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Posted by: timbo

So fix it, you big grown up man, you!


t

Posted by: GlassBeadGame

No further explanation needed. Probably a good idea to keep such a thread on top of the que in the annex.

Posted by: timbo

Wow, Size 5 typography.

I am very impressed at the intellectual depth of your rebuke.

And you berate me for quoting Monty Python as immature. Ha!

Posted by: Alison

You forgot to use the {{sofixit}} braces thingys, for additional annoyance value


Just how old are you??

Posted by: EricBarbour

He's a pseudosocialist hipster nerd from Portland, Oregon.

Judging from personal experience with that bizarre species, he has an emotional age of about 13.

(Many of them are also trust-fund brats, and have never worked a day in their lives. Also, oddly
enough, many of them are audiophiles. One of the http://www.positive-feedback.com/ is from Portland
and was founded and is run by guys like Tim. Weird but true.)

Posted by: TungstenCarbide

says a man with the emotional age of a 12 year old

that's true. Portland is full of trust fund brats. When a person has the money to live anywhere, Portland is the place to go. It's gone down hill over the last 20 years, though, because of all the Californians moving here.

Posted by: Milton Roe

Such emigration improves the average intelligence of both places, though.

Posted by: TungstenCarbide

Nice try, cupcake but the http://www-958.ibm.com/software/data/cognos/manyeyes/visualizations/average-iq-per-state.

Looks like Massachusetts has the highest IQ - understandable with Harvard there. Then you take a big step down to Connecticut and New Jersey - where Yale and Princeton are - again, very understandable ... but North Dakota is a close second to MA! What gives?

Posted by: Milton Roe

What "gives" is fewer minority residents there. These, for whatever reason, don't do as well on IQ tests.

My last quip was an old Will Rogers joke (though nobody can find where he actually wrote it). But being more serious, Oregon's better average state IQ than California's is simple demographics. When Bobby Kennedy lost his one and only primary election in 1968, it was in Oregon, where he famously said: "There are no poor or minorities there-- we've got nothing to hang on to!" He went on to win in California.

States with lower SAT scores (the most common proxy for IQ) tend to vote Democratic. And the two lowest of all are Louisiana and Mississippi.

Posted by: TungstenCarbide

random video

Posted by: Milton Roe

You may laugh, but that's a lot like both ecstasy and Burning Man. (Except the corkscrew part)

Burning Man was excellent as usual this year, BTW. Wish you all coulda' been there. Especially Ottava Rima.

Speaking of which... it's October 11 today, Ottava!! Anything you particularly want to get off your chest and tell us?

Posted by: timbo

I'd have kept the Agee quote, but K-Wolf's stripping out of POV seems mostly appropriate.

t

Posted by: TungstenCarbide

Massachusetts has a high percentage of minorities, and yet IQ scores are top. North Dakota has a higher percentage of minorities than Oregon (i think). It's not the ethnic makeup, Milton.

Posted by: Milton Roe

Massachusetts has < 6% blacks and < 7% Latinos and Hispanics, far less than the national composition (roughly 12% and 16% respectively). These two groups are the minorities that have traditionally driven IQ tests down (I make no claims about innate intellegence here-- these IQ tests are in English, and they are somewhat ethnocentric). However, for whatever reason, it's usually not Asians driving IQ scores down.

http://www.city-data.com/states/Massachusetts-Ethnic-groups.html

No, Massachusetts isn't the "whitest" state in the union, but I never claimed that being Caucasian was the main factor. And yes, of course Massachusetts' long history of emphasis on education must certainly be a factor. I think you were asking what gives with North Dakota, which isn't known for its institutions of higher learning. So I told you my best guess (0.6% blacks in North Dakota, 1.2% Hispanic-- some of the lowest numbers in the country). You don't accept my answer. Fine-- come up with your own, then.

Perhaps the North Dakotans have found some source of a smart-pill. Ya think that could be it?

Posted by: SB_Johnny

Could be the whole being snowed in for most of the year thing too...

Posted by: Milton Roe

That's it! Can't play hoops. Nuthin' to do but read! Bummer, but it works.

Posted by: Milton Roe

North Dakota: Total blacks+Hispanics = 0.6 + 1.2% = 1.8%
Oregon: Total blacks + Hispanics = 1.6% + 8% = 9.6%

http://www.city-data.com/states/North-Dakota-Ethnic-groups.html
http://www.city-data.com/states/Oregon-Ethnic-groups.html

Try again.

Posted by: Ottava

You mean about Columbus Day? You know I am strictly prohibited from talking about certain topics.

Posted by: Milton Roe

No, October 11 is National Coming Out Day. And we don't mean debs.

Posted by: EricBarbour

(pwned)

Posted by: Detective

Maybe that's because it's considerably older than Will Rogers. It originally said that every Irish immigrant to England lowers the average intelligence of both countries.

(Ducks as Alison swipes.)

Posted by: timbo

The whole notion of "reliable sources" is pretty idiotic, actually. The key question is objective accuracy; whether facts come from a primary, secondary, or tertiary source should be, ummmm, secondary to the, uhhhhh, primary concern of VERACITY.

There is bullshit in all published media. There is truth on unedited amateur blogs. Some mainstream media is more bullshit-laden than others (looking at you, Fox News). Some blogs are farcically untrustworthy, to be sure. The whole notion of one-size-fits-all Reliable Sources rules is stupid.

This is original sin dating back to the Philosophers coming down from the mount in 2002 or whatever year it was that Sanger and Wales got serious about systematizing this project...

t

Posted by: Milton Roe

Well, some wasn't THAT original. Yes, for obvious reasons considering the demographics of their writers, WMF didn't trust it to have any idea of truth or even how to detect it. So they did the next best thing: they substituted "authority" for "epistemological competence."

It took quite a while for them to figure out how to define "authority" and finally they decided that it amounted to "non-self-published published material." This wasn't a very good proxy, but it was the best they could do, and now they've stuck to it.

It has obvious problems: when it comes to e-publishing, it hardly matters if you publish it yourself or "someone else" (yuck, yuck) does it FOR you. Without the money problems of publishing, the care of editing goes out the window.

The other problem is that even in venues where publishing still costs money (paper journalism), editorial care is a slave to monied interests in many ways, from time-pressure to sponsor and subscriber pressure, and this can get so bad that a private blog on the net can be far more truthful than the Weekly World News.

Perhaps the main original sin is that everybody forgot during the setting of WP souring policy back in 2005 that there's no good way to separate the independently-published sources that are truthful, from those that are as true as Tass and Mein Kampf. Ah, we let WP's editors figure that out, do we? I thought we'd agreed they are idiots? Hmmm.

Wait, I have it! We let OTHER published sources tell us what the reliable published sources are! Hence the primary and secondary thing.

Gee, it's kind of a recursive conundrum, ain't it? It's all kids and no teacher, and chaos ensues.

Posted by: Kelly Martin

The entirety of the "reliable sources" and "verifiability" "rules" on Wikipedia developed not out of an attempt to build a coherent epistemology from which to write an encyclopedia. Rather, what's happened is as various powerful editors sought to include this source and exclude that source, they have tweaked and twisted the policies so as to give them Plausible Arguments why the source they want is "reliable" and the source they don't is "unreliable". That's why the policies, if you actually read them, are inconsistent, circular, and often inchoate. They weren't designed to make sense, or with any purpose or rationale other than winning the argument immediately at hand.

Posted by: timbo

Plot a regression and do that "The Wicked Witch Is Dead" dance again for our entertainment, Eric!

xoxo,

timbo


P.S. Feel free to include pre-2008 data points.

Posted by: timbo

Which makes you, by my reckoning, at least 80 years old...


timbo