Honestly, I'd prefer to live in a world where people are overly politically correct to one where people overtly threw racist slurs at each other. But it definitely makes you wonder if people should just stop and think for a second in cases like that.
Then again, the raccoons out here are terrifying—the size of small dogs, and they love darting in front of bikers.
I was born in New Orleans.
Most of the South is not Politically Correct, that's more of a [Pejorative] Yankee thing.
Fair enough. I was born in San Francisco, so I get very uncomfortable around a lot of language that's apparently far more normal in some parts of the country.
If I remember correctly from watching Law and Order, "coon" is some kind of racial slur?
I have a friend who grew up in Tennessee. He...did not like it. I didn't really have any problems growing up in Georgia though. But I grew up close to Atlanta and tend to be somewhat oblivious.
Also, I'm sure there are people who hate raccoons. Namely the people who have to deal with raccoons getting in to their trash or taking over their attics.
The problem, to me, with people who are overly politically correct, is they cause as much harm as people who are racist. That is, riling up a whole community over a perceived slight is far worse than one old man who was born 80 years ago and can't remember that the word he uses for black or asian or white people is now considered racist, when it wasn't back then. (Example : Colored is considered racist now, but, when it replaced Negro, it was considered politically correct. I'm sure African American will be racist in 20 years, and there will be some other politcally correct name that will be racist in 40).
There are also some major double standards that undermine PC, yet the PC crowd never calls anyone out for them. For example, using the N-word is perfectly acceptable in Rap music. However, using it in a comedy act is verboten (unless you are black).
On the other hand, using the term 'Honkey' or 'Cracker' is fine even if you are black, and Red-Neck is a slur, but it's used by everyone and nobody get's upset about it.
To me, the biggest problem with overly PC is that people who want to be PC don't actually want to be PC, they want to be treated better than other people via PC, but still have the right to treat others worse. Pox on the whole mess. I'd prefer a world where we let bigots and idiots stew in their own juices, and didn't take offense at every little thing. It's very hard to be friends when you take offense to every perceived slight. *shrug*
Yes, it's about the same level as the n-word.
And yes, raccoon's can be a huge pain in the butt. I'd still never kill one. It's hard to kill something that looks like a clever little person, has opposable thumbs, and can pick locks better than I can.
On a less political note...
I think I forgot to link you guys to the picture of the Shroom bartender.
And yes, they do glow, I forgot to mention that.
EDIT : Shroom in bright light They only glow in the dark.
Yeah... the problem with terms like "colored" is that a lot of it has to do with the respect with which such terms are used. (Honestly, I'm bothered by anyone saying the N-word, no matter who they are). A huge amount of language is intent, and as someone who got called a lot of names as a kid, my feeling is, if someone calls you by a word you don't like out of ignorance, you should tell them you don't like being called that. And then they should respect your feelings, and not use the name that bothers you. It's just how adults are supposed to behave.
My freshman roommate in college used to say "that's so gay" pejoratively all the time. It honestly bothered me, and I asked him to stop, and he did, and it wasn't a problem for either of us (though he was gay, and I wasn't).
If someone calls me a "honkey," I will definitely tell them it's not okay. I also generally tell people that I consider "dumb blonde" jokes to be in poor sport (seriously, every one of them works just as well if you replace the term "blonde" with "idiot," and the only reason the original joke uses hair color at all is a casual and subconscious racism not tied to the humor in any way).
* * *
Then again, I've seen friends have slurs hurled at them by strangers on the subway for no reason, and it hurt them. I remember most of my mother's horror stories about working as a female lawyer at a dozen different major law firms in the '70s, and the constant conversations she was forced to sit through as her male colleagues and bosses opened meetings by commenting on the secretaries' breasts. I've had, on multiple occasions, people shout multiple anti-gay slurs at me out of moving cars and throw things just because I was walking along the sidewalk at night while wearing a purple suit in the wrong city. I went to a high school which, though usually very progressive, had at one point two students in the computer lab replace the entire Wikipedia article on Black History Month with the two words "f+$@ing coons," to the point where the entire block's IP address was banned from wikipedia edits for two weeks and our principal got an angry letter from someone at the Wikimedia Foundation.
And I honestly don't know of anyone who's been hurt in any way by political correctness past "general annoyance"; so I tend to err on that side.
"Cracker" just gave me an idea: I think my rapper name will be "Graham Cracker." Although perhaps graham crackers are more brown than yellow. Hmmm... (I'm half Asian, half white)
It's interesting that "racist" terms seem to be going the way of "everything is racist!" while a lot of queer terms are going in the other direction. IIRC, "queer" used to be offensive, but, to my knowledge, has since been reclaimed.
I generally try not to think too much about political correctness or minority politics in general. It just hurts my brain too much. Like when you start trying to discuss if people not in a minority's opinions on minority matters count or not. I've definitely seen people be like "You're not *insert group here* so you can't possibly understand/are wrong!" Which I feel like is sometimes legit, but tends to also be used to dismiss someone's arguments out of hand regardless of their validity. And I personally am horrible at recognizing actually decent arguments from logical fallacies.
Being from the south, I've seen Politically Correct run amok, so it really is your background. What I've never seen run amok is people realizing that the racist/misogynist/homophobe is a pile of $hit who should be ignored (unless they've become violent, in which case, we have laws for that).
I've also seen people fired or belittled or minimized and hurt because they didn't jump on whatever band wagon was currently making the rounds, called racist/mysognists/homophobes.
Personally, I think the Supreme Court did a wonderful thing in both Loving vs Virginia, and also in the more recent Obergefell v. Hodges. I think people should have the right to marry any consenting adult they want. By the same token, I think calling people who say they believe it's wrong bigots and homophobes is wrong as well. If someone has a true belief that it is, (be it religious, biologically derived (IE: it removes genes from the gene pool), or some other belief system) then that's their right. They just don't have the right to force that belief on others anymore than I have the right to force my belief's on them. Political Correctness is often more about forcing others to believe something, at least now days. The only people I have a real problem with are people who try to force their views on others. That always chaps my hide, no matter what their beliefs are.
Sure, sure. I also tend to not associate with people who get overexcited about these things on either side of the aisle, so what I'm used to is mostly people being very reasonable about explaining to each other when they feel offended by a statement or group and generally finding middle-ground through the help of the relevant community—which may not be an option everywhere.
Yep. Like I said, depends on your experiences. :)
Oh, and another Shroom/Phaitai.
Wow... the Phaitai are way more metal than I thought. I was picturing something like this.
Interesting that you should pick that image; I'm currently watching a later season of Stargate SG1 with Claudia Black and Ben Browder.
@mdt: Where do you find all these images? Do you just Google for stuff, or do you find images and then add characters based on them?
Mix of both.
In the case of the Raptors, knew what I wanted, went and looked for artwork for them.
For the Phaitai, knew I wanted mushroom people, went and searched, found those. They have 4 arms because the artwork had 4 arms. :)
In my space game, I wanted hexapeds, and went and looked for them. Found some artwork I liked, and created the species.
'Pretty pictures' is actually a rather common hobby. I have a relatively small collection; he seems to have a gargantuan one. :) He may even be adept at the photoshop!
As for politically correct... I kind of feel that way, too. But I suffer from a major problem: I absolutely -panic- when I think I've offended someone. My mind just kind of shuts off, and I try to fix it, correct it, or make an excuse of some sort, which works about as well as you might think when I'm in a blind panic. :P I also tend to hold onto emotions for a -very- long time, when others have probably just gotten over them. :(
Of course, that's assuming offense isn't the intent. I tend to be offensive in my humor with the people I like. I like to tease. :) Even still, there's still that little panic in the background, that I -assume- is why I enjoy it. :p
I definitely agree though, that reverse-racism has gotten out of hand. I read an article about how going to an Ivy League college is incredibly racist: Yales metrics look something like this, with me just swapping the 1600 of SAT to something more manageable numerically of a 0-100 scale:
The average person who attends Yale will have the following score on their SATs based on race:
Asians: 94%
Whites: 84%
Hispanic: 74%
African: 64%
That's not -exactly- correct, as you can see, I only did a 10% jump, but the 94 and 64, if I recall correctly are the right numbers. Asian folks get turned away from Ivy League Schools because they 'look too asian' and they want their schools to be a 'melting pot'. :|
The college thing is... really, really, really not that simple. Speaking as someone who didn't get into Yale, but whose SAT scores fell far above any of those percentages...
The "84%" score cut-off you mention includes about 30,000-40,000 students. Yale accepts around 3,000-4,000—which means that, while the average white student who gets in there might have that score, there will be 5-10 students of the same race with similar scores who were rejected.
While many admissions officers will tell you that they don't have a "required SAT score," a lower than expected score is often a red flag; and some will admit that they don't even bother reading admissions with a score below a certain cut-off, unless something jumps out immediately. Often, that "cut-off" will be lower for public schools than private or boarding schools, because college admissions officers are well-aware that such schools often have extensive college prep programs. For instance: my mother bought me a $40 SAT prep book, I studied with it for two weeks, at the end of which my score on the practice tests went up by quite a bit. I also benefitted greatly on the verbal section by studying Latin in school, something many high schools don't offer.
Meanwhile, grades, extracurricular activities and courses chosen, and teacher recommendations are all generally considered more important than scores (at least, above the "red flag" percentage). Students from disadvantaged backgrounds are more likely to attend poor high schools, with poor SAT prep opportunities—but in those environments, if they are equally smart, they will stick out more, earning higher grades (because of curves) and glowing recommendations from teachers who really want to see them succeed in their educational careers and think they deserve better opportunities.
This is part of the problem with people who have taken schools to court over affirmative action (and in some cases won, and some lost); generally, disadvantaged students with rough backgrounds that can be explained will have circumstances that compensate for that (higher grades at a failing school, stronger recommendations, or admissions officers assuming fewer SAT prep classes) and will get farther on a lower base SAT score. This is a naturally-correcting function of the system, and has historically happened even in militantly race-blind admissions processes—students from backgrounds that focus more on test scores will need higher average test scores to be accepted, as other parts of their application might suffer, et cetera.
I won't get into it too much here—but, speaking as a statistician, "reverse racism" in our society exists mostly as a strawman argument. Almost every industry in America has huge, systemic discrimination problems (there are some truly terrifying studies and lawsuits about this, if you dig deeply enough). In the case of college admissions, essentially, admissions officers who haven't undergone sensitivity/affirmative action training of some kind are significantly more likely to pick a white applicant than any other applicant of identical qualifications, and this is the case in most hiring practices as well.
As a white male, I find the statement that 'reverse racism is a strawman' argument to be mildly insulting (actually, more than that, but I'm trying to be nice as this is a PBP). I have had to fight it my entire career. I have worked very hard to get where I am.
However, I have had people promoted to my same job title because they were minorities, or because they were female. Ironically enough, they were paid less than me, and it was justified as 'well, they got in because we needed the quota'.
When I am in a company, and the black woman quits, and the new hire is a black woman as well, and this is the tech industry, you tell me the chances that out of the 80 applicants for the job (and I know it was more than that, I screened 15 resumes myself, and everyone had to screen a dozen or so, 6 people...), not only was 'nobody qualified' in those resumes, but we went out to recruiters and solicited them, and somehow, the one person out of 200 people (between our search and the recruiters) just happened to be a black female?
Sorry, not buying it. Another time, a black male was terminated because he lied on his resume. His replacement was a latino female. Every time a minority employee left or was terminated, the replacement was a minority. After the 3rd or 4th time, you can't tell me it wasn't someone getting the job because of their minority status. Oh, and the guy who lied on his resume? He replaced the second black female in the above anecdote.
There is also the reverse racism that if I don't agree someone else who is white is a racist, I am a racist (see Trayvon Martin shooting). I had someone tell me I was a racist because I said there wasn't enough information to tell who was in the wrong.
Every time I've gone through a resume, or done an interview, I've tried to do it via phone, so that the person's race doesn't matter. If I could do away with gender I would, but it's hard to avoid that hearing voices. Because it shouldn't matter. Any time someone is penalized or granted special favortism because of Race, Gender, or Creed, it is discrimination. It should not happen to anyone, for any reason.
People who claim 'reverse racism' is a strawman are really saying they are ok with people being discriminated against as long as it is people they think it's ok to discriminate against. Discrimination is wrong no matter how you do it and no matter how good you think your intentions are. It's kind of like torture, no matter how good your intentions are, the ends do not justify the means. The ends never justify the means.
Hmm. I apologize, then. When I said "mostly a strawman," I wasn't trying to refer to personal experiences—I just meant that, when I hear the concept of "reverse racism" used in an argument, I've usually heard it used in a broad context of people describing political situations they are not a part of, where the actual statistics suggest a trend in the opposite direction. Specifically, I get very angry when I hear the argument "racism is over, now we need to push back in the other direction"—which I don't think anyone here's made—but which I'm familiar enough with to reflexively respond to.
* * *
First of all, I've spent a large portion of my life being taught, academically, not to acknowledge or rely on personal anecdotes of my own, so I can't offer many there. It sounds like your company had serious issues with this—a management structure that can say "let's hire minorities, because we can pay them less" is being racist against everyone, white and nonwhite alike. It's absolutely problematic. (There are legitimate economic arguments for racial equality, very good ones, and they say at the end of the day you should be paying and hiring people based solely on the quality of the work).
I may be totally off base here, but without knowing the details, I could guess a few possibilities for the problems at your company. Perhaps there was a lawsuit or threatened settlement at some point in the past that drove someone higher-up to demand a certain "minority quota," which is the sort of thing that unless applied carefully and vertically can easily get out of hand. It sounds like this may well have been a company that implied to some of its minority employees that they were getting paid less for lower quality work, or that implied during interviews they might be "quota hires." This is the sort of thing that's very good at demoralizing employees, and may have driven some of said employees to quit or perform subpar work out of a lack of commitment to the company. If the policy is based on "quotas" to begin with, a higher turnover of minority employees means that to keep the same number, your bosses need to hire them disproportionately, and that's one way you can wind up with a system that looks bad from all angles.
* * *
The statistics I've been able to find on this are actually rather interesting, in addition to being depressing. The first three publicly-available studies (from this decade) that show up with a bit of active googling (1), (2), (3) all demonstrate clear hiring biases based on race or photos of identical employees. But all of them look at entire fields, and none at single companies. Overall, there is sweeping hiring preference for "whiter" employee names and photos across the labor market, to a troubling extent, but interestingly (and I didn't know this until now), the tech industry appears the be the one industry with no industry-wide racial hiring bias.
But that's not to say that there's no discrimination in the tech industry—it just means that, for every company in your field that tries to hire more white people than it should, there's a company with the problems you've seen, and from a top-level study they seem to cancel it out.
More realistically applying this, there are almost certainly going to be companies with badly-applied "quota" systems across fields; and also companies with (often subconscious) slightly-racist hiring companies. There just happen to be, if you average all industries, a lot more cases of "traditional racism" than "reverse racism." From where I stand, at least, it doesn't make sense to say one is right and one is wrong—just that one is an issue that affects more people than the others, and we should devote some portion of our national attention and resources to combating "traditional racism" while a smaller portion of resources are devoted to "reverse racism." To the best of my understanding, though, we have two political parties in this country that have taken equal and opposite views on the issue, which means that, as far as I can tell, there are proportionally far more resources devoted to combatting "reverse racism" per instance of discrimination than there are resources devoted to combatting the "traditional racism" that still exists.
(So I guess instead of "strawman" I should have said "statistically over-touted issue," but in the same vein deaths from West Nile Virus are statistically over-touted vs. deaths from failure to wear a seatbelt, when both are preventable tragedies that in a perfect world both deserve more attention)
In the interest of full disclosure, I'm also a white male, but I'm in a field (Chemical Engineering) that's 70% white, 2% black, and 90% male, and for those of us coming from a more diverse college background the transition has been a bit of an unpleasant culture shock.
* * *
The Trayvon Martin thing is a whole, very different, can of worms. I'm not going to argue my opinions on that case with people, and I haven't in the past. What I do know is the statistics that racial minorities are far more often the victims of controversially "stand-your-ground" and "self-defense" homicides (as well as instances of police brutality, though that's a different related issue), and that lighter-skinned defendants are substantially more likely to be exonerated under said defense or given shorter sentences. In the circles I run in, I saw people take both sides on the case (admittedly, one more than the other), but I also saw very few people called racist for having an opinion on George Zimmerman's innocence, and a lot more people accused of "racist politics" for claiming that stand-your-ground itself was a flawed legal system that needed to be addressed.
It's one data point, and those are much, much harder to rule one way or the other than the trends they make up. What's more troubling to me is the recent Dylan Roof shootings—we have a man who told anyone listening that he was committing a racial hate crime and domestic terrorism, with much of the media in the weeks afterwards refusing to report on the attack as racially-motivated (or even being perpetrated with a reason in mind). The case I've seen made in response to that is that denying the existence of racism in a system is, itself, racist-enabling behavior, followed by a debate on whether it should also be considered racism to thusly deny point-of-fact evidence of racism.
Of course, that one also goes both ways. Yes, there is a lot of racial bias all around us, some conscious, some unconscious, in every direction. Denying any component of that, in any direction, is at the very least insensitive to some extent—but it's unreasonable to assume that most people don't carry a bias of some kind, and I do think it's troubling that we continue to refuse as a country to have the discussions on that that we should be.
I guess by the case I made earlier, I am thus guilty of ignoring a section of racial inequality, as I just describe. I just generally figure our country's subconscious dealings with race are so messed up that the best I can do personally is point out what, statistically speaking, are the biggest issues, and point them out to people who I worry aren't aware of to what extent different problems exist.
Well... I'm not into statistics. I'm just a poor white kid who was the first person in my family to Ever go to college, and it simply wasn't something I could afford. I'm the first person in three generations to own property. I've worked my butt off for Years and I simply don't have any other options. Two alcoholic parents, one of which skipped out when I was seven, and thirteen different houses, and eight different schools growing up.
I was number ten in my class, because while not the most intelligent, school offered me escape and praise. So I did well. I listened to good authority figures. I didn't apply myself as much as I should have, but hey.
I had enough money my freshman year to go to college -while- working to pay the majority of the bills for my now-disabled mother (she, like myself currently, worked herself into the ground).
Meanwhile, an African American kid, with two parents pulling 75k a year, a C student, gets a full ride, including his boarding -and- stipends for food and such, at the same college I couldn't afford.
I'm not saying racism is a thing, but affirmative action legitimately hurts people. And I'm honestly afraid to say that in public, or even to some of my friends, because I'm a white, cis-gendered, employed male, and I couldn't possibly understand struggle or strife. : /
Frankly, it's depressing. It's hard being treated like you're part of the problem, and being constantly told that you don't deserve as many chances because you Don't need them. The fact that we treat race like it is a bias aside from specific genes having been prioritized, to me... is kind of criminal. Genetics specifically grant advantages, and if you ask anthropologists, they'll tell you that race makes a difference, but culture is a bigger deal. And I grew up in a culture where 9/10 kids amount to nothing.
And I think the worst part is, despite a constant struggle with depression, with self-worth, and with simply paying my bills while finding things I can enjoy... I'm not even sure being one in ten is an accomplishment. :(
So... Yeah, I understand that racism and sexism are real, but I truly believe that affirmative action (the politically correct term) is made from and -engenders- racism. The fact that it exists can make a white kid like me, who thinks he was passed over because of the color of his skin, a little spiteful.
That being said... I don't think race matters in the grand scheme. Or sex. I definitely give better treatment to women (though I'm aware of it), my upbringing makes me distrustful, and a bit afraid of men. It's a psychological thing. But I also know the reverse is true. Everyone is going to be biased in some way... And I think that in the end, it all breaks pretty much even.
Hmm. All the colleges I looked at, when applying, offered scholarships *only* based on financial need. (Or, in one or two cases, also had merit scholarships based solely on PSAT scores). It's possible that that's a sign of changing times, or the region in which schools are located, but I've never heard of anyone I know dealing with affirmative-action based *scholarships* in any way.
The one person I knew in college who had the most trouble with tuition was a woman whose parents, both wealthy doctors, were of the opinion that "we came from poor black families and found a way to pay for college ourselves, and you should do so too, it builds character," leaving her with a whole lot of piling debt.
Also, by no means do I think racism is fine or nonexistent (simply look at our prison population for further details), nor do I think it's okay. I do think, however, that race is over represented, and socio-economic background is under-represented... And obviously would be, because 'class-warfare' is frowned upon by the majority of people who have the money to perform studies. As for homicides and the like... that's a whole other can of worms. I'd prefer media didn't report anything about the accused killer until post sentencing (or acquittal). I personally think it should be illegal for 'innocent until proven guilty' people to appear in the media. It creates biases, and my family was a victim of a 'golden snitch' pointing the finger at us a decade ago. Our already unstable life got flipped upside down as our own family turned on us due to drug accusations by a known drug addict who is paid by the police force to point fingers at their 'dealer'. Why they would believe this would work, I have no idea. Incentives to people who take advantage of people -to take advantage of people- are untrustworthy systems.
That being said, if you could get me a high school readable report, as opposed to college... it'd be appreciated. It's too dry as is.
And maybe they were grants or naacp things. I just know that they announced he had a full ride during graduation (along with our top two)
Also, the idea of 'I made it myself' is a hilarious notion. Forty years ago, college tuition for a year cost about the same as a summer job. And had a higher probability of netting you a job. Now, at minimum wage, from my understanding, without any other bills, it would take you two years per year to pay for college.
Erp. I'll chime in with my thoughts on the issue later tonight, if I can't sleep :P
But I'll say while we don't have as *much* racial tensions over here (probably due to the lack of such history. Most people wasn't interested in moving *to* sweden except perhaps the last 50 years), there is still plenty. And gender inequality has been a hot topic bounced back and forth for the last few years too.
I love hearing opinions. :) So I'd love to see what you have to say. (side note: You don't have to worry about me holding a grudge based on a difference of opinions. You'll get me panicking to explain myself, or me leaving you be. I'll secretly deride you, though, and laugh with much gusto. :p)
I'll just repeat again, 'affirmative action' is just 'racism I like'. The ends never justify the means. People should be judged on themselves, not quotas, not skin color.
I also tend to hold onto emotions for a -very- long time, when others have probably just gotten over them. :(
I totally do this too! Like, I was getting kind of upset over everybody killing me in Coup, so when we switched to playing Shadow Hunters, I was kind of b&&#%y to someone who was trying to kill me because she mistakenly thought we were on different teams even though we were allies. I apologized to her afterwards, but I felt terrible about it for months afterwards even though she acted totally cool about it.
Of course, on the flip side of that, I also tend to hold on to grudges for years. But that's actually pretty rare.
-----
As a minority in my field, I sometimes wonder how much advantage I get over that. On the one hand, I'll take whatever help I can get. But on the other hand, I really don't deserve it because I've never in any way felt disadvantaged by it. I mean, sure, it's possible there were subtle things that I wouldn't have noticed. But still don't really feel like I deserve special treatment.
The only part of my identity that I've ever felt disparaged for was the fact that I grew up in the South (although this is actually super lucky as the fact that I haven't suffered more kind of surprises me). And I can see it in my word choices as I actively try not to sound Southern (it helps that I don't really have a Southern accent). I remember at orientation my freshman year of college the dean of diversity made a point to ask students from the South to raise their hands. He then followed that up by saying that that people from the South aren't stupid or something along those lines to combat that stereotype. It made me really happy. Although I still tended to be surrounded by people who focused more on the homophobic/negative Southern stereotypes, which was unpleasant. And not helped by the fact that another guy had first hand negative stereotypical experiences. But it makes me sad that I hear all this negativity, but people don't really mention the Southern hospitality stereotype. :-(
As for college admissions, I tend to think that affirmative action should be based more on economics than race. I mean, I've heard there's a correlation, which is fine by me (by which I mean that I'm fine if that means more black people get in to college, not that I'm fine with more black people being poor). But I remember being confused that an African American guy at my high school got in to Harvard despite not being in any of the honors or AP classes. And I mean, I went to a private high school where most of the students came from pretty affluent families. I'm not convinced he was more disadvantaged than some poor white kid going to public school.
On a related note, implicit bias test. It's interesting, but I'm sure it has flaws. Like, the last time I took a couple of them, I was convinced that my responses had a familiarity bias that wasn't taken in to account.
I apparently have a moderate bias towards black as compared to white. I feel this is inaccurate because had they swapped 'good and bad' I'd have had the same difficulty of sorting to the wrong side. But maybe that's just me.
Actually, is that what familiarity bias is? That I was pushing the wrong button because I was remembering left v. right as opposed to right v. left? Because that's -really- what was tripping me up; I'm a gamer. You can't just switch my buttons like that. :p
I'm not actually sure if "familiarity bias" is an actual term. I was using it to mean that, for example with the religion test, I'm a lot more familiar with terms related to Christianity than Buddhism. As such, there's a tight coupling in my brain between, say, "Jesus" and "Christianity," but I had never heard of "Dharma" before, which is apparently a Buddhist term. That made it a lot easier to categorize Christian terms than Buddhist ones.
I would describe your problem as more of a learning bias where initially you're just learning, but once they switch the controls you have to both learn the new mapping and unlearn the previous one. I assume the reason they switch controls is in case you have some innate bias towards left or right (possibly related to which is your dominant hand?).
Hm. Perhaps. I think that kind of creates the problem I experienced, though. That rather than thinking quickly, I had to remember that I was pressing the wrong button -after- I'd pressed the button.
Also, on a less charged topic: It's not that I love raccoons. It's that everyone should. Also, Imgur loves raccoons, and that's how I spend my bits of downtime at work when there aren't posts to respond to.
Also, on the note of 'responding', Neri is content to listen at the moment. :)
It's an ordering effect. It may skew your personal results, but they probably randomize it across different people, so it balances out in the end. Because I'm assuming they're collecting the data to use for something. Or, at least, that they were collecting data at some point. They're not necessarily still looking at it.
Re: Things to do in your downtime- Someone at my work posted this yesterday.
Johnny is also fine listening for now.
I do think, however, that race is over represented, and socio-economic background is under-represented... And obviously would be, because 'class-warfare' is frowned upon by the majority of people who have the money to perform studies.
Oh—but there's just as much research done on how socio-economic background matters, social mobility is decreasing in this country, etc.—it's just that "class warfare" is one of those buzzwords politicians call out to shut down any real discussion of the issue. And when the vast majority of economists think we should be taxing the rich more and everyone else less than we are now, raising the inheritance tax on large estates, subsidizing all birth control, and reducing the tax credits for having multiple children... it's the small minority of other economists who tend to actually get the ear of politicians.
(By "high school readable," do you mean the press releases accompanying those articles? Because those are generally easier to find)
And maybe they were grants or naacp things. I just know that they announced he had a full ride during graduation (along with our top two)
Well... that definitely just seems mean—announcing at graduation "let's introduce all the people who made less than you." I do remember in undergrad there was sort of a status contest among some of my friends to see who was on the most need-based aid (at a school where, granted, ~70% of people were on some degree of aid). There was sort of a feeling of "with tuition what it is, if you can pay it without qualifying for aid your parents must be so rich that you have no problems in life," which I'm not sure I agreed with.
If it was only one student... there are a lot of specialty scholarships in this country that affect a few people. There's one full-ride scholarship solely for eight Jewish orphans a year studying aerospace engineering at California state schools (I actually almost qualified for that one :/). But in that case it's usually someone specifically donating money to set up a trust for such a fund, leaving strict instructions for whose tuition it can pay for.
But I'll say while we don't have as *much* racial tensions over here (probably due to the lack of such history. Most people wasn't interested in moving *to* sweden except perhaps the last 50 years), there is still plenty. And gender inequality has been a hot topic bounced back and forth for the last few years too.
Scandinavia, IIRC, is pretty good on gender equality in the Western world. Versus continental Europe, America tends to have a lot more systemic racism, but (interestingly) a lot less racially-based hate crime (though potentially more gender/sexuality based crime, I'm not positive about that one).
I'll just repeat again, 'affirmative action' is just 'racism I like'. The ends never justify the means. People should be judged on themselves, not quotas, not skin color.
Racial quotas tend to get banned by law in most places they pop up. I'm used to seeing the term "reverse racism" pop up in other areas as well, such as when it was used as the justification for a proposed law in California that would have essentially let the state police stop collecting race data on people they pulled over (and thus overturn the state safeguards against racial profiling).
The intent of affirmative action (though yes, it rarely turns out this way), is to have a system in place where people looking at candidates for something, every time they see a candidate, reminds them that "this person is a minority, am I subconsciously judging them for that, I should think about it before I move on to the next one." But it's very hard to train people to actually do that, which means institutions look for easier work-arounds that can be more problematic.
The only part of my identity that I've ever felt disparaged for was the fact that I grew up in the South (although this is actually super lucky as the fact that I haven't suffered more kind of surprises me). And I can see it in my word choices as I actively try not to sound Southern (it helps that I don't really have a Southern accent).
THIS I've seen a lot of, ever since moving back to California. It's definitely problematic, and I try to point it out as not okay when I see it (there are some governmental figures and laws in other states I have a poor opinion of, but I try not to let that spread to actual people). I've also seen teasing of people based solely on their political party affiliation, but that's the sort of thing that happens everywhere.
By 'High School Readable' I mean 'Explain it to me like I'm five.' :P
More specifically, I do wonder if their artificial controls (throwing out the very low and very high outliers) doesn't innately skew the test. I understand that's just a basic thing to do, removing outliers, but I don't agree with it.
:P I'm not sure you'd like me as much offline, Thunderbeard. I'm of the mindset that -nothing- is off-limits when it comes to humor, unless it upsets someone. If I offend someone, I'll apologize and explain my reasoning: For the most part, I enjoy dark humor, making fun of racism, sexism... and well... everything.
I spent seven years in Michigan, and then spent the following 20ish in Tennessee. I never -really- picked up the accent. I have a slight twang, but like Johnny, I managed to avoid picking it up in its entirety. :) As a result, I have an accent that's 'vaguely southern, but very hard to place'. It's neat.
I think one major problem in the recruitment practices is that visuals are used at all: I think it's fine if they're going to be a spokesperson or something. Totally. Then you are legitimately hiring someone for their looks. But if it's someone who's going to be sitting behind a computer all day... -why-.
If people are willing to acknowledge jokes are racist before they tell them, it takes away most of the problems I have with it.
To continue that conversation, though, as someone who wrote a daily comic and was a member of a stand-up group in college—I have zero sympathy for comedians who get in trouble for telling racist jokes and then cry foul. Professional comedy is about entertaining your audience, not about telling the jokes *you personally* think are funny; comedians that claim their "freedom of speech" is being violated by boycotts or protests are making the amateurish mistake of forgetting that. There are many, many jokes out there, and I just figure it's worth choosing them for your audience—just like many people don't like puns, a lot of other people don't like racial jokes.
But a willingness to apologize is something that most of America seems to lack, and that's what bothers me far more often in this country.
There's actually a lot of books on humor theory out there, which are really interesting and the sort of thing I recommend to people considering going into comedy, but that's probably tangential.
Freedom of speech offers no protection from people thinking you're a jerk. It's only a government thing. And even then, it can in fact be labeled as hate speech if you cross too many lines.
I'm sorry, but I apologize too much. Sorry.
Not really, it's only tangential if you don't want the conversation to organically go onwards along the path it would normally take. :P
Things that make me uncomfortable often make me laugh. It's a panic response in some instances... but that panic response slowly becoming something humorous helps out a -lot- with fight or flight reactions. On the topic of 'not saying sorry enough', I also think 'people get offended too easily'. When I'm afraid to tell a coworker I like her new haircut -because people have been labeled for sexual harassment for things like that-, there's a problem with sensitivity in more ways than one. :)
*skims text*
Ooooh you are on the topic of inappropriate humour! Lemme at it!
XD
I am a horrible person. I saw it coming. I knew I was going to laugh. I clicked. I laughed.
That's nothing. If you want really inappropriate...
One can rootbeer, one baby, one blender...
We used to have an instructor in speech class in college, lo many years ago. Every class period he put a horribly inappropriate joke on the board. The idea was to learn that people are going to say things you don't like, things that make you uncomfortable, and things that make you laugh even though you really don't think you should.
His theory was you learned to handle those types of situations by handling those types of situations. Three times a week, five minutes on how to handle the given joke, how to respond to the person telling it based on social factors, etc.
Surprisingly effective, and totally couldn't be done now days thanks to PC. Not that the jokes don't get told, it's just we can't talk about them or how to respond to them appropriately due to PCitus infecting universities. About as stupid as 'zero tolerance' policies that are really 'zero thought' and 'zero responsibility' policies that end up with 5yo's suspended for making finger gun symbols or arrested for sexual harrassment for kissing the teacher. *sigh*
Some people take freedom of speech too far. There's this one religious group that really upsets my mom. Apparently they will go to the funerals of people who died due to military service and protest. Which apparently includes loudly thanking God for killing that person.
Someone will get offended at pretty much anything. And the problem with things like sexual harassment is that, not I could be completely remembering this wrong, the standard is sort of a "How would an average person respond to this?" which is super vague and wishy-washy timey-whimy.
My male undergrad dance instructor made a joke about it once; that he'd go out dancing and his follow will do something really cool, and he'll really want to be like, "Yeah! That was awesome!" But he doesn't want to make her feel uncomfortable, so maybe he'll go 10 feet away and tell her. Or maybe he'll tap a friend on the shoulder ask ask him to deliver the message.
Also, on the topic of sexual harassment, a friend of mine on G+ posted this. Because I have a lot of friends who are into this sort of post.
Another friend posted this. Which I found interesting largely because I was not expecting it to go in that direction (the article I originally read ended with the tagline rather than starting it). Also because I find new ways of looking at things interesting regardless of if I agree with them or not.
I think it really speaks for itself. I hate how little we trust kids and teenagers. It's like we treat thinking human beings as if they can't understand basic concepts; trust me, the kid was probably dealing with that for 7 or more years. He knows more about it than you do.
You're speaking of Westboro Baptist, probably. Basic gist is: They hate everything. Because God tells them he does, too. Think... Carrie's mom (from the movie), but with social media allowing them to find other people like them. :| Now that's a real horror movie.
On agreeing or not: If you can't hear someone else's opinion without getting upset, there's a good chance it's because you're afraid you're wrong. And... you shouldn't be. You should be willing to hear another opinion, because you might be wrong. Doesn't mean I always take someone else's opinion well (especially when it's me-related :p).
I saw that comic. And I think it's a joke. At least, I hope it's a joke. See... as a non-woman, I don't see stuff like that. I legitimately don't. Ever. I might be hanging around the right crowds, but the worst I've ever heard is 'looking good', or saw them 'smiling at the person.' Same for the second one. Stuff like that completely undermines equality. Uuuugh. I don't even know how to respond to stuff like that.
Another necessary link that has nothing to do with the topic.
and on topic for Lees Just popped up on imgur. :p
*skimming again*
@West-blah - Aren't they like a business? Be as obnoxious as possible while still not breaking the law and wait for someone to eventually lose their cool, then sue.
@Jokes - Some of those where really horrible. Still, I chuckled :P
Wait...so why aren't they allowed to have an inhaler on them? Are the worried about the kids somehow ODing or something? I mean, it's not like an inhaler is a knife or anything....
I don't think it was a joke? I dunno. But I probably wouldn't notice sexual harassment on the street if it walked right past me. I've had friends tease me being like, "I walked right past you and waved my hand in front of you! You didn't notice!" When I walk, I generally have my headphones on and people turn in to "things that I should avoid running in to".
Also, I do not know who Carrie's mom is (but luckily, Google does). Although I do get to hear horror stories from my brother about social media cultists. There's apparently some group that says it's ok to be a trans-woman, but not a trans-man because you're increasing the number of men and rawr patriarchy or something.
Re: The awesome first picture- Have you read the fanfic Embers? It's totally awesome. I like it better than the actual series.
On the topic of awesome fanfiction, Harry Potter and the Natural 20 is also amazing. I need to catch up on the most recent chapters though.
An inhaler is a medication. At the time, students were not allowed to carry their own medication... no matter the reason. I think there -were- provisions for an Epi-pen at the time (according to my canadian friend who is in the education field and showed me the story initially).
I actually don't often do fanfics. I've read some things, but it's only at vehement suggestion.
As to why I think it's a joke: I don't understand how people can be offended by being told they're attractive. Yet that's listed as an example. To me, that's kind of 'oh, hey, totally glad I fit your concept of physical beauty! Thanks, I guess!' I'm not saying that people don't say really stupid things that don't make sense, but simply the fact that they include 'hey, looking good!' as an offending statement speaks volumes about the -writer- as opposed to the people they're talking about. :(
Most zero-tolerance programs in schools started out as reactionary programs (not necessarily associated with either party) designed to curb gun violence in schools... but they generally don't have much association with PC movements.
Zero-tolerance bullying programs, on the other hand, do. But they tend to be extremely ineffective, as most schools will choose not to punish bullies rather than expel them (or be forced to expel both the bully and the victim, if a fight resulted). That said, dealing with bullying in middle/high schools is a serious issue that we need a better way to deal with; most of the statistics indicate we currently have about 2,000-3,000 bullying-related suicides a year in this country (many of them tied to sexuality), and that's a serious problem.
* * *
The Westboro Baptist Church was actually responsible for this rare instance of bipartisan legislation
* * *
@Neri: Now, imagine a large, unattractive but phyiscally intimidating man walking very close to you on the sidewalk at night, then telling you he thinks you have a "sexy ass." Or saying "you should wear something less modest, you'd look really cute." It's an opinion you probably don't want to hear, especially if the person in question has gone out of their way to approach you and deliver the opinion.
Yes, I am also someone who likes being complimented on my appearance. I'm a vain enough person that I've heard guys compliment women on their appearance on the street and thought that they were talking about me. But the thing is, telling someone they're attractive isn't always done tactfully. If it's late at night, or in a sparsely-populated area, it can be downright frightening. And there's no reason men should approach busy-looking women and call out a line like that—because chances are saying nothing will not cause anyone any sort of problems.
Part of the reason why you don't hear much of this is because all the studies show that women are cat-called and/or harrassed far, far less often when traveling near or with male friends/companions. To some extent, men tend to feel far less comfortable calling out such things to a woman who seems to be associated with a publicly-present man—which should be a keen indicator of what people subconsciously think is not okay to say to someone else when there's a "witness" around.
So, what you're saying is: There are creepy people out there. Imagine a perfectly attractive, tiny female walking down the street, tells you she thinks you're cute, and then pulls a gun on you. This is not a male-female issue. This is a crazy-creep issue. :P
I believe pretty strongly in equality (even though, as I've said, I have a bias 'for' females and female rights). I think that a lot of the feminazi movement -really- undermines the really important things that feminists care about. Like Westboro undermines christian organizations, and whatever middle eastern extremist we're talking about today undermines Islam.
It would be cool to get medication for those Creepers that are gonna Creep, but to say it's a -male- thing is probably simply untrue. It may be a little more common in males -or it may go completely unreported, because being a man means that people laugh at you when a woman is a creep towards you-. :P
We, as a society, permit a HUGE amount of double standards.
If a 5'2" 135 pound man walked up to a 6'2" man in a bar and punched him in the nose, and then the 6'2" man punched him back, people would agree it was deserved, and the 6'2" man would never be arrested. Their would be quite a few people laughing at the shorter man, and people would buy the larger man drinks.
If a 5'2" 135 pound woman walked up to a 6'2" man in a bar, and punched him in the nose, and then the 6'2" man punched her back, people would assault the man, beat him down, arrest him, and decry he was a misogynist and woman beater. He'd be banned from the bar, and likely end up on an offender list.
If a couple is going through a divorce, and the wife makes up an accusation about the husband molesting the kids, he is guilty. His reputation is over, and he has no way of overcoming that short of the woman recanting, and even then, there are people who will never believe him.
If a couple is going through a dirvorce, and the husband tells the truth about the wife molesting the kids, he is guilty of lying. His reputation is over, and he has no way of overcoming that short of having an audio recording of the wife admitting it, and even then, there are people who will never believe him.
This is compounded if they end up in family court.
I watched this happen to someone I know, their ex wife (a real psycho) lied in family court about what he made for a living, lied about him inappropriately touching his daughter (he was in another state when she said it happened!), she was caught in one lie after another in court, and the court still let her keep custody of the kids. Insane.
From what I gather, people seem to be under the impression that women are automagically better parents than men, and as such will award custody to a drug addict mother without a job rather than a man with a reliable income. :/
Also, people are dumb.
Too much cat. Initializing reboot...