Troy

Del I'm aware of all of the stuff you posted.  Again, the faulty O-rings was known BEFORE the disastrous explosion.  In fact, the lead engineer refused to sign off on the launch for this reason.  This is common knowledge and was covered in a documentary film (I don't recall the name of iot) and is described on NASA website: 

"McDonald, the director of the Space Shuttle Solid Rocket Motor Project for the engineering contractor Morton Thiokol, was concerned that below-freezing temperatures might impact the integrity of the solid rockets' O-rings."

McDonald wrote a book, Truth, Lies, and O-Rings: Inside the Space Shuttle Challenger Disaster, about it.  You can also learn what was at Nasa's website as well as other sources.

I think Stevie Wonder, Aretha Franklin, and Michael Jackson were born.  They were born into the stage as was Mozart, Beethoven, Ray Charles, Charlie Parker, Jimi Hendrix, etc.

There is not enough musical training in the world that could have made me in my entire 55 years of life as talented as Stevie Wonder when he was just 12 and he is BLIND!  How many little boys could you have trained to do what Michael was doing when he was 10?

Maybe in the field of consciousness all is possible.

Speaking of consciousness, I'm reading Dick Gregory's last book.  He said while meditating one time he levitated.  He also said there were witnesses to this.

Here is another one for you all. Is he “Black” or “White?”

The author is Timothy B. Tyson he wrote the critically acclaimed book, The Blood of Emmett Till, which is why he is on the website.  

But now I'm trying to identify all of the Black writers who have written books that the New York TImes have including on their year end list of the 100 Most Notable Books. I'm almost finished the page: https://aalbc.com/books/nyt100.php and have added the 2017 and 2016 books, but I'm having difficulty with some of the authors. 

According to Wikipedia, Tyson;

• was selected as a John Hope Franklin Senior Fellow at the National Humanities Center
• was Assistant professor of Afro-American Studies at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, and
• is a civil right activist

My guess is that he is not a so called "Black" man, but given is books and life's work he should be.

Trying to identify the Black folks is not trivial black or white as one might think 

Thanks for the correction Cynique.

@Pioneer1 as @Mel Hopkins mentioned this issue is collusion.  By law (antitrust) the league;s owners can not get together decide to take an action,like blacklisting Kaepernick.  But these guys don't have to talk to each other to know the deal. Colin was poison for the NFL's brand.  I'd bet money they colluded regardless of the outcome of the grievance.  

Pioneer, these types of laws are in place for a good reason.  

Del you are giving Feynman too much credit, Nasa's engineers knew, in advance of the disaster the Morton Thiokol', O-rings were shot at and low temperatures.  I only mention it because this is the 2nd time you mentioned Feynman as if he was the only one who knew this.

@Mel Hopkins, thanks.  

Artistry as the culmination is interesting to consider.  I think artistry is an inherited skill.  For example, I can design a website that is technically, on the backend, quite good IMHO.  This fact is what differentiates my site from others.

My weakness however is making the site visually appealing.  I struggle with the homepage for example.  My solution  for the final stage of the two year upgrade will be to find a template and modify it for my purpose, for I do not have the artistry to design something from scratch that is both modern looking and visually appealing. 

Now I have the knowledge to execute someone else's design, but I could not come up with the idea myself.  I'm sure one can learn to make beautiful websites, but to be really good I think you have to be born with the talent. 

Perhaps this is true for all pursuits; to reach the very highest levels you have to have the knowledge and the God given gifts (and @Pioneer1 notice "race" has nothing to do with any of this).  People like Newton, Feynman, Einstein, and others displayed a artistry of their subject matter that truly transcended anything on that pyramid.  I believe they were born with the gift.

Hey man I see you are selling your book directly, so Ill set the buy link up so that it goes to your website.  I'll need the books ISBN13.  Thanks.

Congrats on you new book michael, I will add it to your AALBC.com page:  nextauthors/author.php?author_name=Michael+Taylor next time chance I get.

Did anyone look at the hierarchy described in the Pyramid @Mel Hopkins shared?  Now you may disagree with it, but I think it is a helpful tool to understand the difference between knowledge and understanding.

Knowledge is simply the awareness of information; what years was the Civil War fought or what the formula for calculating the diameter of a circle, for example.  People can know these things and do very well on some standardized tests, but they may not understand a single thing about either subject.  In other words, what can they actually do with this knowledge?

I can tell someone how to calculate the length of the hypotenuse of a right triangle if I give them the length of the other two sides, and they may be able to remember it long enough to take a pass a test, but they may have no clue what they are doing.  Worse still, they can plug the numbers into a calculator and get the right answer without even knowing what the heck is happening.

I've taken more math courses, but I've forgotten much of what I learned simply because I did not understand it.  I "knew" it long enough to pass some tests, but that is about it.  I never had a job which required this higher level math so over three decades the knowledge is mostly gone.  Later, as I got older, and was exposed to some of the concepts, through YouTube videos, it dawned on me how fascinating math really is.  The facts are almost incidental and indeed can be learned later, but understanding what an intergral is, for example, and how and it can be used  is far more interesting than knowing to to calculate it. Understanding this, I believe, has helped me become a better teacher.  

This is why knowledge alone is not enough to be a good teacher.  Knowledge alone is not enough to understand, comprehend, apply or use information to come up with new ideas.  It is however, as the pyramid implies, the foundation for these things.

The perhaps a better title for the article would be, "Knowledge is the Basis for Understanding."  Keep in mind authors don;t generally write the titles of their articles.  The publishers do and sometimes they do a disservice to the article because they are motivated by generating traffic just as much as they are interested accurately relating the subject of an article 

@Delano, if you are interested in understanding what I wrote, you will not divine that from @Pioneer1's statement, which is why I attempted to clarify it.  With that in mind, do you what have a question about my something I wrote?  I'm not going down the rabbit hole of attempting to explain, what I wrote, by way of explaining Pioneer's inaccurate interpretation.

Of course @Cynique is right varying levels of intelligence. There are also many different types of intelligence--none of which have any direct correlation to one's so called race.

...something for @harry brown

Harry L. Thomas, founder of the Creation Festival and senior pastor of Come Alive New Testament Church in Medford, New Jersey, has been accused of sexually assaulting four children over a 16-year period between 1999 and 2015. (as reported by Christianity Today).

This is not a problem with the Church, per se, but a problem with powerful degenerates abusing their power.  We've seen a rash of revelations coming from Hollyweird, politicians, media, and obviously the Church.

What puzzles me is the complete lack of sexual abuse revelations coming from Wall Street.  I guess those cats have enough power than to prevent any public recriminations.  This represents more power than Cosby, Weinstein, Al Franken, Charlie Rose, etc... that oughta tell you something about the nature of REAL power. 

The Secret Lives of the Four Wives: A Novel by Lola Shoneyin Read an Excerpt

This is an excellent book from what I hear.

The banner above is was provided to me by the publisher, who are advertising in the next newsletter.  These ads beyond, bringing revenue, actually bring value to the website as the books are all excellent and the creatives are attractive too.

One of the problems with AALBC.com homepage, a problem I intent to address ins January, is that it is too busy.  One of the reasons for this is that I've allowed advertising to drive what is one the page and that has made it too overwhelming for new visitors to understand what the site is about, or what to do next...  I'm considering removing all advertising from the homepage  or only including well designed ads that is specifically designed for the page.

The upside is that the ads well perform better (I'm sure) for the advertiser, but the downside is that the price point and the requirement to design a custom ad will exclude advertisers with small budgets....I dunno I may need to focus on the advertisers with larger budgets to keep the site alive.  With enough larger clients the promote of the authors/publishers with smaller budgets can be subsidized by the larger advertisers.

Just thinking out loud, but I welcome feedback.

Understood

{sigh}  

OK let me clarify: When I wrote anybody, I meant, any so called "race" (human) can do well academically given the right conditions and ability. 

Is that clearer?

Again this is the problem with the 'net, you can find a source for anything to support your belief.  Del how do you think I got the 97% number?  I looked it up.  It is what all the reputable sites including the one from Nasa, you provided, say.

Obviously, for whatever reason, you don't believe the percentage provided by the authoritative sources and have apparently found a source that matches your conspiracy theory world view.  

@Cynique who know it is interesting that I rarely have to ask you probing questions because of how clearly you express yourself. 

@Del on the other hand is more enigmatic, perhaps deliberately so, which is why I have to ask him more question.  He and @Pioneer1 seem to be on the same wavelength lately, as it simply did not occur to me that Del's question was rhetorical, which would make sense since the question he asked about a new Colin contract could have been found with a 2 second web search.

Taking the question as a rhetorical one. I will say that he proven the NFL's billionaire owners are powerful and do not give a crap about players (Black or otherwise) and are only concerned with profits. This is not exactly a revelation. If you watch any football lately you will notice all the flag-waving, hyper-patriotic segments featuring Black players during the break... It is disgusting really.

As far as my proposed boycott of Amazon.  I would consider it a success if a critical mass of us simply availed ourselves of our own products and services by eliminating dependence on Amazon.   This admittedly is a long shot, but sheesh our livelihoods indeed our culture depends upon it. 

One can't know if Colin will be hurting or not.  But he did make a personal sacrifice.  As @Pioneer1 said, I doubt Colin thought this alll the way through.  He obviously wanted or needed his job, otherwise he would have sued the NFL.  A million dollar book deal is big, but is little compared to his multi-million dollar annual football salary and endorsements.

Actually @Cynique, @Pioneer1's response was completely understandable and consistent with what he's previously expressed.  Now I gave y'all a clue that the author might be Black (I have many non-Black authors on the site) because I wrote I was adding all the Black authors of the 100 NY Times Notable books to the website.  Here is author, Danzy Senna's, background:

“Senna herself is mixed race. Her father is half African-American and half Mexican, while her mother is Irish and English. Growing up in Boston, Senna was raised to self-identify as black.” 

—from NPR Interview about Senna's collection of stories, You Are Free.

I'm treating her as Black by including her on the list; Pioneer says she is white; and Cynique says she is "mixed," claiming hair is the giveaway.

Race is in the eye of the beholder.  The terms are "mixed-race" or "biracial" are in the eye of the beholder too. Again, since there is only one race of humans alive today, these racial terms make no logical sense and are at best inconsistent.  But we live in America and we do a lot of things that make no sense.  

@Pioneer1, I could not help but think about you as I looked at this photo.  Which of your racial buckets would you put this lady?

She wrote a book that the New York Times called one of the 100 Most Notable Books of 2017.  I'm in the process of making sure that all of the called "Black" writers who earned this recognition have that fact reflected on the website.

I know that title reads exactly like something I would say, but if comes from a recent opinion piece in the New York Times, “How to Get Your Mind to Read.”

In one experiment, third graders — some identified by a reading test as good readers, some as poor — were asked to read a passage about soccer. The poor readers who knew a lot about soccer were three times as likely to make accurate inferences about the passage as the good readers who didn’t know much about the game.

That implies that students who score well on reading tests are those with broad knowledge; they usually know at least a little about the topics of the passages on the test. One experiment tested 11th graders’ general knowledge with questions from science (“pneumonia affects which part of the body?”), history (“which American president resigned because of the Watergate scandal?”), as well as the arts, civics, geography, athletics and literature. Scores on this general knowledge test were highly associated with reading test scores.

Current education practices show that reading comprehension is misunderstood. It’s treated like a general skill that can be applied with equal success to all texts. Rather, comprehension is intimately intertwined with knowledge. That suggests three significant changes in schooling... read the complete article.

I know, I don't understand what you have written. That is why I, like the proverbial dentist, asked you a couple of direct questions to help me understand what are trying to communicate.

Do you not believe that majority (even if it is not 97%) of the world's climatologists believe that man is having an man's impact the Earth's climate change? 

And @Delano you selectively answer questions making it very hard to have a meaningful discussion, for I can't easily tell what you know or believe.

Of course, as a open discussion forum there are no stringent standards or expectations for stringent standards. We are just people. There will be typos, there will be mistakes, there will be false claims, and maybe even some deceit. But this is not a peer review academic journal, but discussion forumd are better than the echo chambers found on social media, because your views will be challenged. 

Tell us what you believe Colin proved?

OK I'll bite   

@Delano you've been highly critical of "proof," "right versus wrong," and the precise use of language. What was Colin proven to be right about?

You realize in the time it took you to write the question, you could have determined whether or not Colin was signed to a football contract.

Here is another example where I fundamentally agree with your conclusions @Pioneer1 but reject your premise.  When you write things like,

9 hours ago, Pioneer1 said:

This is why Asians do so good academically.

It just sounds so crazy if not outright racist to me. You know there are many so called "Asians" that don't do very well academically, indeed those in southern Asia have some of the lowest literacy rates on Earth. 

Being Asian doesn't meant you do well academically.  If you have the resources, intelligence, support, conditions, and study anyone can do well academically.  

One could say well what difference does it make, as long as you Brothers agree.  Well the problem is, if we see the underlying causes to be different the solutions we come up with will have to be different. Which means at least one of these solution will not work, as it is not addressing the root of the problem.

That is why you are not a member of a church @Pioneer1.  There are many people who need the structure, the community, the hope that church provides.  Others like yourself can find this in other ways.  I grew up in the church, so this is plain to me.  I don't go now, perhaps for many of the same reasons you don't, but understanding why other do should. It is not be that complicated.

I think it is terrible that some evil but charismatic ministers fleece their members of their money or take advantage of them sexually. But many of us forget that ministers are human, like the rest of us and given too much power some will abuse it. 

There are many others, perhaps the majority, who are righteous and working very hard to make there members better people and bring them closer to God.  This is a good thing.

@Del are you saying that so everyone who is reporting 97% is just wrong?  Or are you saying they are imprecise or inaccurate?  If so how far are they off or what is the correct percentage?  

Do you not believe the vast majority of the world climatologists believe man isimpact on climate change?