Cinncinati Archdiocese to Employees: You must all be Catholic, and We Don't Trust You.

The Roman Catholic Church is willing to let employees at Catholic hospitals, schools, and other institutions go without health care because it might be used for something they disagree with.

No, I'm not kidding. Not at all.

The bishops object because providing comprehensive health care includes providing coverage for abortion, sterilization, and birth control. Not just the supposedly "controversial" stuff - regular birth control pills.

I have no problem with the Church disallowing these things - though I think it's despicable that the papal decrees against condoms have probably done more to spread HIV/AIDS than any other single factor. This archdiocesan posturing and bickering isn't about churches - it's about institutions affiliated with churches. That is not my problem here.

The Archdiocese is saying three big things here:

1. All employees at Catholic institutions, schools, and hospitals can ONLY be practicing Roman Catholics.
 
2. The Archdiocese would willingly sacrifice the health of their employees¹ rather than allow the ability for them to get birth control.

3. They don't trust their own employees to follow their faith.

The argument that coverage is equivalent to using those services - or supporting them - is bankrupt. From there, it's a short step to saying that wages could be supporting those services, so maybe that's a bad idea too. After all, the Archbishop is the one saying that providing access to birth control coverage is the same thing as taking away rights - but removing access is all about freedom.

What more do you expect from an Archdiocese whose "Letters to the Editor" page on the website looks like this:

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¹ Golly - and save some money, too! Guess paying off those settlements is expensive... (Seriously, yes, it is expensive, and while it's not something talked about publicly much, the RCC in this area has been hurting for funds for years.)

Honesty was valued over telling people what they wanted to hear. Doing the job right was valued over kissing ass.

Way back when I had a "sham shield" ¹ and was stationed at Fort Eustis, my Sergeant Major had junior enlisted give a "book report" each month in front of the entire company. I dreaded this. Most of the books you could choose were dry² military histories or biographies of famous generals. Totally not what I wanted to read.

I got lucky.³

When my turn came, one of the book choices was Prodigal Soldiers. That title caught my interest, and the subtitle - "How the Generation of Officers Born of Vietnam Revolutionized the American Style of War" - seemed equally interesting.

I was wrong. It wasn't interesting. It was fascinating.

I'd been inundated with the 80's flood of Vietnam wish-fulfillment movies and TV shows. I'd seen the completely different style of Gulf War One. I had no idea what had happened inbetween.

It's a fascinating read of how a huge organization transformed itself over the course of twenty years. It also tells you exactly what the secret ingredients were in that change.

Honesty was valued over telling people what they wanted to hear. Doing the job right was valued over getting praise for yourself.⁴

Sure, there were consequences. If your unit wasn't up to snuff, there better be a reason why - and a plan to make it happen. But it would be far, far worse to claim your unit was ready when it wasn't.

Despite being an outside observer by the time Gulf War Two came around, it's apparent that sensibility of truth-telling was lost.⁵ And our military suffered for it. Units were put into roles they'd never trained for, with disasterous results. Soldiers were ill-equipped - something absolutely criminal given our defense expenditures. And we've spent longer fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan than we did World War Two.

I think there's an important lesson here that can be generalized to any organization - business, civic, political, religious, or military. When that organization loses sight of these two rules:

• Value honesty over ass-kissing
• Value performance over careerism

that, my friends, is when it is time to start looking for a new place to be.

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¹ SPC or E-4, in the Army, y'all.
² To me, at least
³ Again. So much of my military "career" is based on me getting lucky that it's not funny.
⁴ Yes, I realize that there's some degree of self-promotion or careerism necessary, and that "truth telling" is not the same as being rude. Stick with me here.
⁵ Though I caught glimmers of it being eroded before I left myself.

Museum - A 100 Word Story

Yup, it's flash fiction time again!

As always, this is based around Laurence Simon's weekly challenge for the 100 word-stories podcast. It's a great exercise for writers - writing a good drabble is a lot harder than it appears, but is still a "small" task so you can get around that idea of it being too much work. And then you get a random (and often bizarre) writing prompt to shoehorn you out of writer's block! Go read the rules for the Weekly Challenge and participate! Heck, Chris the Nuclear Kid does when he remembers to (and I can drag him away from video games)!

The player below should have the audio for this week; if it doesn't, you can find the audio here to download. You can also read and hear the rest of the entries at the 100 Word Stories podcast site!

The star's fusion reaction sputtered. "Any moment," Jon said.

Sandra untwined her hand from Jon's and looked at the image of the dying star, at the horrible, empty black that lay in all directions. "It looks... sad."

Jon glanced toward Sandra. "Status?"

"Wormhole generator steady, particle wave containment field ready."

Jon smiled. "The last star of this universe, its final rays preserved forever."

"It deserves better," Sandra said. She watched the slow dwindling death of the star. Of the universe their ancestors came from.

The Light Museum's collection ship ripped through the universe's wall, leaving it cold, dark, and silent.

Learn To Let Go of What You Cannot Control About Online Marketing From A Flash Game

I really like Boomshine. It's a simple, but fun, free casual game (I paid for the iOS version). Don't try it out yet, though - wait a moment.

Trust me.

It's a simple game (and free, on your PC; there's also an iOS app): The playing field has several balls bouncing back and forth (anywhere from 5 - 60, depending on your level). You get to click. Once. Where you click, a large-ish circle appears, sticks around for a while, and disappears. Any of the balls that touch the circle become their own circle. Your goal is to convert a certain percentage of the balls these circular booms.

At early levels, it's pretty easy - but it becomes almost exponentially harder for the last few levels. When you play, something interesting happens. It's easy to "figure out" the ways the balls and booms ¹ will interact on the first several levels. And then you'll hit a level where that stops working. Instead of any coherent plan, you end up largely guessing where to click. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't.

This is an accurate model of trying to get something to go "viral".

There is a pattern and purpose behind Boomshine - but it quickly gets too complicated to consciously figure out. Social networking is the same way - except that it's even more complicated. Quality - both of what you want to
go viral and quality of the relationships - varies. Rights restrictions. Time of day. How busy everyone is. Add your own real-world complications to make it all the more realistic.

Now that game would be impossible to win.

So rather than make yourself frustrated by something you cannot control (or worse, compromise yourself in pursuit of a goal you cannot reach), back off a little bit and let go. Relax. Because the one meaningful difference between Boomshine and real life is that you're not limited to one "click". You can create tons of material (clicks) and see what happens.

So quite worrying quite so much about perfecting your marketing skill, market what you can control, and make great stuff.

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¹Balls and booms. huh huh huh huh huh.--