I just read "Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists" for the interviews. Really.

RD, if you have any of those classic BAS centerfolds with Edward Teller or Robert Oppenheimer, you're a lucky man.

Those are certifiable classics.

bc

The only way to overcome this knee-jerk reaction to gender and race is not only to be free of stereotypes, but to be free of an awareness of stereotypes.

This is a pretty tall order.

I don't know nuthin' about basketball, but I find the statistics regarding racial bias in foul calls entirely believable. It goes along with the recently discussed study about highway stops. Of course, some of this is racial animus. However, I agree that in some quick-decision situations people are ruled by unconscious biases. Freeing ourselves of an awareness of stereotypes is a great and daunting task. It is possible, on a personal level, and in this I think the culture has to change one person at a time.

I have some hope for the younger generation. The Boy, and other kids his age, often do not describe their classmates by color. He may talk about the kid with the glasses, or the really good soccer player, or the one with a lot of hair, without mentioning that person is black or Asian or whatever. He also doesn't seem to know about the ideas that persons of a certain color are likely to respond to particular situations in certain ways. We've tried to foster this, of course, but parental example alone wouldn't do it unless his own peer group reinforced the behavior.

I understand that Esquire has excellent reporting, but I am still far too inhibited to be seen publically reading a magazine that has Halle Barre wearing provocative fripperies on the cover.

My stereotype is a Philips Micro Hi-Fi System with 5 CD Changer

Yeah, RD. The kit alludes to the converation started a couple days ago when you posed the general question (that I'm not recalling with 100% accuracy) regarding the possibility of NOT pigeonholing someone into a stereotype, based on what they say. All I can think of right now is the Boeheim shrug when a call doesn't go the way of the Orangemen. When I was coaching soccer, I found no utility in berating the officials during a match. I feel like it causes the officials to scrutinize everything your players do and develops a prejucidial attitude the next time you encounter that particular official. Rather, I'd choose to follow the chain of command and let my captain do the talking, or try to make light of excessive physical force in an attempt to cajole them into calling fouls in a more egalitarian fashion. As if.

Re: Mr Murdock

Like he needs a bigger megaphone.

I should add that a good friend turned me on to McSweeney's, good stuff.

bc

This has nothing to do with your column, but wanted to ask you if you know why the big oak tree at the corner of Cathedral and MacArthur in the Palisades is being cut down this morning?

I suppose somewhere there's a record of how many shares of Dow Jones Murdoch already owned before he offered double the share price for the company.

The stock jumped from 36 to 56 the day of the news and has stayed up there. So even if he drops his offer, some folks have already made a bundle. I'd certainly take my profits now if I owned DJ shares.


Ivansmom... I always worry about that color-blind thing. My husband and I have worked hard to raise color-blind children. My son wondered what color my daughter would be before she was born; my daughter says there's a woman in the neighborhood who looks just like my sister. The woman is black; my sister is white.

They, too, describe the kid with the glasses or the girl with the pretty dress.

But then they get confused when they hear even supposedly positive reports: John Smith is the first black CEO of Company X. They wonder why that's still news. It's got to color their attitude, for lack of a better word, and almost add to the stereotypes subconsciously.

Hearing about the first woman president of ABC University makes them wonder why that's news. "Does that mean women shouldn't be president, Mom?"

I think the whole world's got to change. It's a tough job, but it can happen, I think, if we're really up to it.

Whew, I'm hot and sweaty and need a rest, but the begonias are all planted.

Ivansmom, I've noticed that my kids are less aware of race than our generation. I think it's because they have been exposed to a much wider range of children than I was over their whole lives. I hope that it makes a difference in school that will continue throughout their careers.

I should also point out that although I still consider the National Geographic an excellent periodical, I find that it has undergone a shocking decline in quality dating to August of last year.

Again with the fripperies.

My Google ad...

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I really didn't think you needed a quiz.

We have tried to split the difference, TBG. We try to describe people by something other than color, which clearly has been reinforced by his peers. However, we've also had very explicit talks about civil rights, as well as the women's movement. Since he was little, we've talked about Martin Luther King, and how people couldn't do things just because of their skin color ("isn't that crazy?"), and about the suffragettes, and how people couldn't vote just because of their gender (his preferred word now). This gives him a context for women and minority CEOs, candidates, etc. We hope the message he's getting is that, in what he considers ancient historical times (wince) people were judged differently based on characteristics over which they had no control, but now we know better and don't do that. So far it seems to be working.

If Dr. Evil succeeds, where will the "Fox" go? Fox Jones. The Fox Street Journal. The Wall Street Fox. Okay, that's my favorite.

RD, I noticed that too, and in fact I did not renew my subscription. I wonder if they experienced a noticeable dip in subscription revenue?

:)

Non-renewal comments suggest that some people did not appreciate "The Joy of Shoes," National Geographic, September 2006. I didn't renew either.

Yes, we've done those things, too, Ivansmom. We have some good family discussions, too. I think I may have told this story in the boodle before, but here's one of my favorite parenting moments:

We like to watch movies from the 1920s and 30s. My husband hunts them down in the Tivo guide and then sets them to record. We have fun watching them with the kids and seeing what life was like back then: the clothes, the slang and the attitudes. We talk about how things have changed and often laugh at old expressions--and discuss seriously old prejudices or stereotypes.

We were watching a 1934 movie called "Imitation of Life" with Claudette Colbert and Louise Beavers about a white woman (Colbert) and a black woman (Beavers) who open a pancake shop and eventually a pancake business (Aunt Delilah's Pancake Mix).

Beavers' character has a daughter who looks white and tries to "pass." When she complains that Colbert's daughter called her "black," Colbert asks her daughter, accusingly, "Why did you say such a terrible thing to her?"

Well... my 12-year-old daughter burst out laughing! She thought it was hilarious that someone would think that it was a terrible thing to call someone "black." To her it was like being told it was terrible to call someone "human."

I think it's true that generation by generation people will learn.

TBG - I think it also helps to live in Fairfax County.

A fox in the financial hen-house on Wall Street bodes ill, moving the WSJ from traditional conservative to neocon extreme.

That's true, RD. I'm thankful for that. It certainly has changed since I grew up here.

This is going to seem like it's off-topic, but actually the story about racial bias in the NBA and the comment about the study having "a lot of moving parts" (cute) got me started thinking about psychology studies and that reminded me that I caught part of "Fresh Air" last night and it's an important program about a significant book about human behavior.

From the NPR website (where you can listen to the show)

Fresh Air from WHYY, May 1, 2007 · Best known for the landmark Stanford Prison Experiment -- in which student volunteers in a mock prison transformed with startling speed into sadistic guards or emotionally broken prisoners -- Philip Zimbardo has written a book on the psychology of the unspeakable. It's called The Lucifer Effect: Understanding How Good People Turn Evil.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=9940824&ft=1&f=13

=====

TBG, I agree, and I think school desegregation has been worth the effort; it's probably the best thing that has happened in the civil rights arena during the past 25 years.

You bring up a good point about media--one of the things that bugs me is how the media covers census data--somehow it's news that the percentage of hispanics has increased in my county, or that by a certain year in the future, all minority groups together will add up to more than 50% of the population. It's irritating to me but I have to admit that it is news, sort of. They also report that sort of data on age groups and income levels. And when the first woman breaks through and earns a status position that throughout all of history has been denied to women, that's news too. The kids are ahead of their time.

From the link Joel provided:

Christopher Hitchens -- the Washington-based pundit, polemicist and world-class dinner party commando -- won the commentary award for his controversial columns in Vanity Fair. Hitchens, who once wrote a column mocking journalism awards, was praised by the judges of these journalism awards for his "incisive eloquence and expansive intellect."

Since I'm just finishing Hitchens book of letters, anyone know what was so controversial about Hitchens columns and their subject content? And why they would have won him the prize?

Picked up a remaindered book this week about the founding and history of National Geographic, titled "Explorer's House"--the story of Gardiner Greene Hubbard, Alexander Graham Bell and Gilbert H. Grosvenor. I'm eager to start reading it. And I did make a mistake in one of my earlier postings about a month or so ago--the price of an annual subscription to Natty G is $15, not $12 as I mentioned--a real bargain at either price.

http://www.amazon.com/Explorers-House-National-Geographic-World/dp/1594200327/ref=sr_1_11/103-4821320-9039802?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1178119836&sr=1-11

If TGB and kb are talking about race, I would be remiss to not point out several excellent op-eds recently by our longtime Metro columnist Carlos Guerra (since the Ken Burns controversy about his upcoming WWII documentary is playing large here).

Guerra writes about the Warren Court's Hernandez decision:

http://www.mysanantonio.com/news/columnists/cguerra/stories/MYSA042807.01B.guerra.34fe112.html

Even though the U.S. Supreme Court answered the question in 1954, people still ask: "Aren't Mexican Americans 'white'?" And few realize that the answer forever changed Latinos' legal status everywhere.

Yes, Hernandez vs. Texas remains little known as its importance is underappreciated. ...

As a Mexican American, Hernandez was denied his 14th Amendment right of equal protection, the lawyers argued. But that protection applies only to blacks and whites, the state responded, and being white, his conviction should stand.

But no Latinos had sat on any Jackson County juries for at least 25 years, the young lawyers showed. That was a coincidence, the state's attorney replied.

But in a 9-0 decision, the Supreme Court justices disagreed.

"The evidence in this case was sufficient to prove that persons of Mexican descent constitute a separate class, distinct from whites," wrote Chief Justice Earl Warren, before adding that when "laws single out that class for different treatment, the guarantees of the Constitution have been violated."

Challenging Ken Burns:

http://www.mysanantonio.com/news/columnists/cguerra/stories/MYSA042107.01B.guerra.351c11b.html

It is little wonder that when Burns' omission of Latinos came to light, thousands protested the exclusion. But the result was as insulting as the exclusion.

Latino war stories will be included in station breaks of Burns' "The War."

I wonder what that tío [uncle] I never met, Adalberto Ramón, a National Guard staff sergeant who was shot between the eyes by a sniper in Italy, or what my scoutmasters, two of whom spent the better part of World War II as POWs in German concentration camps, would think of it all.

I switched from NGeo to Smithsonian magazine ($12) and have been satisfied.

Might have to resume Wired after a decade's hiatus. But that leads to questions of how that would fit into the other stuff that pours into the house. For the literate who like leisurely stories, Surfer's Journal is text-driven. Maybe William Finnegan will write something for them. Maybe he already has.

I just started getting "The Week" magazine--I don't know how I get these magazines, they just appear in my mailbox, a result of something I signed up for online or some credit card promotion, who knows what. Anyway, "The Week" is a quick summary of major media, a good review and a chance to see if you missed anything important (how could that happen, if I read Achenblog every day...) Most of the "articles" are just summaries of real articles written elsewhere, abstracts even, reports of reports. But the most recent issue included a condensed version of Weingarten's "fiddler in the metro" story. I don't like abridgments on principle, but it was a pretty big honor for that to be the week's only feature story.

Stuff that pours into the house.

Ever since I forwarded my late father's mail to my address the piles have been getting bigger and bigger.

I often wonder what my dad actually did with his copies of Working Mother and Oprah magazine. Last week something called Saveur arrived.

I don't really think my dad was paying for all of these. I've got his checkbooks and credit card statements. I think he got one of those "use your air mileage for magazines" offers. I just wish he'd thrown it out.

Funny that you should mention the Smithsonian magazine, Shiloh, since one if my $1 book finds earlier this week was Nina Burleigh's 2003 "The Stranger and the Statesman: James Smithson, John Quincy Adams, and the Making of America's Greatest Museum: The Smithsonian."

Regrettably no index, but know that material on Marsh the paleontolgist is included.

http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/history/marsh.html

Fascinating connectedness, Loomis, between O. Charles Marsh, the Peabody at Yale endowed by his Uncle George and the fire at the Georgetown library this week. It gives meaning to the concept of six degrees of separation.

I wondered about that 'Shoes' article, as well, then NG stopped coming. I guess the subscription expired. I think that parts of NG and Smithsonian need work. The latter isn't quite what it was when I subscribed some fifteen years ago. I miss Natural History and the late Stephen J. Gould's musings on natural selection.

[REDACTED] Bulletin of Atomic Scientists [REDACTED]

:-)

Considering the number of publications which come to our house, it is truly refreshing to realize that I've never read, or even seen, most of the Magazine Award winners.

I vowed never to take the Smithsonian again after ending my subscription years ago. This was before recycling, and it was such a beautiful magazine that I couldn't bear to throw it out. Facing a cross-country move, I had years of magazines stacked up and couldn't give them away to any deserving organization. Of course, I now could recycle them and have considered taking Smithsonian and Nat. Geographic, if only for the Boy. However, he already gets his own chess and fencing magazines, and we have far too many other things coming in to read as it is.

Ivansmom, that's a very nice problem to have.

:-)

That is a lovely way to look at it, Scottynuke, and reflects your cheerful nature. At times I agree. At times I think we're drowning in paper. Then I pull out the recycling wand and all is well.

Hi all! Trying to catch up after a week of nonstop work, but you don't make it easy! Haven't even had a chance to read the transcript of the Weingarten chat.

bc, in the last boodle, you asked a question about a telescope. Perhaps like good astronomers, they were looking for intelligent life forms? (Low and away, and perhaps a little slower next time.)

martooni made me do a double take--at first I thought he said 36D, which made me wonder if there was something he wasn't telling us.

CP, we have a resident blue heron. Such a stoic, patient creature standing there pretending to be a cattail until a hapless fish comes by.

As a nod to being on-topic, we get so many magazines, it would be a full-time job to read them all. Many are Raysdad's effort to use his many frequent flier miles. Food & Wine, US News, Money, Horse Illustrated, Consumer Reports, and the list goes on. At least he stopped receiving Skiing (which made sense, given that neither of us have skied in over four years).

Raysmom: I still have my first pair of skis, the venerable K2 four competition, 195 cm. The one's with the red white and blue p-tex stripes that replicate the tops. I even sent away to K2 corp. for a copy of the Wayne Wong poster of him executing this great turn off a mogul that exposed the bottoms of his skis.

jack, I'll have to look to confirm, but they sound just like a pair that Raysdad has in the garage. From back in the day when manly men strapped on the longest skis they could manage. His latest are a somewhat shorter pair (but longer than current trend) of parabolics.

Yoki, I was delighted to read that you used to ride dressage. It's my favorite equestrian sport, but unfortunately it's only televised during the Olympics. What level did you ride?

No, I didn't ride dressage--just my 4-H horse, suited up Western. Except for his small stature (14.2 hands), he might have done well in dressage. He was far too collected and forward-striding for the average Western judge. They always preferred the peanut-rollers.

Raysmom: My wife designed this space in the upstairs foyer where we're displaying some of our old stuff (most of it's mine): bicycles, skis, lacrosse sticks, tennis clubs, a FlxFlyr, etc.. I was given a choice of displaying it or parting with it.

Raysmom - I was still cruelly mocked by my daughter for assuming that "dressage" rhymes with "message."

What do I know from horses?

(Did I mention the cruelly mocked bit?)

And can anyone tell me why it is worthwhile to watch the first three quarters of an NBA basketball game? Most of the games remind me of those indoor bicycle races where nothing much happens until the final sprint to the finish line.

Speaking of periodicals. Does anyone else have this strange compulsion to tear out all those stupid little insert mailer cards?

And if the answer is no, please forget that I even mentioned it.

RD, the first thing I do when picking up a magazine is pull all those &*%$ cards out. So no, it's not just you.

Although you do show more patience with basketball than I. Last quarter, heck. Why not the last 2 minutes (that take a half-hour to play)?

RD, I can't read Smithsonian till I've done that. They drive me nuts. And it seems that the mag only has three dozen of them...What a pleasure to have torn one side out and come to the other and know that I've gotten all of it!

RDP;

The little mailer cards in my periodicals seem to leap from the pages all on their own... Haven't you trained yours yet?

:-)

>Does anyone else have this strange compulsion to tear out all those stupid little insert mailer cards?

Whaddaya mean "strange"?

One up on all of you. I not only tear out the cardboard inserts, I usually tear out any back-to-back ads. The magazines become svelte and much easier to handle.

That should read "more compulsive than any of you."

RD, I am another person who removed all mailers first - they drive me nuts.

Off on a tangent I happened to go to a site I look at once in a while. It is for a magazine called The Beaver, (jokes aside), it is a good historical magazine here.

Came across the article below and interested followed the links to the author, who it turns out has been getting a lot of press about his new books, and who I also discovered is the son of Dan Hill (Musician - not sure if his music went across the border). Just by coincidence the author also lives in my town.

Quite a collection of books of blacks and black issues in Canada, think I have the next books I will be reading.

http://www.thebeaver.ca/bea.asp?subsection=fea&page=pas

I too immediately rip out and discard those cards. I thought that was what they were for -- wrist and finger exercise. The magazine industry's way of keeping us fit.

RD, you may not know "dressage" from "message", but I bet you know "meritage" sounds like "heritage". Even though it tastes a lot better.

nellie, you're not the only one.

Ha! I always thought omni was my long-lost son.

4H, Raysmom, good times. But not the rabbitry badge, which nearly ended in a way that would upset RD. Ah, the country life. Switching images from at-risk bunnies to acceptable cruel nature: Raysmom, I call the heron "needle-nose pliers of death." Froggies and fishes never see that cattail comin' do they?

Ahem: true confession. Those of us who read magazines in the tub ALWAYS remove the cards before the leisure of bubbles and words.

I have a citation from a student who studied Alan Greenspan and monetary policy that I will post shortly. Get ready for a visual treat about that most decadent of pleasures: a clean well-lit place for books.

Paragraph on the reading habits of Washingtonians (some of the sentences are doozy-long, but the Fed Chairman scene is priceless):

Gail Kern Paster, the director of the Folger Shakespeare Library, spends a few hours at home most nights plowing through books on a cushy, paisley-emblazoned chair in a red room. National Endowment for the Humanities Chairman Bruce Cole does his reading in bed, propped up on a hillock of pillows. At his house in McLean,"where there are no distractions, good light and a comfortable chair," and where the air is sometimes perfumed with classical music, Sen. Robert Byrd (D-W.Va.) reads with such absorption that "not even our little dog Trouble can easily distract my attention from the book," Byrd wrote in an e-mail. And Alan Greenspan, a spokesman said, luxuriates in the bathtub every morning scrutinizing reports and books before heading off to his job as chairman of the Federal Reserve Board. New York has its financial geeks, and celluloid visions swan through the brains of swarms of Los Angelenos. But here in Policywonkdom, it's all about the
history of ethnic conflict in Macedonia, or the state of civil liberties in the Information Age, or hydrogen fuel cells and U.S. energy independence. It's a city of brainiacs and militant readers, of many-degreed people who relish not the notion of a boozy night on the town, but a serene evening at home buried in a book.

From February 27, 2003 Washington Post "Home" page.

Small correction, Dan Hill the musician is Lawrence Hill's brother, Dan Hill the father was a Human Rights Activist.

I have been a reader of Wired since the very first issue which is now very collectible. My copy got discarded long ago. I no longer read it cover to cover and a pile of back issues on the kitchen table continually mocks me.

It has declined from it's early '90s salad days, but it is still a good read.

Other magazines that come in the mail to the yellojkt household include:

Time
Entertainment Weekly
Budget Traveler
Good Housekeeping
GamePro

Painfully, EW is the only one I still make an effort to read cover to cover.

Wired has the most "blow-ins" (the technical term for those annoying cards). I collect them and use them as bookmarks. By the time I get to the end of the issue, there is a stack of 4 or 5.

Time is pretty notorious for thick unbendable advertising inserts. Fortunately, they are usually perforated and easily disposable. Magazines I read at BigBoxOfBooks while drinking an overpriced highly caffeinated milkshake include:

PC
Bust
Blender
Diva
Rolling Stone
Maxim
Utne Reader
Vanity Fair
New Republic

None of these have reached the level of requiring me to subscribe although Blender is would be top candidate if some urchin was selling subcriptions.

Thanks to everyone for never again having to feel guilt about discarding the stiff little inserts from the folds of magazines. Anyway, I only do it if they conflict with my reading or with turning a page--which is always.

In relation to Rupert Murdoch's publishing empire, he certainly does appeal to the darker side of humanity. I think that is well put.
As far as the Wall Street Journal is concerned, even though I don't read it myself, I don't think they appeal to the darker side of the reading public.
Ruth Beazer

I read WSJ when staying at hotels that offer complimentary copies. I started reading it while in college when I would browse through a fellow students pass-along copy she needed for a business class she was taking.

For awhile I worked in a building where several tenants had WSJ subscriptions. I would take an early coffee break, borrow their copy and retire to the building library. When done, I would refold it and replace it in the mail bin. I nearly got busted a few times. I had to give up living on the edge like that.

My brother is a senior editor for the WSJ and we had some pretty interesting email exchanges yesterday, before the news of Murdoch's bid became public. One of the few insider-trading opportunities of my life, and I didn't own any stock! Darn.

The staff is very very concerned. Very. Journalistic standards and all, don't you know.

Loomis, I think I was unaware that Burns was doing a series on WWII until you mentioned it, and also unaware that there was any Latino/Hispanic controversy about it. I read Guerra's piece you linked, though, and have some observations. Using Guerra's own numbers, Latinos comprised only 3.1 percent (if you use the lower 500,000 figure) to 4.3 percent (using 700,000) of all the Americans who served in WWII. Also using his numbers, if Latinos won 13 Medals of Honor, out of the 1,150 who won one, that that makes 1.15 percent.

One therefore has to wonder how much time and proporportion of his series Burns was expected to make devoted to a segment of the military that was only 3 to 4 percent, and won a tad over 1 per cent of the Medals of Honor. I don't suppose you'd want to forward these percentages to Guerra and see what he says?

And it raises the question, what other minority groups "should" a "PC-approved" Ken Burns series have to cover? I'd hazard a guess that the series doesn't have much of a gay, lesbian and transgendered section, either.

And speaking of potato chips (how's that for a cool segue?) as we were several weeks ago, Herr's now has a line of (I'm not making this up) kettle-cooked "Baby Bak Ribs"-flavored chips. Close to BBQ, and has a nice smoky flavor...not bad. And you don't have to hose down your hands and face afterward like you do with ribs.

My subscription to the WSJ dwindled from daily to Friday-only (for their very excellent wine column) to not at all (when they discontinued Friday-only subscriptions). With so much other stuff to read, many days it went to the recycle bin unread, except for the summary on the front page--the headlines at a glance. I hearily apologize to the trees.

Have I mentioned how nice it is to be boodling live once again? I missed you guys!

I take the WS(Fox) but don't read the financial nuts 'n bolts (kinda takes away the point, huh?) or the editorials. Circumstantial evidence suggests someone here at work used to peruse my copy before I got here, but that stopped when I began taking the Boy to school and arriving at a reasonably early hour. Should Dr. Evil succeed in his evil plot to take over the media world, I may well have to give it up.

At great risk of misinterpretation and harsh judgment, I would like to propose counter-arguments to recent news items about racial bias in the application of rules/law. The scientific analysis of socially uncomfortable data requires the utmost in scientific rigor to limit the wiggle room for detractors and opponents to decry the conclusions. I feel that these cases have left critical wiggle room that needs to be addressed.

Please note that I am not saying that my counter-arguments disprove the conclusion of racial bias in either study. Based on the reportage I have seen about the studies, however, it seems that there may be lingering issues that haven't been considered as biasing the outcome, or considered as alternative conclusions that could be supported by the observed apparent bias.

(1) In the calling of NBA fouls, it seems that there is no consideration for the possibility that the black players may actually be committing more fouls; that is, *IF* the rules were applied uniformly, it is conceivable that the black players could nevertheless draw more fouls. Subtly different understanding of the same rules can lead to subtly different outcomes, which is the conclusion of the paper that Joel cites -- he doesn't describe an overwhelming racial disparity, it's relatively mild, and the analysis requires accounting for a lot of other issues. There could be subtle cultural differences between groups of players on where they draw the limit on permissible physicality in the game. Joel's synopsis did not suggest whether the authors had considered a racially-biased difference in playing style.

(2) Gene Robinson had an article (yesterday?) about the continuing costs of "driving while black." Some of his detailed analysis seemed a little jumbled to me (i.e., he confused me), but the critical upshot was that a greater fraction of traffic stops for black and Hispanic drivers result in "probable-cause" searches and arrests, compared to white drivers. Assuming equal probability of criminal behavior by race, this is prima facie evidence of bias. However, let's recall that poverty is racially biased, so that black and Hispanic citizens are more likely to be living in poverty. The quality of public education is racially biased, so that better, and better-supported, schools tend to be situated in predominantly white neigborhoods. Blue-collar crime (the kind that might be spotted in a traffic stop) is often hypothesized to be more likely among the impoverished and undereducated -- I don't know how much evidence already exists about this hypothesis. With these assumptions, one can logically conclude that a greater fraction of black and Hispanic drivers would actually be blue-collar criminals. The traffic stop data thus support the hypothesis that social ills, which are disproportionately inflicted upon non-whites, result in greater probability of criminal behavior. There is a racial bias at work, but it's not necessarily (or exclusively) on the part of the police officers who make the traffic stop. Unfortunately, the clearest way to test this conclusion is to conduct searches in an equal fraction of traffic stops, regardless of probable cause, and compare results of actual evidence for crime. The law does not permit this, obviously, and we wouldn't want it.

CP - loved the bit about DC reading habits. But let me ask you this. Do any of these allegedly-wise people have the common sense to read in a room in which rabbits are hopping about?

I think I've made my point.

Also, I am relieved to see that I am not the only one with the little mailer-card compulsion. Now I can inform my wife that there are others.

But maybe I shan't.

She has enough worries as it is.

>I read WSJ when staying at hotels that offer complimentary copies.

I worked at Dow Jones in South Brunswick HQ in the mid-90s. Strange place. It was weird for a programmer to be in a union, which was basically a joke as one might expect.

Reading the editorial page every day really cheesed me off.

REALLY nice cafeteria. Attractive women. Paid lousy.

Tim, while I think you've got some points, I believe you err when you state that "[t]here is a racial bias at work, but it's not necessarily (or exclusively) on the part of the police officers who make the traffic stop." The fact that a higher percentage of blacks and hispanics, for whatever reasons, commit and/or are convicted of crimes (and there's a whole lot of room for discussion on that one), does not give an officer probable cause to search their vehicle. You can't be giving the police a pass on the "you people are criminals" mindset, are you? Or are you saying that, in all those cases, the police actually smelled pot, or saw paraphernalia, or some other *actual* reason to search the car?

And what about fighting a cat for the desired section of the newspaper, or having a dog to rant to while reading op-eds? Small mammals may not be very good at suggesting the next good read, but they can make a long hard slog through necessary reading possible if not pleasant. Let me tell you "Minnesota Cities" the monthly pub of the League of Minnesota Cities is a must read for a small town mayor, but better than Lunesta as a sleep aid.

Saw a rabbit in the wild yesterday. A first since the eagles dispersed with the spring thaw.

The reading selections in our corner of rural America are rather simple: Outdoor Life; Field and Stream; Guns & Ammo; anything to do with trucks, National Enquirer, the Star, comic books, and the venerable Penny Savers.

Regarding the coaching findings, more data and sustained thoughtful analysis can help us here. Tim points out important considerations for discussion and re-analysis of that huge data set. I would also appreciate time series data. I think we are rougher and foulier (oh pardon the word, but fouler does not work) than in times past. I recall that Kirk Rambis was one of the brutish players in the 80s....was he foulier? Or just a big guy moving through with heft and gravity. Gravitas?

Stereotyping is a human perception-strategy that underlies so much of our quick assement of situations. Not all stereotyping is bad. Think on the smooth salesperson who presents in such a way as to quickly earn your trust (and money.) Finally, I live in a majority-black county. I suspect some stereotyping of me in this setting, not all of the most positive sort. Often the experience is simply that of "other." Recall RD's discussion of our reaction to difference, two or three kits ago.
---
Don't forget this principle that we must live with: The ref is right, even when the ref is wrong.*

*Some rulebooks permit film-checks and the like. However, I still believe in "ref rules" at all levels of sport. Imperfect? Yes. But it is what it is.

--
RD, unless some mole reveals that our new Fed Chair is "Bunny-Bernake" (sp?) well, I guess you are the bunny-bopping-book buddy in DC and the surrounding environs. Today, you win. Savor the moment.

ScienceTim, the nugget of information I found most interesting in the traffic stop study as reported by Robinson is that, although blacks were more likely than whites to be arrested, they were also more likely to be released without any enforcement action.

Actually, the kind of crime spotted in a traffic stop is overwhelmingly related to alcohol or drug crime, or discovery of people with outstanding warrants. That is, you have open containers, odor of drugs or alcohol, people visibly under the influence, visible drugs, and people acting nervous or otherwise arousing the officer's suspicion (or not; these often are pretext stops, where a traffic violation leads to a search) leading to a search which uncovers drugs in the car. Many drug and alcohol crimes are pretty evenly spread over the general population. Warrants, maybe, given your assumptions, have an inherent racial bias. I don't know.

I am touched by the faith in the system expressed by your last two sentences. Did I mention pretext stops?

About the pronunciation of dressage - I had never heard it spoken before, but assumed the French pronunciation. My youngest (she of the issues) imperiously informed me that it was "dressage" to rhyme with message. I didn't argue with her. One has to pick one's battles. I am relieved to find that I was right. I *was* right, wasn't I, Yoki?

Raysmom - Do you get that free daily newspaper called "The Fairfax Chronicle."

I am sure it is a perfectly nice regional paper, but all it does around my house is fill up the recycling bins.

Wheezy, you were correct it is dress-auge, although I have heard the odd pronunciation of mess-auge :-)

Bunny nest update: the four little critters I found on Friday were doing well and getting bigger, so their mama evidently was feeding them. Today there are only two in the nest. I'm concerned. I'm thinking that they explore around the yard at night and two didn't make it back to the nest in time this morning. They're *probably* just getting their own apartment and enjoying their independence. I hope.

I have been informed in no uncertain terms that the last syllable in "dressage" rhymes with the last syllable in the word "massage" as used in the phrase,

"The official claimed that the only service provided was a massage."

I hope this clears everything up.

No Fairfax Chronicle, but two similar local free rags. Fortunately they deliver on the evening the recycling bin goes out, so I don't even have to carry it to the house.

About six months ago, the county put a notice in the Fairfax section of WaPo that junk mail, magazines, paper food packaging, etc. could be put in the recycling (don't know if that was new news or not). We've gone from two full trash cans a week to one partially-filled.

Thanks, RD and dmd.

The real problem with comparing stop leading to search leading to crime with stop leading to search and no crime is that there are no statistics on who is searched where there is no criminal charge. Jurisdictions don't necessarily keep these, and who can blame them. They seldom get reported. Persons searched but not charged have virtually no legal recourse. In very extreme cases they can file a federal civil suit but if there is any remote modicum of reasonable suspicion leading to probable cause the officer, and his government employer, will usually be immune to suit.

Mudge writes:
And it raises the question, what other minority groups "should" a "PC-approved" Ken Burns series have to cover? I'd hazard a guess that the series doesn't have much of a gay, lesbian and transgendered section, either.

Reminds me of a joke in the Hitchens book. Perhaps I can pass it along later? (I see that Hitchen's latest column in Vanity Fair is about about how women aren't funny or humourous.) Guerra's e-mail address is at the end of his column. Why not send along your remarks to him directly, Mudge?

I am supposed to be doing housework or yardwork, but it's so stinkin' humid for the nth day in a row, it's easier to be still with the overhead fan on low. Tornado warnings this afternoon east of Midland. Tornado warning last night about 100 miles south of town. Predicted that we'll be in for rough weather tonight.

Instead of doing what I "should" be doing, I was poking around in Burleigh's book. Opens with Alexander Graham and Mabel Bell traveling to Italy to retrieve Smithson's bones from the British cemetery in Genoa, before continued blasting by locals dumps all British bodies into the sea. Second chapter deals with Smithson's folks--his father, Hugh, Earl of Northumberland, who got his title through his wife, a Percy, she a distant descendent of "Hotspur." His mother was a paramour of Smithson's--a young, wealthy, widow--and of Hungerford descent (I've several questions about this Hungerford line that would contribute to further knowledge about my endogamy, call it "double whammy endogamy"--depending if the answer is "yes.") So James Smithson is not a blood Percy, but there is a possible family link on the Hungerford line. Who knew until I cracked the covers of Burleigh's book?

And the two times I was in D.C., it was for about 36 hours each time and I regret not going to the Smithsonian, which my husband visted on a business trip during our marriage. Seems there was a great loss of Smithson's papers thanks to a FIRE in the Smithsonian in 1865--speaking of D.C. fires lately.

I ALWAYS tear out the cards and stiff ads before I read any part of a magazine. The terrible thing is that I work for a publisher and I design and create inserts and order cards!

But ours are only inserted into an envelope with your newsletter. You know, the one that you JUST ordered yet still get the flyer and card in the envelope that say "Renew NOW and get this FREE travel mug!"

The magazine advertisers who think their ads have to be bold and thick and in my way to get my reading attention must not realize that such ads just end up in the trash.

The magazine ads that are clever and nice-looking and don't have anything to do with Thomas Kinkade or Precious Moments are the ones I do read.

In Monday's boodle, there was a discussion of Bill Cosby and the airplane engine. It was called Fat Albert's Car. Fat Albert put a "Cessna airplane engine" in his car. I'm getting Websensed by the link, but I recall girls' reaction to it was "I want a ride! I want a ride!"

SciTim, you beat me to that comment on officiating.

Wheezy, I think what SciTim is saying is that, in both cases, one possible explanation is that the officials and the police are racially biased. There are, however, alternative explanations which could account for the same data, that were not tested for in the studies.

One of those alternative explanations is that (in the NBA example) the black players really are committing more fouls. In the police example, if police uniformly apply the same standard for probable cause, but one group commits more crimes, then that group will be searched more often.

Note, I'm not saying I believe this--I'm saying that the conclusions are based on shoddy scientific technique, becase significant variables (who actually commits the fouls/crimes) were not considered.

Moreover, as ST also stated, when you look at correlations (race correlates with searches), you have to make sure there are no other correlates. Are people being searched because they're black, or because they're poor? Maybe the police are biased against poor people--which takes us back to the first issue.

Padouk wins! I've never heard it prounounced like message, only the French way. Though I wouldn't put it past the Brits to say dressage-message just for spite.

Germano was ranked as Intermediare 1, but I only competed up to Medium 3 classes.

Good fun. I sometimes wish I'd been able to keep it up and go further. Oh well.

I am happy to learn that pulling out those card inserts is common. I do it all the time, even pull them out of the magazines I borrow from family (although nobody has complained when I've returned the cleaned-up mags).

A question for magazine subscribers, do you always get your copy of the most recent issue in the mail before they hit the stands? I have canceled quite a bit of subscriptions because of chronic late issues. Even though it saves $ to subscribe, it's really irritating to get my issue two weeks after it's been on the stands.

Raysmom - Yes! That was the Cosby bit. Thanks for remembering that, as I fear the brain cells I was relying upon have become a bit unreliable over the years.

Also, since Fairfax County changed the recycling rules we now have a separate bin pretty much just for those cardboard refrigerator boxes that canned sodas come in.

It is good that the county recycles, but I think I need some bigger bins.

Yoki, I can't tell you how much I miss my horses! But when I moved here I knew I'd have to board so far away I wouldn't get to see them much. And besides, my horse at the time was a psychotic Arabian that was given to me (yes, yes, I learned my lesson about "free" horses).

RD, we got a second bin and now have one for papers and one for bottles and cans.

Yoki mentions Brit rejection of French pronunciation.

The best example I can think of is the Commonwealth pronunciation of "lieutenant", where it is pronounced "lef-tenant". My understanding is that this dates back to the French pronunciation pre-Revolution.

I often think of the garage/garridge split, or Bernard/Bernerd.

Oh, of course, Maurice-pronounced-Morris

Wheezy-Frostdottir and She of the Issues should get together and swap pronunciations. Frostdottir was directing Mr. F via mapquest directions to take a left on Frontage Rd., with frontage pronounced to rhyme with massage and dressage. A u-turn was made after the laughing ceased.

My least favorite British pronunciation is "Don Jew-an" for Don Juan. It just sets your teeth on edge. Even the plummiest Brit announcers do it.

Front-ahj Road - that's hilarious, Frosti!

My older daughter reads a lot and often decides on seriously wrong pronunciations while reading. When she uses them I correct her, and she takes note. Then the next three or four times she uses it she first pronounces it wrong, then self-corrects. It's very hard for her to get the wrong one out of her brain.

Oh, of course, Maurice-pronounced-Morris
Posted by: Yoki | May 2, 2007 04:04 PM

Ah yes, Yoki, this is the Irish version two, as in
FitzMaurice sounding MAR-is and
NOT Maur-ECE. Also, my relies with similar names appreciate the capped letter after the Fitz prefix, which is fancy, fancy for elegant and blue-blooded line descending from a baby gotten on the wrong side of bed-sheets. (Take that, Hal-the-Puritan)

But I love to hear and CANNOT imitate British for
*long-fronted, fussy sports car
OR
*the country near El Salvador of Sandinista-fame

Do you mean jag-u-are CP?

Dooley writes, "...significant variables (who actually commits the fouls/crimes) were not considered."

In the basketball case, is there a source of data on who "actually" commits fouls other than what the officials call?

Or the British pronunciation of "samba" and "paso doble" with a short A. (So I was watching Dancing with the Stars last night.)

Wheezy-I know that avid reader mispronunciation well. Rendezvous will always be ren-dez-voose to me in my head even though I say it correctly.

Before the Harry Potter movies came out I think every child in America thought Hermione was pronounced her-moyn. Was Hermione Gingold the last famous Hermione before Granger?

Hey, aloha! We seldom if ever get anything in the mail before it is on the stands, and the New Republic is sometimes weeks late (even with the new two-week format). However, since I'm always behind on reading them, late arrival works out.

My husband calls it Rue Frontage.

I remember watching Allistair Cook on PBS when I was a child (?), and his pronunciation of reNESSance, meaning that artsy period between the 14th and 18th centuries. There was something about the way he sniffed the middle syllable that just got to me.

Aloha, you subscription delays may be due to your propensity for living so far offshore. I suspect mags are sent to Hawaii by ship rather than air, so take much longer. (Rat droppings and bilgewater stains are the tip-off.) I usually get my mags before the newsstand delivery, sometimes by a significant amount.

When especially nettled by all those mag ads, I have been known to assiduously collect and save them, and then dump them all in the post office box for delivery to the various people who put them there--on their dime, of course, and completely blank.

Almost as irritating as those blow-in cards and the tear-out cardstock ads are those darn centerfold spreads of naked women that fall out and the staple through the girl's navel rips the page and...uh, not that I've actually ever read those kinds of magazines, mind you. A friend told me about them...Very disgusting, I'm sure.

LTL-CA writes "In the basketball case, is there a source of data on who "actually" commits fouls other than what the officials call?"

I'm sure there isn't, especially since what constitutes a foul is highly subjective in most cases. Thus the difficulty in drawing definite conclusions (not that the attempt shouldn't be made).

Coming in from AP at the NYT re: Colony Collapse Disorder. Bees:

http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Honeybee-Die-Off.html?

Filed at 4:43 p.m. ET

BELTSVILLE, Md. (AP) -- Unless someone or something stops it soon, the mysterious killer that is wiping out many of the nation's honeybees could have a devastating effect on America's dinner plate, perhaps even reducing us to a glorified bread-and-water diet. [Prepare your 21st century cookbooks!] ...

Genetically immune-deficient?

Then, scientists finished mapping the honeybee genome and found that the insect did not have the normal complement of genes that take poisons out of their systems or many immune-disease-fighting genes. A fruitfly or a mosquito has twice the number of genes to fight toxins, University of Illinois entomologist May Berenbaum.

What the genome mapping revealed was ''that honeybees may be peculiarly vulnerable to disease and toxins,'' Berenbaum said.

Hi Mudge - actually, most mail comes to the islands by air these days, all except parcel post. Magazines are considered first class mail and should arrive with the rest of the real and junk mail I get. Something happens in the distribution house, I think, and often times it ends up being late. This happened when I lived in CA as well. Maybe it's a getting stuff from the east to west that's the problem?

Ivansmom - I'm just jealous that the non-subscribers get their hands on the issues that we subscribers are supposed to get first. So very silly.

And, once and for all is the word 'herb' pronounced with a silent h or not? I've always thought it was silent until I heard Martha Stewart say it with the h-sound. Is she jut weird?

SCC: just

Way off topic but I just discovered this book, "Why Mommy is a Democrat"
http://littledemocrats.net/index.html

Click on the sample pages. Cool illustrations.

Anyway, LTL, there is no one appointed to decide what the fouls "really" were, any more than there is someone who decides whether the umpire called balls and strikes correctly, or whether the Redskins were "really" off-sides (most likely they were--but nobody's counting).

Also the question of who "actually" commits the fouls is a bit misleading, since it really isn't a question of who, but rather, was it a foul or not, as a yes-or-no thing.

The umpire and referee associations do in fact monitor games and review calls, and discuss them with the officials, and write up reports on their officiating all the time. However, I'm virtually certain they don't look at race--they are mostly concerned with whether it was a good call or a bad call, and how many of them did Official X have.

It is further complicated by the fact that the Offials leadership group does in fact issue "directions" to officials, telling them (for instance) to lighten up on calls, or to get stricter about some kinds of calls, or to watch out for so-and-so because he always does X or Y infraction.

I am also dead certain that the training and screening process in promoting officials up through the ranks is so rigorous that there is no chance (IMHO) that any official with a pronounced racial bais could get up to the pro's without somebody noticing it and blackballing the guy. Which is not to say there aren't officials who may have deep, subtle biases; all I'm saying is that if said bias exists, it is deep, subtle, and almost certainly unconscious. (I've worked with a couple redneck glassbowl umpires from time to time; you learn who they are in about four seconds. They get "selected out" by their own colleagues real early; you don't need someone from the outside to come in an do it or even tell you who they are.) (It isn't racism among officials anyone needs to worry about; it is sexism, a WHOLE NOTHER matter altogether. See Postema, Cortesio, et al.)

Martha said "herb" with an aitch? I'm shocked, shocked. It's that jailhouse patois she must have picked up in the joint.

Sorry to drop that pomposity-bomb and then run away; I had a meeting. When I'm trying to be extremely precise and avoid the implication of nefarious intent inferred from my wording, I can get REALLY dry and technical.

Dooley has correctly explained what I failed to clearly explain: my concern is with shoddy science, or at least, insufficiently rigorous science.

What confused me about Robinson's presentation of the results was the part that Ivansmom noted -- the tendency to release arrested persons. It was phrased in a way that seemed ambiguous to me, although it certainly seemed to be saying that a larger fraction of the arrests of nonwhites were later not prosecuted. That would definitely support the contention that the officers were biased in the initial interaction. I can't be entirely certain, however, that that is precisely what the study authors really meant to say, or is that just my expectation of what they intended to say.

It seemed that both studies completely discounted the possibility that the police and the refs are honest actors who are making honest observations. If we make the assumption (as a thought experiment) that they are doing their job in an unbiased fashion, then it compels an entirely different conclusion about the results, one which strikes me as far more interesting. I can't reach into the heart of individual refs and cops and eliminate prejudice, but I (society) can change policies to improve social outcomes in general. Or, in the case of basketball, I can just say "Oh well, what the heck." A change in social policy is expensive, however. It's much cheaper to decry the bias of officials while actually doing nothing substantive to improve the situation.

In the real world, I don't doubt that refs have racial bias and that police officers use traffic stops as pretext for searches on mighty thin evidence. What interests me is the simplistic assumption that bias lies entirely with the official, instead of a mixture of issues. If these studies want to investigate biased outcome on the basis of a property that SHOULD be irrelevant, then we should be at least as interested in the race of the refs/cops as the race of the players/drivers.

ScT's 'pomposity-bomb' elides to 'bombasity,' rather nicely.

Bombastitude?

hey guys!!! sorry i've been so incommunicado - work has been very very busy and yes, i'm lovin the new job...

boodle skimming here so i have a race comment - is it wrong of me (it prolly is) but i get annoyed when ppl assume i'm white or when my mother says "well, you are white so x,y,z" (my mother is very dark skinned and it's actually a point of contention for her in a way)... i'm HISPANIC - not white (even tho i'm half and half)... *shrug* i don't know why it's so important for me to make that distinction... not that there's anything wrong with being white (hah!) but i just don't indentify with it... and not that i set my identity or anyone else's on race - it's just.... well... i'm not white goshdarnit! i'm proud of my race!

and i hate those magazine subscription cards so much that i stopped subscribing to magazines for many years - well, that and i would have stacks and stacks of magazines that i could never get to and then feel guilty about not reading them... now i just subscribe to the washingtonian cuz it has a lot of good local info (and everything else is on line anyway so what's the point?)

HUGS EVERYONE! you don't know how much i've missed the boodle!!! (oh, and the kit too!)

Well, of course there's no place to look up the "true" fouls in a game, which is why it's hard to take the whole thing too seriously. Plus as Mudge mentioned, the recruitment process will tend to preserve current standards, and the players adjust, so you're very unlikely to find a single official you could point to.

Speaking as a soccer referee, I notice different tendencies to foul and patterns of disruption between different nationalities in that sport. The basketball analogy might be the world championships, with national teams competing.

On Mudge's other point, I've played a lot of amateur baseball, and it sure seems to attract rednecks.

We live out in the country a few miles west of Jacksonville, OR and our mail comes via a contract carrier driving one of those little white RH drive jeeps. Our New Yorker comes most anytime. Sometimes a week before the cover date and sometimes two weeks later. Sometimes a week late followed by another on the correct time of delivery two days later. Based on the fact that there are three address with the same number but on different roads and we sometimes get their magazines in our mail box, I think our's maybe get delivered to the wrong place and after they get done reading it, they put in back in mail box and flag it for the carrier to pick it up.

Notice by never renewing subscriptions when the notice is sent out the renewal price keeps going down. We are getting this year's Smithsonian for $2 by winning a scratch off in a renewal letter shortly after last year's expired. We get our New Yorker for $24/year via a postcard that comes with the Vanity Fair.

My wife especially hates those hard cars that come with a tear off perforation. I read the magazines in bed when I wake up 1, 2 or 3 in the morning. While the reading light doesn't bother her, the zip of tearing off the card really gets her awake.

That was chinze call that fouled our best player just when the last two minutes of meanfull time of game began.

I am so glad you showed up mo! You had me all worried.

Now don't you go and do that again.

Mercy.

I like to think that those of us who are hybridized varieties get to pick our own identity. Technically, I am more English than anything else, but I have an Italian name so I tend to consider myself Italian.

Especially since, let's face it, being considered Italian can come in handy.

I like what 'Mudge said about internal professional development in ref world. Kind of a post-mortem. private analysis.

Here is a comment back to LTL-Ca about youth soccer (coaching since 1996 - stopped last year) and regional/national variation.

We are very strict on manners and conduct (Takoma Park Youth Soccer; Northern County Soccer Alliance). I learned a number of expletives in Spanish and had to work hard on this (worked hard on junk-mouth in English, too). We had a Ulster-boy from Antrim play one season; he brought the charmin' but naughty 'fawkking' and powerful 'shiite,' and 'Jaysus' into the mix.

At one point, an Argentine dad who scimmaged nicely with us, opened his potty mouth one two many times. When I chatted with him, he laughed and agreed to comply. He told me that in his culture, you never swear, ever, SAVE on the soccer field.

Garden report: The unorthodox method of burying spoiled veggies in the garden is actually working! There are cucumber sprouts, tomato sprouts, pumpkin sprouts and potato vines.

But the carrot tops - not so much. They seemed to thrive in the pot, but wilted in the garden. Maybe they're growing roots instead (hope so).

Everywhere else - flowers. Trees, bushes, groundcover, meadow, creekside, all a-bloomin'.

Crow report: Just one enthused feathered fan flying up to listen for a few nights, but I drew a few more in yesterday by switching from flowing, intricate classical tunes to Irish pub songs. No question about it - they like a strong beat and repetitive melody. Something to caw along with (and they do).

Wow CP - A British revolutionary, an Islamic sect, and a designated hitter all in the same sentence.

I am impressed.

Mo-some of us think of you in knitting terms. Glad you are back. More on the knitty stuff later, perhaps in the fall when the chill descends again.

RD -- Hal the Puritan held some words...I know i may experience the wrath of somebody but I meant the Irish version of cowpies that in that parlance rhymes with KITE!, not a tribe of Islam.

Sevenswans -- so crows like war and uprising songs? Good to know. The crows in our neighborhood have not recovered to pre-West Nile numbers. My most memorable crow story concerns a hapless owl being harried unto death by a coordinated crow attack. Took the better part of a day. One daughter was beside herself with worry. "Call 911." "Mom, do we have a gun?"

We had a funeral moment over the pecked owl carcass....all inside the Beltway.

Nature happens.

One day last week four copies of The Economist arrived together. Not consecutive dates -- intervening ones had arrived more or less on time (Thursday thru Saturday). At least I can read that, and some others, on the net if I'm desperate to catch up.

Some of the adult English and Irish players -- you don't know whether to send them off for bad language or give an award for poetry.

I don't know that I'd say basbeball (or softball) "attracts" rednecks, per se, LTL, but I kinda know what you mean. I was mainly talking about officials who have been around for a few years, know what they're doing, and may even be good enough to start getting into the lower levels of their sports at say the college level and maybe even Single-A ball.

Down here, we've got a few rednecks in the area, an d they are sometimes involved in baseball or softball, but I know from experience by the time people in this area get to the high school level, there is just no room for racial bias--no coach in this area would tolerate it one bit--you'd just simply lose. (And in this region we take both baseball and softball VERY seriously at the local level: we've won five Little League "Big League" Girls Softball World Series (16-18-year-olds), and one Boys World Series. (And that coach is a friend of mine.)

Also, LTL, as a soccer ref you know just like I do that when you're in the middle of a game you're just thinking way too fast and reacting to events to stop and actually think about somebody's race or nationality or whatever. Yes, there are "homers" with regard to nationality or just in local home teams, but being a "homer" isn't generally race-related. And "homers" are spotted by their peers and weeeded out as quickly as racists. (The Olympics and that level are a different story.)

mo!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Hiya, girlfriend!

RD Padouk-I think I blistered my tear ducts snorting crushed red peppers up my nose with your 7:14.

Reminds me of my favorite hockey schtick-Jesus saves, and Esposito scores on the rebound.

Everyone here has probably already visited Project Implicit, but just in case here is the link.

https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/research/

Have fun taking the tests to discover your own implicit biases on dozens of topics. I think I probably skewed too much to race neutral when taking one of their tests because Denzel Washington figured prominently in the pictures of men I identified as "black." (I've lusted after Denzel since he was on St. Elsewhere.)

Steven Chu, Nobel Prize winning scientist, "was denied admission to Ivy League schools." Not the point of this News Hour story, but in view of recent boodling-very interesting.

>Especially since, let's face it, being considered Italian can come in handy.

RD, a friend of mine tells a story of a biotech exec in San Francisco who's very Italian, keeps a .45 on his desk, and has family in the waste business in NJ. Seems to work for him.

As for basketball, I have to wonder what kind of racist would work in a job where 80% of the players are black. I don't really follow it, but apparently there have been a few All-Star games with no white players at all.

Guess that'd solve the problem.

CP,when I worked inside the beltway, I took a walk every day around our tree-lined block. I watched crows that were flying around the perimeter suddenly land and then walk across one street's intersection. It seemed a terribly foolish thing to do for a being that had wings. But. . .there was a catbird nest.

It remained a no-fly zone for at least a month.

Well, you nailed the other question that's been on my mind, EF: how can a ref be racists when there's 10 guys on the floor, 8 of them are black, one is an 8-foot-tall Chinese guy, and the only white guy is 4 inches shorter than everybody else, comes from Estonia, and has no vowels in his name.

didn't mean to worry anyone RD! lo siento!

cp - knitting terms???? please to explain... (never thought of myself in knitting terms, as, well, i don't knit...)

not that there's anything wrong with knitting mind you! i think it's cool - it's just not something i've ever tried...

hey mudgie, my mudgie!!! *smiley emoticon*

Mo -- your gothness inspires some knitting silliness and patterns. We spoke about you and some knitting stuff...did you give over to the green boa, before spring descended?

mo! Can I have one of your outstanding hugs? *Hugs*

I'm interested in this from the point of view of organization of societies, not on a personal level. But I have always wondered why bi-racial or bi-ethnic people are usually, by themselves and others, identified as *belonging* more thoroughly to one side of that heritage than the other. Thus when mo says "I am Hispanic," why is that? I understand that sometimes, when other people impose the identification, it is outright bias or racism (for example, in Arab Muslim countries, if a person is of mixed ArabM and South AsianM heritage, *pure* Arab Muslims will insist that they are not "Arab enough" and will identify that person as South Asian (and anybody who tells you Arab Muslims are not prejudiced against South Asian or Sub-Saharan African Muslims is either deluded or lying, (well, really just
lying)). I think the degree of African heritage still operates that way in North America (and am shamed by it). If someone is half or some other proportion African-American, they are identified as *really* black, aren't they? By both the African-American and white communities? Why is that (other than the 'not white enough' explanation, which we should be but are not beyond, at this time)?

But when we self-identify, why is that? Language? Cultural richness? Family pressure? I'm curious.

I'm already guessing I'm going to get myself into a mess which this question. I thought about wiping it out, and then decided against. Because I am truly curious, and as Cassandra S says, if we never talk 'about the elephant in the room' then we'll never get past it to the bathroom, no matter how badly we need to.

In this Florida resort town, magazines arrive thusly:
Newsweek, usually on Tuesday
Science, usually Friday after it's issued
New Yorker, erratically but no sooner than Friday after it's issued.
Economist, occasionally on Saturday, usually by Wednesday the next week, sometimes two or three weeks later.

Delivery should be quicker in the summer.
________

It would be interesting to check where science post-docs and junior faculty at research universities got their undergraduate degrees. Come to think of it, I bet the AAAS (American Association for the Advancement of Science) already knows.

When I was at Georgia Tech it was during one of their basketball uspswings and the talent on the team was point guard Mark Price and center/forward John Salley. Mark Price was white and from Oklahoma where a high shool basketball player goes home and shoots free throws for hours. John Salley was from Brooklyn where streetball rules. I'm not sure Salley ever sunk a three point shot. The study claims to have adjusted for position, but the white guy is much more likely to be the guard where he is not under the rim swinging elbows. All this study has revealed is that there are cultural differences in how different groups learn to play basketball.

My son is multi-cultural and we have raised him color-blind but starting in middle school he noticed that the style of talk and play and study was different between kids of different skin colors. He was making broad generalizations, but it was based on his observations and he was making hypotheses. Scientific method at work.

His freshman year he worked as a lighting tech at school. He would come home and observe that there was a huge difference in the level of organization and seriousness between say the drama production and the Black Student Association show. We didn't know how to explain it except to say that there are cultural differences. They exist on the stage and on the court and in the classroom.

There I said it. I'm now going to listen to my Avenue Q soundtrack and admit I'm a little bit racist.

There are

Good questions, Yoki. I hope we do chat about it, along the pathway of RD's good question last week.

Here are few of my thoughts before I tend to evening routines here.

I strongly identify as ethnic, but this is easy as Irishness is a low-risk ethnicity to put forward. I do, however, recall the last vestiges of a curious mix of class, ethnicity, and religion that kept Catholics, French-Canadians, Indians, Bohunks, Litvaks, Polacks, Italians, and Irish on one side of the river in a mining town. We were clannish among this mix and largely happy, but we knew that the other side of the river included big houses, tennis courts, a department store, etc. We lived in the shadow of a copper smelter, where many dads worked under union protection.

NOW
I live in a majority black county and my children are (or have been) among the handful of white students in their high school. The high school is now about 25 percent Latino -- mostly Central American --,the remainder is black; the mix is sometimes volatile.

Racism and stereotyping occur between all stripes of people. Brown on black; black on brown; brown on white; white on brown; black on white; white on black (did I miss anyone?) Despite so much progress, a visit to the school cafeteria is very sobering:

children -- young people in process -- sit at tables according to race.

Footnote to Mo: do you prefer the term 'Hispanic' or 'Latino'.....or 'Latina'?

Yoki, the author I spoke about has a whole book devoted to bi-racial children in Canada (black/white). I read the article in MacLeans where he tells how he felt growing up, I found it very interesting. The majority people I knew that were black growing up were bi-racial, I enjoyed reading his thoughts.

http://www.lawrencehill.com/essays_articles.html

Here in the frozen north our community is deliberately picking the scab of racial division (between white and American Indian). I hope you got the memo on the whole American Indian vs. Native American identification. I kid you not, there was a memo. Anyway, healing the racial rift, crossing the divide, getting along, closing the gap-yada, yada-was the primary reason we recruited people to go to the recent leadership retreat. I don't know where our efforts will lead but at least we're trying. In the past Minnesotans couldn't even acknowledge they had a race problem. Or maybe they've just decided the Indians in our midst are preferable to the Mexicans, Hmong and Somalis (she types cynically). As a non-Indian on the res it's good to start by pointing out it is we who are in their midst and from there it just gets ever more complicated.

HUGS YOKI!!!!! i love me some yoki!!

i don't really have a solid answer for your question yoki - i think historically, what race, ethnicity or religion your mother is, than you are - i mean, that's the way it is with judaism right? in my case, my mother is hispanic and my father wasn't in the picture so i was exclusively raised by her - that being said, i was raised to think of myself as "white" (my aunt thought it would be a better idea to raise us all as "white american" to "better" our futures back before there were many hispanics in this area) so i thought i was "white" till i was 16 - it wasn't till then that i realized that i wasn't totally white - even tho i knew my family was hispanic - and i felt cheated about losing that heritage, culture and self identity - maybe that's why i am so focused on being identified as hispanic... tho i agree it is a weird no-man's land being biracial...

Birds of a feather, CP, whether in the cafeteria or on the telephone line, always stick together. It is a matter of comfort level and inherent trust. The owl pecked to death by crows was an earlier referenced case in point. That does not rule out cooperative interaction to the benefit of a specie as a whole.

mo, you just repeated many of the sentiments that were in the article I read.

Nice to see you back.

mo, I think the association between you and knitting came about through an unfortunate typographical error of mine: a few days ago I referred to you as the boodle's favorite sex mitten. Sorry.

sex mitten *snort*... mudge that's the best compliment i've gotten in a while!

cp - i've gotten that question before as well - i grew up being "hispanic" - it wasn't until recently that latino/a became pc - it's always been hispanic to me but i don't mind either...

Does Hispanic have any meaning in a racial sense? In my experience, Spanish speakers around here are a royal mix of Europeans, Native Americans (which means originally NE Asian?) and some blacks, plus all the 2- and 3-way combinations. And in LA, they also have the rest of humanity available to mix with.

SCC?? Wondering if I got the capitalizations right.

ltl-ca - in my experience "hispanic" meant those of latin decent not from spain and "spanish" meant being from spain (besides the language itself)... latino came about recently to mean those from latin america... but that, to me, is what "hispanic" means... but i'm not the expert by any means, i'm just citing my experience...

And then there are Chicanos.

chicanos are mexican

and yes, not only do i *LOVE* the green scarf, i got a chance to sport it a cpl of times... with compliments i must add!

Hispanic means to me those descended from the Iberian Peninsula, including Portugal. Thus, i've maintained that Benjamin Cardoza, and not the prospective Alberto Gonzalez, is the first Hispanic supreme court justice

mo, nice to see you back.

>i grew up being "hispanic"
I grew up thinking I was mostly Irish, only to find out I was more German. Sheesh.

I had to change mugs.

mo, nice to see you! We've missed you - where's mo?!?

*snort* error - i realize that i'm contradicting myself - when i say i "grew up hispanic" i meant i grew up hearing the TERM hispanic - i never heard latino until recently...

Problems with nomenclature for those south of our southern U.S. border.

Since I'm a descendant of Sancho Garces III--he actually being Basque, but his descendents ruled northern Spain and my antecedents were involved in the first two "Crusades" against the Moors in Spain, according to James Reston, Jr.--then I'm Hispanic.

Am I Latina? I don't think so until I think of my distant antecedent, Alice Saluzzo, who came from Italy. Then I'm Latina.

Am I Mexican (I think of John Phillip Santos and his writing in terms of his Spanish and Indian or Native heritage)? No. Am I mestizo? No. But learning recently that a good chunk of my family tree spoke a language derived from Latin--Spanish, and that half or more of our hemisphere speaks that language has me rethinking much.

And I've been thinking about the Ken Burns issue and controversy--which was covered by WaPo, by the way. Navajos were a much smaller percentage of Hispanics who served in WWII, yet the code talkers were absolutely critical to the success in the Pacific theater. Documentaries, books, film have told their story.

On official census forms, Hispanic is an enthnicity that is tracked separately from race. You can be Hispanic AND either White, Black, Asian, American Indian, or Hawaiian. Here is a more detailed discussion of at least how the US government, vis-a-vis the census, breaks down race.

http://www.civilrights.org/press_room/buzz_clips/race-categories-to-change-on-2010-census-form.html

2000 was the first time that the race question was multiple choice. In the more detailed analysis, the census came up with 250 discrete combinations of ethnicity, race, national origin, and/or tribe. Talk about lumpers versus dividers.

When I was a kid, I yearned to be more "ethnic". I made up last names for myself - long names, with no vowels.

I was a weird kid.

Hey mo! Glad you like the new job, but don't leave us for so long! We do tend to worry, you know. Especially Mudge and Snuke.

I am only one quarter Irish, but since that is my paternal lineage, it is how I self-identify. My wife is Vietnamese, but that includes enough ethnic Chinese that Vietnamese don't always recognize her as one of them. Occassionally she uses this to her advantage in nail salons when the techs talk in Vietnamese not knowing she can understand them. She is expecting some confusion when we visit China this summer.

I tell my son to put down white as race unless it is multiple choice. There have been examples of anti-Asian quotas in the Maryland educational system.

The Ken Burns mini-series, as I understand, focuses on four communities and the effects on and by the war for those areas. It's a caase study type of format, not an over-reaching comprehensive narrative. The communities he chose to profile were not heavily Hispanic. I think he is justifiably taking discrete umbrage at people telling him what to put in or take out of his documentary.

I was born in Texas and my mother had a nickname she used to call me that I still remeber:

Miguel Manuel Ortega Garcia Cortex McYellojkt

It's the name I go by on Drinko De Mayo.

Yes, but do you all know your blood type?

SCC:

Miguel Manuel Ortega Garcia Cortez McYellojkt

Cortex McYellojkt is the name I go by when I drink myself blind.

um... the most common one - o positive?

Can't get through all the comments but, if there is sort of a trivia thing here (sort of like pitchers who have hit for the cycle) relating to the boodle, I gotta say that RD may have had the funniest first post that I, anyway, recall. Snort.

On the NBA bias thing, did anyone consider the possibility that white dudes are just the best insincere floppers and more pestering whiners. I mean, Kevin McHale, as white as you can possibly get, in all the games I ever saw him play, apparently never believed he ever fouled anyone in his entire NBA career. He never was called for a foul that he did not express the highest level of indignation at the utter foolishness of the referee.

Even if the analysis has some faint odor of reality, let's remember some facts about basketball. It ain't peach baskets anymore.

I went to IU as an undergraduate (perfectly timing my presence there so I missed both the 1976 and 1981 NCAA championship teams) and played zillions of pick up games playing Hoosier (polite) basketball.

In the early '80 I was at the U of C on the southside of Chicago. Pick-up games were not only more diverse but sort of field hockey with elbows substituting for sticks. Not a racial thing. An urban thing.

I also learned (in class) at U of C that statistics can be twisted for almost everything; without a cogent theory to interpret data, don't rely on it.

My point, I really find this "report" suspect. Urban basketball is much more aggressive than jump shooting "Hoosier" basketball. Quite frankly, I painfully learned in the early 80's that the urban agressive basketball approach is undoubtedly superior. Intimidation, is a part of the sport.

Fouls result from aggressive play on the basketball court. I think an equally valid possible explanation of what is going on is that African-American players who, I am guessing, are more predominantly from urban areas, are more aggressive on the basketball court. More fouls called against them? Likely means they are playing harder (and maybe more likely to succeed).

I think a duh is in order without playing a race card.

A-

A Mo, a post, a boodle... Panama's in the air!

We can defeat group stereotypes by making the names for them too narrow and complex to remember.

This is the precise reason why I tell people I'm an "Anacoustic Pseudo-Hibernian Gnome from Haute Aphasi