Just wanted to say that the vast majority of "African Americans" actually prefer to be called black. Saw it on 60 Minutes The host of the show talked to a room full of middle and upper class blacks and asked if they preferred to be called black or African American, and 90% of them said black.

The term "African Americans" is some term made up by black academics, but it never actually got very far with black people themselves. Ironically, non-blacks probably use the term African American more than blacks, and I find that the people who use the term African-American in their conversations rarely have any contact with black people, which is why they continue to use the term.

On another note.. I find it kinda weird that because there's an Asian kid in the video, the video gets an Asia tag. Does this mean any video featuring a black person should have an Africa tag? If not, why not? And if we are being consistent, should videos featuring white people feature a Europe tag?

I want a Back to the Future 4..

I don't want to pay for the health care of others if they willfully chose to ignore healthy life choices. If you stuff your face full of Doritoes every day, I don't want to pay for whatever problems come about because of that. If you drink booze or smoke all the time, and you get screwed up cuz of that, I don't want to help you either.

But if you were hit by a car, born with some problem, or catch some disease you had no control over... then I like the idea of paying for your care.

Also, I would prefer to pay for the health care of poor people in Latin America, Africa, Eastern Europe, and Asia, more than the people in say, my own country, the United States. So I'd rather not have national health care, but global health care, if I had to choose between the two. I also think that a national health care system will strengthen immigration restrictions in the US, which I think is a bad thing. I like the idea of an America full of opportunities for the poor people of the world. But if we have national health care, it's VERY likely that immigrants will have a harder time coming to America, because we'll see them as a drain on the health care system. (heck, one of the primary reasons we don't have national health care already is because of how many white conservatives view blacks/latinos/native americans as drains on their wallets already.)

Moon landing was kinda pointless, too. THERE WAS NOTHING THERE.

This is why I never understood the whole mercenary business (which exists to this day). How do you keep one of your employees from shooting you in the leg whenever a better deal comes across? Just hope your business never dries up???

?? I think you misread what I wrote. There are 3 or so posts above us that say these things, not one post that is 3 posts above us.

And the post I referred to is this one by rottenseed, which appears to have the most upvotes on the entire page:
"Fucking machismo. Little pricked Mexicans can get away with harming women because it's part of their culture. What happened before this altercation? I am willing to bet it's 1 of the following things:
1) He grabbed her ass while walking by
2) He called her something when she rejected his advances"

Let's see. Insults based on both physical and cultural factors. Plus prejudicial assumptions about behavior without significant evidence either way in this individual case. Great.

Anyway, yes, I agree, many posts merely wish to have severe violence brought down upon the guy, without factoring in race/culture/whatever. I guess that makes those posts a few percentage points less repulsive and barbaric. Yay.

It seems pretty clear to me that he did the Ricky Ricardo quote because she's of Latin background, just like some Teabaggers had the "Whatchu talkin bout Willis?" signs at their Obama protests. I think the former is more cute while the latter was not nearly as much. :-P

EndAll, there are like three posts above us that specifically bring up the guy's ethnicity. One of them is the most popular post in the page, when judging by the upvotes. It focuses on his "Mexican" background very strongly too, saying that Mexicans have 1) small penises, and 2) are culturally programmed to be sexist. Another post went further, saying it was a "Latin" thing. Then another talked about it being an Islamic thing.

There aren't undertones in those posts since they were very overt.

Citrohan, it's odd that you would leave out the huge number of democracies in Latin America and Africa that are not perceived as scientifically productive. Many of these democracies have far higher voting participation rates than America, and yet this has not led to any major scientific breakthroughs from these societies. We don't have to constantly judge democracies on a national scale either. We can go city by city, too. How scientifically productive are the democracies of Baltimore or Washington DC, for example?

There are probably more scientific breakthroughs coming from the non-democratic society of China than from all of the democratic societies of Africa and Latin America, too. Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia were capable of far surpassing modern day Africa and Latin America's achievements in science as well. Both societies were probably far more oppressive than, say, Jamaica or Costa Rica. Scientifically speaking though, Nazi Germany and Communist Russia were far more impressive.

As for why I brought up free speech vs democracy, you said this: "It makes totally sense; a free society, where ideas and information can be easily exchanged, coupled with a healthy amount of capital from the private sector to fund research is the best environment for scientific advances."

In this one statement, you seemed to combine free speech, capitalism, and democracy into one whole body that cannot exist separately. I think this is very incorrect. Capitalism and democracy are very much at odds at each other. At best, they are checks against each other's excesses. Free speech is not necessary for either of the two, as well. This is why I don't think science and democracy make sense together. Democracy doesn't care about the truth, it cares about what's popular. Many aspects of science are highly unpopular to this day. One could argue that global environmental catastrophe is approaching quickly, and that this is well known amongst the scientific community, and has been for decades, and yet the world's democracies have done nothing and have basically led us to our doom.

And is capitalism compatible with science? I'm not sure, but I think it's more compatible with science than democracy is. At least capitalism has a kind Social Darwinism going for it, where the uneducated and lazy masses can be tossed aside with little guilt, left to die early in poverty. Scientists seem like elitists just by their nature, able to ply their trade to great economic benefit, rising to the top of the income brackets. Capitalism is very much the ideology of the elites it seems..

Hmm I'm surprised so many people think the man should've been hurt until he bled/had teeth knocked out/beaten the shit out of for merely knocking a girl onto her back. Perhaps calling the police would suffice, instead of some revenge "Don't hurt our women folk, you brown-skinned mongrel!" violence.

Then there are ironic declarations that this man was a "pussy" for resorting to violence. Perhaps you're unaware, but women have pussies. So you're calling the guy a girl for being hurt by a girl's insult, then getting upset with him for treating a woman poorly.

" Communism (at least as in the form of China, Cuba, North Korea and the USSR) is not a “majority rule” government, but one where a small, self appointed, insular group at the very top controls everything. Majority rule is, however, a tenet of democracy."

You're mixing a lot of ideologies in your post. There's nothing about democracy that requires free speech, and free speech does not require democracy. Free speech can exist under a capitalist non-democracy, for example. Free speech (ie lack of regulation) is simply not democratic at all.

You also mention many American intellectuals/scientists of the past who would be pretty upset about modern day America's current situation. Most of those guys probably did not want to see democracy taken to the stage that it is at now. A lot of the Founding Fathers, for instance, were not very interested in giving political power to the common man.

As for communism being about majority rule, that's what it's supposed to be. The dictatorship of the proletariat, which is inherently majoritarian since the bourgeoisie are always the minority. It's an ideology built for the largest group of people in the world.. the working class. Not the scientist class, business class, or religious class. So I'm really surprised that so many scientists of the past supported Communism.

I'm not surprised that so few are Republican (Einstein was a Communist, and many of Oppenheimer's relatives were, too), but I wonder how many today are Libertarian-types, since so many identify as independents?

And how many are pro-democracy? I would argue that science and democracy don't really work together well. For one thing, scientists are very smart, while the majority of the human race is probably embarrassingly foolish in their eyes. So are scientists (elite eggheads) really in favor of having the unwashed masses rule the world? I gotta wonder.

A scientist libertarian party guy makes sense to me though. Free market stuff is like a form of social darwinism. Survival of the fittest. Evolution. Science. Brutal, cold, efficient, and without any silly Bible or Quran to teach hippie whatever egalitarian "love your neighbor" principles that are in there.

A scientist fascist makes sense to me, too.

I guess a scientist Communist (which was VERY popular in the past) actually makes the least amount of sense to me. The only part that makes sense is the tenet of Communism that opposes faith in God. If high #s of scientists are not religious, then I can see the appeal of Communism. But all the other aspects of Communism, which is really based on the idea of majority rule ("The People!"), seems to go against what scientists would favor. Then again, I guess convincing the world that there was no afterlife after a nuclear world-destroying war.. would be the most important thing to do for the time being. Kinda like an Ozzymandias from The Watchmen type thing.

>> ^MaxWilder:
because most of us are not racists and will happily breed with somebody from a different cultural background.


Ehh... no one really likes black women though.

I'd be more willing to buy the idea that Americans are "less racist" than other nationalities, but to say that we "are not racist" is just going too far. It's clear from interracial marriage, dating, and cohabitation studies that certain racial-gender groups are on the bottom of the heap. If racial preferences are not racist, then I don't know what is.

It's really common to hear liberal Americans talk about how Swedish women are significantly superior to other kinds of women. Indeed, nearly all Americans I've met will admit that Swedish women are, as a whole, superior to all the nationalities of women from Africa for example. Liberals might feel guilty about it afterwards though, while conservatives just nod their heads and grin without shame.

This reminds me of a right-wing co-worker, who at one point, said that "race doesn't matter", but a few days later, proudly claimed he had "Viking" blood in his family. Didn't really make a whole lot of sense to me.

lucky kids!!