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PAGE 4A - THE COMMERCE (GA) NEWS, WEDNESDAY. MAY 27, 2009
mion
Editorial Views
Tough Time For
Grads Seeking Jobs
Hundreds of new high school graduates —
including 60 percent of the Commerce High
School Class of 2009 — are now seeking
jobs in an economy where jobs are scarce.
As salutatorian Chelsey Cain remarked, "the
reality is we are just now entering reality."
The workplace can be frustrating and diffi
cult. Students who have completed their for
mal education — whether at the high school,
college or technical school level — are often
shocked by the reality of the marketplace.
There are no guaranteed jobs, nor a war
ranty that the job you take will be rewarding
or even pay enough to live the lifestyle to
which you are accustomed.
To the high school Class of 2009, be assured
that your education will pay off — if not now,
then sometime in the future. Be patient.
Those who can find work should consider
themselves blessed, and those who cannot
should reconsider the option of getting
more education. Lanier and Athens technical
colleges offer courses that are virtually free
and which can better position students to
compete for future jobs.
The completion of high school is a major
milestone, but it is not an end as much as a
beginning. The Class of '09 may find more
challenges ahead than some previous classes,
but the education members received will
enable them to overcome this obstacle too.
National Debt Is
A Lurking Danger
Is the cure going to be worse than the disease?
The amount of federal spending undertaken in
the hope of lifting America out of a recession —
or keeping the recession from getting worse — is
pushing the deficit to unforeseen levels, raising
concerns that ramifications of the debt growth
could be more disastrous than the current reces
sion.
Granted, it was inevitable that Uncle Sam had
to take action. We’ve no way of knowing how
much worse the economy would be without the
financial sector bailout and the spending from
the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.
Unfortunately, neither can anyone predict how
those and other deficit spending will come back
to haunt us in the not-to-distant future, but there
will be a steep price to pay for today’s efforts
aimed at recovery.
Even without massive bailout and stimulus
spending, America’s rate of debt growth was
perilously quick. With it, the rate is speeding up
like a dragster at full throttle, but while a dragster
has a braking system, the federal deficit mobile
apparently does not.
Desperate times may call for desperate mea
sures, but if the Obama administration and the
Democratic congress continue this course of
action, the financial disaster it will cause will
make the current recession feel like the good ole’
days.
Americans have belatedly found it necessary
to work to reduce their debt, which is one reason
sales are down. That may be bad for the econo
my, but it is sound thinking for the individuals.
The president and the Congress should follow
that example before our national debt becomes
so great that we can no longer aford to make the
interest payments.
Editorials, unless otherwise noted, are written
by Mark Beardsley. He can be reached at mark@
mainstreetnews. com
The Commerce News
ESTABLISHED IN 1875
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MIKE BUFFINGTON Co-Publisher
SCOTT BUFFINGTON Co-Publisher
MARK BEARDSLEY..Editor/General Manager
JUSTIN POOLE Sports Editor
TERESA MARSHALL Office Manager
MERRILL BAGWELL Cartoonist
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Son, are you just going to sit there
watching that television all summer?
watching the television in my room.
A Chatterbox Nation?
The movie "Cast
Away" was on Turner
Classic Movies not
long ago (that's TCM,
or Channel 55 for
those of you with
cable TV). In it, the
main character, played
by Tom Hanks, is
shipwrecked on a
small island for years.
Desperate for compan
ionship, he finally starts talking to a
volleyball — gives it a face and some
wisps of coconut-straw hair, christens
it "Wilson" (the name imprinted on
it), and begins confiding in it.
I've been pondering this ever since,
and asking people, "Is that really what
we'd do? Are we such a race of talkers
that we'd even talk to volleyballs?"
The general response was an incredu
lous "You had to ask?!" I was at the
outlet mall with one friend when this
topic came up, and she didn't say
anything — just gestured around us at
all the people walking by, driving by,
shopping, even: all alone, cell phones
pressed to their ears, and talking
intently.
We're social animals, all right.
I get that. But after Continental
Connections Flight 3407 crashed in a
residential area outside of Buffalo, NY
— or no, really two months later, when
the transcripts of the cockpit conversa
tions were released — I began to won
der whether we have failed to draw the
line somewhere. Anywhere.
The "doomed pilots," as the Wall
Street Journal dubbed them, apparently
doomed themselves, along with 48
other people. Coming in for a land
ing in a part of the country that is
famous for its "lake-effect weather,"
flying lower and lower over a densely
populated area, through a fog that was
partly ice crystals, were they clutching
the controls? Reviewing their descent
checklist? Creating an emergency
plan? Studying the
flight manual? Why,
no. They were having
a chat. Busy talking,
they didn't hear the
engine sounds that
would have told them
that their airspeed was
rapidly dropping and
the plane was headed
into a stall.
There were other
contributing factors. Captain Marvin
Renslow had failed five flight tests in
five years and shouldn't have been fly
ing anyone anywhere. Copilot Rebecca
Shaw was inexperienced when it came
to cold-climate flying. Neither of them
was employed by Continental, but by
a subcontractor: Colgan Inc. And the
plane they were flying had an unusual
de-icing system.
But it was the cockpit chatter that
arguably kept them from doing the
one thing that counted most: their
job. In this case that chiefly meant
staying alert to what was happening.
An FAA safety inspector who testified
at the National Transportation Safety
Board hearing brushed past all of the
other factors involved in the crash and
commented that he "had been struck
by how frequently Colgan pilots vio
lated safety rules by engaging in idle
chatter in the cockpit," according to
the Wall Street Journal.
Theorists about workplace behavior
in America consider chitchat at work
to be good for team-building and
productivity, and maybe it is. But if
you fly a plane, help take care of sick
people, or do anything important (and
I happen to think all work is impor
tant) please pay attention to what
you're doing. The life you save could
be mine. Or, hey — yours!
Susan Harper is the former director of
the Commerce Public Library. She lives
in Commerce.
A Few
Facts t A
Lot Of
Gossip 2
BY SUSAN HARPER
Is God In The Bad Data?
One of the skills
engineering schools
believe students
should have is the
ability to take a series
of measurements of
physical phenom
ena and then plot
the results on graph
paper. This exercise is
described in the col
lege catalog as "labora
tory" and the student performs one
such exercise weekly from his sopho
more through his senior year.
Laboratory experiments provide
good experience because either as
an engineer or a scientist, one is fre
quently required to make a series of
measurements and decide if some
thing is happening as expected, or not
as expected, and to explain why.
You might not think it, but produc
ing a nicely symmetrical curve is
greatly satisfying in an esthetic sense.
It shows that the universe is indeed
a well-ordered place and that you
understand at least some part of it. But
in fact, the universe is not very well
ordered and all the data points won't
fall on a neat curve. Most of them
will, but a few will be nowhere near
— one 3/4 of an inch
higher and another
7/8 of an inch low.
Here's where all that
college training comes
in handy: misfit points
are glibly designated
bad data and summar
ily ignored. It is not
dishonest or unethi
cal: the universe is not
totally chaotic and
if 17 points fit within 2 percent of
the best-fit curve and three are more
than 15 percent out, well, those are
obviously bad readings. (If you don't
eliminate the misfits, when you cal
culate your bet-fit curve, it won't fit
the rest of the data nearly so well and
you are left with the tortuous task of
explaining — to no one's satisfaction —
why things came out that way. It's far
better to eliminate the bad data before
drawing the curve.)
But I wonder if we have trained our
selves too well. We have learned to
ignore what doesn't fit the expected
pattern; in other words, to ignore what
we can't explain. And we carry this
technical practice over into our every-
Please Turn to Page 5A
Viewpoints
In
Rotation
BY WILLIS COOK
It's
Gospel
According
To Mark
BY MARK BEARDSLEY
Predictions Of
End Of GOP
Are Premature
I am amused with all the
speculation that the Republican
Party has become irrelevant in
America, that it is doomed to
stay that way, all because of the
past two election cycles. The
commentary comes from the
left and the right alike.
Readers know my leanings, if
not Democratic, are decidedly
un-Republican, but I neither
expect nor wish for the GOP to
fall by the wayside.
It was not that long ago when
pundits had similar gloomy
predictions about the future
of the Democratic Party. Five
years ago, no one knew what
the Democrats stood for. Today,
that may still be unclear, but
the GOP has a worse identity
crisis. Its age-old positions of
fiscal responsibility and smaller
government fly in the face of
its actions during the Bush
administration. The Republicans
are no more apt to be fiscally
responsible than the Democrats.
They just come across as richer
and meaner.
There's a small market for
extremism on both the left and
the right, but the majority of
the voters fall inbetween. The
party that positions itself fur
thest on the fringe will become
the minority party. Right now,
that happens to be the GOP.
With Democrats controlling
the House, Senate and presi
dency, the market for opposing
ideas (and people to implement
them) will grow, benefiting the
GOP. In addition, the economy
remains lousy, so what was once
a GOP liability is eroding the
credibility of the Democrats.
We need opposing viewpoints.
We also need leaders whose
loyalty is to the republic rather
than party, and a Congress
where ideas are debated on
merit rather than the party
affiliation of the sponsor. When
one party dominates, dissent
is ignored to the peril of the
nation.
The real concern is not one-
party control; it's the system
in which issues are decided by
the party bosses. Instead of 100
senators making up their minds,
just two decide how the vast
majority of votes will be cast
on high-profile legislation. I
don't want Harry Reid or Mitch
McConnell telling Senators
how to vote, nor Nancy Pelosi
or John Boehner making deci
sions for the representatives. All
100 Senators and 435 members
of the House should cast their
votes based on how they think
legislation would affect their
constituents not on what their
party bosses see as being in the
best interest of the party.
It's beyond my ability to pre
dict whether Democrats will
retain or improve their majori
ties in the next election cycle,
but the idea that the GOP is on
its deathbed is absurd.
I hope the next incarnation
of the GOP comes with mod
eration, because the country
will be better off if legislation
originates from near the center
instead of on either fringe.
Mark Beardsley is editor of The
Commerce News. He can be reached
at mark@mainstreetnews.com