The holiday company party is perhaps the worst “gift” of the holiday season.

“Living in Southern California, while we perceive it as a laid-back lifestyle, for many people it is extremely distressful because of the economy and environmental demands,” said Craig Finney, chairman of the Leisure Studies Department at California State University, Northridge. [.continue.]

Am I the only one that gets this?

Bryan a coworker of mine passed this along last week.
How to make IT staff less angry
Basically it is a 5 part guide to managers on how to manage IT workers. None of it rocket science, most of it is obvious at least to this IT worker.
Quote I find interesting from part 4.

On point two, you can’t force something to be fun. Forcing staff to go off on some ‘team-building’ exercise can have two disastrous effects; one, if they really don’t want to spend time outside the office with co-workers you’ll just make them more resentful and anti-social. Two, if they actually have fun doing something that’s totally unrelated to work you run the risk of simply highlighting how far away from fun work actually is.

Keep your motivational efforts focused on work. Encourage people to socialize by all means but don’t force it. If your CODE-IT workers want to spend more time together, they’ll do it without being forced. Also, social events have nothing to do with making the actual work more interesting. Enjoyable social events are part of the overall workplace environment as discussed in previous posts. This is linked to but distinct from interesting, challenging and enjoyable work.

Another point that I would add is not forcing staff to do team-building exercises with individuals from other departments that they don’t know or work with. Team building with basically strangers from other areas is really not TEAM building. AND please no teambuilding that involves such an encroachment to personal space that if the amount of touching or closeness took place during regular business hours that sexual harassment accusation could easily be made.

That is either some big ass matches or really tiny flies.
Figure Popsicle sticks would work better.

LONDON (Reuters) - One of Britain’s most prestigious art galleries put a block of slate on display, topped by a small piece of wood, in the mistaken belief it was a work of art.

The Royal Academy included the chunk of stone and the small bone-shaped wooden stick in its summer exhibition in London.

But the slate was actually a plinth — a slab on which a pedestal is placed — and the stick was designed to prop up a sculpture. The sculpture itself — of a human head — was nowhere to be seen. [continue.]

Proves my point that art today often is not art.

A generation of boys is leaving school unable to cope in the modern world because lessons have become “feminised”, according to a renowned academic.

They are falling behind in exams and the job market because teachers fail to nurture traditional male traits such as competitiveness and leadership.

Dr Tony Sewell said schools instead celebrate qualities more closely associated with girls such as methodical working and attentiveness in class.

He warned that boys are becoming disaffected and flunk exams and job interviews because their competitive instincts have been discouraged. [.continue.]

hhmmm, very interesting.

AP WELLINGTON, Fla. - The big-busted, bronze mermaid statute “The Siren” is not welcome here anymore.

The life-size sea temptress, the marquee exhibit at the Wellington Community Center’s inaugural Art in Public Places program, drew media attention last summer because of her top-heavy bust line. The sculpture appeared on CNN and had a mention in Playboy.

“Unfortunately, they didn’t want her back,” artist Norman J. Gitzen told the Palm Beach Post. “They were tired of the bad publicity.”

Gitzen added nipples to the statue last month while it was on loan to the Palm Beach International Sculpture Biennale at Wellington Green. The city warned Gitzen to remove them before returning the mermaid.

But then he received a call from Paul Schofield, Wellington’s community services director, telling him “The Siren” was no longer needed.

“It didn’t matter what decision I made. There was going to be some controversy one way or another,” said Schofield, whose department oversees Art in Public Places. “Did publicity play into it? No.”

That was the actual news headline.

So boobs are ok, as long as they don’t have nipples.

She is a big girl isn’t she.

Italy’s most famous porn star Cicciolina has offered herself to Osama Bin Laden.

The 55-year-old actress said it was about time somebody tackled the terrorist and claimed she could be just the woman for the job.

Speaking at an erotic fair in Bucharest, Romania, Cicciolina said: “It is time someone did something about Bin Laden, and I am ready to do it.

“I am ready to make a deal, he can have me in exchange for an end to his tyranny. My breasts have only ever helped people while Bin Laden has killed thousands of innocent victims.”

The blonde porn star, whose real name is Anna Ilona Staller, pointed out that Bin Laden could learn from Saddam Hussein’s mistakes.

In the 1990s she offered herself to Saddam Hussein if he gave up dictatorship of Iraq, and added that if he had taken up her offer “who knows what might have happened.”

Talk about taking one for the team.

Love the country folk.

You might think that a museum wouldn’t have to tell visitors not to stick chewing gum on the art. But you would be wrong — as the Detroit Institute of Arts just found out.

At the DIA on Friday, a mischievous 12-year-old boy visiting the museum with a school group took a piece of barely chewed Wrigley’s Extra Polar Ice out of his mouth and stuck it on Helen Frankenthaler’s 1963 abstract painting “The Bay,” damaging one of the most important modern paintings in the museum’s collection and a landmark picture in the artist’s output.
Though the picture, acquired by the DIA in 1965 and worth an estimated $1.5 million, is expected to make a full recovery, ….[.continue.]

Darn kids these days have no respect for anything.
Let’s take a look at “The Bay”

Wait, that is worth $1.5 million?
The kid was suspended for putting a piece of gum on that?
So I guess the kid wasn’t on Ritalin or anything else that would allow him to “appreciate” that “great”, um artwork.

Becky Hart, assistant curator of contemporary art tried to explain to him the museum’s role in preserving cultural and visual history. “I knew that probably wouldn’t make any sense to him, so I asked him what kind of music he liked.
He said he liked rap, so I said, ‘Well, you know what rock ‘n’ roll is,’ and he did, so I said, ‘Can you imagine if somebody had messed up the beat in rock and roll so you didn’t have any rhythm in rap.’ And he looked at me, and he got it immediately.”

Um yeah, ‘messing up’ rock n roll is like putting a piece of gum on that thing.

Monument represents heaven and earth

In Northern Iraq there is a place called Lalish where the Yezidis say the universe was born. I drove south from Dohok on snowy roads through an empty land, seemingly to the ends of the earth, and found it nestled among cold hills.

I went there because the President of Dohok University told me to go. “I am a Muslim”, he said. “But I love the Yezidis. Theirs is the original religion of the Kurds. Only through the Yezidis can I speak to God in my own language.” [.continue.]

Wow, a very interesting article. I have never heard of the Yezidi before this.

“72 times Muslims tried to conquer us,”

Impressive that the religion itself hasn’t been lost to Muslim influence.

“All people in the world should be brothers,” he said. “You are always welcome here for the rest of your life.”

I just wish more people in Iraq and actually around the world was more like this. And to think this place exists in Iraq, with all the conflict that continues in the region. One moment of perfect beauty, indeed.