Category: People

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People

Offered with no commentary

Via Kansas City Star, State Representative Cynthia Davis comments on a program to provide nutritional meals to poor kids during the summer. Representative Davis’ responses were pulled directly from her summer newsletter.

Program description: Current economic woes make Summer Food Service Program more important than ever. Program provides nutritious meals to young people throughout the state.

Davis response: The implication suggests that during a recession, parents don’t give their children nutritious food. The reverse may be true. During hard times, many families find it even more important to pull together. Families may economize by choosing to not waste hard earned dollars on potato chips, ice cream, or Twinkies. Perhaps some families will buy more beans and chicken and less sweets.

Program description: Hundreds of local community organizations throughout the state will offer lunch, as well as breakfast, during the summer months to eligible children.

Davis response: Who’s buying dinner? Who is getting paid to serve the meal? Churches and other non-profits can do this at no cost to the taxpayer if it is warranted. That is what they did when Louisiana had a hurricane.

Program description: “Children need nutritious food to grow and learn all year long,” said Ann McCormack, chief of the health department’s Bureau of Community Food and Nutrition Assistance.

Davis response: The problem of childhood obesity has been cited as one of the most rapidly growing health problems in America. People who are struggling with lack of food usually do not have an obesity problem.

Program description: Meals will be served at designated sites to children age 18 and under.

Davis response:Anyone under 18 can be eligible? Can’t they get a job during the summer by the time they are 16? Hunger can be a positive motivator. What is wrong with the idea of getting a job so you can get better meals?

Tip: If you work for McDonald’s, they will feed you for free during your break.

Offered without commentary. Because none is necessary.

Update: More from Riverfront Times, including link to Keith Olbermann naming Davis Worst Person in the World.

Update: Excellent response from Fox. Contact your local state legislator to ask them to lobby Republicans to remove Rep. Davis from her chairmanship of the Committe on Children and Families. Excellent suggestion.

Update: Representative Davis responds. I’ve also included a copy of her press release (PDF). Good luck finding anything coherent in there.

Categories
People Technology

Perception

Since I was fulfilling one duty today I thought I would also fulfill another and renew my driver’s license. To renew a license here in Missouri you have to show all sorts of proof of residency, identity, and nationality. You also have to take an eye exam, and a traffic sign recognition test.

The traffic sign exam is more or less a joke, but the eye exam was a little different. When you look through the eye piece, you see rows of letters, white on black, separated by a dotted line down the middle. When you get the test, the person administering it will tell you to read the letters in one of the rows, then ask if you see a blinking light, and if so, on which side. There also seemed to be a stereoscopic aspect to the test, as the letters on one side of the dotted line seemed a little more blurry then those on the other.

There’s no graduated height eye test—either your vision, corrected or otherwise, is good enough, or it isn’t, in which case, go away, get better glasses and come back.

When I got to the license place, I grabbed a number and sat down to wait. Ahead of me, a middle aged Asian guy with his daughter was renewing his license, and having some problems communicating with the person administering the eye test.

He did know some English, and could read the letters. But when she had him look into the eyepiece and read the sixth row, whatever he read didn’t match what she expected, and she kept repeating to him to read the “sixth row”. “Read the sixth row”. He conferred with his daughter in his native language, and would try again, frustrated because he was doing what examiner asked. She also was getting irritated, because there several people waiting, and he couldn’t get the test.

All of a sudden, after another frustrated exchange, he got really excited, said something to his daughter, and then looked back into the eyepiece. He rattled off a bunch of letters, and evidently, got them all right because they went on to the traffic sign test. Again, he had problems, but the DMV person was out of patience, gave him a page with traffic signs and suggested he go to the back of the room, look over the paper, and then he could come back and take the test.

When I got to her desk, I was a little apprehensive about the test, wondering what the heck I was going to find. She asked me to read the first row, and I had no problems. She then asked me to read the signs and tell me what each one was. Again, I had no problem, and was out of the licensing place quickly.

It was only later that that an idea came to me that possibly explained the problems the Asian guy was having. This is only a guess, but I think when she told him to read the sixth row, he actually read the sixth column. In other words, he read top to bottom, rather than left to right. When she kept repeating sixth row, he’d re-read the same column. It was only after a few tries that he caught on to what she was asking, and then read the sixth row, sixth from top of chart, reading left to right.

I think the same thing happened with the road signs: he was reading top to bottom, and she was expecting left to right. Just goes to show that technology is only as good as the shared culture allows it to be.

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People

A truly deserving prize

Throughout the current economic crises, and well before, there’s one person I’ve returned to again and again for both thoughtful commentary on matters economical and political, and reassurance in difficult times and that’s Paul Krugman. I’m absolutely delighted to read he’s won the Nobel Prize in Economics. I cannot think of anyone who has a better grasp of the state of world economics than Mr. Krugman.

I gather that he also has critics among the other economists because of his liberal views. Considering that the conservatives just issued in a $700 billion bail out, I think I’ll stick with the liberals.

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People

A loss

I, as a computer professional, woman in computing, human being, really, lost a wonderful treasure today: Randy Pausch has passed away from cancer.

From Huliq:

In Lieu of Flowers: The family requests that donations on Randy’s behalf be directed to the Pancreatic Cancer Action Network, 2141 Rosecrans Ave., Suite 7000, El Segundo, CA 90245, or to Carnegie Mellon’s Randy Pausch Memorial Fund (www.cmu.edu/giving/pausch), which primarily supports the university’s continued work on the Alice project.

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People

The Fallen

Recovered from the Wayback Machine.

For those outside of St. Louis, we suffered a tragic shooting this week that left one young fireman dead, and two police officers seriously wounded. The event took place in Maplewood, which is just across I44 from where I live.

The fireman was Ryan Hummert, a 22 year old rookie and son of the former mayor of Maplewood, who just started work with the fire department last August. He and others were responding to a reported car fire when the owner of the car started shooting at the fire and police personnel who answered the call for help.

The owner of the house, Mark Knobbe, was a recluse cut off from friends and family, but had never given any indication that he would do an act such as this. After shooting at the police and firefighters, Knobbe set his own home on fire and then killed himself.

Tomorrow, the road outside of the complex where we have our town home will be closed for the funeral procession. I’ll be standing on the side of the road, taking some photos and paying my respects. I’ll post a follow up story tomorrow.

In the meantime, for those in the St. Louis area, the Missouri Fire Service Funeral Assistance Team has a page with information on visitation and the funeral procession. In addition, donations in Ryan Hummert’s name can be made to The Backstoppers an organization dedicated to the support of families of fallen police and fire fighting personnel.