Due to circumstances entirely beyond my control (so convoluted and interesting only to myself) I have had to rent a car for the past few days. I had reserved a Dodge Charger, which is the kind of car I would like to buy if I wanted to buy a car. Sadly, the people at Joe's Rentamax said that the car they had prepped for me turned up having a bit of a rattle. (Ah, good old Dodge. New culture or no, same old problems.) So they gave me an upgrade instead. The upgrade is an obscurity of an SUV called an Edge and it is made by Ford.
It's a fine thing, whatever it is. I don't like SUVs in general, because I don't like trucks and I am a bit confused how a truck, no matter how nice, is an upgrade from a muscle car. I do not control the market for such things, so I will take the folks at Joe's at their word.
It's nice. It attracts salt spray like a fiend, but it's nice. I have absolutely no complaint about anything specific to the EDGE. It handles very nice for a truck. My complaints are reserved for the shared system, the Ford Sync.
What is the Ford Sync? From the commercials, it would seem to be a selling point. It's some sort of supercomputer--a cross between a GPS and a radio and telephone with many nice add ons. It is not. What it is is an incomprehensible occasionally bleating multi function touch screen distraction hogging the place where your radio and climate controls should be.
No, I have not read the manual. I suppose if I owned this car or any new Ford product, I would read the Sync's operating manual. If you buy a Ford it is absolutely incumbent upon you to do so VERY SHORTLY before attempting to drive your car. At the very least you should warn your passengers away from it.
Or they will turn on your hazard lights. I have been driving people around for the past few days and two of them have activated my hazards while futzing with the Sync.
By the way, I am not the only one who has not been able to figure the Sync out. (Me, I'm just overjoyed the car starts and goes places--which is more than my own car is currently doing. I have not bothered with the silly Sync thing.) Before you have visions of my ferrying about the handicapped or senior citizens, I should say that all of my passengers have been computer literate and one was a twenty-something fresh out of the armed forces. The Sync serves as a flame for a moth to your passengers. It is a not so silent challenge to them. It is irresistible. It virtually yells "FUTZ WITH ME."
(My bad driving and lack of conversation skills could be contributing factors.)
On average, it takes five minutes for a passenger to get the Sync to do anything. At times a passenger may substitute his desires for whatever might appear. Can't change the radio station, settle for changing the heat setting. Can't get the GPS to work, change the radio station. Want to turn up the radio's volume? Sorry, oyou can't. That's on the steering wheel. Can't find what you want, turn on the hazards. Repeat passengers can partially master a single function in one ride. Between all of my passengers the full climate and radio station settings have now been explored. No one has scratched the surface of the GPS as yet. All I have been able to make use of is this occasional button that appears that asks 'Where Am I?'
The GPS would be nice, too. Because neither my passengers or myself have any clue as to where we are.
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I am a big fan of Ben Stein. Or at least I was before he went all Creationist on us. (It lost him pals at National Review, too.) Stein's diary was one of the most entertaining parts of the otherwise too bombastic for its own good American Spectator. Since I find his television persona rather besides the point and his current bent not to my liking, I have been tuning him out. But he does occasionally still show that he still can hit:
I never saw a child who could be tortured into doing better work in school. If such children exist, and maybe they do, they are far more to be pitied for the lifelong scars their confused mothers have inflicted than envied.
Interestingly enough, I will add another caveat: I have never seen a wildly successful adult who got there because his mother made him cry over his grades. Men and women succeed because they find a field of endeavor that matches their interests and abilities. It's that simple. They then motivate themselves and achieve.
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Up until a few days ago, things like this were rather smugly said:
What Mr Fukuyama understands, and what so many Americans can't seem to accept, is that the Chinese mode of governance seems to be quite stable. There is no plausible threat to the political monopoly of the Chinese Communist Party. Eastern Europeans abandoned belief in Soviet Communism because its economic model was a pathetic shambles, and even so, it took decades to collapse. The Chinese economic model, meanwhile, is a productive powerhouse. As long as it maintains the confidence of its citizens, there's little reason to think that China's political system is going to change on any timescale subject to punditry.
Then Egypt went up in flames, following Tunisia. Autocracy in all of its forms is luddite. It has no place in the future. It isn't information that wants to be free: it's people.
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Closer to home:
As we continue to position our company for the future, we determined that these steps are necessary to capitalize on the growth opportunities we see ahead while we ensure we are managing costs appropriately and continually enhancing the profitability of our operations
Has the CEO who said this
1) Just announced a bonus for all hourly employees?
2) Opened thirty new stores?
3) Merged with a larger firm?
4) Laid off thousands of workers/shut plants/closed stores.
Why do we know the answer?
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Next: The Global Elite and Me
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