Emma Watson says she doesn’t like the term single and prefers “self partnering.” this sounds empowering to me–how does it strike you? Let me know for a possible [newspaper] article?
We had a lot of high-income women in our camp. All recognized that they could be targeted and potentially become the loser under California’s winner-take-all system. A medical professional said “There is no way that I’m going to pay to support a guy. It was bad enough the last time that I lived with a boyfriend and I had to pick up his socks all the time and do his laundry. Thank God I didn’t have to support him financially.” A finance executive said “I worked my ass off for 17 years for what I have. I am not going to risk losing it.”
I’m not sure why at least some Americans who identify as women think that “self-partnered” is more “empowered” than simply “single,” but I wonder if a person with a lot of cats could be considered “cat-partnered”.
Not long ago, this rolling green stretch of Northern Virginia was farmland. Most people who could vote had grown up here. And when they did, they usually chose Republicans.
The fields of Loudoun County are disappearing. In their place is row upon row of cookie-cutter townhouses, clipped lawns and cul-de-sacs — a suburban landscape for as far as the eye can see. Unlike three decades ago, the residents are often from other places, like India and Korea. And when they vote, it is often for Democrats.
In 1990, the census tracts that make up Mr. Katkuri’s Senate district were home to about 35,000 people — 91 percent of them white. Today, its population of 225,000 is just 64 percent white.
“If my parents came back today, they wouldn’t recognize the place. The changes came like a tidal wave.”
In the 13th Senate district, where Mr. Katkuri lives, one in five residents are immigrants.
Around the advent of the modern immigration system, in 1965, foreign-born people made up only about five percent of the American population. Now they are nearly 14 percent, almost as high as the last peak in the early 20th century. The concentrations used to be in larger gateway cities, but immigrants have spread out considerably since then.
The main purpose of funding a military is to prevent people from other countries from exercising political control, right? If the NYT is correct and people from other countries (“immigrants”) are exercising political control in the U.S. already, what is the point of working all of those extra hours each year to fund our $700 billion military?
“The Architect of Modern Algorithms” (Quanta) is a recently popular link among some computer nerds on Facebook (all of the sharers, when I last checked, identified as older white males):
Barbara Liskov pioneered the modern approach to writing code.
But by the late 1960s, advances in computing power had outpaced the abilities of programmers. Many computer scientists created programs without thought for design. They wrote long, incoherent algorithms riddled with “goto” statements — instructions for the machine to leap to a new part of the program if a certain condition is satisfied. Early coders relied on these statements to fix unforeseen consequences of their code, but they made programs hard to read, unpredictable and even dangerous.
When she was still a young professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, she led the team that created the first programming language that did not rely on goto statements. The language, CLU (short for “cluster”), relied on an approach she invented — data abstraction — that organized code into modules. Every important programming language used today, including Java, C++ and C#, is a descendant of CLU.
Note that in the discredited male-authored history of computer nerdism, the modern programming language dates back at least to ALGOL 60, developed when Professor Liskov was 21 years old. The public war on goto was waged not by Liskov, but by the developers of ALGOL and Edsger W. Dijkstra, a Dutch curmudgeon, who wrote “Go To Statement Considered Harmful” in 1968, pointing out that “the remark about the undesirability of the go to statement is far from new” and describes some of the history since at least 1959 (criticism by by Heinz Zemanek). Note that Dijkstra is also known for saying “The use of COBOL cripples the mind; its teaching should, therefore, be regarded as a criminal offense.” Liskov, for her part, was known at MIT primarily for developing and teaching the standard software engineering class, 6.170, in which the CLU language was used by students. She was a usually modest and always hard-working person who believed that properly engineered software could function perfectly: “If you find a bug in your code, you should be as embarrassed as if you found a cockroach in your kitchen,” she memorably noted (we had a lot of cockroaches in our East Campus dorm and they were regularly visible during visits to restaurants in Central Square at the time!).
[The article also notes that Liskov is concerned about the impact of the Internet:
I’m worried about the divorced couple in which the husband publishes slander about the wife, including information about where she lives. There is terrible stuff going on.
Yet if one of these two sued the other, the most common precursor to their divorced status, the lawsuit, and anything said by a party during it, as well as the mailing address where the plaintiff wants the checks sent, was already public information, available to anyone who wanted to go down to the courthouse, decades before women developed microprocessors and TCP/IP. (see this study on Massachusetts court records, though records of litigation following out-of-wedlock sex are sealed) Reporters were covering divorce litigation in newspaper stories prior to the computer age, e.g., a November 11, 1939 piece in the NYT describing an allegation of “cruelty”, and one from December 2, 1934, “a charge of extreme cruelty won a divorce here today for Mrs. Edith Crocker Sanger from Prentice Sanger of New York City.” Divorce was apparently a good business even in the Depression. From September 24, 1931: “More than $1,000,000 was handed to Mrs. Eunice Essig Brach of Winnetka today with a divorce from her husband, Frank V. Brach, president of a candy company.” Certainly someone launching a divorce lawsuit and obtaining a profitable judgment in 2019 gets a lot less publicity than he or she would have prior to the Internet.]
Readers: What will the next edition in the “female roots of all computer science” saga be? What other fundamental technologies can be plausibly attributed to a person who identified as a “woman”? My vote: find a woman to replace William Shockley as developer of the semiconductor transistor and Silicon Valley. How can it be done? Here’s a National Public Radio story that credits Hedy Lamarr with having invented frequency hopping. Wikipedia contradicts this story to some extent and the actual patent to Ms. Lamarr and George Anthell reveals that they narrowly claimed a specific piano roll-style mechanism for controlling frequency hopping, not the broad invention of frequency hopping. So we need to find an early patent on a specific application of semiconductor transistors in which one of the inventors has a female-sounding name. Then we can discover the female roots of the modern transistor and rely on the fact that reporters won’t read the patent claims to see that they narrowly cover an application of transistors, not the transistor itself.
Also, will this article on Barbara Liskov and the promotion of the article by “allies” have the desired effect of getting more people who identify as “women” into computer nerdism? The article reveals that Barbara Liskov, despite having invented essentially all of practical programming technology, was not popularly recognized until she reached the age of 80. Moreover, she describes having to struggle as a result of her identification as a “woman” (see also a 2008 interview, in which she notes that “there were a large percentage of women” at her first programming job at MITRE in the early 1960s, at which she learned FORTRAN (several years after inventing ALGOL?) and then got a PhD working with John McCarthy, credited for now at least with the development of Lisp, and then met Dijkstra in 1969 (giving him the idea to write his 1968 screed against goto?)). Compare to Britney Spears, a top-of-the-charts success at age 17 who has never described being a cisgender female as a career handicap in her industry. Why wouldn’t a cisgender female aware of both Liskov and Spears conclude that computer science should be a last resort?
“Are women the new children?”: A well-meaning, correct-thinking, Hillary-voting computer nerd friend in Boston described Jean Sammet, part of a six-programmer team on a committee designing COBOL, with “In the field of computer science she was a giant.” Twenty years ago, the same guy would have used “COBOL” as a synonym for computer-assisted mediocrity and incompetence.
Real World Divorce, listing the states in which a woman can obtain the spending power of a computer scientist without doing any typing
post on a NYT article titled “The Secret History of Women in Coding”: describes a golden age of female nerddom from the 1950s through the mid-80s. Employers would recruit, train, and pay people who identified as women to write software in IBM 704 assembly language. They would even do this for applicants who identified as part of two victim groups (a “young black woman” is cited).
Katherine Clerk Maxwell, the female scientist whose equations of electromagnetism (her white male husband was improperly credited) enabled our modern age
The Art of Computer Programming, a 1968 book by Donald Knuth on algorithms (but not the “modern algorithms” invented by Barbara Liskov, according to the title of the Quanta article)
a 2008 interview, in which Professor Liskov says that development of the CLU language was actually a collaboration with Russ Atkinson, Alan Snyder, and Craig Schaffert. (the interview also reveals that Liskov has just one child, less half of the average American completed fertility rate for Liskov’s generation)
USB-C charger made compact thanks to GaN. (or for the car, since the car companies seem to be years behind on USB-C; or a power strip). Everything will charge much faster!
What happens when Disney expands into China? How do the master storytellers of Hollywood tap into 5,000 years of history, art, language, and culture? Answer: you get U.S. Disneyland with a Chinese restaurant and without any obese people on mobility scooters.
A Metro ride will get you in smooth modern comfort from anywhere in the city to Shanghai Disneyland for between 50 cents and $1. There will be a clean restroom in every station through which you travel and the trains run every 2-5 minutes. From the center of Shanghai it is roughly 45 minutes on the Metro to Disney.
Bring your passport. Disneyland has not been briefed on the merits of hosting a large population of the undocumented. Tickets can be purchased in advance or at a ticket booth on site (no line at 10:00 am on a Monday, one hour after opening) at a cost of roughly 50 percent of what you would pay in Florida or California. Lines for rides can be 30-45 minutes so it makes sense to pay roughly double (still no more than the U.S. price) for a “Premier Access” add-on that gives you an anytime fast pass for each big ride.
You can do all of the big rides in one day, but it would probably take two days to explore all of the corners of the and wait in line for the smaller rides for which fast passes are not available (you can pay about $1,000 for the super VIP guide, though, and maybe skip those lines too?). As a strategy, consider saving the Crystal Grotto ride for after dark. It has beautifully lit scenes that might not seem magical during the daytime.
Most of the rides are tame so it is easy to get inured to the dire warnings cautioning the pregnant, the drunk, etc. The TRON roller coaster (ride through), on the other hand, makes you wonder “Why is this legal?” There is a “recovery area” for after the ride.
There is a fun ropes course:
Alice in Wonderland gets a maze (how long before everything related to Lewis Carroll has to be ripped out of U.S. parks?):
I did try the Chinese restaurant for lunch, noting on Facebook “The same boring noodles with crab sauce as at US Disney parks.”
Prices are fairly reasonable, but the most sensible strategy is to have lunch in the adjacent “town” that has a bunch of ordinary restaurants, including a Cheesecake Factory(!), selling Shanghai mall-style food at Shanghai mall-style prices (e.g., about $5 for a bowl of noodles with dumplings or whatever; divide the 35 price below by 7 and remember that it includes tax and service/tip). It is about a 5-minute walk from the park to these restaurants and getting back in is easy with your ticket.
Disney did bring the best of American cuisine to the captive Chinese audience e.g., turkey legs and corn dogs. A water bottle inside the park is about $1.50, but most Chinese bring their own bottles and refill as necessary.
Skip Remy’s Patisserie. Maybe a rat can cook, but he can’t bake.
If you need a souvenir, the castle contains a gift shop with a $260,000 glass replica of the castle..
The parade (video I made for the kids) is off the charts with between 5 and 20 dancers milling around each float and one float per movie. People begin occupying prime spots 30 minutes before it starts, though the Premier Access top level pass should give you a dedicated viewing area. It is helpful to be at least 6′ tall if you’re not going to arrive well before.
Going back to a downtown hotel is as easy as strolling to the Metro station:
Overall: a much better experience than in the U.S. Disney park due to the reduced crowding, a fun activity for an off-peak weekday if you’re in Shanghai, not too much Chinese-specific design.
[Erin] O’Callaghan has accused Schewe, an associate professor of criminology whose research specialty is sexual-assault prevention, of assaulting her in November 2017.
Schewe has vigorously denied that claim, and Title IX investigators exonerated him after concluding that O’Callaghan’s most serious accusation — that Schewe undressed her and started to perform oral sex on her when she was too drunk to consent — could not be substantiated.
Schewe, who is in his early 50s and has worked in the field for more than a quarter-century, regards the implications of the movement differently now that he stands accused.
“I celebrated #MeToo. I thought, ‘Yes! Victims are finally being believed and men are being called out for their shitty behavior. This is fantastic,’” he said in an interview last week with The Chronicle. But the side effect of that, he said, “is that people are now guilty by accusation.”
(“guilty by association” with the drunk woman’s naked body?)
Working from a base of decades of scholarly inquiry, #BelieveWomen turns out to have some subtle exceptions:
He told Title IX investigators that he has devoted his life “to preventing violence against women” and is inclined ”to believe survivors” — even as he dismissed O’Callaghan’s accusations as “something she largely created in her own mind.”
But in his interview with The Chronicle, Schewe said: “If she would have told me that a professor got her drunk and took advantage of her, I would give her support. I would believe her.”
To Schewe, his ordeal is evidence that it’s gone too far. “Maybe it’s a warning to everybody that nobody is safe in the #MeToo era,” Schewe said. And his takeaway? “That guys should stay away from any woman because they have the potential to destroy their life with a couple of words with no consequence to them.”
Life at the University of Illinois can be cozy, at least for those who are not so drunk as to have forgotten most of it:
The lawsuit states that O’Callaghan, who had consumed one or two drinks at Schewe’s apartment [after five or six drinks at a bar], fell asleep on the couch. At some point the rest of the guests went on a late-night food run, leaving O’Callaghan and Schewe alone.
Schewe, intoxicated and “extremely tired,” said he lay down on his bed. He said that O’Callaghan followed him into the bedroom, took off her jeans, and climbed into bed with him.
“Nothing happened, of course,” Schewe told The Chronicle. “Being a sexual-assault-prevention researcher, I knew that there was no safer place that she could be.”
O’Callaghan says in the lawsuit that while she does not recall how she ended up in Schewe’s bed, she remembers that at some point, he “entered the bedroom, laughed, pulled her pants and underwear down, and performed oral sex on her, all without consent.” That’s when O’Callaghan says she blacked out.
Who paid for all of these drinks, you might ask? The taxpayers of Illinois! They’re on the hook to pay lawyers to defend the university from the referenced lawsuit. They’ll also be paying their share of the salaries of judges and other Federal court officials. They’re paying the accused scholar’s salary and benefits while he is “on administrative leave”. They’ll each work a few extra hours in 2020 if there is a fat settlement for the plaintiffs.
(Practical tip in case someone complains about the contents of your PC’s hard drive:
In his statement to the Title IX investigators and his interview with The Chronicle, Schewe dismissed many of the women’s claims outright. No, he did not offer cocaine to Kirkner and Lorenz, nor did he make the remark Lorenz’s partner attributed to him after her dissertation defense. While it’s possible Lorenz saw a nude woman on his desktop-computer screen, such images are common in work on rape prevention and teaching safe sex.
Another practical aspect of this is that the married guy in his early 50s (a “wife” is mentioned) was able to get a woman half his age to share his bed by expressing a passion for some female-oriented issues.)
The good news is that public radio will now have a little more color.
The lawsuit against Schewe, a clinical psychologist who has shared his expertise on rape prevention with such outlets as NPR and Quartz, is one of the more unusual sexual-misconduct cases confronting higher education. Schewe has served as director of the university’s Interdisciplinary Center for Research on Violence, and he recently co-edited the Handbook of Sexual Assault and Sexual Assault Prevention (Springer, 2019).
The 2020 Hyundai Sonata is rolling out of the Alabama factory now (Korean brains and American brawn?).
A candid media presentation shows that “road noise” (unclear what speed) was 63.5 dBA for the new Sonata versus 63 for the Camry and 64 for the Accord. Hyundai has pulled out the same technical stops as Toyota and Honda, i.e., using windshield glass laminated with a sound-absorbing layer of plastic (“acoustic glass”). All but the lowest trim levels also get acoustic glass for the front side windows.
(Car and Driver did a comparison test in which the Sonata was rated 2 out of 5 and objectively measured 1 dBA noisier than the Accord (and 2 dBA noisier than the Camry). The authors noted that “A small tornado’s worth of wind noise makes its way into the cabin, which is surprising because the Sonata is the only car here with dual-pane glass in the front doors.”)
Hyundai is pushing hard with smartphone integration. Their “digital key” (Android-only, perhaps due to Apple restrictions on using near field communication?) lets people open, start, and drive the car without a key. At the SEL trim level and above, the car can be remote-started from an app that works on iPhone or Android.
Now that we live in a USB-C world, of course the car, like every other car, is crammed with USB-A charging ports.
Even the lowest trim level includes Apple CarPlay and Android Auto. It looks like the next step up, SEL, is the minimum for the “Blue Link” remote start, heated seats, automatic temperature control, blind spot assistance, rear cross-traffic assistance, etc. This is priced at $25,500. It is an extra $1,200 to get the digital key and some other goodies via a “convenience” package. It looks as though the comparable Honda Accord is the EX, at $27,770. (But the proper way to compare car costs, I think, is to look at the monthly lease payment since that encapsulates the market’s belief regarding likely resale value. See this example with a Tesla 3.)
Readers: Since the prices are similar, maybe it comes down to looks and style? Here’s the Sonata, the Accord, and the Camry. Which one looks the best?
Thanks to my comments scolding Facebook posters on their failure to fully embrace socialism, LBTQIA+ rainbow flagism, etc., I am on Joe Biden’s email list. From November 16, 2019:
Subject: I never got a million dollar loan from my dad
My father taught me that a job is about more than a paycheck. It’s about your dignity. It’s about being able to look your child in the eye and say everything is going to be ok.
Unlike Donald Trump, my father never loaned me millions. Everything I’ve gotten in my life I’ve worked for — and that’s the reality for most Americans.
For Donald Trump, his life was handed to him on a silver platter and he has never had the slightest inclination to pay it forward.
I’m going to lay out the case on Wednesday night at the debate why I’m the best candidate to take on and defeat Donald Trump next November. But I still need to raise another $500,000 from grassroots supporters before I take the stage in order to stay on track with our fundraising. Can you chip in $5 today to help me out today?
Since Donald Trump is now a multi-billionaire with a personal Boeing 757 in executive configuration, saying that he started with only $1 million (subject) or “millions” (body) is tantamount to admitting that the hated dictator (and almost lifelong Democrat!) has been tremendously successful in business, as measured by ROI. Does Biden not realize this or does he assume that readers of his email are not smart enough to recognize that turning $1 million into multiple billions is an unusual outcome?
[Also note the outdated description of a job from this outdated politician: “It’s about being able to look your child in the eye and say everything is going to be ok.” The welfare parent with the lifetime right to occupy public housing can do that. The employee-at-will holder of a non-government job can’t promise a child anything about the family’s future.]
What did I miss while I was in China? Are the geriatrics still leading among the Democrats? Or is Mayor Pete emerging as I predicted?
(Another politician with whom my Facebook postings apparently align is Tom Steyer. As with other Californians, I can’t figure out why he bothers with national politics. If there are services, such as housing for people currently living in tents, that he thinks government should provide, why doesn’t he organize it at the state or local level where Republicans can’t obstruct progress? Has anyone just straight up asked him why he doesn’t bring his religion to 40 million fellow Californians before trying to proselytize the entire nation?)
I hope that we can all agree to give thanks that we’ve moved on from this phase of personal computing!
Separately, with no Thanksgiving to slow them down, China can concentrate fully on Christmas decoration weeks earlier than Americans. “There’s Snow Place Like Shanghai Disney Resort” shirts in a city where November high temps had fallen to around 70 degrees…
Related:
William Shockley, the not-very-woke developer of the modern transistor and founder of Silicon Valley
Nolan Bushnell, the founder of Atari (see the game console in the photo)
Adam Osborne, the leader of the team that gave us the first mass market portable personal computer
If the Chinese ever start celebrating Thanksgiving (or joining Elizabeth Warren in a National Day of Mourning), the supermarkets are ready. Turkey-flavored Cheetos:
