14825186
submission
sycodon writes:
In what I can only describe as a major WTF is going on here moment, a federal agency (Agency for International Development) run by a hand-picked Obama appointee (Rajiv Shah) has launched a $22 million program to train workers, including 3,000 specialists in IT and related functions, in South Asia. Following their training, the tech workers will be placed with outsourcing vendors in the region that provide offshore IT and business services to American companies looking to take advantage of the Asian subcontinent's low labor costs.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but with today's economy, the last thing we need is the Federal Government helping foreign firms undercut the U.S. IT Labor force.
7062436
submission
sycodon writes:
At the highly anticipated Annual Winter Conference of the American Nuclear Society on November 18, Hyperion Power Generation Inc. will present the "launch" design for the Hyperion Power Module (HPM) to be deployed into the global market.
Read about it here
Discuss amongst yourselves.
5116675
submission
sycodon writes:
An Article, Principles for allocation of Scarce Medical Interventions, in The Lancet by Ezekiel Emmanuel MD, Rahm Emmanuel's brother, who is Barack Obama's "Special Advisor for Health Policy" discusses how to ration healthcare (Free registration required)
Summary:
Because none of the currently used systems satisfy all ethical requirements for just allocation, we propose an alternative: the complete lives system. This system incorporates five principles (table 2): youngest-first, prognosis, save the most lives, lottery, and instrumental value.5 As such, it priorities younger people who have not yet lived a complete life and will be unlikely to do so without aid. Many thinkers have accepted complete lives as the appropriate focus of distributive justice: "individual human lives, rather than individual experiences, [are] the units over which any distributive principle should operate."1, 75, 76 Although there are important differences between these thinkers, they share a core commitment to consider entire lives rather than events or episodes, which is also the defining feature of the complete lives system.
Consideration of the importance of complete lives also supports modifying the youngest-first principle by prioritizing adolescents and young adults over infants (figure). Adolescents have received substantial education and parental care, investments that will be wasted without a complete life. Infants, by contrast, have not yet received these investments. Similarly, adolescence brings with it a developed personality capable of forming and valuing long-term plans whose fulfillment requires a complete life.77 As the legal philosopher Ronald Dworkin argues, "It is terrible when an infant dies, but worse, most people think, when a three-year-old child dies and worse still when an adolescent does";78 this argument is supported by empirical surveys.41, 79 Importantly, the prioritization of adolescents and young adults considers the social and personal investment that people are morally entitled to have received at a particular age, rather than accepting the results of an unjust status quo. Consequently, poor adolescents should be treated the same as wealthy ones, even though they may have received less investment owing to social injustice.
5054061
submission
sycodon writes:
The technology to implement a by-the-mile tax on automobiles is being quietly (albeit not secretly) developed by several universities and states. While this may be old news, what is news is that the Federal National Surface Transportation Infrastructure Financing Commission has concluded earlier this year that the road tax was the "best path forward" to keep revenues flowing to highway and transportation projects, and could be an important new tool to help manage traffic and relieve congestion.
Read more Here
Short version is that your vehicle's movements would be tracked via GPS and you would be billed for each mile. No need to describe the privacy implications.
697225
submission
sycodon writes:
I have an opportunity to do some significant BIRT report contracting at significant pay. The job lasts for 6 months. However, I have already wasted part of my career learning and using a tool that has only a niche market (4D) and I'm not anxious to do it again. What is the future of BIRT? Will become the Gold Standard of reporting tools? Or will it be just another bit of debris along the roadside in the endless parade of new and improved development tools?
168905
submission
sycodon writes:
In the latest on the "It Will Never Work" Hydrogen front, Purdue has discover a process whereby "Water added to aluminum mixed with Gallium can produce hydrogen on demand. As a catalyst, the Gallium is not consumed. The oxidized aluminum can be recycled. The process is close to being cost competitive with petrol." Read about it here: http://pesn.com/2007/05/17/9500471_Hydrogen_via_Al uminum_Gallium/
73620
submission
sycodon writes:
Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) made an surprise appearance at the convention (National Conference for Media Reform)to announce that he would be heading up a new House subcommittee which will focus on issues surrounding the Federal Communications Commission......Also in consideration is the "Fairness Doctrine,". Kucinich said in his speech that "We know the media has become the servant of a very narrow corporate agenda" and added "we are now in a position to move a progressive agenda to where it is visible."
It is common knowledge that the repeal of the Fairness Doctrine was responsible for the explosive success of Talk Radio and enabled (for better or worse) hundreds of new media outlets to flourish.
Read the full scoop here http://www.fmqb.com/Article.asp?id=333927
