Author: Kirio Birks

Zero Tolerance at the Mexican Border

Published by Kirio Birks

Under a new ‘Zero Tolerance’ US border policy, 1,995 children were separated from 1,940 adults between 19 April and 31 May in an attempt to deter further illegal crossings. The pitilessness of such a policy was bound to provoke outrage, and widespread expressions of revulsion have only intensified with the circulation of photographs of distraught children. News outlets, public figures, and people all over the world have rushed to condemned the inhumanity of the Trump administration. Is the outrage misplaced or is it justified? By any reasonable account, it’s necessary to have and enforce immigration laws. The cultural, political, legal, and economic stability of nations depend on their ability to define and control their borders. Enacting policies that provide additional border control isn’t a problem in and of itself. Immigration policies are only a problem if and when they go too far. The new policy states that “if someone caught at the border illegally has a valid asylum claim, they could have a federal criminal conviction on their record, even if a judge later decides …

Silicon Valley and the ABCs of Diversity

Published by Kirio Birks

When discussing diversity, the loudest voices are the ones which treat diversity as intrinsically valuable. Diversity is viewed as something of which more is always better, an idea flying in the face of our intuitions and best practice. And when it comes to diversity among people, diversity of skills and knowledge is often conflated with demographic diversity. We can watch these debates unfold live at Alphabet Inc. subsidiaries like Google and YouTube, as Google faces a lawsuit and YouTube stands accused of severe discrimination against White and Asian males. First, let’s run through a thought experiment just to get the principles down: You’re in an alien museum, on an alien world. You can only save 100 items. You do not know anything about the items, or the world, except what you might be able to infer by looking at them. How do you determine what to take? You’re in a museum on Earth, in a country that’s very foreign to you. You can only save 100 items. You do not know anything about the items, …

Grid Girls and Puritans

Published by Kirio Birks

Objectification, we are told, is degrading. Why? Because any job that requires employees to be sexually attractive and gazed upon for that reason necessarily dehumanises them. It encourages others to treat them as pretty ‘things’ rather than as autonomous people with their own lives, passions, thoughts, and desires. Or so the thinking goes. ‘Grid Girls’ – models employed by Formula One for promotional purposes – have just discovered that their role is to be discontinued. As Formula One’s managing director of commercial operations explained: “While the practice of employing grid girls has been a staple of Formula 1 Grands Prix for decades, we feel this custom does not resonate with our brand values and clearly is at odds with modern day societal norms.” But in their hurry to spare Grid Girls the indignity of the male gaze, nobody making this argument seems to have stopped to wonder whether Grid Girls might have an interest in defending what they do. Instead, a collective of ostensibly progressive voices leapt to their defence without bothering to ask the girls …