There have been some issues with the utilities that send my blog posts to those services.
I am working this.
You might want to click directly to my blog at http://40yrs.blogspot.com.
Year: 2017
It’s Bank Failure Friday!!! (On Saturday)
We have now had the 3rd bank failure of the year, Proficio Bank, of Cottonwood Heights, UT.
That’s 3 for the year so far, as versus 5 for all of last year.
I’m not sure what it means. They are both small data sets.
Linkage
- Please Explain How ‘Both Sides’ Journalism Will Help Us Now (Esquire) Charlie Pierce unleashes a well deserved can of whup ass on the concern trolls among media critics.
- How much pee is in our swimming pools? New urine test reveals the truth (The Guardian) Aspartame and pee in pools. Ewwwwwww………
- Internet of Things Teddy Bear Leaked 2 Million Parent and Kids Message Recordings – Motherboard (Motherboard) The “Internet of Things” = “The Internet of Sh%$”.
- Amazon S3 problem caused by command line mistake during maintenance (Ars Technica) Why Amazon’s cloud went down. To quote the RPG Paranoia, “Whe computer is your friend.”
- How To Fine-Tune Your Bullsh%$ Detector (Co.Design)) Basically common sense.
- Drugs are Cheap: Why Do We Let Governments Make Them Expensive? (The Center for Economic and Policy Research) Dean Baker explains the problem with drugs is not high costs, it is high prices, and suggests that we find alternatives to the current IP based monopolies.
Machiavelli’s Advice For Nice Guys.
It is an interesting, though by no means definitive, analysis which has echos of existentialism, particularly the money quote, “It’s not enough to dream well, the true measure is to achieve.”
Well, It’s a Start
Republican Contributor, Casino Mogul, and Lawn Gnome Sheldon Adelson
For the first time ever, employees at one of Sheldon Adelson’s casinos have joined a union:
When Sheldon Adelson’s casino empire opened a new branch in 2009 on the grounds of the old Bethlehem Steel mill in Pennsylvania, the interior designers played up the link to faded industrial glory.
The gaming floor drips with lights the color of liquified iron ore. There’s a Steelworks Buffet & Grill, and the late-night lounge is called Molten.
But there was another bit of Bethlehem Steel’s legacy that the casino company might not have counted on: labor unions.
The ratification of a new union contract by security guards at the Sands Bethlehem Casino on Wednesday night marked the first time that a workforce within Adelson’s global empire, the Las Vegas Sands Corp, had successfully unionized, despite years of efforts by the Culinary Workers’ union and others in Las Vegas.
Security employees at Sands Bethlehem voted 70-6 in favor of a contract that gives 146 workers an 8% wage increase, and that sets up a seniority system and grievance process. The vote was the result of five years of work by organizers and a year of negotiating between the Sands Corp and the Security Police Fire Professionals of America.
Adelson is one of the most vociferous union opponents in the US, and I hope that this leads to more of the same for him.
Lessons Not Learned
Specifically, the old saying that, “It ain’t the crime, it’s the coverup.”
It appears that one Jefferson Beauregard Sessions has not learned this lesson:
Attorney General Jeff Sessions said Thursday that he will recuse himself from investigations related to the 2016 presidential campaign, which would include any Russian interference in the electoral process.
Speaking at a hastily called news conference at the Justice Department, Sessions said he was following the recommendation of department ethics officials after an evaluation of the rules and cases in which he might have a conflict.
“They said that since I had involvement with the campaign, I should not be involved in any campaign investigation,” Sessions said. He added that he concurred with their assessment and would thus recuse himself from any existing or future investigation involving President Trump’s 2016 campaign.
The announcement comes a day after The Washington Post revealed that Sessions twice met with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak during the campaign and did not disclose that to the Senate Judiciary Committee during his confirmation hearing in January.
(emphasis mine)
“Did not disclose,” is pretty mealy mouthed. Session explicitly denied any contact with Russian officials at the hearing.
Of course, IOKIYAR,* so nothing is going to happen to him.
*It’s OK If You’re A Republican.
Modern Pinkertons, Paid for by Your Tax Dollars
It appears that the Memphis Police department decided to offer their services to McDonald’s franchises as private anti-union thugs:
Police claimed they had “authorization from the president of McDonald’s” to arrest protesting fast food workers, according to a civil rights lawsuit filed on Wednesday against the city of Memphis, Tennessee.
The suit alleges that local police engaged in a “widespread and illegal campaign of surveillance and intimidation” against a local chapter of the Fight for $15 fast-food worker organization as it campaigned for an increase in the minimum wage and union rights for fast food workers.
Officers followed organizers home after meetings, ordered workers not to sign petitions and blacklisted organizers from city hall, according to the suit. They claimed to have been authorized by McDonald’s, the world’s largest fast food chain, and in one incident a McDonald’s franchisee joined police in tailing protesters.
The suit alleges that a campaign of harassment began after Memphis workers participated in a nationwide day of protest on 4 September 2014. Since then, police officers have repeatedly threatened workers with arrest during protests, at one point telling them they had “authorization from the president of McDonald’s to make arrests”. On “multiple occasions” officers “seemed to take direction from McDonald’s”, the complaint charges.
I kind of preferred the old days, when the companies actually had to pay their own money for their thugs.
These days, “Business friendly” politicians use the taxpayer’s money to brutalize their own citizens.
Some Perspective from Sweden
Driving to work this morning, I heard that Sweden was re instituting military conscription.
The story had a heavy “Red Menace”, angle, implying that the Russians are freaking out the Swedes.
While the history of Russia and Sweden is rather frought, it appears that the actual reasons for this are rather less dramatic:
For readers from countries that haven’t had the draft since the mid 20th century like the UK or US, the idea that young Swedes can now be called up for obligatory military training may sound archaic. So what’s the background to Sweden bringing back conscription? Here are four things to help you understand.
1. Not enough people are joining the military
This one kind of falls in the category of, “Well, duh.” If they didn’t have recruiting fhortages they would not be reinstituting the draft.
2. The situation in the Baltic region has changed
Yeppers, this is the Russians.
3. Public support is strong
A mind-boggling 72% of Swedes like the return of the draft, and elections are going to happen next year, and a little bit of dick swinging plays well with the electorate.
4. It hasn’t even been away that long
The draft only ended in 2010, so both the military and public are still familiar with the concept.
My guess is that the first bit is the main driver of this, and that electoral considerations are a close second.
In either case, it’s rather less alarming that it was presented to me on my morning commute.
Well, This is an Interesting Take on the Problems in Indian IT
According to this report by the Indian web site Scroll.in. cheating is so endemic that many of the most prestigious schools in India are unable to do basic coding.
It appears to be the result of a toxic mix of entitlement and credentialism.
This is not to say that all Indian programmers are incompetent, though an Indian IT executive basically gave up on ⅔ of all IT grads in the country, which is a remarkably high failure rate for the elite institutions.
Reports of mass copying during school and college examinations in several states, including Bihar and Uttar Pradesh, are common. But a blog post by a computer science professor indicates that students at the prestigious Indian Institute of Technology, and other engineering colleges, indulge in it too.
Earlier this month, Dheeraj Sanghi, a professor at the Indraprastha Institute of Information Technology-Delhi, wrote a blog post on the quality of the country’s information technology engineers, which corporate recruiters also seem to be concerned about.
In the post titled, CS education is poor because of copying, Sanghi referred to a statement by Srinivas Kandula, chief executive of information technology major Capgemeni India, at a business event in Mumbai earlier this month.
At the event, Kandula said: “I am not very pessimistic, but it is a challenging task and I tend to believe that 60-65 per cent of them [IT recruits] are just not trainable.”
………
Speaking to this reporter, Sanghi said: “In many colleges, even in some of the IITs but to a lesser extent, students either copy the code for a programme from the net, or one student writes it, and the others copy. The code is tested in the laboratory. If it runs – and it does – the student is awarded marks even if the lines are not original.” He added that these shortcuts are adopted as early as the first semester.
………
In his blog post, he recounted that he was recently part of a selection committee to recruit programmers for a government department. He found that most applicants he interviewed, including those who had “several years of experience in industry”, could not perform a variety of tasks they ought to have learnt at engineering college. “These [were] all the programmes we ask our first semester students who have never programmed before,” he wrote.
………
But Indian Institutes of Technology have had their fair share of cheating scandals, some of which seem to have resulted in a cover-up.
For instance, in 2011, a computer science professor at the Indian Institute of Technology-Kharagpur, was suspended for reporting a variety of irregularities at the institution, including mass cheating in examinations. It led to a court case, which is still on. With the next hearing scheduled for Friday, the professor was reluctant to talk to this reporter but his lawyer Pranav Sachdeva said that one of the charges against his client was that “he spoke to the media about it”. Sachdeva added that the IIT had “tried to impose compulsory retirement [on his client] but the Delhi Hight Court put a stop to it”.
………
Even though engineering colleges can easily check copying if they wanted to by failing students who did not submit original programmes, there’s perhaps a valid reason why institutes hold back. “I know of one college which tried this,” wrote Sanghi in his blog. “Every single glass [pane] in all buildings were broken by the angry students.”
Any comments from people who have been through an IT education in India, or those who have experience working with Indian IT professionals would be appreciated.
Silicon Valley in All of Its Glory
We had revelations about a hostile work place at Uber last week, and this week it’s Tesla where the “Brogrammer” culture is alleged:
A female engineer at Tesla has accused Elon Musk’s car company of ignoring her complaints of “pervasive harassment”, paying her a lower salary than men doing the same work, promoting less qualified men over her and retaliating against her for raising concerns.
The allegations of AJ Vandermeyden, who still works at the celebrated electric car manufacturer, paint a picture of a hostile work environment dominated by men where inappropriate sexual behavior is tolerated and women face numerous barriers to advance their careers.
………Vandermeyden began at Tesla in 2013 and was eventually promoted to a manufacturing engineering position in the general assembly department, which consisted mostly of men and where she was paid less than male engineers whose work she directly took over, according to her complaint.
I think that we need to reconsider the adulation that we throw Silicon Valley’s way.
There seems to be a surfeit of narcissism in around San Jose that rivals that around 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.
Jon Stewart Opens up a Can of Whup-Ass on the Media
He tunnels into Colbert’s show, and offers advice to the media.
Specifically, he suggests that Trump just isn’t that into them, and that they should take up a hobby ……… Perhaps journalism might fill the void.
Ouch!
The dem A-team consists of some ghosts in an abandoned Appalachian tavern. pic.twitter.com/PV7dct3HkG— Blagojevist (@blagojevism) March 1, 2017
This was literally the scene of the Democratic Party response to the Trump speech, because nothing screams “win” like a bunch of old white dudes sitting in a run down diner.
Well, Here is Some Good News to Start the Month
The Supreme Court just remanded the Virginia redistricting case back to a lower court with instructions to apply a more rigorous standard regarding racial bias.
It wasn’t a complete victory, but it was a definite win for the good guys:
The Supreme Court on Wednesday gave Virginia Democrats a fresh chance to challenge parts of the legislative map for the state’s House of Delegates.
………
“The upshot of all of this is that not much has changed with these cases,” Richard L. Hasen, a law professor at the University of California, Irvine, wrote in a blog post. “The fight will be over the details and application to particular cases.”
Marc E. Elias, a lawyer for the challengers in the case, disagreed, calling the decision a “major victory” that will help Democrats.
………
In 2015, a divided three-judge panel of Federal District Court in Richmond, Va., upheld 11 of the challenged districts because, it said, race had not been the primary factor in drawing them. Since the districts could be justified under traditional redistricting criteria like compactness, contiguity, incumbency protection and political considerations, the court said, race could not have been the predominant reason for drawing them.
That was the wrong approach, Justice Anthony M. Kennedy wrote for the majority. “The racial predominance inquiry concerns the actual considerations that provided the essential basis for the lines drawn,” he wrote, “not post hoc justifications the legislature in theory could have used but in reality did not.”
………
In assessing those challenges, Justice Kennedy wrote, the trial court identified “no fewer than 11 race neutral redistricting factors.” He called that kind of analysis too malleable.
“By deploying those factors in various combinations and permutations, a state could construct a plethora of potential maps that look consistent with traditional, race-neutral principles,” Justice Kennedy wrote. “But if race for its own sake is the overriding reason for choosing one map over others, race still may predominate.”
Justice Kennedy did not say the challengers would win under his less rigid standard. “The district court,” he wrote, “is best positioned to determine in the first instance the extent to which, under the proper standard, race directed the shape of these 11 districts.”
The Supreme Court affirmed one part of the trial court’s ruling, concerning a single district, which the trial court had upheld even after finding that race played the dominant role in drawing it. The trial court said the district was justified by an attempt to comply with the Voting Rights Act, which forbade the reduction of minority voters’ ability to elect candidates of their choice.
Redistricting is still a mess, but it is a bit less of a mess, and it appears that racial Gerrymanders have become more difficult.
Quote of the Day
In various times and regions, Jews have belonged to conservative parties like the UK tories or French Gaullist parties, for instance. But they are virtually absent from rightist politics. The reason is clear enough. Anti-semitism is almost inevitably and almost always part of rightist political movements. It is a natural feature. This is not always explicitly so. It is not always that way at first, but eventually it is always there.
The right hearkens back to, and attempts to resurrect, a past that never existed, and this past is largely Judenrein.
Jews, and most other minorities, do not exist as human beings with agency in this idealized vision of the past.
They are either absent, or meek stereotypes.
Yeah, He’s Running for President in 2020
Corey Booker, after getting savaged by the Democratic wing of the Democratic Party for voting with big pharma to ensure that people would be impoverished by their extortion, has signed on to a very similar measure to the one that he voted against:
Pilloried by his party’s left wing for voting in January against a non-binding measure with a similar goal, Sen. Cory Booker is joining Sen. Bernie Sanders on Tuesday to unveil a bill to allow the importation of pharmaceuticals from Canada and other countries.
Booker, who has been mentioned as a potential 2020 presidential candidate, came under fire on social media and liberal blogs as too beholden to special interests after he and 12 Democratic colleagues, including fellow New Jersey Sen. Bob Menendez, voted against a drug-importation amendment to the 2017 budget resolution.
That amendment, sponsored by Sanders, of Vermont, and Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., was part of a series of votes, all defeated, to amend the budget resolution the Republican majority was using to start the process of repealing the Affordable Care Act. Sanders reacted angrily after the 46-52 vote, telling USA Today his Democratic colleagues lacked “guts” and he hoped that “in the coming weeks and months you’re going to see many of them develop the courage to stand up to Pharma.”
I am an optimist: I think that our nation might survive 4 years of Donald Trump.
I don’t think that it can survive another presidency of an Ivy League educated neoliberal who runs the country primarily for the benefit Ivy League educated neoliberals.
I really have to start looking into aliyah.
Good
Bernie Sanders won’t be giving his list to the DNC.
Seeing as how Tom Perez has made it clear that the pillaging of the party by overpaid and under-performing consultants will continue, it is best to keep them as far away from that list as is humanly possible.
Seriously, Are There ANY Ukrainian Nationalists without a Nazi Family Background?
It appears that you cannot even find one non-Nazi Uke in Canada:
Exclusive: Canada’s fiercely anti-Russian Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland says her Ukrainian grandfather struggled “to return freedom and democracy to Ukraine,” but she leaves out that he was a Nazi propagandist justifying the slaughter of Jews, writes Arina Tsukanova.It really says all you need to know.
………
So, it appears Freeland’s grandfather – rather than being a helpless victim – was given a prestigious job to spread Nazi propaganda, praising Hitler from a publishing house stolen from Jews and given to Ukrainians who shared the values of Nazism.
Among other things, as editor of the Polish newspaper Nowy Dziennik, he lauded the Babi Yar massacre of Kiev’s Jews:
The Nov. 6, 1941 issue of Krakivski Visti ecstatically describes how much better Kiev is without Jews. “There is not a single one left in Kiev today, while there were 350,000 under the Bolsheviks,” the newspaper wrote, gloating that the Jews “got their comeuppance.”
That “comeuppance” refers to the mass shooting of Kiev’s Jewish population at Babi Yar. In just two days, Sept. 29-30, 1941, a total of 33,771 people were murdered, a figure that does not include children younger than three years old. There were more shootings in October, and by early November, Krakivski Visti was enthusing over a city where the Jewish population had “disappeared” making Kiev “beautiful, glorious.” Chomiak’s editorials also described a Poland “iinfected by Jews.”
It should be noted that my awareness of the history of Ukrainian nationalism going back hundreds of years, might influence my positions on the current conflict in the Ukraine.
On the other hand, it appears that Freeland would Steve Bannon’s kind of foreign minister.
Headline of the Day
The Amazon Reviews for a Phone Designed for Rectal Smuggling Are Pretty Interesting Reading
.Insert butt dialing joke here.
Not Enough Alcohol
I am not watching Donald Trump’s speech.
There is not enough alcohol for me to watch him speak ……… In my house.
There is not enough alcohol for me to watch him speak ……… In my Owings Mills.
There is not enough alcohol for me to watch him speak ……… In Maryland.
There is not enough alcohol for me to watch him speak ……… In the United States.
There is not enough alcohol for me to watch him speak ……… In the world.
There is not enough alcohol for me to watch him speak ……… In the cosmos.
Charlie Pierce Owes me a F%$#ing Screen Wipe
He just described Trump Strategist Steve Bannon as, “The last heir to House Harkonnen.”
I nearly hocked up a lung, even though I’ve never read the Dune books, though I saw the movie.
Brilliant.
It Appears that I Still Have the Capacity for Outrage
Every now and then, I wonder if I have become so pessimistic, and so cynical that I can no longer be outraged by what is going on.
And then I read this report that Donald Trump and an aide are suggesting that liberals are calling in bomb threats to Jewish Community Centers and Schools while desecrating Jewish graves because it makes for good politics:
President Trump suggested on Tuesday that the recent spate of anti-Semitic bomb threats and cemetery vandalism could be politically coordinated attacks to “make people look bad” — an apparent suggestion that his opponents could be behind them.
Continue reading the main story
Speaking at the White House to attorneys general from around the country, Mr. Trump was asked by Josh Shapiro, the attorney general of Pennsylvania, about the wave of attacks and how the federal government could work with state governments to confront the violence.
“First, he said the acts were reprehensible,” Mr. Shapiro, a Democrat who was elected to the post in November, said while recounting Mr. Trump’s response. “Second he said: ‘And you’ve got to be careful, it could be the reverse. This could be the reverse, trying to make people look bad.’ ”
The comments echoed the Twitter post of an adviser, Anthony Scaramucci, who suggested that Democrats were behind threats to Jewish community centers.It’s not yet clear who the #JCC offenders are. Don’t forget @TheDemocrats effort to incite violence at Trump rallies https://t.co/uTBFGhI0Kh— Anthony Scaramucci (@Scaramucci) February 28, 2017
Seriously, I need to go live in a f%$#ing cave.
Just shoot me now.