Sound off about whatever you want! - The Sound and the Fury Blog

Even in the Midst of the Recession, You Can Find Work Here!

An exciting - and daunting - job interview

We’re all living through hard times lately – yes, even us bloggers have felt the crunch thanks to the latest string of economic disasters. Being information workers, and self-employed ones at that it’s a bit harder for us to lose our jobs, but it doesn’t matter – keeping your job at half your former salary is still a slap in the face. But there is hope, even amongst these dark days – if you know where to look, you can still find employment – and we’ve got the skinny on the places to look. Experienced job hunter Carol Simms has kindly contributred this inspirational piece about finding employment in the depths of a recession, and she’s no stranger to job hunting (as you can see from her website) – she’s held over 25 jobs in her lifetime! Along the way though she’s been polishing her writing skills on the job

Save Your Health – Online!

Take care of your health! (image courtesy of novanthealth.net)

Health and wellness have become a pair of watchwords for much of the world. But here in America, there is a unique polarization that is happening. Some people are very health-focused, and other people are completely unwilling to engage. This is fine, of course, since America is the land of the free, apparently, but it can make it very hard to pull yourself out of unhealthiness and start working your way towards wellness. There’s a barrier to entry, so to speak, that prevents those who are unhealthy from successfully changing their lives. And yes, that’s partly a cop-out – people do it all the time – but that doesn’t mean that we can’t try to help make things easier for you. After all, a healthy America is a happy America. Thanks to health and wellness public speaker Mary-Anne Wollston-Johnson for this impassioned piece about how to change your life. Mary-Anne

Private Nursing Education for Public Healthcare

A few members of a graduating nursing class. (Thanks to nursing-schools-in-maryland.com for the pic!)

A lot of people in the media have been having miniature strokes about the latest developments in the Obama healthcare saga. Those against it claim it’s the evil socialist healthcare monster re-awakened (which is rubbish, of course), and those in favor of it claim it’s the ultimate liberal triumph of Obama’s healthcare mandate (which is closer to the truth, but still not the whole picture). Janet Cross, noted healthcare training advocate, was kind enough to take time from her website to offer us this great guest post about the future of nursing and nurse training in America, For more of her work, see her posts on LPN programs, and more recently, her attempt to raise awareness about accelerated nursing programs in NY. There is one thing that both the left and right forget about when discussing this crucial healthcare topic through their chosen media mouthpieces – no matter which side

Recent Developments in the North American Nursing Job Markets

All across North America, the demand for nurses is increasing every year in all sorts of specialized fields. While the Canadian healthcare system is undergoing some occasional reductions in publicly available jobs, the demand is still increasing which will, in turn, create a more American-style healthcare market. We’d like to take this chance to thank Claire Benneton, the chief contributor towards international-nursing-jobs.com and an authority on advanced practice nursing and private nursing, who was kind enough to step in and offer us this up-to-date look at how the field of nursing has changed in North America, and what to expect in the years to come. This can turn out a couple of different ways for those looking to enter the nursing field, as increased jobs will increase the number of people applying, reducing the wages all around – but thanks to the echo of the baby boomer generation, the number of elderly

September 29, 2003

Tim Blair points to another installment of the Sydney Morning Herald’s nigh-unreadable “Webdiary”, as usual containing misrepresentations of American life and law that would be uproariously funny if so many people didn’t take them so seriously. One thing that jumped out at me in the quote Blair published, apparently from someone named Karen Jackson: “And sodomy is still illegal in dozens of US states.” Dozens? Heck, we only have fifty states in all — that’s, let’s see, four and one-sixth dozen — and the archived ACLU statistics from a year or two ago run down how many of them have had their ancient sodomy laws overturned or repealed. As of the time that that page was compiled, 26 states had repealed their sodomy laws by legislature, many of them in the 1970s. Another nine had had their sodomy laws overturned by courts. That leaves fifteen — or, er, one and

August 1, 2003

THERE’S A THREAD ON LGF today about the aforementioned Canadian guy who ended up in jail in Lebanon for the crime of having once visited Israel, and although I’m usually too intimidated to take part in the LGF comments boards I was moved to post this based on something I’d read in the NYT this week: Hey, we should cut the Lebanese a little slack and not just assume they are culturally backward. For instance, one of Lebanon’s technology companies has just created a new second-generation whisper-quiet robotic lawn mower that uses a seriously high-tech computerized guidance system to reduce the strain of yardwork (it’s hard for people who are blind or otherwise disabled) and also cuts down on pollution by using a rechargeable battery pack. A pretty impressive– Oh wait, did I say a Lebanese company? Actually, the RoboMower RL800, profiled in yesterday’s New York Times, is made by

July 23, 2003

THIS IS PROBABLY THE WRONG reaction to have, but when I read the Washington Post’s front-page tale of an lawyer who lost his job in June 2001 and has been working as a temp in a cubicle job since December, my thoughts were not “How sad that this fellow hasn’t been able to find a job in over a year” but “Wait a second: he learned Monday that his Level 2 interview for a prominent government job would be a ‘written assignment’ due Thursday at noon, and he didn’t start on the required six essay answers until ‘Wednesday after dinner’?” For heaven’s sake: the man is a lawyer. What exactly was stopping him from using his savings to open his own office and hang out a shingle once the first three months of looking for a job proved fruitless? Or from moving to Cleveland or Cincinnati and finding a public

June 29, 2003

RANDY BARNETT, WRITING ON The Volokh Conspiracy blog, quotes a fascinating statement from an African-American Stanford Law professor who complains that affirmative action has demeaned his accomplishments: In the current Affirmative Action environment, blessed by our Supreme Court this past Monday, there is nothing that any American of African descent can do that can separate himself or herself from the unspoken accusation that he or she is the beneficiary of more than they deserve. Let me illustrate my point. I am willing to bet that I am the only member of this list who feels compelled to put his standardized test scores and National Merit award on his CV. Why do I do this? For those of you who do not know me personally, it is not a matter of braggadocio. Every September I have to deal with nearly 60 prima donna first year law students whose first and only

April 25, 2003

NPR’S BAGHDAD CORRESPONDENT Anne Garrels (bio) has returned home and was interviewed by NPR staple host Susan Stamberg, for Wednesday’s Morning Edition. The aired version is not quite eight minutes long, including Bob Edwards’ segue, and is a montage of bits from the interview and pieces of previous reporting from Baghdad. Fortunately, NPR loves its website users and put together this page which contains a written variation of the aired version as well as a full 32 minutes of the interview itself, apparently unedited. At the bottom of that page, more links to audio and webpages about Garrels. I was definitely impressed that Garrels apparently has an electrical engineering degree, since she variously ran her laptop and contraband satellite telephone off either the lightbulb outlet powered by the hotel generator, or using a car battery that she hauled down and up 11 flights for its daily recharge. You’ll have to

March 27, 2003

I STUMBLED ACROSS A highly interesting bombshell report describing how the layout of central D.C. and nearby Northern Virginia areas are designed not only to show us lots of Masonic symbols but also to mirror the home habitat of the ancient astronauts who lived around the Face on Mars! Admittedly, this will largely be of interest only to fans of kooky conspiracy theories and/or to people like Max and me who are quite familiar with the geography of the area in question. (The area on Earth, I mean.) Max, can you pick out your building on those aerial photos? Note also that an earlier site about the Masonic symbols acknowledges that Louisiana Avenue, the upper half of the Masonic “square”, wasn’t actually on the plan that L’Enfant was ostensibly using to depict the Masonic symbols; I can only assume that L’Enfant, canny Frenchman that he was, foresaw that it would