Category Archives: Current Evrents

Let’s punch the glass ceiling in the belly!

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I was watching and old episode of the Simpsons yesterday, “Mr. Lisa goes to Washington.”  It was aired in 1991 and Lisa goes to DC, there is a line in the show where a senator says “One day you might even grow up to be a senator, there are women senators you know.” To wit Lisa replies, “I know, there are two, I checked.”  That made me sit up, I knew there were more female senators now, but didn’t know how many.  Out of 100 senators 17 are female.  In over twenty years we went from 2, to 17.  Now the growth rate is tremendous and I applaud that, but when you think about it, 17 out of 100 isn’t that many, especially if you consider that there are more women in the population than men (marginally, sure.)

So then I decided to check and see how many minorities are currently serving in the senate, and there are only 4!  Two Asians and two Hispanic, the last African American was voted out in 2010, and the one before that was elected president (not too shabby) in 2008.

I could also tally up the numbers in the house, but I think it’s easier to get elected into the house than it is into the senate, and a brief look tells me that even so, percentage-wise the minority and female representation is shockingly low.  Now one might argue that it doesn’t matter what someone’s race or gender is, that all that matters is if they can do the job well, and I agree with that, but do you really think the job is being done well?  Do you really think the interests of minorities and women are being championed in the senate?  When complaints are raised the number of complainers are so small that they have no voice.  This is a problem.

I have no solution, other than to ask more women and more minorities to enter into politics. I ask that you don’t play the game but that you work hard to do right, sure it’s not the fastest way to get elected, but at least if you are elected you will do a better job for your country.  There is a young woman I know who is an undergrad, I have been encouraging her to study law because I want her to someday enter politics.  She is someone I would vote for in a heartbeat, we need fresh blood like this.  We need to encourage the youth to pick up the mantle and make this country better.

 

In related news, the first female 4-star general was named.  That’s just awesome!  Plus, she has one of the coolest names ever “Janet C. Wolfenbarger.”  Discussion of this promotion brought about this post’s title, JRD Skinner said she kicked the glass ceiling in the belly :)

This also brought up another amazing lady, Grace Murray Hopper, Computer legend and Rear Admiral (granted she retired a Commander and they continued to promote her after the fact because of all she contributed to technology).

Blurb stolen from Wikipedia:

Rear Admiral Grace Murray Hopper (December 9, 1906 – January 1, 1992) was an American computer scientist and United States Navyofficer. A pioneer in the field, she was one of the first programmers of the Harvard Mark I computer, and developed the first compiler for a computer programming language.[1][2][3][4][5] She conceptualized the idea of machine-independent programming languages, which led to the development of COBOL, one of the first modern programming languages. She is credited with popularizing the term “debugging” for fixing computer glitches (motivated by an actual moth removed from the computer). Due to the breadth of her accomplishments and her naval rank, she is sometimes referred to as “Amazing Grace.” The U.S. Navy destroyer USS Hopper (DDG-70) was named for her, as was the Cray XE6“Hopper” supercomputer at NERSC.

Ranting on the internet works… really?

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“It comes in threes”

GoDaddy learned we don't like fascismIn an apathetic world like today it’s easy to feel defeated and without hope.  I know I do, often, ever since NDAA passed I had lost my faith in the “people.”  Then something great happened, first, GoDaddy backed the SOPA bill, then the internet found out and the boycott started.  It didn’t take long and GoDaddy reversed their position, of course that doesn’t take back any testimony, but it was a big hit to the pro-SOPA community, they saw, with our dollars how not listening to their customers could hurt their business.

SOPA and PIPA can go the way of the DoDoNext, there was the Internet Blackout Day, Wikipedia, many blogs and other sites on the internet went dark, even Google had a doodle showing their distaste for both SOPA and PIPA.  Many Senator and Congressmen’s websites went down that day, not by choice but from the flood of traffic from people who followed links on blacked out websites looking to contact their local politicians to make sure they knew their voters were against this.  The next day we found out that both SOPA and PIPA were shelved.

Komen thinks it can push planned parenthood around, they were wrongThe other night I learned from Planned Parenthood that the Susan B. Komen Foundation had decided to cut their funding for breast cancer screening because PP overs abortions. This was an outrage and something close to my heart, along with other men and women on the internet I shared my links and voiced my complaints on twitter, facebook and google plus.  This morning I woke up to find that SBK has reversed their decision.

That’s right people, the internet has been heard.  Now while I often shy away from talking politics on social media (never talk politics or religion right?) I am starting to think that’s not a good idea.  When it comes time to make a change, we need to be more vocal.  Just think what would have happened if we has all gotten upset over NDAA?  Would it have passed?  I think not.  I think seeing these three examples is enough to show people that apathy is not the way, that we can make a difference if we rant loud enough.  We have the money, we have the voice, we have the power.  Don’t think you can’t win, don’t think your one voice won’t change the world, thanks to social media, it can.

A couple of things:

Facebook goes public and will sell your soul to the devil!

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borrowed this from CBS, watch their videos

I’ve seen a few people get upset over this “NEW” information on how facebook makes money and what going public will mean for you, the facebook user.

Of course there is a defaming article on Yahoo that I’m being pointed to here.   I’ll let you read the article, then come back here and see my replies.

1. Facebook is going to “sell” users for $120 each
This isn’t any different than what’s happening now.  They already sell your information for ads, google does the same.  Are you using gmail to read this?  look to the side and tell me what ads you see?  Those are personalized ads, same things you see if you just do a google search (unless you have turned off private browsing) and while on facebook those ads are supposed to be tuned to your needs, this is why I see local ads. It’s not new, it’s just that FB will make more money from it.  OK.  I was fine with it before, why would I not be fine with it now that they might make more?

2. Facebook users are about to become billboards
So basically if you “like” something it is going to be advertised to your friends to get them to like it too.  Again, that’s already happening, it’s nothing new.  I see everything my friends like, I see ads to like things my friends have liked already, not new, not unscrupulous, this is what social media is.  The idea behind FB is what your friends are doing is interesting to you, it’s a peep pressure kind of thing, my friend is playing farmville?  well I better play it too, oh look now it’s Castlewars, ooo look my brother likes George Takai, I better like that too.  This is how FB works, how it has become the site you check every day.
3. The IPO is as much a Public Relations coup as a Share offering
so FB is going public but Zuckerberg is keeping full control, he could bequeath it to his dog… he could do that now, again, nothing is changing.
I think the big thing here is that nothing is changing but prices will go up and FB will make more money, isn’t that the american dream, to make money off of nothing.  I can’t wait to see what Mark does with his millions now.  Please give more of my schools grants.  (While I may think I wouldn’t like Mark as a person, I like when he donates his money, much like I love it when Bill Gates donates his money, and these are grants I see and work with all the time.
Now when I look up information on facebook going public there are other points of view, CBS seems to like this move. (videos)  It is amusing, the ads for these videos are for Google, Facebook’s competition.

The Year of the Dragon

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It is now the year of the dragon according to the Chinese Zodiac and that’s just fine by Rory and me, a water dragon to be more specific, and while that’s not nearly as cool as a Northern Furred Dragon, it’s pretty sweet.

I’m not very into the Zodiac, not for any other reason other than it just seems irrelevant to me.  I know many people who swear by it, some who plan to have their children in certain years because of it and many other superstitions that are tied to it.  I like the stories though, stories are always interesting.

I was a bit surprised there wasn’t a special Google doodle for the year of the dragon, what’s up with that Google?  No love for dragons? OK I guess there was one, but I couldn’t access it because I’m in Canada? I boo that. Google doodles should not be country specific, except when it makes sense.

What’s your favorite astrology story?  What’s your favorite Dragon?  (After Rory of course)  Share your favorite Dragon images with us today.

How was that?

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Wikipedia Blacks out January 18th in protest of SOPA and PIPAAny night sweats?  Terrors?  Suddenly not knowing simple facts because you couldn’t look them up on Wikipedia?  The Anti SOPA/PIPA blackout was interesting for me at least.  I saw a few sites that said they would go black but didn’t, I attribute most of that to mistakes made in coding and one site I know believes the report that SOPA is dead.

  • There were a lot of confused people thinking we were talking about soap but spelling ti wrong.
  • Some supporters of SOPA/PIPA called us names and claimed the blackout was a gimmick
  • A lot of sites only blacked out their US websites
  • A lot of memes were created today
  • several websites had great blackout messages (I think my favorite is the Oatmeal)
  • Two co-sponsors of the bill have withdrawn their support and other backers in congress have stepped back (I refrain from giving a number because this may increase, I hope)
  • I really enjoyed this article from the BBC, it even has screen caps of all the sites that went dark (I didn’t realize I could make all my flickr images black for the day, that would have been cool)

Would SOPA/PIPA have passed if we didn’t do this today?  Maybe, maybe not.  Now we will never know since it is clear we have made a change.  It took a day of people wanting to leave GoDaddy for them to change their mind and half a day of the internet to black out to shake the co-founders, I will call this a win.  Still, let’s not think we won completely, the bills are still out there and they have supporters and lot of money behind it.