I’d posted something last year discussing Carly Fiorina and Craig Barret’s views that America needs more competition between workers in order to drive down wages, thereby increasing profits.
Funny enough, Fiorina got fired this week - something about “differences” with the HP board. To satisfy corporate tradition, she gets a $21 million severance package. I guess that means universities should produce a few more extra workers, just to drive down wages even more and pick up the paycheck on Carly’s windfall.
The joy. I could go on about how eliminating executive salaries that are tens or hundreds (dare I say thousands?) of times the salary of the average employee would increase overall profit even more - but then, everyone already knows that.:-P
On January 30, 2005, Martyn Bennett passed away.
I realize that 99.9% of you will have never heard of him, but to me and many others he was a musical genius. He was among the first artists to successfully fuse traditional Celtic music with house and drum-n-bass, and both his self-titled album and the follow-up Bothy Culture were brilliant. The latter album in particular stayed in my CD player almost constantly from the time I was 16 until the CD was physically broken when I was around 21.
I found out about a year ago that he’d been diagnosed with cancer (Hodgkins Lymphoma, according to the BBC tribute), but like many of his fans I’m sure we all hoped that he’d beat the odds. Unfortunately, fate dictated otherwise.
I still remember one interview I heard when I was 14 or so, on the NPR’s Thistle & Shamrock, where Martyn was discussing his inspirations and his background. One random sentence sticks clearly in my head: “Jazz…Jazz is very much a player’s thing…” Martyn went well beyond playing for players and made music that belonged to the people, without sinking to the commercialism that pervades most modern ‘popular’ music.
Well, Martyn, here’s to you. You will be missed.
Rest in peace.
I could not write this better myself. Not that I think Democrats are any better, but this is still worth a read.:-)
What Would Republican Jesus Do?
