Fast learning
Jan 30th 2008KarenUncategorized
Archive for January, 2008
Haunted by their words:
From the Center for Public Integrity, which has listed the statements made by members of the Bush administration regarding the threat posed by Saddam Hussein and Iraq to world security:
Following 9/11, President Bush and seven top officials of his administration waged a carefully orchestrated campaign of misinformation about the threat posed by Saddam Hussein’s Iraq….
…this project provides a heretofore unavailable framework for examining how the U.S. war in Iraq came to pass. Clearly, it calls into question the repeated assertions of Bush administration officials that they were the unwitting victims of bad intelligence.
Above all, the 935 false statements painstakingly presented here finally help to answer two all-too-familiar questions as they apply to Bush and his top advisers: What did they know, and when did they know it?
NASA Says New Rocket Might Shake Violently - washingtonpost.com
Jan 22nd 2008KarenUncategorized
NASA Says New Rocket Might Shake Violently - washingtonpost.com
Engineers are concerned that the new rocket, meant to replace the space shuttle and send astronauts to the moon, could shake violently during the first few minutes of flight, possibly destroying the entire vehicle.
Is George about to be caught up in the rapture?
Jan 15th 2008KarenUncategorized
Texans are reporting UFO sightings, and at least one guy is wondering if the end of the world is coming:
“People wonder what in the world it is because this is the Bible Belt, and everyone is afraid it’s the end of times,” said Steve Allen, a freight company owner and pilot who said the object he saw last week was a mile long and half a mile wide. “It was positively, absolutely nothing from these parts.”
Keep them safe
Jan 15th 2008KarenUncategorized
A six-year-old boy died yesterday after climbing on a tv stand to reach a pair of ice skates. The stand held a 32-inch television, which toppled over and crushed the child.
Our television is pretty heavy, and I doubt it’s secure where it is. It’s so easy to forget about child-proofing when your kid is school-aged, but clearly they can still be vulnerable.
Keep safe.
Free chocolate!
Gloria says it better than I can
Standing up to be counted for Hillary:
I’m supporting Senator Clinton because like Senator Obama she has community organizing experience, but she also has more years in the Senate, an unprecedented eight years of on-the-job training in the White House, no masculinity to prove, the potential to tap a huge reservoir of this country’s talent by her example, and now even the courage to break the no-tears rule. I’m not opposing Mr. Obama; if he’s the nominee, I’ll volunteer. Indeed, if you look at votes during their two-year overlap in the Senate, they were the same more than 90 percent of the time. Besides, to clean up the mess left by President Bush, we may need two terms of President Clinton and two of President Obama.
A sop to the freebie lovers
Those of you who kept up with my previous blog will be expecting a freebie from time to time. Who am I to disappoint?
Work at the right company is better
Last night my son had very specific instructions for me and my husband. We were to stand on either side of him, facing each other. We had to be close, but not touching. The three of us had to hold a business card in the center of our little almost-circle. The card was to be held between our right thumbs and forefingers. We had no idea why we were doing this, and The Boy wasn’t sharing his thought-process.
Any deviation from the strict instructions above was swiftly corrected.
It’s a funny story – two adults performing a weird ritual that has no meaning to them just because someone says so. The fact that the person in charge is a five-year-old adds to the amusement.
But it got me thinking about all the times I’ve performed rituals just as devoid of meaning at the behest of employers. When every move a worker makes is scripted – sometimes years in advance by managers that have long since moved on – that worker develops a sense that he is a placeholder. “Do this, in exactly this way” is what they hear. And, implicitly, “It doesn’t need to make sense. Don’t get creative. We don’t want your ideas.”
“A trained monkey could do your job.”
Companies like that wind up with the employees they deserve.