Tag Archives: valley

"Political Correctness" Is Mostly Just Code For Not Insulting People

by PhilipConyers Posted on August 28, 2015

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

S.E. Cupp says that Donald Trump’s rise can be laid at the feet of liberal political correctness. Ed Kilgore isn’t buying:

Is that the source of all this hysteria? Conservative media accounts of random college speech code incidents and the occasional dumb move by a school principal? Something that affects maybe a tenth of one percent of the population?

Well….maybe. When it’s on a 24/7 loop on Rush Limbaugh and Fox News, it probably seems like an epidemic. I can see it raising a lot of hackles. But let’s continue:

I’m sorry, I don’t buy it. The Trump supporters and proto-Trump supporters I know are upset by things like having to listen to Spanish-language messages on customer service lines, not being able to call women “chicks” without someone frowning at them, and having to stop telling racist jokes at work. That’s what “political correctness” is code for: having to worry about the sensitivities of people who were invisible or submissive not that very long ago.

If Cupp is right and I’m not, then let’s all cooperate in convincing Republican politicians and conservative pundits to stop using the term “political correctness” and come right and and tell us what the beef is about. Is it really “trigger warning” requirements at scattered liberal arts colleges? Or is it this whole new world we’re in where people have to question old habits? When Ben Carson calls inhibitions about torturing terrorism suspects “political correctness,” it’s pretty clear he’s yet another apostle for the Church of the Day Before Yesterday, when America was never wrong and dissenters kept their mouths shut.

I could do with a little less speech policing from all sides, frankly. It gets a little tiresome sometimes. Still, the truth is that Ed is right: for the vast, vast majority of us, it leaves our lives entirely unaffected as long as you can avoid flat-out slurs against women, blacks, gays, Jews, and so forth. Really, that’s about 99 percent of it. Is that really so hard?

Excerpt from – 

"Political Correctness" Is Mostly Just Code For Not Insulting People

Posted in Casio, FF, GE, LAI, LG, ONA, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , | Comments Off on "Political Correctness" Is Mostly Just Code For Not Insulting People

Sarah Palin: No Bible Verses for You!

by GilbertBenn Posted on August 28, 2015

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

Great news! Sarah Palin will be interviewing Donald Trump at 10 p.m. Eastern on her brand new show, On Point, which started Monday and airs on the One America News network. It will be the greatest, classiest, rogue-iest interview ever!

Wait. What’s that? You don’t get OAN on your cable system? Me neither. Bummer. Maybe it’ll be on Palin’s Facebook page eventually.

What makes this whole thing a little weirder than even the normal Palin weirdness is that she announced her upcoming interview with a standard-issue blast on the lamestream media for asking Trump a gotcha question about his favorite Bible verse. “By the way,” she writes, “even with my reading scripture everyday I wouldn’t want to answer the guy’s question either… it’s none of his business; it IS personal.” What makes this weird is that Palin has been happy to talk about this before. For example, in this interview:

In dealing with her daily challenges, Palin leans on the Bible verse that says, “God hasn’t given us a spirit of fear, but a spirit of power and might and a sound mind.”

That’s 2 Timothy 1:7 (close enough, anyway), and Palin has mentioned it on other occasions too. It really does seem to be one of her favorites. So why is this suddenly so personal that she doesn’t think anyone should have to talk about it? Are we now all keeping our favorite Bible verses a deeply held secret?

Read this article – 

Sarah Palin: No Bible Verses for You!

Posted in Casio, FF, GE, LG, ONA, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Sarah Palin: No Bible Verses for You!

The Real Lesson From Emailgate: Maybe the State Department Needs More Secure Email

by CassieRZJyu Posted on August 28, 2015

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

David Ignatius talked with “a half-dozen knowledgeable lawyers” and concluded that the Hillary Clinton email affair has been overblown. No big surprise there. Click the link if you want more.

But here’s the curious part. Part of Clinton’s trouble stems from the fact that sensitive information was sent to her via email, which isn’t meant for confidential communications. However, as Ignatius points out, this is a nothingburger. Everyone does this, and has for a long time. But why?

“It’s common knowledge that the classified communications system is impossible and isn’t used,” said one former high-level Justice Department official. Several former prosecutors said flatly that such sloppy, unauthorized practices, although technically violations of law, wouldn’t normally lead to criminal cases.

Why is the classified system so cumbersome? Highly secure encryption is easy to implement on off-the-shelf PCs, and surely some kind of software that plugs into email and restricts the flow of messages wouldn’t be too hard to implement. So why not build more security into email and ditch the old system? What’s the hold-up?

Visit site – 

The Real Lesson From Emailgate: Maybe the State Department Needs More Secure Email

Posted in Everyone, FF, GE, LG, ONA, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on The Real Lesson From Emailgate: Maybe the State Department Needs More Secure Email

Either 35, 36, or 39 Percent of Psychology Results Can’t Be Replicated

by AltonDeyoung Posted on August 28, 2015

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

The Washington Post informs me today that in a new study, only 39 out of 100 published psychology studies could be replicated:

I wonder if I can replicate that headline? Let’s try the New York Times:

Huh. They say 35 out of 100. What’s going on? Maybe Science News can tell me:

Now it’s 35 out of 97. So what is the answer?

Based on the study itself, it appears that Science News has it right. It’s 35 out of 97. Using a different measure of replication, however, the answer is that 39 percent of the studies could be replicated, which might explain the Post’s 39 out of 100. And it turns out that the study actually looked at 100 results, but only 97 of them had positive findings in the first place and were therefore worth trying to replicate. But if, for some reason, you decided that all 100 original studies should be counted, you’d get the Times’ 35 out of 100.

So there you go. Depending on who you read, it’s either 35, 36, or 39 percent. Welcome to the business of science reporting.

Continue reading: 

Either 35, 36, or 39 Percent of Psychology Results Can’t Be Replicated

Posted in FF, GE, LAI, LG, ONA, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Either 35, 36, or 39 Percent of Psychology Results Can’t Be Replicated

TGIAS: Finally, August Is Almost Over

by SangLpktxijhxag Posted on August 27, 2015

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

August is almost over. Huzzah! Kids are back in school, the weather will soon turn balmy, and we only have to pay attention to Donald Trump for a few more days. In September we’ll have more important stuff to obsess over. Right?

Well, we can hope. In the meantime, Dan Drezner has a question:

For this entire calendar year, I’ve heard how the current crop of GOP presidential candidates “showcases the party’s deep bench of talent”….And, to be fair, this seemed to be a fair analysis. There are no fewer than nine sitting and former governors of big states in the field….And yet, after all the declarations, we’re at a political moment when Trump is clobbering all of these talented politicians in the polls — and doing so by honing the lessons he learned from reality television.

….So here’s my question: What does it say about the deep GOP bench that none of them have managed to outperform a guy who has no comparative political advantage except celebrity and a willingness to insult anyone who crosses his path?

I’ve had the same thought myself. Nor is this a partisan question: the Democrats have such a weak bench this year that there’s literally only one truly plausible candidate in the entire field. And this isn’t because Hillary Clinton is so widely beloved: there’s just no one else around who seems to have the usual bona fides to run for president. Hell, even the sitting vice president, usually a shoo-in to run, has a public persona that’s a little too goofy to make him a strong candidate.

In other words, there are hardly any decent candidates in the entire country. What the hell is going on?

But Drezner actually prompts another question that’s been rattling around in my brain: Is there anyone out there who could be the Democratic equivalent of Donald Trump? There was some inane blather earlier this month comparing him to Bernie Sanders, but that was always pretty preposterous. Sanders is a serious, longtime politician. He may be too extreme for you, but he’s not a buffoon.

More specifically: Is it even possible that someone like Trump—no political experience, buffoonish, populist, boorish—could ever make a big impact in a Democratic primary? It’s never happened before, but then, it’s never happened quite this way in the Republican primary either. It makes me wonder. What if Trump had held on to his lifelong liberal beliefs instead of “evolving” so he could compete as a Republican? What would be the fate of a liberal Donald Trump? Would a big chunk of the liberal base embrace him?

Read the article: 

TGIAS: Finally, August Is Almost Over

Posted in FF, GE, LG, ONA, Oster, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on TGIAS: Finally, August Is Almost Over

This company has 400 people hyped to build Elon Musk’s hyperloop

by Bryon6591cdfuls Posted on August 20, 2015

This company has 400 people hyped to build Elon Musk’s hyperloop

By on 20 Aug 2015commentsShare

It’s unclear whether Elon Musk is a comic book character come to life, or whether we’re all just comic book characters living in his world on the floor of some middle schooler’s bedroom. Either way, Musk is probably watching from a secret lair right about now, doing some serious Mr. Burns-style finger-tenting and muttering “Eeexcellent” — until an assistant pops in to feed him his latest experiment in food replacement technology.

Earlier today, Hyperloop Transportation Technologies (HTT), the startup that’s trying to build Musk’s proposed Hyperloop — a super fast and super sci-fi-ish people launcher that could (in theory) get commuters from L.A. to San Francisco in 30 minutes — announced three new partnerships with an engineering design firm, a Swiss technology company, and an architecture firm. (Note: The Hyperloop is not to be confused with Musk’s other big ideas: saving the planet with solar power and colonizing Mars.)

HTT CEO Dirk Ahlborn also announced that it now has 400 “team members” from places like NASA, Boeing, Tesla, and SpaceX, who have made minimum weekly commitments to the project in exchange for stock options. The company is planning to break ground on a five-mile test track in California’s Central Valley in May of next year.

Wired spoke with Carl Brockmeyer, the head of business development at Oerlikon Leybold Vacuum, one of HTT’s new partners, about the collaboration:

Oerlikon has put a half dozen employees on the project. They’re simulating how much energy it would take to clear the Hyperloop tube to near zero pressure, and what it would cost. Brockmeyer declined to give exact figures, but says “you will be surprised” by how little energy is required. In fact, he says the energy could be generated by the solar panels and wind turbines Ahlborn plans to erect in Quay Valley. All that aside, there’s another reason Oerlikon signed on.

“I thought, ‘Traveling in a vacuum tube? This is something we should be involved in,’” Brockmeyer says.

Aecom, the engineering design firm that HTT is teaming up with, helped build the Barclays Center in Brooklyn and is currently working on London’s 62-mile Crossrail tunnel. Aecom’s vice president of new ventures told Wired that he thinks HTTs plans are “very realistic.”

Presumably, all 400 people working on the project think the hyperloop is at least somewhat realistic (although we’re still waiting for proof). That is, unless this is all just a coverup for what Musk really wants to build in California’s Central Valley. DUN DUN DUUUUN! Stay tuned for the next issue of … what? If we were all living in a comic book, what would it be called?

Source:
So Elon Musk’s Hyperloop Is Actually Getting Kinda Serious

, Wired.

Share

Find this article interesting?

Donate now to support our work.

Please

enable JavaScript

to view the comments.

A Grist Special Series

Oceans 15


This scuba diver wants everyone — black, white, or brown — to feel at home in the oceanKramer Wimberley knows what it’s like to feel unwelcome in the water. As a dive instructor and ocean-lover, he tries to make sure no one else does.


This chef built her reputation on seafood. How’s she feeling about the ocean now?Seattle chef Renee Erickson weighs in on the world’s changing waters, and how they might change her menu.


How do you study an underwater volcano? Build an underwater laboratoryJohn Delaney is taking the internet underwater, and bringing the deep ocean to the public.


How much plastic is in our oceans? Ask the woman trying to clean it upCarolynn Box, environmental program director of 5 Gyres, talks about what it’s like to sail across the ocean, pulling up plastic in the middle of nowhere.


Oceans 15We’re tired of talking about oceans like they’re just a big, wet thing somewhere out there. Let’s make it personal.

Get Grist in your inbox

Advertisement

View original: 

This company has 400 people hyped to build Elon Musk’s hyperloop

Posted in Anchor, Everyone, FF, GE, LAI, ONA, PUR, Radius, solar, solar panels, solar power, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on This company has 400 people hyped to build Elon Musk’s hyperloop

Google’s Low-Wage Contract Workers Are Poised to Unionize

by HiramTeelnle Posted on July 27, 2015

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

Labor organizers with the Teamsters union announced Monday that they’re holding an election to unionize workers for Google Express, the shopping service that delivers everything from toothpaste to televisions purchased by online consumers. The union is seeking to represent about 140 Google Express warehouse workers employed by Adecco, a temp agency that provides much of the delivery service’s Bay Area staff.

“Workers are required to sign short-term employment agreements with Adecco that limit them to two years before the company lets them go,” the Teamsters Local Union 853 said in a press release announcing the vote. “Workers have also alleged subjection to constant harassment to work faster in poor conditions that include damaged equipment, cracked floors, and failing electrical systems that have resulted in fires.”

A Google spokesperson contacted by Mother Jones declined to comment.

Google Express currently operates in seven US cities, including San Francisco, San Jose, Los Angeles, and Manhattan. Google started the the service in 2013 to compete with Amazon Prime.

The Google vote is the latest in a string of high-profile efforts to unionize Silicon Valley’s low-wage service economy. In recent months, the Teamsters have begun representing shuttle bus drivers that transport workers for Apple, Facebook, and Yahoo. And the Service Employees International Union has convinced Google and Apple to hire their own security guards, rather than working with subcontractors that were criticized for union busting.

Labor organizers see Silicon Valley as perhaps the most glaring example of how the American economy increasingly benefits the wealthy. The success of the tech giants has created a whole new population of millionaires but has failed to create many middle class jobs. Google, with a market cap of $354 billion, has just 53,600 full-time employees. By comparison, General Motors, with a market cap of only $50 billion, has 216,000 full-time employees.

Such disparities are exacerbated by Silicon Valley’s reliance on contract labor. Google Express workers make $13 to $17 an hour with no benefits, which is far from a living wage in the Bay Area.

“As subcontractors, we are treated as second class citizens,” Gabriel Cardenas, a Google Express worker, said in a statement released by labor organizers. “We get a different type of badge and don’t receive some of the most basic types of compensation like benefits. The majority of us work two or three jobs just to make ends meet. I am standing with my co-workers and community because I believe change for this invisible workforce is possible.”

Correction: An earlier version of the story stated that the Teamsters are organizing Google Express drivers. The union vote only applies to warehouse workers.

Continue at source:  

Google’s Low-Wage Contract Workers Are Poised to Unionize

Posted in Anchor, Citizen, FF, GE, LAI, LG, ONA, PUR, Radius, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Google’s Low-Wage Contract Workers Are Poised to Unionize

California Drinking Water: Not Just Vanishing, But Also Widely Contaminated

by BillBelgrave Posted on July 20, 2015

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

In normal years, California residents get about 30 percent of their drinking water from underground aquifers. And in droughts like the current one—with sources like snowmelt from the Sierra Nevada mountains virtually non-existent—groundwater supplies two-thirds of our most populous state’s water needs. So it’s sobering news that about 20 percent of the groundwater that Californians rely on to keep their taps flowing carries high concentrations of contaminants like arsenic, uranium, and nitrate.

That’s the conclusion of a ten-year US Geological Survey study of 11,000 public-water wells across the state. The researchers tested the wells for a variety of contaminants, looking for levels above thresholds set by the Environmental Protection Agency and/or the California State Water Resources Board.

Interestingly, naturally occurring trace elements like arsenic, manganese, and uranium turned up at high levels much more commonly agriculture-related chemicals like nitrate.

In the ag-heavy San Joaquin Valley (the Central Valley’s Southern half), for example, you might expect plenty of nitrate in the water, because of heavy reliance on nitrogen fertilizers. Over the limit of 10 parts per million in water, nitrate can impede the blood’s ability to carry oxygen and has been linked to elevated rates of birth defects and cancers of the ovaries and thyroid. But while 4.9 percent of wells in the San Joaquin turned up over legal nitrate thresholds, arsenic (over legal limits in 11.2 percent of wells) and uranium (7.4 percent)—neither of which are used in farming—were more common.

But in the case of uranium—which heightens the risk of kidney trouble and cancer when consumed in water over long periods—agriculture isn’t off the hook. Kenneth Belitz, the study’s lead author and chief of the USGS’s National Water Quality Assessment Program, explains that before irrigation, the arid San Joaquin landscape supported very little vegetation, and the naturally occurring uranium in the landscape was relatively stable. But as farms sprouted up, irrigation water reacted with carbon dioxide from now-abundant plant roots to “mobilize” the uranium, pushing it downward at the rate of 5 to ten feet per year and eventually into the water table.

Conversely, some of the regions with highest nitrate levels are former ag areas that are now suburban, Belitz says: northern California’s Livermore Valley and southern California’s Santa Ana basin. That’s because nitrates, too, move through the soil strata at a rate of five to ten feet per year, and take years to accumulate in underground aquifers.

And that means that today’s ag-centric areas, including the San Joaquin Valley, could be slowly building up nitrate levels year by year that could lead to much higher nitrate levels in well water in coming decades, Belitz says.

For California residents and policymakers, the reports adds another distressing data point to the current water crisis. The fossil record and climate models suggests that precipitation levels will likely drop significantly compared to 20th century norms going forward, according to UC Berkeley paleoclimatologist B. Lynn Ingram—meaning an ever-growing reliance on groundwater for both farms and residents. Meanwhile, NASA research shows that this increasingly important resource is being drawn down at a much faster pace than it’s being replenished. And this latest USGS study suggests that the state’s precious, vanishing groundwater supply is widely contaminated. It’s enough to make you want to open a bottle of the state’s famous wine.

More – 

California Drinking Water: Not Just Vanishing, But Also Widely Contaminated

Posted in Anchor, FF, GE, LAI, LG, ONA, Radius, Sprout, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on California Drinking Water: Not Just Vanishing, But Also Widely Contaminated

Watch Me School Jeb In How To Play the Punctuation Game

by DesmondYDT Posted on June 16, 2015

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

I see that Jeb Bush is now Jeb! So I wonder what I should be? I don’t really see myself as an exclamation point kind of guy, so that’s out. Maybe Kevin? is the ticket. But would that make me seem curious and questioning, or tentative and questionable?

Hmmm. Kevin@ is no good. It just seems like half an email address. Kevin# looks like a hashtag written by a confused oldster. Kevin% would remind a tiny number of people of an old BASIC variable. Kevin& just begs the question: Kevin & what? Kevin* would make people start looking around for the footnote. Kevin/ doesn’t even make sense.

But Kevin> has potential, doesn’t it? Forward looking! To the point! Greater than all the rest of you! Plus it sort of looks like an HTML tag, which gives it a faux Silicon Valley techie vibe. And best of all? It’s not an exclamation point! Jeb is going to be sorry he didn’t think of this first.

POSTSCRIPT: Seriously, is it something in the water, or what? Jeb and Hillary both have hideous logos. Who’s making design decisions in campaign-land these days?

View article:

Watch Me School Jeb In How To Play the Punctuation Game

Posted in alo, FF, GE, LG, ONA, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Watch Me School Jeb In How To Play the Punctuation Game

Investigators Are Coming After Apple in an Antitrust Probe—Again

by MariamBeauregar Posted on June 11, 2015

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

Just as Apple catapulted into the music streaming industry at its annual developer conference earlier this week, state and federal investigators, the Department of Justice, the Federal Trade Commission, and even the European Commission were poking around to see if the multibillion-dollar tech giant had violated antitrust laws.

On Tuesday, the New York Times reported that attorneys general in New York and Connecticut were examining whether Apple pressured or colluded with labels to pull listeners away from free streaming services offered by companies like Spotify and YouTube in favor of its own paid product, Apple Music. Days before its unveiling, Apple had been negotiating with music labels over terms, according to Bloomberg News; the labels were fighting for a larger cut of revenue than they currently receive from Spotify. The Verge reported in May that Apple offered to pay YouTube’s music licensing fee if Universal Music Group, the world’s largest music corporation, blocked its music from hitting the site.

In a letter to the New York attorney general, UMG denied wrongdoing and noted it had not made agreements with Apple, Sony Music Entertainment, or Warner Music Group to “impede the availability of third-party free or ad-supported music streaming services.”

But this isn’t the first time Apple has been at the center of questionable antitrust practices. Here are a few other instances in which the tech giant has been under scrutiny:

E-books: Two years ago, in what would be a landmark case in the publishing industry, a federal judge in New York found Apple guilty of conspiring with five major publishers to fix the prices of e-books in an effort to stifle competition with Amazon. Apple is currently appealing the decision.
Employment: The dark side of Silicon Valley hiring practices emerged last April, after Apple, Google, Adobe, and Intel settled a class action lawsuit with about 64,000 employees for $415 million over backdoor “no poaching” agreements to not hire each other’s employees. (The intended result was to suppress wages.) The settlement came four years after the Justice Department called on those companies to stop making those agreements in a federal antitrust complaint.
Music restrictions: In December, following a decadelong class action lawsuit, a federal jury in California ruled that Apple operated within antitrust laws when a software update prevented songs purchased outside of iTunes from playing on iPods. The Los Angeles Times reported that the decision could have cost Apple $1 billion if the company had been found guilty.

View this article: 

Investigators Are Coming After Apple in an Antitrust Probe—Again

Posted in alo, Anchor, bamboo, FF, GE, LAI, Landmark, LG, ONA, PUR, Radius, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Investigators Are Coming After Apple in an Antitrust Probe—Again