The Indiana Legislature is in the news for passing a state law considered by many to be anti-gay. It reminded me of the famous Pi Bill — Bill #246 of the 1897 Indiana General Assembly. There’s a good account of the bill on Wikipedia, but the short story is a doctor and amateur mathematician wanted the state to codify his particular method of squaring the circle, a side effect of which would be officially declaring the value of π to be 3.2.
The bill was written by Representative Taylor I. Record, sent to the Education Committee where it passed, went back to the Indiana House of Representatives where it again passed, unopposed. Then the bill went to the Indiana Senate where Professor C.A. Waldo of the Indiana Academy of Science (now Purdue University) happened to be visiting that day to do a little lobbying for his school. Professor Waldo explained to the Senators the legislative dilemma they faced.
Then, according to an Indianapolis News article of February 13, 1897:
…the bill was brought up and made fun of. The Senators made bad puns about it, ridiculed it and laughed over it. The fun lasted half an hour. Senator Hubbell said that it was not meet for the Senate, which was costing the State $250 a day, to waste its time in such frivolity. He said that in reading the leading newspapers of Chicago and the East, he found that the Indiana State Legislature had laid itself open to ridicule by the action already taken on the bill. He thought consideration of such a proposition was not dignified or worthy of the Senate. He moved the indefinite postponement of the bill, and the motion carried.
Given that the bill was postponed, not defeated, I suppose it could be revived and passed today. Almost anything is possible in Indiana.
Speaking of the law, a number of readers have asked me to comment on the Ellen Pao v. Kleiner Perkins gender discrimination case that was resolved last week in San Francisco. I don’t have much to say except that I think the verdict was the right one. This is not to say that the VC industry doesn’t have problems in this area but that Kleiner Perkins is probably the best of the bunch and therefore was the worst possible target.
That’s my logical reaction. My emotional reaction is quite different because I spent all last week as part of a large jury pool in Sonoma County Superior Court for a case of statutory rape. The rape victim was a middle schooler who had two babies (two pregnancies) with a man probably 30 years her senior. The girl’s mother was charged as an accomplice. What this has to do with the Pao case is I could catch on my phone breathless live blogs of the Pao courtroom play-by-play from both the San Jose Mercury and Re/Code, yet the Santa Rosa rape case has yet to be noticed by any news media anywhere, I guess until now. In this era of supposed news saturation and citizen journalism that’s not the way it’s supposed to be.
I was on the jury for about five minutes before I was dismissed by the prosecution.
Finally, a revised and somewhat updated version of my IBM book is out now in Japanese! Here (in English) is the Preface for the Japanese Edition:
Why should Japanese readers care about the inner workings of IBM? They should care because IBM is a huge information technology supplier to Japanese industry and government. They should care because IBM Japan is a large employer with thousands of Japanese workers, most of them highly-paid. They should care because, of the American multinationals, IBM has always been the most like a Japanese company with strong corporate discipline and lifetime employment. Only IBM chose Japanese managers to run its subsidiary, making it not just IBM’s office in Japan but also Japan’s office at IBM.
But times have changed. IBM no longer offers its workers lifetime employment. And many other aspects of the company have changed, too. Some of these changes have been in response to economic forces probably beyond IBM’s control, but others can be traced directly to IBM management abandoning the principles under which the company was run for many decades.
IBM is a very different company today from what it was 10 or 20 years ago. That’s what this book is all about — how IBM has changed and why. It is not a happy story but it is an important one, because IBM is a bellwether for all its peers — peers that include big Japanese companies, too.
IBM has lost its way. This book explains how that happened and why. And while IBM is nominally an American company, the impact of this change is felt everywhere IBM does business, including Japan.
Bill,
Good luck on your IBM book in Japanese.
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Any more news on the PBS series on startups?
Purdue University has always been Purdue University, since the General Assembly sold the naming rights to John Purdue when it was founded in 1869. The Indiana Academy of Science is an entirely different organization, not a school at all, and was founded in 1887. C’mon, Cringe-y, when you get the basic stuff wrong it makes me doubt all the other stuff.
So, D.T., you’re saying he failed to properly locate Waldo?
Either that, or that he made shit up.
Lining up with the baying of the politically correct mob does not help.
https://www.indianaacademyofscience.org/ “The Indiana Academy of Science is a professional membership organization of Indiana scientists. Founded in 1885…”
I knew a DT Nelson from Purdue. Are you the guy who went to work for Boeing?
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When I went to Purdue Indiana has a colorful congressman who famously said once “Don’t confuse me with the facts.” He left congress in 1975. As congressional intelligence goes, Mr. Landgrebe was clearly decades ahead of his time.
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earl_Landgrebe
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In Indiana they think being called a hoosier is a compliment. At least the Purdue grads know better.
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This is also the state that resisted implementing daylight saving times, as doing so might hurt the corn crop.
Re: “This is also the state that resisted implementing daylight saving times” At least they got that right: https://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2478023,00.asp “End Daylight Saving Time Now. It’s an archaic practice with no proven benefit to society, yet twice a year we go through this dance. It’s time to stop.” By John C. Dvorak, March 10, 2015
I had this great idea. Ditch time zones, daylight savings time, and put everyone on UTC time (coordinated universal time). In Indiana noon would be 17:40 UTC. The official work day would begin at 13:40 UTC and end at 22:40 UTC. You’d sleep from 04:40 to 12:40 UTC.
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This would be a return to the old days when we lived around the rise and setting of the sun, and mid day was when the sun was at its peak positions in the sky. There is no rule that says the work day should be 8 to 5 (or 08:00 to 17:00) on the clock. Those are just arbitrary numbers.
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If the work day in Indiana begins when the sun comes up and ends when it goes down the corn will be happy, the corn will be happy, the pigs will be happy, all of Indiana will be happy,
I wouldn’t be surprised if some people are worried that daylight saving time would hurt the corn crop but in Indiana, they do not use DST (at least not in 1996) because pigs don’t like it, or so they say.
Legislatures have no requirement to pay attention to facts.
In fact, there was a Supreme Court challenge to the war on drugs a few years ago which re-affirmed Congress’ right to declare marijuana the most dangerous substance on the planet if they want to regardless of the evidence against this position.
Statutory rape is not considered important by feminists. This is because it is a major cause of abortions which are sacrosanct. Planned Parenthood got in trouble in Kansas when the state AG prosecuted them for not reporting statutory rapes of people who came in for abortions. They ended up bankrolling their own attorney general who would drop the case. The defeated AG then became the Kansas City AG who tried to prosecute them from there, except the new owned AG ‘lost the files’. The governor was then made Secretary of Health and Human Services for her excellent service.
In addition to that, in The Vagina Monologues, you have the line ‘If it was rape, it was a good rape’ referring to a teacher having an affair with a student.
Maybe you could find a better place to express your concerns about feminism?
Re: “Statutory rape is not considered important by feminists.” Some cases are not important even to most people. This is a little off-topic to your post, but that sentence did remind me of a recent SNL skit of an attractive teacher on trial for the statutory rape of a student, with Kenan Thompson as the fist-bumping judge: http://nypost.com/2015/04/12/tasteless-snl-hot-for-teacher-sketch-sets-twitter-abuzz/
It all brings to mind Macbeth’s soliloquy in act 5, scene 5.
Re: “Macbeth’s soliloquy in act 5, scene 5 ” Looks like there are 4 of them on that page. Which one? https://www.shakespeare-online.com/plays/macbeth_5_5.html
Left out, that statutory rape is traditionally considered something like 14 vs 18, but cases like the above are very common, and go unreported.
Come on, Bob, you are better than this. As a long time reader I expected better than hopping on a bandwagon that is already overfull of excrement.
As a non-native who lives and works in Indiana, the whole furor over the recent religious freedom law is fabricated nonsense. The Indiana religious freedom law mimics the federal law passed by the US Congress and signed by Bill Clinton in 1993. And 21 or 22 other states have similar statutes on their books which cover situations that are applicable at the state level instead of the federal.
Let’s get it together out there. Crucifying the state and citizens of Indiana reeks of the worst kind of PC liberalism. The courts, both state and federal, would still have to rule on violations…win some/lose some.
Threats of boycotts and other political extremism do not resolve these issues, but it does call out the bullies on the block. I am shamed as a tech worker that some many leaders in tech industries think they have a bully pulpit on this. They should leave the political theatre to the politicians and demagogues and do what they are paid to do…run their companies, maybe turn a profit.
DST was and is one of the most unpopular laws in Indiana. Citizens were promised financial benefits that have not accrued (who knew). As I recall it passed the Indiana House by one vote cast by a representative who later recanted. In the last accounting I remember seeing a couple of years ago, DST cost businesses and residents of Indiana approximately $6 million per year more than non-DST did.
Where are all the financial benefits Indiana was going to see from DST? Hot air like that from the politicians, including the former governor who signed this miraculous time-changing legislation who is now president of Purdue University.
You’re mistaken. In fact, the Indiana and Arkansas laws deviated from the language stated in similar laws passed by 22 other states. Also, the knuckle-dragging Governor Pence vacillated in several interviews about whether the law could hypothetically lead to refusal of services to minority groups – he danced around the question, parrying those questions as attacks? If he knew what he signed he should have been able to give a straight answer. And this guy is a Governor?
They’re not going to be identical to the federal law, since when the federal law passed, no one thought that someone would be fined or put out of business for refusing to provide services to a ‘gay marriage’.
What are the quotation marks for? Are you so bigoted you don’t even recognize the concept as legitimate? Or is your syntax just not terribly good?
Question Re: “The Indiana religious freedom law mimics the federal law passed by the US Congress and signed by Bill Clinton in 1993. And 21 or 22 other states have similar statutes on their books which cover situations that are applicable at the state level instead of the federal.” I wonder why 40% of the states wrote a law to “mimic” federal law, while the other 60% did not.
Declaring a gay wedding a marriage is the closest thing to declaring pi = 3.
There was a time when I was opposed to formalizing gay unions because of the possibility of “married for tax purposes”. But after seeing how important it is to the gay community, I no longer am concerned. We can find other ways to deal with tax cheats.
Marriage is normally the result of a wedding. Unless, of course, you’re from the planet Inverso where weddings are required to get a divorce. Bigoted much?
Weddings (marriages) ARE required in order to have divorces.
“Times have changed, IBM no longer has full employment”?
Where have you been? IBM hasn’t had lifetime employment since 1992, the first year they had layoffs! That’s 23 years since anyone remotely associated with IBM made any kind of claim of lifetime employment.
And what ever happened to the 25% of IBMers who were supposed to have been let go between February and March? The exact prediction you made was that 25% of those employed on February 1 would no longer have their jobs by February 28. Not by the end of the year, by February 28. Those were your words. I haven’t seen any kind of numbers from anyone that come anywhere close to that! You’re awfully quiet about that stunningly inaccurate prediction all of the sudden, Mark!
I’ve seen a story elsewhere to massive layoffs at IBM, not sourced with Cringely or Forbes. Don’t remember where though.
IBM could simply set the record straight by open sourcing their employment data, including all involuntary loss of jobs, but they continue to limit the discussion to formal “layoffs”. Let’s just take it for granted that 25% of those individuals who had jobs on 2/1 no longer had them on 2/28 until IBM officially denies that statement.
They have denied it.
Pleas provide a link. It’s important to understand what they said exactly.
LOL, it is so intetesting that a few readers are so vehemently protecting IBM… I have never met anyone who would do that unless they are get paid for it in some shape or form. It feels that a few people in marketing received the objective to comment here and will measured against this during their yearly appraisal!
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