Thanks for posting my last comment. I guess posting a comment doesn’t qualify it as a post, but I only recently learned that.

I noticed it was in moderation when I submitted it and wondered if it would pass editorial review. I see that it did, much to your credit. And sense I believe in giving credit where credit is due, that’s what I’m doing.

Later Dude!

Steve

Happy hunting in your self appointed role as vigilante diversity cop!

Adios!

El SteveO

Your question is absurd, asked and answered. Very clearly, in fact. Now, run along.

It’s too bad that you find my conversation annoying, obviously I find your article and your subsequent failure to address it’s shortcomings somewhat annoying, else I would not be challenging you on what I perceive your shortcomings to be.

So answer me this, why did you NOT also address racial and sexual orientation diversity in the Dawkins book? Are gender, race, sexual orientation, etc., considerations NOT always concerns you address when evaluating whether or not your criterion for diversity are met for anything you are evaluating on the basis of exhibiting satisfactory levels of diversity? This is not an unduly abstract or complex matter and I am somewhat surprised that you are having a difficult time grasping it.

My post preceeding this may have already helped you better understand my primary complaints. Further conversation is welcome if you are amenable to it.

Steve

I’m still hoping that you will find time in your busy schedule to make a satisfactory list of alternate non-white candidates suitably qualified for the multiple categories in Austin’s contest. Having operated alongside Greta Christina to publicy chastise Mr. Cline for his alleged failure to put together an adequately diverse popularity contest, without also providing substantive evidence that a sufficiently large pool of non-white candidates actually exists, certainly warrants this effort on your part at this time. Had you written your article dealing only in the hypothetical and abstract of how and why one might increase diversity, no harm would have been done. When you chose to include Austin and his contest as an example of an allegedly easily avoided diversity failure, I think that you may have unwittingly stumbled into a domain which you might better have stayed out of.

Frankly, I could give a flying frog about popularity contests and who, or what, and why anybody is selected as a candidate. While I am neither a friend or acquaitance of Austin’s, it does bother me to see his character and competency sullied as you and Greta have done. This is not a concern about an abstract or hypothetical category of persons, but rather a concern over a real flesh and blood individual with real thoughts and feelings.

Again, I hope that you follow through and provide a sufficient pool of alternate candidates that meet your diversity criteria. Aside from that, you might consider offering a public apology to Austin for using him as a poorly considered example of a diversity failure he could not have easily avoided.

Sincerely

Steve

PS. I am cross posting a similar version of this to Christina’s blog, as I did my previous comment

My criticism is that in the case of Dawkins you only employed gender diversity as the criterion of establishing acceptable diversity, in the case of Austin you seemed to add the additional criterion of racial diversity to establish a suitable level of diversity in his project, Austin having apparently attained sufficient gender diversity.

As I mentioned in my initial post, I have no idea what the pool of atheist/skeptic bloggers, authors, tweeters, etc., consists of as pertains to race, gender, sexual orientation, etc., although I have no reason to doubt that there are sufficient eligible and worthy individuals as you suggest.

Hope this helps clear things up. Feel free to ask further questions.

Steve

I’ve got to admit that I find a bit of irony in your expression of annoyance with Austin Cline and your accusation that his contest failed to provide sufficient racial diversity. Racial diversity evidently is not a criterion that you consistently employ in critiquing the work of others, as evidenced by absolutely no mention of racial diversity (one way or another) in your criticism of Dawkins anthology of science writers. In that instance your sole expressed concern was that females were unfairly underrepresented. I am left to wonder if had you ascertained that the number of female science writers included in that anthology were sufficient to meet your sensibilities, that you might not have continued to assess whether a sufficient proportion of non-white science writers had been included as well.

I say this because that is evidently what you have done with your evaluation of the candidates that appeared in Austin’s final selections. In the category of Best Blogger, 2 of the 5 (40%) of the contestants are females, one of those being queer if that should be a concern to anyone but themselves. In the category of Best Twitterer 4 of 5 (80%) are females, I have no idea about any of their sexual orientations, although it may have importance in evaluating the appropriate diversity of the contestant pool. In the Best Book category all of the finalists are apparently male, needless to say 0% female. Again, I have no idea as to their sexual orientations. In these 3 categories, the categories that you provided links to in your article, the average is 40% female and 60% male, a proportion that is somewhat less than optimal but possibly sufficient. While assessing gender diversity was the endpoint of your criticism of Dawkins book, in the matter of Austin’s contest you went on to evaluate whether or not sufficient racial diversity was represented and given that all of these categories were composed entirely of ‘white’ people, it is indisputable that there is no racial diversity present.

While I can appreciate your disappointment, to be honest, I do not share it. As you are probably aware, the initial pool of candidates from which Austin made his selection for finalists was composed entirely of nominations made by his readers. I have no means of determing what the race, gender, sexual orientation, etc…, of that pool of candidates consisted of, and neither do I have any idea what other criteria Austin employed to determine who the finalist would be. While you have repeatedly stated that there ‘should’ be a sufficient number of worthy candidates that might satisfy your sense of sufficient diversity in Austin’s contest, you have failed to substantiate your claim with specific examples. I do not think that it is fair of you to criticize Austin for a perceived failure on his part when you are unwilling to step up and provide an adequate number of non-white candidates that might help him acheive a level of racial diversity that you can abide. I have no reason to doubt that such individuals are available, but it is not an area (atheist activism) in which I have sufficient knowledge to address who these people might be. Given that it is a fairly significant concern of yours, and in your field of expertise as well, rather than just criticizing Austin for what you perceive as shortcomings of the racial diversity in his contest, it might be more constructive to provide alternative non-white candidates in all of the contest categories to help resolve this problem.

Of course, another option would be to conduct a contest of your own design which would afford you the opportunity to ‘lead by example’, perhaps the best mode of instruction.