Liberté, égalité, fraternité

In honor of Bastille Day, which was yesterday, I give you this report: the French are more productive than we are.

Okay, the report and the study are two years old, but still.

I know American employers will never consider a way of working that doesn’t demand that employees devote all the hours God sends to serving the corporate profit, but a girl can dream.

Vive la République!

P.S. Désolée about the soccer loss.

Ferreting out the, er, ferrets

Further to the ongoing story of the Dark Lord of Yellow Journalism (Rupert Murdoch, in case you’re in some sort of paperless, broadcast-free Internet void), we have something positive that has emerged, a new phrase to seize upon and use on every conceivable occasion: “reverse ferret!”

The Christian Science Monitor reports that Kelvin Mackenzie, while editor of The Sun (a News Corp rag most famous for photos of bare-breasted women on Page 3 of every issue), goaded his reporters to “put a ferret up the trousers” of personages of high station—meaning, take actions that caused the sort of consternation you might experience were a small, long, wiggly weasel turned loose in your knickers. You know what I mean.

Once the target started sputtering and doing that ferrety dance, then there was well and truly something to report.

However, Mackenzie was apparently sensitive to the reactions of the tab’s audience. Whenever the ferret-induced story caused a ruction amongst the readers (or threatened to land the paper in court), he would order reporters to “reverse ferret”.

As the Monitor reports, this was “a signal to his furry troops to exit the victim’s pants-leg, post-haste.”

Okay, you just can’t make this stuff up. But you certainly can exploit the hell out of it. So I fully intend to find ways to insert the phrase “reverse ferret” into every conversation I can.

Join the revolution, folks. Weasels of the world unite! Charge the chinos!

Who's your daddy?

One thing that strikes me about the latest on News Corp. No, not the allegations of “illegal phone hacking” (implying there’s legal hacking) against The News of the World. Or the spread of scandal to other NC rags in Britain.

It’s Rupert Murdoch himself.

Take a look at any recent photo of the spiritual heir to William Randolph Hearst. Then compare to any pic of the Emperor Palpatine, ruler of the Evil Empire.

If they are not one and the same person then they were at the very least separated at birth.

Curiouser & curiouser

The economic news last week was mixed. Reuters swore that things are swell because hiring improved in June—157,000 new jobs, as opposed to 36,000 in May. Meanwhile the WSJ claimed that only 18,000 jobs were added last month, and things are pretty much a mess.

I tend to believe the Journal. Even if Reuters’ numbers are accurate, they don’t take into account the fact that governments at every level are dumping employees like toxic waste. Moreover, as the WSJ reports, both hours and wages for those actually working are headed south.

That was borne out to me when I came across this job posting. Minimum of a bachelor’s degree to clean toilets for $10/hour…part time.

Now, I understand that working around historical artifacts, even with a mop and dustcloth, is not the same as swabbing out a McDonald’s. Ergo the degree. (Although I doubt that my fellow master’s students in the history department at William & Mary who spent two years getting an MA in Museum Studies had this kind of thing in mind.)

But that being the case, what’s up with the barely-more-than-minimum-wage?

The economy is just whacked, that’s all. When hotshot hedge-fund managers rake in millions for bogus deals that result in ruining individuals and institutions alike, and the folks at McDonald’s and the Woodrow Wilson House make $10/hour part-time and without benefits. Then we’ve all fallen down the rabbit hole.

And Reuters has definitely tippled at the Drink Me bottle.

Cause for hope

This past weekend gave major cause for celebrating humankind. Space Shuttle Atlantis launched after only a minor hesitation—the final shuttle mission of a program that began nearly 30 years ago. And the Republic of South Sudan has joined the comity of nations.

I listened to the launch process Friday morning. My breath caught when the countdown was halted at just over 30 seconds. In the brief moments they took to resume, I flashed to a morning in January, 1986. I’d just got home from a run on the beach and was getting ready to do laundry when my friend Katherine called me and told me to turn on the TV.

Challenger had just exploded on launch. By 1986 shuttle launches were so “common” that a lot of news outlets didn’t cover them. But KNBC’s Kent Shocknek did, every one, and I recall him commenting on the burst of flame, “This isn’t right.” I was transfixed by the images (the way I would be 15 years later, watching the fall of the Twin Towers on British television) and felt gutted.

So I was relieved when NASA resumed the countdown Friday, even though I was thinking O-rings.

It’s sad that this is the last mission—we’re not stopping the space program, but for the foreseeable future our astronauts will be passengers on Russian space craft.

The thing about shuttle missions is how joyful their crews are—look at any photograph of any shuttle crew and their smiles will power a small city. It’s not that they don’t work extraordinarily hard to get on the mission and then to execute it; it’s that they clearly love what they’re doing. Think about your own job and compare.

(A shuttle sidebar: I watched Columbia land at Edwards Air Force Base in November 1982. It was a first date—a colleague of mine had spent the entire week informing me that he was going to drive up to Palmdale to watch the shuttle land. I kept telling him to enjoy it. Finally, around Thursday, he plaintively asked, “Don’t you want to come, too?” “I’ve not been invited.” Well, he did invite me, and we did watch the landing from about a different time zone. But it was fabulous to watch it kind of drift in for the approach. We also went to a desert wildlife center, where I was hugged by a reticulated python; but that’s another story.)

Atlantis has docked at the international space station and will head back to earth shortly. & we’ll move on to other modes of exploration. But this was a beautiful thing.

And so was the independence of South Sudan. Listen to Saturday’s NPR interview with Scott Simon and Ofeibea Quist-Arcton—she was in Juba covering the public celebration. Quist-Arcton has reported on so many stories from Africa that are truly dreadful; it’s a joy to listen to the laughter in her voice as she tells Simon about the newest nation.

It’s when she describes the flag that I really caught my breath: green for the fertile land, red for blood (more than two million killed in 20 years of civil war), black and “a golden star of freedom leading the nation.”

South Sudan has been one of the horror stories Quist-Arcton has covered over the years, and it certainly has a tough row to hoe moving forward. But on Saturday, for one brief day, there was nothing but joy.

So, well done, Atlantis and well done, South Sudan.  

Packaged departures

I’m not saying there’s a connection to me causing five layers of management to approve blowing nearly $18 of corporate funds on a computer mouse for me, but there is a raftload of people leaving the company permanently. Today the air in the cubicle/mushroom-farm around me was full of the sounds of packing tape being peeled off rolls and sealing up moving cartons.

Also, there were corks popping after people got back from a three-hour lunch.

Actually, the deal is that, back when the CEO announced that the company was, ah, not performing to expectations, part of the “fix” was to shed jobs like a python does skin. And in addition to unnumbered layoffs (still TBD), they offered retirement packages to (apparently) every employee with a combination of age plus years with the company that equals 65. And a lot of them have accepted the offer.

Not a lot of lead time on the leaving, either: the head of the engineering group on the product I’m working on announced to the team on the 27^th that he was “taking the package”. And this past Tuesday he told us that today is his final day.

And as of Tuesday he had no idea who would be stepping into his management shoes. All he knew was that the company had sent him a shipping label (he works remotely) to return his computer gear today.

One of my product management colleagues, barely 30 but a ten-year veteran with the company, seems to think that anyone who wouldn’t take a package and get out is an idiot. Since he otherwise is a person of extraordinarily positive attitude, I need to find out more about this.

Meanwhile, I think I’ll take a little sweep around the cube farm. See if anyone’s left a monitor or keyboard lying unattended.

¡Aí, Chihuahua!

I’m not sure whether this is animal abuse or what; have a look for yourself.

I will say, however, that when I was a kid my family had a Chihuahua mix that used to howl at “Malagueña Salerosa”. That was the only song she ever paid any attention to, but it got so that when the guitar intro came on, she recognized it. She’d stop whatever she was doing, cock her head & wait for the falsetto part. Then she would howl as though she were a great, big soulful old hound.

Not a word of a lie, here, mis amigos. 

Still—the best part of the video is the very last part. I hope that perro either got a great big treat or else peed on those shoes. 

Are you a manager or are you a mouse?

In case you’re wondering why US corporations seem sludgy and slow despite all the posturing and demands for taxpayer largesse over the past few years, let me tell you about my request for a mouse.

Yes—I requested a mouse. Because when I started this gig with one of the giants of telecoms, I was issued…a single, clapped-out laptop. (And it took more than a week for me to get set up in all required internal systems; but that’s a different kvetch.) No monitor, no external keyboard, not even a mouse stirred at my cubicle desk.

When I asked the jumped-up onsite “administrator” (read: coordinator) for my agency, she informed me that there was “no budget” for such accoutrements. This was her way of telling me, “we don’t want to spend anything on giving you basic tools for getting your job done; we’d rather keep every nickel possible, so just leave me alone.”

However, there was one conference call where I was walking colleagues through a lengthy document with a raft of tables in it, and I drove them completely up the wall because the finger pad on this POS laptop made scrolling impossible and the screen view kept jumping to different places in the document.

Following that painful experience one of those colleagues told me he would order me a mouse. Which he did—invited me to his cube to pick out what I wanted and he placed the order. Today he sent me the order trail from the procurement system.

And here’s where corporate America just swirls down the drain:

There are five levels of approval on the request for a $17.93 mouse. It’s not even a wireless mouse. I’m surprised they didn’t run it up to the CEO for check-off.

I know times are tough; and; two months ago said CEO announced that, to make up for a less-than-stellar quarter, the company will cut costs (CEO-speak for cut jobs) and blah, blah, blah. But to require five tiers of approval for a bleeding mouse is absolutely beyond the beyond.

I only hope the shareholders appreciate all the money saved by involving so many managers in the ordering of a tiny productivity tool.

The selfishest souls

Yesterday being Independence Day, I was thinking further about Congress, & the delta between what was envisioned more than 200 years ago & what we have today.

I do not venerate the Founding Fathers—they were human males with plenty of flaws; womanizers, failed businessmen, political manipulators & slaveholders as well as principled, thoughtful idealists. When they made the considered decision to overthrow British rule & build a new nation, they had to balance a lot of differing & conflicting commercial & philosophical interests.

They struggled with these issues & our first government, a confederation, didn’t work because all those interests kept the states from playing nicely with each other. (The Confederacy of 1861-1865 had exactly the same problem, which is why, for example, Georgia sent supplies to its own troops, but not to those of North Carolina or Tennessee. You may recall how that turned out.)

But the FF kept working on it, determined that this new government would succeed. This required that the representatives of each state sacrifice some interests toward the greater good of the nation.

The very location of the nation’s capital is an example of this: the Constitution stated that there should be a national capital separate from & therefore not owing to any individual state, but there was major disagreement about where that capital should be. The northern states wanted it in the north, the southern states in the south. Each region was afraid that the other would exercise undue influence over the national government—the north favoring industry, the south agrarian pursuits.

This may seem kind of petty these days, but it was serious business then. The north particularly objected to the capital being so close to the institution of slavery, & it was a contentious discussion.

Finally Alexander Hamilton, Thomas Jefferson & James Madison worked out the Compromise of 1790: northern states agreed to locate the capital along the Potomac River, on land donated by Maryland & Virginia, while the southern states signed up to retire all state war debts—by that time, mostly from the north. The north compromised on ideology, the south on finances.


Keep in mind that Hamilton & Jefferson couldn't agree on much of anything & entertained a cordial loathing for each other & their political philosophies. & yet they came to an agreement on this very contentious decision.

Now—can you imagine the Congressmorons currently sat in the Capitol, whining about having to work on the holiday, putting the common good ahead of their own special interests for anything short of someone holding an NRA-approved gun to their collective overcoiffed heads?

Sadly, I cannot.

& I cannot imagine the Founding Fathers ever imagined the Congress they put together with such care would become so self-serving & useless.

The native criminal class

As we celebrate the 235^th anniversary of driving the independence stake into the ground, with the issues of nearly ten years of two wars, the economy in a morass & a world to which we’re supposed to be the shining beacon of democratic hope, here’s what our national legislative branch is doing: squabbling about whether or not to pass bills that have no redeeming social value whatsoever.

I want to be positive—I do. With all our problems we are an amazing experiment in the belief that people of good will can in fact come together to create and live by reasonable laws, & thrive in the process. I come from the generation that really believed in that & it hurts me to feel the hollowness of that hope.

But I swear—every year our Congressmorons become more venal & petty than I’d thought humanly possible. Every year they bear out the truth of Mark Twain’s comment that they possess “…the smallest minds & the selfishest souls & the cowardliest hearts that God makes.”

I so want the nation to rise up & bury them in this message: grow the hell up. But they'd just find a way to misrepresent it.