This American Life Retraction of Episode 454

The retraction of the story didn’t really change the substance of the description of working conditions at the factories that make Apple products like the iPad and iPhone.  Retraction | This American Life.  Sure, Mr. Daisy was caught embellishing his stories by blending conversations, making up colorful asides, and making assumptions that he perhaps should not have made.  After all, this tale originated as a monologue to be delivered to a live audience.

TAL took his story, which was intended to raise awareness of Chinese labor conditions while entertaining the audience, and turned it into “journalism.”  After they released the story, and after it became one of the most downloaded podcasts that they ever ran, they did some after-the-fact fact checking and found some discrepancies.  This week, they devoted Episode 460 to retracting Episode 454.

Notably missing from the retraction, though, was a denial of the stern labor conditions inside the factories.  As Mr. Daisy described, “The Chinese work hour is a full hour:  60 full minutes, made up of 60 full seconds, routinely running 12 to 16 hours per day.”  With supervisors and cameras watching every move looking to squeeze maximum efficiency from each second.  No talking allowed.  No breaks allowed.  Endless repetitive motions, resulting in countless repetitive motion injuries.  Swollen legs resulting from long hours standing.   Inspections pre-announced, so that the managers have plenty of time to shuffle the players to the pre-planned satisfaction of the inspectors.

What TAL did not address in its retraction was a simple fact that many Chinese friends say is obvious to them:  If you’re a Chinese laborer, and you tell a Western reporter the truth about conditions, and you are later contacted by the authorities and asked if you REALLY told the truth, what are you going to say?  You’re going to say that you never said those things, that the Westerner must have gotten it all wrong, because you know full well that there is an implied threat in the fact that you’re no longer anonymous in the Chinese system.  Words are dangerous things in China.  It is not surprising that Cathy (the translator and tour guide in the story) would change her story to “save face” for the Chinese system at the expense of the Westerner.

The fact that TAL has retracted the story should not be interpreted as a clean report card for Apple and its suppliers.  Apple should still work to demand that the workers that created Apple’s $98 billion cash-in-the-bank fortune enjoy decent working conditions and the standards that all unions work for:  a living wage, a safe workplace, and the freedom to enjoy life outside of work.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/24/science/space/24astronaut.html

While they’re perhaps the most prominent of NASA’s employees, the astronauts are really a small fraction of the workers who have put us into space in a real and productive national program.  I’m hopeful that the private space industry will be able to ramp up operations as quickly as possible to create “private” employment situations for the thousands of NASA employees who will soon be forced to retire early if they can’t find work in the privatized space industry.

The wait is over, folks:  the private, for-profit space business is now looking for “Pilots – Astronauts” at the following link:

Careers | Virgin Galactic

It’s been a long time coming, and they’re still not completely operational.  A story published on AVWeb on April 13 provides a little more detail about what they’re looking for.  Normally, it might be a little difficult to find experience pilots with their ambitious experience requirements, but as the article points out, this is good timing for Virgin Galactic because NASA is winding down the space shuttle program that it’s been running for the last 30 years or so.  Quote:

“Virgin is ready to select three candidates, one to start now and the others to come on board as needed. The pilots will participate in the ongoing test-flight program for WhiteKnightTwo and SpaceShipTwo in Mojave and later will help launch commercial operations and train new pilots at Spaceport America in New Mexico. Virgin is looking for graduates of test-pilot school with experience flying high-performance jets and large multi-engine aircraft as well as “low lift-to-drag ratio glide experience (e.g. simulated flameout landings) in complex aircraft.” Their ideal candidate would have spaceflight experience as well — a criterion that might not be so hard to meet as NASA winds down its shuttle program, leaving their astronaut corps grounded.”

So, if you’re leaving NASA and are looking for work, the skies have just opened up these new possibilities. Good luck to you.  I look forward to flying in your spaceship some day.

This is positively creepy.  As pointed out in an article on Salon.com today, the majority of life-like robots that we see have Asian (or Japanese) characteristics.   A graph of the Uncanny Valley, Karl F. MacDorman and Takashi Minato in Android Science, is presented below.

From Karl F. MacDorman and Takashi Minato in Android Science.

This new one, Geminoid DK, is based on a Danish researcher (hence the “DK”).   Check out this brief video clip.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eZlLNVmaPbM

Now that you’ve seen this robot being “exercised,” or put through its range of emotional motions, pretend that it’s really the front-end to Watson the know-it-all computer.

Then, realize that it’s going to be someone’s boss some day.

Back in the Age of Dilbert, we dealt with The Pointy-Haired Boss.  Coming soon to a timeclock near you, we’ll have the Uncanny Boss.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3TFDxIyaiCE

It’s understandable why the corporate world would want to use Watson as their Customer Service Rep whenever possible:

• It’s cheaper in the long run, since it works 24/7/365 and never needs a bathroom break.
• It knows nearly everything, and what it doesn’t know it can hand off to a human.
• It can handle huge swings in the workload, thereby minimizing the wait time for callers.
• There are probably dozens of other valid business reasons to employ Watson rather than human call center workers.

But, oh, the humanity!  Working in a call center, answering customer service calls and moving through menu-driven problem solving trees is a job that many people can do when they can’t do other things.  It doesn’t require driving skills, or a college degree, or physical strength.  It can be done by people who have limited mobility and/or are confined to a power chair.  It can be done by people who are young, old, or in-between.  It can be done by college students, as I did when I was in college in the 1980s.

But now, it’s about to be done by Watson, and people who take these jobs for granted today will be out of work tomorrow.

The only bright side is, when you now yell and curse at the Customer Service Watson, it won’t hurt any real feelings.

Nir Rosen's Mea Culpa about Lara Logan - Salon.com

All ye who write for a living, learn well from Nir Rosen’s mea culpa about premature tweeting.

Link to original article on Salon.com:

How 480 characters unraveled my career – Egyptian Protests – Salon.com

The author writes that “Twitter is no place for nuance,” with only 140 characters per post.  It’s a technology that is suited for relatively low-tech SMS phones.  As the Age of Smartphones advances, I expect that Twitter will either disappear or evolve into something more like Facebook.

But for the foreseeable future, systems that allow people to make their points and networking connections with a few brief characters will prevail in situations where data bandwidth is tightly constricted.

– Robert

Remote Sensing Metrics Satellite Data

This blog post is a reaction to this story posted on MSNBC on November 24, 2010:

Might be an out of this world Black Friday – Business – Holiday retail – msnbc.com

So, be aware that retail systems like BestBuy and Target and Wal-Mart, and every other top-notch information-revolution retailer, are now using satellite data about car parking patterns to predict sales during the so-called “Holiday Shopping Season.”  And, they’re not just making predictions about sales, they’re also making predictions about staffing and employee hour requirements.

So, if you want to increase the number of hours you get put on the schedule for during this Holiday Shopping Season, make sure to park your broken down Hooptis and Beaters in the Target parking lot NOW!    Target will assume that satellite photos of cars in parking spaces are a valid predictor of Holiday Shopping Season purchasing patterns, which will in turn increase your hours on the schedule.

You just can’t make this stuff up.  Retailers are relying on satellite photos of car parking patterns to determine their staffing levels for the next few weeks.  Except, maybe, just maybe, those cars parked in the lot have some sort of connection to the people who own and drive them???

A Long March 3C rocket carrying China's second unmanned lunar probe, Chang'e 2, is launched from the Xichang Satellite Launch Center in southwest China's Sichuan province on Friday. Source: MSNBC

This report from the New York Times, Congress Gives NASA New Orders That Bypass the Moon – NYTimes.com, reports that the House has passed the Senate-written legislation that does three main things:

• It kills the Constellation program, in which NASA was to establish a mining and exploration colony on the southern pole of the moon.
• It directs NASA to focus on building larger ships that are suitable for longer-distance and longer-duration missions, such as to Mars.
• It advances the march of private, for-profit business into space, as it cedes the possibility of U.S. government colonization of the moon to private space interests.

It is expected that President Obama will sign this legislation shortly, making it a reality.

At the same time, and on the 61st anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic of China (October 1, 2010), the Chinese space program launched a second lunar exploration probe.  China Launches Second Lunar Exploration Probe – MSNBC.  This successful launch means that China is yet another step closer to landing their first mission on the moon by 2013.  Manned Chinese missions are planned for the future, perhaps 2025.

Considering these two news stories separately, there’s little apparent interaction.  But considered together, there are major implications for both space programs.  We may be seeing the establishment of a contest for lunar exploration that rotates on several axes:

• The Chinese government versus U.S. private business.
• A centralized, planned, unified approach to moon colonization versus a decentralized, business-oriented approach.
• A military program versus a civilian program.  China’s space program is inherently a military program, after all.

Stay tuned for further developments, and start learning Chinese if you are interested in lunar exploration.  Or, if you are interested in working on the moon, or just visiting for your family vacation in 2030.  If private business has to compete with the full resources of the Chinese military for the prime locations, mines, and ore and water deposits, I’m betting that the Chinese military will prevail.

By moving the U.S. government out of the business of establishing colonies, and therefore territorial claims, on the moon, it is possible that Congress just gave the moon to China.  Literally.

Their fundraising appeal page can be found here:

https://planetary.org/special/asteroid/index_email.html

Typical questions that they pose include the following:

• How do we operate in deep space?
• How do we handle operations for spacecraft and humans in the low gravity of an asteroid?
• What requirements are needed for life support on a long-duration mission in deep space, and how will those requirements be met?
• Do you anchor a spacecraft to the asteroid, or set up a synchronous orbit, and have astronauts cross that space?
• What is the best way to approach and depart from the asteroid?

The fact that these questions are arising now is yet further evidence that humans are moving into space.  Where humans go, their jobs go as well.   So, additional questions relating to the workplace conditions should also be discussed:

• How do we manage time off, family leave, medical leave, and other extended leave situations?
• Suppose the crew is made up of Japanese, French, Canadian, and United States citizens, but the corporation taking them into space is British.  Which country’s laws govern the workplace rules?
• Suppose an ammonia leak contaminates the crew atmosphere for an extended period of time, causing long-term damage to the crew’s lungs.  What arrangements for long-term care will be in place for the workers?

Once we start asking questions like these, one question typically leads to several others.  There are many questions that must be answered before this sort of operation will become a reality.

But I’m all for this human mission to an asteroid, for the reasons that they state in their promotional web page:  “The solutions developed for this competition could potentially change the future of space exploration.”