Candy Banned: Cow Orker Edition
I enjoy playing a good game. Especially stratergy games. Throw in the concept of work and you’ve got yourself a surefire hit.
You see a coworker take a piece of office candy. You grab an Uzi and gun them down. Sorry, that’s a note to file. That sort of infraction goes on your permanent record. Go back three spaces.
—Candy Banned playing card
Last week I came in to work one morning and cow orker was abuzz with excitement. She even said “good morning” in violation of office protocol forcing me to grunt in response on the way to my desk.
I know!
What could possibly have her so worked up I asked myself out of boredom in sheer desperation. I could care less and forgot the whole thing. But then, unbidden, she explained it to me anyway.
“We got another one!” she exuberated breathlessly. “Another one!”
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BlogFestivus – Day Eight: The Reindeer Before Easter
The Reindeer Before Easter
by Tom B. Taker
Blixem was melancholy. Another winter and it was the same old thing. A whole year of preparing for one crazy night. He was in a rut deep enough to hang Christmas stockings. He wandered aimlessly away from Christmas Town followed by his pet, Hooman.
He trudged all night without purpose through the snow until he found himself in a forest. Then, at dawn, he stumbled into a strange grove of trees. They were arranged in a circle and each contained a door with a mysterious symbol.
“What’s this?” Blixen said. “It’s someplace new!”
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How can a president create jobs?
A study in subtlety - Rupert Murdoch style. Better read on, because what you don't know could kill you!
Nasdaq CEO Bob Greifeld illustrating what we hopes to accomplish by combining his camera with Twitter.
Yep. Another post based on something I saw in the WSJ. (Wealth Stealing Jerks.) Why do I keep looking at that rag, now owned by the honorable likes of Rupert Murdoch and News Corp? Oh yeah. I know. I really enjoy their “We Hate Obama’s Fucking Guts” section, or what they coyly call the “opinion”‘ pages.
Inside the paper the other day, it said something like, “Dear Mr. President: Private Ideas on How to Create Jobs.”
This is something I’ve been very curious about, so I decided to turn to that page and have the mysteries of life explained to me by the WSJ. I prepared myself to be amazed and astounded.
What did I find?
A picture of Bob Greifeld, the CEO of NASDAQ. And what was his advice to Obama? “U.S. companies need the ability to recruit the best workers. … We must increase the number of H-1B visas available and reform the employment-based green card process.”
Holy fucking shit! That’s pure genius!
Ladies and gentlemen, the President of the United States:
Obama: My jobs plan is simple. What we need is more foreigners taking the few jobs that already exist in our country.
Can you imagine a president taking this advice? Then standing up and saying something along these lines? Talk about an express ticket to his own unemployment. You don’t just take a shit on the majority of the population and get happily re-elected.
I’m sure Mr. Greifeld has a point. He sees the recession and unemployment as a function of a lack of skilled workers. Workers that the United States is not producing in sufficient quantities. Perhaps we have a problem with our education system and the number of our young people that are able to access higher education?
I only have a United States education, but I fail to see how Mr. Greifeld’s response addresses the original question, namely: How to create jobs?
I did learn one thing from the WSJ. Obama would be unwise to rely on their advice.
So, what do you think are the things a president can actually do to create jobs? What can be done that is reasonably within the auspices of that office, and what could be effective? Is the solution really supposed to come from the president or should it originate somewhere else?
It seems to me that these are no small questions and how well they are answered will likely determine our leader for the next four years.
One last thing. I know the H-1B visa program is for “skilled” workers, but how have American companies treated other guest workers? Let’s find out.
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8-h8EBP0JSs]Avoiding the gift of chocolate exploitation
When you say “I love you” this Valentine’s Day with chocolate, why not make the effort to make sure it’s “slave-free?” Then it will be something that is truly good for the heart in more ways than one.
From Wikipedia’s Fair trade page:
“Fair Trade is an organized social movement and market-based approach that aims to help producers in developing countries and promote sustainability. The movement advocates the payment of a higher price to producers as well as social and environmental standards. It focuses in particular on exports from developing countries to developed countries, most notably handicrafts, coffee, cocoa, sugar, tea, bananas, honey, cotton, wine, fresh fruit, chocolate and flowers.”
There is another web site called Stop Chocolate Slavery that explains it like this:
“If you want some chocolate, but don’t want to exploit people, Fair Trade chocolate is probably your best bet. “Fair trade” was a term coined fairly recently, apparently in contradiction to so-called free trade.”
Here’s even more of the “bitter truth” from TreeHugger.com:
The truth behind chocolate is not-so-sweet. The Ivory Coast is the world’s largest cocoa producer, providing 43% of the world’s cocoa. And yet, in 2001 the U.S. State Department reported child slavery on many cocoa farms in the Ivory Coast. A 2002 report from the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture about cocoa farms in the Ivory Coast and other African countries estimated there were 284,000 children working on cocoa farms in hazardous conditions. U.S. chocolate manufacturers have claimed they are not responsible for the conditions on cocoa plantations since they don’t own them.
Looking at a list of fair trade chocolate companies, notably missing are companies like Hershey’s and M&M/Mars that control the lion’s share (about two-thirds) of chocolate production in the United States.
So before you give your sweets the sweets you might want to do a bit of quick research and find out if your chocolate has been certified as “fair trade.” That makes a tasty gift even better!
Remarkably, finding an up-to-date list of what is and isn’t fair trade chocolate in the United States is rather challenging.
Looking for a place to shop that offers fair trade products? You can use web sites like TransFair USA and others to find retail locations.
Here is a site that claims to be a comprehensive list of organic chocolate suppliers. I even have a couple tins of Dagoba on my counter at home. Green Promise: Organic Chocolate Suppliers.
Chocolat: Commando raid on the grocery store
Yes - those are real M&M candies
Note: Be sure to pronounce the word “chocolat” from the title correctly. That will give this post a more sophisticated aire.
I’m planning a new section of the blog. I don’t have the perfect name for it yet, but basically it will consist of posts documenting my “commando raids” on grocery stores.
The other day I was shopping with my wife. You know, shuffling my feet behind her, standing around bored, trying to keep my back from popping out, while she spent about 2.3 years filling her shopping cart.
We went through the bulk foods part of the store and I vaguely noticed M&M candies. Then, when we traversed the regular candy aisle, I saw more M&M candies and thought I noticed something funny about the pricing.
I decided to conduct a raid and get some answers. This is what I found out from this morning’s mission:
Target: M&M candy pricing
My quotation effort for prosperity
I have decided that I want to be famous and live on beyond my meager years, you know, just like a lot of other folks have done.
I’m talking about getting your name associated with a quotation. Centuries after you are gone your name may still be dropped in association with the quotation – and that is nothing to shake a stick at!
So, after hard work and careful consideration, I have come up with the following effort. This will be my quotation legacy!
Enjoy!
Never eat chocolate pudding after going to the bathroom and droppin’ a duece.
Shouts from the Abyss 
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