Never mind voter fraud - how about government fraud?

Yesterday I pointed out a particularly good argument in favor of requiring voter ID at US elections. It was well timed, because last Friday the Justice Department informed South Carolina that it would block that state's Voter ID law. MSNBC reported:

The Justice Department said the requirement could harm the right to vote of tens of thousands of people, noting that just over a third of the state's minorities who are registered voters did not have a driver's license needed to cast a ballot.

"The state's data demonstrate that non-white voters are both significantly burdened" by the law and "disproportionately unlikely to possess the most common types of photo identification" needed, Thomas Perez, head of the Justice Department's civil rights division, said in a letter to the state.

The state can appeal the decision at the Justice Department or in federal court.

There's more at the link.

Yesterday Andrew Breitbart's Big Government blog pointed out that the Justice Department's case was based upon mathematics so flawed that it amounted to chicanery. Here's an excerpt.

The Obama Department of Justice has used a mathematical trick in order to make its legal and public-relations case against South Carolina’s voter ID provisions. Officials of the DOJ intentionally created a false perception of the disparity between black and white voters in order to strike down the law that would haveve required photo ID or other proof for voters. Meanwhile, the media helped Eric Holder’s Department of Justice spin their intentionally misleading numbers to the general public.

This entire scam – there’s no better word for it – is based an interesting but totally irrelevant math quirk; when numbers are small, the difference between them is larger.

An Easy Math Trick

To understand the math behind this, let’s start simply and look at two very small numbers – 1 and 2.

If you had one dollar and I had two dollars, I have one dollar more than you. However, if I wanted to try to impress someone, just telling them that I was a dollar wealthier probably wouldn’t work. In an effort to sound more impressive, I could find a way to pump myself up by claiming that I had twice as much money as you. It’s true, of course – 2 is twice as much as 1 — but just knowing that I had twice as much money as someone else doesn’t really paint the whole picture.

If I want to get extra-fancy, I could also say “I have 100% more money than that person.” This is saying the same (misleading) thing as “I have twice as much” in a slightly different way.

. . .

Here’s the quirky part — as numbers get bigger, this difference decreases. Now imagine that you have $100 and I have $101. I still only have one dollar more than you but because the numbers are larger, I can’t pull my ‘twice as much money’ claim trick. In fact, I only have 1% more money than you.

. . .

Now, in both of these examples, the simpler way to express our financial differences is to say “I have a dollar more than you” or by spelling it all out, such as “I have two dollars and you have one dollar.” The whole bit about ‘twice as much money’ or ‘100% more’ is just a way to obfuscate the truth that I only have one more dollar and it works only when the numbers are low.

Thus ends the math lesson.

This intentional obfuscation is exactly what the Federal Government and the Holder Justice Department did to the people of South Carolina. They used this same mathematical quirk to hide the truth about the actual statistics and the media dutifully repeated the ‘Holder Math’. Unfortunately, the state of South Carolina was also bamboozled by this simple math game and failed to expose what the Obama DOJ was up to.

. . .

The number that matters is that there’s a 1.6% real difference, based on the data used – or to spell it out, 10% of black voters without DMV-ID versus 8.4% of white voters. The 20% figure had to be manufactured for some reason and the obvious assumption is that the DOJ is trying to hide the fact that the real difference is so small. They know public opinion is against them so they used a semi-clever trick to fool the state of South Carolina.

This intentional gaming of the statistics by a legal branch of the Federal government should be deeply troubling.

Again, more at the link, including a detailed exposition of how the Justice Department 'cooked the books' to make its case.

I can only hope that South Carolina will appeal this ridiculous decision through the courts, and prevail on the grounds of mathematics and logic, rather than allow mendacious and - let's not mince words - fraudulent arguments to derail its efforts to minimize voting fraud. I also hope Congress will investigate how and why such misleading arguments were relied upon by the Justice Department to make its case (such as it is). Heads need to roll.





Peter

Yep - EOD techs are strange . . . and funny!

Yesterday I published an article about a bomb-disposal robot that 'died' in an explosion in Iraq. Among the commenters was fellow (albeit very intermittent) blogger 'Raven Prometheus', writing at Ruminations Of The Raven-Wolf. He said:

I, personally, have lost 4 bots like that. 4 times that my wife wasn't a widow and my kids weren't orphans. As far as anthropomorphizing them, we named them, noticed and recorded their "personalities", and kept track of their service numbers after we passed them on to replacing teams. One time my team member and I married two of them together (it's a long story), and were caught during the ceremony. It did end up getting us both a 4 day pass to Qatar...

That sounds like a heck of a story! I want to hear more - particularly about that robot honeymoon!

Intrigued by his comment, I wandered over to his blog and read through his archives. I thoroughly enjoyed his tale of the deodorant grenade. Here's an excerpt.

This was just an idea that a friend of mine (the clerk in the story) and I came up with one night at a Magic tournament when she, a few others that believe strongly in personal hygene, and I had taken a fresh air break outside. She asked if I was capable of making something like that, and I said "Sure!" and got an evil look in my eye, the one I call my "Bomb Techs Gone Wild Look". I think I scared her. Anyways, it would be a handy piece of ordnance. Just like Shower-In-A-Can (patent pending), another invention idea of mine. I think it would have to be considered a WND, though, Weapon of Nastiness Destruction...

There's more at the link.

Raven Prometheus, we want more! How about it? You write 'em, we'll read 'em! I invite those of my readers who share my interest to let Raven Prometheus know in Comments to this post, and/or add a comment over at his blog.

Peter

In memoriam: Ronald Searle

One of the most remarkable cartoonists, artists and creative minds of the 20th century died on Saturday.

Ronald Searle was born in England in 1920, in the same month as my late mother. He sold his first cartoon at the age of 15. He joined the Royal Engineers in April 1939, realizing that war with Germany was inevitable, but continued his cartooning, and published the first of what would become his famous St. Trinians cartoons in 1941. However, events overtook him. He was sent to Singapore, where he became a prisoner of war of Japan in 1942.

Searle was initially interned in Changi prison camp in Singapore. In 1943 he was sent to work on the Burma Railway, setting of a famous novel and film about a 'Bridge on the River Kwai'. He suffered many attacks of malaria while working there, and also from the effects of deliberate starvation by the Japanese, which eventually caused him to contract beri-beri. In September 1943 a Japanese guard attacked him, striking him with a pick-axe which penetrated deep into his back. This, coupled with the effects of his illnesses, prostrated him, and he was unable to continue working. Almost miraculously, he survived, and was returned to Singapore in December 1943.




He was transferred to Changi Prison in May 1944. Built to house 800 regular inmates, this structure was now crammed to bursting-point with some 10,000 prisoners of war. Searle lived in a cell containing 200 prisoners. He continued to draw, which was tolerated by the Japanese as long as his subjects were innocuous (he concealed his drawings of Japanese brutality, and recovered them after the war). The prison administrator, a Captain Takahashi, even had him spend three months drawing murals at a Japanese officers' club on a Singapore beach.

Searle wrote and spoke about his wartime experiences at various times. Here are some of his comments.

"What kept me going was that, if I could only show people what it had been like, I would have achieved something in the short life I was likely to have ... I desperately wanted to put down what was happening, because I thought if by any chance there was a record, even if I died, someone might find it and know what went on."

Searle said of the day he woke up to find a dead friend on either side of him, and a live snake underneath his head:

"You can’t have that sort of experience without it directing the rest of your life. I think that’s why I never really left my prison cell, because it gave me my measuring stick for the rest of my life... Basically all the people we loved and knew and grew up with simply became fertiliser for the nearest bamboo."

Of his second year in captivity, working on the Burma Railroad, he said:

"On many occasions there would come a . . . moment when the mind liberated itself from the body and went off independently into the most incredible flights of fantasy. This detachment of the mental faculties from the miseries of the flesh may have its parallels in drug-taking or religious trances, but for us it was an involuntary act of self-preservation that protected some of us from going stark, staring ravers, leaving us just mildly demented."




"It was not only the hard labour that nearly drove us out of our minds; it was also the insects, that curse of the jungle, and they ate us alive. Mosquitoes and foul fat flies were a horror, and their bites were often fatal. But it was probably the non-killers that made our lives the most miserable. At night after work, tired as we were, we were kept awake by the swarms of bedbugs that wandered over us, sucking our blood and nauseating us with their smell when we crushed them. Day and night the lice burrowing under our skin kept us scratching. Sometimes giant centipedes wriggled into our hair when we finally got to sleep and stuck their million poisonous feet into our filthy scalps as we tried to brush them off, setting our heads ablaze. I think there were moments when any one of us would have preferred to brave the mountain lions rumoured to be out there somewhere, than face another bug."

After the end of the war, he was repatriated to England, arriving in Liverpool in late October 1945. He resumed his cartooning career almost as soon as he was demobilized. His wartime cartoons became world-famous after they were used to illustrate several war memoirs of fellow prisoners, including the best-selling 'The Naked Island' by Russell Braddon (which is well worth reading, and may be downloaded as a free e-book in various formats). He later published his own book of wartime prisoner cartoons.




Searle's wartime experiences have been of lifelong interest to me, for two reasons. First, my own father was supposed to be sent to Singapore in 1941. Only sheer blind chance prevented him from becoming a prisoner of the Japanese himself, as I described in Weekend Wings #9. Secondly, I grew up with friends of my parents who had been prisoners of the Japanese. Most never spoke about their experiences, but a few, when asked (and after they'd had a couple of brandies) would go into brutally horrifying detail. Searle's cartoons were a grim and graphic confirmation of their stories.

His post-war cartooning career was prolific and extremely successful all over the world. His St. Trinians School cartoons inspired a number of books and several films, the first appearing in 1954, and one being re-made as recently as 2007. Many clips from the films can be seen on YouTube.




His work was published and critically acclaimed in books, magazines and comics. Here are just a few selections from his output (click each image to be taken to its source, where more may be viewed).

A sardonic, cynical portrayal of Homer's Odyssey, drawing on his own military experience to reinterpret the legend:




A femme fatale from a 1948 article in a French magazine:




And, finally, he pokes fun at himself and his own profession in what appears to be a tongue-in-cheek self-portrait (click the image for a much larger view).




He spoke of his wartime experiences, and his enormous output, in this interview, recorded shortly before his 90th birthday in 2010.

Someone's even set up a Ronald Searle tribute blog, with many reproductions of his drawings and illustrations. It makes very interesting reading (at least, for someone like me!).

Ronald Searle was a truly remarkable man, one whom I held in high esteem for many reasons. I was always astonished by the fact that his ghastly wartime experiences didn't dehumanize him. He retained a whimsical, impish sense of humor, and was always one to seek the silver lining in every cloud (and try to draw it, of course!). The world is a much poorer place for his passing.

May he rest in peace, and may he be reunited with the many comrades he lost during World War II.

Peter

A great video of F/A-18's at work and play

Courtesy of Neptunus Lex, we find this video clip showing F/A-18 Hornet aircraft of the US Navy practicing their landings and take-offs. As the slow-motion sections show (see in particular from 1m.33s. to 2m.03s.), a carrier landing is much harder and rougher on the plane than a conventional one. Indeed, the former is more like a 'controlled crash', which is why naval carrier-based aircraft have much stronger undercarriages than land-based versions.

Neptunus Lex (a retired carrier pilot and US Navy officer) takes the opportunity to describe what's involved in landing the F/A-18 aboard a carrier. It's worth your while to click over to his place and read it for yourself.

Peter

The 'death' of a (mechanical) comrade in arms

I was interested to note the alleged reaction of US troops to the destruction of a bomb-disposal robot in Iraq. Gizmodo reports:

Scooby Doo was a damn good robot. During his deployment in Iraq he assisted in the disposal of 17 IEDs, 1 carbomb, and 1 unexploded bomb (which is always a major get for an EOD unit because of the intel they can gather about the bomb's maker). For every successful mission, the soldiers would draw a hashmark on Scooby Doo's head unit, similar to how fighter jet pilots mark the number of enemies they've shot down on the hull of their planes. Scooby became a member of a team with soldiers that relied on each other.

But one day Scooby met his match. Maybe he'd gotten cocky, turned maverick. His ego writing checks his body couldn't cash. We'll never know. But Scooby Doo was killed in Iraq when an IED he was trying to defuse exploded.

Like Luke after R2-D2 saved the day on the Death Star's trench run, the veteran EOD unit member brought Scooby's body into the repair depot at Camp Victory and said "you've got to fix Scooby." The repair tech said that Scooby was beyond repair, but he could have a brand new robot. No, you don't under stand, this soldier insisted, Scooby Doo had be fixed. He did not want some damn new robot—he wanted Scooby Doo back. Scooby Doo was part of the team. He'd saved their lives. It was reported that this veteran soldier was visibly upset.

And this is not uncommon. EOD units have been known to promote their bots to titles such as Staff Sergeant, award them Purple Hearts, and even hold funerals for their fallen brothers in robotic arms. They assign them personalities, dispositions. Some have even taken their robots fishing with them and let them hold the pole. Regardless of whether you call that camaraderie or laziness, I would argue that it's bonding. It's not hard to see where Scooby Doo's team was coming from. If your dog had been critically injured, and you took him to the vet, and the vet said, "Sorry, can't fix him, but how's about a new dog?" you'd tell him to go procreate with himself, your friend is not so easily replaced.

. . .

Scooby Doo now resides at iRobot's little on-site museum in Bedford, Mass. He has a plaque dedicated to him, and his head-plate still proudly displays his name and stats: 17 IEDs, 1 car bomb, 1 unexploded bomb.

There's more at the link (including pictures).

I must confess, I find this kind of 'personification' of a robot to be more than a little strange. I was certainly never tempted to anthropomorphize any of the weapons or equipment I used during my military service (although, when they didn't work properly, I frequently described them in terms of their ancestry, present worth and future prospects, just as if they had, indeed, been human!). I can't help but wonder whether the Gizmodo article exaggerates the 'bond' between the EOD unit and its bomb-disposal robot. Would any veterans of the Iraq and/or Afghanistan conflicts care to comment? Does it appear realistic, in the light of your experience of and/or with EOD people?

Peter

Some interesting facts about Belgian beer

I enjoy the occasional beer, although I'm not a heavy imbiber. I've always preferred Continental beers, and on the rare occasions I've passed through or near Belgium, I've sampled a few of its many brands of suds. However, I didn't know how dominant that nation's beer 'industry' had become in world terms. The Economist reports:

THE Trappist Abbey of St Sixtus of Westvleteren has little to offer those wishing to gawp at ecclesiastical architecture. The 19th-century buildings—squat, brick and functional—sit on a quiet country lane amid flat farmland, close to Belgium’s border with France. Yet the vast visitors’ car park is a clue that some people nevertheless consider the abbey worth a trip. For beer lovers, St Sixtus is a place of pilgrimage.

Abbey of St. Sixtus of Westvleteren (image courtesy of the Abbey's Web site)

The abbey and its most famous brew, Westvleteren 12 — a dark, strong ale — have taken first or second place in an annual poll of beer enthusiasts’ favourite tipples by RateBeer.com, a widely trusted reviewing website, for the whole decade that the survey has been running. Yet exactly how the American drinkers who predominate on the site get to knock back a Westvleteren 12 is something of a mystery.

Visit the abbey — no easy jaunt on public transport — and you can drink it to your heart’s content, or your head’s. But it is hard to buy elsewhere. The monks tightly ration takeaway sales of the tiny quantities they produce. The abbey’s website gives details of the brief windows when buyers may attempt to call with an order. If they are lucky and get through, they will be allotted a time to arrive at St Sixtus. They are then permitted to purchase two cases (four dozen 33cl bottles) in return for a solemn undertaking that the beer will not find its way to a third party.

Evidently some people are prepared to lie to a monk for the sake of beer. Cases of Westvleteren 12, on sale at €39 ($53) at the abbey, turn up on online beer-sellers for as much as $800. (In a rare easing of the rules, in November the monks released a batch of 93,000 six-packs for the Belgian market, to pay for repairs to the abbey. Next year 70,000 six-packs will go on sale worldwide.)

Pour reputation

As well as having a good claim to brew the best beer in the world, Belgium is also home to the world’s biggest brewer. Anheuser-Busch (AB) InBev, based in Leuven, a small university town half an hour by train from Brussels, turns out one in five of every beer sold around the world. Across the road from head office, the ultra-modern Stella Artois brewery pumps out one of the firm’s best-known international brands.

If St Sixtus fails to match the splendour of a medieval cathedral, the main brewing hall at Stella Artois comes close. The quiet and cavernous interior is dominated by 15 immense stainless-steel brewing kettles, whose column-like spouts soar heavenwards. In different ways both St Sixtus and Stella Artois illustrate the reverence with which Belgians regard their beer.

Their country also makes a bigger range than any other — 1,131 at the last count. Apart from six Trappist ales and other abbey beers, it churns out lagers such as Stella Artois and its stablemate Jupiler, the more popular brew in Belgium. Tipplers can also choose from an array of wheat beers, brown ales, red beers from West Flanders, golden ales, saison beers based on old farmhouse recipes, and any number of regional brews. Oddest are the austere, naturally fermented lambic beers of Brussels and the nearby Senne valley, a throwback to the days before yeast was tamed. These anachronisms have survived only in Belgium.

There's a lot more at the link. Interesting reading for those who enjoy a cold one now and again - and perhaps for the Atomic Nerds, who make their own. I wonder if they'd like to try brewing a saison or lambic beer for this year's Blogorado gathering? Hmmm . . .

Peter

The man who 'killed' Obi-Wan Kenobi is dead

I'm sure almost every one of my readers has seen the original Star Wars movie. Here's the scene where Obi-Wan Kenobi is killed in a light saber duel with Darth Vader.

I'd always assumed that the actor playing Darth Vader in that scene was David Prowse, who usually portrayed the character in the first three Star Wars movies. However, an article in the Daily Mail informs us that in the light-saber fencing scenes, his character was played by British Olympic fencer Bob Anderson, who has just died. Here's an excerpt.

Bob Anderson, 89, was a former Olympic swordsman who worked on many of the best known films of the past seven decades - but very few people are aware of the influence he had on some of our favourite movies.

He is most famous for donning Darth Vader's black helmet and fighting lightsaber battles in the original Star Wars trilogy - most famously with Obi Wan Kenobi.

Anderson also worked as a sword master or trainer on movies including the James Bond film From Russia With Love, The Legend of Zorro and the first Pirates of the Caribbean film.

He also worked on the Lord of the Rings in which he was responsible for crafting fighting moves for some of the characters.

But it was announced today by The British Academy of Fencing that Mr Anderson died early on New Year's Day.

There's more at the link.

I guess we owe Mr. Anderson our thanks for some classic moments in cinematic fencing. May he rest in peace.

Peter

The best argument for voter ID I've heard so far

Fellow blogger Mr. B. at In The Middle Of The Right has posted an excellent perspective on why voter ID isn't an unduly onerous or discriminatory requirement. Here's an excerpt.

Getting a job must be an "undue burden" for the poor and people of color, or something like that....

Department of Homeland Security, Form I-9, Page 4 (click the image for a larger view)

One from list "A"or one from list "B" and one from list"C".

Department of Homeland Security, Form I-9, Page 5 (click the image for a larger view)

That 's what it takes to get a job. You have to show proof of identity (and meet other employment requirements, but we are talking today about the requirements of the DHS), so that your SSN can be used to properly charge you a tithe percentage of your earnings to pay forward the obligations of the gubmint on debts incurred in the past, and to provide freebies handouts benefits to the lazy freeloaders deserving poor and illegals.

Yet to show enough ID to prove who you are when you cast your ballot for your masters leaders who will make decisions regarding your lifestyle and freedom and economic status for the next election cycle is an undue burden... So does this mean that to be employed is [a] burden for these folks? I know a lot of folks who are African-American who are gainfully employed and middle class who were somehow able to overcome the undue burden of providing ID for their I-9 so they could pay taxes earn a living. I really don't see how providing this proof of identity in order to be employed caused them a hardship.

Or it could be a blatant cover by the DNC and Eric Holder to hide the continued voter fraud perpetrated by the DNC and its {ACORN!} operatives. Some of which are funded by those same taxpayers.

There's more at the link. Highly recommended reading - and a great answer to all those who argue that requiring voters to produce an official identification document is somehow unreasonable or excessively burdensome. If you're not allowed to work in the USA without proving your eligibility to do so, why shouldn't you have to prove your eligibility to vote? Sounds reasonable to me . . .

Congratulations and thanks to Mr. B. for a very useful argument.

Peter

New Year schadenfreude

Here are what the title of this video clip calls '34 painful hits in 31 seconds'.

I guess we may as well have a good laugh at someone else's expense to start the year off right . . .





Peter

Circle K can do without my business

I note that Circle K has seen fit to fire a clerk who displayed real courage and presence of mind when confronted by armed robbers. Fox 10 reports:

Eric Henderson was unemployed for two straight years before getting a job at a Circle K in Pensacola. Henderson said he’s been working as a sales clerk for the last 4 months. And the job was going smoothly until three robbery suspects showed up.

“She starts yelling shoot him, shoot him!" said Henderson.

Before the suspects had a chance to shoot, Henderson said he saw an opportunity to take the gun from 25-year-old Verna Sealey.

"I grabbed her around the neck and slammed her on the ground and grabbed the gun in both my hands,” Henderson said.

Henderson said Circle K's policy states clerks are not to provoke, chase or engage a robber. When managers saw the footage of Henderson fighting back, he said they fired him.

“I don't recommend anybody to put your life in danger, but in my opinion this clerk had an opportunity. He obviously felt like he was in danger and he saw an opportunity to save himself,” Detective Dylan Stackpole said.

There's more at the link, including a video report.

If Circle K rewards that sort of heroism by firing the guy, they can do without my business from now on. May I request those of my readers who feel likewise to please boycott them as well - and, in addition, to contact them, to let them know why none of us will be darkening their doorstep from now on? Perhaps, if they hear from enough of us, they might change this damnfool policy. I won't be doing business with them unless and until they do - and until they give Mr. Henderson his job back.





Peter

Fast food - slow decay!

If you habitually eat burgers, fries, etc. from fast food joints, this report from Canada should give you pause for thought.

A McDonald's plain cheeseburger turned 1 year old Thursday on the kitchen counter of a Canadian nutritionist who says it looks much as it did hot off the grill.

. . .

She left the unwrapped burger unrefrigerated on her counter for the past year and said not much has changed, apart from the bun turning stale. She said it "still smells slightly like a burger," although there has been no sign of mold, maggots or bacteria.

"Obviously it makes me wonder why we choose to eat food like this when even bacteria won't eat it," she told the Star.

There's more at the link.

Yep. If even bugs and bacteria won't eat it, why should I trust it in my stomach?





Peter

Of space travel and ancient pottery

I'm amazed to learn that the pottery of ancient Greece may help to improve the safety of space travel. The Israel Herald reports:

The study of the chemical and physical properties of ancient Attic pottery would help improve space missions, believe scientists.

Considering it importance, the National Science Foundation (NSF) awarded nearly 500,000 dollars to scientists from the Getty Conservation Institute, Stanford's National Accelerator Laboratory (SLAC) and the Aerospace Corporation earlier this year to study the secrets of Attic pottery.

Among other objectives, it is hoped that the project will improve our understanding of iron-spinel chemistry, which is critical to the advanced ceramics used for thermal protection in aerospace applications, such as protective tiles on the Mars Rover Sojourner, or the fleet of space shuttles, for example.

Attic pottery features red and black figures and was a fixture in ancient Greece from the sixth to fourth centuries B.C.

Red-figure Attic pottery, circa 530 BC (image courtesy of Wikipedia)

The iron-spinel ceramic pigments found in Attic pottery are able to remain chemically stable at very high temperatures.

It's the degree of iron oxidation that provides the red and black coloring associating with Attic pottery.

There's more at the link.

I know that spinels are "resistant to chemical weathering and abrasion", but who came up with the idea that the use of iron-spinel compounds as a glaze in ancient pottery might be useful to or relevant for modern space technology? It blows my mind to think that the hand-made pottery of ancient Greece, well over two millennia old - long before anyone had even flown, never mind gone beyond our atmosphere into space! - might help to produce better heat-shield tiles to protect spacecraft against re-entry into atmosphere.

Space Shuttle thermal protection system ceramic tile (image courtesy of Wikipedia)

I'd never have made the connection. I wonder what inspired the National Science Foundation to do so? Some modern scientist must have had a brainwave . . .

Peter

American Dream = "The Government Will Provide"?

That's the impression one gets from two news items I came across today.

The first is courtesy of a link from The Silicon Graybeard to a blog I hadn't previously encountered, Free North Carolina. It embedded this video report from Fox News, describing how today's students see the 'American Dream' and its implications. It's worth watching.

Within minutes of finding that clip, Tanker over at Mostly Cajun pointed me to this news report.

Employers are facing more uncertainty in the wake of a letter from the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission warning them that requiring a high school diploma from a job applicant might violate the Americans with Disabilities Act.

The development also has some wondering whether the agency’s advice will result in an educational backlash by creating less of an incentive for some high school students to graduate.

The “informal discussion letter” from the EEOC said an employer’s requirement of a high school diploma, long a standard criterion for screening potential employees, must be “job-related for the position in question and consistent with business necessity.” The letter was posted on the commission’s website on Dec. 2.

Employers could run afoul of the ADA if their requirement of a high school diploma “ ‘screens out’ an individual who is unable to graduate because of a learning disability that meets the ADA’s definition of ‘disability,’ ” the EEOC explained.

There's more at the link. The report is particularly worrying because the ADAAA of 2008, which amended and updated the original ADA of 1990, specifically relaxed and expanded the definition of what constitutes a disability, and gave much more latitude to the (allegedly) disabled worker's perspective rather than an objective standard, or the interests of the employer. The EEOC's new interpretation of specified educational standards may once again favor the work-seeker over the legitimate requirements of the employer.

Putting these reports together, it seems that students already think that the American Dream means that the US government will provide for them in all things . . . and now an agency of that same government is telling them, in so many words, that they may not even need to be students at all if they can find a politically-correct reason to claim an educationally-related 'disability'!

Remember in November - and vote out every dumbass politician who practices or preaches this philosophy!





Peter

Happy New Year 2012!

2011 has been a pretty lousy year in many ways, and 2012 may not be much better: but we still have our lives and our sacred honor, even if our fortunes may be distinctly less than optimum, economically speaking! Let's hope and pray that the New Year will bring blessings to balance the difficulties, and light to dispel the darkness.

A blessed, happy and prosperous New Year to all of you, my friends. Party safe out there tonight!




Peter

Some very interesting music

I'm not a follower of reality TV, or of entertainment shows such as America's Got Talent. However, Lindsey Stirling, a violinist who competed in a recent season of the latter program, came to my attention when I stumbled across this performance during a recent survey of YouTube videos. She calls it 'Spontaneous Me'.

That's some remarkable playing! My first thought on watching it was that I know people who 'talk with their hands' - they're always gesticulating and making shapes with their hands and fingers as they speak. If you were to tie or otherwise immobilize their hands, they'd find it much harder to express themselves. I couldn't help but wonder whether Ms. Stirling's playing would suffer from a similar handicap if you tied her feet together!

Intrigued by this piece, I looked for more of her work. This meditative performance, 'River Flows In You', also caught my eye - and my ear.

There's more of her music on her YouTube channel, and at her Web site (where you can check her blog for more information about her songs). Interesting listening - not all of it to my taste, but all of it refreshing and 'different' in her approach. Recommended.

Peter

Are online vendors targeting drunk shoppers?

An article in the Sydney Morning Herald suggests they are. Here's an excerpt.

Online retailers ... can never be sure whether customers are inebriated when they tap the "checkout" icon. One comparison-shopping site, Kelkoo, said almost half the people it surveyed in Britain, where it is based, had shopped online after drinking.

But while reliable data is hard to come by, retailers say they have their suspicions based on anecdotal evidence and traffic patterns on their websites - and some are adjusting their promotions accordingly.

"Post-bar, inhibitions can be impacted, and that can cause shopping, and hopefully healthy impulse buying," said Andy Page, the president of Gilt Groupe, an online retailer that is adding more sales starting at 9 p.m. to respond to high traffic then - perhaps some of it by shoppers under the influence.

On eBay, the busiest time of day is from 6:30 to 10:30 in each time zone. Asked if drinking might be a factor, Steve Yankovich, vice president for mobile for eBay, said, "Absolutely." He added: "I mean, if you think about what most people do when they get home from work in the evening, it's decompression time. The consumer's in a good mood."

Nighttime shopping is growing overall. ChannelAdvisor, which runs e-commerce for hundreds of sites, says its order volumes peak about 8 p.m., and that shoppers are placing orders later and later. In 2011, the number of orders placed from 9 p.m. to midnight increased compared with previous years.

. . .

At QVC, the television shopping channel, traffic and viewers rise around noon, then quiet down until after 7 p.m. Then items like cosmetics and accessories sell briskly. "Call them girl treats — they seem to attract a really strong following once you get past dinnertime," said Doug Rose, senior vice president for multichannel programming and marketing for the company. "You can probably come to your own conclusion as to what's motivating her."

Still, the nighttime spike requires delicacy among retailers: For reasons of propriety, they do not want to be seen as encouraging drunken shopping, and many people who inadvertently buy products in that state would most likely return them at high rates. On the other hand, a happy customer can lead to higher sales.

There's more at the link.

I don't drink to excess, so I can't say this has ever been a problem for me: but looking at many young people today, who seem to think nothing of tossing back a few drinks most evenings, I can see it might be something a vendor would deliberately seek to exploit. Seems kinda seedy to me, but then, I'm old-fashioned that way . . .

Peter

Privacy software is worth using

I've been using ad-blocking and 'do-not-track' software for some months. It's been eye-opening to see just how many Web sites and software packages are trying to track what I'm doing and where I'm going on the Internet. Now an article in USA Today gives more details of the problem. Here's an excerpt.

Online tracking has been a privacy hot potato for more than a decade. The relentless collection, correlation and selling of tracking data take place to help advertisers deliver more relevant ads to individual Web users.

Online tracking undergirds the burgeoning online display ad market, which is expected to swell 36% to $34.4 billion by the end of 2012, up from $25.3 billion in 2011, according to online marketing firm Zenith Optimedia.

Yet, despite this growing mountain of tracking data and the free flow of advertising dollars, the delivery of behaviorally targeted ads continues to be clunky, at best, says Aleecia McDonald, a resident fellow at the Stanford Center for Internet and Society. "Ad practices like retargeting, where you click on a pair of shoes once, and ads for the shoes follow you around the Web, make people wonder how that could have happened," McDonald says.

Meanwhile, social networks and Web app developers are getting into the tracking game, exploring novel ways to derive fresh revenue from tracking data.

Facebook says it currently uses tracking data strictly to boost security and improve members' online experience. But it also has sought patent protection for technology that includes a method to correlate tracking data with advertisements.

These developments have heightened concerns about the co-mingling of sensitive information that consumers often naively disclose at many websites they visit. The Federal Trade Commission and several lawmakers took major steps in 2011 toward curbing how far companies can go to collect and share tracking data.

The FTC called for a Do Not Track mechanism that would enable Internet users to request not to be tracked. And Sen. Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va., proposed a Do Not Track bill that would compel companies to heed such requests.

But tracking and online advertising companies lobbied intensively to maintain industry self-policing as the status quo. They've argued that unregulated tracking is necessary to help pay for free Web content and services that consumers have come to expect.

"Basic tracking of a user's displayed behavior is an effective way for publishers to earn more revenue for their ad space and for advertisers to see greater returns on their marketing spends," says Will Riegel, a New York City-based tracking data analyst.

As this debate extends into the new year, consumer backlash appears to be gaining grass-roots momentum. More and more average Web users, such as Doug Toombs, 25, a quality assurance engineer from Cambridge, Ontario, are discovering and using available anti-tracking technologies while the global privacy debate continues.

Toombs recently started using Do Not Track Plus and marveled at how the tool automatically blocked more than 13,000 attempts to track his online activities in the course of a few weeks. "Being able to counteract it (tracking) absolutely made me feel much better," Toombs says. "People need to fight back and not get bullied around by these big companies that think they can do anything they want."

. . .

Meanwhile, average consumers who've already figured out how to use the current anti-tracking tools say the trouble is well worth it.

William Morris, 55, a custom car restorer and home remodeler from Elk City, Okla., discovered that the performance of his older Windows XP desktop PC improved considerably once he curtailed the tracking communications constantly taking place in the background on his browser.

One evening, Morris spent two and a half hours researching a physics topic online, keeping an eye on the tally of tracking attempts blocked by Do Not Track Plus. The total: 4,076. "It's unbelievable that there are that many entities out there on the Internet poking their nose into whatever I'm doing," Morris says.

There's more at the link, including details of several of the better anti-tracking software solutions out there.

I use (and recommend) three free anti-tracking and ad-blocking programs: Adblock Plus, Ghostery and Do Not Track Plus. I also use the BetterPrivacy add-on for Firefox to delete so-called 'flash cookies'. I've found that no one package or program does the job completely, but by running these four in combination, I probably cover most of the threats out there.

Peter

Supermarkets and the business of supplying consumers

As part of my ongoing series of articles about emergency preparations, I've been looking into the food supply chain, and talking with a few people about what food-related topics need to be addressed in the series. To my surprise, it became clear that many people don't understand how they buy food now, never mind in preparation for an emergency! They've never stopped to think about how the food supply chain works, how supermarkets are designed, structured and laid out to entice us to spend our money, and so on. I thought it might be a good idea to cover those areas in an article, on general principles.

To begin with, let's take a look at the business of supermarkets, and the challenges confronting them from an organizational and management point of view. Here's a report from CNBC on Giant Eagle, a regional US supermarket chain. Its comments about that chain are, of course, applicable to most others across the country.

Other CNBC reports in their series 'Supermarkets Inc.' are available on YouTube.

Now let's turn to a British series that examines how supermarkets entice shoppers to buy their goods, and what's behind their wares. The series is somewhat anti-supermarket and pro-natural foods, but that's not necessarily a bad thing when you consider the evidence they offer! Here's the first part of the series to whet your appetite.

If you found that interesting, click on the links below for the rest of the series:

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

Part 5

Part 6

Part 7

Part 8

Part 9

Part 10

Then there's the whole field of 'supermarket psychology'. Here's an Australian program about how supermarkets display their goods and set themselves up to entice us to spend more than we intended to, on products we didn't intend to buy when we entered the place.

Again, there are more parts to this series on YouTube, as well as many related video clips. They make very interesting viewing.

I hope these reports have helped inform some readers, at least, of how the food supply channels work in modern urbanized society, whether in the USA, or Europe, or elsewhere. If those channels break down due to some disaster or other, we'll need emergency supplies of food to cope with the disruption. We'll begin to address that subject in the next article in my 'Emergency Preparations' series.

Peter

Daytime fireworks?

I'd never heard of firework displays in broad daylight, but apparently they're not that uncommon. Instead of exploding lights in the sky, they use colored smoke to create their visual impressions. Here's a video clip of a daytime fireworks display on the occasion of the opening of the Mathaf Arab Museum of Modern Art in Qatar earlier this year.

The man behind the display, Chinese designer Cai Guo-Qiang, has produced several others. You'll find video clips of some of them on YouTube.

Peter

Of pensions, unions, politicians and corruption

You may have noticed a news story today about a Philadelphia councilwoman who's retiring for precisely 24 hours, in order to collect a pension check for almost half a million dollars, then will return to duty for her next term of office. Sound corrupt to you? Maybe . . . but it's nevertheless legal, according to Philadelphia's municipal statutes and regulations.

If this sounds unbelievable to you, too insanely nonsensical to be real, rest assured it's by no means the only example. Remember the protests against Wisconsin governor Scott Walker and his plans to rein in the power of education unions in that state? That's why the unions were unhappy - because such 'sweetheart deals' for their members would become a thing of the past. There are many, many other examples in US politics. To name just a few:

• Chicago labor leaders double-dip on pensions - and are now under Federal investigation as a result;
• Under a scheme similar to the one used in Philadelphia, Los Angeles police and firefighters are allowed to earn both full salary and their pensions for five years, receiving the latter benefits in a lump sum when they finally retire;
• In San Diego, a mere ten city workers will split more than $61 million in retirement benefits, according to a report last year.

There are any number of similar stories out there. Do an Internet search on the terms "union", "pension" and "scandal" and see for yourself. Sounds like a rather corrupt version of the so-called "American Dream", doesn't it? And we, the taxpayers of America, end up on the hook for it all . . .





Peter