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Chinky Or Not Chinky: Being Korean=Higher Chance Of Crashing A Plane?

  • September 17, 2009 12:04 am

koreanairOn August 5, 1997, Korean Air flight 801 from Seoul to Guam crashed into the side of Nimitz Hill, a densely vegetated mountain three miles from Guam airport. Twenty years before, a Korean Air Boeing 707 wandered into Russian airspace and was shot down. Two years later, a Korean Air Boeing 747 crashed in Seoul. This was followed by a crash three years later near Sakhalin Island in Russia, a crash over the Andaman Sea in 1987, two crashes in 1989 in Tripoli and Seoul, and then another over Cheju, South Korea in 1994.  Read more...

Chinky Or Not Chinky: Asians + Rice Farmers = Math Whizzes

  • August 25, 2009 6:31 am

asian-mathWhen Malcolm Gladwell’s book Outliers: The Story of Success came out last year, there was an outcry from some in the Asian American community over one of the chapters which made the argument that the reason why Asians are so good at math had to do with our history as rice farmers. Now, just hearing that out of context does make the statement sound ridiculous and possibly racist. But many of those who found fault with Gladwell’s thesis hadn’t actually read the book so their complaints were based on a superficial (mis)understanding of what Gladwell was trying to say.  Read more...