On the Value of Experience

Experience is one of those buzzwords that comes up anytime someone decides to examine someone else's credentials. But what is it really? What makes "5 years of related experience" a testable and reliable metric for making sure someone is qualified for a position?

The short answer is easy: it isn't a good metric at all, but it is a really easy (if stupid, which I will mention discuss in a moment) to weed out candidates that are unlikely to fit. The only real problem with this system is that it assumes being near something is what makes experience. This is fundamentally erroneous since it implies that just by being in Spain I will become Spanish through some sort of cultural osmosis. To a degree this will occur, but how many of us have friends who have returned from abroad decked out in the local dress and speaking a smattering of the language, but unable to tell you much more than that about the local color?

Most of us, I am sure.

This is also true in the work place. Many times people complain about managers who know less about whats going in in the department as a whole than the people on the floor. This is to a certain extent true since if the manager knew every single little detail he would be a micromanaging tyrant, but we often run up against management that has no idea what is going on and the people on the floor are expected to fill them in before the big meeting. The problem becomes that if both of us leave that company and apply at Big Bob's Mayo Warehouse to the same management position, he will get it due to his "5 years of experience managing department X"

This superficial view of experience is downright dangerous at times when it comes to electing our leadership. Just look at the 2008 election when people were crowing from the rooftops about Obama only spending a couple of years as a junior Senator and community organizer before becoming President. Yet these same people paraded out for us Sarah Palin, a woman who they championed because of her "experience as governor of Alaska". She was the boss who had no idea what was happening on the floor, but our culture's obsession with superficial experience attempted to put her one heartbeat away from running our country in one of its most dire situations in the last few decades.

All in all wanting experience is a good thing and is something we should look for, but the catch is that we have to know what we are looking for. It isn't enough to just have someone who was in a position but didn't actually do anything or learn anything. The perfect example of this is the renaming of positions so that they sound more important that they really are. "Specialist" is the new "Assistant", "Technician" is the new entry level. With all of this flash and showmanship flying around, it can be difficult to find out what is real amidst all of the sound and fanfare.

But really it is this simple: When someone puts their best foot forward, make sure it is really there and that it is attached to a leg for them to stand on.

The Know-Nothing Party!

Politics in America seems to have lost its damned mind. We have know-nothings on the left espousing the same reality denialism as those on the right. It is a knee jerk reaction that, if one side expresses a view on something, no matter how far out there or based in woo-woo fiction, the other must take the opposite.

Needless to say, this is fucking stupid. The opposite side of a nonsense position is one that is solidly built on rational thought and backed up by corroborative evidence that is independently verifiable.

Instead we have baseless accusations and nonsense straw men on parade from both sides. To be apart of the fun you really have to fall in step to the beat of the party, otherwise you are left in the cold. Talk about what your holy book tells you, or your gut, and make assertions with about as much evidence as the average alien abduction story and the legions will follow.

We saw it under Bush, we are seeing it again under Obama. Republicans crying out about socialism (after voting for a bailout of private industries) and Democrats turning their noses up without as much moral superiority as their predecessors.

This is a democratic republic folks, not follow the leader.
We need to be aware, and full of facts, not sound bites. We need uncomfortable questions to be asked, and when answered the answers need to be checked against the evidence and accepted once it checks out.

That last bit is EXTREMELY important. Too many times do we see legitimate evidence dismissed as a "conspiracy" or "wrong" just because of some fabricated reason in the receiver's head.

If that is too much to ask for, the welcome to the Know-Nothing Party! Everyone is invited to play the party games, just check your brain at the door.

Future Politics

The internet acts as our generations giant cloud memory for things we commit down for the world to see.
How, perhaps, is this going to play into the future of politics?
In the past, it has been easy for political handlers to clean up an official's past by simply taking them out of that situation, and spreading the 'official word'. This revisionist trick does not work any more, as was demonstrated in our last election. Every time they tried, anyone with an itch and bandwidth pulled up the facts almost as fast as the politicos could lie.

These are more visible and immediate effects of the prevalence of the infortubes, but what say... twenty years from now? Will we find out that the presidential candidate was livejournal user darkXblood who wrote awful poetry? Will President BunnyLord's blog come back to haunt him from his days as a confused teen?

The answer as far as I can see it is: yes. No amount of revision is going to delete Google's cache page, or the cache's of any other number of sites. No amount of the party line will wipe away the incriminating MySpace photos.

I just toss this out there as food for thought. I personally am looking forward to it. It might bring us to a whole new level of transparancy in government... one we wished we had never seen.

Recent Reading

I have been reading the works of Thomas Jefferson recently, and I must say that he was right in hind sight.

His thoughts on government and of the people (specifically in regards to education) were so spot on, it is rather embarrassing to look around at my fellow Americans.

We live in an age where ignorance is seen as a virtue, obedience a civic duty, and government seen as a monolith given to impart what is best for us.

Where the fuck did we go THAT wrong? Seriously, how could we screw the pooch that hard?

"Our country is now taking so steady a course as to show by what road it will pass to destruction, to wit: by consolidation of power first, and then corruption, its necessary consequence." -Jefferson

Here we have, IN HIS LIFETIME, Jefferson telling us the path we find ourselves running along today. We see it everywhere, especially in the last eight years as Bush laid out his decrees from on high, and the fools who bowed at his feet called us Anti-American, terrorists, liberal whiners, or worse when we would use our right to question this insanity.

For the last century we have been told that a sword sits poised above our necks while we lay on the chopping block, and that only by being good and listening to our leaders can we be safe. We cannot see this sword because of the veil the nanny government has put over our heads for our protection.

Thus I posit to you that this constant FEAR is the only sword ready to severe us from our life and our liberty, and WE elect those who hold this blade over us. We elect the executioners of our liberty each time we allow a Congressman to lie, a President to run unchecked, or allow a candidate to go unchallenged in their assertions.

I believe we should take back that which is ours, lest we elect a firing squad instead of our own voice. A cry must go out to call our leaders onto the floor and answer to us as it was intended. They are the ones meant to lay down to us, not the other way around.

The actions we must take are many, daunting, and will at times seem overwhelming but it is up to us to defend our freedom. A place to start is by getting rid of lobbyists, who buy the vote of our representatives and place the tape over the voice of the people. The recent bailouts are a perfect example of this.

We must also never forget what truth is. There are no personal facts, no personal truths. A denial of fact is a lie, and a lie is a sign of dishonesty. Truth is derived from questioning, rigor, and letting no stone rest unturned lest the snake hide there.

We are to blame when things go wrong, and thus it is up to us to fix our problems. Let reason fight back against fear and superstition. Let your voice be heard lest you fall into a cynical void from whence no one may escape.

The only way an action is wasted is when it is never taken.

This was what we should have feared.

While we were all occupied with who was receiving money in the bailouts, we weren't paying attention to the why.

Thus, when the bailouts came, so too did more hands asking for their own pie, not just a piece of what was there. It also failed to address the actual problem of poor government regulation, fiscal policies in both the gov. and private sectors, and not to mention company responsibility.

Now, some people have their suggestions as to what the problem is, from wars to atheists, but that for the most part is either excuses or scapegoating.

The issue is large, complicated, and rests on all of our shoulders. Thus, as one we must push back against the avalanche set off by those initial bailouts.

Vote these assholes out of office so we can have some peace of mind that things like THIS will stop happening.

To use terminology that the Republican's are fond of: It is a slippery slope we are standing on.

It does not help fill a hole in your yard if you fill it with dirt from a hole you dig right next to it.

Just pull that lever.

Chuck Norris is a never ending font of humor. Whether in the form of silly internet jokes or wonderful little short stories.

But nothing comes close to the man himself. The depths he plunges of self parody and the just insane comments that border on the surreal that shoot out of his mouth almost daily are enough to tickle anyone's funny bone.

Today is no exception.

Ever the comedian, Mr. Norris proceeds to tell our President elect how to do his job. Its great! He basically tells him to do the OPPOSITE of everything Obama ran for! What irony!

This bit of masterfully crafted piece of prose is brought to us by that house of laughs, the World Net Daily.

Thanks again guys.

Catch up!

So, I have been sick the last week with a strange and undefined allergic reaction to... something. So I have been out of the loop.

But what a week it has been!

Elections are over, so I think we can all breathe a little easier knowing we are not going to be choking on election fumes for another three years. Obama won, which, while I am unsure as to if this is a good thing, it is a hell of a lot better than McCain. Especially with the off chance McCain bites it while in office and we were to be left holding the bag with Sarah Palin.

That woman embodies everything I hate about the current incarnation of the Republican party.

But enough! It is over, done with! Now there is only the future to watch. While some will complain about Obama's 'socialist' behavior, he is still conservative by most measures. What I hope to see him accomplish is to tear loose the reins of power in this country from the vultures who have forgotten We the People. That is change I can believe in, and if he can accomplish it, then Mr. Barack Obama will forever live the hearts and mind of this nation.

Now, Prop 8 and the other pieces of horse shit flung onto ballots around this country is another story altogether.
People, this is the year 2008. It doesn't take a genius to figure out that people being gay doesn't hurt you at all. Marriage is an archaic word and practice that really has no place in government what so ever. It should be between you, your spouse, and your various gods. You can't really say that your god did it first (unless you are some ancient people with some evidence on hand) since familial unions have been around for a long time. Just look at how tribal relations work.

So, for fuck's sake people, give it a rest. The only difference between you and a gay person is who you want to go to bed with. The only reason you are up in arms over this is because of a two thousand year old book that some people believe in and others don't. This isn't a christian nation, never has been and hopefully never will be. It should be a nation of freedom, where you can be what ever the hell you want and no one can tell you otherwise, provided it doesn't hurt someone.

Stop letting your book get in the way of treating your fellow man with respect and love. The world needs all the love it can get right now, so telling people that their love is wrong kind of defeats the purpose.

All the king's horses....

With the economy seeming to be in shambles due to misregulation, idiotic business practices, manipulative marketing, poor consumer education, and enough bad decisions for everyone to take a pint or two I as a university student have to step back and take a look at a system that has placed a rather large burden on people like me.

Namely: Student loans.

One of the large problems with today's ease of going to college is the price of that same ease. Student loans are given out to people fresh out of high school with little or no money management skills. Most of them have very little concept of value or money, let alone how to plan to pay for something that is only getting more expensive with each passing day.

For some, they are told that they are making an investment. That the money they spend now will be paid back before they know once they are out in the real world and have a nice job where the money just rolls in.

Bull shit.

Unless you are getting one of those generic degrees that will always be needed (business, education, hospitality, medicine, ect) then your chances of finding that perfect job waiting for you is just slightly higher than rolling a thirteen in a game of craps.

This leaves a lot (read majority) of students entering the economy in the red with no real understanding of how to fix it except to throw some money at it and eventually it will go away.

Debt is a bad, bad thing for an economy. Especially when its largest consumers (young professionals and families trying to keep things running smoothly) are trying to fill a hole dug just to get them into a position so that they can make a decent go at making a living.

So, time to get down to the point.

Why do we encourage people to go into debt? It makes no long term sense! What the fuck is the point of making a ton of money one day, only to go bankrupt the next?

This current generation of graduates are inheriting what can only be described as a monetary clusterfuck, and are steamrolling along with debt up to their eyeballs ready to make the situation worse.

People, we all need to wake the fuck up and start doing this thing called saving that has fallen out of vouge in the last couple of decades.

Front Row Tickets to Tragedy

It has been suggested that people who watch Saturday Night Live, The Daily Show, and The Colbert Report are not taking this election seriously. Many people I have talked to seem to scoff at the notion that this Presidential Election (tm) can or should be laughed at.

To a point, I agree with them. But that point came and went early on when both parties decided who they would nominate for office.

On the republican side of things, you have Grandpa Simpson and Peggy Hill promising more of the same.

On the democrat side, a Pepsi spokesperson and Richie Rich sixty years after his inception promising "change", what ever the hell that means.

It occurred to me after last Tuesday's debate that what I was watching was a train wreck in slow motion. Each agonizing second was broadcast to homes across the nation where many a drinking game was played in order to deaden the pain caused by each utterance of "my friends" or "change." These caricatures that danced on television screens across this fine country were indistinguishable from their SNL counterparts.

So I say to the comedy naysayers: Whatever granite faced seriousness you approach this with will mean absolutely dick in the end.

But no matter which line you stand on, what principles you stand for, or whether you laugh or cry at these proceedings there is one thing we can all count on.

We all have front row tickets to another American Tragedy.