It actually follows quite logically from the H1-B charter: "An extensive search for domestic talent has come up empty and we need to go outside to fill our needs." A flat $110K is a little un-imaginative, but I prefer it to a complex system of prevailing "market rates" in each area.
Even if this initiative fails, I would hope something like it would be passed to mandate demonstration that the job has been offered on the local market and was unable to be filled at market rate salary - as evidenced by the fact that market rate + x% is currently being paid for the position.
Part of why I don't live in Hilo today is the politics there, worse than most places.
If you roll back 2 or 3 hundred years, most of that land was effectively taken at gunpoint, one way or another. The Hawaiian natives handled themselves much better than the mainland North Americans, and came out much better off overall, but still pretty screwed in the whole deal. Sour grapes are to be expected.
On the other hand, the Hawaiian culture - characterized elsewhere as stone age - has a lot worth respecting, like Talmudic law it has very practical aspects to it. It comes from a culture without so much lip service to separation of church and state, so basically, listen to God: i.e. me, your King, and follow these traditions because I and the Kings who came before me say so. Some of those traditions were silly / stupid / counterproductive / demeaning, but a big part of those cultural traditions are good for the environment and the people who follow them.
So, now you've got this local political movement around Hilo (basically the last native stronghold in the islands, unless you count places like Nihau) that's playing on the old traditions - it's a screwed up mix of modern democratic politics and ancient cultural mores. Not a great situation, but also not without merit on the side that's too easy to label as crazy.
Tour bus is just part of the traffic, there's staff, and construction workers won't be sleeping on-site, either. To go back to the traditional "use" of the land, it was the King's land, which really means, just STFO and let it be, not 60 people per day, not 6, more like one or two every few months.
I climbed up a waterfall outside Ketchikan AK once, we were probably the first two people up there in the last month or more, and it doesn't matter because the trail, and hiker's debris, significantly impacted the land - it's not completely spoiled or endangering the black bears, it just looks like crap here and there where people left a wet sleeping bag behind, or tied a "helpful" rope across the water, or laid some redneck looking lumber across the worst of the muskeg. The worst damage, really, was the trail rutting, which takes months or years to recover - we left some pretty deep footprints of our own, just making the trip up and down one time.
Thanks for the in-depth replies, a few years back we very seriously considered relocating to Hilo or maybe the Hawaiian Acres area. We were living in small-town central Florida, lots of school discrimination against our white but disabled children - and it seemed like the community in Hilo might be more understanding in some ways. We met some friends in Arcadia, FL who had moved there from Pahoa, then after about 10 years in Florida they moved back to Hilo. They were tied into a church in Hilo that seemed to have a great attitude about race, disabilities, inclusion, etc. In the end, we just moved to the nearest big city and things improved substantially, except that it's a big city and we'd really like more of a stable smaller community for the kids, so I sort of keep an eye on Hilo just to stay a little familiar.
So, imagine for a minute, that you have some controlling interest in a family ranch, a few thousand acres. Some outsiders approach you and ask to lease a piece of your land, you agree and life goes on. Some decades later, you regret making that lease for whatever reasons, but you are stuck with it until the term expires, long after you personally are dead. Now, similar outsiders come and request additional permission to do something similar - maybe not at all different from what has gone on for decades... you can tell them yes or no, what's your answer?
Apple/Palm type monocultures at one end of the spectrum, Android/AMD-Intel systems in the middle, and a wild unworkable unfragmented west at the other end. What he's saying is that too many hardwares spoil the software - and it's true. Just as true as if the Linux kernel were wildly fragmented, or people got all "innovative" with core software components. I suspect that the strict Open Hardware license in some ways fosters innovation and fragmentation, and that's what he's trying to control.
There was a ring of natives surrounding that site, and a long standing tradition for the commoners to "not go there." You can spin that all you want with stories of bloody chiefs, outrageous taboos, etc. I'm hopeful that this is more of a negotiation tactic than a complete shutout on ideological grounds, but with political posturing it's hard to tell sometimes. You can call it a shakedown for cash, or a barter to resolve conflicting interests. I hope both sides get something worthwhile in the end, for the TMT that can only mean permission to build - but they should acknowledge that they are taking something of value from other people when they do that.
Look at the Florida Keys, they block development all the time pointing to impact on the infrastructure (mainly: lanes on US1) - so, you can't build on the lot your grandparents left you in that subdivision in Big Pine Key because some city planning council or another decided that there isn't enough infrastructure to support another 3 bedrooms there.
Well, you Hawaiians have apparently elected some people to positions of power who disagree with your personal point of view. Protesters only serve to sway the opinions of the elected officials by giving them some sense of how likely they are to be re-elected - the officials make their own choices.
No, I meant to have them raise a couple of generations of children without the benefit of "first world" conveniences like advanced education, access to world markets, and all the other challenges of living a thousand miles from nowhere. In particular, I'm remembering a small town in West Virginia that I happened into one day when taking a detour off the blue ridge parkway - Freedom, republican and rule of law all applied there, but they also fit the bumpkin label at a glance, didn't get to know them well enough to determine how crooked they were.
I grew up in 1970s central Florida - I see the Hilo area of the big island following in the footsteps of lower gulf coast Florida in a lot of ways, most of them sad.
The telescopes are a good use of that particular site, from a western / scientific perspective. Having places that people leave the hell alone are also good use of space, too bad that we can't manage to leave some of the "good places" to nature, it seems to me that they are just digging in and resisting where they can, since resisting development of HPP and the other "suburban housing areas" is a pointless battle nowadays.
All cultures need to evolve, but the whiplash from tribal to colony to sugar plantation to tourist mecca has undeniably been hard on the culture. They handled it better than most native populations, which is why they are still as strong as they are, but nowhere near as strong as they could have been if development hadn't been pushed onto the islands so rapidly.
China is a lot like the US used to be - Flagler built his railroad to Key West because he wanted to, not because it made any particular economic sense (beyond: if you build it, they will come). We built many of the hydro-dams just because we could, not because they were a particularly good idea in all cases.
The US is probably entering a time of "overthinking" some development issues, but we still "underthink" plenty of them to make up for it, Deepwater Horizon comes to mind...
Cool thing about the internet is that the location of things like big telescopes is mostly irrelevant - maybe the Chinese will get more say in the tasking if it's on their soil - but I'd bet that wherever it is located, the team operating it will be mostly international anyway.
At one point I thought about moving to Hilo, bumming around the Uni and trying to convince the Telescope operators that they could use my talents - I'm sure they would benefit from letting me into some facet of the operations, but from the Mainland, it looked like a tough nut to crack.
Medicine, astronomy, Black-Scholes options pricing, which is the greatest advantage to humanity is all a matter of perspective.
Astronomy is at a geographic disadvantage, needing to use one of a very limited number of attractive building sites - as such, they should recognize the supply-demand situation for what it is and be prepared to pay up in some way that the controllers of the land value.
Slashdot Mirror
It actually follows quite logically from the H1-B charter: "An extensive search for domestic talent has come up empty and we need to go outside to fill our needs." A flat $110K is a little un-imaginative, but I prefer it to a complex system of prevailing "market rates" in each area.
Even if this initiative fails, I would hope something like it would be passed to mandate demonstration that the job has been offered on the local market and was unable to be filled at market rate salary - as evidenced by the fact that market rate + x% is currently being paid for the position.
Part of why I don't live in Hilo today is the politics there, worse than most places.
If you roll back 2 or 3 hundred years, most of that land was effectively taken at gunpoint, one way or another. The Hawaiian natives handled themselves much better than the mainland North Americans, and came out much better off overall, but still pretty screwed in the whole deal. Sour grapes are to be expected.
On the other hand, the Hawaiian culture - characterized elsewhere as stone age - has a lot worth respecting, like Talmudic law it has very practical aspects to it. It comes from a culture without so much lip service to separation of church and state, so basically, listen to God: i.e. me, your King, and follow these traditions because I and the Kings who came before me say so. Some of those traditions were silly / stupid / counterproductive / demeaning, but a big part of those cultural traditions are good for the environment and the people who follow them.
So, now you've got this local political movement around Hilo (basically the last native stronghold in the islands, unless you count places like Nihau) that's playing on the old traditions - it's a screwed up mix of modern democratic politics and ancient cultural mores. Not a great situation, but also not without merit on the side that's too easy to label as crazy.
Tour bus is just part of the traffic, there's staff, and construction workers won't be sleeping on-site, either. To go back to the traditional "use" of the land, it was the King's land, which really means, just STFO and let it be, not 60 people per day, not 6, more like one or two every few months.
I climbed up a waterfall outside Ketchikan AK once, we were probably the first two people up there in the last month or more, and it doesn't matter because the trail, and hiker's debris, significantly impacted the land - it's not completely spoiled or endangering the black bears, it just looks like crap here and there where people left a wet sleeping bag behind, or tied a "helpful" rope across the water, or laid some redneck looking lumber across the worst of the muskeg. The worst damage, really, was the trail rutting, which takes months or years to recover - we left some pretty deep footprints of our own, just making the trip up and down one time.
Thanks for the in-depth replies, a few years back we very seriously considered relocating to Hilo or maybe the Hawaiian Acres area. We were living in small-town central Florida, lots of school discrimination against our white but disabled children - and it seemed like the community in Hilo might be more understanding in some ways. We met some friends in Arcadia, FL who had moved there from Pahoa, then after about 10 years in Florida they moved back to Hilo. They were tied into a church in Hilo that seemed to have a great attitude about race, disabilities, inclusion, etc. In the end, we just moved to the nearest big city and things improved substantially, except that it's a big city and we'd really like more of a stable smaller community for the kids, so I sort of keep an eye on Hilo just to stay a little familiar.
So, imagine for a minute, that you have some controlling interest in a family ranch, a few thousand acres. Some outsiders approach you and ask to lease a piece of your land, you agree and life goes on. Some decades later, you regret making that lease for whatever reasons, but you are stuck with it until the term expires, long after you personally are dead. Now, similar outsiders come and request additional permission to do something similar - maybe not at all different from what has gone on for decades... you can tell them yes or no, what's your answer?
Apple/Palm type monocultures at one end of the spectrum, Android/AMD-Intel systems in the middle, and a wild unworkable unfragmented west at the other end. What he's saying is that too many hardwares spoil the software - and it's true. Just as true as if the Linux kernel were wildly fragmented, or people got all "innovative" with core software components. I suspect that the strict Open Hardware license in some ways fosters innovation and fragmentation, and that's what he's trying to control.
There was a ring of natives surrounding that site, and a long standing tradition for the commoners to "not go there." You can spin that all you want with stories of bloody chiefs, outrageous taboos, etc. I'm hopeful that this is more of a negotiation tactic than a complete shutout on ideological grounds, but with political posturing it's hard to tell sometimes. You can call it a shakedown for cash, or a barter to resolve conflicting interests. I hope both sides get something worthwhile in the end, for the TMT that can only mean permission to build - but they should acknowledge that they are taking something of value from other people when they do that.
Not enough traffic over the mountain, you need 1000+ cars/hour driving by to make it worthwhile building a casino. (Yeah, they're all over.)
Look at the Florida Keys, they block development all the time pointing to impact on the infrastructure (mainly: lanes on US1) - so, you can't build on the lot your grandparents left you in that subdivision in Big Pine Key because some city planning council or another decided that there isn't enough infrastructure to support another 3 bedrooms there.
Well, you Hawaiians have apparently elected some people to positions of power who disagree with your personal point of view. Protesters only serve to sway the opinions of the elected officials by giving them some sense of how likely they are to be re-elected - the officials make their own choices.
No, I meant to have them raise a couple of generations of children without the benefit of "first world" conveniences like advanced education, access to world markets, and all the other challenges of living a thousand miles from nowhere. In particular, I'm remembering a small town in West Virginia that I happened into one day when taking a detour off the blue ridge parkway - Freedom, republican and rule of law all applied there, but they also fit the bumpkin label at a glance, didn't get to know them well enough to determine how crooked they were.
I grew up in 1970s central Florida - I see the Hilo area of the big island following in the footsteps of lower gulf coast Florida in a lot of ways, most of them sad.
The telescopes are a good use of that particular site, from a western / scientific perspective. Having places that people leave the hell alone are also good use of space, too bad that we can't manage to leave some of the "good places" to nature, it seems to me that they are just digging in and resisting where they can, since resisting development of HPP and the other "suburban housing areas" is a pointless battle nowadays.
All cultures need to evolve, but the whiplash from tribal to colony to sugar plantation to tourist mecca has undeniably been hard on the culture. They handled it better than most native populations, which is why they are still as strong as they are, but nowhere near as strong as they could have been if development hadn't been pushed onto the islands so rapidly.
I'd say that there are very few stone age beliefs that had enough merit to persist to the present day.
OP was clearly using it as a point of mockery, I'd rather mock the failed science of 50 years ago that some people are still clinging to.
How many tourists would be going to 9000' without the presence of the telescopes and the access road?
http://adventureinhawaii.com/b...
China is a lot like the US used to be - Flagler built his railroad to Key West because he wanted to, not because it made any particular economic sense (beyond: if you build it, they will come). We built many of the hydro-dams just because we could, not because they were a particularly good idea in all cases.
The US is probably entering a time of "overthinking" some development issues, but we still "underthink" plenty of them to make up for it, Deepwater Horizon comes to mind...
Cool thing about the internet is that the location of things like big telescopes is mostly irrelevant - maybe the Chinese will get more say in the tasking if it's on their soil - but I'd bet that wherever it is located, the team operating it will be mostly international anyway.
At one point I thought about moving to Hilo, bumming around the Uni and trying to convince the Telescope operators that they could use my talents - I'm sure they would benefit from letting me into some facet of the operations, but from the Mainland, it looked like a tough nut to crack.
Here's one classy website for ya:
http://www.drgeorgepc.com/Volc...
I presume the present council derives its power from popular election, and that the people are supporting them - more or less, as in any democracy.
That they make reference back to their traditions only shows that the people go in for that sort of thing, even today.
The government that provides the infrastructure (roads, police, health care) that supports the endeavor.
Because a belief is traceable to a stone age culture, does that make it less, or more deserving of respect?
Hilo has already gotten a warning shot or two - the peak is probably not going off for a long long time, but the road to it may need to move.
A place of silent meditation, that doesn't draw trucks and tour buses up and down the mountainside every day.
This is sort of the ultimate example of a "thinly traded commodity" market.
Medicine, astronomy, Black-Scholes options pricing, which is the greatest advantage to humanity is all a matter of perspective.
Astronomy is at a geographic disadvantage, needing to use one of a very limited number of attractive building sites - as such, they should recognize the supply-demand situation for what it is and be prepared to pay up in some way that the controllers of the land value.