Category: Everything Else

One of the professors at USF e-mailed this out today:

CASTING CALL: The Apprentice on NBC

The search is on for Donald Trump’s next “Apprentice” on NBC !

NBC’s “The Apprentice” is coming to San Francisco to conduct interviews.

Beau Bonneau Casting in San Francisco is seeking business-savvy go-getters who have what it takes to “make it in the boardroom.”

Interviews will be conducted at the Beau Bonneau Casting Studio in San Francisco on Friday, July 8 or Monday, July 11, by appointment only with a possible second interview on Tuesday, July 14. Selected candidates must be available for the show for up to eight weeks in the Fall of 2005. Candidates must be at least 21 years old and a US citizen.

If you meet all the criteria and are interested in interviewing for the show please call 415.249.9383 a.s.a.p. and leave the following information after the beep.

– Your name
– 2 Telephone numbers where we can reach you
– Your educational background (MBA, PhD, etc.)
– Where you are currently employed
– Why you think you have what it takes to “make it in the boardroom”

Beau Bonneau Casting will be calling you back to set up an appointment if we are interested in interviewing you. Thank you.

Beau Bonneau Casting Staff
http://www.beaubonneaucasting.com

I’m not interested, but I am somewhat amused. Does the professor think that’s a good use of his students’ time?

Dad’s visiting his sister in Vienna (the one in Europe, not the one outside Washington DC). Calling him there would be expensive, not to mention hard to coordinate with that 9 hour time difference, but I sent him a “Happy Father’s Day” text message. How times change.

Funny how even PETA can become that which they hate:

Two employees of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals have been charged with animal cruelty after dumping dead dogs and cats in a shopping center garbage bin, police said.

Investigators staked out the bin after discovering that dead animals had been dumped there every Wednesday for the past four weeks, Ahoskie police said in a prepared statement Thursday.

PETA has scheduled a news conference for Friday in Norfolk, Virginia, where the group is based.

Police found 18 dead animals in the bin and 13 more in a van registered to PETA. The animals were from animal shelters in Northampton and Bertie counties, police said.

The two were picking up animals to be brought back to PETA headquarters for euthanization, PETA president Ingrid Newkirk said Thursday.

Emphasis added.

Nancy Pelosi says:

If you ever need any inspiration or need to know how urgent our work is, just remember that the CEO of Wal-Mart makes as much in two weeks as its entry-level employees make in a lifetime. A lifetime; not a year, not four years: a lifetime

Emphasis added.

UPDATE: Thinking some more, I want to add why I find this so annoying. Companies like Wal-Mart are almost entirely dependent on their front-line troops as generators of revenue. Wal-Mart would not make their huge profits if their stock clerks and cashiers and other front-line employees did not do what they did. So for them so be so poorly compensated when the CEO sits back and makes vast bucks as if that were totally unconnected to the long, hard, earnest labor of the poorly paid front-line troops is particularly offensive.

Bob Herbert’s column today, and the multi-part NY Times series on class in America, is pretty depresing stuff. But Jesse over at Pandagon said something in response that ought to be emphasized:

There’s no problem with the people who run the company earning more money. There’s a problem when we set up an economy where they reap all the benefits for the company they run, as if everyone under them is simply a token functionary who adds nothing to the company’s success.

There’s a larger point to be made here about the whole issue of how the work world has changed in the past few decades but I’m strugling with the words for it.

In what bizarro world is this proposal indecent?

Only women over age 35 or 40 be allowed to drive and only in cities. On highways, he said, they could drive if accompanied by male guardians.

Saudi Arabia, of course! Women are banned from driving in Saudi Arabia, and a Saudi councilman Mohammad al-Zulfa has recently suggested easing the ban to allow some women to drive some of the time. But the thought that women might actually be allowed to do anything for themselves in Saudi Arabia is just too scary. What happened?

Al-Zulfa put the proposal in writing and sent it to the council’s presidency so it can appoint a date for discussing it. But apparently worried about the conservatives’ reaction, council head, Sheik Saleh bin Humaid, has not responded.

Typical.