PISSI seduces naive youths by offering a cause and a community to people who feel that no one takes them seriously.

The Moral Failure of Computer Scientists : an interview with Phillip Rogaway.

Perhaps we need a Bulletin of the Information Scientists.

Making tech companies spy on their users for the state is unamerican, and useless too .

An issue not mentioned here is, which criterion is used to define terrorism? Do attacks on abortion clinics count? They ought to, but so far the US government is not treating them as terrorism.

Oa

Senator Cruz is proposing to block companies from using H1B visas to bring foreign workers to the US temporarily for training.

It is a good cause, but his solution operates by closing off H-1B visas except for very highly paid jobs. I think the solution should more directly address the problem.

I propose that any company or division hiring H-1B workers should be forbidden to eliminate any US jobs for the next two years, unless it has suffered a big drop in gross sales, or to move any work out of the US or to a subcontractor during that time. Fines for violations should be very high.

Also, workers who are told to train their successors (and then be fired) should refuse to train them, or quit immediately. Resisting oppression calls for some guts.

Some research suggests that unhappiness does not predispose people to illness.

There are distinct questions here:

1. Factual: does being unhappy tend to cause other sorts of harm to you?

2. Moral: is unhappiness something unfortunate that happens to you, or is it wrong on your part?

The research suggests that the answer to (1) is no. That's fortunate, for unhappy people. But whatever the answer to (1) is, it does not mean that being unhappy is blameworthy. If there is no ethical, reliable way to decide to be happy, then your unhappiness is no more your fault than an injury or a birth defect.