cdymek's Blog!

Protests in France (no surprise there) have broken out over a new labor law aimed at making it easier to both hire and fire workers. The choice quote in the article has to be this one from a civil servant.

Civil servant Nicole Beauregard, who marched with her teenaged daughter, said: “Young people are less well-armed than we are to defend themselves.

“Getting into the workforce is already hard enough for them, and now they are putting up another obstacle.”

Granted, I don’t know the details of the law. And often the deviler are in the details. But if you’re arguing with the concept, then you don’t get it. No company is going to take on a new worker that it can never let go, even if performance is poor or the company falls on hard times economically. Especially when there are plenty of other places in the world where it’s much easier to get the same quality work done without the headaches.

If these people want to protest for something, look for a fair safety net that helps cushion workers from unemployment while providing benefits to transition to a new career. That would be a more worthwhile investment.

Yet another entry in the how-does-he-find-this-stuff list – four friends blog about opening a new night club in Singapore.

Since my day was rather unventful, I’ll instead comment on an article I read online. Immigration checkpoints have been established in the DMZ in South Korea to facilitate travel to North Korea Having stood in the incredibly tense atmosphere that exists at the border, this is a symbol of detente that is hard to believe. While the restrictions are tight on those who travel north, from my conversations I would believe South Korea is happy to have this program. The desire for reunification is strong everywhere in South Korea, so a program like this, that helps open the border, must have gone over quite well. My only fear is whether it helps prop up a dysfunctional regime even a day longer than necessary.

For those of you who had evil genocidal dictator next on your death pool, congratuations. Milosevic was found dead in his cell in the Hague this morning, finally sending him to the place where he belongs. May he face some form of eternal damnation for what he’s done in his life.

While the details will only emerge over time, the Board of Governors has adopted President McCormick’s recommendations to overhaul undergraduate education. This is truly a great moment for Rutgers, as the creation of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences executed back in 1981 is finally completed. The largest single change – all undergraduates in New Brunswick and Piscataway will attend the same undergraduate college together, with a single honors program, the same degree granting requirements and admissions standards. While various specialized schools (the business school, engineering, and the land-grant programs within Cook) will still exist largely as they do today, the rather odd situation that you take most of your classes with students across all campuses yet are subject to different requirements and standards will largely come to an end.

It took two hours and a replacement of the cable line in to the house, but I’m finally back online. It has never felt so good to have access to so much useless information.