Naughty naughty - two seconds makes a difference in the business world.

So does an hour.

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/blogs/taibblog/16-major-firms-may-have-received-early-data-from-thomson-reuters-20130905#ixzz2e6BvVPbC

Once again, a person doing their job is fired for speaking up.

Once again, no corporation who committed the act is being held accountable for their actions.

Overcoming 'Overburden'.

Read it - http://www.commondreams.org/view/2013/09/04

It's a damn good start. Right now dealing with global warming is our biggest challenge facing us all.

The first step is overcoming the right-wing/corporate establishment that opposes any change to the economic system that allows them to flourish and destroy us further.

Always several steps behind.

Why is it I'm shocked, but not surprised by this?

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2013/09/03

"There are at least 12 significant feedbacks that will have a substantial effect on the rate and pace of warming. Yet feedbacks are often too complex to fully characterize, let alone model.  Yet their effects are serious.  For example just 3 of these feedbacks could add as much as 4.5 degrees to the warming forecasts for 2100.

The first is a result of decreases  in sulfur aerosols from phytoplankton, as the seas become more acidic and these critters begin to die off.  Sulfur aerosols are known to moderate solar gain and mitigate global warming.  This could increase warming by close to 1F by 2100.

Extreme weather events could add another 1.5 F since they effect the Earth’s ability to sequester human emissions and in some cases increase those emissions directly.Add these to the 2 F expected from methane releases – a conservative number if one compares the results of similar events in the geologic record – and these 3 feedbacks alone could add 4.5 F to our worst-case projections for 2100.

And of course, warming doesn’t simply stop in 2100, merely because we stop modeling beyond that.  It continues and accelerates, and, unchecked, becomes self-reinforcing and irreversible.  We’re already locked into thousands of years of sea level rise from the carbon we’ve put into the system to date. "

Sad stupidity captured by my camera.

You're think people would be able to read signs and follow them. In this particular case it's pretty obvious why this one is there ...

Look more closely ...

Look I admit, we used to do this once before ... back when it was allowed. Today it's not, and for the reasons listed. Feeding birds people food will have then pollute up the water with their shit and make a mess, and spread diseases through the water. Then the county will have then find the whole flock and wipe them out.


But does that stop these idiots?

No. And they were doing so with their daughter and granddaughter doing it as well. What a great fucking lesson they are learning.

Yeah, I don't care if it's an old person. There shouldn't be two sets of rules for society.

Then there's these idiots ...

They were even better ... instead of giving out potato chips, it was junk food fries.

Classy people ... classy all the way.

Sigh - kids back to school; end of summer has arrived.

Yeah yeah, I know that summer 'officially' ends towards the last week of September, but fuck you.

As far as I'm concerned, summer begins in June and ends when August is over and it's back to school.

Where did all that time go?

Quote of the day - 08-29-2013.

From Yoni Freedhoff (http://www.cbc.ca/news/health/story/2013/08/26/f-soft-drinks-benefits-risks.html)-

"health-haloing," - a marketing practice in which companies create associations between their products and healthy living.

Yeah soft drink makers are really no different than the tobacco companies in how they market their products. I find it convenient that the one person touting the soft drink ad is a marketing person, not a scientist or nutritionist.

It leads me to wonder if there is a definitive link between soda consumption and addiction? After all, from what I recall, the tobacco companies were 'nailed' (I use that in quotes because really they are still around and still in business and still making money) not just because their products were shown to be hazardous, but as well were shown to be both addictive and that said companies were deliberately spiking their products to make them more so.

My path to being a US Citizen

Well it’s been long time coming, but I can finally say it – after living in this country for 14 years, I finally gave in and became a US Citizen this year. I managed to retain my previous citizenship. Having both has many advantages.

Now that I am an American, I think I can finally comment on many of the processes and things I went through to get to this point.

It certainly was a long process. Some of it took longer than expected due to events beyond my control, while other aspects were of my own doing.

I can say this - I went through the process from start to end legally.

I left my previous place of residence to come to this country to work. I was on a yearly visa the first year because I was a contractor working for a large company; I wasn’t sure how long the contract would last, or whether it’d be extended and so on.

The wonderful world of working for a large software company (okay let’s be honest – Microsoft was at that time the largest software company at the time, and it was certainly the most unique) was before me – and I was cast in.

It was like indentured servitude at times for sure. That's the wonderful world of being on an H-1B visa. You're pretty much a slave to the corporation. Yeah sure you may *technically* be an employee, but the reality in the building is you're there to fufill a need and at any point if you don't you can be yanked out of your office, out of your desk, and shipped back to wherever you came from.

On top of that ... Since just about every aspect of my contract was between the contracting company and the client company, pretty much my entire life at that time and its forward direction rested on spending the bulk of it as the service of the client company.

Now to be fair, it's not as if it was all bad. That is, this isn’t to say I minded - I was young, I was ready and determined to work (I sound like Hilary Clinton, 'I'm tested. I'm ready ... let's get to work!"). I was in a unique part of the world, working for a very unique company in a very unique environment. There were a lot of creative people, lots of positive energy, working with what was at the time cutting-edge technology, and what seemed like lots of time and curiosity to figure things out. Needless to say, we spent a great deal of time together.

Lots of geeks, dorks, nerds, and some attractive people as well, all infused with a sense of power and a desire to learn. Admittedly I was one of them. I’d like to believe along the way I even made some friends.

Then relationships develop, and things slow down. The pace of churning out results and riffs and stuff begin to move at a crawl, when at one point it was a sprint. Everything suddenly because a case of determining where to find a large place to store all of one’s stuff.

 Then 9/11 happened. That stopped the everything. The process of getting a green card was halted for a few years. Meanwhile I continued to exist as slave. Granted, when I got married, the company suggested I could simply get a new visa through my spouse and start the green card process that way, but at that point I figured I'd invested too much time, energy, money and dedication to suddenly stop what I had been doing ...

... little did I know it'd take another 3 years. Being fingerprinted like a criminal, being badly photographed more times that I care to admit. Endless questions, forms, money to send, waiting in line, sitting watching queues fill up, surrounded by morons (both immigrants as well as the private contractors whom the government has chosen to outsource this work to) ... a mound of joy for sure.

My green card finally did arrive ... I was no longer a slave.

But then a kid arrives. Another kid arrives, and suddenly being a US Citizen (or at least starting that process wasn't as important anymore). Just surviving and living and supporting the family becomes more important. So another 3 years go before that slowing starts working out.

Then another three years before I finally kick things off for good. And so ...

More good times of being fingerprinted like a criminal, being badly photographed more times that I care to admit. Endless questions, forms, money to send, waiting in line, sitting watching queues fill up, surrounded by morons (both immigrants as well as the private contractors whom the government has chosen to outsource this work to) ... an even bigger mound of joy for sure.

Which leads to where I am today.

I can honestly say, that a great deal of time was wasted due to my own inaction. I can see that. Had I been more active and forceful, I would've become a citizen 6-7 years ago.

Time will tell if that inaction really makes a difference in the rest of my life.

Perhaps it's all a test of some sort - like how badly do you really want to become an American?

Which leads me to one general thought about the whole process - when talking about illegal immigrants, I definitely think that shutting the borders down to them, and blaming them for many of the economic and employment woes that befall the US isn't the answer. Heck, it's not even the cause. It's funny how so many who do just that are rarely honest about the real reasons corporations hire illegal immigrants in the first place. I never bought into this lie that there are certain jobs Americans simply won't do - corporations hire illegal immigrants because they don't want to hire and pay someone in this country the wages and salary such employment is really worth.

Which isn't to say those who enter and work here illegally did the right thing.

I do feel though that there should be a general amnesty about the whole things. That decision to enter the US and work here in an undocumented fashion shouldn't count against them on the path to pursuing US citizenship. However it should also not entitle them to move the front of the line in terms of the general process. That is, they should be able to file and go through the process without any negative impacts of their status, but they should still go through the process just like everyone else did - lines, fingerprinting, photographs, forms, the whole works. Their undocumented status should not hurt them, but it should not be turned around and used as an advantage over every other immigrant who came here legally and followed the process.

That is - welcome to America. Fill out the form and get in line!