| Rayne Today Searching for dharma, in spite of the weather...
Race in Great article from Reuters (as featured at MSNBC.com) regarding the Lott debacle and the issue of racism in the Once you read the article, you’ll see the numbers speak for themselves (i.e., serious differences in longevity and infant mortality between blacks and whites). When the numbers stop looking so incredibly bad, we’ve succeeded as a nation at fully integrating a minority group into the mainstream. As long as these numbers are so bad, a segment of our society is sub-optimized, not reaching their full potential and not equitably contributing to the rest of society. The numbers reflected in this article focus on black Americans; I’d put money on similarly poor results for other minority ethnic groups, other persons of color in Salon Bloggers have been posting and commenting furiously this last week about free speech in relationship to cross-burning. (See Secular Blasphemy, differentstrings, The Raven, Emphasis Added for all the action.) One key reason why I don’t personally feel cross-burning is a protected speech: it’s a threatening symbol of hatred by a majority group (which has enormous power in this country) against minority groups (who clearly by the numbers in the Reuters’ article do NOT have equitable power in this country). When these numbers change, I’ll probably feel differently about cross-burning. I won’t feel the potential threat of a majority with genocidal desires. I’ll have little or nothing to complain about in regards to racism. Maybe I’m just sensitive because in Lott’s and Thurmond’s perfect world, I’d have to sit in the back of the bus, and my babies, by virtue of being mixed race, wouldn’t have the same chance at a healthy childhood and prosperous future that they have now. But the numbers tell me it’s not just hypersensitivity. They only confirm we have an on-going, serious problem with racism here in the so-called “land of the free”.  comment []Star Wars – where are you, Skywalker?… Apparently watching “Star Wars” the movies hasn’t been enough – we’ve arrived at a time where our warfare needs to imitate art. After reading about the “Star Wars” anti-ballistic missile defense system’s roll out, I wonder about a few more interesting things I read today. If you were to do a job search on America’s Job Bank, you would see that Raytheon has a sudden rash of postings available all over Interesting… comment []New development: Libel-at-a-distance Note an article published today at InfoWorld.com regarding the dismissal of a The continuing Australian suit against Dow Jones & Co. may pose a larger challenge in that Dow Jones’ audience is global in nature. The trans-border jurisdiction issue was deemed irrelevant for this reason. We’ll need to watch this one carefully, to see if the court finds the issue of jurisdiction problematic to prosecution as the case proceeds. This is a good learning opportunity for bloggers; what are libel and defamation, versus the free expression of one’s opinion? There are a number of good resources which define defamation and its subset, libel; this one is fairly short and sweet. As I see it, there are two components which I need to keep in mind while writing – am I being malicious, acting with the intent to cause financial or other measurable damages to the parties about which I’m writing? Am I acting with blatant disregard for facts and truth about the subject parties? Short of the adage, “Don’t say a thing if you can’t say anything nice”, one is entitled under Here in Salon Blogs, comments providing feedback to bloggers from their constituents are a nifty way to ensure a blogger stays on their toes. If you as the blog reader know something to be inaccurate, please pipe up. I’m sure no Salon blogger would ever indulge in deliberate malice (although they can sure as hell rant about stuff that pisses them off!); I’ve not see it yet in countless numbers of posts here in the Salon Blog community. comment []
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