Quotulatiousness

December 9, 2011

600 million “virtual war criminals” to be snagged in new virtual Geneva Convention

Filed under: Bureaucracy, Media, Technology — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 09:10

Look out FPS gamers — the Red Cross has you in their sights:

Move aside, Milosevic. Out of the way, al-Bashir. It’s the world’s videogamers who should be hauled up on war crimes charges, some members of the Red Cross seem to think.

During the 31st International Conference of the Red Cross and Red Crescent, which took place in Geneva last week, attendees were asked to consider what response the organisations should make to the untold zillions of deaths that can be laid at the feet of videogamers.

[. . .]

There is “an audience of approximately 600 million gamers who may be virtually violating international humanitarian law (IHL),” it noted.

The key word there, folks, is ‘virtually’. Ruthlessly gunning down civilians, fellow combatants and/or extraterrestrial visitors may be a crime if you do it for real, but not if you merely imagine the action, even if helped by the realistic visuals of the likes of Battlefield 3 and Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3.

December 1, 2011

Nanny LCBO doesn’t think you can handle this label cartoon

Filed under: Bureaucracy, Cancon, Wine — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 12:53

Michael Pinkus writes about the LCBO‘s latest nanny twitch:

Stunningly Stupid … and if you happened into the LCBO this past weekend you might have noticed a cartoon-style label on a bottle of Bombing Range Red with a red sticker adorning a certain part of the label. For those who were curious and intrepid enough to remove the sticker, expecting to find profanity or nudity you were disappointed to find a glass of red wine that (with the right amount of imagination) might have resembled a bomb — or at least a glass with a bomb-style fuse. Is this a case of political correctness gone amok? Or is the LCBO afraid we’ll get bombed upon seeing the sight? Personally I am stunned at what the higher ups at the LCBO find offensive or what they think we are too … I don’t know … childish, immature, delicate (you pick your word) to see? As it turns out the truth is even more stunningly stupid then I originally thought. It was ordered to be applied by the LCBO Quality Assurance Department, because the pilot is holding a glass of wine and as part of the LCBO’s social responsibility function they don’t want to give you the impression that it is a responsible action to drink and fly … So instead of taking it as the cartoonish fun that it is, the LCBO has to go and ruin it; but the last laugh is on the Board, because anyone worth their salt will be peeling that sticker off post-haste with a “why the f**k did they cover that” question on their face and on their lips. Thanks for being there to save me LCBO, from the evils that men do.

Image of the “hidden” label from TonyAspler.com.

November 27, 2011

China to address the surplus of unemployable university graduates

Filed under: Bureaucracy, China, Education, Government — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 11:47

No, not the old fashioned way of “re-education”, but by reviewing the university programs and eliminating the ones that produce the largest number of graduates who cannot find jobs:

Much like the U.S., China is aiming to address a problematic demographic that has recently emerged: a generation of jobless graduates. China’s solution to that problem, however, has some in the country scratching their heads.

China’s Ministry of Education announced this week plans to phase out majors producing unemployable graduates, according to state-run media Xinhua. The government will soon start evaluating college majors by their employment rates, downsizing or cutting those studies in which less than 60% of graduates fail for two consecutive years to find work.

The move is meant to solve a problem that has surfaced as the number of China’s university educated have jumped to 8,930 people per every 100,000 in 2010, up nearly 150% from 2000, according to China’s 2010 Census. The surge of college grads, while an accomplishment for the country, has contributed to an overflow of workers whose skillsets don’t match with the needs of the export-led, manufacturing-based economy.

November 24, 2011

Nigel Farage on “German-dominated Europe”

Filed under: Bureaucracy, Economics, Europe, Germany, Greece, Italy — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 08:59

November 21, 2011

Lessons learned

Filed under: Bureaucracy, Education, Humour — Tags: — Nicholas @ 09:12

Group projects are one of the first workplace-like things that kids are exposed to in school. The eager ones jump right in, enjoying the challenge of working with others. The sensible ones only do as much as they have to. By the time you enter the workplace, you should have come to this conclusion based on your school work:

November 18, 2011

EU panel spends three years to determine that water cannot be sold as a remedy for dehydration

Filed under: Bureaucracy, Europe, Health — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 08:53

Ah, Brussels! What would we do without you and your panels of experts on quiet news days?

Brussels prompted a flood of abuse this week by apparently banning bottled water vendors from promoting their products as a counter to dehydration.

The European Food Standards Agency was asked to consider its “opinion on the scientific substantiation of a health claim related to water and reduced risk of development of dehydration and of concomitant decrease of performance”.

The request for clarification was submitted by two German professors in 2008, in a bid to determine what health claims could be slapped on bottled water. A panel deliberated on the issue for three years, before the adjudication was delivered back in February, in time to hit the UK’s Euro-sceptical media yesterday.

November 17, 2011

Things not to say in a job interview

Filed under: Bureaucracy, Humour, Randomness — Tags: — Nicholas @ 08:36

Should your resumé somehow get through the gauntlet of the HR queue (and here are some tips to help you there), you may be able to get an interview. Interviews are tough, and intentionally so: companies don’t want to hire the wrong people. You can talk yourself into a job with a good interview performance, but you’ll want to avoid saying things like this:

Sometimes I hear from a candidate that his current boss is a shambling moron whose personality is an unstable mix of dishonesty and ignorance barely held together by malicious greed. His management style draws upon both forms of Marxism — Groucho and Karl. He can recite The Art of War from memory and he frequently quotes from it at meetings (in the original Chinese of course). You feel you have to leave now or you and he will settle your disputes with knives.

The IT at your department looks like it’s run by monkeys, the management are in league with Al Qaeda, HR is outsourced to Resource Solutions, compliance has been infiltrated by Accenture and Jack Bauer has told you that the back office wants you dead.

Today you found a live rat in your coffee.

November 15, 2011

Salman Rushdie: Facebook is run by morons

Filed under: Books, Bureaucracy, Media, Technology — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 09:09

There’s this chap on Facebook called Ahmed Rushdie. He’s a tad unhappy with Facebook over their naming policies:

Facebook has upset Salman Rushdie after the company initially refused to let the controversial author use his common name rather than his first name when signing up to the network.

The writer, who is a newcomer to the Web2.0 game, explained on Twitter that his full name is Ahmed Salman Rushdie.

“Amazing. 2 days ago FB deactivated my page saying they didn’t believe I was me. I had to send a photo of my passport page. THEN…” he tweeted, “they said yes, I was me, but insisted I use the name Ahmed which appears before Salman on my passport and which I have never used.

“NOW… They have reactivated my FB page as ‘Ahmed Rushdie,’ in spite of the world knowing me as Salman. Morons. @MarkZuckerbergF? Are you listening?”

The author of The Satanic Verses, who was forced into hiding in 1989 when a fatwa ordering Muslims to kill Rushdie was issued against him by Iran’s Ayatollah Khomeini, continued to rant about his Facebook plight on Twitter.

November 12, 2011

Still no charges in the Gibson Guitar case

Filed under: Bureaucracy, India, Law, Media, USA, Woodworking — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 11:00

An update in the Wall Street Journal just recaps the background to the case, and has an interview with Henry Juszkiewicz, the CEO.

On Aug. 24, federal agents descended on three factories and the Nashville corporate headquarters of the Gibson Guitar Corp. Accompanied by armored SWAT teams with automatic weapons, agents from the Fish and Wildlife Service swarmed the factories, threatening bewildered luthiers, or guitar craftsman, and other frightened employees. A smaller horde invaded the office of CEO Henry Juszkiewicz, pawing through it all day while an armed man stood in the door to block his way.

“I was pretty upset,” Mr. Juszkiewicz says now, sitting outside that same office. “But you can only do so much when there’s a gun in your face and it’s the federal government.” When the chaos subsided, the feds (with a warrant issued under a conservation law called the Lacey Act) had stripped Gibson of almost all of its imported Indian rosewood and some other materials crucial to guitar making.

The incident attracted national attention and outrage. Like Boeing — whose plans to locate new production in South Carolina are opposed by the National Labor Relations Board — here was an iconic American brand under seemingly senseless federal fire.

November 10, 2011

John Scalzi on the Penn State child rape cover-up

Filed under: Bureaucracy, Education, Football, Law — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 12:02

In four points, John Scalzi walks us through what should have happened at Penn State when the first incident was discovered:

1. When, as an adult, you come come across another adult raping a small child, you should a) do everything in your power to rescue that child from the rapist, b) call the police the moment it is practicable.

2. If your adult son calls you to tell you that he just saw another adult raping a small child, but then left that small child with the rapist, and then asks you what he should do, you should a) tell him to get off the phone with you and call the police immediately, b) call the police yourself and make a report, c) at the appropriate time in the future ask your adult son why the fuck he did not try to save that kid.

3. If your underling comes to you to report that he saw another man, also your underling, raping a small child, but then left that small child with the rapist, you should a) call the police immediately, b) alert your own superiors, c) immediately suspend the alleged rapist underling from his job responsibilities pending a full investigation, d) at the appropriate time in the future ask that first underling why the fuck he did not try to save that kid.

4. When, as the officials of an organization, you are approached by an underling who tells you that one of his people saw another of his people raping a small child at the organization, in organization property, you should a) call the police immediately, b) immediately suspend the alleged rapist from his job responsibilities if the immediate supervisor has not already done so, c) when called to a grand jury to testify on the matter, avoid perjuring yourself. At no time should you decide that the best way to handle the situation is to simply tell the alleged rapist not to bring small children onto organization property anymore.

For “organization”, feel free to substitute “Catholic church” for “Penn State University” as required.

November 9, 2011

Penn State’s problem

Filed under: Bureaucracy, Education, Football, Law — Tags: , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 12:55

Russ from Winterset loses his temper over the truly disturbing way Penn State is handling their child rape issues allegations:

So Joe Paterno is going to retire at the end of the season?

Whiskey? Tango? Foxtrot? Does Joe think he is going to be carried off the MISS PIGGY field to the BEAKER cheers of the DR. BUNSEN HONEYDEW crowd after leading Penn STADLER State to another GONZO bowl game? FOZZIE BEAR that noise. He should have the common DR. TEETH & THE ELECTRIC MAYHEM decency to slink out the back door of the coaching offices in shame like John SAM THE EAGLE Edwards leaving a session of a Federal RIZZO THE RAT Grand Jury.

That moderation expressed in my first update? KERMIT that. If Joe JANIS THE BASS PLAYER Paterno is allowed to coach another ANIMAL football game at Penn RALPH THE DOG State University, every WALDORF fan in the stadium who so much as smiles when their BERT team scores their first ERNIE touchdown can go Suck The Barbed Cock of Satan as far as I’m concerned.

BIG BIRD! Now I’m pissed.

And when you come back with the “look at all he’s done for the community” card, tell me this. How many other kids have been raped since 2002 because JoePa and the other jackasses at Penn State didn’t think it was necessary to get the police involved in this situation? Ten? Five? Even one? Is that a fair trade for all that Joe Paterno has done for his community?

If it’s not quite clear from context, he “replace[d] all but one of my f-bombs in the original draft of the post with the names of Muppet Characters”

November 2, 2011

QotD: The evolution of the public sector

Filed under: Bureaucracy, Economics, Education, Quotations, USA — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 00:03

The public-sector workplace has become a kind of artificial Eden, whose fortunate inhabitants enjoy solid pay and 1950s-style job security and retirement benefits, all of it paid for by their less-fortunate private-sector peers. Some on the left have convinced themselves that this “success” can lay the foundation for a broader middle-class revival. But if a bloated public sector were the blueprint for a thriving middle-class society, then the whole world would be beating a path to Greece’s door.

Our entitlement system, meanwhile, is designed to redistribute wealth. But this redistribution doesn’t go from the idle rich to the working poor; it goes from young to old, working-age savings to retiree consumption, middle-class parents to empty-nest seniors. The Congressional Budget Office’s new report on income inequality points out that growing Medicare costs are part of the reason upper-income retirees receive a larger share of federal spending than they did 30 years ago, while working-age households with children receive “a much smaller and declining share of transfers.” Absent reforms, this mismatch will only grow more pronounced: by the 2030s, Medicare recipients will receive $3 in benefits for every dollar they paid in.

Then there’s the public education system, theoretically the nation’s most important socioeconomic equalizer. Yet even though government spending on K-to-12 education has more than doubled since the 1970s, test scores have flatlined and the United States has fallen behind its developed-world rivals. Meanwhile, federal spending on higher education has been undercut by steadily inflating tuitions, in what increasingly looks like an academic answer to the housing bubble. (If the Occupy Wall Street dream of student loan forgiveness were fulfilled, this cycle would probably just continue.)

The story of the last three decades, in other words, is not the story of a benevolent government starved of funds by selfish rich people and fanatical Republicans. It’s a story of a public sector that has consistently done less with more, and a liberalism that has often defended the interests of narrow constituencies — public-employee unions, affluent seniors, the education bureaucracy — rather than the broader middle class.

Ross Douthat, “What Tax Dollars Can’t Buy”, New York Times, 2011-10-30

October 26, 2011

Giving the government even more weasel-room on FOIA requests

Filed under: Bureaucracy, Government, Liberty, USA — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 10:02

A proposed rule change would allow the US government and its agencies to lie about the very existence of requested records in Freedom of Information Act requests:

A proposed rule to the Freedom of Information Act would allow federal agencies to tell people requesting certain law-enforcement or national security documents that records don’t exist — even when they do.

Under current FOIA practice, the government may withhold information and issue what’s known as a Glomar denial that says it can neither confirm nor deny the existence of records.

The new proposal — part of a lengthy rule revision by the Department of Justice — would direct government agencies to “respond to the request as if the excluded records did not exist.”

October 20, 2011

This is why you don’t want to be a wine importer in Ontario

Filed under: Bureaucracy, Cancon, Wine — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 08:53

In the lastest issue of the Ontario Wine Review, Michael Pinkus explains the 16-point process that all independent wine and liquor importers have to follow in order to get their products into customers’ hands:

Recently I received an email from an agent giving a blow by blow account of the process of getting booze onto the shelf of our beloved Monopoly, including the hair pulling and gnashing of teeth that goes along with it.

[. . .]

“I can take samples to the Licensees — Restaurants & Hotels — and if they want to buy it this is the procedure:

1) They must purchase a minimum of one full case
2) They must pay the LCBO a 25% deposit
3) If I want to reduce the freight rate down from $100+ per case to a reasonable freight rate . . . more like $12/case then I need to gather a minimum of 20 cases in orders with specific Licensees names on them who have all paid the deposit.
4) The LCBO Private Ordering department then processes the paperwork
5) The producer would then ship the product to an LCBO pick-up location
6) We wait until the LCBO consolidates our small order into a large container with other suppliers
7) The product usually takes 4 months to arrive and then spends another month going through Lab Analysis at a cost to the supplier of $175 per product.
8) When the product finally gets released we have to hope that the original licensees that ordered it all take delivery
9) The producer gets paid 60 – 90 days after the order lands in Ontario (while the agent pays to get it out of the Private Ordering warehouse).
10) The agent then has to chase the customer for at least 90 days to get them to pay since they will likely have an excuse not to have a cheque ready upon delivery
11) We have to do this for a total a 300 cases sold within one year to EARN the privilege of getting into the Consignment warehouse.
12) Once granted consignment space . . . we can start to ship from the producer to the LCBO consignment warehouse by the pallet (~56 cases)
13) In consignment, the product can be shipped without an advanced licensee order . . . but still must sell by the case to customers.
14) The producer gets paid once ALL of the order is sold through: 120 – 240 days later.
15) If the product does not sell through within 120 days of arrival then the LCBO confiscates the remaining order, discounts it, and puts it into a sale warehouse.
16) This frees up more space back in the consignment warehouse so that they can trap more agents into over-shipping and then the LCBO can punish them for trying to treat Ontario like a free enterprise liquor system.

Oh, and if the LCBO decides to add your product to their regular merchandise, you’ll be out of luck as it’ll probably sell for less than you can (and your hotel and restaurant customers are paying for exclusivity in a lot of cases, so they’ll stop ordering through you if it’s available in the LCBO retail stores).

October 19, 2011

Regulators back off (temporarily)

Filed under: Bureaucracy, Economics, Environment, USA — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 09:08

Walter Olson reports on some recent regulatory retreats:

Are there enough data points yet to call it a trend? I think there are: the Environmental Protection Agency is now backing off a whole series of deeply unpopular Obama-era initiatives. This time it’s the idea of tightening the federal standard for coarse airborne particulates — better known as “dust” — from the current 150 micrograms per cubic meter to a figure somewhere between 65 and 85, depending on what assumptions are used. That change could have dealt a tough economic blow to businesses, notably farms and ranches, that kick up quantities of dirt in the ordinary course of operation. Unfortunately, the EPA — unable to resist the urge to lash out against its critics — is being less than candid about its latest turnabout.

The retreats have been coming steadily in recent months, since President Obama’s popularity ratings began to tank. In July, following protests from Sen. Olympia Snowe (R-ME) and other lawmakers, the administration dropped a proposal that would have required lead-dust lab testing as part of even relatively minor renovations to older homes. Last month it scuttled costly new smog regulations. A couple of weeks ago it relaxed its so-called Cross-State Air Pollution Rule, which was menacing the continued operation of power plants. And it remains under heavy pressure to scrap its ultra-expensive “Boiler MACT” rules, another utility nemesis.

EPA administrator Lisa Jackson has made it clear that she isn’t happy about some of these about-faces, and her staff spun the latest dust decision in remarkably graceless fashion, accusing critics of spreading “myths” and claiming the agency never had any intention of going after farm dust in the first place.

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