KY: jom!

ST: heh best video evar!

dabs: unfortunately your reasoning will not go down well with a lot of people… who unfortunately like to self-victimise. happens everywhere, just under different guises.

christmas: negro’s not an offensive term according to my dictionary. ‘nigger’ is a different matter, categorised as ‘extremely offensive’. my understanding is that it reminds them of the times of slavery, bla bla bla. it’s only in recent times that it’s considered derogatory. something evolved from the ‘black hole’ thing i suppose. though there’s a diference on how one intends to use the words, i believe.

annegel: yes when he was 2.

julian: thanks for the link. i spent about 2 hours on it, inclusive of opening other related links

simon: bah mooncakes. i hate mooncakes.

Sometimes people can turn these terms around, for instance, ‘Christian’ was originally a derogatory term for followers of Christ. Rather than fighting the term it has now become the normal term for followers of Christ.

–> Christmas: I think ‘negro’ and ‘nigger’ were terms used when blacks were sold like cattle, which is why they are considered derogatory. On the other hand, there’s been a whole debate about this recently: http://chronicle.com/review/brainstorm/index.php?id=654

4. ‘In astronomy, the term black hole refers to a star that has collapsed upon itself, creating something so dense and small that it does not have any physical properties besides a gravitational force so great that even light cannot escape its pull.’

I can see why those officials got upset. Obviously not knowing the meaning of Black Hole means they have small dense minds, thus the comment was obviously refering to them. No logic can escape their brains pull.

The thing I find funny about the whole thing is this; in the US of A you’re supposed to refer to AFRO-AMERICANS and NOT BLACK people. What does the article do?
‘One black official demanded an apology, and Commissioner John Wiley Price, who also is black, said that type of language is unacceptable.’

After all, the whole point of using AFRO-AMERICAN was to disassocciate race from the term BLACK. Malcom-X never asked people to stop using terms like ‘Black Sheep’ or ‘Black Hole’, he just asked that they refer to him as Afro-American so that he was not associated with negative terms.

Which leads to the question. What are we going to start using for White Holes, White Dwarves and other astronomical phenomena? After all, they are named after their colour, NOT whether they are good or bad. And are there not negative terms with other colours as well? ‘Don’t touch it, it’s WHITE hot’. ‘You are like a WHITE washed TOMB?’ ‘They are WHITE WASHING to hide their hypocrisy???’ ‘You don’t look so good, you’re very white! Are you feeling Okay?’

Fact is, it is getting very stupid when you can’t make a perfectly innocent statement without people getting upset.

The problem with using Singularity [as suggested in the article] is there is more than one type of singularity. Stephen Hawkings I would suggest ignores the term Black Hole as he is talking froma scientific stand point where they seldom use colloquial terms for phenomena.

6. You’re memory is still Okay. Now, where is that $1 million dollars I lent you?

7. Can’t celebrate Hungry Ghost festicval anymore. Some Texas politicians feel it’s racist, all those ghosts running around look like KKK members.

9. Someone gotta be da booty!!!!

10. If someone has sex with Verne, can they release the tape afterwards?