How low is the bar in Guatemalan politics? Well...

Perfect !

NYT - Crazy Talk at the Republican Debate

Eleven presidential candidates had three prime-time hours on the national stage on Wednesday to tell the American people why they should lead the country.

Nobody forced them to be there. They were there freely, armed with the best arguments they and their policy advisers had come up with, to make their cases as seasoned politicians, business leaders and medical professionals — the Republican Party’s “A-Team,” as one of them, Mike Huckabee, said at the outset.

And that, America, is frightening. Peel back the boasting and insults, the lies and exaggerations common to any presidential campaign. What remains is a collection of assertions so untrue, so bizarre, that they form a vision as surreal as the Ronald Reagan jet looming behind the candidates’ lecterns.

It felt at times as if the speakers were no longer living in a fact-based world where actions have consequences, programs take money and money has to come from somewhere. Where basic laws — like physics and the Constitution — constrain wishes. Where Congress and the public, allies and enemies, markets and militaries don’t just do what you want them to, just because you say they will.

Start with immigration, and the idea that any president could or should engineer the mass expulsion of 11 million unauthorized immigrants. Not one candidate said that a 21st-century trail of tears, deploying railroad cars, federal troops and police dogs on a continental scale, cannot happen and would be morally obscene. Ben Carson said, “If anybody knows how to do that, that I would be willing to listen.” They accepted the need to “control our borders” with a 2,000-mile fence. Even Senator Marco Rubio of Florida, once an immigration moderate, endorsed the fence. Mr. Carson actually suggested two fences, for double security, with a road in between. Do these people have to be sent to the Rio Grande Valley to see how ludicrous a border fence — over mountains, vast deserts, remote valleys and private property — would be? And it won’t solve the problem they are railing against, which doesn’t exist anyway. Illegal immigration has fallen essentially to zero.

On foreign affairs, there was a lot of talk about not talking with bad people. Senator Ted Cruz of Texas said his first act would be to tear up the Iran deal, throwing the nuclear race back to the ayatollahs and rupturing global alliances — but making a point! Carly Fiorina said: “What I would do, immediately, is begin rebuilding the Sixth Fleet, I would begin rebuilding the missile defense program in Poland, I would conduct regular, aggressive military exercises in the Baltic States. I’d probably send a few thousand more troops into Germany. Vladimir Putin would get the message.”

We get the message, and it’s scary.

Jeb Bush spun a particularly repellent fantasy. Speaking reverently of his brother the president, he said, “He kept us safe,” and invoked the carnage of 9/11. Wait, what? Did he mean George W. Bush, who was warned about the threat that Al Qaeda would attack? Who then invaded a non sequitur country, Iraq, over a nonexistent threat?

When the A-Team got around to science and health, many of them promised to help Americans by killing the program that gives millions of them medical insurance. One candidate said he felt sure that vaccines had caused an autism “epidemic.” The two doctors on the dais did not seriously challenge that persistent, dangerous myth.

Let loose by the CNN moderators, the candidates spun their visions freely. Despite an abundance of serious issues to talk about, nobody offered solutions to problems like child poverty, police and gun violence, racial segregation, educational gaps, competition in a global economy and crumbling infrastructure. On looming disasters (the changing climate) and more immediate ones (a possible government shutdown over, of all things, Planned Parenthood), the debate offered no reassurance that grown-ups were at the table, or even in the neighborhood.

But we did hear an idea to put Mother Teresa — Mother Teresa, a penniless nun — on our money. Think about that.

“We were discussing disease, we were discussing all sorts of things tonight, many of which will just be words. It will just pass on,” one candidate said, wrapping up. “I don’t want to say politicians, all talk, no action. But a lot of what we talked about is words and it will be forgotten very quickly.”

Which was the smartest thing Donald Trump has said all year, and an outcome America should dearly hope for.

This tech blogger completely missed the point of the Ahmed Mohamed story

The story of 14-year-old Ahmed Mohamed, whose home made science project ended in his arrest, has absorbed the media in recent days.

Even President Obama invited Ahmed Mohamed to the White House.

Photos of his clock have been released online, and some have chosen to comment upon its appearance.

An article on ArtVoice reverse-engineered Ahmed’s clock. Fair enough, that’s interesting.

What’s less interesting, and frankly astounding, is the way the piece concludes that because the clock wasn’t strictly invented his arrest was justified.

The author writes:

Now, before I go on and get accused of attacking a 14 year old kid who’s already been through enough, let me explain my purpose. I don’t want to just dissect the clock. I want to dissect our reaction as a society to the situation.

And after reverse-engineering the clock, says:

So there you have it folks, Ahmed Mohamad did not invent, nor build a clock. He took apart an existing clock, and transplanted the guts into a pencil box, and claimed it was his own creation. It all seems really fishy to me.

If we accept the story about “inventing” an alarm clock is made up, as I think I’ve made a pretty good case for, it’s fair to wonder what other parts of the story might be made up, not reported factually by the media, or at least, exaggerated.

The author stipulates that because Ahmed Mohamed didn’t actually invent electronic timekeeping, the police were right to lead a child out of school in handcuffs.

He went on to say, that because they are trained to suspect terrorism in schools the media's discussion of the issue of racial profiling is ridiculous.

When the teachers asked what it was, Ahmed said it was a clock. It was a clock. It didn't count down to zero, like in the 80s movies.

But, by the time it was deduced that the thing which looked an awful lot like a modified digital clock was a digital clock, this had already happened:

Not Even the People Who Write Algorithms Really Know How They Work

Sometimes there’s a little crack in the web that is just big enough to catch a glimpse of who the robots running the show think you are.
You might deduce, for example, that the tracking software that watches you browse has figured out you’re shopping for a Halloween costume. Lo and behold, ads for gorilla suits and fairy wings start popping up in the margins of every other website you visit. Or maybe you just rewatched a bunch of Twilight Zone episodes on Netflix. It makes sense that the site then recommends Black Mirror andQuantum Leap.
But much of the time, there’s no way to tell why information is filtered the way it is online. Why is one person’s status update on Facebook prioritized in your News Feed over another’s? Why does Google return a different order of search results for you than for the person sitting next to you, googling the same thing?
These are the mysteries of the algorithms that rule the web. And the weird thing is, they aren’t just inscrutable to the people clicking and scrolling around the Internet. Even the engineers who develop algorithms can’t tell you exactly how they work.

And it’s going to get more convoluted before it gets clearer. In fact, for a few reasons, it probably won't get clearer ever. First of all, there’s virtually no regulation of data-collection in the United States, meaning companies can create detailed profiles of individuals based on huge troves of personal data—without those individuals knowing what’s being collected or how that information is being used. “This is getting worse,” said Andrew Moore, the dean of computer science at Carnegie Mellon University.
Which means, Moore told me, we are “moving away from, not toward the world where you can immediately give a clear diagnosis” for what a data-fed algorithm is doing with a person’s web behaviors. I once explored the idea that we might eventually be able to subscribe to one algorithm over another on Facebook as a way to know exactly how the information filter was working. A nice thought experiment, perhaps, but one that assumes the people who write algorithms know with any level of precision or individuality how they work.
“You might be overestimating how much the content-providers understand how their own systems work,” said Moore, who is also a former vice president at Google. He didn’t want to talk about Google in particular, but he did present another hypothetical: Imagine a company showing movie recommendations.

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“You might want to say, ‘Why did you recommend this movie?’ When you're using machine-learning models, the model trains itself by using huge amounts of information from previous people,” he said. “Everything from the color of the pixels on the movie poster through to maybe the physical proximity to other people who enjoyed this movie. It’s the averaging effect of all these things.”

These things, the bits of information that a machine-learning model picks through and prioritizes, might include 2,000 data points or 100,000 of them. “One of the researchers at Carnegie Mellon,” Moore said, “just launched a new machine-learning system which can handle putting together tens of billions of little pieces of evidence.”
Which means the systems that determine what you see on the web are becoming more complex than ever. Factor in questions about how those algorithms might hurt people and the picture is murkier still. Consider, for example, Facebook's patent for technology that could trace a person’s social network—a tool that lenders could use to consider the credit ratings of a person’s Facebook friends in deciding whether to approve a loan application. “If the average credit rating of these members is at least a minimum credit score, the lender continues to process the loan application,” Facebook wrote in the patent filing. “Otherwise, the loan application is rejected.”
“That is a really difficult problem,” Moore said. "You’re asking a computer that’s obviously not that smart in the first place to predict whether this person is a risk based on what we know about them—but [you’re telling it], ‘Please exclude these features that, as a society, we think would be illegal.’ But it’s very hard or impossible for the engineers to know for sure that the computer hasn’t inadvertently used some piece of evidence which it shouldn’t.”
All this means that as algorithms become more complex, they become more dangerous. The assumptions these filters make end up having real impact on the individual level, but they’re based on oceans of data that no one person, not even the person who designed them, can ever fully interpret.

Man brilliantly trolls homophobe commenters who slammed Doritos rainbow chips

In a classic tale from the world wide web, Doritos found itself hounded by anti-gay trolls this week as it teamed up with the It Gets Better Project to launch its new rainbow crisps.

For a limited time only, people who donate $10 (£6) or more to the organisation - which aims to raise awareness around the staggering rate of suicides in the LGBT community and offer support to those in need - will receive a bag of rainbow Doritos.

Turns out some people on the internet were not happy about this. So took to the brand's Facebook page to air their opinions. Great.

That's where Facebook user Mike Melgaard came to humanity's rescue, setting up a fake help page to troll the trolls.

Here's a selection of his best efforts:

 

 

 

 

 

He later took to his own Facebook page to address why he took action.

Did it ever occur to you that this actually has very little to do with gay pride? But rather, it is to address the fact that suicide is one of the leading causes of death amongst the LGBT community for ages 15 to 24?

The 'It Gets Better' charity is where this money (all of it, mind you) is going and they just so happen to specialize in LGBT suicide prevention.

Anyone being "upset" over this issue is really just slowing down the collective progress for all of humanity. And you're doing it for no reason other than your personal bias.

Read his post in full here: 

Banking customer engagement: Using data analytics to build personalized relationships

Everybody wants to feel that someone is listening to their wants and needs. When it comes to customer engagement, data analytics can help banks understand consumer desires and preferences. There are patterns and details within the vast quantities of data banks are already collecting. Banking analytics can help you identify and respond to what your customers want today, and even anticipate what they'll want tomorrow.

Data analytics is a vital tool for customer retention, product or service improvement, upselling and client acquisition. It helps banking leaders and marketing teams connect with their current users and the next generation.

Transaction data define marketing opportunities

So much of what your user base has to tell you comes from how they already engage with your banking services already. By analyzing information about how your consumers access and consume content and applications, you can build marketing strategies around the devices, locations and functionalities they already prefer.

Retail banking analytics can uncover customer behavior patterns that reveal impending live events, such as retirement, shopping for a new home or a baby on the way. That's the kind of personalized information that helps retain clients, and it also creates opportunities to promote a cross-sell or upsell tied to the life event. In these instances, a customer may be primed for a fresh look at investment or banking services.

Data analytics opens windows to clients' wants and needs

You can make your customers feel cared for by leveraging data about their unique situations and preferences to create an even more personalized banking experience. It can also help you identify ways to cross-sell and upsell to certain demographics. For example, a recentFinancial Planning report showed that baby boomers are most likely to download personal finance applications. Meanwhile, Gen Xers take the lead in selecting digital wallet and wealth management applications. Data analytics brings the insights from these apps to the forefront, informing banks' new product strategies for their target audiences.

Look to social media

"While demographics and current product ownership are at the foundation of customer insight, behavioral and attitudinal insights are gaining in importance as channel selection and product use become more differentiated," writes Jim Marous in The Financial Brand. "Sentiment analysis and social-media analysis are two additional examples."

If you want to identify which customer micro-segments are well-positioned to respond to your next marketing campaign, use data analytics to highlight patterns in social media. These can include common life event discussions, seasonal behavior, consumer feedback, product discussions, requests for new services and recommendations of your company. You can also track these customers' locations, professions, activities and networks. In each of these micro-segments, when a bank creates messaging that's meaningfully aligned to users' interests and plans, established customers will notice the highly personalized attention, leading to positive social buzz. Satisfied customers spread the word.

Mine a broader vein of data

Another approach banks can take is to "acquire customer data they don't have from external sources, matching that data to records in the bank's master customer information files," observed Jerry Rackley, Demand Metric Chief Analyst and author of Marketing Analytics Roadmap: Methods, Metrics and Tools in a recent interview. One approach would be to use census data, rich with details of home ownership, employment and the average ages in a region. For example, banks can use this to reach out to customers in rental housing who might be ready to buy their first home.

Data analytics is a window into clients' wants and needs. With it, banks can make personalized outreach more compelling and effective than ever before. They can extend an invitation to become a new customer, to continue as a loyal user or to expand the spectrum of products and services in an existing portfolio. Learn more about leveraging analytics in banking to maximize customer satisfaction, loyalty and retention by signing up for a live demo of the industry-specific predictive analytics solution. 

The Difference Between American and British Humour

Ricky Gervais co-wrote, co-produced and starred in the hit BBC series The Office, which was on air for two years and adapted for a U.S. series for eight seasons. Gervais has also starred in films such as Ghost Town andThe Invention of Lying. He was named to the TIME 100 in 2010 and has won numerous awards including seven BAFTA awards, two Emmys and three Golden Globes. Contributor Photograph: Getty Images

Apart from the spelling of the word, obviously

It’s often dangerous to generalize, but under threat, I would say that Americans are more “down the line.” They don’t hide their hopes and fears. They applaud ambition and openly reward success. Brits are more comfortable with life’s losers. We embrace the underdog until it’s no longer the underdog. We like to bring authority down a peg or two. Just for the hell of it. Americans say, “have a nice day” whether they mean it or not. Brits are terrified to say this. We tell ourselves it’s because we don’t want to sound insincere but I think it might be for the opposite reason. We don’t want to celebrate anything too soon. Failure and disappointment lurk around every corner. This is due to our upbringing. Americans are brought up to believe they can be the next president of the United States. Brits are told, “It won’t happen for you.”

There’s a received wisdom in the U.K. that Americans don’t get irony. This is of course not true. But what is true is that they don’t use it all the time. It shows up in the smarter comedies but Americans don’t use it as much socially as Brits. We use it as liberally as prepositions in every day speech. We tease our friends. We use sarcasm as a shield and a weapon. We avoid sincerity until it’s absolutely necessary. We mercilessly take the piss out of people we like or dislike basically. And ourselves. This is very important. Our brashness and swagger is laden with equal portions of self-deprecation. This is our license to hand it out.

This can sometimes be perceived as nasty if the recipients aren’t used to it. It isn’t. It’s play fighting. It’s almost a sign of affection if we like you, and ego bursting if we don’t. You just have to know which one it is.

I guess the biggest difference between the U.S. version and the U.K. version of The Office reflected this. We had to make Michael Scott a slightly nicer guy, with a rosier outlook to life. He could still be childish, and insecure, and even a bore, but he couldn’t be too mean. The irony is of course that I think David Brent’s dark descension and eventual redemption made him all the more compelling. But I think that’s a lot more palatable in Britain for the reasons already stated. Brits almost expect doom and gloom so to start off that way but then have a happy ending is an unexpected joy. Network America has to give people a reason to like you not just a reason to watch you. In Britain we stop watching things like Big Brother when the villain is evicted. We don’t want to watch a bunch of idiots having a good time. We want them to be as miserable as us. America rewards up front, on-your-sleeve niceness. A perceived wicked streak is somewhat frowned upon.

Recently I have been accused of being a shock comic, and cruel and cynical. This is of course almost solely due to a few comments I made as host of last year’s Golden Globes. But nothing could be further from the truth.

I never actively try to offend. That’s churlish, pointless and frankly too easy. But I believe you should say what you mean. Be honest. No one should ever be offended by truth. That way you’ll never have to apologize. I hate it when a comedian says, “Sorry for what I said.” You shouldn’t say it if you didn’t mean it and you should never regret anything you meant to do. As a comedian, I think my job isn’t just to make people laugh but also make them think. As a famous comedian, I also want a strict door policy on my club. Not everyone will like what I say or find it funny. And I wouldn’t have it any other way. There are enough comedians who try to please everyone as it is. Good luck to them, but that’s not my game, I’m afraid.

I’m not one of those people who think that comedy is your conscience taking a day off. My conscience never takes a day off and I can justify everything I do. There’s no line to be drawn in comedy in the sense that there are things you should never joke about. There’s nothing that you should never joke about, but it depends what that joke is. Comedy comes from a good or a bad place. The subject of a joke isn’t necessarily the target of the joke. You can make jokes about race without any race being the butt of the joke. Racism itself can be the butt, for example. When dealing with a so-called taboo subject, the angst and discomfort of the audience is what’s under the microscope. Our own preconceptions and prejudices are often what are being challenged. I don’t like racist jokes. Not because they are offensive. I don’t like them because they’re not funny. And they’re not funny because they’re not true. They are almost always based on a falsehood somewhere along the way, which ruins the gag for me. Comedy is an intellectual pursuit. Not a platform.

As for cynicism, I don’t care for it much. I’m a romantic. From The Office, and Extras to The Invention Of Lying and Cemetery Junction, goodness and sweetness, honour and truth, love and friendship always triumph.

For me, humanity is king.

Oh and for the record I’d rather a waiter say, “Have a nice day” and not mean it, than ignore me and mean it.

Read next: 10 Rules You Need to Know to Communicate Effectively