Thursday, March 31

Bring Ohio Home - A major shift in policy in Washington  

"The essence of civilization is that the strong have a duty to protect the weak."

— George W. Bush, March 31, 2005

And with that quote, so changes the priorities in our Federal Government. Here is what I expect to happen:

• A roll back of tax cuts for the wealthy
• Universal healthcare
• A rapid pull out of our troops in the middle east, to be replaced with strong and effective diplomacy.
• Education reforms will be fully funded.
• Voting will become easy, accessible, verifable and trusted.
• Social Security will not be looted by the securities industry and will remain a strong safety net for the elderly and disabled.
• Gays and Lesbians will be treated with dignity and respect in our country.
• Regressive taxation will be reformed so that taxes will not fall disproportionatly on the poor
• Government be at least as interested in the success of small businesses as they are interested in the success of big businesses.

A new day is dawning in America. I'm just glad to be alive to see it.

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Collard Patch: Recipes: Favorite Desserts For Diabetic Husbands  

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Wednesday, March 30

Cute way to create an index sheet for Excel spreadsheets with lots of tabs  

When working with large workbooks in Microsoft Excel, you can spend a good deal of time navigating through dozens of sheet name tabs to find the one you need. One method for making this task easier is to build an index sheet that contains hyperlinks to every worksheet in your workbook.

To create the index, follow these steps:

1. Insert a new worksheet at the beginning of your workbook and rename it Index.
2. Right-click on the sheet tab and select View Code.
3. Enter the following code in Listing A.
4. Press [Alt][Q] and save the workbook.

The next time you open the workbook, the Index sheet will contain a list of hyperlinks to each worksheet in the workbook. Each worksheet also contains a hyperlink back to the Index sheet. In this example, the link back to the Index is contained in cell H1, but it can be in any cell that is blank for all worksheets.

Listing A

Private Sub Worksheet_Activate()
Dim wSheet As Worksheet
Dim M As Long
M = 1
    With Me
        .Columns(1).ClearContents
        .Cells(1, 1) = "INDEX"
        .Cells(1, 1).Name = "Index"
    End With
    
    For Each wSheet In Worksheets
        If wSheet.Name <> Me.Name Then
        M = M + 1
        With wSheet
            .Range("H1").Name = "Start" & wSheet.Index
            .Hyperlinks.Add Anchor:=.Range("H1"), Address:="", SubAddress:="Index", TextToDisplay:="Back to Index"
        End With
            Me.Hyperlinks.Add Anchor:=Me.Cells(M, 1), Address:="", SubAddress:="Start" & wSheet.Index, TextToDisplay:=wSheet.Name
        End If
        Next wSheet
End Sub

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Saturday, March 26

Some thoughts on Stargate: Atlantis  

1. Why hide the "spare" ZPMs off world, when it would have been much simpler to just put the ZPMs in the city itself?
2. Since the Ancients obviously could make more, there has to be a lab or factory somewhere in that city that can make them.
3. Making ZPMs should have been a priority, the data is in the mainframe database.

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Thursday, March 24

Administrivia  

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Wednesday, March 23

bytehead | Ourmedia  

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Monday, March 21

Obsidian Wings: Terri Schiavo  

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Saturday, March 19

Administrivia  

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Eyeteeth: A journal of incisive ideas.  

One of the most salient features of our culture is that there is so much bullshit. Everyone knows this. Each of us contributes his share. But we tend to take the situation for granted. Most people are rather confident of their ability to recognize bullshit and to avoid being taken in by it. So the phenomenon has not aroused much deliberate concern, or attracted much sustained inquiry. In consequence, we have no clear understanding of what bullshit is, why there is so much of it, or what functions it serves. And we lack a conscientiously developed appreciation of what it means to us. In other words, we have no theory. I propose to begin the development of a theoretical understanding of bullshit, mainly by providing some tentative and exploratory philosophical analysis...

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t r u t h o u t - Stirling Newberry | The Boom That Feels Like a Bust  

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gapingvoid: i'm blogging this  

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Thursday, March 3

The Columbus Dispatch - Editorials  

Employers may someday demand that workers drop unhealthy habits
Thursday, March 03, 2005
ROWLAND NETHAWAY

Smokers and fat people send U.S. jobs overseas. That’s scary, but bad health habits produce high labor costs that force some employers to move their operations overseas. Labor costs are much more than hourly wages, annual salaries or commission rates. They also include pension benefits and the costs of employee health care, which is going through the roof for many reasons, including the bad habits of employees.

One employer told me he sees the day coming when workers will be required to take care of their health if they want to keep their jobs. That means workers will not be permitted to smoke and must keep their weight within a safe range.

Smoking is a leading preventable cause of debilitating diseases and premature deaths in the United States. The government estimates that smoking causes approximately 400,000 preventable deaths each year.

Obesity also kills. The government reports that the United States is suffering from an obesity epidemic that extends from toddlers through adulthood.

Illnesses caused by smoking and obesity not only cost U.S. employers billions of dollars annually because of lost productivity, they also drive up the costs of employee health-care plans offered by employers.

This double whammy could cause employers to demand that their employees never smoke and that they stay in good physical condition. To keep their jobs, employees would have to submit to random nicotine tests and weight checks.

Workers would raise a stink if their bosses started dictating how they lived their lives when away from their offices or work sites.

Elected lawmakers would write legislation to prevent employers from enforcing off-the-job work rules.

Lawyers would have a field day suing employers for everything from invasion of privacy to cruel and unusual punishment.

That does not mean that employers would lose in a showdown over work-related health rules.

Employers should be able to show how illnesses and disabilities caused by smoking and obesity jeopardize the health of the company and the jobs of fellow employees who maintain healthy lifestyles. Employers would have a wealth of public and private research to demonstrate the health hazards of certain behaviors.

They also could argue the unfairness of forcing employers to keep on their payrolls workers whose lifestyle choices make them more expensive to employ than healthy workers.

At the very least, employers might be able to make a case that they should be able to determine if their workers are living unhealthy lifestyles and then charge them higher rates for their health-care premiums.

Courts already have given permission to employers to conduct drug tests of their employees. Some employers fought for the authority to conduct employee drug tests based on the arguments that drug users could present an unsafe work environment, become an unfair additional financial burden and simply be bad for business.

It’s not a stretch to use some of the same arguments and move from drug testing to nicotine and fat testing.

In 2003, a Michigan company, Weyco Inc., gave its employees a deadline to quit smoking. Employees were offered classes and support groups. Four employees refused to take the required nicotine tests and left the company.

A Michigan state senator is preparing legislation to prevent such employer actions against employees who smoke. Similar legislation to protect off-duty smokers is in force in several states.

That doesn’t mean smoker-protection laws can’t be overturned, particularly when lawmakers are confronted with accelerated job losses overseas due to surging health-care costs.

Rowland Nethaway is senior editor of the Waco (Texas) Tribune-Herald.

rnethaway@wacotrib.com

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