i challenge the comment above - that this reflects groupon hiring people who are "lucky to work in a mailroom or as a waiter".
if anything, they are over-hiring for their roles - this guy is a UC Berkeley grad, which implies a certain level of intelligence. making sales like this could easily be done by a boiler room in manilla.
BTW - the link disproves your point somewhat - voters approved a $10bn train, which is now expected to cost over 10x that. Brings into question what exactly they approved, or what it means to "approve" if there is no cost control in the approval.
If you combine the point on what constitutes a normal count and the point on the hostile environment, you get the answer.
Also - related point - for IVF, they have very strict quality standards. Using the measurement standards for IVF would consider 15% "normal forms" as an acceptable level.
Next thing you know, they'll tell me that hollywood actively collaborates with the government on portrayals of the military.
"The major exception here is the Department of Defense, which has an ‘open’ but barely publicized relationship with Tinsel Town, whereby, in exchange for advice, men and invaluable equipment, such as aircraft carriers and helicopters, the Pentagon routinely demands flattering script alterations."
Michael Crichton: “Briefly stated, the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect is as follows. You open the newspaper to an article on some subject you know well. In Murray's case, physics. In mine, show business.
You read the article and see the journalist has absolutely no understanding of either the facts or the issues. Often, the article is so wrong it actually presents the story backward—reversing cause and effect. I call these the "wet streets cause rain" stories. Paper's full of them.
In any case, you read with exasperation or amusement the multiple errors in a story, and then turn the page to national or international affairs, and read as if the rest of the newspaper was somehow more accurate about Palestine than the baloney you just read. You turn the page, and forget what you know.”
it's also interesting to me that a former economist in the obama administration is writing an article about college grads driving taxis, right around the time the powers that be are trying to implement immigration reform to make it easier to import foreign workers to fill various roles. he seems to be dancing around some obvious conclusions that the job market is (gasp) driven by supply and demand for labor, but doesn't quite reach a conclusion.
Why stop with the person we expect to be? Who's to say we're the people we think we are today? Or the person we think we were in the past? If self-perception is biased, it has to be across the spectrum.
Related, on a recent riot in china which was caused when authorities tried to crack down on cheating. The rationale of rioters was that since everyone cheats, the crackdown put kids at an unfair advantage:
sigh.
i feel bad for the guy, you just can't escape a bad move made in a consumer-facing market like this.
http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:X821DtR...
i challenge the comment above - that this reflects groupon hiring people who are "lucky to work in a mailroom or as a waiter".
if anything, they are over-hiring for their roles - this guy is a UC Berkeley grad, which implies a certain level of intelligence. making sales like this could easily be done by a boiler room in manilla.