“Characteristics of the merit philosophy - Daily Journal of Commerce” plus 4 more |
- Characteristics of the merit philosophy - Daily Journal of Commerce
- OSU, UM share philosophy of establishing run - Jackson Clarion-Ledger
- Six Essential Blogging Tips from the Father of Chinese Philosophy - Examiner
- Reagan's December Declaration: GOP "Not a Fraternal Order" - Spectator.org
- AMD Says Intel's Larrabee Delay Is Due to Design Philosophy - Softpedia
| Characteristics of the merit philosophy - Daily Journal of Commerce Posted: 08 Dec 2009 09:15 AM PST
POSTED: Tuesday, December 8, 2009 at 07:45 AM PT BY: John Killin  John Killin What does "merit shop" mean? It's not a bad question. In fact, I hear it a lot. Many assume it's another term for nonunion. However, there is nothing negative or "non" about it. Merit shop isn't a status. It's a philosophy. It's a direct relationship between employer and employee that rewards innovation, initiative, hard work and teamwork. It promotes community and fosters loyalty among coworkers, employers and employees. The roots for the term merit shop stretch back nearly 50 years. But what does it mean? To those who use the term, it means freedom. It is freedom for the individual to do his or her best, for the employer and employee to work together for their common interest, and for the company to compete for customers by offering quality and cost-effective service. This is freedom to not bring someone else in to impede or interfere with those relationships. Those who promote the "merit" philosophy believe in hard work, personal accountability and fair play. They are loyal to their employees and get the same in return. Merit-shop contractors oppose discrimination on the basis of age, race, national origin, organizational affiliation, seniority, color, creed and sex. They reward employees for quality work, creative solutions and outside-the-box thinking. It is a philosophy that embraces the greatness in our free-market system. It rewards innovators. It abhors approaches that institute price fixing, artificial market manipulations, or promote the view that there is only one way to do something. The merit philosophy promotes the American dream. It recognizes that people are not robots. Not everyone works at the same pace, or approaches tasks in rigid, assembly-line manner. Instead, the merit philosophy challenges people by rewarding their productivity and creativity. The employee who works smarter, even at a slower pace, may still be the most productive and thus compensated differently. The 20-year veteran's wisdom and wily efficiency might rightly earn vastly more than the first-year sprinter. While merit-shop contractors typically are not unionized or signatory to a union, they are not anti-union. Nor does the lack of a union presence make a company merit-shop. A merit shop believes in choice. That is a choice for employers and employees alike. Employees should make informed decisions, and they should partner with their employer. I have a very dedicated member who likes to say that there are three ways of doing business in construction – the union way, the nonunion way and the merit-shop way. The merit-shop way is all about supporting training, promoting safety, providing excellence and rewarding valued employees. There is nothing "non" about how he runs his business. He and his employees are "pros," as are thousands of other merit-shop contractors and their employees all across America. John Killin is president of the Associated Builders and Contractors Pacific Northwest Chapter and executive director of the Independent Electrical Contractors of Oregon. This content has passed through fivefilters.org. |
| OSU, UM share philosophy of establishing run - Jackson Clarion-Ledger Posted: 08 Dec 2009 04:57 AM PST OXFORD — Houston Nutt was a quarterback for three years at Oklahoma State. Nearly a decade later, Mike Gundy spent four years under center for the Cowboys as well, with Nutt guiding him as part of assistant coaching staff. And even though both enjoyed making big plays downfield with their arm, they learned one thing very quickly after joining the OSU program: The offense wasn't about them. "It was instilled in us very early to find a way to run the football," said Gundy, who's now in his fifth season coaching at his alma mater. "For us, here at Oklahoma State, this is the fourth year in a row we've led the Big 12 in rushing." And if there's one thing to expect from this year's Cotton Bowl, which pits Ole Miss (8-4) against No. 21 Oklahoma State at 1 p.m. on Jan. 2 at Cowboys Stadium, it's that whichever team runs the football with the most success will probably win the game. "We always establish the run," Nutt said. Considering that philosophy, it's little surprise that when Ole Miss was struggling early in the season, it had trouble running the ball. But that all changed in mid-season, when Dexter McCluster took over and rushed for a whopping 821 yards in the final five Southeastern Conference games. Ole Miss averaged 182.8 yards per game on the ground this season, which ranks sixth out of 12 teams in the run-heavy SEC. The Cowboys will counter with senior Keith Toston, who's rushed for 1,177 yards, 11 touchdowns and averages 5.4 yards per carry. He's also caught 24 passes for 256 yards and a touchdown. Oklahoma State's 191.8 rushing yards per game just edged Texas A&M's 190.4 for the top mark in the Big 12. But even outside of the running game, the two teams have had remarkably similar seasons. Both have quarterbacks who were highly touted coming into the year, but haven't completely lived up to expectations. Snead's struggles have been well documented this season. He's thrown for 2,464 yards and 20 touchdowns, but that's often been overshadowed by 17 interceptions and a mediocre 54.3 completion percentage. This content has passed through fivefilters.org. |
| Six Essential Blogging Tips from the Father of Chinese Philosophy - Examiner Posted: 08 Dec 2009 09:08 AM PST
Six Essential Blogging Tips from the Father of Chinese Philosophy [Here is an excerpt. To read the complete article, check out other articles and resources, and sign up for a free subscription to Copyblogger, please visit http://www.copyblogger.com/.] Confucius, the father of Confucianism, died more than 2500 years ago, but his teachings are still relevant — not least when it comes to blogging. Here are [two of the] six classic Confucian quotes that are vital to remember if you want a successful blog. Information and knowledge sharing are the main driving forces behind the web. If you want people to read your blog and follow it loyally, you can't be greedy with your knowledge. You need to give your readers something that will make their lives better — every time they visit your blog. When you feel you're giving too much away for free, you're on the right track. 2. Everything has beauty, but not everyone sees it. You can't satisfy everyone with every single blog post. There's no way of knowing beforehand what the reaction will be. Some posts you really put effort into and truly believe in might go unnoticed, while other posts you didn't spend much time on can be the ones that set off an explosion of comments, tweets and links. About the Author: Michael Aagaard is something so rare as a serious Danish online copywriter. In fact, he has just launched the very first Danish blog dedicated to the fine art of online copywriting. * * * To read the complete article, check out other articles and resources, and sign up for a free subscription to Copyblogger, please visit http://www.copyblogger.com/. This content has passed through fivefilters.org. |
| Reagan's December Declaration: GOP "Not a Fraternal Order" - Spectator.org Posted: 08 Dec 2009 09:43 AM PST  Political HayReagan's December Declaration: GOP "Not a Fraternal Order"Ronald Reagan would have loved Marco Rubio. Not to mention Pat Toomey. Rubio, the current State House Speaker is the conservative challenger to liberal Republican Governor Charlie Crist's U.S. Senate bid in next year's Florida GOP primary. Toomey, famously, came within a whisker of beating Republican U.S. Senator Arlen Specter in the 2004 Pennsylvania primary when Toomey was serving as a Republican Congressman from Allentown. The challenge was renewed for 2010. Taking a look at polls that showed Pennsylvania Republicans finally fed up with his liberal views, the final straw being a vote in favor of the Obama stimulus package, Specter chose to switch to the Democrats -- guaranteeing Toomey the GOP Senate nomination. The challenge to GOP liberals by GOP conservatives has set off the usual teeth-grinding about demands for party "purity." Snapped Michigan Republican Congressman Thaddeus McCotter to The American Spectator's Jim Antle recently: "I've seen the game of trying to purge Republicans of those who are 'RINOs' or not pure enough…I have one question: How'd that work out for us?" Well, now that you mention it, pretty well, actually. But let's go back to if not to the beginning but the middle of the beginning on this old chestnut of an argument. The time? December, 1976. As the story opens on this fifteenth day of the month, ten days before Christmas, the Republican Party is at a crossroads. The dominant force in American politics for generations since its beginning in the 1850's when it came into being around the premiere social issue of the day, the "right" to own another human being -- slavery -- the GOP of 1976 is in trouble. How did it get here? Up until 1932, as the late Jack Kemp loved to note, the Republican Party was "the home of black Americans, the party of Lincoln, of economic growth, of equal opportunity." The so-called "progressive movement" -- really a rallying cry for economic redistribution and the politics of envy -- swept through the nation in the form of Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal. While liberal historians love to ignore the fact, Republican Herbert Hoover was enamored of progressives and, unlike his conservative predecessor Calvin Coolidge, considered himself to be one of them. Coolidge took a dim view of Hoover, whom he had kept on as Commerce Secretary in order to preserve a sense of stability following the sudden death of President Harding. Later, Coolidge would gripe that Hoover had spent their entire time together in government giving Coolidge advice "all of it bad." In fact, Hoover was one of the first of what would become known as the "me-too" Republicans, picking up on progressive movement ideas of the late 1920s and early 1930s and saying "me too" -- only a little less so. Whether the issue was the historic Lincoln beliefs in economic growth and equal opportunity, best expressed in the 1920s by Coolidge's Secretary of the Treasury Andrew Mellon, or the idea of a permanent "gift tax" -- Hoover was as one with progressives, believing that there was only so much wealth to go around and a bigger government had a distinct and ever growing role in managing this wealth. In what would become a familiar pattern with Republican liberals, he was Franklin Roosevelt only less so. As Amity Shlaes records in The Forgotten Man:
In one fashion or another, through Hoover's election in 1928 on through to the mid-December of 1976, some variation of this argument had gripped the Republican Party. A string of me-too GOP presidential nominees had faced off against Democrats using this argument to persuade the electorate -- and failed repeatedly. From Hoover himself in 1932 to Wendell Willkie in 1940, Thomas E. Dewey in 1944 and 1948, on through Eisenhower and the Richard Nixon of 1960, only Eisenhower the World War II hero had managed a win -- a win for heroism, not moderation. Scores of self-described "moderate Republicans" had won state and congressional elections in this period, managing with a liberal national press to give the impression that "me-tooism" was the wave of the future in terms of building the GOP. The argument finally sundered the GOP in 1964, with Arizona conservative Barry Goldwater's victory over GOP liberal New York Governor Nelson Rockefeller. Reagan himself was launched politically during this particular battle, his October, 1964 speech for nominee Goldwater electrifying the blossoming conservative movement. Nixon appeared to momentarily bridge the gap in 1968 -- presenting himself as a middle road between the views of now Governor Reagan and Governor Rockefeller. Governing as a moderate, Nixon still campaigned relentlessly as a red-meat conservative, the Nixon campaign winning a landslide over liberal Senator George McGovern in 1972 in part on charges the Democrat was representing the party of "acid, abortion and amnesty." With the resignations of both Nixon and Vice President Agnew as the 1976 campaign season loomed, Reagan, newly retired after two successful terms as Governor of California, watched, appalled, as the new GOP President Gerald Ford nominated Rockefeller as his vice president and started marching the GOP along the same weary and worn-out road to me-tooism. The gauntlet had been thrown, and Reagan picked it up. On one side in this showdown of the 1976 primary and convention season were Ford and the moderates -- epitomized by Rockefeller and his fellow New Yorker, liberal Republican Senator Jacob Javits -- versus the conservatives as led by Reagan. Once again the "conservatives can't win" argument was trotted out. Once again -- although this time narrowly -- the moderate candidate (Ford, in this case) triumphed. And once again, the moderate Republican nominee lost, this time to Democrat and liberal Jimmy Carter. By December 15, Reagan had more than had enough. Ford had summoned Reagan, Rockefeller and Democrat-turned Republican John Connally -- the ex-Texas governor who had served Nixon as Treasury Secretary -- to the White House for a chat on the future of the GOP. As liberals were gleefully planning the Carter administration inaugural for the following month, President Ford was trying his best to mend the internal fences of the GOP in true moderate style. Who should be the new GOP chair, he wanted to know? What changes in the party structure should be made. Reagan quietly seethed. To him, the problem was not party structure. It wasn't this or that person sitting in the chairman's job. It was something else altogether. A handful of days later, sitting in his Los Angeles office, Reagan sat down with a reporter from the New York Times and gave his answer to Ford, Rockefeller, and the party moderates who had by now produced one losing presidential campaign after another for 44 years. The headline the next day was stark:
With an accompanying picture of a relaxed and smiling Reagan, the former governor made plain his answer to the question most recently posed in The American Spectator article featuring Congressman McCotter. He answered by rejecting the McCotter premise entirely, in fact turning it around. The way to the future was not by catering to what we now call RINOs -- "Republicans in Name Only" like a Charlie Crist or Arlen Specter today -- or a Jacob Javits of yesterday. Reagan proposed something else. Instead of appealing to Democrats by becoming more liberal, Reagan saw the answer as "courting conservatives who now call themselves Democrats and independents." Said Reagan, in words that surely astonished the Times reporter: "The former California Governor said that Republicans could be saved from extinction only by acting quickly to assert the party's ideological identity. A declaration of conservative beliefs, he said in an interview in his Los Angeles office, might drive a number of Northern liberals out of the party, but that loss would be more than offset by potential gains in the South and West." Did this mean Reagan would support a third party, the reporter asked? "No!" was Reagan's emphatic answer:
So what would this Reagan-approach mean for RINOs? In December of 1976 that specifically meant New York's liberal Republican Senator and Rockefeller ally Jacob Javits, a leading "RINO" of the day -- the Arlen Specter or Charlie Crist, if you will. Reagan was clear -- and firm:
On January 20, 1977, Jimmy Carter took the oath of office as the 39th president, settling down to the nitty-gritty of a liberal administration whose guiding lights were economic scarcity, cutting defense spending and a belief that Americans and the world had an "inordinate fear" of Communism that could best be resolved by accepting the permanent presence of the Soviet Union and a Communist Eastern Europe. Eleven days after Carter's swearing-in, Reagan announced the formation of what the Times called a "permanent political group to back conservative Republican causes and candidates." Citizens for the Republic -- which in 1976 had been Citizens for Reagan -- was an early precursor of the idea that is now personified by groups like the Club for Growth. Five days after that, Reagan appeared in person to give the main address to a fledgling group of activists called the Conservative Political Action Committee. Said the former Governor:
Ronald Reagan's December declaration in 1976 is as relevant today as it was then. Reagan was not about "purging" anyone. He was about inclusivity -- understanding that conservatism was not a cult but rather the majority philosophy of the American people. It was a philosophy that, boldly identified and presented, was more than capable of both winning elections and governing the country. As it turned out, of course, Reagan was right. In 1980 Senator Javits was defeated in the New York Republican primary by a little-known conservative named Alfonse D'Amato. Stung, Javits clung to the ballot as the Liberal Party nominee. He lost his seat to D'Amato in the Reagan landslide -- the same conservative landslide that brought an end to some of liberalism's most celebrated names like McGovern, Birch Bayh of Indiana and Frank Church of Idaho. Reagan didn't have to "purge" RINOs, as Congressman McCotter's remark might suggest. He simply brought the party back to its philosophical roots of economic growth, equal opportunity, colorblindness, and support for social issues that had begun the party and led it to repeated victories up until 1932. Those who turned their backs on this historically rooted party philosophy, like Javits, not only left the party in defeat but had their careers ended for good. In doing this Reagan ushered in another era of conservative philosophical inclusiveness and clarity, which in turn led to revolutionary changes in the modern world. How'd that work out for us? Again, contrary to the McCotter thought, it worked out pretty well. Scratch that. Very well. And having cast that Reagan approach aside in 2008, and in 2006 before that, the results of RINOism -- the approach of Willkie and Dewey and Dole and McCain -- should say something to Republicans if they are willing to listen. Ronald Reagan was right all those many Decembers ago. A recent Gallup poll demonstrates yet again that he would still be right today. Today's RINOs, today's Javits, are free to go, like Arlen Specter -- or free to stay, like Charlie Crist. But conservatism is not a fraternal order. As Marco Rubio and Pat Toomey understand along with Ronald Reagan, it's a political philosophy. And a winning one. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to realize President Reagan would know exactly what conservatives should be doing today in the Obama era. Actually, he already said it. "We are members of a majority. Let's act and talk like it." Which is exactly what Marco Rubio and Pat Toomey are doing. This content has passed through fivefilters.org. |
| AMD Says Intel's Larrabee Delay Is Due to Design Philosophy - Softpedia Posted: 08 Dec 2009 12:11 AM PST A few days ago, Intel disclosed the fact that the development of its Larrabee chip with integrated graphics circuits had failed to progress at the intended pace. Intel, as is the case with such announcements, did not give any specific reasons for the delay, nor did it estimate just how much longer the chip would take to complete. The announcement seemed to suggest, however, that the main reason was the Larrabee's likely inability to compete against NVIDIA's well-established graphics and AMD's 3-teraflops GPUs, at least on the high-end market. As a response to a query set by Tom's Hardware, Advanced Micro Devices gave its take on the recent developments and compared its own research efforts with Intel's. Apparently, AMD seemed to give off the impression that it saw logic in Intel's attempts to integrate graphics into its CPUs, as this was somewhat similar to what Fusion did, but that the Santa Clara-based chip maker was going about it all wrong. "It really comes down to design philosophy," Dave Erskine, graphics public relations of AMD, said."GPUs are hard to design and you can't design one with a CPU-centric approach that utilizes existing x86 cores." "From the outset, we have seen Larrabee as further validation of the importance of visual computing. We continue to assert that GPU technology is essential to the computing experience, today and tomorrow," Erskine added. "AMD is the technology leader in GPU technology for 3D graphics, video and GPU Compute." As opposed to AMD's Fusion, which combines a central processor and a graphics processing unit into a single chip, Intel's Larrabee was supposed to be closer to a GPGPU, with both computing and graphics capabilities based on the x86 design. Already, end-users were quite aware of the fact that Intel's chip had graphics capabilities suited for the mid-range market at best, with performances similar to NVIDIA's GeForce GTX 285. AMD took the opportunity to again explain its unique and favorable position. The company is, currently, the only one that has both CPU and GPU technology to merge together. The developer said that it could more easily respond to the needs of the market because it had a wider range of products. "With only CPU, or GPU, a company is limited in its ability to respond to the needs of the industry," Erskine shared. "AMD is the only company in command of both GPU and CPU IP portfolios, and in response to the clear direction of the computer industry we're bringing CPU and GPU together in Fusion." AMD's Fusion has seen its own string of delays, though. The project started years ago and was restarted several times, each time because the developers decided to move on to new manufacturing processes. The current process that Fusion is being built upon is the 32nm, and the technology is expected to see the light of day in 2011. Dave Erskine did, however, speak of another one of the company's initiatives. "We're entering a new era in PC computing and it requires that visual computing technologies drive the pace of innovation. We call this Velocity. AMD Velocity builds on our already established GPU design cycle to achieve a faster pace of innovation than AMD previously achieved with a CPU-only development focus." Erskine explained. "AMD velocity is designed to deliver performance breakthroughs via teraFLOPS-class GPU compute power in tandem with performance and low-power x86 core options. We expect this will result in a clear, compelling platform differentiation for AMD, and the delivery of the best APU on the market every year." Regardless of AMD's current plans, the development issues surrounding Larrabee will prolong the company's status as a sole developer of both CPUs and GPUs. This content has passed through fivefilters.org. |
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