Life Lessons

A friend sent me the following. It's attributed to Bill Gates, but a modicum of research will show it was actually written by education reformer, Charles J. Sykes (the original mentions thanking God, yet Bill Gates is a known atheist). It none-the-less struck a chord:

Bill Gates gave a speech at a high school about eleven things they did not and will not learn in school. He talks about how feel-good, politically correct teachings created a generation of kids with no concept of reality and how this concept set them up for failure in the real world.

Rule 1 : Life is not fair - get used to it!

Rule 2 : The world doesn't care about your self-esteem. The world will expect you to accomplish something BEFORE you feel good about yourself.

Rule 3 : You will NOT make $60,000 a year right out of high school. You won't be a vice-president with a car phone until you earn both.

Rule 4 : If you think your teacher is tough, wait till you get a boss

Rule 5 : Flipping burgers is not beneath your dignity. Your Grandparents had a different word for burger flipping: They called it opportunity.

Rule 6 : If you mess up, it's not your parents' fault, so don't whine about your mistakes, learn from them.

Rule 7 : Before you were born, your parents weren't as boring as they are now. They got that way from paying your bills, cleaning your clothes and listening to you talk about how cool you thought you were: So before you save the rain forest

from the parasites of your parent's generation, try delousing the closet in your own room..

Rule 8 : Your school may have done away with winners and losers, but life HAS NOT. In some schools, they have abolished failing grades and they'll give you as MANY TIMES as you want to get the right answer. This doesn't bear the slightest resemblance to ANYTHING in real life.

Rule 9 : Life is not divided into semesters. You don't get summers off and very few employers are interested in helping you FIND YOURSELF. Do that on your own time.

Rule 10 : Television is NOT real life. In real life people actually have to leave the coffee shop and go to jobs.

Rule 11 : Be nice to nerds. Chances are you'll end up working for one..

Can't Help But Feel

Can't help but feel that keeping Jonnie Marbles behind bars while he appeals against the totally unreasonable sentence for his foam pie protest against Murdoch is a bit excessive.

Can't help but feel the Royal Family is trying to rejuvenate their bloodline with monkey genes by having Zara marry Mike 'the Nose' Tindall.

Can't help but feel that accusing suppliers of ripping off government departments is a bit off when supplying government departments (including the MoD) means jumping through 20,000 hoops and spending a fortune on getting someone to fill in all the Byzantine paperwork involved in government procurement. No wonder it costs £32 to provide the MoD with one pencil. It's a sad irony that all the efforts put into ensuring the government is not ripped off results in them being ripped off - but it's a self-inflicted injury.

What can't you help thinking?

No, No, No!

Amy Winehouse's father, Mitch Winehouse, apparently wants to set up a charitable foundation to provide young kids with drugs rehab, but the kids say; "No, no, no!"

The Thin End of the Wedge

If young girls are obsessed with being thin, why are so many of them fat?

Woof!

Veggie Loyalty Card for Games

Chairman Bill has discovered that being vegetarian does not necessarily mean someonewho eats vegetables. No.1 son has a friend staying for the few days. He was advertised as being vegetarian, but when asked what vegetables he likes, he said; "None." So, what's the name for a kid who doesn't eat meat, nor vegetables. I'd say the correct term is 'normal kid'.

Hay is wondering whether to risk life and limb by poking a stick with a pizza on the end of it into their cage.

Experiments with monkeys have shown that loyalty cards can work on those with limited intelligence. That's why computer game shops give them to kids. Perhaps parents should develop loyalty cards for their kids to get them to do jobs around the house.

Why is it that kids buy PS3 games that depict men as massive, muscle-bound thugs festooned with all manner of weaponry? There's simply no market for games called 'Atomic Scientist III', 'Revenge of the Mathematicians' or 'Accountancy Wars'.

Overheard in the Meeting

My company's HR Director is doing a 30 minute slot on the company HR policy and challenges.

Chairman Bill: "And are you ever intending to implement psychometric testing, which, for some inexplicable reason, seems to be all the rage in the UK?"

HR Director: "No."

CEO: "If we did, 40% of the people in the company wouldn't be here."

Hiatus Territory Marker

Overheard in the Caravan:

Hay: "Where did you put your dirty clothes?"

Chairman: "In the bedroom."

Hay: "You've left them in a pile in the corner. Why do you do that?"

Chairman: "Male thing - territory marker."

Hay: "It is, isn't it? Just because you can't get down and do a poo in the corner to mark your territory, you leave your soiled clothing there."

No posts for a few days. Am at a global sales conference at HQ in Israel till Wednesday. Taken No. 1 son with me this time to give him an experience. Might wean him off his PS3, although that is perhaps too much to hope for.

Was going to fly BA, but I didn't relish the idea of showing the steward to his seat or serving him his lunch and drinks in return for the privilege of flying with him aboard. Went KLM instead.

We're all off to dinner tonight with the CEO; they've kindly No.1 son along too. Nice people. It is a refreshing change to work for a company led by nice people.

Doctor Bill's Winehouse Vision

There was an item on the news earlier this week about tall people being more susceptible to cancer. Now this might be down to nothing more complex than the fact there are more cells in their bodies, and the higher the number of cells, the more there are to mutate and become cancerous.

Chairman Bill therefore has this recommendation for avoiding cancer - amputate extraneous limbs and hack out the bits you can do without, thus reducing your total number of cells and leaving less to go wrong. Simples!

The Chairman has warned Hayley repeatedly about the dangers of leaving the toilet seat down when going to bed, but does she listen? The Chairman navigates to the loo during the night, using his super-seeker night time sense (which means stumbling around in the dark and not switching on the light) and the result is absolute carnage - a bit like the result when one of your mates at school put cling film over the loo as a joke.

Amy Winehouse... A disaster waiting to happen - such a shame when she had so much talent. The irony is that, like so many pop stars before her, by her early death she has ensured her immortality in the pop firmament.

Below is an amusing image I came across.

Heated Greek Markets - Innit?

Overheard in the Caravan:

No.1 Son; "Hey dad, the grammar they teach at school is well bad, innit?"

A punishing heatwave has settled over central and eastern parts of the US, pushing temperatures as high as 37C (99F) and causing up to 22 deaths. That's nothing - we experienced 41.5 degrees in Rome last week. Mind you, I'm not sure whether they were suffering it day after day though.

Markets - you know, those entities which defy gravity and the laws of physics - have risen on the news that the spendthrift Greeks have been given yet more billions to fritter away on non-existent public sector jobs and a half day week. Surely dad (or German mum, in this case) paying off overextended son's bills - again - does not instil confidence in said son's ability to manage his finances responsibly.

Markets - funny things - never trust 'em, they're about as reliable as a News Corp witness.