Category — General

pomes and places are going away soon

Do you know why we 'are supposed to' work 8 hour days?
Do you know why we no longer put children to work?
Do you know why you have workplace protections?

no?

well maybe you should.

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/business/september96/labor_day_9-2a.html history of laborday

http://www.iisg.nl/~w3vl/ -labor history

http://www.ilo.org/public/english/ international labor organizations

http://www.afscme.org/otherlnk/whlinks.htm women's labor history

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for me in the last few years, there has been three days that i don't 'work', Labor day, Veterans Day, and Memorial Day. I don't work because I think the history behind these days is far more significant than people note, and the people who fought and won to bring about these holidays should not be forgotten, though they also should not be nostalgized.

this is handy, you can try the cms and the admin features before installing.

i spoke briefly about flashmobs the other day with dan chang from his the miami herald, the article is a nice, short culture piece. have a look.

Donald Davidson dies. IN MEMORIAM Donald Davidson (1917-2003) Professor Davidson died yesterday in Berkeley. As soon as memorial notices are available about his… [The Leiter Reports: Editorials, News, Updates]

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Oh i remember reading some of his work when i was an undergrad.

while it might appear that i experienced death in a remote manner above, it should also be clear that i experienced it by relating it to my life, and that through that i sympathized with others or would not have posted it.

Bush and The Philosophers. Speaking of memes, check this one out. Back on August 5, Mark Kleiman wrote a post that concluded with the observation that “There's a great essay to be written about the second Bush Administration as our first truly post-modern Presidency.”… [Matthew Yglesias]

wierd thing is that i just had a discussion with a colleague on this who argued that bush's presidency is the highest perfection of machiavellian modernism, where i argued that under the conception of 'pluralist idealological conflicts' it was post-modern.

Tax the rich the same as the average people, Camejo says

Green Party gubernatorial candidate Peter Camejo on Thursday unveiled one of the recall campaign's most detailed and liberal proposals, one he contended would lift California out of its budget morass.

Camejo, who heads an investment brokerage firm he founded, called for strikingly higher income tax rates on Californians who earn more than $500,000 a year, changing Proposition 13 to allow reappraisals of many corporate properties and tax cuts for low-wage earners.

“We have a crisis,” Camejo said. “At least (the wealthy) should pay what the average person pays, and that would balance the budget.”

Heck, maybe the rich need to be taxed even more than the average person…

Disparity in wealth is killing democracy, scholar warns

One scholar argues that representative democracy is effectively dead ö done in by the biggest shift of income and assets to the super-wealthy since the 1920s.

“President Bush's tax cuts increased the political power of the richest Americans,” says Walter Williams, University of Washington professor emeritus of public affairs. “Their gains fueled the huge increase in campaign contributions and made big money the driving force in national politics.”

[Politics in the Zeros]

Walter Cronkite clears his throat. Walter Cronkite's Ten propositions for the Democrats I respect Cronkite like I respect my grandmother. I'm also a democrat. Please someone, anyone, destroy Walter Cronkite's levelheadism here. Please. [MetaFilter]]

everyone should read this, it is about democracy, and equality in the future.

well, news just hit slashdot that Virginia Tech, where i teach, is building a top 10 supercomputer cluster out of Apple G5's. it is supposed to attract researchers interested in using it to virginia tech, though there are already several groups on campus with clusters and grids opeational already…. well, it is a good way to maintain our reputation in this area at least.

lots of people are viewing this, there is just as much info at slashdot.

http://www.macrumors.com/pages/2003/08/20030830151942.shtml

http://www.computing.vt.edu/research_computing/index.html

http://www.eng.vt.edu/odlc/computing/advanced_computing.shtml

evidence
http://www.ita.vt.edu/archive/docs/tabsheets/FY2004/646457.txt

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Too much to read!. You know, this just shouldn’t be allowed. In fact, I think it ought to be outlawed. It’s just bloody not fair that the 2003 Extreme Markup proceedings come out just as I really ought to be getting a head start on fall reading. Oh, and, um, I guess we won’t… [Caveat Lector]

this has an insightful comment and link to interesting proceedings. 'specially the link to http://www.mulberrytech.com/Extreme/Proceedings/html/2002/Rosenblum01/EML2002Rosenblum01.html