I take it you're talking about the Middle East in its most narrow sense here.
Legolas Send a noteboard - 24/01/2011 09:56:22 PM
It looks like most of the refugees from Iraq to Sweden are Assyrian Christians. While there have been a few isolated honor killings among Middle Eastern Christians, 99% (or more) of honor killings are performed by Muslims. Virtually all female genital mutilation is performed by Muslims. In short, the fact that these communities are largely Christian makes it easy to show that they would not be involved in honor killings. As a result, the statements are probably bad generalizations.
Because as soon as you include Egypt or other African countries, your statement about the genital mutilation becomes flagrantly untrue (and genital mutilation is a far bigger problem in Egypt and the other African countries than in the Middle East proper, so...). I have serious doubts about your statement about the honor killings as well, but I don't really have any hard data on that that would allow me to disprove it.
I do, however, stand by the position that generalizations are appropriate when statistics bear them out. They should not be applied at the individual level to someone you don't know, but when referring to a group it is okay to use factually correct generalizations. For example, "Let's not serve beef at the fundraiser - half the people who are giving money are Hindus".
I agree with that.
So the Irish government has basically imploded.
- 23/01/2011 04:47:10 PM
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I am now confused
- 23/01/2011 05:34:31 PM
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You do realize Britain is pretty much the envy of the Western world at the moment?
- 23/01/2011 06:27:05 PM
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Re: You do realize Britain is pretty much the envy of the Western world at the moment?
- 23/01/2011 06:34:47 PM
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I did. There was more violence than in ours, that's true (ours have none so far, knock on wood).
- 23/01/2011 06:41:34 PM
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Re: I did. There was more violence than in ours, that's true (ours have none so far, knock on wood).
- 23/01/2011 06:43:41 PM
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Those protests were only violent by British standards.
- 23/01/2011 11:54:15 PM
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What protests?
- 24/01/2011 07:26:49 PM
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Re: What protests?
- 24/01/2011 07:28:40 PM
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Re: What protests?
- 25/01/2011 09:23:17 AM
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There's a new objection
- 25/01/2011 11:38:25 AM
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I didn't object...
- 25/01/2011 11:47:11 AM
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And Britain had to live with the Conservative Wilderness for 15 years before it could get there *NM*
- 24/01/2011 02:43:16 AM
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Should I start chiming in on Norwegian politics now that I'm here...? 
- 24/01/2011 12:42:03 AM
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- 24/01/2011 12:42:03 AM
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Why not?
- 24/01/2011 08:49:07 AM
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'Cos I doubt you'll like what I have to say, for one thing.
- 26/01/2011 01:55:13 AM
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That's been a while coming, hasn't it? Cowen seems to be losing it.
- 23/01/2011 05:48:30 PM
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Certainly. he's been on dodgy ground for a couple months.
- 23/01/2011 06:27:27 PM
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Re: Certainly. he's been on dodgy ground for a couple months.
- 23/01/2011 06:33:26 PM
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Re: Certainly. he's been on dodgy ground for a couple months.
- 23/01/2011 07:19:03 PM
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Re: Certainly. he's been on dodgy ground for a couple months.
- 23/01/2011 07:57:05 PM
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Re: Certainly. he's been on dodgy ground for a couple months.
- 23/01/2011 09:29:03 PM
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Re: Certainly. he's been on dodgy ground for a couple months.
- 23/01/2011 09:46:20 PM
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I think Adams is an Irish citizen, and not a British one.
- 23/01/2011 11:45:34 PM
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I found out something else today which makes it even better.
- 24/01/2011 10:37:45 PM
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I was reading your post and going "what about the Chiltern Hundreds"?
- 24/01/2011 10:44:32 PM
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Oh, alternatively we could elevate him to the House of Lords.
- 26/01/2011 11:08:44 PM
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Awesome idea. Something like "Baron Adams of Londonderry", I'm thinking. *NM*
- 27/01/2011 07:54:26 PM
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We made his arch-rival a Lord, after all, so it would only be fair.
- 28/01/2011 08:26:15 AM
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Here you go
- 25/01/2011 12:55:33 PM
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well, the only interesting thing in swedish politics is a wikileaks document and the reactions...
- 23/01/2011 06:21:00 PM
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What is inappropriate about trying to keep out barbaric unskilled people?
- 23/01/2011 10:59:53 PM
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- 26/01/2011 07:46:19 PM
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The inappropriateness is the generalisation in the claim
- 23/01/2011 11:16:52 PM
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Generalizations are inappropriate when they are disproven by statistics, and appropriate when proven
- 24/01/2011 07:33:14 PM
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I've looked into the statistics a bit more.
- 24/01/2011 09:11:52 PM
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I take it you're talking about the Middle East in its most narrow sense here.
- 24/01/2011 09:56:22 PM
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... the fact that they are asylum seekers, and their skill certainly shouldn't matter in that case.
- 24/01/2011 07:08:14 PM
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- 26/01/2011 07:46:19 PM
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Hopefully they'll stop using Irish officially as a way to cut down on unnecessary costs.
- 23/01/2011 10:57:08 PM
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I'd support that
- 23/01/2011 11:26:20 PM
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Ironically, if you de-officialised Irish you could get EU money to help preserve it.
- 23/01/2011 11:48:14 PM
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But why, why?
- 24/01/2011 08:35:43 PM
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Because it's the only thing justifying their insistence they're not British?
- 24/01/2011 10:03:54 PM
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- 24/01/2011 10:03:54 PM
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But all language learning should be purely voluntary (after what parents teach their children).
- 25/01/2011 03:05:28 AM
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What, so you don't think students in high school should be taught foreign languages?
- 25/01/2011 06:34:21 PM
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Irish is the mother tongue of about 7,000-15,000 people at most.
- 26/01/2011 05:04:00 AM
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Wikipedia says it's more like 40k-80k.
- 26/01/2011 06:41:41 PM
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And Elaine, Stephen, or any other Irish people here: do feel free to comment. *NM*
- 26/01/2011 06:42:36 PM
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*NM*
- 26/01/2011 06:42:36 PM
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More to the point, are YOU interested in learning Irish?
- 26/01/2011 05:15:18 AM
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Calling Ireland the new Sodom and Gomorrah, are you?
- 26/01/2011 06:02:05 PM
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- 26/01/2011 06:02:05 PM
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I don't think it's as fun as Sodom and Gomorrah, at least not post-crisis. 
- 26/01/2011 09:48:54 PM
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- 26/01/2011 09:48:54 PM
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Re: I don't think it's as fun as Sodom and Gomorrah, at least not post-crisis.
- 27/01/2011 08:42:21 PM
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- 27/01/2011 08:42:21 PM
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Presumably because they agree with J.R.R. Tolkien and Tómas Sæmundsson about language's importance.
- 24/01/2011 10:16:05 PM
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So Australians and New Zealanders are really English then? Austrians are just Germans?
- 25/01/2011 03:01:14 AM
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I never said I agreed 
.
- 25/01/2011 08:19:11 AM
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.
- 25/01/2011 08:19:11 AM
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I would suggest that a distinct dialect does the job just as well
- 25/01/2011 02:23:59 PM
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The thing is, people who feel really strongly about that usually insist it's a separate language.
- 28/01/2011 04:20:57 PM
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It's really more about having a unique silly costume to wear at Miss Universe pageants.
- 26/01/2011 05:09:10 AM
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You're confusing what we sell to gullible American tourists with what we actually value . *NM*
- 28/01/2011 04:15:01 PM
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. *NM*
- 28/01/2011 04:15:01 PM
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What the hell happened to the Celtic Tiger Country? *NM*
- 24/01/2011 05:47:12 AM
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The Celtic Tiger is dead, Ireland had a GDP contraction of 14% in the last two years.
- 24/01/2011 01:47:06 PM
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It's still there, but it aimed a bit too high and got a bit scorched.
- 24/01/2011 10:07:36 PM
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