Economic Crisis for Dummies

I think I’m a reasonably good manager in at least one respect: I try to shield my team from the horrors of what exists outside of our limited domain. I don’t rehash every argument I’ve had, or tell them every silly quip that has been said by my superiors; I try to create an atmosphere […]

Kucinich on the Bailout

I had to stop myself from shouting “Amen” and “Halleluiah” during this rant by Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-OH):

You First. No, You.

The $700 billion bailout of American financial institutions is likely to be rubber stamped this week. I can’t say that I’m particularly happy about it, but at least this morning’s television news wasn’t as polluted as usual with bankers crying out for Uncle Sam to rescue them. It’s been reported that matters became so pathetic […]

An Alternative Bailout Proposal

As sent to me by Robin Yassin-Kassab: Now here’s a bail out plan that works! I’m against the $85,000,000,000.00 bailout of AIG. Instead, I’m in favor of giving $85,000,000,000 to America in a “We Deserve It Dividend”. To make the math simple, let’s assume there are 200,000,000 bonafide U.S. Citizens 18+. Our population is about […]

Obama the Musical

It’s nice to see the people at Obama HQ are having fun:

The Era of Missed Opportunities

Two days ago, I was walking home from the train station when I heard a loud noise explode from behind me. The dreadful cacophony sounded like a goose was being strangled in 3-D surround sound. I turned, and saw that a group of teenagers had appropriated a traffic cone: one of them was using it […]

Review: Mr. Adams’s Last Crusade by Joseph Wheelan

[AMAZONPRODUCT=0786720123] Ask anyone of a progressive bent who features in their pantheon of political heroes, most of the answers you’ll get will be fairly modern: usually icons of the Sixties, like Noam Chomsky or Robert Kennedy, get many mentions. Sometimes you’ll get Herbert Marcuse. The most historically minded tend to go for Franklin Roosevelt. It […]

Still More Cold Call Absurdity

My blockade of cold call sales people took yet another unexpected turn; the Project Manager in my team, who hitherto has kept her name out of the the bullseye of these firms, is now starting to receive much of the same email traffic that I receive. The first paragraphs in their latest email is revealing: […]

Even More Cold Call Absurdity

The absurdity of cold call selling has reached new depths at my workplace; my voicemail is full of messages from recruitment agents who are desperate to get in touch with me.  Still, I’ve kept the barriers up. So, they’ve gravitated towards my Development Manager. He too has put them off. So finally, they found out the […]

Nature on the Boil

If you want a good indication of how the environment has degraded over time, get out your old home movies. My parents did this last Christmas in an effort to embarass me in front of my girlfriend, an endeavour made simpler by a recent transfer of some old Super 8 films onto DVD. As I […]

Me And My Blog

Picture of meI'm a Doctor of both Creative Writing and Manufacturing and Mechanical Engineering, a novelist, a technologist, and still an amateur in much else.