Sizes are random numbers edition (For women, anyway.)
Today we discover the women’s clothes sizes are virtually random numbers surely a business ethics problem if ever there was one. Denying women the most basic information about what they buy is a wrong that takes money out of women’s pockets every single day.
If Donald Trump were elected he could use nuclear weapons on his own authority. If suffering from a concussion, get rest – do not resume sports immediately. And Congress fails in its duty one more time.
James Pilant
The sizes on women’s clothes are random numbers.
“Vanity sizing was done as a marketing tool. I don’t think it’s done as a marketing tool anymore. I think it’s done because the women are getting bigger, and we’re just addressing that,” said Lynn Boorady, chair of the fashion and textile technology department at SUNY Buffalo State, in the video. “The original sizing charts never had sizes 0 and 2. Now we select sizes 0 and 2 because the sizes are getting smaller and smaller and we’re getting larger and larger but we’re also adding at the other end.”
Yes, if he were President, Donald Trump could use nuclear weapons
If the United States appeared to be under nuclear assault, the president would have minutes to decide whether the threat was real, and to fire as many as 925 nuclear warheads with a destructive force greater than 17,000 Hiroshima bombs, according to estimates by Hans M. Kristensen, the director of the Nuclear Information Project at the Federation of American Scientists, a private group in Washington.
“There’s no veto once the president has ordered a strike,” said Franklin C. Miller, a nuclear specialist who held White House and Defense Department posts for 31 years before leaving government service in 2005. “The president and only the president has the authority to order the use of nuclear weapons.”
Don’t continue playing after a concussion!
But if I had known that continuing to play the same day after hitting my head could have done so much damage, I would not have pushed myself. Now that the information about concussions is available, there are more ways to manage the symptoms once they arise. Coaches and athletic trainers are more aware of the negative effects of a single hit to the head, and most of the time, they won’t allow their athlete back onto the playing field. There are preventative measures that youth sports are taking, such as requiring softball pitchers to wear face masks and soccer players to wear padded headbands.
President Barack Obama asked Congress for $1.9 billion in February to deal with the impending outbreak of Zika in the United States. Congress finally began working on the request in May, with the Senate passing a bipartisan compromise that was about $800 million short.
The bill got tanked in a partisan squabble last month afterRepublicans decided to add in contraception restrictions, a pro-Confederate flag provision, extra cuts to Obamacare, and a measure to exempt pesticides from the Clean Water Act, even though those pesticides don’t target Zika-carrying mosquitoes.
They then departed for a seven-week break while sending a sternly worded letter to Obama, saying he should take aggressive action to battle Zika using the $589 million the administration transferred from other programs, taken primarily from the ongoing Ebola response. GOP lawmakers have also complained recently that the money is not being spent quickly enough, with nearly two-thirds still available.
Is Data Our Problem?? (This is an interesting take on modern politics – I recommend careful reading. This is a good one.)
In this year’s election cycle, the restless, anti-establishment anger is palpable, and shared by voters on the left who felt the Bern and on the right who love the Donald. Both are animated by a conviction that the moneyed class and corporations have hijacked our democracy. Emerging from their conventions, both Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump will vie to win over these disaffected voters. Right now, both candidates are missing a potent opportunity to publicly recognize that it is not only money producing outsized influence in our democratic system. It is data.
Congress failed to act on the Zika virus (Yes, this is another article on the same subject – I have a lot of anger on this topic. A deadly virus that also causes birth defects is predicted to enter the United States and our congressional response was an extra long vacation. Yes, they did pass a bill to fight the Zika virus — it also defunded parts of Obamacare, defunded Planned Parenthood, protected the confederate flag and removed regulations from some pesticides. Apparently holding the lives of Americans hostage is good politics.)
Irresponsibility of this kind should outrage the nation, but our stores of outrage are largely spent. Members of the House and Senate turn every issue into partisan Kabuki theater — a ritual performance of ideological difference in which real-world problems are never solved. And so the status of 11 million undocumented immigrants goes unaddressed. Crumbling bridges and roads remain unrepaired. Social Security and other entitlements go unreformed. A proposal to prevent people on terrorist watch lists from buying firearms dies in committee. The Zika battle is starved of funding. On and on it goes, even as these public servants spend much of their time fundraising for their next re-election campaign. When Donald Trump supporters are asked why they support someone so rude and reckless, they say, “Washington is broken. We need someone who’s a little crazy to shake it up.” Even if their choice of medicine is questionable, you can’t argue with the diagnosis.
How dirty is the water at the Olympics?
Absolutely filthy. A cleanup was promised ahead of the Games, but the state government spent only $170 million of a pledged $4 billion on the effort, citing a budget crisis. Surf still churns with sludge, and garbage floats freely; in many places, raw sewage flows directly into the streams and rivers that feed Olympic sites. “Foreign athletes will literally be swimming in human crap,” Dr. Daniel Becker, a Rio pediatrician, told The New York Times. The Associated Press found dangerously high levels of viruses and bacteria in the waters. In some cases, the virus loads were up to 1.7 million times the level considered hazardous on a Southern California beach. The U.S. rowing team will wear seamless double-layered unisuits made with antimicrobial material to help protect them from the contaminated water.
Since oil prices began to fall in mid-2014, cheap crude has been blamed for 195,000 job cuts in the U.S., according to a report published on Thursday by outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas.
It’s an enormous toll that is especially painful because these tend to be well-paying jobs. The average pay in the oil and gas industry is 84% higher than the national average, according to Goldman Sachs. The cuts have occurred at a time when many other corners of the American economy have been adding jobs.
Pilant's Business Ethics Blog 
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