Wisdoma

The University of Texas recently removed as the name of a dorm a former long-time UT law professor. He was also a former Klansman.

In the discussion about the continuing name of the dorm, I read it was mentioned that UT promotes “diversity” and as a result continuing to recognize a former Klansman was inappropriate.

Apparently, only “approved” diversity is permitted.

I’m NOT going to justify the former Klansman. There are many reasons why a UT dorm should not be named after him.

The bigger question is the concept of “diversity”.

It should mean, among other numbers, accepting a number of viewpoints, including those viewpoints one does not like or even finds repugnant.

Now, ironically, UT may be less diverse. Only “politically correct” perspectives are allowed.

That is not diversity.

One sees this all the time, a typical formula found especially in academia: We promote diversity. Because you do not like ______ you are not allowed.

It is never questioned that by restricting the opinions and perspectives that are unwanted, and which may even in fact be false, that the very concept of diversity is turned on its head. You have to like ______ to be diverse.

More accurately, diversity is simply a code word for, mainly, approved liberal think.

For months – years in fact – we’ve been hearing about how Sacramento County does not have any money, has a huge budget deficit, needs to law off non-managers, and so on.

Now the yearly State Fair is upon us.

Animals. Rides. Fried Twinkies. Fun to be had by all.

Sacramento County inspectors will be out in full force. Not to make sure rides are safe. Not to make sure people are having a good time.

But to inspect over 150 food vendors to make sure there are no artificial trans fats in any food they may sell.

The Sacramento county food inspectors will be testing anything cooked in oil, any food that is not baked or pre-made such as hamburger buns, pre-prepared box mixes, and batter.

Just keep this in mind whenever you hear the County squealing about budget problems.

The money is there. It’s just a matter of prioritizing what you want to spend it on.

It used to be that all my Internet searches were with Google. But the last couple months have seen a drastic change in Google – none for the better.

Now, Bing gets most of my searches. Then Yahoo. Finally Google – mainly just because I’ve used the service for so long and still feel some need just to ‘check it’.

I have even changed the primary search engine in my Firefox browser from Google to Bing.

How did this happen? Changing from the ‘no evil’ startup Google back to the corporate borg Microsoft.

- Relevancy. Google is simply not returning as relevant of search results. It appears Google has lost its way while trying to diving what every searcher is “really” searching for. How about: exactly what I am searching for. Not what some computer thinks I should be searching for.

Google still shows more results. But more of what? Irrelevant pages which only seem to make using Google feel even more useless.

I’m not referring to spam or junk pages, although there is plenty of that on Google. The results are clearly not as relevant as they were a year ago.

I’ve done many searches and found Bing and Yahoo have similar, but not identical results. They do a good job returning primarily relevant results.

Google? It’s now from another planet.

- Poor details about search results. This is harder to articulate, but the informational snippets from pages Google is showing in its search results are often unintelligible. A mass of gobbledy-gook on the page.

- Junk all over the search results page. Google used to have a nice clean interface. Just search results. Now, it is mainly ads, menus and submenus of options and more menus, and then some results.

- Google’s Ego interferes with its results. Have you noticed that more and more of the search results are simply pages Google owns? For instance, medical searches. Google now shows at the top a page from Google. A page of information that is merely copied from a federal website. Ouch. The Google of old would have had as its top listing the actual federal website so a searcher would directly go to the most relevant information.

Now, Google thinks of itself as another website to compete with all other websites – instead of a world class search engine directing people to the most relevant information.

It’s not just medical searches. There are only 10 search results shown by default on the first page of Google. Between Google’s own pages. Google’s books. Google’s products. Google’s news. Google’s YouTube videos. There isn’t much space left for the billions of web pages.

Apparently, Google search is becoming a search of Google.

Google has become the new evil. Bing is now focused on quality for its customers.

Maybe Google should focus on search instead of the 100s of other products it has become involved with that now demand its attention and resources.

Is “terrible” too strong a word?

I thought this was a current book, created now in 2010 with ‘Megatrends’ projections for the next decade. I read the original Megatrends, thought it was really good, so was anxious to read the 2010 version.

Wrong was I.

Megatrends 2010 was published in 2005. Meaning it was written in 2004.

That’s OK. Perhaps better as one should now be able to see clearer some of the effects and truthfulness of the new Megatrends.

Unfortunately, all that has been proven is that this book is a bunch of liberal, Ivy-league, idealistic clap with little mooring to reality.

The premise of the book is that the Age of Information is dead. Gone. No longer exists.

Now, we have the age of “Conscious Capitalism” by which companies seek to maximize the common good for all people on the planet – and not profits.

Yeah, right.

Imagine if you will, a college student writing an essay. And then (trying to appear smart) going through and changing every other word so it is at least three syllables. The more syllables the better. The more amorphous and ‘enlightened sounding’ the better. No sentence is less then three lines long. Each paragraph includes references to transformation, consciousness, spirituality, etc. (Not just one of these terms – all of them.)

In other words: unreadable.

After slogging through much of this mess, it becomes quickly apparent (before page 1) that this is a morass of utopian ideas – such as the need to save capitalism (which is dying) by corporations becoming more socially conscious of their empirical and not theoretical need to transform the spirituality of consumers for the ethical advancement of humankind. [Hee, hee - just had to throw in the type of writing this book uses for the fun of it ]

Needless to say, I was a little surprised – having remembered that I enjoyed Megatrends so many years ago. Turns out, the author of Megatrends 2010, Patricial Aburdene, is the ex-wife of the author of Megatrends (John Naisbitt). Or, as she put it, a co-collaborator.

That’s fine. But this book is not about future trends. It is not about trends proven true that few years. OK, I’ll give the book a bone. Everyone is calling themselves “green” – but not due to increased spirituality and increased participation in yoga. (For some reason, the author refers to yoga a lot. Apparently, everyone is doing it.)

Hey, this blog is green. I’ll call it that to get you to read it. Or to sell a product. That doesn’t mean “conscious capitalism” exists.

FYI: The Age of Information is not dead. Capitalism is not dying. Rather, just the opposite is true. I will not be buying any more books from Ms. Aburdene.

May 20th is apparently draw Mohammad Day.

Draw Mohammad Day

That is a good idea. About time people turned on the Muslim extremists and made fun of them.