Letters of Note gathers and publishes interesting and sometimes amazing letters. Often they’re from famous people, but often they’re not. This one is from John Byrnes, not famous, fighting in New Guinea in 1942. He’s writing to his daughter, upon missing her birthday as she turned two. Have tissues handy. [You can read the handwritten […]
Archive | Humanity
Your HR Rep Doesn't Know
I just read, for exceptionally boring reasons, a paper about the fact that hiring managers and HR reps don’t know the research and facts about their job. For example, most of those surveyed believed the following, apparently incorrect, things: 1. Giving employees a bigger say in decision-making leads to better performance than giving them clear […]
Old Post
I wish I’d found this old post back when the Gates drama was happening. I want to try to remember it because sometimes when people say, “would this [bad thing] have happened to a white person,” I think, “well, yeah, probably.” Sometimes; not all the time. This is from Why Oh Why, which isn’t really […]
The Worst Place for Homosexuals on Earth
Iraq. Technology and social media makes it easier to torture and murder people who aren’t bothering anyone.
Sex and Violence
Yes! It’s a common complaint of mine that naked bodies are seen as terrible things to show a child, but violence is ok. I recently saw Waltz with Bashir. It’s about war, as well as the Christian Lebanese massacre of Palestinian refugees. So there are some nasty scenes and ideas in the movie. Death, destruction, […]
Microsoft: Evil Racists?
So in my last post , I mentioned the fact that Microsoft switched out a picture of a black guy for one with a white guy in its Polish print ad. I think the question is whether that’s ok or not. The article I quoted at the time seems to assume that it isn’t. Microsoft […]
Shut Down the Internet
Iran and China show their colors nice and bright during troubles. Sunshine is the best disinfectant, so when a government tries to stop communication and the press during troubled times, we know that the government is diseased. Urumqi has lost its Internet rights. We just saw this in Iran, so it’s no surprise that another […]
Violence in Urumqi
It’s pronounced /oo room chee/ with the accent on room. The Uighurs are rioting. My wife and I spent some time there a decade ago or so. It didn’t seem a particularly nice place at the time, and the surrounding desert is dust and wasteland. Sometimes beautiful and sometimes just desolate and empty. The Uighurs […]
Pan (ic; demic; demonium)
It means absolutely nothing has changed since yesterday, except for the way it feels. Swine Flue is a pandemic. Australia (especially my probably-someday-to-be-adopted city of Melbourne) has allowed the enemy to gain a foothold. Same with the U.K., I guess, and Japan.
Guy Rules
Are these people gay? THEN: A few years ago, I was out at a restaurant/bar with three guys. It was early in the evening, the bar hadn’t really gotten started, and we just wanted some food. We could have sat in these sort of high stool-chairs, very close to blaring speakers near an empty dance […]