Addictive toy

It's james_davis_nicoll's fault.

http://books.google.com/ngrams/

( what's the plural of octopus? )

Ew. Google sponsors conservative political conference.

Google was the only business among the nine main sponsors of the Conservative Political Action Conference, co-hosted by the Tea Party.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-02-03/google-sponsoring-conservative-political-conference-co-hosted-by-tea-party.html

The company says it will have a presence at both Republican and Democratic events during this year’s election season, including each party’s convention. Google also had a role in the Iowa caucus last month. The CPAC event was attractive because half the attendees are under 25 and heavy users of technology, Google said yesterday in an e-mailed statement.

“This event is a great opportunity for us to showcase Google.com/elections and tools like Google+, which we hope will be used by every candidate and campaign,” the Mountain View, California-based company said.

https://plus.google.com/116535035008265766913/posts/HWKthZcF9Ke

Jay Laefer - Feb 12, 2012 - Public
Embarrassed and Disgusted

As I've written before, I don't speak for my employer. Now I feel obliged to write: my employer does not speak for me.

Two days ago, I learned that Google had sponsored the 2012 Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC). During the event, CPAC organized and hosted various panel discussions. Allow me to share a few:

"The Failure of Multiculturalism: How the pursuit of diversity is weakening the American Identity". The panel was sponsored by ProEnglish, and featured a panelist from VDARE. ProEnglish supports making English the only official language in the United States. VDARE is a white nationalist group.

"Why are U.S. taxpayers spending billions to promote abortion and homosexuality worldwide?"

"The Phony Divide Between Fiscal & Social Conservatives: Protecting Marriage as a Case Study". The panel featured Focus on the Family, Phyllis Schlafly, and the National Organization for Marriage (an anti-LGBT group).

Let me be clear: Each of these people and organizations should be free to express their views, no matter how hateful they are. But my employer spent at least $20,000 to be one of only nine top-tier sponsors of CPAC, and that disgusts me.

ETA: On the other hand, I just got email from Equality California, a group supporting same-sex marriage, that Google is one of the sponsors of their Equality Awards event.