What's annoying you today?

off-topic conversation unrelated to Jane's Addiction
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perkana
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Re: What's annoying you today?

#4041 Post by perkana » Mon Mar 23, 2015 9:22 am

clickie wrote:
perkana wrote:Fucking backache. It hurts sitting up, standing up and sitting down. Used a bag with hot water to try to alleviate the pain, but it didn't work.
What caused it? Are you just one of those people with a "bad back"? Stretches help.
I am. I blame it on using a really bad chair at work. I ran on Thursday and was fine. The pain started that day at night, kept getting worse and worse. It was the worst on Saturday. Started taking aspirin yesterday and it helped a bit. It still hurts, but it's bearable. It hurts less when I'm stretching and I only feel an acute one when I've been sitting down for a long time. It doesn't feel the back anymore, more like the muscle of my left butt, but it hurts like a bitch sometimes. It's one of those pains that it never goes away and now I'm getting used to it :conf:

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mockbee
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Re: What's annoying you today?

#4042 Post by mockbee » Mon Mar 23, 2015 10:34 am

Adurentibus Spina wrote:
mockbee wrote:I'm really pissed at Gawker/NYTimes today.

I appreciate online investigative journalism but some of the things they do take out legitimate intellectuals, who just don't share their point of view,

This particular case was a genomics blogger, a friend of mine, who happens to be referenced on a supremacist (yes nasty) site . Tough, there are multiple points of view out there. Science isn't always pretty. Fight science with science, not smears. :noclue:

NY Times recently hired 20 op-ed writers and then dropped him from their full editorial status, went back to contributing editor because they couldn't handle a potential smear campaign.

Nice 'journalistic excellence' guys. :wave:

....maybe I shouldn't be surprised.
The Gawker article suggests that the issue isn't "fighting science", but rather that your friend published numerous blog entries -- wasn't just "referenced" -- on a racist website (this "taki" site...) A NY-Times editorialist isn't being paid to produce "science", strictly speaking, but to editorialize in an area (presumably of expertise or interest). It's not merely a smear campaign to suggest that your friend's affiliation with a racist blog ought to be taken seriously in the context of producing editorials for the NY Times.

The co-discoverer of the double-helix structure of DNA, James Watson, said some pretty ridiculous racist things about black people and intelligence a few years ago, and as a result, the scientific community condemned his statements and he lost his posting. That doesn't invalidate his scientific work, but it does mean that he probably shouldn't be in a position of authority over people where he can act on racist impulses (or even that his employer should tolerate these). Incidentally, when asked about his comments, Watson recanted and had a hard time believing he had actually said what he said -- suggesting, imho frontal lobe atrophy might have led him to blurt out things that the better part of his brain doesn't believe, but also that he's probably too old to continue in a direct supervisory role in scientific research.

So your friend might not be racist, but it's difficult to tell -- and we can't just ask -- people tend to say "No!" when you ask that question, even if they are racist. And it's not a matter of disagreement about actual science, since that's what peer review is... publications speak for themselves. Blog entries are not respected scientific articles, but they also sometimes speak for themselves.

This "taki" site appears to be a paleoconservative/libertarian blog site that he has contributed to. This was not the "supremacist" site I was referring to (I must have picked that up in some comments made at Gawker), but does appear to have what can definitely be considered objectionable content; maybe there is racist content but I didn't scour the site and certainly didn't feel like doing so. But there you go, that was the smoking gun by Gawker that got him canned from the NYTimes. BTW - There are other current editors at NYTimes who have been published at that taki site. :noclue:

Mr Khan, the referenced fellow relieved of full editorial status at NYTimes, is regularly published in over a dozen legitimate publications; eg NYTimes, The Guardian, Daily Telegraph, Discovery Magazine, etc. The NYTimes Senior Editorial staff already vetted him and wanted Mr Khan on board, it was when the Gawker "smoking gun" came to light to senior brass at NYTimes when this went down, no new information was uncovered.

Just FYI here is a sample of his writing in Discover Magazine (pretty mainstream science mag.......)
Why Race as a Biological Construct Matters

My own inclination has been to not get bogged down in the latest race and IQ controversy because I don’t have that much time, and the core readership here is probably not going to get any new information from me, since this is not an area of hot novel research. But that doesn’t mean the rest of the world isn’t talking, and I think perhaps it might be useful for people if I stepped a bit into this discussion between Andrew Sullivan and Ta-Nehisi Coates specifically.......................

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/gnxp/ ... Q-mnWYkihz
I think it is interesting and worth trying to extrapolate for the masses. Yes, I realize this can get messy pretty quickly, and I would not back him if he wrote racist content, I just don't think that applies to him though. And surely, the possibility of something is not a reason for condemnation.

Gawker and NYTimes can investigate, hire, fire, expose whomever they please. I don't have a problem with that. In this case, though, I think they were feeble. :noclue:


If you want to debate further, I would be on board, and actually interested in what you have to say, but maybe we could make a new thread. :tiphat:

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Re: What's annoying you today?

#4043 Post by Hype » Mon Mar 23, 2015 11:42 am

Yeah we could talk more about it. To be honest, though, as someone surrounded by academics 99% of the time, I sometimes get exhausted by the volume of real and faux outrage... I've had what feels like way too many conversations about this kind of thing. We probably agree about a good deal of the issues with a kind of bullying self-righteous blogging culture (in the vein of Reddit's many big mistakes in doling out vigilante "justice"). But I also think there are times when we shouldn't obfuscate the obvious.

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Re: What's annoying you today?

#4044 Post by mockbee » Mon Mar 23, 2015 11:59 am

Adurentibus Spina wrote:Yeah we could talk more about it. To be honest, though, as someone surrounded by academics 99% of the time, I sometimes get exhausted by the volume of real and faux outrage... I've had what feels like way too many conversations about this kind of thing. We probably agree about a good deal of the issues with a kind of bullying self-righteous blogging culture (in the vein of Reddit's many big mistakes in doling out vigilante "justice").
.
Actually that is funny you say that. Mr. Kahn is not outraged by this turn of events really at all, just kind of miffed. It is his liberal friends who are outraged, couldn't see it coming, called a racist when they know he is not, or has never demonstrated that he is publicly or privately. He discusses race, yes; racist, no.

I can see where you are coming from though, that's one major reason I couldn't handle academia long term.
:wave:
Adurentibus Spina wrote:But I also think there are times when we shouldn't obfuscate the obvious.
Don't know if you are referring to this particular case, but whatever, you have your opinion, I have mine, no need to go further than that.

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Hype
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Re: What's annoying you today?

#4045 Post by Hype » Mon Mar 23, 2015 12:20 pm

Well, Mr. Kahn wrote this: (http://www.vdare.com/letters/vdare-khan ... ste-system)
If by “intelligence” once means analytic reasoning skills, it seems that the Northeast Asians –Chinese, Japanese, and Koreans — are somewhat more intelligent than the white norm. (I believe the I.Q. difference is generally listed as somewhere between 2-8 points, depending on the study). Most of the evidence also seems to point to New World Indians` scoring slightly below whites. Thus, Mestizos (white-Indian mixes) would have slightly lower IQs than whites, while Eurasians (white-East Asian crosses) would have slightly higher IQs. The correlation between the increasing blondeness of high I.Q. Eurasians would be somewhat mitigated if the less intelligent Eurasian men happened to import intelligent East Asian women to make up for their competitive disadvantage on the marriage market, while the more intelligent Eurasians would marry less intelligent blondes (i.e., European derived females).
His inferences from some real data above aren't scientifically merited. We know that IQ tends toward the mean (across generations; never mind the Flynn effect...), so it's generally understood that even though some degree and aspects of intelligence are certainly heritable, two parents with very high IQs are almost certainly going to have a child with an IQ lower than their own. Kahn's racial claims above are absurd, and seem to rest on a misunderstanding of the data. For one thing, it's exceedingly difficult, and probably pointless, to infer anything meaningful about any particular offspring from the racial identity of the parents. IQ is normally distributed in any arbitrary population, so the racialized distribution of IQs that seems to favour some *groups* doesn't tell you anything about it favouring any particular individuals. Why? Because even if east-Asian group IQ scores tend to average 6-8 points higher than, say, white scores (not sure who counts as white), that still means that half the population is below that average. So half of several billion Asians have IQs lower than 106-108 (that is, 106-108 by comparison to average white IQ scores -- who knows why this sllight variation exists...). True, half of them have IQs higher than this, but there's no indication that they have a greater ratio of higher IQs to lower IQs within the population. In fact, they can't, because IQ is an artificially normalized distribution.

Here's a molecular biologist explaining some other issues with this way of thinking: http://www.madsci.org/posts/archives/20 ... .Ge.r.html

By the way, one of the standard, and I think solid, arguments against IQ as a measure of intelligence is that the tests don't do very well at measuring fine-grained distinctions among the above-average. The tests were originally developed to track deficiencies -- retardation.

It's true that high IQ correlates with one thing: educational success. (It also weakly correlates with wealth/status). But this doesn't tell us anything meaningful about intelligence. Educational success: a) doesn't require that much intelligence (it's kind of a baseline), and b) requires more than just intelligence (many very intelligent people don't do very well in school).

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Re: What's annoying you today?

#4046 Post by mockbee » Mon Mar 23, 2015 1:00 pm

Adurentibus Spina wrote:Well, Mr. Kahn wrote this: (http://www.vdare.com/letters/vdare-khan ... ste-system)
If by “intelligence” once means analytic reasoning skills, it seems that the Northeast Asians –Chinese, Japanese, and Koreans — are somewhat more intelligent than the white norm. (I believe the I.Q. difference is generally listed as somewhere between 2-8 points, depending on the study). Most of the evidence also seems to point to New World Indians` scoring slightly below whites. Thus, Mestizos (white-Indian mixes) would have slightly lower IQs than whites, while Eurasians (white-East Asian crosses) would have slightly higher IQs. The correlation between the increasing blondeness of high I.Q. Eurasians would be somewhat mitigated if the less intelligent Eurasian men happened to import intelligent East Asian women to make up for their competitive disadvantage on the marriage market, while the more intelligent Eurasians would marry less intelligent blondes (i.e., European derived females).
His inferences from some real data above aren't scientifically merited...............
Yeah, he wrote that 15 years ago as a blog comment, if you put this quote back in total context, he is actually arguing against some mentally deficient people, on a racist blog site, when he was 23 and an undergrad......I think he might actually agree with much of your analysis of it now, (I have no clue though, I'm not that smart) but I don't know that I would consider this passage as racist though. :noclue:


Razib Khan....response to current events wrote: I’ve written ~4 million words over 13 years (excluding comments). I never thought I would be as prominent as I am now, so even were I to be the type who would dissimulate, it did not seem relevant. Trying to get the best handle of truth is important to me. That mean’s I’ve stepped on some toes, violated taboos, and such. I don’t believe in an afterlife, and neither do I seek the accolades of the masses. If I offend because I think I’m asking questions that need to be asked, then I’m going to offend. Naturally in all the ~4 million words and many years of writing I can’t and won’t stand by the substance or style of everything I’ve written, but the totality is something that I’m mildly proud of (if you read things that you wrote/thought 10 years ago I suspect many of you would wince as well). We all grow old and die. We’ll ask ourselves what the point of it all was in the solitude of the precipice of mortality. The point? Not to seem smart. To become smart. The latter is hard and humbling.

If you want substance to pick apart, maybe try something more current, like I posted above.
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/gnxp/ ... Q-mnWYkihz

But if there is actual racist content in his past (I haven't been made aware of any), then I don't support that.

Surely you wouldn't be proud of every word you have written in the last 15 years? :noclue:

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Hype
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Re: What's annoying you today?

#4047 Post by Hype » Mon Mar 23, 2015 1:15 pm

Having looked more closely at that VDARE post, I can see how it seems to be intended to be an anti-racist correction, and I take the point about the age of it.

If the NY Times reacted solely on the basis of the Gawker post, without relying on some sort of even-handed interpretation of the information, then I agree, it would be unfair, though potentially justifiable for PR reasons. Free speech has that double-edged sword problem...

I wasn't trying to justify Gawker, was just curious about the content of their evidence and picked that quotation out as an odd (and non-scientific) thing to say/believe, though as I admit, the context does help make it less clearly racist in an overt sense (it's still implicitly racist in the sense of employing value-judgments about racial groups).

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Re: What's annoying you today?

#4048 Post by mockbee » Mon Mar 23, 2015 1:45 pm

If the NY Times reacted solely on the basis of the Gawker post, without relying on some sort of even-handed interpretation of the information, then I agree, it would be unfair, though potentially justifiable for PR reasons. Free speech has that double-edged sword problem...
I think that about sums it up. The editorial staff were super apologetic with him, when they let him know, I think they were embarrassed to have to do it. The Gawker guy apparently has a history or distorting context and taking legitimate people out, left and right, just takes joy in it I guess..... and I think nytimes just went through some PR nightmare with someone else "outed", and didn't want to piss any more liberal elite off.

Mr Kahn doesn't associate himself with that Taki site anymore, but I thought this was funny, when I was just perusing the site to see what it was about..... :lol:


Even Kareem Abdul-Jabbar thinks Starbucks’ race initiative is a supremely stupid idea: “I worry that such forced and awkward conversations could quickly escalate to violence.”

I’ll take a pumpkin spice latte with two extra sugars, please.

Since you’re an unconscious beneficiary of white privilege and invisible [sic] institutional racism, that’s easy for you to say.

OK, how about I beat the fuck out of you right now?

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mockbee
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Re: What's annoying you today?

#4049 Post by mockbee » Mon Mar 23, 2015 10:20 pm

I reread my post, and initially I thought that 'joke' was funny because everything about it was dumb, but now I think it's just sad. :dunce:





I'm annoying myself.
:balls:

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Pandemonium
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Re: What's annoying you today?

#4050 Post by Pandemonium » Tue Mar 24, 2015 10:38 am

Some fuckwit in an F150 pickup with no license plate decided he wasn't going to sit in traffic on PCH so to get room between his car and the one in front of him to turn onto the shoulder, he backed right up onto the front of my wife's new car and his bumper crunched her hood back and cracked the windshield and sped off driving on the shoulder. Personal responsibility is a lost grace these days.

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Re: What's annoying you today?

#4051 Post by mockbee » Tue Mar 24, 2015 12:32 pm

Pandemonium wrote:Some fuckwit in an F150 pickup with no license plate decided he wasn't going to sit in traffic on PCH so to get room between his car and the one in front of him to turn onto the shoulder, he backed right up onto the front of my wife's new car and his bumper crunched her hood back and cracked the windshield and sped off driving on the shoulder. Personal responsibility is a lost grace these days.
That sucks. Could she call CHiPs and just give them a description at the time, or would they even care?

Seeing a lot of this sort of stuff around here as well. Fully equipped, brand new Range Rovers, Land Rovers and Porche SUVs, looks like they start at $100k, gunning it down residential streets, running lights, honking at bicyclists in the bike lane, generally if you imagine an ego bubble and you are encroaching on it, it is unacceptable to them. Pisses me off.

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Re: What's annoying you today?

#4052 Post by Pandemonium » Tue Mar 24, 2015 1:55 pm

mockbee wrote:That sucks. Could she call CHiPs and just give them a description at the time, or would they even care?
She should have called 'em right away, it was a clear hit n' run. After it happened as soon as she could, she turned on a side street to check the front and decide whether she should finish driving home or not and no one stopped with her who clearly saw what happened. She did call today as a formality along with our insurance company to start the claim but it sounded like there's nothing the law can do for a minor collision without a plate on the truck and a good description of the driver ("it was a young guy").

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Re: What's annoying you today?

#4053 Post by creep » Tue Mar 24, 2015 1:59 pm

Pandemonium wrote:
mockbee wrote:That sucks. Could she call CHiPs and just give them a description at the time, or would they even care?
She should have called 'em right away, it was a clear hit n' run. After it happened as soon as she could, she turned on a side street to check the front and decide whether she should finish driving home or not and no one stopped with her who clearly saw what happened. She did call today as a formality along with our insurance company to start the claim but it sounded like there's nothing the law can do for a minor collision without a plate on the truck and a good description of the driver ("it was a young guy").
i wonder if you will have issues with the insurance company since it wasn't reported at first and it sounds a little suspicious that someone backed in to her and took off. i'm sure that is the story a lot of people tell when they hit something and don't want the accident to be their fault.

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Re: What's annoying you today?

#4054 Post by Hype » Tue Mar 24, 2015 2:05 pm

Might be able to tell that from photos of the damage... If you hit something that's on the ground there would be more damage to the bumper/underneath of the car... I think an F150 backing up onto the hood/windshield would look different... but I'm not sure.

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Re: What's annoying you today?

#4055 Post by Pandemonium » Tue Mar 24, 2015 9:25 pm

Adurentibus Spina wrote:Might be able to tell that from photos of the damage... If you hit something that's on the ground there would be more damage to the bumper/underneath of the car... I think an F150 backing up onto the hood/windshield would look different... but I'm not sure.
My wife took some pictures with her iPhone when she pulled over. The truck's rear bumper came in contact with her Prius' hood only an inch or so above the front end of the hood right above the hood latch without touching any other part of the front of her car. It literally pushed the hood back about 2 inches breaking the latch and bending the two pivots or whatever they're called that the hood is connected to the frame pushing the entire hood as one piece back against the metal band just below the windshield and wipers causing it to spiderweb crack. We fortunately have good insurance and had no problem getting it covered and a rental car. It's estimated at $3,500+.

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Re: What's annoying you today?

#4056 Post by farrellgirl99 » Wed Apr 01, 2015 7:43 am

every year on april fools my friend texts me about some personal experience thats happened to her and its always very plausible and i fall for it every time. in my defense, its always because i forget what day it is and she never makes it that outlandish. i hate this 'holiday'. it just annoys me that people put so much effort into this stupid shit.

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Hype
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Re: What's annoying you today?

#4057 Post by Hype » Wed Apr 01, 2015 8:02 am

farrellgirl99 wrote:every year on april fools my friend texts me about some personal experience thats happened to her and its always very plausible and i fall for it every time. in my defense, its always because i forget what day it is and she never makes it that outlandish. i hate this 'holiday'. it just annoys me that people put so much effort into this stupid shit.
Oh, I totally agree. That's why I'm so jazzed about that new Jane's Addiction double (Dobel?) album with Perry's kids singing vocals. I'm really impressed so far. :bday:

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Re: What's annoying you today?

#4058 Post by mockbee » Wed Apr 01, 2015 3:37 pm

the goddam city offices DPW / DOB.......

promises a decision by Thursday last week, nothing............ Call Friday, oh yeah later today, nothing..........Call Monday, no answer, they are on half day.......Call/email Tuesday, leave message, don't return my call.......Call Wednesday, say decision by end of day, no decision today, guy who makes decision missing in action, "haven't seen him for days, he should be here, huh?............"

:banghead: :banghead: :banghead: :banghead: :banghead: :banghead: :banghead: :banghead:



I paid them real hard earned money for a decision, they promised a decision by last week. :confused:

Well, at least the decision so far is no decision, not denied.... :scared:

:balls: :noclue:

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SR
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Re: What's annoying you today?

#4059 Post by SR » Wed Apr 01, 2015 6:41 pm

900 miles of straight driving. In San Antonio for the night on my way to Miami. Juana....should you see this, go spurs

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Re: What's annoying you today?

#4060 Post by Artemis » Sat Apr 04, 2015 7:42 pm

The hot water pipe in the unit above mine has a puncture and is dripping to all the units below down to the garage. Plumbers came on Thursday and put a clamp on upstairs but it is still dripping non-stop. It's not the gush it was, but still steadily flowing. The plumbers will be here on Monday to replace the pipe.
The paint on one of my walls is bubbling now. :mad:

Image


Image

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mockbee
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Re: What's annoying you today?

#4061 Post by mockbee » Sat Apr 04, 2015 9:37 pm

SR wrote:900 miles of straight driving. In San Antonio for the night on my way to Miami. Juana....should you see this, go spurs
Texas is the absolute worst for driving. I got caught in an ice storm, and had to drive 600 miles from big bend to austin that day , not fun, and thank god my car didn't end up teetering over a fence or in a tree or just plain upside down spinning in circles like some of the weirder situations we saw in middle of the night.

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Re: What's annoying you today?

#4062 Post by SR » Sun Apr 05, 2015 5:08 am

mockbee wrote:
SR wrote:900 miles of straight driving. In San Antonio for the night on my way to Miami. Juana....should you see this, go spurs
Texas is the absolute worst for driving. I got caught in an ice storm, and had to drive 600 miles from big bend to austin that day , not fun, and thank god my car didn't end up teetering over a fence or in a tree or just plain upside down spinning in circles like some of the weirder situations we saw in middle of the night.
Yup, the worst.

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Larry B.
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Re: What's annoying you today?

#4063 Post by Larry B. » Sun Apr 05, 2015 7:43 am

One of my gf's two dogs is being put down later today. He's a 15 year old Yorkshire, with like 3 teeth and yesterday he jumped off the stairs and broke one of his legs. We're pretty fucking sad.

And she's got another old dog who has cancer and who should be departing from this world in the near future as well.

:wavesad:

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Re: What's annoying you today?

#4064 Post by clickie » Sun Apr 05, 2015 9:15 am

You Chileans put your dogs down just because they break a bone?

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Re: What's annoying you today?

#4065 Post by creep » Sun Apr 05, 2015 4:46 pm

the best night in tv has nothing on tonight except for john oliver.

next week:
game of thrones
veep

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