A Muslim to fit western tastes?

I'm not sure if Boeing wanted to reassure western travelers that Muslims were not only safe, but glamorous, just like our own best images of ourselves; or to suggest to Muslims that flying Boeing's new 747-8 Intercontinental would make them glamorous (and, thus, less likely to be summarily removed from airline flights, like poor Irum Abbasi), but from anything I think I know about Muslims, Boeing has laid an egg with the photo in their new ad campaign.

What in Allah's name were they thinking of? Muslim women don't wear the hijab gaping oh-so-slightly open to reveal a tantalizing hint of hair, and no self-respecting Muslim woman would be caught dead in a pose that suggested that (a) she was intrigued by the non-believing male behind her and that (b) she was perhaps subsconsciously inclined to loosen the hijab just a little bit more, to attract his notice.

Are these people cracked? Do they think they are in some way doing Muslims a favor by portraying them this way? I for one tend to take a pretty dim view of the way Islam affects women, but aside from that, chastity seems to be something that the advertising industry just doesn't get.

© Michael Huggins, 2011. All rights reserved.

Absolutely, positively, pointless

For years, employment at FedEx was the technical writer's dream. It was like lifetime employment at the Postal Service, but with self-respect and an aura of glamour. I did a contract stint there in '87, helped edit their Line Haul Ops manuals for an FAA Audit, wrote policies and procedures for their Information and Telecommunications Division, and actually met Fred Smith; I wanted to get on permanently, but that was the year of the stock market crash, and they imposed a hiring freeze.

It's a fine company that enjoys well-deserved success, but like any large corporation, suffers from a large volume of communication that appears to have been written by a nervous mid-level manager, struggling to inflate his words to sound important and with an anxious eye cast over his shoulder at the Vice-President who might be reading it. This morning, a job ad apparently written by one such manager appeared in my e-mail inbox, titled "Project Management Principle." (In this case, it's supposed to be Principal, meaning "the chief person involved.")

It begins by telling me what everyone knows: that FedEx is a dynamic and growing company. It continues with the following glut of pointless and misleading verbiage as to what a project management "Principle" does:

This position is part of the Corporate Initiatives Program Management team. The team supports strategic programs of FedEx Corporation by facilitating and executing on programs that are critical to the long term success of the Corporation. The position supports the implementation of Project Renewal across the operating companies and Services by facilitating various work- streams, creating and implementing departmental program management processes, tools and techniques. Leads projects to enable realization of benefits for the programs, ensures best practices are used, and provides visibility to senior management on the current status of programs. Provides mentoring for the development of those in less senior positions.
Position Information:

Translation: The Corporate Initiatives Program Management Team manages projects, ensuring good results by using best practices and mentoring less-senior employees.

If a member of this team ever joins the ranks of the unemployed and becomes desperate, instead of standing at an interstate ramp with a sign that says "Homeless and hungry, please help, God bless you," it may say something like this:

The bearer of this display is part of a growing constituency of American stakeholders seeking to restore equity and maximize individual well-being by soliciting targeted placement of discrete amounts of capital, with the goal of leveraging such voluntary disbursements to realize enhanced synergies with the market economy and move toward full parity with other stakeholders. Investors are invited to review opportunities in this sector and consider what commitment level will most effectively align their own goals with those of this segment of the economy.

For now, at least, the writer of the job description is still employed, and he finally gets around to saying what this position actually is, and does:

Responsible for assigning security and creating profiles for new users in Primavera P6. Maintaining P6 Global dictionaries and administrating services. Maintaining P6 P6 Documentation, with the assistance of IT Technical writers, including but limited to, Configuration documentation, Oracle services agreement, and External interface documentation. Responsibilities will also include development and adherence to, P6 standard administration guidelines and change control process. Responsible for development and use of reports to assist administration activities. Responsible for verifying data population and interface operation to ensure data integrity, trough reporting and error logging software. Will provide a single point of contact with IT support personnel and a primary point contact to all Renewal Purple Core users.

Translation: sets up users to use a software package called Primavera, assigning passwords, creating user profiles, etc. Works with tech writers to make sure Primavera-related terms are clearly defined and written down somewhere, so they can be explained to anyone who needs to know, and that instructions for using the software are available. Keeps tabs on how many people are using the system. Keeps the system running through (not trough) staying on top of other software that flags errors and problems. Acts as the go-to person for Primavera for the rest of the computer division and key business users.

In other words: it's not a Project Management Principle (or Principal) position at all, or even a tech writing position: it's basically an administrative position of the type that, had computers been more widely used in my dad's day, might have been done by someone who had had 2 years at community college.

And the qualifications for this job include...? You probably know already. "Master's degree preferred." Absolutely, positively, unnecessary.

© Michael Huggins, 2011. All rights reserved.

Mission accomplished?

I love my country and want to see it reclaim its former greatness, which is why I grieve to see how far wrong we went in response to 9/11. On that day, the whole world was with us. In response to the events of that day, our then-President urged everyone to go out and shop, insisted on finding a non-existent link between 9/11 and Saddam, initiated a war in Iraq that eventually brought Al Qaeda to Iraq where it had not been previously, bungled the chance to capture Osama at Tora Bora, eventually involved us in two wars which he refused to raise taxes to fund, squandered our entire budget surplus, illegally bypassed his government's own FISA courts to engage in warrantless wiretapping on American citizens, countenanced waterboarding, a practice for which we had court-martialed American officers in the Phillippines War of 1900 and had hanged Japanese officers as war criminals after WWII; and, finally, multiplied a security state apparatus so that the many agencies, and the number of people holding top secret clearances, are larger than Al Qaeda itself, while airline passengers submit to invasions of their personal dignity that would have outraged the Founding Fathers.

All this happened, in part, because the Bush Administration could not be bothered to pay attention to warnings about Al Qaeda in intelligence briefings (and even a warning of the risk of attacks on tall buildings via airplane) before the event and even allowed some of the 9/11 hijackers to board flights, although they were listed on "no fly" lists, because government personnel didn't check the lists.

We fought two wars not only without paying for them but without reinstituting a draft, staffing the whole endeavor by sending family men and women from the National Guard and blue-collar kids who saw this as their only chance to get a college degree. We sent them into Iraq without adequately reinforced vehicles or adequate body armor, sending them home as shattered wrecks while the government sought to cut veterans' benefits and had to dismiss the commandant of its own Walter Reed Medical Center over the scandal of poor care. We sent enlistees into multiple tours of duty through "stop loss" orders. Our military is overstretched, while the recently departed Secretary of Defense had to fight his own bureaucracy to cancel ridiculously expensive weapons systems that didn't even work, and a quarter of the money spent on military contracts for the past 10 years turns out to have been wasted.

Today, we no longer have the respect of the world. It hesitates to follow us on military undertakings, doubts the continuing soundness of our currency as a worldwide reserve currency, looks on aghast as a small faction of yahoos and know-nothings holds the United States Congress hostage, resisting the control of its own party leadership and all but bringing government to a halt over the issue of raising the debt ceiling, which had already happened 87 times since World War II (mostly under Republican administrations!). The country we delivered from Saddam is now moving steadily into the orbit of Iran, while in Afghanistan, soldiers of that country's army are deserting in droves. Meanwhile, the world beats a path to China's door to seek its friendship, while fewer people in the United States are employed than were in the work force on 9/11, middle-class wages have actually decreased, in real terms, since 1970, and Warren Buffett pays less in taxes than does his secretary.

Is this why people died on 9/11? So that we could present a face to the world as a once-great country steadily being ruined by clowns and thugs, bankrupt of principles and proudly indifferent to ideas?

We elected a man 3 years ago as leader of the free world who seems, in retrospect, to have been chiefly interested in showing how balanced and adult he was. He inanely proclaimed that his advent would mark the moment when the rise of the oceans began to decrease, but had to go to the Copenhagen Conference on Climate Change empty-handed. He personally traveled to Europe to seek the endorsement of Chicago for the Olympics, but faced with toxic, hostage-taking political tactics from his opposition, he continually gives in. His self-esteem is perhaps intact, but he is not functioning as a leader, and more's the pity, considering his high intelligence. Meanwhile, among the most intelligent candidates for his office from the opposition, all but one had affirmed a monumentally stupid pledge to refuse a budget arrangement that would have included only a dollar in tax increases for nine dollars in reductions. One of his most likely opponents governs a state where the largest segment of workers holds minimum wage jobs and touts this as an economic miracle, and denies that climate science is settled, while wildfires rage unchecked throughout his state, the worst in recorded history, exacerbated by conditions whose origin he refuses to acknowledge.

This is not the America I grew up in. We are badly in need of a course correction. We need to recognize that actions (including the actions of man toward the environment) have consequences, that wars must be paid for, that social burdens should be shared, that the debt ceiling is merely the way we pay for programs that have *already* been passed, and not a new referendum on them, that the way to fight terrorism is not through an undeclared "war" against no sovereign state with no boundaries and no foreseeable end, that turns our nation into a "security state" that would not seem unfamiliar to residents of constitutionally oppressive regimes and that has government agents forcing women to remove breast prostheses and adult diapers at airports; that our crumbling infrastructure of roads, bridges, and tunnels is a national danger and a scandal in the rest of the developed world; that we spend twice as much per capita as the rest of the developed world on medical care while having health outcomes that lag behind theirs, and that we rank 44th in the world, behind Turkey, in public acceptance of biological evolution, while candidates for the office of President feel obligated to show up at a venue like Saddleback Church and prove their good character to the likes of Rick Warren.

Have we lost our minds?

© Michael Huggins, 2011. All rights reserved.

Promise is not performance

What is the point of staking your business's reputation on something that, in the nature of the case, you can't possibly control?

I am thinking of the new billboard ad for Kroger that promises "faster checkout," as well as the ad for Walgreen's that I just heard on AOL Radio saying that a customer went to Walgreen's and "with no lines, he was in and out in a flash." (Never mind that that seems to imply that people have stopped shopping there, which is one of the only reasons that there would be no lines.)

I have shopped at both Walgreen's and Kroger for over 35 years now, and speed is not among the virtues of either. Indeed, as I have pointed out to a Walgreen's manager, it is my experience that, even if I am there at 2:00 in the morning and with no other customers in the store, I will have to wait. Walgreen's clerks dawdle, and it seems to make little or no difference how much or how little customer traffic there is at a given hour.

I won't say that Kroger cashiers are *as* bad, but they aren't much better. Even when one of them tries his or her best, the store's equipment may malfunction; the cashier who checked out my entire order this past Sunday had to call another employee to help her figure out why the scanner would handle everything but the bunch of bananas I was trying to buy.

(Sadly, those aren't the only issues. As long as their shelves are fully stocked, all is well, but ask for a product that you normally buy there that you couldn't find on this visit, and you are wasting your time—indeed, in my observation, employees and management of both places seem bewildered and unaware of the product you are describing there to begin with, even when it is their store brand!)

If I were a Walgreen's or Kroger manager, I might, indeed, privately hand a token to two or three customers each day and tell them that if they weren't checked out in 5 minutes, their order would be free, and I would then use that as a tool to improve the quality of service. But even the very best business should expect, as a result of its success, to have more traffic, which means more and longer lines. For a business whose service isn't even very good to begin with, to advertise itself as though it offered better service than other places is absurd.

© Michael Huggins, 2011. All rights reserved.

Chacun a son date

It's too intriguing not to look into, so I'll definitely log on to Alikewise.com, a free dating site for bibliophiles, based on the idea that "you can tell a lot about a person by looking at his or her books" (well, more precisely, by asking someone to list the books that he or she has actually read). As I said to my son, a devout Eastern Orthodox Christian of a scholarly turn, "When you meet a woman, be sure to ask her how many volumes of the Church Fathers she's read, so she'll be in no doubt as to what kind of man she is dealing with." Fortunately, he's aware of my sense of humor.

My only caveat will be what I have already encountered: those who are well read also tend to be pro-choice absolutists and to assume that all conservatives are mentally deficient, which tends to make for brief conversations. Perhaps I'll be pleasantly surprised.

On the other hand, if someone started a site called IcanSpellCorrectly.com, he would confer a tremendous benefit on those of us who stop reading dating ads at the point where the other says she likes "quite" evenings at home.

Cupidtino.com brings Apple fans together, arguing that they match well because they "tend to have creative professions, a similar sense of style, and an appetite for technology." Yup, that's pretty much what I thought—I'll run the other way.

420Dating.com matches lovers of pot. Nuff said. (I could start a site called I_tried_pot_years_ago_and_thought_it_was_kinda_dumb.com.)

WeWaited.com matches virgins. I truly respect chastity and am disgusted by the lax modern ethos that seems to hold that reserving oneself for marriage is somehow morbid; as I said to one of my kids once, "There's only one first time." Having said that, something about this site's name and self-advertisement strikes me as being as creepy as the religious family therapist I heard once who suggested, quite sincerely, that a dad give his daughter a bouquet of flowers when she has her first period. I'm not kidding.

In any case, I too waited—until I found the wrong one (but then, so did she), whereupon I resolutely set to work. I am truly happy for those who wait and have their prudence rewarded in a blissful union with a truly compatible mate; I have to question whether focusing primarily on that criterion is likely to help seekers achieve that goal.

Honestly, after getting into the habit of rising at 4 a.m. to walk 3 miles before breakfast and recalling the appreciation that I silently extend to other similarly dedicated souls that I happen to see out walking or jogging at the same time, I'm rather inclined to start a site called UpBeforeDawn.com. Like the one about virginity, it would certainly disclose something important about those who responded.

© Michael Huggins, 2011. All rights reserved.

I should have stayed home and listened to the Brandenburg Concertos

We all have to make a living, but Liam Neeson's latest action thriller, Unknown, which I saw this evening, should really be titled "Forget It." Neeson is OK, I suppose, though Bruno Ganz was more interesting, and if cab drivers in Berlin look like Diane Kruger, I will definitely plan a visit and see if I can find one to give me a ride.

Basically, the film is The Bourne Identity for AARP members, and of course I'm glad to see Neeson, who is three months younger than I, proving that people our age can still kick butt over something more important than a parking space. Still, the basic existential issue here is whether a man our age can attract and hold the interest of January Jones, to which, alas, the answer is "Not unless you look like Jon Hamm—sorry." (Which reminds me: if Neeson's character had just spent his time doing what Barry Pepper did to January Jones in The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada, he wouldn't have bothered with car chases and knife fights.)

If you want to see two good films that amount to pretty much the same thing as this one, watch Roman Polanski's (yes, I know, but watch this anyway) 1988 film Frantic, with Harrison Ford and Emmanuelle Seigner, or the better-known The Fugitive, from 1993.

© Michael Huggins, 2011. All rights reserved.

Mecca can wait

Life is a matter of choices, as every adult knows. You choose one thing and give up someting else. Safoorah Khan and the Obama Justice Department are having a hard time getting their heads around this. After just 9 months teaching middle school math, Ms. Khan wanted 19 days' leave to make a pilgrimage to Mecca. Nothing wrong with doing her religious duty. Meanwhile, there is the small matter of the school kids who actually need a teacher, pilgrimage or no pilgrimage. Ms. Khan was refused her leave, resigned, and made the pilgrimage anyway. The Justice Department is suing on her behalf for religious discrimination.

I am one who welcomes attempts to incorporate peace-loving Muslim citizens into our national life. A Muslim may be your doctor, accountant, the engineer at a local plant, or the hard-working business analyst who occupied the cubicle across the aisle from me for several months. I am disgusted by yahoos who think all Muslims are secret agents of terror and want to harass and intimidate people who merely want to build secure and prosperous lives for themselves and their families in the United States.

Having said that, I wonder if 19 days of leave after only 9 months would have been expected by an adherent of any other religion: a Christian wanting to spend Easter week in the Holy Land, a Buddhist wanting to honor the Buddha at one of the venerable shrines of Japan or Cambodia, a Wiccan wanting to visit Stonehenge. I think not.

“This was a profoundly personal request by a person of faith," said Thomas E. Perez, assistant attorney general for civil rights, who compared the case to protecting "the religious liberty that our forefathers came to this country for.” Thomas, please. It was a profoundly inconsiderate request by a person who can see only one side of her faith—a particular duty, which doesn't have to be performed in your first 9 months on a job—while overlooking the larger context of that faith, which includes a strong teaching on alms-giving and our duty to those in need. Which, for a schoolteacher, would include children. Funny that someone should overlook something so obvious.

© Michael Huggins, 2011. All rights reserved.