• EMPLOYERS BE AWARE THAT ‘DISCRIMINATION’ CLAIMS HAVE BEEN FURTHER SUPPORTED by new EEOC guidelines which expand ‘discrimination’ to include hiring decisions based on: (1) “Physical, linguistic or cultural traits” like accent or dress style; (2) Ethnicity or even perception that someone belongs (or not) to an ethnic group, regardless of their actual origin; (3) Requiring ‘English only’ or language fluency unless ‘necessary’ for safe, efficient or effective performance of the position; (4) U.S. citizenship or immigration status; California law makes it “unlawful to refuse to honor documents or work authorizations or even attempt to re-investigate or re-verify documents that on their face reasonably appear to be legitimate.” [LINERLAW NWSLTR – Feb 1, 17]
  • FRESH SEAFOOD IS HEALTHY PROTEIN NUTRITION, BUT CAN BE DANGEROUS. Caution tips: (1) If skin or flesh ”appear dry, dull or dehydrated, eyes are murky or cloudy, or it smells ‘fishy’ rather than briny, the fish has likely been behind the glass for too long… pungent funk is a sign of bacterial decay”; (2) Fish must stay properly chilled around 32 degrees – “for every 10 degrees above 32, shelf-life is shortened by half”; (3) Surveys find mislabeling nearly 20% of the time, both as to type and source. If fish is not marked ‘processed in the United States as FDA requires, may well have come from foreign fisheries with “unsanitary processing & storage methods… If fishmongers can’t tell you where the fish is from & how it was caught, then they probably don’t know what they’re selling either.” [MENS HEALTH – Mar 17]
  • “SILICON VALLEY BOASTS OF ITS OWN MIGHT AND SHRUGS AT ITS OWN IMPOTENCE BOTH AT ONCE… The industry has long supported immigration – half of all the American startups that are worth more than a billion dollars were founded by migrants, and half the population (most engineers) in Cupertino, a posh suburb, are foreign born… But the adverse economic and social consequences of the industry’s output are no one’s responsibility. The industry argues they are the result of unavoidable shifts in technology, in turn responding to society’s broad demands. This logic has allowed tech firms to avoid responsibility for the stolen or bilious content that they publish and for the jobs that their algorithms help eliminate… Oligopolistic, hubristic and ruthless to its core, Silicon Valley is no beacon of moral leadership.” [THE ECONOMIST – Feb 4, 17]
  • “ALL COMPUTERS ARE HACKABLE since we prefer software cheap and full of features, at the expense of security & reliability… We no longer have things with computers embedded in them, but computers with Things attached to (An ATM is a computer with money inside; a car is a distributed system of over a hundred computers with four wheels and an engine.) The internet is no longer a web that we connect to, but a computerized, networked and interconnected world that we live in, called the Internet of Things… that senses, thinks and acts – the classic definition of a robot – combining several decades-old computing trends: mobile, cloud, always-on, huge databases of personal info, cyber-physical systems, autonomy and artificial intelligence, effectively a world-size robot… Until now, programmers have been given a special right to ‘code’ cyberspace as they saw fit – okay when cyberspace was separate and relatively unimportant, but now it’s time for moral, ethical, political and legal decisions on how those systems should work, before we lose complete control.” [NEW YORK MAGAZINE – Jan 27, 17]
  • MEANWHILE, THE NEWEST ROBOTS are transparent gel-based, with visual and acoustical properties similar to water engineered to “move when water is pumped in & out… to produce fast reactions generating force in one second, with sufficient strength to kick a ball or grab & release a live fish.” The expectation is adaption to interface with human organs to “apply more gentle manipulations to tissues and organs in surgical operations.” [M.I.T. NEWS – Feb 1, 17]
  • SMARTPHONE CAUTION: AN OVERHEATED PHONE CAN EXPLODE, especially if the battery is ‘bulging.’ Signs your phone is dying include the screen responding very slowly or ignoring taps & swipes, shutting down without warning or constantly rebooting, running too briefly after recharging, or slowing to a crawl. [THE WEEK – Feb 10, 17]
  • THOUGHTS FOR THE WEEK: The latest Nielsen Report surprisingly shows that it’s Gen Xers, not Millennials, who spend the most time consuming all kinds of media – 5 hours more weekly on internet & TV and 39 minutes more on social media pages.                        

        “For every failure there is an opportunity someone wishes they missed.” – Lily Tomlin

         Astonishing 3-D drawings: https://biggeekdad.com/2016/02/amazing-3d-drawings/