“Punting the Pundits” is an Open Thread. It is a selection of editorials and opinions from around the news medium and the internet blogs. The intent is to provide a forum for your reactions and opinions, not just to the opinions presented, but to what ever you find important.
Thanks to ek hornbeck, click on the link and you can access all the past “Punting the Pundits”.
Wednesday is Ladies’ Day.
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New York Times Editorial Board: Saying ‘I Do’ Amid the Roses
By all accounts, the standout entry in Wednesday’s Tournament of Roses Parade in Pasadena, Calif., will surely be the marriage of two men, Danny Leclair and Aubrey Loots, beaming amid the array of lavishly flowered floats to be viewed on national television and beyond. [..]
Opponents of the single-gender nuptial display in the hallowed parade have dished heavy umbrage in petitions and blogs, calling it “unbiblical” and urging a boycott by onlookers. But the tournament executives have said they are pleased that love will triumph on a day when the tournament theme is “Dreams Come True.” [..]
And now, Danny and Aubrey saying I do. The new couple’s float is titled, “Living the Dream: Love Is the Best Protection.” It is hard to disagree as the new year parades forward.
Robin Hardman: What Really Matters
What is essential to a great culture, as I’ve said before and will say again, is according people respect and allowing them to have control over their time and their work.
Oh, yes, and a couple more things: a living wage and — for all but the very smallest companies — access to decent healthcare. In fact, both Maslow’s hierarchy of needs and plain old common sense would suggest that being able to afford to eat, pay rent and see a doctor are surely the most important building blocks of a great company culture.
Yet, the year that’s just ended was rich with news about employers that would seem to have put a lot of energy into denying their employees these basic rights. While it can be tough to sort out facts from “truthiness” when news is filtered through politics on both the left and the right — especially news related to the Affordable Care Act — a few things can be said: [..]
Few of the politicians who so brazenly proclaim the benefits of drones have a real clue how it actually works (and doesn’t)
The US and British militaries insist that this is such an expert program, but it’s curious that they feel the need to deliver faulty information, few or no statistics about civilian deaths and twisted technology reports on the capabilities of our UAVs. These specific incidents are not isolated, and the civilian casualty rate has not changed, despite what our defense representatives might like to tell us.
What the public needs to understand is that the video provided by a drone is a far cry from clear enough to detect someone carrying a weapon, even on a crystal-clear day with limited clouds and perfect light. This makes it incredibly difficult for the best analysts to identify if someone has weapons for sure. One example comes to mind: “The feed is so pixelated, what if it’s a shovel, and not a weapon?” I felt this confusion constantly, as did my fellow UAV analysts. We always wonder if we killed the right people, if we endangered the wrong people, if we destroyed an innocent civilian’s life all because of a bad image or angle.
Madeline Ostrander: Can the Stuck-in-Place Economy Help Us Face Climate Change?
New studies show that people with deep roots in the place where they live are better equipped to handle upheavals of the type that come with climate change.
After I finished high school in the flat, square corn country of central Illinois, I fled-along with many of my fellow classmates. We chased jobs or graduate school in places like San Francisco, New York, or Washington, D.C. I settled in Seattle. It wasn’t until I hit my 30s that I became aware of the social costs of this mobility. [..]
According to recent environmental research, this could also mean that I am less equipped to cope-if, say, an emergency strikes-than someone who’s better connected to Seattle. Sense of place, community, and rootedness aren’t just poetic ideas. They are survival mechanisms. [..]
The most foreboding trends now and in the decades ahead may stem from climate change-disasters like drought and flooding that devastate some places and force people to move. As we face this kind of world, some communities might endure precisely because people have dug in, rooted themselves, and developed the kinds of generosity, adaptiveness, and foresight that come from knowing where they are.
Joyde Walker: The Choice is Ours: Austerity or Shared Bounty
For all I have gained as the result of my financial struggles, I consider myself blessed. You might wonder how I can say that, when, at the end of December, I’m still working with my winterizing kit, consisting of staple gun, duct tape, and cardboard, trying to insulate against the air leaks that drive my heating bill up. But because of my hardships, I have become more sensitive to the hard times many around me are facing, and feel compelled to share what little I have.
Because of incessant increases in the cost of living, I sometimes have a hard time meeting my expenses. Still, I am more fortunate than some lacking adequate food or shelter because the people setting standards don’t consider them deserving or needy enough to receive help. But thanks partly to the fidelity of family and friends, I am able to keep food enough to share with a few others also struggling to make ends meet.
Nell Minow: Before Academics Complain About Conflicts of Interest, They Should Disclose Their Own
Academics who study business love to talk about the power of incentives and the importance of full information to enable the most effective and efficient decisions. Unless it applies to them.
As David Kocieniewski reported in the New York Times on December 27, 2013, “academic experts” who testify and make filings in favor of business-friendly regulations and rulings often fail to disclose the corporate sources of funding for their research. While they appear to represent the ivory tower virtues of scholarly integrity, with fidelity to nothing but the truth, they are in fact advocates who are paid to take the positions they promote. [..]
Inside Job, the superb documentary about the financial meltdown, has a devastating scene with Glenn Hubbard, the Dean of Columbia’s Graduate School of Business, refusing to discuss the payments he receives from the financial services industry. As one commenter on the Times article noted, “Nothing is funnier than watching people who study economics declare that money can’t possibly have any influence on their work.”
Probably observed on March 1 in the old Roman Calendar, The World Book Encyclopedia of 1984, volume 14, page 237 states: “The Roman ruler Julius Caesar established January 1 as New Year’s Day in 46 BC. The Romans dedicated this day to Janus, the god of gates, doors, and beginnings. The month of January was named after Janus, who had two faces – one looking forward and the other looking backward.” This suggests that New Year’s celebrations are founded on pagan traditions. Some have suggested this occurred in 153 BC, when it was stipulated that the two annual consuls (after whose names the years were identified) entered into office on that day, though no consensus exists on the matter. Dates in March, coinciding with the spring equinox, or commemorating the Annunciation of Jesus, along with a variety of Christian feast dates were used throughout the Middle Ages, though calendars often continued to display the months in columns running from January to December.
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