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C'est une reprise de la semaine dernière avec quelques rajouts...

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THE REGULARS: Summary
A) Le texte plus abordable de la semaine/Scholastic News: State of the Union [Bush vient de faire sa déclaration de politique générale au Congrès américain. VOIR UN AUTRE POINT DE VU DANS LE TEXTE 4.]
B) CNN/Global Office: Monday morning bad for your health [Le lundi au boulot, c'est mauvais pour la santé.]
C) Car Talk/The Puzzler: Roman Drivers [Un casse-tête. De quel côté roulaient les Romains ? On ne triche pas !]
D) Miami Herald/Dave Barry: Can't we all just get along? [Humour. Dave propose de réunir la nation américaine après les divisions de l'élection présidentielle 2004.]

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Bb) CNN/Global Office: Overtime costs UK works $43bn [Les heures supp non payées coûtent cher aux salariés britanniques.]
http://edition.cnn.com/2005/BUSINESS/01/06/overtime.uk/index.html
Overtime costs UK workers $43bn

Friday, January 7, 2005 Posted: 1147 GMT (1947 HKT)

LONDON, England -- Many workers in the UK may have been lucky enough to bank a Christmas bonus last month, but new figures suggest most of them may still be out of pocket. According to figures released this week, British employees did unpaid overtime worth as much as $43 billion last year.

The Trade Union Congress (TUC), which conducted the research, said that each employee who performed an average number of extra hours should have received an extra $8,700 if paid at their normal hourly rate. Or, to put it another way, if they had done all their unpaid overtime at the start of the year, they would have worked for free until February 25.

The TUC said that London workers suffered the worst deal with more than 700,000 people putting in average of 7.9 unpaid hours a week -- almost a complete extra day at the office every week. Had they been paid for the extra time, the average London worker would have picked up more than $13,000 on top of their regular annual wage.

The average number of unpaid hours for the UK as a whole was 7.3 hours.

Long hours can contribute to stress, poor health and relationship problems, and few managers would argue that tired, burnt-out staff are good for business. But TUC General Secretary Brendan Barber warned that the UK, which already has the some of the longest work hours in Europe, had become an overtime culture, in which companies were increasingly reliant on workers exceeding their contracted hours.

"We're not saying that we should turn into a nation of clock-watchers. Most people do not mind putting in some extra time when there's a crisis or an unexpected rush. But too many workplaces have come to depend on very long hours. They get taken for granted and staff have to do even more if there is an unexpected rush," said Barber.

"Worst of all is that many long hours workplaces are inefficient and unproductive. People are putting in long hours to make up for poor organization and planning in the workplace. It also puts employer complaints of the costs of benefits such as pensions or time off for new parents into perspective. Employers have been cutting back on pensions even as their staff put in longer hours."

To draw attention to the issue, the TUC has declared February 25 "Work Your Proper Hours Day," when it is urging staff to stick to their contracted hours to remind their bosses how much they depend on their extra efforts. "Take a proper lunch break, not just a sandwich at your desk, and leave on time, to enjoy your own time on Friday evening," it says. "Why not get together with friends working nearby, and go for a coffee, a pint, or take in a show? You deserve it! This is one day in the year for your boss to appreciate your efforts, and for you to appreciate yourself."

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Bc) CNN/Global Office: Ancient and modern management [Alexandre le Grand, un modèle pour les PDG d'aujourd'hui ?]
http://edition.cnn.com/2005/BUSINESS/01/18/alexander.guru/index.html
Ancient and modern management

Tuesday, January 18, 2005 Posted: 1620 GMT (0020 HKT)

(CNN) -- The short, spectacular life of Alexander the Great has always been Hollywood material. By the time of his death aged just 32 in 323BC the Macedonia-born Alexander had conquered the ancient world, extending his empire across one million square miles from Greece to India.

In his latest screen incarnation, Alexander, played by Colin Farrell in the eponymous Oliver Stone-directed epic, is portrayed as the greatest warrior in history.

But many business experts believe the lessons of Alexander's career have as much relevance for boardroom as battlefield strategists. According to Partha Bose, author of "Alexander the Great's Art of Strategy", modern executives can learn from Alexander's campaigns in three key areas. "It fundamentally boils down to three things: it is where you want to compete, when and how you want to enter or exit that market and how do you want to go about competing when you are in that market," says Bose. "Those are fundamentally the three key strategic issues and again when you take a look at Alexander the Great's history you find that he was pretty much the first ever general to systematically think through those three key issues. "Strategy is only as good as the organization's ability to execute it. Here again, there are lessons from ancient times."

One modern manager who has drawn inspiration from Alexander's campaigns is Federal Express founder and CEO Fred Smith. "Primary was his organizational skills," says Smith. "He organized his army in a way that had never been done. That organization allowed him to play to his strengths, minimize his weaknesses and prevail over opponents who were much larger."

In Oliver Stone's cinematic portrait, Alexander's greatest achievement comes at the Battle of Gaugamela where his 50,000-strong Macedonian army defeats the forces of the Persian king Darius, five times its size. Stone believes Alexander's tactical flexibility and willingness to delegate authority gave him a decisive military advantage. "He had great instincts in battle," Stone told CNN. "He was very fluid, always changing as the battle developed. He was quick to react. Alexander was a great believer in teamwork and he delegated authority beautifully. "The Persians could not move without central approval. It was all governed by Darius in the center. Alexander went for the head. He knew that if he killed Darius he would kill the snake."

Bose agrees that delegation and instinct were central to Alexander's thinking. "We see him trusting a nine-year-old shepherd boy, and getting this shepherd boy to lead the entire army over the Uxion mountains in Persia," he says. "There are many other situations where he would put his trust just like that in whoever it was he encountered. But a sign of great leadership is that great leaders know whom to trust and do put their faith in lots and lots of people."

But for all Alexander's improvisational abilities on the battlefield, his achievements were also a consequence of careful preparation and forward thinking. "We know that there was significant rehearsal and planning," says Stone. "They even had markers, they drew marbles of the enemy, they drew carved statues and they made battle plans like they do at West Point today."

In war, Alexander could be a brutal and cunning opponent. Yet his empire was founded on a respect for local cultures and a belief that peace and internal stability could only exist through prosperity. "All throughout his life you see Alexander going out of his way to embrace other cultures, and the cultures that he did invade saw that he wasn't trying to impose on them his way of doing things," says Bose. "What was happening was that the local culture and the Greek culture would melt together in ways that even the people who were conquered found quite interesting and innovative. The Nestles, the Unilevers or the Procter and Gambles of the world have been able to succeed across the globe because none of them imposed a system on the nations they were going into that came from their origins. They all worked out something that was in line with the local cultures and local tastes, and that is what globalization is all about. So there are really a lot of great leaders and part of their greatness lies in being able to adapt themselves to the local cultures."

Smith, who describes Alexander as "the first truly global thinker," says Federal Express have tried to emulate that approach when moving into new markets. "We have to deal with different cultures, attitudes, different people. Doing that is part of our company's success," he says. "I think Alexander was the first person who did that successfully. He didn't just capture and enslave them. He was enormously successful in putting together a truly global empire."

-- CNN's Robyn Curnow contributed to this report.

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2b) International Herald Tribune: Writing clear English [Les entreprises américaines renvoient leurs salariés à l'école pour apprendre à écrire convenablement un anglais déformé par l'e-mail et les SMS.]

http://www.iht.com/articles/2004/12/08/business/email.html

Challenge for office: Writing clear English
By Sam Dillon The New York Times
Thursday, December 9, 2004

Deficit found as e-mail replaces phone

BLOOMINGTON, Illinois Craig Hogan, a former university professor who heads an online school for business writing here, received an e-mail message recently from a prospective student. "i need help," said the message, which was devoid of punctuation. "i am writing a essay on writing i work for this company and my boss want me to help improve the workers writing skills can yall help me with some information thank you"

Hogan receives hundreds of e-mails monthly from managers and executives seeking to improve their writing or their workers' writing each month. He says the number has surged as e-mail has replaced the phone for much workplace communication. Millions of employees must write more frequently on the job than previously. And many are making a hash of it. "E-mail is a party to which English teachers have not been invited," Hogan said. "It has companies tearing their hair out."

A recent survey of 120 American corporations reached a similar conclusion. The study, by the National Commission on Writing, a panel established by the College Board, concluded that a third of employees in major U.S. companies wrote poorly and that businesses were spending as much as $3.1 billion annually on remedial training. The College Board is a U.S. organization that helps students going to college.

The problem with writing shows up not only in e-mail but also in reports and other texts, the commission said. "The more electronic and global we get, the less important the spoken word has become, and in e-mail clarity is critical," said Sean Phillips, recruitment director at Applera, a California company that makes equipment for life science research, where most employees have advanced degrees. "Considering how highly educated our people are, many can't write clearly in their day-to-day work."

"It's not that companies want to hire Tolstoy," said Susan Traiman, a director at the Business Roundtable, an association of leading chief executives whose corporations were surveyed in the study. "But they need people who can write clearly, and many employees and applicants fall short of that standard."

Millions of inscrutable e-mail messages are clogging corporate computers by setting off requests for clarification, and many of the requests, in turn, are also chaotically written, resulting in whole cycles of confusion.

For example, an e-mail from a systems analyst to her supervisor at a high-tech corporation in Palo Alto, California, said, "I updated the Status report for the four discrepancies Lennie forward us via e-mail (they in Barry file).. to make sure my logic was correct It seems we provide Murray with incorrect information ... However after verifying controls on JBL - JBL has the indicator as B ???? - I wanted to make sure with the recent changes - I processed today - before Murray make the changes again on the mainframe to 'C'." That message persuaded the analyst's employers that she needed remedial training.

Some $2.9 billion of the $3.1 billion the National Commission on Writing estimates that corporations spend each year on remedial training goes to help current employees, with the rest spent on new hires. An entire education industry has developed to offer remedial writing instruction to adults, with hundreds of public and private universities, for-profit schools and freelance teachers offering evening classes as well as workshops, video and online courses in business and technical writing.

Kathy Keenan, a former legal proofreader who teaches business writing at the University of California Extension in Santa Cruz said she sought to dissuade students from sending business messages in the crude shorthand they learned to tap out on their pagers as teenagers. "hI KATHY i am sending u the assignmnet again," one student wrote to her recently. "i had sent you the assignment earlier but i didnt get a respond. If u get this assgnment could u please respon. thanking u for ur cooperation."

Most of her students are midcareer professionals in high-tech industries, Keenan said.

Even chief executives need writing help, Roger Peterson, a freelance writer in Rocklin, California, who frequently coaches executives, said. "Many of these guys write in inflated language that desperately needs a laxative," Peterson said, and not a few are defensive. "They're in denial, and who's going to argue with the boss?"

But some realize their shortcomings and pay Peterson to help them improve. Don Morrison, a former auditor at Deloitte & Touche who has built a successful consulting business, is among them. "I was too wordy," Morrison said. "I liked long, convoluted passages rather than simple four-word sentences. And I had a predilection for underlining words and throwing in multiple exclamation points. "Finally Roger threatened to rip the exclamation key off my keyboard."

Exclamation points were an issue when Linda Landis Andrews, who teaches at the University of Illinois at Chicago, led a workshop in May for midcareer executives at an automotive corporation in the Midwest. Their exasperated supervisor had insisted that the men improve their writing.

"I get a memo from them and cannot figure out what they're trying to say," the supervisor wrote Andrews. When at her request the executives produced letters they had written to a supplier who had failed to deliver parts on time, she was horrified to see that tone-deaf writing had turned a minor business snarl into a corporate confrontation moving toward litigation. "They had allowed a hostile tone to creep into the letters," she said. "They didn't seem to understand that those letters were just toxic."

"People think that throwing multiple exclamation points into a business letter will make their point forcefully," Andrews said. "I tell them they're allowed two exclamation points in their whole life."

Hogan, who founded his online Business Writing Center a decade ago after years of teaching composition at Illinois State University, says that the use of multiple exclamation points and other nonstandard punctuation like the ":-)" symbol are fine for personal e-mail but that companies have erred by allowing experimental writing devices to flood into business writing. "E-mail has just erupted like a weed, and instead of considering what to say when they write, people now just let thoughts drool out onto the screen," Hogan said. "It has companies at their wits' end."

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5b) The Wall Street Journal: At Fast-Food Chains, Era of the Giant Burger (Plus Bacon) Is Here [Comme si les Américains n'étaient pas assez gros, une chaîne de restauration rapide propose un gigaburder avec 300g de viande, et ce n'est que le début. Le pire, c'est que ça marche du tonnerre.]
MEDIA & MARKETING

At Fast-Food Chains, Era of the Giant Burger (Plus Bacon) Is Here

By STEVEN GRAY
Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
January 27, 2005

ST. LOUIS -- The order sounded like heresy to Bruce Frazer, chief architect of hamburgers for the Hardee's fast-food chain. While Hardee's rivals were making menus leaner and greener, Mr. Frazer's boss ordered him to build a "bigger, better burger."

First, Mr. Frazer delivered the Thickburger, topping out at two-thirds of a pound of Angus beef. Good, his boss said, now make an even bigger one. In November, Hardee's unveiled Mr. Frazer's Monster Thickburger: a pair of 5.7-ounce patties, four strips of bacon and three slices of American cheese on a buttered sesame-seed bun slathered with mayonnaise. It weighed in at 1,418 calories -- 600 calories more than Burger KingCorp.'s Whopper with cheese, or the equivalent of more than two of McDonald's Corp.'s Big Macs.

"Food porn," cried the Center for Science in the Public Interest, the Washington advocacy group.

Jay Leno joked that the Monster Thickburger comes in a cardboard box shaped like a coffin. "Would you like a defibrillator with that?" wrote the Chicago Tribune's restaurant critic, while describing the burger as "unfortunately delicious."

It was just what Mr. Frazer's boss, Andrew Puzder, wanted to hear. "If I was going to survive, I needed to do things that people who weren't succeeding were afraid to do," says Mr. Puzder, chief executive of CKE Restaurants Inc., owner of Hardee's. He yearned for a burger like the ones he devoured at St. Louis pubs while attending law school. Now, he says, "we get thank-yous for putting out a burger that people can actually eat."

Big burgers aren't confined to Hardee's. Culver's, a Midwestern chain, has found a hot product in its Jumbo Bacon ButterBurger Deluxe -- beef patties, bacon, cheese, mayonnaise and pickles (1,100 calories); Burger King offers the Double Whopper With Cheese (1,060 calories); and McDonald's features the Double Quarter Pounder with Cheese (730 calories).

This week, a federal appeals court reinstated part of a lawsuit alleging that McDonald's misled young consumers about the healthfulness of its products. A trial judge had previously dismissed the suit; McDonald's said it believes the case will be dismissed again.

John Banzhaf III, a George Washington University law professor who is advising plaintiffs in the McDonald's case, says Hardee's could be asking for a similar lawsuit because it doesn't disclose on restaurant menus that the Monster Thickburger's 107 grams of fat far exceed the maximum daily fat-gram intake recommended by the federal government. Brad Haley, a spokesman for CKE, says, "We've been pretty up-front about what we're doing with regard to the Monster Thickburger ... People would be hard-pressed to assume it was anything other than what it was."

Harry Balzer, a vice president at market-research firm NPD Group, says, "Americans have the means to eat healthier. But when it comes down to the privacy of our eating patterns, we eat what feels good."

Wholesome or not, Thickburgers have certainly been healthy for Hardee's, based here in St. Louis, and CKE, of Carpinteria, Calif. Burger sales at the roughly 2,050 Hardee's outlets have climbed 20% since the 2003 introduction of the first Thickburgers. CKE has posted 19 consecutive months of same-store sales growth, after years of the opposite. The company's stock price, which hit a low of $3.69 in December 2002, was $14.11, up 42 cents, as of 4 p.m. yesterday in composite trading on the New York Stock Exchange.

Fast-food fare is usually prepared quickly and cheaply, with the most-basic ingredients. But as Mr. Frazer cooked up the Thickburger, he heeded Mr. Puzder's mandate to ignore conventional wisdom about ingredients and cost. "He took the shackles off our thinking," says Mr. Frazer, whose is head of product marketing, research and development at CKE.

Mr. Puzder is a tall, lean 54-year-old in a crewcut who paid his way through nearby Washington University law school playing guitar in a rock band. He was personal attorney to CKE founder Carl Karcher when Mr. Karcher brought him into the business. Mr. Puzder was named president and chief executive of Hardee's in June 2000, and a few months later became head of CKE.
[image]

At the time, Hardee's restaurants were grimy, service was poor, and the food was terrible, he says. But CKE had had success selling extra-large Six Dollar Burgers (they actually cost about $3.95) at another CKE unit, Carl's Jr. Mr. Puzder bet that while Americans talk a lot about eating healthier, they were behaving otherwise. In 2002, he gave Mr. Frazer his marching orders: "No more skinny burgers."

Consumers have long told fast-food chains that they want burgers with mayonnaise, but many chains eschew mayo because it is expensive. Mr. Frazer went with it anyway. Working with a development team in the Hardee's test kitchen, he increased the thickness of dill pickles on the sandwich and switched to a tastier, more-expensive American cheese.

The designers considered using a single thick tomato slice, but "it was just too tomatoey," Mr. Frazer says, so they settled on two thinner slices. Four slices of bacon overpowered the original Thickburger, so three were used, although the Monster Thickburger was big enough to handle four. Bigger burgers required a firmer bun, which required more dough -- at still more cost. Mr. Puzder wanted butter on the buns, so Hardee's commissioned the creation of a "butter wheel" that the bun's bottom is rolled over before it's popped onto a grill. Finally, Hardee's made franchisees pay for $7,000 grills with bigger flames that reduce cooking time and give burgers a "char flavor," Mr. Frazer says.

"The costs were pretty heavy [but] we had to do something," says Bill Boddie, chief executive of Boddie-Noell Enterprises Inc., the Rocky Mount, N.C., franchisee of about 320 Hardee's units. His sales had fallen throughout the late 1990s, he says, but are now climbing again.

Hardee's then splurged on advertising that cost $55 million last year. All the spending showed up in the price that Hardee's recommends franchisees charge for a Monster Thickburger: $5.49. By comparison, the most-expensive McDonald's sandwich, the Double Quarter-Pounder with cheese, is $3.60 in the Chicago area, while Burger King's Angus Bacon and Cheese sandwich runs just over $4.

The high price has helped boost the average guest check at Hardee's by 5% to $4.58 in the past year. Annual average sales per restaurant have risen nearly 19%, from a low of $716,000 in fiscal 2001 to $850,000 in the third quarter of fiscal 2005, but are still below the $1 million industry average.

As Hardee's had hoped, Thickburgers have done especially well with men aged 18 to 34 years old. Recently, at a Hardee's in Niles, Mich., a working-class town, Ben Townsend, 27, bit into a Bacon Double Cheese Thickburger -- all 1,300 gooey calories of it, plus fries. Was he worried it might endanger his health? "I've never even thought about it," said Mr. Townsend, who builds homes. "And to be honest, I don't really care. It just tastes good."

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A) Le texte plus abordable de la semaine/Scholastic News: State of the Union [Bush vient de faire sa déclaration de politique générale au Congrès américain.]
http://teacher.scholastic.com/scholasticnews/news/article_fri.asp

State of the Union
By Karen Fanning

President Bush delivered his State of the Union address to Congress Wednesday night, outlining an ambitious second-term agenda that focused on both national and foreign affairs.

The President's hour-long speech expanded on many of the themes he covered during his second inaugural address, which he made on the steps of the U.S. Capitol less than two weeks ago.

Social Security

While Bush touched on familiar issues such as education and health care, he reserved much time to talk about his plans for overhauling Social Security. The program, which began in 1935, provides workers with benefits once they reach retirement age.

Under Bush's plan, American workers will be allowed to put some of the earnings they would normally contribute to Social Security into private savings accounts instead. The President believes these "personal retirement accounts" will not only benefit workers, but will also help save Social Security from future bankruptcy.

Bush's remarks drew audible grumbles from Democrats in the audience. They claim that his proposed reforms are risky and will lead to benefit cuts for retired Americans.

"[Democrats] are all for giving Americans more of a say and more choices when it comes to their retirement savings," said Senator Harry Reid a Democrat from Nevada. "But that doesn't mean taking Social Security's guarantee and gambling with it. And that's coming from a Senator who represents Las Vegas."

Around the World

On the international front, President Bush cited January 30's historic elections in Iraq as evidence that progress is being made in spreading freedom and fighting terrorism.

"The victory of freedom in Iraq will strengthen a new ally in the war on terror . . . bring more hope and progress to a troubled region, and thereby lift a terrible threat from the lives of our children and grandchildren," he said.

While Nancy Pelosi acknowledged the success of Iraq's election, the House Minority Leader from California criticized the President for not offering an exit strategy out of Iraq.

"We all know that the United States cannot stay in Iraq," she said. "We have never heard a clear plan from this administration for ending our presence in Iraq, and we did not hear one tonight."

President Bush also talked about his renewed hope for the peace process in the Middle East and praised the newly elected Palestinian leadership.

"The beginnings of reform and democracy in the Palestinian territories are showing the power of freedom to break old patterns of violence and failure," he said. "The goal of two democratic states, Israel and Palestine, living side by side in peace is within reach—and America will help them achieve that goal."

Ending With an Embrace

The most moving moment of the evening came when the parents of a Marine who died in Iraq embraced an Iraqi human rights advocate. The warm exchange between the invited guests sparked a long round of applause and seemed to touch the President.

In addition to Congress, the Cabinet, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the Justices of the Supreme Court were in attendance Wednesday night. The President's speech was interrupted by applause 66 times, including 44 standing ovations.

The State of the Union address is a centuries-old tradition, which began in 1790, when President George Washington delivered his "annual message."

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B) CNN/Global Office: Monday morning bad for your health [Le lundi au boulot, c'est mauvais pour la santé.]
http://edition.cnn.com/2005/BUSINESS/02/03/monday.pressure/index.html
Monday morning bad for your health
Thursday, February 3, 2005 Posted: 1735 GMT (0135 HKT)

(CNN) -- Monday mornings could seriously damage your health, according to new research. A study carried out by Japan's Tokyo Women's Medical University and published in the American Journal of Hypertension showed that many workers suffer a significant increase in blood pressure as they return to the office after the weekend.

High blood pressure is associated with a greater risk of suffering a heart attack or a stroke, and the results could help to explain why there are more heart attacks on Mondays than at any other time of the week.

Research published several years ago in the British Medical Journal showed a 20 percent spike in heart attacks at the beginning of the week. In the latest study, 175 men and women were fitted with devices to measure fluctuations in their blood pressure over the course of a week. The results showed a surge among those getting ready for work on Monday morning. Volunteers who were not going to work didn't experience a comparable increase, suggesting a link between increased blood pressure and work-related stress.

"Most people are free of the mental and physical burdens of work on a Sunday and experience a more stressful change from weekend leisure activities to work activities on Mondays," said Dr Shuogo Murakami, who led the research.

High blood pressure could also be caused by the stress of commuting. British psychologist Dr David Lewis recently showed that commuters suffered higher levels of stress than fighter pilots during their journey to work, with many recording increased heart rates at levels more usually associated with vigorous exercise.

Belinda Linden, Head of Medical Information at the British Heart Foundation, said a morning peak in blood pressure and the fact that more heart attacks occurred on Monday than on any other day of the week were both recognized by researchers. But she added that "larger and better controlled studies" were needed to establish the cause of the trends. "This relatively small study looks at the weekly variations of blood pressure, and has found that Monday morning provides the highest peak," said Linden. "Although it is tempting to try and explain these findings, and to assume that the return to work is a factor, the constraints of this study mean we cannot be sure of the causes of this variation."

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D) Miami Herald/Dave Barry: Can't we all just get along? [Humour. Dave propose de réunir la nation américaine après les divisions de l'élection présidentielle 2004.]
http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/living/columnists/dave_barry/10392846.htm
Can't we all just get along?

By DAVE BARRY

I thought that, in today's column, I would heal the nation.

The nation suffered a wound during the recent presidential election as a result of the rift between the red states -- defined as 'states where 'foreign cuisine' pretty much means Pizza Hut'' -- and the blue states, defined as ''states that believe they are smarter than the red states, despite the fact that it takes the average blue-state resident 15 minutes to order a single cup of coffee.''

Some blue-state residents are so upset about the election that they're talking about moving to Canada, which is technically a foreign nation. In my view, this would be a mistake: Canada is not the paradise it is often made out to be.

FACT: Every year, 43 percent of all Canadians -- a total of eight Canadians -- are eaten by polar bears.

Besides, running away is never the answer, unless you are a teenage boy who has just blown up a mailbox. As Americans, we need to stay here in America and work things out, because regardless of what color or hue of state we live in, we are all, deep down inside our undershorts, Americans. And as Americans, we must ask ourselves: Are we really so different? Must we stereotype those who disagree with us? Do we truly believe that ALL red-state residents are ignorant racist fascist knuckle-dragging NASCAR-obsessed cousin-marrying roadkill-eating tobacco-juice-dribbling gun-fondling religious fanatic rednecks; or that ALL blue-state residents are godless unpatriotic pierced-nose Volvo-driving France-loving left-wing communist latte-sucking tofu-chomping holistic-wacko neurotic vegan weenie perverts?

Yes. This is called ''diversity,'' and it is why we are such a great nation -- a nation that has given the world both nuclear weapons AND SpongeBob Squarepants.

And so today I am calling upon both sides in the red-blue rift to reach out. Maybe we could have a cultural-exchange program between red and blue states. For example, a delegation from Texas could go to California and show the Californians how to do some traditional Texas thing such as castrate a bull using only your teeth, and then the Californians could show the Texans how to rearrange their football stadiums in accordance with the principles of feng shui (for openers, both goalposts should be at the west end of the field). Or maybe New York and Kentucky could have a college-style ''mixer,'' featuring special ''crossover'' hors d'oeuvres such as bagels topped with squirrel parts.

I'm just thinking out loud here. (I don't mean that figuratively: The neighbors are complaining.) But I truly believe that, if the red states and blue states made a sincere effort to get to know each other, they'd discover that, beneath their surface differences, there are a lot of deep underlying differences.

But that doesn't mean we have nothing in common. We must always remember that, as Americans, we all have a common enemy -- an enemy that is dangerous, powerful and relentless. I refer, of course, to the federal government.

I speak from personal experience. For the past year, I have been hounded by an organization calling itself ''The United States Department of Commerce,'' which apparently is linked to the federal government. Every few weeks, the ''Department of Commerce'' sends me a threatening letter, demanding that I fill out ''the 2002 Survey of Business Owners and Self-Employed Persons (Form SBO-1 or SBO-2).'' This is a questionnaire that asks, among other things, whether I am a Samoan. The ''Department of Commerce'' claims that I have to fill this out because of something that was in my federal tax return.

Well listen up, ''Department of Commerce,'' and listen good: I have NO IDEA what was in my federal tax return. Like 93 percent of all U.S. taxpayers, I just sign it and send it in. For all I know, it states that I am a professional squid wrangler. So you're not going to trip me up by getting me to fill out your survey, OK? You will NEVER find out whether or not I am a Samoan, unless there is a generous federal program that pays millions of dollars to Samoans, in which case: Put me down as Samoan.

But this is not about me. This is about the need for all Americans to join together and heal our national rift. Remember that no matter where we live -- be it in a red state, or a blue state, or a Samoan state -- we are all Americans inside. If we cut ourselves, we will all bleed the same color; and then, as Americans, we will sue somebody. In conclusion, try these squirrel parts.

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THIS WEEK'S TEXTS

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1) Los Angeles Times: Costs make employers see smokers as a drag [Des entreprises américaines commencent à exclure les fumeurs de leur personnel.]

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&e=5&u=/latimests/20050128/
ts_latimes/costsmakeemployersseesmokersasadrag

Costs Make Employers See Smokers as a Drag
Fri Jan 28, 7:55 AM ET
By Daniel Costello Times Staff Writer

Employers have recently tried every carrot they can think of — including cash incentives and iPods — to persuade employees to quit smoking. Now some are trying the stick.

Pointing to rising health costs and the oversized proportion of insurance claims attributed to smokers, some employers in California and around the country are refusing to hire applicants who smoke and, sometimes, firing employees who refuse to quit.

"Employers are realizing the majority of health costs are spent on a small minority of workers," says Bill Whitmer, chief executive of the Health Enhancement Research Organization, an employer and healthcare coalition in Birmingham, Ala.

Federal and state laws bar employers from turning down applicants or firing workers based on race, religion or gender. Some states have enacted laws offering similar protections for smokers. But experts say workers in nearly half the states, including California, have few legal options if employers decide to prohibit them from smoking outside the workplace.

Employees in many states "work at the discretion of their employers and can be terminated for almost any reason as long as it's not illegal," says Stephen Sugarman, a law professor at UC Berkeley.

Last fall, Union Pacific Corp., an Omaha-based transportation company, stopped hiring smokers in seven states. Company executives said the move was made to help quell employee health costs, which have jumped more than 10% each of the last three years. Weyco Inc., an employee benefits firm with 200 employees in Okemos, Mich., began random drug tests for nicotine on Jan. 1, saying it would fire workers who failed the test or refused to quit smoking. (Four Weyco employees resigned rather than take the test, says the company's president, Howard Weyers.) The Riverside County Sheriff's Department plans soon to require applicants for deputy sheriff positions to sign a no-smoking agreement.

In most cases, employers are asking workers to report their smoking habits voluntarily or adding disclaimers such as "nonsmokers only" to job postings. Others are requiring workers to take breathalyzer tests that can catch traces of carbon monoxide in their lungs or submit to urine tests to detect nicotine.

A sheriff's office in Florida is asking job applicants who have a recent history of smoking to pass a polygraph test proving they no longer smoke outside of work.

Employees, workers' rights groups and some unions are decrying the smoking bans as an invasion of individual rights. "What you do in your own home after work or on the weekend is none of your bosses' business," says Lewis Maltby, president of the National Workrights Institute in Princeton, N.J., a spinoff of the American Civil Liberties Union (news - web sites). "The last time I checked, tobacco is a legal product." Maltby says his organization is trying to persuade some states to pass broader worker-protection laws.

Critics of the smoking bans say it's not clear that smokers are more costly than other workers, such as people who are obese. Though some studies have shown that smokers have higher absentee and lower productivity rates than nonsmokers, economists say the research is limited. It's possible, they say, that smokers don't dramatically increase health costs with chronic and expensive conditions like emphysema, heart disease and cancer until they're much older, when they may be employed elsewhere or retired. "It sounds right for employers to say, 'If we get rid of them, we'll save money.' But no one has the concrete data to prove that right now," says Tom Morrison, senior vice president of Segal Co., an employee benefits consulting firm in New York.

Although smoking rates continue to fall across the country — an estimated 23% of adults smoke today, down from 37% in 1970 — employers say they need to find new ways to rein in health costs. According to the Kaiser Family Foundation, a health policy group based in Menlo Park, Calif., health insurance premiums rose 11.2% last year, the fourth consecutive year of double-digit growth.

Some companies have begun charging smokers higher health insurance premiums and forcing others into employee wellness programs filled with smoking-cessation plans. Last month, Alabama announced plans to raise insurance rates on public employees throughout the state who smoke, and it is considering doing the same with obese workers. And, of course, many employers have banned smoking within the workplace for years.

In December, a national study by the Society for Human Resource Management found that nearly a third of U.S. employers polled had smoking-cessation programs; 5% prefer not to hire smokers and 1% refuse to hire smokers.

Weyers, of Weyco, says he instituted his new employee smoking policy after realizing that "if I don't do something to change employees' demand for healthcare, I'll never do anything about costs." Weyers estimates he now spends $750,000 a year on employee health premiums, and he worries he can't absorb many more cost increases. The company self-funds its insurance plan so any reduction in health costs would bring immediate savings.

Weyers says that though some employees complained about the smoking ban — and several left — most employees have slowly come to accept the new policy. The company estimates that about 10% of its workforce smoked and calculates that 28 employees and their spouses have quit since the new initiative was announced a year ago.

Critics are concerned that if more companies follow suit, it will lead to other employer intrusions on workers' lives. What is to stop companies from telling workers they can't ride motorcycles? Or eat junk food?

Legal protections of off-work activities vary considerably around the country, with the general rule giving employers the right to fire an employee for nearly any reason. Employees in Colorado are protected in most legal behaviors outside of work, whereas those in New York are protected when engaging in specific activities like recreation, politics and consumption of legal products. California has less protection around workers' off-the-job behavior, although they can participate in political organizations. California prohibits random employee drug testing other than for job applicants and workers in high-risk occupations such as trucking or medicine.

Maltby, of the Workrights Institute, says employees are facing a variety of challenges to their freedoms outside of work. A worker in Texas was fired in 2003 for having an affair off the job. This fall, a woman in Alabama lost her job for refusing to remove a John Kerry (news - web sites) bumper sticker from her car. (She was later hired by the Kerry campaign.)

Sugarman, of the University of California, says big employers may shy away from "paternalistic behavior," such as banning smoking outside of work, because it could make it more difficult to recruit and retain workers. Union Pacific says it will allow some exceptions to its policy. The company will hire a smoker if it cannot find another suitable applicant, a company spokeswoman says.

Michael Halpern, a physician and health researcher at Washington, D.C.-based consulting firm Exponent Inc., has studied smoking-related costs for employers. His research suggests that smokers may have higher rates of absenteeism because they are more likely to suffer from upper respiratory infections and other illnesses. Also, smokers may be more likely to have less healthful lifestyles, such as poor diets and infrequent physical activity. Still, he recommends employers stick with positive incentives to entice smokers to quit.

"My feeling is that the data is just too limited to support" drastic moves such as firing, he says

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