Hasta La Gadget!

The Pokemon Go craze has taken the world by storm and we’ve already heard lots of unfortunate stories of people getting robbed or getting hurt while they were too busy playing the game. To prevent something truly horrific from happening, New York’s correctional department has made playing online games, particularly Pokemon Go, a parole violation for sex offenders at the direction of Governor Andrew Cuomo.

Cuomo said in a statement that people who are on the sex offender registry are now banned from “downloading, accessing, or otherwise engaging in any internet enabled gaming activities, including Pokémon Go.”

The governor has also published a letter online that he has sent to Pokemon Go developer Niantic seeking its cooperating in preventing registered sex offenders from signing up for the popular game.

Cuomo made this decision following a report released last week by two New York state senators. Jeffrey Klein and Diane Savino visited locations of 100 registered sex offenders in New York City and found that there were 57 Pokemon as well as 59 Pokestops and gyms within half a city block.

The state senators were particularly concerned about the lures that players can use to draw Pokemon to a particular location, lures work for drawing fellow players as well, so you can see why this is a legitimate concern.

Lures have already been used to rob Pokemon Go players and while no case of sexual predators using them for their horrific actions has been reported as yet, it’s always better to be safe than sorry.

Sex Offenders Banned From Playing Pokemon Go In New York , original content from Ubergizmo. Read our Copyrights and terms of use.

William Reid is determined to take full advantage of the “mass abundance of organic, healthy fruits and vegetables that are in the dumpster.” So much so that he only spends $2.75 on food each year.

Reid, a filmmaker, has gotten most of his meals by searching through dumpsters in order to mitigate the effects of food waste on the environment and raise awareness about poverty in the U.S.

“We have tremendous want and need in this country for healthy food, and we have tremendous waste,” he said, pointing out that a distribution problem is to blame for the fact that up to 40 percent of food goes uneaten in the U.S.  

A cultural aversion to cosmetically flawed fruits and vegetables, also known as ugly produce, is also partially responsible for food waste, he added.

“I think that consumers sometimes have unrealistic expectations. People want food that looks a certain way,” he said. 

Watch the video above to see how Reid uses dumpster diving as a strategy to save money and raise awareness about food waste.

This video was produced by Anne Thomas, Nick Palladino and Paul Josephson.

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Wayne Grudem, a Research Professor of Theology and Biblical Studies at Phoenix Seminary in Arizona, writes at the conservative website Townhall.com about why he supports Donald Trump. His article, “Why Voting for Donald Trump Is a Morally Good Choice,” acknowledges several of Trump’s character and behavioral flaws and then says it doesn’t matter if the alternative is worse. He goes into a long list of issues on which he claims that Trump is better than Hillary Clinton.

I could not disagree more with Professor Grudem, so here I will respond to several of them. Given the enormous gulf between the candidates with regard to experience and qualifications, this election should not be close. The fact that the race is close should be a stark reminder not to treat the frightening prospect of a Trump presidency as something to dismiss lightly. Perhaps you may find some of my arguments useful in making the case to friends and family members who are sticking with Trump despite his almost daily barrage of appalling statements. Here goes, for what it’s worth.

Abortion. I am sick of the religious bullying on this issue. The utter contempt for people making different choices in this area is very disturbing. I am personally troubled by abortion, and think that the ideal situation is for unwanted pregnancies to be prevented through contraception. But the question of whether to continue or end a pregnancy is not my decision. It is up to the woman. You can say a thousand times that this makes me pro-abortion, but that is not true. Respecting people’s right to make a different choice than mine does not mean I agree with that choice. The point is that IT IS NONE OF MY BUSINESS.

As for contraception, the Catholic Church, in which I was raised, is stoutly opposed to it. A leading anti-choicer, former senator Rick Santorum, has made it clear that he does not just want to overturn Roe v. Wade, but also Griswold v. Connecticut, which legalized contraception for married couples, and Eisenstadt v. Baird, which did the same for single women. I find it stunning that people in this day and age are willing, much less determined, to mind their neighbors’ business in such an intrusive way. The constitutional separation of church and state protects everyone by prohibiting us from imposing our religious dictates on one another.

Religious freedom. We live in a religiously diverse society. This key point is routinely ignored by the religious bullies, who see it as their divine mandate to force their views on everyone else using the power of the state. When they talk about “religious freedom,” they mean there should be no church-state separation, and that they must be able to discriminate in commerce against people of whom they disapprove. I am a gay rights activist, and I routinely say that any minister of any congregation must have the right to do three things: bar me from their sanctuary, deny me their sacraments, and denounce me from their pulpit. This would cease to be America in a fundamental way otherwise. But they are not entitled to use my taxes to do it.

People running for-profit business should not be able to cite their personal beliefs to justify discriminating against customers. What if everyone started doing that? How would our (again, highly diverse) society cohere? Some people even think that a pharmacist should have the right to refuse to fill a prescription (say, for contraceptives) by citing his moral opposition. How in the world is this reasonable? How is it a pharmacist’s job to put his moral judgment in place of a customer’s and her doctor’s decision? This intrusiveness is revolting and obnoxious.

Military. The notion that America’s military is in decline is gaspingly absurd. The United States spends more on defense than the next ten countries combined, according to data published by the International Institute for Strategic Studies. We have the strongest military force in the world. But Republicans insist on acting as if we are a helpless weakling the moment anyone opposes their latest orgy of unnecessary spending, even when the Pentagon brass say a particular weapons system is not needed.

Alleged bullying by Russia. Overreach is not just a sin of the West. President Obama said last year, “A military solution alone, an attempt by Russia and Iran to prop up Assad and try to pacify the population, is just going to get them stuck in a quagmire, and it won’t work and they will be there for a while if they don’t take a different course.” Obama also notes how much stronger our economy is than Russia’s, and how much stronger our dollar is. We have an awful lot of military resources in the Mideast, from Turkey to the Persian Gulf. But reckless interventionism by the Bush administration only destabilized the region further and helped the rise of ISIL. Hillary Clinton is known to be relatively hawkish; but she also has shown a respect for the tools of diplomacy.

We must use all the tools at our disposal to advance our interests in the world — economic and diplomatic as well as military. Meanwhile, Trump has caused an uproar among our allies by calling our NATO defense alliance into question. He talks as if it is a protection racket. He also openly admires Putin, while depending on Russian oligarchs for business capital. Do not talk to me about Russian bullying when the Republican nominee appears to be in the tank for Russia.

Iran and Israel. America gives a great deal of military aid and intelligence coordination to Israel. Hillary Clinton gave a saber-rattling speech to AIPAC making it clear that her commitment to that alliance is strong. The fact that Netanyahu made a disgraceful effort to interfere with America’s decision on the nuclear accord does not erase the clear evidence of Obama’s support for Israel. Netanyahu is utterly reckless. Our long term policy, through Democratic and Republican administrations for decades, has been support for a two-state solution. Netanyahu is openly contemptuous of this, continuing his slow de facto annexation of the occupied territory despite demographic trends that will ultimately force Israel to choose between being a democracy and being a Jewish state.

The Iran nuclear accord is a multilateral accord that has extensive verification provisions. Nonetheless, we have non-nuclear-related sanctions against Iran that remain in place. The insistence by Republicans that we are abandoning Israel and handing nuclear weapons to Iran is outrageously, absurdly, insultingly false.

Securing our borders. Obama has increased border patrols and increased deportations. The charge that he has left us unprotected is just not true. Nor is it true that refugees are not screened, as Trump claims. There is a rigorous screening process in place. You do not convey strength when your position is based on ignorance and falsehoods.

Bathrooms. There is no more evidence of assaults by transgender persons in bathrooms than there is of voter fraud, which is used by Republicans to disenfranchise hundreds of thousands of voters. If you want to protect your children, keep them away from right-wing politicians and priests. Trump has been accused of raping an underage girl, incidentally. I do not assume his guilt. Charges need to be proven. As it is, trans people are slandered as child-molesters with zero evidence. They just want to use the bathroom appropriate to their gender identity. There is nothing responsible, safe, or Christian about stirring up gender panic. It only endangers trans people. Trying to erase them legally does not change reality, which again is that we are a diverse society and we are best served by respecting and tolerating one another.

Healthcare. It is not true that our healthcare has been harmed by the Affordable Care Act, which was originally proposed by the conservative Heritage Foundation and was first enacted in Massachusetts under Gov. Romney. Liberals wanted Single Payer and a public option. We accepted ACA because that was the best we could get, given Republican resistance which was based not on the merits but a determination to obstruct every single thing Obama tried to do. Still, millions more have health insurance. If you want to improve it, fine. Work with Democrats to make it better, instead of posturing by passing repeal legislation in the House sixty times.

That’s more than enough for one sitting. Overall point to conservatives: stop the demonizing and caricatures, and focus on cleaning your own house. Trump repeatedly shows himself to be grossly uninformed, selfish, cruel, and reckless. The evidence for this is overwhelming and comes out of his own mouth, in contrast to the endless politically motivated investigations of Hillary Clinton, which have turned up nothing, though gullible people assume that she must be awfully crooked with so many investigations against her. Conservatives themselves are increasingly balking at Trump, as seen with Bill Kristol and George F. Will. All recent Republican presidential nominees stayed away from Trump’s convention, as did the governor of the host state, because they were so disgusted. If you loved your country more than you hated Hillary, you would vote for her over Trump.

Copyright © 2016 by Richard J. Rosendall. All rights reserved.

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A year from now you may wish you had started today. ― Karen Lamb

The 2016 annual meeting of the new champions panel, sponsored and hosted by the World Economic Forum recently gathered to discuss emerging technologies – artificial intelligence, mobile apps, Internet of Things, cloud computing, big data and robotics – and what economies and businesses needed to do in order to survive the Fourth Industrial Revolution.

One critical success factor skill and an important element of readiness for the fourth industrial revolution is the ability to code or computer programming – what makes it possible for us to create computer software, apps and websites. The panel discussed the importance encouraging children in middle school and high school to learn to code.

Coding is one of the most important skills that you can acquire today, and a critical skill for the Fourth Industrial Revolution. – Marc Benioff at the World Economic Forum

Benioff noted that at many of the Salesforce events and conferences around the world, school children are invited and educated about coding and participate with hands-on training. Other examples are partnerships with organizations like CoderDojo, where kids around the world learn and love coding free of charge. Benioff was self-taught and learned coding at the age of 14. Middle school children can and should be exposed to coding curriculum so that they can be ready and able by the time they graduate from high school. For so many working professionals who did not have the opportunity to learning software development skills in school, there are opportunities to gain these life-long skills in a fairly short amount of time – this is not easy, but it is certainly doable.

One person who is championing the cause for teaching women how to learn and become computer engineering and software practitioners is Sharon Wienbar, CEO of Hackbright Academy. Ray Wang, bestselling author, CEO and founder of Constellation Research, and co-host of DisrupTV, and I spoke to Sharon about the importance of coding, especially for women who are looking to develop sustainable and successful careers in business.

DisrupTV Episode 0011: Featuring Sharon Wienbar & Liz Wiseman from Constellation Research on Vimeo.

Sharon is the CEO of Hackbright Academy, the engineering school for women, based in San Francisco. Sharon brings her passion for the power of education and her drive to #changetheratio in tech to Hackbright. Sharon serves on the boards of Actiance, Applause, Colfax Corp. and Everyday Health for ScaleVP.

Previously, Sharon was a Venture Capitalist at ScaleVP, where I led investments in software, internet and mobile companies. Prior to joining ScaleVP in 2001, Sharon was Vice President, Marketing for Critical Path and Amplitude Software. Sharon is a frequent public speaker and a “Always On Power Players in Digital Media Winner”. She is also recognized by the Huffington Post as one of the “Top 25 Women in Tech to Follow on Twitter (@wienbar)”.

Hackbright Academy is the leading engineering school for women with a mission to increase female representation in tech through education, mentorship and community. Over the last 25 years, the percentage of women pursuing technical paths has dropped significantly. While the representation of women in fields like medicine, law and physical sciences has improved, hundreds of thousands of women have fallen from the ranks of computer science. Hackbright offers a 12-week accelerated software engineering fellowship where women can learn the fundamentals of computer science and modern web development, and ultimately become software engineers.

Sharon believes that the experience at Hackbright is both intellectually and emotionally challenging. The screening process focuses on making sure the students have enough grit to be successful. The lectures and labs and paired and structured with paired partners. The students are required to collaborate and explain their logic to their fellow students – two women together, coding together and communicating constantly about the logic. This process is helpful with improving interviewing skills.

“Women have many impediments to being successful in tech – things like the imposter syndrome and the notion that we have to have checked every box in the job description to be willing to put ourselves out there,” said Wienbar. The lectures and labs enable students so see evidence of their knowledge and capabilities. As the programs progress, the curriculum focuses on white boarding interview scenarios and other highly intensive scenarios where students develop skills and confidence to demonstrate their knowledge.

Every student is also mapped with three working industry mentors. The mentors can help jump start the student’s professional network with contacts with working professionals, in several companies, across many industries.

Citing Marc Andreessen who famously said ‘software is eating the world,’ Wienbar notes that every company and institution across America is becoming a technology company – banking, retail, industrial equipment and more. Wienbar works with several companies that are undergoing digital business transformation including projects like building mobile apps. Wienbar notes that many companies have a skills gap challenges and a real need to hire and retool IT organizations.

There will be 1,000,000 unfilled software engineering jobs in the United States by 2020 per Bureau of Labor Statistics. In you look at the traditional pipeline of engineering degrees from colleges and university across the country, only 60,000 women will graduate with computer engineering degrees from 2016 to 2020. – Sharon Wienbar

When we look for successful Hackbright candidates, we see a common thread: she is a maker. Our women are cooking, sewing their own clothes, they build buildings and fences and much more. What we look for is women who can think like an engineer and a passion for making things. Making software is a very creative endeavor. The women graduates of Hackbright are capable, passionate and ready to build software and make something that matters. – Sharon Wienbar

Wienbar advises parents of daughters to help them see how and where software is that interests them. Understanding how computers work is a twenty-first century skill. Learning about computers and software is a lifelong skill. As a parent, trust yourself and be patient with your children. You can follow Wienbar on Twitter to learn more about Hackbright and the importance of computer engineering for future women technologists.

In this world, it’s not what you know that matters anymore, it’s how fast you can learn. – Liz Wiseman

Ray and I also learned about leadership executive development from Liz Wiseman, president of Wiseman Group and bestselling author of Rookie Smarts.

DisrupTV Featuring Liz Wiseman 4.15.16 from Constellation Research on Vimeo.

Liz Wiseman (Twitter: @LizWiseman) teaches leadership to executives and emerging leaders around the world. She is the President of The Wiseman Group, a leadership research and development firm headquartered in Silicon Valley. Liz has been listed on the Thinkers50 ranking and named as one of the top 10 leadership thinkers in the world and recipient of the 2016 ATD Champion of Talent Award.

Wiseman is the author of three best-selling books: Rookie Smarts: Why Learning Beats Knowing in the New Game of Work, Multipliers: How the Best Leaders Make Everyone Smarter and The Multiplier Effect: Tapping the Genius Inside Our Schools. Wiseman has conducted significant research in the field of leadership and collective intelligence and writes for Harvard Business Review and Fortune and her work has appeared in the Wall Street Journal, Fast Company, Entrepreneur, Inc. and Time magazines A former executive at Oracle Corporation, she worked over the course of 17 years as the Vice President of Oracle University and as the global leader for Human Resource Development.

Wiseman realized during her tenure as an executive leadership mentor, and her research, that the knowledge economy is now vast, information is doubling every eighteen months, and accelerating business cycles have reached a velocity where business leaders rarely face the same problem twice. Wiseman notes we are reuse the familiar tactics are on a significant decline. Also, the rate at which information is becoming obsolete is increasing at unprecedented rates.

In STEM, about 15% of what we know today is likely to be relevant in five years. And today, we are not sure what 15% it is. – Liz Wiseman

Wiseman recognized early in her career working at a technology company that if you lacked technical acumen, you could not survive. So Wiseman decided that she was going to learn and then teach software programming. The ability to stay innovative meant continuous development of technical skills. To do this, you must stay teachable and adopt a rookie mindset.

Wiseman admires Marc Benioff for not just building a company that innovates, but a company that can continue to innovate when it becomes big and successful. “It’s people like Marc that try to figure out ‘how do we stay and think like beginners?’ said Wiseman. I believe for established and experienced professionals who were not exposed to programming skills as part of their education curriculum, or work experience, it is vitally important for them to maintain a beginner’s mindset – curious, hungry, open – so that they are willing to take online courses or attend institutions like Hackbright Academy to learn coding.

In her book Rookie Smarts, Wiseman found that in the physical world, experience matters – example, you don’t want a rookie surgeon. But in the ‘knowledge world’, rookies not only perform at par, but they perform better, particular when it comes to innovation and speed. They begin unencumbered by knowledge, assumptions and limitations.

“Think about the things you said ‘Yes’ to because you are not smart enough to say ‘No’ yet,” said Wiseman as she described the challenges that she accepted throughout her career because she lacked enough knowledge to say no. And that was a good thing because as an explorer and doer, Wiseman was able to succeed time after time.

“Rookies are all thrust, but no vector,” Wiseman cited a Naval officer who values the rookie experience but also appreciates the importance of experience. With experience, comes knowing which problems to solve and the ability to detect fraudulent problems. With experience also comes persistence – this can also be a liability. Wiseman notes companies that have been disrupted because of being too persistent.

Wiseman advice to experience people working with rookies is that they don’t try to teach rookies anything. There is so much teaching that happens already, that when it comes to reverse mentoring, senior leaders should embrace it and then not make it reciprocal – just let the rookies teach you about what they know. Senior leaders should simply allow the rookies to shine and teach. Rookies are an incredible asset. Experienced leaders must maintain a rookie mindset. And finally, the most powerful teams are imbalanced – example is a bunch of experienced leaders with one rookie with a voice, or a bunch of rookies with one experienced stakeholder.

Learning agility is the important skill of this century. Liz Wiseman

Learning agility is how fast you are able to learn new skills and climb up a learning curve. Also, how fast can you jump from one learning curve to another curve? An important trait is the ability to say ‘Yes’ to things that we don’t know how to do. Learning to code will require the ability for experienced knowledge workers to intentionally struggle.

Hire people who are intellectually curious. – Liz Wiseman

Sometimes we have to unlearn the old, in order to make room to learn the new. Learning to code is a lifelong skill. It is important for both men and women to learn new skills, especially technical skills. Today, citizen developers are able to produce valuable software solutions and applications by leveraging tool kits and platforms that do not require hardcore programming skills. Today, anyone in business can produce software solutions with minimal training (courses that are days and weeks long, not months and years). To stay relevant in the Fourth Industrial Revolution, stay curious, stay teachable, stay playful, adapt quickly, and when you learn, teach.

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Recently there has been talk of how Trump has said he wanted to hit speakers at the Democratic convention who disparaged him “so hard, their heads would spin.” Then, he not only suggested that Russia should hack Clinton’s emails, which some officials have claimed is akin to treason, but he may have leaked classified information about U.S. having bases in Saudi Arabia which he learned in a news briefing in claiming we shouldn’t be paying rent on them.

In short, many of Trump’s remarks, especially those about hitting back, are like fighting words to attack, attack, attack to gain power — much like male animals frequently fight other male animals to gain power, territory, and females. For example, Trump is much like a boxing kangaroo, trying to show who’s boss, by kicking and jabbing however he can until he defeats a rival. Or he is like a chimp who fights with all the tools he’s got, from tree branches to clubs he finds on the ground. When Trump gets on Twitter to spew his hate at different targets, the process is much the same.

In fact, this comparison of Trump to different types of fighting animals is the subject of a recent book: Trump Is an Animal!: An Illustrated Guide and Coloring Boo to the Way that Trump Fights Like Different Types of Animals. The book combines satiric cartoons with timely critical copy that shows how Trump fights like 21 different animals. Besides kangaroos and chimps, the animals include cunning coyotes, baaad ass baboons, huuuge hippos, charging elephants, mighty meerkats, fighting cocks, penguins, tortoises, and snakes.

The book is the perfect example of how Trump is constantly fighting, often unfairly, at virtually anyone who dares stand up to him. An example is a cartoon and accompanying illustration of Trump as a Huuuge Hippo. In the cartoon, Trump with his very big open mouth confronts a hippo with its huge gaping jaws. The introductory paragraph about Trump reads:

Hippos are huuuge. Though they are mostly heribvores, they are anything but peaceful vegetarians, since they are highly aggressive and unpredictable and are considered among the most dangerous animals in Africa. As such, they are much like Trump, who responds largely from his intuition and whim, and is every ready to attack anyone for anything deemed insulting or offensive to him. And he likes everything to be “huuuge,” “great,” or otherwise “extraordinary.”

The rest of the copy in the book is written in a similar vein, briefly describing the different types of animals and the way the males go at it — often in a deadly attack that leaves the loser severely or fatally injured, much like Trump’s Republican rivals and the Republican Party as a whole.

Trump Is an Animal! is available on Amazon, and it is part of a series called Who Is Trump Really? In fact, a website featuring a half-dozen anti-Trump books has been set up at Who Is Trump Really, also accessible by Trump Is Nuts. Other books in the series include Trump Is Nuts! and Trump Is Extinct… Or May Be Soon!.

One of the reason for writing these books is to help to show up Trump for who he really is and contribute to the campaign against him. At least they help to show even more reasons why Trump is unsuited and incompetent to be President, and they may help to broaden the appeal to those who would find the cartoons entertaining as well as informative about the real Trump.

* * * * * *

Gini Graham Scott, PhD, writes frequently about social trends and everyday life. She is the author of over 50 books with major publishers and has published 30 books through her company Changemakers Publishing and Writing. She writes books and proposals for clients and has written and produced over 50 short videos through Changemakers Productions and is a partner in a service that connects writers to publishers, agents, and the film industry. Her latest books include: Resolving Conflict and Lies and Liars: How and Why Sociopaths Lie and How to Detect and Deal With Them

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