Like everything that’s fun or good, the U.S. women’s soccer team’s victory has evolved from a quick moment of pride to a political issue. In this case, the women’s team is suing because they get paid less than the U.S. men’s team, even though the revenue generated, in total, by the women’s World Cup is a fraction of what the men’s version creates. I think there’s an easy solution to the entire gender pay gap issue that should put it to bed once and for all. Just have the entire women’s team identify as men, and they’ll get paid…
If a tree falls in a forest, who has the greatest interest in planting another?
No one plants more trees than the people who cut them down. Deforestation has been an issue for a number of decades, but it really started taking off as a popular concern in the mid-1980s, when organizations like Greenpeace and Earth First!, along with Al Gore, started gaining media coverage. Earth First!, in particular, initiated tactics like blocking logging roads, tree-sitting, and tree-spiking, to stop logging and raise awareness. People who tend to take things at face value, isolate their thinking to the “fact” they’re given, and shy away from critical analysis will hear something like “there are 8…
How did the death of the Polish joke slip by unnoticed?
I recently watched Bob Einstein’s last appearance on Jerry Seinfeld’s Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee with my teenage daughter. In it, he tells a Polish joke about three men – an Irish man, an Italian man, and a Polish man – who are all going to the electric chair. When Einstein refers to the Polish man, he uses the derogatory word for a Polish person, “Polack.” As I was listening to the joke, which I thought was very funny, I looked at my daughter, through my own laughter, and realized she wasn’t laughing. When I asked her why, she…
Hard and fast rules: #34
Never trust someone who wears their watch on the inside of their wrist. It’s a sure sign they’re up to something…
Diversity, but from who’s perspective?
One of the popular trends in management these days is giving the entire staff a personality test so we can understand what kind of people they are. Then managers are to learn how to speak to each individual in a way that resonates best with their varying personality types. One manager learning countless different ways to say the same thing to X number of employees. At the same time, companies are racing to see who can create the largest “diversity and inclusion” department in the their industry, so they can publicize their “commitment to diversity” and attract the employees…
Is the U.S. worth fighting for?
There’s an idea growing in the United States that our founding was illegitimate. The idea goes that we were established by evil white men who selfishly built this country for their own gain, on the backs of slaves imported from Africa. And because of that slavery, everything that has been built, and the traditions that have evolved are born of sin and need to be eradicated. Basically, whether they know they are saying this or not, their idea is we need to wipe the slate clean and start over. And doing that will make us pure because they believe,…
Gays get woke – a Pride month summary
Another Pride month is in the books, and I think America did a great job showing gays how much we love them. We love them even more than the straight people. We certainly love them more than black people. It’s possible we love gays even more than women. But, unfortunately, there’s no metrics for measuring who we love the most. If only we had a dashboard… Our national, identity politics depend on us figuring this out. Until then, I think we may have crossed the line of gay love. We had it just right, until that exploitative Taylor Swift…
The fault line
Walking down the sidewalk this morning, I overheard a construction worker speaking on the phone and telling the person on the other end that it isn’t going to be his fault when the furniture doesn’t arrive on time. I imagine with construction, where there are so many different companies with so many different employees doing such wildly different tasks, that the phrase, “It’s not my fault,” is heard quite a bit. Is it human nature to work, first, to avoid fault? Do we just approach work this way naturally? Or is it the management we’ve experienced who think in…
I’d like to connect with you
“I’d like to connect with you on LinkedIn” is the standard default message the site sends when you want to connect with another on the site. It’s one thing when people I know use the default message and send their connection invitation along. (Though, I always write a personalized message.) It’s another when someone you don’t know and have never heard of uses it. If you’ve never met or even heard of a person you’re trying to connect with, I would first ask, “why are you even trying to connect with them?” But then I would ask, “Why, if…
Eastern seaboard
I’ve always loved the phrase “Eastern seaboard.” It sounds so official… so military… yet, so nuclear attack. You only really ever hear the phrase in movies or television shows, and when you do, it’s usually because something big is going down on the Eastern seaboard. But I can’t help but wonder why nothing ever happens on the Western seaboard. You never hear anything at all about the Western seaboard. It’s like our country’s overlooked seaboard. I know there are always earthquake threats, along with the occasional tsunami. I thought of this today because as I was sitting in the…