid.
Once when I was in Army I was talking to a black guy working on their car. They had a really great car and there were black mechanics in my unit. We were drinking beer and I was helping. I said something like “this is a really great car, I didn't think blacks did this kind of stuff”. He stopped and looked at me funny and did something really amazing, he turned back to working on the engine and asked, “why would you believe that?”. I said “I guess my father told me once that blacks make lousy mechanics”. He shook his head and said something like “You need to get rid of those racist ideas”. I said “I'm not a racist”. He said something like, “You are if you believe racist things like that. Hand me the ratchet.” I was insulted.
Over the years I have looked back at that and thought about it. He was right of course. As children we believe things our parents tell us and don't even understand how racist they are. We become insulted and we make up excuses for why we should segregate people based on race or religion or culture or even economics.
Quite often I will talk about this and other people, white or black, will engage in a Relativist Fallacy argument. Essentially people will say that may apply to you, but, it does not apply to me so I reject your belief.
As if people do not accept stupid things their parents say.
As we grow older many of us reject many of the ideas that we were taught as children. I have found that quite often people who “rebel” in their 20's end up being very much like their parents in their 40's. Sometimes we grow to reject some of the things our parents teach us.
Some people will claim that I am saying that this idea of learned racism is true because I say it is true when what I am actually doing is offering evidence from my own experiences. There are papers that describe the results of studies on this issue. You are welcome to hunt them down.
In the 1950's and 60's blacks moved into the city of Detroit. By the late 1960's the majority population in Detroit was black and the '67 riots occurred. White Flight ruled the next few years. Without the traditional white people “guarding” voting booths more blacks were able to vote and Colman Young was elected Mayor of Detroit.
Coleman Young was and may still be a Segregationist. As a Michigan Congressperson he presented an education segregation bill. Coleman Young was black and his politics taught me that some blacks wanted to be separate from whites as much as whites wanted to be separate from blacks.
There are differences though and I want to point out one of the essential differences.
In the 1980's when Detroit was trying to develop a metropolitan public transportation system the white suburbs refused to co-operate with the leadership in Detroit.
The leadership in Detroit built the People Mover, a very small system that runs around in a small circle in downtown Detroit. Basically a train chasing it's own tail.
Most of the white people in the suburbs were too stupid to understand the complex metaphor. A mass transit system built in such a way because white people refused to co-operate with blacks. I didn't get it until a black guy I worked with pointed it out.
You see, the Whites had isolated the Blacks in Detroit and were forcing them to chase their own tail around in a tiny little area. This is typical of white segregationist policies. In my experience Black segregationists typically want to maintain their own culture AND associate with Whites on a professional level. White segregationists typically do not want anything to do with Blacks.
If you go back and read about the People Mover there were plenty of “reasons” not to build a metropolitan Detroit public transportation system. I look back at them now and see them for the racism that it is. Ideas that spring from the same stupid well as the idea that “blacks make lousy mechanics”.
I came up from the shop floor. I have worked in many shops. Like many blacks I know I have held two and three jobs at a time. The difference between me and the blacks I know is my race. Because I am white I had opportunities to advance in manufacturing that do not exist for blacks. The higher up on the food chain I have risen the fewer black faces I see.
My father's question of me when I was in the Army taught me to notice when blacks are absent, not count them when they are present.
That isn't the point of my blog though. This has all just been lead up and explaining the experience that leads me to believe what I believe.
The primary economic draw in any area is and always will be the major Urban area. Without access to the resources that an Urban area provides, the population density and labor force, you cannot industrialize. Industrialization and urbanization come hand in hand.
http://www.dhr.history.vt.edu/modules/eu/mod01_nature/context.html
The state of Michigan destroyed it's own industrial economic future by doing everything it could to isolate a black community which also happened to be it's primary urban area and primary area of industrialization.
Across the United States Michigan is known as a hotbed of racism. NAZI's publish their filth in Michigan. McVeigh developed his plan of action in Michigan. Michigan Militia. People in Michigan wonder why and I can tell you right now that a lot is because of Detroit. People all over the world recognize Detroit for what it is, a deliberately segregated and impoverished black community.
It is not because Detroit is a primarily black city. It is because of the way the rest of the state has isolated Detroit, segregated Detroit and left it to die after it became a primarily black city and in doing that Michigan cut it's own industrial economic throat.
Some areas in Michigan have tried to build up enough of an urbanization to support industrialization. The Tri-City area of Grand Rapids, Holland and Grand Haven for example. I won't get into the logistical issues that make this a terrible idea and reduce the economic potential of the region as well as jeopardize the ecology of the Lake Michigan shore line.
I will just point out that fifty years ago Michigan was a thriving industrial state with one of the highest standards of living. Forty years after segregating Detroit and leaving the black community to chase their own tail in a tiny little region Michigan is a “third world” state.
We did it to ourselves. Not with the kind of bigotry that lynched Detroit Red's father in Michigan. We did it with an insidiously evil kind of bigotry that hides behind a thin veneer of acceptance and prevents blacks from leaving the poverty stricken shop floor, from moving into skilled trades and eventually into the white halls of industrial upper management.
We did it because our parents taught us stupid things like “blacks make lousy mechanics” or “it isn't because they are black, we just don't want hoodlums running around our little white oasis”.
We segregated Detroit and Detroit Red made an excellent observation of the why, prejudice is so ingrained in the white culture that white people can't even recognize it when they help build monuments, like the People Mover, to their own bigotry. Prejudice is so ingrained in the white culture that whites would rather destroy their own state than help blacks achieve economic prosperity.
Martin Luther King Jr. grew up in the South where blacks and whites often worked together in the lowest jobs available, picking. For hundreds of year land owners and their families have worked side by side with pickers. Martin Luther King knew Blacks and Whites COULD work together. Detroit Red grew up in the North where blacks worked FOR whites and not together WITH whites. Northern Segregation vs Southern Segregation.
Detroit Red made another observation near the end of his life. The same observation that Martin Luther King made. It is possible for blacks and whites to work together in harmony to accomplish a common goal.
We as a people have to start by working with segregated communities to integrate them on a professional and industrial level. First we learn to work together. Then we learn to live together.
Tuesday, January 25, 2011
Capitalism, Communisim and the future of the United States
Roosevelt was an amazing President. Almost single handedly he stopped the slide of politics in the United States from going into a socialistic labor union dominated system.
In 1932 the United States was in a depression that some blame on the stock market crash of 1929. The problem was not the stock market crash, the problem was unsecured lending. Banks made loans to people whose individual finances were less than sound and these loans were secured only by a commodity whose value fluctuated on the open market.
In other words, the depression in 1932 was caused by the same problem that caused the bank issues today.
The market crash in homes or financial products did not cause the economic crisis. The lending to people who could not pay their loans by banks caused the economic crisis.
The mortgage bail out was exactly the right thing to do. Hoover should have done something similar in 1929.
Because employment was difficult to find in the early part of the 20th century employers reduced wages and benefits while increasing the amount of work expected. By the 1930's Communism was spreading world wide and the United States was in real danger of becoming a Communist or Socialist nation.
Roosevelt did several things to prevent this from happening. The two most important were the establishment of social security and making the ownership of gold illegal. Making gold illegal effectively prevented an armed insurrection in the United States.
Wars take resources. You can't fight a war without money. By taking Gold away from people Roosevelt made the internal funding of an armed revolution near impossible.
By taking away one of the most important reasons to join or belong to a labor union, a pension plan, Roosevelt effectively stopped the growth of unions in the United States.
Roosevelt did other things to help prevent socialism. His employment of millions in the "New Deal" which people claim prolonged the depression. Banking regulation and the FDIC.
Economists may be correct that the government employment of so many and the tax burden on businesses prolonged the depression. Without those jobs those unemployed workers would have revolted against capitalism and the length of the depression would have continued as long as it did in the USSR, sixty years or more.
To stay a capitalist nation the United States is going to have to shore up Social Security and make sure workers have the ability to retire rather than work themselves to death.
To stay a capitalist nation the United States is going to have to implement a national health care plan.
To stay a capitalist nation the United States is going to have to improve the education system so that workers are internationally competitive.
If these things do not happen the United States can expect the same kind of armed demonstrations and protest marches that took place in the 1930's and the 1960's.
The US government may succeed in making firearms illegal and they may succeed in squashing free speech.
Like the feudalistic lords of the middle ages who attempted similar actions they will find that strength of arms does not replace the masses of the people when they are willing to die to achieve their goals.
Democracy won over feudalism because, while it took years, the feudalistic lords realized they could not control the masses, the leaders had to work with the proletariat.
As I watch Congress and other morons undo the work of Roosevelt, as I watch social security die out and people argue against the national health care plan I realize that we, as a nation, are about to make mistakes that will ensure the mediocrity of the future of this nation and destroy the standard of living we enjoy.
People may think that since the USSR died out Communism is now dead. They are wrong. Unless the proletariat are given the tools they require, retirement, health care and education, they will once again rise up and cast down the totalitarian leaders who attempt to work them to death.
Or, like the plebeians in Rome and the peasants in Viet Name, they will do nothing when the time comes to protect their "way of life" because their way of life will not change just because the government of another nation takes over.
The death of a nation IS decided when the government decides the people can take care of their own lives, can protect themselves, can feed themselves, because if the people have to take care of everything for themselves why do they need the government?
In 1932 the United States was in a depression that some blame on the stock market crash of 1929. The problem was not the stock market crash, the problem was unsecured lending. Banks made loans to people whose individual finances were less than sound and these loans were secured only by a commodity whose value fluctuated on the open market.
In other words, the depression in 1932 was caused by the same problem that caused the bank issues today.
The market crash in homes or financial products did not cause the economic crisis. The lending to people who could not pay their loans by banks caused the economic crisis.
The mortgage bail out was exactly the right thing to do. Hoover should have done something similar in 1929.
Because employment was difficult to find in the early part of the 20th century employers reduced wages and benefits while increasing the amount of work expected. By the 1930's Communism was spreading world wide and the United States was in real danger of becoming a Communist or Socialist nation.
Roosevelt did several things to prevent this from happening. The two most important were the establishment of social security and making the ownership of gold illegal. Making gold illegal effectively prevented an armed insurrection in the United States.
Wars take resources. You can't fight a war without money. By taking Gold away from people Roosevelt made the internal funding of an armed revolution near impossible.
By taking away one of the most important reasons to join or belong to a labor union, a pension plan, Roosevelt effectively stopped the growth of unions in the United States.
Roosevelt did other things to help prevent socialism. His employment of millions in the "New Deal" which people claim prolonged the depression. Banking regulation and the FDIC.
Economists may be correct that the government employment of so many and the tax burden on businesses prolonged the depression. Without those jobs those unemployed workers would have revolted against capitalism and the length of the depression would have continued as long as it did in the USSR, sixty years or more.
To stay a capitalist nation the United States is going to have to shore up Social Security and make sure workers have the ability to retire rather than work themselves to death.
To stay a capitalist nation the United States is going to have to implement a national health care plan.
To stay a capitalist nation the United States is going to have to improve the education system so that workers are internationally competitive.
If these things do not happen the United States can expect the same kind of armed demonstrations and protest marches that took place in the 1930's and the 1960's.
The US government may succeed in making firearms illegal and they may succeed in squashing free speech.
Like the feudalistic lords of the middle ages who attempted similar actions they will find that strength of arms does not replace the masses of the people when they are willing to die to achieve their goals.
Democracy won over feudalism because, while it took years, the feudalistic lords realized they could not control the masses, the leaders had to work with the proletariat.
As I watch Congress and other morons undo the work of Roosevelt, as I watch social security die out and people argue against the national health care plan I realize that we, as a nation, are about to make mistakes that will ensure the mediocrity of the future of this nation and destroy the standard of living we enjoy.
People may think that since the USSR died out Communism is now dead. They are wrong. Unless the proletariat are given the tools they require, retirement, health care and education, they will once again rise up and cast down the totalitarian leaders who attempt to work them to death.
Or, like the plebeians in Rome and the peasants in Viet Name, they will do nothing when the time comes to protect their "way of life" because their way of life will not change just because the government of another nation takes over.
The death of a nation IS decided when the government decides the people can take care of their own lives, can protect themselves, can feed themselves, because if the people have to take care of everything for themselves why do they need the government?
Monday, December 27, 2010
Perfect example of bad research about racism in an otherwise good article
As readers of my blog know I research a lot, reading a ton of information on many different subjects. Recently I came across a paper that I thought was pretty good at the start. The paper was written in 2008 by a UofM (Dearborn) grad who actually made the honors roll named Jennifer A Huff. The article is actually good, although not as accurate as I would have liked. You can read the article at : http://www.mied.uscourts.gov/historical/newspdf/200805.pdf
This researcher wrote in one of her paragraphs “...the Supreme Court, the Court issued its most famous ruling regarding public education. Brown v. Board of Education (1954) overturned the doctrine of separate-but-equal schooling that had prevailed in the South for decades.”
This is total crap.
Brown v Board of Education overturned several previous rulings. Typically Liberal “Pro-North/Anti-South” researchers cite Plessy v Ferguson which is an 1896 Louisiana case. This ain't reality.
Back in 1849 the case of Roberts v Boston set the legal precedence that Plessy v Ferguson was built on.
Way too many Liberal researchers unfairly attack the south and make it sound as if the north had far less to do with segregation. Those of us who actually remember the sound of tanks driving down 8 Mile during 1967 have a far different perspective.
To her credit Ms Huff does point out that the north pretty much ignored DE-segregation while the south was moving towards an integrated society. In 1970 George Wallace, the guy MLK fought against during the Selma march, won the Democratic primary in Michigan.
The propagandistic myth of an integrated north vs a segregated south is as destructive to society as the myth of the Democratic party supporting civil rights.
We can learn from our mistakes when we realize that we made them and we change what we are doing. When we pretend the mistakes don't exist by making statements like “...had prevailed in the South” we display an unwillingness to accept responsibility for our mistakes.
In reality blacks have been as or more persecuted in the north than they have been in the south. Malcolm X's father was lynched right here in Michigan. Roberts v Boston (you know, Boston Mass, in the north) set the stage for “separate but equal” across the entire country, not just the south.
Back during the Civil War the Democrats in New York tried to succeed from the Union. When that failed the Democrats in New York City tried to succeed from New York State. The famous New York newspaper publisher, Horace Greeley, wrote many editorials against the Democrats and their support of slavery in New York. There were riots during the Civil War which have been renamed “draft riots” where blacks were lynched from lamp posts and black babies were thrown from the upper floors of multi-story buildings. Illiterate blacks were not told that they had been freed and were forced to work in New York city in slave like conditions long after the Civil War. Even today New York deals with immigrant slavery.
Edusnobbery and prejudice create conditions that force academic candidates for advanced degrees to continue publishing obvious falsehoods such as this garbage about segregation in the south. This may be the case where Ms Huff is concerned, or maybe her research is just sloppy and repeating the same tired anti-southern propaganda that has been popular in the North for the last hundred and fifty years.
Detroit was and really is a festering cauldron of racism based on primarily voluntary segregation. Make no mistake segregation is segregation and it creates a racial and cultural divide that is and will always be difficult to overcome while tired and ridiculous propaganda like blaming segregation on the south exists.
Ms Huff's article is worth reading, but, like a lot of the crap written about racism in the United States you have to be careful and double check the facts. Don't get caught in propaganda.
This researcher wrote in one of her paragraphs “...the Supreme Court, the Court issued its most famous ruling regarding public education. Brown v. Board of Education (1954) overturned the doctrine of separate-but-equal schooling that had prevailed in the South for decades.”
This is total crap.
Brown v Board of Education overturned several previous rulings. Typically Liberal “Pro-North/Anti-South” researchers cite Plessy v Ferguson which is an 1896 Louisiana case. This ain't reality.
Back in 1849 the case of Roberts v Boston set the legal precedence that Plessy v Ferguson was built on.
Way too many Liberal researchers unfairly attack the south and make it sound as if the north had far less to do with segregation. Those of us who actually remember the sound of tanks driving down 8 Mile during 1967 have a far different perspective.
To her credit Ms Huff does point out that the north pretty much ignored DE-segregation while the south was moving towards an integrated society. In 1970 George Wallace, the guy MLK fought against during the Selma march, won the Democratic primary in Michigan.
The propagandistic myth of an integrated north vs a segregated south is as destructive to society as the myth of the Democratic party supporting civil rights.
We can learn from our mistakes when we realize that we made them and we change what we are doing. When we pretend the mistakes don't exist by making statements like “...had prevailed in the South” we display an unwillingness to accept responsibility for our mistakes.
In reality blacks have been as or more persecuted in the north than they have been in the south. Malcolm X's father was lynched right here in Michigan. Roberts v Boston (you know, Boston Mass, in the north) set the stage for “separate but equal” across the entire country, not just the south.
Back during the Civil War the Democrats in New York tried to succeed from the Union. When that failed the Democrats in New York City tried to succeed from New York State. The famous New York newspaper publisher, Horace Greeley, wrote many editorials against the Democrats and their support of slavery in New York. There were riots during the Civil War which have been renamed “draft riots” where blacks were lynched from lamp posts and black babies were thrown from the upper floors of multi-story buildings. Illiterate blacks were not told that they had been freed and were forced to work in New York city in slave like conditions long after the Civil War. Even today New York deals with immigrant slavery.
Edusnobbery and prejudice create conditions that force academic candidates for advanced degrees to continue publishing obvious falsehoods such as this garbage about segregation in the south. This may be the case where Ms Huff is concerned, or maybe her research is just sloppy and repeating the same tired anti-southern propaganda that has been popular in the North for the last hundred and fifty years.
Detroit was and really is a festering cauldron of racism based on primarily voluntary segregation. Make no mistake segregation is segregation and it creates a racial and cultural divide that is and will always be difficult to overcome while tired and ridiculous propaganda like blaming segregation on the south exists.
Ms Huff's article is worth reading, but, like a lot of the crap written about racism in the United States you have to be careful and double check the facts. Don't get caught in propaganda.
Friday, December 17, 2010
Multiple Intelligence and Life in general
My wife sent me a couple of links on something called “Multiple Intelligences” or MI which is a multi-modal methodology for the classification of intelligence.
Essentially the idea is that using a single classification for intelligence “IQ” does not capture an entire person so the doctor involved subjectively developed various groups of “intelligences” and designed a series of tests to assess an individuals placement within these classifications.
This is actually a pretty good idea, however, like most things in psychology (including IQ) it suffers from subjective assessment and the internal filters of the people involved in the development of the program and the assessment of the intelligences.
Multi-modalities exist in nature. If you take a salt shaker and dump it out on a table you get a pile of salt. If you take a cross section of that salt pile you will get a “curve” that looks a lot like the grading curve your teachers may have used when you were in school. This is called “normal” distribution.
Here is the thing most people do not understand. The entire curve, even at the far edges is “normal”. Most people tend to think of the center section of the curve as “normal” and the edges as “abnormal”. That couldn't be farther from the truth. “abnormal” is something that does not appear on the curve.
Suppose we jerk the salt shaker slightly sideways as we are pouring it out. We now have what looks like two intersecting piles of salt. If we take a cross sectional curve we still have a “normal” distribution, but, we call this distribution “multi-modal” because it has two “humps”.
There are many multi-modal distributions in nature and in manufacturing. One of the biggest mistakes people make in understanding multi-modal distributions is tossing out “flyers”. Flyers are typically some strange result the researcher collected, didn't understand and then pitched. The problem is that those little grains of salt farthest from the center of the pile tell us more about the limits of the distribution than all the grains of salt in the center pile.
I won't get into the math behind that. It is kind of like averaging or being on a curve. Maybe one of the kids in your class at school did so much better that everyone else became angry because it made it harder to get a “C”. Some people “drop” those “flyers” just because they “skew” the curve”. This is how cultures are destroyed, the lowest common denominator. The “stronger” mutation the group tries to destroy to prevent the evolution and development of the group. The kid, or any other flyer, that skews the curve.
The idea of multiple intelligences has an emotional draw to people. It is a way for them to assure themselves that they are not stupid and help them develop a better self image.
The problem is the subjective analysis. Teachers and psychologists (and sometimes engineers) typically grade subjectively based on their experience. This will skew the results of the analysis based on the personal prejudices of the reviewer. The teacher who gave you crap grades because you didn't get along with them. We have all had one of those.
Intelligence tests are typically not very intelligent. They require language comprehension skills that are a learned skill and so people who have strong language comprehension skills do well on tests regardless of their actual intelligence. The same is true of these MI tests.
Multi-modal distributions occur naturally. In this situation it appears that some researchers have subjectively determined multi-modal groups and then created tests which skew respondents into specific categories based on a subjective assessment of what the researcher believes they mean. For example, “I enjoy categorizing things by common traits” and “I easily pick up on patterns” are essentially the same thing and yet these questions are in different intelligence groups. In the logic section I found the phrase, “Structure is a good thing”. Understanding different structures can be difficult. For example understanding the structure of interpersonal relationships in the management of a large organization can appear chaotic to some. Some might not see the structure at all. Rembrandt vs Picasso. To me, this structure phrase means nothing. I would need to understand the structure and it's intended purpose to subjectively determine if the structure is a “good” thing, or likely to produce the intended results. The Tacoma Narrows Bridge is an excellent example of a structure many thought was good, well, before they built it they thought it was good. After it collapsed not so much.
So how do I answer “Structure is a good thing”? I would select a “middle” answer and the results would skew me away from being a logical person.
However!
The world wide web does offer a wonderful opportunity at really understanding the multi-modal development of personality (intelligence is a stupid term, and I have an IQ of 157 so you should believe me).
Different websites will have more visitors than others. By just capturing the visits to different websites and subjectively analyzing the “content” we (people in general) can develop a better understanding of the real, not the subjective, categorization of these multi-modal groupings.
Multiple Intelligences is a good idea, in the current development of subjective analysis it has it will probably die away for some other “pretty butterfly” that captures the imagination of researchers unless real objective analytical development is accomplished.
Here is a paper on MI: http://pzweb.harvard.edu/PIs/HG_MI_after_20_years.pdf
Here is an overview: http://tip.psychology.org/gardner.html
Here is an interesting paper on MI and culture:
http://www.laspau.harvard.edu/idia/UAI_2010/Readings/JamesGrayreading.pdf
Essentially the idea is that using a single classification for intelligence “IQ” does not capture an entire person so the doctor involved subjectively developed various groups of “intelligences” and designed a series of tests to assess an individuals placement within these classifications.
This is actually a pretty good idea, however, like most things in psychology (including IQ) it suffers from subjective assessment and the internal filters of the people involved in the development of the program and the assessment of the intelligences.
Multi-modalities exist in nature. If you take a salt shaker and dump it out on a table you get a pile of salt. If you take a cross section of that salt pile you will get a “curve” that looks a lot like the grading curve your teachers may have used when you were in school. This is called “normal” distribution.
Here is the thing most people do not understand. The entire curve, even at the far edges is “normal”. Most people tend to think of the center section of the curve as “normal” and the edges as “abnormal”. That couldn't be farther from the truth. “abnormal” is something that does not appear on the curve.
Suppose we jerk the salt shaker slightly sideways as we are pouring it out. We now have what looks like two intersecting piles of salt. If we take a cross sectional curve we still have a “normal” distribution, but, we call this distribution “multi-modal” because it has two “humps”.
There are many multi-modal distributions in nature and in manufacturing. One of the biggest mistakes people make in understanding multi-modal distributions is tossing out “flyers”. Flyers are typically some strange result the researcher collected, didn't understand and then pitched. The problem is that those little grains of salt farthest from the center of the pile tell us more about the limits of the distribution than all the grains of salt in the center pile.
I won't get into the math behind that. It is kind of like averaging or being on a curve. Maybe one of the kids in your class at school did so much better that everyone else became angry because it made it harder to get a “C”. Some people “drop” those “flyers” just because they “skew” the curve”. This is how cultures are destroyed, the lowest common denominator. The “stronger” mutation the group tries to destroy to prevent the evolution and development of the group. The kid, or any other flyer, that skews the curve.
The idea of multiple intelligences has an emotional draw to people. It is a way for them to assure themselves that they are not stupid and help them develop a better self image.
The problem is the subjective analysis. Teachers and psychologists (and sometimes engineers) typically grade subjectively based on their experience. This will skew the results of the analysis based on the personal prejudices of the reviewer. The teacher who gave you crap grades because you didn't get along with them. We have all had one of those.
Intelligence tests are typically not very intelligent. They require language comprehension skills that are a learned skill and so people who have strong language comprehension skills do well on tests regardless of their actual intelligence. The same is true of these MI tests.
Multi-modal distributions occur naturally. In this situation it appears that some researchers have subjectively determined multi-modal groups and then created tests which skew respondents into specific categories based on a subjective assessment of what the researcher believes they mean. For example, “I enjoy categorizing things by common traits” and “I easily pick up on patterns” are essentially the same thing and yet these questions are in different intelligence groups. In the logic section I found the phrase, “Structure is a good thing”. Understanding different structures can be difficult. For example understanding the structure of interpersonal relationships in the management of a large organization can appear chaotic to some. Some might not see the structure at all. Rembrandt vs Picasso. To me, this structure phrase means nothing. I would need to understand the structure and it's intended purpose to subjectively determine if the structure is a “good” thing, or likely to produce the intended results. The Tacoma Narrows Bridge is an excellent example of a structure many thought was good, well, before they built it they thought it was good. After it collapsed not so much.
So how do I answer “Structure is a good thing”? I would select a “middle” answer and the results would skew me away from being a logical person.
However!
The world wide web does offer a wonderful opportunity at really understanding the multi-modal development of personality (intelligence is a stupid term, and I have an IQ of 157 so you should believe me).
Different websites will have more visitors than others. By just capturing the visits to different websites and subjectively analyzing the “content” we (people in general) can develop a better understanding of the real, not the subjective, categorization of these multi-modal groupings.
Multiple Intelligences is a good idea, in the current development of subjective analysis it has it will probably die away for some other “pretty butterfly” that captures the imagination of researchers unless real objective analytical development is accomplished.
Here is a paper on MI: http://pzweb.harvard.edu/PIs/HG_MI_after_20_years.pdf
Here is an overview: http://tip.psychology.org/gardner.html
Here is an interesting paper on MI and culture:
http://www.laspau.harvard.edu/idia/UAI_2010/Readings/JamesGrayreading.pdf
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