Everyone with a soul needs to go look at this flickr pool. So many great shots.
[Photo credit: dotpolka]
July, 2006
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Jul 06
Photo Linkage
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Jul 06
Shibboleth Resumé
Resumés are funny things because the one thing they don’t tell you is the one thing you want to know. As an employer, what I suspect I really want is a way to separate wheat from chaff. I want a way to say “Yes, fine, you have all the necessary checkboxes in place, but are you one of the good ones?” Even if you allow yourself the confidence necessary to believe that you are indeed one of the good ones, a resume is a terrible medium since, stylistically, it tends to force people down the path of enumeration-sans-substance. What is needed is a shibboleth. Don’t tell me which certifications you have, tell me that you are part of the culture. Don’t tell me what programming languages you know, tell me that you can kick ass and take names. Everyone who isn’t a bozo (seriously, go read that if you’re ever hiring someone) should be trying to hire the brightest lights in the building, so show them how you roll, or find another job to apply for.
That is how I would like things to go down, but even very hip HR folk would have trouble with a shibboleth resumé, I’m guessing. If I were applying for a job tomorrow, it would probably be something involving usability, security, and overall technology development. The resumé I’d send to a shibboleth-friendly company might read like this (standard disclaimers about the fact that any decent resumé almost automatically sounds boastful and egocentric; my apologies): Continue reading →
4
Jul 06
Mathematiques Roadshow
I don’t think it’s very normal of me, at the tender young age of 28, to enjoy the Antiques Roadshow as much as I do. I tend to explain that I like it for very much the same reasons that I like books like Salt; namely, that in the examination of the most arbitrary of things, you can reveal the history of the whole damned world. Me being me, of course, a not-insignificant contribution to my enjoyment is made by the people-watching aspect of it. People are shy or proud or hopeful or confused about the things they bring in, but they are always invested, and that gives the show some (albeit subtle) dramatic tension that predates reality TV.
There is an undercurrent of innumeracy in the show, though, that I find distracting. In the end it’s not enough to wean me – if people are happy in their numerical misunderstanding, so be it; I would hope never to be the one subtracting happiness from the world. But it creates a sort of dissonance for me when I’m watching, to know that their notions of appreciation, even the appraisers and experts, is sort of… out of whack.
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Jul 06
Critical Thinking Moment
Everyone has seen the commercial where the progressive insurance guy tells you that people switching to progressive saved an average of $332 on their car insurance. Except that you see similar commercials from State Farm, Geico (albeit with a more fetching mascot) and probably several others. How can this be? Who really offers the lowest rates?
The fact is that none of these commercials tell you a damned thing about which insurance company will offer you the lowest rates. What they tell you, all they tell you, with remarkable consistency, is that it takes an average savings of $300 to get people to switch insurance companies.
They keep running these ads because they count on the public not to know math. I’ve no doubt that this is a successful campaign for them too. Hug a math teacher today.