Wed 29 Aug 2007 – 19.46
lifetime appointee, bitch
With all the stress of finding and keeping a job these days, it’s good to know that there are in fact still some posts where you can pretty much decompose in the job and can’t be sacked save for the most intense of circumstances.
While it may benefit the individual who enjoys a lifetime of slacking off, it paints our society into a corner when all of our nurses, civil servants, judges, union labourers and university professors lose their sense of competition, and thereby lose their edge.
Forbes has the article and explains in greater detail about those and other jobs. Have a look.
posted by Scott in careers.
Tue 28 Aug 2007 – 16.01
I’ve been thinking about happiness lately, and what my answer would be to that profound questions ‘are you happy?’. Turns out a recent AP article covered the same topic for folks in our same age bracket. The answer is not sex, drugs and rock+roll, but rather family.
Spending time with family was the top answer to that open-ended question, according to an extensive survey … Next was spending time with friends, followed by time with a significant other. Nearly three-quarters of young people say their relationship with their parents makes them happy.
Good news for parents, especially those who might find this blog a mite depressing at times. We love you.
posted by Scott in life.
Mon 27 Aug 2007 – 16.01
From Men’s Health comes a rundown of various sex positions. You know, for those readers who may find this useful.
No further comments
posted by Scott in relationships.
What Dating Teaches Us About Money
Sun 26 Aug 2007 – 19.48
Money matters and dating advice in the same post? Yup, it seems that Alan Haft is more clever than the writers of this here site. Using the eternal power of metaphor, these are nice little tid-bits for how to be a wise investor, and at the same time make sense of the dating scene. Slightly.
Pretty sound advice, and taken out of context makes the analogies that much sweeter. For example, “Cut the losers, ride the winners”. Nice choice of words.
posted by Scott in personal finance, relationships.
Sat 11 Aug 2007 – 10.59
A new study tested the relationship between grades and delayed sexual behaviour. In other words, it posed the question “are geeks virgins?”.
This is actually a really interesting article from Gene Expression about a statistical view of students at top-tier universities like MIT and Princeton, and whether or not they were virgins. There are even graphs! It doesn’t take a neuroscience major to know that those nerdlier kids have a stronger chance of being virgins, but I was actually a bit shocked by the statistics.
Virginity, by major
Some parts of the article are pretty blunt and to the point:
At Harvard 59% of the undergraduates are non-virgins, and at MIT, only a slight majority, 51%, have had intercourse. Further, only 65% of MIT graduate students have had sex.
Read the article, it’s interesting. Funny to think that while most virgins share the belief that they are the only ones left, the fact is that depending on their major, they may well be in the majority. Whoa.
posted by Scott in health & fitness, relationships.
Office Workers Waste 2.1 Hours a Day
Thu 02 Aug 2007 – 14.46
Skipping the irony about how I’m currently blogging this at work, I found it interested that a new Inc.com article illustrates how twentysomethings squander 2.1 hours of their work day. Lucky for business owners, the trend seems to decay with time:
20- to 29-year-olds said they waste an average of 2.1 hours per day. The amount of idle time drops off as employees grow older, with the 30-39 age group reporting 1.9 hours of the day wasted and 40- to 49-year-olds reporting 1.4 hours.
I think the reason for this is now that we grow older and therefore more mature, but rather because as we advance in the business world, our job itselfs becomes more of a waste of time. Think about your office — everyone with gray hair counts “schmoozing” as a major part of their job. Talking, having dinners, going to presentations/meetings, etc. That’s a all a waste of time if you ask me. Twentysomethings are the ones with their nose to the grindstones, so maybe we need those 2.1 hours a day to fuck around on Facebook and read blogs (like this one).
Your thoughts? Are we wasting too much time, or just the right amount?
posted by Scott in careers.
American Workers Give Aussies Bleak View
Wed 01 Aug 2007 – 16.06
Three low-paid American workers have travelled to Australia to tell Aussies about the dangers of non-unionised working conditions, and to scare them into a better future by avoiding the whole poor-workers-in-a-rich-country thing that has many Americans by the bollocks.
The three Americans were an example of what Australians could expect in the future… Australia is becoming more and more like the United States and these workers are here to tell us how hard it is to be a low paid worker in a rich country … they provide a warning that life could get a lot tougher for Australian working families if the Liberals are re-elected and they make further unfair changes to the IR laws.
That’s funny because here in the States it’s the exact opposite where the conservatives, not the liberals, are the ones promoting the free-for-all economy (at the expense of workers). Ok, no politics on this site, just pointing this out as a commentary on American working life.
posted by Scott in careers, personal finance.