Michelle Cottle hates Joe Millionaire and Noy Thrupkaew tells you why it degrades both genders. Yeah, but people are flocking to watch it.

Unfortunately, I think as contrived and artificial as these shows are, they are shedding light on a few of the strands that makes people select their mates. Intelligence & humor are always the number #1 criteria that both men and women declare in their prospective partner, but what is left unsaid is that there is a general level of physical attractiveness that is necessary (or barring that, financial success) that must be met before you would even allow the process of discernment to begin. Personally, what I find most amusing is watching men having to create rationales for their choices of women for what they know is a predominantly female audience. It seems clear that their selections of women are based on physical appearence and willingness to “put out” (let’s be honest, how well can you get to know someone in a week anyhow? The first rounds are all about meat-inspection).

OK, when ESPN spends a lot of time reporting on this Yao/Shaq insensitivity thing-it’s getting wwwaaayyy out of hand in our society [1]. Do you know how many times a month I have people asking me to talk like Apu Nahasapeemapetilon?. I mean, I can do it, so I indulge them. Laughs all around. I mean, I make jokes about Irish people being drunks (sorry Jason M. & duende), who am I to protest? (I spent my grade school years in Albany, NY, dominated by an Irish Catholic machine political system and most of my classmates were from working class Celtic backgrounds)

Just watched the Houston-L.A. game on T.V.-did you see Yao’s huge Chinese parents (I think they were his parents?) in the stands? They were clapping in the most subdued Asian manner. It was hilarious to me for some reason, they were like no other parents I’d seen being focused in on by the cameras during game-time….

[1] And what is not being said is that our society does have a milder standard for making fun of east, south and west Asians than say for Latin Americans, and especially for black Americans (imagine Yao doing some faux ebonics). But, I’m all for keeping that mild standard intact, I think one reason that whites and Asians get along in the US is that whites are less stressed out about offending them. “Sensitivity” tends to put up barriers between groups I think, rather than relaxing tensions. And if there’s one thing I oppose with a passion, it is barriers between me & women of northern European heritage on account of “sensitivity” (though true, “sensitivity” can be turned to one’s advantage….)

For those of you who have read some of my comments and posts, you know I’m desperately seeking employment as I wrap up grad school. I’d prefer a job in strategic/management consulting for biotechnology/pharmaceutical companies or in the analysis of equities in those categories.

If you’re in that field, or know someone who is and can connect me up with him/her, I’d appreciate any leads.

Thanks

Here is the resume-also present to the left indefinitely….

E-mail me at david@gnxp.com

Razib adds: “GENE EXPRESSION helping the cognitive elite get their foot in the door of life….”

Someone on the message board is asking about the average IQ of the enlisted soldier. Anyone know? The military is REALLY into testing, but he claims he can’t find it via google.

Please e-mail ?’s you want added to the FAQ to FAQ@gnxp.com.

Posted by razib at 12:05 AM

This City Journal article titled Why Feminism Is AWOL on Islam is important. One thing though that those of the West-PoMo-types and defenders of the tradition-might forget is that sometimes women want to be “oppressed.” Check out this article relating the far greater number of Islamists, many women, protesting equalization of the medieval Muslim divorce laws in Morocco (this is a moment where Robert Kaplan’s enlightened despot shines above the froth of anarchy).

Why would women oppose their own liberation? With rights come responsibilities (so goes the theory), and I suspect many of these women have been socialized to exist in an almost quasi-infantile state without a conception of self-determination and delude themselves that they are “protected” (at least to western eyes) [1]. Of course, there are different roles that men and women traditionally have. But the problem is that behavior between the genders overlaps, and absolute dictates do not take into account personal choice and autonomy.

[check out this related article in Beliefnet about Muslim-Christian custody disputes, I don’t know where I stand on this, but it raises confusing questions. They should raise them atheists and allow them to pick gods when their grow up I say!]

[1] All my liberal friends seem to have heard or encountered traditional Muslim women telling them that they feel “protected” and “respected” by Islam. There might be something to this, but children are also protected and respected. While to a westerner an educated Muslim woman wearing a head-scarf might say that “she is a pearl to be cherished,” in my personal experience as a child, the prime justification that Muslims of South Asian origins made for purdah was that a woman was for the eyes of her man only (perhaps Muslims of other nationalities are more noble in inclination, I have no knowledge of that…). A far less edifying reason, but logical insofar as I believe that most Muslim men view their women-folk as property owned by the extended family which they are head. This explains the story recounted in the article of a father beheading his seven year old daughter because she was raped by her uncle, she was damaged property that blemished the appraisal value (social standing) of the clan. There’s a reason I think the terms “civlization” and “barbarism” should make a comeback….

This article from Scientific American titled “The Reality of Race” is very Zen. Read and see if you agree.

This article explodes the ‘myth of segregation’ by using a new method:

The UWM researchers offer a definition that measures the percentage of residents in a metro area who live on blocks that are at least 20% black and 20% white – with the remaining 60% made up of any combination of black, white or other ethnicity.
…
In contrast to this “20/20” approach, the traditional segregation index takes a metro area such as Milwaukee, which is 16% African-American, and computes how many blacks would have to move to disperse them evenly in each census tract of Milwaukee, Waukesha, Ozaukee and Washington counties. By that standard, both a census tract with a 15% black population and one with a 20% black population would be rated as segregated – one too white, the other too black.

Of course, there is this caveat:

“I don’t think the dissimilarity index measures the degree to which the average white is exposed to blacks in their neighborhood or the average black is exposed to whites in their neighborhood,” said John Logan, a sociology professor and demographer at the State University of New York at Albany. Logan is perhaps the most quoted researcher in America on the segregation rankings.

Thanks to The Edge of England’s Sword for the link.

Posted by razib at 02:06 AM

Fascinating article over at Frontpage. Just a few notes:

“To the racist, the individual’s moral and intellectual character is the product, not of his own choices, but of the genes he shares with all others of his race.”

By “intellectual character” I think that he means preferences, say, of Toni Morrison over Joyce Carol Oates. He skirts the IQ question, but also postulates this:

“This philosophy is why racial division is growing at our colleges. The segregated dormitories, the segregated cafeterias, the segregated fraternities—these all exist, not in spite of the commitment to “diversity,” but because of it. “

I agree that constant preaching of diversity and identity politics can increase self-segregation, but the author doesn’t seem to note that many people self-segregate on their own, without any prompting from Diversity Consultants. Interesting article, otherwise, though I must quibble with his use of “skin color” as a synonym for race. By that method Gong Li and I are the same race, at least when she stays out of the sun.

Posted by duende at 10:37 AM

After all the controversy these past few days, I decided to take stock, and note what the ethnicities of the people who have accounts on this blog are. Of the people that are active in posting or moderating, you have two brown guys (Suman is a Hindu Bengali and I am a Muslim one, though we are both atheists), duende & Jason M. are Irish-American, while David is 1/4 African-American and I know some of the rest is German. Jason Soon is Chinese Malaysian by origin, Australian by nationality. Of people with accounts that haven’t been active there’s one brown guy (Christian by origin, not religious), two Scots, a Jew and a white guy who’s ethnicity (and name) I don’t know.

We could make some bizarre satire about a race-hatred group that can’t figure out who to hate because we include too many types of people.