Buy American - but what is American?

Honda and Toyota make cars in American plants and in the past few years starting building major components like engines and transmissions in the US also.

Here Chevy and other American car manufacturers are rushing to China and Brazil and elsewhere to build major components for cars to be sold in the US. Some subcompacts are totally foreign made but sold under the Chevy name such as the Aveo.

So is it more patriotic (buy American!) to buy a Honda or Toyota than a Chevrolet ? Depending on the model perhaps, but overall the 'foreign' manufacturers may employ more American workers in producing their products.

March 26, 2008

A Chevy With an Engine From China

By IAN AUSTEN

OSHAWA, Ontario — General Motors car engines were once the stuff of American legend. The Beach Boys sang, “nothing can touch my 409,” about a powerful Chevy V-8. Oldsmobile owners in 1981 were so angered that their cars had been fitted with Chevrolet engines instead of Oldsmobile “Rockets,” the subject of another hit song, that they successfully sued G.M. over the swap.

The company has since eliminated brand distinctions between engines, saddling them with names unlikely to inspire songwriters, like Ecotec, Vortec and Northstar. But some owners of the Chevrolet Equinox, a “compact” sport utility vehicle built in North America, might be surprised to learn the origin of the engine under their hoods — it’s made in China.

Last year, China exported more than $12 billion in auto parts, up from less than $2 billion in 2002 — the majority to North America. The increase in exports has added to the problems plaguing North American suppliers. Most famously, Delphi, which is seeking to emerge from bankruptcy, has closed dozens of plants and moved some production overseas to become more competitive, including to China.

Soon China will be exporting whole vehicles to North America. Last year, Chrysler signed a deal with China’s largest car company, Chery Automobile, to supply a Dodge subcompact.

One of the most important steps on China’s long march to becoming an auto exporter was the little-noticed arrival of the humble engine inside the 2005 Chevy Equinox.

“This is the first Chinese-made engine going into this market,” said Eric A. Fedewa, vice president for powertrain forecasts at CSM Worldwide, an automotive analysis firm. “It was an experiment to see if G.M. could use its facility in China to take costs out of a vehicle.”

G.M. neither promoted nor hid the fact that the Equinox engine (and that of its twin, the Pontiac Torrent) is made in China. The car’s sticker notes 55 percent of its content is make in the United States and Canada, 20 percent in Japan, 15 percent in China and the rest from elsewhere. But no sticker tells consumers the engine is built at Shanghai General Motors, a joint venture of G.M. and the Shanghai Automotive Industry Corporation, a Chinese company.

Originally intended to power Buick sedans built for the Chinese market, the engine is the only one available in the Equinox base model.

Starting with the 2008 model, a larger American-made motor became an option in a higher-end version of the S.U.V. The same model of engine as the one made in China is produced at a G.M. engine plant in Tonawanda, N.Y., about a two-hour drive from the Canadian factory that builds the Equinox.

G.M. does not break out internal costs, so it is not known how the Chinese engines compare in price with those from Tonawanda. Mr. Fedewa said an engine of this sort typically costs $800 to $900 to make.

Even in an era of global manufacturing, the Equinox is exceptionally international. Its engineering was largely done here in Oshawa, headquarters of General Motors of Canada. It uses a five-speed automatic transmission made in Japan by Aisin Seiki, though G.M. is a leading manufacturer of automatic transmissions. And the parts are assembled at a factory in Ingersoll, Ontario, a joint venture between G.M. and Suzuki, another Japanese firm.

Suzuki was a major driver in the decision to use the Chinese-made engine. Dick Kauling, a senior engineering manager at G.M. Canada who helped develop the Equinox, said his group had worked closely with engineers at Suzuki, as well as G.M. engineers in Germany, China and Warren, Mich.

“The Suzuki guys said, ‘We have the global logistics that can make this happen,’ ” Mr. Fedewa said.

Suzuki proposed loading a container ship in Shanghai with engines, then having it stop in Japan to pick up transmissions on its way to Canada.

A 25-year G.M. veteran, Mr. Kauling, remembers when car buyers hotly debated the differences between the engines in G.M. brands, not to mention those from other automakers. But he said the old way of organizing production was less than efficient.

Early in his career, the company was running short of engines for Chevrolets but had a surplus of Oldsmobile motors. He was assigned to find a way to modify the incompatible Oldsmobile engine — the two brands had not even been able to agree on common bolt sizes — to fit into a Chevy body.

Now, Mr. Kauling said, “I don’t think we’re concerned where the parts come from,” adding, the Chinese-made engine “has got General Motors all over it.”

The idea of using the Chinese engine did not sit well with the Canadian Auto Workers, the union that represents workers at the Equinox factory. Because of its complexity, engine assembly uses a higher proportion of skilled, well-paid workers.

And Basil E. Hargrove, the union’s president, blames what he calls unfair trading practices by Asian manufacturers for much of the North American industry’s problems.

“Today it’s South Korea and Japan, and tomorrow it’s going to be China,” he said. “It’s only a matter of time before G.M., Ford and Chrysler are going to deal with the crisis they face by going into these countries and shipping into here. Very few consumers ask: where is the engine built or where is the transmission made?”

Assessing the quality of Chinese manufacturing is difficult, partly because of the design of this particular engine.

Gabriel Shenhar, the senior engineer of Consumer Reports auto test division, said that in the Equinox the engine is coarse, noisy, uses more fuel than similar vehicles and produces relatively little horsepower for its size.

He did not blame the Chinese for those shortcomings. “This engine’s blueprint did not originate in China,” Mr. Shenhar said. “The 3.4 liter, 185 horsepower has always been a lackluster engine.”

He called flaws in the design “a reflection of G.M.’s lack of attention to detail and half-hearted effort on this car.”

A spokeswoman for Chevrolet, Carolyn Normandin, said, “Our vehicle comes with a standard six-cylinder engine, while most of our competitors only offer standard four-cylinder engines.” She added that the company will offer improved fuel economy in the next-generation Equinox. She declined to say when that will be introduced.

Some observers expect the new model will be out in about two years. Mr. Fedewa, the analyst from CSM, expects they will not be fitted with Chinese engines.

“Sourcing from halfway around the world is very challenging,” he said, referring to the difficulties of fitting huge transmissions into shipping containers and the possibility of supply-chain disruption.

Defining 'Talent'

I expected to find instances of high-level PhD's not being allowed to stay in the country in this article.

One of their examples of 'talent' . I am using the common definition for 'talent' to be 'foreign worker' is :

Gaurav Gaur, for example, an Indian who earned his M.B.A. from Cornell in 2004 .

A dearth of MBAs in the US ?? Well, perhaps he has particular special skills ,maybe higher math needed for working with derivatives for Hedge funds or for complex econometric modeling? Well, it's a bit more mundane:

....he is a senior project manager for the British bank ...

So the skills America is lacking are MBAs with 3 years of Project Management experience? Can't find this in the USA ? I think not .

And his wife is another 'talent' , needed in the USA :

...his wife, Bhavna, who has a master’s degree in social work ...

MSW's in short supply ? Vitally needed by business ??? I was unaware that Businesses were hiring MSW's ... maybe they are needed for all the workers affected by outsourcing/offshoring ?



March 24, 2008
Businesses Say New York’s Clout Is Emigrating, With Visa Policies to Blame
By PATRICK McGEEHAN and NINA BERNSTEIN
New York officials have long taken pride in the city’s status as a global gateway. But lately, senior executives of some of the country’s biggest corporations, like Alcoa, have been complaining that American immigration policies are thwarting New York’s ability to compete with other world capitals.
Every big employer in the city, it seems, can cite an example of high-paying jobs that had to be relocated to foreign cities because the people chosen to fill them could not gain entry to the United States.
In Alcoa’s case, one of its chief financial executives, Vanessa Lau, who is from Hong Kong, is working from the company’s offices in Geneva when she should be at headquarters on Park Avenue, according to Alain J. P. Belda, the chairman and chief executive.
Officials of large investment banks on Wall Street said the difficulty in obtaining visas for foreign workers, many of them graduates of American universities, had caused them to shift dozens of jobs to other financial capitals this year. In some cases, foreign-born professionals have grown weary of the struggle to get and renew a work visa in the United States and moved on to cities like London, where they say they feel more welcome.
“In a company like ours, we have people moving all over the place all the time,” Mr. Belda said. “This visa situation is causing difficulty.”
Mr. Belda is particularly frustrated, given that he is a Moroccan-born citizen of Brazil whom Alcoa brought to the United States in the early 1990s when immigration rules were looser. Now, with visas for immigrants with special skills tightly controlled and awarded in an annual lottery in early April, managing a global enterprise from New York can be a competitive disadvantage, he said.
“After 9/11, it just became more and more complicated,” Mr. Belda said. “You’re fighting to get everybody in, “he said, then fighting for renewal of their visas so that they can stay more than three years. “How do you move somebody with a family if they don’t know they’re going to be renewed?” he said.
Until now, visa restrictions have been seen as a problem that primarily affected technology companies in Silicon Valley and elsewhere in the West. Bill Gates, the chairman of Microsoft, has been railing against them for years.
But according to the Partnership for New York City, a business advocacy group, there is more demand for visas for specialized jobs in New York, New Jersey and Connecticut than in California, and most of the demand comes from small and midsize companies, not the largest corporations. The partnership, whose members include many of the city’s biggest employers, has lobbied legislative leaders, including Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senator Charles E. Schumer, for a relaxation of visa policies.
“New York’s ability to compete with London, which has much more open immigration, or with the emerging financial capitals in Asia and the Middle East, depends on mobility of talent, both in terms of new and current employees,” said Kathryn S. Wylde, president of the partnership. “What people miss is, New York’s standing as an international capital of business and finance depends on the professionals within these companies being able to come to New York to be trained and groomed for leadership positions around the world.”
Indeed, companies are capitalizing on more open visa policies elsewhere to recruit some of the leaders educated and trained in New York. Gaurav Gaur, for example, an Indian who earned his M.B.A. from Cornell in 2004, said he seized the chance to leave New York last year for London to work for Barclays, though it meant turning his back on opportunities at Bloomberg L.P. and other American companies.
“The whole visa situation was one of the biggest reasons that I took the job,” Mr. Gaur said in a telephone interview from London, where he is a senior project manager for the British bank. “I didn’t want to keep going through this uncertainty — it’s just a nightmare.”
In New York, Mr. Gaur, 33, had managed to secure one of the three-year visas for professionals known as H-1B visas, and he probably could have renewed it for another three years, he said. But after that he knew he would be faced with the prospect of year-to-year renewals while he waited in a long and unpredictable line for permanent residency — and remained tethered to whatever company was sponsoring him for a green card.
Moreover, he said, his wife, Bhavna, who has a master’s degree in social work from Washington University in St. Louis, had work visa woes of her own in a field where few employers were familiar with the H-1B program.
In Britain, he said, “it’s drastically different.” There is no cap on work visas, and since he had a work permit, his wife was automatically allowed to work; she quickly found a good social work job.
“If I stay here for five years,” he added, “I automatically become eligible for a green card, for permanent residency.”
In the United States, companies apply for the three-year H-1B visas annually, starting on April 1. The demand typically far outstrips the total supply of visas, limited to 65,000 a year, with an additional 20,000 available for those with advanced degrees from American universities. Last year 120,000 applications came in on April 1 alone, including hundreds of duplicates, and United States Citizenship and Immigration Services conducted a lottery for the first time.
This year, officials warned, multiple petitions by the same company for one candidate will be disqualified, to prevent businesses from trying to game the system.
In 2006, more than 10,000 companies sought H-1B visas for jobs in New York City, according to the partnership’s analysis in a soon-to-be-published report. Only about one-tenth of those applications came from the country’s 1,000 biggest companies, it said.
Data about who holds these visas and where they work is closely guarded. But judging by the applications filed, the partnership concluded that the greatest demand is from the New York area.
More than one-fifth — 21 percent — of the applications were for jobs in New York, New Jersey and Connecticut, according to the report, titled “Winning the Global Race for Talent.” In contrast, about 18.2 percent of the H-1B visa applications were for jobs in California. Texas ranked fourth behind New York and New Jersey with about 7.7 percent of the applications, according to the report. A survey by the partnership found that employers had complaints about other immigration policies, including long delays in obtaining visas for employees transferring from offices in other countries and visas for their employees to make short-term visits to the United States. They also said they were constrained by big backlogs on applications for employment-based green cards, which offer permanent residency to sponsored workers.
The partnership recommended adjusting the cap on H-1B visas to meet demand and more than doubling the annual limit on employment-based green cards to 290,000 from 140,000. It also suggested exempting workers with advanced degrees in science and math from any cap on H-1B visas and extending the term of visas for workers receiving practical training to 29 months from 12 months.
Mark Krikorian, executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies in Washington, which advocates less immigration, dismissed the partnership’s argument as merely “trying to bend the law to benefit them financially.”
The H-1B visa program creates a form of indentured worker whose pay, on average, is lower than that of American counterparts, Mr. Krikorian contended. The only morally defensible way to bring workers into the country, he said, is with green cards that allow them to quit working for the sponsoring employer and stay in the United States. Still, he added that he opposed increasing the number of such green cards without the immigration service’s raising its standards “so that it’s really Einstein immigration.”
Ms. Wylde disagrees.
“It’s a 20th-century, pre-globalization mentality that thinks somehow American companies and jobs can grow if we cut ourselves off from foreign talent,” she said.

The New Math is the Old Math?

Funny 'findings' ....

First off, is it just coincidence that this report was released one day after America's greatest social scientist and education expert, Bill Gates, urged Congress to press for a greater emphasis on Math/Science education (as well as increased access to foreign 'talent') ??

While parents clamored for the 'old math' curriculum, they won't blame the education establishment for implementing 'new math' methods over the last couple of decades, perhaps because of the threat of suits against boards of educations and teacher's unions. Instead, like a teacher breaking up a schoolyard fight with ' Ok, now makeup, you're both wrong!' they conclude that both math teaching methods have merit :

The report tries to put to rest the long, heated debate over math teaching methods. Parents and teachers have fought passionately in school districts around the country over the relative merits of traditional, or teacher-directed, instruction, in which students are told how to do problems and then drilled on them, versus reform or child-centered instruction, emphasizing student exploration and conceptual understanding. It said both methods had a role.

Child-centered education! Reminds me of phonetic spelling that is currently in vogue now; later on the students are unable to adopt to correct spelling.

They find algebra to be the breaking point in learning math and then deduce that not being able to understand and manipulate fractions causes the algebra problems:

Fractions are especially troublesome for Americans, the report found. It pointed to the National Assessment of Educational Progress, standardized exams known as the nation’s report card, which found that almost half the eighth graders tested could not solve a word problem that required dividing fractions. Panel members said the failure to master fractions was for American students the greatest obstacle to learning algebra. Just as “plastics” was the catchword in the 1967 movie “The Graduate,” the catchword for math teachers today should be “fractions,” said Francis Fennell, president of the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics.

And here's some ideas explained in quasi-computer lingo, suggesting that students are no more than computers , to be programmed :

For example, the report found it is important for students to master their basic math facts well enough that their recall becomes automatic, stored in their long-term memory, leaving room in their working memory to take in new math processes.

And this guy needed to get a PhD to figure out that kids need to know the facts' ? Who's been keeping math facts away from them then ? I guess in child-centered education the teacher gets out of the way and doesn't impose facts in students .

Dr. Faulkner, a former president of the University of Texas at Austin, said the panel “buys the notion from cognitive science that kids have to know the facts.”

And here is the good Doctor confusing the meaning of 'talent' (he may know a bit of math but little about corporate double-speak) . He should know that Corporations and employment agencies have defined 'talent' to mean 'foreign workers' . All he had to do was listen to Bill Gates' talk to Congress the previous day, lamenting about the inability of Microsoft to access 'talent' because of limited immigration laws .

Dr. Faulkner said the current “talent-driven approach to math, that either you can do it or you can’t, like playing the violin,” needed to be changed.

March 14, 2008

Report Urges Changes in Teaching Math

By TAMAR LEWIN

American students’ math achievement is “at a mediocre level” compared with that of their peers worldwide, according to a new report by a federal panel, which recommended that schools focus on key skills that prepare students to learn algebra.

“The sharp falloff in mathematics achievement in the U.S. begins as students reach late middle school, where, for more and more students, algebra course work begins,” said the report of the National Mathematics Advisory Panel, appointed two years ago by President Bush. “Students who complete Algebra II are more than twice as likely to graduate from college compared to students with less mathematical preparation.”

The report, adopted unanimously by the panel on Thursday and presented to Education Secretary Margaret Spellings, said that prekindergarten-to-eighth-grade math curriculums should be streamlined and put focused attention on skills like the handling of whole numbers and fractions and certain aspects of geometry and measurement.

It offers specific goals for students in different grades. For example, it said that by the end of the third grade, students should be proficient in adding and subtracting whole numbers. Two years later, they should be proficient in multiplying and dividing them. By the end of the sixth grade, the report said, students should have mastered the multiplication and division of fractions and decimals.

The report tries to put to rest the long, heated debate over math teaching methods. Parents and teachers have fought passionately in school districts around the country over the relative merits of traditional, or teacher-directed, instruction, in which students are told how to do problems and then drilled on them, versus reform or child-centered instruction, emphasizing student exploration and conceptual understanding. It said both methods had a role.

“There is no basis in research for favoring teacher-based or student-centered instruction,” Dr. Larry R. Faulkner, the chairman of the panel, said at a briefing on Wednesday. “People may retain their strongly held philosophical inclinations, but the research does not show that either is better than the other.”

The report found that “to prepare students for algebra, the curriculum must simultaneously develop conceptual understanding, computational fluency and problem-solving skills.” Further, it said: “Debates regarding the relative importance of these aspects of mathematical knowledge are misguided. These capabilities are mutually supportive.”

The president convened the panel to advise on how to improve math education. Its members include math and psychology professors from leading universities, a middle-school math teacher and the president of the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics.

Closely tracking an influential 2006 report by the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics, the panel recommended that math curriculum should include fewer topics, spending enough time to make sure each is learned in enough depth that it need not be revisited in later grades. That is the approach used in most top-performing nations, and since the 2006 report, many states have been revising their standards to cover fewer topics in greater depth.

The report calls for more research on successful math teaching, and recommends that the secretary of education convene an annual forum of leaders of the national associations concerned with math to develop an agenda for improving math instruction.

Ms. Spellings said Thursday that she would convene such a meeting. She emphasized the importance of math education for all children and said the report underlined the need for parents to teach even young children about numbers and measurements.

Ms. Spellings said she hoped the report would help persuade Congress to approve the president’s fiscal 2009 budget request for almost $100 million for Math Now, an instructional program proposed last year and not financed.

The report cited a number of troubling international comparisons, including a 2007 assessment finding that 15-year-olds in the United States ranked 25th among their peers in 30 developed nations in math literacy and problem solving.

Fractions are especially troublesome for Americans, the report found. It pointed to the National Assessment of Educational Progress, standardized exams known as the nation’s report card, which found that almost half the eighth graders tested could not solve a word problem that required dividing fractions. Panel members said the failure to master fractions was for American students the greatest obstacle to learning algebra. Just as “plastics” was the catchword in the 1967 movie “The Graduate,” the catchword for math teachers today should be “fractions,” said Francis Fennell, president of the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics.

After hearing testimony and comments from hundreds of organizations and individuals, and sifting through a broad array of 16,000 research publications, the panelists shaped their report around recent research on how children learn.

For example, the report found it is important for students to master their basic math facts well enough that their recall becomes automatic, stored in their long-term memory, leaving room in their working memory to take in new math processes.

“For all content areas, practice allows students to achieve automaticity of basic skills — the fast, accurate and effortless processing of content information — which frees up working memory for more complex aspects of problem solving,” the report said.

Dr. Faulkner, a former president of the University of Texas at Austin, said the panel “buys the notion from cognitive science that kids have to know the facts.”

The report also cited findings that students who depended on their native intelligence learned less than those who believed that success depended on how hard they worked.

Dr. Faulkner said the current “talent-driven approach to math, that either you can do it or you can’t, like playing the violin,” needed to be changed.

Bill Gates - Clueless in Seattle

Same old Bill Gates song ... Americans are dumb, so smart foreigners are needed ....

Also, the reason that all H1-B's are gone in one day is that Indian outsourcing firms grab 80% of them and then slowly supply American firms with sub-contractors over the intervening year ...

And this quote:

Microsoft last year wasn't able to get the visas for roughly a third of the people it had planned to hire, he added.

OK then , ask the question : 'How many foreign workers did you plan on bringing in and what were the skills required AND also, how many American workers did you plan on hiring and what were the skills required? ' The assumption is 1) that the foreign workers had special skills that there NO Americans had and 2) Microsoft has a need to hire a lot (thousands??) of workers here in the US (versus how many overseas?) .

Why doesn't the Gates Foundation sponsor a college scholarship program IN THE US that would give incentives to local 'talent' to go to the college of their choice for FREE ?

Currently the most prestigious science fair in the country
gives out a top scholarship of $100k and then smaller $25K ones to the top High School science and math students (leaving out that many of them are not working independently but have professional family and outside help) . With College educations costs approaching $200K at many of the best private colleges, this is pitiful.

The Gates foundation (or even Intel) could easily create 100 or more FULL pay scholarships. 100 scholarships at $200K each would only set back the foundation a measly $20 million, much less than the cost of a single CEO at most American corporations.

It would also show young people that science careers are valued and not just for those who have an entrepeneural bent.

Overseas students see science and engineering careers as upwardly mobile since they can make several times the average salary of their country doing this work. If Americans could also make several times the average American salary in science and engineering then many would also flock to these fields, but this is not the case. In fact wages are declining because of the influx of H1-B workers, the very remedy that Gates is suggesting.

When the dot.com boom of the late 90's was going strong, there were more Computer Science majors than colleges could register, because of the financial possibilities this career offered . If American firms offer premium American pay then Americans will supply the 'talent' demanded. But if foreign workers are brought in to depress wages then few Americans will be enticed to these fields.


Gates to urge immigration, education reform
Microsoft's chairman will push Congress to let more skilled workers in the U.S. and increase math and science classes.
March 11, 2008: 4:15 PM EDT
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Bill Gates is coming back to Capitol Hill with the same wish list he's had for years: more visas for highly skilled workers, more math, science and engineering in schools and more money for technology investment.
On Wednesday, Gates' scheduled testimony before the House Science and Technology Committee will amplify the call for major overhauls in education and immigration laws to help the U.S. technology industry stay competitive globally.
Congress has heard the requests before, especially about increasing the cap on H1-B visas, which are granted to skilled foreign professionals. While a Microsoft spokesman said there's been a "real effort" by Congress and the Bush administration to move the ball forward on broad immigration reform, they have failed.
Gates, who visits Washington about once a year, is also expected to meet privately with policy makers during his visit, said Jack Krumholtz, Microsoft Corp.'s managing director for government affairs. He declined to identify them.
The Microsoft co-founder has long championed such reforms -- especially raising H1-B visa cap -- and made a similar case before a Senate committee a year ago.
"We have to welcome the great minds in this world, not shut them out of our country," Gates said last year in testimony. "Unfortunately, our immigration policies are driving away the world's best and brightest precisely when we need them most."
Krumholtz thinks the changing political climate makes for a more responsive audience this time around.
"He sees this (appearance) as an opportunity in the political season ... to put out a call to both the Congress and to the current administration with an eye toward the new administration," Krumholtz said.
Not everyone sees the climate as warming to Microsoft's position. Roger Kay, a technology analyst with Endpoint Technologies Associates, said an election year may be a difficult time to advance the issue, as it could be labeled a threat to American jobs. Democrats, relying on support from labor groups, might not want to push for legislation that lets more foreign professionals in this country.
The hot-button issue for the technology industry has been to find high-skilled workers in the United States and overseas.
The industry has long pushed for the H1-B visa cap to be raised from its current level of 65,000. In 2007, the quota was filled on the first day applications were accepted.
Krumholtz, who expects the same thing to happen this year, said it's an issue on which Microsoft (MSFT, Fortune 500) and its rivals, including Google Inc. (GOOG, Fortune 500), Oracle Corp. (ORCL, Fortune 500), Sun Microsystems Inc. (JAVA, Fortune 500) and others agree. Microsoft last year wasn't able to get the visas for roughly a third of the people it had planned to hire, he added.
Gates will also urge for educational reforms to encourage more students to get into math and science. Last year, Gates said American high schools have one of the lowest graduation rates among industrialized nations.
"It's not an either or proposition," said Krumholtz. "We need to do both."
But Gates will also touch on positive developments, such as a Philadelphia high school that focuses on using the latest technologies and another effort to provide tech skills to the U.S. work force, Krumholtz added.
While Gates is expected to devote most of his time toward his philanthropic foundation starting in July, he will remain chairman of the company he founded.
Krumholtz said he doesn't know what Gates plans to do in the future, "but I can speak to the fact that I know these are issues that he is very passionate about."
He does know what Gates is doing one day into the future. On Thursday, he will deliver a keynote speech to a sold-out Northern Virginia Technology Council.

Replacement workers now suing their employers

The very name of the program that they were brought in under ' ... temporary guest worker program...' suggests that permanent status was never promised.

'Ignorance of the law' used to be a tenet of the legal system , but now it is just an excuse .. ' Ignorant of American immigration law, advocates said, the workers were unaware that they had been brought in only temporarily. '

Substandard working facilities ? Quite possible... but note that they are NOT complaining about compensation. Apparently it was delivered as promised, and I would bet that it was considerably less than the going rate for US workers. The Oil companies and their sub-contractors no doubt have a lot of blame in pursuing and implementing this hiring plan, but mostly against US workers.

If the conditions after the hurricanes was deplorable then normally companies can offer 'combat pay' (add'l compensation and benefits) to attract workers. At some pay level they could get workers, but they chose to take the opportunity to get foreign workers and pay less.

First we have illegals demonstrating in the streets (what chutzpah!) for their 'rights' and now temporary workers demand permanent status. If new temporary worker programs are designed by congress in some future immigration bill, are legal challenges like this awaiting the US ?

March 11, 2008

Workers Sue Gulf Coast Company That Imported Them

By ADAM NOSSITER

NEW ORLEANS — A group of 500 foreign welders and pipefitters brought in to work at Gulf Coast oil rig yards after Hurricane Katrina said Monday that they had sued their employer, claiming they were lured with false promises of permanent-resident status, forced to live in inhumane conditions and then threatened when they protested.

The workers were recruited in India and the United Arab Emirates and brought in late 2006 and early 2007 under the government’s temporary guest worker program. They worked at Signal International, an oil-rig repair and construction company with yards in Pascagoula, Miss., about 85 miles east of here, and in Orange, Tex., about 100 miles east of Houston.

The company said it had brought them in to supplement a labor force depleted by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita.

At a rally here Monday, workers and their lawyers said they had given up life savings, sold family jewelry and paid up to $20,000 in immigration and travel fees after being assured that the company would help them to become permanent residents of the United States.

In a statement, the company called the workers’ charges “baseless and unfounded” and said it had spent “over $7 million constructing state-of-the-art housing complexes” for the workers. The company said that the “vast majority of the workers” recruited had been satisfied with their conditions and that the workers were being paid “in excess” of prevailing rates and in full compliance with the law.

Workers and their advocates disputed those assertions. Ignorant of American immigration law, advocates said, the workers were unaware that they had been brought in only temporarily.

“They didn’t know they were guest workers,” said Stephen Boykewich of the New Orleans Workers’ Center for Racial Justice. “They thought they were getting permanent status.”

The green cards enabling residency never materialized, according to the lawsuit, and the workers were forced to live in overcrowded guarded “bunkhouses” at Signal International, with inadequate toilets and unhygienic kitchens that frequently made them ill.

The class-action lawsuit was filed by the Southern Poverty Law Center of Montgomery, Ala., among other groups.

The workers’ assertions are the latest in a series of complaints about exploitation of foreign laborers on the Gulf Coast after Hurricane Katrina.

Previous complaints have involved Hispanic hotel and construction workers and farm laborers and have centered on low pay and harsh working conditions.

In the summer of 2006, Hispanic hotel workers sued a prominent New Orleans developer over inadequate pay, and last month, fruit pickers walked off the job in a parish north of here over exploitative conditions.

The Southern Poverty Law Center has also sued on behalf of immigrant workers involved in the reconstruction and cleanup of New Orleans after the storm. It maintains that immigrants brought in under the guest worker program are “systematically exploited and abused,” all over the country.

Brave New World

This is a pretty extraordinary headline to begin with .... legal surrogates in India ... more off-shoring of 'work' (??) .... There are already stories about women who don't want to have childbirth because of it's effect on their bodies or their fear of labor but do want children so they hire surrogates for the 'labor' .

I assumed this was about childless couples (the article's description of choice) who couldn't conceive and in this case it was the woman with the biological problem since the article mentions that a surrogate's egg was used .

Interesting that the reporter and the NYTimes chose to use the terms 'couples' and 'partners' without additional clarification.

But you have to read quite a bit farther into the article to get the additional information about the couple. Mentioned somewhat off-handedly, and very indirectly at first :

“People are increasingly exposed to the idea of surrogacy in India; Oprah Winfrey talked about it on her show,” said Dr. Kaushal Kadam at the Rotunda clinic in Mumbai. Just an hour earlier she had created an embryo for Mr. Gher and his partner with sperm from one of them (they would not say which) and an egg removed from a donor just minutes before in another part of the clinic.


Then, more directly , near the end of the article :


The surrogate mother does not know that she is working for foreigners, Dr. Kadam said, and has not been told that the future parents are both men. Gay sex is illegal in India.


Interesting 'brave new world' we are entering .... co-workers no longer have to be in physical proximity any more ... nor biological parents ... and bringing up kids, you can always send them off to boarding school .... go to market ? why bother with the faceless internet ....

The next step will undoubtedly be the 'harvesting' of eggs and sperm from wealthy or learned or people skilled in particulare areas (great writers, composers, swimmers, baseball players, etc.). Then 'couples' looking for procreation in addition to recreation will be able to combine their DNA with the rich, famous or talented. With the current celebrity idolization many 'couples' would no doubt opt to merger the DNA of the celebrity of the moment.

A rich area for ethicists . And how would this be changing the nature of our society? No one knows for sure but in the name of science, diversity, multi-culturalism, and capitalism (what a market !) , progress cannot be denied . We already have people using science to determine the sex of the fetus and can even determine the chances of genetic illnesses .

It is easy to envision a future world society where sex is strictly a recreational activity and procreation is done strictly through medical procedures .


March 10, 2008
India Nurtures Business of Surrogate Motherhood
By AMELIA GENTLEMAN
MUMBAI — Yonatan Gher and his partner, who are Israeli, plan eventually to tell their child about being made in India, in the womb of a stranger, with the egg of a Mumbai housewife they picked from an Internet lineup.
The embryo was formed in January in an Indian fertility clinic about 2,500 miles from the couple’s home in Tel Aviv, produced by doctors who have begun specializing in surrogacy services for couples from around the world.
“The child will know early on that he or she is unique, that it came into the world in a very special way,” said Mr. Gher, 29, a communications officer for the environmental group Greenpeace.
An enterprise known as reproductive outsourcing is a new but rapidly expanding business in India. Clinics that provide surrogate mothers for foreigners say they have recently been inundated with requests from the United States and Europe, as word spreads of India’s mix of skilled medical professionals, relatively liberal laws and low prices.
Commercial surrogacy, which is banned in some states and some European countries, was legalized in India in 2002. The cost comes to about $25,000, roughly a third of the typical price in the United States. That includes the medical procedures; payment to the surrogate mother, which is often, but not always, done through the clinic; plus air tickets and hotels for two trips to India (one for the fertilization and a second to collect the baby).
“People are increasingly exposed to the idea of surrogacy in India; Oprah Winfrey talked about it on her show,” said Dr. Kaushal Kadam at the Rotunda clinic in Mumbai. Just an hour earlier she had created an embryo for Mr. Gher and his partner with sperm from one of them (they would not say which) and an egg removed from a donor just minutes before in another part of the clinic.
The clinic, known more formally as Rotunda — The Center for Human Reproduction, does not permit contact between egg donor, surrogate mother or future parents. The donor and surrogate are always different women; doctors say surrogates are less likely to bond with the babies if there is no genetic connection.
There are no firm statistics on how many surrogacies are being arranged in India for foreigners, but anecdotal evidence suggests a sharp increase.
Rudy Rupak, co-founder and president of PlanetHospital, a medical tourism agency with headquarters in California, said he expected to send at least 100 couples to India this year for surrogacy, up from 25 in 2007, the first year he offered the service.
“Every time there is a success story, hundreds of inquiries follow,” he said.
In Anand, a city in the eastern state of Gujarat where the practice was pioneered in India, more than 50 surrogate mothers are pregnant with the children of couples from the United States, Britain and elsewhere. Fifteen of them live together in a hostel attached to the clinic there.
Dr. Naina Patel, who runs the Anand clinic, said that even Americans who could afford to hire surrogates at home were coming to her for women “free of vices like alcohol, smoking and drugs.” She said she gets about 10 e-mailed inquiries a day from couples abroad.
Under guidelines issued by the Indian Council of Medical Research, surrogate mothers sign away their rights to any children. A surrogate’s name is not even on the birth certificate.
This eases the process of taking the baby out of the country. But for many, like Lisa Switzer, 40, a medical technician from San Antonio whose twins are being carried by a surrogate mother from the Rotunda clinic, the overwhelming attraction is the price. “Doctors, lawyers, accountants, they can afford it, but the rest of us — the teachers, the nurses, the secretaries — we can’t,” she said. “Unless we go to India.”
Surrogacy is an area fraught with ethical and legal uncertainties. Critics argue that the ease with which relatively rich foreigners are able to “rent” the wombs of poor Indians creates the potential for exploitation. Although the government is actively promoting India as a medical tourism destination, what some see as an exchange of money for babies has made many here uncomfortable.
The Ministry of Women and Child Development said in February that it was weighing recommending legislation to govern surrogacy, but it is not imminent.
An article published in The Times of India in February questioned how such a law would be enforced: “In a country crippled by abject poverty,” it asked, “how will the government body guarantee that women will not agree to surrogacy just to be able to eat two square meals a day?”
Even some of those involved in the business of organizing surrogates want greater regulation.
“There must be protection for the surrogates,” Mr. Rupak said. “Inevitably, people are going to smell the money, and unscrupulous operators will get into the game. I don’t trust the industry to police itself.”
He said that the few doctors offering the service now were ethical and took good care of the surrogates but that he was concerned this might change as the business expanded.
Mr. Gher and his partner, who asked not to be named to preserve his privacy, have worked through their doubts and are certain they are doing a good thing.
“People can believe me when I say that if I could bear the baby myself I would,” he said. “But this is a mutually beneficial answer. The surrogate gets a fair amount of money for being part of the process.”
They are paying about $30,000, of which the surrogate gets about $7,500.
“Surrogates do it to give their children a better education, to buy a home, to start up a small business, a shop,” Dr. Kadam said. “This is as much money as they could earn in maybe three years. I really don’t think that this is exploiting the women. I feel it is two people who are helping out each other.”
Mr. Gher agreed. “You cannot ignore the discrepancies between Indian poverty and Western wealth,” he said. “We try our best not to abuse this power. Part of our choice to come here was the idea that there was an opportunity to help someone in India.”
In the Mumbai clinic, it is clear that an exchange between rich and poor is under way. On some contracts, the thumbprint of an illiterate surrogate stands out against the clients’ signatures.
Although some Indian clinics allow surrogates and clients to meet, Mr. Gher said he preferred anonymity. When his surrogate gives birth later this year, he and his partner will be in the hospital, but not in the ward where she is in labor, and will be handed the baby by a nurse.
The surrogate mother does not know that she is working for foreigners, Dr. Kadam said, and has not been told that the future parents are both men. Gay sex is illegal in India.
Israel legalized adoption by same-sex couples in February, but such couples are not permitted to hire surrogates in Israel to become parents. A fertility doctor recommended Rotunda, which made news in November when its doctors delivered twins for another gay Israeli couple.
Rotunda did not allow interviews with its surrogate mothers, but a 32-year-old woman at a fertility clinic in Delhi explained why she is planning on her second surrogacy in two years.
Separated from her husband, she found that her monthly wages of 2,800 rupees, about $69, as a midwife were not enough to raise her 9-year-old son. With the money she earned from the first surrogacy, more than $13,600, she bought a house. She expects to pay for her son’s education with what she earns for the second, about $8,600. (Fees are typically fixed by the doctor and can vary.) “I will save the money for my child’s future,” she said.
The process requires a degree of subterfuge in this socially conservative country. She has told her mother, who lives with her, but not her son or their neighbors. She has told the few who have asked her outright that she is bearing a child for a relative.
So far, for the Israeli couple, the experience of having a baby has been strangely virtual. They perused profiles of egg donors that were sent by e-mail (“We picked the one with the highest level of education,” Mr. Gher said). From information that followed, they rejected a factory worker in favor of a housewife, who they thought would have a less stressful lifestyle.
Mr. Gher posts updates about the process on Facebook. And soon the clinic will start sending ultrasound images of their developing child by e-mail. Highly pixelated, blown-up passport photos of the egg donor and surrogate mother adorn a wall of their apartment in Israel.
“We’ve been trying to half close our eyes and look at it in a more holistic way to imagine what she would actually look like,” Mr. Gher said of the donor’s blurred image. “These are women we don’t know, will never know, who will become in a way part of our lives.”

Replacement test

Let's do a replacement test on this article and see how it winds up smelling.

I have replaced all the Israeli references with African in these paragraphs:

Although men and women will be able to mingle freely at the new university, faculty members at the American institutions said they were concerned about the possible pitfalls of working in a society where women cannot drive, gay rights do not exist and Africans are not welcome.

The agreements do contain an exit clause. “We have a 30-day cancellation provision, allowing us to leave the agreement with no penalty if at any time we are dissatisfied,” Dr. Pisano said.

University officials said they had addressed the issues of academic and personal freedom head-on.

“We are working with a university that has guaranteed nondiscrimination on the basis of race, religion or gender,” said Peter Glynn, director of the Stanford institute. “We recognize that this university operates in Saudi Arabia. Having said that, this university recognizes that if it wants to be world-class, it has to be able to freely attract the best students and faculty from around the world.”

He acknowledged that the issue could be sticky. “We have several African faculty involved with this, but to be honest, there’s very little of what Stanford will be doing that will involve travel to Saudi Arabia,” he said. He added that Stanford’s main role would be devising the curriculum and recruiting initial faculty members, from around the world. “We believe this university can have a major impact in Saudi Arabia and in the region, and that’s why we’re doing this.”

Would the US gov't allow such agreements with an Apartheid gov't , if any exist nowadays?

Would there be an outcry about an Apartheid agreement? Where are the gay and women's organizations marching and protesting this current agreement with the Saudis?

March 6, 2008

U.S. Universities Join Saudis in Partnerships

By TAMAR LEWIN

Three prominent American universities — the University of Texas at Austin, the University of California, Berkeley, and Stanford University — are starting five-year partnerships, worth $25 million or more, with King Abdullah University of Science and Technology, a graduate-level research university being built in Saudi Arabia.

Under the agreements, the mechanical engineering department at Berkeley, the computer-science department and Institute for Computational and Mathematical Engineering at Stanford, and the Institute for Computational Engineering and Sciences at the University of Texas will help pick the faculty and develop the curriculum for the new university, known by the acronym Kaust, which is scheduled to open next year with a $10 billion endowment.

Over the five years, each university will receive a $10 million gift, $10 million for research on their home campus and $5 million for research at Kaust, as well as administrative costs.

“The agreement will allow us to improve our facilities here in California, and fund a stream of graduate students, without taxing our existing infrastructure,” said Albert Pisano, the chairman of Berkeley’s mechanical engineering department, which he said had voted 34 to 2 to proceed with the agreement. “We’re going to work on projects that are good for the Middle East and for California, like energy sources beyond petroleum, improved water desalination, and solar energy in the desert.”

Despite its enormous oil wealth, Saudi Arabia lacks world-class research universities. In the last few years, as the Persian Gulf nations have begun to worry about the eventual need to convert from an oil-based economy to a knowledge-based economy, they have started offering lavish inducements to American universities to bring their expertise to the region.

Although men and women will be able to mingle freely at the new university, faculty members at the American institutions said they were concerned about the possible pitfalls of working in a society where women cannot drive, gay rights do not exist and Israelis are not welcome.

The agreements do contain an exit clause. “We have a 30-day cancellation provision, allowing us to leave the agreement with no penalty if at any time we are dissatisfied,” Dr. Pisano said.

University officials said they had addressed the issues of academic and personal freedom head-on.

“We are working with a university that has guaranteed nondiscrimination on the basis of race, religion or gender,” said Peter Glynn, director of the Stanford institute. “We recognize that this university operates in Saudi Arabia. Having said that, this university recognizes that if it wants to be world-class, it has to be able to freely attract the best students and faculty from around the world.”

He acknowledged that the issue could be sticky. “We have several Israeli faculty involved with this, but to be honest, there’s very little of what Stanford will be doing that will involve travel to Saudi Arabia,” he said. He added that Stanford’s main role would be devising the curriculum and recruiting initial faculty members, from around the world. “We believe this university can have a major impact in Saudi Arabia and in the region, and that’s why we’re doing this.”

Kaust has already announced partnerships with the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts, the Institut Français du Pétrole, the National University of Singapore, the American University of Cairo, the Indian Institute of Technology in Bombay, the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, and others.

The new pay scale for students

Extraordinary!

Taxpayers paying schoolchildren to study .

It used to be that the promise of financial security with a stable well-paying job in the future was enough of an incentive but now there is the need for immediate gratification.

Governments provide the 'opportunity' for children up to 16 to get some sort of education. There is nothing in the constitution that mandates public education. And now gov't is going beyond just offering the opportunity but paying kids to 'perform' well in school. Taking advantage of any opportunity should be due to personal initiative and drive, often kick-started by the home environment.

A principal (!!) is quoted below:

“We’re in competition with the streets,” Ms. Connelly said. “They can go out there and make $50 illegally any day of the week. We have to do something to compete with that.”

How is the school system going to compete with selling drugs and making perhaps hundreds per day with a program that pays $30-40 for a semester of work ? Even a 3rd grader can figure out that this can't compete , money-wise .

And this quote sums up why this program will certainly fail:

Would it be better to get the money as college scholarships? Shouts of “No way!” echoed through the room. “We might not all go to college,” one student protested.

Having an incentive program that reduced your future tuition/costs at city or state colleges might make sense. Accrue points/money each year you do well. At some level of achievement guarantee entrance to a city/state college, along with acquired financial 'scholarship'. And have the scholarship renewable ONLY if the person passes their college year with a 'B' average.

Education should pay off both personally and later on, in the job market. Direct payments for school achievements is a program that is guaranteed to fail and possibly also fail the students it seeks to help.

March 5, 2008

Next Question: Can Students Be Paid to Excel?

By JENNIFER MEDINA

The fourth graders squirmed in their seats, waiting for their prizes. In a few minutes, they would learn how much money they had earned for their scores on recent reading and math exams. Some would receive nearly $50 for acing the standardized tests, a small fortune for many at this school, P.S. 188 on the Lower East Side of Manhattan.

When the rewards were handed out, Jazmin Roman was eager to celebrate her $39.72. She whispered to her friend Abigail Ortega, “How much did you get?” Abigail mouthed a barely audible answer: $36.87. Edgar Berlanga pumped his fist in the air to celebrate his $34.50.

The children were unaware that their teacher, Ruth Lopez, also stood to gain financially from their achievement. If students show marked improvement on state tests during the school year, each teacher at Public School 188 could receive a bonus of as much as $3,000.

School districts nationwide have seized on the idea that a key to improving schools is to pay for performance, whether through bonuses for teachers and principals, or rewards like cash prizes for students. New York City, with the largest public school system in the country, is in the forefront of this movement, with more than 200 schools experimenting with one incentive or another. In more than a dozen schools, students, teachers and principals are all eligible for extra money, based on students’ performance on standardized tests.

Each of these schools has become a test to measure whether, as Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg posits, tangible cash rewards can turn a school around. Can money make academic success cool for students disdainful of achievement? Will teachers pressure one another to do better to get a schoolwide bonus?

So far, the city has handed out more than $500,000 to 5,237 students in 58 schools as rewards for taking several of the 10 standardized tests on the schedule for this school year. The schools, which had to choose to participate in the program, are all over the city.

“I’m not saying I know this is going to fix everything,” said Roland G. Fryer, the Harvard economist who designed the student incentive program, “but I am saying it’s worth trying. What we need to try to do is start that spark.”

Nationally, school districts have experimented with a range of approaches. Some are giving students gift certificates, McDonald’s meals and class pizza parties. Baltimore is planning to pay struggling students who raise their state test scores.

Critics of these efforts say that children should be inspired to learn for knowledge’s sake, not to earn money, and question whether prizes will ultimately lift achievement. Anticipating this kind of argument, New York City was careful to start the student experiment with private donations, not taxpayer money, avoiding some of the controversy that has followed the Baltimore program, which uses public money.

Some principals had no qualms about entering the student reward program. Virginia Connelly, the principal of Junior High School 123, in the Soundview section of the Bronx, has experimented with incentives for years, like rewarding good behavior, attendance and grades with play money that can be spent in the student store.

“We’re in competition with the streets,” Ms. Connelly said. “They can go out there and make $50 illegally any day of the week. We have to do something to compete with that.”

Barbara Slatin, the principal of P.S. 188, on the other hand, said she was initially skeptical about paying students for doing well. Her students, many of whom live in the nearby housing projects along Avenue D, would surely welcome the money, she said, but she worried about sending the wrong message. “I didn’t want to connect the notion of money with academic success,” she said.

But after a sales pitch by Dr. Fryer, Ms. Slatin said she was persuaded to try. “We say we want to do whatever it takes, so if this is it, I am going to get on board,” she said.

In 1996, P.S. 188 was considered to be failing by the State Education Department, but it has improved dramatically over the last decade. In the fall, it received an A on the city’s report card. Still, fewer than 60 percent of the students passed the state math test last year, and fewer than 40 percent did so in reading.

Teachers at the school said that this year, they had noticed a better attitude among the students, which they attributed to the incentive program. One recent day, fourth graders talked eagerly about the computer games they have been playing to get ready for this week’s state math exam. During the school’s recent winter break, dozens of students showed up for extra tutoring to prepare.

“My teacher told me to study more, so I study,” said Jazmin, who had already taken eight standardized exams this school year. “I did multiplication tables. I learned to divide.” When asked why she took so many tests, Jazmin replied earnestly, “To show them we have education and we learn stuff from education and the tests.”

The students spoke excitedly about their plans for the money. Several boys said they were saving for video games. Abigail said she would use it to pay for “a car, a house and college,” apparently unaware that the roughly $100 she’s earned this school year might not stretch that far. Another little girl said she would use the money simply for food. When asked to elaborate, she answered quietly, “Spaghetti.”

Changing the attitudes of seventh graders seems to be more complicated. At J.H.S. 123 in the Bronx, for example, a seventh-grade English class was asked one morning if there were too many standardized tests. Every hand in the room shot up to answer with a defiant yes. But at the same time, the students all agreed that receiving money for doing well on a test was a good idea, saying it made school more exciting, and made doing well more socially acceptable.

“This is the hardest grade to pass,” said Adonis Flores, a 13-year-old who has struggled in his classes at times. “This motivates us better. Everybody wants some money, and nobody wants to get left behind.”

Would it be better to get the money as college scholarships? Shouts of “No way!” echoed through the room. “We might not all go to college,” one student protested.

So is doing well in school cool? A few hands slowly inched up. But when their principal, Ms. Connelly, asked what could be done to make being the A-plus student seem as important as being the star basketball player, she was met with silence.

For teachers, bonuses come with ambivalence. So toxic was the idea of merit pay for individual teachers that the union insisted that bonus pools be awarded to whole schools to be divided up by joint labor-management committees, either evenly among union members or by singling out exceptional teachers.

Still, nearly 90 percent of the 200 schools offered the chance to join the teacher bonus program are participating, after a vote with each school’s chapter of the teachers’ union. At many schools this year, including P.S. 188 and J.H.S. 123, a decision has already been made to distribute any money they get across the board, and they are trying to include secretaries and other staff members as well.

No teachers were willing to say the rewards were unwelcome, but few said the potential windfall would push them to work harder.

“It’s better than a slap in the face,” said Ms. Lopez, who has taught at P.S. 188 for more than a decade. “But honestly, I don’t think about it. We’re here every day working and pushing; that’s what we’ve been doing for years. We don’t come into this for the money, and most of us don’t leave it because of the money.”

Newer teachers seemed more positive, saying the bonus was a rare chance to be rewarded.

“I tell my students all the time that I can sit in the back and hand them worksheets and get the same amount of money as I do if I stand in front of the class working with high energy the entire time,” said Christina Varghese, the lead math teacher at J.H.S. 123, who is in her 10th year of teaching. “What’s the motivation there? At least this gives us something to work toward.”

It will be months before Ms. Slatin and her teachers know whether they have earned the bonus, but initial test scores are promising. On one test designed to mimic the state math exam, 77 percent of fourth graders met state standards. Roughly half of those who did not were just below the cutoff, making it possible that more than 80 percent of the students would pass the test this year — a virtual dream for the school.

“We want to believe it, but it makes me nervous,” Ms. Slatin said. “Those are not numbers we are used to seeing.”

Illegal Alien dogs

Looks like Fido is the next one to be outsourced in many homes .... nursing homes at least for starters ....

The research could mean that a world is possible where robots could substitute for living dogs and help people, William Banks said.

That twinkle in his LED , err eye, just warms my heart !

And that little response from his integrated audio chip, err 'bark', when I come home is always welcoming!

Since robots will invariably be made overseas , it might be seen as the off-shoring of dogs ....

Or the better analogy might be 'illegal alien' dogs coming here and working for less (no food, just rechargeable batteries) .... and without benefits (no medical needed) ....

robots are intrinsically 'alien' ..... illegal ? maybe not, they have all the required papers (patents, contracts to produce them, sales slips ...)

And you thought that this couldn't happen since dogs are a hands-on 'business', needing petting right here !


Get grandpa a dog -- or a robot
Story Highlights
Study: Dogs and robots about equal in loneliness cures
Both were brought to nursing home residents
Sparky was a 9-year-old mutt trained as therapy dog
Took a bit longer to warm up to AIBO the robotic dog
ST. LOUIS, Missouri (AP) -- Dogs may have a hard time wrapping their paws around this one: Robotic competition is nipping at their heels in the man's-best-friend department.
A study by Saint Louis University found that a lovable pooch named Sparky and a robotic dog, AIBO, were about equally effective at relieving the loneliness of nursing home residents and fostering attachments.
The study, which appears in the March issue of the Journal of The American Medical Directors Association, builds on previous findings by the researchers that frequent dog visits decreased loneliness of nursing home residents.
Andrew Ng, who leads Stanford University's team in building a home-assistance robot and was not involved in the study, said the strength of the research is very encouraging.
If humans can feel an emotional bond with robots, even fairly simple ones, some day they could "not just be our assistants, but also our companions," he said.
To test whether residents responded better to Sparky, a trained therapy dog, or the Sony-made robot dog, researchers divided 38 nursing home residents into three groups at a trio of long-term care facilities in St. Louis.
One group had weekly, 30-minute one-on-one visits with Sparky; another group had similar visits with AIBO; a control group did not visit with either dog. Their level of loneliness -- determined by residents' answers to several questions -- was tested at the beginning and near the end of eight weeks of visits.
Investigator Marian Banks delivered the dogs, but did not interact with the residents. In the end, both groups were less lonely and more attached.
Most of the elderly used Sparky, a 9-year-old, reddish-brown mutt with a white muzzle and floppy ears, as a confidant, telling him "their life story," Marian Banks said.
"He listened attentively, wagged his tail, and allowed them to pet him," said Banks, who adopted and trained Sparky after finding him in an alley behind her home seven years ago.
Those who visited with AIBO took a little longer -- about a week -- to warm up to the metallic creature. Over time, they grew more comfortable with AIBO, and petted and talked to him. He responded by wagging his tail, vocalizing and blinking his lights.
"AIBO is charismatic if you start to interact with him," said the study's author, Dr. William Banks, a professor of geriatric medicine at Saint Louis University. "He's an engaging sort of guy."
The research could mean that a world is possible where robots could substitute for living dogs and help people, William Banks said.
"They could be personal, not an intrusive crazy inanimate object," he said.
Sara Kiesler, professor of computer science and human-computer interaction at Carnegie Mellon University who was not involved in the study, said the results of the study are encouraging but not completely convincing.
The problem is inferring it was the robotic dog that reduced the loneliness, and not the human who brought him into the room, she said. She said another study could compare a visit from AIBO with someone stopping by with a stuffed animal or even just a candy bar.

One Way Diversity

It's always a good exercise to double-check any quote by changing the people or groups in it to see if it can stand the scrutiny.

Let's change that first quote a bit and see if it sounds a hell of lot different:

"No one likes them," said Sarkozy, who was in Berlin for a two-day visit. "This is the wish of regional nations, that is the withdrawal of foreigners from this region."

It sounds a LOT worse and would not be tolerated if a European or American head-of-state said such a thing. As a matter of fact no leader would dare say such a blatantly xenophobic statement in the West, yet it is a common refrain , accepted and even supported in the West when a middle-eastern despot says such things.

Note that he is not just saying that outside militaries must leave, but ALL foreigners are not welcome. If this was not true then the middle east would have flourishing communities of minorities, ethnic, racial and religious, in their oil rich world.

No calls against him for being 'anti-immigrant' and racist?

Hardly, he instead is viewed as rightful , a patriot to his country, a true revolutionary against foreign oppressors .

Iranian leader: 'Foreigners' must leave Iraq

• Story Highlights
• Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad wraps up historic two-day trip to Iraq
  
• Ahmadinejad is the first Iranian president to visit Iraq
  
• Ahmadinejad tries to build new ties with Iraq, says U.S. is spreading terrorism
  
• Ahmadinejad demands 'major powers' leave Iraq
  

BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) -- Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, heading home from Iraq after a two-day visit, again touted the closer relations between Iraq and Iran and reiterated his criticism of the United States.

"No one likes them," said Ahmadinejad, who was in Iraq for a two-day visit. "This is the wish of regional nations, that is the withdrawal of foreigners from this region."

Ahmadinejad was in Iraq for a two-day visit, a highly symbolic visit that follows trips to Iran last year by top officials of Iraq's Shiite-led government, who have been fostering a closer relationship with predominantly Shiite Iran since the Saddam Hussein regime was toppled.

His visit was greeted warmly by Iraq's Shiite Muslim leadership, who have had longtime links with Iran that predate the overthrow of Hussein. At the same time, many Sunni Muslims in Iraq dislike the Iranian regime and have demonstrated against his visit.

In a press briefing on Monday, Ahmadinejad noted that both countries have signed memorandums of understanding, such as economic and border agreements, and will sign many more.

The Iranian president made digs at the United States. He contrasted his trip, which was advertised in advance, with the "stealth" visits of others, a reference to visits by U.S. officials, who don't broadcast their visits to Iraq for security reasons.

Ahmadinejad shunned the security measures followed by many other leaders on visits to Baghdad, riding from Baghdad's airport in a civilian-style sedan -- and not an armored military vehicle or helicopter -- to central Baghdad.

His official welcome and meeting with Talabani was at the presidential house outside of the heavily-fortified International Zone where most high-level events in Baghdad are held.

And his early Monday visit to the Imam Moussa al-Kadhim shrine in Kadhimiya, the Shiite district in northwestern Baghdad, served to underscore his point.

He repeated his criticism of the United States that Iran was backing violence in Iraq. The United States has accused Iran of supporting some insurgent groups in Iraq, including supplying explosively-formed penetrators, the deadliest and most sophisticated type of roadside bomb.

"We do not care about their statements and remarks because they make statements based on erroneous information. We cannot count on what they say," Ahmadinejad said.

"We can offer them a friendly recommendation. We think that leveling allegations against others will not resolve the problem Americans are facing in the region."

On Sunday, Ahmadinejad met with Iraq's president, Jalal Talabani, and the country's prime minister, Nuri al-Maliki.

Although Iraq invaded Iran in September 1980 after a territorial dispute, and the two countries fought an eight-year war, Ahmadinejad said the nations share a common history and he addressed what he called the common problems of terrorism.

"We think that terrorism is something as an issue detrimental to all parties," he said, noting that Iran, Iraq and Turkey have all been hurt by terror.