Atheists file lawsuit over Day of FaithThey say the city wrongfully spent taxpayer money.By JEFF BRUMLEY, The Times-UnionJacksonville spent at least $101,000 to plan and host its Aug. 12 Day of Faith anti-violence rally and now faces legal action from a national atheists’ organization that wants the money returned to city taxpayers.Mayor John Peyton promoted A Day of Faith: Arming Our Prayer Warriors as a way to mobilize the local faith and nonprofit communities to help combat the city’s growing homicide count, which stands at 103 for the year. There had been 96 homicides by the day the event was held.The city estimated that 6,000 attended the two-hour rally at the Jacksonville Veterans Memorial Arena. It featured a lineup of elected, civic and religious leaders who urged residents to pray and volunteer for mentoring and other programs they say could address the social factors behind murder and other forms of violence.But some people and organizations complained about the rally, saying it was overtly religious in nature and represented an example of government promotion of faith.American Atheists Inc. filed a motion in federal court in Jacksonville to stop the event. The judge rejected it, saying it was filed too late. Since then the organization said in court it will sue on behalf of taxpayers to recover the funds spent and to prevent the city from holding such an event again, said Edwin Kagin, national legal counsel for the New Jersey-based group.According to documents provided Friday by Cindy Laquidara, the city’s chief deputy general counsel, City Hall spent $9,180 on advertising, $6,856 for DVD and flier production and mailing, and $80,268 for expenses such as T-shirts for volunteers, an event logo, printing, bus service, events staff and video production. The latter amount includes $20,854 for venue charges.Another $5,097 was spent on staff time dedicated to the event.Laquidara said it’s possible additional expenses were incurred but have not been turned in to the mayor’s and legal counsel’s offices.The American Civil Liberties Union of Greater Jacksonville, meanwhile, has filed records requests with the city seeking information on who was invited to the rally and its funding.Chapter President Ken Hurley said he’s received some of the requested documents and that he has forwarded them to ACLU attorneys for review. But he said it is far too early to predict whether the organization will also file a lawsuit.”You can’t expect that but you can’t rule it out, either,” Hurley said.Kagin said American Atheists is taking action against the city because the Day of Faith was a prayer service financed by taxpayers.”The city has no business being in the religion business,” he said.A Day of Faith: Arming Our Prayer Warriors featured short sermons by several Christian ministers, prayers and religious music. One Muslim and one Jewish leader also participated.Peyton and other city officials have consistently downplayed the religious angle of the event and argued that all residents were invited to attend. The mayor has also noted that secular nonprofit agencies were heavily involved in the effort.The Rev. Mark Griffin, pastor of Wayman Chapel AME in Jacksonville, disagreed with those who characterize the rally as a religious revival.”I think it was money well spent and I don’t think it was inappropriate at all,” Griffin said Friday. He said the event’s focus was on preventing homicides, not on promoting any one faith over another.”There were people of all faiths there and there were people of no faith there – no one was being screened at the door,” Griffin said.jeff.brumley@jacksonville.com, (904) 359-4310
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There’s a couple of books you guys might find interesting:
“Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies”
My brother and I discuss the ideas contained within. I thought it is an interesting discussion of (I’m a little too tired to come up with my own summation, so I borrowed this from the reviews):
Available crops for domestication
Available animals for domestication
Ease Of Technology transfer (east/west is easier than north/south and mountains and oceans are a problem)
It seems to be a fascinating look at why some societies do better than others. His newest book:
“Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed” looks to be interesting as well. Check ‘em out and see if it adds to the discussion. I seem to read soooo slooowly these days. Oh well… I get it in where I can.
I think both of these books focus a bit more on the larger picture rather than race specifically, but I find myself more and more interested in this level of discussion.
***OFF TOPIC***
That book “Guns Germs, and Steel” sounds like it would be downright interesting. My reading rate was extremely slow recently also – until I was able to eliminate some of the mercury toxins (plus perhaps other metals too) that have been locked-in me for many *years*. What a big relief that is!
Thanks a lot to spanders for the tip about this book.
Oh – you ran with the carnies did you? I guess you got to see a helluva lot of losers who WEREN’T of the afro persuasion then, hey? You say that there are *lots* of ghettos that are NOT inhabited by the blacks – that right?
I have. They’re known as trailer parks, and they’re predominantly WHITE. We got a lot of them here in Misery, and they usually show up on the evening news because people are shot there, have meth labs, or a tornado throws them around.
Poverty does not recognize DNA. It’s an equal oppotunity cancer on all people.
My drive-by post:
“The Bell Curve” has been pretty thoroughly de-bunked as pseudoscience – quoting it as evidence for your position is probably not a good idea.
Oh, and Spanders is right:
Jared Diamond books rock.
Oh yeah, and Phreedm asked
Well, 100 grand is not a whole lot to spend when it comes right down to it, but I would like to see more non-sectarian community support groups, volunteer crime watch programs, youth centers, women’s shelters, and drug rehab centers.
Go ahead, somebody call me a socia1ist – I dare ya.
robguy387:
I’m not sure I care much for your tone, son.
Sure, I ran w/the carnies. I’ve also programmed computers, I’m an autodidact, speak 2 languages, & a tai chi teacher.
So less of the attitude, if you please.
Name is spelled w/a ‘K’, BTW.
Sure – never been to Bangkok, or Cambodia – but I know that there’re ghettoes there. There are gay ghettoes, Scottish ghettoes – they’re everywhere.
My point is…I’ve been around. Long enough to know ain’t nuthin’ all cut & dried.
You mean the World Almanac?
Got link? Got studies? You mean in this country? ‘Cause, buddy me boyo, I can pretty much guess w/o looking it up, that ghettoes in the 3rd world countries, THOSE folk ain’t doin’ so well ‘comparatively’.
Of course, the ‘Big Alamanac’ probably doesn’t quite get around to those places, is my guess.
r4d:
I just got off the phone – he’ll be at your house in an hour.
You should drop in more – we miss ya here.
“Poverty does not recognize DNA. It’s an equal oppotunity cancer on all people.”
Sure there are poor, uneducated, low class white people but the numbers don’t lie. Europeans are the least likely to be poor in the USA and Africans the most:
http://www.bsos.umd.edu/socy/vanneman/socy441/trends/povrace.html
Look I’m not saying that non whites deserve different treatment or respect but I am just asking you to pull your collective heads out of the sand and connect the dots. Look I’m a gay man and I’ll be the first to tell you that gay men are less able to form stable relationships and are a high risk group for HIV. I accept facts even when they are unpleasant and the fact is that places like Jacksonville, Fl which has more Africans also has more crime and ignorance than the national average and the two almost always go hand in hand. I don’t see the almost totally white city of Seattle in the middle of an epidemic of violent crime and prayer vigils.
Connect the dots.
Alex:
Gee, & who are there more of? What does that tell you?
Excuse me, but I’m not being an ostrich about this. More poor, uneducated? More crime. It’s NOT indicative of race.
& I quote:
You’re making a broad generalized statement on 1 race, based on your own negative experiences.
I’m not going to try to convince you otherwise. That’s up to you.
& you’re likely to get attacked & rolled by a ladyboy in Bangkok. You may get mugged in the streets of Cambodia.
My point, is that this isn’t restricted to race alone.
Fact is, 400 yrs. of oppression tend to make people a little irritable. Slap poor on top of that, you get a lotta anger.
Fact is, if I were in those shoes, I don’t know friendly I’d be.
Crime’s symptomatic of something very wrong w/any society.
Rather than pointing a finger, ask why.
I can’t help but find it sad.
According to some people’s reasoning that race and crime are related it should mean that the biggest known gansters should be afro-americans.
And here was silly old me that thought that the biggest names in crime in the US were if not Sicilian then certainly Italian. Throw in a couple of Irish and a sprinkle of Jews and you have the top echelon of most mob families of the last 100 years.
to Kite666:
It was (and may well still be) that the Biggest Crimnals were from the area of Italy, particularly Sicilly. But that was only *organized* crime.
When we get down to the day-to-day crime that is NOT actually highly lucrative – as would be the case with the Mob and the Rackets. The “crime” referred to by alexatheist is just the *everyday* variety. Contrary to your remark above “according to some people’s reasoning” that the afro-americans ’should’ be “the biggest known gangsters” instead of the Sicillians IF the afros were BIG into crime – it requires NO “reasoning” at all to simply research the statistics.
Since this has got to be such a HOT issue – and the Whole WORLD wants to rush to the rescue of this luckless & downtrodden ethnic group which is being “descriminated against” here by anyone who mentions their group has ‘limitations’ – I did some research.
I looked in an almanac for the *states” – not the world. This showed that the number of homicides in Washington D.C. was about 44 per 100,000 population. Then read the homicide rates for Vermont and New Hampshire and what do you find? As I recall one state had about 1.7 homicides per 100,000 citizens and the other had maybe 1.9 homicides for every 100,000 citizens.
Why is the homocide rates (in the mid 1990s) 20 TIMES as high in D.C. as it was in Vermont and New Hampshire? Does that have *anything* to do with the fact that D.C. is virtually POSSESSED by afro-americans?
Is it not ALSO correct to state that the *reason* WHY the afro-americans have totally crowded into D.C. is because it is run and is financially supported by the U.S. government (the taxpayers) which means there is almost UNLIMITED money used for free “social services” for the poor people living there?
Is it not also correct to state that the money these Senators and Representatives SPEND in their attempt to have D.C. be a “model city” is what DRAWS a lot of poor, indigents and friggin loafers who PREFER to be supported at public expense?
So it is NOT really any “reasoning” that makes anyone arrive at the conclusions alexatheist has reached in his above messages – is it? ‘Fraid not.
Alexatheist is merely citing bald-faced FACTS. I don’t “like” those facts any more than anyone else does. But alexatheist is NOT any kind of Azzhole for knowing such not-PC-correct facts are real ones.
Well…..no matter where ya go….there you are
How did this thread go from pointing out the careless use of tax payer money to describing civilizations
I have no use for cultural pride or prick waving….
Arguing over what an ethnic group does or did is pointless….you might as well be born again
Will we ever make the quantum leap to sanity….Maybe the information age will help point out peoples similarities instead of their differences…..do not the twigs have a common branch from which they reach
piece
I?m late in the (off topic) conversation and need to run off…
but a few thoughts…
Rob,
First, I?m pretty sure there are some major differences between Vermont/New Hampshire and DC. I think we might need a few more controls in that one?
Second,
You guys aren?t just citing facts; you?re citing facts and about crime and the like and assuming race must be the cause. Correlation isn?t the same as causation. KA and Da Rat Bastid have already made some excellent points about how poverty is a much more likely culprit for the problems you cite.
Finally, just because it?s not politically correct doesn?t mean it?s correct.
I?ll join Spanders and Rainbows and vouch for Diamond?s book Guns, Germs, and Steel. It shows how geography, resources, and disease rather than race can explain many of the current differences between various groups and societies.
To Charlie et al: OFF TOPIC
All one needs to do here is mention “The Bell Curve” and we instantly have the Super-Anti-Bigotry-Arch-Activists foaming at the mouth. To those guys, mere mention of that scholarly work is tantamount to saying “Yo mamma sux real cheap”.
To even mention the title of that book is the same as challenging that crowd to mortal combat & they wanna drive an oaken stake through your worthless heart.
When the renowned scientist William Shockley had announced late in life that humanity needed to improve its average intelligence – he was hounded into obscurity and became hated! Even (the late) Isaac Asimov had guffawed that Schockley donated his sperm at a sperm bank known for fertilizing women wanting to have very gifted children. When Schockly died, even his own children had to read about that in the newspapers, for only his wife still remained his friend. Here was a brilliant Phd Nobel prize winner who was SAVAGELY treated by the folks who wanted to FACTS to be *different*.
Everyones’ egos and a lot of “racial pride” is tied up in such issues as touched on (tangentially) by alexatheist and myself above. It’s really Too Damn Bad that a sane converstaion can’t be had without the possibility of a Race Riot getting started.
The CONTROVERSIAL issues raised by the book “The Bell Curve” have been shoveled under the rug by those who deem all FACTS always need to meet with their approval in order to be considered as ‘true’ information. Somewhat oddly, that is also *exactly* how the dedicated Xians (and other religious folk) react when they’re trying to insist that *their* beliefs are actually based on reality.
We cannot alter what’s real by a snap of the fingers, to have it be “nice as birthday cake”.
(blinks at Rob)
I saw no ?Race Riot.? I saw people challenging your shaky leap from particular statistics that picked from various sources to some pretty hefty claims of ?well, all this must be caused by race.?
Cake, huh? Just because it makes people cringe, doesn?t mean they are denying what?s true out of a sense of political correctness (or because they want birthday cake or whatever). They might be cringing because it is, indeed, possible to both sounds offensive still be incorrect.
No matter how poetically you want to make it sound, your post in no way answers challenges to the various facts and opinions you?re throwing at the board. All you are offering is a somewhat analogous situation and a poor caricature of the other side of the argument. If you have issues with challenges to your facts and leaps, take issue with those challenges. Leave out the entire, ?oh, you?re just trying to be politically correct? crap, please.
(coughs) There shouldn’t be a that before picked, sounds should be sound and poetically should be poetic. Wow. That was typo-lific. (shakes head at self)
robguy387:
Not me. I had my shots already.
Yeesh, & I thought I was melodramatic.
I hadn’t even heard of the bloody thing till this thread.
I’m going to have to address this next statement:
Hey, the numbers have merit, the conclusion drawn from them doesn’t.
You can spout all the numbers you want, all they tell me are 2 things:
1. Racism is still an issue in this society, &
2. Our education system needs to address all those children ‘left behind’.
Still most quantifiably NOT a matter of ‘inferior’ genetics. I used historical examples to disprove that.
Once you start w/the ‘inferior/superior’ crapola, you create a schism.
Japanese have a wonderful saying (you know, those ‘3rd worlders’?): “Fix the problem, not the blame.”
As was shown by the situation originally meant as the ‘thread’ of this topic – the arch-Xtian folks go to extremes trying to spread their idiotic propaganda. In Florida they hold what is really a Prayer Rally to which those “of any religion” are welcomed, at a cost of maybe $122,000 to the taxpayer. But given the X-ians propensity for lying, the cost may have been higher.
We’ve also got a different batch of Xian folks (goofs) who are now creating a Creationist Museum in the Cincinnatti area. The ads for that “museum” state that it will be about 90,000 square feet initially and is said will cost about $25 millon. It is supposed to open in 2007, so everybody should start making plans now.
There will be displays and perhaps videos that show DINOSAURS and people living side by side! As we know from reading science-related texts, the dinosaurs became extinct a LONG time before humans had ever walked the earth.
Some of the oldest man-like fossils I’ve heard about include the one called “Lucy” who was a tiny human-like woman from maybe 4 to 5 million years ago. That fossil was also found in the Olduvai (spell?) gorge in Africa by one of the Leaky folks.
We have dinosaurs – which critters ALL went VERY extinct in only a few years, occurring about 65 million. Thus this X-ian museun is based on TOTAL falsehood invented by Xian “theologians”. If there were NO dinosaurs any *later* than 65 million years ago – and NO proto-humans had existed *earlier* than about 5 to 10 million years ago, it is IMPOSSIBLE to say that “people” who resemble modern day humans were present at the same time dinosaurs existed.
Here again, this is just one more case of the X-ians attemting to “stretch” reality in order to make THEIR theologial nonsense appear as though it’s *real*.
But it aint real.
This is similar to the ‘reverend’ Griffin telling the press that “everyone was welcome” and church membership was NOT checked at the door of that FL prayer rally.
They did not *need* to check for church membership cuz’ no self-respecting atheist would have even wanted to attend any prayer session -whether that rally was intended to reduce homicides or not.
(OFF TOPIC?)
Seems the topic has become about race. If you didn’t think race was an issue pre-Katrina (you know, that meme about a colorblind society the republicans tried telling us for the last couple of decades), I’m betting you do now.I don’t think of it as a race issue, but a class issue.
Sure, there are plenty of problems associated with race, such as the attitude of most african americans toward education, i.e., “If you try to excell in school, you’re ‘an Oreo’”. Street gangs. The desire for the “bling-bling” or to have a car that costs more than your house in the typical “ghetto fabulous” fashion.
I’ve seen it all here. In the african american communities in St. Louis, we have unemployment rates that hover around 20%. While I was canvassing neighborhoods in the last electoral cycle, I saw people live in places that should be condemned. Almost all of them lived in houses with lead paint still in them, which causes retardation! Most were black, but there was lots of White Trash, too. There were also the trailer parks in the southern part of the metro area, too. I still remember the odor of urine and meth labs wafting through them…
It didn’t matter what the color of their skin was, the disease of poverty affected them the same way.
Illiteracy. Despreation. Hunger. Hopelesness. Hatred.
More than once I cried at the end of the day. It also taught me that poverty is the root cause of crime. I mean, how can you expect someone to be an upstanding citizen, go to work at McDonald’s or Taco Bell when you make more money selling drugs, robbing people, or stealing cars?
Yes, a good education can kill poverty, but so does a good paying job with benefits. You know, union scale pay.
You want to blame someone? Blame a government and society that wipes their feet on the poor, ignores its’ responsibility to humanity because they want a tax cut on their Hummers and yachts, does not hold multinational corporations accountable for their human rights infractions, and has a federal minimum wage that proportionately is the lowest in 50 years.
O.K. I just became a member today. This is the first post I came across. I enjoy a good “nigger” or faggot” joke as much as the next person. But goddamn alexatheist, if you’re going to use only The Bell Curve to make your weak point, why don’t you take a look at what the majority of the scientific community has to say about the books “evidence”.
First off, would you place validity into a science book on evolution funded by a Christin organization? I’ll assume not because you post on this board. Then why in the hell would you quote research paid for by the Pioneer Fund? Know who thet are?
“The Pioneer Fund was set up in 1937 by Wickliffe Draper, a millionaire who advocated sending blacks back to Africa. The foundation’s charter set forth the group’s missions as “racial betterment” and aid for people “deemed to be descended primarily from white persons who settled in the original 13 states prior to the adoption of the Constitution of the United States.” (In 1985, after Pioneer Fund grant recipients began receiving political heat, the charter was slightly amended to play down the race angle–Link here:
http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=1271
I don’t need to go on, but if you want some reasons why this book has been debunked time and time again….
http://www.srv.net/~msdata/bell.html
http://www.slate.com/id/2416
Alexatheist, I’m not calling you a racist. It does seem you have fear towards blacks though. You also used personal experiance to make your case. That’s also what religious folks use. That’s fine. I live in Philadelphia which happens to be leading the US in murders this year(secular northeast). I try to avoid many areas and have my own fears. But I don’t try to use science to back up my own stereotypes. That is wrong on so many levels, and I did not expect this on a board of “rational people”
If I may play devil’s advocate for Jacksonville for just a moment…
There are certainly red flags here–the title of the event being the most glaring, BUT…
This event seems a little more in a gray area to me. For instance, the city says that various religions were represented, and secular organizations were also involved. Also, the aim of the event was not promotion of religion but anti-violence–and while I may find that an oxymoron, I am wondering about the question of intent.
Its hard to know what the event was “really” like from just the article. Was there a derogatory message toward atheists (we are often blamed for all the world’s problems, but did that in fact happen here?)
I only bring this up for honest clarification…not to somehow excuse clergy of preaching on the publics dime.
Comment to luke37 OFF TOPIC
It was me who started this argument when I’d referred to The Bell Curve book. Then we had a few who wanted to retaliate by insisting it was “nasty” (or the equivalent) to even refer to that tome. I have some interesting “numbers” on Wash. D.C. that strongly indicate there is NO DOUBT that the afro population brings about TOO HIGH amounts of crime.
“The Bell Curve” was NOT the original publication to announce that the this ethnic group was lagging in intelligence. That was announced by the famed Nobel laureate physicist William shockley who led the team at Bell Labs that invented the transistor. Look it up on “Infopedia” (perhaps) and I think you will find they claim that Schockley was thought of as one of the most brilliant scientiest of the 20th century.
This correlates well with what happened in the life of the little known genius William James Sidis too. As a young guy he was getting badgered a lot, for saying such things as he would never marry. This kid was giving matematics lectures at Harvard at age 14!
Sidis became quite ‘pissed’ at the whole world – because its inhabitants are quite stupid. Or at least compared to William Sidis they were. So Sidis then REFUSED to use his fantassic mind to do ANYTHING that would be of significant value to the inhabitants of Earth.
In like fashion – William Schockley was also hated and mistreated after he suggested the whole world needed to have its average level of intelligence improved through selective breeding. He was castigated thoroughly after he announced that the american blacks had only an average I.Q. of about “85″. Was Schockley wrong? NO – he was correct – but the average person of *little* intelligence DID NOT WANT to hear any of Schockley’s idea. So Schockley was ridiculed and he died isolated from all his former friends and admirers. The goddam (average?) people were SO stupid they found it “useful” to ridicule an enormously intelligent scientist – rather than to pay attention to the significant things he was saying to them.
Then maybe 25 years later we had The Bell Curve book being published which said in part Schockley was WRONG!
Their studies (Murray and Herndon?) indicated that the average intelligence of American blacks was NOT 85% of the average for the rest of the population – it was only 82% of the rest of the population.
This pisses me off. Most of society doesn’t have Hummers or yachts. A lot of us would just like to save enough money to retire. You would like to tax the hell out of everyone to make the lives of people that don’t want to earn their way better.
You’ve already pointed out the solution to the problem: education. Fuck all the social programs. Fuck welfare. Fuck social security. Especially fuck taxing me more!
Sink all that damn money into building a real education system for these people. Then, put a sunset clause on it. If it doesn’t improve their way of life, they simply don’t want it. Then leave them to their devices. If it does radically change their society, then I’m all for spending exactly how much I spend on taxes now.
Welfare hasn’t fixed the problem. Social Security hasn’t either. There are still poor people. I don’t hate poor people, but I do hate it when people think with their emotions and not with their brains. I have little sympathy for someone whom is poor because they want their “bling bling.” I have little sympathy for a culture that sneers at education.
From robguy387: “What does matter is what you’ll find when you open your Big Almanac & look up the statistics in there. Sure – there are plenty of non-afros who aren’t doing well at all. But – statistically – those other peoples’ plight does NOT look very “terrible” comparitively when you read the statistics.”
So Jacksonville, Florida is populated by statistics? My guess is that a lot of potential investors, who consider themselves to be people, look at places like Jacksonville and think “Well, if we’re going to live here, let’s build a gated community for the people, someplace away from all of those pesky statistics.” The investors put their inherited wealth where they’re most comfortable with it, leaving the statistics without much inherited wealth at all.
From alexatheist: “Look I’m a gay man and I’ll be the first to tell you that gay men are less able to form stable relationships and are a high risk group for HIV. I accept facts even when they are unpleasant….”
Well, this gay man will inform you that you are not dealing in “facts” when you state that “gay men are less able to form stable relationships….” You are making a generalization based on statistics that probably describe men in general, and are more pronounced, for that reason, in male-male relationships than in male-female relationships.
Personally, I’ve found many of your claims on this blog to be highly specious, including your claim about Japan in this thread.
Bottom line: learn what statistics are.
comment to Robguy387
This is an interesting conversation. But again I have to disagree. William Shockley was a brilliant person. His belief in eugenics may have tarnished him in his later years, but nobody denies the the overall importance of most of his work. Shockley’s beliefs were largely based on the research of Cyril Burt.
from wikipedia:
From the late 1970s it has been generally accepted that at least a majority of this research was fraudulent, due in large part to research by Oliver Gillie (1976) and Leon Kamin (1974). The possibility of fraud was first brought to the attention of the scientific community when Kamin noticed that Burt’s correlation coefficients of Monozygotic and Dizygotic twins’ IQ scores were the same to three decimal places, across articles–even when new data were twice added to the sample of twins. Leslie Hearnshaw, a close friend of Burt and his official biographer, concluded after examining the criticisms that most of Burt’s data from after World War II were unreliable or fraudulent.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyril_Burt
Smart does not always mean correct.
It seems funny to me how some members of “America’s Most Distrusted Minority” can be so racist.
I used to be ignorant about other races, having grown up in an all white community, but chose to keep an open mind about it,(or was skeptical about what I was told by others). Because of this I’ve been able to make friends with Blacks and Hispanics and am open to anyone else who is different from me.
I think keeping an open mind and looking at all root causes are the real ways to understand and combat crime, not faith based initiatives.
Atomic Testing,
You’re accusing me of something I did not say. Re-read it:
Now, what did you write?
Now, where does that imply that I want to raise your taxes?
Unfortunmately, the Libertarian propaganda has led people to fight over the crumbs the mega-rich throw for us. We end up shooting our economic stbility by shopping at Wal Mart. We give no-bid contracts worth billions to Halliburton, and they get a tax refund. We allow power companies to gouge us on our bills, yet the energy companies are turning bigger profits.
Your taxes have already been raised anyway. Only the corporations call them “profits”.
Bought gas lately? Hello??? War Tax!
Also, it’s a well known fact that 1% of the population controls 80% of the economy. Doesn’t sound like a “free” market to me!
Sounds like the old “Nature vs Nurture” argument to me. If you take the black (mexican, native american, etc) child out of poverty, would he still have the propensity towards criminal activity. Put him into an educated family, would he still have a lower IQ?
We are not just the genetic products of out parents, we’re also products of our environment.
Okay, last word on the ‘Bell Curve’ topic, & I’m done.
Seems that poverty does indeed have an adverse effect on IQ:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IQ
?Environmental factors play a major role in determining IQ in extreme situations. Proper childhood nutrition appears critical for cognitive development; malnutrition can lower IQ. Other research indicates environmental factors such as prenatal exposure to toxins, duration of breastfeeding, and micronutrient deficiency can affect IQ. In the developed world, there are some family effects on the IQ of children, accounting for up to a quarter of the variance. However, by adulthood, this correlation disappears, so that the IQ of adults living in the prevailing conditions of the developed world may be more heritable.”
So, if you’re born well-off, you eat better. You eat better, you do better.
At the risk of being crude, if you’re born born in shit…logical progression. (sorry)
& the exception proves the rule, is the old adage I think.
What does Patri’s 1st Law of statistics say? Oh, yeah…
“Correlation implies causation when convenient; otherwise, there are confounding factors.”
Or is it…?
“The First Law of Statistics:
If the statistics don?t support your viewpoint you obviously need more statistics.
The Second Law of Statistics:
Given enough statistics you can prove anything.”
BACK ON TOPIC: can anyone provide the list of “The…secular nonprofit agencies were heavily involved in the effort”?
to Luke37: (OFF TOPIC)
I certainly appreciate your comments on the whole “I.Q.” issue that’s raised in connection with the “Bell Curve” book & also with Bill Shockley. I have no “burning interest” in beating that dead horse a whole lot more here.
Being employed in “technology” my interests in Humanity’s Major Probelms is only Extremely Slight in nature. Their (humans) main problem *is* that their native intelligence is so low. An I.Q. of only 100 is NOT really good for much – frankly.
Thus there is little wonder that Earth now appears destined to be mismanaged until the time arrives that its biosphere can scarcely support ANY higher life form. There is no band-aid that can be used to patch this ailment.
The low intelligence of humanity *gurantees* they will ruin their ONLY spaceship – the earth. The average person lacks thebasic intelligence to even *want* to do any studying. Plus the greedy business interests keep telling us its “okay” for them to make money even faster, because that doesn’t harm the environment much.
The Bottom Line here is that “Nothing Can Be Done” to save this planet and to rescue the human species. This was probably already recognized by William James Sidis, and may partly have been why the world’s smartest individual (virtually) did not want to DO ONE DAMN thing which would be of any value to humanity. He totally dispised us all.
As indicated by the renowned physicist Stephen Hawking – it is time NOW to begin making the attempt for a FEW humans to escape from this planet. He recommended we make it our goal to have a self-sustaining colony on the moon ASAP and to follow that up with a colony on Mars within about 40 years. Hawking is not wrong (and neither was Shockley IMHO).
The *point* being made here is that
“It doesn’t really matter much how
smart any race is or it isn’t”.
It’s actually a very Dead Issue now – somewhat like when the religious philosophers argued over “how many angels can dance on the head of a pin?”
We may note some *interesting* tidbits of info here and there which are of little importance. The most interesting of all tidbits IMO is that the I.Q.=100 crowd is destroying the earth’s ecosystem beyond repair & they are too stupid to see this is happening. Thus we will continue on that path until it’s too late to make a recovery.
Against THIS scenario (spectre) there appears little else worth wrangling about – expecially “which race is smartest” or “which is the dumbest”
OFF TOPIC
If anyone one here is seriously interested in the “intelligence” question we’ve mentioned above, a couple good papers may be found at:
http://flawlesslogic.com
At the top of that ’site’ you will find a paper entitled “Black-White
I.Q. Differences” by Daniel Seligman
Further down the page you’ll find another entitled:
“Paroxyms Of Denial” by Arthur Jensen.
These are informative essays & well worth the reading. One statement there is that the things claimed in the book “The Bell Curve” are very substantially recognized by the experts as being correct.
robguy387:
Be nice if the link you provided actually worked.
Gee, an I.Q test written by white folk & geared for white folk. Tests that people of a different subculture flunk. What a surprise.
Why don’t you spend more energies on your moon colony, rather than try to convince us 1 race is ’sub-par’ to another, ey?
Well, I wish you’d been a little more clear that you were referring to only reducing the bullshit the government does when “playing favorites” with companies that donate money to their political party.
When a politician talks about his consituents he means the big businesses that are set up in his state. When a statesman talks about constituents, he means all those people that the big businesses are trying to screw.
Reply to KA:
You were right that the URL I’d given citing the I.Q. test results was incorrect – it was partial. Here is the correct site address:
http://library.flawlesslogic.com/
iq.htm
Both myself and ‘alexatheist’ were strongly criticized here for suggesting that information from “The Bell Curve” was meritorious & accurate. (And it IS accurate).
So some of you guys wanted to “crawl my ass” that my information is *false* – then I’ve not choice but to dig up some supporting evidence to SHOW you people.
“The Bell Curve” is NOT politically correct but it is scientifically true.
The effort to “kill” the Bell curve findings mainly is because their is a massive faux-humanitarian effort being made to have ALL races be seen as completely “equal”. The incentive for THAT policy is the (laudable?) goal of *eliminating* any HINT that this or that race may suffer from ANY deficiency, as compared with another race. By doing that, the hope is to reduce or eliminate discrimination because of racial differences.
Thus, for the sake of certain peoples’ socio-political agenda – we are being told we NEED to PRETEND that some valid scientific research is meaningless bullshit. I do not IGNORE the unpleasant facts – the same as I do NOT tell “white” lies.
If anyone gets their rocks off by exclaiming that valid research I’ve pointed to here is only “shit” – then it appears necessary to inform people otherwise.
The religious people of Jacksonville had used “smoke and mirrors” (lies) to hold a religious rally, which they claimed was NOT really a religious rally. The official who was asked to deny them the use of government resources also “pretended” what those religious people were doing did NOT violate the Church/State separation rule. So he was doing what’s “Politically Correct” also!
After a while it becomes sickening to always view the lack of honesty that’s so prevalent in our society.
You see this every day & this accounts for why the United States is now rapidly loosing ground as the greatest nation is the world.
As exemplifed by the *religious* rally held in Jacksonville recently, the highly religious folks are *forever* finding devious ways to publicize their religious point of view.
Earlier I’d mentioned the new faith-based 90,000 sq. ft. “museum” close to Cincinnati that’s being built for about $25 million. This “museum” is intended by the Fundies to show the rest of us that the Bible “is correct” and that ‘gawd’ had actually MADE everything on Earth in “a very short time indeed” like (would you freaking believe?) only 6 DAYS.
If we all ACCEPTEd such a goofy ‘creationist’ idea – that would mean that “evolution” would not (necessarilly) be correct. Meaning the Bible “was” fundamentally TRUE (sure it is).
To do this they have managed to scrounge up quite a lot of dough. One statement I’d heard was there is some guy who is a Big pizza millionaire and he’s a dyed-in-the wool Fundo who donates lots of cash to this cause – the Fundo Causes. I wonder whether the guy may have been a big GWB contributer also.
So this “museum” supposedly will ’show’ that humans and the dinosuars lived *together*! They will do THAT, even though well respected paleontologists have shown through fine scientific dating techniques that the dinosaurs were extinct by about 65 MILLION years ago! At that time the small creature that eventually did evolve into proto-Man was an insignificant little critter on this planet and Mankind did not emerge for more than 55+ million years after that.
This total trickery and bullshit that the Fundo religionists are selling never ceases. They continue trying to shove this nonsense up our butts at every opportunity. To me, the recent FL rally that was (supposedly) intended for “reducing homicides” was ONLY a thinly disguised RELIGIOUS rally.
The reverends and ministers who’d SAID the rally was for the purpose of “reducing violent crime” were IMHO merely being typical religious bullshitters. They will tell any LIE if they can think it is “for Gawd”. They *know& that Gawd will forgive their sins, ‘cuz it’s For Him.
Another example. I’m in Ohio and for a while I was a sort-of admirer of Dan Voinovich, who was the governor here not too long ago – but he is also apparently a devout Catholic or he cow-tows to the religious folks. Voinovich knows that the ATHEISTS can’t hold it against him that he’s relgious – there are also too few of us to even matter.
As the governor, Voinovich had the phrase “With god all things are possible” set into a large round masonry walk – or a sort of Seal on the Ohio statehouse property.
He had this (mainly) done with donated funds. Nevertheless we are now ‘burdened’ with this goddam religious massive “seal” that’s set into a HUGE 20 to 30 foot (???) diameter masonry or stone patio or walkway on the Ohio statehouse lawn.
Voinovich is quite Full Of Himself. When President Clinton’s airplane was landing in Columbus, OH Voinovich was instructed HIS governor’s aiplane could NOT take off – it had to wait for Air Force One. Voinovich got on the radio and instructed the control tower that HE was the goddam governor of THIS state and HIS PLANE WAS taking off.
He ordered his pilot to take-off the plane, and Clinton’s Air Force One had to wait while the Ohio governor’s plane was taking off. Later he was fined by the fAA I believe.
Not only is Voinovich an insufferable prick and big-feeling varmint, he’s also a religious one.
robguy387:
Here’s the thing I have against IQ tests:
I’m horrible at tests. Last IQ test I took (an online 1, sure), I came in under 100. Obviously, anyone who chats w/me in a 5-to-10 minute period, or reads my articles, can pretty much guess that I am by no means stupid.
You plop anybody in an unfamiliar environment, & test them in accordance in unfamiliar standards, $ to donuts, they’re gonna choke.
So, to illustrate:
We take an uneducated black guy outta Oakland, sit him next to some white guy who’s been attending college for 2 yrs., & measure them by a yardstick that the college boy is more familiar w/, who’s gonna do better?
I illustrated earlier, that there were ancient civlizations in Africa, LONG before the white boys came in & started wrecking the place.
OMG, the Racial Nationalist movement? You’ve gotta be fucking kidding me.
So you think white people are superior? Geezus, you Aryan fucknods are just way out in left field.
Do you know what you call a skinhead w/an IQ of 100?
A pep rally.
You know what you call a skinhead w/an IQ of 200?
The Aryan Brotherhood.
Go peddle your racist wares elsewhere.
This is one fucked up thread with piss poor statistical controls.
IQ is a stupid test to classify an entire race against the other, you need to normalize out levels of education.
Compare all black Ph.D’s w/ whites, then compare all MS degree holders, then BS holders, then HS graduates, then drop outs. If there’s a difference between the equally educated groups, I’ll take correction, but I’ve got a hunch the differences are within the confidence interval…
Until then, the both of you (alex/rob) are pissing in the wind with confirmation bias.
Have either of you two had any statistics education?
“Race” doesn’t really exist, that’s the funny thing. Genetically speaking, there are more differences between people within the same “race” then there are between a person of one “race” and a person of another “race.” That is, I (as a white female) am more gentically similar to a black person than I am to another (unrelated) white person. Frankly I can’t remember why that’s the case (perhaps skin color is much a minor thing, genetically or that white people are so widespread and are such mongrels which sounds right to me), but it is something I’ve read over and over again in my readings on race and evolution. Don’t forget that we all came from Africa and we are all Africans from waaaayy back.
The fact that some people think a person’s race is more important than pervasive racism, poverty and a culture that might lead to a life of crime is sad. No, I would never deny that a lot of crime is committed by black Americans (mostly) against other black Americans. To me, it is not a matter of race but class. The lower socioeconomic classes in most societies commits the most crime (except of course white collar crime which is just as bad in its own way) and, in our society, a higher percentage of the black population is in this lower strata.
Perhaps what these racists are also saying is that poor people are intellectually inferior too.
Plus, aren’t we supposed to be talking about religion? The inital comment was saying that crime was committed by the reigious. Well, most people in this county are xian, so most crimes are committed by religous people, black or white.
There is an interesting series of articles in the most recent Skeptic magazine about moral behavior and religious belief (saying that the most religous countries are the most violent etc.) As much as I’d like to embrace these study results, since I’m such a diehard atheist, I was not wowwed by the methods used to come to their conclusions. Check it out!
This reminds me of an episode of B.S. on showtime. It was about how the Boyscouts use taxpayers money to fund events but are discriminating against atheists. Acting as both a public and private organization, depending on what needs are being met.
To K.A. OFF TOPIC
At this point there seems a reasonable doubt that doing on-line intellgence tests may be entirely valid. The pyschologists are trained to do these tests properly – but you’ll need to pay them.
I got real tired of having the people who screamed louder than I do WIN all our arguments, so I bought my test. The reason they were arguing was because they were badly screwed-up.
If you take that test, try to do some power walking of about 30 minutes-plus per day *before* you take the test. Do this for a month or even 2 before you even THINK about taking that test. Research indicated that a person may be able to improve his or her I.Q. score by power walking by as much as THIRTY points. [Holy shit Batman!]
The use of phosphatidyl serine will also IMPROVE mental ability a helluva lot. Ginko biloba will also improve your mentally also. Try it and in maybe a day or two you can TELL the difference. The phosphatidyl serine (PS) is benefical to take about 500 mg per day for the first month – then only 100 mg per day for the rest of your life. The shit is costly though.
There are also other “things” which GREATLY improv mental ability, including those that have been used MUCH in Europe for many years. I forget the name of one stuff (a drug) that’s sold be the boatload over in Euro-land – but you can locate it and BUY it through an offshore company. It’s LEGAL if you buy it only for your own use.
The continuous power walking WILL improve your mind tremendously. It’s mainly the added amount of oxygen that stays in the blood and in your brain that does the doo-dah.
Don’t feel bad if you do have an I.Q. of “100″. Remember that one HALF the people in the world have LESS powerful minds than ‘100′ – which BY DEFINITION is correct.
If you take the test – remember that to eat fruit or drink fruit juice tends (strongly in my case) to REDUCE your mental power! How long this lasts I do not know. This was written by a Japanese scientist (guy who invented the flopy drive) and I’ve tried this & find it IS INDEED correct. Fruit is VERY healthy – but it (temporarilly???) does NOT help your mental ability.
Frankly – reading your writing makes me suspect your mind *is* better than that. This seems so, even though we don’t agree a lot on some things. In my estimation, very few people of not-gifted intelligence are able to arrive at the conclusion that the ‘God’ idea was simply an invention of medicine men and preists & rabis.
Rots of Ruck
Betelnut,
I agree that race is better described as a social construct than some sort of genetic category.
From what I understand, the way the ?genetic variance? stuff is generally stated is that there is greater genetic variance within any ?race? itself than there is between a person of one race and some other person of some other race. So, you, a white female would be more genetically similar to many other (not all) blacks than you would be many other (not all) whites. It?s not ?caused? by anything specific? it?s just evidence of how terribly similar people are genetically speaking. As you say? we are all Africans from waaaay back.
I?ll have to check them out. Thanks for the heads up!
Mxracer,
(nods) Agreed. Definitely, agreed.
Rob,
Yes, please leave ?numbers? in quotation marks because using numbers to truly investigate something and making grand leaps from cherry picked, randomly applied facts to ridiculous assumptions are two very different things.
You showed that the crime rate in DC is higher than in VT and NH. Then you decided that this meant that the African American population was the cause of such. You have shown no causal relationship. None!
I?d invite you to wander around Vermont (local attractions include: black bears, maple syrup, and the Green Mountains!) and then wander around DC (local attractions include: free museums, impossible traffic, and speeding politicians hitting road barriers at 2 am). They are very different places. Most notably, the population density of Vermont in 2000 was 65.83 people per square mile, the population density of New Hampshire was 137.8 people per square mile, and the population density of Washington, DC was 9,316.4 people per square mile. Pretty darn different, eh? I?d imagine the population density has something to do with the higher crime rate? but who knows. Maybe it?s the dearth of maple syrup.
Just picking random numbers from random geographic locations and deciding that this ONE FACTOR that you?ve decided to isolate is the cause for the difference in crime rates is a ridiculous manipulation of statistics. Don?t do it.
I checked out the page you linked to and several other pages on the site. Entirely aside from the fact that much of it made my skin crawl, I?m going to have to question the scientific and academic merit of your site based on? well? it?s lack of scientific and academic sources or anything else along those lines. The web site itself existing is certainly not evidence. I could create a web site contained the statement, ?The spawn of the Jolly Green giant are the only truly intelligent people on the earth! And this is substantially true!? Wouldn?t make it true, even if I used the word substantially.
So, what?s left. The Bell Curve. In addition to the various links posted by others, Reason magazine criticized the methods the researchers who wrote The Bell Curve used to control for socioeconomic factors: http://www.reason.com/9503/dept.bk.HECKMAN.text.shtml While you like to type that its methodology has remained unchallenged, this is not the case (see above link or other ppls link or do a google search or whatever). IQ scores. Based on a recent post, you even apparently accepted that IQ scores can be manipulated and thus aren?t the hard and fast measures of personal brilliance. As an additional note, my career is built largely out of raising students scores on various aptitude tests. Statistics. Well, your statistics suck. Already addressed. So, what?s left?
Ohh… I really messed up the blockquotes up there. Anyone with magical fixing powers want to fix them for me? (smiles hopefully) I just need a / in the second tag in my second set of blockquote tags.
aviaa:
I fixed it for ya, darlin’. Bill’s in the mail.
robguy387:
Well, actually, I brought up the fact that I do badly on tests to prove a point. Obviously, I’m a least a little above average in intelligence. I appreciate all the medical advice, thanks, but likelihood is, I’m not going to take 1.
I do a fairly intense 1 1/2 hrs. of Tai Chi 6 days a week. Been doin’ it 2 yrs now. It blows power walking right out the window. Am familiar w/most of the medicinary advice you gave (though the fruit thing is a little out there).
Now, let’s take the evolutionary path on this ‘race’ crap.
Humanity originated in Africa. Some Neanderthals migrated up to Europe, some stayed in Africa. Centuries later, the African ancestors, known as Cro-Magnon, migrated northwards. The 40 points of speciation occurred because the southern hominids had a high fish diet.
Now: who was ’superior’? The Cro-Magnons wiped out the Neanderthals.
Hmmm…mebbee I should eat more fish?
KA,
Thanks much!
The ?Bill? you refer to is a smart, talented young lad who shall fix any future random problems (such as blockquote issues) rather than a paper with numbers scribbled on it, correct? If it?s the second, I don?t want it. I could very much use the first, though.
If you do, be sure to eat smaller ones and less of the predatory, larger varieties. Also, try and obtain fish that have been raised in fish farms rather than open water. If you eat the wrong ones (tuna, shark, swordfish, and many others), you will have mercury build up in your tissues and it will make you dumber.
AT:
The only fish I really like is catfish (yeah, a scavenger/bottomfeeder, I know).
aviaa:
Well, I had to slip Bill a mickey: seems he’s not partial to being mailed. I did remember to put airholes in the package, though.
KA,
Good. We wouldn?t want a repeat of the LAST time you tried to mail me an assistant. (grumbles about people- and militaries- who try to ship humans in airtight containers)
back in the good old days we didn’t
have alot of crime in the south because we would kill troublemakers quickly.someone wrote they respected dr.king the fact is king was scum who
cheated on his wife we should have taken care of him sooner.that money should have been used to give the police a bonus.
*** OFF TOPIC ***
Mercury Poisoning
“atomic testing” is “right on” about the fact that eating the wrong kind of fish too often will give you mercury poisoning. The older fish in the ocean have high amounts of methyl mercury. This gets more and more concentrated in their flesh as they continue eating the other fish.
I was taking a lot of fish oil capsules for years and I was getting VERY ‘dumb’ as the result. It got to the point I could NOT remember what I was supposed to be doing. I needed to make a list in order to remember what I needed to do: A, B, C, D . . . .
Finally it was diagnosed I was poisoned by mercury. The
“quickie” treatment for this takes about 4 months and it absorbed some of the “fast” mercury pool in that time. But to get out the “slow” mercury pool will require about 2 more years of treatment with lots of DMSA and alpha lipoic acid.
Do NOT make the mistake I did and buy the cheapo kinds of fish oil capsules. We got ours at a Sam’s Club and that was a damn big mistake.
Mercury is so poisonous that one of the Scandinavian countries PAYS the cost of having all its citizens amalgam fillings removed and replaced with the non-toxic kind.
Germany is now said to have also *outlawed* the use of mercury tooth fillings.
Information I’ve seen says that the compounds of mercury are the second most toxic compunds that exist – right behind the compounds of plutonium.
Dr. David Williams says that eating sardines is very healthful. I believe he recommends eating sardines about twice per week.
Fish should contain ALL of the mineral elements we need, because Man has not been able to extract those minerals as was already done by agri-business – as they farmed-away a lot of essential compounds from our soil.