The generic explanation is: The 'minority' can often have worse interview results and still get the job over a non-minority.
There was recently in the news a lawsuit against Harvard I believe, because there is some evidence that a White or Asian (minority in US but not in schools as a lot of them attend school) student can have better admissions testing scores and a "underrepresented" minority with lower scores gets admitted instead.
Wikipedia: In other countries, such as the UK,[7][8][9] affirmative action is rendered illegal because it does not treat all races equally.
The Harvard lawsuit you're referring to was quite a bit more subtle than that. There was a consistent pattern of Asian applicants getting lower scores in interviews conducted by Harvard admissions officers than in the other interviews that were part of the application process while other applicants of other races got approximately the same scores from admissions officers as from other interviewers. This was taken as evidence that the admissions officers' interview scores (and thus the overall admissions decisions) were biased against Asian applicants.
Attitudes are different in NZ from the US. There is no right to bear arms, and self defense is not a valid reason to hold a firearm licence. An overwhelming majority of people believe that military style weapons have no place in society, and that those guns - though not all guns - are too dangerous, and that accordingly yes, you must hand them over.
Even if an overwhelming majority of people believe state shootings (with guns) of people who won't hand them over is moral and ok in society.. the point of my reply still stands and has nothing to do with the right to self-defense etc.
There are plenty of times in history when overwhelming majorities beliefs took away minority rights.
When reading the wrong words can get you 10 years in prison, it probably does trend towards Orwell's future though.
Certainly. I recall seeing a video of a pump shotgun firing while the safety was on.
But as long as you always treat your firearms as loaded and never point it at something you're not willing to kill or destroy, you shouldn't have any "accidents".
Why is there value in keeping the ecosystem in a state we're familiar with? It's not like alligators were "always there" either. Animals migrate, things change, and us ensuring that the animal populations always match what they were in 1995 is hubris.
I agree with the direction of your idea but I don’t think it applies here. Invasive species are a major cause of loss of biodiversity. Typically, habitats change over a much larger timescale. If you introduce a species that’s suited for a habitat and it has no natural predators, you’re going to end up losing a lot of biodiversity as a result. Why is biodiversity important? Biodiversity gives us new opportunities for research (lots of new medical discoveries come from biodiversity), it allows an ecosystem to adapt to pressure (imagine if there’s a deadly new avian flu and you have 10 vs 100 bird species in an area, it’s a lot less likely that all birds will be wiped out in the second scenario as there’s more varied adaptations in that system that might allow the birds to survive). Change is of course natural for all ecosystems but as you lose biodiversity from things like invasive species, you lose the factors that allow an ecosystem to surmount potential extinction (extirpation?) events.
If you apply this same logic to humans, don’t you wind up with a xenophobic perspective? This seems like an alt-right manifesto but applied to animals not humans.
Alligators evolved during the Late Cretaceous (100M-65M years ago) and populated the waterways of the south-eastern US around that time. Pythons were introduced to that ecosystem roughly 30 years ago.
noahA does a pretty good job of explaining why the current thinking is that invasive species are a very bad thing but I agree it's a form of hubris to think we can control these things when humans seem to want to follow a whole other set of behaviors. Still, I think it's a good idea to try to motivate good stewardship.
Except there are already rock pythons, alligators, crocodiles, water moccasins, water bugs, fire ants, rattlesnakes, brown recluses, coyotes, wild dogs, cats, and pigs... I'm forgetting a few. Florida's natural wildlife isn't exactly friendly.
Foolproof method of preventing more victims - just put all the people guilty of those 2 crimes in prison for life. That way, they can never get out and re-offend.
There's already too many cases of someone getting a sentence of only a few years for one of those crimes, and then upon getting out, reoffending in the same or worse way within a few months.
