Politics, Thumb Wound, Gaming Updates, Organisational Quality

[tcpip]

It's been an interesting week in anglophone politics. Jeremy Cobryn was elected leader of the British Labour Party with almost 60% of the vote, a conclusive mandate in anyone's language. Whilst conservatives are having an aneurysm, a further 30,000 people have joined since his win. Meanwhile on the other side of the Big Pond, Bernie Sanders continues to go from strength to strength - one speech that really caught my attention was to Liberty 'University', a conservative religious institution where he emphasized the morality of economic justice. Finally in Australia the ultra-conservative and deeply unpopular Prime Minister Tony Abbott was overthrown in a party-room coup by the more liberal Malcolm Turnbull, who nevertheless has committed to existing policies.

On a completely unrelated personal note, last weekend I hit my thumb and broke the skin under nail causing some bleeding. A day later it was clear that it was infected. The day after that I was at the doctor's who prescribed some antibiotics. Alas, the infection continued and my thumb swelled, creating something like a felon infection. It was quite painful to say the least with significant pressure; not as bad a root canal, but lasting longer, and getting worse. So it was back to the doctor who promptly drained the wound by piercing the thumbnail and wound entrance with a paperclip heated by a lighter. Such are the wonders of modern technology.

On the gaming side of the week, I've reached level 15 in Ingress and will make 16, the top level, in a couple of weeks at the current rate. Thursday night was our regular Laundry files game, finally finished dealing with Deep Ones in the Bass Strait and the escaped Shoggoths. An order was also received to purchase my entire Torg collection, a game which I quite liked but really wasn't using, and that was shipped today. Also had a number of reviews published on rpg.net this week, previously from RPG Review; RuneQuest Pirates, Pirates of the Vistula, En Garde!, 7th Sea Players Guide and Game Masters Guide, Freiburg, and Freeport.

Finally, in some work-related news I've resigned my position as Quality Management Coordinator, one of the many hats I wear. I was going to run an internal audit this week, but the managers weren't interested which is consistent with their behaviour in the past year of ignoring reports of various standard breaches and improvement requests. I was particularly frustrated by this in a business sense, because the empirical evidence is utterly overwhelming that continuous improvement, controlled documentation, procedural transparency, etc, are the foundation of success over ad-hoc decision making which perhaps counter-intuitively, is more time consuming. I foresee naught by doom and gloom as a result of this disengagement of the QA process. Resignation was indeed a very appropriate word choice.

Comments

[cheshirenoir]

At least you know your doctor will still be useful after the inevitable zombie apocalypse, right?
"Give me a moment while I scrape my own home-made penicillin off these pieces of bread."

[theladyunicorn]

I think the worlds politics are screwed.... /sigh/ Still will be interesting to see what happens now.

Also sounds like the resignation might be a good thing in the long run if they were going to act like that. Doesn't sound like a good or healthy environment to be working in.

[i-amthecosmos.livejournal.com]

And in my little podunk backwoods part of the South, Alabama schools are now finally required to teach evolution and climate change. They finally relented because they realized that this "science" stuff might be important to children who might go to college or have plans for science-related fields.

They also didn't ban marriage licenses for everyone, just because The Gays could get them.

Patricia Todd (only gay member of the state Lege) has threatened to expose her fellow lawmaker's affairs if they don't quit with the anti-gay stuff. I hope she does.

[zenicurean.livejournal.com]

Any bets on who will replace Mr Turnbull when Australia's prime ministerial roulette wheel spins anew?

The odd Stones quote

[mr-figgy.livejournal.com]

"Hey, so the time is right for palace revolution..."

[kingtycoon.livejournal.com]

I got into Ingress only over this last weekend after I became curious about the new mobile pokemon app. It looks like it is being developed by the same people who made Ingress - and after playing all weekend and getting up to level 3 (I live by a LOT of statues & churches) I'm really interested to see how they'll populate my neighborhood with pokemon & how it'll work catching them.

Is the curve up to the higher levels very great? I got very confused when one of the streets in my neighborhood with 30 nodes (a LOT of statues & churches) switched color overnight - is that common?

Anyhow - for your records: Kasich is the Republican nominee - Ohio decides who's president and for better or worse he's held on to Columbus through vast suburban support & the excessive corruption of the Democrats here. Kasich v. Clinton is my bet now. The democratic nominating process can be gamed out in a way that supersedes a lot of direct democracy - it's part of how Obama snuck in under Clinton back in '08. I think she's learned the move since then.

[lyca-dimitrova.livejournal.com]

Хорошего дня и настроения!)

[sravakavarn.livejournal.com]

Resignation, An essay by Adorno, which seems actually related, for once.