Month: May 2013

Are Congressional Investigations a Waste of Time?

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People love to complain about Congress – especially about Congressional investigations. But should we?

The other day I was answering email in my office with the door open. A secretary just outside was discussing current events with her boss, a colleague of mine. The news had been full of scandals involving the executive branch of the US federal government; represented in media parlance as “The White House”. The Internal Revenue Service (Treasury Department) had been caught targeting conservative groups who were applying for tax exempt status, the Justice Department had been discovered illegally obtaining records from the Associated Press, and the State Department may have bungled the US response to the attack on Benghazi and then lied to cover it up. Adding insult to injury, the Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services has been accused of seeking donations from organizations that she regulates; a brazen conflict of interest and abuse of power if true.

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Seven Secrets of Health #1 – The Core is the Key

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Physically, no one can do much without a strong core. This article describes why you should work on it, and how.

Have you ever tried to throw a ball while treading water in a swimming pool? Water polo players notwithstanding, there is little to push against, so no one can throw far. That’s because of Newton’s third Law of motion – for every action there’s an equal and opposite reaction. If we throw something forward, our body absorbs the same force in a backward motion. If the forward force is greater than our body’s ability to absorb and if we are not braced against something solid, we will move backward. The principle is that we can only generate force in one direction when doing so against solid resistance, either within our body or from some external fixed point, in the opposite direction.

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Encouragement When Nothing Seems Right

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Nearing the end of a career can be heart-wrenching. Have I done anything worth doing? What am I going to do now? Why did I do so much wrong?

Last week one of the women who works for me was despondent. She is approaching retirement and has worked on a major project for many years, but some people in another organization seem to oppose it at every turn. “It has become hard to come to work” she said, “and it is hard not to think that most of my efforts for the past five years in this area have been in vain.” This woman is a true professional and her discouragement was palpable. I replied with one of the most encouraging passages in Scripture, “Let us not grow weary while doing good, for in due season we shall reap.” I reminded her of the good she was doing and her personal excellence in doing it. Nonetheless, she found it hard to be encouraged. “How can you be so sure,” she demanded, “that this will turn out alright and that my work has not been for nothing?” I replied with a favorite story of mine that demonstrates how tiny causes, given the right timing and conditions, turn out to have huge effects.

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Administrative Support – How to Manage a Meeting

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A dear friend and true expert, Dr. Eleanor Henry, writes on how to manage meetings. 

By Dr. Eleanor Henry

“Last week’s meeting would have started on time, but the starting time wasn’t emailed out until one hour before, so the participants, the few which showed up, straggled in and began work 15 minutes late. The room was hot and muggy from a recent air conditioner breakdown. The chair opened the meeting but the minutes from the meeting before were not done so the participants could not approve the old minutes. Also, no one remembered all of the open action items. It didn’t matter because 7 people were required for a quorum and only 6 attended. The agenda wasn’t complete and the read-aheads that the briefers provided were not distributed before hand. Others wanted to call in but could not because no one had arranged a dial-in link.  Even if there had been, the racket from hammers and drills of people trying to fix the air conditioning in the other room was nearly deafening. The briefer struggled to make himself heard above the din. The computer, slide projector and screen hadn’t been set up and no copies of the slides were available, so the attendees huddled around the briefer’s 15 inch computer screen. At least they could hear him better.”

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