Friday, November 14, 2008

Racist?

I was listening to a podcast on the subject of racism yesterday. The speaker made the following statement (my paraphrase):
"Suppose you are walking alone along a city street, late at night. A group of five young men of the same ethnicity as each other are heading towards you, talking to each other and haven't noticed you. There are many reasons why you might feel apprehensive in such a scenario. But if you would feel more apprehensive if the group of men was from a different ethnic background to you than if they were the same, then you are (at least slightly) racist in your attitude."
I disagree with this statement.

I don't think I am racist (it wouldn't work well in my place of work - most of the people I work with are not from the UK and a significant portion are not of white European origin), but I know that some people (from across the whole spectrum of ethnicities) are. I know that there are such things as racially motivated attacks. There may be several reasons why a group of five young men might attack a lone walker late at night. Hopefully there are many more reasons why they might not. But if we factor racial reasons in there, then the hypothetical group of men who are ethnically different from me have one more possible reason why they should attack me than the hypothetical group who are of the same ethnicity. So if group A has more potential reasons to attack me than group B, then it is entirely justified to be slightly more apprehensive if group A is approaching me.

Or am I racist?

What do you think?

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Monday, November 10, 2008

Booting an Eee PC with Windows from SD card?

I've got one of these:
Running this OS:
(which is great for the kids)
But occasionally (for work purposes), I'd quite like it to run this OS:
(Which I have a legitimate copy of)
And I believe that the thing can be set up so that it can boot from one of these:
So why, oh why, can't I find any simple instructions on t'internet regarding how to actually go about setting this up?

Anybody got any good ideas?

Bearing in mind that I'm only a lower-level computer geek and haven't worked my way up the geek ranks very far...

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Wednesday, November 05, 2008

Butter?

I had a baked potato at lunchtime.

I have noticed that both of the food outlets near my work which sell baked potatoes make the same mistake.

They always ask "do you want butter on it?" to which I always reply "yes".

They then, invariably, put margarine on the potato. Not butter.

Are there people out there who really don't know the difference between the two? Do thay all work in baked potato shops? Why, oh, why?

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