Long Island, NY. The center stage of white trash theatre. The fish-shaped land mass that gave you Joey Buttafuoco, Amy Fisher and Jessica Hahn; where guys surnamed "diddy" hold white (clothing) only soirées each summer in the Hamptons; where Rudy used taxpayer dollars to show Judy his one-eyed, Italian, sausage snake in private. It has to be all the MBTE that got pumped into the water supply. We just don't know how to keep from fucking up.
The latest act in this long running show? Dr. James D. Watson -- the molecular biologist who won a Nobel Prize for his work in discovering DNA in the 1950s. He was also known as the acclaimed, but now former, chancellor of the prestigious Cold Spring Harbor laboratory. Screech!!!!!! Crash!
Wait a minute...what do you mean, former, Spartacus? That's right kids. Doc Jimmy is the "former" chancellor because a few months ago he just could not STFU. Bang! Zoom!
He was quoted as stating that he was "inherently gloomy about the prospect of Africa" as "all our social policies are based on the fact that their intelligence is the same as ours — whereas all the testing says not really." Really!
Well, the story gets even funnier. It turns out that 16% of Doc Jimmy's genetic code (the very DNA he discovered) is of African origins. You can read about it here:
Watson's DNA reveals some African ancestry
This is really nothing new as most of us have genetic code that can be traced back to African ancestry. But the average African DNA code for most white folk of European descent is 1%, meaning that Doc Jimmy is alot closer to his African "Roots" than he led us to believe.
Gotta love Long Island folks. We truly know how to put the "fun" in dysfunctional. Well, in tribute to Doc Jimmy's wonderful achievements in molecular biology, his spectacular downfall, and this most ironic genetic "discovery", I give you this....
One More Article / Un Altro Articolo
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Over the years teaching at La Scuola d’Italia NY, I have learned that
children are not just students; they are careful observers of the world,
full of q...
6 months ago
Funny post. You know, I grew up in Indiana which is to states what Long Island must be to micro-region. Total embarassment.
ReplyDeleteAnd I do what I can to add to the fun.
You've gotta love when a guy like Watson is caught in this kind of ironic situation. Um. Um. Um. Well.
Hang in there. The best thing about a place like LI or IN is that there's always another entertaining, if embarassing, story around the next news cycle.
P.S. Can you pull another Ironic video? This one is saying no longer available. WE WANT ALANIS! WE WANT ALANIS!
Journalists always manage to show how little they know about mathematics, especially when the subject of statistics arises.
ReplyDeleteDelthis Ricks writes in "Watson's DNA reveals some African ancestry" that Watson might have to reconsider his remarks on race because it appears that 16% of his own DNA came from an African ancestor.
Nonsense. First, as Watson said, testing has shown that the races are not equal on the IQ scale. This is a fact. Interestingly, I've never heard a peep about the reseach showing asians as the possessors of the highest group IQ among the three major racial groups: whites; blacks; and asians.
I've never heard any credible source dispute the claim that asians are smarter than whites. Meanwhile, every day I see evidence to support the claim. Half the student body of Stuyvesant High School, New York City's best public high school, is asian. Yet asians account for only 14% of students in the entire school system and they account for only 8% of the city's population.
If Watson had reiterated the research findings that asians are smarter than whites, it's likely reporters would have ignored it. Or perhaps an editor would have placed the story somewhere deep inside a paper. Either way, no outcry from whites would follow.
Moreover, no whites would throw up their hands and gasp if researchers claimed blacks were better athletes. Boxing, football, basketball. Is anyone reeling over the truth? No.
Are there good white boxers, football players and basketball players? Yes. But they represent a shrinking minority. So what?
Entertainment? In the entertainment industry people of all races have succeeded in the US. But judging quality is much harder. There are no fixed standards by which to measure the standing of an entertainer. Money is the most common element. But it says little. Applause? Impossible to quantify.
Meanwhile, when it comes to IQ, we've got something to work with. Asians score highest on IQ tests, followed by whites who are followed by blacks. In support of these rankings is the social and economic advances of asian, white and black societies, cultures and subcultures.
Africa is a benighted intellectual backwater. When looking at only sub-Sahara Africa, the picture gets worse. Why is every black nation an economic failure?
Why is academic achievement among blacks in the US substantially lower than achievement among whites and asians? Why do so few blacks attend college and graduate school? Meanwhile it is a simple fact that each year there are many subjects in which NO Ph.Ds are awarded to blacks. Mathematics is one. Physics is another.
Bottom line. It's hard to doubt the impact of genetic factors on the differences between races. Who would argue against the claim that Muhammad Ali is the greatest heavyweight boxer? Is Michael Jordan the greatest basketball player? Many fans say yes.
Was Einstein one of the smartest men in history? Yes.
But the issue is group performance. There's always one handy genius from every racial group. Few black writers have shown genius. Maybe only one: Ralph Ellison.
More disturbing, however, are the consistently low English SAT scores of black high school students.
Goerge Washington Carver and Booker T Washington are often mentioned. But they died a long time ago. Marcus Garvey and W.E.B DuBois are two more big names. Long gone. Today we have Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton. Two lightweights. Both more embarrassing than beneficial.
So tell me. If it isn't genes that give us our strengths and weaknesses, what does?
i cant believe i am responding to noslappz
ReplyDeleteFew black writers have shown genius.
oh really
what about?
Maya Angelou
Langston Hughes
Martin Luther King
Toni Morrison
Alice Walker
Thomas Sowell
August Wilson
Lorraine Hansberry
Marcus Garvey
James Alan McPherson
Ishmael Reed
Gwendolyn Brooks
Alex Haley
WEB DuBois
James Baldwin
to name a few -- you might not like them or agree with them --- but that doesnt take away from their intelligence or brilliance
enough on noslappz
spart
Long Island (i am on the list kick tonite)
home/hometown of
the Baldwins
Al D'Amato
Debbie Gibson
Rosie O'Donnell
Sean Hannity
Dr Laura
hence my staying on the island of Manhattan as opposed to the island of Long
d-cap, you listed:
ReplyDeleteMaya Angelou -- Sorry. Not a genius. Tell me which of her works you've read. I think she's nothing special.
Langston Hughes -- Not bad. But once again, no genius.
Martin Luther King -- I cited writers. Not civil rights leaders. In any case, the volume of his work is limited. Moreover, his strength was his preaching intonations, the quality of his voice, not the words themselves.
Toni Morrison -- Sorry. Once again, no genius.
Alice Walker -- Another non genius. Why do you think any black you can name is a genius?
Thomas Sowell -- Sowell is an economist. A conservative one, in fact. I like his work and the nature of his observations. But he's not Milton Friedman.
August Wilson -- Wilson is good. He's also like Obama, half white.
Lorraine Hansberry -- Hansberry wrote A Raisin in the Sun, which I very much enjoyed. That was almost her entire literary output. Notice that in Raisin the black family decided it was better to move to the white suburb even though the suburban attitude was anti-black, rather than stay another day in the black inner-city neighborhood.
Marcus Garvey -- I mentioned Garvey
James Alan McPherson -- I don't know this guy.
Ishmael Reed -- no opinion
Gwendolyn Brooks -- no opinion
Alex Haley -- A well known plagiarist and fabricator. In case you didn't know, most of Roots is phony. However, I admire his ability to get as far as he did with his deception.
WEB DuBois -- I mentioned him
James Baldwin -- I like Baldwin, but not enough to dive into all his work.
You could have mentioned Richard Wright. He's of mixed parentage. His social protest literature was hot for a while, but it doesn't work today. Meanwhile, he's another who fell for Stalin. Embarrassing.
Anyway, with respect to black writers I think Ellison is the best ever.
I am reading Ernest J Gaines now -- The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman.
Spartacus: I think you need to put out a few more citronella candles, dear.
ReplyDeleteDCap, Thanks for coming to my defense. I wasn't going to respond to slappz's moronic rant, because the more he wrote the more he proves the point that we all stem from the same gene pool. I wonder if he was born on LI? BTW, I have another to your from LI list:
ReplyDeleteBill O'Reilly
As for your decision on which island to inhabit, Manhattan is a smart choice. As you can see, it's already altered my genetics.
Pissed, I thought about putting out more citronella candles before I posted this. Fuck. You think a bug light might do the trick?
spart
ReplyDeletehe truly is a moron. he starts to make bush look smart. i wont even bother responding to his ridiculous answers to my list. brilliance is in the eye of the beholder, and slappz obviously has a very narrowly focused eye.
i forgot about o'reilly. that truly is embarrassing, and worse he makes his way to manhattan every day. i dont want to write what i wish would happen to bill ---
hope your holiday is going well.....
d-cap, you claim that brilliance is in the eye of the beholder.
ReplyDeleteThat means you believe genius is a subjective quality defined the same way Humpty Dumpty defined words. Humpty said "a word means what I choose it to mean, neither more nor less."
You are claiming there are no measures for comparative judgments to support or disprove the claims of genius. In other words, you think a blogger with a few readers is the equal of Shakespeare.
Anyway, which of the names you dropped have you actually read?
Furthermore, like I said, whenever an observer offers an assessment of a group, there is always a critic ready to contradict the broad analysis by citing an example or two from the right-hand tail of the Bell Curve.
In other words, statistically speaking, the critic is comparing apples and oranges.
So my question stands. What accounts for the disparities among humans, if not genes?
Lastly, Frederick Douglass did great work in Up From Slavery.
I've reviewed no-slappz list and have concluded the following.
ReplyDelete(1) He's a racist.
(2) He's a sexist.
He clearly supports the theory that African ancestry equals less intelligence.
He also can't grant that one woman is a genius.
I find the whole idea of genius to be quite subjective, but I think the fact that he is dead certain that none of the women are the list are worth "genius" status in his subjective definition of it is quite telling.
Let the games begin.
I've tried in the past to give this cat the benefit of the doubt, but this particular laundry list of idiocy is more deserving of the Benefit of The Boot.
ReplyDeleteInteresting post, Spart. Keep it coming!
penelope
ReplyDeletedont waste your time with him
dont get sucked in
Penelope-we can also add punk to your list, too. You see this was the same guy who had an opportunity to put his money where his mouth is on a bet with a regular commenter of mine, Kelso, that Hillary Clinton would not win the Democratic Party nomination. Knowing him to be a well-compensated Wall Street analyst, Kelso placed a high stakes bet on the table, to which slappz responded with $1. You can't even buy a small coffee with that where I live. Anyway, thanks for stopping by. Also, please say hello to Professor Pat Pending. He was always my favorite Wacky Racer.
ReplyDeleteCR - I hear what you're saying, but if we don't give morons like this a platform, we stop being the democratic idealists we say we are. We must not silence the voice of dissent, even when it comes from the far right AND is utterly moronic.
DCap - When are we hanging again? I need to buy you a drink pal. You're awesome.
penelope pitstop, you said "He clearly supports the theory that African ancestry equals less intelligence.
ReplyDeleteI accept the finding that group testing has shown asians have a higher group IQ than whites. Thus, I do believe that one race has proven itself smarter than another. Are you bothered by this well established fact? I'm not.
You concluded that "He also can't grant that one woman is a genius."
Well, not among those on the list appearing here. Sorry. Talented? Yes. Superior writers? Yes. Genius? No.
You claim "I find the whole idea of genius to be quite subjective, but I think the fact that he is dead certain that none of the women are the list are worth "genius" status in his subjective definition of it is quite telling."
Okay. So how do YOU define genius? And what qualities of the work of the women on the list raises them into the genius category? If you believe one or more of these women are geniuses, you should have no trouble revealing the elements of their work that demonstrate that quality.
I just envious that you get such responses from your posts. Then again I rarely touch the forbidden three, politics, work and women. More power to you.
ReplyDeletespart......
ReplyDeletewe should get together --right after new years --- we can meet up around Penn station to make it easy for you for a beer. you should have my work email, i of course cant find yours. (so typical of disorganized me)
Wyld, there's really nothing to envy. I'm thinking about changing the name of my site to bug light because I kept attracting the same pest and he keeps getting zapped. Is there a way you could get him into uniform and out on patrol in Afghanistan?
ReplyDeleteDCap, I have your address. I'll shoot you a note. But it matters not where we drink.
Slappz, while I have no objective criteria for genius, I do know you're an objective adjective of idiot. Come to think of, you're an objective example of punk, too.
Get the biggest motherfucking bug light there is. And take photos. I want to see the light arc this annoying bug makes.
ReplyDelete