Rethinking Race and Class - Radio Open Source

Open Source is a radio show on WNYC in NY. They are one of the first NPR type shows to offer up the full show as a free podcast. This is great because no station in my area is getting the show yet, but I get to listen the the show every day on my iPod.

Every Monday until further notice, starting this week, the show will be about Race and Class issues. I've listened to most of the first one already and hope that others will stay awake on this issue well into the future.

A friend of mine and I were recently corresponding about a couple of old, previous entries here on blobBuoy about some other correspondence from way back that I interpreted as Hate. My new friend had an interesting perspective on how some people, and not even minorities necessarily, believe and behave as though they are entitled to certain things--like jobs and shit like that--that these things should just be handed to them. This came up in the debate over whether new people coming to our country should expect the culture here to adapt to them.

The Open Source Podcast I reference below made me think of a couple more things in light of the whole "hand-out" question. They discussed how so many of us (non-minorities) take for granted, and possibly are unaware, that we have only gotten where we each are today because of so many things just given to us. Even those of us who struggled through college have taken loans, scholarships, etc. which would not have been possible without some sort of government subsidy. Those of us who have insurance via a major, national provider are also in this category.

They also mention that at some point after the Civil Rights Movements of the 60's, AmericaAmerican politicians restored the notion of the "rugged" human"myth of the rugged individual". That somehow, we forgot that everyone needs a little help to get somewhere. This reminded me of another friend who suggests that we shouldn't give too much to our children--that they will be better off "living the adventure" of struggle and survival. I thought this was an interesting perspective, but today I find myself feeling that that same perspective is the very reason we have so much poverty in this country.

The privileged in this country believe that they truly worked their way to where they are now, with no help from anybody and that everyone else should be expected to do the same. How easily we forget the advantages we have just for being white. It's like driving, I suppose. It's not a right to be white, it's a privilege.

On class and race and inequality:

Open Source Blog Archive Rethinking Race and Class: "This is not a Hobbesian leviathan brooding over an unruly mob, using force to keep order while making sure the everyone can pursue their lives with a decent degree of security but a mafia lying to one group (genuinely conservative, frightened white Christians) while abusing another (gays, blacks, enemies of one sort or another) all the while stealing everything." --Marcellus Andrews

I'm not the only "shell game" freak. . .Numb3rs episode continued. . .Monty Hall?

Here's some stuff I found supporting the whole Cup and Bean thing I've been debating with people lately:

I checked Wikipedia and there was nothing there on this specifically. I thought it might be an interesting topic to nurture on that site if I could come up with the time. Then I searched for "Monty Hall" on a whim and found there IS indeed something on this on Wikipedia.org. The best stuff yet comes from there in these Venn Diagrams.

Someone at USC did a Science Fair project on this just last April.

Another guy built a simple Java Applet (which is a lot nicer than my little CF app.) and says it's a great way for students to learn about "the ideas of repeated trials as a means for investigating a random phenomena."

Math Dept Home Page: "Let Ci denote the event that the car is at door i, and Hj the event that the host opens door j . Then

P(You win the car if you switch)

= P(H3 C2) + P(H2 C3) = P(C2)P(H3|C2) + P(C3)P(H2|C3) = (1/3)·1+ (1/3)·1 = 2/3

and in similar manner we find that

P(You win the car if you don't switch) = (1/3)·p + (1/3)·(1 - p) = 1/3

where p = P(H2|C1)."