While We Wait: Writer's Block & Other Lame Excuses

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I'm not convinced yet. I mean, is it a racism problem that Usain Bolt can run faster than a white guy because of his physiology?

Would you care to research why Usain Bolt happens to be faster than anyone else in the world -- including a whole lot of black people?

Cause he's from Jamaica.

Are you really going to argue Jamaicans happen to have that particular bit of genetic code which unlocks the Flash?
 
That's disingenuous NK, you know there are some physiological differences that allow individuals of African backgrounds to excel at certain physical activities. Other physiological advantages might present for some white people in other areas.

Actually let me temporarily refocus on this.

Nah the writing was exhausting, especially compensating for the people who didn't really input much. The data model would have been fine on a per update basis when I'd gotten it to work right.

Clinical depression tends to tire you out as well I found.

I hope you're feeling better dis, and the fact that you're posting again is really awesome. Even through all the intervening years I've continued to draft SysNES stories and plan for a continuation one day, as have many others among us, as you know. :p

But even without SysNES you're an awesome guy and I'm glad you're back.
 
NK has great exatas.
 
That's disingenuous NK, you know there are some physiological differences that allow individuals of African backgrounds to excel at certain physical activities. Other physiological advantages might present for some white people in other areas.

Frankly, I don't.

What I do know is that black children typically think that they have very little recourse but to focus on sports. More to the point, they use sports as an outlet for any number of ****** things going on in their home life or lack of community, and so they're literally practicing from day one -- notably, in sports like basketball or football. White children do that, too, but to a lesser extent, and a lot of them don't play sports because they don't want their brain to turn to mush and they do have the opportunity to do things that aren't limited to: 1) bank on a pro career or 2) become a single parent.*

I'd also note that certain sports which require great physical endurance/ability are overwhelmingly white -- like hockey, or soccer. Soccer, in fact, is probably the most racially neutral sport in America, even though in other places it tends to swing heavily towards blacks (see: every European football team's political crisis ever). Do you really think that those sports just happen to be better for white athletes? Or is there something cultural at work?

Jamaicans are good at sprinting because a long time ago, some Jamaicans decided they really liked Olympic golds, so they invest in their sprinters to the exclusion of practically every other Olympic sport. Or sport in general. Note that soccer, which you'd think a bunch of sprinters would be good at -- or at least produce a few forwards -- is something Jamaicans are awful at, even compared to other, comparably sized countries in the same region.

Or note how Kenya is known for producing distance runners. That's not because Kenyans are innately superior, nor because they drink a specific brand of energy drink, but because their culture still pushes running as a facet of everyday life. Why aren't our long-distance runners dominated by Kenyan exiles -- or the descendants who were shipped here as slaves? Because Kenyans here don't run, and genetic explanations are a crock of ****.

Why are Chinese particularly good at skeet shooting, or ping pong? Why are Koreans good at Starcraft?

Why are CEOs white?

Why has almost every famous breakthrough in science happened at the hands of a white male?

Are you sure you want to go down this road?


*Obviously black kids aren't limited to this, but many of them sure as hell think they are.
 
And furthermore, if racism is dead (this is such a frankly ridiculous statement that I can't stop rolling my eyes when I type it), why does America look like this?

srsly why did someone start painting the land all these ugly colors????
 
If racism weren't alive and well, why aren't there more black head coaches in the NFL?

That might seem like a spurious question. It's not. Who has expertise in football? Presumably, football-playing athletes.
Not that racism isn't a problem in football hiring (it obviously is), but I don't particularly like this argument whenever it's raised. Being good at a sport doesn't make you good at coaching and vice versa, and that goes triple when it's something hyperspecialized with tons of moving parts like the NFL, or the NBA to a lesser extent. Elite players don't often become good coaches or GMs, and often seem to become awful ones who only get the job because of their playing career (Isiah Thomas, for instance), and elite coaches for the most part seem to either come from coaching (Pop, The Dark Lord Belichick, Tomlin, Spo, Thibs), or from marginal pros who spent a lot more time watching than playing (Zen Master, Riley, Dungy, Cowher). I mean, when it comes to playing nobody has ever had more basketball expertise than MJ, and he's still been actively terrible at running the Hornets.

Of course, I might just be sceptical of ex-players' ability to run a team because I'm a SABR guy and ex-ballplayers tend to actively denigrate sabermetrics.
 
Technically, and speaking theoretically, just because something can be explained by culture, doesn't mean that culture is the only factor in play, even if we do accept it is the most important one. That's just reductive arguing, which I don't think is ever a good way to approach social issues.

As for physiological differences, NK, I'm sure you actually know that the tallest people (as in, ethnic groups with a common general anthropological type) in the world, as well as the shortest, come from Africa, and being tall generally contributes to running fast. I'm not even arguing your point, but it seems silly to dismiss that entirely.
 
Nah the writing was exhausting, especially compensating for the people who didn't really input much. The data model would have been fine on a per update basis when I'd gotten it to work right.

Clinical depression tends to tire you out as well I found.
That's also informed my opinion. I would say only 4.5 people really gave a damn about that game. I was only sort of vague in my allusions.
You have the curious phenomenon of people who think their hobby is too much work to engage in.
[...]
Like, I give Azale a lot of crap for that game, but saying that he got quality turnout and enthusiasm for it was a joke. And that's true for a lot of other games as well.
 
As for physiological differences, NK, I'm sure you actually know that the tallest people (as in, ethnic groups with a common general anthropological type) in the world, as well as the shortest, come from Africa, and being tall generally contributes to running fast. I'm not even arguing your point, but it seems silly to dismiss that entirely.

Well, it really depends. Usain Bolt is extraordinarily tall for a sprinter. People his height usually can't run as fast because even though their legs are longer, they can't move them as fast. Bolt can. That is of course the result of intesnsive training as much as it is of his natural circumstances.
 
Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi is like something out of a Guy Ritchie movie. What other man has somehow managed to piss off Barack Obama, Hassan Rouhani, Nouri al-Maliki, Bashar al-Assad (and possibly, by extension, Vladimir Putin), e: and Ayman al-Zawahiri? It takes some real skill to make a whole bunch of people who hate one another hate you even more.
 
I don't know if he's all that special. Part of it is that, of course no real government likes a genuinely independent, out of control insurgency; they can do business with one but they still wouldn't like it, it's only good so long as they can be sure it does more damage to their rivals. Part of it is that he did pick an excellent spot.

It helps that he has his integrity and unwillingness to compromise his vision though.

Kinda makes me think of early Hitler, say if he managed to take over Bavaria for a few months in 1923.
 
I'm willing to give him points because I think the only other people that could piss off America, Iran, and Al Qaeda all at the same time are Kane and Bieber, and they're both fictional characters.
 
Serious answer (okay well the last one was serious but just not grammatically correct) is that while yes, minority groups each face their own specific issues of sexism, the fact remains that white men hold the most positions of power and thus perpetuate the vast majority of sexism. It should also be rather obvious that while women in racial minorities suffer from sexism at the hands of men in racial minorities, they also suffer from sexism from white men in addition to racism (not to mention beautiful combinations of the two such as exoticization).

EDIT: Basically what I'm saying is that you can't blame people for saying stuff like that. I mean I don't personally know if I'd put it exactly as they would, but they're certainly entitled to say it.

And yes I suffer terribly from white guilt I practice flagellation myself every day and the burden of the guilt over what my ancestors did prevents me from getting out of bed some days :sad: (EDIT 2: First couple paragraphs of Crezth's post below actually portrays fairly accurately how I feel though)

They're entitled to say stuff like that, but they're entitled to say anything untrue that they like. I mean, free speech. :p Blame shouldn't come into it, in my opinion, and one shouldn't castigate LoE for correcting a factual innaccuracy, if such it is.
 
I wonder how long until the US realizes that the IS isn't going to go *anywhere* without a ground war. Or rather it knows that already, but how long until it grapples with that reality in a serious way? Ain't like Turkey or Iran's going to commit their armored columns to sweep down the Euphrates.

It's not like we have to win the peace again, we can let Arab League/UN troops do that. But a brief, comprehensive ground war to eliminate all of these anti-American entities in the Middle East and lay the stages for a comprehensive series of plebiscites under some international authority would be a good thing for everyone.

Yes yes, complain that I'm a warmonger, but the only other alternative is an effectively permanent Islamic State which is a horror for millions of people to live in. Iraq and Assad and Iran working together aren't nearly enough to overthrow them, setting aside that it might be bad for the Middle East in an entirely different way if they do.
 
I wonder how long until the US realizes that the IS isn't going to go *anywhere* without a ground war. Or rather it knows that already, but how long until it grapples with that reality in a serious way?

Two years at the least, maybe four, but more likely never. They'd probably wait for it to self-implode/get destroyed by the Shiites, and if it survives they'll get bored and walk away.

I could be wrong but I really can't see America starting a new ground war in the Middle East any time soon. Air strikes and advisers, maybe special forces is probably as far as they can get.
 
I love polandball comics:
Spoiler :



 
Maybe they should solve their own problems by themselves. America is far from the Middle East, so why bother? Africa is much closer, and always needs help.
 
But a brief, comprehensive ground war to eliminate all of these anti-American entities in the Middle East
So would you be signing up for the house-to-house, room-to-room fighting through Mosul and Raqqa and Deir Ezzor and Tikrit and Fallujah (again!) and the Triangle of Death and (since I know your list of "anti-American entities" to be destroyed by the crusading zeal of Some Poor Bastard Who Signed Up Cause Dad Couldn't Pay For College includes Hezbollah and the SAA/NDF) Damascus, Homs, Latakia, and South Beirut required to "comprehensively" eliminate those entities? Oh, you won't? You'd be sending the Marines to go take tens of thousands of casualties (it took them 1200 casualties just to take Fallujah last time, which was one town cut off from day 1 and had MUCH less time to prepare), wouldn't you? And you'd be committing them to this gigantic campaign of urban counter-insurgency against a dedicated and disciplined enemy (and look how brilliantly the Israelis failed against Hezbollah) without the (also gigantic) amount of money it'd take to do the job properly, because FISCAL RESPONSIBILITY, and without any political efforts to make it stick, because we can't nation build or compromise with teh AXIS OF EVUL (and look how brilliantly that worked for us Libya), and even if it worked you'd be handing it over to Arab League forces, which is to say the Saudis, who are the SAME SORT OF DAMNED WAHHABI THEOCRACY you supposedly were fighting.
 
So would you be signing up for the house-to-house, room-to-room fighting through Mosul and Raqqa and Deir Ezzor and Tikrit and Fallujah (again!) and the Triangle of Death and (since I know your list of "anti-American entities" to be destroyed by the crusading zeal of Some Poor Bastard Who Signed Up Cause Dad Couldn't Pay For College includes Hezbollah and the SAA/NDF) Damascus, Homs, Latakia, and South Beirut required to "comprehensively" eliminate those entities? Oh, you won't? You'd be sending the Marines to go take tens of thousands of casualties (it took them 1200 casualties just to take Fallujah last time, which was one town cut off from day 1 and had MUCH less time to prepare), wouldn't you? And you'd be committing them to this gigantic campaign of urban counter-insurgency without the (also gigantic) amount of money it'd take to do the job properly, because FISCAL RESPONSIBILITY, and without any political efforts to make it stick, because we can't nation build or compromise with teh AXIS OF EVUL (and look how brilliantly that worked for us Libya), and even if it worked you'd be handing it over to Arab League forces, which is to say the Saudis, who are the SAME SORT OF DAMNED WAHHABI THEOCRACY you supposedly were fighting.

Yes, I suppose in order to be morally consistent, I would.
 
Well, I'm sure there's a recruiting station up the road somewhere. Off you go.
 
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