An Inconvenient Truth

I saw An Inconvenient Truth tonight. Here's a link to The Science section of their website.

It's quite good, of course.

One slide that was interesting to me was the comparison of the percentage of peer-reviewed studies that conclude the global warming is a real threat (100% of over 900 studies), compared with the ratio of stories in the popular press - about 50%. That is, about 50% of the popular press stories presented the global warming science in some ambiguous way. I.e., we get lied to on a regular basis and those lies get ingrained.

I'll be curious to see if Gore really stays out of the 2008 election.

Ch-Ch-Changes

Apple makes computers and iPods. To make the computers valuable and worth people's money, they make software. To help sell iPods, Apple sells music.

Pearson does a lot of things, so many things, it might make your head spin. Broadly, they're about making you smarter. (I should propose as a new slogan: "We can't make you smart, but we can make you smarter."). Pearson has three divisions:
  • The Penguin book group, home of the famed Penguin classics,
  • The Financial Times, which attempts to explain global capitalism to you, and, our new friend,
  • Pearson Education. You're a bright person, I'll let you guess what Pearson Education is about.
PowerSchool makes software that schools and school districts use to manage their student's information. Hence the phrase Student Information System. Scheduling, attendance, grades, etc. You use a web browser to use most parts of the program. In 1997, when PowerSchool began, that was revolutionary. Today, it's prosaic.

Apple bought PowerSchool from its founder and initial investors just 5 years ago, about 6 months before the first iPod was released. At the time, one might suppose, Apple was interested in stemming their decline in education sales.

We learned last week that Pearson has purchased PowerSchool from Apple.

If you are a geek working at PowerSchool, you might be less than thrilled about exchanging your employee discount on iPods for a discount on the complete set of Penguin Classics. However, you might be thrilled for the product. Since PowerSchool has nothing to do with selling iPods and very little to do with selling computers (it's cross-platform, running equally well on Macs and Windows boxes), it didn't make much sense to be part of Apple's product line. But Pearson Education is all about what PowerSchool is all about. It looks, to me, like a good match.

On Privacy

Wired
The most common retort against privacy advocates -- by those in favor of ID checks, cameras, databases, data mining and other wholesale surveillance measures -- is this line: "If you aren't doing anything wrong, what do you have to hide?"
...
We do nothing wrong when we make love or go to the bathroom. We are not deliberately hiding anything when we seek out private places for reflection or conversation. We keep private journals, sing in the privacy of the shower, and write letters to secret lovers and then burn them. Privacy is a basic human need.
Talking Points Memo:
"...this dogmatic post-9/11 insistence on acting as if human history began suddenly in 1997 or something. The United States was able to face down such threats as the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany without indefinite detentions, widespread use of torture as an interrogative technique, or all-pervasive surveillance. But a smallish group of terrorists who can't even surface publicly abroad for fear they'll be swiftly killed by the mightiest military on earth? Time to break out the document shredder and do away with that pesky constitution."

Work / Life Balance

Got some time on your hands? Google work/life balance. (ok, so I saved you a step, thereby improving the ratio - see how easy this is?)

You didn't ask, but my theory is, there is no work/life balance. It's only life. You get one. Enjoy all of it or make peace with what you can't change or move on.

Don't worry, this is for me, not you. I have no insight into what you need. :-)