I worked at a call center with an analog PBX and a whopping staff of fifty, with four T1's for connectivity. One day I was testing some telephony integration of the software I maintained and had the system call my cell phone. The caller ID came up with the four-digit extension of the caller. It turned out that we could set anything as the caller id number.

What you are asking for is the pre-Civil Rights Act south to be brought back. The right for restaurants to not server blacks, separate drinking fountains, blacks on the back of the bus. All of those were private companies deciding to not treat black the same as whites.

No. The point is that Affirmative Action never was and never is a quota. If someone is enforcing a quota, then they're doing some that both isn't Affirmative Action, and isn't legal. Stop blaming Affirmative Action for it.

Being ugly isn't a protected class. If it were, then the modeling industry would collapse. Feel free to discriminate on the basis of beauty.

If you want to only hire whites, why? There is no justification for it that doesn't trace back to blatant racism. Same with hiring only blacks. You already live in a country where you can't "do whatever you want". From the obvious big stuff like you can't kill people, to smaller but pretty universal things like you can't take other people's stuff (under most circumstances). Then you get down to more touchy subjects like you can't kick out a tenant that doesn't pay without a certain period of notice. All the way to things that many people disagree with, like you can't legally quote a poem in an email without attribution and royalties

A lot of people agree with what you said in the above post, but most don't. To paraphrase your point - our country, our choice, if you don't like the laws that are on the books, feel free to lobby against them or leave. But don't feel that you are automatically right because you own the company. That attitude is likely to get you into a lot of trouble (environmental laws, employment laws, sexual harassment, etc.).

Doing this is illegal. It's not what Affirmative Action means, it's how other racists want it implemented. I have no idea why people still think this way since it was over thirty years ago when the courts clearly stated that a racial quota is illegal.

Then the answer to the question "The real question has always been how much do we spend in order to prevent the damage that is coming" is "nothing". That doesn't make the statement false. It's wasted effort to determine of it was man made in either case.

That's just slightly tweaking my statement to "The real question has always been how much do we spend in order to deal with the future.". If the answer is "nothing", then so be it. My post was about the man made part of the statement, I intentionally tried to stay away from a general debate on global warming.

There are a lot of schools that are misinterpreting AA. The Supreme Court is even slapping some of them down. So, no, I don't think a school doing something that isn't a legal implementation of Affirmative Action says anything bad at all about Affirmative Action itself.

Good point. Amazon didn't disclose enough information to infer this.

Make a good faith effort. All that Affirmative Action has ever required of anyone is to try. They may even be doing it. If so, they should disclose the data to put the argument to rest.

Practical answer: it's cheaper than fixing either the underlying education problem or the underlying social problem.

Other answer: monocultures are natural. Businesses started by white people employ more white people. Not because of maliciousness or discrimination, just because they know more white people than the general population does. Affirmative Action allows particular groups that don't currently have a toe-hold to break into the existing monocultures.

Remember that the AA requires no hiring discrimination. It also doesn't require any success at all. You can say "I put an employment ad at Grambling State University and I got resumes from all white people", and you met your obligation.

Only if misunderstood. If you believe Affirmative Action restricts your ability to hire whomever you want, then you don't understand it.

The ideal outcome of Affirmative Action is that you find a great employee that you never would have found before. Everyone wins. In general AA does have some costs - specifically it requires companies to expend recruiting effort in areas that are likely to be less fruitful than they would have otherwise. But it balances against the "let's ask everyone we know if they know anyone who might be good for this job" situation that encourages a very homogeneous workplace.

If the diversity of new hires is significantly different from the diversity of resumes, that is potential evidence of hiring discrimination. If the diversity of resumes is significantly different from the makeup of the community, then the company has obligations under Affirmative Action to actively seek resumes of underrepresented minorities. Affirmative Action was implemented the way it is specifically because the problem is earlier in the funnel and makes an easy excuse for lack of diversity in the workplace.

In other words, none of the numbers that are being discussed matter. Given the environment today, it is expected that minorities should be underrepresented at tech companies. There is no cutoff number between a good company and a bad company. Two things matter - are they acting fairly on the resumes they receive (as you stated), and are they being proactive to encourage minorities to apply. Neither of these can be inferred from the data presented. PUSH is using this uncertainty to make its own unfounded claims. Amazon's best course of action would be to disclose more information to shut them up.

Actually, it is. Affirmative Action doesn't require a company to hire anyone, but it does require companies to identify that minorities are underrepresented in employment applications and take measures to encourage more applications from underrepresented minorities.

Did you think a study like this was going to find anything that changes the facts? Nearly everyone is already running under the assumption the global warming is anthropogenic, except for a few nut cases. Putting energy into gather more factual evidence that it is anthropogenic doesn't change anything - sane people already knew it and insane people won't be convinced.

So, how exactly does this make troubleshooting easier? When you fix a problem, do you do extra work to confirm something that you already know with 99.5% confidence before trying to fix it?

... because natural CO2 is more resistant to sequestration than man-made CO2?