The Dentist and The Hygienist

Employment attorney Michael P. Maslanka on one of the stranger cases to come down the pike. An excerpt:

There is more, but the reader gets the idea. They texted one another lot. The court noted the plaintiff “considered Dr. Knight to be a friend and father figure, and she denies that she ever flirted with him or sought an intimate or sexual relationship with him.” When the dentist and his kids went to Colorado for a vacation, his wife, who was also an employee of the dental practice, discovered the texting. (Note for lawyers propounding discovery requests: It is texting now, no longer email, that ensnares.) Jeanne Knight told her husband upon his return that the hygienist was a threat to their marriage and had to be fired. They sought religious counsel from their senior pastor, who agreed that was the right thing to do.

All Schedules

All schedules need time for interruptions. They need prep time and recovery time; time for pure action and time for thought. Some goof-off time must also be included. A good scheduler is like a gardener who knows what and when to prune, what requires extra care, and which items should be removed entirely.

The purpose of a schedule is to get things done. Solitary work should be scheduled and not simply squished in. If time is not set for focusing, then the meetings will spread like kudzu and the few solitary times will become moments of desperation and fear.

Left unattended, a schedule will turn into a jungle or a desert.

First Paragraph

They put Foley and the Cuban together in the backseat of the van and took them from the Palm Beach County jail on Gun Club to Glades Correctional, the old redbrick prison at the south end of Lake Okeechobee. Neither one said a word during the ride that took most of an hour, both of them handcuffed and shackled.

- From Road Dogs by Elmore Leonard

Some Important Things to Learn

While absorbing the usual academic subjects, it can help to learn:

• Your strengths.
• Your weaknesses.
• How you learn.
• How you think.
• How you are perceived.
• What you think.
• What you value.
• What you fear.
• What you want.
• What you need.

Quote of the Day

The people never give up their liberties except under some delusion.

- Edmund Burke

Mega-Change and the Universities

In fifty years, if not much sooner, half of the roughly 4,500 colleges and universities now operating in the United States will have ceased to exist. The technology driving this change is already at work, and nothing can stop it. The future looks like this: Access to college-level education will be free for everyone; the residential college campus will become largely obsolete; tens of thousands of professors will lose their jobs; the bachelor’s degree will become increasingly irrelevant; and ten years from now Harvard will enroll ten million students.

Read the rest of Nathan Harden's article here.

Samuelson on The Problem

Whatever one thinks about raising taxes at the top (and I have no objection to it as part of comprehensive budget package), it’s not the crux of the problem. The crux of our problem — the problem being the bipartisan and untenable promises made to most Americans of both high government benefits and low taxes — arises from an aging population and high health costs, which cause rapid increases in spending on Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid.

Read the rest of Robert J. Samuelson here.

Music Break

Any song that has references to Thomas Wolfe, Tennessee Williams, Hank Williams, and Stonewall Jackson deserves to be heard frequently.

The New Year

The new year will be won or lost five minutes at a time; sometimes in even smaller increments.

If we are fortunate, it will have more wins than losses and we won't be seduced by drift because drifting is simply losing on the installment plan.

There should be a great deal of gratitude. Every day we live lives that millions of people around the world would regard as wildly successful and even glamorous.

Let it be a year of combinations: Courage and Prudence, Insight and Humility, Integrity and Drive.

Quote of the Day

"Begin at the beginning," the King said gravely, "and go on till you come to the end: then stop."

- Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland