Ironic thing is, the vast majority of East Asian actors/actresses you do see in Hollywood are single eye-lid. It's like Hollywood just won't hire Asians that's not stereotyped to death.

I lived in Turkey for four years, and after a while I noticed that Turks didn't respond well to my smiling. They didn't understand it as a friendly signal, and it actually caused friction. I never asked about it, but I somehow caught on that they thought I was stupid. I thought about it, and it made perfect sense to me that it was stupid to smile at things that shouldn't make you happy.

So I stopped smiling in stores and restaurants, with coworkers, and even with Turkish friends. My interactions with people improved noticeably.

After four years, I moved back to Canada, where I continued not smiling for no reason. I've never been able to get back into the habit. I just feel stupid and unnatural smiling for no reason. People smile at me just because they see me, and they smile politely. I can't smile back. I just raise my eyebrows.

People now tell me constantly that I'm too sad, that I should smile more that I'm not happy. Now, there's some truth to that -- I do suffer from depression -- but that predates living in Turkey and it's only since then that anyone's accused me of being sad, or even noticed that I don't smile as much as I should. I've had to train my friends out of referring to me as grumpy.

My job is teaching English as a Second Language to students from all over the world. My Western students -- particularly the Latinos -- tell me daily (literally) that I don't smile enough. My East Asian and Eastern European students have never said a word in that direction. I just realized the divide now after watching this video.

It is a few years since I was in Hong Kong, but I don't remember any of those dishes then!

What they did have though, which was really good, is iced lemon tea... not pre-mixed though, you get tea with lemon and ice. It's great

Other south east Asian countries are quite different too... McDonalds in Malaysia is all Helal, so no bacon in anything.

Hehehe, depends.
We talking South-east Asian butcher or New York kosher deli butcher??

@chingalera

If you don't see how overgeneralizing in a derogatory sense an entire population based on their ethnic heritage (I'm pretty sure you weren't referring to the millions of European, American, Australian, South-east Asian, African, Middle Easter, etc. people who live in Japan) is racism then you truly belong on YouTube and not on the Sift. And yeah, if you had said Australians were dysfunctional savages that would not have been racist but just as stupidly xenophobic, overgeneralized, and stereotypical.

Here's the thing, though, I think you absolutely know all this. You're just, as usual, trying to be counter-Sift-cultural--trying to stir the pot, so to speak.

You are free to criticize Japanese culture. Here's the thing about "criticism" though--it's derived form the word "critical" as in "critical thinking." Unfortunately, I don't see any critical thinking going on in your posts here. You spewed a bunch of overgeneralized stereotypical bullshit (see this video--you're clearly not interested in truth but in evoking emotions in people) and when you got called on it, instead of providing any sort of evidence to make your case you tried to cover it up with some ad hominem and anecdotes.

I'm not asking you to not criticize Japanese culture. I'm not asking you to be politically correct or polite even. I'm not even asking you to stop "stirring the pot" on the Sift (because Zeus knows, sometimes the Sift needs it). I am, however, specifically asking you to not insult the intelligence of the Sift community by couching blatantly racist/stereotypical/overgeneralized statements in a faux-rational manner.

The US and Canada are very different. In contrast, every European country has a problem among their Muslim immigrant population with high-crime and low academic scores.

Witness, for example, the famously high rate of Muslim car-burnings across France, same as the recent violence in Sweden.


The best way to create a liberal utopia is to prevent liberals from importing millions of high-crime, low-academic-score foreigners who will be a problem for hundreds of years to come. Witness, for example, the US' intractable problems with its own sub-populations, who don't improve academically in later generations.

In contrast, importing impoverished East Asians increases the nation's average IQ, and lowers the average crime rate. That just goes to show that immigration decisions should be data-based, instead of trying to hide the downsides of our past decisions.


Thanks for the conversation

@oritteropo
"[Norway's] stats of 20% recidivism after 2 years compares fairly favourably with the United States statistics of 80% after 3, wouldn't you agree?"

You are controlling for ethnicity, right? Or not?

Scandinavians in the US do just as well as they do in Scandinavia, in the same way that East Asians in the US have just as low crime rates as they have in East Asia.

(Actually, Scandinavians do even better in the US than in Scandinavia, but not by a huge amount.)


So no, Scandinavians' crime rates in Scandinavia don't compare favorably with Scandinavians' crime rates in the US. They do great in both systems.

candy looks tasty. One thing come to mind though:
. I hope they are paying attention to where their palm oil comes from. Palm oil plantations are a major cause of deforestation. This has traditionally been a south east asian problem (of devastating proportions), but now even that beautiful Amazonian forest that they use to advertize their product is being cut down for this purpose as well.

I'm sure there is a better site, but this is the first thing that google spit out:
http://news.mongabay.com/2008/0709-amazon_palm_oil.html

@longde

Cool. Societies need more immigrants that raise the average, and less immigrants that lower the average.


I don't see a link to those stats, but the following stats seem more accurate:

The US Bureau of the Census, 2009, finds that East Asian immigrants score the highest in bachelor's degree attainment: 66%. The numbers skew even more in the 2nd generation (the first generation born here): 72%. Additionally, the numbers likely skew even more for advanced degrees, rather than just bachelor's degrees.


Regarding general populations, we can make confident predictions about the future trajectory of nations based on the high average educational performance of poor areas in East Asia relative to the lower average educational performance of wealthier areas in Africa, the Middle East, Latin America, and Europe. Anyway, it's good to see the stories of the young scholars in that video.

>> ^chilaxe:

@Porksandwich
I'm talking about north-east Asians (Chinese/Hongkongese/Chinese-Singaporeans, Koreans, Japanese, Taiwanese). Other Asians don't have the same significantly consistent high performance.
Increases in school spending don't significantly correlate with increases in student performance. You can't change someone's nature to make them like to read, and bad teachers & old textbooks can't turn a driven person with a good attitude into someone who doesn't like to read.


Praising athletics while scorning academics is a common trend in the US. It is most definitely disheartening to see the programs that only a small fraction of the student body participate in getting the lion's share of the budget. And increases in school spending also tend to get funneled away from the absolute educational needs and maintenance of the buildings to large projects such as a new school being built or new sports complex. It happens time and time again that the money ends up being spent on things that fall under the umbrella of "school budget" but are not directly related to education.

And I would agree that you can't change someone's nature, but you could spend time trying to identify their interests and fostering those. Math and Science are great, we need more but as you said you can't change their natural inclinations. Bad teachers are notorious for forcing material by the standard means rather than try to find out what would best suite them. Perhaps you need to see things written to retain knowledge, but you write slowly....and the teacher continues to throw a lot of information at you faster than you can write. That is not serving the purpose of education, and it is no big inconvenience or time sink to the class for the teacher to hand out a basic packet to follow along and add additional information to allow people to keep up. Hell I had college professors do this, so you could make your own notes on the subject but still have an organized list of topics pertinent to the lesson.

So short version: School spending does not mean spending toward education. Bad teachers can stunt progress of students through a number of means. Hell a person with a heavy foreign accent can make it hell on earth trying to follow along or do the required homework if they never write it down. A person who can learn in spite of all of this, probably has parents who've given them the time and means to do so or may even know much on the subjects themselves. An immigrant with uneducated parents who may only speak but not read or write English is going to find this much more difficult.

If my parents had taken me out of the US and into Mexico where very little was taught in English, and my parents spoke rough Spanish and couldn't read or write in Spanish....I'd find myself struggling as well. Especially if there was no time to tutor after school because I had to be home for chores or an after school job to make ends meet. Only an extremely exceptional person could prevail through that, and I refuse to believe that all Asians of the categories you mention have no additional help outside of school. And that may be where the focus should lie immigrants not of those categories, helping establish this foundation for their cultural groups and filling it with people who are familiar with their common backgrounds and beliefs to help them adapt. If they are naturalized, you are stuck with them now.....and just throwing them under the bus because they aren't the Asians types you hoped for as immigrants is not going to solve it. If they are willing to work and not undermining society through malice...they can be worked with to find a place for them. This goes for both natural born citizens and former immigrants.....ignoring huge swathes of your population is not a good idea.

Anyway, I don't view immigration as a national problem. Sure it has some influence on the overall problems the country faces, especially illegals. But the core of our problems are related to greed as has been stated, but policies that ignore the people and favor the profit machines whether they be individuals or corporations in spite of the people. And that's where the favor towards Socialism is springing up in the young, Capitalism may have worked but it is no longer allowing the young to establish a life that would even come close to that of their parents. They are reducing the opportunity chance as time goes on for each new generation by these choices. So I don't blame anyone for wanting to throw out what these decision makers cling to as sacred in favor of trying something else that may restore a little sanity into the system. After all, your citizenry needs a way to support itself without being a member of the armed forces, born wealthy, or just plain lucky.

It has nothing to do with their Asian heritage, and everything to do with immigrant characteristics and culture. African immigrants are actually the highest achieving group in the States:




According to America's national Census Bureau, close to 44% of Africans living in the US have a college degree, compared to 23% of the US population, making them the community with the highest rate of academic achievement in the States. A Reuters Africa Journal report by Marie Lora.

>> ^chilaxe:

@Porksandwich
I'm talking about north-east Asians (Chinese/Hongkongese/Chinese-Singaporeans, Koreans, Japanese, Taiwanese). Other Asians don't have the same significantly consistent high performance.
Increases in school spending don't significantly correlate with increases in student performance. You can't change someone's nature to make them like to read, and bad teachers & old textbooks can't turn a driven person with a good attitude into someone who doesn't like to read.

@Porksandwich

I'm talking about north-east Asians (Chinese/Hongkongese/Chinese-Singaporeans, Koreans, Japanese, Taiwanese). Other Asians don't have the same significantly consistent high performance.

Increases in school spending don't significantly correlate with increases in student performance. You can't change someone's nature to make them like to read, and bad teachers & old textbooks can't turn a driven person with a good attitude into someone who doesn't like to read.

@GenjiKilpatrick

Try to elevate intellectual discourse and be a champion of science even if it goes against Western cultural mores. This was a key point you were looking for: "Whatever policies get increased by a shift to socialism are fair to call socialist."

Before you resort to insults, you should be prepared to explain how advocating East Asian, Scandinavian, and Jewish immigration is anti-immigration. Asians do count as minorities, even though they score so much better than white people that liberals discriminate against Asians in college admissions.

We bring you peace.
>> ^chilaxe:

@Porksandwich "Socialism works in other countries, and works quite well."

Does this apply to socialist countries outside of northern Europe?
Socialism works in Scandinavia because it's full of Scandinavians. Scandinavians in the US - regardless of whether their family has been here 100 years or 1 year - are like East Asians and Jews in the US... they contribute to society at a rate far above other cultural groups.
If the US was full of Scandinavians it would rank similarly to Scandinavia, regardless of the differences in economic systems. US outcomes in general are driven by cultural groups.

>> ^chilaxe:

@Porksandwich "Socialism works in other countries, and works quite well."

Does this apply to socialist countries outside of northern Europe?
Socialism works in Scandinavia because it's full of Scandinavians. Scandinavians in the US - regardless of whether their family has been here 100 years or 1 year - are like East Asians and Jews in the US... they contribute to society at a rate far above other cultural groups.
If the US was full of Scandinavians it would rank similarly to Scandinavia, regardless of the differences in economic systems. US outcomes in general are driven by cultural groups.


It would be a lie to say you knew every aspect of every country without living in those countries to judge whether it "works" or not. You'd have to live at every income level and in various locations within each country to really KNOW for yourself. For example the US works quite well if you are a billionaire, but not so much if you make minimum wage. Your opportunity chance is going to be a magnitude higher as a billionaire, and if you fail you won't be destitute...versus the minimum wage worker.

With that said, there is a general theme in the US that if they don't believe they came up with the idea, plan of execution and implementation without basing any of it on "other" countries then we don't want it.

The common argument during the universal healthcare debate was that while other countries offer it, it wouldn't work in the US. And that's where the explanation usually ended, they would always follow up with the US needs to come up with it's own solution. And then inevitably it would be slight changes to the current system that already doesn't work for many. Then we would ignore that something like 30-35% of the US population is already receiving Medicare/Medicaid coverage that would typically be considered a universal healthcare program if it included everyone else.

It was a really disingenuous argument when you consider that they are trying to keep corporations involved in healthcare and never considered that maybe they should throw them out of the decision making process until they've come up with a plan. Then figure out how they could allow them in that wouldn't be detrimental.

I just think they never looked at other countries implementations to see what they could use for a framework in the US and see what would be required to implement it corporations or not.

But the point of all this is that, despite the evidence that things work in other countries. The US fosters the idea that borrowing ideas from other countries and suiting them to ourselves makes us inferior, and we'd rather stew in the mess we've created until we can come up with something wholly uninfluenced by things outside the country rather than try to fix it sooner by looking abroad. This would be a fine mentality if we didn't cut funding on things that were designed to give us the edge when it comes to discoveries of new things and ideas throughout various fields. There was a time when we were openly giving many of those findings to other countries to do what they will with them, but now we in turn are too good to look at them and consider what we could gain from their methods.

Our government is there to serve and protect it's people, but it doesn't protect them from corporations through regulations or limitations of the powers they have over us. SOPA and John Doe piracy lawsuits are good examples. Mortgage crisis is better. None of those serve the people or the society the people make up. And corporations are not people, so they are part of the society but they do not create the society. Corporations should exist as long as they are beneficial to society, not a minute longer.

It may be cultural group driven, but it seems the younger people are willing to abandon cultural beliefs to attempt something else so they have a chance at a future. We as a nation are unwilling to undo what we have done...we look at our past and despite there being evidence of marching down a slowly declining path that is becoming steeper and steeper.....we continue downward. Now we have to wonder if it's so dark we can't see the huge spiked pit with the very narrow walkway for the well off to tread upon. While the rest of us walk blindly into the pit.

Wool over our eyes, blinders, cart on a lead. Tracks to the cliffs edge. Whatever analogy you want to use.

Edited for clarity and thinking ahead and using the wrong word in a couple places.