Sunday, March 9, 2014


News Clips For The Day


­What Germans Know Could Help Bridge U.S. Workers' Skill Gap – NPR
by Susanna Capelouto
March 08, 2014
­
Job training programs are failing to turn out enough skilled workers to fill job openings in the U.S., a phenomenon that puzzles some European companies that expand into the U.S.

President Obama freely admits that America needs to improve the way it trains workers. In a speech at a General Electric manufacturing plant in Wisconsin earlier this year, he said, "We gotta move away from what my labor secretary, Tom Perez, calls 'train and pray.' You train workers first and then you hope they get a job."
In other words, not enough Americans are training for the jobs industry needs to fill. Nationwide, about 4 million job openings are going unfilled, but 10 million people are unemployed, according to Labor Department statistics.

The phenomenon is puzzling to some European companies that have expanded to the U.S. and are used to a more skilled workforce.

The German Way To Train Workers
The White House has tapped Joe Biden to review America's jobs programs, a move welcomed by the German American Chamber of Commerce in Atlanta, which represents about 1,500 German companies throughout the South.

"It's pretty much that middle gap," explains spokeswoman Martina Stellmaszek. "They have no problems finding engineers — there are great engineers in the United States — or really very low-qualified jobs — there is also no problem filling that. But it's really that middle segment where in Germany, we have the vocational training system to exactly train for that."

Stellmazek is referring to the three-year apprenticeship every German trade worker must undergo before being certified in a skilled job. They work three or four days a week at a company and go to school for the other one or two days. The Chamber of Commerce awards the certificates and sets standards for what is taught in vocational schools.

"If you have a certificate that you're an electrician, it doesn't matter if you do it in Hamburg or Berlin," Stellmaszek says. "Companies know what they get."
Europeans are often baffled when they try to hire U.S. workers, she says.
"You don't really know what you get," she says. "If someone tells you they're an electrician, they could have just exchanged light bulbs at an amusement park or they could have worked, maybe, at complex problems."

Stellmazek knows it's impossible to import such an elaborate program to the U.S. It's based on the guild system of the 1800s, and counts on reciprocity — workers trained by a company must work their first three years for that company before they can leave. But the program is also the reason Germany isn't seeing a skills gap like the U.S.

College Educations Instead Of Manufacturing Skills
Emory University economist Raymond Hill says America's go-to-college message, boosted by college financial aid policies, worked in the U.S. for a while as manufacturing went offshore. But higher wages in China and a U.S. energy boom have changed the manufacturing landscape as well as the kind of jobs available. Now, companies can't find workers with the right training, Hill says.

"If you tell everybody, 'Get a college education; that gets you into the middle class. Doesn't matter what you major in, you just need that college degree.' Well, is it any surprise?" he says. "Now we see this manufacturing coming back to us, and that's what we have to get ourselves prepared for."

Hill is banking on a local approach to create a skilled workforce, in which companies partner more closely with tech schools. In Tennessee, for example, Volkswagen partnered with Chattanooga State Community College to import the first full three-year apprenticeship from Germany.

Later this year, the Obama administration will award one grant in each state to a community college with the most promising job training program.





“It's that middle segment where in Germany, we have the vocational training system to exactly train for that.” Stellmazek says that in Germany a three year apprenticeship for a trade is mandated to work, along with vocational school courses two or three days a week to back it up. The worker then has to work for the company that trained him for three years before they can quit. The German American Chamber of Commerce in Atlanta grants certificates and sets standards for what the trade schools teach. With this system those job applicants who claim to be an electrician must have trade school and apprenticeship certificates to back up their claim.

I have seen on the job training in the US, but it rarely involves schooling or intensive training other than a probationary period. Obama is offering grants to community colleges to develop job training programs. We need more schools which offer specific technical training, rather than just community colleges or a few general college credits. “Hill is banking on a local approach to create a skilled workforce, in which companies partner more closely with tech schools.” This approach, a close interaction between businesses and schools in the local area, presumably with some job placement programs should give new graduates or people seeking a career change a place to get started.

Not every young adult is going to be able to pursue a four year college degree, either because of their finances or perhaps they have a low grade point average from high school. If they can still get a well-paid job as a dental assistant, medical assistant, computer technician, data entry operator, court reporter, barber or other specific field, they can potentially afford to buy a house or possibly finance further education for the future.

http://www.gaccsouth.com/en/about-us/ is the web site for the German American Chamber of Commerce of the Southern United States. The GACC South “was founded in 1978 to promote and support bilateral trade between Germany and the US. It is a private non-profit organization and the official representative of German industry, with 120 offices in 80 countries.




­Libertarians Move In To Make A Small N.H. Town Even Smaller – NPR
by Jack Rodolico
March 09, 2014
­
Maureen O'Reilly beams with pride as she shows a visitor around Grafton, N.H., a town so small it doesn't even have a traffic light.

"Have a look at this," O'Reilly says, pointing to a postcard view of hilly rural New England. "How beautiful is this? It's really pretty in the fall, really, really pretty."

But behind the beautiful view, locals are dividing into opposing camps. About 50 libertarians have moved into Grafton from around the country, splitting the town over their push to shrink its government.

Grafton has an annual meeting called Deliberative Session. It's a big day for local politics. About 100 people cram into the firehouse, town officials sitting up front.
The goal is to debate the budget before it goes to a town-wide vote. But after the Pledge of Allegiance, things break down.

People argue over how to conduct the meeting. The moderator loses control. Police remove a man. After an hour, Skip Gorman is fed up.

"It's still a wonderful town and there's lots of camaraderie," Gorman says. "But there's a group of people who have moved here for the sole purpose of being obstructionist."

"I'm not here to obstruct anything," counters John Connell. "I will vote in favor of liberty and justice at every opportunity."

How did Grafton come to this? About 15 years ago, a prominent libertarian hatched the idea of moving libertarians to New Hampshire, with the hope of having a big impact in a small state. They called it the Free State Project, and a handful of Free Staters settled in Grafton because the town has no zoning ordinances.

O'Reilly was surprised by how quickly Free Staters started pushing their agenda.
"Almost seems as if they walked in the door and started running for office and hold positions," she says. "It's not the typical way someone who's a New Englander does things."

Free Staters say Grafton should withdraw from the school district, cut the $1 million budget by 30 percent over three years, and carve Grafton out as a "U.N.-free zone."
Tony Stelick, a Free Stater who lived in Poland under the boot of Stalinism, remembers a government that slowly gained more and more power. He says locals who oppose Free Staters are unwittingly voting themselves towards fascism.
"They don't know where they going," Stelick says. "I been there. I know where they going."

Even though Grafton has always had a libertarian streak, Free Staters are a minority and locals have mostly blocked their agenda. Still, Olson is confident they could shift the balance if they reach out to locals.

"I think most of the people in town are actually supportive of small government," he says.

Since Free Staters came to town, the real change in Grafton has been more emotional than political. Things have become divisive, and a little ugly. O'Reilly says she's thought about moving, leaving behind the beautiful views and the house her husband built.

"Yeah, that's what's hard," she says. "I would hate to ask him to do it. But if it goes the way they want it go, I don't want to live here."




What is a "U.N.-free zone? The website http://www.un-freezone.org/ is a diatribe on the idea that the UN has a goal of setting up a global government body that supercedes all national governments and wants to control all land use, business operations, and other things including eliminating all religions which are to be replaced by the GAIA movement. Read this website on UN Free Zones.

Bill Maher is the only Libertarian I have ever paid much attention to, and this is his statement on the following website: http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2013/04/07/bill_maher_libertarians_have_to_stop_ruining_libertarianism_.html.

“BILL MAHER: Libertarians have to stop ruining libertarianism, or at least do a better job explaining the difference between today's libertarian and just being a selfish prick. Now, many years ago on a television network far, far away, I expressed support for libertarianism because back then it meant I didn't want big government in my bedroom, or my medicine chest, or especially not in the second drawer of the nightstand on the left side of my bed. And I still believe that, but somewhere along the way, libertarianism morphed into this creepy obsession with free market capitalism based on an Ayn Rand novel called Atlas Shrugged, a book that's never been read all the way through by anyone with a girlfriend.

Paul Ryan once said Ayn Rand taught him what my value systems are. And I believe him, because her book has a strange appeal to people who are kind of smart, but not really. (HBO's Real Time, April 5, 2013)”

Maureen O'Reilly, a long time resident of the town at the center of this NPR article, said “if it goes the way they want it go, I don't want to live here." See the following information from Wikipedia about the “Free State Project.” This group of people are succeeding so far in taking over the town and state government to set it up with some extremely radical ideas in order to increase the power of their libertarian movement, which has so far been voted out by other political parties in areas that have a larger voting base than New Hampshire has. Their mindset is distinctly paranoid and even dangerous as they are moving so rapidly to establish control on the local basis. Not all Libertarians are so radical as this group, and there is even a group which advocates socialism, so they aren't all economic conservatives.


Free State Project
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Free State Project (FSP) is a political migration, founded in 2001, to recruit at least 20,000 libertarians to move to a single low-population state (New Hampshire, selected in 2003) in order to make the state a stronghold for libertarian ideas.[2] The project seeks to overcome the historical ineffectiveness of limited-government activism which they believe was caused by the small number and diffuse population of libertarian activists across the 50 United States and around the world.
Participants sign a statement of intent declaring that they intend to move to New Hampshire within five years of the drive reaching 20,000 participants. As of January 2014[update], over 15,300 people have signed this statement of intent[1] and more than 1,560 people are listed as "early movers" to New Hampshire on the FSP website, saying they have made their move prior to the 20,000-participant trigger.[3]

People aligned with the Free State Project have been elected to two-year terms in the 400-member New Hampshire House of Representatives since 2006.[4] Approximately a dozen Free Staters were elected to the New Hampshire House of Representatives in the 2012 election.[5]

The Free State Project is a social movement generally based upon decentralized decision making. The group hosts various events, but most of FSP's activities depend upon volunteers, and no formal plan dictates to participants or movers what their actions should be in New Hampshire.



­
Ukraine: Crimea Rejects Talks With Kiev; Violence Reported – NPR
by Bill Chappell
March 09, 2014
­
Pro-Russian groups used whips to attack pro-Ukrainian demonstrators in Sevastastopol, the port city of Ukraine's Crimean Peninsula, according to the BBC. The news agency says its reporter at the scene is "describing the scenes as very ugly."

The violence comes as Ukraine's interim Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk plans a visit to the United States, a trip that he announced during a cabinet meeting Sunday, reports NPR's Emily Harris. No details about that visit were made public, but it is believed to be scheduled for this week.

Here are other developments we're seeing today:
"The authorities in Ukraine's breakaway region of Crimea on Sunday ruled out negotiations with the central government, which they say is illegitimate," says Ria Novosti.

And referring to a referendum that will offer voters a choice of seceding from Ukraine and joining the Russian Federation is scheduled to take place next Sunday, the news agency says the process of joining Russia could take only "about a month," citing Crimean parliament speaker Vladimir Konstantinov.

Women in Ukraine are heeding the same call for action that has driven men to join the country's army. And while some are looking to work as nurses and in other support roles, others are raring for a fight, reports Radio Free Europe. The agency notes that women have played roles in the protests and civil unrest that led up to the current crisis.

"I've practiced sambo and judo professionally for 10 years," Tetiana Turchina tells RFE. "I know how to shoot and jump with a parachute. I'm familiar with extreme situations because I love extreme sports, rafting, and hiking. Sleeping in a tent surrounded by snow in minus-20-degrees-Celsius doesn't scare me."

Reuters says that pro-Russian forces have tightened their hold on Crimea:
"In the latest armed action, Russians took over a Ukrainian border post on the western edge of Crimea at around 6 a.m. (0400) GMT, trapping about 30 personnel inside, a border guard spokesman said.

"The spokesman, Oleh Slobodyan, said Russian forces now controlled 11 border guard posts across Crimea, a former Russian territory that is home to Russia's Black Sea fleet and has an ethnic Russian majority."

Despite the turbulence in Crimea, it seems that so far, the only shots fired have been warning shots from pro-Russian forces. In one case early last week they were used to turn away a large group of marching Ukrainian troops; on Saturday, they were used to turn away a U.N. fact-finding group from Crimea, as we reported Saturday.
U.S. and European diplomats have been working on how to convince Russia's President Vladimir Putin to pull its military from in and around Crimea. But the idea of using sanctions as a possible tool drew a threat from Russia, with the Ministry of Defense saying it might halt international nuclear weapons inspections if sanctions are approved, according to The Washington Post.




The use of whips on protesters is not only insulting, it is cruel. I think these Crimean Russians are doing some things without Russian oversight or instruction which are more radical and uncontrolled than real Russian troops would do. The idea that Putin needs to “protect” these ruffians is ridiculous. He should tell them to stand down, but Putin isn't a highly ethical person and is not interested in justice.




­Stolen Passports Used For Malaysia Flight, Interpol Confirms – NPR
by Bill Chappell
March 09, 2014
­
Interpol says that "at least two passports" used to board flight MH370 were listed in its Stolen and Lost Travel Documents database. And matching up with what's been reported earlier, the agency identified them as being Austrian and Italian documents.
The agency says it's also reviewing other passports used to board the flight, to determine whether any of them might have been reported stolen. That's from a statement released Sunday.

Saying that "it is too soon to speculate about any connection between these stolen passports and the missing plane," Interpol Secretary General Ronald K. Noble adds that "it is clearly of great concern that any passenger was able to board an international flight using a stolen passport listed in Interpol's databases."
Interpol adds that border agencies are inconsistent at checking passports against the database, with policies varying wildly from country to country. Few countries use the database systematically, Interpol says.

"Last year passengers were able to board planes more than a billion times without having their passports screened against Interpol's databases," the agency says.
It also notes, "The US searches this database annually more 250 million times; the UK more than 120 million times and the UAE more than 50 million times."





This does look like a hijacking to me. I will scan other articles in the future to see if any terrorist group is suspected. Meanwhile they have to find the plane and its black box. I guess they will be searching by ships in the area where the oil slicks were discovered and listening for the “pings.” There is no hope of survivors, of course.




­ A Frat Of Their Own: Muslims Create A New Space On Campus – NPR
by NPR Staff
March 08, 2014
­
Toga parties and keg stands have become stereotypes of college fraternities. But Ali Mahmoud had something else in mind when he founded Alpha Lambda Mu, the first social Muslim fraternity in the country.

"I realized that there was this void for Muslims on campus," says Mahmoud, a junior at the University of Texas at Dallas.

"A lot of us come from immigrant families and so, growing up in America, a lot of us have to live a double life ... where we try to please our family, in terms of our Islamic upbringing, and then we go to school ... and we're just trying to fit in. We're just trying to be cool."

So in 2013, Mahmoud founded the first chapter of Alpha Lambda Mu — named for three letters of significance in the Quran: Alif Laam Meem. The fraternity now has two additional chapters at Cornell University and the University of California, San Diego, and Mahmoud hopes to expand to more universities in the coming year.

Mahmoud tells NPR's Arun Rath that he didn't intend to start a movement; he just wanted to provide Muslim American men with a place to have fun and be themselves.




This doesn't look like a militant secret society, but rather a true social club. I hope these frats will be accepted peacefully by Christians and Jews on college campuses, and will maintain good relations with other students. Organizations that stiffly stand aside from other groups are likely to be considered suspect. Hopefully all will go well.




­

The Elegant Secrets Of Flying Snakes – NPR
by Linton Weeks
March 07, 2014
­
Flying snakes are mysterious. How do they soar? Without wings or other helpful appendages, how do they glide from tree to tree?

A team of American scientists, including Lorena Barba of George Washington University and Jake Socha of Virginia Tech, has been studying the small flying snake – about a yard long with the girth of a human thumb — in the lowland tropical forests of Asia and Southeast Asia. They hope to be able to apply their knowledge to a new generation of airborne robotics.

This week they published a report, Lifts and wakes of flying snakes, in the journal Physics of Fluids.

By observing snake flight in a wind tunnel, the researchers discovered that the reptile's shape actually helps generate a force of lift, and when the snake turns at a particular angle, it gets an added boost of lift.

The scientists then shifted to computer simulations. "Rather than fixed wings, animal fliers have flapping wings," Lorena explained in a statement. "In the case of gliders, their small scale means they're always in a flurry of whirling winds. By understanding how they can be graceful and efficient under these conditions, we can in turn use that knowledge to create small flying machines that are equally graceful."

Like all snakes, the report points out, the flying snake in question has a tubular body with circular cross-sections. When it goes into glide mode – to move from one tree to the next – it shapeshifts its body to create a flatter profile. "During the glide, the snake undulates laterally," according to the report, "and the parts of the body that are perpendicular to the direction of motion act as lift-generating 'wings'"
Those little whirls of wind, or vortices, created by the air going around the special cross sectional shape of the snake's body, can give a flying snake an extra lift, Lorena said. "The shape of the snakes in flight — which is a flattened version of its shape at rest — gets help from little vortices around it."

There is these days scientific interest – especially in the fields of biomimetics and bioinspired design — in what natural movement can teach us about building robotic devices. As the report states: "Nature has evolved diverse solutions to animal locomotion in the forms of flapping flight, swimming, walking, slithering, jumping, and gliding."

Of the 30 or so independent animal lineages that have developed gliding flight through the ages, the study notes, the flying snake is the only animal known to glide without the help of any apparent flight apparatus.

Three species of snakes — in the genus Chrysopelea – are gliders. One, the paradise flying snake, is even able to swivel in mid-air.

Flying Lessons
So what lessons can we learn from this research? "Studying animal flyers is an exciting new frontier for engineering research, because they do many unexpected things to generate flight forces, be agile and navigate in the air," Lorena tells NPR. "We hope to learn the solutions that nature has found for flight at small scales—insects, birds and animal gliders are all quite small compared to airplanes."

The aerodynamics of airplanes, she says, "is well understood, and of course large aeronautical companies design very advanced flying machines. But you know the old urban myth about the bumblebee, and how aerodynamics knowledge would predict that it shouldn't be able to fly. It all boils down to the scale: because it is so small, it actually flies in the midst of many little gusts and whirls that it uses to defy gravity. The physics is very different from that of classical aerodynamics."
She adds, "we hope to be able to use that knowledge to guide the design of engineered devices that mimic nature in its solutions."




I am wondering what types of machines the scientists will come up with and how they will be useful. So far it's just interesting and entertaining, but will these little flying machines become the next spy fleet for the CIA? Or maybe owning them will become a popular competitive sport. Those little motorized toy helicopters are a blast. A man was demonstrating them in my local mall a few years ago at Christmas and he was selling lots of them.

It is really interesting that there is a such a thing as a flying snake – three types, actually – because as many documentaries on the cable Animal Planet station I have seen, this is the first I've heard of them. They are in SE Asia, after all, and may be rare in nature. See this Wikipedia article.

Chrysopelea
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Chrysopelea, or more commonly known as the flying snake, is a genus that belongs to the family Colubridae. Flying snakes are mildly venomous,[1] though they are considered harmless because their toxicity is not dangerous to humans.[2] Their range is in Southeast Asia (the mainland, Greater and Lesser Sundas, Maluku, and the Philippines), southernmost China, India, and Sri Lanka.

Chrysopelea are diurnal, which means they hunt during the day. They prey upon lizards, frogs, birds and bats.[6][18]

Upon reaching the end of a tree's branch, the snake continues moving until its tail dangles from the branch's end. It then makes a J-shape bend,[7] leans forward to select the level of inclination it wishes to use to control its flight path, as well as selecting a desired landing area. Once it decides on a destination, it propels itself by thrusting its body up and away from the tree, sucking in its stomach[clarification needed stomach or belly?] and flaring out its ribs to turn its body in a "pseudo concave wing",[8] all the while making a continual serpentine motion of lateral undulation[9] parallel to the ground[10] to stabilise its direction in midair in order to land safely

Flying snakes are able to glide better than flying squirrels and other gliding animals, despite the lack of limbs, wings, or any other wing-like projections, gliding through the forest and jungle it inhabits with the distance being as great as 100 m.[10][13] Their destination is mostly predicted by ballistics; however, they can exercise some in-flight attitude control by "slithering" in the air.[1]

Their ability to glide has been an object of interest for physicists and the United States Department of Defense in recent years,[11][14] and studies continue to be made on what other, more subtle, factors contribute to their flight. According to recent research conducted by the University of Chicago, scientists discovered a correlation between size and gliding ability, in which smaller flying snakes were able to glide longer distances horizontally.[1] According to a research performed by Professor Jake Socha at Virginia Tech University, these snakes can change the shape of their body in order to produce aerodynamic forces so they can glide in the air.[15][16] Scientists are hopeful that this research will lead to design robots which can glide in the air from one place to another.[17]