A California dude created a big hoo hah when his video of being patted down prior to flying commercially became “viral.“ No, the video didn’t cause a virus on the Internet nor did it cause a dangerous disease to be let loose among the public. Viral in this case is one of those words that probably never imagined it would have the meaning it has these days of a widely exposed video on the Internet.
Me, I haven’t made up my mind yet about whether full body scanning or having a pat-down search need be a prerequisite to flying commercially. My stubborn civil libertarian streak leans toward no, but I don’t know if circumstances have come to the point where such intrusiveness is needed. I have been searched before. Quite a few times in fact, for different reasons, and I have yet to like it when done by one of the male species.
Read the story or stories, however many I decide to link, and watch the video. That is, do so if you want to be informed. If you want to be a total dolt-headed ignoramus, that is your choice as an American. What a great country!
Reading the 2009 John Grisham novel, “The Associates,” rang a bell as to how employers sometime prepare, or don’t prepare, their new hires for the job.
The Grisham novel tells how a young, hotshot law school graduate finds himself blackmailed into a joining a huge law firm so that the attorney can sneak secrets out from litigation involving two of the world’s top defense contractors. Attorney Kyle McAvoy spends a week at his new firm lost in mind-numbing classes on subjects ranging from their computer programs to a specially-made BlackBerry-like device the attorneys must have on and with them at all times.
When I started serious jobs after college I usually found any type of detailed or formal training lacking when it came to various procedures or any other pieces of information that made my life easier or better adapted to the job at hand.
Perhaps one problem I had is that in my two previous jobs — the Navy and five years as a firefighter — an abundance of training was provided to help one sort out where to go or what to do in the case of A, B or C.
Later I noticed that pretty much every job I had as a journalist started out with a guessing games as to locating everything from paper clips to the various forms required for leave or travel reimbursement. How funny, I thought, and not in a “ha ha” way that the biggest obstacle in my job in the field of communication was itself the lack of communication.
Eventually I discovered that to obtain the tools of the trade it was every man, or woman, for themselves. If someone left or was about to leave, you would ask or just take a tape dispenser or a pair of scissors or a better desk, saying, “You won’t be needing that anymore.” A friend and co-worker at a paper for which I once labored wrote a touching column upon my departure and included a line in which Beth said I was laughing and saying: “I’m not gone yet and they are already dividing up my empire.” But we had learned and Beth was more or less my protege so by that time she was grabbing what goodies I did not appear to be leaving behind.
Although I don’t work, per se, in the communication business full time any more I still see the lack of giving workers the information need to do their jobs. This is especially true in my part-time job, where the people who are most likely to have the answers are full-time and often do not see your needs as a part-timer quite as clearly. There are plenty of Web sites and manuals from where I can gather all the rules and regulations but there is no time to extensively study them during work time. Then, you are not allowed to work on your time off which is what boning up by using the work computer would be considered. Catch-22? At least.
Surely some good can emerge when you are left alone to find things for one’s self. I would like to think this is why these jobs I had left no master plan for finding the things and information you need to know to do your job. I think the major reason was, however, work for many people runs at such a high speed today that those little snippets of information the boss intended to provide the new hire just slipped the Big Guy’s mind. Or else the boss said: “Let the new guy find it like I had to find it when I was the new guy.”
It would definitely interest me to see a study, if one has been done, of those organizations that prepare new employees to a T as opposed to those that make the new guy fend for themselves. Just thinking about the subject, one can imagine writing up the positives on one side and the negatives on the other and delivering a pretty good list.
Why is this important? In the grand scheme of things, I don’t suppose it is. Ruminating over this will not make your laundry whiter, will not cure erectile dysfunction and likely not put you on the hot list for the Nobel Peace Prize. It is just something to think about. We’re always in need of something to think about. So here this something is, for what it’s worth. At least a search isn’t necessary to find it.
American knowledge of Veterans Day and more importantly, of veterans, has had to have increased somewhat due to 9/11 and the wars that followed. I’m sure if one were to do a *”Jay Walking” (as in Jay Leno) bitand ask random people on the street what Veterans Day originally signified it would be followed by a blank stare or some completely inane utterance from the respondent.
The day we now know as Veterans Day on November 11 was originally called Armistice Day and marked the cessation of fighting between Germany and the Allied nations. That stop of carnage occurred at the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month. Wow, wonder what will happen next year? 11th hour, 11th day, 11th month, 11th year? The armistice marked the end of what was first known as “The Great War” or the “War To End All Wars.” Unfortunately, that was just the first act, also known as World War I.
If World War II, Korea and even Vietnam seems foreign to most young people these days, then WWI must be thought of as totally “like” ancient. Some of the veterans of that brutal war, fought often in trenches and where soldiers could find themselves maimed by poisonous mustard gas, were still alive when I was a kid. I talked to several veterans who were just as reluctant to tell their tales of horrors from that war as were their sons who fought again in Europe and as well as in Africa and Asia in the Great War’s encore.
A U.S. soldier fires at the enemy in World War I using a French contraption attached to his rifle to better allow shooting from a trench.
TV was full of war when I was a kid. These were WWII stories during the prime time of the 1960s. My favorites included “The Rat Patrol,” about warfare in northern Africa against perhaps Germany’s most brilliant leader, Field Marshal Erwin Rommel. Other favorites included “Combat!,” as well as lighter fare such as “The Wackiest Ship in the Army” and “Hogan’s Heroes.”
When we played war as kids we played World War II. Usually the Germans and the Americans, and sometimes the U.S. and the Japanese. It was always a short straw to be a “Jerry” and even shorter to be a “J*p,” as ignorant little East Texas peckerwoods like yours truly called them back then.
It was World War I — and to some degree the Civil War, Spanish-American War and the Punitive Expedition against Pancho Villa — that really put great chunks of the Earth in combat against one another. It was also where modern warfare was finely honed and where fatality counts ran into the tens of millions — nearly 20 million ball park. The U.S., entering late, still lost more than 116,000 of our brave young men. More than 205,000 were wounded. Many of the modern machines of war were first used with regularity in that war, the airplane, the machine gun, submarines, tanks, the list goes on.
I always loved the study of history even if the subject matter often was littered with as much foolishness and death as it was showcasing triumph of the human spirit. Whether it was Santayana who said: “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it,” or if he lifted it, the quote can be rightfully considered a truth. Likewise, I wish American school students were given a healthy dose of World War I study or perhaps the “War To End All Wars” could be the subject of a riveting docudrama series such as “Band of Brothers,” for the first World War stands as a big piece of a puzzle that remains to this very days. See “Balkans.” I would hate to bore my fellow Americans, not that I really care whether boredom is their chief complaint. I would just like my fellow countryman to understand the meaning and importance of this great war behind “Veterans Day.” Just as how “veterans” is the most important component of Veterans Day.
There is no telling what our Texas State Board of Education will end up doing with World War I in school books. The U.S. entered that war under President Woodrow Wilson, a progressive Democrat, who was essentially against the war before he was for it.
Still, given a good many 20th century folks remain among us, we should realize just how important that ancient first World War is to our being in the present and the future. In short, we could find out a lot more about what might happen tomorrow or in the future if we set aside some time for reading about the war to end all wars which wasn’t instead of watchingBristol Palin dance with the stars. Given the choice, the pick is a very easy one for me to make.
Happy Veterans Day to our veterans and our veterans-to-be. Remember WWI, and all the others.
*Listening to answers on the Jay Walking segments tend to make me sad rather than willing to laugh.
It has been quite some time since I could claim myself as a Dallas Cowboys fan. Many, many years it has been. I think it was when the Cowboys became the so-called “America’s Team” that I swore off of them. How dare them! America’s team, my ass. Whose team was the Charger’s, Tijuana?
Nonetheless, I hate it and feel somewhat sorry that Cowboy’s super-ego and owner Jerry Jones fired Wade Phillips as coach. Part of my feelings can be chalked up to hometown pride. Although I grew up an hour or so where Phillips went to high school, Wade and his dad, the Oilers and Saints head coach “Bum” Phillips are a part of Southeast Texas lore as much as the Spindletop gusher, Johnny Winter and Seaport coffee.
Beyond sentiment it has been somewhat lost that Wade Phillips coached the team. He didn’t play. Dare I say the last time Wade seriously donned pads was when he played linebacker in 1964 for the Port Neches-Groves Indians and later for the University of Houston Cougars.
I forgot who the sports radio wise man it was who said so but whomever it was hit it on the head when he said just prior to Wade’s dismissal that the Cowboys players needed to step up and be men, and admit they have played stink ball. Some say the Cowboys have “dialed in” their games. Others say words about the Dallas playing that even I steered clear of when I as a sailor. Phillips has coached a group of multi-millionaire football aristocrats. Many sports pundits had Dallas picked as the first NFL team to play a Super Bowl game in their own house. That house, of course, is the house (palace) that Jerry built. Jerry didn’t let anyone stand in his way building that palace either.
Here I go on and on about a team I mostly enjoy watch getting ripped a new one. Of course, my team over in nearby Houston has their own problems. But when you mess with homeboys you at least get a verb, an adverb and at least an adjective or two thrown your way
Now if I can only come up with such suitable parts of speech to use.
When it comes to presidential politics, “no” often means “yes,” and even more succinctly, “book” means “yes.”
Fresh from an unprecedented re-election to a fourth term as Texas governor comes Rick Perry, slayer of coyotes, threatening to wrest Texas from the jaws of the rest of the union and now author of a new book called “Fed Up.” If you expected me to link to his new book, sorry, you don’t know me at all.
Quick, a little word association — or in Perry’s case, disassociation:
Political figure writing books — running for president.
Political figure on TV book tour saying he is not running for president — running for president.
Political figure on TV book tour saying he is not running for president on Jon Stewart’s “The Daily Show” — running for president.
There you have it folks. Gov. Good Hair doth protest a bit too much when declaring he will not run for president as darling or Mr. Congeniality of the Tea Party. Would Sarah Palin settle for Veep again? Only if she didn’t get the nomination herself. The Tea Party seems way too traditional to even let a woman run for political office when she would best serve someone at home barefoot and pregnant in the kitchen. But I guess they make exceptions for things such as that, or for bad qualities such as lying. (Saying you are not running for president when you
Dumb and Dumber: Which is which?
have every intention to do so. A white lie for a good ol’ white boy.)
Like his predecessor, Gee Dubya By God Bush, Good Hair is a master at multi-tasking so hedging his bets by staying employed by the State of Texas as its governor no es un problema. Perry can keep his cushy little job as governor of Ol No. 2. I say that meaning Texas is number 2 in population and area. As well as Gross State Product (GSP.) I suppose Perry would qualify for that too.
There is nothing better I like than spending tax money on a politician running for office, but only if I like him, her or it. The GSP, well, not so much.
Now that Bush and Perry have dueling books, the world gets treated to lame TV interviews of the two people whom I least would want to have seen as a representative of this the greatest, even at No. 2 because like Avis we try harder, state in the Onion. Perry’s book said Bush spent too much as president. I haven’t read either one but I suppose Bush will say something about Perry like “his feet stunk.” Boys will be boys!
I really can’t see Perry being elected as president because I don’t think that — even though they did elect George W. Bush — there are quite enough brain dead American voters to pull it off. Of course, it always helps to have a Supreme Court in your pocket.
