RE: [huml-comment] Human Markup Language 1.0 considered harmful

["Dennis E. Hamilton" <dennis.hamilton@acm.org>]

Rex pointed that out to me.

I am, of course, aware of the ways that the term "race" is used in a variety
of situations.

The question that remains unanswered for me is how does including that, with
no effort to provide semantics beyond how it is ordinarily used,
contributing anything to "enhancing the fidelity of human communication."

What are you giving us that we haven't already got?  Are you alleviating the
contentiousness?  Are you making it clear when something is an attribution
versus a factual matter?

That's what I want to know.  The "race" term is what caught my eye.  It was
the red flag.  It isn't what I am objecting to!

-----Original Message-----
From: Bullard, Claude L (Len) [mailto:clbullar@ingr.com]
Sent: Monday, December 02, 2002 06:08
To: 'dennis.hamilton@acm.org'; humanmarkup-comment@lists.oasis-open.org
Cc: William Anderson; rkthunga@humanmarkup.org
Subject: RE: [huml-comment] Human Markup Language 1.0 considered harmful


The author of the blog would do well to consider
how a very large percentage of the forms filled
out for everyday transactions includes a field
for "race".  We did have a thread early on in
the development of the primary considering this
term which is normal for everyday communications
but contentious in some scientific fields, particularly,
anthropology.   A "race" classification is easily
discernible but sometimes inaccurate.   As such,
while it can be used in a codelist, interpretations
of the value have to be left to the user of the
term in the derived secondary.

len

From: Dennis E. Hamilton [mailto:dennis.hamilton@acm.org]

But, given the document at face value, I am concerned that the assertion of
"nothing taken for granted" and self-assertion as a test of humanity are at
best ingenuous.  My demonstration is the supposition of "race" as a physical
characteristic.  And that it be describable (I hesitate to use the notion of
description at all here) by a code.