conclusion without evidence

Today, I completed the final requirements for an ethics presentation for my technical communications class. The project's purpose was show a real-life example of where ethics would play a part in how you do your day-to-day job. As an example, one of the other groups that presented today, chose to tackle the issue of being a bouncer. Do you allow underage drinkers into the bar? Law says no; pocketbook says yes. Is it really immoral to drink underage (between 18 and 21) if you could travel to 92% of the rest of the world and drink by the age of 18?

My group's topic: burning tires in power plants. One of our group members was walking by the coal power plant on Charter Street and was about to kick a piece of coal lying on the sidewalk when he discovered it was not coal. It instead was a stray piece from the heaping pile of sliced scrap tires. Burning tires releases ridiculous amounts of cancerous toxins into the air and surrounding environment.

So why was the power plant using tires for fuel?

At first glance, it seemed the issue was: if you were an employee working at the Charter Street power plant, would you allow the tires to be burned to allow the plant to make money or would you tell your boss you would have nothing to do with it?

Then research happened. It turns out there are over 300 million scrap tires generated every year. That's a lot of tires that would have to go into landfills. Instead, almost 160 million tires are broken down and used for fuel.and another 100 million are recycled into playground pavement, sidewalks and many other municipal items. Also, tires release 25% more energy than the equivalent amount of coal. AND the power plant has scrubbers, which collect most of the harmful chemicals released from the burning process.

Thus, less natural resources are used in energy production, thereby saving the environment. Would you rather have 160 million tires lying in temporary landfills, local burning barrels and rodent infested tire yards or have 160 million tires being used to create the energy needed to post this blog entry?

This is along the same lines for not supporting the creation of large wind-turbines (wind mills without the mill).

Jobby Job

Last week Wednesday, I was casually finishing my supposed only beer of the night when a friend from class walked into Brats. He invited me to hang out with his group of friends. Turns out that the group of "friends" was actually a group of [a respectable consulting company's] consultants. They were trying to convince this friend to join their organization by taking him out.

The friend was being offered a $10k signing bonus and a $68k yearly salary. The three dudes' lines for the friend to join consisted of: we make a lot of money, how could you turn down $10k, now you can be the 'Big shot' in town, ... we make a lot of money. I was given some one-on-one time with the eldest member, whom had worked at Deloitte for 8 years and will call Bill from now on. Bill said he was a really, really fast riser and that the best way to move up was to do all of your work as fast as you can; then do the boss' work. But in 8 years of ridiculously fast rising, he never lead a project or created new work for existing projects and he won't be for awhile.

As I shortsightedly included 'non-profit' in my opening lines about myself, Bill's eyes glazed over. So I switched the topic back to Bill. I then found out that Bill had helped start two companies while in college and both were sold for a decent amount of money. I then asked Bill why he didn't feel the job at Deloitte was step down from working on a start-up? He replied that he wouldn't have been able to be apart of something bigger and then proceeded to list the companies he'd helped. It made me think back to the book, The Soul of a New Machine, which I had finished recently. In the book, all of the engineers are self-motivated to put in long hours for no extra pay, simply to challenge themselves and get their name on something monumental. This seemed a lot like Bill and his motivations for staying with [the respectable consulting company] for so long. To sustain yourself in the existing corporate ladder, you have to think this way.

Bill's exit line "Have fun with the (smirk) non-profit."

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My professor emailed the class today confirming our guest speaker, Penelope Trunk, for Thursday. The Madisonian recently wrote a blog entry about generation Y and why they're different than the previous generations.
Excerpt:

Here’s what a consulting job offers: Long hours in cities where you don’t live. On-demand work for demanding clients. Days and days of working on a client site where you do not even benefit from the supposedly forward-thinking corporate culture that a company like Deloitte has created. And, finally, isolation from all but a few co-workers who are at the same client as you.

Bill seems to fit into this trend as [his respectable consulting company] is on the referred to list of The Best Places To Launch A Career.

I'm still wondering where you're supposed to launch to...

What's in Your bag?

Contents of Grocery bags after visiting Cap Center at 1am:
-1/2 lb hummus, original
-1 lb wheat pitas
-1 lb alfredo sauce
-1 lb sun-dried tomato sauce
-1 gallon 2% milk(there was no 1%)
-1 1/2 lb fish fillets
-1 lb cinnamon toast crunch
-1 lb golden grahams
-1 lb pepper jack
-1 lb aged and grated parmesan
-1 gallon of Arizona Green Tea (because Lipton doesn't know how to make green tea)

While shopping, I met a guy I had previously met at the student org fair whom never emailed me back. I called him 'Schlomi' and he didn't correct me. His name is 'Schlomo'. It was a little awkward.

Previous weird moment of the day:
Group meeting for the business plan was being held and we were dishing out official titles and responsibilities. One of the guys says he's not very technical, but wants to be VP Marketing. I ask him if he had used Indesign, or other graphical editors before. Response: Yeah, I think I've used those before. I'm good at Solidworks.

I just finished working on a stats assignment and should be finishing my proposal for my technical communications class. After now writing down what I want to do and making it into a 'contract' of sorts for my professor, I'm realizing that the task will be ridiculously time consuming. When it is finished I will hopefully find time to post it, so all may comment on my initial proposal to AIESEC US.