Changing a political system, even one as inertia-ridden as we have in the US right now, is easier than changing human nature.

Dan Aris

Hard time following this. The potential 4.7 million people contribute billions to the economy and without them we'd tank again. I heard the same screwing the american worker and milking entitlements myths repeatedly. It puts me in mind of what one commentator once referred to as "Factoids", arguments which have no truth at all, but people repeat over and over in hopes they will become true. Well, some of that is working, because some people are believing these tales as truths and would happily cut their own throats (mustard and onion extra) to act on these fantasies.

Tech, agriculture, service industries, foot services, etc. all benefit from the well behaved illegals. And we, the people who buy goods or services from these people benefit, as well. It's a mystery to me that so much untruth is accepted these days. I figure it began with Rush Limbaugh and is now carried out by hundreds of others since, who wind up people for profit. Nothing seems to sell like telling people what they need to fear and whom they need to loath.

There are no poor in America. There are only, in the words of John Steinbeck, "temporarily embarrassed millionaires."

One of the most insidiously effective tactics of the American right wing has been convincing the poor that they should support policies that only benefit the rich so that they can benefit from them when they're rich. (Though I'm not sure whether they were able to create such a sentiment, or merely capitalized and expanded upon one that was already there.)

Unfortunately, it seems to completely escape the understanding of far too many such that those same policies are making it that much harder for them to ever become rich.

Dan Aris

However, as I think you know perfectly well, as long as we have single-selection first-past-the-post voting, it doesn't matter how many parties there are in the system—only the two major ones have more than a snowball's chance in Hell of actually winning more than 1 or 2 legislative seats in anything but the rarest circumstances.

No; once you've reached the polls, the chance to select better candidates is already long past. If you want a better choice of candidates, then the first answer is "do your best to become one yourself." Since that's not a viable option for many people, the second answer is "get involved at the local level, and start pushing for the things you believe in to be implemented there, and for them to trickle up the chain to state and national candidates."

In other words, if you want to have more than a choice between the establishment Republican candidate and the establishment Democrat candidate, or you want one or more of those candidates to actually represent your views more than they usually do, you need to sacrifice some of your time and/or money to make it happen. (Money is generally only relevant if you've got a LOT of it to sacrifice, though.) Simply showing up at the ballot box and expecting there to be a candidate that you can vote for, who has a reasonable chance of winning, who actually represents a significant majority of your views, is, in America today, naive at best and mind-numbingly ignorant at worst (depending largely on how well your views align with those of the people you tend to live among).

Dan Aris

I think you misunderstood his point—though your point is good too.

But what I read in Tom's post was that the reason we have a single President in the first place, rather than some sort of coequal ruling council, is because of our primitive desire for single, focused leadership.

Dan Aris

Happy little Blue Cloud of Death

Like others I found the headline confusing. I read it as "Researchers are predicting the use of Wikipedia as a vector for the spread of disease". This may mean that:

• Disinformation and ignorance are diseases.
• Memes and computer viruses are diseases.
• Wilipedia contains information that leads to depression.
• Instructions on Wikipedia lead to substance abuse.
• This is getting entertaining, fill in your own reason here.

and the sales.

I'm sorry, but while I don't have numbers on it, I don't believe that's true. It is my understanding that there are at least as many programmers, system architects, and all other sorts of software developers working in-house for companies that do not sell software, writing programs that will never be seen or used outside of that company.

I'm perfectly willing to believe that, at present, there are a significant number of big-corp hiring managers who will ignore any resume that doesn't "list specific kinds of problems that you've solved." However, I'm not willing to believe that it's every single hiring manager in the country, nor even every Fortune 500 hiring manager. Nor am I willing to believe that, if there are indeed a large percentage doing it, that is anything more than Yet Another Hiring Fad. Because I've heard about dozens of different hiring fads on Slashdot over the past decade and a half.

Me, I'm lucky. I got hired in academia, in a job that fits my skillset and temperament very well, so it doesn't actually matter just at the second (knock on wood) what my resume looks like. But if I took the advice of every person who comes along, like you, and says, "OK, you must have X in your resume or you'll never get a job," my resume would be about 20 pages long. (Except that one of the Xs I've heard is, in fact, "your resume must be no more than 1 page." So, go figure.)

If I had a way to evaluate such advice, to know which pieces are good, which are snake oil, and which are just out of date, it would be fantastic. Unfortunately, I don't—and I don't think you do, either.

Dan Aris

Well, personally, I managed to snag a really nice job (for my own skills and temperament), and am not looking.

But it would shock me if there aren't places that "actually let HR do the hiring," but still have IT teams with good people on them that are worth working with. Sure, there are also places like that that you should run screaming from, but to say that "all businesses that do X are terrible places to work" is pretty commonly a false generalization, especially when X is a relatively common practice among large companies.

Dan Aris

Do you have any idea how many people will give different pieces of often totally mutually exclusive resume advice? Your "protip" sounds like a great way to never get looked at by a very large number of firms who actually let HR do all their hiring. And yes, those exist.

Your desires, requirements, and experience are not universal. They are yours. It is important to recognize that, and at least try not to penalize other people when their experience with the hiring process doesn't match what you expect or want.

Dan Aris

One of the definitions I found was:

One who makes great sacrifices or suffers much in order to further a belief, cause, or principle.

I am sure that fits. While SpaceShip II is mainly intended for a non-exploration purpose, the program has resulted in some significant advances in rocketry and White Knight II has significant non-tourism use. These pilots have been involved in other space efforts, I remember the one who was injured from the Rotary Rocket test flights. There are lots of safer ways for these folks to make as much money as a test pilot is paid. They do what they do to advance our progress in aeronautics and space.

Martyrs? Who killed them for their beliefs?

Go away, troll. They certainly died while pursuing something intensely important that they were willing to risk their lives for. The fact that you weren't around to pull the trigger makes them no less martyrs.