As usual, feel free to post whatever you want on this thread. Self-linking is encouraged.
Found on the interwebs:
(Thanks, Bean!)
When capitalized, "Sie" is the formal way to address adults of either gender in polite German. I majored in the…
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If one assumes that a person is making their money, including enough money to have no incentive to "work", by…
Ob sie wirklich Deutsch spricht. Normalweise, kommt die US Soldaten nicht ins Stadt und spricht nicht so oft mit denn…
As for being a Nazi, ich spreche fliessend deutsch und wohnte in Deutschland fuer drei Jahre mit der americanishe Luftwaffe…
And of course this "incentive" only applies to poor people: Rich people who already have enough to live off of…
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Ha! If that guy has a lawyer, I bet the lawyer has some really funny stories to tell at parties.
I saw this over on Reddit this morning and I have to say, I’m stumped. Is the guy upset that the website owner took down images he (the one with a lawyer) was stealing (aka hotlinking)?
Pure win. Raw, liquid, unrefined win.
I dare say his business isn’t getting much respect because he’s clueless in many, many ways. Hilarious!
On religious bigotry.
Thought I’d plug Toon Talk at http://www.toontalk.org/phpBB2/index.php
It’s a forum for cartoonists, whether you’re syndicated, a webcartoonist, or magazine cartoonists.
We could use couple of alt-weekly cartoonists there, just to spice things up…
Fatadelic and V both blogged Australia’s Sorry Day.
He’s getting off lightly if they just disappeared. I read about one website owner who changed images to goatse when people stole them.
http://hrw.org/english/docs/2008/02/13/saudia18046.htm
On analysis vs gut response
A Valentine’s photoblogpost on
everyone I love and another about celebrating the Year of the Rat and my pet rat, Audrey.
Daisy,
These things fall under the category of religious bigotry:
– Not hiring someone because of their religion
– Restricting someone’s legal rights because of their religion
– Denying someone medical care or the right to an education because of their religion
These things do not:
– Not associating with someone because of their chosen religion
– Not voting for someone because of the religious views they promote as part of their campaign
– Disdain bordering on contempt for extremist religious practices
My low regard for a candidate’s Magical Underwear is tempered only a little by the fact that religious authorities are telling him it’s the thing to do.
Note that bigotry against Jewish people is based far less on their religious beliefs and practices than on their status as an ethnic group.
I don’t know if those religious bigotry things are accurate.
I think of it more as a existence/actions thing: It’s generally a bad thing to dislike what someone IS (existence) but generally it’s A-OK to dislike, discriminate based on, or make judgments about what someone DOES (actions.)
Obviously this leads to people claiming that what they DO is “protected” because it’s a requirement/natural consequence/etc of what they ARE. Religious people in particular are given to making this claim.
I don’t think there’s an easy answer to that issue, though personally I tend to reject those arguments: I don’t like having a given set of actions be acceptable for one group and not for others. But intelligent minds certainly differ on where the proper line should fall.
So to use your examples:
– Not hiring someone because of their religion: Bad. However, not hiring someone because they act in a manner you don’t like: Fine, even if they claim it’s mandated by their religion/upbringing/political beliefs/hair color/etc.
– Restricting someone’s legal rights because of their religion: Bad. But this is always bad, so I don’t get why this is in the list.
– Denying someone medical care or the right to an education because of their religion: See legal rights, above.
– Not associating with someone because of their chosen religion: Tricky. I think that it is OK not to associate with people because of their professed religion. But I think that what religion people ARE is not always apparent.
-Not voting for someone because of the religious views they promote as part of their campaign: Absolutely OK. This isn’t any different from any other sets of views.
-Disdain bordering on contempt for extremist religious practices. Absolutely OK. This isn’t any different from disdain for “practices” in general that you dislike; religion doesn’t get a free pass.
-My low regard for a candidate’s Magical Underwear is tempered only a little by the fact that religious authorities are telling him it’s the thing to do.
Mine isn’t. I don’t think any less of someone who gets told to wear the ritualistic mormon underclothes. But I have a lower regard for anyone who does wear them.
Alas readers will be interested in reading (and discussing) this post which I just happened upon:
http://www.csmonitor.com/2008/0211/p13s02-wmgn.html
A white male college grad (good looking and healthy) decides to test the theory of “Nickled and Dimed”, i.e. that it’s hard to get ahead. So he starts with $25 and gym bag and tries to get ahead.
So, what’s your guess: Does he get a job? Does he save money? Does he serve as an inspiring testament to the claim that the american dream can work for everyone? Is he representative? Or is the article primarily an indication of how amazingly unable he is to recognize the leg up that his background gives him?
Read the article. I expect to see it dissected shortly by someone more knowledgeable than I.
(my ‘favorite’ parts are that 1) he leaves the experiment after 70 days when a relative gets sick; and 2) neither he nor the reporter see any irony in this at all.)
– Not hiring someone because of their religion: Bad. However, not hiring someone because they act in a manner you don’t like: Fine, even if they claim it’s mandated by their religion/upbringing/political beliefs/hair color/etc.
See, I don’t think a lot of your examples would be “fine” for me as reasons for not hiring. I think it depends on their ability to get the job done. Tangent: I think employment discrimination laws should be a lot broader.
– Restricting someone’s legal rights because of their religion: Bad. But this is always bad, so I don’t get why this is in the list.
It’s an example of bigotry, that’s all.
– Not associating with someone because of their chosen religion: Tricky. I think that it is OK not to associate with people because of their professed religion. But I think that what religion people ARE is not always apparent.
I’m not sure that I would make the same distinction between essence and action. From my POV, religion is something one does.
-Disdain bordering on contempt for extremist religious practices. Absolutely OK. This isn’t any different from disdain for “practices” in general that you dislike; religion doesn’t get a free pass.
Here’s where many people disagree. I think the term “tolerance” comes in very useful here. I can tolerate people doing a lot of things I don’t necessarily respect. It’s a free country, after all.
-My low regard for a candidate’s Magical Underwear is tempered only a little by the fact that religious authorities are telling him it’s the thing to do.
Mine isn’t. I don’t think any less of someone who gets told to wear the ritualistic mormon underclothes. But I have a lower regard for anyone who does wear them.
People’s behavior is swayed to a large extent by their community and the sources of authority in it. Likewise, people can have very different reasons for believing what they do. So, if their ability to get along in their community depends on their espousing otherwise unsupportable beliefs, then I cut them a little slack.
Oh, I see this “rags to riches” guy found work as a day laborer. That can pay pretty decent money. How unfortunate that, with my vagina, no one would EVER hire me as a day laborer. It is also unfortunate that day labor is one of the only “no questions asked” jobs that a person can find. Want to work in a restaurant, retail, a movie theater? You need what at least appears to be a permanent address, and you can’t smell bad or have dirty clothing. Looks like it’s easier to be a dude after all.
It’s interesting as well that he was eventually promoted into a company. I’m sure his whiteness had nothing to do with this. I know a (white) guy who worked in construction as his summer job, and even though he had zero previous construction experience, he was promoted to a position above all the Mexican day laborers within two months. I’m sure he was just that much more competent than all those brown people. /snark
Gee, a college-educated English-speaking healthy white male US Citizen managed to get ahead without referencing his diploma? Amazing!
The real story in this article, which Sailor alludes to, is not that he succeeded. It’s that he failed. When a relative got sick, he didn’t blow his savings on paying their hospital bills; instead, he “pulled out his credit card” and called off the experiment.
Would a religious organization refusal to hire someone who is not of the same religion be justified? Say a Catholic charity required that their Executive Director be Catholic; this is a person who’s job it would be to help set policies for that charity in conjunction with the Board of Directors. They would then also be in overall charge of how the organization executes those policies. Would that be religious discrimination? Would that be justified? Would that be bigotry?
Would your answers be the same if the person was not in a position of either setting or carrying out policies, say someone who’s washing dishes in the kitchen in a shelter run by that charity?
BTW, not all Mormons wear the union suit. Just those who have attained temple privileges, IIRC. And yes, they can take it off to wash it. There’s a passage in the Bible about righteousness being a seamless garment, and they take it a little more literally than Christians. Lots of Scouts are Mormons; about 12.5%. So I’ve learned a thing or two about them. There’s a lot of amazing misunderstandings about their beliefs and practices. There’s also a lot that I think is pretty wierd.
– Disdain bordering on contempt for extremist religious practices
That would depend on what you mean by extreme, and how they affect other people.
Self-flaggelation every Friday night would be considered extreme, I think. But it’s that person’s own business. A belief that the tree out in the front yard talks to them and provides spiritual guidance might also be considered extreme. In the former case, I might ignore it. The latter case might lead me to wonder just how firm a grip on reality the person has.
OTOH, if the extreme practice is a belief that they have a right to forcibly restrict people from practicing any other religion but their own (as opposed to thinking that practicing any other religion is wrong, but recognizing that everyone has a right to go to Hell in their own fashion), then I figure everyone understands that such is worthy of contempt.
> A white male college grad (good looking and healthy) decides to test the
> theory of “Nickled and Dimed”, i.e. that it’s hard to get ahead. So he starts
> with $25 and gym bag and tries to get ahead.
Awesome! I have done it twice in my life… and both times I stopped at 10K in savings. Once I ended did it as a polisher -> machine tool operator -> draftsman -> machine tool programmer -> IT guy, the other time on a fishing ship in Alaska – that one was to get away from my ex-girlfriend influence, not to prove anything.
Being a white guy was a negative on the ship… on the machine floor, people were wondering what was wrong with me for being there.
I didn’t really like “Nickel and Dimed”. It really bothered me.
A Perspective On The Pledge, courtesy of Atheist Ethicist
(currently a work in progress)
Radfem, what about Nickled and Dimed bothered you?
http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/page/item/b008ysrg.shtml
I wonder how well this would have gone down in the States.
didn’t need the card to get home.
Can I link more than one time? If not, go ahead and edit me out! :P
Same sex public education offered here.
What is the big deal about same-sex education? I’m afraid I’m utterly clueless about why it’s supposed to be this big improvement over co-ed..sounds like more sexist propaganda to me.
I guess the whole- I’ll play at being lower working class and writing a book about my “experiences” and people I worked with and talked to the whole time knowing a book would be coming out of it. It’s a lot different when you can just walk away from it into your own lifestyle which is much different. Almost like they weren’t her experiences but she was borrowing them from someone else. The stories were interesting but it bothered me.
I’ve worked some of these types of jobs when I was younger and I don’t know how I’d feel if I showed up in a book, even if the names were changed. Some of the stories in that book are fairly personal. And if this author came back months later that I thought was my fellow worker to ask me for permission (assuming she did, but given the transitory nature of many low-wage jobs, it’s doubtful she really could), I might feel a bit misled, maybe betrayed whether it was right to feel that way or not.
The book explains a lot of what many people already know especially those who would be attracted to read her book. So maybe it’s a great social statement and doing public good by exposing bad behavior through a voice that more people would unfortunately find more acceptable to hear it through to than the men and women who actually comprise these work industries.
I wonder if anyone ever comes out of one of these stunts with contrary results? Where they thought it would be much easier/harder than it turned out to be? I know of “knickle and dimed”, and spurlock did one of these at one point and now this guy. Is it just that they focus on different parts of it based on what their expectations were?
Spurlock’s was pretty interesting, actually. It was funny to see how much he had to scramble in order to preserve his starting ideas, for example, when they found a church salvage mission that specializes in setting up poor families with the furnishings and such that they needed. That was fine to get a couch, but he had to jump to avoid having those folks take care of all their household good needs. That wouldn’t have fit the itinerary.
OK, that’s absolutely hilarious. On the list with people who approach me asking how they can get my product without paying for it.
Waving Goodbye to Hegemony:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/27/magazine/27world-t.html?_r=1&emc=eta1&oref=slogin