don't see this
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all right, all right | finchereh... | helena
some of us... | brad
hacktacular | edward
men, taxi cabs, white horses | helena
my list | helena
cutting and pasting for idiots... | deborah
this is one of Ridge's first speeches from early 2002...
Good evening. I'm Tom Ridge. Nearly six months ago, President Bush asked me to organize and lead a new federal agency, the Office of Homeland Security. Since that time, many of you have probably wondered just what this agency has been up to and what, if anything, we are doing to prevent terrorist attacks within our borders.
Tonight, I'm proud to unveil my agency's new weapon in the War on Terror: the Homeland Security advisory system. It's a simple five level system, which uses color codes to indicate varying levels of terrorist threat. The lowest level of threat is condition OFF-WHITE, followed by CREAM, PUTTY, BONE and finally NATURAL. It is essential that every American learns to recognize and distinguish these colors. Failure to do so could cost you your life. For those who may have questions, an excellent guide will be found on page 74 of the spring J. Crew catalogue.
Now, what precisely do these threat levels indicate? Condition OFF-WHITE, the lowest level, indicates a huge risk of terrorist attack. Next highest, condition CREAM: an immense risk of terrorist attack. Condition PUTTY: an enormous risk of terrorist attack. Condition BONE: a gigantic risk of terrorist attack. And finally, the most serious, condition NATURAL: an enormous risk of terrorist attack.
Many of you probably noticed that in the preceding chart, we used the term "Enormous risk of terrorist attack" twice. This was a mistake we didn't catch in time and we're trying to fix it.
So, there you have it. The Homeland Security advisory system. This took you six months, you might ask? Well, not exactly. We lost the first few weeks with moving back to D.C., finding office space, working out the phones, etc. Also, remember: I just missed being named Vice-President. Instead, I got this as a consolation prize. And you have to admit, it's a pretty thankless job. So, perhaps in the first few months, there may have been some bitterness on my part that affected my job performance. But not anymore. Since Christmas, I have been totally happy and committed. One last point, at my request and effective immediately, the President has placed the nation on Condition TAUPE. More on that in the weeks and months ahead.
I am cold and tired and very wet. Apropos of nothing, here are my deadly sins, ranked from first to last.
- Pride
- Sloth
- Lust
- Gluttony
- Wrath
- Avarice
- Envy
To be honest, I am very rarely envious of anyone. But I'm definitely on top of the other six. How would you rank yours?
I cannot discuss money matters around my friends. So let me just say that charging a 3% "transaction fee" for a check which counts as a "cash advance" (meaning that interest begins to accrue right away) is what I would label "highway robbery".
Also, two other small coding points. The search engine, which has been down, is now back up again.
Finally, as many of you have noticed, you don't have permission to delete your own posts. Some have complained about this. My logic is this: if you really need to delete a post, get in touch with Helena, Brad or myself. We have the rights to do so. But posting and then removing is a weapon of last resort. It's the sort of thing the White House does all the time.
Information, once placed on a website, is historical. Removing it doesn't get rid of the information, it just moves it to different areas. So next time, think before you post that juicy bit of gossip about your boss.
On that note, I love my job.
This ruling totally stinks. We need to make access to unions easier, not tougher, especially for the growing temporary worker class.
Temporary workers will no longer be able to bargain for job benefits as part of a unit with permanent employees, the National Labor Relations Board has ruled, reversing a Clinton-era precedent.
In a 3 to 2 vote that was issued Friday, the three members appointed by President Bush -- Robert J. Battista, the chairman; Peter C. Schaumber and Ronald E. Meisburg -- said there is a difference between temporary and permanent workers. "Thus, the entity that the two groups of employees look to as their employer is not the same. No amount of legal legerdemain can alter that fact," their ruling stated.
Look for most businesses to continue to try to reduce permanent workers and replace them with temps, allowing them to slash benefits and cut costs. The long-term problem? Put simply: a workforce made up of temps contains numerous overhead that will eventually drag a business down. The lack of institutional knowledge alone is something difficult to quantify, yet the repercussions on the bottom line are significant. Each time a new temp worker is hired, time must be spent to bring them up to speed, and certain bits of information (the password to an old router, the location of an old bill, the vendor one uses for a particular need) are certain to be lost during the transfer. Over time these little bits of loss become larger until an organization can no longer function properly.
I've worked in an office with extremely high turnover...tons of time was always being wasted when someone said "Oh, we already did that last year...where did we put it?"
werkz advice: worth seeing.
The latest non-bond brosnin flick: "After the Sunset" is ostensibly a jewel-heist caper. In reality, it's a somewhat quirky comedy, filled with a bizarre shark shooting, men sleeping together and suntan lotion weirdness. All with a caribbean accent. And a remote controlled car. And Salma Hayek building a deck.
Trust me, you should see it. It's not great, but it's memorable.
werkz advice: go see it!
Bruckheimer's latest production, "National Treasure" is a fairly decent action comedy. Having Nicholas Cage in it lets me complete the following logical statement: Con Air is not as good as National Treasure which is not as good as The Rock.
With that said, NT was actually a fun time. So go see it.
Kerry is off the list of titles. Gerry is on. Go figure.
So Howl's Moving Castle is in the process of blowing apart the box office records in Japan.
Is reading the Post with nostalgia a bad sign that one is going through District withdrawal? or looking at weather.com just to see what the temperature is like inside the Beltway? or scanning Craigslist just to see if there are any interesting looking apartments I could move back to? (other than those offers of free accomodation to ladies from beyond the Iron Curtain?) I know that I will go back soon, and that a few things need to happen first (like hearing a definitive answer on the job that's going to be paying for the new apartment, as unfortunately, I don't seem to qualify for free accomodation) but patience has never been one of my virtues. For now, I will focus on knitting sweaters and climbing mountains (with some reading in between) -- and in the end, it might not be all that bad...
Happy Turkey Day, kids.
I'm stuffed at the moment, or rather, have been, since noon.
The luxury of being able to sit in a warm house and type these words is more than enough to be thankful for.
That and water chestnuts wrapped in bacon cooked in a special marinade...mmm....I think I'm hungry again.
I've always loved maps and globes. The mixture of pure information and imagination (I wonder what it's like over there) is a killer combo. A while back, Helena scored me a great globe with a depiction of the world as it was thought in the past. In many ways, this is even superior to an up-to-date map as if you put two maps together, you can see a visual representation of history, of wars, of the effects of colonization. I always wanted to have a house one day with a giant map on the wall or a huge table, perhaps an electronic one, that I could zoom in or pan around on.
In that spirit, I present the coolest globe ever. It's another stephensonesque object, in the spirit of The Confusion Globe.
Of course, the brand-spanking froogle wish list doesn't have it available to link to. Yet.