03.31.06
Posted in interesting things, political gibberish at 10:36 pm by shawnz
Last weekend, 500,000 folks gathered in downtown Los Angeles to protest proposed congressional reform of immigration law that would put greater pressure to deport illegal immigrations. In St. Louis, hispanic illegal immigrants (which is basically what this debate is about) weren’t exactly a part of my everyday life. We did have some legal immigrant gardeners on campus, but that was the extent of my exposure.
Obviously, in LA, you see the undocumented workers all over. Last summer I moved from the valley to Hollywood in the dead of summer. It reached the high 90’s in the valley, and I had been packing my car and making a few trips to the new apartment. Eventually, and perhaps, inevitably, I hurt my back and was running out of steam. I only had a few more days to get out of my old apartment. I decided to go to Uhaul to rent a dolly. Unfortunately, they didn’t have any. On my way in, and out, 20 to 30 latino laborers clamored around my car, “necessitas ayudar?!” - do you need help? Of course not, I said. But on my way out, as they crowded my car again, I reconsidered. I parked and got out. The laborers knew I had taken the bait. As about 10 of them circled me, some of them even grabbing my arm, I talked to one gentleman who looked pretty nice. I said, $20 for 1 hour of moving boxes. He said, “yes”, and as we fought our way back to my car, a bunch of other guys said “let me come along! you need me!” They seemed quite desperate.
The guy got in my car and I drove him back to my apartment. All i needed was the 10 or so boxes unloaded from my car and into my apartment. The gentlemen, from Honduras, jumped out of the car and started pulling boxes out rapidly. He raced over to the elevator, running the entire time to get all of my boxes inside. I told him to slow down, and that I wasn’t in a rush. I gave him a bottle of water and helped open the doors along the way. He finished the job in 30 minutes. I paid him his $20, and drove him back to the Uhaul. Along the way, in his broken english, he taught me a few spanish words, and we talked about Bob Marley. He was working to send money back home to his family.
I had my reservations about hiring him. I felt guilty, like I was enabling slavey. But how was this any different than hiring a moving company? He was treated well, and paid a fare wage. Minimum wage in California, I believe, is somewhere near $5 or $6 an hour. Did i take away an American citizen’s job? I don’t think I could’ve found a citizen to do that job for $20.
We have no problem buying our cheap DVDs and electronics from Walmart, even though most of those goods are made in other countries, by employees who make less money than Americans and probably have worse working conditions. Why can’t these same folks work here, in America, and fulfill jobs that we sorely need people for? There are obviously issues of overpopulation, schools, and healthcare, and we certainly need to regulate the flow of the immigrants and encourage citizenship. I hope to learn more about this immigration bill, but from what I’ve read so far, I don’t think our congress has taken a responsible approach to the problem.
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03.25.06
Posted in shawn update at 3:51 pm by shawnz
If you scroll down to my blogroll, you’ll see that only Mr. Jeff Lash has merited a link from this website. I know I have more friends with blogs, or websites of some sort. If any of you read this and have your own site, email me or leave a comment with the link. I suppose i could put up links of sites that I have no personal connection to and read anyway… but I want to personalize this space.
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Posted in games that people play at 10:20 am by shawnz
Last week, 2 friends and I went to San Diego for the semi-finals and finals of the World Baseball Classic. Having not followed the series up to that point, all I knew was that the USA had been unceremoniously knocked out. The semi-finals games consisted of Korea vs Japan and Cuba vs Dominican Republic. The Korean fans were great - they were loud, chanted in Korean (dae-han-min-gok, i think, which means KOREA!), and gave us delightful Korean snacks. Okay, the snack I had wasn’t very good. It was a squishy rice shell with a brown inner-filling that tasted beany.
Anyway, it was a fun international vibe in a fun, laid back city. I think it would’ve been great if Cuba had won, considering all they had been through just to get into the damn tournament. It was actually quite interesting to watch them play, since we will probably never seen any of those players ever again, unless they defected before they were whisked back to Cuba.
No pictures yet! Forthcoming…
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03.21.06
Posted in political gibberish, Uncategorized at 11:46 pm by shawnz
California is second, behind New York, in cancer risk from air pollutants. According to the LA Times, despite huges cuts in mobile emissions (cars, trucks), CA needs stronger measures to reduce the risk to 1 in a million, which is the EPA acceptable cancer risk from air pollution. Buy that hybrid already!
One in every 15,000 Californians — or 66 per million — is at risk of contracting cancer from breathing the air over his or her lifetime, according to the EPA’s National-Scale Air Toxics Assessment, which was released in February and based on emissions of 177 chemicals in 1999, the most recent data available.
In the Los Angeles area, the cancer threat is much higher, 93 per million in Los Angeles County — or one person in every 10,700 — and 79 per million in Orange County. The national average is 41.5 per million: one in every 24,000 Americans. Riverside and San Bernardino counties are near the U.S. average.
Although a tiny fraction of all cancers in the United States are caused by chemicals, an array of air pollutants has been shown to cause lung cancer or leukemia in both human and animal studies. Some have been classified as known human carcinogens for 20 years or longer.
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03.13.06
Posted in shawn update at 3:48 pm by shawnz
Out of the box, this Word Press platform is looking pretty good.
This weekend is the World Baseball Classic finals in San Diego. I haven’t followed any of the games prior because WBC news is hard to come by. After the harrowing victory against Japan, and the loss against Canada, the USA team is looking very beatable. Personally, I’m rooting for the Dominican Republic, but before you call me a communist, we’d need to find out if the DR actually has a socialist regime. I’m not even really unpatriotic - its just that Latin America is the heart of the MLB these days, and the better players are on that squad, like my man, Mr. Pujols.
I’m looking for engineers to partner up with on some devices a friend and I are making. These are devices that use biological signals and do neat things. For profit and for elucidation - them be the goals. Know anyone?
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