Wednesday, May 18, 2016

Wazzup Wednesday

  • Vigilante justice hero (~sarcasm) George Zimmerman's gun, used to kill Trayvon Martin, has reportedly sold for $120,000 - about 600 times its worth.  Its buyer is unknown.
  • Zimmerman, you will remember, confronted Martin while making his rounds on security patrol in a gated community in Florida.  Martin, who may or may not have been up to mischief, got into a physical brawl with Zimmerman, during which Zimmerman mortally wounded the teen.  The case became a catalyzing event for what became the Black Lives Matter movement.
  • It is my opinion that Zimmerman was barely within the bounds of use of deadly force in the encounter - an opinion a jury shared - and substantially out of bounds on the use of good judgment.
  • If he'd had even half a brain, he'd have thanked his lucky stars that he was acquitted for murder, and would've thereafter led an upstanding, or at least unremarkable - life.  But, that doesn't appear to describe George Zimmerman.
  • I bring this up in contrast to a recent incident (but non-event) in the Crescent City, in which esteemed blogger Murphy's Law encountered a pair of individuals who were actually targeting him for a robbery/carjacking.  Although ML is extremely proficient with firearms and knowledgeable about laws/enforcement, he used his good judgment to safely extricate himself from a tight scrape without violence.  
  • Moving on.
  • One of my pet peeves is the notion of  'seagull management'.  The term apparently dates to the mid-'80s, from one of Ken Blanchard's management  books, and the premise is that such managers "fly in, crap over everything, and fly out".  The term is equally applicable to any supervisor or manager who is otherwise disengaged from his/her workforce, who, when issues arise, arrives on the scene, makes snap judgments and lots of noise, then hastily leaves, having not solved the issue or perhaps making it worse.  I occasionally see this at my company, among low-level supervisors who lack either the experience, wisdom, or temperament to patiently assess a situation and prescribe a useful remediation.
  • It's reported that Texas is bracing for an influx of Cuban migrants/refugees.  Stock up on Coca-Cola and Myers's?
  • The White House has announced new rules set to go into effect in December to require that more workers be paid overtime pay.  Obviously, this is met by resistance from business trade groups, and I am skeptical of it, given this administration's track record.  But, I'll wait to see how this plays out.
  • I stepped out of the shower this evening - no fancy ninja moves or anything - and got a severe pain right above the ball of my foot.  That was over an hour ago.  It's diminished now, but still sore.

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