teh Mexigogue

I’m not implying by this title that Jesse Jackson is an Uncle Tom, I just think juxtaposing Jesse Jackson with Uncle Jesse from the Dukes of Hazard is simply hilarious.

Back to the issue at hand, Jesse Jackson is in the news explaining his bitching about Barack Obama. Personally I think it’s jealousy that a black man other than him is being taken seriously politically but I think he’s also incensed that Obama is acting like a full-fledged human being rather than being a myopic jackhole who tries to make everything about race. Remember Jackson throwing a pissy fit when the newscasters referred to the Katrina refugees? He thought that term was being used because the people in question were predominantly black. Actually it was being used because the people were seeking refuge but since when does etymology get in the way of a good piss fit? Anyhoo.

The above article quotes Jackson as saying:

“And yet within the black community there are some severe structural crises: The infant mortality rate is higher, life expectancy is shorter, the most children in school with teachers with less than three years’ experience, the highest murder rate, and now the need to revive a ban on assault weapons.”

His non-sequitur about assault weapons notwithstanding, my question is about how the term “black community” is being used. If a white or Latino person lives in a predominantly black neighborhood, are his stats counted as being in the “black community”? Why or why not? Are non-black people who live in the inner city suffering from health disparities also? If so then wouldn’t this be an economic problem rather than a racial one? If a black guy in Howell Michigan has his stats counted among the “black community”, isn’t that a little bit absurd? I’ve been to Howell and I haven’t seen a black community there. To be fair, I haven’t even seen a black community in Detroit or Flint, I just saw a whole bunch of black individuals (as well as some Latino, white, and Arab ones). Also, if Phelps is a white guy from a black section of the Dallas Metroplex yet he doesn’t suffer from health disparities, shouldn’t Jesse Jackson be studying HIM instead of mouthing off about Obama?

This isn’t just an exercise in semantics, I honestly don’t think that Jesse Jackson is capable of thinking about black people as individuals. In his big bubble-head, I think he really thinks that black people are all part of a swarming sea of some greater thing, kind of like all the different cells that make up an eyeball. The downside to this way of thinking is that the individual cells aren’t viewed as individuals that have value in their own right, they are viewed as an indispensable part of something more important. I think that’s why Jesse is lighting up into Obama at the moment. Obama (and I’m not advocating him or his politics, I’m just saying) is daring to be an individual human being rather than a component of the black machine. I think this makes Uncle Jesse mad.

I took it again, same results:

Spike Lee has ignited a controversy by questioning why Clint Eastwood did not cast black actors in the Iwo Jima movies he directed. Eastwood responded by saying that black servicemen did not participate in the raising of the American flag at Iwo Jima and he also said that Spike Lee should shut his face. Let us examine both sides of this debate:

The US military was racially segregated during WWII and black servicemen did not, in fact, participate in the raising of the US flag at Iwo Jima. If Clint Eastwood had chosen, he could have depicted black servicemen in the movie but he chose not to. That is all good and fine. If Spike Lee wants to make a movie focusing on black Americans in World War II or in racial segregation, he is perfectly entitled to.

I think it is fair however, since Spike Lee has tossed down the gauntlet in this case, to question why there is a complete lack of cowboys in Spike Lee’s movies. Is this part of a nefarious plan on Spike Lee’s part to re-write the history books so as to disenfranchise American cowboys? Does “different” in worldview necessarily mean “evil”? And if so, isn’t the cowboy question a completely valid one? What is up with that, Spike? That by which you judge shall also be meted out to you, you cowboy-phobic bitch!!!

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My two arch nemeses, Hillary Cliinton and Puerto Rico have joined forces in the most harrowing alliance since Cobra joined forces with the Iron Grenadiers, except this is even more lame. I don’t know whether to be terrified or bored.

If this footage turns out to be real aliens, Steven Spielburg should sue them.

Smithers, send in the hounds!

This is bullshit. This woman’s actions would not have made people this angry if Fat Megan hadn’t committed suicide. Impersonating somebody on the ‘net is not a crime most people would tend to want to prosecute. Some drama queen offed herself in the biggest overreaction of all time and now people want somebody to hang for it. Grow up people, a little suicide never killed anybody. Or maybe it did, but this woman, as reprehensible as her actions were, did not CAUSE Fat Megan’s suicide. We should not be wasting our money prosecuting and incarcerating her.

This chick I know was singing a song to her baby. It went like this:

Prunes, prunes, the magical fruit
the more you eat the more you poop
the more you poop the better you feel
so let’s have prunes at every meal!

I have a problem with the logic. On the surface the conclusion might seem to follow from the given premises, but the conclusion is, in my opinion, a hasty generalization that suffers from from at least one critical flaw. If her syllogism were in fact correct then multiplying the sheer number of prunes consumed per meal would exponentially increase the pleasure of life, 50 prunes per meal and the resulting shit-storm would be better than 25, and so forth. But I find it more likely that there is perhaps an optimum level of pooping that caps the said happiness at a reasonable level, more likely tied in with the prunes’ ability to aid in the release of poorly digested food rather than being tied to the sheer volume of pooping itself.

While I admit I was initially disposed favorably to the above bit of motherly wisdom, it is with great regret that I must declare the above rationale as a specious oversimplification at best and to say that it is unworthy of being treated as a valid scientific conclusion for the above reasons. This is not intended as a disparagement in any way of prunes or their salutary health benefits. I do recommend eating them. I would, however, draw the line at recommending them for every meal.

Update:

A friend and statistics expert from an online mailing list has given me a mathematical formula to represent this concept. Her work is as follows:

Pr + F + (Pr*F) = Pp

Where Pr = the number of prunes eaten
F = The amount of non-prune food eaten
(Pr*F) represents the interactive effect between the two
Pp = Total Poop

The interaction effect makes this a non-linear relationship, since the amount of poop *should* be expected to increase multiplicatively as both the amount of prunes and food consumption increased.

It could also be a simple additive relationship, which you’d want to test too, in which case:

Pr + F = Pp

If multiplying Prune consumption times Food
(Pr * F) was statistically insigificant, then you’d just use the above additive formula to represent the relationship.

Then, for the poop/happiness connection:

Pp + Pp^2 = H

Where Pp is total Poop and Pp^2 is Total Poop Squared
And H is Happiness

Since that would be also be a curvilinear relationship - happiness would be low as poop were low, would increase to a certain level, but would then decrease when you had to spend half the day on the toilet due to an endless shit-stream.

Thank you, Tracey, for your tireless efforts in helping us to understand stuff!

Second Update:

Another member of the list has give some additional thoughts on this matter:

It’s not a continuous graph. It would be discrete, with each poop
session represented by a numeric happiness value. Given this, it
doesn’t make sense to compute the total daily poop volume. It makes
more sense to measure each individual crap, plug that number into P(x)
(defined in a sec). We should also define ‘j’ as the number at which
happiness decreases due to frequent trips to toilet. V(x) is the
volume of poop for session x. So, P(x) could be
V(x) + n {1 < n < j}
V(x) - n {n >= j}

Let mu be the total times that an individual craps daily, and
Happiness, H, can be defined by the sigma function from 1 to mu of
P(mu) (i.e. P(1) + P(2) + … P(mu) ). Obviously, as mu increases
above j, P(mu) becomes a negative number, decreasing from overall
happiness. Elementary operations research would show that happiness
is maximized when V(x) is maximized j-1 times.

Or, in laymans terms. Crap much. Crap often.