...or even about cultural diversity. Granted the british empire anglicized as much of the world as they could and it's been beneficial to their economy and the economy of their offshoot (america).
There are a whole lot of people who don't speak english in this world and as their economies grow and become technologically advanced they want to enjoy being able to do things in their own languages.
What is this if they don't do it in our language they are against us mentality?
Fine you guys came up with the internet the same way someone somewhere invented the wheel and so many other things that made it possible to get to where we as a human race are.
What is wrong with someone like me wanting to be able to compose an email in my native language, just because it's fun to use all those african proverbs or to even be able to advertise companies with native names (which include diacritical markings and so on) without having to code for each web browser.
I thought this whole internet thing was supposed to open our minds to what others have to offer.
And as per your implication that only anglophone countries can pay for goods, remember there was a world before britain or america, there'll still be one after they're long gone. The funny thing is that most people in the world don't hate america, in fact they love the success story that is america, but it's people like you that see a demon in every shadow that are turning more and more people toward the belief that americans are generally arrogant. And if you read or know anything about history you'll know that pride usually goes before a fall
Lose the attitude, boss, remember Rome, greece, egypt? they were great too....
I agree with your post and most educated africans do too. However, as long as we are in a global economy and the intelligent and educated africans (read sub-saharan africa) have the opportunity to leave their countries, they will continue to do so in record numbers. I'm nigerian and live in the U.S. and I can tell you that in nigeria there are probably less than 5 neurosurgeons, but there are nigerian neurosurgeons all over the world. The same goes for experts in every field including IT.
Why don't they go home and build their continent you ask? They don't, mostly because of self-preservation (it only costs about $50 to hire an assassin in Nigeria and a country whose attorney general was assassinated without fear of reprisals is not a country anyone with a choice wants to live in).
Let me break it down for most people who don't get it like this. The dictators and political elite so-called that rule in most African countries KNOW that, most people don't want to die for a country they don't have a stake in (wrong but common perception due to the fact that they don't see the gains of those who died before them) but they are willing to kill to hold on to power. As long as that imbalance exists, sub-saharan africa will continue to be the beautiful wasteland that it presently is.
The fault as much as some would like to make it is not the Wests (it's expected that they will look after themselves first i.e. the purpose of a business is to make profit all other considerations come after), it lies solely at the feet of those of us who keep quiet or run away because we don't want to die. Or as one, now dead, but popular nigerian musician (Fela Anikulapo-Kuti) once put it in a track apprioprately titled "Sorrow tears and blood", 'My people sef too dey fear, den no wan die....'.
Actually,
for a long time until around '97, most banks or places that could afford it i.e. universities were using mainframes or in the case of colleges unix systems. With windows 95 all that started changing. NT4 especially turned things in Microsofts favour as it was easy like you said to procure illegal copies of said software. Now the only guys who use Linux are hobbyists or techies that are interested in such stuff of which there are only a very few amount of them. Some companies and banks run such systems at their backend but all desktop stuff is primarily windows. If there was an enforcement of the no piracy thing. Nigerians I can assure you would be the first to go OSS because 'awoof' pronounced ah-woof (free as in beer) is what most nigerians desire considering they have to save money for the essentials of life.
Sometimes especially when you're at the mercy of your parents e.g. I grew up in west africa and was way smarter than most of my colleagues but my mom being a teacher insisted that I was better off being 'mature' that moving ahead...it's hard to escape over there because you can't question your folks and opportunities were few and far between...
The problem with averages and race/regional classifications is this: How does it help? Should it be taken into account when allocating federal funding for things like education/healthcare? What happens to the talented individual trapped in the perception of his race/region/class? Should we then take this into account when given people jobs because we have a manual on averages?
Since you're a geek I assume you do know what averages imply. The present averages for any given population is not going to be the same in another time period, but perceptions are not easily removed as they lead to conclusions. It's hard enough to get the general population to understand technical concepts, so how do we have this kind of discussion without producing bias in the general population who for the most part have a dangerously unclear understanding of anything remotely technical.
I don't have a problem with exploring racial differences even though I'm black but i think any perception about race/region/class leaves out one of the most important characteristics of our humanity that we are first and foremost individuals. That concept is what makes a country like america great due to the fact that it enables individuals to free themselves of the shackles of racial identity and leap to heights hitherto unknown.
I'm west african and contrary to what the book says about people of african descent, I've been opportuned to know a whole lot of african eggheads and you'd be surprised at how intelligent these people are.
The implication that stupid people tend to commit crime I find issue with though. I think crime has more to do with poverty than stupidity.
I do agree that there are gene differences across different groups of people be they seperated by region/diet/race simply because we tend to adapt to our environment and that process of adaptation highlights/produces different characteristics e.g. the way dogs came to look so different from wild dogs/wolves etc was a mystery until some folks decided to domesticate wild foxes by changing they behaviour patterns over several generations only to discover that as the foxes got domesticated the chemical pathways that produced pointy ears and bushy tails changed.
In essence I think culture (which changes BTW)and the environment plays a more important role than genetics since for the most part the environment dictates genetic changes.
Frankly, it's not the place of the average american to criticize the english speaking capabilities of any other group of people. I know 'cause I came from a Queen's english speaking environment and damn! for a people whose first language is english, y'all murder the language at about 3 * 10^8 times a second.
Since taking over a standard windows installation is trivial. Can you tell me how you would take over a box where you're locked in to limited user priviledges and you can't edit the registry or touch system files?
I've been around the whole spiritual block as it were. I was raised by roman catholic parents, who, by the way didn't start out as Catholics. Mom was from a muslim family so I had a lot of muslim cousins. My father was of the Apostolic denomination. I suspect they 'agreed' to be catholics (i say that because my mom became fascinated with catholicism having gone to a high school run by British/Scottish/Irish nuns so I think it was her idea of a compromise). I got involved with AMORC (Rosicrucians - it's just a modernization if you will of an ancient egyptian religion or bits and pieces of various ones) at age 9/10 through my mom - she was a member for several years. I won't even go into how that ties into Roman Catholicism. Well I got born again in my first semester of college and was serious enough to remain a virgin until I left (or backslid if you prefer the term). I gave you the background because it helps I think to know that I didn't arrive at christianity without having been around the block a few times.
Getting back to your question, I gave God 10 years of raw, faithful service, no compromises. Just to let you know, I wasn't practising Christianity in america where it's relatively easier to be a christian, I grew up in Nigeria where to get anything done (even getting a driver's license means you have to bribe somebody) you had to soil your hands, apart from having to deal with family - I'm talking about 50/100 family members as we have an extended family structure unlike anything in the west - or even the voodoo guys and if you've never been to a village evangelism where the local juju man can make a leaf dance to the beats of a drum you probably think voodoo is just balderdash. Point it to be a real Christian was hard with a capital H but I didn't mind 'cause I felt God had my back. Imagine my surprise when after getting an electrical engr degree (everyone that meets me from elementary school till grad school and even out of class are usually impressed by how intelligent I am - not boasting just trying to give you an idea), I couldn't get a decent job, first I thought it was because I was in nigeria and you had to know someone who knew somebody...to get a job, so I packed my bags and came to america got in grad school and even though I was poor did my best to get a simple internship just to be able to afford to live in the basement (i'm not a materialistic person) and pay my rent and afford food and tuition (had to pay as an international student thats about $7k/$8k per semester), but apparently my dear God was nowhere to be found. I prayed fasted. YOu see all those things you see in the bible like fasting without food and water (no orange juice like you guys do here), I've done it before (not because I wanted anything from God by the way, except to just open myself up to Him to use me in anyway He wanted, in college we would go on 24hour prayer binges - on public holidays - just to immerse ourselves in his presence so he could minister through us). I've done 3 days straight several times. I've done 7 days straight once. I know a personal friend (he's a medical doctor now) who did 21 days before, so don't think I chickened out at the first sign of tribulation.
God never showed up, now after almost seven years of graduating college, I'm too old to be a first career job hire (i'm 30) so my dream of contributing to the field by getting into telecoms/dsp as a career is not going to materialize anymore. Just in case that sounds contradictory, I was willing to go anywhere, do anything if i was called but as far as I know i wasn't so my thing barring that was to keep doing my one on one preaching and doing my thing in church while practising engineering but look where it got me. So there you go bro. Where is God? Looks to me like I wasted 10 years of my life, it was my choice so I think I was stupid but I don't blame anyone for my situation.
To answer the second part of your question, I was evangelical/pentecostal i.e. your regular born-again, bible-believing, holy-ghost filled christian.
This is a public board so this is a lot of dirty laundry but once in a while I like to answer that question because I used to ask the same question when I was on the other side.
I'm not a christian anymore....but I used to be a pastor and taught a lot of bible studies in my time, so I think I might be able to help you here. When modern day christians talk about certain things they take most of their cue from the new testament, which (recursively) according to the same new testament is the substance of which the old testament was a shadow Heb 8. Paul is a focal point because he usually interpreted the old testament in his writings and tried to show what they foreshadowed. In Roman 1, he specifically counted homosexuality as one of the grieviances that the christian God had with certain generations. Hence the preoccupation of new testament christians with homosexuality as a perversion of 'Gods' original plan for relationships between man and woman. So while the practitioners of Judaism hold to a lot of the stuff in the old testament, christians are not bound by the literal text of the old testament. The 'spirit of the law' 1st of 2nd Corinthians chapter 3 talks about the danger of literally interpreting the law and instead advocates imbibing the spirit of the law instead. I hope I've been able to throw some light on these things. I might not be as coherent as I'd like to be but you have to blame that on my just having just woken up.
Well said. Some of us who grew up in LDC's have been saying these things for years but apparently those who should know better keep thinking if only they could bid their time, they can save their own hide and enrich their families and as they say in Nigeria "God dey na poor man prayer" meaning it's only the poor and disenfranchised who call on God for justice. If you read Chinua Achebe's book "A man of the people" (I'm sure you can find it in some libraries) he's the guy that wrote "Things fall apart" a very popular literature piece and a response to a book written by an european about 50 years earlier i.e. "Mr Johnson", you will see that some people have been saying the same thing for years. A reading of Wole Soyinka's "The man died" (he's a nobel laureate from Nigeria) also says similar things.
Rap is a cultural thing and has nothing to do with ability. It can be arguably said to have roots in different forms of spoken poetry (example ewi in yorubaland - southwestern Nigeria). As for the Bantu migration, there's archaelogical evidence that there were quite a few people in west africa about 2000 bc which would be 2000 yrs before the Bantu migration
I agree with you that affirmative action is a response to a problem i.e. hiring is subjective, hence an employer's views on such things as race, class, politics, gender make a difference in who gets hired. Whether affirmative action/quota is the best possible solution to a complex problem of background/nurture/ideology/opinion is the question.
We all know that people would always find ways to get around laws, so legislating a way out is always tricky business. An employer has every right not to hire anyone the interviewer deems unfit for the job and we all know how easy it is to deem someone unfit. So how do you ensure that the interviewers biases don't factor into the final hire decision. I don't dispute the fact that 'underqualified' people get hired in IT but from my experience it's not only IT but the interesting thing is that I also happen to know 'minorities' who possess good/great skills but still don't get those jobs even though going toe to toe with anyone else they'll come out on top.
So as much as I do understand the basis for resentment, the reality is that no self-respecting intelligent minority likes to be seen as having a job simply because of his/her race. As long as a you have the situation highlighted by the MIT research that indicated that if you had a particular kind of name there was a greater likelihood that your resume would be passed over you've got to admit we have a problem.
At the same time, you don't have to look very far to find those cliques where a minority gets passed over for the high flying management jobs not because of his lack of skills or ability but simply because 'they' are already 'represented' and you can't help but wonder where it will all end. Blame trading won't change the situation and even though resentment and a racist reaction might seem to have a basis, until we come up with a better system none of us really has a justification for perpetuating the cycle.
It's all well and good to highlight the problems with a particular system but you need to proffer a possibly better solution before you can expect to be taken seriously.
"Why is it progress to do something to insure that more people are isolated from one another?"
Is being able to localize software so that those who don't speak english can have a lower barrier to scale in order to acquaint themselves with technology a process of isolation? Or are you so blinded by the dominance of the english language to imagine that other languages (in this case spoken by at least 40 million people) don't matter or are not necessary due to the superior nature of english.
What you don't realize is that an acquaintance with technology would help these folks to have a wider exposure to the whole world and consequently make them less parochial and perhaps more friendly in terms of openness to new ideas.
I've also noticed that so many people here keep making the assumption that the fact that its africa means most of them don't have access to computers. I grew up in a west african country and I can tell you that the penetration level of computing is almost 60% in a nation that up till a few years ago could not boast of any reasonable network and thats a country with a population of about 120 million people. Get a grip folks.
Actually I doubt it, 'cause the effect of immigrants that come from countries without a solid education is cancelled by the effect of those that come from a more rigorous background e.g. you could easily discount west african immigrants as a demographic pulling the US down in actual fact they have a more rigorous educational system (apart from those destroyed by war). So I don't think you would see any significant effect in the overall chart.
Why is it that the slashdot editors would rather post "a need for creative stories" than post one where I requested help about creating a new language font and mapping the keyboard to it. Slashdot has gone the way of the dedeine.
...an ISP does not automatically grant any ISP the powers of the FBI...you probably need to read up your philosophy again. Arguments and fallacies would probably make a good start
actually a lot of people from other parts of the world read american books, which gives a lot more insight into american lives than movies do. and yes i've lived in europe, america and i grew up in west africa and there were very few things that surprised me when i got to america. He was basically saying that the average person in other places in the world know a lot more about american than the average american knows about any other country in the world. And we don't pretend to know a lot about america there's nothing to gain for doing that. On the other hand there's a certain kind of swagger (or so it seems)it adds to your steps when you say (in a manner of speaking) "fuck the world". No one makes you guys out to be stupid but please when you're elevated (by virtue of riches or military might)humility goes a long way in making you likeable. And before you go ahead and say we don't owe the world nothing remember that no one/nothing/no empire lasts forever. And a lot of what you guys grew on as per technology came from immigrants enrico fermi/einstein and co. So please read some history and learn that a strong man doesn't need to be agressive around people he can beat, but he does need some friends because you never know what tomorrow would bring.
..wow wow that sounds a bit arrogant. You mean it was the english speaking culture that gave us kepler, galileo, socrates, plato, hippocrates, alexander, mozart, beethoven, and the 'arab' numerals. Get your head outta ya arse...The world didn't start with England it sure as hell wouldn't end with the U.S. despite your vainglorious impetuous opinions to the contrary.
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...or even about cultural diversity. Granted the british empire anglicized as much of the world as they could and it's been beneficial to their economy and the economy of their offshoot (america).
There are a whole lot of people who don't speak english in this world and as their economies grow and become technologically advanced they want to enjoy being able to do things in their own languages.
What is this if they don't do it in our language they are against us mentality?
Fine you guys came up with the internet the same way someone somewhere invented the wheel and so many other things that made it possible to get to where we as a human race are.
What is wrong with someone like me wanting to be able to compose an email in my native language, just because it's fun to use all those african proverbs or to even be able to advertise companies with native names (which include diacritical markings and so on) without having to code for each web browser.
I thought this whole internet thing was supposed to open our minds to what others have to offer.
And as per your implication that only anglophone countries can pay for goods, remember there was a world before britain or america, there'll still be one after they're long gone. The funny thing is that most people in the world don't hate america, in fact they love the success story that is america, but it's people like you that see a demon in every shadow that are turning more and more people toward the belief that americans are generally arrogant. And if you read or know anything about history you'll know that pride usually goes before a fall
Lose the attitude, boss, remember Rome, greece, egypt? they were great too....
I agree with your post and most educated africans do too. However, as long as we are in a global economy and the intelligent and educated africans (read sub-saharan africa) have the opportunity to leave their countries, they will continue to do so in record numbers. I'm nigerian and live in the U.S. and I can tell you that in nigeria there are probably less than 5 neurosurgeons, but there are nigerian neurosurgeons all over the world. The same goes for experts in every field including IT.
Why don't they go home and build their continent you ask? They don't, mostly because of self-preservation (it only costs about $50 to hire an assassin in Nigeria and a country whose attorney general was assassinated without fear of reprisals is not a country anyone with a choice wants to live in).
Let me break it down for most people who don't get it like this. The dictators and political elite so-called that rule in most African countries KNOW that, most people don't want to die for a country they don't have a stake in (wrong but common perception due to the fact that they don't see the gains of those who died before them) but they are willing to kill to hold on to power. As long as that imbalance exists, sub-saharan africa will continue to be the beautiful wasteland that it presently is.
The fault as much as some would like to make it is not the Wests (it's expected that they will look after themselves first i.e. the purpose of a business is to make profit all other considerations come after), it lies solely at the feet of those of us who keep quiet or run away because we don't want to die. Or as one, now dead, but popular nigerian musician (Fela Anikulapo-Kuti) once put it in a track apprioprately titled "Sorrow tears and blood", 'My people sef too dey fear, den no wan die....' .
Actually, for a long time until around '97, most banks or places that could afford it i.e. universities were using mainframes or in the case of colleges unix systems. With windows 95 all that started changing. NT4 especially turned things in Microsofts favour as it was easy like you said to procure illegal copies of said software. Now the only guys who use Linux are hobbyists or techies that are interested in such stuff of which there are only a very few amount of them. Some companies and banks run such systems at their backend but all desktop stuff is primarily windows. If there was an enforcement of the no piracy thing. Nigerians I can assure you would be the first to go OSS because 'awoof' pronounced ah-woof (free as in beer) is what most nigerians desire considering they have to save money for the essentials of life.
Sometimes especially when you're at the mercy of your parents e.g. I grew up in west africa and was way smarter than most of my colleagues but my mom being a teacher insisted that I was better off being 'mature' that moving ahead...it's hard to escape over there because you can't question your folks and opportunities were few and far between...
The problem with averages and race/regional classifications is this: How does it help? Should it be taken into account when allocating federal funding for things like education/healthcare? What happens to the talented individual trapped in the perception of his race/region/class? Should we then take this into account when given people jobs because we have a manual on averages?
Since you're a geek I assume you do know what averages imply. The present averages for any given population is not going to be the same in another time period, but perceptions are not easily removed as they lead to conclusions.
It's hard enough to get the general population to understand technical concepts, so how do we have this kind of discussion without producing bias in the general population who for the most part have a dangerously unclear understanding of anything remotely technical.
I don't have a problem with exploring racial differences even though I'm black but i think any perception about race/region/class leaves out one of the most important characteristics of our humanity that we are first and foremost individuals. That concept is what makes a country like america great due to the fact that it enables individuals to free themselves of the shackles of racial identity and leap to heights hitherto unknown.
I'm west african and contrary to what the book says about people of african descent, I've been opportuned to know a whole lot of african eggheads and you'd be surprised at how intelligent these people are.
The implication that stupid people tend to commit crime I find issue with though. I think crime has more to do with poverty than stupidity.
I do agree that there are gene differences across different groups of people be they seperated by region/diet/race simply because we tend to adapt to our environment and that process of adaptation highlights/produces different characteristics e.g. the way dogs came to look so different from wild dogs/wolves etc was a mystery until some folks decided to domesticate wild foxes by changing they behaviour patterns over several generations only to discover that as the foxes got domesticated the chemical pathways that produced pointy ears and bushy tails changed.
In essence I think culture (which changes BTW)and the environment plays a more important role than genetics since for the most part the environment dictates genetic changes.
Yes you are reading it wrong.
Frankly, it's not the place of the average american to criticize the english speaking capabilities of any other group of people. I know 'cause I came from a Queen's english speaking environment and damn! for a people whose first language is english, y'all murder the language at about 3 * 10^8 times a second.
Since taking over a standard windows installation is trivial. Can you tell me how you would take over a box where you're locked in to limited user priviledges and you can't edit the registry or touch system files?
I've been around the whole spiritual block as it were. I was raised by roman catholic parents, who, by the way didn't start out as Catholics. Mom was from a muslim family so I had a lot of muslim cousins. My father was of the Apostolic denomination. I suspect they 'agreed' to be catholics (i say that because my mom became fascinated with catholicism having gone to a high school run by British/Scottish/Irish nuns so I think it was her idea of a compromise). I got involved with AMORC (Rosicrucians - it's just a modernization if you will of an ancient egyptian religion or bits and pieces of various ones) at age 9/10 through my mom - she was a member for several years. I won't even go into how that ties into Roman Catholicism. Well I got born again in my first semester of college and was serious enough to remain a virgin until I left (or backslid if you prefer the term). I gave you the background because it helps I think to know that I didn't arrive at christianity without having been around the block a few times. Getting back to your question, I gave God 10 years of raw, faithful service, no compromises. Just to let you know, I wasn't practising Christianity in america where it's relatively easier to be a christian, I grew up in Nigeria where to get anything done (even getting a driver's license means you have to bribe somebody) you had to soil your hands, apart from having to deal with family - I'm talking about 50/100 family members as we have an extended family structure unlike anything in the west - or even the voodoo guys and if you've never been to a village evangelism where the local juju man can make a leaf dance to the beats of a drum you probably think voodoo is just balderdash. Point it to be a real Christian was hard with a capital H but I didn't mind 'cause I felt God had my back. Imagine my surprise when after getting an electrical engr degree (everyone that meets me from elementary school till grad school and even out of class are usually impressed by how intelligent I am - not boasting just trying to give you an idea), I couldn't get a decent job, first I thought it was because I was in nigeria and you had to know someone who knew somebody...to get a job, so I packed my bags and came to america got in grad school and even though I was poor did my best to get a simple internship just to be able to afford to live in the basement (i'm not a materialistic person) and pay my rent and afford food and tuition (had to pay as an international student thats about $7k/$8k per semester), but apparently my dear God was nowhere to be found. I prayed fasted. YOu see all those things you see in the bible like fasting without food and water (no orange juice like you guys do here), I've done it before (not because I wanted anything from God by the way, except to just open myself up to Him to use me in anyway He wanted, in college we would go on 24hour prayer binges - on public holidays - just to immerse ourselves in his presence so he could minister through us). I've done 3 days straight several times. I've done 7 days straight once. I know a personal friend (he's a medical doctor now) who did 21 days before, so don't think I chickened out at the first sign of tribulation. God never showed up, now after almost seven years of graduating college, I'm too old to be a first career job hire (i'm 30) so my dream of contributing to the field by getting into telecoms/dsp as a career is not going to materialize anymore. Just in case that sounds contradictory, I was willing to go anywhere, do anything if i was called but as far as I know i wasn't so my thing barring that was to keep doing my one on one preaching and doing my thing in church while practising engineering but look where it got me. So there you go bro. Where is God? Looks to me like I wasted 10 years of my life, it was my choice so I think I was stupid but I don't blame anyone for my situation. To answer the second part of your question, I was evangelical/pentecostal i.e. your regular born-again, bible-believing, holy-ghost filled christian. This is a public board so this is a lot of dirty laundry but once in a while I like to answer that question because I used to ask the same question when I was on the other side.
I'm not a christian anymore....but I used to be a pastor and taught a lot of bible studies in my time, so I think I might be able to help you here. When modern day christians talk about certain things they take most of their cue from the new testament, which (recursively) according to the same new testament is the substance of which the old testament was a shadow Heb 8. Paul is a focal point because he usually interpreted the old testament in his writings and tried to show what they foreshadowed. In Roman 1, he specifically counted homosexuality as one of the grieviances that the christian God had with certain generations. Hence the preoccupation of new testament christians with homosexuality as a perversion of 'Gods' original plan for relationships between man and woman. So while the practitioners of Judaism hold to a lot of the stuff in the old testament, christians are not bound by the literal text of the old testament. The 'spirit of the law' 1st of 2nd Corinthians chapter 3 talks about the danger of literally interpreting the law and instead advocates imbibing the spirit of the law instead. I hope I've been able to throw some light on these things. I might not be as coherent as I'd like to be but you have to blame that on my just having just woken up.
She must be leaning over your shoulder...thats the justification for the compliment, No?
Well said. Some of us who grew up in LDC's have been saying these things for years but apparently those who should know better keep thinking if only they could bid their time, they can save their own hide and enrich their families and as they say in Nigeria "God dey na poor man prayer" meaning it's only the poor and disenfranchised who call on God for justice. If you read Chinua Achebe's book "A man of the people" (I'm sure you can find it in some libraries) he's the guy that wrote "Things fall apart" a very popular literature piece and a response to a book written by an european about 50 years earlier i.e. "Mr Johnson", you will see that some people have been saying the same thing for years. A reading of Wole Soyinka's "The man died" (he's a nobel laureate from Nigeria) also says similar things.
How do you measure how good a person is when he hasn't even got a job to show that he's got the skills in the first place?
Rap is a cultural thing and has nothing to do with ability. It can be arguably said to have roots in different forms of spoken poetry (example ewi in yorubaland - southwestern Nigeria). As for the Bantu migration, there's archaelogical evidence that there were quite a few people in west africa about 2000 bc which would be 2000 yrs before the Bantu migration
I agree with you that affirmative action is a response to a problem i.e. hiring is subjective, hence an employer's views on such things as race, class, politics, gender make a difference in who gets hired. Whether affirmative action/quota is the best possible solution to a complex problem of background/nurture/ideology/opinion is the question. We all know that people would always find ways to get around laws, so legislating a way out is always tricky business. An employer has every right not to hire anyone the interviewer deems unfit for the job and we all know how easy it is to deem someone unfit. So how do you ensure that the interviewers biases don't factor into the final hire decision. I don't dispute the fact that 'underqualified' people get hired in IT but from my experience it's not only IT but the interesting thing is that I also happen to know 'minorities' who possess good/great skills but still don't get those jobs even though going toe to toe with anyone else they'll come out on top. So as much as I do understand the basis for resentment, the reality is that no self-respecting intelligent minority likes to be seen as having a job simply because of his/her race. As long as a you have the situation highlighted by the MIT research that indicated that if you had a particular kind of name there was a greater likelihood that your resume would be passed over you've got to admit we have a problem. At the same time, you don't have to look very far to find those cliques where a minority gets passed over for the high flying management jobs not because of his lack of skills or ability but simply because 'they' are already 'represented' and you can't help but wonder where it will all end. Blame trading won't change the situation and even though resentment and a racist reaction might seem to have a basis, until we come up with a better system none of us really has a justification for perpetuating the cycle. It's all well and good to highlight the problems with a particular system but you need to proffer a possibly better solution before you can expect to be taken seriously.
"Why is it progress to do something to insure that more people are isolated from one another?" Is being able to localize software so that those who don't speak english can have a lower barrier to scale in order to acquaint themselves with technology a process of isolation? Or are you so blinded by the dominance of the english language to imagine that other languages (in this case spoken by at least 40 million people) don't matter or are not necessary due to the superior nature of english. What you don't realize is that an acquaintance with technology would help these folks to have a wider exposure to the whole world and consequently make them less parochial and perhaps more friendly in terms of openness to new ideas. I've also noticed that so many people here keep making the assumption that the fact that its africa means most of them don't have access to computers. I grew up in a west african country and I can tell you that the penetration level of computing is almost 60% in a nation that up till a few years ago could not boast of any reasonable network and thats a country with a population of about 120 million people. Get a grip folks.
An interesting observation
Actually I doubt it, 'cause the effect of immigrants that come from countries without a solid education is cancelled by the effect of those that come from a more rigorous background e.g. you could easily discount west african immigrants as a demographic pulling the US down in actual fact they have a more rigorous educational system (apart from those destroyed by war). So I don't think you would see any significant effect in the overall chart.
I'd like to know your charging structure as I'd like to start something like that too.
Why is it that the slashdot editors would rather post "a need for creative stories" than post one where I requested help about creating a new language font and mapping the keyboard to it. Slashdot has gone the way of the dedeine.
...an ISP does not automatically grant any ISP the powers of the FBI...you probably need to read up your philosophy again. Arguments and fallacies would probably make a good start
actually a lot of people from other parts of the world read american books, which gives a lot more insight into american lives than movies do. and yes i've lived in europe, america and i grew up in west africa and there were very few things that surprised me when i got to america. He was basically saying that the average person in other places in the world know a lot more about american than the average american knows about any other country in the world. And we don't pretend to know a lot about america there's nothing to gain for doing that. On the other hand there's a certain kind of swagger (or so it seems)it adds to your steps when you say (in a manner of speaking) "fuck the world". No one makes you guys out to be stupid but please when you're elevated (by virtue of riches or military might)humility goes a long way in making you likeable. And before you go ahead and say we don't owe the world nothing remember that no one/nothing/no empire lasts forever. And a lot of what you guys grew on as per technology came from immigrants enrico fermi/einstein and co. So please read some history and learn that a strong man doesn't need to be agressive around people he can beat, but he does need some friends because you never know what tomorrow would bring.
...you're no good at sex...hmmm
The Discover article is here http://www.discover.com/issues/jul-04/departments/ biomechanics-of-cockroaches/
Reg required though.
..wow wow that sounds a bit arrogant. You mean it was the english speaking culture that gave us kepler, galileo, socrates, plato, hippocrates, alexander, mozart, beethoven, and the 'arab' numerals. Get your head outta ya arse...The world didn't start with England it sure as hell wouldn't end with the U.S. despite your vainglorious impetuous opinions to the contrary.