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Drew Faust, This Republic of Suffering: Death, dying, and killing in the Civil War. Faust argues that the scale of the Civil War transformed the meanings and modes of death, both for fighting men and for the civilians left behind—often left for months in ignorance of whether the soliders they cared about had survived or perished. Her accounts of how soldiers performed, or attempted to perform, “a good death” showed just how much social meaning shapes us, even in extremis. Race of course played a big role, both in how willing Southern whites were to kill Northern soldiers and in how living and dead black soldiers were treated. Before the Civil War, no one kept track of soldiers’ deaths in a systematic way; after, there was a massive effort both to identify the dead and change recordkeeping so people wouldn’t lose track of so many bodies and gravesites. Really interesting read.
Danielle Keats Citron, Hate Crimes in Cyberspace: Starting with the grueling stories of Kathy Sierra; a law student who was harassed on AutoAdmit (and for long after law school); and a victim of revenge porn, Citron argues for revising the law to make it easier to go after online abusers, both criminally and civilly. I’m not fully convinced by her arguments for removing liability protection from websites—the standard she proposes seems easily abused to me—but I’m coming around to the idea that there should be notice and takedown for revenge porn distinct from copyright rights. I also think there’s more First Amendment tension in her proposals than she admits. You can’t maintain both that discussion about art, culture, and gossip/daily behavior is important to forming the citizen and thus deserves protection in the same way as political speech (see also: the personal is political), and also that harassers aren’t “engaged in political, cultural, or social discourse.” They 100% are: they are trying to get women to shut up and hate themselves, and there’s nothing nonpolitical about that, any more than a cross-burning is nonpolitical. However, it is also the case that harassers’ speech coerces and terrorizes others, mostly women, which is why we ought to improve our treatment of rape threats and revenge porn.
Something I learned: from the 2010 data she presented, the Germans seem much more sensible about using information from online searches to make decisions about job candidates than those in the US or UK. In the US, 58% felt that concerns about a candidate’s lifestyle influenced decisions to reject them; 45% for the UK; 42% for Germany. Those aren’t huge differences. But: for inappropriate comments by the candidate, it was 56%, 57%, 78% respectively, while “unsuitable” photos were 55%, 51%, and 44%--which I hypothesize comes from Americans being prudes/hypocrites about photos suggesting the existence of sex and drinking. For inappropriate comments written by friends and relatives of the candidate, 40% in the US had disqualified someone, 35% in the UK, and 14% in Germany—still high, but a heck of a lot better (almost identical results from inappropriate comments written by colleagues or work acquaintances). Criticizing previous employers, coworkers, or clients: 40%, 40%, 28%. Search revealed that candidate provided false information: 30%, 36%, 42%. (We hate sex, don’t mind liars so much?) Poor communication skills online: 27%, 41%, 17%. Concern about financial background: 16%, 18%, 11%. I gotta say, the Germans’ priorities seem far superior.
W. Bernard Carlson, Tesla: Inventor of the Electrical Age: Biography of Tesla that attempts to chart a middle path between treating him as a crank and treating him as the inventor of everything modern whose contributions were ignored/suppressed. Carlson emphasizes the need for technological innovation to match business needs and imaginations; when Tesla lost his business-savvy partners, he entered a decline from which he never really pulled back. He also emphasizes the modern dance between patentees and actual manufacturers; Tesla never really wanted to make stuff, only to license his patents to get more money to spend on his lab. He ended up making lots of promises he couldn’t keep, and so his story ends rather sadly even as he remains a relatively well-known inventor.
Neil DeGrasse Tyson, The Pluto Files: Very short book about Pluto and Tyson’s role in its deplanetization. The writing can be cute, but it’s pretty light going. Tyson argues against putting much weight on the label “planet”: he doesn’t think that it does kids nearly as much good to learn a mnemonic for the planets as it does for them to learn that there are small rocky bodies (Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars), big gaseous ones (Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune), and various other objects (including Pluto) in the solar system.
Danielle Keats Citron, Hate Crimes in Cyberspace: Starting with the grueling stories of Kathy Sierra; a law student who was harassed on AutoAdmit (and for long after law school); and a victim of revenge porn, Citron argues for revising the law to make it easier to go after online abusers, both criminally and civilly. I’m not fully convinced by her arguments for removing liability protection from websites—the standard she proposes seems easily abused to me—but I’m coming around to the idea that there should be notice and takedown for revenge porn distinct from copyright rights. I also think there’s more First Amendment tension in her proposals than she admits. You can’t maintain both that discussion about art, culture, and gossip/daily behavior is important to forming the citizen and thus deserves protection in the same way as political speech (see also: the personal is political), and also that harassers aren’t “engaged in political, cultural, or social discourse.” They 100% are: they are trying to get women to shut up and hate themselves, and there’s nothing nonpolitical about that, any more than a cross-burning is nonpolitical. However, it is also the case that harassers’ speech coerces and terrorizes others, mostly women, which is why we ought to improve our treatment of rape threats and revenge porn.
Something I learned: from the 2010 data she presented, the Germans seem much more sensible about using information from online searches to make decisions about job candidates than those in the US or UK. In the US, 58% felt that concerns about a candidate’s lifestyle influenced decisions to reject them; 45% for the UK; 42% for Germany. Those aren’t huge differences. But: for inappropriate comments by the candidate, it was 56%, 57%, 78% respectively, while “unsuitable” photos were 55%, 51%, and 44%--which I hypothesize comes from Americans being prudes/hypocrites about photos suggesting the existence of sex and drinking. For inappropriate comments written by friends and relatives of the candidate, 40% in the US had disqualified someone, 35% in the UK, and 14% in Germany—still high, but a heck of a lot better (almost identical results from inappropriate comments written by colleagues or work acquaintances). Criticizing previous employers, coworkers, or clients: 40%, 40%, 28%. Search revealed that candidate provided false information: 30%, 36%, 42%. (We hate sex, don’t mind liars so much?) Poor communication skills online: 27%, 41%, 17%. Concern about financial background: 16%, 18%, 11%. I gotta say, the Germans’ priorities seem far superior.
W. Bernard Carlson, Tesla: Inventor of the Electrical Age: Biography of Tesla that attempts to chart a middle path between treating him as a crank and treating him as the inventor of everything modern whose contributions were ignored/suppressed. Carlson emphasizes the need for technological innovation to match business needs and imaginations; when Tesla lost his business-savvy partners, he entered a decline from which he never really pulled back. He also emphasizes the modern dance between patentees and actual manufacturers; Tesla never really wanted to make stuff, only to license his patents to get more money to spend on his lab. He ended up making lots of promises he couldn’t keep, and so his story ends rather sadly even as he remains a relatively well-known inventor.
Neil DeGrasse Tyson, The Pluto Files: Very short book about Pluto and Tyson’s role in its deplanetization. The writing can be cute, but it’s pretty light going. Tyson argues against putting much weight on the label “planet”: he doesn’t think that it does kids nearly as much good to learn a mnemonic for the planets as it does for them to learn that there are small rocky bodies (Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars), big gaseous ones (Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune), and various other objects (including Pluto) in the solar system.
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if you are going to get a contract, my HR manager will request something called a
criminal record certificate or police clearance (certificate), and if that is clean, things are fine.
why hugely bothering with records on things like facebook, twitter, or whatever there is floating around ?