The more I read about this fracking process, the more horrified I became that our state is even considering allowing it to occur here. Currently, it is illegal, and seemingly for very good reason. Other states, such as Pennsylvania, who have allowed fracking, have found themselves with huge environmental and economic problems. Thousands of wells have been contaminated to the point where the “fix” from the gas companies is to truck in gallons of fresh water for the population to drink. People have gotten sick and died, and yet the gas companies have exempted themselves from all government and environmental regulations to the point where they don’t even have to reveal the chemicals they are putting into the water under the guise of keeping their patent secrets.

A segment from a documentary called GasLand shows a resident starting a fire by holding a match to the water coming out of the kitchen sink faucet. I added this documentary to the number 1 spot on my Netflix queue, so should be able to watch the entire thing for myself soon.

When the gas boom is over, the companies move out of the area leaving a destroyed environment, contaminated water, worthless property, and severe unemployment. I’ve even heard some talk that some of the recent earthquakes in Ohio could have been caused by fracking.

And now they want to do those very same things here. Wow, wonder what’s going to happen to our nearby nuclear plant if the earth upon where it sits becomes less and less stable due to fracking? I don’t think a lot of people here know about fracking. I’d never heard of it before this week, and people aren’t really talking about it. My fear is that the politicians are so much in the pockets of these large corporations that it may not even matter what the people who are going to be most affected, harmed, and even killed by this devastation want or do to try to stop it. We have such a huge history of political and corporate shortsightedness.

Sure, I realize that we are dependent on oil and fossil fuels and that it would be a very good thing to limit our dependency on other countries for energy, but are we going to sacrifice the health and lives of hundreds of thousands to millions of U.S. citizens’ lives for a short-term solution that could last for only about 40 years and then our problems are worse than they’ve ever been?

When the dollar is completely devalued and we have a complete economic crash, are we really wanting to be totally dependent on the goodwill of a gas company or a corrupt government to continue to send in the water trucks because our wells and groundwater are so contaminated that we have no other source of fresh water?

We’ve lived without fossil fuels for hundreds of years. We can’t live past three days without clean water. We are already losing rights and freedoms every day by the bucket load, and something like this would create yet a new dependency for the very water we drink.

Am I anti-business for thinking this way? I don’t think so. I am very much in support of business. If you work hard at a business, are rewarded with great wealth, and are generous with the people who helped you get there, then great! Capitalism at it’s finest. Boo yah! I’m all for that. There are businesses and corporations that I support, albeit some more willingly than others.

However, I also believe that good ethics is imperative in any business practice, and what is happening with these fracking deals isn’t ethical…at all. Yes, it can create jobs and cause a boom in the localized economy for the very short term, but the longer term  harm and the cost of lives is far too great, and would create even more dependency on government agencies when we really need to be weaning ourselves away from those dependencies. We need to become a healthier and more self-sufficient society and not be so dependent on other countries, global corporations, or even our own government for everything.

Special thanks to ProgressOhio for the use of No Fracking Way under the Creative Commons license.

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Sure, it’s full of business news, but it really doesn’t seem full of anything that I don’t also see in many other places. Every news site has stocks going up and down. Every news site has news about the major companies and some of the smaller ones. Every news site has opinions, editorials, discussions, etc. Why is WSJ considered *it* when it comes to business? (Or is it?)

I’m just not seeing the urgency here. I do need to read it at least weekly for my class, and I admit I do enjoy reading some of the articles when I do look through them, but if I were to miss out on it for a few weeks, I wouldn’t view it as any kind of big deal. In fact, there have been times when I have gone for weeks without bothering with any news at all and don’t feel like I’ve missed out on anything for having done it.

Is there a real need to “keep informed,” or do we do it because we feel some sort of obligation or are addicted to it in some way? Do we really need to keep up with all of these things? Or are we just filling our heads with a bunch of worthless gobbledygook and leaving little or no room for the things that are of most importance to our lives?

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Below is my version of teamwork:

Video by forbiddenkingdom .

This video scene is part of the big Jet Li vs. Jackie Chan fight in The Forbidden Kingdom. This fight alone makes the movie worth watching.

In this movie, both of their characters are very passionate about what they wish to accomplish, and are also two very unique individuals, the Silent Monk, and the Drunken Immortal, who have very different ideas about how to reach their goals.

It wasn’t until near the end of this fight that they both realized that they were on the same mission and decided to work together.

As Jackie Chan’s character put it, “We’ll kill each other when it’s over.”

Once they started working together, did they suddenly begin agreeing with each other about everything, kowtowing to each other’s opinions, start toning down their individual points of view for the “good of the team,” and thus have no further conflicts or disagreements whatsoever until the prophesied return of the Monkey King?

Not at all.

Their diverse viewpoints and strengths complemented each other for the greater long-term success of their mission. Though they would have both been dinged for poor teamwork on the typical corporate performance review (just look at the destruction they caused in the temple!), their conflicts actually strengthened each other and the rest of their makeshift team of heroes.

Conflict is not automatically an enemy to teamwork. In fact, a degree of conflict may be very necessary to find the most innovative solutions to team problems. What do you think?

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I’m about two thirds through the book, and this concept of corporations wanting linchpins is really the only major thing bothering me about the book so far. I agree with the idea that the world of workers as factory cogs is dying, that  we can no longer keep cranking out cheap, average trash for more and more profit, and that the linchpins are going to change the way most people think about work.

However, I don’t believe most corporations are going to be the places in which most of it happens. I tend to agree more with this response to a review of the book over at Amazon:

Does the world even recognize the linchpin? I know someone who was so enthusiastic about their work that within 3 months at their new job they had found mistakes that had existed for 2 1/2 years. The response of their boss, who had been there just over 2 1/2 years, was to do everything he could to get this employee to quit, which he did. Just caring about what you do might make you valuable but won’t make anyone recognize that fact. Meanwhile, plotters, schemers and backstabbers will be taking credit for others’ work and playing politics to get ahead. There’s only been one company I’ve worked in where I haven’t seen one of these talented, passionate, uber-competent people playing second-fiddle to a weaselly boss among them who either took credit for their work, hid the lynchpin’s accomplishments from their own boss for fear of being replaced by them, or took advantage of that passion to get them to do more work for less pay. The lesson is you need to be smart, not just passionate, or else you’ll be taken advantage of by those who are not good at their jobs but good at playing politics and people.

You can find the link to the above response here.

I believe most corporations are going to continue to view the linchpins as nothing but troublemakers who are viewed as too disruptive to the status quo. Most corporations are still all about status quo. Sure, there is a lot of lip service given about people being their highest assets and employee empowerment, yadda yadda, but lip service is mostly all it is. Just look at all the endless corporate policies and rules intended to control employee behavior and stifle creativity and innovation.

Corporate upper management, still living in the past, and their middle management enforcers, will cling desperately to the status quo until they are literally forced to release it. In the meantime, their companies haven’t gone from good to great, but instead from good to less good to only barely mediocre.

The corporations may eventually catch up and join the 21st century, but are we really willing to wait for them to do it? Or are we instead going to end up creating our best art elsewhere and without the corporate middleman?

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Now remember, this is a lady who helps people escape from their corporate jobs, and yet Google asked her to come and do an employee presentation for them. Wouldn’t it be neat if all of our corporations would do this kind of stuff? Instead, it seems that if employers aren’t in the process of laying everyone off, they are desperately trying to keep their remaining employees chained to their desks and running their companies like the mafia.

Maybe Google just isn’t all that insecure. Or maybe they don’t have cubicles. I have no idea, though they do let people bring their dogs to work, so I must give them a huge amount of credit for that.

The presentation is a bit long, but I do recommend watching it even if you’re not planning to escape from any cubicles soon. It’s definitely not a snore-fest like many other company presentations…even if she is using the evil PowerPoint.

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