About Google Scientist James Damore

I know I'm late to the game on this Google incident, but this is such a good illustration about how we, as a society, are unable to talk and think about serious issues except through our ideological filters. Further, some questions that can be explored through science apparently should no longer be even raised. First, a comment from a Gizmodo article by Melanie Ehrenkranz, who characterizes former Google Engineer James Damore as follows: "The man thinks women are inferior to men as engineers." That is typical of a lot of how Damore has been treated on the Internet. Now consider the basic facts about what Damore wrote at Google:

Calling the culture at Google an "ideological echo chamber", the memo says that while discrimination exists, it is extreme to ascribe all disparities to oppression, and it is authoritarian to try to correct disparities through reverse discrimination. Instead, it argues that male/female disparities can be partly explained by biological differences. According to research he cited, those differences include women generally having a stronger interest in people rather than things, and tending to be more social, artistic, and prone to neuroticism (a higher-order personality trait). Damore's memorandum also suggests ways to adapt the tech workplace to those differences to increase women's representation and comfort, without resorting to discrimination.
Damore has given detailed interviews about what happened at Google and why he wrote his comments. That includes this interview with Joe Rogan:

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Shall We Meet for Lunch or Hold a Walking Business Meeting in the Park?

“Let’s have lunch, OK?” That used to be my suggestion when I wanted to talk with someone, whether it be catching up with a friend or the need to discuss business. That was before the biometrics of Fitbit, among other things, nudged me to reach for a different way to conduct a small business meeting. Now, when I need to talk business, I often ask whether, instead of lunch, my acquaintance would like to talk while we walk in a park. I started doing this a couple years ago, and to my surprise the great majority of people would rather walk than sit in a restaurant or coffee shop.

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It’s Time to Clean Up Missouri Politics: About the CLEAN MISSOURI Ballot Initiative

Today I had the privilege of attending an informational meeting regarding the CLEAN MISSOURI ballot initiative. The organization will be finished collecting signatures in a few weeks, and is on target to having the initiative on the Missouri statewide ballot this coming November. Who could possibly be against a Ballot Proposition that will read exactly like this:

Shall the Missouri Constitution be amended to: ● change process and criteria for redrawing state legislative districts during reapportionment; ● change limits on campaign contributions that candidates for state legislature can accept from individuals or entities; ● establish a limit on gifts that state legislators, and their employees, can accept from paid lobbyists; ● prohibit state legislators, and their employees, from serving as paid lobbyists for a period of time; ● prohibit political fundraising by candidates for or members of the state legislature on State property; and ● require legislative records and proceedings to be open to the public? State governmental entities estimate annual operating costs may increase by $189,000. Local governmental entities report no fiscal impact.
Here is the Policy Summary. Here is the actual text being proposed for the Missouri Constitution. Here is the website for Clean Missouri. If you would like to get involved in this effort, contact Campaign Director Sean Soendker Nicholson at sean@cleanmissouri.org.

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Research Tools – the Beginning of a Collection

I decided to create a new category today: "Research Tools" I wanted to create a place where I could find interesting places to find things. Here's the first entry, describing seven such places for high quality research: "7 Great Educational Search Engines for Students" It briefly describes the following: 1) Educational Resources Information Center (ERIC) [M]aintained by the U.S. Department of Education. You’ll find more than 1.3 million bibliographic records of articles and online materials . . ." 2) Lexis Web Searches validated legal sites. 3) Google Scholar From Wikipedia: "Google Scholar is a freely accessible web search engine that indexes the full text or metadata of scholarly literature across an array of publishing formats and disciplines." 4) Microsoft Academic From MA: "Microsoft Academic understands the meaning of words, it doesn’t just match keywords to content." 5) Wolfram Alpha.   From the website, "he introduction of Wolfram|Alpha defined a fundamentally new paradigm for getting knowledge and answers—not by searching the web, but by doing dynamic computations based on a vast collection of built-in data, algorithms and methods." 6) iSeek Education  From the website:  "iSEEK Education is a targeted search engine for students, teachers, administrators, and caregivers." 7) ResearchGate From the website:  "ResearchGate is built by scientists, for scientists.It started when two researchers discovered first-hand that collaborating with a friend or colleague on the other side of the world was no easy task."

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