elpasospeak

According to a story in The Washington Post, Target has settled a class action lawsuit that claimed the company unlawfully discriminated against blacks and Latinos.

Evidently Target ran background criminal checks on their job applicants during the hiring process.

As part of the settlement:

The big-box chain said Thursday that members of the class-action lawsuit will receive priority in its hiring process for job openings at the company’s 1,800 U.S. stores. Applicants who are no longer in the market for a job — because they’re already employed or are retired, for example — will be eligible for a cash award.

Evidently now companies are required to forgive and forget.

We deserve better

Brutus

May this Easter holiday bring your family health, happiness, and lots of love.

Brutus

Tim Holt recently wrote this opinion piece for  El Paso Herald Post.

He wrote about various automatic language translation services that are available today.

He concluded with:

You can see where this is heading. It is pretty clear that in a few years, the need for conversational foreign language as course of study will no longer be needed. No more conjugating Spanish verbs. No longer trying to understand where the umlaut goes in German. There will be no need, except for those that wish to pursue a college career in languages. But even there, the question I would ask is “why?” Duolingo and Rosetta Stone better rethink their business model.

Losing foreign languages as a course in school may or may not be a good thing, as foreign languages also teach about cultures as well. On the other hand, the vast majority of people on the planet will be able to carry on meaningful conversations with each other without having to actually learn the language of the person they are conversing with, and in the process will learn about those cultures as part of the conversation.

This makes me wonder about the language programs at our local schools.  It should not be long before people will be able to carry a device that will translate between languages and thus only need to be fluent in one language.

Please remember that Mr. Holt does not run the school district that he works for.

I applaud him for publishing the article.

We deserve better

Brutus

This came in the other day, I don’t know who the author is:

Often the school shooters have been found to be outcasts:  the ones excluded, neglected and bullied.  For sure none of them were the “popular” kids.  So I’ve got a suggestion for all of those students walking out of school today in protest.  How about walking right back in and befriending some of those students you leave out at recess and never sit with at lunch.  Those you laugh at and make snarky remarks about within earshot.  Wanna change the climate of your school?  Then get your asses back in there and BE NICE TO EVERYONE!

I don’t know if the idea would help with the shooting problem but it seems like a good idea in general.

We deserve better

Brutus

The El Paso Herald Post published a guest op-ed piece the other day that I suspect discussed the community that contributes to this blog.

You can read it here:

https://elpasoheraldpost.com/op-ed-public-schools-need-marketing-firms/

It is unfortunate when we lose the ability to differ on issues of policy and instead argue based on personal attacks.

From the piece:

Being a blog that mostly caters to angry-at-local-politics folks, or people that are just angry in general for having to pay any taxes at all for anything, the echo-chamber cacophony of agreement crescendoed into a roar of annoyance and outrage.

Most of us are quite capable of speaking for ourselves.  It was inappropriate for the author to conclude that someone is angry, or why we might be angry for that matter.

His op-ed piece makes many valid points and at the same time he was factually wrong when he wrote “A student that goes to a charter school takes their funding with them”.  Yes the school district loses the money if gets from the state, but the local property tax money still goes to the school district.

Then again maybe he was talking about another blog.

We deserve better

Brutus