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From Deutsche Welle:
Don’t use the term ‘race,’ German scientists urge
Following the 100th anniversary of the death of the “German Darwin,” researchers have distanced themselves from the classification of humans into races. Scientific decency should preclude using the term “race,” they say.
Scientists at the University of Jena in eastern Germany have called for the term “race” to no longer be used, saying there is no biological basis for the classification of humanity into races.
“The primarily biological justification for defining groups of humans as races — for example based on the color of their skin or eyes, or the shape of their skulls — has led to the persecution, enslavement and slaughter of millions of people,” the scientists wrote in the Jena Declaration.
“However, there is no biological basis for races, and there has never been one. The concept of race is the result of racism, not its prerequisite,” they continued. …
Scientific research on genetic variations of human beings shows that “instead of definable boundaries, genetic gradients run between human groups,” say the scientists. “To be explicit, not only is there no single gene that underpins ‘racial’ differences, but there is not even a single base pair.”
Didn’t Wittgenstein point out that “games” don’t have any one thing in common that always determines that they are games?
And yet the concept of games remains a useful one.
“Designating ‘the Africans’ as a supposed threat to Europe, and attributing certain biological characteristics to them, are also in the direct tradition of the worst racism of our past. So, let us ensure that people are never again discriminated against on specious biological grounds,” the scientists write.
Also, the Jenaites pointed out that now that young people are educated that race has no biological basis, you never ever hear young “black” women talking about their “black hair” anymore. In this century, we all know that supposed racial differences in hair were just a white racist myth, which has freed up a lot of time in the brains of black women to think about more productive topics than the scientifically non-existent differences between their hair and that of Becky with the good hair.
“Designating ‘the Africans’ as a supposed threat to Europe, and attributing certain biological characteristics to them, are also in the direct tradition of the worst racism of our past.”
How about the behavioral characteristics of the African immigrants?
If the only race is the human race, why not end affirmative action?
“To be explicit, not only is there no single gene that underpins ‘racial’ differences, but there is not even a single base pair.”
The Jena folks have come up with a fine latter day form of Ignatius of Loyola’s statement of faith, “What seems to me white, I will believe black if the hierarchical Church so defines.”
“The concept of race is the result of racism…”
Ohtay!
If we're to be colorblind, then people of color will be unseen...
I think the one thing common to “games” is that they are backtrackable / non-serious / non-commital.
Of course, von Neumann and the Rand Corporation has given us the sort of “game” whereby a decision tree or payoff matrix is used to describe or select strategies that may consist in placing H-bombs on population centers.
Meanwhile, a low-key obituary in the NYT for Sally Floyd:
Sally Floyd, Who Helped Things Run Smoothly Online, Dies at 69
Anyway, further to Steve Sailer's point (and to really tie this together with race, not coincidentally), Wittgenstein discusses games as a way of introducing his concept of Family Resemblance. Which says more or less that things can be part of a category without necessarily having a single attribute in common, but rather one or more of a set of attributes common to members of the category.
Anyway, Wittgensteinian Family Resemblance couldn't be a more suitable or better-named thing to shove in the face of a group of scientists (of all people) who can proclaim in supposed triumph: “To be explicit, not only is there no single gene that underpins ‘racial’ differences, but there is not even a single base pair.”
Didn’t Wittgenstein also say “numbers are not essential to mathematics”? That would explain why we never have to look at numbers that go along with the African population growth chart no one educated talks about.
So don’t say, ‘race’ say, ‘species’.
Does this mean that 23andMe needs to close up shop?
It’s always a good move to base your thesis on a counterargument to something your opponents have never claimed. Many non-racial differences are the result of multiple genes, so why would racial differences be any different? No one credibly is positing that there is a magical “white” or “black” gene that determines everything about someone, but that racial differences at the genetic level do exist and are discernible and demonstrable.
Colors do not exist. Some think ‘blue’ is light blue, some think it is dark blue, and some cultures have different words for these two wavelengths! Further, many ‘colors’ are actually composites of several underlying wavelengths. The metaphor of white light for white people is all too obvious.
At some physical level, color really doesn't exist, there is just a continuous spectrum of electromagnetic radiation. But at another level, particularly as humans talking to other humans, we all perceive color. Completely separate cultures have developed a similar categorization systems of colors, which suggests that it is real. Race is the same way.Replies: @AnotherDad
By the way color does exist...to those who can see.
Mugs are not cups, but the boundary is fuzzy.
Aren’t they doing a motte and bailey here, defining race to be something that nobody is saying it is (single gene, sharp boundary, distinguishing traits must not overlap between races?), and then using that artificial definition in their debunking?
Science is as great as it ever was, but scientists... different story.
Some ideas are so stupid, only academics can believe them…
To me this thinking is naive at best and disingenuously dishonest at worst.
It’s useful to think of this issue in terms of an analogy to the light spectrum. Red and orange (or green and yellow or any other pair) are adjacent to each other and there is no objectively definable wavelength at which it can be said that orange becomes red.
Yet red and orange are meaningful categories.
Maybe not to the Jena people.
Yes, where's the boundary between blue and violet? Colours don't exist!Replies: @Anonymou
Of course, von Neumann and the Rand Corporation has given us the sort of "game" whereby a decision tree or payoff matrix is used to describe or select strategies that may consist in placing H-bombs on population centers.
Meanwhile, a low-key obituary in the NYT for Sally Floyd:
Sally Floyd, Who Helped Things Run Smoothly Online, Dies at 69Replies: @L Woods, @slumber_j
Pretty sure gambling is still considered “gaming.”
If they would ban the word racist at the same time I might be for it. Better not to talk about it if we are going to address the real problems afflicting the less endowed half of the population regardless of that-which-shall-not-be-named. Scientists can talk about population groups instead, which is a much more flexible term, embracing all sorts of sut-that-which-shall-not-be-named groups. I suppose all that-which-is-not-to-be-named preferences would have to be written out of the law. Isn’t this the way they do it in France?
Breed is a good alternative word for race and widely and easily understood due to people’s familiarity with dogs, cats, horses, etc.
I assure you, this is a totally… totally, different word.
The word “race” ist verboten. Got it.
Seems “breeds” has the same effect. The “African breed” or the “European breed.” That works.
Or ist that verboten too?
Newspeak is a lot of work!
They make it up as they go. New rules everyday. What's changed today could be changed again tomorrow. No sense trying to keep up.
And this is how nations die.
It’s not the job of scientists to worry about discrimination, any more than its their job to worry about the improper use of gunpowder.
Discrimination is a human right.
Aren't they doing a motte and bailey here, defining race to be something that nobody is saying it is (single gene, sharp boundary, distinguishing traits must not overlap between races?), and then using that artificial definition in their debunking?Replies: @Michael S, @Anonymous
What they’re doing is loudly proclaiming that the deer is definitely a horse.
Science is as great as it ever was, but scientists… different story.
If we were talking about any animal other than humans, blacks and whites would be considered two distinct subspecies, and maybe even two separate species (especially by the endangered species crowd).
Personally I say we go along with them on this one. OK, race doesn’t exist. Instead let’s start defining blacks, whites, Asians, and Amerindians as all members of separate subspecies – the term that would be used for any other animal. It helps that it’s scientifically accurate, has parallels with all sorts of non-human animals, and sounds ridiculous to deny. You can argue that “race” is a human construct and convince people that you’re talking sense, because we never use the term race to apply to any other animal. But no one would be as easily snookered if you were using the same terminology applied to the rest of the animal kingdom. Plus the term “subspeciesism” is just never going to happen.
Incidentally, the Wikipedia page on Race is locked for editing, and emphatically declares that “modern scholarship regards race as a social construct” – in case Wikipedia ever wants to know why I will never give them a damn dime.
Freeman Dyson: "Everybody uses it (Wikipedia); Nobody trusts it".
Gnu’s Not Unix!
Racism schmacism.
There are some rabbis that vehemently disagree with the folks st Jena…..
Let’s go farther. Not only is there not a single gene or base pair, there is not a single atom! And not a single electron!
Color is the perfect analogy.
At some physical level, color really doesn’t exist, there is just a continuous spectrum of electromagnetic radiation. But at another level, particularly as humans talking to other humans, we all perceive color. Completely separate cultures have developed a similar categorization systems of colors, which suggests that it is real. Race is the same way.
Color is a poor analogy to race. Color is precisely the analogy that these deniers would use--if they wanted you to think at all.
First off, the want you thinking about a single variable, skin color. And with color it is in fact a single variable and as it happens that single variable is color!
Secondly, their scam is to claim that "race" is just continuous variation and the electromagnetic spectrum is in fact completely continuous. While actual race is vary clumpy.
Finally, the "colors" we see--this is blue, this is green--are just human perception. And that's precisely what they want you to believe about race ... there's continuous variation and it's just human perception that there is this thing called race.
In sum, in terms of the four big scams the deniers run:
-- race as skin color
-- talking about single traits
-- preaching continuous variation
-- race is "sociallly constructed" (human perception)
the color analogy works pretty well for them.
In contrast, the gist of the reality of "race" is packages of multiple traits and pretty sharp discontinuities--almost complete at oceans, but very hard at the Sahara, the Himalaya, across the Central Asians deserts; and to a lesser extent at other deserts and ranges. People within these regions then progressing on their own--mostly separate--patterns of gene-culture co-evolution.
I think the analogy that people pretty much instantly get--and does a lot of damage to the narrative--is "Ok, you don't like race, let's call them "breeds", like breeds of dogs."Replies: @Dieter Kief
To me, one metric of the quality of any religion is that it does not require you to believe things about the real, actual, world that are objectively false.
So, great, now there’s two r words? I think the whole thing is f word r word.
In some languages, like French and Spanish, they even use the word race/raza to mean ‘breed’ when speaking of dogs, cats, etc.
Sure. Just like the concept of sex is the result of sexism. We were all amoebae until somebody started up with the misogyny!
Is there a single gene or a single base pair that distinguishes one species from another?
Cool. Now do subspecies. Or breeds.
Did they wait for the Ernst Haeckel centenary to crap on him, or did they see it coming up on the calendar and say, “Hey, let’s crap on him!” Is he now one of them pre-Nazis who only get brought up for having possibly ( but definitely)’influenced the Nazis? A German Galton, if you will.
Personally I say we go along with them on this one. OK, race doesn't exist. Instead let's start defining blacks, whites, Asians, and Amerindians as all members of separate subspecies - the term that would be used for any other animal. It helps that it's scientifically accurate, has parallels with all sorts of non-human animals, and sounds ridiculous to deny. You can argue that "race" is a human construct and convince people that you're talking sense, because we never use the term race to apply to any other animal. But no one would be as easily snookered if you were using the same terminology applied to the rest of the animal kingdom. Plus the term "subspeciesism" is just never going to happen.
Incidentally, the Wikipedia page on Race is locked for editing, and emphatically declares that "modern scholarship regards race as a social construct" - in case Wikipedia ever wants to know why I will never give them a damn dime.Replies: @Dan Hayes
Wilkey:
Freeman Dyson: “Everybody uses it (Wikipedia); Nobody trusts it”.
“instead of definable boundaries, genetic gradients run between human groups”
Yes, where’s the boundary between blue and violet? Colours don’t exist!
Black (or bad) boys rape our young girls but Violet gave willingly.
The colors are in that order because reasons. What are they?Replies: @YetAnotherAnon
There are some that would posit that The Jenanites are themselves a distinct race, though others merely consider them a distinct culture.
Yep.
Apparently, that ancient conundrum has been squared. It *is* possible to argue ‘logically’ that “black is white”.
All you have to do is call yourself a professor and put a pompous signed letter in the newspaper.
Job done.
Next we will have ‘milking the bull’ – professors have put a signed letter in the paper stating that ‘gender’ is a ‘fiction’.
And people scoff at ‘primitive peoples’ who are held in sway by witchdoctors.
I hate to break this to you, but the whole point of religion is to require you to believe things about the real, actual, world that are objectively false.
The purposes of religion are many but the big ones are pretty clear:
-- setting and enforcing norms for the society
-- binding people (the tribe) together making it stronger
-- helping inculcate proper values in children
-- helping people deal with the certainty/uncertainty of death
-- improving people's resiliency to the sufferings of life
And, you are certainly correct that back in day religion also
-- explain the world's existence and its natural phenomena
and from claiming to do so would religion would draw legitimacy and power.
But most religions have managed to shed the need to explain natural phenomena and accomodate modern science. (What we can figure out with reason, observation, experiment.) One can accept the general picture of the universe offered by science and be an orthodox Christian believer. (Or Jewish, Muslim, Hindu, Sikh, Buddhist, Taoist ... believer i think.) Your religion informs your belief in the *purpose* of actual physical reality and proper behavior within in.
In contrast, modern minoritarianism/liberalism requires you to believe a bunch of things about reality--about sex, race, nature and nurture, human psychology and behavior--that are just plain--obviously and verifiably--false.
D Day was 75 years ago. I wish the Germans would just forget about it and start acting like Germans again.
I wonder, if you look at the ‘scientists’ this article claims, would you instead find the usual ragbag of sociologists, anthropologists and other worse-than-useless Marxist entryists?
The bait-and-switch of claiming race does not exist because there is not a single gene that differentiates them suggests that scientists are not behind it. If they are though it is a worrying sign that even STEM subjects are falling to the infection which has destroyed the arts and social sciences in Western academia.
The genre field of Crapology is then broken down into specific areas such as sociology etc.
I always think words like “racism” and “racial discrimination” should be banned.
These words attack the people, often a large percentage of a community, not addressing a certain inappropriate behavior at certain time and place. Uttering these words won’t get many problems solved but they deepen the misunderstanding between large number of people.
All other things being equal, a society without a lot of people TALKING about “racism” and “racial discrimination” day in and day out is a more harmonious people.
Why focus on color. That isn’t important…what matters is intelligence and some races are really lacking.
By the way color does exist…to those who can see.
Take these pseudo-scientists that want to pretend that race doesn’t exist and drop them in the middle of Detroit and let them explain that to the negroes as they’re being beaten to death or shot.
Yes, where's the boundary between blue and violet? Colours don't exist!Replies: @Anonymou
Black brown red orange yellow green blue violet gray white
Black (or bad) boys rape our young girls but Violet gave willingly.
The colors are in that order because reasons. What are they?
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-sussex-12584669Replies: @anon
I love it when they make declarations like this, I just imagine their noses growing like Pinocchio.
Of course, von Neumann and the Rand Corporation has given us the sort of "game" whereby a decision tree or payoff matrix is used to describe or select strategies that may consist in placing H-bombs on population centers.
Meanwhile, a low-key obituary in the NYT for Sally Floyd:
Sally Floyd, Who Helped Things Run Smoothly Online, Dies at 69Replies: @L Woods, @slumber_j
Sort of, but so are other things–and you can probably find exceptions to that rule. As you do.
Anyway, further to Steve Sailer’s point (and to really tie this together with race, not coincidentally), Wittgenstein discusses games as a way of introducing his concept of Family Resemblance. Which says more or less that things can be part of a category without necessarily having a single attribute in common, but rather one or more of a set of attributes common to members of the category.
Anyway, Wittgensteinian Family Resemblance couldn’t be a more suitable or better-named thing to shove in the face of a group of scientists (of all people) who can proclaim in supposed triumph: “To be explicit, not only is there no single gene that underpins ‘racial’ differences, but there is not even a single base pair.”
Aren't they doing a motte and bailey here, defining race to be something that nobody is saying it is (single gene, sharp boundary, distinguishing traits must not overlap between races?), and then using that artificial definition in their debunking?Replies: @Michael S, @Anonymous
Right, cars are not trucks, but what defines a car versus a truck?
Another area of his was cooking terminology, which apparently is also studied by anthropologists. The one thing I remember from his cooking lecture was that the work cook can be used as a more general substitute for any other cooking verb, except bake. You cannot cook bread or cook a cake (unless you mean to toast or otherwise post-process already baked bread or cake), but you can use cook in place of fry, braise, saute, flambe, boil, broil, and every other cooking term under the sun, according to this guy.Replies: @Alden
“Human race” makes no sense, it is like “canine race” or “fish race”. Race, in any form (species, breed, subspecies,..), can have meaning only within context of classifying differences among homo sapiens species.
If you insist there are no differences- just look at dogs or horses or fishes. Is shark the same as salmon? Yeah, I thought so …
I doubt the authors are truly ignorant, more likely they are being disingenuous by making the wrong point. A single gene or pair isn’t really what evolution is about. Evolution is defined by the changing frequency of alleles in a population. . Race, such as it is, is primarily a population categorization The degree to which the allele frequencies are useful to categorize populations is a question than be asked and answered.( The degree to which it matters is a separate question.) Sociology usually uses group categorization explaining 10% of the variation as a useful threshold for practical use.
There are good reasons for simply using “population” (eurocentric, afrocentric, and so forth), one of which is accepted scientific language, the other is that it avoids the needless distractions of a trigger word.
I doubt the authors are truly ignorant, more likely they are being disingenuous by making the wrong point. A single gene or pair isn’t really what evolution is about. Evolution is defined by the changing frequency of alleles in a population. . Race, such as it is, is primarily a population categorization The degree to which the allele frequencies are useful to categorize populations is a question than be asked and answered.( The degree to which it matters is a separate question.) Sociology usually uses group categorization explaining 10% of the variation as a useful threshold for practical use.
There are good reasons for simply using “population” (eurocentric, afrocentric, and so forth), one of which is accepted scientific language, the other is that it avoids the needless distractions of a trigger word.
There are some odious views associated with racism, and I for one, prefer to avoid being smeared with that tar.
True (= no truism).
If races were discrete non-overlapping entities, they wouldn’t be races. They would be “species.” Even species show a lot more genetic overlap than most people think.
If you must, say no to Race. Copy the doggy lovers: talk about Breeds.
On the other hand who the hell wants to be bullied by a bunch of authoritarian German creeps?
What we call a ‘game’ must have three essential properties:
1. A set of formal rules.
2. A formal way to frame a competition.
3. A necessity to make meaningful decisions.
ScarletNumber, neither you nor AnotherDad have the first fricking clue about anything having to do with religion, so you both need to just STFU about the entire subject and confine yourself to your otherwise useless internet griping.
Or you could tell me where I’m wrong.
You made the statement that the whole point of religion is to require you to believe things about the real, actual world that are objectively false. This is not a specific requirement of religion, much less "the whole point" of it.
Allow me to propose an alternative definition. The subject matter of religion is that in reference to which you must remain humble. Unless you conceive of yourself as the supreme being in existence (a statement about as "objectively false" as any could be), then it follows that such subject matter does exist, i.e. it forms part of the real, actual world. The real world, then, contains at least something of which your faculties are not permitted to pass judgment upon. Religion consists of those thoughts and practices addressing themselves to this subject matter, or operating under the awareness thereof.
The point of this very cursory description was not to suggest that the claims made by any specific religion are true, but to establish the fact that it is not "objective" to remain irreligious, nor is it irrational. The humble recognition that you are not all-knowing is the plain and simple truth, and what follows from this is religion.
I think a lot of people are missing an obvious implication of the suggestion that there is no such thing as race.
If there is no race, there is no such thing as a white race either, skin tone is a continuum, even individuals vary in skin tone from season to season.
If there is no white race, how can there be ‘white privilege’, ‘white toxicity’ or ‘white guilt’? My dictionary says….
If race isn’t a valid concept, how could ‘white people’ even be identified? On what basis is ‘affirmative action’ applied?
A visting Israeli professor in the UCLA Linguistics department when I was there specialized in studying stuff like this, mug vs. cup, etc.
Another area of his was cooking terminology, which apparently is also studied by anthropologists. The one thing I remember from his cooking lecture was that the work cook can be used as a more general substitute for any other cooking verb, except bake. You cannot cook bread or cook a cake (unless you mean to toast or otherwise post-process already baked bread or cake), but you can use cook in place of fry, braise, saute, flambe, boil, broil, and every other cooking term under the sun, according to this guy.
He was wrong. English speakers never use the broad term cook for fry sauté broil or roast. People who cook seldom use the word cook. We boil simmer and poach. We grill at highest heat and bake or roast at different temperatures aka high or low heat. Bet he never read an English language cook book.
On the other hand, he probably spoke understandable English unlike most foreign TAs and college profs.
Ohtay!Replies: @Forbes
And “people of color” is the result of colorism.
If we’re to be colorblind, then people of color will be unseen…
Seems "breeds" has the same effect. The "African breed" or the "European breed." That works.
Or ist that verboten too?
Newspeak is a lot of work!Replies: @Forbes
As I continue to repeat: “Everything before yesterday is wrong.”
They make it up as they go. New rules everyday. What’s changed today could be changed again tomorrow. No sense trying to keep up.
Wittgenstein did say that there was no definition for “game”, but as smart he was, he was wrong there. In Rules of Play: Game Design Fundamentals, Katie Salen and Eric Zimmerman gave this definition:
“A game is a system in which players engage in an artificial conflict, defined by rules, that results in a quantifiable outcome.”
It stands up under scrutiny.
Where’s Basil Fawlty when you need him. “We’ve got some Germans here so don’t mention ‘race,’ I said it once but I think that I got away with it.”
I think the proper term is “subspecies”. A pit bull and a great dane are quite different but they can still breed and produce offspring. They are both subspecies of DOG. Blacks, Asians, and Whites can all interbreed but they are subspecies of HUMAN. No one who is a dog owner, cat owner, or cattle rancher would agree that subspecies do not exist, or that the different traits of different subspecies are not important. If you disagree with this I suggest that the next time you are looking to adopt a cute, friendly lap dog, you get a pit bull.
Okay, fine.
You made the statement that the whole point of religion is to require you to believe things about the real, actual world that are objectively false. This is not a specific requirement of religion, much less “the whole point” of it.
Allow me to propose an alternative definition. The subject matter of religion is that in reference to which you must remain humble. Unless you conceive of yourself as the supreme being in existence (a statement about as “objectively false” as any could be), then it follows that such subject matter does exist, i.e. it forms part of the real, actual world. The real world, then, contains at least something of which your faculties are not permitted to pass judgment upon. Religion consists of those thoughts and practices addressing themselves to this subject matter, or operating under the awareness thereof.
The point of this very cursory description was not to suggest that the claims made by any specific religion are true, but to establish the fact that it is not “objective” to remain irreligious, nor is it irrational. The humble recognition that you are not all-knowing is the plain and simple truth, and what follows from this is religion.
Germans! When their extreme racial theory is discredited, do they stop coming up with crazy theories about race and return to reasonableness? No, they go to the opposite extreme.
Attacks on racial inequality are justifications of economic inequality by La gauche Brahmane. It is a war on the dullards of the working class.
Another way to express this phenomenon would be, the Social Democratic Parties in Europe lost track with the social reality of all kinds of people and are now rather focussing on the middle class and at the same time, on the unproductive lower classes.
A good example for the losing track aspect were the Cantonal elections in the Swiss canton Wallis last year: There was not a single member of the old working-class on the Social Democratic list: Just Lawyers and Public Service employees and a few ministers and social workers. and that was it. The voters who are actual workers and farmers etc. have almost completely left the Social Democrats and most of them are now voting consevative - and immigration-critics like the SVP.
Are there successful exceptions to this rule? Yes, all lest parties which get, that immigration is a big problem and climate change a lesser one, than the usual leftists think. Mette Frederikson, Danish Social Democrat who understood these things, got elected Danish president this year. German immigration- and Islam-critic and Social Democrat Thilo Sarrazin is the most successful author ever in the German Republic...
Mostly disagree.
The purposes of religion are many but the big ones are pretty clear:
— setting and enforcing norms for the society
— binding people (the tribe) together making it stronger
— helping inculcate proper values in children
— helping people deal with the certainty/uncertainty of death
— improving people’s resiliency to the sufferings of life
And, you are certainly correct that back in day religion also
— explain the world’s existence and its natural phenomena
and from claiming to do so would religion would draw legitimacy and power.
But most religions have managed to shed the need to explain natural phenomena and accomodate modern science. (What we can figure out with reason, observation, experiment.) One can accept the general picture of the universe offered by science and be an orthodox Christian believer. (Or Jewish, Muslim, Hindu, Sikh, Buddhist, Taoist … believer i think.) Your religion informs your belief in the *purpose* of actual physical reality and proper behavior within in.
In contrast, modern minoritarianism/liberalism requires you to believe a bunch of things about reality–about sex, race, nature and nurture, human psychology and behavior–that are just plain–obviously and verifiably–false.
Attacks on racial inequality are justifications of economic inequality by La gauche Brahmane. It is a war on the dullards of the working class.Replies: @Dieter Kief
The Brahmin Left is a thing.
Another way to express this phenomenon would be, the Social Democratic Parties in Europe lost track with the social reality of all kinds of people and are now rather focussing on the middle class and at the same time, on the unproductive lower classes.
A good example for the losing track aspect were the Cantonal elections in the Swiss canton Wallis last year: There was not a single member of the old working-class on the Social Democratic list: Just Lawyers and Public Service employees and a few ministers and social workers. and that was it. The voters who are actual workers and farmers etc. have almost completely left the Social Democrats and most of them are now voting consevative – and immigration-critics like the SVP.
Are there successful exceptions to this rule? Yes, all lest parties which get, that immigration is a big problem and climate change a lesser one, than the usual leftists think. Mette Frederikson, Danish Social Democrat who understood these things, got elected Danish president this year. German immigration- and Islam-critic and Social Democrat Thilo Sarrazin is the most successful author ever in the German Republic…
Es wenden die Herrscher
ihr segnendes Auge
von ganzen Geschlechtern
und meiden, im Enkel
die ehmals geliebten,
still redenden Zuege
des Ahnherrn zu sehn.
The rulers turn
their beneficent eyes
away from whole races,
and shun in the grandchildren
the once-loved,
quietly eloquent features
or their forebears.
That’s Goethe, having the indecency to use the word (Geschlecht), and Brahms with the indecency to use his text (to magnificent, even devastating effect.)
From Gesang der Parzen (Song of the Fates), a segment from Goethe’s Iphegenie auf Tauris.
Translation is a bit clunky.
Die Herrscher (rulers) identified earlier in the poem as die Goetter (gods.)
Eerily prescient of our times. Our race, once blessed and beloved, now shunned.
On the other hand who the hell wants to be bullied by a bunch of authoritarian German creeps?Replies: @Dieter Kief
These formidable critical scientists in Jena (a City with a terrific past and well worth a visit (think of Ernst Haeckel, J W v Goethe, Fridrich Schiller, Joh. Gottlieb Fichte, Ludwig Tieck, Novalis, physicist Ritter, Carl Zeiss…)) are deeply anti-authoritarian and anti-repression and try to be absolutely free of any hierarchical tendency, since they claim to deeply believe in Post-Hitlerism (=equality & purity).
At some physical level, color really doesn't exist, there is just a continuous spectrum of electromagnetic radiation. But at another level, particularly as humans talking to other humans, we all perceive color. Completely separate cultures have developed a similar categorization systems of colors, which suggests that it is real. Race is the same way.Replies: @AnotherDad
Disagree Massimo.
Color is a poor analogy to race. Color is precisely the analogy that these deniers would use–if they wanted you to think at all.
First off, the want you thinking about a single variable, skin color. And with color it is in fact a single variable and as it happens that single variable is color!
Secondly, their scam is to claim that “race” is just continuous variation and the electromagnetic spectrum is in fact completely continuous. While actual race is vary clumpy.
Finally, the “colors” we see–this is blue, this is green–are just human perception. And that’s precisely what they want you to believe about race … there’s continuous variation and it’s just human perception that there is this thing called race.
In sum, in terms of the four big scams the deniers run:
— race as skin color
— talking about single traits
— preaching continuous variation
— race is “sociallly constructed” (human perception)
the color analogy works pretty well for them.
In contrast, the gist of the reality of “race” is packages of multiple traits and pretty sharp discontinuities–almost complete at oceans, but very hard at the Sahara, the Himalaya, across the Central Asians deserts; and to a lesser extent at other deserts and ranges. People within these regions then progressing on their own–mostly separate–patterns of gene-culture co-evolution.
I think the analogy that people pretty much instantly get–and does a lot of damage to the narrative–is “Ok, you don’t like race, let’s call them “breeds”, like breeds of dogs.”
https://www.amazon.de/Hunde-Bewegung-Martin-S-Fischer/dp/3440130754 Replies: @Old Palo Altan
The bait-and-switch of claiming race does not exist because there is not a single gene that differentiates them suggests that scientists are not behind it. If they are though it is a worrying sign that even STEM subjects are falling to the infection which has destroyed the arts and social sciences in Western academia.Replies: @Alden
The generic term for all of them is Crapologist, one who creates and teaches Crapology.
The genre field of Crapology is then broken down into specific areas such as sociology etc.
Another area of his was cooking terminology, which apparently is also studied by anthropologists. The one thing I remember from his cooking lecture was that the work cook can be used as a more general substitute for any other cooking verb, except bake. You cannot cook bread or cook a cake (unless you mean to toast or otherwise post-process already baked bread or cake), but you can use cook in place of fry, braise, saute, flambe, boil, broil, and every other cooking term under the sun, according to this guy.Replies: @Alden
You paid for and got credit for this course. Jeez.
He was wrong. English speakers never use the broad term cook for fry sauté broil or roast. People who cook seldom use the word cook. We boil simmer and poach. We grill at highest heat and bake or roast at different temperatures aka high or low heat. Bet he never read an English language cook book.
On the other hand, he probably spoke understandable English unlike most foreign TAs and college profs.
Recursive names, LISP, the Lisp Machine with its Talmud-like screen layout….One notices a trend if one is a Noticer.
Color is a poor analogy to race. Color is precisely the analogy that these deniers would use--if they wanted you to think at all.
First off, the want you thinking about a single variable, skin color. And with color it is in fact a single variable and as it happens that single variable is color!
Secondly, their scam is to claim that "race" is just continuous variation and the electromagnetic spectrum is in fact completely continuous. While actual race is vary clumpy.
Finally, the "colors" we see--this is blue, this is green--are just human perception. And that's precisely what they want you to believe about race ... there's continuous variation and it's just human perception that there is this thing called race.
In sum, in terms of the four big scams the deniers run:
-- race as skin color
-- talking about single traits
-- preaching continuous variation
-- race is "sociallly constructed" (human perception)
the color analogy works pretty well for them.
In contrast, the gist of the reality of "race" is packages of multiple traits and pretty sharp discontinuities--almost complete at oceans, but very hard at the Sahara, the Himalaya, across the Central Asians deserts; and to a lesser extent at other deserts and ranges. People within these regions then progressing on their own--mostly separate--patterns of gene-culture co-evolution.
I think the analogy that people pretty much instantly get--and does a lot of damage to the narrative--is "Ok, you don't like race, let's call them "breeds", like breeds of dogs."Replies: @Dieter Kief
As it turns out, the head of the Jena group, “Prof. Dr. Dr. h. c. Martin S. Fischer” is – – – – a zoologist, specialising in – – – – dog breeds. One of his papers is about the dog’s “moving apparatus” (=feet and legs etc.) and Ficher is proud to show in this paper abut his “first-ever worldwide experiments” – – just how similar dogs are – all of them. See – he saw your argument coming. – Bark!-bark!
https://www.amazon.de/Hunde-Bewegung-Martin-S-Fischer/dp/3440130754
I do have a question which is quite OT: how common is it (and was it) in Germany to use the form first name, initial, last name (as with Dr Fischer) in Germany? It is almost universal in the USA, extremely uncommon in Britain, and I have only seen it two or three times in German usage.
I'll bet you have the answer Dieter!
https://www.amazon.de/Hunde-Bewegung-Martin-S-Fischer/dp/3440130754 Replies: @Old Palo Altan
Very funny, in every way.
I do have a question which is quite OT: how common is it (and was it) in Germany to use the form first name, initial, last name (as with Dr Fischer) in Germany? It is almost universal in the USA, extremely uncommon in Britain, and I have only seen it two or three times in German usage.
I’ll bet you have the answer Dieter!
Black (or bad) boys rape our young girls but Violet gave willingly.
The colors are in that order because reasons. What are they?Replies: @YetAnotherAnon
Resistor colour bands mnemonic.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-sussex-12584669
Danke für die Blumen!
Ernst Haeckel is a truly great man, and it helps me if I find a way to laugh about such poisonous dwarfs as Professor Martin S. Fischer is one.
Martin S. Fischer – without a net and a double floor– I just add one and one: The US had two drivers for such names: It is a big society – and it is a highly mobile society. In static societies, there’s not much need to make sure you’d find the right, Mr. Fischer, let’s say, most likely, because you knew him anyway. In Switzerland, people say: You always meet twice – so be cautious, and polite! – when talking to one another. And it’s true, you do meet (at least) twice! Because Switzerland is small… No need to make names more telling.
(Thanks for your heartwarming answer to my Japan/Immigration/ Nördlingen / Neresheim – – – Dinkelsbühl comment. I made a funny mistake, in that I mixed up Dinkelsbühl and Dünklingen. Dünklingen is the fictive little town in which the novel “Geht in Ordnung – sowieso – – genau – – ” is situated. That I did make this mistake was not so far fetched, because Henscheid named Dünklingen after Dinkelsbühl and Nördlingen . – I’ve spent much more time in the fictitious town of Dünklingen than in the real world small-town wonders of Dinkelsbühl and Nördlingen, which I both love – as I do the neighboring Bopfingen am Ipf, which gives the best view of the great crater of the Nördlinger Ries.
I once motored from Weimer to Jena, and still remember it as one of the most beautiful drives of my life. I see a road which skirted deep valleys and wound round hills and through dales, all in a particulalry brilliant light. Jena entranced me - and I didn't even have time to stop!
Weimar I had spent the day in, and I had wished I could live there. The Goethe house, on the other hand, rather disappointed me. He is simply too much of an Enlightement figure for my dark reactionary soul I fear.Replies: @Dieter Kief
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-sussex-12584669Replies: @anon
Violet goes willingly.
The correct term is really subspecies. Politically it has become the norm that there is only Homo sapiens sapiens = one race (or subspecies) but there is no scientific sound reason why that is.
Ernst Haeckel is a truly great man, and it helps me if I find a way to laugh about such poisonous dwarfs as Professor Martin S. Fischer is one.
Martin S. Fischer - without a net and a double floor- I just add one and one: The US had two drivers for such names: It is a big society - and it is a highly mobile society. In static societies, there's not much need to make sure you'd find the right, Mr. Fischer, let's say, most likely, because you knew him anyway. In Switzerland, people say: You always meet twice - so be cautious, and polite! - when talking to one another. And it's true, you do meet (at least) twice! Because Switzerland is small... No need to make names more telling.
(Thanks for your heartwarming answer to my Japan/Immigration/ Nördlingen / Neresheim - - - Dinkelsbühl comment. I made a funny mistake, in that I mixed up Dinkelsbühl and Dünklingen. Dünklingen is the fictive little town in which the novel "Geht in Ordnung - sowieso - - genau - - " is situated. That I did make this mistake was not so far fetched, because Henscheid named Dünklingen after Dinkelsbühl and Nördlingen . - I've spent much more time in the fictitious town of Dünklingen than in the real world small-town wonders of Dinkelsbühl and Nördlingen, which I both love - as I do the neighboring Bopfingen am Ipf, which gives the best view of the great crater of the Nördlinger Ries.Replies: @Old Palo Altan
Glad to learn of the origin of “Dünklingen” – I’ll have to go there some day, if I can just find that book …
I once motored from Weimer to Jena, and still remember it as one of the most beautiful drives of my life. I see a road which skirted deep valleys and wound round hills and through dales, all in a particulalry brilliant light. Jena entranced me – and I didn’t even have time to stop!
Weimar I had spent the day in, and I had wished I could live there. The Goethe house, on the other hand, rather disappointed me. He is simply too much of an Enlightement figure for my dark reactionary soul I fear.
In Weimar, there was Johann Gottfried Herder, too. Goethe made sure he became the superintendent of Weimar. - Everybody likes me so much there that it is bordering at the insane, Herder once wrote, only to conclude: But I lead a life of utter reluctance and solitude. - People are "walking contradictions - partly truth and partly fiction", as Kris Kristofferson once sang in - - - a real folk song of our days. Herder loved those - he even created the German term: Volkslied... and Zeitgeist - - - - and Welthandel...Replies: @Old Palo Altan
I once motored from Weimer to Jena, and still remember it as one of the most beautiful drives of my life. I see a road which skirted deep valleys and wound round hills and through dales, all in a particulalry brilliant light. Jena entranced me - and I didn't even have time to stop!
Weimar I had spent the day in, and I had wished I could live there. The Goethe house, on the other hand, rather disappointed me. He is simply too much of an Enlightement figure for my dark reactionary soul I fear.Replies: @Dieter Kief
The road from Weimar to Jena is a miracle. I drove only once on it in each direction from Weimar to Jena.
Goethe oversaw the design, if I might put it this way in English – in German, it would (have) be(en) “the Anlage” – of this outstandingly beautiful road.
This is from the link below about the Weimarian road system = “Straßenwesen”
onen: der Kriegskommission und der Wegebaudirektion. Die Verbesserung der Verkehrsinfrastruktur war in dieser Situation ein Hauptanliegen Goethes. Sein Ziel war, den Handels- und Postverkehr, der von Erfurt aus über Buttelstädt in Richtung Naumburg – Leipzig verlief, über Weimar – Jena bzw. Weimar – Apolda umzuleiten, um so die wichtigsten Gewerbeorte des Landes an die Hauptverkehrsströme anzuschließen. Die Straße von Weimar nach Jena wurde von 1782 bis 1787 für etwa 11.000 Taler ausgebaut. Sie hatte bis dahin keinen Steingrund und war nur im Sommer befahrbar, im Herbst und Frühjahr voll sumpfiger Stellen und im Winter kaum passierbar. Hinter dem Kegeltor stieg sie in einer engen und gefährlichen „Gänsegurgel“ steil und unwegsam durch den Wald. Die Jenaer Straße war bekannt für ihre Gefährlichkeit. An einigen Stellen war ihr Ausbau sehr aufwendig. Deshalb ließ der Straßenbauspezialist und Bauleiter de Castrop die Straße an solchen Stellen aus der Hohle über den benachbarten Acker führen. Am damaligen Ortsausgang von Weimar wurde die Straße nunmehr die Trasse der heutigen Jenaer Straße entlang geführt. An die alte „Gänsegurgel“ läßt ein Waldweg gegenüber der Kegelbrücke denken.
https://www.via-regia.org/via_regia/geschichte/einzelthemen/thueringen/weimar2.php
In Weimar, there was Johann Gottfried Herder, too. Goethe made sure he became the superintendent of Weimar. – Everybody likes me so much there that it is bordering at the insane, Herder once wrote, only to conclude: But I lead a life of utter reluctance and solitude. – People are “walking contradictions – partly truth and partly fiction”, as Kris Kristofferson once sang in – – – a real folk song of our days. Herder loved those – he even created the German term: Volkslied… and Zeitgeist – – – – and Welthandel…
Your link is a treasure which I shall read and explore over the coming weeks; indeed, once that is done, I think I will have no option but to plan a trip there to see it all again for myself .
Another thing: I am actually in full agreement with you about simplicity and purity being a constituent part of (good) baroque architecture, as it is of (good) modernism. I have even looked again at Wittgenstein’s house and, although not convinced, I see that I shall have to give it a personal inspection before forming a definitive view.
There is a Carthusian monastery in the forest near Schloss Zeil, and its architecture is reminiscent of what Wittgenstein is doing. Perhaps he would have found his proper vocation with that Order?
In Weimar, there was Johann Gottfried Herder, too. Goethe made sure he became the superintendent of Weimar. - Everybody likes me so much there that it is bordering at the insane, Herder once wrote, only to conclude: But I lead a life of utter reluctance and solitude. - People are "walking contradictions - partly truth and partly fiction", as Kris Kristofferson once sang in - - - a real folk song of our days. Herder loved those - he even created the German term: Volkslied... and Zeitgeist - - - - and Welthandel...Replies: @Old Palo Altan
I am both astonished and proud to learn that my reaction to the road from Weimar to Jena was such an historically well-grounded one.
Your link is a treasure which I shall read and explore over the coming weeks; indeed, once that is done, I think I will have no option but to plan a trip there to see it all again for myself .
Another thing: I am actually in full agreement with you about simplicity and purity being a constituent part of (good) baroque architecture, as it is of (good) modernism. I have even looked again at Wittgenstein’s house and, although not convinced, I see that I shall have to give it a personal inspection before forming a definitive view.
There is a Carthusian monastery in the forest near Schloss Zeil, and its architecture is reminiscent of what Wittgenstein is doing. Perhaps he would have found his proper vocation with that Order?
Quite pleased to see a Wittgenstein reference. Philosophy seems to have forgotten him.