Conservative rock, Google trends, kabuki glamour ...

[erudito]

A list of 50 greatest conservative rock songs.

About the fun of Google™ trends. Such as which countries most often Google™ bad+sex.

A glamorous young actor seems to be resparking interest in kabuki theatre.

Study fails to find any connection between marihuana and lung cancer.

The 30th anniversary of the Judgement of Paris.

May 25th is Towel

Comments

Not when it's a small minority

[erudito]

Anyway one cuts it, 1 out of 7 or 1 out of 10 is very much a minority view. Something which is a such a minority view is not a defining characteristic.

Given that we have laws against racial discrimination and no barriers on racial grounds to entering any profession, job, the country, etc, neither the country's institutions nor the populace can be defined as 'racist'.

The problem is that worrying about racism is a great way to display Virtue (and to dismiss divergent views as illegitimate). Which rather gets in the way of putting it in perspective.

Let's extend the analogy.

[catsidhe]

There were 410 deaths by road accident in Australia to the end of March, 2006.

The population of Australia is about 20,000,000, give or take.

20,000,000 - 410 = 19,999,590 people who weren't killed in car accidents between 2006-01-01 and 2006-03-31, which is so far within the margin of error as to be indistinguishable.

Therefore, logically, there is no problem with road safety, QED.

I'm glad we have that sorted. Or might there be a problem with the logic?

Re: Let's extend the analogy.

[erudito]

Depends on how stupid one wants to be. As I said above, something which is such a minority feature is not a defining characteristic.

Obviously, if I point to evidence that some folk in Australia are racist, I am not claiming that there is no racism in Australia.

Re: Let's extend the analogy.

[catsidhe]

There is a little talking at cross purposes here.

You are claiming the simple statement that the majority of Australians are not avowedly racist -- which if you accept the data given, is trivially true (if incomplete... what about those who are still racist, but know what answer to give the pollster? but anyway)

The view you are complaining about, however, is not that everyone's a racist, aching to join the Klan!!1!, but the more meaningful statement that Racism is perfidious, more widespread than we should like or have to accept, and is a major problem.

Or am I still being stupid?

Re: Let's extend the analogy.

[erudito]

Let's recap. I said Which means 6 out of 7 and 9 out of 10 don’t. Could folk please stop going on and on about ‘racist Australia’ now thanks?

Which is surely pretty clear. It is not claiming that racism is not a bad thing. It is not even claiming that it is not a problem. It is merely claiming that something which is such a minority characteristic is not a defining characteristic of the country in question.

Given the very high rates of intermarriage, that Australians regularly score well on international comparison opinion polls of tolerance (notably better than some EU countries, for example), the cheerfulness with which non-white sporting heroes are embraced, that running the least Eurocentric immigration policy in our history has seen popular angst about migration fall to the lowest levels in over 30 years, that the most consensual political act in our history was the 1967 referendum and racism clearly being such a minority view, it is way past time to retire "racism" as the first explanation in just about any case.

[anthraxia]

"the ban on compulsory student unionism will bring an end to subsidised beer for students

[korgmeister]

Those are definitely the most important things about student unions and I'm glad they're there.

It's just a shame that most students don't even know those services are even available because the unionists are more interested in making noise at political rallies than they are about helping connect the students paying the union fees with the services they need.

Work for a living

[erudito]

And if they have to work for a living, they might do more of that.

Re: Work for a living

[anthraxia]

Sorry, if who have to work for living?
While I'm all for people having part time jobs while at Uni, I don't think it's productive to expect students to work for a livng whilst studying. It CAN be done, but it's not easy, especially if you're doing sciences; not only that, but it's not exactly easy to find a full time job that lets you be flexible with work times so as to make it to lectures, tutes, etc.

In fact, it's taken me 16 years in the work force to finally get a job where going back to University just part time is even contemplatable.

[meljayles]

lab grown meat how very sapphire and steel!

Ahhh

[erudito]

Sapphire and Steel Hmmmmm. :)