CC, there are a lot of fools out there who seem to think white European culture (you don't really mean Anglo-Saxon here) is somehow the worst of them all. Or, to be fairer, they act as though that's what they believe.
But you don't do better than they when you "defend" the thing in a way that walks so close to a racist line, either. You would be an idiot to conclude from this that Pakistan or Zimbabwe or the other ex-colonies there are somehow inferior cultures. That's not really what this data bears on, is it?
So we see again the classic CC vice: data, thesis, no match between the two. Try to do better.
I largely ignore Sanjay in that his facts are created by his ideology rather than the other way around.
And Sanjay, got news for you, it isn't racist to point out that the majority of the wealth and innovation and creation in this world has been created by Europeans or descendants of Europeans. You accusing me of racism is like me accusing you of wishing to re-write history.
And Anglo Saxon is exactly what I mean. And I fully mean other countries and peoples would do well to study the culuture and say, "Hmmm...Maybe if we let women work instead of mutilating their genitalia we might not have $400 income per capita per year."
Well, no, CC (and Tim V.). The multicultualists want to tell me that all cultures are "equal" or WASP cultur is "bad" or some such. CC is showing that it's _rich_. Or, as he says, "he majority of the wealth and innovation and creation in this world has been created by Europeans or descendants of Europeans." (Actually that's not true, incidentally. As far as I can tell damn near every tool was invented by the Chinese, and most of math and engineering by the Arabs or the Indians via the Arabs...but let it slide). But that it's _rich_ is orthogonal to that it's _good_ -- I'm not really sure _how_ you say a culture is "good" or "bad." So the point stands: the data and the thesis are mismatched.
And, Anglo Saxon _isn't_ what you mean -- a lot of the cities that rank well are white european, not Anglo Saxon (or see the recent poll on most popular business destinations, which seems to like places in Switzerland). Canada, for example, is rather a Brit/French hybrid, no?
And yes Brad, we're well aware of how much Canada rocks. Can't field a hockey team or a baseball team worth a damn, but you have nice cities to do business in.
Ah, because the accuracy of "wikipedia" is legendary.
It's not a major point. The main reason I disliked your use of "Anglo-Saxon" as opposed to "european" was you've been posting a lot on the French attitude toward "Anglo-Saxon" culture, which wouldn't include the Canadians or Dutch here.
Perhaps, it occurs to me, the worth of a culture is inversely proportional to the amount of times Britney Spears appears in its newspapers, actually. I think that might be all scientific n'shit.
I would contend wikipedia is more accurate than anything because it is created by a free peoples and the market. Yes, anglo-saxon may refer those in mainland Europe that invaded the south of the British Isles, but the effective use of it today is roughly, "anybody that is related to the British Empire"
Which happens to include all the developed, advanced, kick ass world.
And yeah, great inventions in China and the Middle East. I recall gun powder and the number zero. And that was what? Several THOUSAND years ago?
" I would contend wikipedia is more accurate than anything because it is created by a free peoples and the market."
You would be wrong, although certainly that was the original idea with wikis. There's been something of a closet industry lately of diagnosing why, experimentally, that's turned out not to work. In fact there used ot be a Bay Area wiki community for info here that got heavily used, and had to be shut down about a month ago because the info on it was such crap.
Given your meaning of Anglo-Saxon you're still using it wrong. See Denmark up there?
As for Chinese innovation, no dice man. Look, figure it takes time to weight the merits of an innnovation (and anyway, most things you're gonna come up withdepend on technologies that came originally from say China, so....). There's a great book by Rybczynski on the history of the screwdriver. It srted with his being asked by the NYT to write an essay on the "tool of the millenium," --- the tool that had most influenced human development from 1000-2000. He writes that he found it frustrating to do because basically everything he thought of, he then researched, and the basic story was, the Chinese invented it long ago.
(Untimately the exception was the screw --- but that appears to've been the brainchild of one guy who was so off-the-charts brilliant that I don't think I want to put down his achievements to a culture).
What have you done for me lately? is a good idea, but I think it's fair to say that you can't point to anything right now and say, _that_'s as significant -- artistically, economically, what-have-you --- as something like a printing press or a screw or a saw or plumbing or piping or stringed instruments or.... So by and large I think the Asians will win the culture wars by those sorts of measures (which I'm not sure I buy into).
A better question might be, what exacly do we want "multiculturalism" to be, and when is it useful (versus, when is it crap)?
In regard to the technological developments that have come out of Asia: the Moslems and the Chinese certainly did make some great contributions . . . until about five hundred years ago. Since that time, most of the technological progress has come from Europeans and their colonists, and it's only been recently that Asia has once again become a major centre of innovation.
This is mainly due to the government systems in place in the areas. Around fifteen hundred A.D. the Chinese were unified under one government and the Moslems were in very much the same situation. The Europeans, on the other hand, were much more divided, and this fostered competition among the nations of Europe. Rudimentary capitalism also was implemented in several European countries, while China and the Moslem world moved closer to totalitarianism. China and the Moslem world became stagnant; Europe became the new leader in technology.
Now of course, things are changing. Capitalism and competition are becoming more common in Asia (at least, on eastern end of the continent), while "The Western World", comprised of Europe and some of its colonies, is moving farther and farther from its capitalist roots. The results of these changes are becoming evident, and, I might add, no one seems more aware of them than our very own Captain, so there's not much sense in accusing him of being racist in favor of the children of Europe.
Also, he is justified using the term Anglo-Saxon. Although there are several non-Anglo-Saxon cities listed in the top thirty, the top ten are ALL Anglo-Saxon. You say Canada is a mixture of French and English culture, which is true, but from what I understand our legal system and our government (what I would consider the two main factors in how wealthy a country become) are primarily based on the English model, so attributing Canada's success to the strength of some of the ideas about liberty and justice that were propagated by the Anglo-Saxons is justifiable.
In fact there used ot be a Bay Area wiki community for info here that got heavily used, and had to be shut down about a month ago because the info on it was such crap.
Ridiculous - I don't see how you compare wikipedia to a wiki in SF.
Wanna know how successful wikipedia is? Check out how popular it is:
As i'm posting this, wikipedia has an Alexa rating of 17 - which makes it the 17th most visited site on the web. Alexa isn't entirely accurate, but it's a fairly good indicator. Google gives en.wikipedia.org a PageRank of 9/10 which is pretty damn rare - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_websites_with_a_high_PageRank
Lately, I've been turning to wikipedia instead of google for hunting down information on many topics, because, in my experience, quite often it's a better kick in the right direction than what google is. If you ever want to test the accuracy of an article, you can always cross check - which is something you should do anyway.
I know it's tempting, but don't let me catch you linking to wikipedia in your posts! I'm sure you've made that mental note for yourself already anyway :P
CC, there are a lot of fools out there who seem to think white European culture (you don't really mean Anglo-Saxon here) is somehow the worst of them all. Or, to be fairer, they act as though that's what they believe.
ReplyDeleteBut you don't do better than they when you "defend" the thing in a way that walks so close to a racist line, either. You would be an idiot to conclude from this that Pakistan or Zimbabwe or the other ex-colonies there are somehow inferior cultures. That's not really what this data bears on, is it?
So we see again the classic CC vice: data, thesis, no match between the two. Try to do better.
You'd probably face fewer complaints like Sanjay's if you post a link to the Economist's methodology for this ranking...
ReplyDeletehttp://www.economist.com/media/pdf/BUSINESS_TRIP_INDEX.pdf
http://www.economist.com/theworldin/business/displayStory.cfm?story_id=5149435
I largely ignore Sanjay in that his facts are created by his ideology rather than the other way around.
ReplyDeleteAnd Sanjay, got news for you, it isn't racist to point out that the majority of the wealth and innovation and creation in this world has been created by Europeans or descendants of Europeans. You accusing me of racism is like me accusing you of wishing to re-write history.
And Anglo Saxon is exactly what I mean. And I fully mean other countries and peoples would do well to study the culuture and say, "Hmmm...Maybe if we let women work instead of mutilating their genitalia we might not have $400 income per capita per year."
Well, no, CC (and Tim V.). The multicultualists want to tell me that all cultures are "equal" or WASP cultur is "bad" or some such. CC is showing that it's _rich_. Or, as he says, "he majority of the wealth and innovation and creation in this world has been created by Europeans or descendants of Europeans." (Actually that's not true, incidentally. As far as I can tell damn near every tool was invented by the Chinese, and most of math and engineering by the Arabs or the Indians via the Arabs...but let it slide). But that it's _rich_ is orthogonal to that it's _good_ -- I'm not really sure _how_ you say a culture is "good" or "bad." So the point stands: the data and the thesis are mismatched.
ReplyDeleteAnd, Anglo Saxon _isn't_ what you mean -- a lot of the cities that rank well are white european, not Anglo Saxon (or see the recent poll on most popular business destinations, which seems to like places in Switzerland). Canada, for example, is rather a Brit/French hybrid, no?
ReplyDeleteCripes;
ReplyDeletehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anglo_Saxon#Modern_usages
And yes Brad, we're well aware of how much Canada rocks. Can't field a hockey team or a baseball team worth a damn, but you have nice cities to do business in.
Ah, because the accuracy of "wikipedia" is legendary.
ReplyDeleteIt's not a major point. The main reason I disliked your use of "Anglo-Saxon" as opposed to "european" was you've been posting a lot on the French attitude toward "Anglo-Saxon" culture, which wouldn't include the Canadians or Dutch here.
Perhaps, it occurs to me, the worth of a culture is inversely proportional to the amount of times Britney Spears appears in its newspapers, actually. I think that might be all scientific n'shit.
I would contend wikipedia is more accurate than anything because it is created by a free peoples and the market. Yes, anglo-saxon may refer those in mainland Europe that invaded the south of the British Isles, but the effective use of it today is roughly, "anybody that is related to the British Empire"
ReplyDeleteWhich happens to include all the developed, advanced, kick ass world.
And yeah, great inventions in China and the Middle East. I recall gun powder and the number zero. And that was what? Several THOUSAND years ago?
What have you done for me lately.
" I would contend wikipedia is more accurate than anything because it is created by a free peoples and the market."
ReplyDeleteYou would be wrong, although certainly that was the original idea with wikis. There's been something of a closet industry lately of diagnosing why, experimentally, that's turned out not to work. In fact there used ot be a Bay Area wiki community for info here that got heavily used, and had to be shut down about a month ago because the info on it was such crap.
Given your meaning of Anglo-Saxon you're still using it wrong. See Denmark up there?
As for Chinese innovation, no dice man. Look, figure it takes time to weight the merits of an innnovation (and anyway, most things you're gonna come up withdepend on technologies that came originally from say China, so....). There's a great book by Rybczynski on the history of the screwdriver. It srted with his being asked by the NYT to write an essay on the "tool of the millenium," --- the tool that had most influenced human development from 1000-2000. He writes that he found it frustrating to do because basically everything he thought of, he then researched, and the basic story was, the Chinese invented it long ago.
(Untimately the exception was the screw --- but that appears to've been the brainchild of one guy who was so off-the-charts brilliant that I don't think I want to put down his achievements to a culture).
What have you done for me lately? is a good idea, but I think it's fair to say that you can't point to anything right now and say, _that_'s as significant -- artistically, economically, what-have-you --- as something like a printing press or a screw or a saw or plumbing or piping or stringed instruments or.... So by and large I think the Asians will win the culture wars by those sorts of measures (which I'm not sure I buy into).
A better question might be, what exacly do we want "multiculturalism" to be, and when is it useful (versus, when is it crap)?
In regard to the technological developments that have come out of Asia: the Moslems and the Chinese certainly did make some great contributions . . . until about five hundred years ago. Since that time, most of the technological progress has come from Europeans and their colonists, and it's only been recently that Asia has once again become a major centre of innovation.
ReplyDeleteThis is mainly due to the government systems in place in the areas. Around fifteen hundred A.D. the Chinese were unified under one government and the Moslems were in very much the same situation. The Europeans, on the other hand, were much more divided, and this fostered competition among the nations of Europe. Rudimentary capitalism also was implemented in several European countries, while China and the Moslem world moved closer to totalitarianism. China and the Moslem world became stagnant; Europe became the new leader in technology.
Now of course, things are changing. Capitalism and competition are becoming more common in Asia (at least, on eastern end of the continent), while "The Western World", comprised of Europe and some of its colonies, is moving farther and farther from its capitalist roots. The results of these changes are becoming evident, and, I might add, no one seems more aware of them than our very own Captain, so there's not much sense in accusing him of being racist in favor of the children of Europe.
Also, he is justified using the term Anglo-Saxon. Although there are several non-Anglo-Saxon cities listed in the top thirty, the top ten are ALL Anglo-Saxon. You say Canada is a mixture of French and English culture, which is true, but from what I understand our legal system and our government (what I would consider the two main factors in how wealthy a country become) are primarily based on the English model, so attributing Canada's success to the strength of some of the ideas about liberty and justice that were propagated by the Anglo-Saxons is justifiable.
Brad,
ReplyDeleteJust kidding.
Sanjay, quit your whining.
Mahan, party on Wayne.
Sanjay,
ReplyDeleteIn fact there used ot be a Bay Area wiki community for info here that got heavily used, and had to be shut down about a month ago because the info on it was such crap.
Ridiculous - I don't see how you compare wikipedia to a wiki in SF.
Wanna know how successful wikipedia is? Check out how popular it is:
http://www.alexa.com/data/details/main?q=&url=en.wikipedia.org
As i'm posting this, wikipedia has an Alexa rating of 17 - which makes it the 17th most visited site on the web. Alexa isn't entirely accurate, but it's a fairly good indicator. Google gives en.wikipedia.org a PageRank of 9/10 which is pretty damn rare -
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_websites_with_a_high_PageRank
Lately, I've been turning to wikipedia instead of google for hunting down information on many topics, because, in my experience, quite often it's a better kick in the right direction than what google is. If you ever want to test the accuracy of an article, you can always cross check - which is something you should do anyway.
I know it's tempting, but don't let me catch you linking to wikipedia in your posts! I'm sure you've made that mental note for yourself already anyway :P