More on work
Posted: January 15, 2011 Filed under: job, more.on, work Comments OffMy Linkedin connections have ratcheted up their activity level since the start of the new year. At last count, my associates collectively posted more than 750 status updates. Most of the activity is the result of people making new connections.
When one person shows a lot of new connections, it’s often an indicator that the person has or is about to lose a job. When there’s a squall like this, from people at different companies, something else is going on. I suspect, but can’t confirm yet, that this is a good sign. People who have jobs are looking for better jobs or at least are thinking about it. They’re wondering who among their connections is doing what.
People aren’t finding the kinds of steady jobs of old. Those jobs and the expectations for same ended probably 20 years ago. Tom Peters predicted it in the 80s and has ridden the wave of New Work for a pretty good career. He used to say that your career was your Rolodex (back when folks knew what one was), that you always needed to be thinking about how you’d be assembling a job based on your personal connections. Companies, too, would be developing virtual, ad hoc teams that would come together for quick projects and dissemble with no hard feelings.
Of course, lots of people have made a living with all kinds for a long time. Recently, a guy has received a lot of attention for admitting that he wrote college papers for pay. (These folks have an, um, interesting name for their company in this line of business.) Some 40 years ago, I did the same. I didn’t write many and probably made only a few hundred bucks. I did guarantee a B. My big advantage was that I could type, making it easier for the customer who didn’t have to recopy the text into his (it was all guys) handwriting. It might be the only typewritten paper that the student ever handed in, but in a big school, no one noticed.
Funny thing. I was bombing out of my own courses even as I wrote B papers in sociology, English, and history. Karma generally finds you, eh?
More on winter
Posted: December 8, 2010 Filed under: more.on, winter Comments OffWe’ve had a few days of below-freezing weather with a couple more in the queue. There’ll be a warm-up on Sunday and Monday, bringing freezing glop that turns to hydraulic cement early next week.
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| via Wunder Blog : Weather Underground |
We’ve rearranged a few rooms in our house. I now have a different BlogCave™ off of our family room. The wood stove provides enough warmth; I’ve not had to turn on the heat, yet.
When the snow is covering the back window, we’ll have better insulation. Until then, the sharp northwest winds alert us to each little gap that we missed in our last weatherization project.
Nature plays hard and wants to win.
More on reporters as opinionators
Posted: December 1, 2010 Filed under: more.on Comments OffNicole tells a fine story, A Confession « Nicole, Worcester, about helping her grandmother vote during 2002. It’s an excellent response to the column by Nick Kotsopoulos, Ballot help defies spirit of the law
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Voting isn’t a social studies MCAS test where you have to demonstrate that you, unaided, know the answers. It’s an act of civic participation whereby each voter expresses a viewpoint on the candidates and issues at hand. In town meetings, we vote in public, with plenty of opportunity to chat before and during the vote. Those votes are as legally binding as ballots on election day. Similarly, people can vote by absentee ballot, at home or wherever, with all manner of assistance and with no real time constraints.
Our voting processes are complex and imprecise. We try to balance the rights of groups to voice their opinions, of individuals to act according to their consciences, and of the general public to know that the votes were counted as accurately as humanly possible.
We’re coming up on the 10th anniversary of Bush v. Gore in which activist judges decided that the state of Florida should stop counting the votes in the 2000 presidential election because the Florida Supreme Court erred in its scheme to fashion a recount and that there wasn’t time to create a new scheme that met constitutional requirements.
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| via Ballot help defies spirit of the law |
So, people vote for many reasons and in many ways. Governments and others determine how the votes are tallied. As I said, our processes are complex and imprecise. We’re trying to bring as many people into the process as we can. Yes, we need to do so legally. We’re not helped by snarky comments about voters who are new to the process and uncertain about what to do. Particularly when those comments are made by an otherwise good political reporter.
More on sleep, Chile, work, and compassion
Posted: October 13, 2010 Filed under: more.on, work Comments OffIt’s a line of context, but Dylan is good for that:
Ain’t it just like the night to play tricks when you’re tryin’ to be so quiet?
Visions Of Johanna
As I’ve mentioned often before, I have a type of insomnia that my mother had. I sleep for a while and then am awake for several hours during the night. Generally, I get back to sleep in the early morning and, with a nap in the early afternoon, do ok.
Two nights ago, I dreamed that I slept a full night. I woke enthusiastically and was then disappointed to learn that it was one in the morning. This past night, I dreamed that I couldn’t sleep. I woke at the same time, quietly restarted the fire in the stove (quietly so that I wouldn’t wake the dog who no longer sleeps on his bed near the stove) and listened to the BBC coverage of Chilean mine rescue.
As I’ve very often said, whatever it is that I do, I work hard, but what I do isn’t hard work. The major challenge I’ve had in my work is that I turned my desk 90° so the afternoon sun isn’t shining in my eyes. I didn’t have to wait 10 weeks for someone to drill through 700m of stone to rescue me.
Nevertheless, I’ve found that comparisons rarely help me change how I feel about my situation. In the early 1980s, I went to a doctor with symptoms that I now know were the early signs of depression. “What have you got to be depressed about?” the doctor said. “Look at all those people who are losing their jobs in Detroit.” Now I had three things to feel bad about – my initial symptoms, the people in Detroit, and the fact that I didn’t feel bad enough about the people in Detroit.
Researchers have shown that different parts of the brain are activated when we show compassion or not in the presence of another’s pain. In the sweet language of scientists, we learn that
The researchers concluded that empathy-associated activation of the anterior insula motivated costly helping, whereas a signal in the nucleus accumbens, a brain area related to reward processing, reduced the propensity to help.
I think that this means that the part of my brain that seeks rewards is less compassionate. This suggests that if I’m told that I should be nice to others because it’s good for me, I’m less likely to be motivated to do so. Instead, if I perceive someone is part of my group, I’m already predisposed to be willing to relieve their pain.
That’s a lot to ponder. And, as the guy says, “I may not be much, but I’m all that I think about.”
More on food
Posted: August 30, 2010 Filed under: food, more.on Comments OffYesterday’s Telegram editorial, Peeling the egg (paywall content), about the recent crop of salmonella and legislation that would strengthen federal food inspection includes a couple of interesting points.
Consumer choice and free markets do far more daily for food safety than government. Americans reject foods that are out-of-date, spoiled, or fail to meet their standards. Stores and producers who wish to remain in business have no choice but to respond — witness the voluntary food safety programs of many major corporations.
That’s true. I’m probably not going to buy contaminated eggs, Cadmium Happy Meals, or more than my minimum daily requirement of E. coli a second time, if there is a second time.
Also, the editorialist and commenters note that consumers should buy locally-produced products. Good option, but not a guarantee, either. Witness the listeriosis outbreak a few yeas back, when three people died and one woman miscarried as the result of the infected milk. Whitter Farms closed its Shrewsbury operation and now sells milk that is produced at its Connecticut plant.
It’s a reminder that growing, processing, and distributing food is a complex process. There are many intersections at the international, national, local, and household level where trouble can occur, often serious, sometimes deadly.
The gold standard for process quality, Six Sigma, sets a goal of establishing processes that can produce 99.9997% defect-free products. Or, 3.4 defects per million. That’s a pretty good standard, unless it’s your breakfast.
It should be noted that the companies under investigation for the latest large shipments of salmonella, Wright County Egg or its Maine affiliate, Quality Egg, make no claim for six sigma quality.
The bill in question, S. 510: FDA Food Safety Modernization Act (GovTrack.us), appears to have the support of big food businesses and associations with opposition from organizations that represent small farms. However we decide the issue, let’s get our thinking in order. We can only vote with our feet on the issue of food safety if we’re still on our feet.
More on Great Paywall of Worcester
Posted: August 17, 2010 Filed under: future.of.news, more.on, t.and.g Comments OffWell, it’s day two of the new model. The comments are pretty fierce and overwhelmingly angry.
We learned in the note from the Telegram’s publishers that “We have great faith in our professionally trained journalists who set out each day to bring you the latest news and information touching your lives.” (See Telegram & Gazette to charge for online local news for more.)
So, with the first time that the Telegram’s premier columnist is available in the new model, you can well imagine what goodness is awaiting us.
Without Jeff on guard, we have to find these things by ourselves.
More on Great Laws
Posted: August 17, 2010 Filed under: more.on 1 Comment »It seems that there is some research going on to confirm the Hakkarainen Law of Great Events. As previously noted, this law says that, in any great event in your life, someone important to you will let you down or be absent.
Yesterday, the New York Times published an essay, Coping With Crises Close to Someone Else’s Heart by Harriet Brow, about this phenomenon. While dealing with illnesses of her daughters and the dying and death of her mother, Brown wrote,
For the most part, we were blessed with support and love; friends ran errands for us, delivered meals, sat in hospital waiting rooms, walked, talked and cried with us.
But a couple of friends disappeared entirely. During the year we spent in eating-disorder hell, they called once or twice but otherwise behaved as though we had been transported to Mongolia with no telephones or e-mail.
“Other people’s reactions are multifaceted,” writes one psychologist . “There’s no formula, and it’ll change from person to person.” It may be that the vanishing friends were paralyzed first by their feelings of helpless and then by the guilt of being paralyzed in the first place.
There’s a summary of the article as well as some insightful comments at the Well blog – When Friends Disappear During a Health Crisis.
More on politics
Posted: August 17, 2010 Filed under: more.on, politics Comments OffOne of the toughest things about reading political analysis these days is trying to filter the snarky, sarcastic, or ironic commentary from the straight-forward loony. I suspect that I know the answer to this one, but I’ll ask for your help.
…when it comes to doing what is right versus doing what is expedient, you do what is expedient so that you can get reelected and do what is right in the second term.
via Obama, the one-term president – Roger Simon – POLITICO.com
Simon’s point is that President Obama is on track to be a one-term president unless he decides to quit first.
A candidate says, as Bobby Kennedy did, “Some men look at things the way they are and ask why? I dream of things that are not and ask why not?”
A president says: “What do the polls say?”
Citing Eisenhower’s decision to send troops to Little Rock or Lincoln to talk about slavery, both actions being off-message to the public sentiment, Simon continues
… But what’s so wrong about being off message if you are right about the issue?
This: An unidentified chief of staff to a “politically vulnerable House Democrat” told James Hohmann and Maggie Haberman of POLITICO that Obama’s statement “probably alienates a lot of independent voters” and “there are a lot of [Democrats] who are spooked in tough districts today” and “a lot of Republicans licking their chops right now.”
And what’s the point of doing the right thing if your party is going to lose seats because of it?
I believe that Simon is being ironic. His words and tone are so close to the sentiments of so many other analysts that I don’t think that an intelligent person could write this way in seriousness without throwing up just a little bit.
More on health care
Posted: August 11, 2010 Filed under: health.care, more.on Comments OffSomeone close to us went to the hospital the other night because a chronic condition had turned into a crisis. They waited for hours in an ER because, otherwise, they’d have to wait weeks for an appointment that might have treated the problem in 15 minutes. This was a chronic issue that, if left unchecked, could become life-threating. Conversely, if treated well in a timely fashion, it could be just another medical issue in a collection of medical issues with which this person and her family lives.
This isn’t a case of impatient patients wanting to jump the queue by elevating a concern to a crisis. This, according to the guidance given by many of support resources, is the plan. Well-connected people going through their ordinary channels could get this person to see the right medical professional in anywhere from three to eight weeks. So, for the same condition and likely the same longer-term treatment plan, the best option is one that costs probably two orders of magnitude more.
Recent studies have confirmed that many of the savings in emergency room expenses that we expected from universal coverage didn’t occur. (See the Boston Globe article, Emergency room visits grow in Mass.) We got it wrong in our assumptions. We assumed that ER expenses were being driven up by uninsured people using emergency services to get free care.
Not so much. Rather, as in this case, people with health insurance come to the ER because they couldn’t see their regular doctors in time. (The Globe article suggests that this is due primarily to lack of access to primary care physicians. That may be true generally, but we shouldn’t overlook the issue of timely access to specialists.)
The simple and wrong solution would be to make emergency room access more difficult to obtain. Insurance companies can and will and perhaps even do make it more difficult for their customers to use their insurance at the ER without some kind of pre-authorization.
A more complete solution is more complex, primarily because lots of people are making a good living off of the current systems. To make a change involves diverting some portion of our resources from crisis management toward timely and preventative solutions. (Cue the story of the River Babies.) A few preventative services are already in the pipeline for Medicare in 2011.With a few more good ideas, we might just make it.
More on work and jobs
Posted: July 25, 2010 Filed under: job, more.on, work Comments Off
The flurry of new connections on LinkedIn indicated that there was churn in the workforce. Then, we received word from former co-workers that there was a recent round of layoffs at our former company. More people are now looking for work. Some are finding jobs, temporary, mostly.
It was just about a year ago that Sandra got word that her work would be going away. She had a choice: accept a severance package or follow the work to India. She chose the former and is now retired. (We may not be done with work for pay, but careers as we knew them are pretty much done.)
We now get to watch the world of work from a different vantage. Here are some items of note:
- Remember the opportunity to follow the work to India? It turns out that some people are seeing this as a viable option. You can live cheaply and find plenty of opportunities for career development and advancement. via No work in the US? Move to India – Boing Boing.
- I don’t know many people who use a pencil these days. (I carry a mechanical pencil and use it rarely.) Apparently, there are a few folks left and, among them, are those who take their pencils really seriously. Cartoonist David Rees Launches ‘Artisanal Pencil Sharpening Service’. You can get your pencils sharpened manually.
Quote of the day:
“Just because something makes you smile or laugh … doesn’t mean it’s a joke.” via Artisanal Pencil Sharpening. - Don’t know what kind of work you should be doing? Your brain can tell you. Brain scans may help guide career choice.
- Some people like the excitement, challenge, and risk of working for a small startup company. If you do, here’s a cautionary tale about bailing out too soon. The third co-founder of Apple Computer, Ron Wayne, designed the original logo and wrote the first manual. He decided that the Steves (Jobs and Wozniak) were too unfocused and unrealistic and so he sold back his 10% stake in the company for $800. It would now be worth north of $22 billion.
- If you’re young, smart, and female, you can make some decent money selling your eggs. Good SAT Scores Lead To Higher Egg Donor Prices.
