I watch the ripples change their size
But never leave the stream
Of warm impermanence
And so the days float through my eyes
But still the days seem the same
And these children that you spit on
As they try to change their worlds
Are immune to your consultations
They're quite aware of what they're goin' through

Monday, April 12, 2010

Monday in the Game

First up, fellow VP XIII'er, George Galuschak has a story up at Strange Horizons. Middle Aged Weirdo in a Cadillac. You should go read it.

Spent the day in training. Well, not all day. Most of it was walking through the paperwork. Tomorrow will be the major training part of it. And in a day and a half we'll go through the four days of training I'll need to go through with the enumerators. Right now the job looks like paper shuffling coordination. I think I was the only one in the class who hadn't worked for the Census before, making me the virgin in the room. And actually that created a buzz in the room.

On the plus side of the equation, before we got started there was a general bit of news. Seems like for this group of people, at least two people who were supposed to be there landed jobs and were able to call in to have replacements. And the "extra" person (who would be trained to cover in case one of us landed a job), called in yesterday saying they had a job offer late on Friday. So, the general feeling that at the end of March the job market changed continues. Of course, I wish I had been one of those three, but we do what we can.

One of the major problems for the current hysteria of anti-government fever and hard-core libertarianism. And that's just the roads. You really don't want to know about storm water, septic sewer, water, plowing, line painting,

Somebody is about have the regulations explained to them. Hey, Sgt Gary Stein, my guess is you're about to get a talkin' to, more so than you already have. That thing you stumbled over, yeah, that was the line you crossed. Just like those who opposed President Bush and served honorably, suck it up pal. Now, he is technically correct, he is not required to follow illegal orders (or orders that would cause him to violate laws performing them). There is already a procedure for that, including how to substantiate your claim and what actions may be taken against those who don't follow orders. I hope you've boned up on those regs, Sergeant. And just a reminder, politically disagreeing with the CinC is not an acceptable excuse for not following the lawful orders given you.

4 comments:

Hi said...

Thanks for the mention, Steve!

Steve Buchheit said...

No worries, George. Congrats on the great story and the sale.

Rick said...

They have to quit making up stupid titles. Using moronic straw man phrases like "hard- core libertarians" or "radical socialists" are the hallmarks of people with IQ's less than 160. What would they do about the roads? Pretty much the same as we do now. It's like people who say you can't own your car if the country becomes more socialist oriented.

I know people like to rant and rave about politics so they can feel like their IQ is bigger than it is, but damn libertarians and socialists are just people like the rest of us, not ideological demons.

Between the morons trying to castrate ACORN and those trying to castrate the Tea Party no wonder so little gets done.

Steve Buchheit said...

Rick, well, as you know, it's a game of how to get to the extreme as fast as possible. I tend to use a catch-all phrase, though, for most fringe elements. To me they're "whackaloons." And there's a second level to that, which mostly labels those who are fringe but don't have the real ability to be fringe, or those who have an overabundance of fringe capability, and that phrase is "freeze-dried whackaloons." Whackaloons are dime a dozen, it takes talent, skill, and drive to make freeze-dried whackaloon.

Most people are tolerable. I can listen to and find points of agreement with most political positions. It's when those pundits of whatever kool-aid flavor their pushing starts in with the intolerance (might way is RIGHT! and everything else is WRONG!) is when I start pushing them into the outlyer category.

Extremism and exclusionary rhetoric, on any end, needs to be called out. Lately I've added a category to this, and that's the "false agreement" (which is closely aligned to the "false equivalency" tactic). It's a verbal trick being used by those who would destroy this country to place themselves in positions of power.