News — At The Edge — 8/17
Little of what goes on in the world today — hypocrisy, oil & data spills, teacher ratings, unsafe food — reflects what is actually happening.
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The king of insults can’t handle the truth about himself —
“Trump has made more than 12,000 false or misleading statements during fewer than 1,000 days in office…[insulting] hundreds of people, entire countries and our collective intelligence…[yet] confronted with…truths about himself…he wigs out….
- [Said] ‘very fine’ people on both sides in Charlottesville, accused a judge of Mexican heritage of being unable to do his job, calls African and Caribbean nations ‘shithole countries’ and says he prefers immigrants from lily-white Norway. He told four nonwhite congresswomen to ‘go back’ to where they came from, regularly insults the intelligence of African Americans and has parroted white nationalist rhetoric….[He’s] upset that people…think he is a racist….
- [He] racked up a deficit…for a 27% increase over a year ago…[and] called ‘fiscally irresponsible’ (oh my!)….
- [Now] after years of excusing Russia’s attack on our democracy and those of other Western countries, and…[taking] Putin’s word over…U.S. intelligence community, people are calling him a ‘patsy’ or a ‘poodle’ for Putin. The nerve!….
- Insulting women, intimating…[they] trade sex for campaign contributions, and accumulating allegations of sexual assault? Darn if people don’t call Trump a ‘misogynist.’
- Trump brags…North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un…sends him beautiful letters. And people call him ‘gullible’?!….
- Trump denies climate change, and people…call him ‘anti-science’ or an ‘ignoramus’….
- [M]ade about 200 trips to his golf properties since taking office, has days on end with no public events and doesn’t read his intelligence briefing (or much of anything else)…[and] people call him ‘lazy.’
- He refuses to dissolve his business holdings…and receives foreign emoluments, yet people have the nerve to call him ‘corrupt.’
- Trump attacks the rule of law, the First Amendment, the separation of powers and the courts; meanies accuse him of being ‘anti-democratic’ or ‘authoritarian.’
- Trump hires a slew of incompetent and ethically challenged advisers…[yet] media have the gall to say his presidency is ‘chaotic.’
- Trump changes policy by tweet and gets dubbed ‘impulsive,’ reverses himself and gets called ‘erratic.’
- He approves a family separation policy and refuses to provide safe and sanitary conditions for asylum seekers, only to be called ‘cruel’ or ‘inhumane.’
Will the attacks on Trump never cease?!….
The man who victimizes others insists that he is the biggest victim of all… calling him racist and misogynistic, fiscally irresponsible, lazy, corrupt, authoritarian, impulsive and erratic based on his racist and misogynistic, fiscally irresponsible, lazy, corrupt, authoritarian, impulsive and erratic rhetoric and actions. The unfairness of it all!” https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2019/08/13/king-insults-cannot-handle-truth/
If data are the new oil, data breaches should be treated like oil spills —
“[1989] Exxon Valdez supertanker ran aground in…Alaska, pouring a quarter of a million barrels of oil into the surrounding waters…[but] culture of discipline within ExxonMobil…helped turn it into the profitmaking beast it is [now]….
[Today] digital firms are floundering towards their own Exxon Valdez moment. The latest is Capital One [bank]…[where] a hacker had stolen personal and financial details of 106m credit-card customers and applicants…[and] should have had more protection…[but] lacked a culture of safety sufficiently strong to ensure that it relentlessly probed for new vulnerabilities….
[Business] argue that data are trickier to manage than oil..[in] a fiendish game of cat-and-mouse. Companies do not know who their attackers are — criminals? state actors?….
The hacker only has to be right once to penetrate a system. Defenders have to parry every jab….
Still, the oil industry’s experience is instructive….
- ingraining safety in every employee can strengthen the weakest link…the individual….Wise firms fake phishing emails to flush out the [vulnerable]….
- Oil firms’ insistence on their supply chains speaking the same language…on safety…Hackers increasingly infiltrate…by first penetrating the defenses of smaller suppliers and piggybacking on the communications systems which link the two….
- data can turn from an asset into a crushing liability….Capital One says its recent hack will cost it up to $150m this year…Ignoring potential fines, that is less than $1.50 per victim — and a tenth of the bank’s latest quarterly profits. Equifax, a credit-scoring firm, recently agreed to pay up to $700m to resolve lawsuits….
[A] consultancy, puts…average cost of a data breach…at $150 per victim…[but] should be…$1,000 to spur the investment needed to prevent losses.” https://www.economist.com/business/2019/08/10/the-exxon-valdez-of-cyberspace
Student evaluation of teaching ratings and student learning are not related —
“[A] widespread belief that students learn more from highly rated professors….
[New] studies revealed no significant correlations between the SET ratings and learning…suggest that institutions focused on student learning and career success may want to abandon SET ratings as a measure of faculty’s teaching effectiveness.” https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0191491X16300323?via%3Dihub
Artificial Intelligence Sniffs Out Unsafe Foods —
“Researchers trained machine-learning algorithms to read Amazon reviews for hints that a food product would be recalled by the FDA….
It can take months before a recall is issued….[Now] early detection and…faster recalls…[because] people increasingly buy foods [online]…[and] write reviews [enabling]…[algorithms] to predict FDA recalls three quarters of the time. They also identified another 20,000 reviews for possibly unsafe foods — most of which had never been recalled….
[WHO] estimates that 600 million people worldwide get sick annually, and more than 400,000 people die from contaminated food. ‘So having tools that…do recalls faster will be useful [globally]….[Since] recalled products can still get five-star reviews…stars alone don’t tell the whole sickening story.” https://www.scientificamerican.com/podcast/episode/artificial-intelligence-sniffs-out-unsafe-foods/
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Doc Huston
