June 2011
Play
Listen
Dayman // It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia
Because I can never get enough of this show/song. Free Download.
I’m so happy to have an mp3 of this now.
Finally!
Some strawberries that taste perfectly ripe!
This is what a feminist looks like (my husband)
Gnus ewe can yous (Facebook made me give this a title…)by Liam Dynes
So for those hearing rumblings: Beth was indeed pregnant, but unfortunately the fetus did not live past nine weeks. As we are now in week 13, doctors are now involved.
Three things you all can do:
1) know that your well wishes are already appreciated;
2) do what you can to help ensure women (and men) can become more comfortable discussing miscarriage in an open and understanding climate;
3) support the continued abilities of doctors to undergo the training they need to address issues like these - especially in the US where D&C procedures have just become subject of a law (H.R. 1216) making it illegal for doctors to receive any public money (scholarship, program funding) to learn these procedures as they ‘may be used for abortions’.
In plainer English, anti-choice nutcases have made it so a woman whose fetus dies could be forced to carry it for weeks until a natural miscarriage (risking infection and necrosis), as well as forcing the woman to report a miscarriage to police for possible investigation (ie: lied to cover an abortion).
This is my husband on Facebook today, saying it better than I ever could (this is kinda a given in our relationship though, as he is a really, really talented writer).
May 2011
Why Your Boss Is Wrong About You →
nytimes.com
As anybody who has ever worked in any institution — private or public — knows, one of the primary ways employee effectiveness is judged is the performance review. And nothing could be less fair than that.
In my years studying such reviews, I’ve learned that they are subjective evaluations that measure how “comfortable” a boss is with an employee, not how much an employee contributes to overall results. They are an intimidating tool that makes employees too scared to speak their minds, lest their criticism come back to haunt them in their annual evaluations. They almost guarantee that the owners — whether they be taxpayers or shareholders — will get less bang for their buck.
In other words, there may be lots of reasons to restrict collective bargaining by state workers, but the idea that it will lead to a fairer system of rewarding employees, to the benefit of taxpayers, should not automatically be counted as one of them. Performance reviews corrupt the system by getting employees to focus on pleasing the boss, rather than on achieving desired results. And they make it difficult, if not impossible, for workers to speak truth to power. I’ve examined scores of empirical studies since the early 1980s and have no found convincing evidence that performance reviews are fair, accurate or consistent across managers, or that they improve organizational effectiveness.
Think about it. Performance reviews are held up as objective assessments by the boss, with the assumption that the boss has all the answers.
Emphasis mine. While this article is geared toward eliminating the argument that unions are unnecessary and we should simply reward the worker who performs the best, it has some really great points about performance reviews in general.
Good read for anyone who has ever been subjected to or has had to execute a performance review.
Reblogging myself after my previous post.
“They are an intimidating tool that makes employees too scared to speak their minds, lest their criticism come back to haunt them in their annual evaluations.”
#relevant
All of this.
The more you know: Otter Pops edition
In 1995, National Pax had planned to replace the “Sir Isaac Lime” flavor with “Scarlett O’Cherry,” until a group of Orange County, California fourth-graders created a petition in opposition and picketed the company’s headquarters in early 1996. The crusade also included an e-mail campaign, in which a Stanford professor reportedly accused the company of “Otter-cide.” After meeting with the children, company executives relented and retained the Sir Isaac Lime flavor.
“The events were not staged, they were fixed. People were supposed to ask tough questions. But asking a tough question – let alone knowing how to follow up – is a skill. Taking that task out of the hands of reporters and putting it into the hands of inexperienced amateurs was brilliant in itself.”
—Rick Perlstein, the author of Nixonland: The Rise of a President and the Fracturing of America, quoted in this article. This is why the pre-screened audiences of ”Town Hall” meetings and debates have always driven me nuts.
“Murdoch installed Ailes in the corner office on Fox’s second floor at 1211 Avenue of the Americas in Manhattan. The location made Ailes queasy: It was close to the street, and he lived in fear that gay activists would try to attack him in retaliation over his hostility to gay rights. (In 1989, Ailes had broken up a protest of a Rudy Giuliani speech by gay activists, grabbing demonstrator by the throat and shoving him out the door.) Barricading himself behind a massive mahogany desk, Ailes insisted on having “bombproof glass” installed in the windows – even going so far as to personally inspect samples of high-tech plexiglass, as though he were picking out new carpet. Looking down on the street below, he expressed his fears to Cooper, the editor he had tasked with up-armoring his office. “They’ll be down there protesting,” Ailes said. “Those gays.”
—
- How Roger Ailes built the Fox News Fear Factory
If the thought of Fox News making close to a billion dollars in profits every year makes your stomach turn into a swirling whirlpool of despair, read this brilliantly unfair and unbalanced profile of its chief, Roger Ailes, “teenage boozehound,” “bald and obese, with dainty hands,” and Islamo- and homo- and liberal- and journalism- phobic.
(via morninggloria)
“Those gays.”
