new national temperature resource to be on-line soon
2012-10-12
Ruth Mantell _MarketWatch_
UMich consumer sentiment index rose from 78.3 at the end of September to 83.1 in early October
St. Louis Fed
2012-10-12
Joachim Seifert
5 mechanisms affecting earth temperatures
2012-10-12
Paul McDougall _InformationWeek_/_UBM_
Is Geithner signalling more visas to be issued for cheap, young, pliant tech guest-workers from India
2012-10-12 (5773 Tishrei 26)
Caroline B. Glick _Jewish World Review_
American Jewry's cherished values
"Obama's economic policies have taken a huge toll on the economic fortunes of American Jews who invest disproportionately in the stock market. His nationalization of the college loan business has given universities impetus to raise tuition rates still further thus dooming more young American Jews to starting their adult lives under a mountain of debt. And it isn't at all clear how they will be able to pay off this debt since under Obama half of recent college graduates cannot find jobs... Well, there's civil liberties. American Jews like those. But Obama doesn't... According to a report published by the Government Accountability Institute, some twenty percent of visitors to the Obama campaign's fundraising site "my.barackobama.com" are foreigners, barred by US law from contributing to political campaigns. So too, the Obama.com website was registered by Robert Roche, a US businessman living in Shanghai with ties to Chinese state-owned companies. Roche is an Obama campaign bundler. 68% of the traffic on the site comes from foreign users. Obama.com is currently managed by a Palestinian rights activist in Maine. Finally, there is the cause of Israel and US-Israel relations that American Jews are assumed to care about. After the fiasco at the Democratic National Convention when the widespread antipathy for Israel raging in the Democratic Party was broadcast on primetime television, the Obama administration has stopped even trying to hide its contempt for the Jewish state and its American Jewish supporters. Whereas the US refused to walk out of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's obscene address to the UN General Assembly last month, US Ambassador Susan Rice chose to absent herself entirely from prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu's address before the body. Adding insult to injury, last week Obama appointed Salam al-Marayati to represent the US at the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe's annual ten-day human rights conference. Marayati is the founder and executive director of the Muslim Public Affairs Committee. As Robert Spencer recalled this week, on 2001 Sept. 11, Marayati gave an interview to a Los Angeles radio station accusing Israel of being responsible for the jihadist attacks on the USA. He is an outspoken supporter of Hamas and Hezbollah."
Proposed Bills 2012
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"Although CAFE standards have failed to reduce gasoline consumption or significantly improve the environment, they have succeeded in killing tens of thousands of human beings. The reason: the laws of physics. in order to meet the per-gallon fuel efficiency standards set by congress, the automobile industry has been forced to reduce the size and weight (mass) of vehicles. Consequently, automobiles and light trucks contain more plastic and aluminum than ever before. Their human occupants are more vulnerable to injury and death from most kinds of accidents. in 1989, analysts at the Brookings institution and Harvard University estimated that 2K to 3,900 lives are lost and 20K serious injuries occur each year in traffic accidents resulting from smaller, lighter cars. The Competitive Enterprise Institute examiend 1997 traffic fatality data and concluded that CAFE standads caused between 2,600 and 4,500 deaths in 1997. In 1999, _USA Today_ analyzed the statistical link between CAFE standards and traffic fatalities and reported taht '46K people have died in crashes they would have survived in bigger, heavier cars... since 1975'. In 2001, a National Academy of Sciences panel repoted tha teh down-weighting and down-sizing of light vehicles in the 1970s and early 1980s, partly due to CAFE standards, 'probably resulted in an additional 1,300 to 2,600 traffic fatalities in 1993'." --- Mark R. Levin 2009 _Liberty and Tyranny_ pp124-125;
citing Robert W. Crandall & John D. Graham 1989 January _Journal of Law and Economics_ "The Effect of Fuel Economy Standards on Automobile Safety" vol32? #97 pg118;
Julie DeFalco 1999 June "The Deadly Effects of Fuel Economy Standards: CAFE's Lethal Impact on Auto Safety" (pdf)
James R. Healey 1999-07-02 _USA Today_ "Death by the Gallon" pg B1; Paul R. Portney et al. 2002 NAS "Effectiveness and Impact of Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) Standards" pg3;
Paul R. Potney et al. 2001-08-92 testimony to US senate committed on Commerce, Science, and Transportation and committee on Energy and Natural Resources
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2012-10-13
Proposed Bills 2012
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"There is a manifest, marked distinction, which ill men with ill designs, or weak men incapable of any design, will constantly be confounding -- that is, a marked distinction between change and refomation. The former alters the substance of the objets themselves, and gets rid of all their essential good as well as of all the accidental evil annexed to them. Change is novelty; and whether it is to operate any one of the effects of reformation at all, or whether it may not contradict the very principle upon which reformation is desired, cannot be known beforehand. Reform is not change in the substance or in the primary modification of the object, but a direct application of a remedy to the grievance complained of. So far as that is removed, all is sure. It stops there; and if it fails, the substance which underwent the operation, at the very worst, is but whee it was." --- Edmund Burke "A Letter to a Noble Lord" in 1904 _Works_ vol5 pg187; Peter James Stanlis 1991 _Edmund Burke: The Enlightenment and Revolution_ pg213; Mark R. Levin 2009 _Liberty and Tyranny_ pp13-14
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2012-10-14
2012-10-14
Anthony Watts
over 2K new low temperature records set in the USA so far in October
2012-10-14
Christen Croley _Cumberland PA Sentinel_
poll of small business owners: worse off now than they were in 2007
2012-10-14
Tom Blumer _PJ Media_
missed opportunities in debates WRT the Socialist Insecurity Abomination
2012-10-14
Dwight L. Schwab ii _Examiner_
both illegal and legal immigration at all-time high
2012-10-14
Thomas E. Brewton
Hillary and Biden bumbled security of Benghazi consulate while Obummer was hanging out with Beyonce
2012-10-14
Victor Davis Hanson _PJ Media_
the Obummer breaking point
2012-10-14
Nicholas Stix _V Dare_
leftists are trying to invent an anti-white pan-Asian "identity"
Proposed Bills 2012
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"The recession or depression is the necessay if unfortunate correction process by which the mal-investments of the boom period, having at last been brought to light, are finally liquidated, re-deployed elsewhere in the economy where they can contribute to producing something consumers actually want. No longer are wealth and goods diverted into unsustainable investments with inadequate demand and insufficient resources. Businesses fail and investment projects are abandoned. Although painful for many people, the recession ro depression phase of the cycle is not where the damage is done. The bust is the period in which the economy sloughs off the mal-investments and the capital mis-allocation, re-establishes the structure of production along sustainable lines, and restores itself to health." --- Thomas E. Woods 2009 _Melt-Down_ pg72
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2012-10-15
2012-10-15
Janice Fiamengo _PJ Media_
"social justice" crowd biased against justice and the bright
2012-10-15
Elliott Jones _Treasure Coast FL Palm_
owner of Thai restaurant in Vero Beach FL charged for trying to buy green cards illegally
"arrested on charges of paying a federal under-cover agent $313K to get illegal green cards for 27 workers from Thailand and one from Mexico... the closing of the restaurant stems from an 11-month undercover investigation, during which a federal agent posed as being willing to illegally provide green cards -- permanent resident cards -- for a price. Tipfun is charged with conspiracy to commit fraud... The 28 workers are held in lieu of $150K cash bails. Most have over-stayed their travel visas, although specifically which ones were not released. The charges against them include fraud or conspiracy to commit fraud... Some workers were lent money by the restaurant owners to buy the cards. During one meeting with the illegal workers, Tipfun told the agent to not count the cash payments in their presence because they had been charged more than the agent asked."
2012-10-15
Larry Rulison _Albany NY Times-Union_
guest-workers employed on state government contracts
"Others believe the practice is an abuse of the federal government's work visa programs, which are designed to help American high-tech companies fill positions that would be vacant without recruiting over-seas. The biggest user of foreign workers on state contracts in New York is Westchester County-based IBM, which has $300M in state contracts. IBM has been given hundreds of millions of dollars in state aid to keep it from moving its New York operations out of the country. At the same time, IBM has brought hundreds of workers from India to fill jobs in Albany for which -- in theory -- plenty of Americans are qualified. 'It's very clear that IBM is exploiting the huge loop-holes in the programs to bring in cheaper guest workers instead of hiring Americans.', said Ron Hira, an associate professor of public policy at Rochester Institute of Technology. 'Why the state continues to do this in the face of the obviousness of the practice is a real public policy question.'... That's what concerns Girish Bhatia, CEO of GCom Software, an Albany company that uses foreign workers -- many of them holding H-1B visas -- and has more than $45M in contracts with state agencies ranging from the Department of Labor to the Division of Criminal Justice Services... He says he rarely gets a response from job ads in local newspapers and instead gets almost all his candidates from job websites such as Dice.com that are popular around the world."
2012-10-15
Erik Schelzig _San Francisco CA Chronicle_
TN AG questioning law to clamp down on foreign-run charter schools
"Tennessee law limiting the percentage of foreign workers at charter schools... But Smith said the governor wouldn't go so far as to urge them to disregard the law on the books that allows chartering authorities to reject or revoke a school's application if more than 3.5% of the teachers and staff are foreigners in the H1B or J-1 visa programs. Cooper said the ability of chartering authorities' 'ability to exercise such discretion could constitute a chilling effect upon a charter school retaining non-immigrant foreign workers with H-1B or J-1 visa since exceeding the 3.5% quota could jeopardize the charter school's application or its continued existence [which would be a good thing].'... 'The rationale for using 3.5% of employees, as opposed to some other percentage, as benchmark for the permissible number of foreign workers is not readily apparent [any more than 20 mile per hour speed limits in school zones].', according to the opinion."
2012-10-15
Thomas E. Brewton
history of leftist indoctrination
2012-10-15
Thomas E. Brewton
leftists' new idols
2012-10-15
Roger L. Simon _PJ Media_
phony "town halls" and Candy Crowley's ego
2012-10-15
Patrick J. Buchanan _V Dare_
behind the Benghazi cover-up attempt: the 2012-09-11 Muslim terrorist attack on the USA consulate at Benghazi
Proposed Bills 2012
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"On 1896-05-06, [Samuel Langley] made his attempt at unmanned flight, with his steam-powered 'Aerodrome V'. It flew for nearly half a mile before it settled into the waters of the Potomac. Langley and his team winched it out of the river and set it off on another successful trip, the first airplane flight ever recorded on film. The man handling the camera was none other than [Alexander Graham Bell] himself... On 1903-10-07, Bell and Langley assembled their team for a test flight with a pilot, once again along the Potomac River. This time, however, it failed. A second attempt on December 8 failed also. Then, on December 18, they read in the newspaper that the day before, at Kitty Hawk, NC, brothers Orville and Wilbur Wright had flown a machine 120 feet with Orville on board... But in 1914 a pilot did manage to fly Bell and Langley's airplane, and Bell himself went on to make new discoveries and devise new inventions (including, in 1918, a speed-record-breaking hydrofoil)." --- Arthur Herman 2001 _How the Scots Invented the Modern World_ pg346
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2012-10-16 USA election 3 weeks (21 days) from today
2012-10-16
Anthony Watts
duelling papers on cyclone frequency
2012-10-16
Roger L. Simon _PJ Media_
No, Hillary, Benghazi will not go away until there is repentance and reform
"What Obama doesn't want to believe is that Islamist [pro-violence Islamic] thought and often actions are endemic through the Muslim world because to believe that would be to acknowledge that there is something systemically wrong with them that could not be blamed on us, the imperialists. Islam is, after all, their religious ideology. Jihad is their conception. Obama will do everything possible not to face this. The failure to name Islamism in any form as a motivation for major Hasan's Fort Hood murder rampage is just one example of this problem but an obvious and telling one. This inability to confront the issue in an honest way has ramifications in Benghazi because, if this problem is not to be taken seriously, then security really isn't necessary."
Reminds me of the Jewish scholars extensive analysis of teshubah -- repentance. You have to realize that you did something wrong, openly acknowledge it to the person to whom you did wrong and/or to the Deity as the case may be, and then change your behavior so as not to repeat the offense. Only then can one be possibly considered a baal teshubah -- a master of repentance who has appreciably over-come his evil impulses. We have yet to see a sincere apology for the failure to secure the consulate, a sincere apology for the lying about some video, nor signs that those behavior patterns are being corrected...jgo
2012-10-16
Anthony Watts
new NCAR super-computer in WY, designed by notorious off-shore out-sourcer Ill-Begotten Monstrosities, and powered by inexpensive coal
2012-10-16
Eve Samples _Treasure Coast FL Palm_
PIP changes starting to look like a gift to government-blessed protection rackets
2012-10-16
Ian Schumacher
a simple resolution to the "faint young sun" paradox?: models vs. reality
2012-10-16
Jennifer Martinez _The Hill_
both evil candidates for president favor boosting cheap young pliant guest-workers with flexible ethics
2012-10-16
John Hall _Independent_
wealthiest people of all time
Brian Warner: Celebrity Net Worth
"With an inflation adjusted fortune of $400G, Mansa Musa I would have been considerably richer than the world's current richest man, Carlos Slim Helu, who ranks in 22nd place with a relatively paltry $68G."
2012-10-16
Norm Matloff _H-1B/ L-1/ Off-Shoring News-Letter_
Re: Tech work-force slams MSFT's proposal
The e-news-letter issue referred to [in the Dice posting].
I appear to have been misquoted here, though.
The quotes from industry below are pretty standard, but one of them deviates, in a Freudian slip sense:
Silver would prefer an approach that doesn't require companies to pay visa fees. That way, even the poorest start-up would be able to hire brilliant developers, no matter their birth-place.
Since the visa fees form only a very small fraction of salary, especially amortized over the multiple years the worker is tied to a green-card sponsoring employer, being a poor start-up should not be an obstacle to begin with. Instead, I suspect that what this employer really has in mind in hiring foreign workers is saving on the salary itself.
And if Silver's workers are indeed "brilliant", he should be paying a hefty salary premium to them. (As I've shown before, most of the foreign workers are not in the "brilliant" league.)
BTW, I highly recommend reading the comments at the end of the article (not shown here).
Norm
Susan Hall: Dice: tech work-force slams MSFT's H-1B proposal
2012-10-16
Norm Matloff _H-1B/ L-1/ Off-Shoring News-Letter_
What skills shortage?
This message will go in a somewhat different direction from what the title might suggest. Please bear with me, and I will get to the issue implied by the title.
A couple of weeks ago, I mentioned that my department (I think all of UC) switched from operating their own e-mail servers to having Gmail do it. We would be able to keep our old e-mail addresses, and indeed, mine still works... So, please continue to use that one.
But in order to accomplish this, Gmail apparently set up a rather Rube Goldberg type of kludge, under which my Gmail address contains my UC Davis address. In fact, if I log into Gmail through the web to view my mail, I actually do NOT enter a password, and just click Sign In. I then get to a UC Davis sign-in page. I had to do a lot of tweaking to make my Mutt e-mail reader access the Gmail server.
All this presented logistics problem in terms of my distributing my e-news-letter. The above-mentioned kludge was an issue, as were Gmail constraints and my desire to use a text-based e-mail client, and above all to keep things simple. I did develop a quick-fix solution at the time, but not acceptable for various reasons.
I won't go into the details, but the point is that several people among you had suggestions, and 2 in particular spent considerable effort helping. It so happens that e-mail servers are not something I'm very knowledgeable about, so I really appreciated the help these 2 guys gave, each in different ways. Because of that, I now have set up something in Python (my favorite programming language, along with R) that is working pretty well. I'll probably fine-tune it a bit when I have a chance, but it is serviceable.
So, now to the title of this message. Of the 2 who helped me, one is unemployed and I believe the other is too (not sure in the second case right now, but he's been unemployed before). And yet both of them are highly capable.
The one who I know for sure is unemployed has a PhD and is one of the smartest people I know; he took to this problem without having a lot of background, and yet immediately started giving me insights, and ultimately led me to an example on the web which formed the core of my solution. The second guy is quite experienced in e-mail server issues (developing code, not administration), and taught me a lot of information that proved helpful.
Yet I'm sure that both of them have been passed over for jobs in favor of H-1Bs. And no, the solution is not retraining, as I've explained before; it's to reduce the H-1B program.
Norm
---30---
2012-10-16 (5773 Tishrei 30)
Thomas Sowell _Jewish World Review_
random thoughts
Redding CA
St. Augustine FL
"Not since the days of slavery have there been so many people who feel entitled to what other people have produced as there are in the modern welfare state, whether in Western Europe or on this side of the Atlantic. Economist Edward Lazear has cut through all of Barack Obama's claims about 'creating jobs' with one plain and inescapable fact -- 'there hasn't been one day during the entire Obama presidency when as many Americans were working as on the day President Bush left office'. Whatever number of jobs were created during the Obama administration, more have been lost... there is ever a Hall of Fame for confidence men, Charles Ponzi and Bernie Madoff will have to take a back seat to Barack Obama."
Thomas Sowell web site
index of Thomas Sowell columns at Jewish World Review
2012-10-16 (5773 Tishrei 30)
Walter E. Williams _Jewish World Review_
poverty non-sense
Cybercast News Service
Right Wing News
Creators Syndicate
World Net Daily
New Media Journal
index of Walter E. Williams columns at Jewish World Review
Proposed Bills 2012
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"The first great wave of Scotch-Irish emigration began with the failed harvest of 1717, which forced people to choose between moving and starving. A merchant from Philadelphia, Jonathan Dickinson, noted that summer 'we have had 12 or 13 sayle of ships fom the North of Ireland with a swarm of people'. He also noted their appearance: tall and lean, with weather-beaten faces and wooden shoes 'shod like a horse's feet with iron'. The women wore short, tight-waisted skirts and dresses, showing their bare legs underneath, which shocked Quaker Philadelphia. Another wave of Ulster Scots followed in the 1720s; so many, in fact, that the British Parliament demanded an inquiry, wondering whether they would completely depopulate the Protestant element in Ireland before they were done. Some never made it. The trip on over-crowded ships could be hazardous, even murderous. One ship from Belfast to Philadelphia ran out of food midway. 46 passengers died of starvation, and the rest had to turn to cannibalism, with some eating members of their own families. The numbers kept coming, however, until by 1770 at least 200K had settled in America. In the first 2 weeks of 1773 August alone, 3,500 [immigrants] turned up in Philadelphia, looking to start a new life." --- Arthur Herman 2001 _How the Scots Invented the Modern World_ pg198
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2012-10-17
2012-10-17
Anthony Watts, Christiansen & Ljungqvist
climate was warmer 1K years ago
2012-10-17
Anthony Watts
Berkeley national lab & submariners: CO2 makes you stupid
This explains politicians! Los Angeles, San Francisco, NY, Chicago! All that time spent gabbing in closed committee rooms and auditoriums, and people living in other over-populated/over-crowded areas...if you can call that living...jgo
2012-10-17
Alisha Azevedo _Chronicle of Higher Education_
SJSU reports improved results using MIT video-lectures combined with live teacher Q&A... just as one would expect
Now, if only MIT would ditch the Javascript control of access to the videos, we'd be getting somewhere...jgo
2012-10-17
Patrick Thibodeau _Yale_
amidst US citizenry's on-going disgust at devastation caused by India-based IT cross-border bodyshops and off-shoring operations, they thrive (with graph)
"Many in the industry worried -- for naught -- that an Obama presidency might bring work-visa restrictions... India's IT firms grew unabated in Obama's...term... Tata...now gets nearly 54% of its revenue from North American firms and employs 238,538, according to SEC filings. Of TCS's global work-force, it describes 92.5% as Indian... Infosys this year reported in government filings that it had 10,115 employees in the US on H-1B visas, or 23% more than when Obama was elected... US representative Zoe Lofgren, who represents Silicon Valley [executives and immigration lawyers], said in her district [with its costs for housing and taxes and gasoline and electricity artificially jacked up by local and state governments] the average wage for a computer system analyst is $92K, but an H-1B worker can be paid about $52K under wage rules."
The US Dept. of Education, National Center for Education Statistics, Digest of Education Statistics reports that 48,542 computer and information science degrees were earned by US citizens in academic year 2009-2010; 582,496 from 2000 to 2010; over 1.3M from 1970 to 2010. Similarly, US citizens earned 310,586 STEM degrees in academic year 2009-2010; over 3M from 2000 to 2010; over 9M from 1970 to 2010. When combined with NSF data on percentages of capable STEM workers with non-STEM degrees or no degrees at all, the USA added over 1M US citizens to the CS talent pool from 2000 to 2010, over 2.3M from 1970 to 2010; nearly 4M US citizen STEM workers were added from 2000 to 2010, and nearly 12M from 1970 to 2010. (see the graphs)
The US State Department reports that from FY1990 through FY2010 over 5.9M F (student) visas, over 1M L-1, over 5.6M J, 2.4M B1, nearly 64M B1/B2 visas, and over 2M H-1B visas have been issued through consular offices. Over 110K H-1B visas were issued in FY2009, over 117K H-1B visas were issued in FY2010, and a preliminarily estimated 129K H-1B visas were issued in FY2011 -- not 65K, not 85K, not 100K. (see the graphs)...jgo
2012-10-17
Robert X. Cringely _Beta News_
IBM doesn't even pretend to comply with H-1B law and regs
I, Cringely
2012-08-06: John Miano: CIS: IBM: "The Cost Difference Is Too Great for the Business Not to Look for" H-1B Workers
2012-10-17
Patrick Thibodeau _IT World_/_IDG_
687K tech manufacturing jobs, 28%, lost since 2000
"In total, the NSF said high-tech manufacturing jobs have declined by 687K, or 28%, since 2000. The NSF definition of high-tech manufacturing includes the computing machinery along with aircraft, spacecraft and pharmaceutical industries. TechAmerica, an industry group, tracks high-tech manufacturing specifically and its research finds employment numbers that are equally stark."
2012-10-17 (5773 Mar-Cheshvan 01)
John Stossel _Jewish World Review_
bad rules and selectively enforced rules
"Sherman points out that licensing rules keep getting more intrusive: '50 years ago, only 5% of the American population needed a license from government to work in their chosen occupation. Now that number is 30%.'... ask neighbors or colleagues for recommendations, or check Consumer Reports and Angie's List. You check because you know that even with licensing laws, there is quackery."
2012-10-17 (5773 Mar-Cheshvan 01)
Jim Mullen _Jewish World Review_
the debate debate
2012-10-17 (5773 Mar-Cheshvan 01)
Jack Kelly _Jewish World Review_
College attendance hides a scandal
"Mr. Obama has been a friend to those who run our colleges and universities, but not to students who pay Cadillac prices for the educational equivalent of a Yugo. Real wages for recent college graduates have fallen nearly 5% from 2007 to 2011. More than 40% of recent college graduates work in jobs that do not require a college education. There are 323K waiters and waitresses, 115K janitors and 83K bar-tenders with college degrees."
2012-10-17 (5773 Mar-Cheshvan 01)
Martin Schram _Jewish World Review_
Russia drops bomb-shell on US nuclear safe-guard plan... few notice
2012-10-17 (5773 Mar-Cheshvan 01)
A. Barton Hinkle _Jewish World Review_
under-mining values that help people escape poverty
"the federal government has 126 separate anti-poverty programs... if the goal is to reduce poverty, rather than merely treat its symptoms, then those programs are a colossal failure... In 1966, at the height of the War on Poverty, the poverty rate was just under 15% of the population; in 2010, the most recent year for which data is available, it was 15.1%... In 2010, one in every 10 American children lived in 'deep poverty' -- that is, in families with income less than 50% of the poverty line... rather than address such problems, the Obama administration may be contributing to them -- by expanding the welfare rolls, further undermining the values that enable people in poverty to escape it."
2012-10-17 (5773 Mar-Cheshvan 01)
Debra J. Saunders _Jewish World Review_
Hell is paved with Obummer's (and Mitten's) intentions
2012-10-17 (5773 Mar-Cheshvan 01)
Paul Greenberg _Jewish World Review_
the crown of Aleppo
2012-10-17 (5773 Mar-Cheshvan 01)
Michelle Malkin _Jewish World Review_
Hollywood's hysterical "cancer screening" lie for Obummer
Proposed Bills 2012
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"When you're practicing deeply, the world's usual rules are suspended. You use time more efficiently. Your small efforts produce big, lasting results. You have positioned yourself at a place of leverage where you can capture failure and turn it into skill. The trick is to choose a goal just beyond your present abilities; to target the struggle." --- Daniel Coyle 2009 _The Talent Code_ pg 19
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2012-10-18
2012-10-18 05:30PDT (08:30EDT) (12:30GMT) (14:30 Jerusalem)
Scott Gibbons & Tony Sznoluch _DoL ETA_
un-employment insurance weekly claims report
DoL home page
DoL OPA press releases
historical data
DoL regulations
"The advance number of actual initial claims under state programs, unadjusted, totaled 359,048 in the week ending October 13, an increase of 29,129 from the previous week. There were 357,562 initial claims in the comparable week in 2011.
The advance unadjusted insured unemployment rate was 2.1% during the week ending October 6, a decrease of 0.1 percentage point from the prior week's unrevised rate. The advance unadjusted number for persons claiming UI benefits in state programs totaled 2,744,348, a decrease of 40,882 from the preceding week. A year earlier, the rate was 2.5% and the volume was 3,133,644.
The total number of people claiming benefits in all programs for the week ending September 29 was 5,001,985, a decrease of 42,664 from the previous week. There were 6,694,493 persons claiming benefits in all programs in the comparable week in 2011.
Extended Benefits were only available in New York during the week ending September 29...
States reported 2,098,793 persons claiming EUC (Emergency Unemployment Compensation) benefits for the week ending September 29, a decrease of 7,279 from the prior week. There were 2,967,054 persons claiming EUC in the comparable week in 2011. EUC weekly claims include first, second, third, and fourth tier activity.
[Note that the population used for calculating the "insured unemployment rate" (the divisor) changes roughly quarterly:
to 132,623,886 beginning 2007-10-06;
to 133,010,953 beginning 2008-01-05;
to 133,382,559 beginning 2008-04-05;
to 133,690,617 beginning 2008-07-05;
to 133,902,387 beginning 2008-10-04;
to 133,886,830 beginning 2009-01-03;
to 133,683,433 beginning 2009-04-04;
to 133,078,480 beginning 2009-07-04;
to 133,823,421 beginning 2009-10-03;
to 131,823,421 beginning 2009-10-17;
to 130,128,328 beginning 2010-01-02;
to 128,298,468 beginning 2010-04-03;
to 126,763,245 beginning 2010-07-03;
to 125,845,577 beginning 2010-09-25;
to 125,560,066 beginning 2011-01-15;
to 125,572,661 beginning 2011-04-02;
to 125,807,389 beginning 2011-07-02;
to 126,188,733 beginning 2011-10-01;
to 126,579,970 beginning 2012-01-01;
to 127,048,587 beginning 2012-04-07;
to 127,495,952 beginning 2012-07-14;
to 128,066,082 beginning 2012-10-06.]
EUC (Excel)
EB
graphs
more graphs
2012-10-18
Steven Russolillo _Wall Street Journal_
Philly Fed index slightly down, Leading Economic Indicators slightly up
NASDAQ
RTT News
Fox/MarketWatch
Conference Board
2012-10-18
Anthony Watts, Jan Esper, Ulf Büntgen, Mauri Timonen, & David C. Frank
Journal of Global and Planetary Change: earth was warmer 2K and 1K years ago (with graph)
2012-10-18
_CBS_/_AP_
Bangladeshi in USA on student visa tried to explode 1K pound bomb at NY Fed
Los Angeles CA Times
Forbes
Mashabel
NY Observer
CNN
UPI
Fox
NY Post
Joe Palazzolo: Wall Street Journal
2012-10-18
Stephen Dinan _Washington DC Times_
CRS: Illfare spending increased 32% in last 4 years in over 80 unconstitutional federal programs
Black Chrstian News
Alex Jones's Prison Planet
Heather Ginsberg: Town Hall
News Max
Catholic On-Line News Consortium
"[Illfare spending across over 80 unconstitutional federal programs] has grown substantially over the past 4 years, reaching $746G in 2011 -- or more than [Socialist Insecurity], basic defense spending or any other single chunk of the federal government -- according to a new memo by the Congressional Research Service... Overall, [illfare] spending as measured by obligations has grown from $563G in FY2008 to $746G in FY2011, or a jump of 32%... Sessions's staff on the Budget Committee calculated that states contributed another $283G to low-income assistance -- chiefly through Medicaid. Combined, that means the federal and state governments spent $1.03T on [illfare] programs... the number of people on food stamps during [Obummer's term] has risen from 32M to 47M... The report looked at programs that had obligations of at least $100M in a fiscal year, which meant some small-dollar [illfare] assistance wasn't included."
2012-10-18
Alisha Azevedo _Chronicle of Higher Education_
programming hackathons proliferate at universities
"Programmers have a short span of time to quickly build a usable application from scratch, usually around a theme."
2012-10-18
Anthony Watts, J.B. Williamson & Ric Werme
synthesizing gasoline from water vapor and CO2
2012-10-18
Barry Rubin _PJ Media_
Iranian operative admitted plot to kill Saudi ambassador in Washington, DC
2012-10-18
Janice Kephart _Center for Immigration Studies_
3,400 Border Patrol agents to be dumped as result of Dem-Rep non-budget deal
2012-10-18
Kabir Bhatia _WKSU_
Ravindra Telluri forfeits $1M for visa fraud: sponsored H-1B applicants for jobs that did not exist
2012-10-18 (5773 Mar-Cheshvan 02)
judge Andrew P. Napolitano _Jewish World Review_
who is responsible for the attacks on the US consulate in Libya?
Proposed Bills 2012
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"Identifying current and future supplies of scientists and engineers is extremely difficult: predictions of an over-supply in the 1970s did not come true, and predictions of shortages in the late 1980s also failed to occur. What is clear is that S&E [science and engineering] positions are in a state of flux." --- NSF 99-321 _Retention of the Best Science and Engineering Graduates in Science and Engineering_ pg1 (quoted in Daniel S. Greenberg 2001 _Science, Money, and Politics: Political Triumph and Ethical Erosion_ pg147)
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2012-10-19
1781-10-19: Victory at YorkTown
Reid Smith _American Spectator_
lest we forget
2012-10-19
Quin Hillyer _American Spectator_
the economic record in favor of limited government
2012-10-19
Steve Johnson _San Jose CA Mercury News_
AMD to dump 15%, about 1,665 employees
2012-10-19
Paul Davis _Providence RI Journal_
Cranston RI canvassing board member resigned rather than go along with giving ballots to/counting votes of "convicted killers"
chair of canvassing board says they send absentee ballot, will bounce request to the courts
2012-10-19
Barry Neild _Global Post_
Scots get chance to vote on independence
Uhhh, why not let Scotland shift to being a member of the Commonwealth, with its own legislature, etc., yet remain under the UK umbrella?...jgo
2012-10-19
Rick Richman _PJ Media_
twilight of a leftist "god"
"But as Claremont professor Charles R. Kesler demonstrates in his erudite new book _I Am the Change: Barack Obama and the Crisis of [Leftism]_, Obama was not really something new; he was the culmination of a long historical process, which has now produced a predictable crisis. Kesler discards pejorative labels of Obama ('a third-world daddy's boy, Alinskyist agitator, deep-cover Muslim, or [illegal alien]') and argues he should be taken at his word: he is [one kind of leftist or another] and should thus be evaluated as part of the history of modern American [leftism]. The result is an analysis far more devastating than any label could be. Modern American [leftism] has always had a streak of political messianism, a Great Man view of the presidency, and impatience with a government slowed by the checks and balances created by the Founders. The history of modern [leftism] begins with Woodrow Wilson, the father of the movement to create a 'living Constitution' in place of the written one. He sought to end what he called 'blind worship' of the Constitution..."
2012-10-19
Anthony Watts
ball lightning
2012-10-19
Robert Moore _Cenantua_
"civilized" moon-shine -- over ice in a fancy glass -- is just wrong
2012-10-19
Brett French _Billings MT Gazette_
land-owners protest state plan to release bison by barring hunters from their land
"'If the hunters don't have anyplace to hunt, they won't buy high-dollar licenses, and maybe some hotshot for fish and game will take a look at that and say, Gol darn, our revenue went down. Maybe we should pay attention.'... about 15 land-owners in FWP's Region 6 who canceled their enrollment in Block Management cited FWP policies and bison as the reason for not renewing their contracts... Statewide, about 50 of 1,300 land-owners dropped their enrollment in Block Management... Eastern Montana land-owners have long been opposed to state and federal government actions, partly because the agencies hold control over huge swaths of public lands that border them, or are enclosed by their private lands, and which they lease for grazing... if the state wants to put bison near Missoula -- the state's [leftist] political stronghold -- Holt said she would support the move."
2012-10-19
_Knoxville TN News Sentinel_
control of Scripps Networks Interactive changes hands
"Bob Scripps [son of Robert Paine Scripps & Margaret Culbertson; grand-son of Edward W. Scripps; cousin of John P. Scripps who operated the west-coast papers] cultivated his love of farming at Miramar Ranch, and continued it at his ranch home in Texas where he raised peaches and plums. Scripps started in the family business during the depression when he 'ran calculators' at the Cincinnati head-quarters for the same $20 per week paid to other beginners. He returned to Miramar in the late 1930s, and in 1941 he was drafted as a private in the Army infantry. Within days of the attack on Pearl Harbor, he shipped out of San Francisco for Guadalcanal, eventually serving in the Georgia Islands, the Solomon Islands and the Philippines. He was on a troop ship bound for home when the first atomic bomb was dropped."
Scripps Howard owned the much-merged Cincinnati Post Times Star until it again merged with the Cincinnati Enquirer, which is now owned by Gannett...jgo
2012-10-19
Erik Schelzig _Knoxville TN News Sentinel_/_AP_
Nissan to hire 800 for Smyrna TN plant 3rd shift
"Meanwhile, German auto-maker Volkswagen AG announced in July it would boost production at its Chattanooga plant by 30K cars next year with the help of about 1K new workers added this year."
2012-10-19 (5773 Mar-Cheshvan 03)
R' Dovid Rosenfeld _Torah.org_
Pirkei Avos/Pirqi Abot: The Great Loan of Life chapter2 mishna14(a)
"One who begrudges his fellow's talents or accomplishments will never amount to anything himself. He will wallow in self-pity, wishing he were someone he is not. If we do not accept ourselves for whom we are, we will never achieve ourselves. We will pursue vain hopes, attempting to force ourselves into another's role, and we will fail to fulfill the first and most basic obligation of the Torah and of life: being ourselves."
2012-10-19 (5773 Mar-Cheshvan 03)
R' Pinchas Winston _Torah.org_
Meaningful Speech
"the aspect of man that reveals that he possesses a soul is his ability to speak. However, what reveals the extent to which his soul impacts his body is how he speaks"
ve chedshuth ani megid (וַחֲדָשׁוֹת אֲנִי מַגִּיד) and new things do I declare;
be trem tezmechenah ashemiaa atekem (בְּטֶרֶם תִּצְמַחְנָה אַשְׁמִיעַ אֶתְכֶם) before they spring forth I tell you of them (Isaiah/יְשַׁעְיָהוּ/ishaayahu 42:9)
2012-10-19 (5773 Mar-Cheshvan 03)
Caroline B. Glick _Jewish World Review_
How Obummer & colluders helped "advance" the Middle East
Proposed Bills 2012
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"In the recession year of 1993, when the national unemployment rate stood at 6.8%, unemployment of PhD scientists and engineers was gauged at a trifling 1.2%. However, the numbers are misleading. The actual unemployment rate for this group is considerably higher when the category 'involuntarily out of field' (IOF) is taken into consideration. The overall IOF rate persisted at 2.4% in 1993 and 1995, NSF reported, with a low of 3.3% in the life sciences and 6.3% in the physical sciences. The real employment picture is even dimmer if the growing practice of serial post-doctoral appointments is recognized as a form of under-emplyment and stock-piling of surplus labor. As job opportunities failed to keep up with PhD output, the post-doctoral system became a 'holding pattern' for otherwise unemployed young scientists." --- Daniel S. Greenberg 2001 _Science, Money, and Politics: Political Triumph and Ethical Erosion_ pg103
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2012-10-20
2012-10-20
Anthony Watts
radio-carbon re-calibration
2012-10-20
Julian Walker _Hampton Roads VA Pilot_
Judeo-Christians should not support leftist anti-Christian, anti-God, anti-Bible, anti-church Democrat party
Proposed Bills 2012
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"In 1782 the Virginia legislature passed a law permitting slave owners to free their slaves at their own discretion. by the end of the decade, there were over 12K freedmen in the state. At the same time, Thomas Jefferson was writing _Notes on the State of Virginia_, the only book he ever published, in which he sketched out a plan whereby all slaves born after 1800 would eventually become free. In 1784 Jefferson also proposed a bill in the federal Congress prohibiting slavery in all the western territories; it failed to pass by a single vote. One did not need to be a hopeless visionary to conjure up a mental picture of the American Revolution as a dramatic explosion that had destroyed the very foundation on which slavery resed and then radiated out its emancipatory energies with irresistible force: The slave trade was generally recognized as a criminal activity; slavery was dead or dying throughout the northern states; the expansion of the institution into the Wet looked uncertain; Virginia appeared to be the beachhead for an anti-slavery impulse destined to sweep through the South; the time seemed ripe to reconcile America's republican rhetoric with a new post-revolutionary reality." --- Joseph J. Ellis 2000 _Founding Brothers_ pg90
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2012-10-21
2012-10-21
E. Calvin Beisner
AAAS Science publisher calls for better communications, but not better science
2012-10-21
Roy Beck _Numbers USA_
What candidates said in "debates" about immigration
Proposed Bills 2012
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"Failure is only postponed success as long as courage 'coaches' ambition. The habit of persistence is the habit of victory." --- Herbert Kaufman
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2012-10-22
2012-10-22
Christopher Kochera & Christine Davidson _Youngstown OH Vindicator_
50th anniversary of Cuban/Soviet missile crisis
"Evidence mounted of an increasing Soviet military build-up in Cuba. A U.S. Air Force U-2 reconnaissance plane captured photographs Oct. 14 of Soviet missile bases under construction. The Kennedy administration quarantined the island, a move the Soviet Union denounced as an act of war."
2012-10-22
Zach Benoit _Billings MT Gazette_
dispatchers at risk for post-traumatic stress (and tech support pros)
2012-10-22
Roger Andrews
how GISS fabricates long-term Antarctic warming
2012-10-22
Victor David Hanson _PJ Media_
How many people believe government officials and bureaubums anymore?
2012-10-22
Michael Stratford _Chronicle of Higher Education_
voting systems still have problems
"Many states have voter-registration rolls that are larger than the actual population of eligible voters in the state, Mr. Stewart said."
2012-10-22
Bob Egelko _San Francisco CA Chronicle_
Mittens continues to back-pedal on immigration reform, go along with more immigration law perversion
2012-10-22
Michael Snyder _InfoWars_
Obummer & Mittens both favor system that kills American jobs
2012-10-22
bishop E.W. Jackson _STAND America_
interview with Daily Caller
Proposed Bills 2012
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"In 1992 October, between 3.2M and 3.8M [illegal] aliens were estimated to be in the country, with that number rising by about 250K each year. Only 30% of those in 1992 were calculated to be Mexican; half were 'over-stayers' -- people legally admitted (usually as tourists) from any country, who had failed to leave." --- Elliott Robert Barkan 1996 _And Still They Come: Immigrants and American Society 1920 to the 1990s_; quoted in Jon Gjerde 1998 "The Recent Era of Immigration to the United States [of America], 1965 to the Present" _Major Problems in American Immigration and Ethnic History_ pp 469-470
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2012-10-23 USA election 2 weeks (14 days) from today
2012-10-23
Robert X. Cringely _Beta News_
This is how IBM intimidates employees, cuts pay
2012-10-23
_UC Riverside_
earth's varying oxygen levels
2012-10-23
Dino Teppara _Lexington SC Patch_
why Obummer loves illegal aliens
2012-10-23
Bryan Preston _PJ Media_
White House, State Dept. were informed of pre-meditated 2012-09-11 terrorist attack on Benghazi consulate early on
2012-10-23
Mary Grabar _PJ Media_
Obummer's communist core curriculum set to roll out after election
2012-10-23
J. Christian Adams _PJMedia_
reporter asking questions after photo-meet in DoJ vote-rigging corps was threatened by Holder's body-guard (video)
2012-10-23 (5773 Mar-Cheshvan 07)
Thomas Sowell _Jewish World Review_
Libya and Obummer admin lies
Longview TX News-Journal
NH Union Leader
Dothan AL Eagle
St. Augustine FL
Proposed Bills 2012
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"One reason American could assimilate immigrants, as we have seen, is that there were regular pauses for digestion. Another reason is that the American political elite wanted the immigrants to assimilate. And it did not hesitate to ensure that they did. Over 200 years of US history, a number of tried and true, but undeniably tough, assimilation techniques had been perfected. But today, they have been substantially abandoned. The economic culture of the United States has changed significantly -- from classical liberalism to government-regulated welfare statism. Earlier immigrants were basically free to succeed or fail. And many failed: as we have seen, as many as 40% of the 1880-1920 immigrants went back home... Some public subsidies to immigrants are direct, like welfare. Others are indirect, such as the wholly new idea that immigrant children should be taught in their own language. This effectively transfers part of the cost of immigration from the immigrant to the American [tax-victim] -- and to the American school-child. Almost a century ago, the Great Wave of immigrants were met with the unflinching demand that they 'Americanize'. Now they are told that they should retain and reinforce their diversity." --- Peter Brimelow 1996 _Alien Nation_ pp 216-217 (233-234 in pdf)
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2012-10-24 USA election 13 days from today
2012-10-24
Lorna Thackeray _Billings MT Gazette_
2K year old bison bone site mired in controversy
"salted with hundreds of projectile points... Early estimates said 30K pounds of bone and 13K pounds of fire-cracked rock lay in the bone bed... One neutral archaeologist said he knew of 25 other Pelican Lake bone beds in Montana and Wyoming alone. 'Pelican Lake' refers to a type of corner-notched projectile point that looks like a Christmas tree that was common in the Northern Plains about 2K years ago... Analysis so far indicates that more than 2K bison were processed at the site. They could all have been killed at once or 100 or so at a time over a period of years... More than 1K Pelican Lake atlatl darts that were attached to a hunter's throwing stick were collected from the site, he said. No arrow-head points were found. Although skulls were noticeably absent, researchers hope to find enough mandibles to help determine what time of year the bison were killed. The season can be determined by tooth eruption in the younger animals, Fergus said."
2012-10-24
_Billings MT Gazette_/_AP_
USA may soon be world's top oil extractor
"average of 10.9M barrels per day... 13M to 15M barrels per day by 2020"
2012-10-24
Tom Lutey _Billings MT Gazette_
wheat prices rising, another $1G crop in sight
2012-10-24
Anthony Watts
NASA on record maximum... and minimum ice at poles
2012-10-24
Warren S. Warren
physics of climate
2012-10-24
Robert Spencer _PJ Media_
Bangladeshi attempted Fed bomber says he did it to make Muslims one step closer to running the whole world
"Faisal Shahzad [the student, OPT, H-1B guest-worker, green card grantee, naturalized US citizen], who tried to set off a car bomb in Times Square in 2010, said in a video at that time: 'Jihad, holy fighting in Allah's cause, with full force of numbers and weaponry, is given the utmost importance in Islam... By jihad, Islam is established... Islam will spread on the whole world. And the democracy will be defeated...' Abdulhakim Mujahid Muhammad, who murdered private William Long outside a military recruiting center in Little Rock, Arkansas, in 2009 June, explained: 'I've loved jihad every [sic] since I became Muslim... Step by step I became a religiously devout Muslim, Mujahid — meaning one who participates in jihad...'... [Charles C. Haynes] doesn't mention the efforts by the Hamas-linked Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) and the Muslim Brotherhood-linked Islamic Society of North America (ISNA) to stop Muslims from cooperating with law enforcement. Nor does he note the fact that not a single mosque in the entire United States has any kind of program to teach young Muslims and converts to Islam the errors of the al-Qaeda view of Islam, which they supposedly abhor and reject."
Clarion Project: Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR)
Investigative Project: CAIR-Hamas-Muslim Brotherhood links
Discover the Networks: Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR)
anti-CAIR
Discover the Networks: Islamic Society of North America (ISNA)
Clarion Project: Islamic Society of North America (ISNA)
Discover the Networks: Muslim Brotherhood (MB)
2012-10-24
Steve Goreham
climate vs. state temperature records
"The summer of 2012 is now over and all temperature data recorded. Guess how many states set new state high-temperature records in 2012? None! According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), not one of our 50 states set a new state high temperature record in 2012."
2012-10-24
Daniel Allott _American Spectator_
GATTACA proving prophetic after 15 years
2012-10-24
Stephen Kruiser _PJ Media_
Patrick Moran gives tips on how to commit voter fraud
J. Christian Adams: PJ Media: Moran relied on "civil rights" lawyers for part of voter fraud scheme
"Take note – Moran explicitly says the lawyers from Obama's Organizing for America, the communities, or the committees would be in the polls who will 'argue for' the phony utility bill to be counted."
2012-10-24
Barry Rubin _PJ Media_
reasons violent Muslims and Arabs generally consider USA their enemy
"In short, USA support for any [non-extreme, non-violent] regime makes [violent extremists] angry and will always do so... their goals...include throwing USA influence out of the region and overthrowing its allies -- no matter what Washington tries to do to please them. In the context of their ideology, they interpret USA concessions as signs of weakness which thus invite them to become even more militant and aggressive... As for Israel, giving that country less help would not change the radical view. Only if the United States had the same policy as Hamas, Hizballah, and the Muslim Brotherhood might it be forgiven."
Investigative Project: CAIR-Hamas-Muslim Brotherhood links
Discover the Networks: Muslim Brotherhood (MB)
2012-10-24
Jean MacKenzie _Global Post_
debate of candidates for president
2012-10-24
_Fox_/_Dow Jones_
earnings disappoint, execs announce more waves of lay-offs
2012-10-24
_Political Vel Craft_
11 reasons to get your kids out of the government schools
2012-10-24
Walt Gardner _Education Week_
the same old disingenuous STEM executive complaint
"Repeating something often enough does not make it true. But don't try telling that to corporate executives... the #1 reason for the mismatch: low pay... In a letter to the editor of The New York Times, Stuart Firestein, chairman of the department of biological sciences at Columbia University, said it best: «For Chinese and Indian students, science remains a way out of poverty. For American students, it's becoming the path into it.» («Giving Up on Math and Science Careers» 2011 Nov. 7). That's precisely why U.S. colleges and universities, which are turning out as many STEM degree holders as ever, find their graduates taking jobs in finance and consulting. Who can blame them? Why devote 4 years or more to a grinding course of study to take a job in a field that pays so poorly [over a life-time]? In «Steady as She Goes? Three Generations of Students Through the Science and Engineering Pipeline�GB;, Hal Salzman and Lindsay Lowell conclude that there is a surplus of talent. «Highly qualified students may be choosing a non-STEM job because it pays better, offers a more stable professional career, and/or is perceived as less exposed to competition from low-wage economies.»"
2012-10-24: "Today is United Nations Day. May it be the last." --- David Horowitz
2012-10-24 (5773 Mar-Cheshvan 08)
John Stossel _Jewish World Review_
greed
"When markets are free (alas, ours is not; in America today, too often people «partner» with politicians and get rich through government), those who charge too much, or skimp on quality or service, lose money to competitors who serve people better. What could be more humane? Nothing has done more than markets to lift people out of the mud and misery of primitive life."
2012-10-24 (5773 Mar-Cheshvan 08)
Paul Johnson _Jewish World Review_
the world's most unlovable man
2012-10-24 (5773 Mar-Cheshvan 08)
Robert Robb _Jewish World Review_
Obummer and Mittens both weak on foreign policy
2012-10-24 (5773 Mar-Cheshvan 08)
Laura Ingraham _Jewish World Review_
pres Obummer tries to make his apology tour disappear
2012-10-24 (5773 Mar-Cheshvan 08)
Walter E. Williams _Jewish World Review_
what you can't say
DelMarVa
Biloxi MS Sun Herald
"there are certain topics or arguments that one should not bring up in the presence of children or those with little understanding. Both might see that explaining a phenomenon is the same as giving it moral sanction or justification."
Proposed Bills 2012
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"It is monstrous that courts should aid or abet the law-breaking police officer. It is abiding truth that '[n]othing can destroy a government more quickly than its own failure to observe its own laws or worse, its disregard of the charter of its own existence.'" --- justice Brennan quoting Mapp v. Ohio, 367 US 643, 659 (1961) in Harris v. New York, 401 US 222, 232. (1971)
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2012-10-25 USA election 12 days from today
2012-10-25 05:30PDT (08:30EDT) (12:30GMT) (14:30 Jerusalem)
Scott Gibbons & Tony Sznoluch _DoL ETA_
un-employment insurance weekly claims report
DoL home page
DoL OPA press releases
historical data
DoL regulations
"The advance number of actual initial claims under state programs, unadjusted, totaled 342,702 in the week ending October 20, a decrease of 20,032 from the previous week. There were 377,156 initial claims in the comparable week in 2011.
The advance unadjusted insured unemployment rate was 2.2% during the week ending October 13, an increase of 0.1 percentage point from the prior week's unrevised rate. The advance unadjusted number for persons claiming UI benefits in state programs totaled 2,811,504, an increase of 63,421 from the preceding week. A year earlier, the rate was 2.5% and the volume was 3,196,554.
The total number of people claiming benefits in all programs for the week ending October 6 was 4,917,460, a decrease of 84,525 from the previous week. There were 6,679,024 persons claiming benefits in all programs in the comparable week in 2011.
Extended Benefits were only available in New York during the week ending October 6...
States reported 2,052,957 persons claiming EUC (Emergency Unemployment Compensation) benefits for the week ending October 6, a decrease of 45,836 from the prior week. There were 2,921,937 persons claiming EUC in the comparable week in 2011. EUC weekly claims include first, second, third, and fourth tier activity.
[Note that the population used for calculating the "insured unemployment rate" (the divisor) changes roughly quarterly:
to 132,623,886 beginning 2007-10-06;
to 133,010,953 beginning 2008-01-05;
to 133,382,559 beginning 2008-04-05;
to 133,690,617 beginning 2008-07-05;
to 133,902,387 beginning 2008-10-04;
to 133,886,830 beginning 2009-01-03;
to 133,683,433 beginning 2009-04-04;
to 133,078,480 beginning 2009-07-04;
to 133,823,421 beginning 2009-10-03;
to 131,823,421 beginning 2009-10-17;
to 130,128,328 beginning 2010-01-02;
to 128,298,468 beginning 2010-04-03;
to 126,763,245 beginning 2010-07-03;
to 125,845,577 beginning 2010-09-25;
to 125,560,066 beginning 2011-01-15;
to 125,572,661 beginning 2011-04-02;
to 125,807,389 beginning 2011-07-02;
to 126,188,733 beginning 2011-10-01;
to 126,579,970 beginning 2012-01-01;
to 127,048,587 beginning 2012-04-07;
to 127,495,952 beginning 2012-07-14;
to 128,066,082 beginning 2012-10-06.]
EUC (Excel)
EB
graphs
more graphs
2012-10-25
Robert X. Cringely _Beta News_
H-1B visa abuse limits compensation and steals US jobs
I, Cringely
Slash Dot discussion
2012-10-25
Anthony Watts
wind-electric: costs 140% or more as much as was predicted
2012-10-25
Mike McNally _PJ Media_
how the Obummer campaign is receiving illegal donations from foreign citizens and operatives
2012-10-25
Roger Cohen
physics of climate
2012-10-25
Josh Flory _Knoxville TN News Sentinel_
EOD Tech merged with Sterling International
"Kaye said Wednesday that the combined companies form 'the world's preeminent conventional munitions disposal organization'."
2012-10-25
Bridget Johnson _PJ Media_
pentagon waits until after election to announce cuts in veterans' benefits
2012-10-25
Jim Kouri _Examiner_
Obummer admin diverting funds from border security to unilateral amnesty for illegal aliens
2012-10-25
John Sexton _Breitbart_
Immigration reform missing from Obummer's glossy campaign booklets
2012-10-25
Matt Wilson _San Jose CA Mercury News_
former engineer praised for boosting science fairs
"a difficult time in the mid-1990s trying to fill an engineering position. He had to wait more than 6 months to hire a foreign student with an H-1B work visa. He recalls not understanding why there were so few American engineers available at the time."
OK, we can infer from his membership in ASM that Bruce Kawanami was a "materials" engineer, working with semiconductor fabs. He's saying that, in the mid-1990s, over a decade after many of the fabs packed up and left the USA, he had "a difficult time" recruiting someone for some unspecified kind of engineering work.
Neither the reporter nor Bruce Kawanami defined what was "difficult" about recruiting. It's just an unfounded assertion we're supposed to accept on faith.
Begining in the 1980s, many of the jobs followed the fabs. People left behind had less way to sustain employment in that field, so they re-tooled for other kinds of work. Students, seeing the jobs dry up, studied other material, trying to follow the shifting winds of "hot skills" in search of a viable career and prosperity. What's so surprising about that?
The article doesn't say what he tried to do to recruit.
What was his budget to fly in talent from across the USA for interviews?
What was his budget for relocation?
Was he willing to relocate talent from Sopchoppy or Bangor or was he insisting on "local" talent?
What was his budget for new-hire training?
Was his compensation budget competitive?
In what publications were the job ads placed?
Were they classifieds or display ads?
For how many days and weeks were the ads run?
In the mid-1990s, there were still a very few job ads in ComputerWorld, Design News and various engineering publications, and beginning about 1990 they were starting to appear on usenet and then Monster. The local rag published a weekly employment supplement which was scrawny compared to what the ads in ComputerWorld had been like in the late 1970s and early 1980s. The vast majority of the ads on-line were posted by bodyshops, not real jobs at all. And the "recruiters" were clueless (didn't know the fields for which they were recruiting, didn't understand the key-words they were given, didn't understand which of them were synonyms and which were totally different, didn't know the difference between Control Data Corp.'s Kronos operating system and Kronos Inc.'s worker time-keeping systems), doing mindless string-matching, instead, rejecting many capable candidates, pursuing totally inappropriate candidates, then developing an ever-lengthening gauntlet of trivial pursuit rote memorization quizzes conducted over the phone... a total waste of resources.
What caused him to retire when he had so many useful years ahead of him, what with increasing life expectancies and productive years at that?
Was he given early retirement?
Was he laid off in one of the many rounds of down-sizings, RIFs, right-sizings, etc., from about 1985?
Or was it a combination?
The reporter failed to do his job, failed to ask, and failed to inform the readers.
The USA has close to 2 million STEM workers with STEM degrees not employed to do STEM work. Many are in survival jobs. Others have been unemployed for long stretches. Several academic studies over the last decade have shown that only about a third of US STEM workers with fresh new degrees land STEM jobs. As years pass after graduation, the percentage of STEM capable workers in STEM employment continues to fall. Unemployment rates in STEM fields are running 2-3 times the full employment levels we were seeing before H-1B.
According to US Dept. of Education, National Center for Education Statistics, from academic year 1969-1970 through AY2009-2010, over 9M STEM degrees (bachelor's, master's, doctor's) have been earned by US citizens. Counting those with other majors but STEM minors, and auto-didacts, based on NSF factors, we've produced nearly 12M capable US citizen STEM workers since 1970. (Some of the best software engineers and sys admins I've known -- at NASA and the Dept. of Energy and Control Data -- had degrees in things like music, classical Greek and Latin literature, psychology, or no degrees at all... though Greg Mansfield and Dave Cahlander both had PhDs and had studied at MIT and/or Purdue.)
If you're not finding STEM talent in the USA, then you're not seriously trying.
jgo
---30---
2012-10-25
Daniel Wetzel _Die Welt_/_Global Warming Policy Foundation_
lies, damn lies, and green statistics
2012-10-25
Victoria Macchi _Naples FL News_
citrus farmer charged with employing illegal aliens, attempt to buy whistle-blower's silence
Proposed Bills 2012
| |
"Decency, security, and liberty alike demand that governmental officials shall be subjected to the same rules of conduct that are commands to the citizen. In a government of laws, existence of the government will be imperiled if it fails to observe the law scrupulously." --- Meacham v. Fano, 427 U.S. 215 (1976)
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2012-10-26 USA election 11 days from today
2012-10-26
Becket Adams _Blaze_
new jobs since 2009 almost all part-time
"what about the 25-54 demographic? Well, that age demographic actually has lost 729K jobs since 2009."
2012-10-26
Larry Rulison _Albany NY Times Union_
state gov't refuses to track numbers of foreign direct and indirect employees: How many of them have expired visas?
"The Office of General Services, which runs the state procurement system, says that state contractors are required to certify that all of their workers on state projects are here legally."
2012-10-26
_WWNYTV_
illegal alien sentenced to prison for green card trafficking
"He also pleaded guilty to assaulting and injuring a Homeland Security agent during his arrest. Federal officials say Velazquez-Jacobo will be deported to Mexico after he serves his sentence."
2012-10-26
Kimberly Reynolds _MTV_
"We're not illegal" says illegal alien
2012-10-26
Elizabeth Dexheimer _Business Week_
UMich consumer sentiment index from 78.3 in September to 83.1 in early October to 82.6 in late October
Elizabeth Dexheimer: Bloomberg
Bergen NJ Record
St. Louis Fed
2012-10-26
_Inquisitr_
Constitution party candidate Virgil Goode
Proposed Bills 2012
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"Just as the democratic statesman who sets out to plan economic life will soon be confronted with the alternative of either assuming dictatorial powers or abandoning his plans, so the totalitarian dictator would soon have to choose between disregard of ordinary morals and failure. It is for this reason that the unscrupulous and uninhibited are likely to be more successful in a society tending toward totalitarianism. Who does not see this has not yet grasped the full width of the gulf which separates totalitarianism from a liberal regime, the utter difference between the whole moral atmosphere under collectivism and the essentally individualist Western civilization." --- Friedrich A. Hayek 1944, 1963 _The Road to Serfdom_ pg135
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2012-10-27 USA election 10 days from today
2012-10-27
Robert Moore _Cenantua_
not ready for prime-time Revolutionary War history... here in the valley?
"...Winchester area... Washington's office... Daniel Morgan, lord Fairfax... Morgan's home, 'Saratoga'... Richard Kidder Meade and [governor] Edmund Jennings Randolph... captain Thomas Taylor Byrd... Mary Armistead... Francis Otway Byrd... (land which had been given by 'King' Carter to his grand-daughter... Thomas' mother...Elizabeth Hill Carter Byrd), in Frederick (now Clarke) County. Less than a year later, he married Mary A. Armistead..."
2012-10-27
Lorna Thackeray _Billings MT Gazette_
family to auction historic heirlooms to expand ranch
"Granville Stuart came to the territory in 1858. sHe mined gold, went into the retail business and became a rancher before serving as U.S. ambassador to Uruguay and Paraguay."
2012-10-27
Alec Rawls
climate hysterics/eco-fascists teaching children to hate their parents?
2012-10-27
Peter A. Vance _Albany NY Times Union_
H-1B visa program is full of injustices against US workers
"As a retired manager in the software field, I have long opposed this program. I do this not due to the alleged injustices perpetrated by employers on the H-1B recipients, but due to the injustices perpetrated on our native work force. Companies cut training budgets for their workers and then lay them off when switching technologies. The companies then advertise for mixes of skills and experience that are rare if not incompatible and then get permission to employ H-1Bs who are 'qualified' only on paper. The companies employ these people at lower salaries than the rate paid the laid-off workers and provide no benefits. Meanwhile, I know programmers who have become carpenters and college computer science graduates who sell cars. The managers who advocate these tactics are more concerned about decreasing costs [pocketing the profits] and moving on than the quality of the product or the effect they have on their colleagues. That the government allows this sham, decried by many workers and hands-on managers [is bad]."
2012-10-27
Erica Ritz _Blaze_
Obummer supporters slam policies of... Obummer
Proposed Bills 2012
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"There are 3 main reasons why such a numerous and strong group with fairly homogeneous views is not likely to be formed by the best but rather by the worst elements of any society. By our standards the principles on which such a group would be selected will be almost entirely negative." --- Friedrich A. Hayek 1944, 1963 _The Road to Serfdom_ pg138
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2012-10-28 USA election 9 days from today
2012-10-28
Jan Falstad _Billings MT Gazette_
oil extraction and economic growth changing tiny Bainville
2012-10-28
Anthony Watts
climate paper from Briffa & Melvin at UEA
Proposed Bills 2012
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"Real learning requires a voluntary commitment as well as 'strong interaction between teacher & student, something that has long disappeared from the modern university'." --- George Roche 1994 February _The Fall of the Ivory Tower_ pg 225 (quoting George H. Douglas 1992 _Education Without Impact: How Our Universities Fail the Young_ pg 125)
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2012-10-29 USA election 8 days from today
2012-10-29
_Knoxville TN News Sentinel_
ORNL activates new 20 peta-FlOPS super-computer
2012-10-29
Mark Sherman _Knoxville TN News Sentinel_
supremes hear case about re-sale of copyrighted works
Chronicle of Higher Education
"Kirtsaeng re-sold copyrighted books that relatives first bought abroad [at lower than US prices]."
2012-10-29
G.W. Schulz _KGO San Francisco CA_
FBI has deployed devices to track any/all mobile devices in a wide area, contrary to constitutional requirement for warrants to be specific to individuals and places
"IMSI catchers could be built at home for as little as $1,500"
Proposed Bills 2012
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"The perpetuity by generation is common to beasts; but memory, merit, & noble works are proper to men. And surely a man shall see the noblest works & foundations have proceeded from childless men, which have sought to express the images of their minds, where those of their bodies have failed. So the care of posterity is most in them that have no posterity." --- Francis Bacon circa 1600 (quoted in Virginia Postrel 2000 October "Politicizing Parenthood" _Reason_ pg 18)
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2012-10-30 USA election one week (7 days) from today
2012-10-30
Anthony Watts
increased supply of natural gas from shale has increased exports of coal
2012-10-30
Robert Moore _Cenantua_
The Burwells of "Glenvin" (not "Carter Hall"), and one of the real "Undefeated"
2012-10-30
Dan Jones _Light Reading_
slowest and fastest wireless service cities
2012-10-30
A.W.R. Hawkins _Breitbart_
Obummer blew it when Benghazi consulate was attacked on 2012-09-11, continues to prevaricate
2012-10-30
_Fox_/_AP_
Mexican citizen pled guilty to killing US Border Patrol agent in incursion into USA
2012-10-30
Michael Ledeen _PJMedia_
What did Obummer know about Benghazi... and when
2012-10-30
Victor Davis Hanson _PJ Media_
why leftists feeeel what they do
2012-10-30
Tom Blumer _PJ Media_
Obummer economy still not recovered
I was examining a sampling of state, county and metropolitan area unemplyment rates. At first blush there seemed to be some improvement -- say half of a percentage point in some cases -- but when I put them in a graph of historical statistics, I realized that with several months of such improvement, we just might reach conditions as good as... the worst depths of the worst of the previous 3 recessions.
graphs
2012-10-30
Jeff Lukens
president Obummer still lying about Benghazi
2012-10-30
Andrew B. Wilson _American Spectator_
Winston Churchill vs. Obummer
2012-10-30
Michael O. Church
What programmers want
2012-10-30
Mark J. Perry _AEI_
Robert Reich favors market pricing for his lectures, but not for prices he pays
2012-10-30
Cindy Chang _Los Angeles CA Times_
Taiwan joins "visa waiver" scheme
Somerset county PA Daily American
"Starting Thursday, Taiwanese citizens will no longer need a visa to visit the U.S.A... Taiwan will join countries such as France and Germany in a visa waiver program that the [corrupt] U.S. government reserves for nationalities that it deems pose little security threat and that are not major sources of illegal immigration... Taiwanese travelers will no longer have to wait in line at the U.S. Consulate in Taipei or pay a $164 fee and convince an interviewer that they will return home... Citizens of the 37 visa waiver countries, which include Japan and South Korea, can stay in the U.S.A. for 90 days after filling out an online travel authorization form and paying a nominal fee."
2012-10-30 (5773 Mar-Cheshvan 14)
Thomas Sowell _Jewish World Review_
"cooling out" the voters on Obummer failure in Benghazi
Redding CA
Union Leader
Omaha NB World-Herald
Citizen
Longview TX News-Journal
Proposed Bills 2012
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"Likewise, efforts to understand infinitely large quantities, which the Greeks had studiously avoided, infinitely small ones, which the Greeks had skillfully circumvented, negative numbers, & complex numbers floundered because mathematicians failed to appreciate that these concepts were not grounded in immediate experience, but creations of the mind. IOW, mathematicians were contributing concepts rather than abstracting ideas from the real world. For the genesis of their ideas they were turning from the sensory to the intellectual faculties." --- Morris Kline 1980 _Mathematics: The Loss of Certainty_ pg 167
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2012-10-31 USA election in 6 days
2012-10-31
Monica Yant Kinney _Philadelphia PA Inquirer_
did gambling woes prompt 2 murders?
"Rashivar Karnati didn't know. He shared an apartment in San Jose, CA, with Raghunandan Yandamuri in 2011, but could recall only one time his room-mate visited a casino in Reno. Chendu Tummala had met Yandamuri years earlier in under-graduate school in India. Long after both men moved to the United States, they still hewed to Indian traditions and would never have discussed Yandamuri's gambling problem. 'Asking financial information is not a good thing.', Tummala told me. 'We didn't even know he had filed for bankruptcy.' Now, Yandamuri's financial woes are being cited as motive for a kidnapping and double homicide that may go down as among the most depraved gambling-related crimes of modern times. The 26-year-old software engineer is charged with stabbing 61-year-old Satyavathi Venna, and then gagging her 10-month-old grand-daughter, Saanvi, and stuffing her into a suit-case that he dumped in a sauna while he awaited a $50K ransom payment. The infant's parents and Yandamuri were neighbors at the Marquis, a King of Prussia apartment complex populated by [cheap, young, pliant foreign labor with flexible ethics] on H-1B visas."
2012-10-31
Catherine Herridge _Fox_
August 16 classified cable warned that Benghazi consulate could not withstand a co-ordinated attack
"'approximately 10 Islamist militias and AQ [al-Qaeda] training camps within Benghazi... these groups ran the spectrum from Islamist militias, such as the QRF Brigade and Ansar al-Sharia, to 'Takfirist thugs'"
2012-10-31
Robert Spencer _PJ Media_
killing free speech
2012-10-31
Bob Owens _PJ Media_
about 32 at USA consulate at Benghazi were abandoned by Obummer regime
2012-10-31
Matt Purple _American Spectator_
Tea parties remain vigorous
2012-10-31
Gary Harmon _Grand Junction CO Daily Sentinel_
over-seas ballots could be key
2012-10-31
_Medical Express_/_NeuroScience_
math anxiety triggers pain
Liz Klimas: Blaze
PLOS One
2012-10-31
Norm Matloff _H-1B/ L-1/ Off-Shoring News-Letter_
NY state government
Here's an article I've been meaning to discuss: 2012-10-15: Over-seas workers for state contracts: Albany NY Times-Union.
The issue of government agencies employing H-1Bs, L-1s, etc., and the related issue of off-shoring, come up before. Bills have been introduced in state legislatures to ban the practice; see my articles 2004-02-03: proposed legislation by Jeff Drozda in Indiana, and 2004-06-28: Dept. of Commerce.
But they have been weak to begin with, then watered down, then finally failing to win passage anyway.
It's interesting that the New York state government, in fact a putatively pro-labor Democratic administration, is so defiant in the above article. And they apparently are also saying that giving priority to U.S. citizens and permanent residents over foreign workers violates discrimination laws, an argument that the old Sun Microsystems used to make too.
The H-1B employer quoted in the article makes a rather incriminating comment, in my view:
Bhatia says there is a "misconception" that companies that use workers from places like India do so to save money. But using H-1B workers, he says, is the only way that companies like his that provide programmers and software engineers can fill slots because most U.S. graduates with computer programming degrees would rather work at more exciting jobs. He says he rarely gets a response from job ads in local newspapers and instead gets almost all his candidates from job web-sites such as Dice.com that are popular around the world.
If Bhatia's jobs are indeed "unexciting", there is a classical answer: Pay them more! He's apparently paying most of his H-1Bs only $60K. My point is that he is admitting H-1B is indeed used as a source of cheap labor, including by him, quite contrary to his claim of a "misconception".
Norm
---30---
2012-10-31 (5773 Mar-Cheshvan 15)
Michelle Malkin _Jewish World Review_
Obummer's lay-off bomb
2012-10-31 (5773 Mar-Cheshvan 15)
Felice Cohen _Jewish World Review_
Sandy's up-side
2012-10-31 (5773 Mar-Cheshvan 15)
John Stossel _Jewish World Review_
Mittens is only half there
"Mitt Romney tells people he won't fire federal workers or cut education spending. He says he'll spend more on the military. He sounds like a big-government guy. Or is he just pandering for votes? Ann Coulter came on my TV show to defend Romney. 'What you call pandering is called getting elected.', Coulter said. Romney says he'll repeal Obamacare. Great! But he wants to keep popular parts: coverage for pre-existing conditions and keeping grown kids on their parents' policies until age 26. Those mandates are popular. But that's not insurance. That's welfare."
2012-10-31 (5773 Mar-Cheshvan 15)
Walter E. Williams _Jewish World Review_
black and white standards
"The Current Employment Statistics program shows that in 2008, the total number of U.S. jobs was more than 138M, compared with 133.5M today. As Stanford University economics professor Edward Lazear summed it up, 'there hasn't been one day during the entire Obama presidency when as many Americans were working as on the day president Bush left office'... Emanuel Cleaver, D-MO, who is chairman of the Congressional Black Caucus, said, 'If Bill Clinton had been in the White House and had failed to address this problem, we probably would be marching on the White House.'"
Proposed Bills 2012
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"the Home Office is presenting the corpses of long reviled & failed legislation as a new anti-terror initiative." --- Nick Cohen 2001-12-02 "Without Prejudice" _The Observer_ pg 31
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