Seven of them. It’s probably a problem with technical degrees in general, not just IT.
Category Archives: Social Commentary
Should Liberals Be Skeptical?
…it is just not the protesters’ apparent allergy to capitalism and suspicion of normal democratic politics that should raise concerns. It is also their temperament. The protests have made a big deal of the fact that they arrive at their decisions through a deliberative process. But all their talk of “general assemblies” and “communiqués” and “consensus” has an air of group-think about it that is, or should be, troubling to liberals. “We speak as one,” Occupy Wall Street stated in its first communiqué, from September 19. “All of our decisions, from our choices to march on Wall Street to our decision to camp at One Liberty Plaza were decided through a consensus process by the group, for the group.” The air of group-think is only heightened by a technique called the “human microphone” that has become something of a signature for the protesters. When someone speaks, he or she pauses every few words and the crowd repeats what the person has just said in unison. The idea was apparently logistical—to project speeches across a wide area—but the effect when captured on video is genuinely creepy.
True liberals certainly should be. But most people who call themselves that these days aren’t. And of course, it’s hard to take very seriously anyone who thinks that Dodd-Frank is “the best liberal hope for improving democratically regulated capitalism.”
[Update a while later]
The Wall Street protesters have been sold a bill of goods:
The narrative that came out of these events—largely propagated by government officials and accepted by a credulous media—was that the private sector’s greed and risk-taking caused the financial crisis and the government’s policies were not responsible. This narrative stimulated the punitive Dodd-Frank Act—fittingly named after Congress’s two key supporters of the government’s destructive housing policies. It also gave us the occupiers of Wall Street.
We have to take back the narrative.
NASA’s Insane Risk Aversion
My latest rant on the ISS situation, over at Open Market.
Now We Have To Worry About The Northern Border, Too
Reasons to fear Canada.
As if we needed more.
Why Do Women Have B00Bs?
Asking the important questions. It remains an evolutionary mystery. Maybe Glenn (and Ben) have the right answer, but it’s unsatisfactory from a scientific standpoint.
Child Of The Corn
This guy needs to turn in his man card:
A man used his cellphone to call from Connors Farm in Danvers at about 7 p.m. Tuesday after he, his wife and two children became lost in the maze, police said.
You’d think his wife would have asked for directions.
She Knew The Job Was Dangerous When She Took It
Sorry, but I don’t have a lot of sympathy for this woman:
…the situation has pitted Ms. Douceur and her family against Raytheon Polar Services, which manages the station through a contract with the National Science Foundation. Both Raytheon and the science foundation say that it would be too dangerous to send a rescue plane to the South Pole now and that Ms. Douceur’s condition is not life-threatening.
“During the winter period, extremely cold temperatures and high winds make an extraction dangerous for all involved, passengers as well as crew,” said Jon Kasle, a Raytheon spokesman, “and such an extraction is considered only in life-threatening conditions.”
So, here’s my question. NASA was recently considering abandoning the International Space Station because they didn’t have a reliable lifeboat to extract astronauts in an emergency. But Amundsen-Scott is inaccessible for half of the year, every year, and yet people winter over there. Why isn’t the NSF spending billions to develop an Emergency Crew Extraction Vehicle for the south pole? Or, why are astronauts’ lives worth so much more than those of Antarctic researchers? Or is the research they’re doing on ISS worth so little that they’re unwilling to risk lives on it?
This to me is a perfect example of the irrationality of our space policy.
“The Other Man In My Marriage”
…was Steve Jobs.
I remember that Popular Electronics cover well. I was a subscriber, and I wanted one to play with, but couldn’t justify the money for it at the time (I had just been laid off from my job as a VW mechanic in the 1973 recession, and had decided to go back to school). I remember wondering what I would actually do with something that could only be programmed by toggle switches from a front panel in assemblermachine language.
Michael Jackson’s Death
No, I can safely say, with conscience clear, that I had absolutely nothing to do with it. I never asked him to make a concert tour, I never bought any of his music, I never encouraged him to do anything he ever did in any way whatsoever. My hands are completely clean. I just wish we could stop hearing about him.
[Update a while later]
You know the bit about how he claimed that he never had a childhood? It appeared to me that he had a childhood that lasted for five decades.
Having A Good Working Memory
It’s never been one of my strengths. I always liked math and physics because they didn’t require much memorization — I could just rederive formulas on the fly. One of the reasons that I never seriously considered being a doctor was the amount of memorization required. And I think that for that profession in particular, memory is important, and apparently more so than intelligence or processing capability, because I’ve met doctors who I didn’t think were all that smart, and I don’t intrinsically respect them just because they’re doctors. At least not as much as they and society thinks I’m supposed to.