The summary makes it sound like they refused to give permission, but actually TFA says that the Swedish simply didn't submit the right paperwork yet due to some delay and have merely pushed the interview date back a little. No refusal has been given, they simply have not applied yet.

TFA mentions that they were unable to compete the necessary paperwork, but that they fully intend to and have simply pushed the interview date back a little. The Swedish don't seem particularly alarmed about this. The request was not refused, they just didn't submit the necessary paperwork.

Actually quite a few European labels were refusing to sign up with Apple. They couldn't get Adele, for example, because her label was refusing to sign on. They released a statement today saying they would be on board.

The homosexuality issue is slightly more complex than your understanding of it. While there may be some element of choice to some degree, what is important is that many people, probably most people, feel that they can't change their's. Most straight people feel that they couldn't choose to be gay, and would be upset if people blamed them for "choosing" to be straight. They would feel it was unfair and discriminatory, because while it is perfectly fair to criticise people for their choices it isn't fair to criticise them for things they have no control over.

So actually, the science of it isn't even that important. What is important is that most people can't choose to be straight or gay, they just are, and people who blame them for that deserve criticism. I think most people understand that, but somehow you got bogged down on one specific detail and missed it.

In Europe human rights guarantee equality. The courts have interpreted that as dress codes for both genders having to be equally liberal/strict, but not necessarily the same. So for example if women are allowed to wear knee length skirts men would be allowed to wear similar clothing that society considers normal for men, such as knee length shorts or a kilt.

If women don't have to wear a tie, men don't have to wear a tie. If women can wear causal shoes, so can men. It's a perfectly reasonable, well balanced system that doesn't take equality to a ridiculous extreme.

They don't have to be women, but we know (because we asked, and because of historic numbers) that women are a large, willing and untapped resource in CS. We also know exactly how to fix that, so it makes sense to do it. That's why companies like Intel, Google and Apple are throwing vast amounts of money at the problem. It's in their own interests to get more skilled programmers on board.

I'm sure someone will claim these companies have been shamed into acting, but if that were they case they would have spent some money on PR, not $300m on an actual solution like Intel did.

GamerGate still growing? What planet are you living on?

GamerGate is dead. The release of their own IRC logs showed exactly what GamerGate was really about, with absolutely no ambiguity or question remaining. It was a trolling campaign, elaborate and seemingly widespread but actually with just a tiny core of people and masses of sock puppet accounts. It's all there for you to read yourself.

And that's why it's complete bullshit. Until they are about a week old babies don't even understand that there are other human beings in the world. They instinctively know how to feed from their mothers, that's about it.

So yeah, a test of one child who happens to look at one or two objects they have no understanding of doesn't prove anything.

Can you mention some actual names and cite actual things they said/wrote? All I'm hearing are vague references to a group that is never named and doesn't seem to represent the mainstream feminist movement at all. I'm a feminist and I don't recognize that position at all.

History says it isn't that simple. Pink used to be a boy's colour, with blue for girls. Horses were at first of interest mainly to boys, then girls, then boys again and nowadays it's girls once more.

Sure, there clearly are biological differences, but there are strong social ones as well. Is child care seen as more of a women's thing because women are genetically predispositioned to it, or because biology says only women can feed babies with breast milk and men are physically larger and thus better hunters and society just never fully corrected in the modern age.

That's an easy one. It's not innate. 100 years ago pink was a boy's colour, similar to red. Girls preferred blue, a soft and pale colour. In the 1920s it flipped around.

The reason your daughter needed pink bricks to become interested is because she has been bombarded by images and advertising telling her that pink is a girl's colour, and girls should seek out pink toys. What we need is for advertisers to go back to showing girls playing with non-pink stuff, like Lego did before about 1985. Maybe you should show her this, and the many similar images from that era.

To me it seems that the current "feminism scare" is similar to various others over the years - the MMR vaccine, Dungeons and Dragons etc. People who don't understand it getting upset over imaginary threats to their well-being, and convinced that the authorities and everyone else is part of some giant conspiracy theory to cut their balls off.

Or just look at some Lego advertising pre-1985: https://www.google.co.uk/searc...

Notice how many of the images feature boys and girls playing with the same toys. They believed in what they were doing: http://www.independent.co.uk/n...

Unfortunately in the 1980s Lego changed their policy and tried to corner the boy's toy market: http://www.womenyoushouldknow....

Interestingly the 1980s were also the peak for women in engineering studies.

No, the only voice we hear is the Men's Rights Activist lunatics shouting for 50-50 everything.

Seriously, feminists don't want a 50-50 gender balance in everything. What they want to an end to gender stereotyping from an early age, and equality of opportunity. For both genders. Just because they are called "feminists" doesn't mean they are only interested in women's issues.

50-50 is just a straw man.

No, that was good enough back in the 70s when Lego and other engineering toys were gender neutral and marketed as such. If you look at Lego adverts from the 70s and before they tended to feature both genders playing, usually together, with the same kits. That's what we want now.

Instead what we have are different kits for each gender, and they all tend to be highly stereotyped. Boys' kits are usually focused on combat and machines, girls' kits are focused on home making and fashion. In actual fact neither is particularly good for learning about engineering, but the boys kits at least don't steer them away from it.