Fox’s Chris Wallace: "In our interview last week with President Trump, he questioned whether his opponent Joe Biden could handle a similar encounter. Well, we asked the Biden campaign for an interview and they said the former VP was not available. We'll keep asking every week.” pic.twitter.com/5BIbp6dQ02
— TV News HQ (@TVNewsHQ) July 26, 2020
Four Existential Questions
- Can I eat it?
- Can I have sex with it?
- Can it kill me?
- Can I buy it at a discount?
People I Thought Were Dead
About 19 years ago, I published the first version of People I Thought Were Dead.
As of yesterday, July 25, 2020, with the death of Olivia De Havilland of natural causes at the age of 104, all of those people are now actually deceased.
Playlists for Pandemics
Come take a walk on the wild side
Come kiss me hard in the pouring rain
You like your girls insane
So, choose your last words, this is the last time
‘Cause you and I, we were born to die
What Young People Did Not Know
What young people did not know. They did not know that lumpy, aged, and wrinkled bodies were as needy as their own young, firm ones, that love was not to be tossed away carelessly, as if it were a tart on a platter.
Playlists for Pandemics
But I’m not crazy, I’m just a little unwell
I know right now you can’t tell
But stay awhile and maybe then you’ll see
A different side of meI’m not crazy, I’m just a little impaired
I know right now you don’t care
But soon enough you’re gonna think of me
And how I used to be
On This Date: Settling Clergy Sex-Abuse Cases
On this date, July 15, in 2007, the Roman Catholic archdiocese of Los Angeles announced it was settling clergy sex-abuse cases for $660 million.
Some people, including some in my own family, will tell you that America started going down the drain when we took God out of schools, whatever that means.
Call me a skeptic but we haven’t taken God out of churches and yet we still have $660 million worth of child rape. In one archdiocese!
Pass the collection plate, Padre!
Purpose in the Workplace
There was a Harris Poll survey years ago that asked employees how connected they were to the purpose and core values of their company.
- 37 percent of these US workforce employees clearly knew their company’s purpose.
- 20 percent were enthusiastic about the purpose of the company.
- 20 percent could see how they as an employee could support the purpose of the company.
- 15 percent felt enabled to work toward the purpose
- 20 percent fully trusted the company that employed them.
Is that a good set of statistics or not? It’s not unexpected when you look at the US workforce right now.
What if that were a football team? So what if you’re the quarterback on this football team and on this football team, on the offensive side, there are 11 players and you find among all 11 players that only four of them know which goal they’re going to. That only two of them cared. That only two of them knew which position they’re supposed to be playing. The two of them believe that their efforts could make a difference out of the 11, and that eight of them would just as soon be rooting for the other team.
That makes little sense, right? When I talk to groups, to companies about this, people have a nervous laugh because they know they should be acting like a team, but that they’re not typically.
And That’s the Truth: Black Lives Matter?
[And That’s the Truth is a feature by our guest blogger, Sojourner Truth– PE]
When I tell you that black lives matter, I mean that to me, all black lives matter. When Black Lives Matter tells you that black lives matter, that means they want to tell you a Big Bad Wolf story about a cop.
What is Black Lives Matter about anyway? It ain’t about black lives. I seen on the TV news about gun violence on Fourth of July weekend, hundreds of people shot and killed, including six children. They showed pictures of the children and every one of ’em was black.
Do you know any of their names? You know George Floyd, right? Why didn’t any of these babies’ lives matter as much as George Floyd? Does your life only matter if you’re killed by a cop?
What did Black Lives Matter say about six black children being murdered? Not a goddamn word. What does Black Lives Matter say about the death of any black man, woman or child, no matter how tragic or senseless, if they wasn’t killed by cop? Not a goddamn word.
It’s a magic trick where your attention be directed away from what’s really going on, which is that black folks is victimized by violence every single day, but not by cops, it’s by armed criminals who don’t give a goddamn who they shoot.
You say what you want about white people, they caused me a lot of misery, but they don’t murder babies in the street.
And that’s the Truth!
TMB: Sound Up on Tusk
A New Purpose in Life
I’m taking an online course on Finding Purpose and Meaning in Life . . . when my son was growing up, I felt like my purpose in life was to be a good father and to take care of my family.
After the boy grew up and moved out on his own, I struggled for many years to find a reason for being alive anymore. I thought maybe raising the boy was my destiny and I had fulfilled it.
Now I’m happy to say that with a lot of guidance, I’ve figured out my new purpose in life, a new way to help and serve people: taking out the trash.
My Boyhood Sports Icons Are Dying: Jim Kiick
Jim Kiick was a running back, primarily with the Miami Dolphins, from 1968 to 1977. He played in three Super Bowls, winning two, and scored the decisive touchdown in Super Bowl VII, a 14-7 victory over the Washington Redskins that capped off an undefeated 17-0 swason.
He is the Dolphins’ fourth all-time leading rusher.
RIP Jim Kiick
People I Thought Were Dead
- Mario Andretti, auto racer
- Leslie Caron, actress
- Mitzi Gaynor, actress/singer/dancer
- Marla Gibbs, actress
- Bobby Goldsboro, singer
- Mikhail Gorbachev, General Secretary of the USSR
- Howard Hesseman, actor
- Sally Kellerman, actress
- Peter Lupus, actor
- Gavin MacLeod, actor
- Robert MacNeil, TV journalist
- Jackie Mason, comedian
- Lee Meriweather, actress, former Miss America
- George Mitchell, U.S. Senator
- Jaye P. Morgan, singer/game show panelist
- Bill Moyers, journalist
- Charley Pride, singer
- Dean Stockwell, actor
- Fred Williamson, athlete/actor
Updates
- Mitzi Gaynor, died 10/17/2024, age 93
- Mikhail Gorbachev, died 8/30/2022, age 91
- Howard Hesseman, died 1/29/2022, age 81
- Sally Kellerman, died 2/24/2022, age 84
- Gavin MacLeod, died 5/29/2021, age 90
- Jackie Mason, died 7/24/2021, age 93
- Charley Pride, died 12/12/2020, age 86
- Robert MacNeil, died 4/12/2024, age 93
- Dean Stockwell, died 11/7/2021, age 85
Do You Want a Programmer or a Pizza?
I teach programming classes for a living. The school has a Slack account and one of the things we use it for is to post relevant job openings.
These postings come from the hiring companies and most of them unfortunately simply consist of a copy of the job description: Responsibilities, Requirements, Technical Skills. Bullet points. Trying to hire programmers like ordering a pizza.
When I was a hiring manager, HR would try to run job postings like that. The problem was that I wanted to hire good programmers and good programmers have a lot of options regarding where they work. So just as a candidate needs to sell themselves to a company, a company needs to sell itself to candidates. One way of doing this is through job postings. So I rewrote the job postings to make them more enticing.
To give you an example of what I mean, here’s a short excerpt from an Irvine Public Schools Foundation (IPSF) job posting:
Three years from now, we will look back and you will be a key hero who led us to new heights. At IPSF, you will have a blast coming to work every day and you will be respected and valued for your contribution to our community. We are looking for the top person and have allocated the resources necessary to recruit him or her.
You will be a key hero, respected by your community. They want the best person and they have the resources to make it happen.
Now here’s a short excerpt from our most recent Slack job posting:
PHYSICAL DEMANDS: While performing the duties of this job, the employee is regularly required to use hands to finger, handle, or feel objects, tools, or controls; reach with hands and arms; and talk or hear. The employee frequently is required to walk and sit.
You see the difference, right?
There’s not one person in the world who, if asked what they’re looking for in their dream job, would say “I’m looking for a job where I can regularly use my hands to finger, handle, or feel objects, tools, or controls. And I would really love to have frequent opportunities to walk and sit.”
Also when you see this kind of mumbo-jumbo, it tips you off that anything you try to do will be stymied by a series of compliance hurdles.
If you’re looking for a new job, I can’t tell you how selective to be about job postings. Lots of factors are involved. But if a company makes no effort to sell itself or the job offered, and treats you like a commodity before they hire you, be assured they will treat you like a commodity after they hire you.
Thus spoke The Programmer.
We Need a Better Coronavirus Metric
The U.S. reports a record day of cases: 36,880 new coronavirus cases were reported on Wednesday, which is the largest one-day total since the start of the pandemic. Florida, Oklahoma, South Carolina and Texas reported their highest single-day totals. — Medium
This is misleading, isn’t it? We’re doing more testing. It’s a lot easier to get tested than it used to be. You don’t need to have symptoms. You don’t need a doctor’s order.
Pharmacies are now doing drive-thru testing. The CVS in my neighborhood takes testing appointments at 10-minute intervals from 9am to 5pm. And they’re not easy to get. People are booking them up. I just got my test yesterday (results next week).
It sounds like from that 36,880 number that more people are being infected. It sounds like that is what’s being implied. But there’s really no way to know that from the data provided. Obviously if we’re doing more testing, we’re going to have more detected cases. Or to flip it around, we’ll have fewer undetected cases. But we don’t know what we really want to know, which is if we have more cases.
It seems like a more useful number would be the percentage of tests that come back positive. If it goes up, that’s bad; if it goes down, that’s good. But it’s unaffected by the number of tests performed.
Now Here’s a Guy Who Gets Me
I teach programming classes for a living. The classes are 8 hours a day, 5 days a week, for 12 weeks. I put a lot of preparation into it because I want students to have the best, most up-to-date and relevant instruction.
It’s a good job for me. Programming seems to me like an important, valuable skill . . . it’s allowed me to make a living doing (for the most part) things I like and things I’m good at.
It gives you a lot of options. You don’t have to work for a tech company. Almost any field of endeavor now uses software and data and they hire programmers. You can work in education, healthcare, finance, sports, whatever energizes you.
So it’s good to have a job where I feel like I’m helping people. The downside is that the students can’t really tell good instruction from bad instruction.
Yes, they can assess whether I’m articulate and a pleasant person to spend the day with, but they really can’t assess the prep that goes into organizing the material, keeping it current, making it comprehensible and breaking it into 8-hour chunks of valuable educational activities.
The only person who can appreciate that is my teaching assistant, my TA, because he’s also a programmer. Today was his last day. He’s leaving to take a new job (which he should . . . he’s a talented guy and being a TA is not a long-term career).
As part of a note he wrote me, he said
Honestly i think you’re a savage and you provide the students with so much and you don’t take shit from the back office. Thank you for everything. I’m going to miss working with you.
Now here’s a guy who gets me. (By “back office,” he means the sales and marketing guys who want to tell me how to teach the classes.) The single most underappreciated quality of my career — and by “underappreciated” I mean it’s embroiled me in a great deal of conflict — is my unwillingness to take advice on how to do my job from people who don’t know how to do my job.
Thus spoke The Programmer.
We Giveth But We Also Taketh Away, Just Like God
“As driving behaviors evolve during the COVID-19 pandemic, XYZ Insurance Company is working to reduce auto rates in every state. The national average for those rate reductions is 11%, saving customers a total of approximately $2.2 billion.
“‘Current driving data and claims experience show a considerable decline in miles driven and fewer accidents,’ said XYZ Senior Vice President Kristyn Cook-Turner. ‘As a result, we’re looking for ways to continue supporting our customers while we monitor and adjust to trends.’
“‘On the flip side, we’ve also noticed that a lot more of our customers are getting sick and dying,’ Cook-Turner continued, ‘so we’ll be correspondingly increasing premiums for health and life insurance.’
“‘You win a few, you lose a few.'”
You’re Not Gonna Like the Way You Look
I went for what I thought would be a quick stop at Men’s Wearhouse to buy a tie. The salesman informed me that they were selling ties on a “buy one, get one free” basis.
The selection wasn’t very good in my opinion. I picked out one tie I liked and spent another 30 minutes trying to find a second tie that I wouldn’t feel bad being seen in. Several times I was on the verge of checking out with just the one tie but it just didn’t feel right to pass up a free tie.
Ain’t That Peculiar?
Mayor Says Seattle Will Move to Dismantle Protest Zone, After Second Shooting in Less Than 48 Hours — TIME
It’s peculiar how leftist radicals get hold of a piece of ground and all of a sudden they love guns and border walls . . .
Orwell: “You Can’t Say I Didn’t Warn You F*ckers”
Every record has been destroyed or falsified, every book rewritten, every picture has been repainted, every statue and street building had been renamed, every date has been altered. And the process is continuing day by day and minute by minute. History has stopped. Nothing exists except an endless present in which the Party is always right.
According to KMOX radio in St. Louis, a petition has been started with hopes of changing the city’s name and — wait for it — taking down a statue of Saint Louis IX in Forest Park. The petition creators say the city’s name is “outright disrespect” to Jewish and Muslim residents.
A statue of Christopher Columbus in Tower Grove Park was taken away last week.
