According to an article in PC World., the republicans in the US Senate voted today to drop some privacy rules for the FCC, allowing ISPs to sell our online activity data to third parties without having to notify us. I have already sent a message to my representative in the house to let her know that I think she should vote against the change.
It may not come up for a vote this year, but according to the Chicago Tribune, Illinois lawmakers have introduced a bill that would legalize and tax marijuana. The logic is that “marijuana prohibition creates far more problems than it prevents.” Plus, the plan might generate $350 million in new tax revenue.
I personally have no interest in using mind altering substances but I hate seeing tax money wasted on an ineffective prohibition. It funds organized crime, corrupts law enforcement and incarcerates thousands of non-violent citizens.
I have written before about the fact that Daylight Saving Time is a bad idea. But now there is a Boston Globe article that calls it “dumb, dangerous, and costly.” It mentions that Massachusetts is studying the idea of springing ahead permanently, along with bills in the state legislatures of Texas, California and Washington. Time to write my state legislators to get a bill going in Virginia.
Arizona and Hawaii are the only two states that currently ignore DST. Montana just recently got a bill passed in one house of it’s state legislature, and might become the third.
A supreme court justice, Roberto Barroso, has called for the legalization of marijuana and possibly even cocaine, claiming that the war on drugs is just “repeating the same mistakes over and over again“. Several Latin American countries have legalized marijuana but conservative Brazil seems to be heading the other way.
According to an article in on hawaiinewsnow.com, Hawaii is considering making prostitution legal. This bill, and another to decriminalize marijuana are being considered as ways to reduce the prison population. So they are hitting the war on drugs AND the war on sex at the same time.
Whenever the electoral college decides a close presidential election there is a chance that the president will not have won the “popular” vote. This always inspires calls for a scrapping of the electoral college and using the popular vote to determine the presidency. But there is an obvious flaw with this thinking which can be illustrated with the recent election of Donald Trump.
Democrats think that if there were no electoral college HRC would have one this past election because she had more popular votes. But that might not have been the outcome without the electoral college. If both candidates knew that this past election would be based on a simple majority, then both candidates would have campaigned much differently (mostly in CA and NY). The results would have been different in every state.
For a clear explanation of why we should KEEP the electoral college you should read this article by the Cato Institute, and this explanation of the pros and cons of the current system.
JetBlue has developed an employee education benefit package that goes well beyond tuition reimbursement. They have partnered with Thomas Edison State University to provide a degree program for their employees called JetBlue Scholars. The program combines online education, open source course materials, exams for credit and education coaching. The result is a flexible and cost effective education model that could become a template for other employers. And because the education is not done in a classroom, the students can complete their degrees while continuing to work full-time.
According to and article in Business Wire, this model eliminates “the costs of classrooms, dorms, sports teams and hardcover books.” I would add that using online education also eliminates the bulk of the cost of the instructors themselves. One instructor recording an excellent video lecture provides that lecture to millions of students, and for many years. The cost of a traditional college education is still climbing, so this low-cost model should be very attractive. And once it reaches critical mass it will start to draw students away from traditional colleges, putting pressure on the upward trend in college costs. There will always be those who value the traditional college experience, but a separate path is evolving for those who don’t think the extra expense is worth it.
I love to shop online so I get lots of practice opening boxes. Several years ago I figured out a way to open most of these shipping boxes with just my hands.
The top of your typical shipping box has two flaps that fold down and meet in the middle. A piece of strapping tape covers the edges of the flaps from one end to the other and the tape folds over the ends of the box to hold the flaps down. Normally people cut the tape at the ends of the box, and then cut between the top flaps, so that they can free the flaps.
Instead, I stand the box on one end so the top flaps are on the side and one end of the tape is on the end facing up. I put my thumbs on that end of the box, one thumb on each side of the tape and press down. I push the end of the box in under the top flaps. The end of the box goes in just a bit and the tape is pulled away from side. I then put my fingers under the loosened tape and pull it up which usually frees that end of the tape. I then pull the tape along the top of the box to remove as much of it as I can. If the tape doesn’t come off enough to free the flaps, I flip the box so that the other end is on top and repeat these steps. Once most the tape is removed pushing in on the top flaps usually allows them to be pulled apart. I have even added a short YouTube video to illustrate the process.
This works best with plastic tape. It is a bit trickier with paper tape which is often reinforced with string. This type of tape often rips before you can pull it all the way across the top. But even then I can usually pull enough tape off to push in and separate the flaps.
BTW, this technique is also useful to release the bottom flaps when you want to break down the boxes for disposal.
A recent study, presented in the Washington Post shows why pharmaceutical companies might not welcome medical marijuana. It shows that states that allow medical marijuana have fewer prescriptions for pain and other conditions that can be helped by marijuana.
It also shows examples of pharmaceutical companies actively lobbying against loosening marijuana laws.
The DEA is due to make a decision on whether to “reschedule” marijuana. It is currently on Schedule 1 because the DEA thinks it has no medical value. But with many states allowing medical marijuana, that position is hard to justify. The change would be a major step in the push to make pot legal. And it would make researching the effects of marijuana much less of a burden. The decision was planned for the first half of the year so it should come very soon.