Who is liable if you have a crash in a taxi cab or a state-owned vehicle? The thing this article overlooked is that there is more than one business model for selling cars. Self-driving cars might flourish by allowing companies to provide a lower cost car service for those who either cannot or do not wish to drive themselves. Apps like Sidecar (http://www.side.cr/safety) and Lyft (http://www.lyft.me/safety) are already pointing in this direction and centrally controlled driverless car services could be a logical next step, especially if companies take on the liability for what happens during a ride -- just as they would in an airline, rideshare or taxi service.
Moreover, even if driverless cars don't become the norm, driver-assist cars may do so and could dramatically reduce accident rates. As a car and driving enthusiast, I am selfishly averse to all these changes, but the safety benefits are hard to argue against.
The Reuters article is just one of a couple following the F.L.A.'s inspection of the Foxconn Plant. There is a slightly longer, but much more critical article by the New York Times. Looks as if/. editor's are doing is some editorializing of their own, too. From the "what-is-the-right-question" department, eh? How about from the "now-we-are-shilling-for-apple" department?
I am at all not convinced by arguments that the problem with the current government of the United States is that it is too complex. During the late 18th century, when the U.S. Constitution was written, debated, signed and ratified, even the most optimistic views of Colonial literacy rates held them at a point 10-15% below current rates. In addition the people who founded the current government were among some of the most distinguished and learned people of the era. Many Congressional delegates were well read in both British Common Law and in old world continental classics -- which they could read in Greek an Latin. So, to use a modern analogy, it would be as if Richard Feynman had participated in the drafting of the Constitution.
The system of checks and balances that operates under the current U.S. system is a commonplace today, but so is the idea that light is both a particle and a wave, inasmuch as both are basic elements of secondary education. While the full math behind quantum theory is not taught, many of the concepts are -- and with general success. So let's please move past this idea that government is too complex and return to the crux of the problem.
The crux of the problem is two-fold:
1) That there are some forms of social organization that our framers did not foresee, both inside and outside of government. It is up to to those of us living today to deal with these directly and it is up to us to determine what is best. Throwback arguments by either the right or the left merely give comfort to hypocritical opportunists who are willing to clothe themselves in a mythic past to conceal the pursuit of their own selfish ends.
2) Most people are too fond of willful ignorance, wishful thinking, and daydreaming to take on the responsibility associated with (1).
Oops. This was my post folks. Didn't realize I wasn't logged in. Doesn't do much good to say such things as an anonymous coward. Talk about mundanely flawed!
I would amplify some of the comments suggesting a non-engineering solution by saying that, if you have not already done so, you might capitalize on some existing programs already extant in the state. Among these, there are or two LTER Schoolyard programs in Alaska. Schoolyard is the outreach and education component of the National Science Foundation's Long Term Ecological Research (LTER) Network. The Bonanza Creek LTER and their Schoolyard Programis hosted at the University of Alaska Fairbanks and, although the Arctic LTER is hosted at the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, MA, their Schoolyard Program does have a local component. Each may have ideas and directions you can use.
If I had to guess, I'd say Slashdot and I conspired to add six months to my grad. school career, minimum. But I managed to get through anyway, so I don't care. Good luck and thank you.
This is a really common problem in the academy. So common in fact, that one particular academician has come up with a special license, the Community Research Academic Programming License (aka, the CRAPL). It's worth a look and good for a chuckle:
A search of the Auburn Montgomery website, produces several "News & Events" hits which show Dr. Aaij giving public lectures and supporting student scholars. A Google Scholar Search on Michel Aaij shows a regular publication record in peer reviewed journals dating back to the late 1990s, at least. This guy is a good scholar and, from the article, strikes me as a good colleague, even without the Wiki contributions. He deserves tenure. The fact that he found the time for this other form of service/scholarship on top of his other work is very commendable and I'm glad to see it included in his portfolio. The fact that this did make it into his portfolio is better for Wikipedia than it is for Dr. Aaij, who I think wouldn't have gotten tenure no matter what. In any case, I say "Congratulations, Dr. Aaij!"
The journal article on which TFA is based is embargoed behind Kluwer's academic firewall's and my school doesn't have a subscription to this one. So, I can't see the actual article. However, the comments from some of the people who *can* see the article are telling, to wit:
"Only by a stretch of imagination do you see a linear correlation in there. Look at figure 3... http://journals.lww.com/jcrani... OMG!!..."
and......
"This is only a pilot-study, and should NOT be brought into the media before a larger and more rigorous study has been done. This study has very small sample groups, and they should have had a group with the cellphones at their waste, but turned off. It could be other things than the electromagnetic radiowaves, i.e. the weight of the phones, if there is an effect at all, which a larger study will clarify."
not to mention.....
"This is only a pilot-study, and should NOT be brought into the media before a larger and more rigorous study has been done. This study has very small sample groups, and they should have had a group with the cellphones at their waste, but turned off. It could be other things than the electromagnetic radiowaves, i.e. the weight of the phones, if there is an effect at all, which a larger study will clarify. "
and.....
"Also, the study doesn't say if the measurement and calculations were unblinded, and the sample groups were not randomized, and recruited by word of mouth locally. This is just the flaws without looking at the results. Again, please stop writing about pilot studies, unless you are giving it a critical evaluation."
as well as....
"Something is wrong with the user cited charts where the bone density declines on a range from zero to 80,000 hours.
Now at maybe 2000 hours exposure per year, that means 40 years exposure. How could they get that much data?
Chart labels must be wrong. "
followed up by....
"From the method section of the study:
'Men of the first group provided information about the number of years they had used a mobile cell phone and the number of hours per day that they carried the phone in the belt pouch. The number of years of use and the product of years of use and hours per day each year carrying the phones were used as rough estimates of cumulative exposure.'
*****In other words*****
A small pilot study with questionable (or at least very simplistic) methods for estimating for cumulative exposure was conducted on a small and apparently undifferentiated sample and a statistically significant result was obtained.
As one of that "strange breed," I was initially concerned. Now, not so much...
Timothy's other hobbies include feeding mice to snakes, setting up barrels loaded with fish then handing out guns, and throwing blood in the water at shark-infested beaches. Wow. I really do kinda feel bad for the guy who wrote this original post. Kinda, but not really.
Basic relational database design is about logic and structure. When compared with other areas of computing, I would argue that the the original materials worked out by Codd and Date have not changed nearly as dramatically. There are certainly exceptional sub-areas where there have been major changes (e.g. the introduction of the object model and development of XML and RDF, to name but two prominent examples), but if I were you, I would suggest doing two things:
1. Do some research into existing relational database platforms (e.g. SQL Server, Oracle, PostGRES), figure out which model will ultimately work best for you, and get a book on that implementation of SQL and RDMS. Every intro to databases book has a chapter on relational database design. That will get you started. You can also skip the platform selection process if you are already stuck with a database.
Codd (now deceased) and Date are still the authorities, IMHO, and this latter book will give you a good overview of major conceptual issues in relational database design.
...is 25 years old. One of the sentences in TFA begins "When I was in my dorm room at Harvard."
So, a rich, successful, right-place-at-place-at-the-right-time twentysomething makes a self-serving comment born out of the hubris and inexperience of youth. This is like Paris Hilton saying "It doesn't matter what you do, as long as its *hot*" and it is only newsworthy because Paris Hilton isn't in a position to take a great deal of the intellectual capital I've invested in Facebook and simply passing it to whomever suits her fancy. Perhaps some of Zuckerberg's older business partners could recommend that he shut up.
Promotes stability in the Middle East. Approximately $75 million for the Palestinian people
to promote good governance and invest in education and public health. Approximately $142
million to continue support for the democratic government of Lebanon.
So that's $217 million for 2009 alone, for a major portion of the State Department's Middle East Peace Program. And the argument here is that $250 million per year, over 40 years, isn't that much?
In previous editions of Disagree Mail, several people commented on the fact that the offerings were too short and too few. I didn't comment, but I shared the sentiment.
DIDO: Dumbasses in, Dumbasses out. Anyone who suggests that the internet needs to be regulated, or even could be regulated, in the same way that way that airwaves are regulated does not really understand what the internet is. Television and radio were/are regulated using the fairness doctrine because they are public resources that are only available in limited quantity. You can only have on station broadcasting on the frequency that represents, for instance, channel 9, in any given geographical area.
The internet, on the other hand, is a scale free network (see the nice book by Albert-László Barabási on the topic), meaning that it is not limited in the same way that the airwaves are. Balancing the internet would be like balancing printed media (there are as many newspapers as printing presses) or telephone conversations. There's no need to regulate because we aren't talking about finite public resources. The whole concept is ridiculous --- so ridiculous that I can't even believe I'm writing about it to a bunch of geeks. Even semi-geeks like me *know* this about the internet.
And yet, the first twenty postings were almost entirely about how bad the fairness doctrine could be if applied to the internet on political grounds. While it is true that that this could be bad politically, the more salieent issue is that "balancing" the internet would be bad because it is a stupid, pointless, unworkable idea put forward by bureaucrats and pollsters who probably have regular difficulties checking their email and go whining to their relatives when their "internet breaks!!!!"
A few highlights from Title 5, Part III, Subpart A, Chapter 23 of the U.S. code, which describes the Merit system in Federal hiring practices:
From Section 2301: .....
"All employees and applicants for employment should receive fair and equitable treatment in all aspects of personnel management without regard to political affiliation, race, color, religion, national origin, sex, marital status, age, or handicapping condition, and with proper regard for their privacy and constitutional rights."
.....
From section 2302:
.....
(8) Employees should be--
(A) protected against arbitrary action, personal favoritism, or coercion for partisan political purposes, and (B) prohibited from using their official authority or influence for the purpose of interfering with or affecting the result of an election or a nomination for election
.....
(b) Any employee who has authority to take, direct others to take, recommend, or approve any personnel action, shall not, with respect to such authority--
(1) discriminate for or against any employee or applicant for employment- .....
(E) on the basis of marital status or political affiliation, as prohibited under any law, rule, or regulation;
Google should appeal this up the wazoo, and most importantly STOP KEEPING SUCH LOGS.
Ok, I realize that this has been said somewhat less directly in related posts, but, in this case, I think a clear rebuttal may be in order. "SUCH LOGS," as they are described above, are the bread and butter of Google's business model. They would no more stop keeping them than they would stop running keyword searches on the content of your gmail account.
Scientology is no more ridiculous than christianity, islam, or judaism. OK, spaceships that look like DC3s, OK, that's weird, but no more so than virgin births, 5000 year old flat earth, talking snakes, noah's ark, or killing your first born.
Huh. This got modded to 3, as interesting? So much for the wisdom of crowds.
Criticizing religion in the 20th and 21st century is easy when you are able single out individuals and groups who accept scriptural texts as fundamental truths about matters of empirical fact. Of all the items mentioned, only the virgin birth and Abraham's willingness to sacrifice Isaac are widely accepted by modern practitioners of Christianity (and, incidentally, Islam) as a literal truths and not parables.
What Scientology lacks, and the historical obscurantism and prejudice of this post belie, is the long-standing relationship between Judeo-Christian and Islamic traditions and Western codes of ethics and law. This connection is best summarized by Jurgen Habermas:
"Christianity has functioned for the normative self-understanding of modernity as more than a mere precursor or a catalyst. Egalitarian universalism, from which sprang the ideas of freedom and social solidarity, of an autonomous conduct of life and emancipation, of the individual morality of conscience, human rights, and democracy, is the direct heir to the Judaic ethic of justice and the Christian ethic of love. This legacy, substantially unchanged, has been the object of continual critical appropriation and reinterpretation. To this day, there is no alternative to it. And in the light of the current challenges of a postnational constellation, we continue to draw on the substance of this heritage. Everything else is just idle postmodern talk.
- "Conversation about God and the World." Time of transitions. Cambridge: Polity Press 2006, p. 150-151"
TFA in this post reads a lot like TFA in an earlier post about the supposed science and engineering labor shortage. In both cases, we see governmental and educational institutions using a perceived need for more labor in a certain sector as a means for spending programs and college recruiting, while not tailoring their approaches to meet specific market demands.
If it makes you happy, ya'll can debate all day long about whether or not the myth is really a myth or just a function of the fact that only people with 5 to 10 years' experience in the real world aren't wasting the oxygen of the world's self-made uber-programmers. Personally, I would rather think about what this common thread means in broader terms. What do these two articles, taken together, say about macro-scale patterns related to the labor market and, more importantly, American global competitiveness? What does the fact that schools and government incentive programs are not flexible enough to meet specific demands mean in terms of their abilities to promote the pursuit of livelihoods tailored for educated (and more importantly, according to you lot, self-educated) science, engineering, and IT professionals? What, in turn, does this say about the plans of various political candidates (Obama and McCain, chief among them), to deal with globalization through job retraining?
HA! Ok, now I'm happy. I take back the Eurotrash snob bit. My apologies. Although you really can spark a lot of good discussion by coming off as a complete jerk. Who knew?
It's that too few people do things, and what they do make no difference.
Again, agreed.
And no, I'm not treating americans as a group. I'm treating them as a sum total, because that's what determines how the country works.
Ok, now here I must disagree. Sum totals may be how smaller countries with long shared histories and relatively more linguistic and cultural homogeneity work. But, historically, that has not been how America "works." The various regions and factions have contributed to a pluralism and, frankly, a level of dis-organization and inefficiency that, until recently, played a major role in why we were perceived as having so much freedom. Of course, this same factionalism contributed things like southern segregation, etc., but, overall, it worked in our favor. The problem now is that media consolidation some kind of willful ignorance that I truly do not understand is making it harder and harder for the factionalists to be effective in bringing about change.
On the one hand, I agree with a lot of the specific critiques about what is happening in this country and appalled that we are now supposed consider anonymity as separate from privacy. On the other, I am proud of our combative, brawling, factionalist past and am happy to wade in against any goldanged ferner (that's "foreigner," for you non-Southerners) with the gall to call me a shithead just because I'm an American.
You are flamebaiting troll of a Eurotrash snob and I have no idea how you were ever modded so high. But since I can't do anything about that, here are some things to remember:
1. Bush did not win the popular vote in 2000 -- and that was prior to 9/11.
2. There were minor protests before the war in Afghanistan and serious protests leading up to the war in Iraq and beyond.
3. Many of the worst allegations regarding domestic civil-liberties infringements involving most U.S. citizens (i.e., the ones who weren't Muslim) didn't come out until after the 2004 election. Before that, the press was focused on such lovely things as Abu-Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay (which I grant you are no picnic either).
4. Take a moment and look across the channel at the United Kingdom. They ain't exactly having a civil-liberties hoe-down in England these days.
5. Treating Americans as a unitary group is just as stupid as it would be for people of any other nationality.
Slashdot Mirror
As opposed to spammy, pop-up filled ZDNet article.
https://www.theregister.co.uk/...
Who is liable if you have a crash in a taxi cab or a state-owned vehicle? The thing this article overlooked is that there is more than one business model for selling cars. Self-driving cars might flourish by allowing companies to provide a lower cost car service for those who either cannot or do not wish to drive themselves. Apps like Sidecar (http://www.side.cr/safety) and Lyft (http://www.lyft.me/safety) are already pointing in this direction and centrally controlled driverless car services could be a logical next step, especially if companies take on the liability for what happens during a ride -- just as they would in an airline, rideshare or taxi service.
Moreover, even if driverless cars don't become the norm, driver-assist cars may do so and could dramatically reduce accident rates. As a car and driving enthusiast, I am selfishly averse to all these changes, but the safety benefits are hard to argue against.
The Reuters article is just one of a couple following the F.L.A.'s inspection of the Foxconn Plant. There is a slightly longer, but much more critical article by the New York Times. Looks as if /. editor's are doing is some editorializing of their own, too. From the "what-is-the-right-question" department, eh? How about from the "now-we-are-shilling-for-apple" department?
I am at all not convinced by arguments that the problem with the current government of the United States is that it is too complex. During the late 18th century, when the U.S. Constitution was written, debated, signed and ratified, even the most optimistic views of Colonial literacy rates held them at a point 10-15% below current rates. In addition the people who founded the current government were among some of the most distinguished and learned people of the era. Many Congressional delegates were well read in both British Common Law and in old world continental classics -- which they could read in Greek an Latin. So, to use a modern analogy, it would be as if Richard Feynman had participated in the drafting of the Constitution.
The system of checks and balances that operates under the current U.S. system is a commonplace today, but so is the idea that light is both a particle and a wave, inasmuch as both are basic elements of secondary education. While the full math behind quantum theory is not taught, many of the concepts are -- and with general success. So let's please move past this idea that government is too complex and return to the crux of the problem.
The crux of the problem is two-fold:
1) That there are some forms of social organization that our framers did not foresee, both inside and outside of government. It is up to to those of us living today to deal with these directly and it is up to us to determine what is best. Throwback arguments by either the right or the left merely give comfort to hypocritical opportunists who are willing to clothe themselves in a mythic past to conceal the pursuit of their own selfish ends.
2) Most people are too fond of willful ignorance, wishful thinking, and daydreaming to take on the responsibility associated with (1).
Oops. This was my post folks. Didn't realize I wasn't logged in. Doesn't do much good to say such things as an anonymous coward. Talk about mundanely flawed!
I would amplify some of the comments suggesting a non-engineering solution by saying that, if you have not already done so, you might capitalize on some existing programs already extant in the state. Among these, there are or two LTER Schoolyard programs in Alaska. Schoolyard is the outreach and education component of the National Science Foundation's Long Term Ecological Research (LTER) Network. The Bonanza Creek LTER and their Schoolyard Programis hosted at the University of Alaska Fairbanks and, although the Arctic LTER is hosted at the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, MA, their Schoolyard Program does have a local component. Each may have ideas and directions you can use.
If I had to guess, I'd say Slashdot and I conspired to add six months to my grad. school career, minimum. But I managed to get through anyway, so I don't care. Good luck and thank you.
This is a really common problem in the academy. So common in fact, that one particular academician has come up with a special license, the Community Research Academic Programming License (aka, the CRAPL). It's worth a look and good for a chuckle:
http://matt.might.net/articles/crapl/
A search of the Auburn Montgomery website, produces several "News & Events" hits which show Dr. Aaij giving public lectures and supporting student scholars. A Google Scholar Search on Michel Aaij shows a regular publication record in peer reviewed journals dating back to the late 1990s, at least. This guy is a good scholar and, from the article, strikes me as a good colleague, even without the Wiki contributions. He deserves tenure. The fact that he found the time for this other form of service/scholarship on top of his other work is very commendable and I'm glad to see it included in his portfolio. The fact that this did make it into his portfolio is better for Wikipedia than it is for Dr. Aaij, who I think wouldn't have gotten tenure no matter what. In any case, I say "Congratulations, Dr. Aaij!"
The journal article on which TFA is based is embargoed behind Kluwer's academic firewall's and my school doesn't have a subscription to this one. So, I can't see the actual article. However, the comments from some of the people who *can* see the article are telling, to wit:
"Only by a stretch of imagination do you see a linear correlation in there. Look at figure 3 ... http://journals.lww.com/jcrani...
OMG!!..."
and......
"This is only a pilot-study, and should NOT be brought into the media before a larger and more rigorous study has been done. This study has very small sample groups, and they should have had a group with the cellphones at their waste, but turned off. It could be other things than the electromagnetic radiowaves, i.e. the weight of the phones, if there is an effect at all, which a larger study will clarify."
not to mention.....
"This is only a pilot-study, and should NOT be brought into the media before a larger and more rigorous study has been done. This study has very small sample groups, and they should have had a group with the cellphones at their waste, but turned off. It could be other things than the electromagnetic radiowaves, i.e. the weight of the phones, if there is an effect at all, which a larger study will clarify. "
and.....
"Also, the study doesn't say if the measurement and calculations were unblinded, and the sample groups were not randomized, and recruited by word of mouth locally. This is just the flaws without looking at the results. Again, please stop writing about pilot studies, unless you are giving it a critical evaluation."
as well as....
"Something is wrong with the user cited charts where the bone density declines on a range from zero to 80,000 hours.
Now at maybe 2000 hours exposure per year, that means 40 years exposure. How could they get that much data?
Chart labels must be wrong. "
followed up by....
"From the method section of the study:
'Men of the first group provided information about the
number of years they had used a mobile cell phone and the number
of hours per day that they carried the phone in the belt pouch. The
number of years of use and the product of years of use and hours per
day each year carrying the phones were used as rough estimates of
cumulative exposure.'
*****In other words*****
A small pilot study with questionable (or at least very simplistic) methods for estimating for cumulative exposure was conducted on a small and apparently undifferentiated sample and a statistically significant result was obtained.
As one of that "strange breed," I was initially concerned. Now, not so much...
Timothy's other hobbies include feeding mice to snakes, setting up barrels loaded with fish then handing out guns, and throwing blood in the water at shark-infested beaches. Wow. I really do kinda feel bad for the guy who wrote this original post. Kinda, but not really.
Basic relational database design is about logic and structure. When compared with other areas of computing, I would argue that the the original materials worked out by Codd and Date have not changed nearly as dramatically. There are certainly exceptional sub-areas where there have been major changes (e.g. the introduction of the object model and development of XML and RDF, to name but two prominent examples), but if I were you, I would suggest doing two things:
1. Do some research into existing relational database platforms (e.g. SQL Server, Oracle, PostGRES), figure out which model will ultimately work best for you, and get a book on that implementation of SQL and RDMS. Every intro to databases book has a chapter on relational database design. That will get you started. You can also skip the platform selection process if you are already stuck with a database.
2. Read this: Date on Database: Writings 2000-2006 by C. J. Date
Codd (now deceased) and Date are still the authorities, IMHO, and this latter book will give you a good overview of major conceptual issues in relational database design.
There is science, logic, reason; there is thought verified by experience. And then there is California.
-Edward Abbey
He reminds me of Marc Andreesen, back when Marc was that age.
Funny you should mention him....
...is 25 years old. One of the sentences in TFA begins "When I was in my dorm room at Harvard."
So, a rich, successful, right-place-at-place-at-the-right-time twentysomething makes a self-serving comment born out of the hubris and inexperience of youth. This is like Paris Hilton saying "It doesn't matter what you do, as long as its *hot*" and it is only newsworthy because Paris Hilton isn't in a position to take a great deal of the intellectual capital I've invested in Facebook and simply passing it to whomever suits her fancy. Perhaps some of Zuckerberg's older business partners could recommend that he shut up.
10 Billion dollars may seem a lot, but given its based around 40 years it cuts it down quite a bit.
Ok, just to be clear, the math is: $10,000,000,000 / 40 years = $250,000,000 per year.
Now, from the United States Government Printing Office, the President's 2009 Budget says:
Promotes stability in the Middle East. Approximately $75 million for the Palestinian people to promote good governance and invest in education and public health. Approximately $142 million to continue support for the democratic government of Lebanon.
So that's $217 million for 2009 alone, for a major portion of the State Department's Middle East Peace Program. And the argument here is that $250 million per year, over 40 years, isn't that much?
In previous editions of Disagree Mail, several people commented on the fact that the offerings were too short and too few. I didn't comment, but I shared the sentiment.
Serves us right.
*****begin rant******
DIDO: Dumbasses in, Dumbasses out. Anyone who suggests that the internet needs to be regulated, or even could be regulated, in the same way that way that airwaves are regulated does not really understand what the internet is. Television and radio were/are regulated using the fairness doctrine because they are public resources that are only available in limited quantity. You can only have on station broadcasting on the frequency that represents, for instance, channel 9, in any given geographical area.
The internet, on the other hand, is a scale free network (see the nice book by Albert-László Barabási on the topic), meaning that it is not limited in the same way that the airwaves are. Balancing the internet would be like balancing printed media (there are as many newspapers as printing presses) or telephone conversations. There's no need to regulate because we aren't talking about finite public resources. The whole concept is ridiculous --- so ridiculous that I can't even believe I'm writing about it to a bunch of geeks. Even semi-geeks like me *know* this about the internet.
And yet, the first twenty postings were almost entirely about how bad the fairness doctrine could be if applied to the internet on political grounds. While it is true that that this could be bad politically, the more salieent issue is that "balancing" the internet would be bad because it is a stupid, pointless, unworkable idea put forward by bureaucrats and pollsters who probably have regular difficulties checking their email and go whining to their relatives when their "internet breaks!!!!"
GACK!!!!!!
****end rant****
A few highlights from Title 5, Part III, Subpart A, Chapter 23 of the U.S. code, which describes the Merit system in Federal hiring practices:
.....
.....
.....
.....
.....
....etc, etc, etc.
From Section 2301:
"All employees and applicants for employment should receive fair and equitable treatment in all aspects of personnel management without regard to political affiliation, race, color, religion, national origin, sex, marital status, age, or handicapping condition, and with proper regard for their privacy and constitutional rights."
From section 2302:
(8) Employees should be--
(A) protected against arbitrary action, personal favoritism, or coercion for partisan political purposes, and
(B) prohibited from using their official authority or influence for the purpose of interfering with or affecting the result of an election or a nomination for election
(b) Any employee who has authority to take, direct others to take, recommend, or approve any personnel action, shall not, with respect to such authority--
(1) discriminate for or against any employee or applicant for employment-
(E) on the basis of marital status or political affiliation, as prohibited under any law, rule, or regulation;
Google should appeal this up the wazoo, and most importantly STOP KEEPING SUCH LOGS.
Ok, I realize that this has been said somewhat less directly in related posts, but, in this case, I think a clear rebuttal may be in order. "SUCH LOGS," as they are described above, are the bread and butter of Google's business model. They would no more stop keeping them than they would stop running keyword searches on the content of your gmail account.
Scientology is no more ridiculous than christianity, islam, or judaism. OK, spaceships that look like DC3s, OK, that's weird, but no more so than virgin births, 5000 year old flat earth, talking snakes, noah's ark, or killing your first born.
Huh. This got modded to 3, as interesting? So much for the wisdom of crowds.
Criticizing religion in the 20th and 21st century is easy when you are able single out individuals and groups who accept scriptural texts as fundamental truths about matters of empirical fact. Of all the items mentioned, only the virgin birth and Abraham's willingness to sacrifice Isaac are widely accepted by modern practitioners of Christianity (and, incidentally, Islam) as a literal truths and not parables.
What Scientology lacks, and the historical obscurantism and prejudice of this post belie, is the long-standing relationship between Judeo-Christian and Islamic traditions and Western codes of ethics and law. This connection is best summarized by Jurgen Habermas:
"Christianity has functioned for the normative self-understanding of modernity as more than a mere precursor or a catalyst. Egalitarian universalism, from which sprang the ideas of freedom and social solidarity, of an autonomous conduct of life and emancipation, of the individual morality of conscience, human rights, and democracy, is the direct heir to the Judaic ethic of justice and the Christian ethic of love. This legacy, substantially unchanged, has been the object of continual critical appropriation and reinterpretation. To this day, there is no alternative to it. And in the light of the current challenges of a postnational constellation, we continue to draw on the substance of this heritage. Everything else is just idle postmodern talk.
- "Conversation about God and the World." Time of transitions. Cambridge: Polity Press 2006, p. 150-151"
TFA in this post reads a lot like TFA in an earlier post about the supposed science and engineering labor shortage. In both cases, we see governmental and educational institutions using a perceived need for more labor in a certain sector as a means for spending programs and college recruiting, while not tailoring their approaches to meet specific market demands.
If it makes you happy, ya'll can debate all day long about whether or not the myth is really a myth or just a function of the fact that only people with 5 to 10 years' experience in the real world aren't wasting the oxygen of the world's self-made uber-programmers. Personally, I would rather think about what this common thread means in broader terms. What do these two articles, taken together, say about macro-scale patterns related to the labor market and, more importantly, American global competitiveness? What does the fact that schools and government incentive programs are not flexible enough to meet specific demands mean in terms of their abilities to promote the pursuit of livelihoods tailored for educated (and more importantly, according to you lot, self-educated) science, engineering, and IT professionals? What, in turn, does this say about the plans of various political candidates (Obama and McCain, chief among them), to deal with globalization through job retraining?
Kind of reminds ya of the 1990s urban legend about Canadian lighthouses and U.S. aircraft carriers.
....and seemingly on the mark with regard to the Air Force's suggestions regarding email filtering, responsibility for security breaches etc.
US Ship: Please divert your course 0.5 degrees to the south to avoid a collision.
CND reply: Recommend you divert your course 15 degrees to the South to avoid a collision.
US Ship: This is the Captain of a US Navy Ship. I say again, divert your course.
CND reply: No. I say again, you divert YOUR course!
US Ship: THIS IS THE AIRCRAFT CARRIER USS CORAL SEA*, WE ARE A LARGE WARSHIP OF THE US NAVY. DIVERT YOUR COURSE NOW!!
CND reply: This is a lighthouse. Your call.
Not true, of course. But, funny.
True, it's not as if nobody did anything.
HA! Ok, now I'm happy. I take back the Eurotrash snob bit. My apologies. Although you really can spark a lot of good discussion by coming off as a complete jerk. Who knew?
It's that too few people do things, and what they do make no difference.
Again, agreed.
And no, I'm not treating americans as a group. I'm treating them as a sum total, because that's what determines how the country works.
Ok, now here I must disagree. Sum totals may be how smaller countries with long shared histories and relatively more linguistic and cultural homogeneity work. But, historically, that has not been how America "works." The various regions and factions have contributed to a pluralism and, frankly, a level of dis-organization and inefficiency that, until recently, played a major role in why we were perceived as having so much freedom. Of course, this same factionalism contributed things like southern segregation, etc., but, overall, it worked in our favor. The problem now is that media consolidation some kind of willful ignorance that I truly do not understand is making it harder and harder for the factionalists to be effective in bringing about change.
On the one hand, I agree with a lot of the specific critiques about what is happening in this country and appalled that we are now supposed consider anonymity as separate from privacy. On the other, I am proud of our combative, brawling, factionalist past and am happy to wade in against any goldanged ferner (that's "foreigner," for you non-Southerners) with the gall to call me a shithead just because I'm an American.
Tom,
You are flamebaiting troll of a Eurotrash snob and I have no idea how you were ever modded so high. But since I can't do anything about that, here are some things to remember:
1. Bush did not win the popular vote in 2000 -- and that was prior to 9/11.
2. There were minor protests before the war in Afghanistan and serious protests leading up to the war in Iraq and beyond.
3. Many of the worst allegations regarding domestic civil-liberties infringements involving most U.S. citizens (i.e., the ones who weren't Muslim) didn't come out until after the 2004 election. Before that, the press was focused on such lovely things as Abu-Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay (which I grant you are no picnic either).
4. Take a moment and look across the channel at the United Kingdom. They ain't exactly having a civil-liberties hoe-down in England these days.
5. Treating Americans as a unitary group is just as stupid as it would be for people of any other nationality.