For those just joining us, this is a series. There’s a series of links at the bottom of this post, so you can start at the beginning if you like. Step 3: Kick Morale In The Teeth When times get tough, the tough get going. But actually, as a worker, when times get tough ion a way that looks like they’re not going to get better, it doesn’t matter what the tough do: it’s the smart that you want to keep an eye on. And when times get irrevocably tough, the smart invest their energies on where it will pay …
Category: GENERAL
How to Kill Your Successful Business In Five Easy Steps: Step 2
For those just joining us, this is a series. There’s a series of links at the bottom of this post, so you can start at the beginning if you like. Step 2: Be Irrational About Diversification A week or so later, word came down that the top that the XP Office tutorial was to be set aside, and instead I was to think up a new project. There were all kinds of big project proposals being pitched –including one to the US government, to make their websites “accessible” as per a legal mandate of around that time. In retrospect, I …
How to Kill Your Successful Business In Five Easy Steps: Step 1
Recently, I posted about the fact that someone needn’t come to Korea to experience being held at arm’s length in a group, regardless of what one does to assimilate or join. Working in a family business is a great way to experience this. Also, sometimes people ask me what I did before I came to Korea. If it seems like an idle question, then I just say, I went to grad school, and taught at Concordia University while I was studying there. Also, some tech writing. And I leave it at that. The fact of the matter is, whatever I …
Wild Brews: Beer Beyond the Influence of Brewer’s Yeast by Jeff Sparrow
Wild Brews is a wonderful little book that deals specifically with the wild-fermented beers in the Belgian tradition — that is, Lambic (and various subtypes and blends like Framboise, Gueuze, Kriek, and so on) and the Flanders Ales. Anyone who is even a little experienced in homebrewing is going to at least be intimidated by the idea of brewing a lambic. Most of us make beer happily knowing that the fruits of our labours will be drinkable in a month or two, six months at the most in many cases — it’s a rare beer that takes a year to …
Bluepill
I get an email from my workplace, and what’s the first image in the content? Yup, it’s a scattering of blue pills. Of course, for someone who hasn’t seen or didn’t care for The Matrix, this has no real symbolic significance at all. It’s an appropriate image for the link to an article about the impending launch of a College of Pharmacy at our campus. But for someone who’s seen The Matrix, the Blue Pill has a rather ominous meaning, for Morpheus tells Neo that if you take the Blue Pill, “the story ends, you wake up in your bed …
“Let The Little Children Come To Me…”
… may be close enough to pass as a Bible quote, but I don’t think it says, anywhere in that book, that clerics get to say that to kids so they can rape them with impunity, with the aid of the Church in keeping them out of prison (or other trouble)… and I don’t think it’s specified anywhere that when this institutional crime comes out, the biggest cleric of them all gets to pretend nothing’s going on. I want to leave aside the fact that this is an obvious, and pathetic, public gaffe which can only serve to harm the …
A Hard Decision Made
Well, folks, I’ve decided, finally, to come clean. Those of you who have met me in person? Seen my photograph? That’s not me. It’s a guy named Leonard. He’s a pretty good actor, and a swell chap. He lives in Korea, he pretends to be me. He even spends a few hours a day just sitting in front of a computer, so that this blog is plausible. He checks the blog every day, logs in, types some crap and then deletes it. Just, you know, in case anyone decides to look into the records. He’s part of an elaborate ruse. …
You Know You’re Middle-Aged When…
… when you get your new steam-cleaner vacuum and you’re excited to give it a try. Oh yes, then there is no doubt in your mind.
Briefly…
“German bishop surprised at number of abuse cases.” He must be the only one. Even among practicing Catholics — in the Western world, at least — nobody who is in possession of his or her senses is ever surprised when charges and evidence come up of priests sexually molesting children, and nobody is surprised when it comes out that the Church was protecting such monsters, shuffling them around and keeping everything hushed up. In fact, the German bishop’s being surprised is either an act or a sign of utter naiveté. (Link via Mike Armstrong’s post on Facebook, which I won’t …
Political Protest Blood Drive
Imagine participating in a political landscape where you run a blood drive so that you can use the blood to douse the offices of the ministers you oppose, as part of your effort to drive them out of office. No, really. And better: The next day, they will collect 1,000 more liters and target the prime minister’s residence, the demonstrators said. You know, I just don’t really know what to say about that except that sometimes the real world really does make the job of the speculative fiction writer a little more demanding.