LeWeb is LeWhite and LeMale
Of 94 speakers, 7 are women, 11 are people of color.
PS: Apologies if Pepe is offensive. So's the speakers lineup.
Blogs
Submitted by Gina on November 30, 2009 - 20:49.
What Does "Buy American" Mean, Anyway?
I got an email this morning...
The Alliance for American Manufacturing (AAM) is committed to putting America back to work. Last week, we packed the house at our Town Hall meeting in Baltimore. A diverse coalition of working people, business leaders, local elected officials, students, and Baltimore Ravens Michael Oher and Ray Rice urged Washington to "Keep It Made in America."
What does "Buy American," or in this case "made in America," mean, anyway? It may mean something to manufacturers or producers. Like, my husband's company got burned by buying Chinese glass that was inconsistent in quality, and so they are switching back. But it's not like we consumers have an actual choice. I can buy an American wine, but the glass is from China, the cork from Portugal, the tin for the capsules from Indonesia, and it was aged in Hungarian or French oak.
Buying American is not a matter of consumer awareness. Of course it is our preference...
Submitted by Gina on November 25, 2009 - 11:30.
Inside The President's Head on Afghanistan
Lately I've been reading Lessons in Disaster by Gordon M. Goldstein. It's about Vietnam and the role of McGeorge Bundy, Kennedy's and Johnson's National Security Adviser. It's infuriating. Basically it's a story of elites gunning for war with no real thought being given to outcomes. The Bay of Pigs section is enough to make your blood boil for days.
I started reading Lessons in Disater when The New Yorker reported that President Obama was reading it. Two stories today, one in the New York Times and the other from the Associated Press highlight how the lessons of Lessons have influenced his thoughts.
First, from AP:
Military officials said Obama has asked for a rewrite before and resisted what one official called a one-way highway toward commander McChrystal's recommendations for more troops. The sense that he was being rushed and railroaded has stiffened Obama's resolve to seek information and options beyond military planning, officials said, though a substantial troop increase is still likely.
and the Times:
This low-end option was one of four alternatives under consideration by Mr. Obama and his war council at a meeting in the White House Situation Room on Wednesday afternoon. The other three options call for troop levels of around 20,000, 30,000 and 40,000, the three officials said.
The parallels are staggering. In Lessons, Vietnam was sold by the generals with three versions of essentially the same plan. The goal of many advisers seemed to be manipulating the Presidents Kennedy and Johnson rather than informing them.
When National Security Adviser Bundy was questioned about the goals and possible outcomes of military intervention, he never returned a thoughtful analysis.
Incidentally, I don't blame the Generals. Their job is war and that is what they are supposed to do. They gave their thoughtful recommendations, as today's generals surely have. The problem was the intellectuals who didn't do their part to bring in analysis of other mitigating non-military factors. In other words, a bunch of Ivy League jackasses tasked with the bigger picture never gave one thought to the boys who would die because of their little intellectual exercise.
The Times continues:
A central focus of Mr. Obama’s questions, officials said, was how long it would take to see results and be able to withdraw.“He wants to know where the off-ramps are,” one official said.
The president pushed for revisions in the options to clarify how — and when — American troops would turn over responsibility to the Afghan government. He raised questions, officials said, about the exit strategy for American troops and sought to make clear that the commitment by the Untied States would not be open-ended.
Call it dithering or whatever, but I'm glad we have a thoughtful president intent on not repeating the mistakes of the past.
Submitted by Gina on November 12, 2009 - 09:28.
What We Have Left Undone
Most merciful God.
we confess that we have sinned against you
in thought, word, and deed,
by what we have done,
and what we have left undone.
-The Book of Common Prayer of the Episcopal Church
October 11, 2009, the day President Obama was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, the first family attended services at St. Joseph’s Episcopal for the fourth time since his inauguration, reciting again the prayer above, a prayer that echoes the challenge of his award and reminds the pious that claiming faith includes a promise to act.
Four days later, the President visited New Orleans, his first excursion to the area devastated 4 years ago by Hurricane Katrina, both fulfilling a campaign promise and acknowledging promises forgotten.
Southerners are used to forgotten promises. Take Mississippi, for example. Government programs liberals cite as the backbone of a progressive agenda - public education and social security - have neither saved Mississippi's children from the nation's worst school system nor kept its seniors (more than 1 in 6, highest in all 50 states) from living in abject poverty.
Adjacent to Mississippi is my beloved Tennessee, and another memorial to failed government promises. One year after deferred maintenance led to a TVA plant spilling coal waste across acres of countryside, cleanup consists of possibly covering the mess with a golf course and hauling 3 million tons of the toxic sludge to a privately owned facility in Perry County, Alabama, despite the protests of Perry’s residents.
Why should the people of Perry believe in government as a force for good when tax dollars are used to pay businesses to cart poison into their community? Why should people who drive by acres of ash sludge in Tennessee believe in government efficiency? Why should Mississippians believe that, say, government run health care will improve their lot any more than public education and social security increased opportunity or prevented their elderly from living in squalor?
As if they are not to believe their own lying eyes, southerners are portrayed by sanctimonious liberal elites as ignorant racists voting against their own best interest for electing legions of republicans who acknowledge their experiences - that government has been inefficient, incompetent and uncaring.
Go south again, Mr. President. See the election for what it was - not just a mandate for change from believers, but also a statement of protest from red-staters who daily witness what government has left undone.
Submitted by Gina on November 9, 2009 - 14:31.
Comparing American Wars
Really interesting graphic comparing length, casualties in American wars, from the Revolutionary War to Afghanistan.
Submitted by Gina on October 28, 2009 - 14:41.
Apparently the 13th Trait is a Y Chromosome
Yet another top ten (ok 12) list in the tech industry that seems to forget that all techies aren't dudes.
Submitted by Gina on October 21, 2009 - 17:13.
High Speed "Other" Internet!
The Taj network, funded by the National Science Foundation, now connects India, Singapore, Vietnam and Egypt to the larger Global Ring Network for Advanced Application Development (GLORIAD) global infrastructure, and "dramatically improves existing U.S. network links with China and the Nordic region," according to an NSF statement.
...
"Scientists deal with lots and lots of high-intensity data, and this dedicated other system enables transfer of huge amounts of data quickly and efficiently," explained NSF spokesperson Lisa-Joy Zgorski. She added, however, that it's not an elitist network.
This is great! Now we should be seeing a lot more cases like Anthony Wesley, the amateur astronomer from Australia who discovered the Earth-sized scar on Jupiter last summer. This is revolutionary! Now we can all be a part of adding to the world's body of knowledge on issues of scientific import! A non-elitist network! Fantastic!
there are no plans to make it available for home use.
Um. Nevermind.
