The Measure of Reality
- How quantification has completely changed the face of society. Very interesting stuff. This has probably been my favourite read this year.
Nightfall
- Interesting ideas of the role of religion in society and mass hysteria
Speaker for the Dead
- Really fascinating book. I love sci-fi where there is an alien species that humans have trouble understanding for whatever reason
Books I unrecommend:
Heretics of Dune
- Ugh. Tedious. I actually couldn't finish it. Didn't start Chapterhouse either.
Information Doesn't Want to be Free
- Pretty basic. How many footnotes do you really need before you just include them in the text?
Was on maternity leave this year so there are quite a few. Those marked * are also recommended.
Guns Germs and Steel - Jared Diamond *
The Vital Question - Nick Lane *
The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath *
Convergent Series - Larry Niven *
Cosmos - Carl Sagan *
World of Ptaavs - Larry Niven
The Integral Trees - Larry Niven
The Girl on the Train - Paula Hawkins
The Girl with Seven Names - Hyeongseo Lee *
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry Into Values - Robert M Pirsig *
The Thrilling Adventures Of Lovelace And Babbage (Comic) - Sydney Padua
The Great Book of Amber: The Complete Amber Chronicles, 1-10 - Roger Zelazny
The Measure of Reality: Quantification in Western Europe, 1250 - 1600 - Alfred W. Crosby *
Rendezvous with Rama - Arthur C Clark *
The Time Dweller - Michael Moorcock
Journey to the Center of the Earth - Jules Verne
Ender's Game - Orson Scott Card *
Speaker for the Dead - Orson Scott Card *
Tim Gunn's Fashion Bible - Tim Gunn *
The Gods Themselves - Isaac Asimon *
The Hugo Winners vol. 3 - Various
Between Planets - Robert A. Heinlen
The Martian - Andy Weir *
Perelandra - C S Lewis
Heretics of Dune - Frank Herbert (Unfinished, couldn't do it.)
Nightfall - Isaac Asimov *
Foundation's Edge - Isaac Asimov *
Foundation and Earth - Isaac Asimov *
Stranger in a Strange Land - Robert Heinlen *
Information Doesn't Want to be Free - Corey Doctorow
Currently Reading
Engines of Creation: The Coming Era Of Nanotechnology - K. Eric Drexler *
It's a huge benefit. Currently pregnant and working in web development: working from home and part time are absolutely crucial to keeping me in the work force. Don't get me wrong I love my job and wouldn't want to give it up but there's no way I could breastfeed, raise a child and work full time in an office environment for the next year. Babies eat once every 2-3 hours! It's just not feasible. Then after a year off, skills would slide since things move so quickly in this industry and I'd be far behind where I was.
Working from home with the option for part time is the bees knees. I can keep up my skills and do motherly things as well, and just take a pay cut (from the hours) for a year .
Yes, it's amazing. Better than usual is an understatement. There are 3 main points to get right before you throw everything in the slow cooker.
1. The liquid must be delicious (ie. not water) and almost covering or just barely covering your meat. It must also fill the crock pot at least half way. Think tomato sauce or stock.
2. The meat must be browned well before throwing it in the slow cooker. Fry the outside edges at high temp first.
3. Using well used muscles results in far better flavour -- rump, blade roast, flank, shank, and chicken thighs. Fat (but not toooo much) is your friend. It will dissolve over time and add flavour.
*. If you throw in a parmesan rind all your dreams will come true.
That's why I haven't won the lottery! I haven't been putting parmesan rinds in my slow cooker!
Slow cookers on top of being tasty are also super convenient. You don't really have to pay attention to it and it's a large batch so you can store it in the fridge and eat it through the week.
I think the bias for the more experienced workers has a lot of flaws they can't cover in a study like this.
For one, why are they bringing up a disability if it won't affect their job? It's not related to the application nor is it appropriate. I don't talk about being pregnant in interviews but once I'm in the interview I can bring it up in person. Things have worked out well for me with this approach.
Secondly, if I were looking at a resume for a very qualified person the first thing I would do is google them to see if they made up their credentials. After finding nothing because this person was made up for the study I would not pursue them.
> For one, why are they bringing up a disability if it won't affect their job? It's not related to the application nor is it appropriate.
US disability discrimination laws only provide protection if you disclose. (As I understand it, maybe I'm wrong?) Since it's not legal for the company to discriminate against you there shouldn't be any problem with disclosing. If anything, an employer should want someone to disclose because that person is honest. A candidate who doesn't state they have a disability either doesn't have one, or does have one but is hiding it.
Someone using a wheelchair might want to disclose early so the interviewer can say hold interviews in a place that isn't up a flight of stairs.
> if I were looking at a resume for a very qualified person the first thing I would do is google them to see if they made up their credentials. After finding nothing because this person was made up for the study I would not pursue them.
So you'd not pursue the non-disabled candidates, as well as not pursuing the disabled candidates. That would mean similar levels of rejection. How would you explain the disparity in amounts of rejection between fake candidates with no declared disability and fake candidates with a declared disability? All the candidates are equally fake.
How is a spinal cord injury relevant to an accountant job? It's weird and premature to bring it up in a cover letter, it could be taken as a sign of poor judgement or "why are they bringing this up? I don't care, are they an activist type? I don't need that kind of attitude." A younger person new to the world of work might be more easily forgiven the choice than an experienced person. If you get contacted for an interview, that's the time to bring up accommodations like wheelchair access.
I could imagine a cover letter describing Asperger's syndrome as an asset for accountancy work, claiming it's a source of their focus and numeracy. It would still be weird but that would meet the reader's expectations, right?
Still, I'm not trying to explain away their results, the quantity of data and comparable results for both disabilities suggests a common bias irrespective of the nature of the disability.
A spinal cord injury has some relevance - is the location of the interview going to be accessible? Is the location of the job going to be accessible? Here the candidate is going out of their way to give potentially useful information to the employer. It's weird (and illegal) to use that against them.
Also, some places have recognised that they have bias, and they've put in place some system to reduce it. See, for example, the "two ticks" scheme in the UK.
First point: Full disclosure, I'm Canadian - in Canada it's not required to disclose your disability to prove discrimination. Generally you can at least get to the interview phase without disclosing. Not familiar with American law, didn't know that.
In Canada you are also required to have an elevator or ramp in every business building so stairs normally aren't an issue either. I don't think I've ever been to an interview where someone in a wheelchair wouldn't have access.
I agree disclosing in the interests of transparency is a great thing, I just don't see what it has to do with a cover letter and "Why you'd be a great fit".
Second point: I guess I hadn't thought that one through. :P
In fairness to the study, the way they brought the subject up was pretty well done.
In all the cover letters (both with and without disability) they stated that the candidate volunteered for a disability charity and that their work there meant that they had experience in working with people in a supervisory capacity.
In the disability letters they added that they had the disability and wanted to help others with it.
Having read a fair few CVs myself, I think they all read fairly innocuously.
My only comment on the way it was written (as an employer) is that the novice letters read better than the experience ones: having supervisory experience for a graddie is a plus; but a bit of a red flag for a senior role (why would you mention it, don't you have it in your day job?)
I think the most likely explanation for the finding is in the breakdown by company size. The government and fed contractors were, more or less, without bias (in some cases with a small bias towards the applicants with disabilities).
By far the largest bias was in small firms. If I were to hazard a guess it will be at least partly due to a perceived cost in recruiting people with disabilities (which is presumably why they are exempt from ADA in the first place). But the study didn't pursue this.
I was laid off at a large electronics box store as a business systems admin after they closed 26 stores in Canada (guess who!) in 2013. I got another job for nearly double the salary afterwards so it was really good for me.
I started as a junior web dev at the new place so I learned web dev on the job instead of using the C# applications skills I had learned at my previous position and after a year have moved up to web developer with my new skills. Luckily the SQL, version control and OOP skills don't really change and after dealing with a multinational's database system I could rock the SQL pretty hard.
The drop in title was a bit of a kick in the pants but that's just superficial anyway. Everything else about the job was awesome -- and still is.
I took a week for myself to gather my thoughts and really think about what I wanted in life because I wasn't happy. Once I knew what I wanted it was easy as long as I didn't stop trying. This I think was the most important part of making the lay-off a success in the grand scheme of things.
Before getting the new job I had to go through a few months of EI and waiting patiently for the right fit. I got laid off at the same time as hundreds of EA and Microsoft workers with far more experience than I had at the time so finding a job was hard. I only had 1 year of industry exp before being laid off.
The plan has been the same for the last 5 years. There has always been the intention to make light rail through Surrey and Langley and the plan has always been to improve the bike lanes and roads.
A yes or no vote will not change the plan, it will merely change the way that Translink makes money.
The plan has been similar for years, and translink has been trying to get funding for it. The referendum is the last ditch attempt to actually get funding. In the event of a no vote it is unlikely that anything but road expansion will occur for the next five to ten years.
I think it's important to note that the transit plan won't change regardless of whether we vote yes or not. The same light rail and bridges will be built if we vote no, which will lead to the same results in happiness.
If we vote no it's just a matter of whether or not Translink can learn to manage the money that they have now. They have historically been horrible at this.
Source? I'm probably going to vote yes, since much of what I buy is PST-exempt anyway (e.g. food, books) and I really believe that our city needs world-class transit.
It would be great if we get the transit improvements either way. If that belief is false, though, it's a very dangerous idea to be spreading.
The plan has been touted in the metro and other papers since I moved to Vancouver 5 years ago. I suppose it depends on how you want to define plan -- as talk from officials with no drafts or as a concrete plan with specs and budgets. If we are using the latter definition it has been since around 2012.
I recall when the Canada line was being built for the Olympics there was an outcry because it would push the plans for the rail to Langley(UBC? My memory is not 100%) back by years as they were putting it on hold to make way for rail to Richmond.
It reminds me of what happened here in Manchester, UK. The population was asked to vote for the introduction of a congestion charge, which would have been used to fund a number of infrastructure improvements. The proposal was soundly (and predictably) defeated, but pretty much all proposed improvements were introduced anyway -- local authorities just found the necessary money in other ways.
Cosmos - !!!
The Measure of Reality - How quantification has completely changed the face of society. Very interesting stuff. This has probably been my favourite read this year.
Nightfall - Interesting ideas of the role of religion in society and mass hysteria
Speaker for the Dead - Really fascinating book. I love sci-fi where there is an alien species that humans have trouble understanding for whatever reason
Books I unrecommend:
Heretics of Dune - Ugh. Tedious. I actually couldn't finish it. Didn't start Chapterhouse either.
Information Doesn't Want to be Free - Pretty basic. How many footnotes do you really need before you just include them in the text?
Was on maternity leave this year so there are quite a few. Those marked * are also recommended.
Guns Germs and Steel - Jared Diamond *
The Vital Question - Nick Lane *
The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath *
Convergent Series - Larry Niven *
Cosmos - Carl Sagan *
World of Ptaavs - Larry Niven
The Integral Trees - Larry Niven
The Girl on the Train - Paula Hawkins
The Girl with Seven Names - Hyeongseo Lee *
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry Into Values - Robert M Pirsig *
The Thrilling Adventures Of Lovelace And Babbage (Comic) - Sydney Padua
The Great Book of Amber: The Complete Amber Chronicles, 1-10 - Roger Zelazny
The Measure of Reality: Quantification in Western Europe, 1250 - 1600 - Alfred W. Crosby *
Rendezvous with Rama - Arthur C Clark *
The Time Dweller - Michael Moorcock
Journey to the Center of the Earth - Jules Verne
Ender's Game - Orson Scott Card *
Speaker for the Dead - Orson Scott Card *
Tim Gunn's Fashion Bible - Tim Gunn *
The Gods Themselves - Isaac Asimon *
The Hugo Winners vol. 3 - Various
Between Planets - Robert A. Heinlen
The Martian - Andy Weir *
Perelandra - C S Lewis
Heretics of Dune - Frank Herbert (Unfinished, couldn't do it.)
Nightfall - Isaac Asimov *
Foundation's Edge - Isaac Asimov *
Foundation and Earth - Isaac Asimov *
Stranger in a Strange Land - Robert Heinlen *
Information Doesn't Want to be Free - Corey Doctorow
Currently Reading
Engines of Creation: The Coming Era Of Nanotechnology - K. Eric Drexler *
Planets for Sale - A.E. van Vogt
For Whom the Bell Tolls - Ernest Hemingway
Tender is the Night - F. Scott Fitzgerald