My friend jobmergency posted this. She is a really good writer; feel free to check out her blog.
Month: May 2014
Amorphous Blob Pizza
Yesterday my cousin (he’s 8) and I went to the bakery to buy pre-made pizza dough. He was very excited about the “play-dough” and couldn’t wait to start working it. Unfortunately we ended up with a gaping hole in it so I had no choice but to fold it back on top of itself and roll it out into an amorphous blob.
Either way, he thought we made some tasty pizza and it all worked out fine. This one had pepperoni, roasted red peppers, zucchini and mushrooms with mozzarella and bocconcini cheeses. Pretty, pretty good.
Doctor! Nothing will stop it!
Officially tired of job hunting.
I am officially tired of wasting my time.
I applied for a government position back in February and even interviewed for said position a few months back. I thought the interview went fine.
The position outline of course describes the ideal candidate, who is expected to be a virtual human encyclopedia with a godlike ability to apply his or her knowledge in innovative and creative ways, while simultaneously solving all the world’s sustainable development problems. So yes, the moon and the stars, please.
In order to improve the way governments approach sustainability, they must change how they operate. But this is like trying to ask Kim Jong-un to get a better haircut. It ain’t going to happen.
The government decided to repost the position for which I’ve already interviewed now 3 months later, with no application deadline in hopes that some other superhuman candidate will come along to fill the position, I assume. They could have had someone (me, or anyone else with experience) working on their problems for months now, but prefer to adhere to the norm of inefficiency. This way the HR people are kept busy paper-pushing at least.
Just have to keep studying for the LSAT. I am incrementally improving my accuracy in answering questions, but it is slow and painful.
When you look this good, why change it?
And…what goes around sometimes does come around
Ilene Busch-Vishniac, was the President of the University of Saskatchewan until yesterday, when she was fired from this post. This was following the controversy over the firing and subsequent reinstatement of Dr. Robert Buckingham.
It’s a game of senior administration dominoes…
See:
University of Saskatchewan terminates president after fired professor controversy
And the plot thickens…
University of Saskatchewan Provost resigns, but the President won’t…students are protesting (I don’t believe this is happening outside of Quebec!) and everyone is kung-fu fighting…
Read more here:
Robyn Urback: University of Saskatchewan president needs a lesson in Free Speech 101
University of Saskatchewan professor Robert Buckingham was fired for criticizing a university cutback plan, given the corporately branded name “TransformUS”. But it’s okay, controversy and bad press have encouraged university CEO Illene Busch-Vishniac, ahem, I mean President Busch-Vishniac, to give Robert Buckingham his job back, kind of.
How to deny, discount, and dismiss bullying and psychological abuse at work
David Yamada of “Minding the Workplace” has posted an excellent article on bullying and psychological abuse at work. This article was also reblogged extensively, including a reblog by James Pilant of Pilant’s Business Ethics Blog (I recommend following his and David Yamada’s blog; lots of fascinating reading!)
A recent blog piece by psychologist Kenneth Pope explaining how reports of torture can be easily denied, discounted, and dismissed strongly resonated with my understanding of the dynamics of bullying and abuse at work. I thought it worth sharing and discussing with readers here.
Three cognitive strategies
Dr. Pope identifies “three common cognitive strategies for denying, discounting, dismissing, or distorting instances of torture and for turning away from effective steps to stop it and hold those responsible accountable”:
First, “reflexively dismissing all evidence as questionable, incomplete, misleading, false, or in some other way inadequate.”
Second, “using euphemism, abstraction, and other linguistic transformations” to hide the abuse.
Third, by “turning away: ‘I’m not involved,’ ‘There is nothing I can do about it,’ ‘I have no authority, jurisdiction, power, or influence,’ ‘This is no concern of mine,’ etc.”
Applied to workplace bullying
I quickly thought of workplace bullying when I read this blog post.
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The Canadian Dream
Article on income inequality in the USA published in the New York Times.
Nicholas Kristof: It’s Now the Canadian Dream.
It’s why Americans are screwed.
Cowbirds are Jerks
Given that I have a science background, I sometimes find myself interested in the social behavior of animals and how these behaviors have evolved. I learned that loons were big jerks, but Canadians still seem to love them anyway. They just hide the fact that they are jerks by looking and sounding pretty (I’m sure this seems vaguely familiar to some of you).
Today I was watching a cowbird through binoculars. As it turns out, rather than make the effort to build nests, cowbirds sneak in and lay their eggs in the nests of other birds when they aren’t watching. Apparently for passerine birds, cowbirds lay eggs at unusually high rates, like at chicken-level egg laying rates, to compensate for high egg mortality. And, rather than spend effort incubating eggs (since they hijack other nests) the females sometimes hang around their innocent victims’ nests like psycho-moms, watching to see what happens to their eggs. As if this wasn’t crazy enough, two scientists, Hoover and Robinson, discovered that cowbirds, like cuckoos, will retaliate and destroy the eggs of the host birds if the host birds reject the cowbird eggs. Jerks!
Even better, if the eggs aren’t rejected by host parent or parents, the cowbird chicks will hatch earlier, grow noticeably bigger and create much more noise than the host bird chicks, giving them an advantage to get more food. Once fledged, cowbirds live around cattle, eating insects that are stirred up by them. That’s right; cowbirds even take advantage of the easy access, all-you-can-eat buffet provided by cows.
Next time I meet a sponging, lazy, vindictive human who can’t stop breeding, I’ll try to remember that the behavioral niche for jerks evolved a long time ago. Nature has developed many creative methods of ensuring the survival of a species.
Brown-headed Cowbird, from allaboutbirds.org. You can recognize it based on its distinctive hat, boots and belt buckle.
Remember that atheist club?
What comes to my mind published this entertaining poster:
Based on this, clearly what the world needs is an atheist-extremist group. I’m in charge of the new group. Except the only problem is all of my followers won’t believe anything I say. Okay nevermind. That won’t work.
Back to the drawing board to find another way to take over the world…damn it!
Why We Are Screwed 