On 05/05/2010 11:59 PM, Jim Henderson wrote:
> On Wed, 05 May 2010 23:01:06 +0100, Stephen wrote:
>
>> You all know that this thread has a time limit. After tomorrow
>> (Thursday) the election is over, I hope.<g>
>
> It seems lots of people hope so, but what are the real odds of a hung
> parliament?
>
> Jim

“Real odds” how would I know? But at the end of last month they were 8 
to 13, so said the bookies. Today it was 4 to 7 for a hung parliament.
I think that our parliament should be hung ;-)


-- 

Best Regards,
	Stephen

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Warp wrote:
> andrel <byt### [at] gmailcom> wrote:
>> You seemed to support that law or at least didn't condemn it.
> 
>   I think that's the core issue in this whole thread.
> 
>   It was not my intention to support that law. What I was really objecting
> to was (what I perceive to be) the hypersensitivity many people have with
> anything which deals with "race". In other words, my question was whether
> people are objecting to the law purely because they have an automatic
> aversion to anything that makes a distinction between races, or whether
> there are *logical* reasons to oppose the law. (No need to answer that
> for the umpteenth time. I am explaining here, not asking.)
> 

Ah, I wondered what was carrying this thread out for so long.

Alright, the reason is that race is not a good distinction. It looks
like it, on the surface. Maybe 90% of illegals are Mexican, I don't know
the exact numbers. But I would be willing to guess that around 80 to 90%
of the legal population would be of Mexican decent as well. So, race is
not the determining factor. There is also, as pointed out elsewhere in a
recent branch, the fact that you can not look at a person and say 'ahh,
they are this race'. The most you can say is 'they show features of
decent from this race.'

In an area that is already as racially charged and biased. where there
are people with strong prejudices in positions of power, allowing
discrimination based on race is akin to handing them a law saying 'we
know you were right all along, run those folks out of town.

>   There are people (but not anybody here, as far as I can tell) who are
> *so* hypersensitive about "racism" and racial issues that they are
> promoting outright banning the entire concept of "race", and are saying
> that *anything at all* which makes any kind of distinction between "races"
> is extremely bad and should be banned. Naturally even any kind of honest
> police work which does anything at all that distinguishes between racial
> features, is also automatically bad, even if there is absolutely nothing
> in that police work that could be considered discriminatory or racist.
> 

My personal opinion is that race is becoming meaningless as people allow
it to. I admit that I can not look at a person and tell the race of
their grandparents. If I can not look at someone and tell, and I suspect
that the average police officer can not simply look at someone and know
their race, why should race be a basis for anything?

Discussing racial issues and racism is fine, to me. Allowing racism to
bleed over into how the government interacts with citizens, in manners
were race is of no use at all is bad.

If you want to suppose that race can be determined, then I propose a
government wide challenge. Any official, acting, sitting, whatever, who
needs to be able to identify a person as being one race or another,
should be able to identify, and categorize, from picture peoples of the
following decent: Japanese, Chinese, Korean, Taiwanese, Thai,
Vietnamese, Maori, Malaysian, Native Austrialian; Indian, Saudi, Iraqi,
Egyptian; Nigerian, South Afriacan, Brazilian, Mexican, American,
British . . . and so on. Any misses would show that the traits they are
making decisions based on are either not indicative of a certain race or
it would show they are incapable of applying race as a means of
separating the correct people for what ever it is the law allows them to
separate people for.

>   My personal opinion is that *if* in some contexts crime could be more
> efficiently stopped by making the distinction, then it would make sense
> to do so. Race shouldn't be something to be so hypersensitive about. It's
> just another human trait as anything else.
> 

For the reason above, it isn't. A white shop owner says he was robbed by
'some Mexican gangster kids. you know, like those kids talking funny on
the corner.' near a Cuban neighborhood. Should the police focus on
Mexicans, or Cuban, or gang members? Maybe with a bit better
description, eye color, hair, height, skin color, they can narrow it
down. Could make things worse, and say it is a Brazilian neighborhood.
1000 mile difference geographically, a different language that sounds
similar, some shared facial traits in general. Similar cooking, if you
pick and choose carefully.

The average person is just unequipped to distinguish races, even if they
themselves think that they are. Because of that, why should the law,
which is enforced by the average person, allow them to make distinctions
based on their perception of race?

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Jim Henderson <nos### [at] nospamcom> wrote:
> On Wed, 05 May 2010 18:33:46 -0700, Patrick Elliott wrote:

> > On the other hand, the ideological reasons many have for keeping it are
> > as bad, or worse. There was even some clown a while back teaching
> > "diversity" at colleges, who had the gall to claim that you couldn't
> > expect Black people to be on time, because there was something inherent
> > in the "race" that made them always late, so you had to "work around"
> > this issue, if you wanted to properly deal with and implement
> > "diversity". He was a) also black, and b) completely serious about it,
> > and had a whole host of other "traits" he tried to claim other people
> > have, based on their race, and you had to adjust schedules, rules,
> > policies, etc., not to be inclusive of different ideas (what most people
> > call "diversity" in businesses, and which can sometimes be just as
> > stupid), but different "races".
> > 
> > As far as I know, the bozo is still wandering around the country side
> > babbling this BS at colleges.

> It sounds like this bozo may be projecting cultural norms on an ethnic 
> group.  For example, I note that often when I schedule an appointment 
> with people in some countries in Africa (I have no idea what the person's 
> race is because I don't speak on the phone with them, see them, or 
> communicate in any way other than e-mail and chat typically), they may 
> arrive at the online session as much as an hour late.  But I think that 
> is largely a cultural thing, due to poor transportation infrastructure or 
> other similar reasons that are environmental.

> I guess what I may be trying to say is that this bozo has reasons for 
> thinking what he does, but he's applying poor logic and attributing 
> racial reasons rather than cultural or other environmental factors.

  It often seems that when someone claims some "race" (eg. "blacks") to
be in some way inferior to another (in practice exclusively "whites"),
it always causes huge controversy, but when it happens the other way
around, people seldom even notice, and if they do, they usually don't
care much, even though technically there's no difference.

  For example some years ago there was, I think, some kind of
multiculturalism / tolerance / anti-racism theme in some school here
in Finland (I think it was a secondary school, or the likes). One
task given to students was to write an essay on the subject. The best
essays were published on the website of the school.

  One of the essays had a rather peculiar sentence in it. Otherwise it
was typical text on this subject that you can expect from a person in
his early teens or such, and in fact this one sentence was likewise as
well. However, the contents of the sentence were rather peculiar in that
it stated how black people are generally better at sports than white people
(and this was written explicitly as an argument of why racist people are
so wrong in claiming that black people are inferior to white people).

  Apparently this didn't catch anybody's eye, as it was published in the
website as one of the best exemplars of student essays. The teacher who
read and evaluated the essay didn't seem to think anything special about it.

  Now, imagine that the sentence would have been reversed, in other words,
claiming that white people are in some thing better than black people.
Imagine the commotion and controversy.

  I think this example is rather telling. And it certainly isn't the only
example of such things.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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Sabrina Kilian wrote:
> 
> If you want to suppose that race can be determined, then I propose a
> government wide challenge. Any official, acting, sitting, whatever, who
> needs to be able to identify a person as being one race or another,
> should be able to identify, and categorize, from picture peoples of the
> following decent: Japanese, Chinese, Korean, Taiwanese, Thai,
> Vietnamese, Maori, Malaysian, Native Austrialian; Indian, Saudi, Iraqi,
> Egyptian; Nigerian, South Afriacan, Brazilian, Mexican, American,
> British . . . and so on. Any misses would show that the traits they are
> making decisions based on are either not indicative of a certain race or
> it would show they are incapable of applying race as a means of
> separating the correct people for what ever it is the law allows them to
> separate people for.

I propose a challenge.

Let's take 50 Arizona police officers, follow them for a day, and see 
how accurately they identify illegal aliens. One side or the other would 
have to STFU about the quality of the officer's profiling methods.

  -Shay

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Warp wrote:
>   I think this example is rather telling. And it certainly isn't the only
> example of such things.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0B9QGrpdu5Y

And yes, there are controversies over that. California keeps flip-flopping 
between "affirmative action" and not. (AA being where you make it easier for 
minorities to (say) get into college simply because they're a minority.)

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   Linux: Now bringing the quality and usability of
   open source desktop apps to your personal electronics.

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Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
> And yes, there are controversies over that. California keeps flip-flopping 
> between "affirmative action" and not. (AA being where you make it easier for 
> minorities to (say) get into college simply because they're a minority.)

  One of the most hilarious terms that some people use is "reverse racism".

  That term just doesn't make any sense. What is "reverse racism"? What
people *mean* by that, and I'm not kidding a bit here, is when a white
person is the victim and a non-white person is the perpretrator. As if
regular plain "racism" was only when a white person is prejudiced or
discriminates a non-white person due to his ethnicity. Just the existence
of that term and the meaning it's used with is even more telling, IMO.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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Stephen wrote:
> I think that our parliament should be hung ;-)

I think you mean 'hanged'. :-)
See you tomorrow @ 7.
BTW don't forget that you are now on record as saying that you're buying ;-)
> I’ll tell you something. This Friday I get Dr John so drunk that he will regret
starting this thread. 


John
-- 
Cogito sum,|| wbu### [at] tznvypbz (rot'ed) || GPG Key Fingerprint:
ergo sum,  ||   These opinions are mine alone,   || 0D9BCF4CF1B71CA2F5F7
cogito     ||     others can find their own      || BFBBCBC34EDEAEFCE453

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On Thu, 06 May 2010 08:51:31 -0400, Warp wrote:

>   I think this example is rather telling. And it certainly isn't the
>   only
> example of such things.

It is - applied here in the US to decision making, we call it "reverse 
discrimination" (which in some ways I think is kinda a stupid term, 
because it's still discrimination, though I understand what's meant by 
it).

Jim

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On Thu, 06 May 2010 10:03:00 +0100, Stephen wrote:

> On 05/05/2010 11:59 PM, Jim Henderson wrote:
>> On Wed, 05 May 2010 23:01:06 +0100, Stephen wrote:
>>
>>> You all know that this thread has a time limit. After tomorrow
>>> (Thursday) the election is over, I hope.<g>
>>
>> It seems lots of people hope so, but what are the real odds of a hung
>> parliament?
>>
>> Jim
> 
> “Real odds” how would I know? But at the end of last month they were 8
> to 13, so said the bookies. Today it was 4 to 7 for a hung parliament. I
> think that our parliament should be hung ;-)

LOL

The projections I've seen show nobody with a majority (ie greater than, 
what is it, 326?), but with the conservatives with the largest number of 
MPs.

Jim

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Jim Henderson <nos### [at] nospamcom> wrote:
> It is - applied here in the US to decision making, we call it "reverse 
> discrimination" (which in some ways I think is kinda a stupid term, 
> because it's still discrimination, though I understand what's meant by 
> it).

  I think "reverse discrimination" is the idea that two wrongs can make
a right. Which I think is a bad idea in the long run. Do enough "reverse
discrimination" and you will only cause more animosity between people,
as some people will feel that others are getting privileges, not to talk
about the hypocrisy ("all people are equal and should have equal rights
and privileges, but we are giving this group of people extra privileges").

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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