On-line Vietnam Veterans Memorial

Vietnam Veterans Memorial (The Vietnam Wall) : Footnote.com:
"Leave a tribute, a story or photograph about any of the 58,256 veterans killed or missing in the Vietnam War."

Here's the note Kim Kommando sent about this:

"March 29, 2008—Vol. 12, No. 13
A DIGITAL TRIBUTE TO THOSE WHO FELL IN VIETNAM
More than 30 years have passed since the Vietnam War ended. Perhaps you knew someone who died in the war. Maybe you've visited the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington. With 58,320 names on the wall, one person could be difficult to locate.

The Vietnam Veterans Memorial has gone digital. The digital version is stitched together from more than 6,000 photographs. You can search for a name on the wall quickly and easily using the search box. It will take you to the name instantly."

P/R Disaster @ Heathrow Airport

If you've ever been frustrated at spending weeks training to implement a new system or open a new facility - this is why we do it. This is also why our Best Buy had approximately 3 employees per customer the first week, and why there were actually managers in sight. When a local chain store chain can get it right, an international airline ought to have a clue.

Heathrow Horror Show | Autopia from Wired.com:
"Two hour waits, broken elevators, and 15,000 misplaced bags. It's just another day at London's Heathrow Airport.

Last week, amidst much hoopla and self-congratulation, British Airways opened it's glittering new $8.6 billion Terminal 5 at Heathrow. The size of 50 football fields and capable of handling 30 million passengers a year, the modern, airy glass and steel extravaganza was supposed to be the answer to the chronic congestion that has made Heathrow one of the most detested airports in the world.
. . .
Many of the early shift baggage handlers reporting for work on opening day couldn't find parking spaces at the new terminal or got stuck at security checkpoints, creating a huge staffing shortage. Those who did make it in either couldn't log into the computerized baggage sorting system or didn't know how it worked (not good news if you handle baggage for a living). As a result belts began jamming up, and the first three flights of the morning took off without any luggage on board at all. Instead, those bags piled up at the terminal.

While the baggage handlers were struggling to get luggage from the terminal onto outbound flights, they also had to figure out how to deal with bags coming in on arriving flights. This didn't go so well, with some passengers waiting 90 minutes for luggage to arrive at baggage claim. Front line employees trying to manage the chaos claim that their desperate calls to supervisors went unanswered.

But wait, it gets better. Planes were forced to sit idle at the T5 gates while British Airways baggage handlers struggled to get them loaded and unloaded, which meant arriving flights had no place to park and began piling up on the tarmac. This made getting the right bag onto the right plane still more complicated, creating more delays, which in turn meant that even more bags piled up inside the sorting system. Lather, rinse, repeat.
. . .
Baggage was the main issue, but plenty of other stuff went wrong at Terminal 5, too. Check in desks were closed when the first passengers arrived on opening day. Escalators and elevators didn't work. Self pay kiosks in the parking garages malfunctioned. And as icing on the cake, a flashmob of "Stop Airport Expansion" protesters descended on the terminal that morning, forming the occasional conga line and further annoying passengers who were undoubtedly already wanting to kill someone.

The final tally at the end of the weekend: 15,000 bags sitting somewhere in the bowels of Terminal 5, hundreds of flights canceled, and a complete public relations disaster for British Airways."

Emphasis added.

American Express Buys GE Money's corporate-payment services

This is of interest to folks in Phoenix & Salt Lake City where American Express has many employees ... Acquiring GE as a Corporate Card customer is a big plus in this deal.

UPDATE: American Express To Buy GE Money Unit For $1.1 Billion:
"American Express Co. (AXP) agreed to purchase General Electric Co.'s (GE) GE Money's corporate-payment services, which provides commercial payment and purchasing cards to corporations, for $1.1 billion.
. . .
GE created corporate-payment services in 1992 to issue corporate travel and entertainment cards and purchasing cards to employees. The unit, which now caters to more than 300 large corporate clients, generated more than $14 billion in 2007 global purchase volume and maintained $1.1 billion in receivables at Dec. 31, the companies said. Its billed business has grown at a compounded rate of 18% over the last five years. It employs about 350 people, largely in Salt Lake City.

The transaction calls for GE, the unit's largest client, to become a client of American Express under a multiyear pact, the companies said.

For American Express, the deal is part of an ongoing strategy to focus on the payments sector and follows the sale last month of its international banking subsidiary. Corporate-payment products are similar to those offered by American Express' commercial card business, which handles the travel, entertainment and purchasing spending by employees of large corporations and mid-sized companies. Accounts typically are paid in full at the end of each month, rather than through a revolving credit account.

The sale also includes the purchase of GE's vPayment technology, which permits the processing of large payments with fraud controls.

Mark Begor, president and chief executive of GE Money's operations in the Americas, said the unit "has been a terrific GE growth story, and today's announcement underscores the value we've created from a business that essentially had a single client only about a decade ago. This transaction meets GE's strategy of redeploying assets in financial services and is a win for GE, our shareowners, and our customers."

American Express expects the acquisition to slightly cut per-share earnings and return on equity in the early years following the transaction."

American Express buying GE Money unit - Forbes.com:
"The acquisition is part of American Express' strategy to grow its payments business. The unit being acquired is similar to American Express' commercial card business, which handles work expenses by employees of mid- and large-sized companies.

American Express said the deal will add to revenue immediately, but reduce earnings slightly in the first few years after the deal is completed. The expectation for a small decline in earnings is based on an expectation the cash used to buy the unit would have otherwise been used to repurchase common stock.

The deal is expected to close by the end of the month."

GE reaches a pair of deals with American Express, Santander - MarketWatch:
"'American Express is hoping to increase its value proposition to corporate clients by complementing its market-leading corporate card program with a robust purchasing card program -- all for a 'one-stop shop' approach,' said Red Gillen, senior analyst with Celent, a Boston-based financial research and consulting firm.

GE, which has signed a multiyear contact with American Express, said the deal will allow it to put assets in financial services to different use.

'GE Money has traditionally been more focused on the consumer space and, given the current economic crisis, a capital infusion from selling a business unit of secondary importance comes at an opportune time,' Gillen said."

Emphasis added.

Welfare Reform: Reduced Poverty & Unwed Childbirth

When what you've been doing isn't working, it is time to try something new. In 1996 Congress enacted a welfare reform program that many forecast was doomed to fail. It has actually been very successful.

Welfare Reform Turns Ten: Evidence Shows Reduced Dependence, Poverty:
". . . President Johnson’s War on Poverty had failed to reduce welfare dependence. From 1965 to 1994, AFDC caseloads rose steadily, reaching a height of 5 million families on the rolls. Because prolonged welfare dependence has negative effects on the development of children, welfare reform was intended to disrupt inter-generational dependence by moving families off the welfare rolls through increased work and marriage. Welfare caseloads began to decline in earnest after 1996 and have fallen by 56 percent since then.President Johnson’s War on Poverty had failed to reduce welfare dependence. From 1965 to 1994, AFDC caseloads rose steadily, reaching a height of 5 million families on the rolls. Because prolonged welfare dependence has negative effects on the development of children, welfare reform was intended to disrupt inter-generational dependence by moving families off the welfare rolls through increased work and marriage. Welfare caseloads began to decline in earnest after 1996 and have fallen by 56 percent since then.

This decline in welfare dependence coincided with the increase in the employment of single mothers. These trends have been particularly dramatic among those who have the greatest tendency to long-term dependence: younger never-married mothers with little education. During the late 1990s, employment of never-married mothers increased by nearly 50 percent, of single mothers who are high school dropouts by 66 percent, and of young single mothers (ages 18 to 24) by nearly 100 percent. Welfare reform impacted the whole welfare caseload, not just the most employable.

Not surprisingly, as families left welfare and single mothers transitioned into work, the child poverty rate fell, from 20.8 percent in 1995 to 17.8 percent in 2004, lifting 1.6 million children out of poverty. The declines in poverty among black children and children from single-mother families were unprecedented. Neither poverty level had changed much between 1971 and 1995. By contrast, six years after PRWORA was enacted, these two poverty rates had fallen to their lowest levels in national history, from 41.5 percent to 30 percent for black children and from 53.1 percent to 39.8 percent for children from single-mother families.

Since welfare reform, the once explosive growth of unwed childbearing has ended. The unwed birthrate was 7.7 percent in 1965 and increased about one percentage point per year for the next thirty years. Had this rate of increase been sustained, the unwed childbearing rate would have hit 41.6 percent by 2003, but welfare reform interrupted this process. Between 1995 and 2003, overall unwed childbearing inched upward by only 2.4 percentage points, a fourth of the pre-reform rate of increase. The black unwed childbearing rate actually fell from 69.9 percent in 1995 to 68.2 percent in 2003.

Opponents of reform would like to credit many of these positive changes to a good economy, but the evidence for this interpretation is not strong. While a healthy economy did contribute to the progress charted in welfare dependence, employment, and poverty, good economic conditions alone would not have produced the striking changes that occurred in the late 1990s.

Historically, periods of economic growth have not resulted in lower welfare dependence. Indeed, during two episodes of economic expansion, the late 1960s and the early 1970s, welfare caseloads actually grew substantially. Only during the 1990s boom did caseloads drop appreciably. While a slowed economy may have affected the rate of caseload reduction since 2001, it is important to note the vast difference in trends before and after welfare reform. In the days of AFDC, welfare rolls remained flat or rose during periods of economic growth and rose substantially during recessions. Since PRWORA, caseloads have plummeted in a robust economy and declined slowly during a recession.
. . .
Welfare reform has been successful. However, that success has been limited by several factors. First, welfare reform in 1996 addressed only one of the more than fifty means-tested federal welfare programs, AFDC. Second, the federal work requirements that pushed the states to promote work and reduce welfare dependence have always been too lenient, resulting in lax state work programs once the minimum federal standards have been met. Third, while the law set clear goals to reduce out-of-wedlock childbearing and strengthen marriages, nearly all states’ bureaucracies simply ignored these goals.

To continue and extend the success of welfare reform, future efforts should focus on the following goals: 1) strengthen TANF work requirements; 2) establish work requirements in parallel welfare programs; and 3) fortify the Healthy Marriage Initiative."

More music options at work

This morning I'm listening to a couple of CDs from home, but the CDs are still there. I was surprised how easy Windows Media Player 9 made it to rip music from the CDs and Synch it to a little USB thumbdrive.

Once I got to work, I inserted the thumbdrive, and windows offered to play the music right away. The sound quality seems nearly as good as when I play CDs on the work computer.

The ripped music takes less space than I imagined - I have 2 albums on my Memorex 1Gb TravelDrive, and I still have over 800 Mb left for files, pictures, etc.

I realize I'm not breaking any new ground here - I've known this could be done for years, but it was always easy enough to bring in CDs. Now that I'm in the habit of carrying a thumbdrive everywhere, I decided to give it a try.

I realize 1/2 the world carries iPODs or other MP3 players, but that is just one more thing to add to the pile in my pockets. The thumbdrive fits on a keyring and is always with me (it is on a ring with a Swiss Army knife and a Red Cross CPR Key Chain).

If a post-middle-aged babyboomer can do it, you can to - give it a try . . .

IRS Investigates UCC

This inquiry is in regard to the national organization and I believe it shouldn't affect local congregations.

IRS grants three-week extension for UCC's response: "The UCC has been granted a three-week extension to respond to the Internal Revenue Service's inquiry of Sen. Barack Obama's June 2007 speech at the UCC's General Synod in Hartford, Conn. The deadline is now set for March 27.
. . .
Even as the IRS continues its investigation, the Rev. John H. Thomas said the UCC will not shirk from its longstanding tradition of advocating for justice as a fundamental tenet of UCC faith and witness.

"When the church speaks out on issues of justice and peace it is continuing a prophetic witness rooted in the Bible and at the heart of the traditions in American church history that have shaped the United Church of Christ," Thomas said. "Labeling this as partisan or political represents a profound misunderstanding of the moral responsibility of the church and its members to be involved in the great and pressing public issues of the day."

The UCC's legal team is being headed by former U.S. Solicitor General Seth P. Waxman from the prestigious law firm WilmerHale of Washington, D.C."

Arthur C. Clarke - R.I.P.

One of my favorite authors - he lived a long life and although Earth-bound, Clark was able to live in the style he chose & crafted for himself.

Science fiction author Arthur C. Clarke dies aged 90 - Times Online:
"Sir Arthur C. Clarke, the science fiction writer, has died aged 90 in his adopted home of Sri Lanka
. . .
The visionary author of more than 70 books, who was nominated for a Nobel Prize after predicting the existence of satellites, was most famous for his short story "The Sentinel", which was expanded into the novel that was later adapted for Stanley Kubrick's film "2001: A Space Odyssey".

He was also credited with inventing the concept of communications satellites in 1945, decades before they became a reality.

Clarke was the last surviving member of what was sometimes known as the "Big Three" of science fiction, alongside Robert A. Heinlein and Isaac Asimov."

If you've never read Arthur C. Clarke, you're missing out on some great science fiction that is both technically accurate and quite entertaining.