Yesterday was the first day of the detail with a different division within Large Nameless Agency. It was a promising start. The first thing my guide showed me while doing the obligatory tour of the office area was the (dramatic pause) supplies closet, accompanied by the phrase "If you need something and it's not in here, let us know. We'll get it for you." No lock on the door to prevent people from binging on index cards or huffing Sharpies, no guarding of the post-it notes, no looking dubious about the need for scotch tape.
Then the project director took me to lunch. I think I'm going to like it there.
Wednesday, July 30, 2008
Monday, July 28, 2008
Second careers for the elderly
CNN had an interesting report today about an elderly Japanese man who retired from his rather staid career as a travel agent, and now at the age of 73 has become quite a celebrity. I'm not sure exactly what it says about senior citizens and popular culture in general, but Japan has become quite the trend setter in recent years.
Sunday, July 27, 2008
Bulwer-Lytton Lives
Every so often I screw up big time when I hit the library. This was one of them. The cover art should have been a clue, the hyphenated author's name another, but the fact it was published by Tor rather than Harlequin led me astray. I have a weakness for an occasional dip into sword and sorcery type books that goes back to when I first discovered Fritz Leiber back in high school. With a few rare exceptions, of course, most of what gets printed as sword and sorcery these days is a waste of paper, but I'm always hoping that I'll stumble across an author new to me who can actually write.
Dart-Thornton, unfortunately, doesn't qualify. This particular piece of dreck includes deathless prose like "If you stay here, I shall long for you as a fledging longs to fly, yet I will be as happy as a pig in mud, knowing you are safe. But if you come with me, I shall be as happy as a lark in flight and tragic as a fish in a dry riverbed, fearing for your security."
The truly depressing part is this volume is part I of a trilogy. This woman got paid for writing not just one awful book, but three.
Xenophobia strikes again
I got another one of those odd xenophobic "illegal aliens are destroying the country" e-mails yesterday. It had been passed on by a person who I had thought was capable of engaging in critical thinking, but apparently not.
Everytime I'm the lucky (?) recipient of one of these epistles, I marvel again at the explicit illogic they display: illegal aliens are simultaneously stealing jobs from hard-working Americans and bleeding us dry by sucking on the welfare teat, collecting food stamps, and generally enjoying the good life. I want to know how you do that: How do you steal jobs and sit on your ass at the same time? Seriously. Tell me how. It sounds like a great gig.
The bitter truth is that yes, jobs are being taken from U.S. citizens and filled by undocumented immigrants, but it's not the immigrants doing the stealing -- it's the employers who have figured out they can get away with violating multiple labor and tax laws to increase company profits. They ignore faked IDs, pay sub-legal wages, violate OSHA standards, and generally treat their cheap labor pool as disposable. If workers think conditions are unsafe, the overtime hours are illegal, or they've been shorted on their pay, all it takes is one phone call to ICE and the loud-mouthed employee is gone. Doesn't matter if it's a meat packing plant employing thousands of people, or one suburban housewife with a cleaning lady; employers willing to exploit undocumented aliens know full well the power of three simple syllables: la migra.
If undocumented workers are injured on the job, they're not going to get appropriate medical care and disability. They're going to get a one way trip back to El Salvador or Nigeria or Bangladesh. You know those guys hanging out Home Depot hoping for a day's work? Well, if they put in 12 hours and at the end of it get told they're out of luck, they are. All they can do is curse silently and hope they're the next job they take actually pays something.
A favorite line of the anti-immigrant crowd is that undocumented workers are "stealing" our Social Security benefits. How? If they're working with fake IDs and the employer is going through the motions of doing everything legally -- FICA deductions, for example, and state and federal income taxes -- then they are paying into the system with every check. But you know something? They're never going to get any of it back. They can't file for refunds, and they can't apply for retirement benefits, because they haven't paid in under their own legal identity. As far as the IRS and the Social Security Administration are concerned, people who made contributions under a name other than their own have never contributed at all. No refunds, no benefits.
The IRS has acknowledged that there are many millions of dollars in income taxes withheld annually that are never claimed through refunds even though they are being withheld from persons whose incomes are so low they would qualify. The IRS, however, does not go looking for people who don't file returns unless those people owe the government money. Why should they? And, if you don't believe me, next spring if you know you've got a refund coming, don't bother to file a tax return. Just don't hold your breath waiting for the IRS to find you.
As for the sitting back and sucking the rest of us dry by collecting food stamps, welfare, whatever, does anyone with two brain cells left to rub together actually believe that, given the current anti-immigrant climate in this country, undocumented aliens are going to walk into government agencies to voluntarily complete a foot-high pile of paperwork ? These people are smart enough to survive horrendous desert crossings, they manage to scrape by on poverty wages and still send money back to their home countries -- why would they then be stupid enough to draw attention to themselves by trying to get on welfare?
I really wish someone would shove a cork in Lou Dobbs' mouth . . .
Everytime I'm the lucky (?) recipient of one of these epistles, I marvel again at the explicit illogic they display: illegal aliens are simultaneously stealing jobs from hard-working Americans and bleeding us dry by sucking on the welfare teat, collecting food stamps, and generally enjoying the good life. I want to know how you do that: How do you steal jobs and sit on your ass at the same time? Seriously. Tell me how. It sounds like a great gig.
The bitter truth is that yes, jobs are being taken from U.S. citizens and filled by undocumented immigrants, but it's not the immigrants doing the stealing -- it's the employers who have figured out they can get away with violating multiple labor and tax laws to increase company profits. They ignore faked IDs, pay sub-legal wages, violate OSHA standards, and generally treat their cheap labor pool as disposable. If workers think conditions are unsafe, the overtime hours are illegal, or they've been shorted on their pay, all it takes is one phone call to ICE and the loud-mouthed employee is gone. Doesn't matter if it's a meat packing plant employing thousands of people, or one suburban housewife with a cleaning lady; employers willing to exploit undocumented aliens know full well the power of three simple syllables: la migra.
If undocumented workers are injured on the job, they're not going to get appropriate medical care and disability. They're going to get a one way trip back to El Salvador or Nigeria or Bangladesh. You know those guys hanging out Home Depot hoping for a day's work? Well, if they put in 12 hours and at the end of it get told they're out of luck, they are. All they can do is curse silently and hope they're the next job they take actually pays something.
A favorite line of the anti-immigrant crowd is that undocumented workers are "stealing" our Social Security benefits. How? If they're working with fake IDs and the employer is going through the motions of doing everything legally -- FICA deductions, for example, and state and federal income taxes -- then they are paying into the system with every check. But you know something? They're never going to get any of it back. They can't file for refunds, and they can't apply for retirement benefits, because they haven't paid in under their own legal identity. As far as the IRS and the Social Security Administration are concerned, people who made contributions under a name other than their own have never contributed at all. No refunds, no benefits.
The IRS has acknowledged that there are many millions of dollars in income taxes withheld annually that are never claimed through refunds even though they are being withheld from persons whose incomes are so low they would qualify. The IRS, however, does not go looking for people who don't file returns unless those people owe the government money. Why should they? And, if you don't believe me, next spring if you know you've got a refund coming, don't bother to file a tax return. Just don't hold your breath waiting for the IRS to find you.
As for the sitting back and sucking the rest of us dry by collecting food stamps, welfare, whatever, does anyone with two brain cells left to rub together actually believe that, given the current anti-immigrant climate in this country, undocumented aliens are going to walk into government agencies to voluntarily complete a foot-high pile of paperwork ? These people are smart enough to survive horrendous desert crossings, they manage to scrape by on poverty wages and still send money back to their home countries -- why would they then be stupid enough to draw attention to themselves by trying to get on welfare?
I really wish someone would shove a cork in Lou Dobbs' mouth . . .
Saturday, July 26, 2008
Weekend reading
I started another Laurie R. King book last night, The Moor. It's part of King's Mary Russell series and feature Sherlock Holmes in the years after he retired and became a rural beekeeper. Mary Russell is a young woman in her mid-teens when she first meets Holmes. Holmes, of course, is a heck of a lot older, although, as King makes clear, not elderly. She suggests that Holmes was actually much younger than Conan Doyle's accounts of his exploits made him appear, probably because she recognized that if she made him too old in her own books it would be hard to keep him believable. A middle-aged man might be plausible as a hero; someone's who slid over the geezer line into "you kids get off my lawn" territory is not.
I think the first one I read in the series was The Beekeeper's Apprentice. I was dubious -- I've read a number of books where authors attempted to use the Sherlock Holmes character and didn't do a particularly good job with the effort. In the end, King did well enough that I went looking for other books by her, including another series set in modern day San Francisco, but I still have some reservations about the whole Mary Russell-Sherlock Holmes thing. The plot lines are interesting, the characters are fleshed out enough to feel like real people, the historical backdrop is obviously thoroughly researched . . . but there's that whole May-December romance thing.
It isn't that I don't believe a woman, particularly a young woman, could exist who could actually think circles around Holmes and be as intellectually detached as him -- a meeting of like minds, so to speak. I can understand two seemingly very dissimilar people discovering that they're actually perfectly matched. I'm just thoroughly creeped out at the moment by the age thing.
Of course, I may be noticing it more than I usually do when reading a Mary Russell mystery because I just finished The Wives of Henry VIII. Reading descriptions of Henry Tudor in hot pursuit of a nubile bride, someone who could give him sons, is enough to evoke shudders in any reader. Antonia Fraser quotes from documents (letters, diaries, and even official legal records) that make it clear that by the time Henry was married to wife #4 --Ann of Cleves -- the only way he could perform was to be with a woman so young she barely qualified as an adult. An amazing amount of documentation exists giving explicit details of the king's sex life, or lack thereof. By the time he's in his 40s he's pretty adamant about expecting a girlish virgin in the bed, and Ann didn't fit the model. She wasn't petite, her breasts weren't perky, and she was pushing 30, something that hadn't bothered him in the abstract while the negotiations for the marriage were in progress, but obviously hit home once she arrived in England.
Followed reading about Henry's messed up love life with watching the news and seeing John McCain having applesauce accidents in supermarkets, and older men are looking very creepy indeed.
I think the first one I read in the series was The Beekeeper's Apprentice. I was dubious -- I've read a number of books where authors attempted to use the Sherlock Holmes character and didn't do a particularly good job with the effort. In the end, King did well enough that I went looking for other books by her, including another series set in modern day San Francisco, but I still have some reservations about the whole Mary Russell-Sherlock Holmes thing. The plot lines are interesting, the characters are fleshed out enough to feel like real people, the historical backdrop is obviously thoroughly researched . . . but there's that whole May-December romance thing.
It isn't that I don't believe a woman, particularly a young woman, could exist who could actually think circles around Holmes and be as intellectually detached as him -- a meeting of like minds, so to speak. I can understand two seemingly very dissimilar people discovering that they're actually perfectly matched. I'm just thoroughly creeped out at the moment by the age thing.
Of course, I may be noticing it more than I usually do when reading a Mary Russell mystery because I just finished The Wives of Henry VIII. Reading descriptions of Henry Tudor in hot pursuit of a nubile bride, someone who could give him sons, is enough to evoke shudders in any reader. Antonia Fraser quotes from documents (letters, diaries, and even official legal records) that make it clear that by the time Henry was married to wife #4 --Ann of Cleves -- the only way he could perform was to be with a woman so young she barely qualified as an adult. An amazing amount of documentation exists giving explicit details of the king's sex life, or lack thereof. By the time he's in his 40s he's pretty adamant about expecting a girlish virgin in the bed, and Ann didn't fit the model. She wasn't petite, her breasts weren't perky, and she was pushing 30, something that hadn't bothered him in the abstract while the negotiations for the marriage were in progress, but obviously hit home once she arrived in England.
Followed reading about Henry's messed up love life with watching the news and seeing John McCain having applesauce accidents in supermarkets, and older men are looking very creepy indeed.
Thursday, July 24, 2008
A brief rant about unprofessional behavior
I put in a ten-hour day today assisting with objective review panels. Large Nameless Agency awards significant amounts of money annually to various nonprofits and state and local government agencies for use on projects that advance the overall science-based mission of LNA. These are important projects with some fairly hefty budgets so it's vital the applications get a thoughtful and thorough review.
Well, today those of us who take this responsibility seriously got to suffer because a fair number of reviewers decided to just blow the whole process off. They didn't bother to show up at their assigned time to spend 20 minutes to an hour discussing why any particular application should or should not be approved, didn't bother to contact the panel organizers to let them know they couldn't be there, and of course never submitted the electronic copies of their reviews so the chair could have served as proxy and read their comments. LNA requires each application to have a minimum number of reviewers actively involved in the discussion, either in person or via conference call, so when someone didn't show, that meant we all had to sit and wait while the panel organizers went and literally knocked on office doors and stuck their heads into cubicles looking for a volunteer to serve as a last minute substitute. That sub wouldn't have had a chance to read the application in depth, but (at least in theory) could still ask intelligent questions of the reviewers who had.
Thanks to the shirkers, the panel review schedule got hopelessly off track, the day went on and on, and I'm willing to bet everyone who was there for the entire day now has the names of the slackers indelibly engraved in their memory. I know I do.
I also know that the supervisors of the shirkers are going to be hearing from the panel organizers. Participating in these reviews is an agency-wide requirement, so everyone who blew it off may have also just kissed their "above average" performance rating good-bye. I can hope. . .
(I was also rather disgusted with the reviewers who did show, but didn't follow the instructions -- e.g., failed to bring a hard copy of their review to give to the recorder or made continual references to things they had been told to ignore in scoring -- but that's a different rant.)
Well, today those of us who take this responsibility seriously got to suffer because a fair number of reviewers decided to just blow the whole process off. They didn't bother to show up at their assigned time to spend 20 minutes to an hour discussing why any particular application should or should not be approved, didn't bother to contact the panel organizers to let them know they couldn't be there, and of course never submitted the electronic copies of their reviews so the chair could have served as proxy and read their comments. LNA requires each application to have a minimum number of reviewers actively involved in the discussion, either in person or via conference call, so when someone didn't show, that meant we all had to sit and wait while the panel organizers went and literally knocked on office doors and stuck their heads into cubicles looking for a volunteer to serve as a last minute substitute. That sub wouldn't have had a chance to read the application in depth, but (at least in theory) could still ask intelligent questions of the reviewers who had.
Thanks to the shirkers, the panel review schedule got hopelessly off track, the day went on and on, and I'm willing to bet everyone who was there for the entire day now has the names of the slackers indelibly engraved in their memory. I know I do.
I also know that the supervisors of the shirkers are going to be hearing from the panel organizers. Participating in these reviews is an agency-wide requirement, so everyone who blew it off may have also just kissed their "above average" performance rating good-bye. I can hope. . .
(I was also rather disgusted with the reviewers who did show, but didn't follow the instructions -- e.g., failed to bring a hard copy of their review to give to the recorder or made continual references to things they had been told to ignore in scoring -- but that's a different rant.)
My life is a cliche
Yesterday was one of those good news, bad news days:
The good news -- I got picked to serve as production editor on a fairly high profile project. The work will be interesting, and I'll get to take two books* from initial idea to final product. Thanks to various budget constraints, I'll even get to do most of the lay-out because adding a graphics artist to the team might not be possible.
The bad news -- the division putting out these publications wants the editor "embedded" within their work group so it'll be easier to bounce ideas off each other and get feedback without having to schedule formal meetings. That means I have to temporarily change work locations.
The good news -- the office space they're sticking me into looks like it's bigger than my living room, the furniture is real wood, you could land a 747 on the desk, there's a door that closes, and there are actual windows overlooking a wooded creek. Natural light and peace and quiet. After a full year in my dimly lit interior cubicle, my system may take awhile to adjust.
The bad news -- it's in a different office park. My 7-minute walk to work ends tomorrow; Monday I'll be getting on a bus.
The good news -- MARTA stops right in front of the building.
More good news -- it is not the main LNA campus.
The bad news -- the bus only runs through there once an hour during rush hour, and switches to every other hour in the middle of the day.
The good news -- it may run only once an hour, but at least I still won't have to drive myself.
Overall, the good appears to outweigh the bad: I'm getting to do something more creative than usual, the project is one where there is no pre-determined government boilerplate template the documents have to fit into so I may be able to keep the content in plain language instead of having it degenerate into bureaucratese, and even the longer commute won't be particularly onerous compared to what the average working sap in Atlanta endures. And it's all scheduled to by December 31 so a mere five months from now I'll have the short commute back.
*They may be book length but would be more accurately described as advertising brochures justifying the existence of a newly created program area.
The good news -- I got picked to serve as production editor on a fairly high profile project. The work will be interesting, and I'll get to take two books* from initial idea to final product. Thanks to various budget constraints, I'll even get to do most of the lay-out because adding a graphics artist to the team might not be possible.
The bad news -- the division putting out these publications wants the editor "embedded" within their work group so it'll be easier to bounce ideas off each other and get feedback without having to schedule formal meetings. That means I have to temporarily change work locations.
The good news -- the office space they're sticking me into looks like it's bigger than my living room, the furniture is real wood, you could land a 747 on the desk, there's a door that closes, and there are actual windows overlooking a wooded creek. Natural light and peace and quiet. After a full year in my dimly lit interior cubicle, my system may take awhile to adjust.
The bad news -- it's in a different office park. My 7-minute walk to work ends tomorrow; Monday I'll be getting on a bus.
The good news -- MARTA stops right in front of the building.
More good news -- it is not the main LNA campus.
The bad news -- the bus only runs through there once an hour during rush hour, and switches to every other hour in the middle of the day.
The good news -- it may run only once an hour, but at least I still won't have to drive myself.
Overall, the good appears to outweigh the bad: I'm getting to do something more creative than usual, the project is one where there is no pre-determined government boilerplate template the documents have to fit into so I may be able to keep the content in plain language instead of having it degenerate into bureaucratese, and even the longer commute won't be particularly onerous compared to what the average working sap in Atlanta endures. And it's all scheduled to by December 31 so a mere five months from now I'll have the short commute back.
*They may be book length but would be more accurately described as advertising brochures justifying the existence of a newly created program area.
Wednesday, July 23, 2008
The slide toward third world status continues
Thunderstorms rolled through DeKalb County last night. Trees fell on houses, lightning zapped various locations. . . and today big chunks of DeKalb County, aka the east side of Atlanta, have no safe drinking water. One lightning strike, and water purification is shot to hell for hundreds of thousands of people for . . . who knows? Apparently the indefinite future. The county still has the advisory up on its website. Cynic that I am, I can't help but think that if a simple thunderstorm manages to wipe out the water supply, just imagine what a determined evil-doer could achieve -- Tommy Thompson, never one of my favorite politicians, actually worried about stuff like the vulnerability of food and water supplies back during his brief tenure as Secretary for Health and Human Services. Guess he spent too much time worrying about stuff we could actually fix, though, and not enough time stroking egos in Washington, because he was in and out of the Bush administration pretty quickly.
In any case, Large Nameless Agency promised earlier today to bring in bottled water so we hard-working government employees won't have to worry about dehydration. Given that most of the bottled water around here also comes from the Chattahoochee, I'm not sure passing out bottles of Dasani is the ideal solution. (Not that any had appeared by the time I left work this afternoon; they'll probably delegate the task to FEMA and the water will end up shipped to Iowa.)
I'm anticipating an abnormally number of people calling in "sick" on Friday. After all, an intestinal bug sneaking through from the Chat is going to take a day or two to make itself known -- but when it does, I'm sure the enteric disease experts I work with will have all the symptoms nailed.
If I wasn't so thirsty I'd do a longer rant about poor engineering and failing infrastructure, but instead I think I'll just wander across the street and see just what kind of beer the Citgo sells.
In any case, Large Nameless Agency promised earlier today to bring in bottled water so we hard-working government employees won't have to worry about dehydration. Given that most of the bottled water around here also comes from the Chattahoochee, I'm not sure passing out bottles of Dasani is the ideal solution. (Not that any had appeared by the time I left work this afternoon; they'll probably delegate the task to FEMA and the water will end up shipped to Iowa.)
I'm anticipating an abnormally number of people calling in "sick" on Friday. After all, an intestinal bug sneaking through from the Chat is going to take a day or two to make itself known -- but when it does, I'm sure the enteric disease experts I work with will have all the symptoms nailed.
If I wasn't so thirsty I'd do a longer rant about poor engineering and failing infrastructure, but instead I think I'll just wander across the street and see just what kind of beer the Citgo sells.
Monday, July 21, 2008
A movie recommendation
Amazing Grace. I rejoined Netflix recently; this was the second DVD they sent me. I watched it last night, and I'm still tearing up. I highly recommend this film to anyone who thinks individual activists cannot change the world.
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