In the memorandum, M. Susan Chambers, Wal-Mart's executive vice president for benefits, also recommends reducing 401(k) contributions and wooing younger, and presumably healthier, workers by offering education benefits. The memo voices concern that workers with seven years' seniority earn more than workers with one year's seniority, but are no more productive.

To discourage unhealthy job applicants, Ms. Chambers suggests that Wal-Mart arrange for "all jobs to include some physical activity (e.g., all cashiers do some cart-gathering)."
....
In an interview, Ms. Chambers said she was focusing not on cutting costs, but on serving employees better by giving them more choices on their benefits.

"We are investing in our benefits that will take even better care of our associates," she said. "Our benefit plan is known today as being generous."

Ms. Chambers also said that she made her recommendations after surveying employees about how they felt about the benefits plan. "This is not about cutting," she said. "This is about redirecting savings to another part of their benefit plans."

Quick! Mr. President! This woman has GOT to be on your staff!

What a bitch. Could all upper management people at that company possibly be as bad?

-janelane

///
Do you know what makes a human being decent? Fear. And therein lies the problem. None of you has anything left to fear anymore. You rest comfortably in seats of inscrutable power, hiding behind your false idol, far from judgment, lives shrouded in secrecy even from one another. But not from God.
- Loki, "Dogma"

Wal-Mart Memo Suggests Ways to Cut Employee Benefit Costs - New York Times

The "FOR EXTERNAL USE ONLY'' sticker stumped 25 percent of even those who could read every word, and misled 90 percent of the adults in the lowest literacy group.

That, Dr. Wolf said, was probably because its icon was so strange. The label depicted an oddly-stretched human shape encased in what looked like a series of ghostly shrouds. Take this pill to stop hallucinations? To start them?

"A lot of people thought that icon meant the drug was radioactive," Dr. Wolf said.

Some funny quotes for an NYT article on Rx bottle labels. Not a chair-gripping, hot-tech topic, but reality nonetheless.

-janelane, FOR THE EAR

And Now, a Warning About Labels - New York Times

When reading the first part of the book, it feels like the author is trying to correct his many years of disservice to the environment as he helped to develop the oil industry. The book makes it clear that man's ego is destroying the planet for no real benefit and Chomat coins the term "egosystem" to describe this. He recounts stories of people he has met from "non-westernized" countries not being able to comprehend why the western lifestyle is so focused on exponential growth and how it could easily be perceived that cars are the dominant species on earth.

This book looks pretty interesting. It appears to be 15% factoid and 85% the-West-is-killing-everything-beautiful-and-good. The author seems to be a bit better with the blame game than the numbers game, though.

-janelane, energy-tech

theWatt: Daily Energy News and Discussion - Oil Addiction: The World in Peril

Equifax's chief executive says he opposes federal legislation that lets consumers obtain a free copy of their credit report to help them monitor financial accounts for fraudulent activity.

CEO Thomas Chapman called the legislation unconstitutional and un-American because it cuts into profits that Equifax and two rival credit reporting agencies -- Experian and TransUnion -- earn from selling credit reports and monitoring services. Equifax maintains credit data on 220 million Americans. The company earned $1.27 billion in revenue last year.

"Our company felt, and still does ... that it's unconstitutional to cause a public company who has a fiduciary responsibility to return profit to shareholders to give away the product," Chapman said to reporters following a speech at the Commonwealth Club of California in San Francisco on Monday. "Most of my shareholder group did not think that giving away our product was the American way."
/
He discussed recent data breaches and the California notification law that requires companies to tell consumer when they experience a security breach -- a law that many credit with making consumers aware of data breaches that previously went unreported. Chapman said his company "has notified people for a long time."
/
When pressed to say whether his company had notified consumers when it experienced insignificant breaches, he replied, "I'm not going to go there. I'm not going to answer that question. We have been notifying and engaging in communication with customers, consumers, for a long time. We're known for that. We're known for our stand on privacy."

To ward off excessive legislation, Chapman supports the idea of tougher industry standards pressuring companies to encrypt data. He suggested that increased funding for enforcement of data-theft laws would help reverse a trend in which few identity thieves are ever prosecuted.

That man is going straight to hell. What a prick.

His reasoning on how to stop theft is fundamentally flawed; you could bring back corporal punishment and still fall victim to identity crooks overseas. Requiring encryption is fantastic, but removing some poor shmuck's right to view their credit report without the $30 surcharge isn't going to lessen the massive ignorance engulfing consumers where identity security is concerned. That's like creating software to deal with the vulnerabilities in Microsoft's code instead of requiring them to....wait...

-janelane, exasperated

Wired News: Credit Chief Slams Free Reports

] The poll also found pervasive concern about what
] Americans view as the corrosive effect Hollywood and
] popular culture have on the nation's values and moral
] standards. Seventy percent said they were very or
] somewhat concerned that television, movies and popular
] music were lowering moral standards in this country.
]
]
] While this sentiment was voiced by supporters of Mr. Bush
] and of Mr. Kerry, it appears that the concern about a
] decline in values is becoming another point of
] polarization in American politics. Mr. Bush's supporters
] were more likely to cite it than were Mr. Kerry's voters,
] and it was an issue that had particular resonance in the
] South and among weekly churchgoers, rural voters and
] women.
]
]
] The poll found that 55 percent of Mr. Kerry's supporters
] said that Mr. Bush's supporters did not share their views
] and morals; 54 percent of Mr. Bush's voters said the same
] thing of those who voted for Mr. Kerry.
]
]
] In addition, 70 percent of Mr. Kerry's supporters said
] they were more worried about candidates who "are too
] close to religion and religious leaders" than about
] political leaders who "don't pay enough attention" to
] religion, after a campaign in which Mr. Bush repeatedly
] spoke of God and his faith. By contrast, 52 percent of
] Mr. Bush's supporters said they were more worried about
] public officials who "don't pay enough attention to
] religion and religious leaders."

American poll: Religious Leaders

] BRIELLE, New Jersey (AP) -- An 8-year-old girl who
] suffers from a rare digestive disorder and cannot eat
] wheat has had her first Holy Communion declared invalid
] because the wafer contained no wheat, violating Roman
] Catholic doctrine.
]
] Now, Haley Waldman's mother is pushing the Diocese of
] Trenton and the Vatican to make an exception, saying the
] girl's condition should not exclude her from the
] sacrament, which commemorates the Last Supper of Jesus
] Christ before his crucifixion. The mother believes a rice
] Communion wafer would suffice.
]
] "It's just not a viable option. How does it corrupt the
] tradition of the Last Supper? It's just rice versus
] wheat," said Elizabeth Pelly-Waldman.

This article points to one of many of my problems with organized religion. What has the content of the wafer has to do with accepting Jesus as your Savior? Why should the content of the wafer have anything to do with your acceptance into the church?

More importantly, do the church leaders honestly think that Jesus Christ would deny this little girl communion on account of a digestive order?

CNN.com - Church says girl's communion not valid - Aug 19, 2004

Decius wrote:
] ] "The Government must play a greater role in punishing
] ] those who conceal their identities online, particularly
] ] when they do so in furtherance of a serious federal
] ] criminal offense or in violation of a federally protected
] ] intellectual property right," (Lamar) Smith said at a
] hearing on
] ] the topic today.
]
] Congress wants to make it a federal crime to lie on your
] domain name registration.

The actual bill is even scarier. It's a felony for you to "knowingly [provide] material and misleading false contact information to a domain name registrar, domain name registry, or other domain name registration authority in registering a domain name used in connection with the online location, or in maintaining or renewing such registration.".

Check out the details of the bill at:

http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/D?d108:17:./temp/~bdhFqm::

under "Text of Legislation" (which, BTW, it took me _forever_ to find; it's like they're trying to hide these damn things...). If you're really a glutton for high blood pressure, check out the rest of Lamar Smith's civil "services" at

http://lamarsmith.house.gov/

Before starting your own gov't on a small South Pacific island, you can try mailing letters to your congressmen/-women and reps in the House. And, instead of posting angry rebuttals to the not-not sheep here on Memestreams, you might start a petition (http://www.petitiononline.com/create_petition.html) and spread the word about that. Is there anyone with legal experience (Acidus excluded :-) who'd like to tackle it?

RE: Congress Eyes Idiotic Whois Crackdown