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Which one of these is legally acceptable discrimination?

A) "I'm sorry, being Martian is really a requirement for this position."
B) "I'm sorry, being native-born is really a requirement for this position."
C) "I'm sorry, being college-educated is really a requirement for this position."

If you answered C as in College, you're correct.

As others have noted, often times a degree means any bachelor's degree required, not necessarily one specific or even relevant to the line of work. So what is the cause of this hiring obsession with degrees today? One former bigwig I worked for required me to add it to the job descriptions because it would keep our pay relevant compared to every other department.

I would not be surprised that Applicant Tracking Systems are being used to quickly thin the herds of applicants, with location being the first check and the second being a degree. So while recruiters whine about not having enough qualified applicants, how many are really digging into applicants by hand and by eye to find the best of the whole pool outside of that candidate-burying checkbox?

In a role where I was at the cusp of being hired, the CEO's last piece of advice was to put my education status at the top of my resume, as though that's the first thing he cared about, not the last decade of directly-relevant work experience that so readily said I could do the job. The external recruiter later said they "redid the requirements" to aim at someone who well, wasn't me. In many of these cases, perhaps my judgement is skewed because this is the readily available legal rejection, not that I'm huge and intimidating by size, or pale as a ghost, or whatever.

I didn't get diagnosed with ADD until after I left college, so while I'm intelligent and was reasonably successful, I have this repeated experience where I can't get hired to a job commensurate with my real life experience and award-winning track record. And it makes me feel like leftovers, that someone might hire me if they really need someone right now, but otherwise all I'm good for is answering calls. Even some early high school degree requirements were found to be discriminatory. So this this educational requirement the new discrimination?

Chris Evans has announced he is leaving his role as a presenter on BBC Two's Top Gear after one series.

He tweeted: "Stepping down from Top Gear. Gave it my best shot but sometimes that's not enough.

"I feel like my standing aside is the single best thing I can now do to help the cause."

His resignation comes after falling ratings for the show - which hit a series low on Sunday night, with an average of 1.9 million viewers.

Source: BBC

It is just over a year since Evans was given the job of reinventing Top Gear for the post-Clarkson era, an appointment that was controversial from the start after he had repeatedly denied he had been approached to host the show.

The then BBC2 controller, Kim Shillinglaw, said Evans’s “knowledge of and passion for cars are well-known and combined with his sheer inventiveness and cheeky unpredictability he is the perfect choice to take our much-loved show into the future”. But Shillinglaw lost her BBC2 job before the show went on air, one of a string of senior departures to hit the show, also including that of its executive producer Lisa Clark.

Source: The Guardian

http://www.vice.com/read/oakland-underage-sex-work-scandal

Not so long ago it was possible to point to Oakland as a police reform success story. In the last decade, the cops have gone from conducting an average of 3,000 searches without probable cause every year to 280 in 2015. Officers are now required to wear body cameras. After decades of abuse, violence, and corruption, the police department seemed to finally be changing.

In the last few weeks, though, a scandal has emerged that threatens to tear the department apart. In brief, 14 Oakland police officers are currently under investigation for sleeping with an 18-year-old sex worker—three of them when she was 17, thus allegedly committing rape and sex trafficking under California law. The woman, using the alias Celeste Guap, told the East Bay Express earlier this month that she was having sex with the cops for money and protection; she had been given a friend's arrest history and information about undercover prostitution stings.

Hints of the scandal surfaced last year, after a suicide note written one of the officers involved, Brendan O'Brien, mentioned Guap, prompting an investigation. But the higher-ups allegedly dragged their feet, and the supposed cover-up has only widened the sordid scandal has since expanded. (According to Guap's later comments to the media, she's actually had sex with "more than 30 officers" from multiple agencies around the Bay Area.)

The shocking and salacious events were the catalyst to Oakland appointing four police chiefs in two weeks. Initially, Sean Whent, who was promoted to top cop at the end of a similarly messy 2013 shuffle that saw three new police chiefs in three days, got canned because he allegedly knew about Guap sleeping with Oakland cops but didn't press for a speedy and public investigation.

On the old green site there user achievements like CmdrTaco's list. Perhaps we could promote submitters by making them get a scribe's icon or something distinctive to encourage submissions?

We already have the gold star for subscribers, but the servers aren't useful without submissions to feed the place too.

My default length password via generator was too long for an application today.

The password you entered is not valid

Please note that the password must respect the following rules:

        It must contain between 6 and 32 characters. Use only characters from the following set: ! # $ % & ( ) * + , - . / 0123456789 : ; ? @ ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ [ \ ] _ ` abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz { | } ~
        It must contain at least 1 letter(s) (ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz).
        It must contain at least 1 numeric character(s) (0123456789).
        It must not contain more than 2 identical consecutive characters (AAA, iiii, $$$$$ ...).
        It must not contain your user name.

Sorry that I prefer more than 32 characters for my throwaway application accounts. F Oracle Taleo.

A funny article I found on NBF:

Do not "blame" life extension for Rupert Murdoch and Fox News, If Murdoch died Fox would still be right wing

Which is a response to: Bonus Level: The World's Most Powerful Humans are Getting Another 10-15 Years on Earth

A common argument against life extension is that it would allow the elites to live indefinitely, accruing more power, wealth, and influence for themselves. To that I say: If you're so worried about it, stop waiting for them to die, and start killing them.

This thread made me chortle like a short little fat man with too much money:

Why is this article tagged with the logo for Digital Equipment Corporation?

Maybe I'm just old, but damn, I could excuse not knowing Honeywell had a computer systems group. But not knowing |d|i|g|i|t|a|l| is technologically heathen!

Alabama ACLU and Newspaper Criticize Police for Arresting Citizen Journalist by Bama Camera

The Alabama police department that had a man arrested on a felony charge of jamming up their emergency lines – even though he did not make a single call – is now taking heat from the local ACLU as well as the local newspaper.

But the Wetumpka Police Department is still sticking to its guns, threatening to arrest anybody else who posts their non-emergency phone number of (334) 567-5321.

They claim that by calling that number, it somehow leads turns into a 911 call, which they claim makes it difficult to respond to actual emergencies.

But all they were doing were exercising their First Amendment right to petition for redress of grievances by complaining about how officers ripped a camera out of Keith Golden’s hands for recording the police department from public property.

First Amendment Audit (Wetumpka PD) "I don't care about your 1st Amendment Rights"

Arrest Update by Bama Camera
**UPDATE**FPS-USMS-BAM CAMERA by News Now Houston

Below is the closing section to an article written by Cognitive Dissonance of TwoIceFloes.com, he is also a contributing author at ZeroHedge.com, and by far their best in my opinion.

To change the world I must first change myself. To approach this in any other manner is to adopt the techniques and mindset we decry as dishonest, disingenuous and corrupt. I have come to realize the approaching trials are about so much more than just survival. This is about personal growth and spiritual transformation, of reaching for and achieving a higher plain of existence greater than the lowest common denominator, the heart of the fraud the Empire promotes and which “We the People” are addicted to and dependent upon.

And this, I suspect, is what truly holds so many people back.

For to break from the herd and look squarely in the mirror requires a fearless self examination and assessment, precisely what we are conditioned to avoid at all costs in our mindless pursuit of self absorbed consumerism. The promoted myth is simple enough; when we exit the education indoctrination system the only remaining items left to pursue are specific skills required to further our ‘career’, which in turn provides the money to pay the debts that support the self destructive consumer lifestyle.

Turning our back on this meme and consciously choosing a life of more focused labor and dedication to self sufficiency and independence is not aligned with the bargain we struck with the system back when we entered grade school all those years ago. I made a deal with the devil in return for a life of leisure when I hit age 65. To question this fundamental ‘truth’ requires us to question everything, something very few of us are willing to do.

Are you?

Too spicy for Soylent: Norway teaches migrants about Western women

Should Western relationship norms be taught to migrants? The BBC's Victoria Derbyshire programme attended a controversial class in Norway that aims to teach asylum seekers how to interact with women.

"When you move to another country, there will be different cultural codes compared to what you are used to," says instructor Margareth Berg. "And that will be codes that are not written or spoken about. Somebody has got to tell them what is normal behaviour."

In 2009, a spate of rapes by migrant men in Norway prompted the introduction of the controversial classes for refugees. Incidents of mass sexual assault by gangs of men in the German city of Cologne at the new year shone a light on this approach. Now, other European countries are thinking of introducing similar training.

The class in Haugesund, in west Norway, is no longer just about rape prevention. Now, it includes discussions around communicating with the opposite sex, boundaries, domestic violence, and what to do if you witness a sexual assault. Public awareness videos about rape are also shown.

It lasts four hours, and is not compulsory - although many refugees take it as part of a series of courses offered to new arrivals, including language courses and help with finding work. In this class, most are Syrian, but there are also some Iraqis and Afghans.