lol yeah, just like IS. I remember so clearly when the Islamic State said, "Hey Christians in Iraq, if you just want to be Christian and not bother anybody, if you want to just stay in your existing towns and not expand all over the place, that's cool."
They can argue that all they like, but the facts don't support them.
If you compare "how Christian" America is in terms of law, government, and military, and then compare "how Muslim" groups like Seleka are, only an idiot would come to the conclusion that they're about the same or that the US is more extreme. And idiots of that magnitude aren't worth talking to.
SJW being a pejorative meaning does not make the phenomenon any less real. As an example, "racist" is a pejorative term, but racists are real.
You're twisting the definition of SJW to make it apply to me, though. You chose too high a level of abstraction ("unfairly biased"). I'm against things that are unfairly biased for women as well. Where people think SJWs err is in HOW they determine things are unfairly biased. Disparate impact is one example, unequal outcome is another. SJWs are happy to stop at that level. Unequal outcome is evidence of unfair bias, and that's good enough.
You can't lump such people in with others (like me) who believe in equal opportunity, but not equal outcome. The views are far too different.
But the lowercase form "social justice warrior" -- sure, I'm that. I believe in social justice very strongly.
The press release says "At the urging of Rainbow PUSH Coalition and others, AMAZON finally released its workforce diversity and inclusion data."
That suggests Amazon's release of data was under pressure from interest groups like Rainbow PUSH Coalition.
Why do you keep saying things that imply the companies did this spontaneously?
From http://rainbowpush.org/pages/b... we see that: "The Rainbow PUSH Coalition is the product of a social justice movement that grew out of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference's (SCLC) Operation Breadbasket. Founded by Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Operation Breadbasket sought to combine theology and social justice, and to effect progressive economic, educational, and social policy in America."
How is that not descriptive of an organization fighting for social justice, i.e. a "social justice warrior?"
How can you call the concept a straw man when we have examples of them and their influence? (At the very least, their own claims of their influence.)
I am saying the same thing that the Erica Joy says - that merely being a black female means she is at a disadvantage when trying to fit in a company of white males compared to a white male.
What is it about black females that prevents them from fitting in a company of white males?
The point is that a lot of the stuff we classify as murder is classified as terrorism because it's perpetrated by Muslims.
I know that's your point, but it's not supported.
A gang vs gang shooting isn't much different from an intra-Muslim terrorist attack when you abstract it a little.
Yes, it's very different, because at an abstract level gang vs gang violence is violence between equals. Both gangs have the power of guns and violence at their disposal, both gangs have their own territory and power base, both gangs have relatively equal revenue generators like intimidation, prostitution, drugs, gun running, etc.
How on EARTH is that not much different than when the majority Muslim group in Pakistan (Sunnis) targets religious processions of minority religious groups (e.g. Shias, Ahmadis) and suffers little or no consequences for it?
Honestly I think your statement shows that maybe you just don't know much about the extent and type of terrorism going on in the Muslim world. Sunnis vs Shias in Iraq (perhaps this is where you got your gang vs gang analogy) is very different from Sunnis vs Shias in Pakistan, or Sunnis vs Alawites in Syria, or any other conflict. It's a mistake to think of even sects within Islam as monolithic.
You ask "To who?" (To whom) when it's broken down within the US but then lump them in globally?
That's because Muslim terrorism is global in nature. Even among domestic Muslim terrorist incidents in the US there is generally a link to foreign groups. The US is the target of many Muslim groups around the world. Compare that to something else... how many times did IRA separatists attack domestic targets in the US? (I don't know, but I suspect never.) How many times did Mexican drug cartels attack NYC? (Never.)
MOST threats are local in nature and can be dismissed by people who aren't right there in the target area. For instance there are zero local terrorist threats that I'm aware of where I live. Puerto Rican separatists are absolutely not going to attack the city I live in, I would wager a lot of money on that. The only real threats are global, and Muslim terrorists are the biggest global threat.
Globally, the greatest terrorist threat is not religious based - it's political. Different factions fighting it out for control over territory.
Africa - Nigeria north/south conflict,
I don't understand this.. are you not aware that the conflict in Nigeria is based on the south being predominantly Christian and the north being predominantly Muslim? That's the basis for all of the terrorist attacks by groups like Boko Haram.
Somalia recently split into north/south
I thought you were going to give non-religious examples of terrorism? Somalia's tensions are between a relatively secular central government and the very radical Islamic Courts Union. (Among others.) But what does this have to do with terrorism?
Mali Tuareg separatists
I didn't know terrorism was a big factor in Mali.
Asia - Israel+Palestine
You're joking, right?
Georgia/Russia
Yes, finally a good example of non-religious terro... hold on. Terrorism? What happened in the Georgia/Russia conflict that was related to terrorism?
Ukraine would be a better example since they had some terrorist incidents (though people speculated a lot that the downing of that airliner was unintentional, so it wouldn't really count).
I think you've forgotten that you said "Globally, the greatest terrorist threat is not religious based - it's political." and then you were going to list examples to demonstrate that.
You aren't listing non-religious terrorist threats, you're just listing threats. I never said terrorism was a bigger threat than war, or disease, or poverty, etc.
"At the urging of Rainbow PUSH Coalition and others, AMAZON finally released its workforce diversity and inclusion data."
Explain how this is not related to SJW activism and is actually a straw man.
No shit Sherlock! That's why it's the perfect rebuttal to someone saying "It's like this because I say so".
Begging the question. You're justifying your own childish "straw man" retort by saying the other person's argument was invalid... but you can't actually explain why it was invalid.
Your distinction makes no sense, because nobody is saying black females have to become not-black or not-female (or both).
We are talking about soft skills like getting along and fitting into the group. Are you saying that black females inherently have characteristics like snobbery that make them unable to fit into a group and be well regarded??
There are many things. A lot of them revolve around dealing with kids... * Good maternity and paternity leave policies * Flexible time to accommodate daycare, school, sports, etc events * Work/life balance (reasonable working hours, not on call all the time) * On-premise or nearby daycare (I honestly don't know why companies in business parks don't pool resources and provide free daycare)
Then there are issues that sound sexist like more openness about salary and fewer closed-door negotiations (because women don't like negotiating about sensitive subjects).
I agree with a lot of these things, and I'm not at all on the pro-diversity bandwagon. Diversity for diversity's sake is retarded. Claims that diversity makes your team better are BS. But things that make the work environment better for everyone, including women, seem like a good idea.
The problem is these things may make you less competitive due to higher costs, so it's hard to get much traction on these issues unless it were made law and all companies had to participate (so they would have an even playing field).
It was never that race and gender didn't matter, it has always been that all races and all genders are equally valuable as human beings and equally worth having in organizations.
If we're all equally worth having in organizations, then a 70%, 80%, or 100% white male organization is equally valuable to a more diverse organization.
they don't actively discriminate on gender, it's just that the work environment is disadvantageous for women.
Or perhaps it's just advantageous for men. So since men and women are equally worth having in your organization, why does this matter?
If the work environment becomes less advantageous for men and more advantageous for women, then fewer men will apply and more women will apply, and your mix will be different, but you haven't actually improved the situation because of your assertion that men and women are equally worth having in organizations.
You think social justice warriors who want equality of outcome are mythical? Do you even read the news?
For the last few weeks we've been hearing about how Google, Apple, Amazon, and other tech firms don't have enough women and non-Asian minorities working for them. Companies are being described by the media as "overwhelmingly white and male."
Calling things straw men that aren't actually straw men is a fallacy of its own. It's a pathetic attempt to deflect the argument that is no better than "No because I said so and you're wrong anyway!"
I'd think that the black community could make their own choices on who their leaders are and don't don't need white folk telling them which of their leaders are effective
Unbelievable arrogance.
1. The black community is not monolithic. "They" do not make choices. Black people make choices. 2. White people can have an opinion on something and black people can have an opinion on the same thing. They can even disagree! There's no need to shield black people from exposure to opinions by other people.
That's surprising, don't you guys have a ton of low population density land in the middle of the country? Is it not workable there because of water requirements?
There's plenty more to the right of Fox News too. So what?
Why do you think you have a better idea of what "true center" is than anybody else? Nobody cares. People talk about left and right from their own perspective, not from some mythical world-wide vantage point. As if you are familiar with every viewpoint in the world, ridiculous.
And the moderate-right anywhere else would be considered leftist here. So what??
I don't get this fascination some people have with putting the whole world on a single axis and saying "See how cool I am, I'm so worldly, what you think is left is actually RIGHT! haha!"
While Sunni are the main perpetrators of terrorist attacks globally, Muslims are the primary target.
Does that somehow excuse the terrorism and make it not count? I don't get it.
A lot of the intra-Muslim terrorist attacks are actually inter-sect terrorist attacks. They are attacking people they see as blasphemous or not "true" Muslims. A great example if you want to read more is the plight of the Ahmadi Muslims in Pakistan. There is a lot of violence against them, and actually it's part of their Constitution that Ahmadis cannot be considered Muslim.
Or check out Sunni/Shia violence.
What's interesting about this fact is that we (US/Canada/Europe) count those as terrorist attacks but do not count mass-shootings/bombings/etc unless they are carried out by a Muslim. They are "murders" if carried out by a non-Muslim.
Things like the Oklahoma City bombing are counted as terrorism. Murders are different.
7% of attacks by anti-abortionists vs 4.6% of attacks by Jewish terrorists vs 2.5% by Muslim terrorists. Who's the real threat?
To who? It depends. If you're in Puerto Rico, definitely the separatists are the biggest threat. If you work in an abortion clinic, the anti-abortionists. If you work in an animal testing lab, the "extreme left wing" groups are your biggest threat.
Muslims are the biggest threat to the biggest part of the population.
Because laws like that so very successful in wiping out Judaism and Christianity, that only know of them through ancient historical texts, right?
Yes. Not wiping them out around the world, but wiping them out in countries where they are no longer welcome. There used to be many Christians in the Middle East. Laws and state-sanctioned violence against Christians is largely responsible for their exodus.
Another example would be, what do you suppose the Hindu population in the land area of Pakistan looks like today compared to 100 years ago? Are you aware that many Hindus were forced out after partition and did not leave voluntarily?
Secondly, it was not illegal [aljazeera.com] to be a member of the Klu Klux Klan in July. Although several Florida police officers were fired for being members.
I'm not talking about July. I'm talking about things like the KKK Act:
After the act's passage, the president had the power for the first time to both suppress state disorders on his own initiative and to suspend the right of habeas corpus. Grant did not hesitate to use this authority on numerous occasions during his presidency, and as a result the first era KKK was completely dismantled and did not resurface in any meaningful way until the first part of the 20th century.
As far as I understand that restriction was on "display" of religious symbols and icons in public schools by teachers (and other staff) as part of their separation of church and state laws. If there is a broader law that you wish to cite, you may need to provide a link to the law.
Yes, there are many broader laws I could cite. The easiest is probably the recent law against public use of the burqa since it's a religious symbol. http://www.cnn.com/2011/WORLD/...
You are incorrect that it has to do with separation of church and state. This is talking about regular citizens in public. Ever since the French Revolution, France has had a more hostile attitude towards religion than most Western countries, and imposes much greater restrictions on religious practice than others.
Proselytizing -- by private citizens, not officials of the state -- is also restricted.
and the statement still has no bearing on your life if you don't ever come into contact with them.
No, indirect contact still has a bearing on your life. Most (probably all) of the family members of 9/11 victims did not ever come face to face with a terrorist who wanted to kill them. The terrorists still had a big impact on their lives.
Ordinary citizens who make any changes to their routine in anticipation of a terrorist attack in Canada (or the US or most of the world) are very likely in need of therapy.
This is true and it's why counterterrorism has to be focused in places where it makes sense. No need to monitor everyone's emails or frisk everyone in airport security. Target the groups that are most likely to be terrorists (Muslim guys). Narrow it down as much as you can (Muslim guys who go to mosque a lot, or whatever, and are in a database). Let everyone else get on with their lives.
If it happened more, certainly. The Klan was dealt with a long time ago, we even outlawed membership in the Klan. Not that it makes sense to include the Klan since their ideology is based on race first and foremost.
Anyway, I think you might not be familiar with the numbers with respect to Islamic terrorism. You have to look at worldwide numbers, not just acts in America. Thousands and thousands of people are killed every year in suicide bombings because they're Shia (and the Sunnis in Pakistan don't like them) or they're Christian (and all the Muslims in Egypt don't like them) etc.
Now compare that to how many abortion clinic bombings there are in the world.
Now consider that Christianity is still a larger religion than Islam.
Outlawing the world's second largest religion in a few select countries ("western democracies") would not work in practice
Why wouldn't it work in practice? It would be easy enough to shut down all mosques, ban the Koran, ban Muslim symbols, etc. It would be easy enough to hamper travel to Muslim countries, and in particular ban the Hajj.
would violate basic principles of democracy
Not true. It's okay to ban organizations in a democracy, which is why the Nazis have been banned in Germany for some time. The US made membership of the KKK illegal (note: membership, not engaging in crimes).
and would also be immoral according to the high moral standards of western democracies, in which laws against thought crimes are generally frowned upon.
What? I don't get it. Practicing a religion is not thought, it's practice. If people want to think about something illegal, they can currently do that, and they can continue to do that.
France (a Western democracy) has gone down that path long ago, where they started placing restrictions on *display* of religion. You can think what you want, but you can't necessarily share it or act on it.
Right, so the fact that the area is ofputting is of no concern to the people within the area. I disagree.
I don't know what you're referring to. What I said is it's not as great a loss as you initially said because the person will still do something else.
but yeah if you ignore such things then you're dooming yourself to exclude people displaying normal human characteristics.
Well, no, the story itself is a counterexample. One "weird" person paved the way, and then the "normal" person followed. So it appears that if we ignore it, things still work out in the end.
If you wish to define typical human behaviour as a personality disorder, then be my guest.
There are plenty of typical human behaviors that are disorders. Racism was at one time very common, and in some cultures today it is still very common. But we don't say "There's nothing wrong with them, they're typical."
But realise that's it's completely pointless and is self servig guesture to maintain the status quo.
I don't want to maintain the status quo, nor do I want others to impose a new status quo. What's wrong with letting things change naturally?
How many black women's tech blogs do you, personally, follow? How many white men's?
I don't follow any tech blogs, but regardless, I don't agree with your unstated assumption here that meritocracy is decided in the public realm. Actually, perhaps it's not "regardless" -- perhaps you follow too many tech blogs and you have gotten the misconception that they are more important than they really are. You're projecting your thoughts about blogs onto me, when I don't really care about them.
But either way, you (I) wouldn't decide that someone is a good programmer by conducting a poll, or by googling them to see what bloggers think about them. Maybe that IS how you would decide! That's decidedly odd to me.
I'll share my viewpoint if you're interested. In my younger days when I had time to burn, I worked on some open source projects. Things were decided like this. "I'm going to change the build system to use autoconf." A massive cheer goes up on the dev list. If the person actually does it, they are lauded. If they disappear, which often happens, they are forgotten.
I've seen contributions from people from many different countries. The main non-white contributors were Indian, who were recognizable by language and by their greater propensity to use their real names. There may have been black contributors but I'm not sure. None of them had obviously black names like Latisha or whatever. How can I say whether a contributor with the nickname "wcc" is black?
Perhaps you don't have a similar experience, which is why you can't see what meritocracy there is in the tech world. I don't think anybody argues tech is 100% meritocratic... we've all seen things like nepotism for instance. But much of it is.
Now fast forward to my current job, which is with a small team working on a single product used by libraries. We have 4 developers. Some are better than others. The worst developer does more documentation and working with the sysadmin who does deployment. He takes bug reports. He answers questions like "Why is this report giving this total instead of this? Is it not counting such and such?"
Because he's not as good, he's given less "big stuff" to do. He didn't take on the big project we got from the FCC. I did. I'm a better programmer than him, so I got the responsibility.
That's meritocracy between white guys.
So there's definitely meritocracy in tech. I've seen it myself. If you haven't, I'm curious to know your experiences. I don't know how it is at huge companies like IBM or Google. Maybe it's different. But... I doubt it.
White men care about tech things that white men care about; which is clearly not uniform, but on average will be significantly different than what tech things black women care about.
Can you elaborate on that difference? Again, I don't think this has much to do with meritocracy because who "the best programmer" is doesn't depend on whether he worked on a super popular and widely written about product. The person who implemented the algorithm for rounded corners at Apple isn't necessarily better than the person who wrote the tracking software for Boeing's laser weapon (which most of the population hasn't heard about).
Nonsense. Even individuals aren't only one thing. They're different things at different times and in different contexts. Further, you're talking about two large groups of people; there's clearly a lot of variation among them.
Then you should have qualified your "they're both" with "they're both at different times and in different contexts" which I would have agreed with.
That has no bearing on what they are at one particular time and in one particular context. Does that help you understand this issue?
You're a little bit closer in recognizing that women aren't all the same. Congratulations!
Do you understand that even though women aren't all the same, they are both a self-identified and other-identified group based on gender? And that people actually talk about "women" as a group? Congratulations! You're closer to understanding that decisions aren't always made on an individual case-by-case basis! We have this thing called "policy" which is where you make decisions based on a system of rules and principles.
But you're still wrong. A given woman can like some kinds of math but not others, can like math during some parts of her life but not others, can even like math in some moods but not others.
Liking some kinds of math but not others is but one factor that goes into answering the question "Do you like math?" The woman has to decide whether the parts she enjoys outweighs the parts she doesn't enjoy.
As for other parts of her life, sure, she can move from one bucket to the other over time.
So? Let's say she hadn't gone into programming for some reason. That means she went into some other field. If she's a good programmer, maybe she'd be a good electrical engineer, or a good math professor, or a good research biologist, or etc. See? There isn't necessarily a "loss" because she didn't join an all-male team of programmers.
If by "personality" problem you mean "the person is human and doesn't like being the odd one out by a huge margin" then sure.
Hold on. From the article: "The inspiration to try out Dolphin actually came from the realization they already had a female team member (Rachel Bryk)—I figured if she found it okay, maybe I should try too?"
So in your statement, you're saying that the first woman either wasn't human or liked being the odd one out by a huge margin. Nice!
How about the possibility that the first woman enjoyed the work and didn't have a personality disorder that made her scared of working with "too many" men or being too scared to try things that "women don't do."
You are right that white men decide who has merit. But white women also decide. Black men decide. Black women decide. People of every race and gender decide. Many people disagree. Not all white men agree with each other (take a poll on PulseAudio or Gnome 3). Not all black women agree with each other.
Seriously, the first sign you're a racist/sexist is when you start lumping ALL white men or whatever group into one anonymous block.
Slashdot Mirror
lol yeah, just like IS. I remember so clearly when the Islamic State said, "Hey Christians in Iraq, if you just want to be Christian and not bother anybody, if you want to just stay in your existing towns and not expand all over the place, that's cool."
You idiot.
They can argue that all they like, but the facts don't support them.
If you compare "how Christian" America is in terms of law, government, and military, and then compare "how Muslim" groups like Seleka are, only an idiot would come to the conclusion that they're about the same or that the US is more extreme. And idiots of that magnitude aren't worth talking to.
SJW being a pejorative meaning does not make the phenomenon any less real. As an example, "racist" is a pejorative term, but racists are real.
You're twisting the definition of SJW to make it apply to me, though. You chose too high a level of abstraction ("unfairly biased"). I'm against things that are unfairly biased for women as well. Where people think SJWs err is in HOW they determine things are unfairly biased. Disparate impact is one example, unequal outcome is another. SJWs are happy to stop at that level. Unequal outcome is evidence of unfair bias, and that's good enough.
You can't lump such people in with others (like me) who believe in equal opportunity, but not equal outcome. The views are far too different.
But the lowercase form "social justice warrior" -- sure, I'm that. I believe in social justice very strongly.
The press release says "At the urging of Rainbow PUSH Coalition and others, AMAZON finally released its workforce diversity and inclusion data."
That suggests Amazon's release of data was under pressure from interest groups like Rainbow PUSH Coalition.
Why do you keep saying things that imply the companies did this spontaneously?
From http://rainbowpush.org/pages/b... we see that: "The Rainbow PUSH Coalition is the product of a social justice movement that grew out of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference's (SCLC) Operation Breadbasket. Founded by Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Operation Breadbasket sought to combine theology and social justice, and to effect progressive economic, educational, and social policy in America."
How is that not descriptive of an organization fighting for social justice, i.e. a "social justice warrior?"
How can you call the concept a straw man when we have examples of them and their influence? (At the very least, their own claims of their influence.)
I am saying the same thing that the Erica Joy says - that merely being a black female means she is at a disadvantage when trying to fit in a company of white males compared to a white male.
What is it about black females that prevents them from fitting in a company of white males?
The point is that a lot of the stuff we classify as murder is classified as terrorism because it's perpetrated by Muslims.
I know that's your point, but it's not supported.
A gang vs gang shooting isn't much different from an intra-Muslim terrorist attack when you abstract it a little.
Yes, it's very different, because at an abstract level gang vs gang violence is violence between equals. Both gangs have the power of guns and violence at their disposal, both gangs have their own territory and power base, both gangs have relatively equal revenue generators like intimidation, prostitution, drugs, gun running, etc.
How on EARTH is that not much different than when the majority Muslim group in Pakistan (Sunnis) targets religious processions of minority religious groups (e.g. Shias, Ahmadis) and suffers little or no consequences for it?
Honestly I think your statement shows that maybe you just don't know much about the extent and type of terrorism going on in the Muslim world. Sunnis vs Shias in Iraq (perhaps this is where you got your gang vs gang analogy) is very different from Sunnis vs Shias in Pakistan, or Sunnis vs Alawites in Syria, or any other conflict. It's a mistake to think of even sects within Islam as monolithic.
You ask "To who?" (To whom) when it's broken down within the US but then lump them in globally?
That's because Muslim terrorism is global in nature. Even among domestic Muslim terrorist incidents in the US there is generally a link to foreign groups. The US is the target of many Muslim groups around the world. Compare that to something else... how many times did IRA separatists attack domestic targets in the US? (I don't know, but I suspect never.) How many times did Mexican drug cartels attack NYC? (Never.)
MOST threats are local in nature and can be dismissed by people who aren't right there in the target area. For instance there are zero local terrorist threats that I'm aware of where I live. Puerto Rican separatists are absolutely not going to attack the city I live in, I would wager a lot of money on that. The only real threats are global, and Muslim terrorists are the biggest global threat.
Globally, the greatest terrorist threat is not religious based - it's political. Different factions fighting it out for control over territory.
Africa - Nigeria north/south conflict,
I don't understand this.. are you not aware that the conflict in Nigeria is based on the south being predominantly Christian and the north being predominantly Muslim? That's the basis for all of the terrorist attacks by groups like Boko Haram.
Somalia recently split into north/south
I thought you were going to give non-religious examples of terrorism? Somalia's tensions are between a relatively secular central government and the very radical Islamic Courts Union. (Among others.) But what does this have to do with terrorism?
Mali Tuareg separatists
I didn't know terrorism was a big factor in Mali.
Asia - Israel+Palestine
You're joking, right?
Georgia/Russia
Yes, finally a good example of non-religious terro... hold on. Terrorism? What happened in the Georgia/Russia conflict that was related to terrorism?
Ukraine would be a better example since they had some terrorist incidents (though people speculated a lot that the downing of that airliner was unintentional, so it wouldn't really count).
I think you've forgotten that you said "Globally, the greatest terrorist threat is not religious based - it's political." and then you were going to list examples to demonstrate that.
You aren't listing non-religious terrorist threats, you're just listing threats. I never said terrorism was a bigger threat than war, or disease, or poverty, etc.
Maybe Google, Apple, Amozon, etc are concerned that something they're doing is putting off potential applicants.
Here's a news release: http://www.rainbowpush.org/new...
"At the urging of Rainbow PUSH Coalition and others, AMAZON finally released its workforce diversity and inclusion data."
Explain how this is not related to SJW activism and is actually a straw man.
No shit Sherlock! That's why it's the perfect rebuttal to someone saying "It's like this because I say so".
Begging the question. You're justifying your own childish "straw man" retort by saying the other person's argument was invalid... but you can't actually explain why it was invalid.
Your distinction makes no sense, because nobody is saying black females have to become not-black or not-female (or both).
We are talking about soft skills like getting along and fitting into the group. Are you saying that black females inherently have characteristics like snobbery that make them unable to fit into a group and be well regarded??
There are many things. A lot of them revolve around dealing with kids...
* Good maternity and paternity leave policies
* Flexible time to accommodate daycare, school, sports, etc events
* Work/life balance (reasonable working hours, not on call all the time)
* On-premise or nearby daycare (I honestly don't know why companies in business parks don't pool resources and provide free daycare)
Then there are issues that sound sexist like more openness about salary and fewer closed-door negotiations (because women don't like negotiating about sensitive subjects).
I agree with a lot of these things, and I'm not at all on the pro-diversity bandwagon. Diversity for diversity's sake is retarded. Claims that diversity makes your team better are BS. But things that make the work environment better for everyone, including women, seem like a good idea.
The problem is these things may make you less competitive due to higher costs, so it's hard to get much traction on these issues unless it were made law and all companies had to participate (so they would have an even playing field).
It was never that race and gender didn't matter, it has always been that all races and all genders are equally valuable as human beings and equally worth having in organizations.
If we're all equally worth having in organizations, then a 70%, 80%, or 100% white male organization is equally valuable to a more diverse organization.
they don't actively discriminate on gender, it's just that the work environment is disadvantageous for women.
Or perhaps it's just advantageous for men. So since men and women are equally worth having in your organization, why does this matter?
If the work environment becomes less advantageous for men and more advantageous for women, then fewer men will apply and more women will apply, and your mix will be different, but you haven't actually improved the situation because of your assertion that men and women are equally worth having in organizations.
You think social justice warriors who want equality of outcome are mythical? Do you even read the news?
For the last few weeks we've been hearing about how Google, Apple, Amazon, and other tech firms don't have enough women and non-Asian minorities working for them. Companies are being described by the media as "overwhelmingly white and male."
Calling things straw men that aren't actually straw men is a fallacy of its own. It's a pathetic attempt to deflect the argument that is no better than "No because I said so and you're wrong anyway!"
I'd think that the black community could make their own choices on who their leaders are and don't don't need white folk telling them which of their leaders are effective
Unbelievable arrogance.
1. The black community is not monolithic. "They" do not make choices. Black people make choices.
2. White people can have an opinion on something and black people can have an opinion on the same thing. They can even disagree! There's no need to shield black people from exposure to opinions by other people.
Better check yourself for racism bud.
That's surprising, don't you guys have a ton of low population density land in the middle of the country? Is it not workable there because of water requirements?
There's plenty more to the right of Fox News too. So what?
Why do you think you have a better idea of what "true center" is than anybody else? Nobody cares. People talk about left and right from their own perspective, not from some mythical world-wide vantage point. As if you are familiar with every viewpoint in the world, ridiculous.
And the moderate-right anywhere else would be considered leftist here. So what??
I don't get this fascination some people have with putting the whole world on a single axis and saying "See how cool I am, I'm so worldly, what you think is left is actually RIGHT! haha!"
While Sunni are the main perpetrators of terrorist attacks globally, Muslims are the primary target.
Does that somehow excuse the terrorism and make it not count? I don't get it.
A lot of the intra-Muslim terrorist attacks are actually inter-sect terrorist attacks. They are attacking people they see as blasphemous or not "true" Muslims. A great example if you want to read more is the plight of the Ahmadi Muslims in Pakistan. There is a lot of violence against them, and actually it's part of their Constitution that Ahmadis cannot be considered Muslim.
Or check out Sunni/Shia violence.
What's interesting about this fact is that we (US/Canada/Europe) count those as terrorist attacks but do not count mass-shootings/bombings/etc unless they are carried out by a Muslim. They are "murders" if carried out by a non-Muslim.
Things like the Oklahoma City bombing are counted as terrorism. Murders are different.
7% of attacks by anti-abortionists vs 4.6% of attacks by Jewish terrorists vs 2.5% by Muslim terrorists. Who's the real threat?
To who? It depends. If you're in Puerto Rico, definitely the separatists are the biggest threat. If you work in an abortion clinic, the anti-abortionists. If you work in an animal testing lab, the "extreme left wing" groups are your biggest threat.
Muslims are the biggest threat to the biggest part of the population.
Late reply, sorry.
Because laws like that so very successful in wiping out Judaism and Christianity, that only know of them through ancient historical texts, right?
Yes. Not wiping them out around the world, but wiping them out in countries where they are no longer welcome. There used to be many Christians in the Middle East. Laws and state-sanctioned violence against Christians is largely responsible for their exodus.
Another example would be, what do you suppose the Hindu population in the land area of Pakistan looks like today compared to 100 years ago? Are you aware that many Hindus were forced out after partition and did not leave voluntarily?
Secondly, it was not illegal [aljazeera.com] to be a member of the Klu Klux Klan in July. Although several Florida police officers were fired for being members.
I'm not talking about July. I'm talking about things like the KKK Act:
After the act's passage, the president had the power for the first time to both suppress state disorders on his own initiative and to suspend the right of habeas corpus. Grant did not hesitate to use this authority on numerous occasions during his presidency, and as a result the first era KKK was completely dismantled and did not resurface in any meaningful way until the first part of the 20th century.
As far as I understand that restriction was on "display" of religious symbols and icons in public schools by teachers (and other staff) as part of their separation of church and state laws. If there is a broader law that you wish to cite, you may need to provide a link to the law.
Yes, there are many broader laws I could cite. The easiest is probably the recent law against public use of the burqa since it's a religious symbol. http://www.cnn.com/2011/WORLD/...
You are incorrect that it has to do with separation of church and state. This is talking about regular citizens in public. Ever since the French Revolution, France has had a more hostile attitude towards religion than most Western countries, and imposes much greater restrictions on religious practice than others.
Proselytizing -- by private citizens, not officials of the state -- is also restricted.
and the statement still has no bearing on your life if you don't ever come into contact with them.
No, indirect contact still has a bearing on your life. Most (probably all) of the family members of 9/11 victims did not ever come face to face with a terrorist who wanted to kill them. The terrorists still had a big impact on their lives.
Ordinary citizens who make any changes to their routine in anticipation of a terrorist attack in Canada (or the US or most of the world) are very likely in need of therapy.
This is true and it's why counterterrorism has to be focused in places where it makes sense. No need to monitor everyone's emails or frisk everyone in airport security. Target the groups that are most likely to be terrorists (Muslim guys). Narrow it down as much as you can (Muslim guys who go to mosque a lot, or whatever, and are in a database). Let everyone else get on with their lives.
If it happened more, certainly. The Klan was dealt with a long time ago, we even outlawed membership in the Klan. Not that it makes sense to include the Klan since their ideology is based on race first and foremost.
Anyway, I think you might not be familiar with the numbers with respect to Islamic terrorism. You have to look at worldwide numbers, not just acts in America. Thousands and thousands of people are killed every year in suicide bombings because they're Shia (and the Sunnis in Pakistan don't like them) or they're Christian (and all the Muslims in Egypt don't like them) etc.
Now compare that to how many abortion clinic bombings there are in the world.
Now consider that Christianity is still a larger religion than Islam.
Outlawing the world's second largest religion in a few select countries ("western democracies") would not work in practice
Why wouldn't it work in practice? It would be easy enough to shut down all mosques, ban the Koran, ban Muslim symbols, etc. It would be easy enough to hamper travel to Muslim countries, and in particular ban the Hajj.
would violate basic principles of democracy
Not true. It's okay to ban organizations in a democracy, which is why the Nazis have been banned in Germany for some time. The US made membership of the KKK illegal (note: membership, not engaging in crimes).
and would also be immoral according to the high moral standards of western democracies, in which laws against thought crimes are generally frowned upon.
What? I don't get it. Practicing a religion is not thought, it's practice. If people want to think about something illegal, they can currently do that, and they can continue to do that.
France (a Western democracy) has gone down that path long ago, where they started placing restrictions on *display* of religion. You can think what you want, but you can't necessarily share it or act on it.
Right, so the fact that the area is ofputting is of no concern to the people within the area. I disagree.
I don't know what you're referring to. What I said is it's not as great a loss as you initially said because the person will still do something else.
but yeah if you ignore such things then you're dooming yourself to exclude people displaying normal human characteristics.
Well, no, the story itself is a counterexample. One "weird" person paved the way, and then the "normal" person followed. So it appears that if we ignore it, things still work out in the end.
If you wish to define typical human behaviour as a personality disorder, then be my guest.
There are plenty of typical human behaviors that are disorders. Racism was at one time very common, and in some cultures today it is still very common. But we don't say "There's nothing wrong with them, they're typical."
But realise that's it's completely pointless and is self servig guesture to maintain the status quo.
I don't want to maintain the status quo, nor do I want others to impose a new status quo. What's wrong with letting things change naturally?
How many black women's tech blogs do you, personally, follow? How many white men's?
I don't follow any tech blogs, but regardless, I don't agree with your unstated assumption here that meritocracy is decided in the public realm. Actually, perhaps it's not "regardless" -- perhaps you follow too many tech blogs and you have gotten the misconception that they are more important than they really are. You're projecting your thoughts about blogs onto me, when I don't really care about them.
But either way, you (I) wouldn't decide that someone is a good programmer by conducting a poll, or by googling them to see what bloggers think about them. Maybe that IS how you would decide! That's decidedly odd to me.
I'll share my viewpoint if you're interested. In my younger days when I had time to burn, I worked on some open source projects. Things were decided like this. "I'm going to change the build system to use autoconf." A massive cheer goes up on the dev list. If the person actually does it, they are lauded. If they disappear, which often happens, they are forgotten.
I've seen contributions from people from many different countries. The main non-white contributors were Indian, who were recognizable by language and by their greater propensity to use their real names. There may have been black contributors but I'm not sure. None of them had obviously black names like Latisha or whatever. How can I say whether a contributor with the nickname "wcc" is black?
Perhaps you don't have a similar experience, which is why you can't see what meritocracy there is in the tech world. I don't think anybody argues tech is 100% meritocratic... we've all seen things like nepotism for instance. But much of it is.
Now fast forward to my current job, which is with a small team working on a single product used by libraries. We have 4 developers. Some are better than others. The worst developer does more documentation and working with the sysadmin who does deployment. He takes bug reports. He answers questions like "Why is this report giving this total instead of this? Is it not counting such and such?"
Because he's not as good, he's given less "big stuff" to do. He didn't take on the big project we got from the FCC. I did. I'm a better programmer than him, so I got the responsibility.
That's meritocracy between white guys.
So there's definitely meritocracy in tech. I've seen it myself. If you haven't, I'm curious to know your experiences. I don't know how it is at huge companies like IBM or Google. Maybe it's different. But... I doubt it.
White men care about tech things that white men care about; which is clearly not uniform, but on average will be significantly different than what tech things black women care about.
Can you elaborate on that difference? Again, I don't think this has much to do with meritocracy because who "the best programmer" is doesn't depend on whether he worked on a super popular and widely written about product. The person who implemented the algorithm for rounded corners at Apple isn't necessarily better than the person who wrote the tracking software for Boeing's laser weapon (which most of the population hasn't heard about).
But I am curious what the difference is.
Nonsense. Even individuals aren't only one thing. They're different things at different times and in different contexts. Further, you're talking about two large groups of people; there's clearly a lot of variation among them.
Then you should have qualified your "they're both" with "they're both at different times and in different contexts" which I would have agreed with.
That has no bearing on what they are at one particular time and in one particular context. Does that help you understand this issue?
You're a little bit closer in recognizing that women aren't all the same. Congratulations!
Do you understand that even though women aren't all the same, they are both a self-identified and other-identified group based on gender? And that people actually talk about "women" as a group? Congratulations! You're closer to understanding that decisions aren't always made on an individual case-by-case basis! We have this thing called "policy" which is where you make decisions based on a system of rules and principles.
But you're still wrong. A given woman can like some kinds of math but not others, can like math during some parts of her life but not others, can even like math in some moods but not others.
Liking some kinds of math but not others is but one factor that goes into answering the question "Do you like math?" The woman has to decide whether the parts she enjoys outweighs the parts she doesn't enjoy.
As for other parts of her life, sure, she can move from one bucket to the other over time.
Someone amazingly skilled was put off.
So? Let's say she hadn't gone into programming for some reason. That means she went into some other field. If she's a good programmer, maybe she'd be a good electrical engineer, or a good math professor, or a good research biologist, or etc. See? There isn't necessarily a "loss" because she didn't join an all-male team of programmers.
If by "personality" problem you mean "the person is human and doesn't like being the odd one out by a huge margin" then sure.
Hold on. From the article: "The inspiration to try out Dolphin actually came from the realization they already had a female team member (Rachel Bryk)—I figured if she found it okay, maybe I should try too?"
So in your statement, you're saying that the first woman either wasn't human or liked being the odd one out by a huge margin. Nice!
How about the possibility that the first woman enjoyed the work and didn't have a personality disorder that made her scared of working with "too many" men or being too scared to try things that "women don't do."
Whoa slow down there racist sexist.
You are right that white men decide who has merit. But white women also decide. Black men decide. Black women decide. People of every race and gender decide. Many people disagree. Not all white men agree with each other (take a poll on PulseAudio or Gnome 3). Not all black women agree with each other.
Seriously, the first sign you're a racist/sexist is when you start lumping ALL white men or whatever group into one anonymous block.