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confuZion3
confuZion3 HalfDork
7/11/08 3:33 p.m.

What does Isis mean?

John Brown
John Brown SuperDork
7/11/08 3:36 p.m.

Up until a few hundred years ago a "girl" was a child either male or female, not of legal age.

Which of course makes Vince and Tommy sick mother berkeleyers

Salanis
Salanis Dork
7/11/08 3:38 p.m.

Isis was an Egyptian goddess.

John Brown
John Brown SuperDork
7/11/08 3:39 p.m.
confuZion3 wrote: What does Isis mean?

I·sis 1 (ss) n. Mythology An ancient Egyptian goddess of fertility, the sister and wife of Osiris.

The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition copyright ©2000 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Updated in 2003. Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.

Isis Noun an Egyptian fertility goddess Collins Essential English Dictionary 2nd Edition 2006 © HarperCollins Publishers 2004, 2006

Noun 1. Isis - Egyptian goddess of fertility; daughter of Geb; sister and wife of Osiris

confuZion3
confuZion3 HalfDork
7/11/08 3:42 p.m.

OK, so Isis definitely wasn't a Stupid Dirty Girl then, right?

Strizzo
Strizzo Dork
7/11/08 3:51 p.m.

i'm having a hard time grasping why the guy would say that to the girl in the first place, white or black

confuZion3
confuZion3 HalfDork
7/11/08 3:51 p.m.

Ditto.

MEGA-EDIT: Oh yeah. She's a female. Not a girl. That's sexism there.

Jensenman
Jensenman SuperDork
7/11/08 3:53 p.m.

I am so sick of this whole PC thing. Sure, there are words which are definitely offensive, but the name of a color? Come ON, now. That's just plain stupid.

I completely agree: the first statement was not racist. The response was. BUT! that 'offended' black guy is 'protected' from being called racist because of his race.

That is a HUGE problem in today's society. There was a black state senator down here who wrote a letter to the editor saying that the entire white community down here consisted of 'angry white males' who were mad because 'their power had been taken away'. If the tables were turned, a white senator doing something similar would have been tarred and feathered by both the black and white media types and run out of town on a rail. This guy is still a state senator.

Kramer
Kramer New Reader
7/11/08 4:03 p.m.

What do they call black people who live in Europe? Or Asia? At the last Olympics, US reporters couldn't report about the black French man. He wasn't "African American". Do we need to create "African European" or "African Spanish"?

Salanis
Salanis Dork
7/11/08 4:06 p.m.

"African Spanish" is redundant. Spain was conquered by the Moors for quite a while. That's why the Spanish have an even darker complexion than most Mediterraneans.

confuZion3
confuZion3 HalfDork
7/11/08 4:09 p.m.

What about white people who immigrate from Africa to the United States? That, right there, kills the whole meaning of African American. It does NOT IMPLY COLOR!

Salanis
Salanis Dork
7/11/08 4:10 p.m.

Go back far enough, and we're all of African descent.

John Brown
John Brown SuperDork
7/11/08 4:45 p.m.

I bet there is more Asian than African once you get that far back.

RX Reven'
RX Reven' New Reader
7/11/08 4:49 p.m.

PC based word selection is annoying / PC based character selection is deceitful…

I’m sure most here suffer through the incessant ADT Home Security commercials that play on cable TV; if you don’t, consider yourself fortunate.

Anyway, there are four different versions I’m aware of but all follow pretty much the same premise…housewife is home taking care of the kids, dad isn’t around, one or two thugs break into house, alarm goes off sending thugs running away.

OK, in three versions there are two thugs and in one version there is one thug so that gives us a total thug count of seven and all are unambiguously white.

The most recent crime statistics by race I could find dates back to 1998 and shows the following incidence of burglary (Asian = 1,039, Black = 91,164, Indian = 486, White = 53,755). Notice that there are no statistics for Hispanics, that’s because they’re grouped together with whites…how convenient.

OK, since 15% of people in the US are Hispanic, I’ll assume they commit 15% of the burglaries and back those numbers out from the whites resulting in (Asian = 1,039, Black = 91,164, Indian = 486, White = 31,758, Hispanic = 21,997).

Question: If 21.7% of burglaries are committed by whites, what are the odds of randomly sampling seven burglars (with replacement) and finding all of them to be white?

Answer: About one in fifty thousand!!! So, the ADT commercial is 49,999 parts negative misrepresentation of whites in the interest of pandering to the PC crowd and one part legitimate.

Salanis
Salanis Dork
7/11/08 4:59 p.m.

Those commercials are hilarious. I love how the women set the alarms while they're at home. After all, that's when everyone always sets their alarm. Nobody ever has to use the door to take the trash out or anything while they're at home. And your motion sensors can totally tell the difference between you and a burglar.

The burglars aren't bothered by the fact that there's a person in the house. They're even brazen enough to run up and kick open the front door in the middle of the morning in an otherwise lively neighborhood. But they're scared off by the sound of an alarm that would indicate that the police might show up in about 5-10 minutes, if they have nothing better to do.

I think that's even better than the old Kim's Karate commercials where some guy in a black ski-mask tries to jump someone walking through the park, and two 10 year old kids jump out of the bushes in uniforms and black belts and start kicking the crap out of him.

[Note: Fortunately I don't actually have a TV so I only catch them occasionally.]

Edit: I think someone needs to do a parody of those commercials. It could be for the "TBD" security system. Show the woman at home. Woman is doing dishes or something mundane, puts a scoop of kibble in two pastel dog dishes, and kisses her husband goodbye.

Burglar runs up and kicks the door down, startling the woman who was walking through the hallway. She screams and runs towards the kitchen.

Suddenly there's a barking and snarling and a giant berkeleying Doberman and Rottweiler come barreling down the hallway and take the guy off his feet. You hear barking and the guy screaming bloody murder as bits of clothing are thrown into the air.

"Two Big Dogs" security system. When you need security. You need "TBD".

rebelgtp
rebelgtp HalfDork
7/11/08 5:04 p.m.
Salanis wrote: Go back far enough, and we're all of African descent.

Actually if you go back even further you will find that primates did not start in Africa. There are fossil remains out here where I live that are older than anything found in Africa. So the primates here at some point made their way across the land bridge into Asia and down to Africa.

So really if you go far enough back we are all American... I live in Eastern Oregon by the way, if you are ever passing through and are interested in that sort of thing, stop by the Thomas Condon Visitor Center in the John Day fossil beds.

And actually if I'm remembering correctly they recently found the oldest known samples of primates in China. So go back further and we are all Chinese . So yeah go back far enough we are all from the same place sure....but it ain't Africa

aircooled
aircooled Dork
7/11/08 5:57 p.m.
Kramer wrote: ...He wasn't "African American". Do we need to create "African European" or "African Spanish"?

I believe "African American" is a creation of Jessie Jackson...

...possible the most racist person in the US. Race is pretty much the only thing he thinks about.

Salanis
Salanis Dork
7/11/08 5:59 p.m.
rebelgtp wrote: Actually if you go back even further you will find that primates did not start in Africa. There are fossil remains out here where I live that are older than anything found in Africa. So the primates here at some point made their way across the land bridge into Asia and down to Africa.

Well if you want to keep doing that, we're all of oceanic descent.

alfadriver
alfadriver New Reader
7/11/08 6:15 p.m.
Kramer wrote: What do they call black people who live in Europe? Or Asia? At the last Olympics, US reporters couldn't report about the black French man. He wasn't "African American". Do we need to create "African European" or "African Spanish"?

I remember watching one of those MTV reality shows about the "Year at Sea" school. They got the opportunity to speak to Nelson Mandella. One asked him "what was it like to grow up African American in apartid (sp?) South Africa".

Mandella was very smooth, but you could see that most figured out the moronic gaffe pretty quickly. Nelson said that he was not African American.

Eric

Strizzo
Strizzo Dork
7/11/08 7:42 p.m.
John Brown wrote: I bet there is more Asian than African once you get that far back.

actually, if you go back really far, everywhere is from the general area of africa. always a pain discussing "a long time ago" with a geologist

rebelgtp
rebelgtp HalfDork
7/11/08 8:46 p.m.
Strizzo wrote:
John Brown wrote: I bet there is more Asian than African once you get that far back.
actually, if you go back really far, everywhere is from the general area of africa. always a pain discussing "a long time ago" with a geologist

Try it I'm working on degrees in Biology, Anthropology and Geology...most of what I study deals with "a long time ago".

Yeah sometimes I feel like my brain is going to explode.

rob_lewis
rob_lewis Dork
7/11/08 10:05 p.m.

FWIW, John Wiley Price has been playing the race card for MANY years in Dallas. This is just another opportunity for him to get his name in the paper.

-Rob

Strizzo
Strizzo Dork
7/11/08 11:51 p.m.
rebelgtp wrote: Yeah sometimes I feel like my brain is going to explode.

i have a BA in Geology from The University of Texas

rebelgtp
rebelgtp HalfDork
7/12/08 1:25 a.m.
Strizzo wrote:
rebelgtp wrote: Yeah sometimes I feel like my brain is going to explode.
i have a BA in Geology from The University of Texas

Nice. I have to say this last term my 2 favorite classes were geology classes. Basically just had to take self guided field trips to the John Day fossil beds and the columbia river gorge, collect samples, take tons of pictures and put together presentations. It was just flat out fun.

In all seriousness up here in Eastern Oregon and in Idaho there is a growing demand for Geologists as its profitable to reopen some of the old mines in the area once again. A family friend was hired directly out of school for $80k to work for one of the mining companies.

Wall-e
Wall-e SuperDork
7/12/08 1:44 a.m.

As part of my extensive(?) training to handle the threat that terrorists pose to mass transit I have learned that all terrorists are somewaht overweight middle age white men in flannel coats and that their bombs are sloppily made and oozing some kind of liquid. Thank (the diety of you choosing if you so choose) you folks can rely on me to get you home safe.

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