Wholefoods, Indie Bands, Slow Dancing, Zach Braff, Anorexia.

Today’s link is Stuff White People Like, a blog (you guessed it) about what white people like. We’re so lame! Some of the best include:

#67 Standing Still at Concerts

…So when white people go to concerts at smaller venues, what to do they do? They stand still! This is an important part of white concert going as it enables you to focus on the music, and it will prevent drawing excess attention to you. Remember, at a concert everyone is watching you just waiting for you to try to start dancing. Then they will make fun of you.

#65 Co-Ed Sports

…But if you are reasonably skilled in sports, you have to be extremely careful how you approach your co-ed matches. If you try TOO hard (bowling over a female catcher, throwing a kickball EXTRA hard at someone) you come off as an aggressive, crazy maniac. On the other hand, if you don’t try at all you come off as a jerk who thinks they are above the game. The only solution is to approach the game like a point-shaving basketball player – play hard enough to be convincing, but not hard enough to win. If you follow these rules, you will find yourself invited to the mandatory post-game drinks at a local bar where you will be photographed many times.

#64 Recycling

Recycling is a part of a larger theme of stuff white people like: saving the earth without having to do that much.

Recycling is fantastic! You can still buy all the stuff you like (bottled water, beer, wine, organic iced tea, and cans of all varieties) and then when you’re done you just put it in a DIFFERENT bin than where you would throw your other garbage. And boom! Environment saved! Everyone feels great, it’s so easy!

#63 Expensive Sandwiches

If you are in the position where you need to take a white person to lunch for business or pleasure, saying “I know a great sandwich shop,” will always bring out a smile. The white person will then tell you about the great sandwich shop in the town where they went to college and how they had a crush on a waiter, or that there was some special sandwich that they always ordered. This will put the person in a good mood.

It’s important to note that this type of restaurant is best for business or friendship situations as it is very neutral and does not carry connotations like Sushi or Breakfast.

These sandwiches generally start at $8.99. Remember that whenever a white person says they wants to go to a sandwich shop you are looking at at least a $15 outlay after tip and drink, $20 if the place has a good selection of microbrews.

Also note: white people will wait up to 40 minutes for a good sandwich.

[tags]stuff white people like, racial stereotypes, funny link, hilarious blog, discrimination, recycling, expensive sandwiches[/tags]

Some Blogs I Am Reading Because A State-Funded Board Certified Me As Semi-Literate

1. This:

2. The [tag]Atlantic Review[/tag] has an excellent post on future quagmire building in [tag]Iran[/tag], and how many we need in our daily diet:

Tired of the same old boring quagmire? Looking for a new kind of quagmire to talk about with your friends? Good news if you are, because Iraq is not the only quagmire around. No need to look far—keep it in the “[tag]axis of evil[/tag].” Iraq’s neighbor, Iran is also a quagmire of a sorts… a diplomatic quagmire for the transatlantic allies.

3. If this is at all possible, [tag]Bill Clinton[/tag] claims they’ve been running their campaign “on a shoestring”:

The former president spoke as if he were back in the grass-roots insurgency that he and his wife brought to the presidential campaign trail in 1992. “We’ve gotten plenty of delegates on a shoestring,” he said recently. He didn’t mention that his wife’s campaign has raised and burned through more than $140 million so far. That’s a lot of shoestring, even in Washington.

4. Life imitates The Big Lebowski over at [tag]Byron Crawford[/tag]. Now, the post itself isn’t actually first rate but the discussion (over 200 comments as of right now) has got itself a race war on its hand. And who knew, on a black mans website and everything!

5. Some short asides: Russia is seeing minimal increases in its oil production, Was Edwards really the working class candidate?, 25 Questions to Think About Before Your Next Job Interview, Bush’s Enemy #1: [tag]Dennis Kucinich[/tag], and a firm of which [tag]Prescott Bush[/tag] was a director was involved with the financial architects of [tag]Nazism[/tag].

Views on The Rap Music

From Yahoo News:

“More than seven-in-ten among the U.S. public, including large majorities of both blacks and whites, offer a [tag]negative assessment of rap music[/tag], with 71% of blacks and 74% of whites agreeing that rap’s [tag]societal impact[/tag] is bad. Fewer Hispanics, however, hold this view (48%). Among whites, men are much more likely than women to say hip hop and rap have a [tag]bad influence on society[/tag]. Among blacks, however, the gender relationship tilts in the opposite direction ? women are more likely than men to say this form of music is having a bad influence. [tag]Younger blacks[/tag] and whites (ages 18-34) are far less likely than older respondents to see a negative societal impact of [tag]hip hop[tag] and rap music. No difference is seen in the percentage of young whites and young blacks saying this. Of all the race and gender groups in the survey, black men are most likely to give a positive rating to hip hop (18%) and rap music (11%). But these levels of positive rating are still quite modest.”

And more extensively from Pew Research Center:

“[tag]African Americans[/tag] see a widening gulf between the values of middle class and poor blacks, and nearly four-in-ten say that because of the diversity within their community, blacks can no longer be thought of as a single race, a new Pew Research Center survey has found.

The survey also finds blacks less upbeat about the state of black progress now than at any time since 1983. Looking backward, just one-in-five blacks say things are better for blacks now than they were five years ago. Looking ahead, fewer than half of all blacks (44%) say they think life for blacks will get better in the future, down from the 57% who said so in a 1986 survey.

Whites have a different perspective. While they, too, have grown less sanguine about black progress, they are nearly twice as likely as blacks to see black gains in the past five years. Also, a majority of whites (56%) say life for blacks in this country will get better in the future.

Similar race-based gaps in perception emerge on several other key topics explored in this survey. For example, blacks have much less confidence than whites in the fairness of the criminal justice system. Also, blacks say that anti-black [tag]discrimination[/tag] is commonplace in everyday life; whites disagree.

But there are also areas where the two groups largely see eye to eye. For example, blacks and whites agree that there has been a convergence in the past decade in the values held by blacks and whites. On the issue of immigration, blacks and whites agree that most immigrants work harder than most blacks and most whites at low-wage jobs. And on the popular culture front, large majorities of both blacks and whites say that rap and hip hop – two music styles with roots in the black community that have gained mainstream popularity in recent years – have a bad influence on society.

The survey finds that black and white Americans express very little overt racial animosity. As they have for decades, about eight-in-ten members of each racial group express a favorable view about members of the other group. Large majorities in both groups say that blacks and whites get along either “very” or “pretty” well, though in both cases a greater number say “pretty well.” More than eight-in-ten adults in each group also say they know a person of a different [tag]race[/tag] whom they consider a friend.”

See Also: Hip-Hop: Beyond Beats and Rhymes: Part I, CIA Gave Us Bum Rap (& America Too), Discussing The Decline on Hip Hop Radio, and Multiculturalism.

The Power of the Bank

“I sincerely believe that [tag]banking establishments[/tag] are more dangerous than standing armies, and that the principle of spending money to be paid by posterity, under the name of funding, is but swindling futurity on a large scale.”

– [tag]Thomas Jefferson[/tag]

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See also: [tag]Credit Default[/tag] Swaps and Financial WMDs, Subprime to Prime, the Whole Credit Structure has been Hit, McNomics, The Subprime Mortgage situation explained, Morgan Stanley chief takes just 800K for 2007, Deets Emerge on the Bear Subprime Criminal Probe.

A Book Burning Ceremony in Nazi Germany

On May 10th, 1933, university students and German citizens burned 25,000 volumes of books deemed ‘un-German’, as nationalist students marched in torchlight parades “against the un-German spirit.” The scripted rituals called for high Nazi officials, professors, rectors, and student leaders to address the participants and spectators. At the meeting places, students threw the pillaged and unwanted books into the bonfires with great joyous ceremony, band-playing, songs, “fire oaths,” and incantations.

Un-German Literature is Sorted Out for the Book-Burning Ceremony

Book Burning Ceremony: Against the Un-German Spirit (1933)