Victor Rozek
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As I See It: Revolving Door
December 7, 2015 Victor Rozek
… Read moreJust when you think the excesses and oddities of the Internet can no longer surprise, along come reports of an online ISIS “help desk”–24/7 assistance for the budding jihadist. Well, it turns out the reports were inaccurate. It’s not a single point of contact, but a “decentralized, multi-platform recruit outreach,” according to West Point’s Combating Terrorism Center. Regardless, trolling for expendable volunteers willing to detonate themselves for your cause certainly marks a departure from the ordinary array of bile-flavored hate sites.
Suicide bombers originate in many countries, and are subject to a variety of cultural influences. But if they have
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As I See It: The Gospel According To Dan Price
November 9, 2015 Victor Rozek
… Read moreThere is a Biblical parable in the gospel according to Matthew that touches upon labor relations. As the story goes, a vineyard owner sends his foreman out to hire laborers at daybreak. They agree upon a wage–one denarius in this instance–and off they go to toil in the soil. (“Toiling” is the biblically preferred term for work.) But the foreman goes out several more times throughout the day and hires additional men, telling them simply that they will be paid “whatever is right.” Apparently, they needed work more than clarity about wages, so off they went to join the daybreak
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As I See It: Biology On The Wing
October 19, 2015 Victor Rozek
… Read moreThe solemn pod arcs in unison and disappears beneath blue water, leaving telltale plumes dancing in the breeze. I’m perched on weather-carved rocks on the extreme southern end of a small Canadian island called Saturna, watching a pod of killer whales sweep around the point. They pass by a mere stone’s throw from shore, on their way to ancient feeding grounds. But they are not alone. A hundred yards beyond, a picket line of boats filled with grasping tourists tracks their every breach.
Once hunted, they are now annoyed. Once victims of persistent greed, they now endure persistent curiosity. From
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As I See It: America Needs A Vacation
September 28, 2015 Victor Rozek
… Read moreEntrepreneurs are typically blessed with some combination of courage, imagination, and somebody else’s cash. But while these advantages occasionally translate to wild success in the marketplace, that success comes at a price. As reported by Business Insider, Dr. Michael Freeman, a clinical professor at UCSF, surveyed entrepreneurs and found that just under half admitted dealing with mental health issues, and 30 percent report suffering from depression (over four times the national norm), 29 percent struggle with ADHD, and 27 percent live with anxiety. Changing the world is stressful work. Sounds like they need a vacation.
They’re not the only
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As I See It: Game On
August 10, 2015 Victor Rozek
… Read moreHis days are spent in a small room, eyes fixated straight ahead. His appearance is neglectful, and he often forgets to take sustenance. An observant visitor might notice a peculiar thickness around his slender waist. He wears a diaper. He endures this indignity not because he is elderly or disabled, but because he cannot bear to tear himself away from the screen on which endless battles rage.
Chinese authorities estimate there are another 24 million like him, a generation of gamers addicted to the action-life depicted in violent virtual worlds. Marathon sessions are common. Serious gamers routinely play for 20,
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As I See It: The Improbable Conference
July 13, 2015 Victor Rozek
… Read moreWhere IT is concerned, the United States has functioned as a nurselog for India’s booming IT sector. Soon after American management discovered that India’s cheap, plentiful, educated labor could produce cheap, plentiful, sophisticated software, so began the greatest job migration since clothing manufacturers fled the country. The skies over India darkened with incoming hardware, software specs careened off satellites, and Tower-of-Babel help desks were born.
It was a rocky start, marked by resentment from threatened American workers, and cultural and language incompatibilities that plagued their Indian counterparts. But eventually everyone settled into the new normal. American IT moved on, specializing
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As I See It: Listen Up And Ignore Me
June 8, 2015 Victor Rozek
… Read moreThere’s an old chestnut that says you should hire the young while they still know it all. And what a bargain! Insecurity and confusion masked by arrogance and bravado, all at entry level prices. Who could resist? It’s the curse of the human condition that each generation must learn all things afresh. Unfortunately, ignorance coupled with limited experience offer a ready foundation for making poor career choices–decisions that can color a lifetime.
And once mistakes codify into lifestyles, they become very hard to correct. By middle age, bad career choices manifest in resentment and regret. I know of no one
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As I See It: Cold War 2.0
May 4, 2015 Victor Rozek
… Read moreRussian history is one of repeated repression blanketing systemic failure. But it is also a history of a resilient people adapting to state-imposed limitations. Russia’s cultural achievements are a testament to intelligence successfully seeking expression, often against great odds.
Defying state control over their lives and prospects, the exceptionally gifted gravitated toward arenas in which they could exercise a measure of control over their careers. Whatever flavor of oppression they were forced to swallow–Czarist, Stalinist, or Communist–creative minds found refuge in fields such as literature, music, dance, and notably chess–the only global domination communism ever managed to achieve.
Move the
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As I See It: Playing In The Minefield
April 6, 2015 Victor Rozek
… Read moreWith some reluctance, I take a deep breath and begin to tiptoe into the minefield. There are topics so polarizing that no matter what opinions you express, or how benignly you express them, they are bound to spawn potent disagreement. And with the advent of social media, taking a stand on anything even slightly controversial guarantees that remote hatred will roll in with tidal inevitability.
Topics like discrimination, white privilege, women, minorities, economic equity, and male domination, potentially explosive in their own right, are made incendiary when they are flogged in the pursuit of money.
Which is why Ellen Pao’s
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As I See It: In the Land of the Panel Beaters
March 16, 2015 Victor Rozek
… Read moreA somber-looking man stands in the front of the aisle facing a plane-load of passengers. His arms are crossed above his head and in each hand he holds a high-pressure spray can of poison. Overhead luggage racks are opened, and a brief announcement is made to justify what is about to happen. Two hundred seventy-two passengers descend into apprehensive silence. The man then walks up and down the aisles spraying toxic chemicals ostensibly to kill invasive pests. There are infants and seniors aboard the plane. Everyone is drenched.
Welcome to New Zealand.
It was barbaric, an uncivilized measure unworthy of