The New University

Well, it’s happening, you can Click Here to read aibout it in The City Paper Article “What’s Up Chuck?” by Chris Young.

What’s going on?

Well, the business side of colleges and universities are basically taking over with a typical Pittsburgh corporate business model … aka “make all of the decisions we want without any input from those actually in the business”.

In other words, the university and college staffers are starting to experience what the rest of us in the Pittsburgh business climate have experienced all of our lives … stress caused by the people that know little but make the decisions ignoring the people that are in the “trenches” and know almost everything.

Now, maybe some places in universities need a little cleanup, for example in accounting methods, etc … but any massive and instantaneous change (no matter how much for the good) can potentially screw things up bad and beyond repair.

It seems like Chuck Daugherty possibly has been taking Duquesne University in this direction since he kicked law-school Dean Don Guter to the curb.  The City Paper article documents the issue and complaints very well (which includes anything from the sale of WDUQ-FM to the cutting of four men’s sports teams), so check it out.

We might as well give a “Clueless Trophy” to Chuck at Duquesne and see how far he can go with it.  I have a feeling we’ll be highlighting him again.

-SWB

PS – it was bound to happen … the dumbing down of our prized learning institutions to the corporate operational level found in the cities companies.

Unions … they once were

Many times I’ve heard my uncle and some of his steelworker friends talk about the unions of the day. They negotiated good pays, medical coverage, safety procedures, etc for them.   They well fit their function … and you can’t always blame the steel industry for “leaving” because of them being greedy.  Actually we produce just as much steel, but the processes have become much more efficient.

Anyway … hearing what they have said, and seeing unions now (or the systematic abolishment of them) is a cause for concern.  Now, unions do not have a place everywhere.  Some industries do a good enough job of policing themselves that they run better without unions.  This day in age, though we are getting back to where unions are needed again … simply to protect the workers and help secure basic rights (the right to keep your job if you do it well, and not lose it because some exec found a people other places in the world to do it for 60% cheaper.), etc.

So, with the issues workers are having, why don’t we see more unions popping up?

Well, think about it.  Too many articles on the greed of unions. Articles now popping up on how unions are fighting with each other (Click Here for The Pittsburgh City Paper article by Chris Young), instead of working together.  Resentment towards unions like the PA Teachers Union (ie. you can’t get a teacher fired, even if they are the worst teacher ever … unless they rape or harm a child), the fact that many only collect dues and never do anything or are powerless, and of course the aura of mob involvement from the movies.  There probably more reasons people don’t turn towards unions, but those are the only ones I could think of at this time.

If unions could bring themselves to have good enough reputations again, the could easily accomplish the following:

• Cut health care costs by protecting the doctors, nurses, etc from greedy and selfish lawyers looking for a quick buck.
• Cut health care even further by securing insurances that home in on proactive and preventative programs.
• Cut health care by protecting workers from unsafe conditions.
• Cut health care by keep stress down on the job.
• You get the idea?

Maybe if unions could work things out instead of what seems like the newest fad (union rivalries), the workers would join unions and address the health care cost issues themselves.

This is not a pro union article, but a thought on the health care issue, since everyone seems to have no idea what they actually want.

-SWB

PS – Unions … they once were the key to “fair in America”.

Dok Harris and Kevin Acklin – Back to the basics

Capture from City Paper’s “Street Wise” article. Click it to go to the City Paper article.

SWB just wanted to highlight another one of the excellent articles that The Pittsburgh City Paper has been putting out lately. It’s about Dok Harris and Kevin Acklin going back to the basics of appealing to the actual voters personally for their votes.

Hmmmm … amazing how going back to the simple things actually works.

Now, since neither of these guys is a typical political running dude … they may actually give Luke Ravenstahl some competition – so ya might want to watch closely getting near the voting date.

-SWB

PS – What these guys are doing to get votes makes sense … which I though was made illegal about a 100 years ago in Pittsburgh.

This article was also added into Pgh Mayoral Race 2009 section of SWB.

The chemical soup named “I”

Quickie post here to highlight a City Paper article on modern day river and water pollution.

Click Here to read the article Something’s Fishy by Bill O’Driscoll.

The article details research work and findings from the University of Pittsburgh researcher Dan Volz on the current pollution and dangers found (endocrine disruptors) in the waters of out rivers.

This is a very informative and not all political article – so check it out.

-SWB

BTW … you’ll understand the post title once you read  the article.

News Sensationalism … again

The anarchists are here!!!

The anarchists are here!!!

Well, it’s actually just a band from Europe that decided to get a better view of the city from an old abandoned school building on Polish Hill. Granted, the decision was after a party held in their honor, so I’m sure the decision making process of the band members was slightly under full capacity.

Even taking that into consideration …

Andrew Stocky of the famed WTAE news, decided they were G-20 anarchists scouting out training sites.  Albeit untrue and fictional, as any professional would do – Andrew held to his story.

Thankfully the City Paper had enough sense to shed a little light on the truth as seen here.  It’s amazing that the free magazine initially seen as a Pittsburgh smut rag, is the one sporting legitimate news, and the professionals are … well … selling out.

Well, keep with the smut rags, and occasionally us bloggers (we may do things to get hits, but we at least hold on to one or two sentences of truth in a posting) … and you may find actual news.

-SWB

PS – Yup, mainstream news makes shows like TMZ seem legit.

Kudos to The City Paper for keeping up good reporting.

The Earth as part of our infrastructure

Quoting from The Pittsburgh City Paper:

“…. Millennials don’t necessarily view the environment as a partisan or idealogical issue. To them it’s an infrastructure problem, like wanting the New Orleans levees fixed.”

Click Here to check out the article by David S Bernstein of The Pittsburgh City Paper.

The article is actually about how the Republican party is shooting themselves in the foot (and head, and chest, and knee caps …. you get the idea) by ignoring the environmental issues, thus removing them from the Millennial’s radar. Bingo …. and as usual with the RNC, they don’t really care.

OK, on to the real issue. The Millennials are right. The environment is a huge infrastructure issue – the air we breath is slightly important, and is the planet gets up to baking temps, we have a much bigger issue. The environment feeds every aspect of life. Being honest, some environmentalists without good scientific skills did do some damage to the legitimate groups by “freaking out” and over-stating things. That doesn’t nix that fact that we have a growing issue. Granted, some of it is cyclical and natural, but man is starting to kick start non-natural issues into gear. We need to stop or reverse that.

Here is my view: If we can make a rover to last 90 days on Mars and it ends up lasting over 4 years functioning well ….. we definitely have the technology for fully solar and electric cars to go mainstream – we just don’t want to kill the oil industry in a night. Look at diesel-electric trains – how long have they been around? Look at houses in California and Nevada that are completely off the grid. We have the technology.

Unfortunately we also have the politics.

At some point, the politics and other agendas will have to be put side – or we won’t be alive on this earth to have anything to be political about.

-SWB

PS – Plant a tree and breath. Use a CFL bulb and breath better.

Kudos to The City Paper for a great article on how a political party can get clueless to the point that when the are standing on ground that melts their shoes … they still don’t get it.

CP’s Mon-Monkeys – Pittsburgh’s Water Fun

You gotta love when you post a worthless blog article like we did this morning with A Song Of Days. We have so much more faith in the intelligence of our readers when they don”t read those articles … or at least not right away.  Curiosity, unfortunately, yields a great deal of mind-control power.

OK, on to the article we discovered in The Pittsburgh City Paper. It’s titled “Enter The Wonderful World of Amazing Live Mon-Monkeys“.  In the printed version, it’s actually a pull-out section summer guide which includes the article “Taking A Dive” linked above.  The cover reminds me of the sea monkeys we used to grow as kids, and the article reminds Pittsburghers of the many water based activities and sights available.  Check it out.  Considering Pittsburgh is one of the few places you can Kayak down the river to take a tour of the sewage plant, makes us kind of cool.  Smelly, but cool.

People forget we have great things in the surrounding areas like Raccoon Park, the Downtown fountains, Kayaking in the rivers, the pond at Schenley, and of course our favorite – Alcosan. The article does a great job of going over the features of each, so read it when you get a chance – then go visit.  You can vacation, keep your money local, and keep your travel bill down.  So, skim the Mon and have some water-fun in Pittsburgh.

-SWB

PS – Weasels hang out at the river – if you want to be cool, you should too.

Magistrate – the hot spot this year.

Capture from The Pittsburgh City Paper – click it to go to their site. Forget about mayor … the real seat of interest this year is District Magistrate – especially for Lawrenceville. Tony Ceoffe (a local activist for Lawrenceville) is running for magistrate this year. He was also part and head of the group that is working to clean up lawrenceville, “Lawrenceville United”. Susan Banahasky is another person that was involved in cleaning up Lawrenceville. These two were on the same, but are currently banging heads on whether Tony would even be able to be a good magistrate due to his prior experience.

For a great article on the goings on – Click Here for the piece by Marty Levine of The Pittsburgh City Paper.

-SWB

PS – Oh well, s’much for the mayor being important 🙂

A Nation Of Radicals

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Don’t you just ha ate it when the wind blows and radically changes how perfect that grass was standing when you were taking that perfect photo of it ….. or better yet, how radicals force you to change the way you think?

If you get a chance, read the article called “A Conversation With Malik Rahim” in The Pittsburgh City Paper. Besides being an excellent article, it brings to light that our whole country was created by radicals. Point being is that Obama is seen as a radical because of who he associated with – but everyone forgets, as Malik pointed out in the interview …… America’s founding fathers were the biggest radicals you could think of. Now, I’m not an Obama nor McCain supporter ….. personally I don’t think either one was ready for the position.

Everyone fears radicals …… yes some are bad, but the worse thing to fear is no change at all. When it comes down to it, radicals are probably the least of your worries.

Either one of our presidential candidates this year could be looked at as radicals ….. they each had their points they wanted heavy change on — heavy change. This doesn’t mean we should have put them in prison or single them out …. but discerned their points and ideas to determine which ones fit and benefit the residents and visitors of this country. Because people think differently doesn’t mean they are going to make a law to empty out your bank accounts, take you house, make you a slave …… or better yet, make you stand in line for toilet paper. It’s an indication that a percentage of the nation is ready to grow up into it’s next phase of existence.

As you keep to your “values” – if you have any – less the ones the press dictates you have, and you hopefully discern what you believe is good for your country ….. try to remember one thing: If there weren’t radicals, there wouldn’t be an America.