From Pine View Farm

November, 2010 archive

Facebook Frolics 0

Wonder what she said?

The National Labor Relations Board alleges that American Medical Response of Connecticut Inc. illegally fired Dawnmarie Souza from her job as an emergency medical technician late last year after she criticized her supervisor on her personal Facebook page and then traded Facebook messages about the negative comments with other employees.

(snip)

Federal labor law has long protected employees against reprisal for talking to co-workers on their own time about their jobs and working conditions, including remarks that may be critical of managers. The law applies whether or not workers are covered by a union.

I’ve found that, if one only person in a work group complains about supervision while the others do not, it’s likely the employee who has the problem. If most of the persons in the work group complain, it’s likely that supervision is the problem. Most persons do not come to work in order to be miserable.

All seriousness aside, we’re probably going to see more tension between employers and employees over use of social media. Employees will contribute to this by forgetting that the internet is a public place, and employers will respond by hammering the employees, rather than by cleaning up their practices.

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QOTD 0

Theodore Roosevelt:

A vote is like a rifle; its usefulness depends upon the character of the user.

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Take It Back 0

And not meant the way the Cream meant it.

Via Andrew Sullivan.

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Lies and Lying Liars 2

Andrew Sullivan takes the dissecting knife to just one lie.

It’s quite an autopsy.

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Comment Rescue, The Voter Fraud Fraud Dept. 2

I’ve been distracted by computer problems for the past few days (you can read about them at Geekazine) and have put off responding to this comment, from which I’ve excerpted the opening sentence. I’m promoting it because, in my view, it deserves the plain light of day:

Mississippi has more registered voters than residents is that not a problem?

Startpage is your friend.

I have not argued and will not argue that keeping accurate voter records is not a good thing.

Nevertheless, the right-wing hysteria over voter fraud is a redstate herring.

It is simply not true that large numbers individual persons are registering fraudulently in order to throw elections.

The voter fraud fraud is the spiritual and intellectual bastard child of the poll tax and the literacy test–Sunday go-to-meeting clothes on a strategy to keep the poor, the downtrodden, the dispossessed from having a public voice.

Elections are stolen in the counting room, not in the voting room.

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Facebook Frolics 0

Given the stuff that students do and say every day, this does rather seem to be an overreaction by the school system.

In August 2009, the then 24-year-old resigned from her job at Apalachee High School after someone claiming to be a parent sent an e-mail complaining about pictures of Payne smiling while holding alcoholic drinks during a trip to Europe. Payne had also written an expletive on her page, saying she was headed to a game of “Crazy Bitch Bingo” at a Midtown restaurant.

Payne said she was pressured to resign over the e-mail; the district said she volunteered.

A suit is working its way through the court system.

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Stray Question 0

If someone is going to click “Not Sure” in one of those newspaper poll thingees, why would he or she even bother to click?

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QOTD 0

Thomas Aquinas:

A man has free choice to the extent that he is rational.

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It’s Kind of Like Running into a Cop Car 0

Going from running into the dock to being in the dock:

Fish and wildlife agents said the three had been out fishing in an 18-foot boat near Roosevelt Inlet on Wednesday and decided to move closer to the Coast Guard station, where they collided with the Lewes fire boat docked there.

Charges have been filed.

And justly so. It’s dangerous enough out there without adding stupid to the mix.

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The Rich Are Different from You and Me 1

They get a “Get Out of Jail” card.

A fund manager for Smith Barney is getting off without felony charges after he allegedly ran over a cyclist with his Mercedes and fled the scene in Eagle, Colorado, because, the DA says, felony charges would be bad for the fund manager’s business.Get out of Jail

Martin Joel Erzinger will not be charged with a felony because “Felony convictions have some pretty serious job implications for someone in Mr. Erzinger’s profession,” according to District Attorney Mark Hurlbert.

Afterthought: A hit-and-run can have some pretty serious job implications too.

Via the Wage Slave.

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Q. What Are “the Whirries”? 0

A. What the external hard drive on my file server has got.

Now I know why I was motivated yesterday to order a new 2TB external hard drive from Tiger.

I use it primarily for backing stuff up. All that is uniquely stored on it is the complete F-Troop and the complete Meet the Gimp, which I put there so I could watch them from any computer on the network.

I’m downloading the Meet the Gimp right now.

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The Immaturing of NASCAR 0

From time to time, after I finish the Cheerios box, I find myself reduced to reading the NASCAR coverage in the local rag.

Back when I was a young ‘un, back in the days of cars of wood and men of steel, back when persons actually knew what a “hemi” is, stock car racing was about winning races with the best car and driver. The cars were stock: you could drive one to the race, then drive it in the race.

Now the cars are as far from “stock” as they can be, and racing seems to be about causing your opponent to crash. Items like this are far too common:

Gordon and Burton had different mindsets. They wrecked under caution. They hit before the caution came out and Gordon moved up to Burton’s car to show his displeasure. Burton went to acknowledge him and turned left into Gordon, wrecking both.

They met in the backstretch. Gordon shoved Burton before they clutched and grabbed each other as series officials separated them.

It’s turned into pro wrestling without the clever scripting.

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Old Tea, New Bags 0

Gary Younge, in the Guardian, states over the obvious, but does so quite well. A nugget:

The Tea Party is not a new phenomenon. It’s simply a new name for an old phenomenon – the American hard right. Over the last two years the term has provided a rallying point for a coalition of disparate groups, most of which have been around for many years. Minutemen (anti-immigrant vigilantes), birthers (who deny that Obama was born in the US), Promise Keepers (Conservative Christian men), Oath Keepers (military and police, retired and current, who vow to resist unconstitutional government “by any means necessary”), Fox News watchers, Glenn Beck lovers and Rush Limbaugh listeners who had no unifying identity before.

Having a name helps. It has offered a political identity to a significant number of people who were either not active or might not have understood themselves to be in any way connected. That name has helped reorient the stated priorities of the right away from social issues and towards fiscal ones. But this is no more than the old whine in new bottles.

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QOTD 0

Emma Goldman:

If voting changed anything, they’d make it illegal.

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From Three Card Monte to Bait and Snatch 0

I think it’s called “diversification”:

Grocery store owners William and Esperanza Casco were making enough money to stay current on their mortgage, but when JPMorgan Chase & Co. offered a plan that reduced their payments, they figured they could use the extra cash and signed up.

The Cacsos say they never missed a subsequent payment, so they were horrified when the bank decided the smaller payments weren’t enough and foreclosed on their modest Long Beach home.

Via Atrios.

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Twi-lite 0

One hopes that this will do for the Twilight series what Airplane did to the Airport series:

Via Kung Fu Monkey.

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Dialectic 0

Field points out contradictions:

So let me get this straight; MSNBC suspends Keith Olbermann for donating money to dumbocratic candidates, and their rivals, Radio Rwanda, allows their on air personalities to run for republican office? I swear liberals are getting softer and softer by the day. You all have got to get hard core like the republiclowns. Do you think Radio Rwanda would fire one of their biggest earners over some s^&t like this? Hell News Corp gave over a million dollars to that racist- right out of central casting- Haley Barbour, and didn’t even sweat it.

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Facebook Frolics 0

Before you post that umpteenth status update about your toddler’s latest witticism or your feelings for Glenn Beck, consider this: According to research by a graduate student at the Business School at the University of Colorado-Denver, the top two reasons that Facebook users unfriend people is that they post too frequently on trivial topics or about polarizing subjects — particularly politics and religion.

“One of the interesting things about unfriending is that most real-world friendships either blow up or fade away,” says Christopher Sibona, who wrote the study with his adviser, Steven Walczak, an associate professor of information systems management. “But on Facebook, users actively make the decision to unfriend, and people often don’t know why or what’s happened in the relationship.”

How does “I keep forgetting to log in” rank in the list?

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Compromise 0

Lukovich
c

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Dr. Gerry Mander Explains Fiscal Policy 0

He makes it simple and understandable.

A more useful way is to see it as the opening of a golden casket in which are housed billions of tiny money pixies who fly over financial markets sprinkling sparkly confidence dust. Invisible trader elves gather the dust and distribute it to institutional investors. They then take the dust in magic flying sleighs and stuff it down the chimneys of all the good citizens who go out and spend money and stimulate the economy. But it only works if people truly believe. If you don’t believe, you won’t get any confidence dust this Christmas and your economy will stay in the doldrums.

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