Insane and inept. You have to respect that America is the land of opportunity and any body can grow up to be president, but…please don’t feed the wackos!
Bribery. How many times have we seen official getting caught taking bribes? Enough to ask “Are you stupid or what?”
More Bribes. Speaking of, “Are you stupid or what”. Here’s our friend Gov. Rod Blagojevich getting caught red handed taking bribes for creating legislation for special interests.
Inept. The SEC is under fire for not figuring out Bernard Madoff’s $50 billion Ponsi scheme. It only took ten years and a spontaneous confession.
Congress for sale. In this case some rich special interest groups are applying pressure via large donations to block legislation.
I’m an engineer. I’m proud to be an engineer. We make and design the things around you. Your heater – Designed by an engineer. Your car – Designed by an engineer. That trusty iPod, again, designed by an engineer. Your computer…you get the point. Do you know the name of the engineer who designed your sound system? No, of course not. How many famous engineers can you name? Not many I’d guess. Thomas Edison? Absolutely. Einstein? Nope, Einstein was a scientist. The difference? Scientist discover the concepts. Engineers apply those concepts. We take the ideas and create things in new and different ways. How many patents does Einstein have? None. How many does Edison have? 1093! Einstein was very important and obviously brilliant but how does he affect your day to day life?
Why haven’t people heard of most engineers? My guess? Our skills aren’t common to most people and we don’t bargain with our expertise. Most men and growing amount of women in the US can tell you a lot about sports heroes. They can relate to the sports they watch and may even as children had aspirations to be out there on that field. The desire to be “the popular one” is pretty strong, men and women alike both watch celebrities. Do men and women empathize with engineers? I know the pull to know what the thermal gradient around a CPU is pretty strong, but…it’s just not a hit at parties.
The solution? The damage has been done to this generation but we can encourage the next. Don’t encourage your kids to pick on the smart kid. Tell them it’s important to take math and science. Lastly, don’t encourage news reports like these.
The police can’t confiscate property on a whim. If the property isn’t illegal or used in the commission of a crime they can ask but not demand. The police are agents of the state and work for you. They are not all powerful and need to work within the same laws as the rest of us.
Sarah Palin. Thank goodness we didn’t get saddled with this product of the media.
Dynasties. How is it that certain families are better suited to be in charge than others? Aren’t monarchies un-American?
2 ) We don’t actually need an attorney general do we? Republican members of the Senate Judiciary Committee are asking for an additional week to confirm Eric Holder as the Attorney General. Why – because the other guys did it last time. Grow up!
3 ) Placing party status before the wishes of the people. Pat Buchanan is bemoaning the decline of the Republican Party. Pat…the people have spoken and they’re not listening to the Republicans anymore. Time to start listening to the people, goof.
5 ) Indefinite detention – Many in congress believe we should have the power of indefinite detention. “We hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” These words written in the Declaration of Independence seem to apply here. All though it has been decided by the US courts that foreign detainees don’t have the right same rights as Americans, but…in the spirit of Americanism let’s set some guidelines and timetables for the release of foreign prisoners.
I’ve been writing way too many serious entries lately, it’s time for something a little more personal. Who are your idols and role models? Heres mine: I won’t include family or friends on here. They might be reading and I don’t want to give them a swelled head.
Al Oerter – Al won the Olympic Gold medal four times in a row, was the underdog three times, set a world record twice and was injured in two of those Olympics. Rarely has there been an athlete that shows such mastery but at the same time overcomes such adversity. Also, Al was a class act. He was well spoken family man that rarely had a bad word to say about anyone. He was never arrested or brought undo attention to himself. Unfortunately, Al passed away last year of heart disease. He had the opportunity for a transplant but turned it down so younger candidates could use the heart longer. Mr. Rogers – The real deal. What you saw is what you got. He was never known to utter a bad word about anyone and truly loved all people. As an ordained minister he was pressed about homosexuals and replied, “God loves you just the way you are”. He was so well respected that when someone stole his car the thief heard who’s it was and returned it – with an apology! Abe Lincoln – An obvious choice that everyone has read about. He’s my idol because he came from little means, educated himself and rose through hard work to be the president. As a man he had the personal integrity that allowed him to fight the bloodiest war in US history for all the right reasons and never forgot that he was fighting against fellow Americans. Mahatma Gandhi and Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. – True men of peace. I idolized them because they practiced what they taught. Their non-violent protests showed the world that change doesn’t have to come through violence and a humble word can have much strength. Who else do you know that has a symbol on a national flag or a US Holiday named after them. All without firing a shot! Gandhi – “ I object to violence because when it appears to do good, the good is only temporary; the evil it does is permanent.” Nikola Tesla – Tesla is underrated as scientist go. Chiefly known as the father of AC current his contribution go well beyond that. The inventor of wireless communication? Marconi? Wrong! Nikola Tesla! Tesla held patents for alternating current electric power (AC) systems, polyphase power distribution systems and the AC motor. In other words he’s the guy who decided what kind of electricity you use and how it’s sent to your house. I love this guy because he always had total faith in his ideas and never let anyone tell him something was imposible.
It’s probably not a big shocker that I don’t care for the large corporation workplace. The stress can be unbearable and the release mechanisms are few and far between. While working for one of these monolithic corporations I noticed that there are two kinds of stress in the work place, short term and long term.
Short term is the kind of stress you get in the manufacturing work place. Essentially it’s caused by trying to beat the clock. Examples of this would be fast food, assembly and repair. Places where you have a specific task that you are trying to do in the shortest possible time. I encountered this when I worked in computer manufacturing. There was a lot of pressure to make as many computers in a day as possible. The nice thing about this type of job is that hard work and success is easily benchmarked and when the whistle blows your work is complete.
Long term stress is the kind of stress you get from long term work. This involves long term projects and work that requires a long time to complete. This type of stress is commonly found among professionals like business people and engineers. This type of stress is cause by always having something that needs to be done. While I was in engineering this was the case with new product introductions. The process takes months and was never complete until the product was launched in the marketplace. When you left everyday there was always things left to do.
While in manufacturing I took advantage of an internal corporate class and attended a workshop on stress management. I was not impressed. The premise of the class was that when you get stressed stop doing what you’re working on and visualize a happy place. I’m not kidding! Uhhhm, isn’t that the old stop and count to ten trick? Thanks, I pretty much came to terms with that as a second grader. Being the watcher that I am I DID notice something odd about the folks taking the class. We were all from the same workplace! We all came from computer manufacturing. Hmmm, I think maybe the problem wasn’t me being high strung. Maybe, just maybe, the workplace was being pushed too hard? Eventually, I promoted out of manufacturing but I did learn a valuable lesson. No, not to seek my happy place! I learned to fix the cause of the stress not react to it.
To lighten the mood, I found the very funny clips.
OK. I’m at a loss to come up with a topic for this entry, so I’ll just wing it. How often do watch the news and feel worse for the experience? Lemme see, what did it say…some whack job has kidnapped and killed a child, a parent has killed their own child, you and your bad habits have caused global warming and we’re all going to die, you’re obese and the government is going to regulate X food product, an athlete has been arrested for a violent crime, a former athlete has been arrested for a violent crime, our president and those that work for him as well as congress have decided to take more of your civil liberties away, the Christian right wants to force their beliefs on me, Muslim extremist killed X people today and will kill the rest of the non-Muslim population when they get to it, there was a large outbreak of salmonella, illegal immigrants cause cancer, the economy is the worse in X years, the economy will get worse and stay that way for many years, drunk driving is at it’s worse ever, US students are at their stupidest, the world hates the US, someone shot at Israel and Israel killed a couple hundred in response, the Russians are getting scary, Lynsay Lohan or Paris Hilton have done something criminal and stupid, Pirates are attacking ships off Africa, and …that’s about it. My response? I turned off the TV.
Here’s my take on it – Stop glorifying the talentless affluent, stop shooting at each other, stop blowing yourself up, give very long prison sentences to those that endanger life for profit, park an aircraft carrier off Sierra Leone and blow the pirates out of the ocean, stop driving drunk, mind your own business, they’ll always be wackos – don’t be one, and…illegal immigrants don’t cause cancer. Really, they don’t.
By the way, if really want to watch some athletes, check this link out. At least these guys have heart…and probably haven’t committed a violent crime. Athletes with heart
Now I’m going to read a comic book. At least their problems are simple.
Hello again. I took a couple of weeks off to celebrate the holidays and just be lazy. Thank you for everyone that has come and checked out this blog, I appreciate you taking the time. Please feel free to make a comment or two, I appreciate the responses and it gives me an idea what you want to hear about.
Immoral business practices? Why is it that we excuse foreign manufactures for things we see as improper? I used to part of manufacturing computers at HP. When I first started with HP the computers were made at HP using both contract and HP workers. At the time the use of contract workers was a new thing for the company and was considered “cutting edge supply chain”. After about three years “the business folks” thought it would be cheaper to have someone else make our computers domestically. I was not affected because I was promoted to engineering shortly before the closure and the engineers were kept on to work with the new manufacturer. At the time I just did not understand why this new manufacturer would be any cheaper. I’m a little slow sometimes. It seemed to me that it would be more expensive. After all, they needed and used the same number of folks for manufacturing and engineering and we kept an engineering staff and a large amount of business folks as well. Were they just better than us? Nope! What happened was that the new manufacturer’s employees were cheaper. HP was required by internal regulations to pay their employees better, give their employees insurance, guaranteed work weeks, stock options…ect. By tradition HP guaranteed all their employees a “competive wage” and a certain amount of job security. The feeling was that the worker should be rewarded for their hard work and these were part of those rewards. So…HP felt that their workers justly should be rewarded for their work but paid someone else to make their computers and not honor the workers? Huh? So it’s ok to pay someone else knowing they will not live up to your ethical standards? Isn’t that abuse in absentia? Hmm…it must be alright if it keeps us competitive.
Several years and a merger later it was decided by “the business folks” that a domestic contract manufacturer was too expensive. The solution? Let’s move manufacturing and component purchasing to Mexico and Asia. Wait! That’s stupid, lets move IT and internal data base support to those very nice people in India to. OK, this time I figured it out quick. The folks in China and Mexico are just plain cheaper to employ than US workers. Why? They work for pennies an hour, have no insurance or benefits and their work place overhead is cheaper as well. Why? In the US we have all those pesky building, OSHA, and environmental regulations. Well…. Why do we have these things? Minimum wage – society says everyman deserves a livable wage. Insurance – Again society tells us that a decent society provides access to health care. Building codes – our pesky morality places value on human life and health. Osha – same. Environmental regulation – same. In all fairness HP is hardly the only ones that have outsourced product assembly. This method is the norm not the exception
Let’s take a step back and look at this again. As a society we’ve decided that every man and women deserves a livable wage, health insurance and a safe working place but we’re willing to pay someone who we know won’t? Maybe, I’m being harsh. If we pay someone to do work for us, do we have the right to tell them what is ethically acceptable or not? They are after all sovereign countries and have a culture and history all their own. Apparently we do. Remember a few years ago when Kathy Lee Gifford caught flack for child labor in the making her clothing line? We were outraged and stigmatized Kathy Lee and boycotted her clothing line. So we feel it’s alright to dictate to a foreign manufacturer if they treat children poorly but we feel it’s alright not to impose our standards if they use adults? I’m sorry, to me it just doesn’t add up. It seems that that we are willing to trade our ethics and sense of right and wrong for a dollar. I guess it’s even easier if we don’t have to see them do it.
The solution? Working on it…
People don’t read books – says Steve Jobs. He was referring to the business model of the kindle. He went on to say that the kindle won’t be a big success because the premise, electronic books, is flawed in that people just aren’t reading books. That makes sense, you can’t sell an electronic version of a product that’s not selling to begin with. Personally I think St. Steve jobs likes to hear himself talk. In my opinion Jeff Bezos would be in a better position to judge book sales. He has sold a few books in time. I own a kindle and I think it’s great but admittedly I’ve never met anyone else who owns one. It is, by the way, not just a book reader, you can subscribe to magazines and newspapers as well.
Do people read books? Not as much as they did in previous generations. I don’t have any figures to back that up, it’s just the popular sentiment. Why is America reading fewer books? I don’t think it’s a decline in intellect. I do think it’s a matter of more choices and a faster workplace and life style.
People today have more options to use the time on. Compared with 20 years ago we have much better television. Television that has theatre like sound, high definition, bigger screens, video recording, unedited movies readily available, more networks and channels for everything. We also have the internet which provides us with information on demand, MMO games, regular games, social networking sites and blogs. All of these things at our finger tips and we can do them night or day. A reason I have heard often for not reading books is, “I read all day long at work, I want a break”. Guilty as charged, I read all day as well and often don’t feel like reading for fun. The culprit – faster communication. We can communicate and trade information instantly with others regardless of distance. This has led to much more information taken in over a business day.
All of this adds up to information overload and a short attention span. Books are a slow pleasure. After several hundred pages a setting has been set, characters have been developed and a story has been played out to the tune of several hours. In a movie or TV show you can have a story told to you beginning to end in one sitting and much of the thinking has been done for you. On the computer you can be transported through time and space to adventure or talk to groups of friends, post pieces of yourself for your friends or just read about your interest du jour. Gratification is just much faster and easier on the brain in today’s faster paced world and the slow pleasure of a book has a hard time competing.
With all that said… I still read books. The depth of the stories are just better. I guess I’m just contrary.
John Walsh, long time host of America’s Most Wanted, was officially notified yesterday that Ottis Toole was responsible for the abduction and murder of his son Adam Walsh, murdered in 1981. Otis Toole was the crime partner and homosexual lover of infamous serial killer Henry Lee Lucas. He twice confessed to the crime and then recanted and died in prison in 1996.Good job Police Chief Chad Wagner for making the effort to bring this case to a close. The case laid cold until Chief Wagner took over as Police Chief one year ago and vowed to bring the case to a close. A man of his word. Thank you for the integrity you’ve shown as a public servant and the compassion you’ve shown toward the Walsh family.
Hearts out to John Walsh and his wife Reve on the news, it was too long coming.
Don’t think too long on this though, you’ll just get angry that sick freaks like Ottis Toole are allowed to prowl the streets. In todays world of 24hour a day gloom and doom news it’s easy to be scared and “Why is the world getting worse? Why don’t we do something about this?”. I can’t speak to crime stats but I believe people do care and are making the world safer for kids. Since Adam Walsh was abducted our citizens and legislators have acted and introduced several major programs aimed at helping us protect our kids, identify threats and stiffen the penalties for abducting and abusing children in the US.
This act strengthens many existing laws and introduces several more.
The Highpoints –
A new law to prosecute in cases of sexual conspiracy with a minor. This involves several adults involvolved togetherin abusing 3 or more children.
Use of the internet to distribute rape date drugs
Requirement to document the name, age and identifying information for performers in the sex industry(porn). Also requires information by posted about the location of these records.
Penalties in not registering as a sex offender
Changes to mandatory minimums for sex crimes involving children
Changes to the criteria for bail. Allows courts to refuse bail to suspected offenders.
Changes circumstances in which the government can collect DNA. Adds “in custody” and additional crimes that DNA can be collected from the already incarcerated.
Upon release law enforcement may request that a released offender be subject to searches of person and property at any time without needing a warrant
Larger damages to be awarded to victims in civil actions
Megan’s law (1994 Jacob Wetterling Act). http://www.megans-law.net/ has a history of Megan’s law as well as links to the Megan’s Law programs in all 50 States.
Megans law was enacted after a rapist already on the sex offenders registry raped again. At that time the sex offender registry was only available to law enforcement. This act requires that personal information about an offender be available to the public. This includes name, location and offence(s).
Amber Alert. http://amberalert.com/ has an explanation of the system as well as links to your particular state
“The AMBER ALERT Program originated in Texas in 1996 after 9-year-old Amber Hagerman was abducted and murdered. Texas organized a system that encouraged law enforcement agencies to alert the media following confirmed child abduction.” The Amber Alert has now spread to all 50 states. This program lets law enforcement announce the recent disappearance of a child over the radio and television shortly after the abduction has been reported. This gives citizens information about the kidnapper so they may report possible suspects to the police.
Posted by carpcatcher 
MyBossIsAnIdiot Blog 
Five Reasons to Hate Politicians 1/27
January 28, 2009Insane and inept. You have to respect that America is the land of opportunity and any body can grow up to be president, but…please don’t feed the wackos!
Bribery. How many times have we seen official getting caught taking bribes? Enough to ask “Are you stupid or what?”
More Bribes. Speaking of, “Are you stupid or what”. Here’s our friend Gov. Rod Blagojevich getting caught red handed taking bribes for creating legislation for special interests.
Inept. The SEC is under fire for not figuring out Bernard Madoff’s $50 billion Ponsi scheme. It only took ten years and a spontaneous confession.
Congress for sale. In this case some rich special interest groups are applying pressure via large donations to block legislation.
Brought to you by MyBossIsAnIdiot.com and Mike Kalkwarf