In a local “headless torso” case, two boys were arrested for killing their mom, then cutting off her head and hands to hinder identification of the body, a trick they picked up from watching “The Sopranos.” This is why I don’t allow a lot of TV viewing at my house . . . Read more →
January 2003
The Ultimate Morale Booster
Cybersex and so-called virtual affairs on the Internet are the all the buzz among professionals who study spouses who stray. But the truly fertile ground for dangerous emotional attachments outside marriages is much more conventional: the workplace. — USA Today, “Infidelity reaches beyond having sex”, Jan. 8, 2003 The Programmer reflects that perhaps sex in the workplace is a good indicator of employee morale: I remember my first job, I worked on some great teams and great projects. I also had liaisons with a secretary and a senior systems analyst (quite a coup for a junior programmer). A married operations manager kind of came on to me, but she had a crisis of conscience at the last minute. Currently, I work in a low-morale workplace — a low-morale industry, for that matter — no one has any emotional connection with one another, and I get no sex at all. Of… Read more →
Job Posting of the Week
From an actual job posting: Time management and data organization skills are also required. What kind of world are we living in where that sort of thing has to be explicitly specified in a job description? Aren’t time management and data organization skills pretty much required for daily life, outside of, say, a prison or a mental asylum? Thus spoke The Programmer. Read more →
I Have a Dream (2003 Edition)
“I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where my memory is honored by a full slate of NBA basketball games . . .” Read more →
Rent Hikes Cause Homelessness?
I read a story in Time magazine about a family in Columbus, OH, evicted from their apartment and living in a homeless shelter because they couldn’t afford a rent hike on the apartment. The husband was unemployed at the time; the wife was a pizza delivery driver. Both are high-school dropouts and they have three kids. The lesson here, according to Time: All it takes sometimes is a sudden rent hike to push a working family into a shelter. Read more →
The Forer Effect
Psychologist B.R. Forer found that people tend to accept vague and general personality descriptions as uniquely applicable to themselves without realizing that the same description could be applied to just about anyone. Consider the following as if it were given to you as an evaluation of your personality. Read more →
Teachers Making a Difference
Good or bad? It doesn’t say. OC Family‘s Special Annual “10 Teachers Making a Difference” issue is out . . . Read more →
Ask HW: Why Aren’t There More Black Head Coaches in the NFL?
The conventional wisdom on this is that black coaches are hired on merit, while white coaches are hired by racists. Read more →