May be now some of those candidates would know what it means to be on the receiving end of racism and look with some sympathy and understanding when black, brown, yellow Americans complain about it.

Oh, look, this guy just bought a new fridge. Let's show him lots of fridge ads. Oh, look he clicked one of the fridge ads! Wow, this guy is really into fridges.

Meanwhile in guy's home...

Guy: "Hmm, this fridge looks about as good as the one I bought and the price is about the same. Yeah, I feel good about my purchase. Not going to return it. See you in 15 years, fridge sellers."

The battle against overly authoritarian shitheads is not a 30-year battle. It is likely an eternal battle (for moderate values of the concepts of "battle" and "eternity").

(There is no Islamic State in the west, but there are other examples one could name. For example: despite mountains of evidence to the contrary there are still hundreds of millions of people in the western world who think that sending drug addicts to prison is a great idea.)

It is also not a battle that can be successfully fought by anyone who does not picture themselves having their great grandchildren live in the region, because only those who do will have the stamina to keep fighting forever. Americans or Europeans can't be responsible for fighting the battle for a Middle east free of The Islamic State, or whatever other pretentious banner these guys will be fighting under next year.

And Soylent Green has been trade marked.

You are right in saying the electric part actually reduces efficiency, the only reason to have it is to eliminate the gear box/transmission. But once the technology is in why did it take 60 years to scale the system down to handle trucks? While the automotive engineers spent all that time designing gear boxes to couple the diesel to the 18 wheel truck's wheel, why did not think of going electric? The greatest advantage would be in removing the low end torque requirement. Diesels have better low end torque than gasoline engines. But electric motor has the best torque vs power profile. Using an electric motor to remove the first gear alone would allow them to optimize the engine better for fuel economy, freed from the low rpm torque requirements.

Well we have the benefit of hindsight.

I specifically said, don't rail road some low level schmuck and go after the big guys who have lot more to lose. As long as corporations can blame low level employees and let the big fish get away free, these things will keep happening. To prevent recurrence, big guys should lose big. Otherwise we don't mean it and they wouldn't care.

The diesel-electric locomotive took over from the steam locomotives at incredible rate of adoption. Many steam locomotives pf Baldwin Loco Works, Philadelphia, made just one run from assembly line to scrap yard. It was that fast, technology changed before the order pipeline was flushed. In just 10 years, between 1950 and 1960. But even very large earth movers, even those that needed lots of electric power on board, stubbornly stayed with diesel instead of diesel-electric.

This conversion of diesel trucks to diesel-electric or gas-turbine-electric trucks is long over due. In the case of steam locomotives, the efficiency went from 6% for steam to 15% diesel-electric. But coal was much cheaper than diesel. Here the efficiency boost is probably from 20% to 30%. Going from expensive fuel to slightly cheaper fuel. It might not beat the speed at which steam was made obsolete. But it could come close.

The posting-wallah is deliberately saying wallah to drive his filthy rich relatives crazy.

In cheaper hotels the guests are paying for their own stay. Most swanky hotel guests are too rich to care or their corporations are picking up the tab. All the company executives carefully look at the bills. As long as the porn bill is not identifiable, they shrug and sign it off.

There is no honour among thieves. Set up proper ways to rat on their bosses, throw in some incentives for them, you can find enough evidence and witnesses. If the politicians let it happen and if the government goes after them, they can be sent to jail. But the politicians will never will let it happen.

Yes, India and Bangladesh became polio free. In Pakistan it was confined to one slum of Karachi. Just when victory was about to be had, the terrorists accused the doctors and workers of being American spies and killed an aide worker. The progress stopped. Then the virus spread to the hinterlands of Wazirstan and NWFP. Then the Haj pilgrimage brought it to Mecca and it spread to Nigeria and Indonesia. That is where it stood last year. Not sure where it is now.

[I was clearly wrong to have used the phrase "Right now". I should have said, till about 10 or 15 years ago]

It is 45 liters of concentrated virus. It is polio this time it could be just simple salmonella or E Coli next time or ebola. The point is not to look one person dumping the wrong bucket. Something as serious as concentrated polio vaccine should not have reached this person pouring stuff down the drain. Every ml every drop of dangerous viruses and bacteria must be accounted for. There should be clear audit trails about who is getting what and how it was disposed of eventually. There should be a clear protocols to track it. One should not be able to get 45 liters of polio in ones hand to dump. Setting up procedures like this costs money. That is where the company cut costs. That is where perverse incentives come in. The top honchos will have a policy directive that says "you must follow these procedures to handle viruses classified as ABC". Then do not hire enough people to enforce the policy. If any team lead points it out, ruin that person's advancement and as an example to others. Nothing on paper. But everyone understands why the promising career of Dr XYZ suddenly foundered. That is how it is done. That is what we should go after.

It would be far too easy to fire some low level schmuck and pretend everything is hunky dory.

Let us not overreact:

45 liters, even concentrated, of polio virus does not pose great danger, especially since it went into a modern sewage treatment facility. I am a polio victim myself, got it in 1966, 10 years after Salk released the vaccine in USA, but I was in rural South India with very very poor sanitary conditions. All through high school in every class I had another polio victim, typical class sizes are 50 to 60 in India at that time. So it works out to some 4% of the sample population (account for survivor bias, the dead victims did not make it into this sample). I was lucky, lost just part functionality in one leg. Right now in the slums of India, Pakisan and Bangladesh people are living constantly exposed to polio and still the infection rate is not all that high. So we need not go hyperbolic with this news.

Let us not underreact

We are giving more and more rights to the corporations, equating money with speech and even religious beliefs to corporations. But when it comes to criminal penalties they get to use limited liability corporation laws. Do not go after the underlings. Top management should not be able to create policy documents on one hand, then create incentive systems that encourage the violation of the same policies, and claim immunity, "Well, that employee violated our own established policy. It is her fault. Don't you think of touching my bonus!". Nominal financial penalties for those who were negligent are in order. But extraordinary penalties, amounting to all the pay and bonuses collected by the upper management in the last five or ten years should be assessed. Their performance review policies should be reviewed, and if they have practices that create perverse incentives to violate their own corporate policies, even harsher penalties are in order.

Unless they made less than 600K by this scheme, they are coming out ahead. Such slap in the wrist is not likely to stop such practices.

I am very sure it is not the top management of Marriot that dreamt up this scheme. The top honchos of most companies are so technologically inept they need tech support to turn on their iPads. It is most likely a local operation. The local manager lamenting not showing any revenue increase despite installing the WiFi access point server. And from the ranks someone down realizing jamming is possible. After that it is simple making bonus and making numbers for the local team that set up the scheme. The top guy has collected his bonus and will find another job. The mid level guys who knew it would be fired and have to look for a new job. The tab is paid by a big faceless corporation. This is likely to happen again.

OK, Ok, I agree, correlation is not causation. I am not claiming to be an expert or have all the answers. All I am doing is raising the question: Why do they always occur together? Is it a mere coincidence? I report, fair and balanced, and you decide. That is all I am saying.