ADDING INSULT TO INJURY

There never was a better example of Adding Insult to Injury than the Canton Ohio Walmart.  Not only do they screw their workers over every which way they can by reducing their hours, not giving them breaks, making them work off the clock, and every other workplace abuse they can get away with, Now, they add insult to injury by actually having the gall to solicit food donations for their staff associates.  It hit the front page of the Plain Dealer newspaper yesterday and has gone viral on Twitter and Facebook. 

Its difficult to believe that its been nearly a year since I participated in a Walmart Black Friday protest in Albany, New York.  Last Thanksgiving, I was living in Schenectady New York.  I have a friend there who is a retired union worker and very interested in labor organizing and right to work laws that states are passing.  He doesn't drive, so I picked him up and we headed out to the two available Walmart stores available to us in Schenectady. One is a standard Walmart, the other a Super center.

He felt sure we could connect with other activists.  The first Walmart we went to there was no activity at all.  So we left to try the superstore on the other side of town.  En Route, we saw two activists carrying a flag and banner so we stopped to try to connect with them.  They told us that nothing was happening in Schenectady, that we needed to head to Albany where the primary protest was focused. 

My friend was not convinced.  He insisted that we go to the Walmart Superstore which is huge and has a huge parking lot on the other side of Schenectady.  When we arrived there, he was speechless.  There was nothing but a stampede of rabid zombie Christmas shoppers.  He was speechless in his disappointment and could only grunt "harumph" and negatively shake his head side to side. 

We had no choice but to head to Glenmont New York Supercenter where the primary protest was located.  The weather was good, so, we were hopeful.  When we arrived on Route 9West the protest was in full bloom and it was very visible and effective. 

There seems to be more awareness this year about the blight upon the American dream known as Walmart, Mallwart, or Wallyworld.  Robert Reich, President Bill Clinton's labor secretary has even been blogging about Walmart, most recently noting that they have had 3 consecutive down quarters.

Today, I live in Alliance Ohio and the Walmart on Atlantic Blvd in nearby Canton, Ohio has gone viral because they have been soliciting food donations for their workers.

 There still is not sufficient outrage in our communities though.  As of today, there are only 3 Walmart protests scheduled in Ohio.  One in Cincinnati, one in Columbus and one in Youngstown.  None are scheduled in Cleveland, Toledo or Dayton or many other places where there are stores.

Seems to me there ought to be a protest at EVERY store and Sam's Club nationwide.

from ALLIANCE OHIO, Andrew John DiLiddo Jr. aka "AJ"  (pronounced "dee-LEED-dough)  sorta rhymes with "Toledo" 

A Technology Retrospective - A Lifetime of Progress?

THE ANCIENT, STONE AGE, GOOGLE WAYBACK MACHINE AND CELL PHONES

by Andrew J. Di Liddo, Jr.

November 15, 2013 

 
This morning, my alarm clock went off. It's not exactly an alarm clock.  It's a smart phone set up to behave like an alarm clock.  I hit the snooze button on the screen, and groggily did my first Google search of the day.

Taking this smart phone totally for granted, I realize how just a few years ago (actually, a life time ago) I wondered what the heck a cell phone was as I used the “STONE AGE GOOGLE” Wayback Machine - way back in 1975. 

What, pray tell, is the STONE AGE GOOGLE Wayback Machine, you ask?

The old cartoon show Rocky and Bullwinkle had a Wayback machine that the character Peabody used to solve problems, make inquiries and time travel.

Way back, I was in graduate school at Ohio State University in Columbus, Ohio studying cell biology. 

Back then, we had a precursor to Google at Ohio State in our library there.

Below, Peabody, a cartoon character from "Rocky and Bullwinkle" and his Wayback Machine.

 

 



You see, as a graduate student doing research for my thesis, I was expected to be aware of, keep up on, and read all published worldwide research in the narrow area of cell biology I was studying. 

In order to do this, I went to the reference department at the Ohio State Library as so many grad students did and made arrangements to use their STONE AGE GOOGLE machine.

I provided the reference librarian several keywords in my research realm like “cell”, “mitosis”, “meiosis” and “microscopic ultra-structure”. 


Below a diagrammatic drawing of how cells look through a microscope, some in various stages of mitosis.

A couple of weeks later, (WEEKS, NOT SECONDS!)  a postcard would arrive in the biology department office in my snail mail mailbox notifying me that my search was ready to pick up at the library. Each research paper that hit on one of my key words would generate a hit in the wayback google machine, which would generate a computer card with the reference information to that citation of published journal research.

The computer cards were about 3 inches by seven inches, slightly larger or longer than a 3 by 5 index card.

The first time I picked up the RESULTS of my STONE AGE GOOGLE SEARCH, the results were delivered to me in a cardboard box tray about 3 feet long and 7 inches wide stuffed with hundreds of printout card references and weighing several pounds!

We all have some idea of what a FORTRAN INPUT punch card looks like for computing in that era: 

OUT PUT cards, or RESULTS of a search, came out in similar format but with text instead of numbers.

I had to carry my Stone Age Google search results back to my laboratory and sort through these cards that were supposedly relevant to my area of research.  (think about this the next time you do a Google search and are not satisfied with your results).

Once I identified the most relevant articles, the next step would be to write to the authors of these journal articles in snail mail and request a reprint of their article which would also arrive by snail

mail. Many of the articles I needed were published by scientist biologists in the Netherlands
and this took a while!

What my fellow grad students and I soon discovered was that because we used the word “cell” in our Stone Age Google search Wayback machine, about 90% of the hits our printout cards we received back were related to Cell phones.  In 1975 we had no idea what a cell phone WAS and we were in a state of disbelief that we would ever see one and we had no idea what it would be like.

I guess we were not too imaginative?  After all, we were merely trying to extract DNA from fossilized dinosaur bones and clone a living dinosaur in our laboratory during the middle of the night while the faculty were sleeping!

We knew a cell phone might be sort of like a Dick Tracy wrist watch walkie talkie thingy.  

Cell phones and the computer cards related to cell phone technology were a nuisance to us and quickly converted into scratch pads for taking phone messages with a pencil from land line phones with no voice-mail. 

Like I said, that was a life time ago. 

from Alliance, Ohio.................AJDiLiddoJr