There's battle lines being drawn.
Nobody's right if everybody's wrong.
Young people speaking their minds
getting so much resistance from behind

Tuesday, March 20, 2018

Linkee-poo is rushed

Apparently today is international "OMG we forgot and now need this tomorrow" Day.

"A new study I published with my co-author examines gender bias in student evaluations. We looked at the content of the comments in both the formal in-class student evaluations for his courses as compared to mine as well as the informal comments we received on the popular website Rate My Professors. We found that a male professor was more likely to receive comments about his qualification and competence, and that refer to him as 'professor.' We also found that a female professor was more likely to receive comments that mention her personality and her appearance, and that refer to her as a 'teacher.'" As the husband of a professor, yes this to a thousand. (Grokked from Kelly Link)

Second-hand marijuana smoke may have worse health effect than tobacco smoke. But here's the thing, any kind of smoke is fine particulate matter (including ash), which settles deeply in the lungs. That makes it hard for your body to expel.

"A self-driving car operated by Uber struck and killed a pedestrian who was walking her bicycle in Tempe, Ariz., Sunday night. The incident could be the first pedestrian death involving a self-driving vehicle." Well, that didn't take as long as people might have thought. So now all those hypotheticals are about to get real.

An e-paper smart calendar. Yes, wants. When e-ink was first developed it was thought there would be a lot of these types of items, sadly the only real use we've seen has been as e-book readers (I think there was a watch, but not much more than that). (Grokked from Rodney)

"A sheriff’s spokeswoman said three people were injured in a shooting at a high school in southern Maryland on Tuesday, including the shooter."

"A package destined for an address in Austin, Texas, exploded at a FedEx distribution facility near San Antonio early Tuesday morning, reportedly resulting to a slight injury to an employee." Well, there's a mistake. Using FedEx creates a long paper trail. And at least around me FedEx no long has drop-off boxes, you have to go into an actual store which have cameras. This is also why the police made the appeal to talk with the bomber, because in talking they begin to make mistakes. Mistakes lead to clues to identity, which leads to arrests. This is what gets most criminals. They escalate, they get cocky, they taunt police, and then they get sloppy and/or changeup their MO.

"'The enemy is forgetting': Bernanke, Geithner and Paulson on why we must remember the 2008 financial crisis." Unfortunately humans are really good at forgetting (or at least ignoring) things. BTW, that's a fabulous story title.

"Senior executives at Cambridge Analytica – the data company that credits itself with Donald Trump’s presidential victory – have been secretly filmed saying they could entrap politicians in compromising situations with bribes and Ukrainian sex workers." Nice people. (Grokked form Katheryn Cramer)

2 comments:

Fabutronic Sheila said...

One of my NASA peeps had an alternate version of your International OMG Day: "I know I am only giving this to you today, but I really need this done tomorrow."

I'm lucky that I typically don't experience the OMG days -- I just have days where the sheer volume of work is a bit much. The only quick-turnaround items I have are research proposal reviews, and the writers generally give me plenty of advance notice to enable me to clear my other work and create an open window to work on the proposal.

I also have a priority system (A-level, B-level, and C-level) and have the backup of my department chair and those above him, in the event that someone tries to monopolize my time or jump the line. Having these people in higher positions to watch my back is priceless.

Steve Buchheit said...

I so feel that NASA person. And having that backup would be great. Unfortunately my boss is one of the worst offenders by instantly firing off a reply email, "We'll get that to you today!" And I can go from having nothing, and looking at my twitter feed to overwhelmed in 15 minutes. And that's happened almost every day since last week. Add to the fun our customers' (and our one sales person's) inability to communicate fully (mostly by not realizing I haven't been a part of the conversations in their heads). So there's lots of false starts and frustrations from me asking questions.