“Ethnics”

13th
Jul. × ’10

There is a great deal of indignation, (much of it nauseatingly self righteous) on Twitter* over this article in the Daily Express. As it’s next to impossible to express your thoughts with any kind of rigger on Twitter, I thought I’d have myself a rant here.

Lets be clear – I am not under any illusions about the editorial inclination of the Daily Express, or for that matter, its readership. However, it would be more than a little disingenuous to not judge the news item as a self-contained piece. Besides, I have a real job and can’t sit around trawling the archives of some rightwing tabloid looking for stuff to be offended by.

Actually, I may be setting the terms of discussion too broadly. The whole flaccid furore seems to be about the use of the term ‘Ethnics’ in the headline. In case you haven’t clicked on it, here it is in full:

ONE IN 5 BRITONS WILL BE ETHNICS

Cue mass pietistic, sloganeering on Twitter as the groupthink echo chamber grows tumescent at the chance of expressing its indignation.

The main body of the article, reporting on a recently released demographic study, contains very little thats different from what the Guardian – a publication not known for hysterical xenophobia – reports about the same thing. The whole thing boils down to the use of the word ‘Ethnics’.

Never mind that us ethnics have been describing ourselves as such for fuck knows how long. Christ! You have to be living in some kind of saccharin steeped oblivion to imagine that, for example my Punjabi friends and I sat around in college* calling ourselves ‘Ethnic Minorities’.

For the benefit of the super right-on, bedecked in authentic tribal patterns, who are no doubt consulting their vast knowledge of post colonial, pop psychology, let me assure you that we were not being ironic or self-hating. We were speaking casually about ourselves, our families and communities. So please spare me the rectal dribble of your vapid mind.

In my view, there is a more fundamental issue at stake than why or when ‘Ethnics’ acquired derogatory associations. I am not trying to act as a representative* for anyone else, but in this foreign immigrants view, there is nothing inherently racist or morally flawed with countries seeking to set conditions on who and how many can settle on their territory. If you accept this, then there is a discussion to be had about who, where and how many.

If you don’t accept the above notion, say so. Instead, people are jumping on the flimsiest of excuse to call those advocating limits and conditions ‘racist’. I’m not passing judgement on the value of the argument advocated by one side or the other. That’s a different discussion. What I’m saying is that the moral denunciation that calling someone ‘racist’ carries is being eroded by a bunch of limp, clueless posers.

There is nothing in the Express article that indicates to me that the writer thinks one set of people are superior to another. The writer is clearly holds a negative view about the levels of immigration to the UK but that doesn’t make him a racist. That’s not what racist means.

Resorting to calling people racist and such is not helping anyone’s cause. I mean for god sakes! It’s pissing me off! If the whining is getting on my tits – an immigrant from the middle east – its time to consider how your argument is being received in the wider population.

As it happens, I’m not convinced all this shrieking from the roof tops has anything to do with concern for ethnic minorities. This isn’t about people like me, or even disdain for people who are perceived to be ‘racist’. The whole thing has turned into some-kind of ludicrous lifestyle statement: “Look at me and my educated open mindedness. I’m hip and with-it”.

Ok, so you’re not some toothless yokel mesmerised by daytime TV, but don’t imagine your Twitt about the white-washing of imperial involvement in Africa while watching Zulu demonstrates some kind of worthwhile insight.

Issues of immigration, asylum and integration are one of the key points facing western democracies. How they are dealt with is going to effect more than the lives of foreigners and minorities. It’s going to effect the moral, legal and political character of these countries.

If you want to have a discussion about these things*, inevitably people will sometimes express themselves in ways that are boorish, insensitive, thoughtless, or oafish. This don’t make them racist. You don’t get to abdicate from addressing their substantial point by nit picking semantics.

* By its very nature, Twitter is an excruciatingly poor medium for communicating any kind of nuanced view. I’m of the opinion that as a matter of integrity, people should refrain from using it for anything other than notification, but this is a rant for another time.

* Shit! That was over twenty years ago!

* An easy way of aggravating me is by purporting to speak on my behalf based on some ancillary factor such as race, gender, ext. I don’t know how woman put-up with all the “woman want this” and “woman think that” stuff. I don’t imagine I’m speaking on anyone else’s behalf. These views are my own. No one else wanted them.

* I wonder.

Posted in Unbidden Ramblings | 1 Comment

BAE Rolls Out Taranis UAV Demonstrator

13th
Jul. × ’10

From Gizmag:

A prototype of England’s Taranis Unmanned Combat Aircraft System (UCAS) that we first covered back in 2006 has been unveiled for the first time by the UK Ministry of Defence (MoD). Three and a half years in the making and the product of more than a million man-hours the concept demonstrator is designed to test the possibility of developing the first ever autonomous stealthy UCAV that would ultimately be capable of precisely striking targets at long range, even on another continent.

This isn’t something that happens all that often but when it comes to Taranis, it is actually possible to point to a UK MoD project and think it isn’t woefully behind the technological curve.

Posted in Science & Technology | Tagged , , , , , , , | Comments closed

Lifting Mr. Nima

11th
Jul. × ’10

It has come to my attention that rumours have been circulating, suggesting that Mr. Nima has some kind of secret life.

This is all nonsense I assure you.

Posted in Unbidden Ramblings | Comments closed

First flight of the A-12

8th
Jul. × ’10

Some interesting stuff at Gizmodo about the A-12, the aircraft that evolved into the much better known SR-71:

This declassified Lockheed Martin video shows the first flight of the A-12, the super-secret spy plane precursor of the SR-71 Blackbird. Only 15 were made under the CIA’s OXCART program. The story of this technological wonder is fascinating.

Remember, this aircraft first flow in 62 with development starting in 1957. With further development, it was able to reach Mach 3.2. Not bad for an aircraft that was designed 12 years after the end of a war fought with piston engined prop planes.

Posted in Science & Technology | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

Telecaster vs. Stratocaster

5th
Jul. × ’10

There are very few mass-produced items that can boast the same uninterrupted lifespan.” In other words, it beggars belief how an object designed six decades ago doesn’t look – or, more importantly, sound – kitsch or outdated. The Telecaster’s younger and less elegant sibling, the Stratocaster, tends to go wildly in and out of style, but this guitar remains as unimpeachably cool as ever.

I agree. The Telecaster is much cooler. More in the Guardian.

Posted in Design | Tagged | Leave a comment

FireWire

4th
Jul. × ’10

This is why I like FireWire so much.

Try powering an external hard drive enclosure with two 7200 RPM hard drives with hardware RAID1 and an enclosure fan from a single USB cable and see how far you get. If you have to carry around an external storage device, having to use only one cable, or worse, look for a power socket for it is a big boon.

Oh – and it’s fast.

Since I am on the topic, I can recommend the G-RAID Mini. The unit is very well built, has interfaces for USB, FW400, FW800 and eSATA. As I mentioned, it supports RAID1 in hardware as well as RAID0.

It also comes with a simple but very practical carrying case.

Posted in Computing | Tagged , | Leave a comment

Labour Gazing

9th
Jun. × ’10

From the BBC:

Diane Abbott has gained enough nominations to get onto the Labour leadership ballot paper.

Dear Labour party: I trust you’ll let us all know when you are ready to stop with the tokenism, naval gazing and identity politics and get on with trying to form some kind of cohesive political/economic vision. If you recall, 60% of voters reject the one you presented in the election.

I mean, you do understand that this is why your are in the position of having to look for a new leader – right?

Bellow are bunch of comments culled from those submitted by Guardian readers:

Special interest groups have helped destroy Labour’s link with the public. It listens to identity politic groups far too much. Be it on immigration, feminism or race. Labour has completely lost touch with majority opinion.

Instead of listening to special interest groups Labour need to get it’s head out of it’s ass and listen to how the majority of people feel because they are now completely out of touch.

Pandering to muslim groups, church groups, feminist groups, race groups, etc won’t bring labour back into the main stream any more than promises of tax cuts could have brought the Tories back after they lost in 1997. In fact it will turn people off them. It’s part of the reason Ken lost to Boris and New Labour did so badly.

Stop promoting politics as self-contained career option. Stop supporting the careerist drones. We know who they are, we know their type: Uni politics to politico job / MP researcher / policy wonk to unwinnable seat to winnable seat to inner circle. Get yourself some characters who know something of the world and have something – anything – interesting to say.

1. Stop lying, manipulating the truth and denying responsibility for what went wrong – a big mea culpa and an even bigger ‘sorry’ is due to Britain

2. Stop bossing people around and trying to control every aspect of our lives

3. Stop demanding political solutions for every kind of human problem

4. Stop taxing-and-wasting to such a massive, gerrymandering extent

5. Stop patronising, belittling and ‘welfarising’ blue collar people, just offer opportunities

The emphasis on ‘youthful’ MPs kills politics for women. Many become seriously interested in politics once their children are independent. Joining a political party when you are 40+ pretty much guarantees you will never become an MP; & you haven’t a snowflake’s chance in hell of a ministerial position.

Posted in Politics | Tagged , | Leave a comment

Going Too Far

9th
Jun. × ’10

Rafael Correa of Ecuador speaking during Hillary Clinton’s visit:

The new left that I represent is not anti anything. We are not anti-capitalist. We are not anti-American. We are not anti-imperialist. We are pro-dignity, pro-sovereignty, pro-social justice, pro-good life for our people. We are in favour of the good things.

Steady on fella: it’s ok to be against imperialism.

Posted in News | Tagged , | Leave a comment

Lightroom 3 Released

8th
Jun. × ’10
Adobe has released the final version of their excellent image editing and organising application today.

According to Wired:

The flagship change was in the RAW rendering engine, Adobe Camera RAW (ACR). This is what takes the raw information from the camera’s sensor and turns it into a set of pixels that we recognize an an image. There are many improvements, but the noise-reduction in Lightroom 3 is phenomenal. I use it, and it really is able to knock the color and luminance noise out of even super-high ISO photographs.

I’ll certainly be interested in reading Dave Girard review of this release. As far as I’m concerned, Girard does the best reviews of image editing applications on or off the web.

Here is Girard’s review of Apple’s Aperture 3 application which was released a couple of months back.

Posted in Photography | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

Another Out of Control Government Website Budget

8th
Jun. × ’10

Quote of the day:

You need to ask yourself whether £360,000 seems like a fair price for such a website. I’d suggest it isn’t. Even with a significant allocation for design, I’d have thought you could produce a similar result – with better functionality – for 95% less. If there’s more going on behind the scenes than is obvious from the front end, perhaps they might like to explain what. This is a perfect example of why I’m not scared of all the talk about massive public sector spending cuts.

 

Posted in Politics | Tagged | Leave a comment