If You Don't Want to Hire Felons, You Need a Good Reason

The federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) is warning employers that it is illegal to use a prospective employee's past conviction records, even for serious felonies, as an "absolute measure" as to whether they should be hired because this "could limit the employment opportunities of some protected groups."

This is, the EEOC says, because blacks and Hispanics are over-represented among felons.

"Blacks and Hispanics also have an unfortunate higher high school and college dropout rates than whites and Asians -- surely this could be determined to be a disparate impact. Does that mean the EEOC could mandate that employers cannot consider an applicant's education? Where will it stop?" asks Justin Danhof, general counsel of the National Center for Public Policy Research. "It is unfortunate that the EEOC is placing outdated racial politics ahead of the American workforce at a time when employers should be encouraged to hire, but this mentality will likely make businesses think twice about plans for expansion. Employers should be free to consider the full content of an applicant's character when making hiring decisions."

Yup, this edict is true.

Bud's story

I got shot down over North Vietnam in 1967, a Sqdn. Commander. After I returned in 1973...I published 2 books that dealt a lot with "real torture" in Hanoi.

Our make- believe president is branding our country as a bunch of torturers when he has no idea what torture is. As for me, I was put thru a mock execution because I would not respond... pistol whipped on the head....same event. Couple of days later...hung by my feet all day. I escaped and a couple of weeks later, I got shot and recaptured. Shot was OK...what happened afterwards was not.

They marched me to Vinh...put me in the rope trick,...almost pulled my arms out of the sockets. Beat me on the head with a little wooden rod until my eyes were swelled shut, and my unshot, unbroken hand a pulp. Next day hung me by the arms ... rebroke my right wrist... wiped out the nerves in my arms that control the hands... rolled my fingers up into a ball. Only left the slightest movement of my left forefinger. So I started answering with some incredible lies.

Sent me to Hanoi strapped to a barrel of gas in the back of a truck.

Hanoi ...on my knees... rope trick again. Beaten by a big fool. Into leg irons on a bed in Heartbreak Hotel. Much kneeling... hands up at Zoo. Really bad beating for refusing to condemn Lyndon Johnson. Several more kneeling events. I could see my knee bone thru kneeling holes.

There was an escape from the annex to the Zoo. I was the Senior Officer of a large building because of escape... they started a mass torture of all commanders.

I think it was July 7, 1969... they started beating me with a car fanbelt. In first 2 days I took over 300 strokes.... then stopped counting because I never thought I would live through it.

They continued day-night torture to get me to confess to a non-existent part in the escape. This went on for at least 3 days. On my knees... fan belting...cut open my scrotum with fan belt stroke.... opened up both knee holes again. My fanny looked like hamburger... I could not lie on my back.

They tortured me into admitting that I was in on the escape... and that my 2 room-mates knew about it. The next day I denied the lie.

They commenced torturing me again with 3- 6- or 9 strokes of the fan belt every day from about July 11 or 12th to 14 October 1969. I continued to refuse to lie about my roommates again.

Now, the point of this is that our make-believe president has declared to the world that we (U.S..) are a bunch of torturers. Thus it will be OK to torture us next time when they catch us... because that is what the U.S. does. Our make-believe president is a know-nothing fool who thinks that pouring a little water on someone's face, or hanging a pair of women's pants over an Arab's head is TORTURE! He is a meathead.

I just talked to MOH holder Leo Thorsness, who was also in my squadron, in jail... as was John McCain... and we agree that McCain does not speak for the POW group when he claims that Al Ghraib was torture... or that "water boarding" is torture.

Our president and those fools around him who keep bad mouthing our great country are a disgrace to the United States.

If it got the Arab to cough up the story about how he planned the attack on the twin towers in NYC... hurrah for the guy who poured the water.

"Bud" Day

__________________________________________________________
George Everett "Bud" Day (born February 24, 1925) is a retired U.S. Air Force Colonel and Command Pilot who served during the Vietnam War. He is often cited as being the most decorated U.S. service member since General Douglas MacArthur, having received some seventy decorations, a majority for actions in combat. Day is a recipient of the Medal of Honor.

Birds of a feather

From the email inbox:

John "Poppo" Popovich is the best sports reporter/sports director in Cincinnati and he is a great guy. He lives out in the country in Indiana, due west of Cincinnati.

Popo's Morning Rush
July 30, 2010

Father of the Groom
Before I came to Cincinnati, I was a news reporter at WOC in Davenport Iowa. I covered a lot of city council and a lot of political stuff. One of the guys I covered was Ed Mezvinsky, who was the Congressman from Iowa's first district. Seemed like a pretty nice guy, but when he ditched his wife for a New York reporter, the Iowa voters ditched him.

My most vivid memory is that he sat on the House Judiciary Committee that was deciding the fate of President Nixon. Anyway, years later, "Fast Eddie" got caught with his hand in the till. He cheated investors out of more than $10 million dollars. He has gone to prison for several years.

A week ago, his son married Chelsea Clinton.

Practical math

At MIT, you can take a course in Street Fighting Mathematics.

"It's an attack on you!"

Everyone should watch this short video.

Come to the USA

Voronoi diagrams

From Wikipedia:

In mathematics, a Voronoi diagram is a special kind of decomposition of a metric space determined by distances to a specified discrete set of objects in the space, e.g., by a discrete set of points. It is named after Georgy Voronoi, also called a Voronoi tessellation, a Voronoi decomposition, or a Dirichlet tessellation (after Lejeune Dirichlet),

In the simplest case, we are given a set of points S in the plane, which are the Voronoi sites. Each site s has a Voronoi cell, also called a Dirichlet cell, V(s) consisting of all points closer to s than to any other site. The segments of the Voronoi diagram are all the points in the plane that are equidistant to the two nearest sites. The Voronoi nodes are the points equidistant to three (or more) sites.

Now see it in action. Mesmerizing.