I was recently on the receiving end of a promotion. This has been both bane and boon, for reasons familiar to anyone who’s spent any amount of time in the “real world” (i.e. not me).
- Boon: I am now being paid in real money, rather than what I refer to as “intern money”. My promotion also marks the end of the monthly “paying the intern” ritual, wherein my coworkers were invited to gather around me in a circle and light 10 yuan bills on fire whilst they all laugh heartily at the intern’s “paycheck”, which was not an actual check, but rather a handful of used lottery tickets (none of them winners).
- Bane: I now have a whole truckload of new responsibilities, few of which I have any idea how to fulfill. C’est la vie.
So we’re in an adjusting period. While the job and I are feeling each other out, substantial posts are probably going to drop off. For those of you who tend to find yourselves snoring facedown on your desks in a puddle of your own drool after trying to read one of my beloved “substantial” posts, give thanks! In lieu of actual thinking, I’ll probably just be posting anything that piques my interest. Links ahoy!
Study finds left-wing brain, right-wing brain – Science finally confirms what liberals knew all along: they’re smarter than everyone else. Glad we got that out of the way.
Opportunity for Wall St. in China’s Surveillance Boom – Any government anywhere has the right to take what it deems appropriate measures to improve administration and better protect its citizens. That much is indisputable. That does not mean, however, that the American companies who have chosen to engage with the Chinese government on this project have not stepped into anything less than a full-blown ethical quagmire.
Probably the most logical reason to install thousands of new video cameras would be to reduce the crime rate, and, sure enough, that’s exactly one of the reasons cited by the government why it needs the new system. It all rings a bit hollow, though. Crime is not a pressing societal issue in China (or, at least, not the kind of crime that could be prevented by more cameras on the streets, anyway), so why spend hundreds of millions of dollars on new toys to fight it?
One does tend to wonder when it turns out that some of the language used by the government to pump up the new system (“promote social stability”) is exactly the kind of language used to condemn people who challenge the Communist Party in the political sphere (“harm social stability”). I wish the American companies who’ve stepped into this mess luck. They shan’t receive any sympathy from me. They’ve made their bed. Now it’s time to sleep in it.
