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from the your-days-are-numbered...-Drei,-Zwei,-Eins dept.
Anu Garg at A Word A Day posted this story of an upcoming mayoral election in the small town of Völklingen, Germany (near the French border, south of Belgium), wherein one of the candidates gave a spectacularly bad answer to a question in a recent debate.
Representative Uwe Faust of the political party Die Partei jokingly asked, “According to the building code, paragraph 126, each owner is obliged to label his property with the number given by the municipality. I find it alarming that in Völklingen many house numbers are displayed in Arabic numerals. How would you like to take action against this creeping foreigner infiltration?”
To which Otfried Best, running with the far-right NPD party, fell for the joke, replying, "You just wait until I am mayor. I will change that. Then there will be normal numbers."
Mr. Best apparently does not know what Arabic numerals are.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Wednesday September 13 2017, @02:17AM (2 children)
Actual real world statistical data seems to disagree.
Its a predictability and average odds improvement life hack. Kinda like there's no way to know "for certain" if you ride a bike, you won't get killed in an accident and sometimes people in helmets die anyway, but the numbers do indicate helmets are safer, like it or not.
The way it actually works is a proxy for culture. The odds of me in my race/culture getting a positive response from them in their race/culture is always higher if they equals us, never lower.
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Wednesday September 13 2017, @01:40PM (1 child)
The "real world statistical data" you refer to doesn't match your assertions at all.
Take the most extreme negative reaction available, where they try to kill you. Well, it turns out most murders are within what are our current racial classifications: White people are more likely to be killed by other white people, while black people are more likely to be killed by other black people.
Speaking only for my own experience: I'm a white guy who has been attacked, robbed, and cheated several times in my life. Every single time, it was by a white guy. Meanwhile, I've never once been mistreated by a black, Hispanic, Asian, or Native person, and several times they've gone out of their way to help me out. And no, it's not because I don't interact with any non-white people.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Thursday September 14 2017, @01:28PM
That has a lot to do with "birds of a feather flock together" as do your other anecdotes. From wikipedia the results are:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_and_crime_in_the_United_States#Homicide [wikipedia.org]
Inversely, the percentage of individuals in each racial demographic arrested for murder in 2013 was:
0.01% of Black or African American population (4,379/38,929,319)
0.0017% of White American and Hispanic American population (3,799/223,553,265)
The odds of walking up and talking to a black murderer are about five times higher than white. Just kinda how it is.
It goes both ways of course. The odds of a positive response are higher not just because the other guy is likely to be a nicer guy, but because if you're alike the odds of your behavior being compatible with the other guy are higher.