Anesthetic

Wow.... I cannot believe some of the stuff people say on Blogger....

You'd fire someone from expressing their freedom of speech?

So, only USians who are white and speak english are allowed the full benefit of rights?

Man, it is no wonder most of the world things USians are a bunch of backwards, racist, uneducated, bellybutton-gazing louts.

Thank god for Canada, its moderation and its non-melting pot mentality.

Canada rocks.

Oh. About the "USian" thing. Canada and the US make up north America. As such, it is incorrect to call USians Americans because such terminology serves to lump us all together and we - non-USians- in no way want to share that category.

More on Work

I have a degree! It’s a replacement for an actual personality

I got a great comment yesterday from an astute reader, following my post on the job situation in my city and wage discrepancies and all that.

I have lots of schooling but, frankly, the stuff that has made me successful (and that’s a matter of some discussion, depending on who you’re talking about me to…) isn’t the book learning I have, but the social skills, need to read, and my obsession with connecting people to resources they need to get forward.

My reader, Wendylicious (who is young, for the record), reinforced my dislike of focus on credentials over ability and experience. Her key points, with which I greatly agree, are that some things are much more important in terms of success than others: things like “…brains, guts, and the willingness to work hard to get ahead…,” extensive reading; pursuing personal interests; a desire to continually self-improve; a willingness to take a job that will provide lots of forward and upward mobility, even though that job might be entry-level.

My reader is likely one of those people who would be bored out of their minds in college, not because they’re not smart or able, but because they have an innate knowledge – they extrapolate from their experiences and use what they learn - and college courses are sometimes pretty much reiteration of things such people just know. Extrapolation means creating a tangent line at the end of the known data and extending it beyond that limit.

What differentiates such people, and I count myself in this group, is that they pay attention to what’s going on around them. They read the paper; they read blogs; they watch the news (and they know Entertainment Tonight is not news); they talk to people, and more importantly, they listen to what people are saying; then, they take this mass of information and apply it to life and work. They don’t ascribe to “That’s just how it is.”

These people remember other people’s names, what those people do, what they like and dislike and WHY; they’re interested in the world they live in. Essentially, they are observers and they’re connected to life on a cellular level. And all this ability, as un-school-learned as it may be, can be a massive benefit to a business or employer. Pick any one of those qualities and apply the requirements of a job to it....

Imagine now, that you have an employee with a great degree but few to none of the above qualities....

And, not to digress (ok, I digress), exactly how many classes did said degree-holder attend and what was their GPA? A person can get a degree without having attended class and with a GPA of 1.8.

What’s sad is that we still live in a culture that celebrates and chases credentials. As my reader points out, an education got from books isn’t everything; lots of educated people are idiots with degrees (that part is me, not my reader, speaking).

I am a huge supporter of education in whatever form it comes in. There are professions that require a person to go to university for sure; I wouldn’t want to be treated by an unschooled doctor or represented by an unaccredited lawyer, for example, BUT I know a few people who aren’t lawyers but who have an excellent grasp of law and legal issues because they’re fascinated with law. And therein lies the key.

If employers would please quit focusing on the paper a potential employee comes with and would hire people on their ability, their interest, their experiences and their determination (and if that person comes with a degree, all the better), most businesses would find they are much more productive and that their employees would stick around longer, because they’re actually interested in the job, not just coming to work so they can afford to live.

Anyone can be taught but attitude, guts, goals and go-get are born.

Thanks Wendy.

WriterWriter

Sing it!

But Mr. Bush, you don’t speak English!

Reprinted from The Globe and Mail
www.globeandmail.com

One-language anthem
What is the US President talking about now???

So, you’re only a citizen of the US if you speak English? The national soul is only English? So what does that mean for MILLIONS of US CITIZENS who were born on US soil or who are naturalised or who have chosen to come to “The Land of The Free?”

What about all those Cajuns who left, persecuted, and came to the Carolinas? Those would be the Acadians - from the maritime region of Canada - who were FRENCH speaking Catholics.

What about all those people who were stolen from Africa and brought to America (thank you, Bob Marley) and who certainly didn't speak English but who certainly became and are now citizens?

What about all the people who come from Korea, China, Japan, Philipines, who are citizens but whose first language is not English? Should they leave?

When are the citizens of the US going to stand up and silence the village idiot that is their President?

Newsflash, Mr. Bush: the US national soul is made up firstly of people who were there long before English speakers were – first nations people. After that, people who came from every corner of the earth – places where people have occasionally never heard English being spoken.

A country's national anthem should at least be sung in the official languages spoken in a given country. In Canada, our anthem is sung in English, French and CREE, all of which are official languages (OK, Cree doesn't have the respect it deserves, but it is one of Canada's major languages regardless).

The US has two official Languages; English and Spanish.

Get on board Mr. President.

Here’s the reprint from the Globe and Mail:
JOHN CHUCKMAN

Hamilton, Ont. -- Re National Anthem Best Sung In English, Bush Declares (April 29):
"One of the important things here is that we not lose our national soul," George Bush said in reacting to a Spanish version of the American national anthem, Nuestro Himno (Our Anthem), which was played on U.S. Hispanic radio and TV stations recently.

…. President Bush reacted with: "I think the national anthem ought to be sung in English, and I think people who want to be a citizen of this country ought to learn English and they ought to learn to sing the national anthem in English."

Canada's anthem has two official versions, French and English, and were a group of immigrants to offer it in Ukrainian or Mandarin, most Canadians would be tickled.

Xenophobia in a land of immigrants should have no place."

Working for it.

There have been some really interesting radio programs on today -- CBC -- about the state of working in Alberta and in Canada.

Lots of conversation about lack of skilled workers and such.

What was missing, at least from the hour I listened to, was a discussion of wages.

As a comparative, my eldest will graduate from her degree in one month. She has spent the last 3 years pursuing her degree and, at the same time, for the last year and a bit, working for a large industrial design firm here. It is a practicum so one cannot expect full time, regular employee wages; however, she makes all of $1 more per hour than do employees of Tim Horton's Donuts, who make $10 per hour at present.

Last Friday night, she was out scrounging for fast food and stopped at Chicken on the Way, where she noticed a Help Wanted sign in the window. Wage? $14 per hour for slinging hash.

So here's my question: why do employers moan and carry on about how hard it is to find employees when there is this huge disconnect between what educated, skilled people make and what Joe Buddy makes at a greasy spoon?

In my five or so years in banking, I met loads of people who not only had a BA in finance, they'd added the Canadian Securities Course to their credentials, meaning they'd spent at least the last five years in full-time school - following 12 in the regular school system. Entry level wages in banks range from $25,000 to $39,000 on a good day. Yet, a person with a 10th grade education can walk into Chicken on the Way and start making $27,000 a year working full time with no education at all.

When my daughter graduates from her degree and becomes full-time staff at the huge, wealthy industrial design firm, she will make $18 per hour, for a grand annual total of $35,000 annual, which is $7700 more than the greasy spoon job but which extra will go to taxes. In effect, she will make as much as she would were she to work at the greasy spoon.

So for all you employers out there, heads up. People don't have loyalty to any company that doesn't respect them. Money isn't everything by any means, but it is a large part of the package.

Crap wages, disrespect for substantial years of education and an unwillingness to do everything to gain, keep and nurture employees are foundational ways to destabilize any business. In the current booming, growing, scortching hot economy, those habits are deadly.

Fly away

I’m going to Scotland!

Well, I finally bit the bullet. I’ve been planning to go to Europe again for about 8 months and have always wanted to go to Scotland but have never made it north – close, once; Newcastle – but not farther than that.

So I’m to Inverness, home of Loch Ness and the fabled monster, Nessie, and also home to Culloden (photo at left here), where the highland clans were destroyed by Bonnie Prince Charlie, who may or may not have been a pawn of the British, who were quite terrified of the Clans and their power.

Thank you very much to Chris O'Byrne for this gorgeous photo (at right) of Urquhart Castle, as seen from a placid Loch Ness.

I’m excited to see my daughter, Alex, who’s an au pair for a family in Inverness, and to see my adopted family in Hook, (On the map here, it is right north of the number 5).

Hook is in the south east of England, about 20 minutes from Stonehenge, and almost entirely at the other end of the island from where Alex is in Inverness.



I’ll be posting photos here when I am back from Scotland so keep an eye out.

WriterWriter.

Harder Next Time?

Canadian Press
Apr. 21, 2006 10:22 AM

RED DEER, AB

Talk about adding insult to injury, dude.

A 20-year-old man who was hit by a train that he didn't hear coming because he had Norwegian heavy-metal music blaring in his headphones now has to pay a $287 ticket for trespassing on Canadian Pacific Railway tracks.

Jesse Maggrah was knocked into the ditch and suffered several broken ribs and scrapes to his head and hands.

On Wednesday, a CPR officer served Maggrah with the ticket as the young man was recovering in hospital.

"This is a double whammy for me," Maggrah said Thursday. "I'm grateful that I'm living, but I'm not grateful that I've got to pay this ticket. I'm ticked off about it."

The ticket was issued under the Alberta Petty Trespassing Act. Railway police tend to issue warnings about trespassing, but in this case they decided a further deterrent was needed, said CPR spokesman Ed Greenberg.

Officers didn't, however, seek the stiffest penalty. If charged under the federal Railway Act, a trespasser could be fined up to $10,000 or receive six months in jail.

Maggrah said he'll pay the fine.

"I don't want to take it to court and all that crap, so I'll just pay it," he said.

What? This guy's pissed because he was STUPID? Who walks on the train tracks anyway, and who does it with headphones on? I'm thinking a small fine is the least of his worries considering he's alive, not on life support, not maimed, not damaged (ok, maybe from some time before), not missing limbs and has his beautiful face still intact.

Here, for any of you who might try this 'at home,' are the rules.
Don't wear headphones whilst walking on train tracks.
Don't turn the sound up so far you can't hear a train wistle! They're really loud for a reason
Don't turn the sound up becuase Apple says it's bad for you.
Don't be STUPID.

Thanks to Stantec in Calgary for the photo

So there's been this huge issue in my city -- cat licensing. Lots for and lots against and all manner of good, bad and really dumb reasons for licensing.

So, let me get this straight: according the supporters, licensed cats will stick to their own backyards while outside, stop pooping in the neighbours’ peonies, and will no longer be eaten by coyotes, hit by cars, or become lost.

Is there an education program that comes with the licenses? Will the coyotes now see the licenses and realise licensed cats are not edible? Will licensed cats realise they’re too special to leave their own yards? Will they discover that the neighbours’ gardens are no longer suitable places to make deposits? Will speeding vehicles screech to a halt when they spot a licensed cat? Will licensed cats somehow be able to read maps?

I suppose a license is a good idea if one's cat is prone to running away, but mostly, cats know where their food and warm beds are so they normally don't go too far from home.

In the case of a cat eaten by a coyote, which happens a lot here, a license won't help because coyotes can't dial the phone to say "Hey, found your cat and it was delish."

I can see a license helping for cats that are hit by cars, providing someone stops to look at the license and calls it in so the cat's owner can be told their kitty is deceased. In our area, however, the coyotes are faster than the drivers and kitty roadkill is usually dragged off to feed coyote pups.

Mostly what will happen is that disgruntled neighbours will take advantage of the license to report that the next door kitty has left poo in their plants. This city's bylaw officers report that the vast majority of infractions are reported by people who can't stand their neighbours and wish they would move.

Other than that, though, licenses are a great idea!

War. What's it good for?

And, we’d like to know why…

…The US Government is planning on spending multi-billions of dollars refurbishing its stockpile of nuclear (That’s NU-CLE-AR, Mr. President) weapons and why the US for some reason has the only UN sanctioned stockpile of nuclear warheads. We’d also like to know how more warheads equal less probability of testing said warheads…. According to Ambassador Linton F. Brooks,

“The RRW warheads would create a "reduced chance we will ever need to resort to nuclear testing." In addition, he said, "Once we demonstrate we can produce warheads on a time scale in which geopolitical threats could emerge, we would no longer need to retain extra warheads to hedge against unexpected geopolitical changes."

We’d also like to know why the US government acknowledges the very poor state of US schools, and why it does nothing about the low quality education the majority of its citizens receive.

Wait! If the US spends next to nothing on education, and some money convincing its poorly educated population that they’re under siege, then nobody will question the need for spending billions of dollars on technology that cannot be used short of annihilating the whole world, US included. That doesn’t answer the question of why the US gets to make all these rules that apply to everyone but the US.

Could it be true, the statement on the front of MacLean’s Magazine, currently on newsstands: “Worst President in the last 100 years?”

CRAP

Wow…. Lots of fun craziness going on in the world today.

Since Michael Baigent and Dan Brown have had their very public little scrap settled, there have been lots and lots of interesting programs and articles in the news. Congratulations to both those guys for really effectively using every possible facet of the media to publicise their various properties, The Da Vinci Code (book and film) and Holy Blood and the Holy Grail and The Jesus Papers.

Both books are great reads and really fun as they have so managed to piss off the Catholic Church, which has now spent untold amounts of time and money trying to discredit both Brown and Baigent.

Today in the local paper, there’s an article on a website called www.jesusdressup.com, where people can dress up “Jesus” in all sorts of funny clothing. Earlier this week there was a PBS program on a guy who does facial reconstruction and who had a skull dating from the time and coming from the area where Jesus would have come from.

It seems that Christians all over the world are highly offended by the dress up site but not in the least bothered that Christ’s looks have been utterly misrepresented for ever and ever, amen.

The facial reconstruction guy’s model is of a dark-skinned, curly, dark-haired guy – pretty much a guy who looks like most guys that come from that area of the Middle East. The mock-up guy was decidedly NOT blond and blue-eyed. So now the Christians are bothered by having holes poked in their theory of the white Christ. Why doesn’t it cross their minds that it is highly unlikely that their medieval Christ cannot possibly bear any resemblance to the real McCoy?

Here’s another question: the bible, if it can be believed at all, says that Christ had brothers and sisters. There cannot be any question that Mary, his mother, and Joseph, his father, had families – parents and siblings. So why do Christians get all bent when anyone suggests that there are many living people who have blood ties to both those families? It is illogical to believe otherwise. There cannot be any question that Christ’s bloodlines continue to this day.

Other stuff:
- “Virgin Birth” does not mean the woman’s a virgin; it means she has had her first child. See this Wikipedia reference for more, interesting, information
- It is very unlikely that Christ said “I AM the son of God.” It probable, as he was leading a rebellion against Rome, that he said “I am A son of God,” considering the rest of the message was “Join me.”
- The Catholic Church is totally freaked out by those who want to put an end to suppression of the truth, suppression of women and support and promotion of anti-Semitism. If Dan Brown and Michael Baignet’s books are garbage like the Catholic Church says, why is the church so hell-bent on disproving the stuff? Great letters at Salon.com

How weird is it that Christians put up statues and drawings and paintings of a man being brutally tortured and then tell they tell their little children to pray to that thing, all the while exhorting people not to pray to graven images. It is so wacked!

Stuff I Can't Stand

Ok. I'm in a mood, so forgive me.

I can't stand it when I call the telephone repair people and they don't know how NOT to cut me off when they put me on hold! There are problem people on both sides of the phone, I know, but seriously, can't these geeks figure out how to put someone on hold?

I can't stand it when I call the tech support group for my computer software and the tech says "I don't know how that happened and I'm not sure how to fix it."

I can't stand it when people make that HUGELY annoying "ch-ch-ch-ch-ch" sound when they're thinking out loud! It is so annoying! See "Speak to Influence" for more on this.

I can't stand it when people say "real-i-tor." There's no such thing. It's real-tor. Exactly how it's spelled. I especially can't stand it when realtors say "real - i - tor." You'd think they'd know better. Go HERE for a list of commonly mispronounced words.

I also can't stand it when people call Italian people Eye-talian. No such thing. They come from Italy, not Eyetally. OK? And It's Iraq (ihrahc), not EYE-rack and Iran (ihrahn) not EYE-ran! OH, and Mr. Bush; it is NU-CLE-AR not Nu-cue-lar! Good grief.

I can't stand it when people negotiate over small things and completely ignore the big picture.

I can't stand it when people can't figure out how to turn left!!! CRAP People.... Ok here's how to do it: When you turn left, you turn into the lane nearest the median (assuming there are two lanes to choose from). You do NOT turn into the lane nearest the curb. If you do and you are hit by someone turning right, YOU are at fault.

If you want to get into the curb lane, signal right, shoulder check and THEN change lanes. And YES, the rules DO apply to you.

I also can't stand it when people who are merging stop in the merge lane. The deserve all the "birds" that are flipped their way.

I can't stand it when people are merging and mean to get over two or three lanes, so they hold up everyone behind them waiting for a break in traffic rather than merging properly and signaling while they're at it.

Ok. I'm done. I'm going to eat soup now. It always makes me feel better.