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The Mythical Tunnel Between CERN and Central Italy
fph il quozientatore writes "Mariastella Gelmini, the Italian minister of Public Education and Scientific Research, complimented the researchers for the recent (supposed) discovery of faster-than-light neutrinos. Her press release mentions that Italy funded the construction of a 'tunnel between the CERN [in Geneva] and Gran Sasso [the labs in Central Italy].' Google maps reports the distance between the two labs as over 900km — but of course once the tunnel is open to traffic the trip will be much faster."
He was speaking of the future tunnel that the faster than light neutrino's already know about so they can follow it.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
There's still the problem of all those pesky particles flying at high speed down the center stripe.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
dual it and have 2 one way tunnels
I thought they just sent it through the same tubes the internet uses? Aren't neutrinos almost as small as golf balls? They'd fit easy.
It sounds like she's saying that Italy contributed to the tunnel, through which the experiment took place, by way of contributions from Gran Sasso Labs totalling 45 million euros. Bad translation into English, and possibly bad sentence structure in Italian. (I don't speak Italian so I can't judge.)
Would this be a Quantum Tunnel?
Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they aren't out to get you
As an Italian speaker I can confirm that there is no mistranslation. She really said a tunnel was in place and Italy contributed the money to build it....
If that's what she said, it's tragic other than funny. This administration of sad clowns, old thieves, and incompetent assholes (except perhaps the finance minister) has to go. The sooner the better. And i say it as an Italian who lives in LA but goes back yearly and still loves his country.
We learn from history that we learn nothing from history - Tom Veneziano
because all I get out of that release is:
- The neutrino can travel faster than light, good job scientists.
- We [Italy] spent a shitload of money to build a tunnel to make science happen, GOOD JOB US!!
- We continue to spend shittonnes of money to make science happen.
- All praise Italy!
I'm glad somebody out there is funding science, but why is she focusing on Italy's achievement to fund a science and not the scientists and the implication of their finding? I'm missing why Italy's contribution to CERN is worth 50% of that press release.
greed@All_Evils:~#
i'm worried that i completely understand this, but still have no idea what i just read what did TFA just say
I don't know what is worse. That she believes the tunnel exists, or that she believes that 45 million euro is a significant contribution towards building a 900km long tunnel.
(Disclaimer: I don't speak Italian)
The word used in the Italian is "tunnel". At first I thought that this might be an example of how one shouldn't always translate a word as the closest sounding word in the target language, since the most closely etymologically related word may not be the most semantically close. This is how we get Dante's Inferno rather than just calling it "Hell" which would be a more accurate English translation. At least once in science this has created a real problem in the past, about a hundred years ago. The canals of Mars were started by the translation of the Italian word "canali" as canals even though "canali" didn't have the same connotation of artificial construction.
However, in this case it looks accurate. I checked with multiple online dictionaries and Google translate to see how they would translate "tunnel" from Italian to English. Everyone gave the obvious one. Just in case, I picked likely possible semantically related words (path, connection, link, beam, bridge) and asked Google for the Italian words. In none of those cases did it hit on tunnel. So it looks like the translation is accurate.
I haven't been following these results too closely, but I gather from the response here that the neutrinos did not travel through a tunnel. So, then, did they just travel through the Earth? I guess this wouldn't cause any or much interference, so I'm assuming that's what was done, but I haven't found this directly stated.
Note to self: Make a funny sig.
Somebody's nephew in the construction business ("Friends of Silvio") made-off with the money!
So whatsa new about athat?
I think you've probably pinpointed the source of her confusion.
Computer memory is just fancy paper, CPUs just fancy pens with fancy erasers; the 'net is just a fancy backyard fence.
Well there is a project which is used to send neutrinos and has a decay tunnel. The tunnel just doesn't go all the way, as that's not needed.
http://public.web.cern.ch/public/en/Research/CNGS-en.html
ooooo... BURN! XD
Regardless of 'who' built the 'what'.. does it not at least cause the mind to wonder.. " If we can find 'faster than light' neutrinos , that we could develop or find a way to Sail on such a thing? " FTL Sails for Space travel? What are the ramifications of this find ? What could this find mean to FTL travel. That was my first thought upon reading the above.. not .. WHO BUILT WHAT and HOW MUCH THEY DID or DID NOT SPEND.. and what is the Meaning of the Word 'TUNNEL' .
Just the Uneducated , Wanna be , Space File here. Or would that be Cosmo-phile? Trek E ? Wanna Be Science Geek ?
and No , I don't speak Italian either.
I really do hate to appear to be supporting an obvious troll, but IQ tests bear the same "racial prejudice". Asians tend to score higher (on average) than other ethnic groups, while those of African descent tend to score lower than others. European ancestry puts one squarely in the middle of the curve. There is great debate and controversy over whether there is a "cultural bias" towards "differing skill sets", but no one has anything they can actually call a theory without sounding racist, so any discussion is moot.
Before you mod me into Flamebait/Troll oblivion along with the parent, please keep in mind that I can actually back my statements up with facts*., and I'm not actually being racist myself, merely pointing out that this particular racist misinformation has a basis in actual, factual for-really-reals facts. Of course, I will cheerfully accept an "Off-Topic" mod, because we're not commenting on the correct article. A better place for this discussion would have been here.
Keep in mind, moderation is anonymous, so no one will know if you mod this "Informative" or "Interesting" instead of "Troll" or "Flamebait".
* I could find something more informative than wikipedia, but it expresses the gist of the information I wish to convey, and I'm being lazy due to the lateness of the hour in my geographic location.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.
I have a tunnel between my router in New Zealand and a customer in the US of A
Once I've finished with it you are more than welcome to drive your car through it...
I don't know what is worse. That she believes the tunnel exists, or that she believes that 45 million euro is a significant contribution towards building a 900km long tunnel that doesn't actually exist.
FTFY :)
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.
Looks like someone doesn't understand how the slashdot effect can apply to email addresses, angry nerds, and mailbombs.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.
http://news.slashdot.org/story/11/09/25/227228/accent-monitoring-innovation-or-rights-violation
racist troll would have been somewhat more on-topic in this thread
I listen to both RIAA and non-RIAA stuff if I like the music, tangential business/politics nonwithstanding.
I've been waiting for the neutrino story to pop up on slashdot, and this is it? seriously? a bunch of lame tunnel jokes?
Yes, being hypersensitive about race to the point of not being able to have legitimate scientific discussions about things like this is a problem.
Pissed-off people like this AC aren't helping the situation.
I listen to both RIAA and non-RIAA stuff if I like the music, tangential business/politics nonwithstanding.
And to me this story is old news.
#DeleteChrome
What happened?
I don't know what is worse. That she believes the tunnel exists, or that she believes that 45 million euro is a significant contribution towards building a 900km long tunnel that doesn't actually exist.
FTFY :)
Ah, but 45 Million euro is far too much for a 900km-long imaginary tunnel! I can build an imaginary tunnel 5 times as long for only 9.99 million Euro (99 cents).
I'm black and I score at least three standard deviations above the norm on IQ tests.I don't buy the culturally biased bullshit about the tests.
Unfortunately there's an anti-intellectual theme in much of African American culture. Through peer and societal pressure, black kids learn to under-perform.
If I'm black and I can do well academically, then others can too. Just pull your damned pants up and read a book.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
Before criticizing the minister too harshly, you might want to consider that the linked blog is quotes the results of Google translate on the actual press release in Italian. It's just possible that the results of google translate are a little inaccurate.
Excellent reporting. The citizen reporter is doing a great job today.
As it is offensive to Mariastella and all Italian women.
Moreover it is also a straight personal attack to the Italian PM.
This website is clearly directed and read by the Italian Left parties.
If you won't comply you'll be suded by our attoneys, have the website obscured in Italy and brought in prison for a year or two.
Sincerely yours
S.B.
Sent as ripples into the electromagnetic field. No single photon has been harmed in the process.
Cue video of melting server in 3... 2...
That's not how government bidding works. All the other offers are in the 50 million Euro range, and since you don't have any experience in similar projects like our friends at established local corporations, your bid can obviously be eliminated as unrealistic. The project goes to the local corporation that delivered the previous tunnel -- unfortunately at twice the projected cost and with multi-year delays, but those were due to unforeseen circumstances, so now they clearly have the required experience to overcome the difficulties inherent in this kind of a tunnel project.
The experiment's results are no big deal, one of the neutrinos just said "follow me, guys, I know a shortcut".
By the taping of my glasses, something geeky this way passes
Honestly, when I think of why prejudice is bad, it's not because "all subgroups of society are equal on average", that's definitely not true socio-economically and it's probably not completely true genetically. The reason prejudice is bad is because within each subgroup the range of possible qualities a person can have are huge!, where as the differences between the averages of subgroups are almost negligible. So if you go around comparing everybody by the average of their subgroups your going to be right not much more than 50% of the time. Whereas, because of the huge differences between individuals, you only need to spend a small amount of effort to make decent comparisons on individual merit, which is what people should do.
:(
Unfortunately I think this can be a bit hard to explain, so for the most part we just say "all subgroups of society are equal on average" and hope that the result is the same.
No, really. He's right and Mariastella Gelmini is right.
Gran Sasso is a mountain in eastern Italy. About 25 years ago, a tunnel (of the traffic kind) was made underneath the mountain. Physicists saw this as a great opportunity to build a particle physics lab, using the mountain as shielding from cosmic radiation. Usually such experiments (such as dark matter detectors) are placed deep underground in hard-to-get-to mines, but this lab is great since you can literally drive up to it. The lab is comprised of three (very) large sections that are right off of the main road.
Italy paid for this tunnel and the carving out of the lab space. Maybe she was confused or maybe the translation was poor, but Italy did indeed fund the construction of the tunnel underneath Gran Sasso as well as the laboratories underneath the mountain. So give them credit there.
I have a tunnel between my router in New Zealand and a customer in the US of A
That would be a tube.
The Internet is a series of tubes (youtube, boobtube, screwtube, newbtube, schtumptube ...)
My yiddish is rusty.
Did the poster even read the neutrino-story he quotes? The key number of 732 km should be fairly clear in everyone's mind by now...
Why the 900 km figure? Is it just more sensational as a puny 732 km?
As for the translation which started this nice story, I would be careful. I learned enough foreign languages to know one thing: Every language has its own subtleties (which may vary from region to region or with social status or through any number of other factors). In this context the word tunnel may not be meant on the literal sense and the translator simply translated the words without understanding their meaning in the context.
Or maybe it explains why the coalition failed to build bridges between the Afghan people and America?
...but those were due to unforeseen circumstances...
When building an imaginary tunnel, I imagine most circumstances are "unforeseen"; also "unseen".
Don't get me wrong, but if you say
"I don't buy the culturally biased bullshit about the tests." and then add "black kids learn to under-perform."; isn't that kind of contradicting yourself ?
Personally I'm convinced that *on average* IQ (**) is pretty much equal amongst all people, regardless of their genetic inheritance but that culture (nurture if you like to make the time-line a bit shorter) is a major driver on whether people will score good on these tests.
(**: if there is such a thing... IMHO most of these tests are unreliable as THE TESTS are culturally biased too... )
If there is one thing to be learned on slashdot, it has to be sarcasm.
It's well known that all Italians exceed the speed limit.
I'm being lazy due to the lateness of the hour in my geographic location.
That's ok. I'm being lazy because of my skin colour.
I mean color.
The thing is you are being racist therefore most people will disregard what you say as nonsense due to their social programming regardless of any possible truth in what you say. The problem is that the anti-racism programming disallows any discussion of difference between races.
Hey guys, when you post an article, just check the original source, read it, and ... understand it. The article refers to "http://cassandralegacy.blogspot.com/2011/09/something-is-deeply-wrong-minister-and.html" , in this blog we can read the original text in Italian. The translation is bad , that's all.
Of course now you have a transmitter and a detector the next step is for the geeks at CERN to work out how to use those pesky little neutrinos to transmit a message, it shouldn't be too difficult to achieve...
And you will never known how much Italy contributed to the painting of the "Sound Barrier" !
JCN-9000
from what I recall, special relativity can be seen as stating two things:
- there is a maximum speed and because it's not infinite you need the Lorentz transformation
- light travels with this maximum speed.
If for example there had been a later discovery that light had mass, then light would not travel at the maximum speed. Now there have been very accurate measurements showing a ridiculously low upper limit for the mass of photons, but the idea of photons having mass does not by itself contradict special relativity. It would mean Maxwells laws are not entirely accurate.
There should be data somewhere that shows an upper limit for the difference between speed of light and limit speed.
Her vagina?
After the gigantic gaffe, she replied with an even more ridiculous press release: "Obviously ["obviously"?? LOL] the tunnel we are referring to is the tunnel of protons neutrinos travel in". Seriously.
Maybe she is thinking of the tunnel that carries all the internet tubes?
Vote monkeys into Congress. They are cheaper and more trustworthy.
Our minister Mariastella Gelmini is both totally ignorant and unable to write in italian.
The original sentence is here:
http://www.istruzione.it/web/ministero/cs230911
The correct translation is:
Italy contributed to the construction of the tunnel between Cern and Gran Sasso laboratory, used for the experiment, giving about 45 million euros.
The tunnel is used for the experiment. The tunnel was build between Cern and Gran Sasso. There is no other interpretation possible: someone built a 750KM underground tunnel between Ginevra and Gran Sasso, in order to make the experiment.
And Italy proudly participated to the construction of this tunnel.
Since after ignorance always follow arrogance, our precious minister Gelmini promptly replied:
http://www.istruzione.it/web/ministero/cs240911
The tunnel to which I was referring is the one where protons runs. From protons collisions originates a neutrinos stream that through the earth reaches Gran Sasso.
It's a ridiculous attempt to fix a very stupid sentence, trying to masking her abyssal ignorance.
Welcome to Italy!!!
That's a 168km saving in distance traveled, the tunnel being a straight line through the Earth, whereas you have to travel 900km along the curved surface.
Of course, digging the tunnel did cause some financial troubles for Italy, but I'm sure it will pay off in increased trade with Switzerland, especially once they figure out how to do high-frequency stock-market trades in the few billionths of a second before the trade actually happens. I just hope the Italian scientists patented the method before publishing.
That particular quirk has been well documented, and it's simply down to the way IQ tests are designed. Those in the more intensive schooling systems of "the west" and parts of asia at the far end of the scale are more likely to be exposed to the kind of tests used in these things. It's well established that some cultural/racial/geographical demographics do badly in IQ tests not because they're less intelligent, but because IQ tests are usually badly designed and administered. As Einstein said, "IQ scores are very important. How else would we measure how good people are at IQ tests?"
Please consider this account deleted, I just can't be bothered with the spam anymore.
This experiment required creating a new proton extraction point, target, meson focussing magnet and meson decay tunnel. The focussing element and tunnel were pointed in the direction of the Gran Sasso laboratory. The Italian funding agency paid a large fraction of these including the meson decay tunnel. The tunnel provides time for the mesons to decay to the neutrinos and is a few hundred meters long and directed downwards towards Gran Sasso. The experiment would not have been successful without the decay tunnel.
I don't speak Italian so I don't know this is what was meant...
There are different average atomic weights for lead deposits based on the radionucleide sequence that led to them. So which one do you mean? After all, if we're fussing over 60ns in 900km, we obviously need some precision.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
Save yourself the hours of translating Italian forums I just went through.
Yes, thank you. This is why it is funny and sad, but not riot-worthy.
It's OK Bender, there's no such thing as 2.
No. Stating that a culture is biased against education does not contradict stating that an IQ test is not biased against that culture.
A tunnel is a large tube, right?
Could this merely be a weak attempt at a joke rather than gross incompetence from the minister of Public Education and Scientific Research?
But yeah, she's a politician, let's just twist everything around until we find some way to make it sound bad.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
You have a good point, there's statistics about a race, and then there's performance by the individual.
It may be that some ethnic groups are advantaged by genetics. Maybe not. It doesn't REALLY matter, if you look at things (in my opinion) correctly.
There's mountains of evidence that intelligence is very heritable. So therefore, if a person is intelligent, a large part of that is BY LUCK.
the point: IF YOU ARE SMART IT IS IN LARGE PART BECAUSE YOU ARE LUCKY.
How about we stop being snooty about having RAW brainpower and START repecting what people can control, meaning, HOW HARD THEY WORK, and HOW HARD THEY TRY, and HOW WELL THEY LISTEN TO THE WISDOM OF OTHERS.
That's the best way to get results for society anyway! Whoever a person is, if they're rewarded for working hard and trying hard, they'll make the MOST out of themselves. NOT if they achieve approbation for just "being smart".
I know I'm going to reward my kid for working and trying hard. As for her brains, she's got what she's got, we'll work on making the most of it!
--PM
My first thought was wondering if the troll misposted or just figured it would make it even more troll like to write a troll post for one topic and post it to another. But yeah, I just finished reading that article and thought my Slashdot had screwed up somehow.
AJ Henderson
That is actually supporting himself. The fact is that IQ tests give worse scores to the black community than the rest of the world. Some indicate they feel this shows that the test must be biased (under the assumption that culture doesn't impact intelligence, and therefore a uniform distribution should be seen.) The previous poster was using himself as evidence that if someone shakes off the cultural anti-intellectualism, then they score just fine. While a single individual doesn't make or break a statistical norm, I tend to agree with him since I have seen the same thing. It also makes sense that in the academic obsessed cultures like Asian ones, people do better because they work harder.
AJ Henderson
The thing is you are being racist therefore most people will disregard what you say as nonsense due to their social programming regardless of any possible truth in what you say. The problem is that the anti-racism programming disallows any discussion of difference between races.
The subject says it all. The people making these general statements are assuming dark skin == something measurable other than skin color. What does "race" mean? Are you assuming people with dark skin all have the same genetic makeup? Come from the same part of the world? Have the same culture? Have the same differences in intelligence? Sorry, that's pretty much the definition of racism.
As there are self evidently stupid Asian people, clever black people and both clever and stupid white people, I don't see how this proves anything other than the pointlessness of IQ tests.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
I am Italian, enjoy my translation of the full statement: she's far more dimwitted than you may think.
She didn't even bother to read the statement from the scientists and she went ahead already to declare a historical discovery.
This is the kind of people that are running my country.
"The discovery at CERN in Geneva and the Institute of Physics is a scientific event of the utmost importance.
I congratulate to the authors of a historical experiment. I am deeply grateful to all the Italian researchers who contributed to this event that will change the face of modern physics.
Exceeding the speed of light is a momentous victory for scientific research around the world.
For the construction of the tunnel between CERN and Gran Sasso Laboratories, through which the experiment took place, Italy has contributed a sum now estimated at around 45 million euros.
In addition, Italy today supports CERN with absolute conviction, with a contribution of more than 80 million euros per year and the events we are experiencing are confirming that it is a correct and far-sighted choice".
I'll start looking into the link once people are a) controlling for economic environments, and b) able to define what a race is.
Apparently, a) has happened and reduced the difference to be almost within sampling error, and b) is nearly impossible, so I'm not holding my breath. In the meantime, I'll tag crap like this at least off-topic, and most likely flamebait.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
Working hard is over-rated by people who like working hard. so that they do not have to sit back and contemplate the meaninglessness of their own existence.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
The thing is you are being racist therefore most people will disregard what you say as nonsense due to their social programming regardless of any possible truth in what you say. The problem is that the anti-racism programming disallows any discussion of difference between races.
"Race" is only an important or meaningful distinction to racists. Most of the rest of us don't waste our time placing people into Nineteenth Century pigeonholes
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
Did you see those paparazzi bikini pics on GIS? MILF-tastic!
I would believe the tunnel remark if we had Hitler or Mussolini or even Stalin in control. Hitler loved tunnels. He simply could not tunnel enough. We still don't know the extent of Nazi tunneling and Stalin was no slouch either when it came to secret tunnels. Since they had so much slave labor at hand it is a wonder that they didn't whip up a few record height paramids while they were at it.
He obviously isn't from a confederate state. If he was, he would be aware that we all have ridiculous accents. "Ebonics" isn't any different than Creole, or the Tennessee twang.
Full disclosure: I am a gun toting progressive liberal atheist from Mississippi. Yall both have a lot of preconceived notions that are flat out wrong.
Poverty and affluence have a far stronger correlation to average performance on IQ tests than race or "culture".
IQ tests are "supposed to be" a measure of intelligence independent of your level of study and reading. If "pulling up your pants and reading a book" helps you to score higher on IQ tests, this indicates that the IQ tests are indeed failing at their purported purpose of measuring some "fundamental" intelligence, and instead are measuring culturally-varying factors (e.g. what books you read and/or clothes you wear). This is not to say that culturally-related achievement measures are not important and may also indicate problems to be addressed, but in this case your assertions seem to prove rather than disprove that IQ tests can have significant cultural biases.
The thing is you are being racist therefore most people will disregard what you say as nonsense due to their social programming regardless of any possible truth in what you say. The problem is that the anti-racism programming disallows any discussion of difference between races.
"Race" is only an important or meaningful distinction to racists. Most of the rest of us don't waste our time placing people into Nineteenth Century pigeonholes
Your statement demonstrates the problem, people have been told that the only difference between human races is skin color and any suggestion otherwise is deeply offensive. People have been told this so many times it has sunk in. Repetition does not establish, nor disprove, validity.
If you are assuming I'm trying to imply that one race is inherently 'better' than another I'm not. I'm just pointing out the the reverse argument that all races are absolutely identical that has been repeated throughout the entire western world for many years now isn't truthful.
Light skinned people are statistically more likely to get skin cancer given the same amount of sun exposure as dark skinned people, it's racist but it's a fact.
Dark skinned people are more likely to suffer from sickle cell. It's also racist but it's a fact.
How about we stop being snooty about having RAW brainpower and START repecting what people can control, meaning, HOW HARD THEY WORK, and HOW HARD THEY TRY
Yes, I agree - let's fire Stephen Hawking, and fill his position with a hard-working banjo-player with a 65 IQ.
and HOW WELL THEY LISTEN TO THE WISDOM OF OTHERS.
Yeah, there's enough "wisdom" being passed around out there that I'd be hesitant to hire anyone who listens to any of it. I like people who can think critically and come to rational conclusions which aren't based on "the wisdom of others".
Speaking as a civil engineer, a 750 km tunnel is no problem. Doing it for $45 million is probably harder than getting an elephant to travel faster than the speed of light, however.
Give a man a fish and you have fed him for today. Teach a man to fish, and he'll say "WHERE'S MY FISH, YOU IDIOT?"
The thing is you are being racist therefore most people will disregard what you say as nonsense due to their social programming regardless of any possible truth in what you say. The problem is that the anti-racism programming disallows any discussion of difference between races.
The subject says it all. The people making these general statements are assuming dark skin == something measurable other than skin color. What does "race" mean? Are you assuming people with dark skin all have the same genetic makeup? Come from the same part of the world? Have the same culture? Have the same differences in intelligence? Sorry, that's pretty much the definition of racism.
Yes the subject appears to be intended to be offensive. However all I'm saying is that the anti-racist brainwashing that the western world has put itself though has blinded people to the obvious fact that not all people are equal and interchangeable. It's quite possible for a viewpoint to be totally wrong and its opposite to also be wrong. I never suggested that all people of any given skin color are identical to each other, clearly they are not.
...a low-class, gutter, illiterate bastardization of American English...
Someone should have pointed out that American English is a low-class, gutter, illiterate bastardization of the British English it derived from.
As no-one has I'll have to do it.
No offense meant - the real point is that Languages change over time and it's common for social groups to alter language.
Are you in the Tea or Republican Party? That's a good way to self-diagnose. Were you the only black kid at your all-white school?
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
He obviously isn't from a confederate state. If he was, he would be aware that we all have ridiculous accents. "Ebonics" isn't any different than Creole, or the Tennessee twang.
Full disclosure: I am a gun toting progressive liberal atheist from Mississippi. Yall both have a lot of preconceived notions that are flat out wrong.
an accent is not the same thing as a failure to understand basic grammar. of one's own native language. when you know no other.
ever met Asian immigrants to America? maybe the parents speak heavily-accented English. if they speak English. their children? if you called them on the phone, if you were really sharp maybe you'd detect a little accent here or there but probably not. their children's children? you'd never know they are racially Asian if you called and they answered the phone. it works this way for everybody - except blacks.
so what happened to the blacks? 200+ years and they still can't overcome their tendency to speak pidgin. ebonics is not "different" it's inferior, it is a gutter language often found in ghettos, difference is blacks celebrate ghetto life instead of viewing it as something to overcome and transcend. even the highly educated blacks who didn't grow up in a ghetto often sound discernably black. it doesn't work this way for any other racial or ethnic group. it has to be genetic, and if it is, it's a genetic inability to adapt to new social conditions not found in any other racial group.
so no, it's not just an "accent". another flimsy excuse by liberal apologists: terminated.
The receiving site in the experiment IS in a mountain tunnel. The tunnel construction was widened to accommodate the laboratory as well as the road traffic. Italy paid for that. The tunnel does not connect the two sites. One lane of the tunnel traffic was stopped for the duration of the experiment to improve the accuracy of the measurements. Italian tunnel money made this science possible. Stop hating, yo?
Replying to myself as I can't quite choose whom of the other people to reply to.
Seems I must have misinterpreted the statement above... apologies.
"I don't buy the culturally biased bullshit about the tests."
Frankly, I'm still not 100% sure how to interpret that sentence, probably part of its meaning gets lost in translation somewhere ..( you don't happen to speak Dutch ? =)
That said, I think all who replied to my post all more or less agree on the fact that IQ tests simply are not capable of measuring intelligence objectively... IMHO these tests are VERY biased towards those that have been in contact with the way these tests work and/or what they use for testing. In my experience they are mostly geared towards logic and insights but rely on 3D thinking and basic mathematics to work with. If you're familiar with the latter, and you've gone through a system where tests and quizzes are everyday stuff you're bound to score higher than anyone who didn't. (**) Whether you're part of that group has IMHO nothing to do with race or genetics directly but rather with 'chances' and yes culture. One culture simply doesn't push (willingly ,circumstantially or forcedly) towards that goal as the next one.
(** In all honesty I've never had much "respect" for IQ-test results in the first place, they're way overrated. Although I always scored high on them I find myself lacking severely on things like language and creative arts & crafts... maybe I'm good at solving things, I'd give an arm and a leg to be able to re-play some tune I just heard or simply be able to captivate an audience over some random subject. IMHO IQ-scores don't correlate to "being smarter" in general and it surely does not come close to "being better". )
Probably a bad analogy, but I think Shakespeare would have scored below Newton, yet the former gets quoted quite more often, that should count for something too, not ? =)
If there is one thing to be learned on slashdot, it has to be sarcasm.
As an Italian member of the research community, I apologize for my brain-dead minister.
My government sucks. I didn't vote for these people.
Thanks for your understanding.
No man, I Am italian and I can guarantee you that the minister meant exactly what is written here. In the ministry note she released she totally mentioned a tunnel, physically connecting the CERN labs in Geneva with the Gran Sasso labs in central Italy, through which the experiment should have been carried out. Now, such a tunnel would cross a lenght of approximately 732 km, and even considering the fact that the minister has no chance to know anything about neutrinos, and in particular that they are so small they can easily pass through matter, it is absolutely mental to think we could have made such an effort, building a gallery underneath half Italy.. Furthermore spending just about 45 mln euros. Mariastella Gelmini (it's female, by the way) was just trying to take part in the division of merit of the experiment, showing how much her ministry contributed, hence talking about something she understands absolutely nothing about, and simply resulting in a mind-blowing, pant-wetting international gaffe. The minister herself (whose recognition as a complete ignorant and incompetent is widespread) is responsible for the last season of reforms of Italian schools and universities, through which Berlusconi's government is trying to put down public instruction, making Knowledge useless and impossible to reach, so to have a mindless, unconscious and stupid people to rule.
The exact translation:
Alla costruzione
To the construction
del tunnel *tra* il Cern ed i laboratori del Gran Sasso,
of the tunnel *between* CERN and Gran Sasso Laboratories,
attraverso il quale si è svolto l'esperimento,
through which the experiment took place,
l'Italia ha contribuito con uno stanziamento oggi stimabile intorno ai 45 milioni di euro.
Italy has contributed with a sum now estimated at around 45 million euros.
The official declaration of Italian minister of Education and Scientific Research:
http://www.istruzione.it/web/ministero/cs230911
Please use google translation if you have any doubt or if you are not Italian tongue like me.
http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=it&ie=UTF8&prev=_t&sl=auto&tl=en&twu=1&u=http://www.istruzione.it/web/ministero/cs230911
In the meantime, I'll tag crap like this at least off-topic, and most likely flamebait.
Seeing as you responded to it, you can't moderate it at all (I'm assuming you intended to write "moderate", rather than "tag"). However, my intent was not to be flamebait; I simply tire of seeing these ridiculously racist AC posts all over the place (usually at least one per article), and actually had a response for this one other than my usual "this isn't worth responding to".
I will cheerfully agree that this entire thread is off-topic. Thank you for contributing.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.
Ah yes, the condescending, angry, white liberal douche. I knew you'd show up eventually. You know nothing of our internal politics or struggle.
What you have just illustrated is exemplar of what I was referring to.
When a black kid achieves academically, people who choose not to do so accuse him/her of "trying to be white" or "selling out". This continues into adulthood where success in academia or the professional world is treated much the same way. It's treated with scorn and derision, fueled by jealousy. But, this only comes from those who have failed to achieve on their own. When a black man or woman takes his or her God given abilities and works hard to use them to achieve success, it make a lot of people unhappy. Black people who could have, but didn't and white liberals who need black people to be dependent upon them.
It's more than that. It's two-fold. You need black people to be dependent upon you for the entitlement programs that you so generously give out and you need black people to fit into the model that you believe they should occupy. You need this because it's the only way to explain away your failure to achieve. When a black guy gets a job that you were hoping for, you need for it to be affirmative action because without that you have to face the hard truth that there are minorities that are better than you.
Take someone like Cornell West, or Skip Gates as an example, they don't engage in those sort of juvenile efforts to compel conformity of thought. Why? Because they are successful in their fields.
I've grown beyond schoolyard politics and social pressure.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
Seems I must have misinterpreted the statement above... apologies.
It happens.
Frankly, I'm still not 100% sure how to interpret that sentence, probably part of its meaning gets lost in translation somewhere ..( you don't happen to speak Dutch ? =)
Sorry, English and a little French & Arabic. I'll try rephrasing,
I do not believe that the tests are culturally biased. I believe that the idea of them being culturally biased is bullshit. I was also pointing out that in African-American culture, there is a strong theme of anti-intellectualism. Look at some of the later responses to my post and you'll see what I'm talking about.
An example of cultural bias would be if there were questions that only one group of people are likely to know the correct answer. An example of this would be to ask the student to name four brands of sunscreen. Black and brown people don't use sunscreen and would therefore be less likely to be able to name four brands of a product that they never need. Or a word associations where you must take a word and select the one that is least related such as taking the term "Beach" and the potentially related items "Tanning", "Swimming", "Surfing" and "Whale". In this hypothetical example, the correct answer is "Whale", but a black person doesn't go to the beach to tan so for him/her "Tanning" is the word least associated with a beach.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano