You, I, The, And, It, A, To, Yeah, That, What, No, In, Know, He, Of, It's, Oh, Is, Like, On. That list of twenty monosyllabic words constitutes one third of teenager's communications according to a new British study. And it is actually worse than it sounds. The total number of words in the vocabulary of teenagers is dramatically lower than people currently in the 25-34 year age bracket: 12,682 compared to 21,391. Employers are starting to notice that entry level employees lack basic communication skills.
Head of linguistics at Lancaster University, professor Tony McEnery, who led the study for Tesco, said: "Employers are already complaining that first jobbers are lacking basic verbal communication skills and it seems things could be set to get worse.
In typical fashion, however, the researchers have given this turn of events a catchy pop-culture soundbite name and point to technology as the cause of it all.
Gadgets like MP3 players and games consoles were blamed for eroding their grasp of vocabulary to an all time low. Experts fear the condition, dubbed Technology Isolation Syndrome, will cause problems at work for inarticulate adolescents who grunt to communicate rather than speak properly.
If the trend continues downward, the next generation may not even be able to inquire as to whether you want fries with that.
A hotel and bar located in the "dead Heart" of Australia's outback is going up for sale. The Birdsville Hotel has been around for over 100 years and has high occupancy rates even though it is unbelievably remote.
For more than 100 years the Birdsville Hotel — the so-called dead heart of Australia's outback — has been a refuge and drinking spot on the fringe of the forbidding Simpson Desert.
At the northern end of the notorious Birdsville Track, which stretches 517 km (321 miles) across the Strzelecki and Sturt's Stony Deserts, the pub's whitewashed stone verandahs are a magnet for adventure tourists from Australia and the world.
"It's a great business. Sometimes I almost tear my hair out thinking all roads lead to Birdsville, and on any given night there can be 300-400 people in the hotel," owner Jo Fort told Reuters.
A former nurse, Fort met her builder husband at the hotel, where she arrived 27-years ago on her own outback tour of Australia. The 1880's-vintage pub is a bolthole from temperatures topping 45 Celsius (113 Fahrenheit).
To reach the hotel most people travel by four-wheel-drive, carrying their own fresh water, supplies, fuel, and spare parts to guard against emergency in a desert area larger than France at 584,000 sq km (225,500 sq miles).
Here's your chance to get away from it all. Here's a little information on this legendary pub. People fly in there just for a night of drinking.
Researchers at the South Pole have some fancy new digs to brag about. The famous geodesic dome was actually a nightmare to deal with as the snow kept drifting over it. The new Amundsen-Scott station has a whole new high-tech design.
The designers of the new station faced innumerable unique obstacles.
One of the most daunting is snow cover. Eight inches of snow accumulate every year, without ever melting, in an environment that routinely sees zero humidity and temperatures of minus 73 Celsius (-100° F). Winds create snowdrifts that inevitably bury low-lying buildings in months. The current station is constructed beneath a 50-meter diameter geodesic dome that is largely covered in the austral winter. So every year, bulldozer crews spend the summer excavating the dome. To avoid a "bowl effect" of snow buildup in the surrounding area, crews now have to push the snow nearly a mile away, expending precious fuel.
The dome is showing signs of structural fatigue from years of excessive and unevenly distributed snow loading, and the enclosure is no longer adequate for a growing population of scientists and operations personnel. The original 1956 South Pole station suffered the same fate, and has long since vanished under 30 feet of ice.
To meet the challenge of drifting snow, the new station is designed with the profile of a sleek airplane wing. It is elevated and faces into the prevailing near-constant 10 to 15 mph wind, which flows above and below the station. The fast-moving winds beneath the station effectively help scour the area of snow, thereby greatly reducing the need for manual excavation. However, because some snow buildup is inevitable, the building also sits on 36 uniquely designed hydraulic jack columns that allow the 65,000-square-foot structure to be raised in 25-centimeter (10-inch) increments, thereby effectively adding decades to its building life.
A home on stilts. The NSF website has video tours of the new facility and some fabulous photos as well.
Immigration enforcement agents raided meat packing plants in six states yesterday, arresting hundreds of illegal immigrants. But what is different this time is the reason many of these people were arrested. It was for identity theft. They had stolen the Social Security numbers of legal residents and citizens to use as credentials to secure employment.
Federal agents targeting illegal immigrants raided meatpacking plants in six states yesterday, arresting hundreds of workers on the uncommon charge of identity theft and shutting down the world's second-largest meat processing company for much of the day.
About 1,000 U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents with search warrants entered plants owned by Swift & Co., of Greeley, Colo., charging that "large numbers" of workers illegally assumed the identities of U.S. citizens or legal residents by using their Social Security numbers to get work, ICE officials said.
Company and union officials said agents, some dressed in riot gear, locked down six beef- and pork-processing plants early in the morning, segregating workers into groups of citizens and non-citizens after questioning. Some illegal workers were bused to detention facilities hours away, labor officials said.
ICE officials would not say how many people were arrested, pending a news conference today in Washington. About 90 percent of Swift's 15,000 U.S. employees work in three shifts at the plants, company officials said.
The crackdown was another step in the federal government's campaign against illegal immigration, and like some recent raids it targeted job sites, the magnet drawing many of the nearly 12 million illegal immigrants. But the move was unusual for several reasons.
U.S. authorities cast the 11-month investigation as an attack on identity theft, not on typical immigration violations. Swift officials were not charged, despite recent administration vows to get tough on companies as well as workers.
But have no fear, America. The unions are trying desperately to protect the rights of illegal immigrants to steal your identity and violate American law with impunity:
"These actions today by ICE are an affront to decency," said Mark Lauritsen, a spokesman for the United Food and Commercial Workers union, which sought an injunction in court to halt the raids and planned protests around the country. Federal agents essentially stormed plants "in an effort designed to terrorize" workers, he said.
Nice to know who they support, isn't it? This raid should scare the heck out of people. There is a huge criminal effort here to steal identities and provide documentation to illegal immigrants. The fact that unions are backing that is even more frightening.
Peter Kann, the chairman of Dow Jones, writes an op-ed in today's Opinion Journal that puts a lot of what media critics complain about in today's journalism into perspective. He is not arguing for the press to be stifled. Rather he is pointing out what is wrong with it today. Mind you, if the press does not clean up some of its egregious behavior they will jeopardize that which they depend on: freedom of the press.
You'll be relieved to know that Jefferson did remain true to his primary principle: "The press," he concluded, "is an evil for which there is no remedy. Liberty depends upon freedom of the press and that cannot be limited without being lost." He was right then, and we are right now, to prefer a free press, however flawed, to any controlled alternative. Still, as we watched CNN flashing its pre-election logos each day–"Broken Borders," "Broken Government," "Broken Politics," Broken Everything–I can't help thinking the media, too, is in need of some mending.
At its best news informs and enlightens the citizens of a free society and thereby safeguards and strengthens our democracy. At its worst–dishonest, unfair, irresponsible–the media has potential to erode the public trust on which its own success depends and to corrode the democratic system of which it is so indispensably a part. So, let me touch on 10 current trends in the mass media that ought to disturb us.
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The blurring of lines between news and opinion. Newspapers have a format that helps maintain the distinction. The Internet, TV and most magazines have neither that format nor that tradition. The result is a blending of news and views. The two are not ingredients to mix together for a tastier meal, they are different courses. Part of the problem here lies in fashionable new philosophies that argue there are no basic values of right and wrong, that news is merely a matter of views. It's a dangerous philosophy for our society and a dagger at the heart of genuine journalism.
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The issue of conflict and context. On most issues most Americans are not on polar extremes. On abortion, for example, most seek a sensible center. Where is that center reflected in media coverage that mainly portrays rabid feminists or irate pro-life activists? Balance is not achieved by the talk show format of two extremists yelling at each other. And how many of us recognize our own communities from their depiction on local TV news shows–a nonstop montage of mayhem, murder, rape, arson, child molestation and more?
Obviously, there are eight more trends he discusses. What is important here is that the media seriously risks undercutting the public trust they must have to remain free. As Kann points out, most media today is owned by major corporations. So the David versus Goliath myth they perpetuate is quite false. They are not puny, brave reporters going after the giants of corporate America or uber-powerful politicians. Rather they are an even larger and more powerful corporation attacking lesser beings.
Civilization, Science, World news | Gaius Wednesday, 13 December , 2006 | 
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