Oil Rigs, Technology and Accountability

What we have here is a situation perpetrated by a leadership that would immediately fire subordinates who did the same kind of mistake in the function of their jobs. And yet, no one is arrested for negligence, the owners are not stripped of their property, the managers/directors are not fired from their positions.

If you lived in an apartment and caused such a disaster, you would be arrested immediately. If you owned a house and caused such a disaster, your property would be seized immediately. If you were a superintendent of an apartment complex and your decision caused this kind of disaster, you would be fired immediately. I guess if you are rich, you can get away with murder.

Problem 1

Oil rigs in North America do not have to have a specific safety valve unless they are being built in the Arctic. This is nonsensical, if the technology exists for extra safety, why do we make it an optional device? Imagine, cars sold to rich people will have airbags and safety belts while cars sold to poor people will only have a basic plastic frame with no airbags and no safety belts. Houses sold to rich people will have locks on their doors and windows, apartments rented by poor people will have the option of doors and windows if they pay extra..... even more so if you want to have locks on them. The Arctic will have safety valves because the environment is more precious over there than elsewhere.

Pour some salt on the injury and insult the the wounded: Before the disaster in the Gulf of Mexico, oil companies were trying to convince the government to allow them to build oil rigs without safety valves in the Arctic because no one had ever had an accident in the other oil rigs in the other areas of North America. Why are they even allowed to propose this in a rational setting? Imagine a group of engineers asking permission to build bridges which can fall apart during a windstorm because the wind "rarely" blows above 50 miles per hour and they want to save on material costs.

Problem 2

We build a technological wonder because we can and because it can bring us some material benefits but we don't have any way of correcting any disaster if something dangerous happens. Imagine building a 20 floor building with 3 outstanding elevators but no stairs. Oh dear, a fire has struck the building, how will the people get out with the electricity cut? Or imagine that you buy the most technologically advanced car that no one can repair if it ever breaks down..... and your engine has just spurt its last spurt....

The oil companies that have built this oil rig did not have included in its design plans ways to circumvent problems that could arise. So when the widget, that did not have its safety valve, finally exploded and caused all this oil to come gushing out... no one had a clue how to stop it because nothing was designed into the system for such an accident. And yet somehow, we continued to build oil rigs without A)safety valves and B)without corrective devices to limit accidental damages. These people who allow this have a higher salary than most of us? Why?

Problem 3

Twenty odd days later and accumulating, we still haven't found a way to stop this oil spill. The main oil company who is responsible for this is enthusiastically informing us that they will cover the expenses of the cleanup and pay damages incurred. Are you telling me that they are insinuating that they actually have a choice to refuse to pay the cleanup cost and the damages? Imagine the drunk driver proudly proclaiming that he will submit himself to a criminal trial for having hit a passerby with his vehicle while drunk and that he will pay for any medical expenses that the victim suffered. And the experts who love to criticize politicians for any wrongdoings turn and agree with each other that the oil company should be applauded for taking responsibility.

The engineers still have no idea how to solve this situation..... Before implementing a technology into our world, should we not have spent time in determining how to correct potential problems like this one? Imagine sending humans to the Moon and forgetting that we have to find a way to bring them back to Earth and we try to solve that problem after the humans have landed on the Moon and want to come back.

Problem 4

"We did not fail to stop the leak, we just did not succeed in our attempt to correct the problem." and only John Stewart or Stephen Colbert can mock the individuals who said those statements at the latest attempts to stop the gushing oil leak which is currently destroying our environment? Why are the journalists and the politicians so polite with these individuals who make obviously self-contradictory statements and who admit that they have no immediate solutions to the problems that they created?

Would a boss tolerate an employee that says "I did not arrive late, I just did not arrive in the time scheduled."? Note that this fictional employee is transforming the language of responsibility from himself to the boss. If the employee admits being late, then he is responsible for this action. If the employee can convince the boss that his arrival did not fit the scheduled time then it is the schedule which is at fault and not the employee.... hence it is the boss who invented the schedule who should be responsible in accommodating the employee's arrival. Well if we don't tolerate this from the majority of the population, why are we tolerating it from its supposed leaders?

Conclusion

This entire situation is yet another example of rushing in somewhere without thinking of the consequences. Capitalism wants you to move without thinking so that you can get the profit before the slow guy next to you. Capitalism works if you are a small owner and the extent of your ownership is a family farm. Capitalism can not work with technology that can manipulate our genetic structure, technology that can transform an environment as easily as a volcano and with ownership structures that surpass political nations.

We have allowed money to dictate to us our moral standards. If we can save money to make more profit then we are successful. Explosion in an oil rig? oops, just a temporary "financial" setback..... we will just throw money at some engineer to fix the problem and throw money to clean up the spill and then we will continue to make profit tomorrow.

Our current capitalism will cost us more in the long term for a short term benefit. Consumers can not solve this problem, Citizens can solve this problem. Put Capitalism under the complete control of Democracy before Capitalism buys out our Democracy from under us.

Logic, Evolution and Sexual Harassment

Occasionally we read different things from different areas of study and we wonder how all of it can be combined into an interesting whole? Or do we throw it out into some forgotten hole?

Basic Logic

Ok, so the basics of logic teach you that if every premise is true within an argument form and the argument form is a valid form, then the conclusion must be true. We get a fact like A is equal to B being premise 1. We get a fact like B is equal to C being premise 2. We conclude that A must be equal to C. If premise 1 is true and premise 2 is true, then the conclusion must be true. This very paragraph is an example of a valid argument form, and if you want to know what makes an argument form valid or invalid I would recommend taking a class in logic to get the very best info.

I can give you one example of an invalid argument. We get a fact that A is equal to B as being the first premise. We get a fact that B is equal to C as premise 2. We conclude that A is equal to D. This would be classified as an invalid argument form. Even if premise 1 and 2 are true, the conclusion can not be expected to be true because it is not a valid argument form. Many times we are presented with argument forms through rhetoric and the argument forms are not always valid but we are expected to accept them as valid and make decisions about them. The use of statistics can be abused in such a fashion. The point is to be astute in one's observation.

Evolutionary Psychology

Now I do not claim to be an expert in the field of evolutionary psychology so I am not necessarily familiar with the latest developments in that field and I know that in any theory, you will have those who agree and those who disagree and both sides will have their scientific evidence. Just look at how light was perceived by 19th century physicists. Some believed light was a bunch of rays and others believed that light was a bunch of particles and they both had their evidence. Turns out that they were both correct, light is supposedly rays AND particles. My point is that knowledge is constantly "evolving" pardon the pun.... and evolutionary psychology will have proposed theories which will be modified and refined as the years go by.

One of the premises that has come out recently in evolutionary psychology is that the human male is very dependent upon his visual organ to determine his sexual partner. What he looks for is irrelevant for my argument, the fact that the visual is the main tool is what is important to my premise. Apparently, some research has demonstrated that when the male visually sees what stimulates him, his brain produces pleasure responses similar to that of cocaine. Ok, again I have no idea how true this premise is..... This is something that can be debated amongst the evolutionary psychologists. For the purposes of my argument, we are assuming this is true.

So the human male needs to see something that stimulates him sexually and to propagate the species. This could explain why photographic pornographic material is so successful with a male customer base and the more literary material is more successful for the female customer. But I don't want to deviate my focus away from the male in this blog, suffice it to say the visual keeps the male "stimulated".

Sexual Harassment

Well we all know that sexual harassment is unwanted sexual advances from an unwanted partner. If the male requires visual stimulation to be attracted to his partner, what happens if he does not wish to receive visual stimulation from an unwanted partner? Advertising on television that shows the scantily clad individual to attract the vision of its male audience, huge posters on billboards that show a visually stimulating image for the male audience and the strategically placed inserts inside a magazine that one must turn to continue reading whatever article being read, all of these examples are probably unwanted visual stimulation which tease the male visual sexual drive with no possibility of release.

"Just don't look." becomes synonymous with "She should not have worn such a short skirt." If the woman is allowed to wear what she wants without being harassed sexually, then the man should be able to walk down a street without seeing such billboards in his face, or watch television without having to "fastforward" every circumstance, or even read his magazine without having to worry what comes on the next page.

Besides, before he can determine for himself whether or not he should look or not, he must realize what he is looking at in the first place. If he decides that he does not want to look, well its too late, the damage is done. Just like the woman who is approached by an undesirable advance, once the approach has happened, the damage is done. If she wants to be approached by strangers in such a way, she has the option to go to a singles bar. She does not want to be approached in the same way at her work or walking in the park with her friends.

We believe that a woman should not have to suffer sexual harassment just because she wore a skirt. If the man is stimulated visually, should he not be in control of what he looks at? The billboard, the television commercial and the magazine ad don't give him that choice, they ambush his visual response and create this stimulation which the male may not want to receive.

Conclusion

--So if "the male vision stimulates his sexual desires" is true.
--If "the male is ambushed by advertising campaigns to attract his attention with sexually stimulating images" is true.
--If "the male is not particularly interested in being sexually stimulated by that image at that moment in time" is true.
--If the premise of: [if the argument "women should not suffer sexual harassment based on their clothing choices" is acceptable then the argument "men should not suffer sexual harassment based on their inadvertent glance at some advertising aimed at them" should also be acceptable] is true.
--Then the conclusion "that the human male is victim of sexual harassment by visually stimulating advertisements" must be true.

Now is this morally or ethically wrong? Well logic never really determines morality or ethics so that would be a matter for a different blog. But this is an interesting area for further consideration. Naturally this topic is meant to stimulate a debate, not to impose a specific point of view..... Perhaps the human male enjoys ALL visual stimulation and would never dare avoid the advertising, after all, if the visual stimulation gives a high similar to a cocaine high (legally) what male would rationally want to take away one of his pleasures? Bring on more advertising? But then again, does this become the beginning of slavery through pleasure?

Lose your adult status for more chocolate, which a child enjoys even more than an adult, get even more chocolate if you now avoid your vegetables (which a child will now readily agree)..... and then the body breaks down because no more vitamins. Where is society in that metaphor? Are we the society that just traded in our vegetables for more chocolate? Yay to visual stimulation! I would rather enjoy my chocolate in moderation.... as an adult where I choose when to eat my chocolate, but maybe I am in the minority?

An Apology from a Pope

The Problem

During the past 50 years people have complained about priests sexually abusing them. The current pope has offered an apology. The wronged party is not satisfied with the apology. Neither am I.

First, the apology focuses upon Ireland. What about the abuses done in Canada, the United States, Australia, Brazil, need I go on with all the other countries? Seems like a trend and nothing is being done to address this issue nor to acknowledge that it is a huge problem. If the apology sticks with one country it may distract from the bigger problem. Afraid of showing dirty laundry to the public? Apologizing for the one dirty linen found on the ground by the public and hoping the basket full of dirty clothes goes unnoticed?

Second, I believe there are two crimes that were done here, the abuse itself being crime 1 and the denial of any wrongdoing up until recently being crime 2. What is the most frustrating thing for a victim than to be disbelieved and then attempting to describe the crime in its graphic details to then be ignored and shunned by the leadership of the church because the story is just not believed?

Claimant-->You have dirty clothes in your laundry basket.
Reluctant Apologizer-->We wear clean clothes.
Claimant-->I saw Criminal A put one dirty sock in that closed basket.
Reluctant Apologizer-->Please describe this dirty sock.
Claimant-->It was red, its easy to find, just open the basket and you will see it.
Reluctant Apologizer-->Did anyone else see Criminal A put this red sock in the basket?
Claimant-->I have no idea and I don't care, look in the basket and you will see for yourself.
Reluctant Apologizer-->Well Criminal A denies having put his red sock in the basket. Are you sure that it was our basket? You may be confused. Are you sure it was his sock and not someone else's sock, maybe your own?
Claimant-->Look in the bloody basket, the one with the initials of your organization and find the red sock with the initials of its owner on the sock and you will see.
Reluctant Apologizer-->Well it may take time to go through all of our baskets and all of the clothes found therein, we will get back to you.

months go by and Claimant meets Frustrated who shares his story of having seen Criminal A put his green dirty shirt in the laundry basket and that Reluctant Apologizer took down his statement and never got back. Both decide to ask around and see if anyone else has seen anything and they both discover that several have had similar experiences, it goes public.

Reluctant Apologizer-->Well we have concluded our investigation and we wish to apologize for the red sock and the green shirt, not to worry Criminal A will no longer have access to that particular laundry basket.
Claimant-->What else was in the laundry basket? Why is it still hidden? Why are you only acknowledging the red sock and the green shirt?
Frustrated-->Yes, and also what about the fact that you ignored and disbelieved us until we took matters into our own hands and began to organize? Lastly, why is Criminal A only being blocked on one laundry basket.... shouldn't he be blocked from all of your other ones as well?
Reluctant Apologizer-->Well we will offer Criminal A to an outside justice system so that we do not need to answer your other concerns, would that be acceptable?
Claimant-->That may be nice, but what about Criminal B? One of my friends saw him put dirty pants in some other laundry basket.
Reluctant Apologizer-->If your friend comes in, I will be happy to ignore her details and repeat the same nonsense I did with you two and then we will apologize for Criminal B's behavior once we can no longer stall and hide.

What should be done

The leadership spent a lot of resources to hide the crime and to discourage the victims from receiving any comfort. I can understand being cautiously skeptical and investigating any allegation but when you see a phenomenon that crosses national borders and that unrelated people all seem to be giving identical details about a crime you border on the ridiculous if you stall in your investigation and tell the victim that the aggressor denies the allegations.

Does the Roman Catholic Church really believe that admission of a crime is the first instinct of a criminal? I can understand that dirty laundry is preferable to be kept in one's family but we are talking about burnt clothing not about some priest who doodles on a notepad while hearing someone's confession. We are talking about a priest who takes advantage of his trustworthy position to satisfy himself sexually not about some priest who thinks people on welfare should work in hard labor camps and occasionally writes about his opinions to his peers.

Dirty laundry is normal, burnt laundry is not. The leadership who stalled and ignored the problem should apologize for trying to hide the crime and then resign from their positions of leadership. Forgiving does not imply ignoring the crime, forgiveness is acknowledging the crime and still having a relationship with the criminal. A parent who sees his child stealing from a store owner won't ignore it but will have his child face responsibility of his actions and still be there as a parent. A parent who sees that his child steals and then tries to hide this fact from the victim is not doing his family name any favors nor is he helping his child.

Art, Humanities and Business

Ways of Seeing

No generic criticism in this blog, just a comparison on ways of seeing the world. Neither of the three ways of seeing the world should replace the others although perhaps some are a bit more noble than the others. Looking at an elephant from the front with a telescope at 100 yards may be better than seeing the same elephant while on his back with a magnifying glass. But the telescope won't give you the details that the close-up look will give you and the magnifying glass dude won't realize that he's on the back of an elephant until its too late. Of course these 3 ways of seeing this metaphorical elephant are not the only ways to see either. I will just limit myself to three in this blog.

The problem that I often encounter is that the telescope guy thinks he is superior to the magnifying glass dude and vice versa and they don't bother sharing what they have discovered to each other. Secondly, sometimes they attempt to impose their way of doing things to the rest of us as if their way of seeing is the only true way of seeing. There really is only one way of seeing something, but the magnifying glass alone won't cut it, neither will the telescope alone. It has to be these ways combined and a bit of judgment to determine the true object of one's study.

The telescope guy may be convinced that he is looking at a horse while the magnifying glass dude is convinced that he is on top of a tiger. Combine both pieces of information and a bit of judgment and you see what it truly is: a zebra. Unfortunately we don't really do any of this because our capitalist mindset encourages us to specialize into distinct areas of knowledge. Specialization does have its benefits but as in the above example, having some generalists who see the whole picture can also have its benefits. I just find it sad that we go to the extreme of what capitalism teaches when it is self-evident that capitalism at an extreme is quite flawed at best and just plainly wrong at worst.

I now want to show hypothetical examples of how the disciplines of art, humanities and business present a certain set of information onto a public. It is encouraging when each distinct view has equal access to the public eye even if the generalist view is not presented; but unfortunately, some distinct views get more airtime than others. The topic is how to be more understanding of blind people and to allow better services for them as part of government or charitable expenses. How does the film arts scholar present the info, how does the communications scholar present the info and lastly, how does the marketing scholar present the info.

Fine Arts

"Its all about art baby!", this is the mantra of the arts guy. So we want to have people understand about blind people and what they go through? No problem, we will make a five minute film in blackness with the sounds of walking all over the place, but with no visuals, just a black screen! The audience will be disoriented as they hear all sorts of sounds of traffic and walking and see a completely black screen during the entire 5 minutes! Art!!! yeah!

Communication Studies

"What is the message?", this is the question that the humanities guy asks himself. Ok so we want to have an individual walking with his cane on the street as cars pass by and have someone come up to him speaking about directions of how to get to a place using visual cues. We then switch to a point of view shot where the audience is seeing the person speaking and pointing to different locations but we hear no sounds, then we switch to a black screen and hearing the person explaining about visual cues and saying things like: "just go down there where I am pointing and...." then we switch back to a 3rd person viewpoint and have a written statement explaining that the blind person is missing one of his senses and could not even be reading this text and that we should realize this instead of continuing in our usual ways of doing things. That would convey the message we want to give.

Marketing

"We all know that sex sells.", this is the down-to-earth statement for the business guy. Alright, some guy with a cane is walking down the street and is tripped by some handsome looking guy. A sexy looking lady comes out and yells at the handsome guy for being a child and the sexy looking lady dressed in revealing clothing bends down to help the blind guy up and says that he can see her heart so he is better than the handsome guy. 30 seconds and we saved money because we shot on video instead of expensive film for 5 minutes. Make sure that we use the remaining money in our budget to saturate the television channels with our commercial.

Conclusion

Which of the above three is the best way to transmit the info? Neither is better than the other, we need all three. If one of the above methods replaces any of the other two or both, then we are in danger of seeing life in only one way and that won't help us get to the truth of anything. Once truth is in danger, lies will be easier to manipulate our democratic population.

For democratic society to be preserved, we need to guarantee that market forces won't dictate that the easy message will have precedence over the sophisticated message. We need to make sure that the specialist is not the only one to speak nor is one specialist favored over any other. We need to encourage generalists, those who have an over-arching view of things.

An Alternate Way to Run a Corporation

The Current Situation

Well currently corporations are run by investors, they vote for a Board of Directors and the Board of Directors hires a CEO to run the day to day operations. A metaphorical way to see this would be that the Board of Directors is like a nation's legislature (Senate, Congress, Parliament, etc), while the CEO would be like a nation's head of government (President, Prime Minister, etc). The goal of the investor is to make profit, profit and even more profit. If the corporation makes more profit this year than the last and the belief is held that the next year's profits will be even higher.... then the investor is extremely happy.

The problem with this situation is that there is a disconnect with reality between the investor and the rest of society. The concept that firing employees to make more profit as being self-destructive for all corporations who rely upon consumers is alien to the investor. They see the short term and immediate gain and even when someone speaks long term planning, they see this as meaning 5 years instead of 5 generations. When the medical profession indicates that absenteeism is based upon the extra workload and the extra stress which only began making its appearances when corporations tried to get 1 human being to work more than what a human could tolerate.... well the investor believes this to be a product of laziness (remember they would never tolerate the conditions that they attempt to impose upon honest workers).

Corporations have gone unchecked like a runaway train and the owners are happy because the train has made each of their stations in record time (some experts tell the owners that the train never stopped but kept going and this will lead to disaster but the owners ignore these warnings). Then listeriosis hits the food industry, financial markets go haywire, car manufacturers discover a major flaw in their best product..... Apologies come out but nothing really changes (you don't hear of any company wishing to rehire a laid-off workforce to do things correctly instead of cutting corners). More corners are to be cut and new lay-offs are planned with the remaining workers picking up the slack. "Do more with less" is the mantra of the day, then the investors get surprised when less is produced.

The Alternative

So since the investors and business leaders think its normal to practice self-destruction, like staying awake for 48 hours at a time and sleeping for 4 hours and then repeating the sequence and they don't want to stop and think about the consequences of such obvious foolishness, perhaps an international law should be imposed on all corporations. The details can always be worked out later, but here are the broad strokes. A corporation answers to three entities for its survival, the investor who provides capital, the worker who provides labor and the consumer who provides sales. Yet despite this fact, only the investor is represented in the leadership of the corporation (and we have all seen the foolishness that they can achieve).

So the proposed alternative is that we have the investors vote for one third of the Board of Directors, we have the workers vote for another third and we have the local government appoint the last third. The investors continue with the 1 share equals one vote. The workers go with one person equals one vote. Government appointees can not be major investors or workers in this company and preferably not related with anyone who is. The investors will have to negotiate with presenting their views as to making a profit (which is ok if tempered with reason), the workers will focus on productivity (which may mean reducing work hours while keeping the same salary and providing social benefits to make the employee happy and therefore less sick) and the government appointees will focus on consumer protection to make certain that any legitimate complaints on a product is heard quickly and dealt with and also make certain that advertising does not overwhelm the consumer with nonsense.

A confirmed member of the Board of Directors must not be allowed to be a member of another Board of Directors of ANY company. If someone can be a Board Member of more than one, they have just admitted that the workload is insufficient and perhaps they can occasionally work on the front-lines with the honest and hardworking individuals of their company to see how their decisions truly affect the people in the trenches. Could you imagine during World War 2 an individual being a US General leading tanks in Western Europe and then emailing the Pacific Fleet on how they should deploy their ships because he is also a US Admiral? Well there are many who are members of several Boards of Directors in various corporations. How can they find the time if this job is so important?

Concluding Remarks

What the best thing for each corporation would be to have the people on the top work alongside the lowest level entry position employees on occasion and get their hands dirty and appreciate that these workers are not lazy but sometimes over-worked. Again a show that shows owners and bosses heading in the right direction is the TV show "Undercover Boss". Now it isn't at the perfect destination of where corporations should be but it definitely allows the owners to open their eyes and see first hand the reality at the trenches.

Secondly, Unions were not mentioned because we are looking a corporate governance and not management/employee relations which is an entirely different thing. The Board of Directors position filled by employee votes would be like voting for a Canadian federal election while however the employees decide to organize their union and how they choose a completely different set of people to fill in as Union leaders would be like voting for a Canadian provincial election. Later on, managers could be voted as such by their immediate underlings like a municipal election. But these additional features are more modifying the system from the ground up and this blog was more on focusing modifying the system from the top down.

In each of these modified aspects, it necessitates that the worker be astute and democratically minded which will transfer over to his life outside of work which should be more important than his life at work. Work to live, yes! Live to work, no. A successful democratic society must give its citizens the tools to engage in other important aspects of life, where money is only one of many aspects and not the only aspect. Money is like a toy and if someone in society believes that toys are more important than anything else, then they should remain childlike and not be involved in the decision making aspects of an adult society. Toys are great, we can all enjoy the playtime, but we must stop playing with toys on occasion and get our responsibilities done, something the investor doesn't seem able to comprehend as he accumulates more and more toys at the expense of others.

Taking Pictures of Sleeping Workers

Well here we have it. The non-thinking public notice a goofy incident and immediately jumps to a conclusion without considering the situation. The specific issue I am referring to here is the customer who took a picture of a Toronto Transit worker sleeping on the job. We are told that the individual was fired afterwards and we are also told of other incidents like the situation where a bus driver takes an unscheduled break to get a coffee during the middle of a bus run.

Am I questioning if the worker was sleeping or not? No, I can see very clearly that the employee is sleeping. What I am questioning is the why. No one seems to want to consider that and the fact that management immediately fired this individual makes me ask why with even more emphasis. A responsible management is supposed to hire someone that they trust to do the job, and yet at the first sign of doubt, the management demonstrates faith in itself in its decision to trust this employee by firing the employee.

Let us consider the following, if the management hired this employee in the first place then it is under the assumption that the individual has what it takes to perform the job. Therefore if this is true, we must assume that this employee is a rational human being, a responsible adult, a competent worker.... yet he has fallen asleep at the job.... why? If management immediately fires this competent worker without questioning the reasons, then management has admitted that it does not trust its own methodologies of scrutinizing capable employees or that it has no trust or loyalty for the people they hire.

So if we assume that the employee is incompetent and fire him and we are correct then the story ends there. If we assume that the employee is competent and yet has been caught sleeping, we must investigate further and then we determine if our assumption is correct or not. If I was management, I would not assume and investigate further before making any decision, no matter how obvious things appear.

Let us look at what kind of job this employee has. He is stuck in a booth to sell tickets and to offer tourist information about the transit system. During the morning rush, he is selling tickets and serving the lineup of people wishing to buy a ticket or get some information. Then its 10 am in the morning and there is perhaps 3 people coming to his booth during that hour. The requirements are that he stays at his post to serve the clients as they arrive. The employee can not leave the booth to start cleaning some outside area because A) the area is so large he may not be able to see if there are clients waiting to be served and B) security concerns of being outside of a secured booth and being robbed.

The employee must therefore stay put. The employee is not allowed to read or to do crossword puzzles or to occupy his mind in other pursuits because management is afraid of the public perception of seeing a non-busy worker reading. Part-time students who could potentially be studying in between clients would not be tolerated either. So we have the employee, stuck in a booth twiddling his thumbs trying to find something to occupy himself waiting for the next client. The employee can not even use the phone to speak to another human being. So what happens? Well ANY human being would fall prey to dozing off and being asleep. AND ANY MANAGEMENT WHO THINKS OTHERWISE SHOULD BECOME AN EMPLOYEE FOR SIX MONTHS TO SHATTER THEIR ILLUSIONS.

There is a new reality television show called "Undercover Boss", where the owner or the big boss goes undercover and becomes an employee at his own business for a week. Well these bosses have their eyes opened, much like the Prince in Mark Twain's "The Prince and the Pauper". In Mark Twain's book, the Prince switches place with his look-alike who is a poor beggar and the Prince sees how his kingdom is truly run. Well the undercover boss in the television show also gets a taste of his decisions done from on top without consideration of the consequences that he is leading human beings who have strengths and weaknesses.

I can guarantee you that anyone who thinks that this sleeping employee is lazy or wrong would change their mind if they worked in that environment for six months. They may not fall asleep like this particular employee did, but if they are honest with themselves, they would see how easily this could happen to them with the existing circumstances. Find what society considers to be the best of the best of the human beings of our society and impose upon that person the following restrictions: A) Must serve clients during rushes, B) Must stay alert during quiet periods, C) Must not read, talk on the phone or do anything that may be perceived by the public as being lazy (can not even read corporate material even if written well and would keep you dynamic). Then have this human being do this 40 hours a week for six months with the occasional overtime thrown in while this individual is also dealing with outside pressures at home (like for example fumigating his living area to eliminate some pests).... Then lets see if this individual would do any better than this employee who was caught sleeping.

As for the bus driver who was caught stopping in the middle of a bus run to get a coffee for his coffee break. Question1->Does the employee have access to a coffee place when he is allowed his break? Question2->Does management restrict their own coffee breaks or do they allow themselves access to a coffee place at a time of their own choosing?

Solutions for the sleeping employee and for the bus driver who takes unscheduled breaks: Have employees work with partners who can chat and keep each other company and allow them some leeway during non-rush hours (like reading?) Sometimes tourists ask these employees about cultural events happening in the area and most of the time the employees don't know, so allow them to have access to this kind of information to communicate to those who ask. Salespeople in stores often know nothing about the product that they are selling because they are not given the time to read up on the latest gadget that their own store carries so they focus on techniques of selling instead of product knowledge..... and during non-rush times the salesmen are confined in moving inventory from one wall corner to the other corner just to give the impression that the store is new and dynamic. So give the employee some leeway during the non-rush times of the day.

As for the bus driver, if the end of his route where he is allowed to take a break is void of a coffee place or whatever would be convenient for the employee, then hire a coffee delivery clerk. The job of the coffee delivery clerk would be to get the coffee order from employees during the day of what they want in their coffee and when their break is and when they will take their break. This way, when the bus driver arrives at his break spot in the middle of nowhere, he will have someone there with his coffee and a quick chat for about a minute or so with another flesh and blood human being. After all, if management gives themselves such privileges why deny these privileges to their own employees? And if management denies these privileges that they themselves take for themselves, why be surprised when employees find ways to acquire similar perks for themselves?

So if anything, I blame management for the sleeping employee, doubly so when they fired that employee without investigation and I would suggest that if anyone was to be fired then it should be the entire management team who provided for this situation to happen.

If one employee has a problem, then chances are that its the employee's fault and responsibility. If several employees have the exact same problem (and in the case of the sleeping employee and the bus driver taking his unscheduled break they are not alone in this situation) then the responsibility is on management and not on the employee. This sleeping worker should not have been fired so quickly, he should have been suspended with pay and have an external audit done to investigate all possible causes including mismanagement, and then deal with the situation appropriately (which could include firing the employee).

Cheating on Tests

Well the previous blog spoke about how standardized tests were all but accurate means of determining knowledge or ability. This blog shows the cheating and how easy it would be to do so and how to truly avoid it.

The previous blog showed how some of the questions in a standardized test did nothing but ask for trivia. So imagine that you are in film school and the question on one of your exams is to know the name of a particular widget on a camera that hasn't been produced since the 1980s. The student has never actually touched this camera and probably never will and this widget is called something different by another company on their camera if they even have it as an optional add-on. The class is supposed to be one where you learn how to take proper shots for film-making. Some students study for the test and focus on the nonsensical material and they get A+ on their test, some students have no interest in wasting their time in studying nonsense and pay for a cheat-sheet and also get the A+. We learn that cheaters exist and that they succeed more often than not, and we refuse to think about how it is even possible or how to properly avoid it.

It would be easy to spot by interviewing the student and seeing how neither one can have a genuine conversation about how to do a proper camera shot. The first one wasted their time in knowing unnecessary trivia about widgets and the second one wasted their money on a cheat sheet that informs them about these same widgets. Conclusion? Many of the A+ students out there don't have the basic understanding of the field they are supposed to be learning.

Easy experiment to do with a first year university student. Read the same textbook that the student is supposed to have read and have a conversation about what this textbook is saying. Don't ask specific questions because this will turn into trivia like questions and the student will end up quoting the appropriate passage. If you ask them what this passage means, they will be at a loss for words and probably attempt to repeat the quote.... maybe they will introduce their own words to replace the actual quote but when you ask them to explain to you what it actually means, they will be unable to do so. This is why cheating is so easy, the required answer is but a simple quote without having to explain what the quote means.

This will only work with first year students because part of the university education is to learn the specialized lingo or jargon of their field and know how and when to use it.... What is unfortunate is that since they never really understood what they were learning in the first year they tend to be encyclopedias of trivia without really understanding what the implications are. Then they use jargon to fake a knowledge that they do not truly have. Imagine when this A+ student becomes the next professor for the next generation of students and this type of quick testing does to genuine knowledge and understanding?

Well the world of employment has already noticed it, which is why they are more interested in the real world working experience of the newly graduated professional than his actual academic mark. Its quite easy to see how much this A+ graduate lacks the knowledge needed in the field he has studied because they can't get away with using trivia knowledge to prove their expertise and they definitely can't use jargon to fool the one who truly knows the field.

Consider George Orwell's example of an intellectual paragraph full of jargon:

"On the one side we have the free personality: by definition it is not neurotic, for it has neither conflict nor dream. Its desires, such as they are, are transparent, for they are what institutional approval keeps in the forefront of consciousness; another institutional pattern would alter their number and intensity; there is little in them that is natural, irreducible, or culturally dangerous. But on the other side, the social bond itself is nothing but the mutual reflection of these self-secure integrities. Recall the definition of love. Is not this the very picture of a small academic? Where is there a place in this hall of mirrors for either personality or fraternity?-----from an Essay on psychology in Politics (New York)"

Just what is that supposed to mean? Its nonsensical jargon that sounds intellectual but is not really saying anything of substance. Words are coming out just like sound comes out of a trumpet but put the words together they seem to sound sensible just like when you play individual notes you demonstrate that you can play those notes, but you aren't playing any music. Well universities tend to produce this type of graduate. He can quote trivia that is meaningless for actually solving a situation at hand and he speaks jargon about stuff that really doesn't make any sense (even to someone who knows the subject at hand) and is proud of having received his A+ for knowledge he doesn't truly have. Imagine someone who has reached the level of professorship and starts quoting jargon to the unsuspecting students. He is perceived as a brilliant professor by the administration which hired him (because they don't know anything about the subject either) and students who begin to learn the jargon believe this quack to be brilliant as well and they parrot his sayings without comprehension.

Sophistry is about the appearance of wisdom and the current methods of testing promote sophistry and encourage cheating. You don't have to know anything, you just have to fake that you know it long enough to jump whatever hurdle that immediately tests you. There is some statistic out there that claims that students only retain about 20% of what they learned in university, perhaps the truth of the matter is more likely that the student only truly learned 20% of what they should have?

I come back to my example of the widget on this non-existent camera as a test question to determine your knowledge of taking a proper shot or as a question on a standardized test for seeking employment. Is it any wonder that the university graduate or the newly hired employee is seen as not having any real-world experience or knowledge to do the basic camera operator? Now multiply this trend for every single area of employment..... Is it any wonder why economists could not prevent the last economic downturn and that even today, most are scratching their heads in trying to figure out how it happened in the first place?

If you are in a car and you put the car on neutral and the car is coasting down a hill, you congratulate yourself in making a car move without expending any gas (this is capitalism of the 19th and 20th century).... now suddenly, you notice that your car is heading for a shallow lake and that your feet are getting wet..... how do you solve it? You turn the car engine on and move forward faster? Oh the engine is flooded.... not to worry, our brilliant minds have found a way to start the car despite the rising water of the lake that we are still sinking/sliding into. Congratulations to the human ingenuity, but wait a second, the driver decides that he needs to move forward because he sees the shore on the opposite end of the lake. This seems sensible because every so called expert reason that moving forward is good, and seeing the shore proves that it is an attainable goal and they all use jargon to explain and convince the driver that his initial destination is correct. (the driver seems to have been given the authority to throw out of the car anyone he feels is a burden to his driving)...

The true thinker, who is not impressed with jargons, trivial knowledge of nonsense or self-important drivers suggests that perhaps putting the car in reverse may be the better solution because the shore behind is much closer, we don't know how much deeper the car may still sink and perhaps we could temporarily exit the vehicle to push and pull it out of its current predicament. The true thinker is thrown out of the vehicle for being so negative and not helping to solve the problem with the popular but wrong direction that the pseudo-intellectuals with A+ PhD degrees and the drivers all seem to agree upon.

And that is why it is so easy to cheat on tests. The test givers can't recognize the intelligence that the test is supposed to determine and the tests themselves or the required written projects themselves focus on trivialities and jargon, both of which are extremely easy to fake.

The A+ mark does not indicate intelligence or knowledge. Positions or titles do not determine genuine capability. When the lunatics have taken over the asylum, how does one find a true physician?