Really? I understand racial insensitivity, but is this a fair expectation of diversity in a fictional place that takes place in Scotland? Sure, the name is completely off, but it feels like the rest of this anger is misplaced on an author who is not trying to tell a story on themes of racial diversity.
To top it off, crowds react strongly and positively to enthusiastic and impassioned anger, further building the bravado of this poetic "slam" piece.
If Rowling is trying to tell and cast a story reflective of the local demographics, it doesn't appear inaccurate.
Scotland isn't the same type of "melting pot" America has come to be. Again, perhaps the expectation has been created that all cultures must have the demographic diversity that America has established. Remember, the character she is referring to is actually Scottish.

Scottish population by ethnic group (Scotland 2011 Census)

Percentage of total
White Scottish - 84.0%
White Other British - 7.9%
White Irish - 1.0%
White Gypsy/Traveller - 0.1%
White Polish - 1.2%
Other White ethnic group - 1.9%
White Total - 96.0%

Pakistani - 0.9%
Indian - 0.6%
Bangladeshi - 0.1%
Chinese - 0.6%
Other - 0.4%
Asian Total - 2.7%

Caribbean - 0.1%
Black - 0.0%
Caribbean or Black Other - 0.0%
Caribbean or Black - 0.1%
African - 0.6%
African Other - 0.0%
African Total - 0.6%

Mixed or multiple ethnic groups - 0.4%
Arab - 0.2%
Other - 0.1%
Other ethnic group Total - 0.3%

@VoodooV
i dont understand you sometimes man.

how has ching hi-jacked this thread..in particular?
i will concede that he has in the past but how does that translate to this thread?
because it appears to me ching just poked his nose into you berating @bobknight33 as a bigot and a racist.

is bob a racist?
i dont know if i would call his comments here racist.maybe insensitive,even callous in regards to americas past history of slavery.

now i would see this as an opportunity to converse and communicate.
maybe learn from each other.
or at the very least UNDERSTAND why bob feels/thinks the way he does.

but you dont do that.
you ridicule and belittle him.

and then when ching chimes in pointing out that we are ALL slaves.
you cry foul and that bob is just a racist and ching is a troll.
musing dreamily of an internet community that could be rid of such parasites.
basically your own little fiefdom where everybody thinks like you.you know,the RIGHT way of thinking.

or are you not aware of the hypocrisy at work here?

i could go on but i fear you will inject intention into my commentary and perceive me as some sort of enemy.
which i am not.

i am not attacking you brother.
i am just trying to point out that our community is diverse,and bob has just as much a right to speak as you do.
as does ching.
but to cry foul after consecutively bashing bob and bemoan your suffering for having to endure those you disagree and how they besmirch your community...is..well...weak.

i disagree with bob often.
ok,almost always.
but i have to give that boy props for engaging on a secular left site when he is obviously a christian rightwinger.

that takes balls.
so kudos to you @bobknight33

love your commentary voodoo
hate your high horse.

So how shallow and insensitive do you have to be to simply ignore a whole segment of the female population based solely on their appearance?

This video is getting so much play among so-called "conscious" women about how "not enough men" are as "sensitive and empathic" as Dustin Hoffman is in this video, but all I can see is how much of a dick he was, and is only getting emotional here because he realizes his own insensitivity and how unlikely he is to change his ways...

And besides, most of the "societally attractive" women that I've met are frequently far less interesting to talk to than the "normal-looking" woman (or more uniquely beautiful ones), since the "societally beautiful" women have very little need to develop a real personality, since so much is given to them, on the basis of their looks alone..

What a shame.

Hello Bjorn,

Please don't leave!! The comments were nothing personal towards you...they didn't like the video because it went against the site's rules and it wouldn't have mattered who posted it...if you hadn't of been the one to post that one, I'm certain it would have been by someone else here. I believe the ban was only to be temporary because they thought they could delete the video for you that way. Some of the people here can be a bit insensitive and I feel awful that you are so upset.

You post some awesome videos and are a really nice person and we don't want to lose you! I hope you'll reconsider.

Now if you would have originally said "this kind of event is the tip of the ice berg". That sounds reasonable ,but what you said to someone who expressed there being saddened by the situation is "This is hardly worth crying over. She got felt up. There are girls that were raped". That my friend makes you look insensitive, and lacking in empathy. Which in my book is not very cool.

insensitive, but fitting

HOW DARE YOU LOOK AT OTHER WOMEN! YOU'RE THE MOST INSENSITIVE BOYFRIEND EVER - LET'S GO SEE MAGIC MIKE RIGHT NOW.

Well, technically it is easier when you have 40% less body mass and have a small frame to begin with. I don't see how pointing out an obvious emotionless fact would be considered insensitive. A 7 foot tall, large framed fully able bodied person would have to work significantly harder time (if not impossible) trying to accomplish the same feats. I don't think anyone physically challenged or gifted is so oblivious to this fact, that if you were to bring it up, they would be hurt or offended in anyway.

Good on him for making the most of what he has got. Certainly makes my efforts (or lack of) look embarrassingly shameful.

What an unnecessary comment. He has no legs, but that fact does not diminish his spirit - you insensitive prick.

The issues here are all wrong.

He's right about "Innocence of Muslims" looking like it was made by "Rank amateurs in a basement studio, no doubt it was. It's so bad that no one would ever have seen or heard of it, if it wasn't for the hoopla it caused. I never would have. Once I did, I sought it out and watched it. Well sort of.

First of all, the quality is garbage, something less than what we would expect from a YouTube video. Past that, The editing, the writing and the acting is terrible. It's confusing and hard to follow. In all honestly, I ended up skimming large parts of it because I didn't get the point. It's that bad.

What I don't understand is why the Muslim community felt this piece of crap video was worth killing people over? What they did was promote the film, and in doing so, brought fame to it. They are just as much to blame in the distribution of said offensive material.

So, some no name, never heard of before Egyptian born person (Nakoula Basseley Nakoula) creates a 14 minute anti-muslim video. Naakoula is a graduate of the Faculty of Arts at Cairo University. Born and educated over seas, he comes to the US and creates a video called "Innocence of Bin Laden" After the film is finished, in post production, he over-dubs all the audio and changes the title to Innocence of Muslims and changes the meaning of the film altogether.

Nakoula has been arrested for the "intent to manufacture methamphetamine" for which he did prison time. Then he pleaded no contest to federal charges of bank fraud as he opened fake bank accounts in order to defraud the banks out of as much as $800,000. He was a criminal with no scruples or morals.

He went out of his way to create this movie just to piss people off. He even claimed it was funded by $5 million collected from 100 Jewish donors, and that he was an Israeli-Jew.

So, what is my point? This piece of scum set out to create an incident and he succeeded.
The Muslim world over reacted and went "Bat-shit insane" (my words). In a fit of rage, they misplaced the blame on everyone associated with the West. They held protests in almost every major country in the world. They killed people and turned this into an international state of panic. "Oh poor us, don't criticize our Mohammad." (insert screams of "oh how could you" here) and ("The western world hates us - kill them now")

Now as a result, we, the people that didn't do anything, are being told we need to be more tolerant of the bat-shit crazy people and start educating ourselves more on their religion and watch more of their movies.

Now I have no issue educating myself on other cultures, in fact I find it interesting. But what I don't like being told is that us Westerners are part of the problem and that if we'd only have educated ourselves, this insensitivity wouldn't have happened. This is so absolutely false and absurd.

I know not all Muslims are "bat-shit crazy," but I didn't see any of them standing up and pointing their finger in the right direction (at some scumbag from Egypt).

As far as I am concerned this is what I see:
1). A scumbag needs to be deported for succeeding in inciting riots causing death.
2). People should be able to have their own opinions and be able to speak them in all areas concerning religion or their lack of faith in them.
3). the Muslim people who took part in the riots and killings should all be punished to the full extent of the law and be shamed by the rest of the people.
4). Muslim people need to get over themselves, learn to accept that their way isn't the only way and learn to "turn the other cheek". (And I use the term "their way" loosely because I don't think even they can even decide and agree on what the rules of their religion are.)

@hpqp
I am not at all ashamed of my verbose, self-indulgent dross, so here we go!

Something has to be extra-physical, as least based on our current model. I can fully accept that a brain by itself can receive sensory input, process it against memory, and thus act in a completely human way indistinguishable from a conscious human, but on its own can literally be no more "conscious" than a river flowing down a mountain. Our current view of the physical universe does not tolerate any rational physical explanation of consciousness. Any given moment of human experience - the unified sensory experience and stream of consciousness - does not exist in a single place at a single instant. To suggest that the atoms\molecules\proteins\cells of the brain experience themselves in a unified manner based on their proximity to or electrochemical interaction with each other is magical thinking. Atoms don't do that, and that's all that's there, physically.
I disagree that consciousness is subordinate to cognition in terms of value. Cognition is what makes us who we are and behave as we do, but consciousness is what makes us different from the rest of the jiggling matter in the universe.

A couple of posts back, you challenged my statement about abstinence education as demonstrating a lack of pragmatism. I didn't really address it in my reply, but I'd prefaced it with the understanding that it's not a magical incantation. I know people are still going to have sex, but I suggested that has to be a part of education. People have to know that you can still get pregnant even if you're using the contraceptives that are available. They have to at least know the possibility exists. It's one more thing for them to consider. People are still going to drive recklessly even if you tell them they can crash and kill themselves despite their airbags, seatbelts, and crumple zones, but that doesn't mean it's not worth it to educate them about the possibility. I fail to see how that's not pragmatic.

I didn't reply to your comment about adoption vs abortion because I'm not sure there's anything else to add on either side. As I've said, my beliefs on this are such that even a grossly flawed adoption\orphan care system is preferable to the alternative, even if it means that approximately 10 times the number of children would enter the system than have traditionally been adopted each year. (1.4M abortions annually in the US, ~140K adoptions, but there are several assumptions in that math that wouldn't hold up to scrutiny.) Many right and just things have unpleasant consequences that must be managed. (The typical counter here is that Pro-Lifers tend to also be fiscal\social conservatives and won't fund social services to care for these new individuals they've "protected" into existence. That's just another issue of taking responsibility for the consequences of choices. If they get what they want, they need to be held to account, but it's a separate issue. A related issue, but a separate issue.)

Criminalizing\prohibiting almost any activity results in some degree of risky\dangerous\destructive behavior. Acts must be criminalized because there are individuals who would desire to perform those acts which have been determined to be an unnecessary imposition on the rights of another. Criminalization does not eliminate the desire, but it adds a new factor to consideration. Some will decide the criminalization\prohibition of the act is not sufficient deterrent, but in proceeding, are likely to do so in a different manner than otherwise. The broad consideration is whether the benefits of criminalization\prohibition outweigh the risks posed to\by the percentage who will proceed anyway. Prohibition of alcohol failed the test, I expect the prohibition of certain drugs will be shown to have failed the test..eventually. Incest is illegal, and the "unintended" consequence is freaks locking their families in sheds and basements in horrific conditions, but I think most of us would agree the benefits outweigh the detriment there.

Is putting all would-have-been-aborteds up for adoption abhorrent or absurd? The hump we'll never get over is asking "is it more abhorrent than aborting all of them", because we have different viewpoints on the relative values in play. But is it even a valid question? They won't all be put up for adoption. Some percentage (possibly 5-10 percent) will spontaneously miscarry\abort anyway and some percentage would be raised by a birth parent or by the extended family after all. An initially unwanted pregnancy does not necessarily equate to an unwanted child, for a number of reasons. I do not have statistics on what proportion could be expected to be put up for adoption. Would you happen to? It seems like that would be difficult to extrapolate.

The "'potential' shtick" carries weight in my view because of the uniqueness of the situation. There is no consensus on the "best" way to define when elective abortion is "acceptable". Sagan puts weight on cognition as indicative of personhood. As he states, the Supreme Court set its date based on independent "viability". (More specifically, I feel it should be noted, "potential" viability.) These milestones coincide only by coincidence.
Why is it so easy for us, as you say, to retroproject? And why is this any different from assigning personhood to each of a million individual sperm? For me, it's because of those statistics on miscarriage linked above. The retroprojected "potential" is represented by "percentages". At 3-6 weeks, without deliberate intervention 90% of those masses of cells will go on to become a human being. At 6-12 it's 95%. This is more than strictly "potential", it's nearly guaranteed.

I expect your response will be uncomfortable for both of us, but I wish you would expound on why my "It Gets Better" comparison struck you as inappropriate. Crude, certainly - I'll admit to phrasing it indelicately, even insensitively. I do not think it poorly considered, however. The point of "It Gets Better" is to let LGBT youth know that life does not remain oppressive, negative, and confusing, and that happiness and fulfillment lie ahead if they will only persevere.
It's necessary because as humans, we aren't very good at imagining we'll ever be happy again when surrounded by uncertainty and despair, or especially recognizing the good already around us. We can only see torment, and may not see the point in perpetuating a seemingly-unending chain of suffering when release is so close at hand, though violence against self (or others).
This directly parallels the "quality of life" arguments posed from the pro-choice perspective. They take an isolated slice of life from a theoretical unplanned child and their mother and suggest that this is their lot and that we've increased suffering in the universe, as if no abused child will ever know a greater love, or no poor child will ever laugh and play, and that no mother of an unwanted pregnancy will ever enjoy life again, burdened and poverty-stricken as she is.
As you said, we're expecting a woman to reflect "on what would her and the eventual child’s quality of life be like", but we're so bad at that.
And all that quality-of-life discussion is assuming we've even nailed the demographic on who is seeking abortions in the U.S.
Getting statistics from the Guttmacher Institute, we find that 77% were at or above the federal poverty level and 60% already had at least one child.

On a moral level, absolutely, eugenics is very different debate.
On a practical level, the eugenics angle is relevant because it's indistinguishable from any other elective abortion. Someone who is terminating a pregnancy because their child would be a girl, or gay, or developmentally disabled can very easily say "I'm just not ready for motherhood." And who's to say that's not the mother's prerogative as much as any other elective abortion, if she's considering the future quality of life for herself and the child? "It sucks for girls\gays\downs in today's society and I don't think I can personally handle putting them through that," or more likely "My family and I could never love a child like that, so they would be unloved and I would be miserable for it. This is better for both of us."
Can we write that off as hopefully being yet another edge case? (Keep in mind possibly 65% of individuals seeking abortion declare as Protestant or Catholic, though other statistics show how unreliable "reported religious affiliation" is with regard to actual belief and practice.)

_{"Argumentation"? I have learned a new word today, thanks to hpqp. High five!}

@ReverendTed
I will try to be brief, because I can’t wait for the “we solved abortion” party, and because @kymbos has made me self-conscious '. There is much to be said on the subject of your tangent, but I will keep it at this:

a) nothing is “extra-physical” (or meta-physical, or supernatural, etc.)
b) consciousness is subordinate to cognition and the treatment of sensory input, as even your illustration of consciousness testifies (see also: how blind-from-birth people dream)

A brain which has never received/treated sensory input is nothing more than a muscle-regulator. I am very grateful to @Tojja for linking the Sagan piece, because I now have a great mind backing my own intuitions.


Now back to the problem of regulating/prohibiting abortion. I take your lack of response to my rebuttal of the adoption “solution” as your agreeing with me (tell me if I’m wrong), in which case it illustrates what I argued concerning the lack of pragmatism on the pro-life side. Because let’s face it, the following are constants:

a) people will have sex, sometimes leading to unwanted pregnancy
b) people will want/need abortions, whether legal or not
c) criminalising abortion (be it on the doctor’s or the woman’s side) results in risky practices, especially by the most at risk (poor/uneducated)
d) putting all would-have-been-aborteds up for adoption is abhorrent and absurd

So what to do about it?

I notice that your argumentation goes back to the whole “potential” shtick, including the emotionally manipulative retroprojection of human individuality on a ball of cells in the example of how pro-lifers think. Sagan argues against the whole “potential” thing better than I do, so I’ll leave it at that, but I do take issue with the “good comes from bad” argument. Yes, undesired kids can grow to have great lives, just as the contrary can happen. But in a case opposing an individual who is and one who might be (but is not yet), it is the former’s choice that takes precedence (yes, we’re pro-choice, not pro-abortion or abortion-tolerant). Don’t forget, many unexpected pregnancies end in chosen births, not abortions. The important thing is not whether it is unexpected, but whether or not it is undesired. It is the choice of the woman, usually based on reflexion on what would her and the eventual child’s quality of life be like, to let what is at that stage only potential become an actual human individual.

Do you ever miss what you were like before you existed? That nothingness before life and after death is all an aborted foetus ever gets, because it never reaches the stage of cognition that allows for consciousness and thus for identity. As an aside, I must admit I found your comparison between the pro-life stance and the It Gets Better campaign rather crude, insensitive and not well-thought-through at all. I’ll let you figure out why. As for eugenics, that is another debate entirely, whose crux is not “can a woman chose to pursue/terminate a pregnancy” but instead “can (a) parent(s) chose to pursue/terminate a pregnancy based on discriminatory criteria”. The difference should be easy to spot.

_{We seem to agree on humanitarian aid, so high-fives all round}

Even this vid falls into the unfortunate focus on the "legitimate" part of his comments, in its first alternate apology.

"I said some very insensitive things."

No. YOU BELIEVE NONSENSE CRACKPOT NON-SCIENCE and should not be in charge making legislation.

There is no conspiracy -- it is lazy journalism (it took over 24 hours for the journalists to start quoting real science -- an eternity in a world of instantaneous communication. I have been pretty frustrated at the amount of words spent around the "legitimate rape" while that second part sat there like a giant stinking turd.

Laziness. Lack of critical thinking. Outrage over feelings sells, science doesn't.

Still.

*celebrate the linkage of politicians back to crap science.


>> ^vaire2ube:

Press refocused on how he WORDED the issue, rather than pointing out he believes your body can avoid a rape baby because, very , you know... its what he BELIEVES.
who gave the orders to spin that one... the overlords were watching and mitigated this whole thing with a bunch of bad coverage and pundit spewing... its the next best thing to executing people who dont agree with your opinion.. muddy the swiftboat waters

Did you even read the rest of my post?



Yes, I did, that's why I said "- and for just the kind of reasons you mention." My point was simply that this Apple doesn't come with the kind of stuff that would make me be happy about the extra cost.

but you won't get a Dell or HP workstation much cheaper even without those support options



We seem to. I haven't run numbers, but our normal Dell workstations are around this same class and come in $1500-$1600 (with a service plan, and after discounts). Anyways, I didn't compare this sort of thing initially because it's hard to compare apples to apples - I was just seeing what value there is for a consumer in this Mac Pro. Anyways, as before, I think there's Macs that they price reasonably - and others (like this0 that they're still gouging on because they can (there's segments of their market that are very price insensitive).

Comment hidden because you are ignoring dag. (show it anyway)

Just speaking generally, I think the "over-sensitivity" claim is often trotted out by people when they are being kind of insensitive.

You can still be passionate, vulgar as fuck, interesting, funny or odd and employ the golden rule.

>> ^gorillaman:

Forget the medium, what about 'it's just a conversation'? You can go too far with this and give people an excuse to be oversensitive.