Technology

Recently on CNN, former Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott (R-Miss.) appeared and discussed the ongoing stall in the fiscal-cliff talks, and delivered his take.

Congress, he said, was a much different place when he first arrived, because everyone in both parties socialized more, and they all had permanent residences in Washington. Before cellphones, the Internet, fax machines and other devices, people needed each other’s presence more to fill time, and members in both parties played golf together, went to happy hours and had family dinners and barbecues.

Federal Trade Commission Chairman Jon Leibowitz has been busily traveling Europe trying to get the European Union to crack down on the use of tracking cookies that online advertisers depend upon to get the right ad onto the screen of the right person.
 
If you’ve ever wondered why the ads that pop up when you surf the Web seem to be tailored to your interests, it is because they are. As most people are aware, many common sites either track your activity within that site (Facebook), or purchase online ads based upon the proven interests of the individual computer user.

Privacy is an ongoing concern for all of us; it's a real thing. However, there're a lot of bogus headlines regarding online privacy, and I figure some perspective is good.

Most of the panic regards Google and Facebook, and almost all of it is faked, from parties who're looking for headlines or people who don't understand tech, and panicked. Let's say very little fact-checking was done.

Why does the politically correct environment do their best to stifle free speech when it's not their own?

Could it be that the ultra-left have a most difficult time defending their positions with logic? Therefore, before placing themselves in that awkward position of challenging well-thought-out points of view, they attempt to demonize or outright dismiss opposing points of view.

In a recent controversy that arose over the commencement speaker (Johns Hopkins Hospital Director of  Pediatric Neurosurgery, Dr. Ben Carson) at Emory University in Atlanta, biology professors attempted to cast doubt on the legitimacy of the choice of an individual who was a creationist and went so far as to accuse the individual of saying that evolutionists were unethical. They came to this conclusion because the speaker feels that is very easy to explain the source of morality if one believes in biblical principles.

It’s almost Mother’s Day, a time when we celebrate mothers in all shapes, sizes and forms — from birth mother to foster mother to adoptive mother, Jewish mother, Italian mother (etc., etc.); we celebrate Mamas, Mamacitas, Aunts who ought to be included in the group, godmothers and my personal favorite, grandmothers. According to the laws of one state and measures proposed in a handful of others, I suppose I too could be considered a mother.
 
As the cliché goes, thanks to the wonders of modern science, I’m the owner of a few wonders-of-modern-science frozen embryos. As biological motherhood has evaded me for years now, this option was suggested when it became apparent pregnancy would not be as easy as 1-2-3. These multicellular diploid eukaryotes are precious indeed, not necessarily for what they are now but for what they could be. But they are not people, and I can tell you that I am not yet, despite my best efforts, a mother.
 
Or am I?

Technology has always played a key role in driving the U.S. economy forward. But over the past decade or so, it is not just the big players — government, Fortune 500 companies and research universities — that are benefiting. Personal computers, broadband Internet and now smartphones have put cutting-edge technology into the hands of small-business owners, nonprofit leaders and entrepreneurs, creating immense opportunities for each person to do what he or she does best.

Anyone who thinks the feminist lobby is obsolete hasn't heard about the Equal Pay App Challenge.

The White House recently launched a new competition to create “innovative tools” to help propagate the myth of the wage gap — the notion that women earn only 75 cents for every dollar a man earns.

The challenge is not only to “educate users about the pay gap,” but also to “build tools to promote equal pay.” I have to admit, not all the goals of the competition are bad. In addition to advancing false numbers, the tool should help users through the process of negotiating — a skill, I agree, men do tend to be more naturally inclined toward. But the larger purpose of the challenge is to further the notion that women are a victim class in need of special government protections.

At the White House science fair this morning, President Obama is expected to announce a new education initiative to invest $100 million into training 100,000 new teachers. Specifically, the president is trying to fend off the problem of a shortage of teachers in science, technology, engineering and math — known as STEM — in order to keep the United States competitive in the global marketplace.

While he’s not expected to talk about the dearth of women in the STEM fields, you can be sure that’s part of the larger White House agenda.

Mark Zuckerberg presses himself into the public eye. It was his insistence and demanding countenance that first brought to my mind those ancient socialist realist statues of Lenin pressing forward against the wind, oversized, waving a bronzed document, almost a hundred years ago in the century’s first great wave — worldwide wave — of “new man” generational politics. It came then from the realization that they simply had the numbers. Capital had already fled Russia. Russian gentry were now waiters in Paris and all was left were peasants; comrades then, millions upon millions of them. And the document: the three-page, single-spaced letter that Zuckerberg had prepared; a letter to potential investors for a $5 billion initial public offering of Facebook. It was a manifesto:

People have asked me about the whole SOPA thing, how bad a law it could be.

Sure, the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and Protect IP Act (PIPA) are really destructive, potentially damaging U.S competitiveness and genuinely killing jobs. However, there's some good news associated with the reaction to the bad law, news that we're missing.

As an industry, we've been able to rationalize that bad laws and politics don't matter, but now we're waking up. More importantly, this has also gotten the attention of "the Internet," meaning a lot of the people who use the World Wide Web. That includes some really smart Hill staffers who believe in the democratic potential of the 'Net.