30 Aug 2009
Homeland Stupidity

Here's a strange tale, from an unusual source, about a company you've probably never heard of. But it goes a long way in explaining a lot of things.

Lorraine was skimming a jobs board in Indy the other day, looking to see if she could find an RN position that was part time and close enough to help bring in some extra cash. No luck on that, but she did run across the following, reproduced in it's entirety below. Why it popped on an RN search is beyond me. I've added links to the company (and division) - suffice it to say that they're a major defence contractor, probably second only to KBR. A final comment follows the job posting ...

Company: URS Corporation
Location: Indianapolis, IN
Employee Type: Full-Time
Industry: Environmental
Manages Others: Not Specified
Job Type: Other
Education: 4 Year Degree
Experience: At least 3 year(s)
Post Date: 8/25/2009
Contact Information Ref ID: EGG
Description Interest Category: Business Operations/Administrative
Job Description:

The candidate will provide immediate real time support to appropriate law enforcement personnel by retrieving, analyzing and summarizing information gathered from law enforcement and external sources. The candidate will query a host of databases in order to supply information specific to case needs. The candidate will be responsible to ensure compliance with 28 CFR part 23 and I.C, 5-2-4.

Must be able to manage the intelligence database, including input, processing, and and output procedures in an automated data processing, or computer environment. Locate, retrieve, and process information within assigned functional areas. Must be able to provide visual aids, (eg. link analysis, geographical charts, bar graphs, telephone toll analysis, flow and organizational charts).

Maintain a working knowledge of IIFC computers, equipment, and telephone systems, and provide related training to IIFC approved personnel as needed. Monitor all available sources of media, intelligence sources, and homeland security resources to timely identify incidents and patterns.

Assist in creating reports (i.e. officer safety bulletins) to law enforcement, public and private sector, and senior government leadership, and subject information to correlation and analysis in order to discern patterns, recurring events, identities, and criminal and terrorist activities.

Assist with routine administrative projects, and perform special projects when needed. Perform other duties as defined by IIFC Executive Director.

Minimum Requirements:

Bachelors degree in English, Journalism or Criminal Justice and at least 3 years of job-related experience. Good written communication skills; working knowledge of word-processing and integrated software applications; organizational skills and ability to perform detail-oriented work are required.

Must be able to perform analysis and interpret criminal intelligence information.

Must be organized and able to access, input, and retrieve information from available Indiana Intelligence Fusion Center (IIFC) systems. Must be able to prioritize work and meet deadlines.

Must pass a background investigation, an initial and subsequent random drug screening. Must pass periodic security related polygraph test on request.

Starting salary is $15.50/hr

That works out to an annual salary of $32,240/yr. That's with a four year degree and 3 years of experience. Judging from the "success" of the various intelligence "wars" our government has been waging (drugs, terror, etc.), I'd say that the old saw is true: If you're paying peanuts, expect to hire monkeys.

09:44 /Politics | 0 comments | permanent link

Blaze strikes Old Dover School

We were finishing up our tomato canning about 11:30 last night when I smelled smoke and went outside to investigate. The air was pretty thick with smoke. Everything on the farm was OK, so we hopped into the truck and took a drive down 32 less than a block when we spotted the fire. We are across the road from the SW corner of the building. We came home and called 911 and our neighbors to alert them - engines were out there until about 4 this morning - luckily no cinders fell on the gas station across the street from the fire, or we would've have some real problems.

Firefighters were called to a blaze at the Old Dover School just after 11 p.m. Thursday.

(link) [Lebanon Reporter]

Update: Fire could be end for old Dover school

“serious, serious work” would be necessary ... to salvage the structure

09:38 /Home | 0 comments | permanent link

29 Aug 2009
Reading by the Numbers

This is what happens when you try to quantify subjective value: you can see how many points your favorites would get you here.

Librarians and teachers report that students will almost always refuse to read a book not on the Accelerated Reader list, because they won’t receive points. They base their reading choices not on something they think looks interesting, but by how many points they will get. The passion and serendipity of choosing a book at the library based on the subject or the cover or the first page is nearly gone, as well as the excitement of reading a book simply for pleasure.

(link) [New York Times - Sunday Book Review]

21:19 /Home | 0 comments | permanent link

Toyota pulls plug on US factory

Well, not really. It seems as though most of these jobs will just be moving south and east a bit:

Leaders from San Antonio and the state had been working to lure Tacoma production to the San Antonio Toyota plant through an incentives package laced with tax abatements and economic development funds.

Is this what we've come to? A state versus state bidding war using taxpayer monies to enrich corporations? Political pull as the main determining factor in facilities placement? Where's Wesley Mouch when you need him?

Toyota pulls out of a production plant in the US it jointly owns with General Motors, the first time it has abandoned a factory.

(link) [BBC News]

21:14 /Politics | 0 comments | permanent link

28 Aug 2009
Sheep in the News - Outrageous Price Edition

That's be $374,700 to us Yanks ...

A sheep is believed to have become the world's most expensive after selling for £231,000 at a sale.

(link) [BBC News]

12:38 /Agriculture | 0 comments | permanent link

Mother, Should I Trust the Government?

Kevin Carson hits another home run - read it and weep.

... the key economic policymaking roles, in Democratic administrations as well as Republican, have been held by corporate executives, corporate lawyers, and investment bankers. Ever hear of Bob Rubin or Tim Geithner? Yeah, a real bunch of fire-eating anticapitalists we got there. That’s one reason I hold such contempt for “Joe the Plumber” and his screaming ignoramuses: anyone who can seriously look at Obama’s economic team and its policies, and suspect him of being a closet “Marxist,” probably shouldn’t be allowed to use scissors without adult supervision.

(link) [Center for a Stateless Society]

10:56 /Politics | 0 comments | permanent link

The Good Enough Revolution: When Cheap and Simple Is Just Fine

I disagree: it is the crapification of everything. And what's more, we've been here before: during the American Civil War (not coincidentally just after the start of our Industrial Revolution) great fortunes were made by Northern factory owners throwing together cheap equipment for the military, and eventually flooding the marketplace with it as well.

The world has seen its iron age, its silver age, its golden age and its bronze age. This is the age of shoddy.
—New York Times, April 3,1861

History doesn't necessarily repeat itself, but sometimes it does throw a big roundhouse punch ... but I guess we'd better get used to things that don't really work, can't be repaired, and just generally suck. I only hope we have the landfill space to hold the detritus until we come to our collective senses again.

To some, it looks like the crapification of everything. But it's really an improvement. And businesses need to get used to it, because the Good Enough revolution has only just begun.

(link) [Wired]

08:39 /Technology | 0 comments | permanent link

26 Aug 2009
Dirty Coding Tricks To Make a Deadline

In response to the rhetorical question at the end of the teaser, all I can say is "All the time!". But I'll have to add that it's almost always in compliance with the Iron Law of Software Engineering:

  • On time
  • Quality code
  • Under budget

Guess which two options management always picks...

Gamasutra is running an article with a collection of anecdotes from game developers who had to employ some quick and dirty fixes to get their products to ship on time. Here's a brief excerpt: "Back at [company X] — I think it was near the end of [the project] — we had an object in one of the levels that needed to be hidden. We didn't want to re-export the level and we did not use checksum names. So right smack in the middle of the engine code we had something like the following. The game shipped with this in: if( level == 10 && object == 56 ) {HideObject();} Maybe a year later, an artist using our engine came to us very frustrated about why an object in their level was not showing up after exporting to what resolved to level 10. I wonder why?" Have you ever needed to insert terrible code to make something work at the last minute?

(link) [Slashdot]

06:33 /Technology | 0 comments | permanent link

25 Aug 2009
Most red ink ever: $9 trillion over next decade

We are so f*cked it's not even funny anymore ...

AP - In a chilling forecast, the White House is predicting a 10-year federal deficit of $9 trillion — more than the sum of all previous deficits since America's founding. And it says by the next decade's end the national debt will equal three-quarters of the entire U.S. economy.

(link) [Yahoo! News: Top Stories]

21:39 /Politics | 0 comments | permanent link

24 Aug 2009
You Can't Cure Stupid

What can I possibly add to this?

A new national survey from Public Policy Polling (D) illustrates the profound levels of ignorance that currently interfere with the debate over health care.

(link) [Talking Points Memo]

21:50 /Politics | 0 comments | permanent link

Vacation 09

Well, we're back. And I'm cogent enough to blog. But not much. Suffice it to say that we had the grandkids for a few days, and returned them to Minnesota via the Upper Peninsula of Michigan ... that is to say, we went the long way round. But what a trip! I'll try to fill in some of the details over the next few days.

21:47 /Home | 0 comments | permanent link

18 Aug 2009
Coroner: Wild dogs killed Ga. woman, then husband

There's a problem with wild dogs in nearly every rural area near a large city. Why? Folks from the city bring their unwanted pets (and especially puppies) out here and just dump them, to fend for themselves. They have no idea that dogs are naturally social creatures, who will form packs to hunt. Sometimes my livestock. Sometimes my neighbors kids.

AP - An elderly woman killed by a pack of wild dogs had been out for a walk when she was attacked, and her husband died trying to fight off the mauling animals when he discovered the bloody scene near their rural Georgia home, authorities said Tuesday.

(link) [Yahoo! News: Top Stories]

21:36 /Agriculture | 0 comments | permanent link

17 Aug 2009
The Freewheelin’, Unrecognizable Bob Dylan

Gosh, I guess I really am "old school". When did we turn into a country whose police could randomly stop anyone strolling down any street and demand "Ihre Papiere, Bitte!". Does the photo show Krakow in 1940 or New York in 2009? You decide. I can't seem to tell anymore.

“How does it feel?” Bob Dylan wondered back in 1965, to be on your own, “like a complete unknown.” Now he knows. Two police officers in their 20s asked Mr. Dylan, 68, to provide identification as he took a stroll through Long Branch, N.J., last month, The Associated Press reported.

(link) [New York Times]

08:42 /Politics | 0 comments | permanent link

16 Aug 2009
Woman With Police Monitoring Blog Arrested

Her "crime" was mere identification of our employees - you know, the folks whose salaries we pay with our tax dollars. Apparently, we must now have secret police. Wouldn't it just warm the cockles of Thomas Jefferson's heart to see this travesty taking place in his native and beloved Virginia?

The Washington Post reports that a Virginia woman is being held in custody by police who allege that information she posted on her blog puts members of the Jefferson area drug enforcement task force at risk.

(link) [Slashdot]

21:31 /Politics | 0 comments | permanent link

15 Aug 2009
Capitalism ≠ Free Markets

Kevin Carson nails this one to the wall - if you value property rights at all, go read his latest essay: Breaking Eggs to Make “Libertarian” Omelets

06:49 /Politics | 0 comments | permanent link