My web tracking service definitely seems to lump "Mozilla 5.0", and thus Safari, in with Netscape 7 since the other choices (Netscape 3, 4, MSIE 4, Opera and Other) all have negligible hit counts.
About 35% of the hits to my personal site are via referrers from various mountain biking forums (where my signature has a link to my site) and about 12.5% are from the MacNN forums. With these tidbits in mind, here are my site's browser stats, compiled since Dec 2003 and current as of today:
MSIE 6, 52.87% Netscape 7 (this includes Mozilla and Safari, I believe),38.33% MSIE 5, 8.24% with others in vanishingly small numbers
Other interesting tidbits of note: 28.24%of my visitors use Macs, 1.55% are reporting running Linux 2.x, and no, the fact that I use a Mac and reload my own website does not account for the stats since reloads are only 13.84% of all traffic (besides the fact that my PC using friends reload as well).
Ad-Block Roland's blog!
on
Port-A-Nuke
·
· Score: 1
Yes, but the earlier story didn't drive traffic to Roland's blog, so it had to be posted again. He pays Slashdot good money to pimp his blog so they're going to make sure it gets linked to at least once a day, even if it means posting duped stories.
This bugs me, too, so I've gone so as to block the following regular expression in my ad-blocker: radio\.weblogs\.com\/0105910 . Voila, no more links to Roland's blog -- the "read more" link in today's dupe enticed me to click on it and immediately want to bash my head on the desk, but now it will be out of sight, out of mind and Roland will not get even what scant ad revenue slips by my ad-blocker itself...
(I use PithHelmet in Safari, but any ad-blocker that handles regex strings should be able to block the above.)
Hash functions map a bigger space (unbounded strings, for example) to a smaller space (64 bits, perhaps), so collisions are inevitable. The linked article is not significant because it points out that MD-5 has collisions, since this is trivially true as I've attempted to make clear. It's significant because researchers have found a way to find multiple inputs which both hash to the same value. Since they have not found out how to create an input string that hashes to a value of their choice (preimage problem) MD-5 is not fundamentally broken.
"When there are collisions in the algorithm, the checksum cannot prove, beyond a reasonable doubt, that the data has not been tampered with." This preceding sentence demonstrates a remarkable lack of understanding about hash functions. Collisions are inevitable, see above. How hash functions work is by making the hash values unpredictable and spread out evenly over the space of the hash values, given random input. Read up: http://www.cs.sunysb.edu/~skiena/214/lectures/lect 21/lect21.html or by googling for "hash functions collisions probablility".
"The problem as I see it is if a method is found to predict collisions in a hash. Is this possible with md5 and sha-1?"
If by this you mean "Is it possibly to construct a message to have a pre-determined hash value?" the answer is no. It's in the article, search for "preimage" if you're lazy.
"Also just wondering, does anyone else think this is ugly?"
No, you're not alone. I'm a huge apple fanboy (LC, 6100/60, G3/233, G3 Lombard, iMac DV, G4/800, two eMac/1.25s) and I think the new iMac is very mundane. The Twentieth Anniversary Mac looked much better, and that was nearly a decade ago...
I unlocked my Nokia 3650 last night using the second site's unlock code generator. Make sure to read the instructions and not make typos as you only get a limited number of attempts before the phone locks itself down, so to speak, after which only professionals with a cable can unlock the unit.
Unless we can think of a perfect test, which is unlikely, I think we should stay away from this one, or we'll end up with more Bell Curves or worse, Mein Kampfs.
I am largely in agreement with this. However, the question then becomes "how to get underperforming social groups to step up to the plate". I firmly believe that telling generation upon generation of black youth that they are repressed, have suffered disadvantages too numerous to mention, etc. etc. is not the way, and the downward trend in performance since the 1960s seems to back this view.
I will not grant you that black MBA's have lower test scores than white MBA's or that black lawyers are less capable than asian lawyers.
I present this: http://www.csus.edu/indiv/h/howellj/Research/LawAd missions/Howell_APPAM2003.pdf
Key quotes: "At the 15 most highly ranked law schools, the median LSAT score was 165, a score attained by only 11 percent of white and 0.8 percent of black test-takers (Cross and Slater (1997)). Blacks make up a greater proportion than 0.8 at these 15 institutions and this fact is generally accepted as evidence of the use of affirmative action."
Med schools: "In 1996, the median MCAT score for white test-takers was 30.2 on a scale of 0 to 45. The median for black MCAT test-takers was 23.5, which is 6.7 points or 22.2 percent lower than average white scores (Cross and Slater (1997)). The median MCAT score among whites who were denied [emphasis theirs] admission to medical school in 1996 was, at 25.2, slightly above the median score for accepted blacks."
Business schools: "In 1996, the median GMAT score for white students [was] 524 on a scale of 200 to 800, while the median GMAT score for black test-takers was 412. [...] As with the statistics presented on MCAT scores, white business school applicants who were denied admission scored, on average, 80 points higher than those black applicants who were admitted."
Side note about GMAT scores, from http://www.fairtest.org/examarts/spring97/gmatcomp.htm (1997 test scores, of course): "GMAT Average Scores 1994-95
All Test-takers 503
White (non Hispanic) 523
Black/African American 411
Asian/Asian American 512"
Are black professionals less capable? Probably not inasmuch as the tests are not comprehensive in one's ability to be a proficient doctor, lawyer, MBA. Did many gain acceptance with lower test scores, most definitely yes.
Are black high school graduates less well educated than whites on average? I suspect this is true, but it is NOT a result of your contention that they don't try or are not motivated to succeed. It is a result of a long history of inferior schools, inferior resources, and inferior opportunity.
How are you so sure that it is not that reason? What's your reasoning for why asians do well, if not that they work hard? Doesn't this imply -- and this is my ongoing point in this string of posts -- that other races don't work as hard? Don't like that explanation? Then come up with a better explanation for asians' collective performance.
Oh, I agree that rotating transponders should never be used to judge what otherwise would be photo finishes. Any inaccuracy on the magnitude of cms is unacceptable. Use for the talking heads for in-race splits is acceptable imo, on the other hand.
It is clear that you think that any black interviewing for a job would be statistically more likely not to be the best candidate for the job. But wait...all you had to go on in my example was race - and that is the definition of racism.
Are you debating the point that, statistically, the average black candidate will have lower scores and less education than the average white/asian? If not, how can you accuse me of being racist? Are you asserting that scores and educational background are racist entities unto themselves? That, too, is ridiculous.
Any bike racing ending with the wheel spinning at 60rpm is a pretty slow race. Most cyclists average around 90rpm, with the sprints getting up around 130+ rpm. Much higher for track races, where it is around 170rpm.
You're confusing cadence (the rpm of the cranks) with the revolutions per minute of the wheel. The figure you cite are in the ballpark for cadence, yes, but not for the wheels' rotation. Assume a wheel is 70 cm tall ("700c"), which gives a circumference of about 2.2 m. Let's be cautious and assume a finish speed of 60 km/h (1000 m/min for ease of computation). Therefore our hypothetical wheel would be rotating at about 450 rpm.
As far as cognitive abilities, there is no conclusive evidence that black people (or any race) is any different from any other race. Things like SAT scores and IQ scores cannot be used because there are so many factors that can affect these scores that they are useless in any kind of genetic study. All we can get from them is a conclusion like, "Asians typically score higher on SAT tests than black people." You can't really make much more of an inference from that.
[I like the use of blockquote + italics. I think I'll copy you]
I agree that there is a) no conclusive evidence supporting an assertion that cognitive abilities differ on average between races, and b) that SAT/IQ/other current measures are biased tests. I've read "The Mismeasure of Man", etc. etc.
However, as a previous reply to my grandparent post mentioned, I bet the paucity of evidence is in no small part because even raising the question is very politically incorrect. There is no motivation to create a test of true innate spatial ability or pattern recognition (without the ridiculous cultural knowledge bias of early IQ tests, for instance), since no one really wants to know what the results would be if such a test were taken widely.
So is this scientific "proof" that liberals tend to be more compassionate but also more cowardly?
No. It is, however, flamebait and fodder for the conservatives to jump over.
From a related article about the same study (http://www.spectroscopynow.com/Spy/basehtml/SpyH/ 1,1181,9-1-1-0-0-news_detail-0-3237,00.html): "The neuroscientists have tested 11 people so far, and they warned against drawing conclusions until about twice that many are examined.
They said the results would point the way for future research, not provide immediate answers, and their caution was echoed by other neuroscientists."
This whole discussion seems to be predicated on the assumption that amygdala size is definitely correlated with party affiliation. THIS HAS NOT BEEN PROVEN. Indeed, nearly the whole NYTimes op-ed piece was the author spinning yarns in the air.
Did you read the article? The "photo" of the finish is a composite of multiple frames (snapped at 1000 fps) of the 8mm immediately after the finish line boundary.
Yes, Yao Ming is quite visible at 7'6". http://www.nba.com/playerfile/yao_ming/?nav=page . He is hardly typical of the asian physique: his parents were 6'10" and 6'4" and both on the Chinese national basketball teams for their respective sex...
There has been one study done that shows a marked difference in callback rates upon resume submission for fake applicants with very characteristically black and white names, not multiple "studies." It can be read in full here: http://econ-www.mit.edu/faculty/download_pdf.php?i d=971 . It is not conclusive. Indeed the authors themselves state, "Ultimately, one cares about whether an applicants[sic] gets the job and about the wage offered conditional on getting the job. Our procedure, however, simply measures callbacks for interviews. To the extent that the search process has even moderate frictions, one would expect that reduced interview rates would translate into reduced job offers. However, we are not able to translate our results into gaps in hiring rates or gaps in earnings."
I furthermore object to this study because it portrays the issue as literally black and white. There are no asian names in their pool, and thus the question of why asians do well as a group remains unanswered. For me, at least, it certainly hasn't been because I receive a huge number of callbacks -- I was searching for a job around the new year and had a callback rate of 1 in 40, far worse than the black average of 1 in 15 in that study. Is this because I have a distinctively asian name (I do)?
I would imagine though, that whatever differences there are in cognitive abilities among various races are subtle enough that all the other factors: education, experience, work ethic and whatever else would dominate. Cognitive abilities are a vastly more broad and nebulous thing where the physical ability is relatively specific--running fast or jumping high, so in terms of limiting achievement, I would bet (and hope) it's pretty irrelavent.
I agree that it is near-irrelevant for simply living a normal life, having 2.3 kids, saving up enough for their college tuition at state u. and your retirement. However these distinctions, expressed in terms of SAT, GRE, LSAT, MCAT scores, are exactly what determine acceptance to elite universities, law schools, med schools, and these in turn unlock the door to different lifestyles. And these "elite"/highly educated professions are where affirmative action has the greatest effect, for better or worse: for example, in 1997 blacks were 3x as likely to be admitted to UCLA's med school as whites/asians. Source: http://home.sandiego.edu/~e_cook/analysis/RaceTrip lesYourChances.html
Something to ponder, especially given the MCAT difference in the above example is very nearly 1 standard deviation... (On the other hand, I must admit that medical school is just about a self-contained unit and MCAT knowledge may well be unnecessary, but then why even test?)
Forgive me for putting words in your mouth but you seem to be saying Asian's are hard working and industrious so they are successful while blacks are not.
Take this mind set and put it in a prospective employer interviewing Asian and Black candidates. In the employers mind the Asian candidate doesn't have all the social baggage the black candidate does. As the stereotype goes the Asian is much more likely to work hard and be successful, maybe the black guy grew up in a slum, doing drugs and listening to rap music. He's going to hire the Asian candidate unless he is filling a quota.
It is a fact of life in America if you are black you are inherently at a disadvantage in life. You are going to be racially profiled by police and hassle more than any other ethnicity. You are going to be at a disadvantage in nearly every interview.
I don't feel that you've argued your points well.
First, you have to account for the fact that asians (lower case for convenience) do perform very well. Take the SAT for instance: http://www.collegeboard.com/press/senior99/html/99 0831a.html , which incidentally has a passing mention of the higher instance of graduate degrees among asian parents than even whites. So why are these asians successful? Genetics? No, that's an socially undesireable conclusion, as the reaction to the (flawed, read Steven J Gould's "The Mismeasure of Man" if interested) "The Bell Curve" showed. Because genetics is a dirty word when it comes to academic achievement, besides being near-impossible to test for without being circular, we turn to social explanations. Is it that asians work harder? Maybe. And if this is indeed the true cause, then yes, it does imply that blacks don't work as hard, on average. Of course it also is more than somewhat derogatory to asians -- "oh, he's not smart, he just spends all his time studying."
My point in the above is that it is a verifiable fact that asians collectively perform better than average (better than whites in many areas) when comparing academic performance between racial and ethnic groups. You can be outraged all you want at the suggestion that blacks don't work as hard, but if that is the accepted explanation for asians' performance then that indeed is the implication.
I object to your second paragraph for being ridiculous. Applicants are judged on many criteria, not the least of which is their past experience and education. It should be readily apparent from the applicant's resume whether she had exhibited a good work ethic in the past. Any hypothetical hiring manager who disregarded this and hired someone based on racial stereotypes would be an idiot.
Your last paragraph seems like whining. As per the above I don't accept your interview reasoning. Your broad statement declaring disadvantages is unsupported except by your own rhetoric. This leaves unspecified hassling and racial profiling by police, and the profiling by police indeed seems to be valid. Are you going to argue, however, that getting pulled over more often by the highway patrol is the root cause of poor SAT scores?
Finally I'd like to add a note on genetics: Why is it so well accepted that races differ in physical abilities yet not in other realms of achievement? For example see the prevalence of blacks in top level sprinting and basketball competition. Is this a social phenomenon, asians just don't want to grow up to be basketball players? (Hint: no. http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?articleID=000BD23 5-1F76-1C75-9B81809EC588EF21 as reference.) If this is true, and indeed it appears so (which doesn't bode well for me, a 5'7" asian with little hope of making it to the NBA;-) then why is it so outlandish to suggest that analogous differences appear in cognitive abilities?
As an undergrad I was involved in a fMRI study of the co-activation and -deactivation of brain regions under certain tasks. There was an (apocryphal?) story that I vaguely remember reading in MIT Technology Review, iirc, about one of the leading researchers in the field, who had the regions of the brain tattooed on his scalp. This researcher probably had a better idea with his tattoo than the aforementioned nurse, as CPR instructions do change over the years while the brain's structure has been constant in recent history even as our understanding of it changes significantly...
Unfortunately I can't find reference to this guy either through google (too many unrelated tattoo site hits) or the Tech Review's own search engine.
If it makes you feel any better, one of my acquaintances, also detained at the border by US immigration, was forced to prove his bank account balance since he wasn't carrying any cash on him. He's a US citizen, Caucasian, too.
Slashdot Mirror
How are you checking for Safari? You do realize that it reports itself as Mozilla/5.0, no? http://developer.apple.com/internet/safari/safari_ faq.html#anchor2
Indeed, but Safari is a wily beast. Its default is "Mozilla/5.0":from http://developer.apple.com/internet/safari/safari
My web tracking service definitely seems to lump "Mozilla 5.0", and thus Safari, in with Netscape 7 since the other choices (Netscape 3, 4, MSIE 4, Opera and Other) all have negligible hit counts.
About 35% of the hits to my personal site are via referrers from various mountain biking forums (where my signature has a link to my site) and about 12.5% are from the MacNN forums. With these tidbits in mind, here are my site's browser stats, compiled since Dec 2003 and current as of today:
MSIE 6, 52.87%
Netscape 7 (this includes Mozilla and Safari, I believe),38.33%
MSIE 5, 8.24%
with others in vanishingly small numbers
Other interesting tidbits of note: 28.24%of my visitors use Macs, 1.55% are reporting running Linux 2.x, and no, the fact that I use a Mac and reload my own website does not account for the stats since reloads are only 13.84% of all traffic (besides the fact that my PC using friends reload as well).
This bugs me, too, so I've gone so as to block the following regular expression in my ad-blocker: radio\.weblogs\.com\/0105910 . Voila, no more links to Roland's blog -- the "read more" link in today's dupe enticed me to click on it and immediately want to bash my head on the desk, but now it will be out of sight, out of mind and Roland will not get even what scant ad revenue slips by my ad-blocker itself...
(I use PithHelmet in Safari, but any ad-blocker that handles regex strings should be able to block the above.)
"Give me a pro-gun rights, balanced budget, non-tax raising liberal, and I'd vote for them in a minute"
What are you waiting for? Run for office. Or wait 25 years and maybe I'll be on the ballot somewhere with that agenda...
Hash functions map a bigger space (unbounded strings, for example) to a smaller space (64 bits, perhaps), so collisions are inevitable. The linked article is not significant because it points out that MD-5 has collisions, since this is trivially true as I've attempted to make clear. It's significant because researchers have found a way to find multiple inputs which both hash to the same value. Since they have not found out how to create an input string that hashes to a value of their choice (preimage problem) MD-5 is not fundamentally broken.
t 21/lect21.html or by googling for "hash functions collisions probablility".
"When there are collisions in the algorithm, the checksum cannot prove, beyond a reasonable doubt, that the data has not been tampered with." This preceding sentence demonstrates a remarkable lack of understanding about hash functions. Collisions are inevitable, see above. How hash functions work is by making the hash values unpredictable and spread out evenly over the space of the hash values, given random input. Read up: http://www.cs.sunysb.edu/~skiena/214/lectures/lec
"The problem as I see it is if a method is found to predict collisions in a hash. Is this possible with md5 and sha-1?"
If by this you mean "Is it possibly to construct a message to have a pre-determined hash value?" the answer is no. It's in the article, search for "preimage" if you're lazy.
It sounds like you are a libertarian, not a conservative. Vote appropriately.
Libertarian Party: http://www.lp.org/
"Also just wondering, does anyone else think this is ugly?"
No, you're not alone. I'm a huge apple fanboy (LC, 6100/60, G3/233, G3 Lombard, iMac DV, G4/800, two eMac/1.25s) and I think the new iMac is very mundane. The Twentieth Anniversary Mac looked much better, and that was nearly a decade ago...
http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/wlg/3935w .uniquephones.com/unlock/index.php
http://ww
I unlocked my Nokia 3650 last night using the second site's unlock code generator. Make sure to read the instructions and not make typos as you only get a limited number of attempts before the phone locks itself down, so to speak, after which only professionals with a cable can unlock the unit.
I am largely in agreement with this. However, the question then becomes "how to get underperforming social groups to step up to the plate". I firmly believe that telling generation upon generation of black youth that they are repressed, have suffered disadvantages too numerous to mention, etc. etc. is not the way, and the downward trend in performance since the 1960s seems to back this view.
I present this: http://www.csus.edu/indiv/h/howellj/Research/LawA
Key quotes: "At the 15 most highly ranked law schools, the median LSAT score was 165, a score attained by only 11 percent of white and 0.8 percent of black test-takers (Cross and Slater (1997)). Blacks make up a greater proportion than 0.8 at these 15 institutions and this fact is generally accepted as evidence of the use of affirmative action."
Med schools: "In 1996, the median MCAT score for white test-takers was 30.2 on a scale of 0 to 45. The median for black MCAT test-takers was 23.5, which is 6.7 points or 22.2 percent lower than average white scores (Cross and Slater (1997)). The median MCAT score among whites who were denied [emphasis theirs] admission to medical school in 1996 was, at 25.2, slightly above the median score for accepted blacks."
Business schools: "In 1996, the median GMAT score for white students [was] 524 on a scale of 200 to 800, while the median GMAT score for black test-takers was 412. [...] As with the statistics presented on MCAT scores, white business school applicants who were denied admission scored, on average, 80 points higher than those black applicants who were admitted."
Side note about GMAT scores, from http://www.fairtest.org/examarts/spring97/gmatcom
All Test-takers 503
White (non Hispanic) 523
Black/African American 411
Asian/Asian American 512"
Are black professionals less capable? Probably not inasmuch as the tests are not comprehensive in one's ability to be a proficient doctor, lawyer, MBA. Did many gain acceptance with lower test scores, most definitely yes.
How are you so sure that it is not that reason? What's your reasoning for why asians do well, if not that they work hard? Doesn't this imply -- and this is my ongoing point in this string of posts -- that other races don't work as hard? Don't like that explanation? Then come up with a better explanation for asians' collective performance.
Oh, I agree that rotating transponders should never be used to judge what otherwise would be photo finishes. Any inaccuracy on the magnitude of cms is unacceptable. Use for the talking heads for in-race splits is acceptable imo, on the other hand.
Are you debating the point that, statistically, the average black candidate will have lower scores and less education than the average white/asian? If not, how can you accuse me of being racist? Are you asserting that scores and educational background are racist entities unto themselves? That, too, is ridiculous.
You're confusing cadence (the rpm of the cranks) with the revolutions per minute of the wheel. The figure you cite are in the ballpark for cadence, yes, but not for the wheels' rotation. Assume a wheel is 70 cm tall ("700c"), which gives a circumference of about 2.2 m. Let's be cautious and assume a finish speed of 60 km/h (1000 m/min for ease of computation). Therefore our hypothetical wheel would be rotating at about 450 rpm.
[I like the use of blockquote + italics. I think I'll copy you]
I agree that there is a) no conclusive evidence supporting an assertion that cognitive abilities differ on average between races, and b) that SAT/IQ/other current measures are biased tests. I've read "The Mismeasure of Man", etc. etc.
However, as a previous reply to my grandparent post mentioned, I bet the paucity of evidence is in no small part because even raising the question is very politically incorrect. There is no motivation to create a test of true innate spatial ability or pattern recognition (without the ridiculous cultural knowledge bias of early IQ tests, for instance), since no one really wants to know what the results would be if such a test were taken widely.
From a related article about the same study (http://www.spectroscopynow.com/Spy/basehtml/SpyH
They said the results would point the way for future research, not provide immediate answers, and their caution was echoed by other neuroscientists."
This whole discussion seems to be predicated on the assumption that amygdala size is definitely correlated with party affiliation. THIS HAS NOT BEEN PROVEN. Indeed, nearly the whole NYTimes op-ed piece was the author spinning yarns in the air.
Did you read the article? The "photo" of the finish is a composite of multiple frames (snapped at 1000 fps) of the 8mm immediately after the finish line boundary.
Yes, Yao Ming is quite visible at 7'6". http://www.nba.com/playerfile/yao_ming/?nav=page . He is hardly typical of the asian physique: his parents were 6'10" and 6'4" and both on the Chinese national basketball teams for their respective sex...
There has been one study done that shows a marked difference in callback rates upon resume submission for fake applicants with very characteristically black and white names, not multiple "studies." It can be read in full here: http://econ-www.mit.edu/faculty/download_pdf.php?i d=971 . It is not conclusive. Indeed the authors themselves state, "Ultimately, one cares about whether an applicants[sic] gets the job and about the wage offered conditional on getting the job. Our procedure, however, simply measures callbacks for interviews. To the extent that the search process has even moderate frictions, one would expect that reduced interview rates would translate into reduced job offers. However, we are not able to translate our results into gaps in hiring rates or gaps in earnings."
I furthermore object to this study because it portrays the issue as literally black and white. There are no asian names in their pool, and thus the question of why asians do well as a group remains unanswered. For me, at least, it certainly hasn't been because I receive a huge number of callbacks -- I was searching for a job around the new year and had a callback rate of 1 in 40, far worse than the black average of 1 in 15 in that study. Is this because I have a distinctively asian name (I do)?
I agree that it is near-irrelevant for simply living a normal life, having 2.3 kids, saving up enough for their college tuition at state u. and your retirement. However these distinctions, expressed in terms of SAT, GRE, LSAT, MCAT scores, are exactly what determine acceptance to elite universities, law schools, med schools, and these in turn unlock the door to different lifestyles. And these "elite"/highly educated professions are where affirmative action has the greatest effect, for better or worse: for example, in 1997 blacks were 3x as likely to be admitted to UCLA's med school as whites/asians. Source: http://home.sandiego.edu/~e_cook/analysis/RaceTri
Something to ponder, especially given the MCAT difference in the above example is very nearly 1 standard deviation... (On the other hand, I must admit that medical school is just about a self-contained unit and MCAT knowledge may well be unnecessary, but then why even test?)
I don't feel that you've argued your points well.
First, you have to account for the fact that asians (lower case for convenience) do perform very well. Take the SAT for instance: http://www.collegeboard.com/press/senior99/html/9
My point in the above is that it is a verifiable fact that asians collectively perform better than average (better than whites in many areas) when comparing academic performance between racial and ethnic groups. You can be outraged all you want at the suggestion that blacks don't work as hard, but if that is the accepted explanation for asians' performance then that indeed is the implication.
I object to your second paragraph for being ridiculous. Applicants are judged on many criteria, not the least of which is their past experience and education. It should be readily apparent from the applicant's resume whether she had exhibited a good work ethic in the past. Any hypothetical hiring manager who disregarded this and hired someone based on racial stereotypes would be an idiot.
Your last paragraph seems like whining. As per the above I don't accept your interview reasoning. Your broad statement declaring disadvantages is unsupported except by your own rhetoric. This leaves unspecified hassling and racial profiling by police, and the profiling by police indeed seems to be valid. Are you going to argue, however, that getting pulled over more often by the highway patrol is the root cause of poor SAT scores?
Finally I'd like to add a note on genetics: Why is it so well accepted that races differ in physical abilities yet not in other realms of achievement? For example see the prevalence of blacks in top level sprinting and basketball competition. Is this a social phenomenon, asians just don't want to grow up to be basketball players? (Hint: no. http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?articleID=000BD2
nice. have you read zamyatin's "We"? it, and ayn rand's derivative "Anthem" have many similar predictions, albeit from 50-75 years ago...
As an undergrad I was involved in a fMRI study of the co-activation and -deactivation of brain regions under certain tasks. There was an (apocryphal?) story that I vaguely remember reading in MIT Technology Review, iirc, about one of the leading researchers in the field, who had the regions of the brain tattooed on his scalp. This researcher probably had a better idea with his tattoo than the aforementioned nurse, as CPR instructions do change over the years while the brain's structure has been constant in recent history even as our understanding of it changes significantly...
Unfortunately I can't find reference to this guy either through google (too many unrelated tattoo site hits) or the Tech Review's own search engine.
If it makes you feel any better, one of my acquaintances, also detained at the border by US immigration, was forced to prove his bank account balance since he wasn't carrying any cash on him. He's a US citizen, Caucasian, too.