Is Google Evil?

On By southwerkIn Capitalism

 

Is Google Evil?
Is Google Evil?

Is Google Evil?

I’m Getting Discouraged

Writing is a pleasure for me and a need. I have to write to get some things out. There are things I want to say that I believe are important.  I’ve been doing blogging on regular basis for about five years, more on some sites than others.

It is now pretty obvious that Google has penalized me repeatedly and thoroughly. With the changes Google made in 2012 and 2013, I have been reduced from more than a hundred hits a day to my current average (and falling) of 34 hits a day.

So, I’ve been looking at Google and “Search Engine Optimization.” To say the rules are Byzantine would be a dramatic understatement. What’s more Google changes the rules whenever it feels like and in anyway it feels like.

I want to write. I don’t want to spend hours doing SEO. I like to think I have a life, and the implication of having a life is that you are experiencing it and don’t have time for nonsense. I envision the great authors of history trying to navigate through Google and spending hours on SEO. It was only funny the first time.

What’s getting me in trouble? One thing is my lengthy quotes. I like to talk up my friends’ Blogs, Dan Bodine, Steven Mintz and my colleague, Chris MacDonald and many others. I love telling people about new blogs. I write a paragraph introduction, include two or three paragraphs of one of their articles followed by a direct link (usually I link to both the individual post and their full web site). Google considers this duplicate material and penalizes me heavily for it. So, I’m going through my posts, 2,210 of them, trying to get the quotes reduced to “snippets,” which I’m not sure exactly what is, but am assuming it is a sentence or two with a “…” at the end. I’m told a snippet will not draw unfavorable attention.

There appears to be a bunch of other things I do that were okay in 2012, that are Google penalized now. I am trying to learn the rules. I’m pretty upset. After all, you might think that my 2,210 posts would get me some kind of credit in the first place but no, sometimes I don’t stay on topic, my “brand.” When I talk about a favorite movie or mention something that happened or talk about criminal justice (which I teach), their diabolical rating system says “NOT BUSINESS ETHICS.” And I get penalized. So, I’ve been killing posts that aren’t directly on subject.

I can’t help but believe that I want to write about the important issues of the day and instead I’m playing a maniacal time-eating,role-playing game in which the rules make little sense and change while you are trying to play the game.

Is Google Evil?

I hope not. Maybe all this horrible, horrible things they have done is just an aberration and once I work through it, I will get some search results for all my work. I don’t expect to be treated fairly because Google isn’t going to do that, but a little, tiny bit of fairness is not too much to hope for.

James Pilant

From Around the Web.

From Evil Google to WordPress

Google recently revealed the pitch-black nature of its evil heart …

http://vanshardware.com/2010/02/from-evil-google-to-wordpress/

What’s the Business Ethics? Should the Employees in Video Stores be Movie Buffs?

On By southwerkIn Business Ethics2 Comments

029What’s the Business Ethics? Should the Employees in Video Stores be Movie Buffs?

It seems like a good idea – knowing the product – being able to understand questions – give good recommendations. But they are not always move buffs. Sometimes, they know very little about films at all.

For me personally, this isn’t much of a problem, I am a film buff, myself and know what I want to rent or buy. Of course, sometimes they think they’re film buffs. I’m sorry, one recommendation, Dirty Mary, Crazy Larry, is never going to be a classic.

But let us return to the question: Should the employees in video stores be movie buffs? I think they should at least have some rudimentary knowledge because of something that happened to me.

Now, I live in the Bible belt and here among many there is a certain pride in not being cultured, knowledgeable or educated. One day I wander into a video rental place and have a look around. There’s a couple of John Wayne films that I had seen when I was in my teens that I wanted to watch again as an adult. So, I’m back there in the shelves looking for Rio Bravo and El Dorado, when I come across the film, Even Cowgirls Get the Blues.

I had seen Even Cowgirls Get the Blues. I don’t remember where. It may have been on cable or a friend rented it. I think it’s a pretty good film but generally I don’t watch lesbian films. Now I have seen a lot of films involving lesbians but this isn’t quite the same thing. The film is not a lesbian film so much as it is a LESBIAN film. It shouts and screams and at the top of its lungs proclaims that it is a lesbian film. Okay? LESBIAN!!! And as for rating, it’s a hard R. How hard? Think of steel or diamonds.

I immediately see a vision in my mind of a Bible belt family just home from church about to watch what they believe is the usual redemptive tale of a white hatted cowboy slaughtering bad guys or Native Americans and winding up with the appropriately virginal school teacher who cannot restrain her ardor for a man who kills so casually. And instead the family gets to learn about female sexuality in a new and controversial way.

So, I, a good citizen and business ethics teacher (which means I can’t so much as eat a grape in the supermarket – a student might see me) carry the film up to the front and ask the clerk to move it from Westerns.

The conversation goes like this.

“You say this film isn’t a Western?”

“That’s right.” I reply.

“Does it take place in the West?”

“Well, yes it does.” I admit.

“Are there actual cowgirls in it?”

“Well, they do wear chaps.” I was not willing to disclose the absence of other clothing.

“Then why should we move it?”

“Look, just watch it, okay?” I give up, not willing to explain the significance of Uma Thurman’s outsized thumbs.

He gives me that look which means “I will go through the motions of appearing to take your concerns seriously but as soon as you leave this is going back in the Westerns.”

And it was back there the next time I came in.

As business ethics go, this is a small problem, no matter how traumatized the formerly happy middle class family that sees it, may become.

And of course, I did my ethical duty, so I can feel good about myself. But maybe, just maybe it would be a better world if the sales clerks in video rental places knew more about films.

James Pilant

Poor Youngsters as Happy as More Affluent Peers (via Thriven’s Blog)

On By southwerkIn ethics

Poor Youngsters as Happy as More Affluent Peers (via Thriven’s Blog)

!!@@#dddddd444plate16-thIs happiness determined by the size of your wallet? I’ve never thought so. But I do believe that debt pressure can make a good life into a living hell. I worry that millions of Americans saddled with debt they can never pay are never going to have a chance at the happiness that the last generation had.

Americans owe 2.4 trillion dollars in consumer debt. Than doesn’t count real estate. The big pieces of that are student loan debts coming in at about 730 billion dollars, credit card debt at 962 billion dollars. That leaves 708 billion for things like auto loans.

In good times, that wouldn’t be that big of a problem. If you have good jobs and a thriving economy, those kinds of debts are manageable.

These aren’t good times.

These debts translate into hardcore misery: lost homes, spousal abuse, alcohol and drug use, crime as well as mental illness.

When the debts are larger than your income, you lay awake at night. It sits in the back of your mind like a dull pain that never goes away. You feel it when you talk, when you read, even when you take a step.

You can’t buy a can of pop on the way to work. You can’t buy coffee when you’re cold.

You put gasoline in the car and pray hard that it works okay, even though you have been due for an oil change for three months and the tires are getting bald.

Your life moves away from logic and you rely on luck. Will the car keep running? Will one of us get sick? Can we get some part time work or maybe sell something? That’s what life is when it’s just a matter of luck. Things just happen.

There are millions of Americans out there feeling that kind of pain.

Read the article. It’s well thought out from a good web site.

James Pilant

  An important article in today’s Guardian. For many of us who grew up poor or who have close contact with young people and families in the low income category, we would hardly be surprised that life can be as good without much in the way of money. Indeed, in many cases it is better. The genuine positive closeness of people – family, partners and friends – is almost certainly the key factor to feeling secure and happy. There’s nothing like l … Read More

via Thriven’s Blog

Why This Site?

On By southwerkIn Capitalism

076A2032Why This Site?

Why should you read my site and subscribe to it? What makes me different?

Business ethics is usually interpreted in a limited fashion. We talk about “on the job” ethics, that is, personal ethics. We talk about corporate ethics, that is, organizational ethics. And we discuss the ethics of economic systems.

That’s where I live – economic systems. That is where the big crises are.

1. Multinational corporations are on the attack on national sovereignty. They want to be independent of the nations where they exist and want the power to sue and overrule laws.

2. Businesses are continually, often successfully turning public resources into private money.

3. Free market fundamentalists are invading every sphere of endeavor with a doctrine as oppressive and odious as any totalitarian government.

Those are the big issues. They are hard to talk about.

It’s not popular. You don’t get hired as a consultant when you imply that businesses are unpatriotic, that they don’t have a right to public resources and that the free market is not the cure for all that ails society.

But I’m not going to shut up.

Join me – read my stuff. Join me in the struggle for justice and fairness.

James Alan Pilant

Do the American People Need to Become Re-introduced to Science?

On By southwerkIn Opinion7 Comments
Global warming ubx

Image via Wikipedia

Seth Mnookin: The Autism Vaccine Controversy and the Need for Responsible Science Journalism

Last January, Andrew Wakefield, the discredited British gastroenterologist whose 1998 paper sparked the first wave of fears that vaccines might be causally connected to autism, was further disgraced when the editors of the British Medical Journal declared his work “an elaborate fraud.” (By that point, Wakefield had already forfeited his medical license for a litany of moral, ethical, and professional misdeeds — including an incident where he paid children at his young son’s birthday party to donate their blood for his experiments.) With little left to lose, Wakefield seemed to fully embrace the fringe: In June, he headlined a rally titled “The Masterplan: The Hidden Agenda for a Global Scientific Dictatorship” with a cohort of 9/11 Truthers, One World Government conspiracists, and anti-fluoridationists.

So, how are the mighty fallen. This is one of the slender reeds upon with the anti-vaccination movement rests? Has the movement slidden into Internet Conspiracy Theory? (JP)

Seth Mnookin: The Autism Vaccine Controversy and the Need for Responsible Science Journalism

 

Do the American People Need to Become Re-introduced to Science

I’m beginning to wonder.

Last winter, I was getting my haircut during a snow fall and one of the clients said “I guess that global warming is going to get us all; the he hee-hawed like a jackass.

Didn’t hear quite so many jokes during the drought last summer when in the eight county Houston area, 66 million trees are dying roughly 10% of all trees in the area.

The evidence is clear. Get some bad research, a couple of bogus think tanks and compliant media with give you equal credit with internationally renowned scientists. Using this tool, you can confuse enough of the population to keep necessary legislation or in the case in the article above vaccinations from taking place.

I’ve been in college with students studying to be scientists. (My degree is in criminal justice and speech, and I have a law degree.) I was always amazed at how hard they worked to be precise in their conclusions. Their dedication was amazing. For many it was a love of learning, of discovering, and of making a difference. That’s why they became scientists.

Hearing and reading them described as some kind of international plot to disdain God and make people give up their cars is a pretty miserable experience. It’s like hearing a good friend maligned.

Let me tell you something. I was raised in a fundamentalist church. Do you know how many times I was lied to in their literature; how often the material was simply made up whole cloth? Do you know how often when I went and studied history and science and discovered that the things they told me were non-existent or distortions of the facts? It was a regular experience.

When I compare that to the number of times that scientists have deliberately misled me in my lifetime, there is simply no contest.

You make better decisions with facts and science than you do with wishful thinking. Whether it be secondhand smoke or global warming, I’ll line up with the best knowledge available.

James Pilant

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I have my big girl pants on – but am I a “real” adult? (via Ashley Cray)

On By southwerkIn business ethics1 Comment

It’s a very gradual process as you mature. By maturity I mean developing your reasoning, intelligence, learning from experience, – getting a little wisdom.

You will discover if you haven’t already that men often have difficulty transitioning and, of course, some women. They will remain forever children in a very real sense – they learn nothing and the years of high school are the greatest years of their lives.

You don’t have anything to worry about. It’s obvious you’re thinking, that means you are still developing. Thinking people do quite well when it comes to maturing and developing their adult persona.

Of course, there is always going to be one problem.

Let me tell you a story. — I was at a home for the elderly. There was a man there about 75, very conservatively dressed. I actually seem to recall him wearing a Homburg. He was not a resident. He was a visitor. He was pushing his mother in a wheel chair. She was berating him for his shortcomings like he was ten years old. I remember sitting there thinking, “It’s nevery going to stop. There are going to be people who will never see me as an adult.”

You’ll have the same problem. There will always be people who don’t want to let that child transform into an adult. Indulge them a little. Old age is rough. If you have ever seen a fifty year old business man wearing leathers and riding a Harley, you have some idea of how rough it is for many people to adapt.

But once again, you’re not someone that I need to worry about.

Best wishes,

James Alan Pilant

I have my big girl pants on - but am I a "real" adult? The other day I stumbled upon a blog post from All Groan Up called “Ill feel like an Adult When…” This realllllly  got me thinking about being a “real” adult.  I dont look like an adult.  I dont act like an adult.  But my age deems me as being a “Young Adult.” I pay my bills. I have a mortgage. I have a car payment. I vote. I go to the Doctors office alone. My insurance is in my name. I do my own grocery shopping. I have a career-type job. … Read More

via Ashley Cray

New Zealand playing offside? (via Integrity Talking Points)

On By southwerkIn business ethics
Courtesy of KNOL Google

The problem of tax havens has worsened each year with more and more countries making relatively small sums of money protecting enormous sums from taxation in their home nations. It is hardcore unethical both for the nations doing it and for the people and corporations taking advantage of it.

The author here worries whether or not New Zealand will choose the ethical or the profitable path. It’s a good article.

By the way, I have read several entries from this blog. I am impressed and I added the site to my favorites.

James Pilant

15 April 2011 Is New Zealand a tax haven?   By opposing the conversion of the United Nations Tax Committee into a specialist enforcement body, New Zealand is seen as a supporter of tax havens and those who move illicit funds into such jurisdictions.  Nicholas Shaxson, a campaigner and author of books about tax avoidance claims New Zealand is “letting down the developed world” and within a few years will join rogue nations listed on the Financial … Read More

via Integrity Talking Points

DEP, “Don’t Expect Protection”

On By southwerkIn Economic Justice
DEP, “Don’t Expect Protection”

pennsylvania-enviornment_0Fracking’s Toxic Secrets: Lack Of Transparency Over Natural Gas Drilling Endangers Public Health, Advocates Say

Some frustrated residents and anti-fracking activists are finding new names to call the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) — “Don’t Expect Protection,” “Department of Energy Production” — according to Dana Dolney of ShaleTest, a nonprofit that provides free air and water quality testing for low-income residents near natural gas wells.

The department is taking heat for providing what critics see as incomplete water quality test results to property owners who are concerned about pollution from nearby fracking operations. Withholding such information, the critics say, could endanger residents’ health.

“Based on what is happening in the Marcellus Shale, we saw a huge desperate need for this kind of testing,” Dolney said. “We wouldn’t have to do what we do if it wasn’t for the failures of the DEP.”

The DEP and natural gas companies are defending the testing methods, asserting that the contaminants most likely to be associated with fossil fuel extraction are included in what is shared with the DEP and, subsequently, with homeowners.

Still, critics suggest the purported “filtering” of testing data is just one of the ways people are left in the dark about the assortment of heavy metals and other toxic contaminants that may be in their air and water as a result of drilling, hydraulic fracturing and other phases of natural gas production. Recent studies have identified more than 600 chemicals used throughout the process of natural gas production, and often left undisclosed by companies. Additionally, natural but equally hazardous substances can be released from the wells.

Fracking’s Toxic Secrets: Lack Of Transparency Over Natural Gas Drilling Endangers Public Health, Advocates Say

Not telling people the information you don’t want them to have is lying. It’s just easier to justify to yourself. This is what happens when an agency is captured by the industry it is supposed to regulate.

James Pilant

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Are Your Children Likely to Make More Money than You?

On By southwerkIn Economic Justice

No. The statistics are clear.  The ability to change class to move upward is very, very limited. Most people on average and most commonly will make about the same money as their parents.

Why are we in this situation? Well, education is no longer a likely venue to higher income. The privileged have access to Ivy League schools and privately educate their children from the nursery to college. Currently we have what is essentially two education systems in the United States, one for the upper class and public education for everyone else. God help anyone self-educated like Abraham Lincoln. People like that aren’t even in the ball game.

What else? Well there’s hiring practices. The upper middle class reassured by such books as “Emotional Intelligence” hire on the basis of comfort. And comfort by and large means hiring your own social class. It diminishes the importance of ability and makes skilled work annoying to others.

Contacts are another critical factor. I’ve heard many people say, “It’s not what you can do, it’s who you know.” I don’t think that knowing the plant manager is that big a deal down in the lower class where I dwell. That’s not what I’m talking about. I’m talking about access to Congressmen and Governors. I’m talking about the heads of corporations and the deans of business schools. I’m talking about knowing the players in the financial sector, of knowing where the levers are when it comes to getting loans, jobs and influence. Those are the contacts that make a difference.

Tell me, what’s all A’s at state U, compared to Harvard or Georgetown? What is raw ability when you don’t golf, wear the right clothes or speak the language of the upper class? What is your chance of moving up in the world when maybe you know a state representative and the other guy has a letter from the White House?

We can do better.

Ability should be the measure of success. Social class shouldn’t be a burden borne only by the workers. The cozy club atmosphere of the privileged should be open to all comers.

James Pilant

Here is the article title and a paragraph explaining the numbers behind my claims.

The Rise and Consequences of Inequality in the United States
Alan B. Krueger
Chairman, Council of Economic Advisers
January 12, 2012

More research has been done on intergenerational income mobility. Studies find that your
parent’s income is a good predictor of your subsequent income. Studies that use income data
averaged over longer periods of time for parents and children tend to find higher correlations
between parental and children’s income. A reasonable summary is that the correlation between
parents’ and their children’s income is around 0.50. This is remarkably similar to the correlation
that Sir Francis Galton found between parents’ height and their children’s height over 100 years
ago. This fact helps to put in context what a correlation of 0.50 implies. The chance of a person
who was born to a family in the bottom 10 percent of the income distribution rising to the top 10
percent as an adult is about the same as the chance that a dad who is 5’6” tall having a son who
grows up to be over 6’1” tall. It happens, but not often.

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Bible College a Scam?

On By southwerkIn business ethics

01Bible College a Scam?

One of the chief problems is business ethics today is the seizure of public resources by private interests. Hospitals, schools, public parks, etc. are all considered fair game for private ownership. Here we also have a conversion, public trust into private profit. It is not unusual for a minister or other church authority to misuse their authority, their standing in the community for profit. The story is not new but this episode is particularly cruel. This was not a case of embezzlement or working the elderly for a place in their will, this was a form of slavery using the power of the federal government as an enforcement mechanism to avoid compliance with the law.

Students from foreign countries came to the United States in the belief that they would receive a Christian education, instead they were given hours and hours of work each week while being denied decent housing and an education.

It is the understanding in this country that both churches and religions are not for-profit organizations. This is not always the case but it is the expectation. This “Christian” organization appears to have been a money making bonanza utilizing foreign labor at a small fraction of the minimum wage under the threat of expulsion from the United States for non-compliance.

This is a business ethics problem pure and simple. A Christian College was used as a cover for a racket. Religion was used as a cover for crime. Public respect and status were converted into cash. This college, if the testimony of these students is accurate, was as much about religion as Bernie Madoff was about legitimate investments. The scam played it from two angles, a reliance on the cover provided by both American respect for religion and college education.

This does little for the American image overseas that we treat visitors to our country so brutally. It is embarrassing but I am even more worried about the outcome of the case. This has become increasingly a nation with two tiers of justice, one for the majority of us and another for the well placed and influential. Our villain here is in the influential group. What will it be, probation and community service? Will they stall the sentencing until the public outrage subsides and something appropriate for an upper class member of society can be worked out?

I am not hopeful. I have seen who gets prosecuted and what sentences are given for a good number of years now.

We only get a little justice.

James Pilant

South Carolina Bible College President Busted For Slavery, Forced Labor | Crooks and Liars

The president of a South Carolina Bible college was charged last week with essentially treating foreign students as slaves by forcing them to perform work for little or no pay.

According to The Sun News, federal prosecutors filed a criminal complaint against Cathedral Bible College President Reginald Wayne Miller, accusing him of forced labor.

An affidavit included with the complaint said that students “described a pervasive climate of fear in which their legal status as non-immigrant students was in constant jeopardy, at the sole discretion of Dr. Miller, who threatened expulsion and therefore termination of their legal presence in the United States for noncompliance with his demands.”

Students told investigators that classes at the school “were not real,” and that the real purpose of the school was to force them to work over the maximum of 20 hours per week that federal law allows for student visas. The students alleged that Miller often forced them to live in substandard conditions without hot water, heat or air-conditioning.

via South Carolina Bible College President Busted For Slavery, Forced Labor | Crooks and Liars.

Some Additional Information: The Raw Story.

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2014/05/25/sc-pastor-accused-of-turning-bible-college-into-forced-labor-camp-for-foreign-students/

Miller was arrested in 2006 on charges of lewdness and prostitution after he exposed himself to an undercover officer in a bathhouse at Myrtle Beach State Park. Records indicated that Miller participated in a pre-trial intervention program, allowing his record to be expunged.

During a Friday appearance at Florence Federal Court House, a federal judge set bail at $250,000. He was also ordered to stay away from Cathedral Bible College, and its students. The former pastor could spend 20 years in jail if convicted.

From Around the Web.

From the web site, World.Time.Com.

http://world.time.com/2013/02/20/irish-prime-minister-apologizes-for-forced-labor-in-magdalene-laundries/

Irish Prime Minister Enda Kenny made a historic apology on Tuesday to the survivors of the notorious Magdalene Laundries and the families of more than 10,000 women who were forced into unpaid labor from 1922 to 1996. In an emotional speech to the Irish Parliament, Kenny told the surviving women and their families “this is a national shame for which I say again I am deeply sorry and offer my full and heartfelt apologies.”

For more than seven decades in the 20th century, thousands of unmarried mothers, women who had been sexually abused and young girls who had grown up in the care of the state lived and worked in the Irish Magdalene Laundries operated by four orders of Catholic nuns. Ignored by Irish society, 26.5% of these “fallen women” were sent there by the Irish state to work without pay for an average of six months. The Irish government had previously denied playing a role in sending young women to work in laundries.