Yearly Archives: 2012

Walmart: Low Prices, Low Values
Posted on July 9, 2012 by CHC   ᐃ ᐁ

Last Thanksgiving, according to this article by John W. Cox of the Tampa Bay Times, 73-year-old Jan Sullivan of St. Petersburg, Florida, was fired from her job at Walmart.  The reason?  An impatient customer wanted to exit the store through the entrance door rather than walk through the checkout area where Ms. Sullivan, a greeter, was stationed.  The customer insisted on passing and pushed Ms. Sullivan on her way out.  To keep herself from falling, Ms. Sullivan says, she momentarily grabbed the woman’s sweater.

She was suspended that evening for violating a Walmart policy that forbids employees to touch customers.  Two days later, she was fired.  Walmart stated that Sullivan’s actions created “a bad experience for our customer.”

The incident was recorded by a store security camera.   Walmart will not release the tape.

Ms. Sullivan was not able to get a lawyer to plead her case.  She was denied unemployment compensation — because her dismissal was based on her own “misconduct” — and she lost her appeal.  Since she cannot find work, she has had to sell her house to make ends meet.

Walmart is a $240 billion company by market capitalization and it reported profits of over $15 billion this year.  This is how they make their money.  They may have low prices but you won’t find good values in their stores.

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Note: Updates to The 100 Billionth Person Blog

You may notice a few changes I have made to the navigation for this blog.  In the header, there is now a link that lists all of my posts, which you can sort by title or by date.  In the sidebar, I have added links for popular (Top Ten, no less!) search terms.  I have eliminated ads and added my current reading list.  Finally, I have reduced the number of categories for my posts.  It was pointless and silly to list eleven different varieties of “commentary” when it all comes from the same brain.

As always, thanks for reading and responding.

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CHC Comics: Nerd Edition 1.0
Posted on July 4, 2012 by CHC   ᐃ ᐁ

Higgs Field Cartoon

Maybe a few laps around the cyclotron would help.

P.S.  Nerds who can’t get enough of this type of humor are invited to read my earlier post on this same topic.

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So, What is Your Blog About?
Posted on July 2, 2012 by CHC   ᐃ ᐁ

The other day, I attended my first get-together of the Asheville Blogger Society.  I met some nice people (writers are nice people, in general) who asked the inevitable question: so, what is your blog about?  My first instinct was to blurt out, it’s about me.  But that’s not quite right.  It’s my view of the world.  True, but still not quite right.  It’s about things that compel me to write.  Politics.  Poetry.  Philosophy.  Physics.  People.  Personhood.

I suppose I fashion myself to be the 21st Century incarnation of the syndicated columnist Sydney J. Harris.  Wrightly or wrongly.

The general wisdom is that a successful blog must cover a specific topic.  Like, how to catch vermin invading your home (on that note, ihatevermin.com is available as of this writing).  But I must ask, what is a successful blog?  Is it one that has tens of thousands of readers?  Does it generate tens of thousands in ad revenue for the writer?  Nice for others perhaps, but those are not my goals.

First, I want to have fun.  The act of writing, the challenge of selecting the right word and the right place to put a comma, provides a certain satisfaction upon one’s own rereading, well before the product is read by others.  It is hard for me to imagine any writer who does not want to satisfy his/her own sensibility of the language first and foremost.

But I would also like to make connections.  The comments made by the readers of this blog are highly prized, not simply for the content but for the decision to comment.  Interactions, whether human or chemical or physical, are the golden threads that line the nest we call our universe.

Writing this blog will not make connections.  That is something I need to do in person, taking time to care for people, listening to them instead of them listening to me.  I get it.   One-Sided Conversation doesn’t make it today.

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“One-Sided Conversation” – Copyright Eric A. Maatta, recorded 1974 by Eric Maatta and Craig Collins
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