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That sounds cruel.

The underrepresented group is the "low IQ" group, and unless I missed some big developments, IQ isn't something that can be acquired by seeking.

The root problem is that membership in the fundamental group is not distributed evenly across superficial demographic groups. But reality (genetics) can't be moved by wishing, shrieking or blaming.

The implications of IQ distribution by demographic groups has been discussed in gruesome detail elsewhere. Pay particular attention to the parts about thresholds and tails.

Of course, everyone already knows this, and are increasingly recognizing that these stories are about power, not programming.

Since this story seems to be a regular feature now (with different details here and there), I really need to create a standard response post. Until I do, please ponder the following:

This graph should explain the racial differences in gifted programs, for any rational definition of "gifted".

To see it in gruesome detail, go here, and read, and read, and read. If anything on that page is over your head, you should consider keeping a polite silence until you can get around to taking some stats classes at your local university.

Well, fortunately, both problems are solved. I direct your attention first to the question of why there are more black men in prison than you would think "fair" by their fraction of the population:

http://www.lagriffedulion.f2s....

Next up, a quick look at hiring practices. Note that this one is earlier, and does not walk you quite so explicitly through the cutoff theory.

http://www.lagriffedulion.f2s....

If you can handle the math, that site will open your eyes.

Well, fortunately, both problems are solved. I direct your attention first to the question of why there are more black men in prison than you would think "fair" by their fraction of the population:

http://www.lagriffedulion.f2s....

Next up, a quick look at hiring practices. Note that this one is earlier, and does not walk you quite so explicitly through the cutoff theory.

http://www.lagriffedulion.f2s....

If you can handle the math, that site will open your eyes.

Unless you're in a niche market, such as modeling women's clothing, or lifting heavy cargo/equiment, where the ratio will swing dramatically, but not completely eliminating the opposite gender, then your ratios should hit about 50/50.

Actually, no. This false belief is one of the biggest problems in today's society. The truth of the matter is that men are more diverse than women, even if the averages are the same. What that means is that you'll only see 50/50 gender split if the job is something that 50% of the population could qualify for. As soon as you have a job/role/whatever that less than 50% of the population could do, you will see more men than women who are capable of doing said job.

For example:
Have a job that requires nothing other than a 50th percentile math ability? You'll see 50/50.
Have a job that requires nothing other than a 95th percentile math ability? You'll see 64/36 in favor of males.
Have a job that requires nothing other than a 99th percentile math ability? You'll see 71/29 in favor of males.
http://www.lagriffedulion.f2s.com/math.htm

It's really that simple. A job that requires skills that only one out of a hundred people have, and you're already seeing a massive gender disparity on who is even capable of doing the job.

I get that Office Suite 20xx is bloated, but it is not like there aren't a wide array of Novel specific editors that cater to the exact things novel writers need, and it is not like OSs don't come with VI, EMACS, DOS Edit, Notepad, etc...
Scrivener is almost good enough to make me want a mac.
Rough Draft is what I actually use to write novels, it is simple and outputs in RTF, has very few features, but the ones that it does have are what I want.

IMO a good creative writing software package has to be simple, and it looks like TFA is looking to simplify even further... It is an understandable thing, because distractions are killer for a writer...

IMO he should get an AlphaSmart A portable, purpose built device which does text and only text. Full keyboard, it gets something like 700 hours on 3 AA batteries, it does not have fonts or animated assistants or 1gb install files, and best of all, you don't have to look like a pretentious douche on slashdot to use it.

seems she was previous debunked, and is back for another swipe with dodgy data. http://www.geoffreyfalk.com/blog/June2009.asp#5 http://www.lagriffedulion.f2s.com/math.htm http://www.lagriffedulion.f2s.com/math2.htm the top 1% of students in general esp at a high school level are not what matters when it comes to mathematical genius anyways. its ridiculous to draw conclusions from that. and if asian/colored women outperform their men then they should continue to do so when it gets to the phd level/awards right? probably not addressed. i think what matters with these studies is they are published and get a headline, thats all that really matters, very few of the gender warriors that like your conclusions are going to check your work.

seems she was previous debunked, and is back for another swipe with dodgy data. http://www.geoffreyfalk.com/blog/June2009.asp#5 http://www.lagriffedulion.f2s.com/math.htm http://www.lagriffedulion.f2s.com/math2.htm the top 1% of students in general esp at a high school level are not what matters when it comes to mathematical genius anyways. its ridiculous to draw conclusions from that. and if asian/colored women outperform their men then they should continue to do so when it gets to the phd level/awards right? probably not addressed. i think what matters with these studies is they are published and get a headline, thats all that really matters, very few of the gender warriors that like your conclusions are going to check your work.

Of course we can't trust them. I've found not one, but two people on the internet that say so. See http://www.lagriffedulion.f2s.com/math2.htm/ and http://motls.blogspot.com/2008/07/janet-hyde-boys-girls-in-math-not.html/.

There are more male winners of the field's medal. This article makes a pretty convincing case that the reason is because males have a wider sigma and that there will be more male super geniuses than women. http://www.lagriffedulion.f2s.com/math.htm

I have a fledgling theory related to that:

Women are biologically more stable than men. They're at less risk for most every genetic disorder, live longer, have stronger immune systems (I'm pretty sure I've read a study to that effect), are way less likely to take stupid risks or lash out violently.

I suspect that, in many different ways, women have a smaller standard deviation from the mean. Men seem to be a bit more biologically experimental, with far more outliers. If you take the very top achievers in pretty much any field, it's a relatively safe bet they'll be men, and there's no female to match Newton, Einstein, and Co. Similarly, on the other end, you'll find far more male murderers and other criminals, and far more mentally retarded men.

A possible explanation (though it obviously over-simplifies things) is that a woman's body needs to capable of nurturing a child for 9 months, and that's not a situation in which nature wants to be beta-testing new traits. Men have much less of an unbreakable commitment in procreation, so they can be a little less stable. It's worth the risk (and the failures), since you'll get more outstanding men, who can both make a positive impact on the world and, in doing a better job of surviving, positively impact the gene pool.

In summary, I think evolution takes more chances on men, resulting both in more "super-geniuses" and in more colossal failures. In contrast, women are given more tried-and-true genes and they don't end up outliers as often.

There are more male winners of the field's medal. This article makes a pretty convincing case that the reason is because males have a wider sigma and that there will be more male super geniuses than women. http://www.lagriffedulion.f2s.com/math.htm

"A motorbike has terrible aerodynamic drag, making the petrol consumption comparable to a small car..."

Yeah, it's not like a lot of motor bikes can get 40, 45, 50, or even 70MPG.

Wait.

http://www.motorcycle-training.f2s.com/review.html

My very limited understanding is that Bananas are originally from an area in India where the native jungle is disappearing

The Banana is native to Southeast Asia and Australia not just India. According to Botany 2004 bananas were "first cultivated in the Mediterranean region ca. 650 A.D". However some botanists believe bananas once grew in Oregon.

I know I'm just feeding a troll, but do see this article for a statistical explanation.

You obviously haven't completed the Gnome achievement. That should add a few weeks of gameplay. ;)

I like the Little Rocket Man. I thought it was hilarious when I found out about it.

Why wait for the Nigerians? If all that is required to administer a server is an IQ in the ballpark of 67 and little to no English skills, there must be a horde of latent IT admins flooding across the Mexican border every day. As a bonus, these people are positively geniuses when compared to the Nigerians, and are currently wasting their time picking fruit and washing dishes.

http://www.lagriffedulion.f2s.com/sft.htm#gdp%20table

the link about the Gnome achievement was pretty awesome and definitely a clever addition. This is the reason why games have indeed progressed since Pong.

La Griffe du Lion: A female Fields Medalist is predicted to surface once every 103 years.

Camille Paglia: If civilization had been left in female hands, we would still be living in grass huts.

> I couldn't get it shut down as quickly as I would have liked.
> I had to release the front brake to fully untwist the throttle.

what he needs is a kill switch. right by the throttle and front brake.

http://www.motorcycle-training.f2s.com/kill.jpg

like every gas-powered motorcycle has had for decades. and since this is so experimental, a cut-out on a lanyard like you find on treadmills and jet-skis.

but maybe that's for wimps who let lawyers and politicians influence design?

Thou doth protest too much - you build your case on purely one thing and fight for it dearly as if nothing else mattered. That is because there is nothing else to fight for - occasional Nobel prize winners aside Chinese inventiveness is poor - for a civilzation 5000 years old the inventions are pretty limited. The Greeks, for example, produced significantly more in their time than than China has during it entire life. I employ many of them - you should be Ma Shen - or something clearly Steven is only your Western name. Fact is that despite their cleverness they seem to be unable to think out of the box - which I guess what is needed for creating new concepts and ideas. They have a one track view of things (like you and the paper thing). There is a lot of discussion around this area look for example at http://www.lagriffedulion.f2s.com/sft2.htm Politically incorrect as it is it may be that Chinese and Japanese are genetically not as good at generating new ideas. But they are much better at refinement of ideas and careful close work. Much more focus, patience and concentration than Westerners. I mean it is odd that one fifth of the world's population, with clearly high intelligence have produced so few good ideas - your examples notwithstanding.

'Why can't I find any good information regarding the superiority of any given race over any other given race?'

Because you've never spent an afternoon with La Griffe du Lion.

Be afraid, people, be very, very afraid.

Three points:

A) To the parent - expect to be modded down as "-1 Nazi". Get used to it - it comes with the territory.

B) I think that the original poster's idea for a PhD thesis is utterly gay, but

C) I've always thought that the Hindi [and others hailing from the Jewel in the Crown - I dunno, maybe Zoroastrians as well] have a tendency to engage in a fuzzier mode of thinking than do we in The West.

Westerners, coming out of what you might call the Euclidean School, tend to start with a set of axioms, and try work from there to further conclusions.

The Hindi, on the other hand, often seem to come at things from a more - I dunno what you'd call it - "aggregative" point of view: If there's a big fuzzy cloud of evidence that points towards the acceptability of a thing, then they'll tend to accept it, even if they can't prove it to themselves in a more strictly Euclidean fashion.

Well, whatever...

PS: Getting back to the question of genetics, the Hindi don't seem to grok diatonic music [Bach, Beethoven, Bruckner, etc], whereas the Han & the Japanese & the Koreans can't seem to get enough of it.

Go figure.

Don't tar all ADSL providers with the same brush. I have an "up to 8Mb" service, more like 4Mb in practice for £20 per month. More importantly for me, its got a 448k upload speed, and my IP address has never changed, even when I upgraded to a higher speed. Moreover, my provider doesn't complain about me running things like SMTP, HTTP, FTP or DNS servers like NTL used to.

I was attempting to bridge the gap between our understanding of selfishness and altruism, showing that what can be seen as selfless behavior is only enlightened self interest. I am a ntural believer in altruism, so it was hard for me to accept that we always actn out of our own self interest. Indoing so, I had to explain all of what I had previously thought of as "good" in terms of self interest, but it turns out that they are not incompatible.

Interesting, but I believe mistaken: this is a hair shirt that you do not have to wear. The reason is that if anything, it is our genes and "memes" that are selfish, not ourselves, and further they are selfish in the sense of self-perpetuation, not in the sense of saving the specific instance. In fact (consider a meme for noble self-sacrifice), the specific instance can be hindered, but the extra effort that it induces in the host can still cause it to replicate successfully. Yes, we are hugely mechanical, but it is errornous to deduce selfishness as a corollary.

Noble values cannot withstand cynicism, though. Those who believe that we are by nature selfish, even if they reason that unselfish motivation is selfish deep down, are going to fail to "take" nobler values at the level of behaviour, for they fail the "reality" test, but it is all a mistake.

The biggest problem is that motivations are in practice mixed, that is: impure. The popular mode of thinking is towards cynicism, so mixed motives are seen as "really" being selfish. The glass is half empty through such grey-tinted specs.

I am also an Anarchist of the old school, Bakunin style. I perhaps lean closer to syndicalism than you seem to, but that is probably my radical labor activist background talking. I was an organizer with the IWW. Not many people know they still exist, or that as soon as Judi Bari started telling loggers that their rights as workers and protecting the environment coincided, someone decided to blow her up.

Interesting. I'm not surprised about Judi Bari; there are some nasty types in the world, and many who believe that it is worth distorting reality to uphold and strengthen the hierarchy from those who undermine the status quo. In modern times, such authoritarians would paint themselves as democrats (small 'd'), and they are likely to believe themselves to be. If your world is one where anarchists are near-synonymous with terrorists, as appears to be the case with the FBI in the Wikipedia article, you're going to think that they're carrying, rather than being bombed. Everything reinforces prior perceptions. The bomber probably believed that he (I'll assume it's a he) was protecting civilisation in his small way, as well as defending what he perceived to be his interests.

Just as one can be "irrationally" selfless, so many people are "irrationally" spiteful and mean-minded.

My own politics are orthogonal to the left-right divide. I'd have been rated still more (socially) libertarian, where I not to have experienced certain paranormal phenomena, so that I conceive of the universe having an emergent intelligence (belief in the paranormal is supposed to be an authoritarian trait).

I agree that belief that naive selfishness is good is a horrible idea. But people need to be shown why that is true for them, rather than being hit over the head with abstract concepts like good, justice, altruism, or selflessness. As Robert Heinlein had Lazarus Long say, "Never appeal to a man's better nature. He might not have one. Appeal to his self interest instead." And so ironically, if we want to bring about a world of selflessness we have to use selfishness.

I think that there are two issues here: How to motivate people in large numbers, and how to encourage the development of character. The real problem is that values differ, but self-interest is pretty normal, so that if you want to give one message to m

Actually, they tend to be more fiscally and militarily conservative. But after reaching a certian point many well-paid people become philanthropic, which actually tends towards social liberalism.

Point is, I'm tired of having to label a person one thing or the other when the majority of the country would be supremely surprised to find out that their views actually plant themselves somewhere in the middle.

Check out this Political Compass to see where you REALLY land. I ended up being much more liberal than I suspected. Taking the quiz was really eye-opening about how I'm actually much more center than I am right.

I think you misread the parent. I think they were talking about a progressive tax rate that reached 90% for people at the highest income levels. The reason people think this is a bad idea because they think that it undermines successful people and promotes mediocrity.

However, this is a simplistic argument that has at least one false premise: people are paid according to their contribution to society. You only have to compare the salaries of c-level executives to the average salary of people that work in their companies, teachers and social workers to professional athletes and/or people that were born into money versus those that were born into a family making below the poverty line. People are frequently not making an income based on their competence, success, hard work or any other factor attributable to themselves.

More often than not, it's dumb luck. If you accept that as true, then you can give a little more credibility to arguments that there should be a more equitable distribution of income to counter the effects of luck while at the same time supporting those things that are valuable to society - such as hard work, competence and so forth.

As far as politics go, you should also take a look at the political compass diagram, and take the test. As a benchmark, try taking a look at the 2004 Presidential Election and then the other countries. Notice how most fall in the upper right quadrant? If you think in terms of Clinton or Kerry being "left", then yes, Slashdot might be left in that sense - but still firmly in the same authoritarian right quadrant.

If you think "left" in terms of Gandhi and Stalin, then Slashdot isn't left at all - either with an authoritarian or libertarian aspect. But, it is like you said: what's left is relative to where you stand. The thrust of Slashdot follows the larger pattern that you can see in most governments - which is a right, authoritarian bias. It can be hard to see - especially in cultures like the U.S. that have such a narrow range of political expression, but tools like the political compass can be useful to get your bearings.

The moment i saw the headline my mind came to Escher, showing us water floating upwards in the painting http://www.petergh.f2s.com/waterfall.jpg Now let's wait for the real life implementation of the ever-rising stairs...

Always find the political compass to be much more useful, separating the left and right into an economic and a social scale, so that hitler and stalin can occupy the same position on the political scale, but are fairly far apart economically.

http://www.digitalronin.f2s.com/politicalcompass/a nalysis.php

Looks like you're right!

The population average matters tremendously. As you point out, it is the extreme cases that matter. But if the population average is just a bit higher, your percentage of the extreme cases is much higher. This is due to the Gaussian-shaped distribution of IQ.

E.g. how many black rocket scientists do you know? There's a handful. How many Jewish rocket scientists? Way more than their 2-3% of the population would suggest should exist. How many Jewish lawyers or doctors? Way more than 2-3%. Of course, many Jews do crappy jobs. But the higher average IQ means they fill the IQ-loaded jobs.

Here is a nice, mathematical analysis of the phenomenon:
http://www.lagriffedulion.f2s.com/fuzzy.htm

Here's a nice piece on Jews at CUNY:
http://www.lagriffedulion.f2s.com/iq.htm

The population average matters tremendously. As you point out, it is the extreme cases that matter. But if the population average is just a bit higher, your percentage of the extreme cases is much higher. This is due to the Gaussian-shaped distribution of IQ.

E.g. how many black rocket scientists do you know? There's a handful. How many Jewish rocket scientists? Way more than their 2-3% of the population would suggest should exist. How many Jewish lawyers or doctors? Way more than 2-3%. Of course, many Jews do crappy jobs. But the higher average IQ means they fill the IQ-loaded jobs.

Here is a nice, mathematical analysis of the phenomenon:
http://www.lagriffedulion.f2s.com/fuzzy.htm

Here's a nice piece on Jews at CUNY:
http://www.lagriffedulion.f2s.com/iq.htm

I agree that you sound like a libertarian. (I'm not one -- I'm a social democrat, but I agree that most of us social democrats support bloated governments when we get into power).

Want to find out where you fall on the political spectrum, and whether you are a libertarian, liberal, conservative, or socialist?

Try taking this brief (about 40 multiple-choice questions) political placement test.

For you Gnome users, there's Gnome Beagle -- it does pretty much the same thing. Be sure the watch the Flash Demo.

Check out Political Compass. It has a fairly good description of what the Libertarian Left is.
http://www.digitalronin.f2s.com/politicalcompass/a nalysis2.php

Basically, someone like Gandhi, Mandela, and the Dalai Lama would be Left Libertarians.

Libertarians are different from anarchists. Anarchist believe that there should be no government. Libertarians believe that government is a necessary evil, but it should limit itself to "essential services" and should generally try to stay out of people's lives.

Left Libertarians consider some government social welfare, government public education, health care, and some business regulation to be essential, but that the government should try to interfere in how people live their lives (If you want to marry a goat or your sister or download MP3s without the permission of the original artist, go right ahead. The government shouldn't stand in the way of social freedoms. People should be able to make personal mistakes without Big Brother "protecting them".).

Right Libertarians consider enforcement of Intellectual Property to be important, creating new forms of IP important, enforce IP laws abroad, government regulation of undesirable behaviour to be important, but thinks that government should stay out of people's financial lives (If you want to pull an Enron or operate your business with less red tape, go right ahead. The government shouldn't stand in the way of financial freedoms. People should be able to make their own financial mistakes without Big Brother "protecting them".).

I know that classifying, labelling, and pigeonholing is the way we humans think, but politics is a complex area and it deserves far more thought than just a simple red-blue choice.

Even an oversimplified left-right line, though, is worth examining more closely. For example, the 'centre' position seems to vary considerably; here in Europe, we tend to consider both US political parties to be quite right-wing. (I wonder if there's any correlation between that and our press, which in general seems a little more ready to criticise TPTB...)

This http://www.digitalronin.f2s.com/politicalcompass/ is a very good site that should clear things up.
It explains how politics isn't 1D but rather 2D.

From the site:
There's abundant evidence for the need of it. The old one-dimensional categories of 'right' and 'left' , established for the seating arrangement of the French National Assembly of 1789, are overly simplistic for today's complex political landscape. For example, who are the 'conservatives' in today's Russia? Are they the unreconstructed Stalinists, or the reformers who have adopted the right-wing views of conservatives like Margaret Thatcher ?
On the standard left-right scale, how do you distinguish leftists like Stalin and Gandhi? It's not sufficient to say that Stalin was simply more left than Gandhi. There are fundamental political differences between them that the old categories on their own can't explain. Similarly, we generally describe social reactionaries as 'right-wingers', yet that leaves left-wing reactionaries like Robert Mugabe and Pol Pot off the hook.

A while back, someone posted a link to this site on slashdot, http://www.politicalcompass.org/. It's theory includes a left and right, authoritarian (fascism) and libertarian (anarchism) axes.

Here's a link to one of the pages including where major political figures fit on the compass. http://www.digitalronin.f2s.com/politicalcompass/a nalysis2.php

Cheers.

Actually, and interesting analysis of error rates and thier effect on the outcome in Florida is available here.

Basically, his point is that lower-IQ voters (mainly blacks) spoil their ballots at a much higher rate than higher-IQ voters. Since blacks mainly vote democrat, he was able to show that Gore sould have won if all spoiled votes had counted...

http://www.hairykrishna.f2s.com/3x3.html

http://www.hairykrishna.f2s.com/bender.html

One of the best case mods I've seen.

http://www.hairykrishna.f2s.com/droplet.html

Fixed that one
, but now it looks like libxml (or xmlstarlet) has started playing by not closing the content-type meta tag

Just in case people care, here are the 7 base units:

Metre for Length
Kilogram (what this article is about) for Mass
Second for time
Ampere for current
Kelvin for temperature
Mole for amount
Candela for "Luminous intensity" ... or something.

All the others are built up and defined from these, so these must be well defined. Change what exactly a Kg is changed more than just mass - it changes everything dependant upon it. Hence, these things must be got right.

The definition of second changes every now and then though, and I think the metre has changed a few times, too. I wrote a bit about the second here, in my AS-Level Physics coursework, if anyone want s a simplifed read.

(Wiki)

I don't see how this topics is maths, by the way.

Cedega don't release there source so I thought I'd write my own patch against winehead/a>.

It's about a meg or so, if you fancy testing, or playing around and implements the core of DirectX9, beyond cedega in some areas. I'm merging with wine head at the moment so wine should be on a similar level to Cedega in a month or so when shaders are fixed.

Hopefully when Cedega get some competition they will actually improve there product or release more source so that others can.

so was I.

I've got a few months research into UI's to put up when I get the time.

Including things like the answer to, just how long does it take to click that button, or Is this really a better user interface?

I would like to see soft 'modes' so that if I'm at work and I get a fault call I can switch over to 'fault call mode' and all my book marks and menus are configured optimally to 'fault call' mode, then when I'm done I can switch back to internet mode or debugging mode.

Well, it doesn't have to be money, but under a capitalist system that's what seems to work the best.

I would have no objection to receiving any of the following.
A new PC.
or just some more HDD space or ram.
or a jar of coffee (decaff)
or my windows cleaned.
or free rent of a room in your house for a week.
or food
or some cash.
or absolutely nothing.

If you pick the last option I may not be able to continue my services for long because, although I am quite happy with absolutely nothing it doesn't get me very far in a capitalist world.

For the cost of absolutely nothing you can have, amongst other things directx 9 on wine, this version costs 100% less than the Transgaming version.

you could always help get wine working just as well.

Fancy some aplha testing of Directx 9 for wine?

Well you might like to try directx 9 under wine, and fix any bugs in the other 25%

Look at: http://www.sylviawebster.f2s.com/pwns/