The Growlery (January 2004)
Essays by
Michael Gilleland
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The Growlery (January 2004)
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Enron is the modern equivalent of the United Metropolitan Improved Hot Muffin and Crumpet Baking and Punctual Delivery Company, and Ken Lay is the modern equivalent of Ralph Nickleby:
"Pretty well!" echoed Mr Bonney. "It's the finest idea that was ever started. 'United Metropolitan Improved Hot Muffin and Crumpet Baking and Punctual Delivery Company. Capital, five millions, in five hundred thousand shares of ten pounds each.' Why the very name will get the shares up to a premium in ten days."(Charles Dickens, Nicholas Nickleby, chapter 2)
"And when they ARE at a premium," said Mr Ralph Nickleby, smiling.
"When they are, you know what to do with them as well as any man alive, and how to back quietly out at the right time," said Mr Bonney, slapping the capitalist familiarly on the shoulder.
Indiana Republican Mark Souder is proposing that the U.S. mint should introduce a new dime, with Ronald Reagan's face on it. I am reminded of Kenneth Roberts (1885-1957), author of splendid historical novels about early America. Roberts despised Franklin Delano Roosevelt so much that he glued Roosevelt dimes to his ashtrays, and took delight in grinding the ashes of his cigars into the image of Roosevelt's face.
A test case for those who believe that consenting adults should be free to do whatever they wish in the privacy of their own homes is the trial in Kassel, Germany, of Armin Meiwes, who butchered Bernd-Jurgen Brandes and ate his remains. Brandes had consented to the arrangement.
I'm not enthused by the prospect of Bush's re-election, or by any of the current Democratic presidential hopefuls. Now it will be impossible for my favorite dark horse candidate to run -- former Illinois senator Paul Simon died on December 9, 2003. A college dropout, Simon was a true intellectual, the author of several scholarly books, including Lincoln's Preparation for Greatness: The Illinois Legislative Years (University of Oklahoma Press, 1965), The Tongue-Tied American: Confronting the Foreign Language Crisis (Continuum, 1980), and Freedom's Champion: Elijah Lovejoy (Southern Illinois University Press, 1994). He was also that rara avis, an honest politician, so squeaky-clean that he was nicknamed "The Reverend." With his horn-rimmed glasses, unfashionable bow ties, pendulous ear lobes, and professorial mien, he was a refreshingly delightful contrast to today's blow-dried, telegenic, empty-headed political hacks. Requiescat in pace.
Wednesday, 24 December 2003, between 9 and 9:30 AM, on Minnesota Public Radio -- a pompous talk show caller was droning on about third party politics when something he said caught my attention. The caller mentioned the money going into presidential candidates' coiffures. He meant coffers, of course, but it was a delicious mistake, nonetheless.
Good news. Erik Sorenson, president of MSNBC, announced in a memo, "The holiday hiatus for 'Jesse Ventura's America' will continue indefinitely." The sooner that blowhard fades into total oblivion, the better. Update: The human bobblehead has now been offered a position as visiting fellow at the Institute of Politics at Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Public Affairs, according to Albert Eisele and Jeff Defour, in their column Under the Dome (The Hill newspaper, 7 January 2004).
The Office of Affirmative Action at Central Michigan University (my alma mater) promulgated a ukase entitled How to Celebrate Christmas Without Offense. But faced with unfavorable publicity from Fox News and criticism from alumni donors, they withdrew the statement from their web site. In the interest of historical preservation, I rescued it from the Google cache.
Composer Charles Valentin Alkan (1813-1888) supposedly died when a book shelf fell over on him. In April, 2003, the newspaper Jutarnji List published a story about a 60 year-old mathematics professor from Zagreb, identified only by the initials "DK", who was trapped for three days by a pile of books. The Associated Press (December 30, 2003) reported that Patrice Moore was trapped in his apartment for two days under a pile of books and papers. If I keep acquiring books at my current rate, a similar fate is likely to befall me.
Call me an unrepentant Philistine, but in my opinion the ugliest building in Minnesota by far is the Weisman Art Museum, designed by Frank Gehry.
A civilized employer would let you work one hour your first day back from vacation, two hours your second day, etc., until you eased your way back to a full eight-hour day. I also like David Warren's suggestion that "the eve and full twelve days of Christmas, plus Epiphany, should be public holidays." According to Walter Harding, in The Variorum Walden (New York: Washington Square, 1963), p. 273, "In his Commencement Speech at his graduation from Harvard, Thoreau suggested that we should reverse the biblical order, working one day and resting six."
So many Americans are jumping on the low-carb diet bandwagon that bakers are in danger of losing their livelihood. Whenever I see everyone walking in one direction, I instinctively head the other way. In protest against the low-carb madness, our dinner this evening was a baguette, with olive oil to dip it in and olive paste to spread on it. Delicious.
Pope John Paul II, at last count, has canonized over 450 new saints. That's enough to keep the Bollandists busy for a long time. One I'd like to see added to the list is Desiderius Erasmus (1466-1536), but the likelihood of this happening is close to zero.
Question: What did the English major say to the computer science major?
Answer: "Would you like fries with that?"
Ha, ha. Well, now the tables are turning for computer science majors. Just as there was an exodus of manufacturing jobs from the United States, now American computer programmers are losing their jobs to cheaper labor abroad, primarily in India.
The U.S. Bureau of Labor and Statistics reports that the number of programmers employed in the United States declined by 87,000 from 2000 to 2002. According to Forrester Research, there are 905,370 computer programmers and software engineers working in the United States today. By 2015, that number is expected to drop to 669,974.
The Wall Street Journal recently reported that IBM was moving 4,700 programming jobs offshore. In a speech to the Council on Competitiveness, IBM chief executive officer Sam Palmisano defended the trend, saying, "China, India, South Korea and other rapidly developing nations are replicating the structural advantages that historically have made the U.S. the center of innovation."
USA Today's tech columnist Kevin Maney jokes that, if his job is moved to India, he hopes that someone in Hyderabad gets it, so that he can complain that his situation went from Hyderabad to Hyderaworse.
M. Eric Johnson, director of the Glassmeyer/McNamee Center for Digital Strategies at Dartmouth College's Tuck School of Business, pontificates, "Low-skill jobs like coding are moving offshore and what's left in their place are more advanced project management jobs." In other words, the people who actually make things, the computer programmers, are being displaced, while the jobs of the bean counters are safe, but that's OK. This reminds me of a story told by a programmer who used to work at LaserMaster -- the Chief Executive Officer was giving a tour to potential investors, and led them through a room full of programmers. "This is where the typists sit," he said.
The trend is hitting close to home. Of Minnesota companies, both Northwest Airlines and Thomson West employ computer programmers in the Philippines. The state of Minnesota subsidized Northwest Airlines $700 million in 1991 for two new aircraft maintenance facilities, and this is how the taxpayers of Minnesota are repaid.
In the presidential campaign of 1992, H. Ross Perot complained that the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) would result in a huge loss of jobs from the United States to Mexico, and that we would hear a "giant sucking sound" as jobs moved south of the border. A dozen years later, Perot's own company Electronic Data Systems (EDS) is laying off American workers at the same time it is hiring new workers in Bombay, India, at about one tenth the cost. The giant sucking sound is getting louder and louder.
Kim du Toit has an interesting perspective on this problem, entitled Protecting Your Livelihood. He suggests that the only safe jobs these days are trades such as plumber and auto mechanic. When your bathroom's flooded, you want someone to fix it now. You can't wait for someone from India or China to repair it.
The Catalogue for Philanthropy publishes an annual Generosity Index, arranged by state and based on tax return data. The index for 2003 (based on data from 2001) shows that Mississippi is supposedly the most generous state, New Hampshire the least.
My mother's next door neighbors, in a small New England town, recently replaced the floor on her front porch, which was rotting away and becoming a safety hazard. She insisted on paying them, but I know that what she paid didn't cover the cost of materials, not to mention labor. When she returned home after a week-long Christmas visit, she discovered that these same neighbors had painted the walls in her bathroom. When she tried to pay them, they said it was a Christmas present. If I am convinced of anything, I am convinced that one day these neighbors will hear the voice of the King saying: "Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me" (Matthew 25:40).
A few years ago, a family member was hospitalized for several months, most of the time in the intensive care unit. Throughout those months, my own neighbors almost every day prepared meals for the rest of the family and left them (anonymously) on the front porch of our house. More often than not, my next door neighbor clears the sidewalk in front of our house with his snow-blower after a winter storm, before I get a chance to shovel.
I would guess that these and most other acts of kindness don't appear on anyone's generosity index and aren't tabulated on anyone's tax returns. They are all meticulously written down, however, "in the Lamb's book of life" (Revelation 21:27).
Whenever I'm tempted to despair about human nature and worry about the future of the human race, I call to mind these unselfish deeds and my mood shifts from gloom and despondency to hopefulness and gratitude. This, I think, is what the Bible means when it says, "God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them" (Genesis 1:27). How better to show forth the best side of us, God's image, than to perform these acts of charity?