Delicious LiveJournal Links for 3-9-2009

• Harvard Scientists' Discovery Opens Door to Synthetic Life
  The technology can be used to program cells to make virtually any protein, even some that donâ™t exist in nature, the scientists said. That may allow production of helpful new drugs, chemicals and organisms, including living bacteria. It also opens the door to ethical concerns about creation of processes that may be uncontrollable by lifeâ™s natural defenses.
  (tags: science life)
• The Sheer Size of IPV6
  Some nice visualisations
  (tags: internet graphics)
• How Not To Be Insane When Accused Of Racism (A Guide For White People)
  Donâ't make it a whacking huge deal if you say something racist, or something others perceive as racist.
  (tags: culture advice racism race privilege)
• Ancient brain circuits light up so we can judge people on first impressions
  The scans showed that two brain regions were involved in opinion-forming, the almond-shaped amygdala, which is linked to regulating emotions, and the posterior cingulate cortex, which is active in making financial decisions and putting values on the outcomes of situations.
  (tags: psychology neuroscience brain emotions decisions)
• The good news is reality exists. The bad is it's even stranger than people thought
  Yet more proof that the stuff down at a quantum level makes no sense when thought about using metaphors derived at a human level.
  (tags: philosophy physics reality quantum)
• The International Jurassic Park Erotic Fan-Fiction Writer's Association
  Go on. You know you want to.
  (tags: fanfic JurassicPark)
• When soft-core games turn hard-core
  Fascinating piece on why PopCap managed to launch a hard-core game without realising it.
  (tags: games physics)
• Parents need guidance too
  I reall,y really hope I never turn into this person.
  (tags: people stupidity age Comment)
• Why we've reached the end of the camera megapixel race
  With some comments on why jamming in more pixels can make your cameras _worse_.
  (tags: technology photography sensors camera)
• Edsger Dijkstra - The parable of the toilets
  Programmers, as a rule, are delighted by it, and managers, invariably, get more and more annoyed as the story progresses; true mathematicians, however, fail to see the point.
  (tags: funny programming toilets)
• How to stop the drug wars
  The Economist makes sense
  (tags: law drugs government prohibition)
• Hanzi Smatter
  Dedicated to the misuse of Chinese characters in Western culture.
  (tags: funny language tattoo chinese)

The "tone" argument

Edit:Thank you to everyone for the comments left on this piece. I've learned a lot from a variety of you. I am trying to engage with people who are trying to educate me, and I appreciate you taking the time and effort to do so. I do appreciate that this is a large and complex issue, and if I'd known that it was going to be spread over half of LJ I'd probably have thought about it for more than 30 seconds before writing it.

I've now had it pointed out to me by several people that there's no point asking people to be polite when they're discussing things on the internet - because the tone they take doesn't actually affect how people's views are taken.

The most recent time I was linked to this post, which is well written, amusing, and completely failed to make its point to me.  Their point was that speaking politely doesn't work.  That people have tried speaking politely, and got nowhere.

My point is that they offer absolutely no evidence that shouting _does_ work.  And in my experience, shouting pushes people away more than anything else.

I don't have a racism example, because I've not been accused of racism.  However, I have been accused of sexism.  And I'm fairly sure that I have been sexist - but the way that I was approached managed to both shut off any chance that I was going to listen to what the person was saying, but also caused a few other people to feel disgusted at what they were saying.  It caused people to speak negatively of "feminists" - something I had to then try and correct (what with being one myself).

If someone has evidence that shouting at bigots actually achieves any good then I would be very happy to hear it.  Provided that it's presented to me in a reasonable, non-offensive manner.  I may even change my mind :->