employment

Systems Engineering the Human from Birth through Death

The systems engineering discipline is at once an exceptional holistic and precision tool for conceptualizing, designing, fielding, maintaining, upgrading and recycling systems as diverse as handheld mobile communications devices, the Internet/WWW, urban transportation systems, and US military weapons systems like an aircraft carrier.

Yet Another Fabricated Jobs Report

According to Friday’s (January 8) payroll jobs numbers, almost 300,000 new jobs were created in December. Additionally, the previous two months were revised upward by 50,000 jobs. Apparently, the equity market did not believe the report, with the averages moving down today.
As I have pointed out almost monthly for what I think could be approaching two decades, the alleged job growth always takes place in nontradable domestic services, that is, in areas that do not produce exports and have no competition from imports. This is the job profile of a Third World country.

2016: A Year of Barbarism?

With New Year celebrations barely in the rear view mirror, foreboding storm clouds are once again forming along the horizon.  The blackening skies are casting a dour mood over 2016, which in its mere infancy seems all but assured to see deepening global tumult, conflict, and crisis.
At the root of this palpable disquiet lies the still fragile state of the global economy, coming up on eight years after the financial collapse of 2008.

America Is Being Destroyed by Problems That Are Unaddressed

One hundred years ago European civilization, as it had been known, was ending its life in the Great War, later renamed World War I. Millions of soldiers ordered by mindless generals into the hostile arms of barbed wire and machine gun fire had left the armies stalemated in trenches. A reasonable peace could have been reached, but US President Woodrow Wilson kept the carnage going by sending fresh American soldiers to try to turn the tide against Germany in favor of the English and French.

Gazette Riders of the Crosscut

“Go west young man, and grow up with the country.” John Soule, from an 1851 editorial in The Terre Haute Express.
The past is a suitcase full of memories, carried throughout our life’s journey wherever it may lead. Growing heavy after a while, it becomes a burden. Carelessly we drag it along the street, bang it against rocks, wearing holes in its shell. It becomes tattered and torn, spilling out bits of the contents to be blown away in the breeze. And all too soon, what we have left is nothing but memories of memories.

Why the TPP Must be Opposed at All Costs

The TPP, the Trans-Pacific Partnership, the corporate Mega-deal on “free trade” has been concluded between the partner states, and is now in the final stages of its ratification.  This deal involves the US and 11 other countries (Canada, US, Mexico, Chile, Peru; Singapore, Malaysia, Australia, Brunei, Japan) of the Pacific Rim, representing 40% of global economic activity.  The text was secretly negotiated by hundreds of corporate lobbyists.  It has now been released, and Congress will have 90 days to examine the 6000 page text before approving, which will allow the President to sign it in

Destructive Austerity

With Gross Domestic Product (GDP) at US $ 2.94 trillion (2014), the UK has the fifth largest economy in the world after Germany and Japan. It also suffers from acute income and wealth inequality and, according to Oxfam, who know all about poverty, “one in five [or 20%] of the population live below our official poverty line, meaning that they experience life as a daily struggle.”