Troy

Seriously, one of the reasons I don't do much on Facebook is that it gives you a distorted perception of humanity, reality even. I've spoken to too many people who have told me that they feel worse about themselves simply because everyone else's life looks so much better on Facebook. If you judged humanity by our collective activity on Facebook, or any social media platform, you would become a misanthrope. Your ramblings interest me @Cynique, like any good memoir it tells me as much about myself as it does about you. I've come the conclusion that we are all just human, flawed creatures, susceptible to manipulation, and doing the best we can with the cards we've been dealt

Del asking you if Santa Claus had an impact is a patently silly question. But your outrageous and nonsensical analogy with Stana makes your answer clear. I was attempting to gauge how fixed your opinion was on climate change was. I thought the massive storm Harvey might have an impact, but you are far more rigid and fixed than I expected. This issue is a religious one with you. Again, I see the beliefs of the scientific community, new information, another unprecedented weather calamity will not change your position one iota. This is tantamount to trying to tell a Christian that Jesus was not raised from the dead or even telling you that Astrology is bunk. Now I understand, thanks.

@Del, your request is not clear to me. Tell me what you are looking for specifically; Are you looking for a visual or a mathematical model. Do you want graphs or charts. I suspect you are just as good as I am at hunting down information on the WWW as I am. Given the history of you shooting down every other form of supporting information I've provided; I'm not keen for looking for something that you will only dispute with your spreadsheet.

@NubianFellow, neither of these articles spoke to a reduction of sperm count in white men compared to Black men The Dailymail's (a tabloid) article is based upon information published in the Washington Post (virtually plagiarizing them), the Washington Post cited this study; http://www.nber.org/papers/w22849#fromrss, which speaks to in increase in mortality due to trade with China. The Pew Center's article discussed birth rate and the increase in crease of hispanics and their increase cover whites and Blacks. Since many hispanics are white, it is not clear why you would select this article to support you point. As an aside; the Pew reports says that in 2009 73% of black birth were to unwed mothers!. That is a staggering statistic and speaks volumes to the nature of Black families....

Cynique height is not subjective, eye color may be depending on your vocabulary, hair texture is subjective for the same reasons eye color is. People can group other people into different groups to their heart's content. You just can't group them into difference "races" because their is only ONE RACE. Del you can mix some races; Neanderthals and Sapiens mixed. I understand Europeans to this day have some percentage of their genome which can be tracked directly to the Neanderthal man.

Del sit is plain to see you will not answer my direct and simple question. Instead you cloud the issue will irrelevant points that we've already gone over. All I asked was, Do you believe the scientists who tell us that this very bad storm was made worse because of manmade climate change? Again, if you don't want to answer one question, which at this point you made abundantly clear that you don't, that is fine, but you can save the other stuff, as you said before. You've also demonstrated a prodigious propensity for shooting down anything I might have to say on the subject. So again if you won't answer my question you can rest your finger muscles.

Wow, so you won't answer the question regarding the recent statements of the scientific community. This is deep. Just and hour ago you accused NubianFellow avoiding a question due to ignorance, but here you are doing the same thing yourself. Given your statement it is indeed curious why you won't simply say "No." Instead you go back to the strawman of an argument and accuse everyone of not thinking for themselves. If you want "new" or additional more data you can look at rainfall in Houston over time. But something tells me it won't mean anything to you. Kationa, Sandy, Harvey, statistically anomalies?! Del these are not anomalies these are and emerging and predicted trend in more severe weather. The really sad part is that many people on the political right here in America share your viewpoint and are not doing anything to prepare for the increasing number of severe weather events. As a result people are loosing everything and dying as a result.

The actual study may be found here: https://academic.oup.com/humupd/article/doi/10.1093/humupd/dmx022/4035689/Temporal-trends-in-sperm-count-a-systematic-review I did not read the whole study, but I read enough to know that the study was conducted using men in the "West" which includes; North America, Europe Australia and New Zealand and excludes, South America, Asia and Africa. (obviously this excludes the majority of Black people). The study itself simply says they did not have enough information about trends about people in Africa or South America, but it does not look like the declines are as steep as they are in the West. Quote from the study: "...we saw no significant declines for studies from South America, Asia and Africa, which may, in part be accounted for by limited statistical power and an absence of studies in unselected men from these countries prior to 1985. However, we note that the modification of the slope by geographic group was significant. Thus, based on the results presented here, while it is not possible to rule out a trend in non-Western countries, these data do not support a decline as steep as that observed in Western countries." However, @NubianFellow since the study only talks about men in the "west" and Black people in America are part of this group, why have you concluding that Black men in America are not impacted with a lower sperm count? The study itself did not attempt to compare phenotypically Black and Phenotypically white people in the west, so I assume you have another source.

Yes Del that is my point because these stereotypes ( and they are indeed stereotypes) are true sometimes, does not make them true all the time. But again the reasoning is nonsensical because there is only one race. The differences we use to describe people are purely subjective. Someone who is white to one person is Black to another depending upon the time and the place, How you self describe is irrelevant to the way those around you define you. There is no objective or scientific way to describe ones race. If pressed I was say everyone is Black.

Quantifying the difference is very hard if not impossible because their are many factors including the way the City of Houston was designed. But that does not mean there is no impact from man made climate change. Are you going to answer my question?

Pioneer the differences you are attributing to race are a function of culture or evil. White people marched across Europe during the crusades killing other white people, directed by the leadership of the Catholic Church. Shoot, white folks killed 600,000 of each other here in the United States, duped into believing they were fighting for states rights when in fact the were fighting for rich people. Evil people think very differently than kind people. Middle class educated Black people in Harlem think differently than poor uneducated people in Harlem. Black people whose families have been wealthy for a few generations have more in common with rich white people than you or I have with each other. This makes sense if you understand there is only one race. Now that does not mean that people, like you, who attribute meaning to race, that has no foundation in reality. I also understand that people who subscribe to these "Inherent" racial difference and go so far as to believe Black people are an inferior "race" can create serious problems for me and other Black people. Indeed it is one of the reason I fun this website. It is people misunderstanding of race that is problematic. Maybe if people really understood that there is only one race they would also understand how silly their beliefs are. White people are not inherently evil, Black people are not inherently less intelligent, Jews are not inherently stingy, Black women are not inherently good in bed, Asians are not inherently good at math... right?

@Pioneer1, you are being coy. Do you believe that 45's family are qualified to do anything substantive in the West Wing of the White House? Did you know that more than 40% of Harvard undergrads have a family member that attended the school, more than 30% have a parent that attended the school 30%! Do you really think all of those legacy admits are more deserving to be admitted than all the Black kids who are not legacies and were rejected?

In my research of top Black websites, I stumbled across a video on The Root, in which Idris mentions he is directing a film on a book that "everybody read," called Yardie. by Victor Headley Well I did not read it, and I figured some of you all have not read it either. If you are into Urban fiction it really sound like something you'd want to check out. The film is in post production and is scheduled to be released in 2018. I'm sure I'll publish a review.

No problem keep us posted on your book reviews.

OK gotcha I have a question I've been meaning to ask you a question about climate change, I'm sure you may have had a feeling it was probably coming

OK @Del, I'm sure you've heard about the massive storm here in the United States that pummeled Houston with the greatest rainfall they have seen in recorded history. Do you believe the scientists who tell us that this very bad storm was made worse because of manmade climate change? You don't have to elaborate, unless you want to, a "yes" or "no" response will suffice. Thanks.

Hey @TSegal, is http://www.afromerica.com/ your site? I remember that site from back in the day! It looks interesting now. Where have all been? Is my missing y'all just a function of Google raising the profile of celebrity dysfunction over substance in search and the complete abdication of Black media to talk about positive websites? Or have y'all been keeping a low profile?

Mel i took Del's comment more generally. Sure I think many of these conversations are successful in the sense that I come away with new perspectives and insight. But as far as myself personally I still have some work to do; true be told, I'll probably never be satisfied with myself

Del I'm pulling back on the word "successful." Now I know success is purely subjective and relative. I just don't consider myself completely there yet, at least as far a AALBC.com is concerned. From a technical perspective the site is better than any site in it's niche that I've ever seen. I think that is an objectively true statement. But it is a struggle from a business perspective.

@Mel Hopkins, I'm going to have a conversation with someone this morning about the very point you mentioned in the very large font. I'll keep the "eye glazing over" in mind and let you know how it goes. But in the meantime, I will share this anecdote. There was another book site, now defunct, that I worked with closely. I had 3 orders of magnitude more traffic--it wasn't even in the same ball park in terms of traffic (side bar: At one point Alexa ranked that site ahead on mine, which is one reason I've moved on from them as a tool). Despite the substantial difference in traffic the other site was able to sell just as much advertising as I could--for years. Their site, at least the homepage, was more visually appealing than mine--which I suspect was the reason. The person that ran the site understood completely your point about data. We spoke about this subject frequently. I would point out information that would benefit their site and they simply did not care. People are much more likely to make their decisions emotionally, not based upon data, or fact and figures. The most successful salespeople know this. Indeed they take advantage of people using this flaw in our decision making process. NY Publishing and individual advertisers are simply were not sophisticated enough to look at stats. I offer the ability for advertisers to login to my site to monitor their campaigns and no one does it--no one! Google provides a remarkable service called tag manager, and I don't know anyone in my niche that even uses it. So trust me I KNOW the average person, in fact MOST people do get this. But I do, and this is why I know I can attract more people to my site posting on wikipedia than I can with a Facebook advertisement. This is also how I know I can benefit my site more through search engine optimization than through social media marketing. This is how I know ads on my site out perform ads on social media--bank for buck. Again I know the way I came to this knowledge is not the way I can bring other people to understand it. This is also why Google, can algorithmically sell advertising on my site and get more money that I can. This is why I can benefit from a sales person, translating this into a language which resonates with the typical person is not in my strong point, but I'm working at it. I also need to free up more time to do it SEMRush and Google analytics are not easy tools for the average person to use. Google tag manager is not intuitive at all. I had to watch 3rd party video to understand how to even implement it. Again, I know few indie sites will use it--despite the tremendous benefits. So no, SEMrush does not make it easy. @Pioneer1, so you think Jared or Melania are qualified? @Delano, most of what you wrote is true, but running this site without a full time wage has been a struggle. If I were not work for the first half of this site's life it would not be around today.

Hmmmm.... I missed (or forgot) about that bit about "2 Black Races" from our previous conversation. The is a confounding and befuddling statement. It is not supported by science and is actually something I never hear, even in colloquial use (until now). So there are 2 Black races which are distinguished by the straightness of their hair...wow. Why not three or four black races, We can put the light skinned one in one bucket, the straight haired ones in another, the thin lipped narrow nose ones in another, the flat butt ones in one, and the light eyes one in yet another bucket. Of course there will be some overlap; since some Black people have thin lips, narrow noses, light eyes, straight hair, flat butts, light skin, humm maybe they are yet another race of Black people... or maybe they are just white? I wish we could dispense with the word "race," or at least our current concept its meaning, as it makes no freaking sense and only serves as a tool used by the rich and powerful to divide the rest of us against each other.

What better segue is there to: New Hair-do is a “Natural” by Connie Bradley (circa the 70s)

Yeah all of the links to "the study" were broken. Whenever I see a article referenced in a blog, or a site like Essence I usually skip the article (they are usually very thin anyway) and I go straight to the study. I usually find people draw conclusions that were not stated in the study.

@Mel Hopkins, sites in the top 500 with tons of traffic Alexa is probably as good as any of them, but for less popular websites, like mine and many of the others I'm interested in tracking SEMRush is far superior, besides the sites I'm most interested in are not traffic by Nielsen and ConScore. Check it out if you have not already done so. Yeah I know a lot of people use Alexa, but as you probably know by now I don't do a lot of things that other people do ;-) Alexa used to collect a lot of their data from people who used their tool bar, which was a browser extension. It would collect the data of browsing data of the people who used the extension to compile their website ranking. In an ideal scenario this skewed to people who used the browser extension which biased the data (i.e. Black women, my demographic, don't usually install extensions to their browsers). Of course, because of Alexa's popularity, many people began gaming their Alexa ranking, in much the way people buy followers or likes on social media, which further corrupted their ranking. I don't know what Amazon has done to address these issues, but since SEMRush provides far richer information I don't really care. Semrush collect large volumes of query results from google searches, which make their information quite good. Still if your site in not ranking on search results SEMRush won't have very good data. If you are a site that gets most of their traffic from social media, SEMRush may not have much on your site (at least as far as I understand it), but if you are getting most of you site from organic reach on social I think you site's traffic is at a far greater risk than a site dependent upon organic search.

This actually sounds like an interesting read @MAFOOMBAY. Was the author able to find any photos of the Frederick? I noticed you did not hyperlink to the review on your website, please feel free to do so. I noticed in your book review you did not mention the author's name or link to a bookseller to buy The Back Russian. Even if you were not interested in the commissions you can earn selling the book, it would just make it convenient for your readers if they are interested in buying the book. Thanks for sharing your review here!