Month: May 2004

The editor of the Daily Mirror was fired for posting fake pictures of British soldiers torturing Iraqi prisoners, but Rumsfeld hasn’t been fired for allowing real abuse to take place. As a matter of fact, nobody has really been punished for allowing real abuse to take place. From what I can tell that’s not because Americans – nor the President – think the abuse was justified. Do our military leaders think it was justified?

A woman who has four children in foster care was ordered not to have any more until she can take care of them. (Turns out she was pregnant again by the time the ruling happened!)

I certainly understand where the judge is coming from. This couple should not have any more children. However, must not? Can the courts endorce that order? And without taking any kind of preventative action, can they enforce it all? Here’s what the judge said:

“In a March 31 ruling made public last week, the judge said she was not forcing contraception or sterilization on the couple and was not requiring the mother to get an abortion should she become pregnant. But the couple could be jailed for contempt if they have another child.”

The two costs to consider here are the costs to society of caring for these children temporarily (and probably permanently) and the cost to the children who will most likely have a more difficult time growing up in foster care and homeless shelters than they would have had they been born to more stable, well off parents. Balancing those two issues is very difficult. Whether children in this situation are better off with their parents or better off with others is a highly debated situation. Is the parents’ situation temporary (and foster care is justified) or is it permanent in which case the best thing for the children might be to be adopted by someone looking for children to love?

I think the correct “punishment” for failing to agree with the judge’s ruling would be to have the next baby put up for immediate adoption. (Especially if the mother continues her drug usage while pregnant, a serious abuse to the child.) However, that ruling implies so much power to the courts that it has serious, scary implications to our society.

I think that most people blindly follow the beliefs of their party.

I bet 80% of you that agree with the above statement agree because you think members of the opposite party are stupid, bull headed and blindly follow their party. They never listen to you. Right?

We waste way too much time pitting Democrats against Republicans and vice versa. And in reality both parties are so close to each other on the political spectrum that it makes our debates ridiculous. I mean look at the grand scheme of politics, the extreme right is some sort of dictatorship and the extreme left is some form of communism. Our Democratic and Republic parties (with capital letters of course) are right next to each other somewhere in the middle. And the members of those parties cross the lines quite a bit. I mean, how many Republicans do you know that are prochoice? And I know a few Democrats that are prolife. And that’s just one issue in the larger portfolio of war, terrorism, voting, and educational systems to name a few.

Yet an independent will never make it in our political system because they don’t have the financial backing of a party and all the votes a party can pull in.

I think debate is absolutely necessary. But a debate that only has two sides – the same two sides! – for the hundreds of issues that face us today is bound to reach some strange compromises. Compromises that we can’t afford.

Fast Company | Don’t Manage Time, Manage Yourself

“The typical businessperson experiences 170 interactions per day (phone calls, hallway conversations, emails) and has a backlog of 200 to 300 hours of uncompleted work.” Wow! No wonder I feel like I’m never done!