The New York Times > Washington > In Ads, AARP Criticizes Plan on Privatizing
This may be a pretty big blow to the Bush plan. It seems like momentum is building against the idea of privatize Social Security with surprising speed.
For more on why they’re against the plan, check out the AARP website.
The New York Times > AP > Business > US Airways Is Seeking Free Help for New Year’s
The article starts by saying that the airline was crippled when “an unusually large number of flight attendants and baggage handlers failed to show up.” But later:
Mollie McCarthy, the president of the Association of Flight Attendants chapter in Philadelphia, said 238 flight attendants nationwide called out sick on Christmas Eve and 306 on Christmas Day, compared with 261 and 298, respectively, on the two days in 2003.
Ok, everyone has an agenda, but those are the only numbers I’ve seen. The union claims that their absentee rate was 10% lower than in 2003 on 12/24 and a whopping 8 more people missed work on 12/25 compared to the previous year. If that causes problems for your airline, they deserve to fail. I’m not convinced the airline isn’t trying to manufacture a scapegoat.
This might be an interesting story if you’re a geek and/or have concerns about government intrusion. And it provides more proof that people in government have too much time on their hands.
I’ve read several interpretations of the so-called “shifting” toward conservatism in the US from people on both sides of the aisle. While they disagree on why and even whether it is happening, I keep coming away with a common thread in their discussions (whether intended or not): conservatives are thriving not so much because of what they are doing but why they are doing it.
I think it’s important that people in applied fields such as business and engineering tend to be more conservative. These studies require a lot of focus–more of a engineering student’s classes are in engineering. After college, work is more career-driven–longer hours, more time is spent working with abstractions. Compare to the liberal arts, where career opportunities are more likely to be in law, academia or public service. In my history classes, psychology classes, etc. we spoke about people in far different ways than in engineering, where people were “users,” or “perceptors” if in fact “people” came up at all. And the liberal arts student will be more likely to spend their lives working with people.
So it’s easier for the CFO, the engineer, the consultant to see things like “profit” and “efficiency.” And it’s easier for the professor or lawyer to see “human rights” and “world hunger” and all the other things that might sound too touchy-feely. What is the ramification? As one astute Economist reader pointed out in regard to an article on the liberal bias of American universities, why would a conservative want to work in academia when they could make more money as a consultant, ect? And there you have it. The right responds to the cold logic of maximization–take the Clear Skies act as an example. The left, meanwhile, is placing more value on intangibles.
This isn’t going to change too much–we need both sides, the business people and the engineers, the lawyers and teachers, and everyone in between–the whole spectrum is contributing toward the strength of the whole. In order to widen their appeal, Democrats will need to “re-frame” issues so they appeal to the logical people as well as the touchy-feely ones.
The New York Times > Washington > Ohio Recount Gives a Smaller Margin to Bush
Consider the fact that the recount happened to be a victory for Democracy–hopefully the key people in Ohio can keep the various issues at the forefront. In the meantime, those who might cheat should see this as a deterrent. Perhaps some of my old neighbors up in NE Ohio can put some pressure on Diebold to shape up–verifiable paper trails on all electronic voting machines by 2006!
The New York Times > Business > Return That Ill-Fitting Gift? Maybe Not
…and for the second time today, I’m writing about privacy concerns tangentially releated to the article I’m referencing.
In this case, the use of a driver’s license or ID by the private sector concerns me. The department stores are using the ID to get at personal information. I suspect most people hand their ID over without a second though, or perhaps while figuring that there is a security reason for doing so.
Several years ago I made a habit of visiting several clubs with some friends. Once, at one of the clubs we frequented, instead of manually checking our ID’s they scanned them using a little hand scanner. I thought “how cool!” But some time later, I got a mailed advertisement from the club owner about another club they were opening. It seems as if they’d disguised their acquisition of my address behind the shield of “reasonable security.”
Privacy advocates have voiced concern that government-required infomation could fall into the wrong hands or be used for the wrong purposes. It looks like that’s already happening.
The New York Times > National > State Sees Instant Results in Electronic Gun Checks
This makes me a little uncomfortable. Sure it’s great that quick checks allow people to get guns a little more quickly (but whatever happened to the “cool-down period?) But I’m a little more wary of the idea that this enables police departments to know instantly when a restraining order is placed on a gun owner.
I dislike the implication that the gun owner could be found guilty before a crime is committed and punished with the confiscation of their guns, especially since a tense situation such as any one that might lead a judge to issue a restraining order could, one imagines, lead to the gun owner needing to defend himself (a husband from an enraged boyfriend or family member, for example.) Surely there are better ways to protect the person requesting the restraining order.
Directly underneath the Natural Bridge
Flowers on a rusty barbed-wire fence. Hinckley, OH
A sapling growing along the edge of the Natural Bridge
Spring snow
honeybee
The obligatory mountain shot. Evans, Bierstadt, Grays and Torreys,...
A Random Photo