“In the media today, the Christian media, there’s too much triffling with God, too much slapstick, too much triviality. There aren’t enough tears. There isn’t enough seriousness. The Joy has a light silly flavor to it. Not the kind of flavor that out to be there when you have suffered and died with Jesus. We ought to be calling the world to a kind of joy which has tears on it’s face and can walk through dark valleys. Instead of trying to sound like the silly banter of primetime, drive time, world.”
John Piper, “Looking at the Kindness and Severity of God 2
A new study shows that people, and particularly men, who work in a noisy environment have a mild to moderately increased risk of heart attack. If you?re a man with many other factors working against you, then your risk is even higher. For example, overweight, with high blood pressure, stressed, and working in a noisy environment. Read the complete article on WebMD
Companies offfer telephone through the Internet but they don’t have reliable 911 service.
The FCC gave a deadline for providing reliable 911 access through the Internet Phone Service, however, many companies did not make the deadline. The Internet Telephones allow you to make calls through your internet connection, however, if you need 911 service, the 911 dispatcher needs to know the location of your call. This is a Federal requirement. FCC declared that if they cannot get reliable 911 service to their customers, they will have to disconnect existing customers and deny new customers.
SunRocket is one of the companies that are succeeding in this race. Read more in this article.
Walmart take the low-road model and Costco take the high-road. Costco is much better for our society and Walmart is destructive.
A recent editorial in Seattle times outlines the “low-road” model and the “high-road” model. Walmart, taking the low-road, aims to make prices the lowest by paying employees the least possible and paying the least possible for the products that they sell. Everything is taken on the low road. Costco, on the other hand, pays much more for their employees, with health packages and higher hourly rates, and they support unions for their employees. Costco takes the high road.
Costco is seeing employees stay much longer and Costco actually experiences higher profits per employee. Read more in an editorial column in Seattle Times.
Indeed, a Business Week analysis shows Costco’s average hourly wage is $15.97, far above the Wal-Mart (Sam’s Club) $11.52 figure (even excluding the 25 percent of Wal-Mart workers who are low-paid part-timers). The yearly employer contributions to health care ? Costco, $5,735; Wal-Mart, $3,500. Of Costco employees, 82 percent are covered by the health plan; Wal-Mart, 47 percent. Employee turnover at Wal-Mart is three times higher than Costco’s.
And then comes the clincher, suggesting the low-road approach may not be so clever after all: Costco’s profit per employee is $13,647; Wal-Mart’s, $11,039.
Thanksgiving day, we saw an RollsRoyce with the license tag SF 80. A very big African American was driving. Guess what happened on our way back home in the evening.
The same Rolls Royce passes us on the freeway. Wow, we were all floored. So we caught up with the Rolls Royce and eventually came along side. Of course, our Chevy Tahoe probably looked like any of the hundreds of Chevy Tahoes on the freeway. He had no idea that he was side by side with us early in the day.
We continued our way home and thought that we had gone different ways when the Roll Royce passed us for the third time. Morgan Hill has some very wealthy communities, so we thought for sure it was going to Morgan Hill. Our exit was coming up and it seemed that the Rolls Royce was getting off at our same exit. To our suprise, he took the same exit as us! Where in our middle class neighborhood would a 49’er in a Rolls Royce live?
We had considered following the Rolls Royce to see where a supposed SF 49’er football player might live. My dad joked that he wanted me to let him out so that he can continue the pursuit on foot. We continued on our way home so that we can see the special two hourse of Donald Trump’s The Apprentice.
Perhaps you’ve heard the warnings or just intuitively known. America is on a losing path with respect to the global economy. Now a comprehensive report and proposal has been drafted and set before Congress.
America is on a losing path in the global front of science and technology. This is not just related to the outsourcing that we have seen, but it’s related to the huge increase in highly educated people in other countries and the decline of the quality of highly educated workers in the United States. The report was commissioned by Congress and created by a committee of science and technology professionals. It can be downloaded for free from the National Academic Press website.
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