July 16, 2013

Matthew Yglesias on his being randomly beaten by blacks

Matthew Yglesias writes in Slate:
Bayes' Theorem For Dummies—Dummies Like Richard Cohen 
Trolling the universe this morning, Richard Cohen wrote a column arguing that it wasn't racist of George Zimmerman to suspect Trayvon Martin of being a criminal because everyone knows that a disproportionate share of violent crimes are in fact committed by young black men. 
I think what Cohen really means to be arguing isn't so much that neither he nor Zimmerman are racists, but that racism is the correct social and political posture. That white people have good reason to fear black men, and that therefore all black men should be put in a subordinate position. But as a logical argument, Cohen here is falling afoul of very poor statistical inference. For example, the vast majority of newspaper op-ed columnists in America are white men just like Richard Cohen. But that doesn't mean it's reasonable to see a white man walking down the street and assume he's a newspaper columnist. If you look specifically at Jewish men, you'll see the stereotype that we are disproportionately represented in the field of political commentary is absolutely accurate. And yet it is still not reasonable to assume that some randomly selected Jewish man is a professional political writer. Even right here on the mean streets of Washington, DC—a city that's legendary for its high rate of punditry—a clear majority of Jewish men are not pundits. It's just a very rare occupation. 

Here are the demographic backgrounds of the a list of the top 50 pundits in America in 2009, a list compiled by The Atlantic.
By the same token, the fact that young black men are disproportionately likely to be involved in violent crime in no way licenses the inference that you should stop random black men on the street and begin treating them like criminals. 
For example, since moving to a majority black city ten years ago it is the case that 100 percent of the people who randomly assaulted me on the street were African-American. And yet that was a single incident on one day out of thousands. The overwhelming preponderance of black men I walk past on the street on a day-to-day basis—even the young ones, even the ones wearing hoodies—aren't committing any violent crimes.

Back on May 15, 2011, I wrote: "Was the beating of Matthew Yglesias a hate crime?"
If I were to start questioning every single black male teenager I come across as a criminal suspect, I would very much be engaged in unreasonable behavior. Now everyone makes mistakes, but the fact that Richard Cohen has been making this mistake in print for over 25 years leads me to think he just doesn't care. He knows most young black men aren't dangerous criminals, but he nonetheless thinks they should all be held under a cloud of preemptive suspicion anyway.

Sportswriter Damon Runyon (source of the great musical "Guys and Dolls") once amended the Book of Ecclesiastes:
"The race is not always to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, but that's how the smart money bets."

87 comments:

Anonymous said...

Steve,

Slight OT, but if the media insist on labeling Zimmerman as white, then I have one question. Does George Zimmerman qualify for any affirmative action programs? If so, he cannot be white or even white hispanic. True white hispanics, i.e. Spaniards, don't qualify for set asides.

And if Zimmerman, a true Mestizo if there ever were, doesn't qualify for affirmative action, then that should mean the soon-to-be-amnestied 11 million and their dependents should not qualify for affirmative action either.

Anonymous said...

Yglesias doesn't see how consequences factor into rationality. The chance of a passenger jet experiencing mechanical failure is very slim, therefore we shouldn't take care to perform regular maintenance on them. If you knew there were only a few landmines in a field you had to cross, and that your chances were slim of hitting one, it would still be rational to take precautions because the consequences of hitting one are so severe.

C. Van Carter said...

The beating of Matthew Yglesias wasn't long and hard enough, obviously.

Silver said...

"He knows most young black men aren't dangerous criminals, but he nonetheless thinks they should all be held under a cloud of preemptive suspicion anyway."

Matt's absolutely right here. If you are habitually wary of young black men then you'll want to avoid them, which means missing out on the trove of delights only their company is rightly renowned for bringing to one's life, like....

Um....

Well....

The equality cult is either a peculiar kind of brain disease or else there is no amount of illogic that cannot be justified on the unspoken basis of anti-white fear and resentment.

Anonymous said...

You just can't knock sense into some people.

Phoenician said...

Of course, when you take behavior into account, the statistics change.

Anonymous said...

All the burglaries and home invasions in Zimmerman's neighborhood were committed by black teenagers. As a member of the neighborhood watch, who the Hell should he have been watching out for? Eskimoes? Filipinos? It is bad enough that we have to listen to such stupidity, but do liberals really think they can make stupidity compulsory?

For an entertaining rant on the subject, check out Fred Reed's new column.

















Scharlach said...

When you start arguing "B-b-b-but not all blacks are criminals," you've already lost the argument.

If doctors applied Matty's reasoning in deciding whether a lump is cancer or not, we'd see a lot more medical malpractice suits.

"Oh, 80% of lumps aren't cancerous, so you'd be engaged in extremely unreasonable behavior to get yours checked out by a doctor!"

Auntie Analogue said...


Way to go, Mr. Yglesias, offering us yet another round of bankrupt relativism! One suspects that Mr. Yglesias wished to show how the pen - or perhaps the eraser - is mightier than the flash mob, the "knockout game," and the massively disproportionate numbers and frequency and percentage of black crime.

Anonymous said...

Here's a question. If Yglesias is arguing vs stopping various young black males and profiling them as criminals, wouldn't that in itself mean that he is making a case against reading into the minds and motives of young black males? If so, then the corollary must be accurate as well: If we can't accurately determine a race or group's motives regarding committing a crime, then wouldn't that have to apply to whites as well, especially regarding hate crimes?

We need someone like Judge Posner to help on this one. If it is impossible to stereotype a group's motives regarding crimes and thus can't or shouldn't be a factor when determining if a crime was committed and if a suspect is a criminal, then why do we have hate crime laws when murder is already a felonious act?

Hate crimes, by their nature, presuppose that a group/race/identity was grieved and wronged due to an historical Who? Whom?. Under current hate crimes laws, the suspect most likely to be brought up on hate crimes charges are white males. This is a distinction in the law which should not be allowed to exist. It is a reverse (or an inverted) "separate yet equal" distinction in the law where for the most part only white males (and whites in general) are presumed to be guilty of committing a hate crime and are brought before a judge on hate crime charges.

Seems like under the right judge and with the right attorney, one could get the entire "hate crimes" jurisprudence ruled unconstitutional which it should have been done decades ago.

Anonymous said...

He can't tell the difference between assuming that all Jewish men in DC are pundits and being suspicious of a young black man walking alone, at night, through a neighborhood beset by burglaries perpetrated by young black men? Really? He gets paid to write this crap?

Anonymous said...

The strawmen and platitudes in this piece and others like it challenging Cohen's fact-filled article demonstrates to everyone just how arrogant and removed from reality the liberal elite truly is. As if there was any doubt.

They really think people are that dumb. They really think people won't see through their lies and distortions.

I don't believe I've ever seen it this bad for the liberals. It's like the entire superstructure of liberal politically correct intellectualism is collapsing under the weight of its own lies. And the worse it gets, the bigger the lies, the worse the collapse, which in turn makes it even worse for them. It's like a vicious cycle. Let's hope this is the end for them, but I won't be too optimistic.

It's so bad I think they are even alienating former allies and will not win any converts to their cause.

Anonymous said...

Question: If MY is walking home and he sees four or five hoodie-wearing black teens, does he cross the street? Bet he does. Why wouldn't he? Why wouldn't anyone, including Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton. And if so, he ought to shut the hell up.

dearieme said...

"missing out on the trove of delights only their company is rightly renowned for bringing to one's life, like....": once upon a time an answer to that question was "jazz". (True they weren't the only jazzmen but they were a substantial fraction.)

Jelly Roll Morton, Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, Fats Waller and hundreds of others: what on earth happened?

a very knowing American said...

I've been racially profiled. (I'm a white man.) I was attending a social function, and went afterwards to the bus stop, which was in a black neighborhood. I was approached by a couple of black guys who wanted to know what I was doing there. I convinced them I was just waiting for a bus, and they went away. Maybe they were driven by some racial animus, but I think it's just as likely they were respectable members of the community who thought -- not irrationally or un-Bayseanly -- that I might be up to no good: looking to buy drugs maybe.

I've known other white people who've been questioned by cops for being in black neighborhoods for perfectly legitimate reasons.

Anonymous said...

ranting about this and 'the one percent' - pays extremely well - he just bought a 1.2 million dollar home.

heartiste said...

The beating of Matthew Yglesias wasn't long and hard enough, obviously.

Well, it was either not hard enough, or too hard. Either way, what this proves is the psychological "stickiness" of innate ideological predisposition.

Or, to put it in terms some will be familiar with: That rationalization hamster is incorrigible.

heartiste said...

Shorter Yglesias logic:

"Most lions won't attack you on sight at any given time, so you're perfectly safe strolling around Kruger National Park alone in nothing but shorts and flip-flops during dusk, headphones jammed in your ears. To do otherwise would be rank anti-lion bigotry!"

Funnily, a lot of SWPL hipsters follow this logic, they're that invested in their moral posturing.

Deckin said...

This is a question of inference, and about that, it's Yglesias who is "challenged"

He writes:

I think what Cohen really means to be arguing isn't so much that neither he nor Zimmerman are racists, but that racism is the correct social and political posture. That white people have good reason to fear black men, and that therefore all black men should be put in a subordinate position. But as a logical argument, Cohen here is falling afoul of very poor statistical inference.

Uh, no. No one but an idiot confuses the Pr(A|B) with the Pr(B|A). But that isn't the right question. The question is, given a sufficiently high value for the Pr(A|B), what does this tell us of the relationship between the Pr(B|A) as compared with the Pr(B|not A)?

Although the Pr(Black|Criminal) is not the same as the Pr(Criminal|Black), a high enough value on the former certainly justifies thinking the latter is greater than the Pr(Criminal|not Black). The Pr(Raining|Cloudy) is certainly not the same as the converse, but it's certainly higher than the Pr(Raining|not Cloudy).

And that's all it takes to make the rational inference of being wary around black men. Throw in some context: Youth, hoody, night, acting strange, looking into people's homes, lots of burglaries recently committed by people who look pretty much the same, and you most certainly get Zimmerman's rationale being rational. You also get good reason to, in lots of contexts, 'fear black men.'

Yglesias himself learned some of those contexts the hard way.

Anonymous said...

Yglesias can afford to talk like this since he can afford a million dollar house in a whitening city.
Thus, even though he was attacked by blacks, he's living in a community where measures are being taken to protect the likes from him such violence.

But notice he won't move to Detroit.

Silver said...

"once upon a time an answer to that question was "jazz". "

You're referring to notable group accomplishments. I was referring to the pleasures that result from being in the mere presence of large numbers of blacks, whether one chooses to interact with any of them or not. My contention is that these pleasures are non-existent and that that fact in itself is enough to avoid being where blacks are. If you don't get anything out of being around them, why are you wasting your time? Why not spend your time in the company of people you do derive pleasure from interacting with or merely being around?

The first or second day I arrived in America I walked into a mall and headed to the food court to get something to eat. Unlike the rest of the mall this area was completely taken over by blacks. I was taken completely by surprise. They must have been 95%. I'd never seen anything like it. I stood there and eyed the situation for a while. "No way in hell am I sitting there," I told myself. Was I wrong? Why should have I merely endured my lunch when I could easily recall having seen large numbers of what I guessed were Latinos (not exactly my people either, but worlds closer to it than blacks) and some whites and ate my lunch there and actually enjoyed it?

That's why this argument that "not all blacks are criminals" for me misses the point. True enough, they're not. But why should I feel compelled to interact with them just because most of them aren't criminals? It's like urging a girl to go out with a guy she's not attracted to because he's "not a rapist!" As I see it, reasons to prefer your own kind go much further than avoiding the negative qualities of other groups. I'm no more inclined to want to be in the presence of large numbers of Asians than I am blacks. I may be less inclined to avoid large gatherings of them, but I'm no more inclined to positively want to be in their presence. Just as with blacks, interacting with asians isn't remotely as fulfilling as interacting with my own kind.

Would it really be the end of the world if the majority of people felt this way...and admitted it?

Anonymous said...

Black guy must have banged his head pretty hard.

One difference between Yglesias and most poor whites.

Most poor whites are helpless against black crime when it happens. But Yglesias knows he has the means to afford minimizing such incidents in the future, at least for himself. He knows he has the money and connections to move to a safe place from which to pontificate to the rest of us.

Btw, if we base white liberals by their actual behavior--Yglesias's included--, it is very race-ist since they use all sorts of economic means and zoning laws to whitopian-ize big cities to favor homos, 'creative types', and tokens/mulattos who can be bought off and made fancy.

Anonymous said...

"You just can't knock sense into some people."

Oh, I suspect he knows the truth, but where would he be in DC or among his ilk if he did a shift?

Anonymous said...

At any rate, racial differences do exist. Generally, blacks are physically stronger than whites(and Jews), and of course, blacks know this. Even liberal cities are racially more or less segregated. Jews are, on average, smarter, and so they dominate elite power positions, and blacks are, on average, stronger, so they dominate sports and hardcore crime.
Yglesias is a a high IQ Jew who can afford to live well, and so, perched in his privilege and affluence(such as affording a million dollar plus home in ever whitening DC), he indulges in all sorts of moral narcissism and supremacism and pontificates like he's better than the rest of us who can't afford to be as privileged as high IQ Jews. While Yglesias was once attacked by blacks, he knows he has the means to avoid most such incidents in the future. But ifyou're a poor lower-IQ 'white trash', you can't move to a million dollar home in the nice part of the city. If anything, rich whites and Jews will use section 8 housing program to take urban blacks and dump them into your community. And if you get beat up and robbed by blacks and complain about black violence, the rich whites and Jews will call you 'racist'.

Yglesias, a high IQ white Hispanic Jew with lots of money and privilege. Zimmerman, a low IQ Hispanic who lives in the part of city beset with crime and encroaching blight. And Yglesias turns his nose up at the likes of Zimmerman.

Lee Siegel is right. These white/Jewish privileged snobs have no clue.

josh said...

Beacause there were no other indicators that Trayvon was up to no good whatsoever.

Anonymous said...

Child abduction is fairly rare, so any parent who wouldn't let their child get into a windowless van with a disheveled man holding a sign marked "free candy, hugs, and photos" is clearly a judgmental loon.

Anonymous said...

The equality cult is either a peculiar kind of brain disease or else there is no amount of illogic that cannot be justified on the unspoken basis of anti-white fear and resentment.

What they say and what they do aren't identical. How many liberals who say these things live in black slums?

Anonymous said...

Of the many flaws in that article i'd say the biggest revolves around the question of practical consequences.

What's the difference between not profiling, correctly profiling or mistakenly profiling a Jewish man as a media pundit?

Not a lot.

What's the difference between not profiling, correctly profiling or mistakenly profiling a black teenager as a potential robber?

Up to and including life or death.

Anonymous said...

Why take chances?

One of the things that came out in the trial was that several of the burglaries as well as that awful home invasion with the mother locking herself in the bathroom with the 4 month old were committed by black males who were residents of the complex.

In the case of Trayvon Martin himself, what you have is the woman, Brandi Green, living with her son and then she gets herself a new man, Tracy Martin, and he brings the trouble to the neighborhood.

Rather than getting rid of Stand your ground, it would be good if the legislatures passed laws requiring parents of school suspended kids to monitor them 24 hours a day. If that is not possible, there should be some kind of confinement for the delinquent so he is not free to roam around and break into homes and attack people.

Anonymous said...

Where does Andrew Sullivan stand on the subject of getting a beating by big black men?

Anonymous said...

http://topconservativenews.com/2013/07/teens-with-free-zimmerman-bumper-sticker-slaughtered-in-jacksonville/

Finally some white TEENS(but as victims than perpetrators).

Shouting Thomas said...

And yet it is still not reasonable to assume that some randomly selected Jewish man is a professional political writer.

Is Yglesias worried about being beat up by Jewish professional political writers?

My guess... probably not.

Anonymous said...

Yglesias really is an astonishingly bad pundit. The "Moneybox" feature he writes at Slate, which covers business and money, has one howler after another.

Ariston said...

Despite the disproportionate presence of Jews in the media, I would be mildly surprised if it were as differential between non–Hispanic white gentiles as violent crime rates are between non–Hispanic white gentiles and black people (especially after controlling for education in our former case, because the disproportion still remains remarkable when you control for poverty in our latter case).

Not only that, but of course it's a logical inference to assume any given Jewish male is more likely to be, let's say, upper–middle class or even a political commentator than the average white gentile… but those things don't matter day–to–day.

There's a really important thing when it comes to inductive reasoning. If you get mauled by a bear (even though they are actually rarely violent towards humans unless protecting young), you immediately take a posture of ‘bears are dangerous’ and act upon it, whereas you don't think about how they are disproportionately likely to be habitual (as opposed to opportunistic) omnivores compared to other mammals you encounter.

Assumptions derived from disproportionate danger are more rational than those from disproportionate trivia. It's wrong to assume that any given black male is a criminal, but it's not wrong to be wary of one on a dark street— especially at night in urban areas. I realize that my chances of being a victim of crime at night in West Philly are actually fairly low, but I don't want to stop for gas there at 12am (which I have before) if I can prevent it, and that's a rational assessment. What's funny is that I encounter white liberals of the sort who are having the vapors over the Zimmerman trial who act worried or even freaked–out that I would drive through West Philly in the daytime, when—being a young, fit male in a car in broad daylight in a populated street—my chances of being victimized are near–nil.

It'd be hilarious if it weren't so destructive to our social fabric.

Whiskey said...

Yglesias argument is powerful -- to fellow elites who are status climbing or status-anxious. To everyone else, the primary goal is not getting their head kicked in. So acting like Cohen or "profiling" is smart, if you want to avoid your head being kicked in.

And besides, avoiding Black men does Whites no harm at all. They don't miss out on anything. Only for the status anxious or climbing (basically DC pundits and drones) is this an issue.

Are most young Black men criminals? In a word, yes. In that they are likely to beat any weak-appearing targets for status and sexual marketplace gain.

Anonymous said...

Anonymous 1:57: that story is a dead link. Do you have another source for that story?

Anonymous said...

Suppose some white guys insulted a black guy. Should the black guy just quietly walk away with his tail between his legs?

I thought libs hate uncle toms and loved uppity blacks who 'fight back' and stand their ground with pride.

But when blacks threaten you, just act like a scared dog and retreat like a scared child?

Uncle tom bad. White tom good.

Anonymous said...

If you got lots of money, class, and connections, you hang around black jazzmen like Wynton Marsalis.

If you don't got lots of money, you see a lot of trashy rappers in your hood.

How about rich libs trade their cool hip/fancy jazzers with the rappers who terrorize poor white communities?

Anonymous said...

Truth = dumb.

It's no wonder people like Yglesias don't wanna use the term 'liberal' anymore and prefer 'progressive'.

'Liberal', in its true sense, means being open-minded and rational and factual and skeptical of dogma. It also means playing by the same rules as the other side.

But people like Yglesias have elite power/control and don't wanna be liberal with us anymore. They wanna force their dogma and agenda onto the rest of us, and they don't care if they use illiberal means to bring about 'progress'.

If they still called themselves 'liberal', people would notice that they are not acting very liberal since they are so into PC.
But if they go by 'progressive', it means they can do whatever they like to ensure 'progress' happens.

Anonymous said...

http://topconservativenews.com/2013/07/teens-with-free-zimmerman-bumper-sticker-slaughtered-in-jacksonville/


link down but goggle gives others

media score 2

Anonymous said...

would we rather have government and media by jeffrey toobinism, with an "agreed truth", race-based retribution, unconcern for the individual, and a lack of regard for principal, or would we prefer government and media by juror B-37ism, with a fact based empirical truth, race neutrality, concern for all individuals, and regard for principal? A penchant for agreed truth goes hand in hand with a preprogrammed inability to distinguish important from unimportant information, both helping one to convincingly criticise or demonize individuals or groups, whether in office politics or something like the Zimmerman case. This may be its principal evolutionary value.

According to O'Mara, "Two systems went against George Zimmerman that he can't understand...You guys, the media...He didn't know why he was turned into this monster, but...you guys had a lot to do with it, you just did, because you took a story that was fed to you and you ran with it, and you ran right over him and that was horrid to him."

Did Zimmerman put his "soul at hazard", placing himself in a world he didn't fully understand, unleashing an uncontrollable chain of events that might, via some unprincipaled anti-western aliens ("let's choose the small boy photo, let's withhold the text evidence, let's pretend we can't figure out who was on top"), lead to his death. True, these aliens are not, in this case, dead ringers for Djokar Tsarnaev, with his distinctive haircut, yet they do seem figurately to float above our doors, unfindable and unaccountable, merciful if we bow our heads before the blood stain.

Anonymous said...

Fair enough point, Mr. Yglesias -- but it's also quite possible that given the demography of Mr. Zimmerman's gated community, most young black men of Trayvon's profile *ARE* "up to no good." Making statistical judgments of that kind shouldn't be made using national statistics, but rather with the most applicable sample possible -- which in this case might be very, very local.

Secondly -- and this is what really chaps my hide about this whole thing -- even if Zimmerman *DID* profile poorly, it *DOES NOT* make him a murderer, even if you think it makes him an Official Bad Person and a "dummy" in this case. The jury found reasonable doubt regarding Zimmerman's initiating of the physical violence in this incident, and therefore he was acquitted -- as he should have been. You and many others seem to have a problem with laws being interpreted correctly rather than ad hoc when they conflict with your personal feelings on the matter at hand -- which should be downright scary to everyone.

David said...

Yglesias's reasoning here is so poor I really think his injuries might be more serious than he suspects.

Commenters here can think circles around him on this topic. See

Josh
Anon. at 7/16/13, 12:37 PM
Anon. at 7/16/13, 12:39 PM
Anon. at 7/16/13, 12:44 PM
Heartist at 7/16/13, 1:13 PM
Deckin

In my opinion, it's like he's the old Ali and they're the young Ali.

Anonymous said...

The consequences of mistaking a jew on the streets of DC for a pundit are slightly less costly than mistaking a thuggy-looking black teen alone on a dark street for a law abiding kid. But we all know this, and so does Yglesias.

JSM said...

He knows most young black men aren't dangerous criminals, but he nonetheless thinks they should all be held under a cloud of preemptive suspicion anyway."




"According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, one in three black men can expect to go to prison in their lifetime"

http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/race/news/2012/03/13/11351/the-top-10-most-startling-facts-about-people-of-color-and-criminal-justice-in-the-united-states/



One in THREE black men are thug enough to expect to spend time in prison at some point.

You bet you're smart to be suspicious of all black men as probably bad apples, as you'll be RIGHT one time out of THREE!

blogger said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Anonymous said...

Yglesias talks about Bayesian analysis but the better measure for planning one's actions is either the probability ratio or the odds ratio. I'm not sure whether he's really that obtuse or just pretending to be in order to score a cheap debating point.

Otis McWrong said...

Yglesias can’t possibly be this stupid – rather the purpose of this column is to polish his anti-racist bona fides and perhaps to score a few status points off Cohen. I suppose he could have just dashed it off without thinking through anything, but my suspicion is that he knows better.

It doesn’t even make sense. He writes: “neither he nor Zimmerman are racists, but that racism is the correct social and political posture”. What is “social and political” posture? Cohen was writing about a trial. “Social posture” is not and should not be a legal standard.

MY writes: “The overwhelming preponderance of black men I walk past on the street on a day-to-day basis—even the young ones, even the ones wearing hoodies—aren't committing any violent crimes”. Following his logic, can we assume he doesn’t have homeowner’s insurance? After all, on a day-to-day basis, the overwhelming preponderance of homes do not burn down. The point of insurance is to sell the risk of events that, while unlikely, would be catastrophic if they were to occur. Anonymous @ 1:52pm touches on this. I would put houses burning down and being violently attacked in these “catastrophic” categories, though any actuary would quote you different likelihoods of the two events. Since we can’t buy Protection from Violent Attacks insurance (as far as I am know), people take other measures to avoid this outcome, such as be wary of and if possible avoid young black males…just as insurance companies lower their risk by insisting you replace ancient cloth-insulated wiring.

The more odious part of his column is the continued leftist insistence that “profiling” and “racism” are crimes.

Anonymous said...

We are told by progressives that Zimmerman shouldn't have protected his neighborhood and should have just quietly stayed in his car and driven home. He should have left everything up to the police...

BUT... according to the same progressives...

Blacks and progressives should march around noisily, block traffic, beat up people randomly, set fire to garbage cans, smash windows, and beat up Hispanic men ALL OVER THE NATION because they are angry over what happened in a trial in Sanford Florida. And because of six Florida women, all of Florida should be 'boycotted'.

Zimmerman followed someone because the latter really did look suspicious(and indeed turned out to be a no good thug) and because there was a rash of burglaries in his neighborhood. He didn't rail against all blacks, even against all black criminals.

But blacks and progressives, simply because they don't like a verdict in a trial, think they have the right to walk around everywhere all over the country, bully and threaten people, and make life miserable for everyone else. And plenty of blacks have attacked whites and Hispanics since the verdict.

The very people who say Zimmerman shouldn't have done anything and should have left everything to the authorities are now the very ones who don't care about law-and-order and wanna take the law into their own hands and BLAME ALL OF FLORIDA AND WHITE AMERICA because a legal process didn't go their way. They act like vigilante mob but accuse Zimmerman, who actually called the cops and waited(and only used the gun when he was being beaten up real bad), of vigilantism.

It's like a motormouth telling a quiet person to shut up.

http://youtu.be/3eVqdnDk02Y?t=2m7s


But what do you expect in a nation where someone like Al Sharpton gets to play a 'moral leader' or the likes of Cornel West are lionized as 'intellectuals' and 'thinkers'.

Or when the likes of Jennifer Rubin have people like Jason Richwine blacklisted but then say the GOP must be more 'tolerant'.

Or, when feminists dress and act like sluts in the name of 'slut pride' but will sue anyone for sexual harassment if he calls a slutty woman a slut.

Anonymous said...

"By the same token, the fact that young black men are disproportionately likely to be involved in violent crime."

The question then arises: "Is it reasonable to profile anyone?" Imagine: strange young man wandering around with a bloody knife in the night acting odd in an area where previously there had been bloody homicides. Presumably, the answer is: "Yes." But it might be very unreasonable to profile the above individual e.g., if it happened to be Halloween and if the young man was in costume and on a ghost tour. So, the answer is, "Yes ...if the profile is generally predictive enough given the circumstances." And where 'enough' is somewhat subjectively defined and is related to the potential cost of not profiling.

Now, using "race" as one of the predictors shouldn't be an issue. Imagine that all or most crimes were committed by one race -- though only a few of that race, in fact, committed crimes. Given this situation, it would be unreasonable, in many instances, to refuse to use race as one of many predictors in a multivariate model. Could race be used as the sole predictor, given that most individuals of that race don't commit crime? Well, yes. It's not difficult to construct hypotheticals in which such profiling is reasonable. For example, if you had a room of suspects, you knew that the criminal was Asian, and if there happened to be only one Asian in the room. Of course, these situations are rare. In most instances, race alone isn't a reasonable profile. But, then, no one uses race alone. Profiling, in reality, is multivariate and contextualized.

As for Ygleias's example, specifically, one can think of obvious situations in which it would be idiotic to not use race to construct a profile to avoid future attacks. Imagine that on South Dunbar he had previously been jumped ten time late at night by Black youths ages 15-25 wearing purple hoodies. And that he happened to be walking along South Dunbar one week after the last beating and that he saw ahead of him Black youths ages 15-25 wearing purple hoodies and grinning at him. Would it be prudent of him to think, "Well, most South Dunbarese, just as most Blacks, just as most youths, just as most hoodie wearers, just as most midnight loiters are not of the pummeling type, so this group is unlikely to be of that type too?" This, of course, is Lewontin's fallacy applied to Bayes' Theorem. We might call this Ygleias's fallacy: Since race (or some other trait) in isolation devoid of context weakly predicts behavior, using race as a predictor in a multivariate contextualized model is irrational.

It's amazing how much time is spent trying to deny the rationality of rational discrimination instead of trying to identify and to work on the biases that occur in practice. As a strategy for bias prevention, I guess that this shotgun approach makes sense to the extent that it works. But it's nonetheless amazing that this line of argument works.

Dave Pinsen said...

Zimmerman isn't white enough to be a Univision anchor.

David said...

Another young Ali - Otis McWrong. Probably the strongest punch yet. Can YOU do better? Try it, let's see it!

Svigor said...

I've often been accused of profiling for assuming that Yglesias's assailants were black.

Yeah but you were only right because you're a racist.

But being right is racist.

Mmm, sorta. I like mine better.

I think what Cohen really means to be arguing isn't so much that neither he nor Zimmerman are racists, but that racism is the correct social and political posture.

I think what I'm arguing is that you guys need to shit or get off the pot: define racism as a set of reasonably specific misbehaviors, and stop trying to add perfectly reasonable, ethical behaviors to the pot, or resign yourselves to the fact that reasonable, ethical people will increasingly identify racism as a perfectly reasonable, ethical behavior.

You guys weaponized "racism," now you get to eat it.

The beating of Matthew Yglesias wasn't long and hard enough, obviously.

Hear-hear! I bet Yglesias took certain behavioral measures to see that the beating wasn't repeated, too; rat-bastard racist that he is.

When you start arguing "B-b-b-but not all blacks are criminals," you've already lost the argument.

Most blacks are not violent criminals, but most violent criminals are black. This becomes especially true when you account for differences in population size.

Most Jews are not virulently racist, anti-white urinalists, writers, or pundits, but most virulently racist, anti-white urinalists, writers, or pundits are Jews.

Et cetera.

We need someone like Judge Posner to help on this one.

Tim Wise gave us some help on this one in his online war with the late Birdman Bryant. Wise, while attacking the notion that whites are justified in racially profiling blacks as perpetrators of crime, gave blacks a pass on the fact that black-on-white violent crime is much, much more common than white-on-black violent crime; he said of course blacks racially profile whites as better crime victims - that's where all the money is.

Rather than getting rid of Stand your ground, it would be good if the legislatures passed laws requiring parents of school suspended kids to monitor them 24 hours a day. If that is not possible, there should be some kind of confinement for the delinquent so he is not free to roam around and break into homes and attack people.

Yes, let's get the nanny state to go even nannier, that'll solve things. How about we keep our freedom, instead? Those who choose not to protect themselves know the risks. If they don't, they know how to research the risks.

But what do you expect in a nation where someone like Al Sharpton gets to play a 'moral leader'

You ain't just whistling Dixie there, pard. This guy made his bones with the Tawana Brawley Hoax. That's his pedigree.

Anonymous said...

"Uh, no. No one but an idiot confuses the Pr(A|B) with the Pr(B|A)."

This profiling issue comes up time and time again. And, when race differences are acknowledged, 'Ygleias's fallacy' is inevitably trotted out. This occurs frequently in philosophical circles. Could someone write a simple logical proof showing that a multivariate contextualized profiling which includes race as a variable is rational where rational profiling is defined in a way that includes some calculation of the consequences of not profiling? Something simple, something stylish. This shouldn't be difficult. And it would make dismissing this fallacy a whole lot easier.

carol said...

Jelly Roll Morton, Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, Fats Waller and hundreds of others: what on earth happened?

Three of those were pretty louche characters, but still, yes it's appalling how far down they've come in musical aspiration.

I blame pro sports.

ben tillman said...

If doctors applied Matty's reasoning in deciding whether a lump is cancer or not, we'd see a lot more medical malpractice suits.

"Oh, 80% of lumps aren't cancerous, so you'd be engaged in extremely unreasonable behavior to get yours checked out by a doctor!"


Excellent. That argument is worth repeating.

Anonymous said...

I think what Cohen really means to be arguing isn't so much that neither he nor Zimmerman are racists, but that racism is the correct social and political posture.


I'm sorry, but remind me again how Jews ever got the reputation for being terrifically intelligent? Yglsias is dumb, cynical, and dishonest. Being aware of racial differences is not the same thing as "racist".

candid_observer said...

Does Yglesias even know what Bayes' theorem means? It would have been nice of him to spell out how he was applying it in the cases he brings up.

What is certainly true is that Bayes' theorem can be used to show the opposite of what he'd like us to conclude -- namely, for example, that knowing a shady seeming character is black can add a huge amount of additional likelihood that he is a criminal.

Anonymous said...

If you look specifically at Jewish men, you'll see the stereotype that we are disproportionately represented in the field of political commentary is absolutely accurate.


Yeah. And this certainly does NOT seem to be attributable to the intelligence, insight, or even superior prose style of the Jews in question. So I think we're entitled to wonder just why Jews are so disproportionately over-represented in the field of political commentary.

Anonymous said...

Its amazing how a well written comment can get blocked by komment kontrol, but black cuckold fetishes still get to salivate over black muscularity.

Strongman comp, crossfit are mostly whites. the majority of the blacks I see make the most depressing white lumpenprole look like pillars of fitness by comparison, but this nonsense persists.

blacks run in packs - there's no physical superiority involved when you're facing a wave of people running at you. how did blacks do in koreatown during the la riots? how come blacks go after soft pasty bloggers like Yglesias but stay the fuck away from cracker bars where the white wimmen be?

black athletism and physical 'superiority' is not quite as much of a unicorn as black chess champs, but its up there

Anonymous said...

Silver, what ethnicity are you if you don't mind my asking? Just curious because in a prior post you mentioned that you weren't "really white" or something like that.

Anonymous said...

do liberals really think they can make stupidity compulsory?



Yes. And to a great extent, they have succeeded.

Harry Baldwin said...

Yglsias is dumb, cynical, and dishonest.

This reminds me of an old joke they used to tell in Communist Eastern Europe: "You can be intelligent, you can be sincere, or you can be a Communist. Actually, you can be any two, but never all three."

It works just as well for Progressives as Communists. That is, Yglesias may be an intelligent, insincere Progressive or a stupid, sincere Progressive, but he can't be an intelligent, sincere Progressive.

Cail Corishev said...

Yglesias either has no idea about Bayes' Theorem (or statistics in general) or he's being disingenuous here and assuming most people will think, "He sounds really smart; I'll take his word for it." For starters, you don't do Bayesian analysis with a single factor like "Is the person black or not?" The whole point is that multiple probabilities can be combined to get one overall probability that something is true.

I'm writing a Bayesian spam filter (based on Paul Graham's Plan for Spam), and "profiling" is exactly what it does. There's no one word that guarantees that a message is spam. But if a message contains 10 words that appear frequently in spam, and it doesn't contain any words that appear exclusively in non-spam, the probability that the message is spam will be very close to 1.

That's what profiling means. It doesn't mean, "Stop all blacks because blacks are more dangerous than other groups"; that's what liberals like Bloomberg do because they're trying to avoid profiling. Profiling would have a cop say (pulling percentages out of my hat for the example), "Ok, there's a young black man walking down the street in this neighborhood, so historical data says there's a 5% chance that he's up to no good. That's not nearly enough to suspect anything. But he's also wearing a hoodie, which adds another 5% (whether he's black or white), and he's hiding his face (another 3%), and keeping his hands shoved down deep in his pockets (another 10%), and his sneakers look brand new, which we've been told to look out for because a store was knocked over last night (another 20%). Let's pull over and ask him where he's headed .... Okay, he doesn't seem to know this neighborhood (another 20%) so let's chat with him a bit more.... Ok, he showed us what he was holding in his pockets, and it was liniment and denture cream that he said he's taking to his grandma whom he's staying with a few blocks from here (-30%), and he seemed friendly and relaxed while we talked to him (-10%), and offered to show us the receipt for his shoes (-30%). Seems okay, tell him to have a nice day."

That's how actual profiling would work, except that sometimes things would go the other way and the "thug" scores would keep piling up until you'd have near certainty that the guy was on the way to or from a crime. We all do that kind of analysis every day without thinking about it, from hiring a babysitter to buying a head of lettuce -- we estimate the various pros and cons and come up with an overall good/bad estimate of the thing we're judging. Not with the precision of a Bayesian equation, of course, but close enough for dealing with people and day-to-day life. You wouldn't want to say, "Profiling says this guy is 99% likely to be up to something, so shoot him right now." But you ought to be able to say, "Profiling says this guy is 90% likely to be up to something, so let's stop him and have a chat, see how he acts."

Cops profile drivers all the time this way, by the way. You cross the center line momentarily, so they pull you over, even though that doesn't prove anything -- you might have just been tired or looking at the radio for a few seconds. They smell alcohol, but that doesn't prove anything -- someone at the party where you weren't drinking might have spilled it on you. They ask you to get out of the car and you stumble a bit, but that doesn't prove anything -- you might have just bought some new shoes that don't feel right yet. But combining just those few factors -- each of which could be completely innocent -- gives them more than enough justification to require a breathalyzer and haul you in.

ben tillman said...

What's the difference between not profiling, correctly profiling or mistakenly profiling a Jewish man as a media pundit?

Not a lot.

What's the difference between not profiling, correctly profiling or mistakenly profiling a black teenager as a potential robber?

Up to and including life or death.


No. You're mistakenly presuming that the interests of Whites matter. They don't.

Yglesias's point is that (accurate) stereotypes are an inconvenience and insult to Blacks, and our brains must therefore be washed until they are cleansed of these stereotypes. There is no room in this analysis for the consideration of our interests.

Anonymous said...

"blocked by komment kontrol"

When will you realize it's whim that's doing it?

Automatic_Wing said...

Randomly? How do we know these brothas weren't outraged by one of Matty's dumb Slate columns?

Sheila said...

Kudos to all the excellent comments re logic and MY's lack thereof . . . but surely I'm not alone in finding a sanctimonious progressive Jewish pundit like Yglesias attempting to school a sanctionious Jewish pundit like Cohen "schadenfreudelicious?"

Anonymous said...

Yglesias makes several errors of reasoning.

By the same token, the fact that young black men are disproportionately likely to be involved in violent crime in no way licenses the inference that you should stop random black men on the street and begin treating them like criminals.

This is sophistry. There was very little random about Zimmerman's choice to follow Trayvon Martin. Trayvon was not Steve Urkel or Morgan Freeman. He was a young black man, wearing dark clothes, not in his neighborhood, with gold capped teeth, a hoodie, acting weird and peering into windows at night.

The other problem I see with Yglesias's reasoning is that relatively low probability events, in aggregate, add up. Each time he doesn't cross the street when a group of youths who fit the gangbanger profile come towards him, he increases the risk that he eventually gets a beatdown.

Another problem is the policeability of an area is dependent on the criminality of the precinct, in aggregate. The thin blue line is a good idiom describing how a police force relies on the bulk of the population doing the right thing, since there are few police with respect to the overall population. What can be policeable in an area with 1 or 2 murders per 100k can become unpoliceable when there are 10 or 20 murders per 100k. There should be no reasonable explanation that the same standard of policing can be maintained when there is an order of magnitude more crime committed.

The other compounding factor is that frequently a more criminally prone population is also coupled with a lower ability to generate much revenue that would fund a police force, due to lower IQ.

Inane Rambler said...

Yglesias isn't really much of an intellectual, but he does know his rhetoric.

He's writing exactly what the WaPo/Slate crowd wants to read.

I guess it's well played.

Anonymous said...

Cail Corishev said...
Yglesias either has no idea about Bayes' Theorem (or statistics in general) or he's being disingenuous here and assuming most people will think, "He sounds really smart; I'll take his word for it."


A little bit of both, but mostly he's just a disingenuous hack who thinks he can bamboozle and insult us into silence.

The logic fail of the "Justice for Trayvon" crowd is off the charts; the smarter ones use sickeningly dishonest and misleading arguments, while the dumber ones sincerely believe them. The latter ones, I can sympathize with and try to explain myself to. The former I am beginning to think are just plain evil, even while they fancy themselves as being on the "side of the angels."

Lefty Lawyer said...

Of course Yglesias is correct that a majority of black teenagers are not about to commit a crime. However, logically it is not a matter of selecting black teenagers but de-selecting everyone else.

So, in the Zimmerman example. There have been burglaries in the community, so it makes sense to be vigilant - and the starting point is that all strangers should be checked out.

But, then you can start eliminating people to be checked out in the name of efficiency. You don't stop anyone over 40. You don't stop any females. So, do you stop the white teenager? Probably not, because the history in the area is that the crimes are caused by black teenagers. Do you stop black teenagers? They can't be ruled out as unlikely, so you do stop them and ask questions.

By the way, this is logic, not constitutional law. It is probably OK for a neighborhood watch guy to use this principal, probably not OK for a cop.

Aaron Gross said...

Yglesias is exactly right on this one, and Cohen is wrong. Yglesias writes,

the fact that young black men are disproportionately likely to be involved in violent crime in no way licenses the inference that you should stop random black men on the street....

That's absolutely correct. There may be other facts that imply it, but the facts that Cohen cites do not support it in any way. And it's obvious that Cohen did get his conditional probabilities backwards, just as Yglesias pointed out. Cohen was talking about P(black|criminal), where a more relevant probability is P(criminal|black).

I haven't read all the comments here, but from the ones I've read it seems that as usual, iSteve readers endorse the stupid, unsound argument over the intelligent, sound argument because the former supposedly leads to the desired conclusion.

Anonymous said...

Let's say, hypothetically, I'm walking through DC and I see a Jewish guy, and he's wearing a navy blue suit, a flag pin, and maybe some Oliver People's glasses for good measure. Because I'm such a worldly progressive, I don't stereotype him as being a pundit, but it turns out, much to my surprise, he is, in fact, a political pundit.

In the above scenario, what penalty am I about to pay for not connecting the dots? Zero?

Antioco Dascalon said...

I don't think Zimmerman even racially profiled Martin at all, at least initially. I believe that Zimmerman was driving through the neighborhood and saw Martin, from a distance, in the dark, in the rain, in a hoodie, running or perhaps staring at a house or something. How could he know his race?
Rather, he was alerted but the fact that some skinny kid in a hoodie was where he shouldn't be. He then got out of his car and called the police. By this time he identified Martin and saw that he was black. But initially he was behaviorally profiling him.

Anonymous said...

And yet it is still not reasonable to assume that some randomly selected Jewish man is a professional political writer.

I wonder to what extent this sentence makes up the heart of Yglesias's opposition to profiling. If large numbers of people had a problem with leftist professional political writers and noticed that they were predominantly Jewish, the next step could be the marching of pitchfork waving peasants who might not differentiate between Jewish leftist political writers and greater Jewry. But is that the real story?

The rhetoric of this particular Jewish political pundit is clearly altruistic on behalf of his tribe, the vast majority of whom are not political pundits but whom have a clear self-interest to continue going along with pro-immigration multiculturalism and has nothing, absolutely nothing at all to do with maintaining his own gig as a liberal political pundit that enables him to buy $1.2 million dollar dwellings. Nothing at all! Just pure, unadulterated altruism here.

His solution: rather than actually deal with the growing problems that political correctness is bringing, we should instead ban noticing, thinking, and taking precautions, as to do so is clearly repugnant.

Anonymous said...

"Rather, he was alerted but the fact that some skinny kid in a hoodie was where he shouldn't be."

Not that skinny.

http://media2.wptv.com//photo/2013/05/22/TM711_4_20130522123142_640_480.PNG

Anonymous said...

@ Aaron Gross

I haven't read all the comments here

No, you obviously haven't.

Mr. Anon said...

"Aaron Gross said...

"Yglesias is exactly right on this one, and Cohen is wrong. Yglesias writes,

""the fact that young black men are disproportionately likely to be involved in violent crime in no way licenses the inference that you should stop random black men on the street....""

No, Yglesias is being completely disingenuous. Nobody is stopping "random black men" on the street. Forty year old black men in dockers and aligator shirts are not being stopped. "Youths" in Hoodies and gang-regalia are the ones who are likely to be stopped.

You take every opportunity to call nearly everyone hear stupid. I find nothing particularly intelligent in about half of what you post here. The other half is usually borderline deceitful and/or in support of your own ethnic biases and against ours.

candid_observer said...

There may be other facts that imply it, but the facts that Cohen cites do not support it in any way. And it's obvious that Cohen did get his conditional probabilities backwards, just as Yglesias pointed out. Cohen was talking about P(black|criminal), where a more relevant probability is P(criminal|black).

This is just dumb.

If one is trying to assess P(criminal|black), then it is obviously relevant to bring up P(black|criminal), given equally obvious background knowledge, namely that there are, in general, far fewer blacks than whites. That's why people emphasize crime rates of various races when talking about these issues, rather than absolute numbers.

Suppose the probability that a white is a criminal is p, and the probability that a black is a criminal is 8p -- which is consistent with established facts. Then, by calculation, the probability that someone in Sanford of unknown racial background is a criminal (under the assumption that only 3 in 10 in Sanford are black, and, for the sake of simplification, the rest are white -- close enough to its actual demographics) is .3x8p + .7p = 3.1p. If one determines this individual is black, it shoots up, again, to 8p; if one determines this individual is white, it decreases to p. Obviously, the fact they are black and not white is importantly relevant in this inference.

Now you may argue that even 8p isn't enough to "profile" someone as a criminal. But of course that was not all the information Zimmerman had available -- and why pretend that he was just a random person in a random place evaluating another random person for criminality? The person he was evaluating was not just random, but a young male, was slinking around, wearing a hoodie, in an area in which there was quite recently several breakins. Under these conditions, the probability shoots very far up, and being black continues to have a great impact on the calculation. If Zimmerman was, as a member of a neighborhood watch team, going to report anyone as suspicious, why would such a person not represent exactly the right candidate? What would he even be doing out there if he didn't?

You know, before you start calling other people dumb, it's important not to say something dumb yourself.

Mr. Anon said...

"Anonymous Anonymous said...

Yglesias doesn't see how consequences factor into rationality."

Yes, exactly so, and a very good point. When discussing risk, so many people only consider the probability of the event, and not the severity of the possible outcome. To consider only the former but not the latter is actually quite stupid and dangerous.

If I see some shifty looking people ahead of me while walking down the street ("youths" meth-heads, vagrants, etc.), it is prudent to cross the street or otherwise do something to avoid them. What's the upside to avoiding them? Potentially, not getting attacked and killed. The downside? A few extra steps. It's not like the shambling homeless guy muttering to himself is going to speak to me and impart to me the secret of life. That's the sort of thing that happens in movies, but in real life the probability of that is indentically zero. Far more likely is that he will - in order of decreasing likelihood - a.) impart a strong stench of urine to my nostrils, b.) hit me up for spare change, or c.) lunge at me with a sharp object.

Many people are nothing but trouble; it is worth avoiding them entirely. There is no upside to dealing with them at all.

Mr. Anon said...

"Lefty Lawyer said...

By the way, this is logic, not constitutional law. It is probably OK for a neighborhood watch guy to use this principal, probably not OK for a cop."

If it is not OK for a cop, it is not because of constitutional law, but only because of the taffy-like knots that have been tied in the law by activist lawyers and judges.

Silver said...

Aaron Gross is upset that pro-white comments are given a fair hearing on this blog. He preferred it when it was dominated by IQ fetishists, because they don't really threaten to shake up the existing order. That's the real dividing line between 'dumb' and 'intelligent' commentary in his eyes.

I'm sure Aaron Gross loves black people, btw. I am sure he absolutely adores them. There's nothing he enjoys more than putting himself in environs 70% black. Alas, he lives in Israel so his opportunities for such heart-warming mingling are limited - not least because his government, in a fit of stupidity, not realizing the immense benefits it is foregoing, ejects blacks as unwanted "infiltrators" - but I'm sure if he lived in America he'd fill his life with nothing but blacks, and no way in hell would it even so much as occur to him to "profile" anyone, perish the thought.



Anonymous said...

Err, the vast majority of car trips do not result in fatal collisions, so I shouldn't treat my car seat differently than my couch by wearing a set belt? Sorry Matthew, you forgot the part of the analysis where you take the probability of the event and multiply it times the cost of the event. Risk robbery, rape or murder? Worth disparate treatment even if the odds of any one youth are still low..then you add on that other factors up the accuracy of the prediction. Should Trayvon have died? no. Should the cops have been called, ie did Zimmerman and his neighbors owe the world's young hoods a presumption that resulted in their houses getting jacked much more frequently? no.

Silver said...

"Silver, what ethnicity are you if you don't mind my asking? Just curious because in a prior post you mentioned that you weren't "really white" or something like that."

I meant "not really white" compared to the general hbd standard. Compared to the classic American wasp standard, not white at all. I'm a southeastern european mix, more partial to the ex-yugoslavs because I've lived there and can speak the language, but in terms of appearance, let's say, uh, 'hardcore dago' would cover it - something like a cross between Ralph Macchio and Danny Nucci. (Ralph Macchio has grown whiter as he has gotten older, but he was quite the greaseball in his youth.)

I think this gives moderate pro-white stance I take more credibility, wouldn't you agree? After all, I'm doing it "for the money" (lol), and it comes at some personal risk. And the reality is America, based on present trends, is going to contain a lot more people who look like me in coming years, so if all I cared about were my own racial interests I should be very pleased with proceedings. If I didn't think whites a future in America at all I would be doing what all the hispanic activists do, which is to con whites into thinking how awesome it's going to be when hispanics have completely taken over, and I would support both methods of doing this: (a) focusing on black people's struggles and blaming them on white racism, and (b) promoting race-blind individualism, tossing whites a few "western civilization" bones at times, or else ignoring cultural content altogether (after all, we're all individuals!!).

Anonymous said...

Speaking about yglesias & polar bear hunting, does matt know what happened to documentary maker timothy treadwell who acted as if grizzly bears were actually like winnie the pooh at heart? He succesfully proved that not all bears were as dangerous as some think -- until he (&gf) got killed and eaten by a bear.

It was a horrific example of the darwin award.

Anonymous said...

Meh, I don't know. At the end of the day, you're either going into the "white" bucket (bad) or the "non-white" bucket (good, at varying levels) and I don't think looking like a young Ralph Macchio will get you out of the white bucket.

Generally think your posts are spot on, however.