Culture matters

Rich, Black, Flunking:

The black parents wanted an explanation. Doctors, lawyers, judges, and insurance brokers, many had come to the upscale Cleveland suburb of Shaker Heights specifically because of its stellar school district. They expected their children to succeed academically, but most were performing poorly. African-American students were lagging far behind their white classmates in every measure of academic success: grade-point average, standardized test scores, and enrollment in advanced-placement courses. On average, black students earned a 1.9 GPA while their white counterparts held down an average of 3.45. Other indicators were equally dismal. It made no sense.

[..] [Professor Ogbu] and his research assistant moved to Shaker Heights for nine months in mid-1997. They reviewed data and test scores. The team observed 110 different classes, from kindergarten all the way through high school. They conducted exhaustive interviews with school personnel, black parents, and students. Their project yielded an unexpected conclusion: It wasn't socioeconomics, school funding, or racism, that accounted for the students' poor academic performance; it was their own attitudes, and those of their parents.

Ogbu concluded that the average black student in Shaker Heights put little effort into schoolwork and was part of a peer culture that looked down on academic success as "acting white." Although he noted that other factors also play a role, and doesn't deny that there may be antiblack sentiment in the district, he concluded that discrimination alone could not explain the gap.

"The black parents feel it is their role to move to Shaker Heights, pay the higher taxes so their kids could graduate from Shaker, and that's where their role stops," Ogbu says during an interview at his home in the Oakland hills. "They believe the school system should take care of the rest. They didn't supervise their children that much. They didn't make sure their children did their homework. That's not how other ethnic groups think."

(reddit, 1200 comments)

Texas judge gives 7 year old right to decide custody

A seven year old boy was at the center of a county courtroom drama yesterday when he challenged a court ruling over who should have custody of him. The boy had a history of being beaten by his parents and the judge initially awarded custody to his aunt, in keeping with child custody law and regulation requiring that family unity be maintained to the highest degree possible.

The boy surprised the court when he proclaimed that his aunt beat him more than his parents and he adamantly refused to live with her. When the judge then suggested that he live with his grandparents, the boy cried and said that they also beat him.

After considering the remainder of the immediate family and learning that domestic violence was apparently a way of life among them, the judge took the unprecedented step of allowing the boy to propose who should have custody of him. After two recesses to check legal references and confer with the child welfare officials, the judge granted temporary custody to the Dallas Cowboys, whom the boy firmly believes are not capable of beating anyone.

Oh lordy. Perhaps the kid could teach them a trick play:

Pet notes

"TIL: I can use cats as a successful medium for anonymous, old-school communiqué. I also learned that their owners don't appreciate it. "



A redditor adds:

An older, tired-looking dog wandered into my yard; I could tell from his collar and well-fed belly that he had a home and was well taken care of. He calmly came over to me, I gave him a few pats on his head; he then followed me into my house, slowly walked down the hall, curled up in the corner and fell asleep. An hour later, he went to the door, and I let him out.

The next day he was back, greeted me in my yard, walked inside and resumed his spot in the hall and again slept for about an hour. This continued off and on for several weeks.

Curious I pinned a note to his collar, 'I would like to find out who the owner of this wonderful sweet dog is and ask if you are aware that almost every afternoon your dog comes to my house for a nap.'

The next day he arrived for his nap, with a different note pinned to his collar, 'He lives in a home with 6 children, 2 under the age of 3 and he's trying to catch up on his sleep. Can I come with him tomorrow?'

Florida school cancels "To Kill a Mockingbird" play

...because it contains a racial slur! Way to miss the fucking point. What are we banning next, Huckleberry Finn? The Catcher in the Rye?

What an idiot

Silly professor! Stars only come out at night. LOL!

(reddit)

A friend caught his wife naked with another guy recently

And he doesn't want to address it at all:

Friend lets New Dude move in with him and his wife. New Dude doesn't pay rent at the time because he's "trying to get on his feet." I think it's cool that they are trying to help New Dude out, especially since he doesn't speak English as a first language and doesn't have any marketable skills. Last week, friend told me he walked in on New Dude and his wife in the bedroom and they were both naked. He really doesn't seem to want to do anything about this. I brought up how f'ed up this is a couple times and he seemed uninterested in what I have to say, but I can tell he's been losing sleep lately and he's clearly losing a good bit of his paycheck to support New Dude. New Dude seems like a cool guy but I think it's messed up that my friend is going through this. It's only going to get worse. How should I approach my friend and get him to listen?

EDIT: I found a picture of New Dude to give you a better idea of the situation: http://imgur.com/NpCur.jpg

(reddit)

Rotationplasty

(reddit, 350 comments)

Eeek

(reddit) This is Excalibur, billed as the highest climbing wall in the world, located in the Netherlands:

Why do the best artists always die young?

Infamy can inflate one's reputation to a point, but I gotta figure their personal struggles bring out serious creativity.

Reddit reminds that Elliott Smith, my favorite singer-songwriter, died 7 years ago yesterday—at 34.  He killed himself with two stab wounds to the chest.

I've queued up his two best albums in Grooveshark, Either/Or and Figure 8.  Enjoy!

However, the two tracks that most live in my mind are from XO, an album that's somewhat more upbeat and unique-sounding. I put these in a widget for the ADD crowd ; )

(cross posted)

Why is medical so much cheaper in Mexico than in the US?

A redditor answers:

Having lived in San Diego for awhile, and having done medicine on both sides of the border I can tell you exactly why.

First, with dentistry, some dentists are really cheap and bad, but others are really good, but it appears that competition is based off of reputation and service, and not on regulations. On the US side, dentists do not get to their position by service, reputation, or competition but by regulatory capture. The number of people who can practice dentistry and who can get the proper schooling is very restricted. However, in Mexico I found that many dentists provide far better services at a far lower price. The poor people go to the lower quality dentists, and the rich people go to the higher quality ones, but in the end everyone gets care at a price they can deal with, and the rich dentists are still cheaper than then ones in the USA by several orders of magnitude.

Also, if I have an ear ache in the USA, first I must go to my primary, then I will likely be made to go see a specialist, they will probably run some tests, and then they will give me a prescription, which will almost always be to some patented overpriced drug, that I must wait several hours to fill, cost, at least $230 between the medicine and the doctors. In Mexico, you just walk into the pharmacy, say you have an ear ache, and they hand you a bottle of generic antibiotics, cost $25 max, within 10 minutes.

Even though the government does pay for health care and dentistry, medicine in Mexico is far less regulated than in the USA. They can't pull off the crap that we do in the USA, because if they did people would start to die all over the place.

Spider vs. millipede

Millipedes are tougher than you think.

See also giant centipede vs. tarantula.

And there's this Japanese Bug Fight website.  Encyclopaedia Dramatica "apparently has supplemental information" (via reddit)

Clearly this thing is keeping the lawn in place

... LAWN FORCEMENT

Endless hours of amusement

1. Visit Globe Genie
2. Click "Teleport"
3. Rinse
4. Repeat

What the fuck is my information security "strategy"?

A useful resource for sysadmins.

Asian wedding proposal

Answering the age-old question

Now you know as much as a 7th grader.

Scamming the scammers

This 419 Eater from 2006 is pretty brilliant; he got a Nigerian scammer to write a Harry Potter book out by hand!
 
Bonus points for posing as Arthur Dent BSC. HHGTTG. PhD. with the client Cyberdyne Systems.

It's wabbit season.

Survival of the fittest

There can be only one.

A young Mexican boy walks up to his mother

...with his face covered in flour and says, "Look mami, I'm a white boy!" His mother takes one look at him and slaps him across the face. She replies, "Go show your father what you have done!"

So the little boy runs to the other room where his father is and shouts, "Papi look! I'm a white boy!" Just as the mother did, the father slaps him across the face and says, "Go show your grandmother what you have done, maybe she can knock some sense into you."

The little boy runs out to the garden where his grandmother is and says, "Grandma, look! I'm a white boy!" His grandmother slaps him across the face, grabs him by the ear and sits him on the floor. She gives him a long speech about why he should be proud to be Mexican and why he shouldn't try to ever cover up his true identity.

The boy then slowly walks back into the kitchen, past his mother. She asks him, "So, what did you learn?" The boy replies, "I've only been white for 10 minutes and I already hate you people."