Dad (Brett)
All around rockstar geek. Brett enjoys his job as a Clinical Data Manager (helping research medical breakthroughs at Celgene); in his time off he enjoys reading books, watching movies, and learning new tricks on his camera and in Photoshop. He absolutely adores his wife and 2 daughters.
Mom (Erin)
Complete supermom. Erin loves her job as a Youth Field Researcher (aka 'mother'); in her plentiful spare time (ha!) she enjoys sleeping, re-reading Twilight or Harry Potter, and cuddling with Brett.
Aeriana ('Wacko', 'Princess')
Hybrid Angel/Devil. Aeriana loves her mommy and daddy, each of whom she loves to test at times and pretend innocence at others. A veritable sponge, Aeriana wants to do anything she sees an adult doing; she loves babies and especially adores her little sister, taking great care of her every need.
Zoe Jean ('Stinker', 'Cutie')
Growing fast, Zoe wants to be just like her big sister. Very goal oriented, she'll find a way to get that toy she's been looking at. She loves her pacifier and can't help but snuggle up to her blanket. Zoe is as relaxed as they come, she just loves chillin' out and watching TV.
Recently the Boy Scouts of America celebrated the 100th anniversary of its founding with a special Jamboree. President Obama was invited to speak at the event, however he decided that appearing on The View was more important. Understandably, and thankfully, Obama has suffered quite a bit of backlash because of that decision.
What ended up happening at the Jamboree was that they played a pre-recorded message by the President to the Jamboree attendees - at which point there's video showing the Boy Scouts in attendance loudly booing him throughout his message. When I heard about this I was deeply disappointed. I don't care much for what President Obama is doing for (or is that 'to') this country, but he's still the President of the United States and therefore I feel that the Boy Scouts have a certain responsibility to show respect.
"A scout is trustworthy, loyal, helpful, friendly, courteous, kind, obedient cheerful, thrifty, brave, clean, and reverent."
Somehow those who booed the President's message momentarily forgot about 'courteous', 'kind' and 'reverent', and I'd assume in cases where some joined in due to peer pressure, 'brave' was also temporarily forgotten. (Though in all fairness, I could do better in fully keeping the scout law in my own life.)
Anyway, I often read the Glenn Beck newsletter which highlights some of the things he mentions on the radio and today there was a blurb mentioning that he talked about the Boy Scouts incident (including the video clip below). Inwardly I groaned; Beck is well known for being ready to criticize the President... but I checked out the video anyway and was pleasantly surprised that Beck was also disappointed with the Boy Scouts.
That's one of the things I like about Beck; though he sometimes goes a bit overboard and though the fact that he's on the air for 4+ hours a day sometimes gets him in trouble, he truly seems to have respect for the offices of these people he so vehemently disagrees with.
I thoroughly enjoyed reading Freakonomics, and I'm currently on the lookout for its sequel, SuperFreakonomics at a yard sale... Mean while, Money magazine posted a great, short little glimpse into the Freakonomics mind.
A couple weeks ago I found (searched out?) the need to explicate the Foxconn situation in China. In the days since, several developments have occurred that I thought I'd share.
- Foxconn raised salaries of employees (who were already making a lot of money compared to other Chinese).
- Foxconn announced another salary increase planned for the fall.
- People applauded Foxconn's efforts.
- Foxconn announced that it is looking to move some production to Taiwan or Vietnam.
The overall result is that some Foxconn employees will get paid a bit more. Other Foxconn employees will lose their job entirely. This may take some time, the production flow of these types of companies doesn't really allow for any kind of immediate shift, but because the labor costs rose in China it now makes more business sense to take the production elsewhere.
Can we get some media outlets to vent their 'righteous indignation' towards the other media outlets who cost people their jobs? No?
(To be fair - the future Taiwanese or Vietnamese Foxconn workers will benefit from this move so an objective viewpoint may be that this is all a wash. But what drives me nuts about this is that people were clamoring for better working conditions for the Chinese and instead caused many of them to have no working conditions at all.)
If Only...
Dad (Brett)
Mom (Erin)
Aeriana ('Wacko', 'Princess')
Zoe Jean ('Stinker', 'Cutie')