BBC Blog Network

User Profile

toydrum

Listed below are comments made by toydrum between Saturday, 20th September 2008 and Wednesday, 15th April 2009.

«Newer
Older»

What caused the Amazon firestorm? 06:23am on 15 Apr 2009 If this has truly happened because Amazon has a system deliberately designed to remove books from the public eye based on content, rather than a technical glitch, what other types of books have been removed that have not yet been noticed?

As a private company, they certainly have the right to conduct their business as they choose, as long as they remain within the law. However, if it is indeed true that Amazon - THE major bookseller in the world -- has deliberately chosen to use their influence to encourage sales of certain books at the expense of others, based on personal opinion (whether their own opinions or that of external pressure groups), this type of censorship seriously damages their credibility for all books and insults the intelligence of all of their customers.

It is as foolish and shortsighted for a bookseller to try and tell readers what content to read as it would be for a clothing store to try and make customers buy only blue shirts by hiding all the others in the back stockroom.

At this point, Amazon's reputation has been seriously brought into question and they need to step up and openly and publicly explain this situation.
Dr Who 5:27pm on 06 Mar 2009 A museum is a place for collections of historical, scientific or cultural interest. How is this inappropriate? Cultural interest changes through the years and this represents current interest.

When I was younger, I went to a very prestigious museum and saw a fantastic exhibit of the Muppets. This did not make me less educated or less cultured -- I went on to earn more than one postgraduate degree. If anything, it made me realize that museums might have something interesting to see in them and increased my curiousity about the world.

Take the children to see the exhibit and then spark their curiousity by taking a little more time to point out other cool things in the museum. Education comes from the direction of others around you, not from objects in a glass case.
The sinister world of statistics 02:34am on 05 Mar 2009 'Figures never lie, but liars always figure.'

The idea of having an office that produces nothing but 'unbiased' statistics seems like a waste of time. I do not believe it is possible to produce unbiased statistics because the bias is built in to the choice of data that is counted.

To complain about manipulating statistics for political reasons is missing the point. The choice of which criteria to count and how to count them is always part of the manipulation, so statistics should always be viewed with a degree of skepticism.

Perhaps a more appropriate question would be how can people be taught that skepticism and taught to put statistics into perspective.
Quadratic equations and away days 4:54pm on 15 Jan 2009 kaybraes, I think you missed a point in the blog.

"Kids from troubled backgrounds will be well used to the harsh voice of command - and worse."

If the parents are part of the problem, the situation is likely to get worse by just punishing them, since they will likely go home after and beat the kid down more. Yes, the cook's boy does kick the cat.

I agree that the parents should be involved but chances are they need to be taught parenting skills themselves.
Shock and ordinary 9:28pm on 29 Oct 2008 I am not impressed by your take on this. Ascribing the reaction to a 'generation gap' sounds just like the 'boys will be boys' argument that has been used for centuries to justify all levels of misbehavior, from thoughtless pranks to full blown criminal mischief.

Whether you normally like their comedic style or not, these 2 crossed the line and reached outside their show with an obscene and unnecessary attack. It was stupid and childish, and they whoever was stupid enough to let that portion go on the air needs a serious lesson in common sense.

However, to imply that all 'young' people think this is okay is pretty offensive. You base your theory on an analysis of the emails and text sent in by the listenening audience, but that doesn't tell you the age of the listeners!! People of all ages found this offensive, just like there were varying ages of people who did not.

And then there is the large number of people that find it offensively stupid rather than just plain offensive....
Ethnicity and the five-year-old 11:13pm on 19 Oct 2008 I think that there are at least 3 critically important factors missing from this report:
- the economic level of the parents
- the educational level of the parents
- the cultural background of the parents (e.g. are these immigrants or were they born in the UK? If immigrants, how long have they lived in this culture?)

Without those factors, it seems pointless to try and draw any meaningful conclusions from the study. Instead the study by its nature forces somewhat racist conclusions because it categorizes individuals only by ethnic background, as if that is the sole cause of any differences.
Births outside marriage - a real cause for concern 5:43pm on 24 Sep 2008 I know quite a few women that deliberately chose to become single parents and I could never understand that decision. Parenting is incredibly difficult work and it is much easier with 2 people.

Besides which, like it or not, men and women do not parent in the same way and children (boys and girls) learn different things from them. Many single parents have been successful in making sure their children are exposed to role models of the opposite sex, but I would think that would normally be much easier within the household than having to go outside of it.

As for economic incentives to encourage marriage, I can't see that being terribly useful. Marriage is a huge emotional and psychological commitment -- I don't think there are very many people that consider economics as a major factor in that decision.
A broad church 00:17am on 24 Sep 2008 Years ago, when I moved from the San Francisco bay area to live in Texas for a while, many of my friends were horrified and certain that I was moving to a place full of intolerance and narrow-mindedness.

Within a week of moving into a house in Fort Worth, I had 2 very nice ladies from the local church bringing me cookies and inviting me to their services. When I told them I was Catholic (which I remember as be as being considered appalling in South Carolina), they were still very welcoming, making sure I knew where my local parish church was and all the nicest parts of town (including some great local restaurants!).

Far from being narrow-minded and intolerant, I found the majority of the people of Texas to be friendly, welcoming and not interested in judging their neighbors. Yes, there were exceptions, but strangely enough, I found that the general attitudes were far more tolerant than those in the "liberal" SF bay area, where tolerant more often meant you agreed with the extreme liberals, but anything that wasn't far to the left was intolerant.
Map of the week: Economically inactive - other 3:25pm on 22 Sep 2008 "There isn't a census box for "at home looking after the kids" but it's thought that most of the 4.1 million people who fell into this category in 2001 were exactly that."

In other words, that is a wild guess and in lieu of actual information, it is not very useful as a starting point for discussion.

By the same meaningless statistics, you could argue that given the economic forecast is for increased unemployment over the next few years, wouldn't it be in the country's best interest to encourage more single earner families? That would theoretically free up more jobs so that you would have fewer households in unemployment.

This theory is, of course, nonsense. Neither jobs nor workers are interchangeable; if the job needs do not match the skill set available, the unemployment will not change but the number of jobs that need to be filled will rise.

Stringing together unrelated and incomplete bits of statistics may be a useful starting point for a chat at the pub, but it is a very bad basis for serious discussion about economics or sociology.
Latin class 02:38am on 20 Sep 2008 I have to agree with the last 2 posters (#25 and #26). America is NOT welcoming of any immigration, legal or otherwise.

We have extremely low caps and long waits for immigration from countries like Mexico and the Phillipines -- 2 of the countries that supply quite a few people to our armed forces!! I have friends that are Mexican that have been on the list waiting for legal immigration for over 17 years and, based on their registration year and the quotas, they expect their names to come up sometime in the next 3-4 years. For immigrants from the Philipines, the wait is nearly 30 years!!

Here in San Diego, I have seen much a big rise in racism and anti-immigration (especially anti-Mexican) attitudes in the last 5 years. Many people (especially newcomers to the area) assume that anyone with a hispanic surname must be an illegal alien, even though the majority are not only legal, many are from families that have been here for a lot more generations than my mixed-European ancestors.

It seems that a lot of it is being stirred up by the politicians on both sides -- democrats that want to appear pro-union and republicans that have moved far too heavily into the camp of the whitebread fundamentalist bible thumper.

Our economy needs realistic immigration policies. The jobs need to be done and the employers will hire illegals if they can't find anyone else. As long as the politicians are too cowardly to acknowledge that and put up a realistic policy that includes guest workers and reasonable quotas that help our economy grow, we will have a choice of illegal immigration or economic disaster in fields like agriculture and the service industries.

«Newer
Older»

^ Back to top

BBC MMVI

The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites

BBC.co.uk

BBC Blog Network

Find and talk to the BBC's bloggers.

User Profile

toydrum