What about receiving calls wherever you are?

calling obama a monkey is different from calling george w. bush a monkey regardless of intention.

Regardless of the intention, they ARE both chinese. So is it really a stretch to see a racist element to this nick name? It is racist by default. I'm not saying that it is a greatly offensive nickname or even unfunny, but for someone to call it racist is not at all a stretch.

Is it racist to acknowledge that Ellen Pao is of Chinese ancestry? I don't get how but I don't get a lot of the modern sensitivities.

Certainly if you want to denigrate someone and you bring up their gender or ethnicity, it can be sexist or racist.

but they aren't denigrating her because she is Chinese. They are denigrating her because they perceive her to be a terrible CEO, and Chairman Pao is a easy way to belittle what they see as her 'authoritarian' ways

He's also fine with it when the shop's not busy.

The problem is definitely not the store. The problem is that people are trained by starbucks to treat all cafes like this. His cafe, instantly to me, suggests that it's NOT okay to camp out with my laptop all day there.

that they wouldn't pay artists initially is pretty bad press, to me, at least. Even with the 180, apple doesn't look good here, in my opinion.

swift has a lot of influence on her fans. It's not a minor threat that apple is facing.

And yet I bet people wouldn't consider Ian Mackaye to be "whining."

Oh I agree. Occam's razor gets in the way when I try and consider that this giant conspiracy happened.

what they're doing is making up a new hypothetical continent consisting of the US, China, Europe, India, Japan and comparing that to Africa.

I think it works to show how big Africa is.

But yes, if you compare countries, you can take comparisons further, and it would be more practical.

i like the africa comparisons here:

http://www.texasmonthly.com/daily-post/how-big-texas-compare...

the last line might help people understand why people compare these things:

"If you’re the right kind of nerd, you can probably do this forever and not get bored"

I do these kind of comparisons all the time myself (particularly distances) - I just tend to react that assertions that Europe is "small" which I think are based on the distribution of "interesting" bits within Europe and the US. In Europe a lot of the "interesting" bits cluster together in the middle with a lot of empty bits towards the edges - the US has the opposite layout with major attractions often being on the coasts and the middle getting relatively little attention.

[NB Note the sweeping generalisations - I know fine well that there is a lot of cool stuff in the "middle" of the USA as well as lots of fascinating stuff round the periphery of Europe - I'm from Scotland!]

To be on the same tier of racism as the United States, Japan has to start lynching its minorities.