Dept. of taking all the fun out of life. “Couch potatoes especially should avoid sitting in the same position for long periods,” advises Dr. Craig Tokowitz of the Illinois Masonic Medical Center. “They should by all means not sit in overstuffed furniture because it doesn’t offer the back any support.”
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Glasnost anyone? “Imagine: You are the manager of a large and complex public enterprise that is important, indeed crucial, to the future of the state,” writes Jay Amberg in Chicago Times (January/February 1988). “You are held accountable for the success of the enterprise, but you have little authority to make the decisions. . . . You have little control over who enters the site to work for you. The central office hires all workers, and part of your staff answers, to the bureaucrats in the central office rather than to you. . . . You are, of course, given plenty of raw materials to shape into the products the state demands. But the finest materials, like the best workers, are kept, from you. These are given to managers at special sites favored by the central office. These managers may even recruit your superior workers, while you are left with whomever the central office sends you as replacements. If this were not daunting enough, the special site managers receive extra workers who aren’t considered part of the quota allocated to every site. . . . the product of your enterprise . . . often fails to meet the standards set by the state.
More than three-quarters of dentists use gloves when treating all their patients, so as to keep from getting AIDS, reports the Chicago-based Academy of General Dentistry. Nearly 20 percent more use gloves in treating “some patients.” We’d love to know how they make up their minds.
Tales from Iowa, as told by Osha Davidson in the Progressive (January 1988): “Can-hunting is more usually a solitary activity, done by farmers and laid-off factory workers while the kids are at school. One woman told me she and her husband had walked the road in front of their farm collecting recyclable cans to get gas money so they could drive to their foreclosure hearing over in the county seat. When they got there, they found that the judge had gone to a meeting but had left behind a recorded message informing them they had lost their farm.”
