John Hughes died yesterday. He was slightly older than my parents, which means he was too young. I am not qualified to comment on his life and work, so I point you to someone who is.
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Bill Simmons went to the National Sports Collectors Convention (NatSpoColCon?) and saw some crazy stuff, as well as spent a lot of money:
In case you don’t watch Keith Olbermann (for which I can’t really blame you, he’s a blowhard, although that doesn’t mean he’s wrong), you may have missed his show the other night, in which he tore into elected officials on both sides of the aisle for opposing healthcare and receiving massive political contributions from insurance companies. It’s pretty brutal; read the whole thing here. A few excerpts: In March of 1911, after a wave of minor factory fires in New York City, the City’s Fire Commissioner issued emergency rules about fire prevention, protection, escape, sprinklers. The City’s Manufacturers Association, in turn, called an emergency meeting to attack the Fire Commissioner and his ‘interference with commerce.’ Jeepers. Don’t hold back, Keith. Because the insurance industry owns the Republican Party. Not exclusively. Pharma owns part of it, too. Hospitals and HMO’s, another part. Nursing homes, they have a share. You name a Republican, any Republican, and he is literally brought to you by campaign donations from the health sector. So much indeed. …[T]he evil truth is, the Insurance industry, along with Hospitals, HMO’s, Pharma, nursing homes — it owns Democrats, too… Hundreds of Democrats have taken campaign money from the Health Sector without handing over their souls as receipts. But conveniently, the ones who are owned have made themselves easy to spot in a crowd. Hee. Kirk and Spock share a…moment.
There are a handful of new pictures of a smiley baby over at Josephine’s site. Enjoy! There are two types of schedule, which I’ll call the manager’s schedule and the maker’s schedule. The manager’s schedule is for bosses. It’s embodied in the traditional appointment book, with each day cut into one hour intervals. You can block off several hours for a single task if you need to, but by default you change what you’re doing every hour. This is why I don’t get anything done! It’s not just laziness! Andrew is sighing over it, but I think Rod Dreher poses a valid question: If we accept that people who claim that they need to have sex reassignment surgery to make their bodies conform to who they believe they truly are, then on what basis do we deny people who claim that they need to have one or more limbs amputated to feel whole their moral and/or legal right to the desired surgery? I certainly have no desire to keep anyone from transgenderating, but I also don’t see exactly why we should prevent someone from chopping off their own arm if it bothers them. I see it as a legitimate question. Hey, Ross Perot is still around! Missed that guy, and his special brand of crazy. Richard over at Honest Hypocrite is pissed, and with pretty good reason: About the time when we seem to be getting Linus calmed, a manager (the unfriendly one) comes over and tells us in the most officious manner possible that some of the other patrons have been threatening to leave because of our crying baby, and some parents take their children outside to calm them, and isn’t teething tough. Wow. I can honestly say, I’ve taken Charles and/or Josephine to any number of restaurants, and I’ve never had anything like that happen. Richard has asked for responses and advice, but before I do that, I have qualifications and caveats:
Okay, enough caveats and explanation. Here’s my take: given that Linus was merely crying, and not running rampant through the restaurant, and there were enough other children there to qualify Bensi’s as supposedly-kid-friendly, I’d say the customers who complained were out-of-line. I’d also say the manager who complained was waaaaaay out-of-line. If something like this had happened to Sarah and me and the kids, here’s what the responses would have been:
Ooh, I like the sound of this: companies and municipal governments have been exploring the idea of the 4 day, 40-hour workweek. Local governments in particular have had their eyes on Utah over the last year; the state redefined the workday for more than 17,000 of its employees last August. For those workplaces, there’s no longer a need to turn on the lights, elevators or computers on Fridays—nor do janitors need to clean vacant buildings. Electric bills have dropped even further during the summer, thanks to less air-conditioning: Friday’s midday hours have been replaced by cooler mornings and evenings on Monday through Thursday. As of May, the state had saved $1.8 million. I would absolutely be in favor of something like this where I work. I’ve long been half-jealous of the 24-hour operations teams, who work 12-hour days, but only work 3 or 4 days a week. I would consider taking a job that did that, except you end up working either Saturdays or Sundays all the time, plus holidays if they fall on your shift. If I could show up at 7 and leave at 6, taking an hour for lunch, from Monday to Thursday, I’d be pretty excited for all the extra sleeping in I could do if I didn’t have children. |
