I haven't read the report from these people in previous years, but the last few pages are recommendations for parents on how to monitor their children's game use. That's good for parents who want to do a good job supervising but don't have the "technical" knowledge on how to do it.
I have to wonder about a couple of things though. The blurbs for games they recommend and games they avoid all look like they came from marketing departments. In a way, it's good that they're not editorializing too much about the games, but at the same time it makes it look like they didn't play the games themselves.
The other thing is this report is 31 pages long? I'm not shopping for children so I just skimmed to the end, but it seems overlong for most folks who don't already know they need the information.
Actually no it was a religious consideration, and my parents never really thought about the moral dimension. It was at school that kids decided to make an issue of it every 5 minutes, and during that I came up with actual reasons.
India is a pretty poor country. People survive there without meat just fine. Well, except for the pollution. Being vegetarian is absolutely not a luxury of living in a rich nation.
No, I think that if animals only lived in and around their natural habitats, there would be fewer of them for people to kill and eat, since the factory farm model packs as many into each square foot as possible. Without that artificial mechanism and the distribution industry that it uses, meat would be much more scarce than it is now. In the GGP post, the premise was that people eating meat would be required to kill their own meat. There was nothing about having to farm your own crops.
And we can speculate all day about what the average person knows without getting anywhere.
I hope that people wouldn't adjust. Actually, I think this state of the world could only be supported with a much lower population. The elimination of factory farming would mean the only meat you could find would be in its natural habitat. I guess I'm speculating that some other system wouldn't supplant the current one. Anyway, finding and killing enough animals to sustain the life you have now would take a lot more time than people put into their food acquisition (especially compared to a garden) and in some areas would just be physically impossible. So either those people would adapt to the reality of not enough meat around and eat less or none of it, or they'd move someplace else.
This would be an interesting science fiction premise.
I don't think you understand. There is right and wrong, and then there are things that are personal choices, for which the terms "right" and "wrong" simply don't apply. Personal taste maybe is a better way to phrase it. Many many people I talk to are looking to be freed from the moral component of this choice by reducing its rank to the no-man's land of "opinion" where anything is valid.
And it doesn't really matter how you feel about preventing cruelty as long as you aren't. The bad news about this is that it's easier said than done to cut the cruelty out of one's diet, having lived with it for a long time. My mom made the interesting point that no one has to learn to eat meat, but it does take some learning (i.e. dietary and nutritional information) to stop.
In general, people tend to eat more protein each day than they need. I've read in a few places that if you get enough calories, you basically get enough protein. People who go all out for protein are just making expensive urine.
Tasty Bite makes some pretty good ready made items - Bombay Potatoes and Bengal Lentils, and soon Priya Mango Thokku will again be available in the USA. The FDA blocked its importation due to pesticide spraying, and Priya has since cleaned that up and is waiting on new approval. I could really just live on Priya Mango Thokku.
That's certainly true. They do ask sometimes "well what do you eat" then I start telling them about how great Indian food is. Which it is, and that works in my favor.
But I also think they're looking for some kind of validation, i.e. for me to say something that goes along with their frame of "it's just a personal choice" as opposed to a moral issue. I'm not interested in validating anyone, and sometimes I get more antsy than others.
There are a number of arguments against meat and whatever other cruelty to animals, but most of them center on the audience regarding animal cruelty as wrong. Without that basic level of common ground, no further rational argument is possible. Lucky for PETA, many people do have problems with cruel treatment of animals, and with the fact that much of the cruelty is not for any good reason. The question is where to draw the line, and I think that's the only question. PETA and I draw it pretty far back, others will trade lots of animal cruelty for some physical pleasure, stopping I guess just short of bestiality.
So PETA is in the awkward and unenviable position of reminding people of their own moral standards. Not PETA's standards, but the audience's. Most people avoid information about the cruel and inhumane treatment of their meat products. The only explanation I have for this is that they lack the willpower or perhaps the technical knowledge to make the decision they believe to be right. However, I know that slashdot has a ton of tough guys who pride themselves on having absolutely no compassion. Maybe they'll chime in on this post, overcompensating for their meat guilt by describing how little they care and how much they enjoy meat. I already see some of it in the thread, and they're making my point for me.
Over the years, after being asked to defend being vegetarian, I understand PETA's position pretty well. People ask, idly, "why" and expect an answer related to cholesterol or "energy" or some shit. That's not my reason at all. I was raised vegetarian, being from South India, so it's pretty easy for me to be all self-righteous and you can see some of that in this post too. It used to be a lot worse. At some point, how you were raised is not enough of an explanation, and you have to either figure out the real reasons independent of your parents or just shrug it off and start eating meat. So as soon as I even mention pain and suffering, people start the handwaving and cut me off because even though they asked, I'm the jerk for actually telling them. They don't want to make the decision independent of how they were raised, I guess. In fairness, I don't know if I could either.
PETA is, obviously, more militant than I am. Conscience can be like that. As always in these meat posts, I refer the reader to Hard To Swallow, which makes these points in a better way.
The difference is that there is some hope that Holder will maintain some level of independence from Obama. Gonzalez viewed himself as the president's lawyer which is absolutely not the role of the attorney general. Holder's career, such as it is, has been made without help from Obama. He's not a longtime friend and employee who feels a personal desire to further Obama's career thereby furthering his own. Gonzalez' DOJ was in the habit of issuing legal opinions basically on demand to shield members of the Bush administration behind the defense "I'm not a lawyer, I acted with advice from counsel that *insert bullshit here* was legal."
Here is a speech by Holder on the rule of law given in June of this year.
I'm opposed to censorship and in favor of academic freedom. So I do object to Holder on that basis, and agree with you that people pinning their highest hopes on Obama will be disappointed. Me, I was just voting against McCain.
I don't mean to dodge responsibility for my post by attributing it to some unnamed source. I guess by "discredit" I don't mean a superficial dismantling of the enemy's motivations. Instead I do mean some kind of intellectual engagement in order to let's say obviate the motivations. Obviating the motivations for terrorism is no small task, and may require changes in policy and practice of USA. It is only by obviating the motivations that terror can be ended, is what I meant to convey. Not solely by exacting literal revenge on the terrorist individuals or even their leaders.
I suspect that there are lots of people of all political persuasions who would rather do the handwaving that you describe.
I see what you mean though: I have tacitly assumed that no rational basis can ever exist for attacking USA, when in fact the USA treats the world as an expense account.
I'm always encouraging girls to consider careers involving mathematics, whether they're especially good at it or not. This is because math ability creates opportunities in a way that many subjects do not.
No, the problem is that these behaviors are so deeply rooted that no one is willing to acknowledge them when they're pointed out. I submit that competition as a classroom motivational tool alienates girls. I've read at least one study regarding science education and cooperative groups versus competitive ones. Teachers are very intent on competition, and so are parents and therefore so are students. That's not going to change on a wide scale. It's not because no one pointed it out.
Alfie Kohn wrote a book about the detrimental effects of competition called No Contest, but his unwillingness to give any background on himself makes his ideas easy to dismiss since he has no credentials. People who don't already (on some level) agree with him translate this into a lack of credibility.
One more thing is that we must not restrict ourselves to thinking that only male teachers and students create gender inequities in classrooms. Female elementary school teachers who give girls answers and force boys to figure things out for themselves are doing the same disservice.
I'm trying to remember who said this first: the object of analyzing motivations behind 9/11 is a very good one. Because without that understanding, all you can do is kill the enemy and make them martyrs. This can draw more people to the "cause", and if you're really unlucky, acts to confirm the enemy's propoganda about us. I say unlucky because who knows whether martyrs will serve as a deterrent or a rallying point? Someone skilled at propoganda will find a way to turn martyrdom to his advantage. If you instead understand the theoretical basis for the attacks, you can discredit the theory. This acts to decrease support for the "cause," reducing the likelihood that attacks will happen in the future. The ideal outcome of a war on terror is that the insane ideologues such as bin Laden will only be talking to themselves and will lack the resources and manpower to do anything with all the hate.
People get caught up in revenge fantasy and lose sight of the big picture. Anyone seeking to understand the terrorists' stated positions is doing so to dismantle it.
Again, this analysis isn't my own original thought, but something I read. If anyone has a source, I'd appreciate the citation.
I imagine everyone here knows New Voyages already. If you haven't seen it, you should watch some. James Cawley gets it.
My favorite of the TOS movies was 6 because the enemy overestimated Kirk's racism and underestimated his intelligence and dedication to duty. The turning point was when, instead of starting the war he was expected to start, he said "signal our surrender." In TOS, Kirk was never a warmonger or really prone to violence at all. Not a hothead. Maybe these people watched the old series and noticed all the fights and shit without noticing that Kirk didn't start hardly any of it. And when he did start a fight, it was more to prove a point or to keep someone else from having to fight. Kirk doesn't like losing. Anything. That's the fundamental truth of Kirk.
I don't expect this movie to show an old, wise, thoughtful Kirk, but let's not turn him into a stereotypic cocky youth.
Can you elaborate? The most immediate example for me was how we don't allow students to resolve their conflicts by fighting in school. Instead a bunch of government officials (i.e. me, or an administrator, the police, etc) breaks up the fight and imposes consequences on the involved parties from the outside.
In his book Good to Great, Jim Collins cites Circuit City as a company that went from being a pretty good company to being a great one under a great leader. Without subjecting you to too much of the book, Circuit City identified ways to spread as quickly as possible while maintaining a "consistent" customer experience. Stamping out stores across the land with the highest efficiency. The "comparison company" in the same field was Silo which didn't make the leap. The book isn't that old. Did the leadership at CC change to take it in a new direction, or was it always on this path?
Personally, after getting ignored/treated as nonwhite (I'm nonwhite) a few times, I never went back.
There was a dialog in Planescape that notified me that it wasn't going to be an ordinary RPG. Without giving too much away, there were two identical dialog options, but one of them said "lie" in front. So the game wanted you to decide whether you believed what you were about to say or just said it to see what would happen. It's a position that gamers find themselves in often, but this game put your character in that position instead. And there were some subtle results for your decision later. Honestly, it's not even in the same league as the other D&D Forgotten Realms game that share its Infinity Engine (Baldur's Gate, etc.)
I was able to find it on Gametap I think last year, and I think you'll find a number of other games to suit your tastes there too. The Incredible Machine and the recent Sam and Max games might be good.
I presume you have extensive experience with private schools on which to base this analysis? Or are you just spouting something you heard elsewhere, and thought sounded good? I thought so.
The reality is that some private schools do that, but not all and not, IMO, the best ones.
The local white-flight school sends us their rejected students sometime around January of each year. The students get a letter saying that they won't pass the current year and good luck in their future endeavors. I read it once a few years ago, maybe it's changed. The letter doesn't go into details, but sometimes these reasons are academic, and sometimes they're disciplinary.
I don't think many generalizations can be made about what goes on inside private schools. I won't go so far as to say that all private schools have this same mechanism for getting rid of students who won't guarantee their positive results. However, it is certainly true that all private schools have this ability, and no public schools do. Here at least, even "expulsion" means the students are sent to an alternative education program for 45 days then they come back to me.
No one who brings up other countries in the discussion uses any that have mandatory public education.
If you read about the Comerica deal at the hellgate site, they present it as financing similar to what filmmakers get. I know nothing about how to finance a computer game, so maybe that's code for "and now they're looking for someone to buy it.
If McCain were running the kind of campaign that reached across the aisle to people like me, he'd be doing better. Before the primaries were over, I had no problem with McCain and even thought of him as a Republican I wouldn't object to and might even vote for. I'm about as far left as it gets, but integrity and honesty are unrelated to ideology and that's what I respected about McCain. I won't rehash McCain's reversals and embrace of the GOP. Suffice to say that I disagree fundamentally with many of their views. McCain's choice of Gov. Palin surprised me because I'd never heard of her, and then she revealed herself to be all politician and no policy. In recent weeks the campaign has turned very ugly, and the McCain campaign's refusal to repudiate the racists and fearmongers makes me think this is a different man than he used to be, or maybe just different than I thought. Either amounts to the same thing.
Obama doesn't thrill me the way he does with a lot of people who are energized by his powerful public speaking. I'll probably vote for him, mostly against McCain, which makes me a little sad.
Your boss needs you as much as you need him or her; that is the nature of your relationship, and why you are paid money to show up and do your job. It costs money to lose an employee. If a business turns over employees fast enough for long enough, it will die.
This becomes more wrong with the passage of time. Because the beginning of what you say is true, companies have an interest only in minimizing the cost of a lost employee by making them as easy to replace as possible. The cheap example is McDonald's. Once upon a time if you were a cook at McDonald's you had to be able to cook at some level of proficiency. To ensure a consistent product and to reduce the qualifications (and therefore pay) for their cooks, McDonald's automates the cooking process so that the only qualification is to physically be able to do the job. Managers at McDonald's get their instructions on a paper tape from a central location. Managers are less easily replaced but still very easy.
The effect of this is visible when you consider how scheduling is done. No consideration needs to be given to employee availability, because there's no terrible loss if someone leaves or has to be let go because they can't make their scheduled times. This effect crosses many lines of work. It's happened to social workers, who are now PPW's and CFSW's. Decision-making power is moved higher up the hierarchy, allowing those people to be paid more, the lower levels to be paid less, and to be replaced much more easily.
Read All The Livelong Day and The Electronic Sweatshop both by Barbara Garson.
Slashdot Mirror
I haven't read the report from these people in previous years, but the last few pages are recommendations for parents on how to monitor their children's game use. That's good for parents who want to do a good job supervising but don't have the "technical" knowledge on how to do it.
I have to wonder about a couple of things though. The blurbs for games they recommend and games they avoid all look like they came from marketing departments. In a way, it's good that they're not editorializing too much about the games, but at the same time it makes it look like they didn't play the games themselves.
The other thing is this report is 31 pages long? I'm not shopping for children so I just skimmed to the end, but it seems overlong for most folks who don't already know they need the information.
Actually no it was a religious consideration, and my parents never really thought about the moral dimension. It was at school that kids decided to make an issue of it every 5 minutes, and during that I came up with actual reasons.
India is a pretty poor country. People survive there without meat just fine. Well, except for the pollution. Being vegetarian is absolutely not a luxury of living in a rich nation.
overcompensating
And we can speculate all day about what the average person knows without getting anywhere.
I hope that people wouldn't adjust. Actually, I think this state of the world could only be supported with a much lower population. The elimination of factory farming would mean the only meat you could find would be in its natural habitat. I guess I'm speculating that some other system wouldn't supplant the current one. Anyway, finding and killing enough animals to sustain the life you have now would take a lot more time than people put into their food acquisition (especially compared to a garden) and in some areas would just be physically impossible. So either those people would adapt to the reality of not enough meat around and eat less or none of it, or they'd move someplace else.
This would be an interesting science fiction premise.
PETA has to throw everything at the wall and see what sticks. Check back in 25 years when the movement is at the stage that gay rights are at now.
I don't think you understand. There is right and wrong, and then there are things that are personal choices, for which the terms "right" and "wrong" simply don't apply. Personal taste maybe is a better way to phrase it. Many many people I talk to are looking to be freed from the moral component of this choice by reducing its rank to the no-man's land of "opinion" where anything is valid.
And it doesn't really matter how you feel about preventing cruelty as long as you aren't. The bad news about this is that it's easier said than done to cut the cruelty out of one's diet, having lived with it for a long time. My mom made the interesting point that no one has to learn to eat meat, but it does take some learning (i.e. dietary and nutritional information) to stop.
In general, people tend to eat more protein each day than they need. I've read in a few places that if you get enough calories, you basically get enough protein. People who go all out for protein are just making expensive urine.
Tasty Bite makes some pretty good ready made items - Bombay Potatoes and Bengal Lentils, and soon Priya Mango Thokku will again be available in the USA. The FDA blocked its importation due to pesticide spraying, and Priya has since cleaned that up and is waiting on new approval. I could really just live on Priya Mango Thokku.
That's certainly true. They do ask sometimes "well what do you eat" then I start telling them about how great Indian food is. Which it is, and that works in my favor.
But I also think they're looking for some kind of validation, i.e. for me to say something that goes along with their frame of "it's just a personal choice" as opposed to a moral issue. I'm not interested in validating anyone, and sometimes I get more antsy than others.
Good advice, though.
There are a number of arguments against meat and whatever other cruelty to animals, but most of them center on the audience regarding animal cruelty as wrong. Without that basic level of common ground, no further rational argument is possible. Lucky for PETA, many people do have problems with cruel treatment of animals, and with the fact that much of the cruelty is not for any good reason. The question is where to draw the line, and I think that's the only question. PETA and I draw it pretty far back, others will trade lots of animal cruelty for some physical pleasure, stopping I guess just short of bestiality.
So PETA is in the awkward and unenviable position of reminding people of their own moral standards. Not PETA's standards, but the audience's. Most people avoid information about the cruel and inhumane treatment of their meat products. The only explanation I have for this is that they lack the willpower or perhaps the technical knowledge to make the decision they believe to be right. However, I know that slashdot has a ton of tough guys who pride themselves on having absolutely no compassion. Maybe they'll chime in on this post, overcompensating for their meat guilt by describing how little they care and how much they enjoy meat. I already see some of it in the thread, and they're making my point for me.
Over the years, after being asked to defend being vegetarian, I understand PETA's position pretty well. People ask, idly, "why" and expect an answer related to cholesterol or "energy" or some shit. That's not my reason at all. I was raised vegetarian, being from South India, so it's pretty easy for me to be all self-righteous and you can see some of that in this post too. It used to be a lot worse. At some point, how you were raised is not enough of an explanation, and you have to either figure out the real reasons independent of your parents or just shrug it off and start eating meat. So as soon as I even mention pain and suffering, people start the handwaving and cut me off because even though they asked, I'm the jerk for actually telling them. They don't want to make the decision independent of how they were raised, I guess. In fairness, I don't know if I could either.
PETA is, obviously, more militant than I am. Conscience can be like that. As always in these meat posts, I refer the reader to Hard To Swallow, which makes these points in a better way.
The difference is that there is some hope that Holder will maintain some level of independence from Obama. Gonzalez viewed himself as the president's lawyer which is absolutely not the role of the attorney general. Holder's career, such as it is, has been made without help from Obama. He's not a longtime friend and employee who feels a personal desire to further Obama's career thereby furthering his own. Gonzalez' DOJ was in the habit of issuing legal opinions basically on demand to shield members of the Bush administration behind the defense "I'm not a lawyer, I acted with advice from counsel that *insert bullshit here* was legal."
Here is a speech by Holder on the rule of law given in June of this year.
I'm opposed to censorship and in favor of academic freedom. So I do object to Holder on that basis, and agree with you that people pinning their highest hopes on Obama will be disappointed. Me, I was just voting against McCain.
I don't mean to dodge responsibility for my post by attributing it to some unnamed source. I guess by "discredit" I don't mean a superficial dismantling of the enemy's motivations. Instead I do mean some kind of intellectual engagement in order to let's say obviate the motivations. Obviating the motivations for terrorism is no small task, and may require changes in policy and practice of USA. It is only by obviating the motivations that terror can be ended, is what I meant to convey. Not solely by exacting literal revenge on the terrorist individuals or even their leaders.
I suspect that there are lots of people of all political persuasions who would rather do the handwaving that you describe.
I see what you mean though: I have tacitly assumed that no rational basis can ever exist for attacking USA, when in fact the USA treats the world as an expense account.
I'm always encouraging girls to consider careers involving mathematics, whether they're especially good at it or not. This is because math ability creates opportunities in a way that many subjects do not.
Career counseling isn't really a simple thing.
No, the problem is that these behaviors are so deeply rooted that no one is willing to acknowledge them when they're pointed out. I submit that competition as a classroom motivational tool alienates girls. I've read at least one study regarding science education and cooperative groups versus competitive ones. Teachers are very intent on competition, and so are parents and therefore so are students. That's not going to change on a wide scale. It's not because no one pointed it out.
Alfie Kohn wrote a book about the detrimental effects of competition called No Contest, but his unwillingness to give any background on himself makes his ideas easy to dismiss since he has no credentials. People who don't already (on some level) agree with him translate this into a lack of credibility.
One more thing is that we must not restrict ourselves to thinking that only male teachers and students create gender inequities in classrooms. Female elementary school teachers who give girls answers and force boys to figure things out for themselves are doing the same disservice.
I'm trying to remember who said this first: the object of analyzing motivations behind 9/11 is a very good one. Because without that understanding, all you can do is kill the enemy and make them martyrs. This can draw more people to the "cause", and if you're really unlucky, acts to confirm the enemy's propoganda about us. I say unlucky because who knows whether martyrs will serve as a deterrent or a rallying point? Someone skilled at propoganda will find a way to turn martyrdom to his advantage. If you instead understand the theoretical basis for the attacks, you can discredit the theory. This acts to decrease support for the "cause," reducing the likelihood that attacks will happen in the future. The ideal outcome of a war on terror is that the insane ideologues such as bin Laden will only be talking to themselves and will lack the resources and manpower to do anything with all the hate.
People get caught up in revenge fantasy and lose sight of the big picture. Anyone seeking to understand the terrorists' stated positions is doing so to dismantle it.
Again, this analysis isn't my own original thought, but something I read. If anyone has a source, I'd appreciate the citation.
I imagine everyone here knows New Voyages already. If you haven't seen it, you should watch some. James Cawley gets it.
My favorite of the TOS movies was 6 because the enemy overestimated Kirk's racism and underestimated his intelligence and dedication to duty. The turning point was when, instead of starting the war he was expected to start, he said "signal our surrender." In TOS, Kirk was never a warmonger or really prone to violence at all. Not a hothead. Maybe these people watched the old series and noticed all the fights and shit without noticing that Kirk didn't start hardly any of it. And when he did start a fight, it was more to prove a point or to keep someone else from having to fight. Kirk doesn't like losing. Anything. That's the fundamental truth of Kirk.
I don't expect this movie to show an old, wise, thoughtful Kirk, but let's not turn him into a stereotypic cocky youth.
Can you elaborate? The most immediate example for me was how we don't allow students to resolve their conflicts by fighting in school. Instead a bunch of government officials (i.e. me, or an administrator, the police, etc) breaks up the fight and imposes consequences on the involved parties from the outside.
In his book Good to Great, Jim Collins cites Circuit City as a company that went from being a pretty good company to being a great one under a great leader. Without subjecting you to too much of the book, Circuit City identified ways to spread as quickly as possible while maintaining a "consistent" customer experience. Stamping out stores across the land with the highest efficiency. The "comparison company" in the same field was Silo which didn't make the leap. The book isn't that old. Did the leadership at CC change to take it in a new direction, or was it always on this path?
Personally, after getting ignored/treated as nonwhite (I'm nonwhite) a few times, I never went back.
There was a dialog in Planescape that notified me that it wasn't going to be an ordinary RPG. Without giving too much away, there were two identical dialog options, but one of them said "lie" in front. So the game wanted you to decide whether you believed what you were about to say or just said it to see what would happen. It's a position that gamers find themselves in often, but this game put your character in that position instead. And there were some subtle results for your decision later. Honestly, it's not even in the same league as the other D&D Forgotten Realms game that share its Infinity Engine (Baldur's Gate, etc.)
I was able to find it on Gametap I think last year, and I think you'll find a number of other games to suit your tastes there too. The Incredible Machine and the recent Sam and Max games might be good.
I'm interested to know how you feel about this.
For more insight into voting systems and game theory, read Gaming the Vote by William Poundstone.
I presume you have extensive experience with private schools on which to base this analysis? Or are you just spouting something you heard elsewhere, and thought sounded good? I thought so. The reality is that some private schools do that, but not all and not, IMO, the best ones.
The local white-flight school sends us their rejected students sometime around January of each year. The students get a letter saying that they won't pass the current year and good luck in their future endeavors. I read it once a few years ago, maybe it's changed. The letter doesn't go into details, but sometimes these reasons are academic, and sometimes they're disciplinary.
I don't think many generalizations can be made about what goes on inside private schools. I won't go so far as to say that all private schools have this same mechanism for getting rid of students who won't guarantee their positive results. However, it is certainly true that all private schools have this ability, and no public schools do. Here at least, even "expulsion" means the students are sent to an alternative education program for 45 days then they come back to me.
No one who brings up other countries in the discussion uses any that have mandatory public education.
If you read about the Comerica deal at the hellgate site, they present it as financing similar to what filmmakers get. I know nothing about how to finance a computer game, so maybe that's code for "and now they're looking for someone to buy it.
If McCain were running the kind of campaign that reached across the aisle to people like me, he'd be doing better. Before the primaries were over, I had no problem with McCain and even thought of him as a Republican I wouldn't object to and might even vote for. I'm about as far left as it gets, but integrity and honesty are unrelated to ideology and that's what I respected about McCain. I won't rehash McCain's reversals and embrace of the GOP. Suffice to say that I disagree fundamentally with many of their views. McCain's choice of Gov. Palin surprised me because I'd never heard of her, and then she revealed herself to be all politician and no policy. In recent weeks the campaign has turned very ugly, and the McCain campaign's refusal to repudiate the racists and fearmongers makes me think this is a different man than he used to be, or maybe just different than I thought. Either amounts to the same thing.
Obama doesn't thrill me the way he does with a lot of people who are energized by his powerful public speaking. I'll probably vote for him, mostly against McCain, which makes me a little sad.
Your boss needs you as much as you need him or her; that is the nature of your relationship, and why you are paid money to show up and do your job. It costs money to lose an employee. If a business turns over employees fast enough for long enough, it will die.
This becomes more wrong with the passage of time. Because the beginning of what you say is true, companies have an interest only in minimizing the cost of a lost employee by making them as easy to replace as possible. The cheap example is McDonald's. Once upon a time if you were a cook at McDonald's you had to be able to cook at some level of proficiency. To ensure a consistent product and to reduce the qualifications (and therefore pay) for their cooks, McDonald's automates the cooking process so that the only qualification is to physically be able to do the job. Managers at McDonald's get their instructions on a paper tape from a central location. Managers are less easily replaced but still very easy.
The effect of this is visible when you consider how scheduling is done. No consideration needs to be given to employee availability, because there's no terrible loss if someone leaves or has to be let go because they can't make their scheduled times. This effect crosses many lines of work. It's happened to social workers, who are now PPW's and CFSW's. Decision-making power is moved higher up the hierarchy, allowing those people to be paid more, the lower levels to be paid less, and to be replaced much more easily.
Read All The Livelong Day and The Electronic Sweatshop both by Barbara Garson.