Briefly Noted
Unsurpisingly, Greg Laden has relapsed into making traditional racial and ethnic distinctions (he notes the racial difference in height between Europeans and Pygmies), which only a few days ago he claimed were too ambiguous to discern. In this post, Greg speaks of “Euro-Americans” and a group of Pygmies called the “Efe” with whom he interacted with in the DRC.
Which brings me to my point: race denial is an insincere rhetoric. The same liberals who insist that “race” doesn’t exist relapse into making everyday racial distinctions with the rest of us. These categories are not really difficult to understand. The liberal denial of them is nothing more than a posture adopted in service to political correctness.
A bit off topic, but my personal favorite are the left-atheist types who go apeshit over creationism, while being vehement race deniers. I’d come across these types on one of those scienceblogs.com sites, I dont recall which one. They reacted to me with insults and wouldn’t discuss any sort of evidence. They were religious about it.
PC Myers.
“These categories are not really difficult to understand. The liberal denial of them is nothing more than a posture adopted in service to political correctness.” ( — from the log entry)
Correct.
Check it out…decent article exposes some of the myths of the 1920s KKK – http://www.insurgentdesire.org.uk/kkk.htm
Well, naw. What evolution shows is that 1) a larger gene pool is a benefit to an organism; 2) that all organisms are individuals rather than groups, and each has a unique genome; that species don’t exist except as convenient groupings of similar individuals for analysis is clear enough, and the same goes for race. It’s not like we can do away with talking about hummingbirds and orcas, and it is the same with words like “pygmy”, “white”, “Han Chinese” and “African-American”.
Come on guys, it’s easy. It’s not rhetoric, it’s just the truth. Race is at most a convenient group for analysing social trends, but really nothing more.
Huh? Since when has it been politically correct to deny the existence of species? I guess it was bound to happen. But, when will Obama-brigades begin raiding universities and tossing all scientific texts heretofore used in biology into Bonfires of Hope/Change, and replacing them with texts that tell the non-racist truth (species do not exist) at last?
BTW, your conclusions about evolution are approximately the exact opposite of reality. Groups evolve, individuals don’t. Unless you believe in Lamarckianism, in which case I advise you to throw away the textbook with Comrade Lenin’s face on it.
1.) Tanzania is the most genetically diverse country in the world. It is also one of the poorest. It has a higher infant mortality rate and a lower life expectancy rate than the United States.
2.) Packs of wolves are individualistics? Schools of fish?
How can Tanzania be ‘the most genetically diverse country in the world’? I’d think that’s got to be the USA.
It’s not politically correct to deny the existence of species. It’s just true. Species are arbitrary groupings rather than some immutable essence of, I don’t know, “duckhood” referring to ducks. Each organism is an individual, and any grouping is to some extent arbitrary.
Naw, the conclusions about evolution presented above are the precise reality insofar as that makes sense. Individual organisms undergo mutations, and shared mutations in different individual create the change in species, not the other way around.
I also think you’re confusing Lysenkoism with Lamarckism. Somewhat different.
@Prozium: 1) No, Tanzania is not the most genetically diverse nation on the planet. That is assuredly one of the developed nations, due to immigration. And it also seems as if you are disputing the idea that a larger gene pool is a good thing, in which case I hope having sex with your sister and mother are good fun.
2) No, they aren’t individualistic, or whatever else you mean. But they are all individuals, and each fish in a school and each wolf in a pack is genetically different from every single other wolf and every other fish, regardless of how it seems from the outside. Individuals can operate socially, share some mutations, and do pretty much exactly the same things and still be genetically and I suppose consciously distinct organisms.
Getting truth out of you guys is like getting blood from a stone. Your irrational belief in race hate bullshit has caused you to try to twist words and facts into something that supports your archaic, slimy, primordial and disgusting nonsense.
You are all clearly quite stupid, and I think you should be separated from the rest of society, so that the stupid genes eventually die off in a maelstrom of incestuous limbs, failing eyes and polydactylism.
1.) Actually, Tanzania is the most genetically diverse nation on earth. The vast majority of human genetic diversity is located in sub-Saharan Africa (the poorest, most backward region of the planet) where our species first evolved. Europeans and Asians are descended from a small band of hunter gatherers that left Africa to colonize Europe and Asia around 50,000 years ago. American Indians are even less genetically diverse having originated from wandering Siberian tribes. Genetic diversity is not positively correlated with high living standards.
2.) Schools of fish and packs of wolves are social creatures that live and hunt in groups. The same is true of any number of different species including our own. I’m not grasping your point: are you now dispensing with all taxonomic categories and not just race? That’s an interesting, if absurd extension of your worldview.
3.) Racial categories are no more mysterious than geographic ones. The Northern Hemisphere reflects an underlying physical geographic reality even though it is humans that draw the boundry at the equator.
4.) If you value your opportunity to participate in this discussion, keep the ad hominem at of your future posts.
Alec: “I think you should be separated from the rest of society, so that the stupid genes eventually die off in a maelstrom of incestuous limbs, failing eyes and polydactylism.”
Do you speak of Jews in general here, or perhaps your own experience as a filthy and parasitic ibred Jew? As you well know, Jews are notoriously inbred and prone to incest as studies of Jewish history, sociology, and especially genetics demonstrate. Yup, to be a Jew is a mighty wonderful thing considering all of the potential diseases and disorders (both mental and physical) so many Jews are born with and/or pass on because of centuries of fanatical inbreeding – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ashkenazi_Jews#Specific_diseases_and_disorders
Not to mention how incredibly UGLY Jews are – Jews are both inwardly and outwardly ugly, degenerate, diseased, and deformed. It must be pretty terrible to have been born a Jew like you were Alec…I’m so sorry you and your people are so damaged, but it’s your own fault for reproducing human freaks who were bred to study Talmud all day and figure out ways to continue ripping-off gullible non-Jews instead of doing actual hard work for survival. However, methinks the upcoming generation of younger Jews will have problems with that pattern of Jewish life considering so many of them now live in a permanent autistic and/or Aspbergers-like stupor. Good luck with that!
So, it looks like the only solutions are to (1) continue to reproduce amongst yourselves, though this will cause further mental and physical diseases and disorders to become even more rampant amongst your kind; (2) ceasing to reproduce altogether (my choice; for the good of the human race you know); or (3) reproducing with the filthy goyim (something tells me that option is completely off the table).
That means you and your people are basically extinct within the next 2-3 generations, or at least the best of you are (though of course the crazed Haredim will of course live on, lol) – so enjoy Earth while you still can, and I wish you bad luck.
Mammals live and evolved in groups, as do/did most other species. Humans moreso than most other species.
Claiming that every creature on Earth is an ‘individual’ is flatly absurd and against all known tenets of biology.
I hate to say this, but I somewhat agree with Alec. Some people think that there’s an essential difference between different species — like as if there is some sort of essential ‘duckness’ that ducks have but that geese don’t have. This isn’t true — each individual duck has his own genome, and each individual goose has his own genome, and these genes are to a greater or lesser degree shared. Some organisms are closely related, and others more distantly, but we are all related. I share some ancestors with the tree outside my window, even if these ancestors lived millions, maybe billions of years ago.
Which is not to say that the concept of ‘species’ is not a useful concept — because it is. But there is no essential difference between species, and it’s difficult to say whether or not animals are capable of interbreeding just because they’re not the same species. I read somewhere that the first liger (cross between a lion and a tiger) born was quite a surprise to the people keeping the big cats.
But, of course, just as the concept of ‘species’ is a useful concept, so the concept of ‘race’ is a useful concept. Black people are different from white people in many important ways. Of course, these groupings of race are somewhat arbitrary, but then so are species groupings.
Barbicane, that’s a bunch of semantic gobbledy-goop.
Species can be differentiated; arguing that they are “social constructs” created essentially arbitrarily by scientists (as you heavily imply) is laughable. Talk about radical-Libertarianism run amock.
President Barbicane seems to be an asshole.
He said somewhat arbitrary, Lenny, not completely arbitrary. And he’s right. Look up the definitions of species, genus, family etc. I remember a biologist once answering a creationist’s challenge by requiring specific definitions of these classes, insisting that for every definition he could provide an example of a life-form that lies outside it. (IIRC the creationist was trying to make the case that every living thing is created and does not/cannot/has not evolved beyond the parameters of those definitions.)
When you get to human races there is certainly no firm definition of “the white race,” nor even of the nordic race, really, hence the endless disputes about “who is white.”
Races are best thought of as “fuzzy sets.” That’s what Richard McCulloch was attempting was his 0=central nordic, and 1, 2, 3…7 etc moving progressively away from that type until at some point you move into “white, not nordic” . I’m not sure how biologically accurate the “0” designation is but he’s probably correct that there’s a “central” or core type.
Of course, that all makes for uncomfortable complications — would WNs really wish to be considered crummy examples of their breed? And if not, is that really much different to a negro not wishing to be considered the refuse of mankind? Rather obvious why some whites turn against their own kind and trash the whole idea of “races” — they just don’t want to create (“socially construct”) a reality in which some people are forced to be thought so poorly of. I highly doubt calling people “assholes” is going to do much to change that. Then again, close, calm and collected reasoning doesn’t seem to be much help either. (Eg That Lindsay fellow seems to have blocked me from his blog again for no apparent reason, and I’m far more patient with and polite to him than the creeps and cretins that crawl around WN sites.) So the frustration of skinhead types who just wish to skip all the talk and just bring on the race war is understandable.
silver: “So the frustration of skinhead types who just wish to skip all the talk and just bring on the race war is understandable.”
Jesus Christ silver, what got into you?
Nothing has gotten “into” me, Cap’n, I’m just stating what I think is, after just a bit of reflection, pretty obvious. These are some frustrated people. In their own lifetimes they’ve seen matters go from bad to worse. They can’t be bothered vacillating about minutiae or forever evading linguistic snares set by their opponents. That frustration sometimes spills over into a resolve to dispense with talking and just “get the job done.”
That’s either an accurate observation or it isn’t. If you want to disagree with it then do so. But can you, for once could you, not make it about me or my motives? Can you do that, Cap? Can you grow up?
And it also seems as if you are disputing the idea that a larger gene pool is a good thing, in which case I hope having sex with your sister and mother are good fun.
Wow, that was scientific. Panmixia or incest? Those are our choices?
Can you describe speciation for us?
When you’re done, please apply your logic vis-a-vis biological taxonomy to the rest of the universe.
E.g., “there are no cars, only conglomerations of wheels, engines (wait, there are no engines…), frames, etc.,” “there are no buildings, only conglomerations of wood, brick, concrete, plastic, metal, etc.” “no, no, no, wait, there is no metal, only conglomerations of molecules, no, atoms, no, SAPs…”