I was recently on pro con.org reading about drone strikes. I found both sides of the argument interesting but tended to be more ion the pro side of that argument. It seemed like for every con the was a logical pro. Although there were some clear contradictions that were literal disputes over facts. For instance there came a point where on the pro side  it was mentioned the drone strikes were perfectly legal, but on the con side it was said that those strikes were illegal. Another discrepancy in the argument was about PTSD. The pro side claimed that drone pilots were at less risk for potential mental health effects like PTSD but the con side claimed the drone pilots were at more risk for mental health issues. Luckily though apart from that the topics were more debatable. Many of the con arguments are universal for combat in general. For instance one of the arguments was drone strikes create more terrorists than they get rid of. I found that one interesting because to me at least it seemed like that argument was saying that because the attack was coming from the sky it was more likely to inspire others to join up with the terrorist cause when I have a suspicion that  a ground attack would probably bring about similar numbers to that of a drone attack because after all an attack is an attack if it comes from the sky or ground. I guess what I’m trying to say is if someone is going to try and say drone attacks are ineffective by throwing numbers around I would like to see the numbers for other attacks as well not just drone strikes.

This week I read an article on what not to ask in an interview. I found it interesting because as long as I can remember anyone that has ever told me about how to handle an interview has said to ask questions but no one has said to not ask these questions. Although there are a few questions that seem like common sense not to ask if you don’t want to seem suspicious but anyway here it goes. The first question is “what does the company do?” It should be understood the applicant knows what he or shoe is applying for so I think I’m going to gloss over this one. The next one the “What’s your drug testing policy?” This one makes sense not to ask because then it seems like the applicant has some kind of drug problem to hide. Another question to not ask is “How long until I can have your job?” I think if anyone were to ever ask this question it would be because they are tying to convey some level of work ethic or something but I can imagine from the other side of the table its an annoying question to deal with. Asking about overtime is also frowned upon. This is because it can give the employer the impression that the applicant won’t work as efficiently in order to get overtime hours. The last of the questions mentioned are anything to do with what has already been said in the interview. The last thing the interviewer wants to see is the interviewee not paying attention during the interview.

I read an article on making U.S. currency distinguishable to the blind. I think that it is an interesting problem, which will probably lead to some interesting solutions. The article discussed several different ideas such as making the bills different sizes, using raised ink, or putting a mark on the bills to let the blind know what the amount is. The current U.S. bills have none of these features making it impossible to tell what anything is. This means that blind citizens are relying on good faith that they aren’t getting taken advantage of when making transactions.  Unfortunately the treasury department thinks that it would cost too much to redesign all the money to make it distinguishable. This seems a little absurd because the treasury just redesigned the $10, $20, and $100 over a span of a few years. The irony being it would have actually cost less to change the bills during the original redesign than to go back and change them all now. Personally I think changing the sizes of all the bills is a good idea. That way the treasury can keep using the same paper, which seems to hold up rather well for paper. I also think that it would not hurt to raise some of the bill denominations ink to make it more distinguishable from other bills. As it stands now though it appears the treasury is going to fight what can only be assumed as an inevitable transition to universally distinguishably bills all the way to the end. 

I watched 47 Ronin the other day and I’m not sure what to think. The story was something typical for a Keanu Reeves movie. Basically he was this guy who was trained to fight by demons and later escapes them as a kid to be found by a Japanese lord. The lord takes him in a gives him a home. Then the movie jumps to Keanu as an adult hunting some kind of creature with a group of samurai. Since he is not Japanese he get referred to as a half breed and treated as less of a person. He killed the creature but credit is given to another man. Later there is a tournament held by the lord where a shady other lord attends, betrays, and causes the death of the host lord. Everyone that served under the now deceased lord is ordered not to seek revenge and that the lords daughter is to marry the evil lord to prevent a feud between clans. One year later the samurai get together and decide to seek revenge anyway and rescue the daughter anyway. They ran across the issue that hardly any of them had weapons so Keanu takes them into the forest where he was raised to get swords from the demons that raised him. After acquiring the weapons the samurai plan to ambush the evil lord. The plan would have worked but instead of attacking the lord they were ambushed by the evil lords army headed by a witch. They escaped with a few casualties, and planned a new attack at the evil lords compound. The attack was successful the evil lord and the witch were slain, and the daughter was returned. After all this success the 47 samurai are confronted by the shogun, who is the man the ordered them not to seek revenge. He admits what they did was right, but then says they all have to killed themselves for disobeying but its o alright because they still have their honor, and the samurai are alright with that too which I think is strange. Then at the very end of the movie it says people actually visit the graves of these men like the movie was an entirely true story. So in the end I was not a fan of this movie. Also I forgot to mention *Spoiler Alert*.

Chapter nineteen was about writing with style. One of the main points was writing concisely. I found this interesting because it seems like my entire life my English teachers have been giving length requirements forcing student to have to fluff up their papers to meet the demands. In fact I remember days spent in English class learning about how to fluff up paper to meet these requirement, learning how to re-arrange words and phrases to make them longer by using over complicated words. Ironically the teachers justified those lesson plans by saying it is a skill that will be necessary for college English classes. Now this section runs entirely against everything that twelve years of English classes has been teaching. The funny thing is I actually prefer writing concisely as opposed to fluffing up a paper to meet a requirement, even though it is entirely counterintuitive to what I have been told. Another interesting section from that chapter is the part on assuming gender roles when using nouns. The book says not to use pronouns like he or him when describing a noun. This is because it can come off as sexist to the reader because the writer is assuming that the role of whatever the noun is would be fulfilled by a male as opposed to a female. At the same time that works both ways if the writer were to carelessly use she or her when describing a noun. I just found that section interesting because it really highlights the undertone of a message by using pronouns.

This week I watched a video about a robot playing Ping Pong against a former number one world ranking player. A robotics company in china built a robotic arm that stands 901 mm tall that has been deemed the fastest robot on the planet. To test this claim the robotics company, KUKA, brought in table tennis legend Timo Boll to challenge the machine. The game only lasts about three minutes, but they were probably the most intense three minutes in the history of table tennis. To start the robot gains a heavy lead on Timo by winning six points. Then Timo makes a comeback. After a neck and neck race to ten Timo wins by one point. I think this was an interesting experiment to conduct, seeing if the robot was faster than a human, but it raising an interesting question. What does a robot that can move faster than a human mean for the future? I don’t mean this in a terminator “take over the world” kind of way but economically speaking people are already loosing jobs to machines so why should people continue to improve them. For instance the ping pong robot itself was probably built by machines. I think there should come a point where we stop improving designs on machines meant to build more machines but instead improve designs on objects meant to improve humanity. Imagine if all the brainpower used to build the robot that was being used to play ping pong was used to build a safer car, or create a more efficient airplane, or perhaps more effective medical equipment? Keep in mind I know the ping pong robot has more practical uses than just playing a game but time spent on creating something to take jobs should have been spent on improving the quality of life for humans in my opinion.