What this country desperately needs is all the fortune and glory of American Idol channeled into this. IMHO, if kids thought they could become technological rock stars instead of ostracized nerds, technical fields would get a much greater influx of talent. Unfortunately, the people seem to be addicted to the bread & circuses.
IMHO, the problem lies with the uneducated, uninformed, and technologically ignorant believing all the doom and gloom thereby causing unnecessary government regulation and redistribution of research & development funding to social engineering (an oxymoron in and of itself).
"The more complicated the plumbing, the easier it is to stop up the drain." I'm still driving a 1986 Toyota 4Runner and wouldn't trade it for anything. But this proposal raises a problem. What if you have a standard transmission? Sometimes you have to heel/toe the brake and gas while you're stopped on a hill. IMHO, people are relying too much on technology or rather they assume that it's always going to work and so they unplug their brain. You can't fix stupid.
My fav came from the Great International Paper Airplane Book. Sort of square design with upturned wing tips. The initial shape reminded me of a diaper. But here's the kicker: I tossed one of these off the Eiffel Tower and filmed it. It flew for 7.5 minutes and landed on the other side of the Seine. Good times.
It makes you wonder how long Edison would have lasted in an environment where failure is severely punished. However, throughout the history of technological advancement, failures are often taken up by others who introduce new elements to the solutions and make a success out of the original idea. Apple it a prominent example. Xerox PARCs approach was interesting but as Jobs put it "They did a bunch of things wrong."
That being said, today's American culture of giving out awards for participation is total bullsh*t. It instill a false sense of self-importance resulting in too many people thinking they are entitled to stuff they haven't earned. I was talking to a colleague about his advisory role in a FIRST robotics competition and I said that what America needs is an American Idol level of reward for science, technology, and innovation with all the same fame and popularity. His response was yes, but he's witnessed the team distilling out to one or two kids doing all the work and the rest riding their coattails.
Or it could be due to the fact that the Earth is still ringing from the Japan quake and that constructive interference patterns in the waves just happen to peak in the midwest. It's truly sad that what counts for science these days is choosing a conclusion first and then seeking data that backs it up while conveniently ignoring data that doesn't.
It's not the solution to any economic problem because it assumes the possibility of full employment which can't happen without severe inflation. That aside, the New Deal prolonged the effects of the Great Depression and while World War 2 bought the U.S. out of it, it was really due to lend-lease. Up until that point, legally the U.S. was constrained by the Neutrality Acts which prevented the U.S. from getting involved in the war.
Lightsquared got a $267 million dollar federal loan from the Dept of Agriculture. LightSquared's major backer is Philip Falcone, a high-level Democratic party donor and owner of Harbinger Capital, the venture fund with a $3 billion majority stake in LightSquared. And what were democrats saying about evil capitalists?
Given that Lightsquared's hardware interferes with GPS, it doesn't surprise me that their satellite wasn't designed properly either. My theory is that they designed all their hardware as cheaply as possible from back-of-the-envelope concept to implementation so as to maximize profit and were hoping that a fascist economic policy would allow them to proceed.
Read my earlier post more carefully. I can't take my trade show elsewhere. As an exhibitor, I have no choice on aspects of the show which are unionized. But don't misunderstand. If I walk into, say, a metal fabrication shop and they do good quality work at a fair price, I don't give a crap if they are unionized any more than I give a crap about race, religion, sexual orientation or political leanings. But, if the union has control over all the metal fab shops in town, that's a monopoly of the labor resource. If the business has to raise prices simply to cover labor costs that it wouldn't have if it were a non-union shop, that's a recipe for failure. General Motors is the most recent example. As a matter of fact, a colleague who has worked for GM as an assembly line worker and subsequently started his own business making QA tooling sells his products to Detroit automakers and also sold to Honda in the southeast. He said that Honda is light years ahead of GM in terms of quality of life for the workers. Bottom line, if you have a good workforce and you're not stupid, you take care of them because they are an asset. But, if you hire someone who turns out to be incompetent, they should be let go.
Sure, there are unions in right-to-work states but I shouldn't be required to make use of them. Neither should public schools. THAT, SIR, IS FREEDOM OF CHOICE. If an employer CHOOSES to do business with a union, that's their prerogative. But even in right-to-work states, in many situations you don't have a choice to work with them or not. Take Nevada, for example, a right-to-work state, and, say, the Sands Convention Center. The Sands has a union contract for electrical labor. Even though I as an exhibitor don't have a contract with the union I am required to pay union labor rates to install a couple of clip-on exhibit lamps at a one-hour minimum charge of $70 an hour for five minutes work. Work they perform whenever they feel like it, even after a show opens. I can't fire them. I can't dock their pay for not performing in a timely manner. No choice. When it comes to the public school system, even if you choose to send your kids to a private school that you pay for, you're still required to pay for the public school and hence the union teachers through taxes.
Nonsense. Associate all you want. BUT the key point here is don't limit MY CHOICE as an employer to A) only being able to hire union workers, B) locking me into a multi-year contract, C) not being able to sh*tcan somebody that isn't working out. If you as a worker prefer to throw your hat into a group of workers who wish to hire a single negotiator, that's fine. BUT, I as the employer (translation: consumer/purchaser of something which in this case happens to be labor) MUST have the choice to say to the negotiator and hence the group that the terms of their offer aren't acceptable to me and I will continue to shop for something better. If the union knows that it's not the only game in town, it must therefore be competitive. By having no choice but to hire a union worker for a price the union decides on and a performance standard that the union decides on, you destroy the employers freedom. By the same token, an employer that treats its workers well encourages the workers to continue to do so.
Say you wanted to buy a new bicycle and the store said to you "Okay, here's your kid-size tricycle". But you need a mountain bike so you say "No I need a mountain bike." To which they reply "Sorry, you can only have a kid-size tricycle. Oh, and you have to keep it for three years and in three years you'll want to upgrade but we'll tell you tough noogies." You'd tell them to go pound sand and go to another bicycle store. The free market works both ways.
Because collective bargaining takes away the freedom of the employer to choose to reward exemplary workers and fire the ones that suck. The same argument applies to states without right-to-work laws. Why should I as an employer be forced to deal with a union?
You also fall into the classic trap of thinking every employer is this huge monolithic mutli-billion-dollar "evil" corporation. Not true. One person can be a corporation. Without right-to-work laws, even a one-person corporation will have to endure extra expenses. Case-in-point: Illinois is not a right-to-work state. If you are exhibiting at a tradeshow in Chicago, you are required by law to hire a union worker to do everything in your booth including vacuuming, picking up a friggin' screwdriver, even carrying a small box from your car to the booth. For a one-man company with a measly 10x10 booth, that's a millstone of an expense. Even more so if you are a startup trying to conserve every penny. Imagine having to pay somebody $70 to literally plug in a light fixture (I know this because I just went through it). No business owner is going to sit there and take it up the ass. They will do one of two things: A) pass the cost onto the customer in the form of higher prices or B) exhibit somewhere else. If the business owner chooses option A and his competitors all choose option B, he will eventually be out of business and two fewer people will be making money.
Okay, here's a real world example. The New York City public school system has roughly 2000 teachers in what's known as "the rubber room." They have been removed from the classroom for a variety of reasons from poor performance to criminal activity. The union contract requires that they A) keep their job, B) get their full salary and benefits. Mayor Bloomberg wants to fire them but legally can't. Many types of unions have rubber rooms particularly the UAW. And people wonder why GM crashed and burned, was propped up by the taxpayers without them getting a say in the matter, turned over to the union who gets a tax credit for the losses before the bailout and they still can't get profitable.
But to be more specific, the union isn't the only problem. Collective bargaining is a bigger problem. Imagine if you wanted to buy eggs but by law you weren't allowed open the carton to make sure none of them were cracked or spoiled. Not only that but you were required to buy a gross of eggs every week but you're a single person. And then to add insult to injury, you were required to save the shells and dispose of them in a government approved landfill for which you had to pay a maintenance fee until the shells completely decompose.
Not to worry. All new cars will be sandboxed so you can only use a professional driver on a closed course. Goofy, you say? Sure, but you can always take mass transit to work.
There have been a few rescues here in Arizona of boy scout troops who got lost or read their map wrong and only had two days of food and water for what turned out to be a four day hike.
I'm waiting for the Secretary of Energy to say that by using more electric cars, we'll cool the planet which will make the flow of electricity more efficient which will in turn make running the car more cost-effective which will encourage more people to buy more electric cars, etc. etc.
Clearly the court didn't want to pass judgement on the nature of the case (no pun intended) and instead chose to throw it out on an Angelina Jolie-ish thin concept. It also sets an interesting precedent. If, as the court claims, the university is not a person as a requirement for a legal claim on the Fraud Against Taxpayers Act, then one could argue that no university should be allowed to get taxpayer funding because there can be no oversight.
Oy, spoken like a true jealous journalist who thinks companies should exist for sole the benefit of supplying healthcare and retirement benefits to its employees. Granted, one shouldn't spend money simply to take out the competition. Apple tends to buy companies that add a lot of value to its business compared to the money spent.
I'm less concerned with "private companies" having to abide by privacy rules than I am with governments having to abide by them. You don't HAVE to do business with companies that don't respect your privacy. You do have to deal with the government.
IMHO, there's a lot of content out there that's not "science" fiction but rather fantasy and the two tend to get lumped together. If you're going to go down this road, you need to separate the two. Imagine if you had to pit Fellowship of the Ring against A New Hope or Avatar against Wrath of Khan.
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What this country desperately needs is all the fortune and glory of American Idol channeled into this. IMHO, if kids thought they could become technological rock stars instead of ostracized nerds, technical fields would get a much greater influx of talent. Unfortunately, the people seem to be addicted to the bread & circuses.
IMHO, the problem lies with the uneducated, uninformed, and technologically ignorant believing all the doom and gloom thereby causing unnecessary government regulation and redistribution of research & development funding to social engineering (an oxymoron in and of itself).
"The more complicated the plumbing, the easier it is to stop up the drain." I'm still driving a 1986 Toyota 4Runner and wouldn't trade it for anything. But this proposal raises a problem. What if you have a standard transmission? Sometimes you have to heel/toe the brake and gas while you're stopped on a hill. IMHO, people are relying too much on technology or rather they assume that it's always going to work and so they unplug their brain. You can't fix stupid.
Oh, come on, all you naysayers. Every engineer worth his salt believes in PFM.
My fav came from the Great International Paper Airplane Book. Sort of square design with upturned wing tips. The initial shape reminded me of a diaper. But here's the kicker: I tossed one of these off the Eiffel Tower and filmed it. It flew for 7.5 minutes and landed on the other side of the Seine. Good times.
Nifty but are we talking 10 meter accuracy? 10 meters could mean the difference between Hot Dog on a Stick and Sbarro.
It makes you wonder how long Edison would have lasted in an environment where failure is severely punished. However, throughout the history of technological advancement, failures are often taken up by others who introduce new elements to the solutions and make a success out of the original idea. Apple it a prominent example. Xerox PARCs approach was interesting but as Jobs put it "They did a bunch of things wrong."
That being said, today's American culture of giving out awards for participation is total bullsh*t. It instill a false sense of self-importance resulting in too many people thinking they are entitled to stuff they haven't earned. I was talking to a colleague about his advisory role in a FIRST robotics competition and I said that what America needs is an American Idol level of reward for science, technology, and innovation with all the same fame and popularity. His response was yes, but he's witnessed the team distilling out to one or two kids doing all the work and the rest riding their coattails.
Or it could be due to the fact that the Earth is still ringing from the Japan quake and that constructive interference patterns in the waves just happen to peak in the midwest. It's truly sad that what counts for science these days is choosing a conclusion first and then seeking data that backs it up while conveniently ignoring data that doesn't.
It's not the solution to any economic problem because it assumes the possibility of full employment which can't happen without severe inflation.
That aside, the New Deal prolonged the effects of the Great Depression and while World War 2 bought the U.S. out of it, it was really due to lend-lease. Up until that point, legally the U.S. was constrained by the Neutrality Acts which prevented the U.S. from getting involved in the war.
Great, now all those social programs that are dependent on most people dying off in their 70s will be even more effed.
I'd gladly see $4 Billion spent on this than more Solyndra stupidity.
Lightsquared got a $267 million dollar federal loan from the Dept of Agriculture. LightSquared's major backer is Philip Falcone, a high-level Democratic party donor and owner of Harbinger Capital, the venture fund with a $3 billion majority stake in LightSquared. And what were democrats saying about evil capitalists?
Given that Lightsquared's hardware interferes with GPS, it doesn't surprise me that their satellite wasn't designed properly either. My theory is that they designed all their hardware as cheaply as possible from back-of-the-envelope concept to implementation so as to maximize profit and were hoping that a fascist economic policy would allow them to proceed.
Read my earlier post more carefully. I can't take my trade show elsewhere. As an exhibitor, I have no choice on aspects of the show which are unionized. But don't misunderstand. If I walk into, say, a metal fabrication shop and they do good quality work at a fair price, I don't give a crap if they are unionized any more than I give a crap about race, religion, sexual orientation or political leanings. But, if the union has control over all the metal fab shops in town, that's a monopoly of the labor resource. If the business has to raise prices simply to cover labor costs that it wouldn't have if it were a non-union shop, that's a recipe for failure. General Motors is the most recent example. As a matter of fact, a colleague who has worked for GM as an assembly line worker and subsequently started his own business making QA tooling sells his products to Detroit automakers and also sold to Honda in the southeast. He said that Honda is light years ahead of GM in terms of quality of life for the workers. Bottom line, if you have a good workforce and you're not stupid, you take care of them because they are an asset. But, if you hire someone who turns out to be incompetent, they should be let go.
Sure, there are unions in right-to-work states but I shouldn't be required to make use of them. Neither should public schools. THAT, SIR, IS FREEDOM OF CHOICE.
If an employer CHOOSES to do business with a union, that's their prerogative. But even in right-to-work states, in many situations you don't have a choice to work with them or not. Take Nevada, for example, a right-to-work state, and, say, the Sands Convention Center. The Sands has a union contract for electrical labor. Even though I as an exhibitor don't have a contract with the union I am required to pay union labor rates to install a couple of clip-on exhibit lamps at a one-hour minimum charge of $70 an hour for five minutes work. Work they perform whenever they feel like it, even after a show opens. I can't fire them. I can't dock their pay for not performing in a timely manner. No choice. When it comes to the public school system, even if you choose to send your kids to a private school that you pay for, you're still required to pay for the public school and hence the union teachers through taxes.
Nonsense. Associate all you want. BUT the key point here is don't limit MY CHOICE as an employer to A) only being able to hire union workers, B) locking me into a multi-year contract, C) not being able to sh*tcan somebody that isn't working out. If you as a worker prefer to throw your hat into a group of workers who wish to hire a single negotiator, that's fine. BUT, I as the employer (translation: consumer/purchaser of something which in this case happens to be labor) MUST have the choice to say to the negotiator and hence the group that the terms of their offer aren't acceptable to me and I will continue to shop for something better. If the union knows that it's not the only game in town, it must therefore be competitive. By having no choice but to hire a union worker for a price the union decides on and a performance standard that the union decides on, you destroy the employers freedom. By the same token, an employer that treats its workers well encourages the workers to continue to do so.
Say you wanted to buy a new bicycle and the store said to you "Okay, here's your kid-size tricycle". But you need a mountain bike so you say "No I need a mountain bike." To which they reply "Sorry, you can only have a kid-size tricycle. Oh, and you have to keep it for three years and in three years you'll want to upgrade but we'll tell you tough noogies." You'd tell them to go pound sand and go to another bicycle store. The free market works both ways.
Because collective bargaining takes away the freedom of the employer to choose to reward exemplary workers and fire the ones that suck. The same argument applies to states without right-to-work laws. Why should I as an employer be forced to deal with a union?
You also fall into the classic trap of thinking every employer is this huge monolithic mutli-billion-dollar "evil" corporation. Not true. One person can be a corporation. Without right-to-work laws, even a one-person corporation will have to endure extra expenses. Case-in-point: Illinois is not a right-to-work state. If you are exhibiting at a tradeshow in Chicago, you are required by law to hire a union worker to do everything in your booth including vacuuming, picking up a friggin' screwdriver, even carrying a small box from your car to the booth. For a one-man company with a measly 10x10 booth, that's a millstone of an expense. Even more so if you are a startup trying to conserve every penny. Imagine having to pay somebody $70 to literally plug in a light fixture (I know this because I just went through it). No business owner is going to sit there and take it up the ass. They will do one of two things: A) pass the cost onto the customer in the form of higher prices or B) exhibit somewhere else. If the business owner chooses option A and his competitors all choose option B, he will eventually be out of business and two fewer people will be making money.
I also find it amusing that the people poking fun at these folks are often people who spend lots of time on fantasy football.
Okay, here's a real world example. The New York City public school system has roughly 2000 teachers in what's known as "the rubber room." They have been removed from the classroom for a variety of reasons from poor performance to criminal activity. The union contract requires that they A) keep their job, B) get their full salary and benefits. Mayor Bloomberg wants to fire them but legally can't. Many types of unions have rubber rooms particularly the UAW. And people wonder why GM crashed and burned, was propped up by the taxpayers without them getting a say in the matter, turned over to the union who gets a tax credit for the losses before the bailout and they still can't get profitable.
In New Jersey, the following procedure must be followed in order to fire a teacher. Time involved: 2 to 5 years.
http://www.publicschoolspending.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/New-Jersey-Tenure-chart.pdf
But to be more specific, the union isn't the only problem. Collective bargaining is a bigger problem. Imagine if you wanted to buy eggs but by law you weren't allowed open the carton to make sure none of them were cracked or spoiled. Not only that but you were required to buy a gross of eggs every week but you're a single person. And then to add insult to injury, you were required to save the shells and dispose of them in a government approved landfill for which you had to pay a maintenance fee until the shells completely decompose.
Not to worry. All new cars will be sandboxed so you can only use a professional driver on a closed course. Goofy, you say? Sure, but you can always take mass transit to work.
There have been a few rescues here in Arizona of boy scout troops who got lost or read their map wrong and only had two days of food and water for what turned out to be a four day hike.
I'm waiting for the Secretary of Energy to say that by using more electric cars, we'll cool the planet which will make the flow of electricity more efficient which will in turn make running the car more cost-effective which will encourage more people to buy more electric cars, etc. etc.
Clearly the court didn't want to pass judgement on the nature of the case (no pun intended) and instead chose to throw it out on an Angelina Jolie-ish thin concept.
It also sets an interesting precedent. If, as the court claims, the university is not a person as a requirement for a legal claim on the Fraud Against Taxpayers Act, then one could argue that no university should be allowed to get taxpayer funding because there can be no oversight.
Oy, spoken like a true jealous journalist who thinks companies should exist for sole the benefit of supplying healthcare and retirement benefits to its employees. Granted, one shouldn't spend money simply to take out the competition. Apple tends to buy companies that add a lot of value to its business compared to the money spent.
I'm less concerned with "private companies" having to abide by privacy rules than I am with governments having to abide by them. You don't HAVE to do business with companies that don't respect your privacy. You do have to deal with the government.
IMHO, there's a lot of content out there that's not "science" fiction but rather fantasy and the two tend to get lumped together. If you're going to go down this road, you need to separate the two. Imagine if you had to pit Fellowship of the Ring against A New Hope or Avatar against Wrath of Khan.