Wednesday, March 21, 2012

Miscellaneous Joy, Ribald Conservatism Edition

-Steve Sailer catches the New York Times with their preconceptions being hilariously disproved. A shooter had being going around in France, targeting victims including Jews and Muslim soldiers. Naturally, without a shred of evidence, the New York Times wrote up the story as an example of Europe's "far-right" in action. But then it turned out that the shooter was actually an example of what Mark Steyn described as 'some guy named Mohammed', who claims to belong to al Qaeda. It's all well and good for New York Times writers to claim to not pre-judge matters based on stereotypes, but they might try to be a little more consistent in their application of the principle. I expect the retraction and apology to be coming any day now.

-One of the best one-sentence pitches for considering Mitt Romney as both a fiscal and a social conservative, (referencing a particular NEA grant) coming from Ann Coulter:
"Do you think a man who slashed government spending in North Korea [Massachusetts], put the corrupt and financially bleeding Olympics on solid financial footing and rescued dozens of companies from bankruptcy would consider a photo of a bullwhip stuck in a man's buttocks a wise investment of the taxpayers' money?"
It doesn't fit on a bumper sticker, but it's a pretty great slogan.

-Via Hacker News, an interesting piece by a female programmer talking about the subtle sexism she faces at work. I found it actually quite thought provoking, because it points out how a lot of male behaviours might not be considered that bad individually, but can have a cumulative effect that's quite corrosive.

Of course, then you scroll down to the comments, and it in part features her expressing some reservation (with a smiley face, admittedly) about a commenter referring to 'girls'. Later she suggests 'gals' as an alternative "if you want to sound less stuffy". Yeeeah. There's nothing wrong with this, and she does imply she's partly kidding. But let's just say that if you've given serious consideration to whether the term 'girls' is overly sexist and what alternatives there might be, I'm probably placing you somewhere higher up on the 'likely to take offense at mildly inappropriate comments' spectrum. That doesn't change what she wrote, but it might add some context about the things she's talking about.

-Pick your appropriate headline, between 'About Bloody Time' and 'I'll Believe It When It Actually Happens'.

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