DavidHumus - Slashdot User

Submission + - Green jobs more plentiful than fossil fuel jobs 2

Submitted by DavidHumus on Thursday October 24, 2019 @09:09AM

DavidHumus writes: Whereas the fossil fuel industry employs about 900,000 people in the US, green economy jobs — those associated with non-oil energy — number about 9.5 million, according to the study quoted here: https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.newscientist.com%2Fa... .

So much for the idea of "destroying the economy" by supporting alternatives to fossil fuel and working to reduce greenhouse gases.

Submission + - Why do we think bankers get paid too much, but not technology CEOs? 1

Submitted by DavidHumus on Thursday February 20, 2014 @12:33PM

DavidHumus writes: From the NY Times article (http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2014/02/18/outrage-over-wall-st-pay-but-shrugs-for-silicon-valley/):
Big paydays on Wall Street often come under laserlike scrutiny, while Silicon Valley gets a pass on its own compensation excesses. Why the double standard?

The typical director at a Standard & Poor’s 500 company was paid $251,000 in 2012, according to Bloomberg News. Mr. Schmidt [Google's CEO] is above that range by over $100 million. ... The latest was the criticism of Jamie Dimon’s pay for 2013, given the many regulatory travails of his bank, JPMorgan Chase. The bank’s board awarded Mr. Dimon $20 million in pay for 2013, $18.5 million of which was in restricted stock that vests over three years. ... For one, the outsize pay for Mr. Schmidt doesn’t square with Google’s performance. Putting aside the fact that he is not even the chief executive, Google had net income of $12.9 billion last year. JPMorgan was higher at $17.9 billion....

On pure economics, Mr. Schmidt appears to be receiving an inordinate amount. By every measure, JPMorgan is bigger, with more profits. And yet Google awards $100 million to its chairman and there is nary a peep.

Maybe the bigger question is why is CEO pay so entirely disconnected from company performance?

Submission + - Less vaccination then, more measles now (wsj.com)

Submitted by DavidHumus on Sunday July 21, 2013 @09:31PM

DavidHumus writes: Some of the longer-term effects of the anti-vaccination movement of past decades is now evident in a dramatic increase in measles. From the article: A measles outbreak infected 1,219 people in southwest Wales between November 2012 and early July, compared with 105 cases in all of Wales in 2011.

There continues to be no credible evidence that vaccination causes autism but the a significant minority believes this anyway.

Submission + - Peppers Protect against Parkinson's (sciencedaily.com)

Submitted by DavidHumus on Thursday May 09, 2013 @03:09PM

DavidHumus writes: A recent study indicates that consuming vegetables from the Solanaceae family, which includes tomatoes and peppers (as well as tobacco), decreases the risk of contracting Parkinson's disease. Earlier studies had shown that smoking tobacco seems to provide protection against the disease and the newer one seems to confirm that the key ingredient is nicotine, which is present in some vegetables like peppers.

Submission + - US Educational Scores Not So Abysmal (phys.org)

Submitted by DavidHumus on Wednesday January 16, 2013 @05:40PM

DavidHumus writes: The much-publicized international rankings of student test scores — PISA — rank the US lower than it ought to be for two reasons: a sampling bias that includes a higher proportion of lower socio-economic classes from the US than are in the general population and a higher proportion of of US students than non-US who are in the lower socio-economic classes.

If one were to rank comparable classes between the US and the rest of the world, US scores would rise to 4th from 14th in reading and to 10th from 25th in math.

Submission + - Can IT's potential be realized?

Submitted by

DavidHumus

on Monday March 10, 2008 @05:59PM

DavidHumus writes: "From an article "How to Tap IT's Hidden Potential" in the Wall St. Journal http://online.wsj.com/article/SB120467900166211989.html by Amit Basu and Chip Jarnagin: "...top executives at most companies fail to recognize the value of IT. ...there is still a tendency to think of IT as a basic utility, like plumbing or telephone service."

The article goes on to list five primary reasons for "the wall" between IT and business: "...mind-set differences between management staff and IT staff, language differences, social influences, flaws in IT governance (defined as the specification and control of IT decision rights), and the difficulty of managing rapidly changing technology."

Does this fully explain the extreme lack of understanding of IT at high executive levels? The article is even-handed in apportioning blame but touches on a few good points. In particular, how "[m]ost top executives fail to recognize the value of information technology. They think of IT as a basic utility, or as an expensive headache that they'd rather not deal with.""

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