Happy Thanksgiving!
Author Archives: Cimaxion
The History of Thanksgiving
A Day of Thanksgiving – 1951 Film
In that marvelously stilted, creepy and bigoted 1950s way, this little slice of propaganda shows how a family celebrates Thanksgiving. I’m most interested in the comment about being thankful for not ‘working slave hours.’ Interesting bit of thankfulness, especially since every thankful person in the film is white.
Inside Penguin’s Publishing Offices
Guy Kawasaki over at Holy Kaw! posts about the various team members and office spaces at his publisher, Portfolio, which is an imprint of Penguin. He’s put up a bunch of photos he took inside the Manhattan office building where all the book work goes on.
It’s all more or less just fine… until we get to the photo of the art department (although I don’t trust smiling publishers). The poor art people are given those brutally unprivate low-walled cubicles to work in. All management teams use the exact same excuses for these open work areas: fosters team spirit, allows easy direct communication over cubicle walls, lets the window light spread throughout the work area.
The real reason management installs low-rise cubicles is for observation and control. It puts all employees, even the most dedicated and creative ones, in the position of monitoring each others’ work habits and arrival/departure times. Low-rise cubicles are an insult to employees and do not foster team attitudes. Professionals build teams by sharing their skills, not by watching each other.
Here’s Kawasaki’s book at Amazon. And the cover really just truly sucks. It’s about how to convince people to do the things you would like for them to do in business. It probably helped convince the art designers to work in this cubicle hell. His next book should be about how to smash furniture.
Mystery Video From Neill Blomkamp
Wired Magazine for the iPad included this mysterious little film that is apparently some sort of teaser by Neill Blomkamp, the director of District 9. It shows the discovery of a dead alien or unknown life form by two guys driving down a dirt road. Creepy. But why would anyone touch a dead alien? The creature is stamped as if part of some project at a lab. Maybe it’s about growing new life forms to feed the planet and then some of them escape. Or some company has captured and bred aliens for food production!
Here’s a Slashfilm article that suspects it’s a teaser for an online narrative about a company doing genetic engineering.
Wednesday Is The Day To Make Hell For The TSA At U.S. Airports
I can’t believe that I’m posting a video interview with Ron Paul about the ongoing horror show coming out of the TSA and the Obama administration. But the simple fact of the matter is that it really doesn’t matter who is attacking the President and the TSA for blatantly unconstitutional molestation and physical abuse of air passengers across the United States. It doesn’t matter if it’s Republicans or Tea Party dopes. The only thing that matters is that a free people with some hope of maintaining a democracy MUST stop a government that thinks it can go inside peoples’ clothes and touch their bodies in the name of very questionable security.
The Obama administration’s TSA must be stopped no matter what. It is an absolute imperative that they not be allowed to molest men, women or children who are simply exercising their right to travel freely. So I find myself fully in the camp of a political party that I normally want nothing to do with. When it comes to stopping the TSA and protecting the civil rights of people in this country it makes no difference who is leading the fight. It think this cause does in fact join Republicans with liberals. It’s one of the few things we can agree on.
The TSA has expressed concern about verbal and physical abuse being directed at its employees. They hope that passengers can understand the difference between the TSA employees and the officials making the policies. Except that the person you have to defend yourself from is the one standing in front of you trying to put his or her hand into your pants. You must defend yourself against that person. The policymakers will get the message and act eventually. But in the airport you must defend yourself against the person actually committing the assault.