Different Worlds

I attended a funeral today, and watched part of another on television. One was for a famous man from a famous family. The other was for a young man with one of the most common last names in the country. Yet in their own ways, both left the world a better place than it was when they arrived in it.

Edward M. Kennedy served in the US Senate 47 years.

Donovan X. Jones lived 21 years.

Kennedy graduated from Harvard and the UVa School of Law.

Jones would have graduated this spring from Clemson.

Kennedy leaves behind a lengthy record of work on civil rights, health care reform, education reform, immigration reform, foreign policy, and many other issues important to life in these United States. I'm not going to recount them all here. You can go to just about any web site and find it. He was admired and reviled in multiple circles, but few will debate the impact he had on this nation.

Jones left behind a lengthy record too, which I will recount because rest assured, no one but his close family and friends will be able to find it a month from now.

He was a member of the Kingsbury Road Church of Christ, where he served as co-chair of the youth group, Sunday Bible class, the Bible camp, the Lord's Table, Scripture readings and inter-congregational Bible bowls.

In high school he was named most outstanding student; class salutatorian (earned the class rank of two out of 482 students); scored 1,500 on the SAT college entrance exam; earned the international baccalaureate diploma; and was inducted into the Sumter High School Academic Hall of Fame. He was the number one ranked player on the 2005 SHS Varsity Tennis Team, selected by tennis coaches to the all region team and the USA Team Tennis State Tournament Champion in 2004. He was selected as a Clemson National Scholar (a full six-year academic scholarship), National Merit Scholar, Coca-Cola Scholar, National Honor Society Scholar, Robert C. Byrd Scholar and Palmetto Fellows Scholar.

At Clemson University, he continued his record as an excellent student. He was a member of the Calhoun Honors College; a Dixon Fellow; a member of the student senate and business manager of THE TIGER student newspaper; the Clemson Language Partner Program; was a member of Alpha Phi Omega (my own fraternity), Alpha Lambda Delta, and Delta Sigma Pi; and he participated in the Clemson Study Abroad Program last spring, where he studied in Alicante, Spain. He took advantage of other educational opportunities in Alaska, England, France, Italy, Switzerland and the Netherlands -- all while maintaining a 3.9 GPA.

In the community, he was an organizer of the county-wide Palmetto Tennis Tournament and Youth Day; worked with a team of students to build a Habitat for Humanity home; and tutored Spanish-speaking students in English in the evening at the community library.

I have no doubt Edward Kennedy and Donovan Jones are sharing a table engaged in a great debate on the topics that interest us most.

It's a shame they can't have that conversation where the rest of us can listen. And learn.

Mamas, Don't Let Your Babies Grow Up To Be Killers

I'm a big fan of Chuck Shepard's News of the Weird, which local alt paper Free Times runs every week. The news items he publishes are usually weird, sometimes outrageous, and almost always funny. But there's one recurring feature that can't be described as anything but bizarre:

Murders with the middle name "Wayne".

Probably the most famous, or infamous, murderer who falls in this category is John Wayne Gacy, also known as "The Killer Clown". From 1996 to 2008, Shepard compiled a list of 224 people charged with murder who shared this middle name. Although the list hasn't been updated in quite a while, he continues to compile articles on the subject.

Surprisingly, only 11 of them have the first name John, and that was only good enough for 2nd place on the list. The most common? Michael, with 19 appearances. David (10), Timothy (8), and Robert (7) round out the top five.

Heck, you can use Google to find a handful more in the news, including this one from a couple of weeks ago.

I wonder if Stephen J. Dubner and Steven D. Levitt ever tackled this in their "Freakonomics" studies. Does having this middle name "Wayne" make you more likely to stab, shoot, dismember, beat, pour acid on, set afire, or use a steamroller on other people?

Just to be on the safe side, there's no way in hell I'm giving any child of mine the middle name of Wayne.

The War On Talent

One of the blogs I follow is called Fistful of Talent, and one of their writers posted an interesting premise late last week, saying of NFL teams that signing Michael Vick would be the safest hire they'd make all year.

Never mind the negative publicity and the PETA protests which surely would ensue, but such a hire poses an interesting dilemma for a lot of major employers. And most minor ones too.

Let's think about this from the NFL's perspective first. Michael Vick is a game-changer. He is capable of creating and executing plays other quarterbacks can only dream of. He's a spectacular runner and can throw a ball 60+ yards with a flick of the wrist.

He is also a mediocre passer, typically completing 53-55 percent of his throws. His 2-1 career touchdown-interception ratio is very pedestrian. Off the field his reputation for making bad decisions is legendary, including failing drug tests while under indictment for the dog-fighting charges.

So here we have someone who should be in the prime of his career instead fighting for a chance to prove his worth.

Now let's apply this to the "real" world. How many among us would hire an ex-con known to dabble in drugs to perform the same work they did before being imprisoned? Even if they were willing to take minimum wage would you be willing to suffer the slings and arrows of the general public and your employees? If you were, how long would it take before said ex-con demanded his old salary? Would you be willing to pay it?

Many years ago I was interviewing candidates for a maintenance position and brought in one who looked good on paper. There was one key question I had for him, which was to explain a nearly 2-year gap in his employment record. He proceeded to pull out newspaper clippings detailing his arrest and indictment for murdering his wife, along with the court transcript and newspaper clippings detailing the dismissal of those charges by the judge. I'm sure I could have hired him and not gotten any negative press from it, but the air of suspicion in town about him had not fully dissolved. There is no doubt in my mind I would have gotten an earful from the other employees.

And so it goes with any prospective employee with a stain on their resume, especially now. Employers can be choosy about who they hire, and they will take every opportunity to pick through your work history and find a reason to not hire you. You can't avoid the employers who are that picky; they're the only ones hiring! Unless you have a unique set of skills and a consistent history of excellent performance, you might as well make that proctologist appointment now just to get used to the probing.

Now Vick gets to try and revitalize his career in Philadelphia. Isn't this the same city whose fans once booed Santa Claus?

Sometimes Reality Doesn't Bite Hard Enough

I wish I'd thought of this idea in 1994 when I was struggling to find work after finishing graduate school. Then I could have looked like an idiot to the free world.

If you spend $70K in tuition costs for a 4-year degree and you're paying it to a school with no name recognition, one must question your intelligence.

If you attended class every day, achieved a GPA of 2.7, and consider this a positive feat, one must question your intelligence.

If you contacted all the employers listed in the college's career placement office, was contacted by two of them, received no job offers, and you think it's the college's fault, one must question your intelligence.

If you think it should be easy in this economy for a new college graduate with no experience and a mediocre academic record to find a non-retail job, one must question your intelligence.

I'm reminded of people I know who were fortunate enough to work at a company that gave their employees merit increases this year, and complained the amounts were too small. I would love to recommend they leave that company, join together to start a business, and hire the new graduate. It would be the only company in history that would have to declare bankruptcy before it officially existed.

Will those in the "Birther" movement please shut up now?

Great article from Steven Thomma on the claims about President Obama not having been born in the United States. It includes the complete interview Bishop Ron McCrae had by phone with Obama's grandmother where he tries to get her to say (through a translator) that he was born in Kenya. He used some editing tricks to make it appear she said he was.

It's an unfortunate shame that politicians would try to use a sham like this for political gain (imagine that!), but Representative Bill Posey of Florida plans to take it one step further with H.R. 1503, which would require candidates for the office of President to prove their citizenship. On it's face that doesn't sound like such a bad idea, but which of the following do you think is more likely to be the correct driving force behind it?

a) No one else in Congress was smart enough to think of a measure like this before.
b) We have to be careful in this day and age when it is more likely for citizens of the United States to have been born abroad.
c) In this era of rampant illegal immigration, it only makes sense for people to have to prove their origins.
d) A certain political party is still upset their white bread war hero/GILF ticket lost the election to a black man.

Leonard Putts chimes in as well with his thoughts being if this is the best the GOP has to offer, the party is in deep doo-doo. Personally I think the country would be better if the moderates split off from the conservatives, then you'd have the right-wing purity so many seem to crave even if they end up representing 12% of the population. The moderates would appeal enough to the Blue Dogs and their supporters to convince them to leave the Democratic party, which would finally allow a strong Centrist movement to build. Imagine how much fun a realistic 3-party system would be.

Sorry, Libertarians and Greens.