Facebook the Homewrecker?

Article first published as Facebook the Home Wrecker? on Technorati.
Note: This is the original edit.

The popular media has found a new scapegoat for our personal failings and of course it has something to do with the Internet. 

Depending on whose study you're reading,  divorce statistics now show that either  1 in 5 or 1 in 3 cite  the popular social networking site Facebook as the cause. 

How can a website break up a marriage?  According to the studies unfaithful spouses often pursue extramarital relationships via Facebook with relative ease and little consequence.  Reconnecting with an old flame or just fudging marital status to flirt with other users is as simple as a mouse click.

And why not blame Facebook?  If the medium didn't exist none of these failed marriages would have happened, right?  Just as it's ridiculous to blame the lamp that you dropped on your foot for your throbbing big toe so it is with blaming Facebook for your divorce.

 General statistics still show divorce rates hovering in the 50% range which means  a large group of people made the wrong decision at some point with or without Facebook's help .  Blaming the catalyst (aka: Facebook) is nothing less than abdication of personal responsibility. 

The media loves headlines like this and buries the details on page 3.  After all infidelity is boring but add in the Internet and suddenly it's breaking news.   If you're married and pursuing extramarital relationships on Facebook, it's likely you'd be pursuing them without it.

It seems that many enter marriage with little more care than considering the purchase of an automobile.  I'll demonstrate with a equivalency comparison...

price = earning potential

styling = looks

performance = use your imagination...

cargo capacity = wants kids

safety = not an axe murderer

resale = alimony

With such a short list it's no surprise so many marriages fail.  Is it really such a revelation that an unfaithful spouse is caught flirting on Facebook if your entire relationship is based on such limited information? 

Divorce is a very mechanical process; full of formulae, legal claims and plenty of  personal liability to go around.  Intangibles like communication, shared interests and mutual respect can't be quantified by a cold algorithm.  It follows then, that blaming a website for the failure of your relationship exists in the realm of pure fallacy.  Facebook is a means not a cause.

The Supreme court rules on the Affordable Care Act

Article first published as The Supreme court rules on the Affordable Care Act on Technorati.

In a 5 to 4 ruling with Chief Justice Roberts being the deciding vote, most of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) was upheld. The court ruled that the act's individual mandate was constitutional under congressional tax powers. The ruling largely ignores the argument that the individual mandate is a violation of the commerce clause.

The primary argument for opponents of the ACA focused on the individual mandate to purchase health insurance. They held that congress had overstepped its authority by requiring instead of regulating commerce. Opponents also argued that the purchase of health insurance was a personal choice.

Proponents of the ACA pointed to the right of congress to levy taxes and enforce commerce. Examples of which varied from the individual income tax to the EPA.

However, It did curtail a provision to sanction states that did not expand their Medicaid programs to include the poor under the ACA. In effect creating a toothless mandate since the federal government is prohibited from taking punitive measures against states who refuse to comply.

With this ruling, individuals without medical coverage, (beginning in 2014) can be assessed a tax that begins at $95 and increases every year until 2016 where a formula indexed to inflation is used.

What isn't addressed in the court's ruling were core structural issues with the ACA. Specifically, the Medicaid expansion provisions of the act now effectively void and the vague language concerning required coverage features.

Core to the argument of opponents of the ACA is the government requirement of an individual to be compelled to engage in commerce with a private commercial entity. Today's ruling ignores that argument in favor of the stronger argument of congress' right to tax. The language of the ACA mandate does treat the penalty as a tax and not a transaction.

Even proponents of the ACA admit the program is flawed but like the Medicare part D prescription program from a decade ago they claim it's better than the alternative.

It's not inconceivable that the future may hold low cost minimum coverage health plans with few if any benefits under the current ACA language. Such plans would not be unlike the minimum coverage auto insurance policies commonly seen in states that require auto insurance to register a vehicle.

Little attention has been given to what constitutes the minimum coverage outside of actuarial values concerning deductible and out of pocket expenses based on income. While pre-existing conditions are largely curtailed specifics of what constitutes the features of an effective health plan are vague at best. Likely part of the compromise made to garner insurance industry support, such concerns appear to be left to the insurer.

Proponents of the ACA have called today's ruling a victory for the President while the opposition has vowed to defeat it using legislative measures.

Obamacare as the ACA is commonly referred to by detractors will continue to be hotly debated in the coming months and is likely to be the major political issue of the coming Presidential election.

Are you out of your F'ing....

Are you out of your F'ing mind??!

I just read this article and while I admit it is a bit old (March 2010) the premise is utterly preposterous.

Here's the link...Perspective: Keep working (Even if you don't get paid)

The author suggests keeping the same work routine you had before you became unemployed.

This assumes quite a lot such as; the work you were assigned was still relevant ( dubious if you've been downsized) and that you'll develop bad habits if you break your worker bee routine (god forbid you figure out that you'd be better off contracting.)

There's no doubt in my mind that this individual has never had the misfortune of going an indeterminate amount of time without a steady paycheck. Being a science publication it's also obvious that the author has benefitted from working in the public and/or education sector as well (tenure anyone?)

It's natural. When things are going well your mindset is totally different than if you're scraping the bottom of the barrel just to find enough money to keep the lights on and enjoy a hearty meal of ramen noodles for dinner.

There's almost a sense of euphoria among those who've never stared the specter of financial disaster in the face. They just don't understand how things can go wrong often asserting that they would never stoop to such degradation as taking unemployment or letting a credit card account go bad.

I'm unsure of the source of the quote (and I do paraphrase) but someone once said the measure of a man wasn't what they did in good times but how they weathered the hard times.

Yes, by all means do what you can to keep your skills up but this article suggests working for free for the company that canned you. I'm sorry but if you're let go for whatever reason consider those bridges burned. If they valued you you'd still be there. It's been my experience that once you've been escorted to the door there's no longer a desire to see you walk back in through it, even for free.

I could care less what the U.S. Bureau of statistics says about the bad habits of the unemployed. For one thing nobody I know or have ever known (including me) has ever been interviewed by them so I'm suspect of their findings.

The second assertion came shortly after the quote from a supposed hiring manager, "I have no problem hiring the unemployed. But I will not hire people who are not working"

Really? well thank god for that because you sir are not looking for a resource, you're looking for a slave.

I see the perspective of a taskmaster here. Perhaps because I'm someone who's spent most of his career as an independent contractor I have trouble playing devil's advocate in this case. I'm more about the product than procedure to make it which runs contrary to the prevailing 19th century work ethic.

That's the mantra that says no work gets done unless it's closely monitored and controlled.

The reality is that if you can't get work in your field, working for free won't pay the bills and at some point you're likely to end up pushing shopping carts around Home Depot to pay the rent. This isn't unlike the advice given in those outdated self-help books about how to land the perfect job. You know the ones that say to go work as an unpaid intern for a year hoping to get an entry level position. That's fine if someone can afford to support you but that's been a rarity for a couple of decades now.

The other thing that's not addressed is the cost of working. If you continue doing what you did before you got canned you'll soon find that you're going through an awful lot of cash.

Take the work for free at your old employer jazz. 

You still have the costs just to get there. Fuel costs, bus fare, etc. Then there's the costs for unimportant things like lunch, parking fees and dry cleaning. After all, even if you're sadistic ex-employer does take advantage of your "work for free" offer they won't be happy if you show up in shorts and flip flops. 

Let's also not forget that as a non-employee you will no longer have access to company resources like computers or the internet so you'll have to provide your own. That's at least $100 a month outlay tethering a laptop to a smartphone.

I'm suspicious of this entire article and find it almost insulting. What is even more insulting is the fact that it's on a site called, "sciencecareers"

I'm not the flat earth type but this type of advice makes everyone in the discipline look a bit naive.