Bad news for atheists: individuals low in religiosity are more likely to have a “slacker” personality 
 
Good news for slackers: individuals high in conscientiousness are more likely to have a “gullible fool” personality 
 
Equally fair and balanced

If there is a correlation between higher intelligence and higher fitness, we should not necessarily expect to see no variation in intelligence (i.e. the bell curve disappears) but we should expect to see the bell curve moving to the right over time.

“‘one powerful man having hundreds of children.’ He cites the fecund Moulay Ismail of Morocco, who died in the 18th century, and is reputed to have fathered 888 children”
I was always under the impression that fecundity is not measured in any way by males, but only females in a population, as females limit the overall possible population, where males do not limit

Nice post! What about drift? That is, it doesn’t account for new genes, but should account for the overall changes in populations over time, correct? (then again, the human population is quite large, so would drift only have a geographical bearing?) So as long as mutations do occur, selection wouldn’t be the only force acting on a population.

The Hakka’s origins are disputed, but some studies show them to be similar to Hmong. Whatever their origins, I think living in the southeast exposed them to the same selective pressures as the Cantonese and Fujianese. Through similar selective pressure and intermarriage, I think you may have had an equalization amongst the different southern ethnicities.

Within China, it’s said that the southerners dominate much of the private sector in the north and the urban areas. Even the northerners that live in the Russian far east are mainly peddlers of cheap goods and laborers. They haven’t been able to turn around the far east’s dismal economic situation or create much in the way of new jobs or industry. Contrast the northerners to the Fujianese and Cantonese in SE Asia, who have driven those economies into industrial powers.

Started seeing “Negro Addition” (and lots of PC anachronisms in general) in the TV series “Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman”.

So believable: California model-types dressed in brand-new buckskin dialoguing in surfer accents about women’s rights and the need to be sensitive to all persons of color – on the frontier circa 1875. Not to mention a female doctor, at a time when most places looked askance even at female nurses (Florence Nightingale notwithstanding).

I didn’t watch the whole series – did Dr. Quinn ever have a black boyfriend?

Such sums do not and cannot exist.

If you printed out one hundred $100 bills per second 24/7, it would take the better part of 200 years to reach $57,000,000,000,000. (One estimate of the USA deficit)

It’s just numbers on a screen representing nothing that could ever be real. It’s absurdity.

I say the hell with it. Erase the screen, default, and if anyone squawks, nuke ’em.

China would be no worse off in reality (as opposed to on the screen). They would still have (most of) their physical assets, not even counting all the secrets they stole from our labs. We would have our physical assets. Just wipe the slate fresh and start over with what each nation physically has got right now, and we will all be just fine. Screw the greedheads who made insane bets.

Funny. BUT Finns don’t have that annoying Scandinavian accent. We have an annoying accent of our own.

In the longterm…..

I see that you're not signing off on your comments anymore, Whiskey. I wonder why….

This would be a good excuse for the government to require universities to divorce themselves of sports programs all together and stick to being academic institutions. Would solve several problems, including title IX issues and also complaints about the affirmative action of bringing in athletes with SAT scores 400 points below the average student. Then again, this would lead to more racial disparate impact…

"What are we electing Republicans for?"

Oil and Israel.

The third anonymous had an excellent post.

The country is doomed. We'll have war until Jesus comes home (or the economy collapses, whichever).

Kirchick is a fellow at FDD:

http://www.defenddemocracy.org/media-hit/fdd-welcomes-lee-smith-and-james-kirchick-as-fellows1/

His "areas of impact":

Arab Spring, Europe, Iran – Human Rights, Israel

Your points about the naivete of libertarians and Ron Paul fanatics w/r/t race are correct.

However, the US faces problems outside of the racial issues. One such problem – in my opinion a massive problem – is foreign policy/war.

I will vote for Ron Paul because of his views on foreign policy.

If Paul tried to defend the newsletters he'd be done in a heartbeat. I am glad he instead has decided to distance himself from them.

http://www.miamiherald.com/2011/12/29/2566223/miami-lakes-to-enforce-curfew.html

3-5000 blacks storm a mall in Miami Lakes.

I wish people would invent new sports. I'm bored with the existing sports. There was such a rush of creativity 100-150 years ago when the first boys schools were established. And it's been stasis pretty much ever since.

There are surprisingly few types of team sports.

There are the ones where you have to get the ball over a line — football, rugby, etc.

The ones where you put the ball/object past a goalie who guards the net – soccer, hockey, water polo, lacrosse, field hockey, team handball.

Basketball's innovation was to put the net so high it wasn't really possible to have a goalie and to make goal tending illegal.

There are the hit the ball over the net games and not let it bounce N (where N=1 or 2) times- volleyball, tennis, ping pong, badminton,

Oh, and the hit the ball and run to a safe base games – baseball, cricket, kickball.

I have noticed that the sports with goalies have big next while the sports without goalies like basketball and golf make the target just slightly bigger than the ball. I find games with goalies boring.

Hockey, soccer, and lacrosse should try a variant without a goalie but with a very small and hard to hit target. If you make it small enough you have low scoring. If you make it big enough you can score like basketball. People like scoring so I'd recommend making it pretty big to boost scoring.

Aussie Rules is a fun rugby variant. But can't spread outside Australia since it's called Aussie Rules.

I don't understand why the countries who aren't good at soccer keep obsessively playing it. After a 100+ years of being no better than the 35th or 54th best country at a sport — why not just give up? Make up some weird national variant and be the best at that. Isn't that more fun?

I get a kick out of obscure sports and tried to watch Team Handball. It's pretty big in Europe. But it just looks like a slow hockey power play to me. The Danes seem to love it though.

Some guys in Philly invented a sport they called Kronum a few years ago. They have youtube videos. Tried to be a combo of basketball, soccer, and handball.

I've also long been surprised that no indoor variant of baseball was ever developed. All these arenas with empty seats looking for sporting events to fill them up. Yet hockey and basketball are pretty much it.

Wow! Inbreeding for me is very simple, ’cause I’m microbiologist. I’ll explain what I used to think about inbreeding before I have read your comment:

Inbreeding for me and Yeast genetists is mating between relatives (sibling x sibling, parent x sibling and any relative which has similar genetic origin). What can you obtain doing inbreeding? You can find alleles which modify a fenotype in a positive way (e. g. Glucose and Nitrogen compounds uptake) or in a negative way. Homozygous individuals are what we look for.
If we talk about higher eukaryotes, an Inbred population is one which individuals have mated among distant or close relatives and as a matter of fact, the allele diversity is lower. If you analise a tribe you can find inbreeding, but if you analise south american population you will find so little inbreeding, because our population have been generated from different cultures and “genetic backgrounds”.

Have I resolved your problem? 😀 Simple ideas (diversity) could help you.

Do you think the Jamaicans are cheating (ie doping)?
They seem to have made a dramatically quick rise to total domination of sprinting.

Less than 3 million Jamaicans. So the US West African population is 15x as large to pick from.

I find it easy to believe that all levels of govt in Jamaica would look the other way, if not actively assist, in any doping program and cover-up.

The success of Jamaica's sprinting is the best PR for Jamaica since Bob Marley. Who would want to rock that boat?

There may be other monuments, but this one at the SPLC lists several dozen.
http://www.splcenter.org/civil-rights-memorial/civil-rights-martyrs

Hi AK, it’s the first time I comment here but I’ve been reading your blog for a few months already and it’s quickly becoming one of my favorite blogs, good job!

I like your index more than the infamous CPI. That being said, I think Indonesia ranking at #36, just 6 places behind Poland is hardly believable. I’m Polish and I used to live in Indonesia for some time, and I gotta say that the difference in corruption prevalence was huge. Three years ago the corruption in Indonesia was at levels that are almost unimaginable to an EU citizen so unless some truly monumental change took place there in those three years since I’ve last been there I don’t think they should be ranked anywhere close to Chile and Czech Republic. The data may be skewed because corruption in Indonesia is mostly voluntary. That is, on one hand you would hardly ever come across someone openly demanding a bribe but on the other you can bribe pretty much anyone if you want to and achieve unbelievable things for laughably low bribes*, all it takes is some contacts and know-how.

*An example: I was offered an Indonesian ID card – a real one made in a government office from original materials, only with fake personal details – for mere $30! I don’t know how much it would cost one to pull a similar trick in Poland but I’m guessing the price would be in the thousands if it is at all possible.

Ive been going through Steve's articles fleshing out citizenism, and I cant seem to find a line that he once wrote that I remember reading a while back. It was a response to cheap labor proponents, along the lines that one should care about your fellow citizens, because theyre the ones you expect to fight with you and for you when things go to hell. Except the wording was more Sailerish and poignant.

If anyone can find what Im talking about, Id really appreciate it. My google-fu is not as good as I thought it was, and Im wondering if Im just imagining the whole thing.

The US is still invading the world for land. Only now we do it for Israel. Not only that, but we are forced to dilute the land per capita so American Jews dont have to feel repulsed and scared by a mostly homogeneous white American nation coupled with select highly educated immigrants.

The "invade the world/invite the world" still continues without missing a beat. Only now the US political elites wants anyone and everyone BUT Northwestern European whites. What is the purpose of modern US immigration policy and foreign policy? Not for the common people, thats for sure.

The world was on a gold coin standard. The United States became the reserve currency because it was literally as good as gold. When the US went off, so had the rest of the world, so there was no transition. It remained as a reserve currency. It also helps that OPEC only sells its oil in US dollars, thereby creating global demand for the currency. And when countries like Iraq, Libya, and Iran, entertain selling their oil exports for other currencies, they are met with economic sanctions for unrelated reasons. Couple that with Japan and China buying US debt in order to maintain their own trade surplus at the expense of the US also creates demand.

But the most important reason of all is taxes. Governments create demand for their respective fiat currencies by only accepting that "worthless paper" as payment, and will seize real property in the event of failure to pay what is owed.

Its why libertarians are wrong when they think legalizing gold and silver will undermine the fiat money system. Even in the likely event that capital gains tax on gold and silver is removed, people will just hoard precious metals and pay their bills and debt in fiat money. And thanks to legal tender laws, you cant refuse it even if you are the most zealous goldbug.

Anonymous said…

And, of course, shiny metals like gold are also lacking in real value. People just invest them with a completely illusory symbolic value.

3/28/14, 5:09 PM

Not because its symbolic, but because of tradition. Metal coins have always been money from 700 BC all the way until the middle of the 20th century, when the ruling class up and decided to do away with the "barbarous relic." Well over 2000 years of established history. And yet now its become unthinkable of bringing it back. Given enough time and control over the opinion-forming organs of society, the ideological state apparatus's as Louis Althusser called them, one can simply dictate what is valued and what isnt.

I do agree with goldbugs though that gold is honest money. You cannot debase it as easily as the push of a button like central banks do today. They would have to first repo every coin in circulation and then physically dilute the gold content of each coin before reissuing them. Its been done repeatedly by kings throughout history, but always complicated, and intellectuals notice the aftereffects of mass inflation. Fiat money allows it be to done so slowly and insidiously that people can actually be convinced that its a good thing to have 2% (at minimum) of your cash holdings to simply evaporate every year for the benefit of the political and financial elites. It goes back to the ISA's again.

3/29/14, 5:49 AM Anonymous said…
" And tradition is just another way of saying that the symbol is old…"

Yeah, no.

Symbol-something that stands for or suggests something else by reason of relationship, association, convention, or accidental resemblance; especially: a visible sign of something invisible

Tradition-a way of thinking, behaving, or doing something that has been used by the people in a particular group, family, society, etc., for a long time

I dont see why you feel compelled to stretch your symbol argument rather than just admit the oversight. People first adopted coins because it was better currency than food. Nothing better came along over the millennia, and people had to be forced to make the transition to paper money through gold confiscation and threat of imprisonment.

"Well, since we have a 700 BC starting date, metal coins have not always been money…"

Of course. But we are talking about civilizations that have evolved from primitive hunter-gatherer societies, and are at least pastoral in nature, if not industrial.

"And monarchy goes back even further…."

Your point? Monarchy can easily be argued to be superior to universal suffrage democracy. The diffusion of responsibility alone makes it untenable for long-term stability, with political factions blaming each other for every failure. A sword of Damocles was essential in keeping the ruling class honest, a threat which has unfortunately been completely removed.

"Yes, just as the ideological state apparatus convinced people that some shiny coins could be exchanged for something of real value, like, say, a cow…"

Actually no. People made the transition all on their own. Kings were late to make the change to collecting taxes in coins and were still taking food, seashells, and whatnot. However, the revenue lost out was regained and then some by nationalizing gold mints.

"A much simpler method is to flood the gold market. Since gold is a commodity, its value goes up and down according to scarcity…."

Of course. But as with any commodity, the available supply is limited by rates of annual production and industrial consumption. More importantly, the capacity for gold stocks to grow is a feature, not a flaw. When demand for gold exceeds supply, jewelry and even dental fillings can be melted down. Computers and electronics can be scrapped and salvaged, all growing the total gold stock as needed. The non-monetary demand for gold gives it value as money, but it is not permanently consumed as with food and other commodities.

"And, of course, gold is also fiat money….unless you think that a pound of gold actually has inherent value…"

There is no such thing as inherent value. The only metric to valuate the price of any good is what another person will give you for it. Gold will always have value for that reason. Or at least until matter duplicators become a reality.

Im also curious how the Israel-firsters who frequent this blog will respond. "Israel is an exception because it is a Jewish nation, but America is a nation of immigrants" would be my guess, peppered with some passive aggressive insinuation of antisemtism for even bringing up the topic of Israeli immigration policy and neocon duplicity.

"Personally, I am in favor of strict immigration restrictions for both Israel *and* America, but practically nobody is with me on this one. There's already a Jews for the Preservation of Firearms Ownership–anyone for Jews for American Immigration Limits? (The acronym is what we'd like to do with the illegals. 😉 )"

How about Jews for American Immigration Limits and Expedited Removal? JAILER is a better acronym than JAIL.

I thought the impressive Finnish scores resulted from Finland having fewer immigrants to drag down their scores. You want Finnish scores aim for Finnish demographics.

Ah I know that grey so well (of what hair I have left).

Great pic, handsome and adorably cute! Congratulations again Razib!

Latest from Australia. Money works.

http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/abbott-offers-asylum-seekers-10k-to-go-home-20140620-3ajr6.html

Thanks Razib for the nostalgic memories, I love David Brin’s books to this day, especially the Uplift serieis. Also love reading his thoughts and his commentary on his blog:

http://davidbrin.blogspot.com/2012/09/intelligence-uplift-and-our-place-in.html

One other thing I loved is that he pissed off Star Wars fans with his critique of the ideology behind Star Wars (he did one for Lord of the Rings for it’s elitiist views, but I don’t think I came across any angry reactions).

Housing projects like this have failed all over the world. Here in Australia and even monoracial Ireland(wiki search:Ballymun Flats in U2 song). Not good to have people with lots of problems living in these high rises. Too many shared walls and shared spaces. Not enough partitioning and containment of problems. Brings out in worst in women and men. Not exactly a race thing. My wife grew up in one them in Malmo, Sweden. Her main complaint were old men flashing her in elevator.

Lol at this triangulating clown:

As I wrote before, it’s a lovely place to VISIT . I did not suggest that you or anyone else, who are not Singaporean, fly over there this minute to live forever.

Unless you are blessed by God to be a free American, a man can do a lot worse than living in Singapore. If there ever was an argument for a benevolent, paternalistic (mild) dictatorship, Singapore is it.

For a “communitarian conservative” you sure do wax rhapsodic about dat exotic cuisine and the cleanliness of foreign sidewalks. Here I thought it was a pons asinorum of conservatism to be unimpressed with mere commercial success or superficial orderliness (degenerate Hollywood can achieve the former, draconian Pyongyang the latter). Do Singaporeans have deep roots, a traditional culture, and a strong sense of local identity? That would impress me, but you’re conspicuously silent on the subject (apparently it’s less important than how their food tastes). Or is it really just a shiny, sterile playground where transnational elites can enjoy their bottle service and top-shelf prostitutes?

The fact that a handful of cosmopolitan entrepot cities have enjoyed financial success has no implications for how to properly govern a sprawling, geographically diverse, culturally balkanized mess like the modern USA. The differences in size, history, and complexity are insurmountable. If this isn’t blindingly obvious to you then you may not be as conservative as you imagine. You also don’t help your case with comments like “of course we’d rather not have any immigration, but if we HAVE to open the floodgates then we might as well give preference to high IQ Asians and Jews”, which is both wrong (I’d take white Europeans over Chinese any day, they’re much closer culturally and genetically to the core US population) and seems to eagerly invite the interpretation that this is what you actually want to happen.

One of the funniest post I have read for a while. Almost die laughing.

Quantity over quality is a very American mentality. Of course the quality of words matters more, but we needed Science to tell us so.

Steve, regarding this:

Seriously, isn’t one logical implication of this line of thought that educated mothers should be stay at home mothers rather than hire Mayan-speaking Guatemalan ladies to mind their children while they work?

The reason that these mothers are working is not feminist indoctrination, generally. Not the married ones at least. Feminism is the ideological mask over the reality that two incomes are generally needed to live in a good neighborhood. In my metro a decent 3 bed, 50 year old house in an nice area (where the schools are still about half black) costs 500,000$. Few people are able to earn on one salary enough to support such a mortgage. The wife earns 60k in HR or similar added to husband salary of 80k, and there you have a 500k house.

“When Strom Thurmond ran for president, we voted for him. We’re proud of it. And if the rest of the country had followed our lead, we wouldn’t have had all these problems over the years, either.” Amen.

Amen.

seems like if you were a gazillionare harpy and you wanted your wuss hubby whacked, having it done in Mexico would be ideal. Just grease a few palms and you have the hit men you need and compliant law enforcement.

Was there a security camera at the gym?

“The general manager at the Four Seasons said that Goldberg had not been a guest and that the accident had not taken place at the Four Seasons.”

http://news.yahoo.com/surveymonkey-ceo-goldberg-died-hotel-gym-173112024--finance.html

Ron Unz’s ethnic heritage is Israeli-Russian (Jewish).

I think his analysis of the statistics is persuasive.

For those who believe in white supremacy, over african americans and hispanics…Tests are not culturally appropriately designed, they are a piggy bank for some… So please, stop hating. Reading some of these comments made me nauseous. Is a new era of nazi sh** going on? Is it why Donald Trump is a favorite presidential candidate? These times seems like a commencement of a reversal of all the progress achieved so far as a society. What is the objective of such comparisons? How can you compare tests of 50 states altogether with one territory? Tests that have been translated? In other parts of the world, though, tests are in English, and guess what? US scores are a shame! Ask the French. What is wrong with the land of freedom and all that jazz? Viva Puerto Rico!

Video Link

Apparently there is reason to believe FGM is practiced amongst Iranian and Iraqi Kurds due to the influence of the Shafii Islamic school, which is pro-FGM. Kurds in Turkey and Syria (where the YPG/PKK are most influential) don’t practice it because the Shafii school is less influential. Here’s a good article about it:

http://www.rferl.org/content/Female_Genital_Mutilation_Said_To_Be_Widespread_In_Iraqs_Irans_Kurdistan/1507621.html

BTW the Shafii school is also popular in southeast Asia, where a mild form of FGM is practiced amongst Muslims.

Also, Kurdish leadership is quite divided. The Kurdish regional government of Iraq has nothing to do with Ocalan’s ideology and is more conservative than the ppk-inspired PYD of Syria (although still more pluralistic than most Middle Eastern governments). Talabani’s PUK in Iraq is somewhere in between, liberalism-wise.

Hi Razib, this a little late to be posting to this thread, but I did DNA.land using my 23&me data and my results were:

100% West Eurasian:

70% Dravidian
24% Indus Valley
3.8% Balkan
2.2% ambiguous west eurasian

I’m a south indian, kerala specifically, from the “syrian christian” ethno-religious group. I’m not surprised about the amount of dravidian being so far south, but I am surprised at the amount of “indus valley” and not even a iota of gujarati, it amost looks like the northweststern indian ancestors hopskipped over central india and went straight to the south. Is this typical of south indians? I also was surprised at the minor “Balkan”component, being syrian christian I was looking for a minor southwest asian component (some of our community believe we’re descended from Jewish converts along with local dravidian converts, but I am looking more toward Assyrian/Aramaics input due to a Nestorian influx).

I just wanted to see if you or anyone might be able to shed light on the typical south indian profiles, since I haven’t seen any other south indian profiles mentioned aside from Iyer (thank you by the way for posting yours) since he’s a brahmin though he would of had more northern origins….

This is very different from my 23@me profile which didn’t seem to even try to differentiate the ancestries and just basically said I was south asian (with a few miniscule other ancestries)

Practices of female seclusion must have been adopted from the Roman or Persian upper classes (or maybe the Jews?).

This is not true. North African church father Tertullian, writing around the 3rd century, identified face veiling as a pagan Arabian custom in chapter 17 of his insufferable treatise “On the Veiling of Virgins”:

Arabia’s heathen females will be your judges, who cover not only the head, but the face also, so entirely, that they are content, with one eye free, to enjoy rather half the light than to prostitute the entire face.

Likewise, the Talmud associates veils with Arab culture in ch. 6 of Tractate Shabbat:

Arabians may go out in their long veils and Medians in their mantillas; so may even all women go out, but the sages spoke of existing customs.

It’s likely that nomadic Arab women had more freedom than settled ones. But as Patricia Crone points out, the Quran seems to suggest a more agricultural audience (on that note, I find myself increasingly persuaded that the events in the Quran took places in Arabia Petraea rather than Mecca in Saudi Arabia, but that’s another story).

“Colonialism wiped that confidence out from Senegal to Malaysia.” Post colonial theory is such a cop out. It bascially seems to give free license for a “get out of jail” response” to any criticism. but why does colonialism only seem to applied when it is european non-muslims doing it? The Islamic empire or “Ummah” as it were were colonialists. Everything you describe (letting religions keep their own personal courts, only worried about taxes and loyalty,etc. etc) pretty much applies to “colonial” empires, the British empire in particular. Now mind you we have more details about these “colonialist” ventures as they are more recent in history and even the “colonialists” themselves would write less than flattering things about themselves, alot about colonialism I suspect you learned more through western educations, and it’s more critical examinations of their own historical records, while being more generous toward native and especially “islamic” writings and records. Please use something other than “colonialism” to make excuses for “islams” close-mindnesss, or let islam take responsibility for the stifling of the non-muslim (pagan, zoroastrian, hindu, buddhist and gasp even christian) intellectual development as well in the areas that islam so innocously took control.

Now forgive my obvious irritation at this, you are quite a informative commenter and I read your comments with interest, this is more of a in general type response as I’ve seen this line of thinking before. You are gracious to non-muslims commentators (as you should be, but all types, christians, moslems and even those “peaceful” buddhists and hindus” can be less than courteous and good manners should always be recognized ), and you’re very knowledgeable but I find your versions of islamic theology and history a little too pat and sanitized, and explaining things away a little too naively.

A disclaimer as well here, these are my own views (and irritations) and readings of history and I don’t speak for anyone else. 😉

Why must a government borrow the money when it can issue new money for zero (or near zero) cost? Why pay interest to banks et al?

As Thomas Edison wrote: “But here is the point: If our nation can issue a dollar bond, it can issue a dollar bill. The element that makes the bond good makes the bill good. The difference between the bond and the bill is that the bond lets the money brokers collect twice the amount of the bond and an additional 20 per cent, whereas the currency pays nobody but those who directly contribute to Muscle Shoals in some useful way.”

Excellent points, all. May I have a recipe for gefelti fish?

Have always been a avid reader of your blog/articles, will continue to do so in your new venue.

I am looking forward to the new site, sounds exciting!

Congratulations and good luck!

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-07-03/trump-hopes-quietly-steal-russias-natgas-dominance-over-europe

I guess the suit doesn’t make the man

Is that the same ‘security’ (policing?) that was at the Charlottesville fiasco?

Here’s a good rule to make an estimation: leaving wild luck aside, it takes a good 10 years of working below the line of public recognition for an actress to get somewhere in the biz. Many actresses understand this intuitively. If an actresses resume doesn’t reflect a 10 year slog, and she’s not Meryl Streep level of talent, chances are sky high she bopped the director or producer.

Prime-time for an actress is in their twenties. Past that, it gets very difficult. If you’re a pretty 23 year old actress, just getting started, and you feel you aren’t going to be where you want to be until you’re 33 (!), are you going to let Fat Ugly Shlomo be your boyfriend for a time, with a decent promise that you’ll be in a featured movie role in a year or so, or do you slog through the shit till you’re well in your thirties with no guarantees?

Actresses act. So for many actresses, fucking a guy who repulses them is just part of their job description. They have to do it in plays, what’s the big difference if they do it with a director in real life for awhile, if it means leapfrogging past a ton of monotonous shit in the process? What’s real life anyway? Acting. That’s what it is, right?

As an actress, once your career gets “in the zone,” and you’re a recognized public figure, more or less, it’s less an imperative for you to deliver the pink for you to make a decent or good living. But do you want to move up a notch? Uh-oh…

Let’s say you did it the ethical way, and now you’re 33 and have a good supporting role or two under your belt. Now you want an Oscar to move you up to the next level. You’re not that creative, or self-disciplined or smart enough to start or maintain your own functioning production company. You’re still dependent on getting roles created by others. Do you take the pain, and hand over the pink to Fat Old Jewey, or do you fly by the seat of your pants as offers dwindle every year? You’re in your thirties. Make the decision girl. He’s here, he has his hand on your ass. You’re drunk. Make the decision. You have a couple of friends who are doing a lot better than you. Fat Old Jewey helped them. You know that for a fact. Have another line of coke.

Make the decision. He’s gonna leave. Make the decision.

The double standard and hypocrisy of some whites is unbelievable, and you are making your people look bad. If China needs to leave Tibet and Xinjjiang, then white people should get out of North America and Australia at the minimum.

I don’t think Jews could penetrate the Chinese society easily. After all, Jews look rather different from the chinese and would find it impossible to manipulate a highly cultural monoethnic population in the billion, the examples of which are Mongols, Manchus or kaifeng Jews that had eventually been absorbed by the chinese.

No doubt Jews are smart, resilient and entrepreneurial people, but besides their tribalism, i think their disaportionate success today in global business, academics, politics is largely due to the rise and dominance of white powers where their host are. However, chinese are not white and don’t buy the monotheist Judeo-Christian religion. Interestingly, today the small number of overseas chinese seem to gradually outperform the Jews in many fields even in western societies.

You think Britain gave up India out of altruism or social justice? They had to because they became a bankrupted and impotent sunset power after 2 wars. The British elites understand their place clearly that’s why Hong Kong was returned to China although the Hong Kong island was permanently ceded to the UK by Qing China.

The math and verbal split indeed seems be able to explain a lot of things. But i don’t understand why software is more influenced by verbal instead of math skills? Also, with a huge population that gives chinese doctors and researchers a great advantage in obtaining clinical data, as well as a strong government support, less restricted laws and a more relaxing attitude in religion, i see China has more potential in biomedical and clinical research compared to the US or EU. For example, China currently is said to lead in gene editing in the world despite the fact they got into the game relatively late.

I agree on the aerospace analysis. Besides aerospace, to produce meaningful results most R&D is essentially a game of burning money plus accumulated experience/data from past trial and error (that also demands real money).The US economy relies heavily on seignoiorage from the dollar hegemony, but as the national debts grow, its previous model of depending on extravagant government funds and grants in R&D development has become difficult to go on. For example, in order to verify some basic data of a certain composite material US labs would conduct thousands of experiments, whereas china could achieve the same result by dozen times.

Many people imagine high-tech as something hidden in the lab or like alien tech. They simply ignore the fact that those lab techs are meaningful only if they are accessible to people. If smart phones could be made better yet cheaper, i’d say that’s tremendous high-tech.

I remember reading a comment here suggesting that the Christian values have played an important role in pushing the western society forward by encouraging people to seek new things. In contrast, there is a saying in China that living in the moment 活在当下, and i think china would be happily to do so had it not for the purpose of catching up and competing with the west after the opium war. If we think about it, are we really that much happier than our ancestors living in the past with no TVs, smartphones, etc? Modern technologies are basically some fancy toys that divert our attention from something to another. So far we haven’t faced a nuclear holocaust that causes the collapse of civilization, but the relentless urge to be unique, to invent something new, may well lead to the demise of human race. For one thing, AI is not that far away to replace humans.

Mainland China is a great place for Anatoly to do his work except that there is the great firewall. VPN would be helpful but it’s just not convenient. Hong Kong would be an ideal alternative, and it probably has the best Indian food among Chinese cities.

It’s better get hit by Shanghai’s smog that by Jose’s/Tyrone’s proven method of Glock-approved income-transfer.

Interestingly, despite the dreaded smog, Shanghai has an average life expectancy higher than most developed countries. I think the ranking is 4th in the world. Same goes to Beijing.

MSM call it smog, and I have little reason to doubt it given that Shanghai is sort of located in the central plain where smog from the north can be easily spread out.

Mr Chieh, I appreciate you provide this site with voices of people other than WN and am sorry for your mainland family members. However, the land reform PRC conducted is necessary and may be the most important factor that contributes to China’s rapid growth after Deng opened up China. Plenty of countries have cheap labor, but what makes China especially appealing for foreign investors is its highly efficient infrastructure, which would not be possible had it not been for the land reform to end the concentration of landholding in the minority landowners. India, on the other hand, did not go through land reform after its independence, so its manufacturing base can hardly be developed in contrast to Japan, China, South Korea.

Mr. Myself, I’ve always enjoyed reading your comments from the perspective of a laowai supposedly living in China now. However, grouping Cantonese with Uighurs, or to a less degree with Manchurians, as an example of resistance to assimilation is a bit off in my opinion. It’s true that most Muslim Uighurs in Southern Xinjiang identify themselves more with Islam and Turkey than with China, and they may truly be an outsider and resister in China.

The Manchurians used to be one of those alien barbarians that constantly harrased the borders of the middle kingdom and eventually took it over 400+ years ago, but now it’s hard to imagine they are not considered chinese (by Han chinese), because the concept of China is dynamic and the current chinese culture is a product of Manchurian culture and the old “orthodox” Chinese culture. In fact, the current standard chinese Mandarin, is based on the chinese dialect with a Manchurian accent. Manchurians now only hold on to being Manchurian when they want to be benefited from the chinese affirmative action that gives preferential treatment to ethnic minorities.

On the other hand, Cantonese have long been assimilated since Han dynasty. Mainland Cantonese hold on to being Cantonese is not that different from Shanghainese to being Shanghainese, or New Yorkers to being NYers, mostly out of a sense of uniqueness/exceptional-ness within rather than out of the larger group. Mandarin only became the standard national chinese less than a century ago. Given how large and diverse China is, people from different provinces may well regard their own dialect/culture as the more orthodox standard. Cantonese sound louder sometimes because 天高皇帝远, and by no means they would refuse a chinese identity. This is different from a few of those colonially loyal and brainwashed Hong Kong Cantonese that advocate for independence (a show similar to calexit in the US).

No wonder Windows 10 is becoming so sh*tty now that Indians have taken over Microsoft!

I have always enjoyed reading your thoughtful comments. If you decide to do it for us readers, here are some interesting statistics I found on a Chinese site, which might be useful:

For the majority of readers here who don’t understand Chinese, I did some translation for some data from the same chart:

View post on imgur.com

I think that people generally have a mental model of what constitutes appropriate behavior, and then when people break it, they expect the breakers to be punished. When they are not, and actually rewarded, that’s when it actually engenders respect.

See the below video:

Video Link

A man gave up his seat to an elderly Asian woman. While the black mother occupied 2 seats herself, she blamed racism and the old lady for not giving the seat to her daughter.

Nobody on that train stood up for the Asian woman, no one, all silent. I don’t think people would find respect in that beast, but in the end she got what she wanted. Duke is right, especially in a multicultural and multiracial environment. The Confucius ideals only work among people who share the same ideals.

While 70% of the US GDP is personal consumption, can you explain why China is the largest auto market(1.7X of the US), largest eCommerce market(2x of the US), largest smartphone market(2.7X of the US), largest industrial robot market(4x of the US), largest retail market, etc etc. yet Chinese Nominal GDP is only around 60% of the US GDP? If anything, the Chinese economy is deliberately under-reported to avoid the US paranoia. Remember the reaction of the US towards Made in China 2025?

Therefore, it’s not implausible that china will surpass Taiwan in the foreseeable future. China deliberately under-reports its GDP, whereas Taiwan’s GDP even includes the output value of Taiwanese companies and people working outside Taiwan.

Chinese GDP has to be under-reported. Someone made an interesting and useful table comparing key economics data among China, US, Japan, and India.

https://lt.cjdby.net/thread-2488663-1-2.html

China’s Nominal GDP is already number 1 but right now it’s just keeping a low profile to avoid the US’ paranoia.

There are all kinds of people on the internet, i’m sure you understand no need to be glass-hearted. To be fair, I agree with Spandrell on being polite and considerate but not on his very incendiary unnecessary rhetoric. His Chinese may need improvement too, as being good at cursing doesn’t necessarily mean good language skills.

在WN网站说了几句中文，给洋人和高等华人都添了这么多麻烦，成何体统，以致于高等华人不得不绞尽脑汁拿“规则”站出来伸张正义？

Love the free pass everyone gives CONgress and sticks the blame on Trump here.

“He lied”. “He went back on his promise”. Pretty tough to get things done; and this a Democom bulwark; migrants flooding the country. It’s their platform.

..yet it’s Trumps fault. Sure.

You’re stupid.