Is Your Boss an Alpha?

What is an 'Alpha'?

In his book 'Brave New World', Aldous Huxley portrays a future society in which people are manufactured with varying levels of ability and intelligence; all according to society's needs. The class of people 'designed' to do the no-skill, menial jobs are called 'Epsilons' while people designed to be the cream of society are the 'Alphas'. It is a tranquil society because people in each class know their place and they have contempt for the other classes.

In the real world, being really smart and talented does not necessarily earn one the title of Alpha. One has to be smart and talented while also feeling vastly superior to all but a handful of people who also happen to be Alphas.

In order to successfully work for an Alpha, you must find that razor-thin place in which the Alpha does not feel threatened by your aspirations on one hand, while simultaneously not being written off as lazy by the Alpha because of your apparent lack of aspirations.


Here are some tips to help you work for an Alpha without losing your integrity:

1. Get used to swallowing... your pride. You may feel like a yes-person from time to time, but you'll get used to it and it's generally better than being unemployed.
   
   
2. Identify five people who hate you and list them as references on your resume. List 'Embezzlers Anonymous' as your only club membership on your resume. This removes the temptation to flee a difficult situation.
   
   
3. Listen, listen, listen! When your boss asks for token input, be prepared to parrot back his/her ideas. A true Alpha will realize you're being a sycophant and perhaps only start reading your personal emails. A fake Alpha will criticize your ideas and then implement them as his/her own.
   
   
4. Find out what magazines your boss subscribes to and quote them often. You don't actually have to read them since your boss doesn't read them either. Just make up stuff that you can imagine your boss saying. (see #3)
   
   
5. When doing work that your Alpha boss will review, make some glaring mistakes so that your boss will have something inconsequential to correct. This strategy plays on an Alpha's need to feel superior to the underlings while serving as a potential decoy to protect good ideas that would otherwise get nixed if you submitted perfect work.
   
   
6. Find out who your boss respects and/or fears. See if they are hiring.
   
   

5 Reasons Why You Don't Want George Lucas as Your Pastor

Star Wars was one of the first movies that I saw as a kid and I owe alot of my childhood aspirations to its creator, George Lucas...and Jesus too of course. I got to thinking about the George Lucas phenomenon and then church, and in true post-modern fashion I decided to blend them and observe the results. So, here is the result of semi-considerable musing on a very unlikely scenario.

Why You Don't Want George Lucas as Your Pastor

5. Pastor George could very well slip up and pray to 'the Force' during the pastoral prayer.

4. Pastor George might be inclined to preach the same sermons as he preached twenty years ago but enhance them with new computer effects, digital mastering, and more dramatic explosions.

3. Your church isn't ready to have computer-generated characters in the worship team.

2. Lucas gets bored easily, as evidenced by the fact that he keeps tinkering with a movie series that began during the Carter presidency.

1. Pastor George paid his dues back in the late 70's and ever since then, he listens to nobody and does whatever he wants - even Hollywood boss types couldn't tell him that the dialogue in Episodes 1-3 was awful. (try Googling the terms 'pathetic' , 'dialogue' and 'Star Wars'.)

Disclaimer:
Because Lucas is not beholden to anyone, this could also be five reasons why George Lucas could lead a church from 8 people to 8,000 and write lots of best-selling books.

Is it Okay to Solicit for Organ Donation?

I received a kidney transplant in 2002 from a living, non-related donor friend. (as opposed to a complete stranger) Did I solicit the donation? Not in so many words... I made the need known to friends and family, and many expressed interest and underwent testing to determine compatibility.

Maybe it was a sell, but it was a soft-sell. There was no coercion, no guilt-trips, no high pressure effort to close the transaction...just information about the need with faith that many people respond in generosity to genuine need. This sell has taken on a new dimension with the web.

Some have raised the objection that donating to a specific person (directed donation) is unfair and that it short-circuits the national system of organ procurement which is based primarily on medical need. As the government-sponsored custodian of organ procurement, UNOS (United Network for Organ Sharing) is the foremost critic of directed donation.

According to UNOS, directed donation undercuts the principle of distributing organs according to recipient need.

This reasoning has two major flaws:

1. A directed donation does not necessarily preclude a more needy person from receiving that organ. Many live donors give in response to a specific need and would likely not otherwise donate.
   
2. If a person on the UNOS waiting list receives an organ from a live donor, then everyone on the waiting list stands to benefit. There is one less person ahead of them in line, so to speak.

Nothing has put this issue in the spotlight moreso than the matchingdonors.com website . On this website, people in need of a transplant can post their profile (for a fee) with the intent of connecting with a willing live donor. To be fair, the site often waives the fee for those unable to pay.

So, what's wrong with that?? When one group of people needs something that another group has, a profit motive comes into play. Exchanging an organ for 'valuable consideration' (money) is illegal in the USA. Even if a recipient offers to cover a donor's costs (travel, lodging, etc.), who is going to make sure that the donor does not profit from the exchange? What would prevent the recipient from slipping the donor an extra $1,000 to offset any possibility of last-minute cold feet?

This dynamic is not very new, but now the transaction can take place not only in a family living room but also on the world wide web.

I believe that solicitation for organ donors is only going to grow as long as the demand for organs is far greater than the supply thereof. What then could UNOS do to avoid becoming irrelevant?

• Establish standards for organ procurement from live donors and provide certification or a seal of approval for organizations that meet those standards. This would assist legitimate organizations in standing out from those interested only in profiteering.
  
• Acknowledge that the current system is inadequate and encourage the development of local organizations with the mission of increasing the pool of donors (both living and cadaveric)
  
• Drop the adversarial tone with regard to organizations responding to the same needs that sparked the formation of UNOS. Issues of life and death should compel us to fight less and cooperate more.
  
• Rethink the idea that directed donation hurts organ procurement overall. Whether a donation is directed or not, it equates to one less person on the waiting list.

Texas Baby Name Game

If you need any reason to think a state is above average, just consider how many 'cool' baby names are also city names in Texas.

So, if you want to play along, for every name listed, salute in the general direction of Texas for each one that corresponds to a person you know.

• Austin
• Dallas
• Tyler
• Houston

Perhaps it's a soft heart for country music that leads parents to name their kids after a city in Texas. I just can't imagine a country singer named Hartford, Albany or Dover having any honky-tonk credibility.

Where this leaves baby girls, I'm not sure. There are still plenty of cities in Texas that are not taken yet. I'm partial to Waxahachie and Nagodoches.

Wisdom of the ages

Everyone gives King Solomon the credit for writing the book of the Bible named Proverbs when in truth he was just an ancient plagiarist who compiled a bunch of folk-wisdom and immortalized it. How wise can a guy be who had 1,000+ wives. I would be happy with one wife and about 6 concubines.

So here is my early work on some original wisdom. Nobody thought these up before I did.

• Never eat roadkill that is still in the road.
  
• Don't throw rocks at a sleeping grizzly bear unless you are far above on a ski lift.
  
• Crime isn't as fun as it looks on TV
  
• When in doubt take a nap
  
• If God had intended for dogs to fly, he wouldn't have invented branding irons
  
• If God had intended for us to know binary, he would have given us two arms
  
• If God had intended for us to vegetarians, he would have made vegetables taste like chocolate and made steak taste like turnips
  
• Always wear dirty underwear before flying because the material embedded therein may be the only means of identifying you in case of a crash.
  
• For every person who makes alot of money and writes a book about it, there are fifty who don't make alot of money and don't write a book about it.
  
• If I had a nickel for every one of my fingers and toes, I would have a dollar
  
• If you're going to commit arson, don't target your next door neighbor upwind from your house and make sure you wait until they're not outside doing yardwork.
  
• The Oompa-Loompa union couldn't have been happy that the new Willy Wonka movie only employeed one actual Oompa-Loompa
  
• College is like a job except that you pay for the privilege of going

Is multiculturalism a pipe dream?

The news over the past decades has been a litany of multicultural ideals failing to live up to the sales pitch. Here is a short list:

• Yugoslavia - Muslims, Catholics, and Orthodox all living together in smurf village harmony...until they start killing each other.
  
• Quebec - Canada has a province-sized ghetto where the people speak French and the culture is very different from the rest of Canada. Despite multiculturalism, there is a constant undercurrent of separatism in Quebec's politics and a constituency of English-speaking Canadians anxious to grant their wish.
  
• The United Kingdom - In true multicultural fashion, the UK has celebrated the cultural diversity in its urban areas. Of course there are some living in the Muslim communities - born and raised in the UK - who feel disenfranchised and decide that blowing up civilians is better than the same old routine.
  
• France - Come one, come all...Blacks, Arab, and/or Muslims, we have a place for you. We're liberal and tolerant, at least until you start burning down your own neighborhoods.
  
• The United States - The underlying assumption of the Civil Rights movement was that cultural assimilation was a means of gaining equal rights/opportunity. Multiculturalism has turned this idea on its head. Some Black leaders and authors are reconsidering whether the gains of school desegregation were worth the loss of community-based schools and the Black leadership of those schools.

One could suggest that we have some of the trappings of multiculturalism without having bought the entire package. Africans living in Paris may be allowed to maintain their indigenous culture, but if they can't be employed due to a lack of language skills, they may eventually vent their anger on parked cars and police. So it might stand to reason that a government must find a way to welcome cultural diversity in ways beyond mere residence.

One could also reason that multiculturalism is fundamentally flawed. Other philosophies that have briefly captured our imagination have either overestimated the goodness of people, or they have underestimated the basic selfishness of people. Such was the case with communism.

Personally, I take a bit of both points of view. A government that allows a large immigrant population to exist without any effort toward economic integration should have its head checked. At the end of the day, everybody wants basically the same thing...but it does not take much time for one person's desires to conflict with those of his neighbor.

Multiculturalism may play well in children's books, but the real world is more like 'The Lord of the Flies'. Goodness and generosity quickly give way to selfishness, fear, and mayhem.

FDR - Hero or Villain?

Franklin Delano Roosevelt...President of the United States for nearly sixteen years. He presided over the dawning of the United States as a world superpower. Like it or not, he was the man behind the desk during the worst of times and the best of times.

If one looks to the literary works of the early to mid 20th century, it doesn't take much sophisticiation to see that Socialism was 'the next big thing'. In 'The Grapes of Wrath' by John Steinbeck, or in 'The Jungle' by Upton Sinclair, capitalist America was an ugly place, doomed to be overthrown eventually by the accumulating anger of the masses...consumed by its own disregard for people.

Some commentators paint FDR as the president who caved in to socialist demands and created a welfare state that persists to this day despite more than one declaration of 'war on poverty'. If this is true then I would expect the US economy to function much more like the true socialist economies in Europe. Our social welfare system would be a vast tangle of pension guarantees, short work-weeks, and generous benefits for the unemployed and disadvantaged.

Interestingly, today's liberals hold to FDR as a patron saint of American 'progressive' ideology, yet he probably angered the liberals of his day who felt that he didn't go far enough toward a socialist utopia.

Upton Sinclair, the socialist author of 'The Jungle' was quoted as saying, "I aimed at the public’s heart and by accident hit its stomach." Sinclair portrayed the appalling conditions that existed in urban meat packing plants, the mind-blowing corruption of the political process, and the human devastation created by capitalism. Instead of heeding Sinclair's call to embrace socialism as the better way, American government simply found a way to remedy the most shocking abuses through legislation and governmental oversight.

This pattern became the playbook by which FDR later co-opted the Socialists' political platform...taking just enough of their best ideas to render their political ambitions impotent while keeping the basic American system of government largely intact. I further suggest that World War II might have gone very differently if our response to the Great Depression had been an embrace of Socialism, or worse yet, if the failed policies of Herbert Hoover had continued...leading possibly to the overthrow (by violence or by democratic process) of the American government by desperate and starved human wreckage beholden to the socialist messiahs of the time.

I leave that thought for you to consider.