And yet it wasn’t.
I also noticed when I was fixing the profile settings in the Android app, the profile preview didn’t show the avatar and banner photos I’d uploaded, but in my view they’re there. I’m going to have to have people check it for me today.
So I’m going back to the ombud of one of my professional societies to request an appeal of a code of conduct complaint I made against another member. My original complaint was found not actionable … by a panel of the harasser’s close friends and his wife’s direct reports.
I’ve given them so many chances to get it right. Now I’m going to have to force them to do the right thing.
Good luck! Let us know how it goes.
That this is not covered by conflict of interest regulations is scary.
And unsurprising, because the people in power want to keep themselves in power so they can keep reaping the benefits of exploiting people in less powerful positions.
The organization head often advertises events in her spouse’s lab (i.e., that you pay him to attend).
So.
Yeah.
Academia.
[Edit: Well, para-academic 501©]
It’s infuriating.
Why did I want to do be in academia again?
Co-workers who object to everything.
Occasionally objecting? Great. Good. A little pushback, a different opinion is necessary feedback.
Often objecting? This is annoying, but you are still occasionally bringing something to the table.
But every goddamned meeting.
Co-workers who have been kept in the loop and wait until the project kickoff to explain all the reasons why their departments shouldn’t have to comply with the same things everyone else does.
I nearly hung up my conference call today.
I ground my coffee in the supermarket grinder intended for flavored coffees.
Twice.
Thoughts and prayers.
A couple of days ago I got bitten by a dog crossing the street
There were a couple of punk looking kids who were totally failing to control their animal
It drew blood, just a little, but still that’s messed up
I hope I’m not going to have a dog phobia now
Those teeth are sharper than they look
I belong to a organization providing first aid and first aid training, which, per our code of conduct, shall remain nameless in this spate of public criticism.
For the past several years, they have been starting to try to push on us a new way to detect whether people have cervical spinal injuries (i.e. injuries to the top seven vertebrae) which need immobilization.
This is a rule that’s been vetted by researchers and proven to be effective. You determine whether the person is subject to the rule, check them for three high-risk criteria, then seven low-risk criteria, and, if you determine it’s safe, you have them move their head from side to side to see if they can move it without pain. If so, cool, you don’t need to immobilize.
I got to a disagreement today with our regional education coordinator about this rule.
The rule says that if there are any of the three high-risk criteria, you immobilize them. If not, and there is at least one of the low-risk criteria, you do the side-to-side check. Two of the low-risk criteria, though, don’t make sense for this: they seem to belong in the “if you can’t check this off, you should immobilize the patient” category (i.e a “high-risk” criterion, except written in the negative). And that’s what our coordinator was arguing the rule said (immobilize if you can’t check this off), even though that’s not what the text said.
After the disagreement, I did some self-study of the vetted, proven, research. Neither of those two criteria are present. Neither is present in the vetted, proven version of the rule they’re pushing on us; they were grafted on afterwards, without letting anyone know that we were no longer operating within the bounds that the research had proven safe.
I found where they (presumably) got those rules from: a list of “low risk criteria” from a different set of cervical spinal rules, where all of the factors had to be present in order to conclude that there were no spinal issues. No wonder they don’t fit. No wonder they don’t make any sense.
This hasn’t slipped by everyone, I know: it has always been a point of contention whether all of the low-risk factors must be present to to the side-to-side test, or just one. The former doesn’t make sense, practically with the alcohol and distracting injury rules in place (If they haven’t had something to drink, it’s automatically okay to ask them to turn their head?!); the latter doesn’t make sense in any plain reading of the rules’ wording (How is “If any one of the following” is present being twisted to mean “These two conditions must be present, plus any one of the others?”).
Still, I can’t believe that I’m the only one, in at least the past four years (my manual from four years ago has this rule, with the two not-researched bits included), who has bothered to look up the original rules, and compare them against the ones we’re using, which we say are the same as the original ones. Not one of the people working on the manual, not one of the regional education coordinators, not one of the people tasked with instructing the instructors themselves…
So, I guess, to bring this to the topic at hand, what really grinds my gears is when there is a complete and total failure at quality assurance, when bringing in a new procedure, to make sure that the changes you make to the procedure to make it relevant to your needs don’t make it completely stupid.
This is going to be a monumental embarrassment. Our region, in particular, has been drilling this rule as the way of the future, and to realize that we’ve screwed this up this badly… This is going to come back to bite someone hard.
Hope it’s not me, as the person reporting it. 
Mmmmm… Not knowing anything more about the organization, I’ll go with slightly better odds that the messenger gets shot.
Not to make any threats, but let’s just say that if I can’t get this fixed, quietly, within the system, I am exactly the kind of person who, when convinced I’m right, would seek out a much more visible, more public venue to state my case. So far, just a few people know, mostly within the chain of command, and if they can get this fixed with a minimum of fuss, then, cool.
But there are ways I can reach out to the organization more widely, if it doesn’t get fixed (and it really, really needs to, before someone gets hurt by a person following the wrong version of this rule). I know where the address books are kept; I’m in a few of the Facebook groups.
And, if they come back too harshly on me and I end up quitting or being forced out of this organization, well, I would no longer be bound by the code of conduct which restrains me from public criticism of the organization.
There’s an added bonus bit of gear-grinding. Nothing worse than having to memorize a new rule which is very similar to an old incorrect one.
Good luck being the messenger!
I know somebody who used to be an EMT. She was so gung-ho about being an EMT she got a Star of Life tattoo. And then, like, years later, she said she got into so much political bullshit with the bureaucracy of the service she worked for she couldn’t do it anymore.
is a performance for of Maurice Ravel’s Bolero-- a 15 minute crescendo for orchestra. Althoiugh I’ve heard it many times before, it’s nice to see closeups of technique. The form dictates that it not be interrupted, as the crescendo is gradual.
There are three ad breaks, two of which advertise Godzilla-King of the Monsters and the others are the usual ones for cell phone service and other crap I don’t need. Just before the last note is played, ABC invited me to view the first 9 minutes of one of their new shows.
NO!
It’s like drawing a mustache on the Mona Lisa.
Think of it as “Conceptual Art.”
My neighbor across the street. She started at 8:00 a.m. She’s currently mowing her back lawn.
https://www.facebook.com/HoneyBunnyDuckyDownySweetyPieLilEverLovinJellyBean/videos/10156518675098342/
It rained last night. It’s not good for lawn-care machinery to be run on wet grass. These people just don’t CARE.