Cop Car's Beat

More from Slashdot.org - How ignorant can we get?

'Murder Hornet' Meme Inspires Stupid Americans To Kill Pollinators En Masse (latimes.com) 159

Posted by EditorDavid on Sunday May 10, 2020 @12:34PM from the bug-hunt dept.

An anonymous reader writes: You really can't make this stuff up, but Americans across the country, out of fear of "murder hornets," have begun killing all kinds of bees en masse. According to Doug Yanega, senior museum scientist for the Department of Entomology at UC Riverside, a national panic has led to the needless slaughter of native wasps and bees, beneficial insects whose populations are already threatened...

"Folks in China, Korea and Japan have lived side by side with these hornets for hundreds of years, and it has not caused the collapse of human society there. My colleagues in Japan, China and Korea are just rolling their eyes in disbelief at what kind of snowflakes we are..."

"I don't want to downplay this — they are logistically dangerous insects. But having people in Tennessee worry about this is just ridiculous. The only people who should be bothering experts with concerns about wasp IDs are living in the northwest quadrant of Washington (state). And really, right now, nobody else in the country should even be thinking about this stuff," he continued.
"The facts are, experts said, two dead hornets were found in Washington last December, a lone Canadian live nest was found and wiped out last September and no live hornets have yet been seen this year," reports the Associated Press.

And when they spoke to the Washington Agriculture Department entomologist working on the state's response, he issued an additional correction for all the journalists covering this story. "They are not 'murder hornets.' "They are just hornets."

"Heroism, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder." CC

One answer is proferred.

It is a given, to me, that I am not the only one to wonder how beneficial is the decrease in air pollution brought on by restrictions due to CORVID-19. Slashdot.org has one person's preliminary evaluation. I don't know François Gemenne, but I find the reported thoughts interesting, to say the least.

Will Coronavirus Lockdowns Bring a Drop in Air-Pollution Related Deaths? (forbes.com) 16

Posted by EditorDavid on Sunday March 15, 2020 @04:19PM from the sparing-the-air dept.

 

The World Health Organization believes air pollution kills seven million people each year.

But will this year be different? Forbes reports: The global lockdown inspired by the novel coronavirus, COVID-19, has shuttered factories and reduced travel, slashing lethal pollution including the greenhouse gases that are heating the climate. The lockdown may save more lives from pollution reduction than are threatened by the virus itself, said François Gemenne, director of The Hugo Observatory, which studies the interactions between environmental changes, human migration, and politics.

"Strangely enough, I think the death toll of the coronavirus at the end of the day might be positive, if you consider the deaths from atmospheric pollution," said Gemenne, citing, for example, the 48,000 people who die annually in France because of atmospheric pollution and the more than one million in China... "More than likely the number of lives that would be spared because of these confinement measures would be higher than the number of lives that would be lost because of the pandemic," Gemenne said in an appearance on France 24's The Debate.

The discrepancy in how we react to these divergent threats should give us pause, Gemenne said, to consider why it is that we respond so strongly to one with less lethality and so weakly to one with more.

Gemenne has a chance of being correct IFF (if, and only if) production and travel do not, as I expect to happen, go into overdrive when the COVID-19 outbreak is over.

International Days

It's Liz's fault. She inspired me to do it. She was brazen enough to wish us a happy International Women's Day ...and she even mentioned other days that are celebrated. How dare she! (That's the pointy finger being wagged, below.)

At any rate, Liz inspired me to check into other "International Days". It turns out that there are a bunch. This file (Download International Days) is from a UN website.

The International Days that occur in March are listed as being the following:

1 March

Zero Discrimination Day  [UNAIDS]

3 March

World Wildlife Day  (A/RES/68/205)

8 March

International Women's Day

20 March

International Day of Happiness  (A/RES/66/281)

French Language Day (French)

21 March

International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination  (A/RES/2142 (XXI))

World Poetry Day (UNESCO 30 C/Resolution 29)

International Day of Nowruz  (A/RES/64/253)

World Down Syndrome Day  (A/RES/66/149) 

International Day of Forests  (A/RES/67/200)

22 March

World Water Day  (A/RES/47/193)

23 March

World Meteorological Day  [WMO] (WMO/EC-XII/Res.6)

24 March

World Tuberculosis Day  [WHO]  

International Day for the Right to the Truth concerning Gross Human Rights Violations and for the Dignity of Victims  (A/RES/65/196)

25 March

International Day of Remembrance of the Victims of Slavery and the Transatlantic Slave Trade  (A/RES/62/122)

International Day of Solidarity with Detained and Missing Staff Members

 

A tale of the season

This afternoon, I went to the grocery store to pick up a few items - mostly fresh fruits and vegetables. Not only was there a great deal of traffic on the streets, but the grocery store was crowded and bustling. As I placed the last of my items onto the conveyor belt to the cashier, I suddenly realized that my purse was still at home. This is an annoying, but not unusual, occurrence with me. During my years of graduate school, working for a living, and volunteering, I didn't need to carry a  purse: everything fit into my brief case or office bag. Admittedly, on the rare occasion when I toted a purse, I was apt to leave it in a store or restaurant; but, usually, if I forgot about my purse, it was at home.

I would not have minded running home to get the money; but, it would have involved my placing all of the items back into the shopping cart, replacing items on the shelves, going home and returning, doing the gathering again, and unloading the basket again - which, I was sure, the people behind me in line would appreciate ever-so-much. While I was asking the checker if he had a counter check with which I might pay, the woman in front of me turned back to the checker and said, "Put it on my bill." I asked the woman to please write her name and address on my grocery list, thanked her profusely, and promised to get a check into the mail pronto. She had just saved me and several other people an inconvenience - without really knowing that she would ever be repaid.

When I arrived home, it occurred to me that it would be silly to make my benefactor await delivery of a check. I put together two sets of cash - one set for the amount that I owed the nice woman (Pennie) and an equal amount for her to have on hand the next time she sees me (or someone like me) forlorn in a grocery checkout line. I stuck them into a greeting card and delivered it to her house, leaving before she had a chance to open the card - but - not before we had the chance to exchange a warm hug!

They say that no good turn goes unpunished. Pennie has picked herself up a "Secret Sister" for 2020!

 

 

Bogie knows more about this than do I because...

she has experience from within a corporate "returns" structure.

Following is an item from my old favorite, Slashdot.org.

Returned Online Purchases Often Sent To Landfill (www.cbc.ca) 90

Posted by msmash on Monday December 16, 2019 @11:10AM from the closer-look dept.

 

How is the boom in online shopping influencing how much good product just goes to waste? Adria Vasil, an environmental journalist and managing editor of Corporate Knights magazine, answers: It's pretty staggering. The increase of the volume of returns has exploded by 95 per cent over the last five years. And in Canada alone, we are returning $46 billion worth of goods every year. And you think, OK, what's the big deal? Well, the problem is that -- especially when we're returning online -- a lot of these products end up going in landfills.
Why? You're returning something that's new and fine?
It actually costs a lot of companies more money to put somebody on the product, to visually eyeball it and say, is this up to standard, is it up to code? Is this going to get us sued? Did somebody tamper with this box in some way? And is this returnable? And if it's clothing, it has to be re-pressed and put back in a nice packaging. And for a lot of companies, it's just not worth it. So they will literally just incinerate it, or send it to the dumpster.
Do you have an example of something that we might all be doing that could lead to this kind of a waste?
Have you ever bought any clothes online? Further reading: The Painful, Costly Journey of Returned Goods -- and How You End Up Purchasing Some of Them Again.

 

I could not have formulated my reasoning as succinctly as was done in the above posting, but I've acted as though I could by nearly never returning anything that I purchased online. Most of my clothing (other than shoes which are exceedingly difficult to find to fit my feet) are purchased new, online, or used from a charity thrift shop (usually Goodwill or Disabled American Veterans shops). About one-third of the time, my purchases don't fit - either because I ordered the wrong size (through idiocy or lack of attention) or the size didn't run true (I use the guidance provided by the merchant in determining sizes.) Just now, I have two shirts that, despite my going through the exercise of following the merchant's delving into my figure's configuration and providing a recommended size, did not come close to fitting. A third shirt, the same item number but different color/pattern, fit snuggly in the bust; but, since I wear those shirts over a knit tank top (as a "great shirt") and do not actually button them, came close enough to a proper fit that I will wear it.

 

from Lands' End

 (Please note that the model doesn't look nearly as good in the shirt as would I!)

 

What will I do with those shirts? I'm not quite sure, yet; but, the answer will most probably NOT be to return them. In the past 30 years, I've used several options: 1) while working, I might offer item(s) to a co-working friend OR leave the item in a sack in a women's restroom in the factory clearly marked, "FREE - Cop Car"; 2) in retirement, I might use those two methods at the agency with which I volunteered or at the local senior center that I frequent; 3) I might give the clothing to a charity that provides working clothes to financially struggling women - especially for them to have/wear when interviewing for a job; or 4) I might donate the clothing to the previously mentioned thrift stores.

 

Why do I do that, rather than return clothing items? The biggest reason is that I am too lazy to go to the bother of making the return; but, I also know from conversation with Bogie that the process followed by the merchant when receiving a return is expensive to them.

 

How about non-clothing items? In general, they are either low-value, in which case I use the same methodologies, or higher-value, in which case I might return item(s) to the merchant. Right off hand, the only high-value item I can recall returning was a chair that was purchased in Wichita and proved defective (as did the replacement chair!) I gave up on that particular model chair and eventually purchased a similar (but different brand) chair from a different merchant in Wichita.

 

In other words, my methods of disposing of new merchandise is nearly the same as my methods for disposing of clutter. I always believe that someone can make good use of things that I do not want! BTW: Family would get first offer on clothing if anyone was the appropriate size. Half of the women in our family are much smaller than my current size; half of the women are larger. Once, I was able to pass along a couple of pairs of pants; but, only because inexplicably I had ordered size extra small - which might not have fit me even in the days when I weighed 110 pounds!

People are hard to hate close up. Move in. - Brené Brown

PSA (Public Service Announcement)

Although I cannot find it, I recall that sometime within the past two years I have grumbled about being unable to decipher what is meant by various pictograms. At the time, I was struggling with a "care tag" on a new piece of clothing. Today, in a magazine sent out by the grocery store chain that we frequent was included the following legend. Aren't you glad to know?

More from Slashdot.org - Grading Tests, Nuking Mars, Using Old Tech

The following item from Slashdot.org is an excellent rehashing of the reason we were always told "show your work" on tests!

How Should Schools Grade Unexpected-But-Correct Answers On Coding Tests? 76

Posted by EditorDavid on Sunday August 18, 2019 @07:34AM from the does-not-compute dept.

 

There can be more than one correct answer for academic tests of programming ability, writes long-time Slashdot reader theodp:

 

Take the first of the Free-Response Questions in this year's AP CS A exam, which asked 70,000 college-bound students to "Write the static method numberOfLeapYears, which returns the number of leap years between year1 and year2." The correct answer, according to the CollegeBoard's 2019 Scoring Guidelines, entails iterating over the range of years and invoking a provided helper method called isLeapYear for each year.

Which does work, of course, but what if a student instead took an Excel-like approach to the same problem that consists of a (hopefully correct!) single formula with no iteration or isLeapYear helper function? Would that be a worse — or better -- example of computational thinking than the endorsed AP CS A Java-based solution? (Here's a 7-minute AP Conference discussion of how to correctly grade this problem)?

So, how have you seen schools and companies deal with unexpected-but-correct approaches to coding test questions?

 

I'm not sure how I should feel about the following item.

Elon Musk Begins Selling $25 'Nuke Mars' T-Shirts (bgr.com) 83

Posted by EditorDavid on Saturday August 17, 2019 @06:34PM from the making-a-statement dept.

 

"Elon Musk tweeted on Thursday evening 'Nuke Mars.' A few hours later he followed it up with 'T-shirt soon'," writes Business Insider.

BGR reports: Musk's tweet is a reference to the theory that by dropping one or more large bombs on Mars' poles, the CO2 locked away in the ice there would be released, giving the Martian atmosphere a much-needed boost... Making the planet's atmosphere denser could help it retain heat and bring it a small step closer to being habitable by human settlers. However, past research has suggested that bombing the planet's poles wouldn't release nearly enough CO2 to be worth the trouble. Elon Musk has publicly disagreed.

It's unclear why the SpaceX boss decided to bring this all up again, but he does have a habit of saying whatever he thinks will get a big reaction on Twitter. Oh, and apparently he's hoping to sell some shirts as well.

In any case, no space agency is ready to even begin preliminary planning for a crewed Mars mission, much less any long-term efforts to change the climate of the Red Planet. If that ever does happen, bombs may or may not play a role.
The article adds that scientists "aren't fully on board" with Musk's line of thinking, but the t-shirts really are available in the online SpaceX store. Late Friday Musk began promoting them with an optimistic tweet.

"Nuking Mars one T-shirt at a time."

 

The following item makes this oldster chortle.

US Navy Tests WWII-ERA Messaging Tech: Dropping Bean Bags Onto Ships (popularmechanics.com) 70

Posted by EditorDavid on Saturday August 17, 2019 @05:34PM from the cornhole-code dept.

Long-time Slashdot reader davidwr writes: In World War II, pilots would air-drop messages onto ships using bean-bags. Just as with sextants a few years ago, the Navy is bringing back old tech, because it works.

Just as during the Doolittle Raid of Tokyo, the purpose is to prevent eavesdropping. You can read more about the modern bean-bag-drop on Military.com or Popular Mechanics. There's a video about the Doolittle Raid hosted at archive.org with bean-bag-drops at 2:39 and 5:19 into the video. I wonder how many high-density SSD drives fit in a standard Navy bean-bag?
"In a future conflict with a tech-savvy opponent, the U.S. military could discover even its most advanced, secure communications penetrated by the enemy," notes Popular Mechanics. "Secure digital messaging, voice communications, video conferencing, and even chats could be intercepted and decrypted for its intelligence value.

"This could give enemy forces an unimaginable advantage, seemingly predicting the moves and actions of the fleets at sea with uncanny accuracy."

Sherman's Lagoon August 13-17, 2019

Sometimes it takes a comic strip to illustrate large truths in life. This week, it was Sherman's Lagoon by Jim Toomey that did so. The first image comprises the daily cartoon strips for August 13-16, 2019, which may need to be enlarged (by clicking on the image) for ease of reading the script.

The second image is today's cartoon panel - August 17, 2019.