Author Archives: Karl

No bonuses for jobless, hungry

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Imagine a place where in two short years a budget surplus has been magically transformed into a deficit. A place where millions of people are jobless, many of them laid off in the past 24 months. Homelessness is steadily increasing, millions of children go to bed hungry and terrorists have recently attacked, killing thousands.

Then imagine that this country’s king decides to deny government workers scheduled raises and new government workers civil service protection, but confers upon the appointed members of his court bonuses of up to $25,000.

Read the rest of this editorial at Yahoo! via therablog.

Bumper Mentality

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This is harsh. …

Have you ever wondered why sport utility vehicle drivers seem like such assholes? Surely it’s no coincidence that Terry McAuliffe, chairman of the Dem-ocratic National Committee, tours Washington in one of the biggest SUVs on the market, the Cadillac Escalade, or that Jesse Ventura loves the Lincoln Navigator. Well, according to New York Times reporter Keith Bradsher’s new book, High and Mighty, the connection between the two isn’t a coincidence. Unlike any other vehicle before it, the SUV is the car of choice for the nation’s most self-centered people; and the bigger the SUV, the more of a jerk its driver is likely to be.

According to market research conducted by the country’s leading automakers, Bradsher reports, SUV buyers tend to be “insecure and vain. They are frequently nervous about their marriages and uncomfortable about parenthood. They often lack confidence in their driving skills. Above all, they are apt to be self-centered and self-absorbed, with little interest in their neighbors and communities. They are more restless, more sybaritic, and less social than most Americans are. They tend to like fine restaurants a lot more than off-road driving, seldom go to church and have limited interest in doing volunteer work to help others.”

Ouch, ouch, ouch, ouch! Read the rest of Stephanie Mencimer’s review of Keith Bradsher’s “High and Mighty: SUVs”.

Post-9/11 priorities: Stephen Covey

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Minneapolis, Minnesota: Since 9/11 my significant other has found more dissonance between his job and his career goals so he decided to quit his job. Unfortunately that dissonance remains and he seems stuck at determining what he wants to do with his life. What suggestions do you have for moving on? In other words the intent to change is high but his actions seem weak. He focuses more on his house repair than on exploring a new career.

Stephen Covey: The ideal career can say “yes” to the following three questions: Am I good at it? Do I really like it? Does the world need it to the point that I can get paid for it? This requires a lot of self-knowledge, and also the study of opportunities to discern the real needs and problems in those opportunities. Then proactively, you go to that opportunity as a prepared solution to their problem instead of being just another problem.

Comment from Stephen Covey: The main reason most people don’t have the job they want is because they don’t do this homework, and they’re nothing but a problem rather than a solution to problems.

Comment from Stephen Covey: Arise to your responsibility and make it happen.

Read the rest in this missed Stephen Covey chat transcript at USAToday.

Stephen Covey is chatting now at USAToday on Job satisfaction.

Irony And The Truth About Computing

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Shelley posts on the irony of a summit on Social Software that has as attendies mostly “made up almost exclusively of white, educated, upper-middle or upper class, 30-50 year old males.”

Dave Rogers posts in her comments a “truth” I believe in computing – “I think history shows that technology has never changed _what_ people do, it only changes the _how_. Technology usually compresses processes in time, or expands them in space, often both at the same time. Most of the time we confuse the “how” with the “what,” and think something novel has happened.”

That last phrase though is a little off. It *is* novel when the time is shorted to accomplish a task, or distances are compressed, or messages further distributed. The “How” is important 🙂 But the essential truth he points to here I know to be very true.

Volunteer coordinator copes with crises and gets job done

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“Father, in the name of Jesus,” Efrain Cotto prayed Wednesday, minutes before the first seating of a pre-Thanksgiving dinner for the homeless and hungry at the Salvation Army headquarters in North Philadelphia.

“We need your help. We can’t do this alone.”

Besides Jesus, Mr. Cotto, volunteer coordinator for the Salvation Army and a local pastor, could have used a couple of dozen more volunteers.

Read the rest in this Philadelphia Inquirer article.