'The standard you walk past is the standard you accept.'
The ten-page anti-diversity manifesto circulating round Google is simply the latest round in the ongoing exclusion of women and minorities from tech. The cod-evolutionary biology relied on by its anonymous author is a pile of tosh with a long and murky pedigree, and feeds directly into both white supremacism and misogyny. The manifesto ignores the actual history of tech in favour of assumptions and baselesss generalisations.
The Google doc is the tip of an iceberg of discrimination and harassment. What is to be done?
Despite concerns about limits on free expression caused by UN proposals with respect to Traditional Cultural Expressions, is the real danger much closer to home? David Mamet's use of copyright to restrict post-show discussion of his play "Oleanna" raises concerns about the chilling effects of extended uses of IP rights.
Was the author of the true 'first English detective story' stabbed in the back?
"It is something to be greater than Scott, Shakespeare, Homer in the South Seas, and to that you have attained." Robert Louis Stevenson, letter to M.E. Braddon. Why has a work which was hugely well-known in its day (that day being a very long one) never been considered a candidate for "earliest English detective novel"?
