Posts with Music

Here’s something interesting. I ran across it after following a link on Matt Yglesias’ site (“Best Practices”) to a post at Feministing (“1943 Guide to Hiring Women”). Before you laugh about how ridiculous it seems, consider that the average woman in the United States today earns about four-fifths what an average man earns for the same work. (The Institute for Women’s Policy Research should have the current numbers.)

Eleven Tips on Getting More Efficiency Out of Women Employees

There’s no longer any question whether transit companies should hire women for jobs formerly held by men. The draft and manpower shortage has settled that point. The important things now are to select the most efficient women available and how to use them to the best advantage. Here are eleven helpful tips on the subject from western properties:

1. If you can get them, pick young married women. They have these advantages, according to the reports of western companies: they usually have more of a sense of responsibility than do their unmarried sisters; they’re less likely to be flirtatious; as a rule, they need the work or they wouldn’t be doing it – maybe a sick husband or one who’s in the army; they still have the pep and interest to work hard and to deal with the public efficiently.
2. When you have to use older women, try to get ones who have worked outside the home at some time in their lives. Most transportation companies have found that older women who have never contacted the public, have a hard time adapting themselves, are inclined to be cantankerous and fussy. It’s always well to impress upon older women the importance of friendliness and courtesy.
3. While there are exceptions, of course, to this rule, general experience indicates that “husky” girls – those who are just a little on the heavy side – are likely to be more even-tempered and efficient than their underweight sisters.
4. Retain a physician to give each woman you hire a special physical examination - one covering female conditions. This step not only protects the property against the possibilities of lawsuit but also reveals whether the employee-to-be has any female weaknesses which would make her mentally or physically unfit for the job. Transit companies that follow this practice report a surprising number of women turned down for nervous disorders.
5. In breaking in women who haven’t previously done outside work, stress at the outset the importance of time – the fact that a minute or two lost here and there makes serious inroads on schedules. Until this point is gotten across, service is likely to be slowed up.
6. Give the female employee in garage or office a definite day-long schedule of duties so that she’ll keep busy without bothering the management for instructions every few minutes. Numerous properties say that women make excellent workers when they have their jobs cut out for them but that they lack initiative in finding work themselves.
7. Whenever possible, let the inside employee change from one job to another at some time during the day. Women are inclined to be nervous and they’re happier with change.
8. Give every girl an adequate number of rest periods during the day. Companies that are already using large numbers of women stress the fact that you have to make some allowances for feminine psychology. A girl has more confidence and consequently is more efficient if she can keep her hair tidied, apply fresh lipstick and wash her hands several times a day.
9. Be tactful in issuing instructions or in making criticisms. Women are often sensitive; they can’t shrug off harsh words the way that men do. Never ridicule a woman – it breaks her spirit and cuts her efficiency.
10. Be reasonably considerate about using strong language around women. Even though a girl’s husband or father may swear vociferously, she’ll grow to dislike a place of business where she hears too much of this.
11. Get enough size variety in operator uniforms that each girl can have a proper fit. This point can’t be stressed too strongly as a means of keeping women happy, according to western properties.

Commence Operation Munch Eagle!

I’m going to try every restaurant within a 1.5 mile radius of my house. This will mean eating at restaurants with atmosphere and deep wine lists in the Highlands and the western edge of Decatur, and it will mean eating at some places I would never otherwise go (like “Wings & Philly”, down at Moreland and Memorial between the rim shop and the TV/VCR repair shop).

The goal: to become better acquainted with my surroundings. I feel like there are a bunch of good restaurants around, but when people ask me, I find myself saying “uh, there’s a McDonalds on Ponce”. That, and I’m also hoping that President Bush, no doubt looking for ways to secure his legacy during the last year of his term, will recognize that Operation Munch Eagle promises to be at least as effective as past and present policy alternatives at bringing peace and stability to Iraq, and will fund implementation on a greater scale. I’m countin’ on that surge.

Here are the rules:

1. Gotta hit ‘em all. That means that restaurants I’ve been to before are still on the target list (but note that they are represented by a blue pointy thing on the linked map, while restaurants to which I have never been are identified by a question mark). “Though you may believe that you’ve been there a bunch, you haven’t really until you’ve been with that Eagley Munch.”
2. Gotta write ‘em up. I have a bad memory for this sort of thing.
3. Gotta take a picture (?) I figure any set of rules should contain at least three.

I’ll post details as they are available. Click the map for the current list of eateries (nearly 100 so far!).

That is all for now.

Check this out, from Tyler Cowen’s Discover Your Inner Economist (Dutton, 2007), which seems to indicate that we’re at least twice as scared of bringing harm upon ourselves are we are of simply being harmed by forces beyond our control:

A deadly influenza virus comes from Asia to our shores. There is no cure, and doctors estimate that a person’s chance of dying a horrible and painful death from the virus is 10 percent. A vaccine is available, made from a weakened form of the virus. The vaccine cures most people, but kills 5 percent of them.

Clearly it is better to take the vaccine. A 5 percent chance of dying, however awful, is not as bad as a 10 percent chance of dying. Yet not everyone, when surveyed, wants to take the vaccine. Many people are more afraid of the risk they choose than the risk that might befall them.

A poll, published in the Journal of General Internal Medicine, indicated that only 48 percent of the responders said they would take the vaccine. The rest were too afraid of the danger they might bring upon themselves. True, this was only a questionnaire and perhaps many of these people would be more rational if they were on the verge of possible death or viral infection. But the mere fact that their intuitions led them away from the vaccine, in the questionnaire setting, shows that human beings do not approach these problems rationally.

Those same people were more likely to recommend the vaccine for others. They were especially likely to recommend the vaccine for people distant from themselves, such as strangers. Fifty-seven percent of the responders said they would give the vaccine to their children. Sixty-three percent said that, if they were doctors, they would give it to their patients. Seventy-three percent said that if they were directors of a hospital, they would give the vaccine to all of their patients.

What can be sad about our branch of the family Hominidae is not that we are so often afraid, but what we are afraid of!

So I’ve been wanting to spend more time on portrait photoshop technique. I think there might have been a time when I’d have thought that retouching pictures was to be a big fat phony. But that time was definitely before I could afford a licensed copy of Photoshop and a Canon 40D.

Now, I tend to think that post processing can get us closer to the world we actually live in. Like how when you remember that time you stopped for lunch in the little town on California 1 and the waitress was comically snotty and you took that picture of everyone outside afterwards, you probably don’t remember the telephone pole that looked, if you happened to be right where the camera was, like it was sprouting out of your head. Removing the telephone pole, then, is keeping a stupid detail from ruining a perfectly good memento. And then sometimes you just want to make a pretty picture even if it doesn’t have anything to do with reality.

Anyway, the problem I’ve been having is that I’m shy about pointing the camera right at people’s faces, so I don’t have that many pictures to use as a basis for this kind of editing. I need to get better about that. I was mining pictures for something I could work on, and I found this picture that AT took about a year ago. The before and after are below. AT said I should send the finished product to the subject’s husband (who also spent too much money on a camera). I thought about it, and it seems weird.

So you tell me, sg: is there any way to send this to the guy without him wondering if I’m being creepy?

& Scarf by Lance McCord, on Flickr">& Scarf" />

Yeah, those are socks on your hands instead of mittens. Shut up.

What the hell are you talking about? Who are you talking to? You sleep better with the christmas lights off, so it’s dark, dark, dark in your room. And when you wake up at night — like you just woke up a little while ago — more often than not, you talk for a while and go back to sleep.

When you talk during the day, I usually assume that you’re talking to or about whatever you’re playing with or trying to eat, or maybe to the dog. (These are representative, incidentally, of sg’s three-pronged approach to non-human classification: things to eat, things to play with, and Daisy. There is substantial overlap among the categories, rendering the taxonomy fairly useless for any scientific purpose, but I haven’t had the heart to break it to you.)

But at night, in the pitch black, what could you see to talk to? Or to talk about? It’s gorgeous, anyway.

This morning you were making scary monster noises while chewing on a Weeble’s head. Tokyo beware!

Snow fell for an hour and was gone in four more, washed away by the sleet and rain. sg, you have some kind of virus in your lungs, RSV (human respiratory syncytial virus), probably. You paid for this trip into the cold with a not insignificant coughing spell, but what are you going to do — not take a baby out to see her first snow? That would be unhealthy.

Then this one can be mine.

Sg, the iPod was good to me on the ride home tonight. Fairly dark (with some exceptions) and rhythmic (with some exceptions). I had such a good time listening that I decided to memorialize. I’m memorializing. There are a couple of tracks on here I feel that I have to apologize for (not in the “I’m sorry” way, but in the “it’s not as bad as you may think” way). For instance, the second track’s full title is “The Flowing Bowl / Máire Breathnachs #1 / The Doon / The Mason’s Men”, and maybe that’s a warning about how long the song will seem to go on. Give it a chance, though. And the fourth track is really annoying, except that tonight I realized that it becomes really awesome if you imagine Jay-Z rapping over it. And the sixth track is a zany cross between Massive Attack and novelty act that just works (and you’ll get more out of it, sg, if you know who Brian Wilson and Pete Townshend are (or were), and if bass abounds). And no, I know, the lyrics in the eighth track are kind of lame. In fact, I’m leaving the eighth track off.

But then there’s track number three, which I had never heard before. What a pleasant bunch of surprises! When the duo began to sing, I thought it was going to be the kind of indie pop where the vocalists try to make up in enthusiasm what they lack in skill, but the woman singing (Sydney Vermont, fwiw) knows how to use her voice. Truly, I think a lot of the atmosphere comes from the juxtaposition of her commercial grade singing and the indie clumsiness of the melody, harmony and the guy (Dan Bejar of the New Pornographers, btw). Or maybe the atmosphere owes more to the Twin Peaks-style reverb guitar set up against disco synth and Mannheim Steamroller-lame snow/space sound effects. Or maybe its the use of phrases like “I’ve got the mange, dear” or “take your Diner’s Club card” (people have those?). Who can say! That’s part of the fun.

Also, the first song reminds me of what I listened to in high school. ‘night!