Shannon Larratt is Zentastic

I've posted a second update for today; this time an experience update. Not quite as giant though, but still more than enough to keep you busy (I'm guessing people are wrapped up in back to school issues). Thank you as always to the review team and the authors.

I've also added a new column — it's not really a column so much as a short letter, an open letter to employers letting them know why they should hire the modified. You can click here to see it if you'd like.

To whom it may concern,

There's been a lot of attention paid lately to people with piercings and tattoos. You may even be getting pressure not to hire (or even to fire) these people from a small percentage of your customers or even higher management, or to enact dress codes that ban these artforms. Both as an expert in these fields and as a successful business owner, I'd like to briefly tell you why this may not be a good decision purely from an objective business point of view.

Employees generate income for a business both by the work that they do, and by the interaction they have with your customers — and yes, this does of course include their appearance. In order to achieve this, it boils down to having employees that feel good about working for you, and make others feel good about doing business with you.

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Well, now I'm off to start working on tomorrow's update as well as Friday's. I wish I was kidding, but I'm not… There's a lot of good stuff in the queue though.

Just got added a few minutes ago:

…and back in stock for now (they go fast):

Before I get started on the experience update, let me mention a little news. When you look at that $87 billion dollars that Bush has requested, 78% of it is going to military operations, with only $15 billion of it going to “rebuilding” Iraq (more), arguing that the Iraqis should have to pay for their own reconstruction — I'll also mention that six month ago or whenever the first request was for this money, they said it would only take two and a half billion to rebuild Iraq… oops… Which means that either a lot more money has to be asked for, or Iraq will stay a total mess (and very angry and firecly anti-American when they finally do rebuild).

In any case, goodbye tax cuts (more).

I don't know what the factors are, but at least the American people are starting to very publicly say “holy crap, what the hell is our country doing?” As I mentioned yesterday, Bush's approval rating is at his lowest ever, and the majority of Americans now believe both that US foreign policy is overly aggressive and increases terrorism (more). That said, the poll also shows an increasing “black and white” phenomena — people either absolutely trust the President's “this is because on September 11th, 2001, four hundred planes crashed into the Empire State Building, and we can't let that happen again” malarkey, or they see through the lies totally and are completely losing trust in the system.

In “Crazy North Korea” news, it continues its escalating bluff or no bluff game, promising to continue its nuclear weapons development (more), including a 3,400 mile range ballistic missle (more) capable of carrying their nuclear bombs. For those that have no idea where North Korea is, that means that their weapons systems can take out most of the continental West Coast of America, as well as bases in Alaska, Hawaii, Japan, and Guam. Oh, and North Korea has a larger standing army than the US as well.

I should also point out that North Korea sells its weapons on a “first come first served” basis on the open market… so assuming they really develop or have developed this tech, you can bet that the new extremist government of Iraq, which you can also bet will desperately hate America if not all of the West, will be well armed with nuclear ICBMs. Yay for the apocalypse.

Then of course there's economic war as well as Europe starts to truly unify with the underlying goal of taking out America's dominance (more)…