A whistleblower is one who exposes wrongdoing in their workplace. Things don’t usually go well for whistleblowers. They get branded as “troublemakers” by their employers, or worse. Canadian Duncan Edwards reported a strip club breach of security by his Defence Minister employer and was fired for his diligence. Iranian doctor Ramin Pourandarjani died of “salad poisoning” shortly after reporting the use of torture against political prisoners by his government. Christoph Meili, the bank guard who reported the destruction of Holocaust victim’s savings records by UBS bank, had to be given political asylum in the United States after Swiss authorities attempted to arrest him. Being a whistleblower is not an easy decision to make.

Even if I thought that our printers killed baby seals, I would not be a whistleblower. The Bernards, for generations, have silenced whistleblowers. It’s how we made all our money.
Quotation from television character Andy Bernard on The Office

It was a crisis of conscience. I had to be cognizant of what could happen to my family as well as to me. I was confident I wouldn’t be able to get a job in a corporation again, certainly not in the insurance industry.
Quotation from Wendell Potter, former executive at Cigna

P.S. My heart goes out to the people of Japan in the wake of this week’s earthquake, tsunami and nuclear melt-down. Don’t give up!

“Beeeeee” said the llama. That is very good advice. Just be.

The wife should always avoid the company of female beggars, female buddish mendicants, unchaste and roguish women, female fortune tellers and witches.
Quotation from Vatsyayana, Kama Sutra (Aphorisms on Love) “When love becomes intense, pressing with the nails or scratching the body with them is practised on the following occasions: On the first visit; at the time of setting out on a journey; on the return from a journey; at the time when an angry lover is reconciled; and lastly when the woman is intoxicated.”

This is the season of Naked Lady lilies in northern California. They grow the flower stem first- the leaves only come later after the flower has bloomed.

“The pervasive theme is rebellion.” Laurel Thatcher Ulrich begins her new book, “Well-Behaved Women Seldom Make History,” struggling to explain — understand — the appeal of an aside she made in the spring 1976 issue of an academic journal, a comment that has become a popular slogan printed on T-shirts and coffee mugs and bumper stickers, usually without her permission and often without attribution.
Quotation from Kathryn Harrison, We’re No Angels, Sunday Book Review (The New York Times) Much of what is characterized as female “misbehavior” is a matter of voice — of a woman insisting she be heard, paid not only attention, but also the respect due a being as fully human and necessary as a man.

It was recently revealed that Russian spies posing as “ordinary” Americans were arrested. They lived in happy surburban homes. They sent messages to their handlers using invisible ink. They posted images on the internet with secret, coded texts hidden in them. They had “American” children. One alleged spy, Anna Chapman, was a “demure, divorced 28-year-old who said she founded an online real estate company worth $2 million.” They were, in short, “normal” Americans, which is probably what gave them away.

Jessie Gugig, 15, said she could not believe the charges, especially against Mrs. Murphy. “They couldn’t have been spies,” she said jokingly. “Look what she did with the hydrangeas.”
Quotation from In Ordinary Lives, U.S. Sees the Work of Russian Agents by Scott Shane and Charlie Savage (The New York Times)

“She said they were from Canada.”
Quotation from Lila Hexner, who lived next door to one of the spies.

The tragic oil “spill” in the Gulf of Mexico continues. BP CEO Tony Hayward’s congressional hearing this week was a disappointment. I wanted him to tell Congress that BP takes every precaution to prevent accidents like this. I wanted to hear that safety and protecting the environment is as important to him as profits. After all, Mr. Hayward was appointed in 2007 to “clean up” BP after the Texas City refinery fire of 2005 and the Prudhoe Bay pipeline spills that occured the following year. But instead of changing the penny-pinching corporate culture of BP, he cut expenses and eliminated 7,500 jobs.

Does America’s rightous indignation make you feel uncomfortable? It does me. Two months ago, we were angry at Goldman Sachs. BP is just the villain du jour. The underlying problem is we– as a society– tolerate expediency over having to make difficult choices. Too many of us think it’s ok to use torture as a tool in the war against terrorism. Why do Republicans and Democrats point fingers at each other rather than fix the health care system or Social Security? Where is the indignation over having 300,000 homeless children in California?
Doing the right thing proactively is always less costly and painful than damage control after something bad happens.

Far From Gulf, a Spill Scourge 5 Decades Old (The New York Times) “The Niger Delta, where the wealth underground is out of all proportion with the poverty on the surface, has endured the equivalent of the Exxon Valdez spill every year for 50 years.”

Be inspired by: The Excitement is Building (on Habitat for Humanity) “Everyone is pretty ordinary. No divas or superstars. But together we make a very big difference.”

Water is water is water. Until you mix it with oil. Water and oil do not mix, and that’s a lesson we are learning again and again… and again.
The 10-million gallon Exxon Valdez oil spill in Alaska 21 years ago isn’t even in the top 30 oil spills of all time. Remember when Iraq opened the spigots on several Kuwaiti oil tankers in 1991? That spill topped 520 million gallons. A rig in Mexico collapsed in 1980 and spilled 30,000 gallons of oil into the ocean every day for a year. Bigger oil spills have occurred in France, Russia, Angola, Canada, Italy and in the Persian Gulf.
The BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill on America’s Gulf coast is “officially” leaking 5,000 gallons a day, but “Steven Wereley, an associate professor of mechanical engineering at Perdue University, told the House Energy and Commerce Committee that by his calculations… the spill appears to be closer to 72,000 barrels per day–or more than 3 million gallons” of oil per day.
Tomorrow, the Deepwater Horizon will become the second worst oil spill in history. There is no good news in this.
My wish is that we could turn oil into water and let fishes be fishes.

The world’s five largest publicly traded oil companies [are] on track to earn more than $100 billion before year’s end. Yet, at the same time that Big Oil’s bottom line is going up, so are Americans’ energy costs.
Quotation from Allyson Schwartz

I hear one message- don’t blame me.
Quotation from Sen. John Barrasso, Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee. (BP blames Transocean Ltd. and Transocean Ltd. blames BP… or maybe it was Halliburton Inc. Some blame the Republicans while others blame President Barack Obama)

If I can’t blame YOU, who else is there to blame?

Father Wages Court Battle Against Funeral Protests “Military deaths are the work of a wrathful God who punishes the United States for tolerating homosexuality.” (ABC News)

Why Is Pat Robertson Blaming Haiti? “The [Haitian earthquake] was divine retribution for a pact with the devil.” (Time Magazine)

Disabled Kids are God’s Punishment for Abortion “God is taking “vengeance” on parents who have had abortions by making their other children disabled.” (CBS News)

“What’s in the cookie batter?” she wanted to know. “Lots of sugar,” he said. “Just remember I’m not responsible if you don’t like them.”

Goldman Sachs charged with fraud by SEC “These charges are far more severe than anyone had imagined,” and suggest Goldman teamed with “the leading short-seller in the industry to design a portfolio of securities that would crash,” said John Coffee, a securities law professor at Columbia Law School in New York. (Reuters)

Abacus Allowed Goldman to Shuffle Mortgage Risk Like Beads “The SEC said that Goldman Sachs created and sold Abacus 2007-AC1 without disclosing that hedge fund Paulson & Co. helped pick the underlying securities and also bet the CDO would default. Paulson was proved correct, and his hedge fund eventually turned a $1 billion profit and CDO investors lost a similar amount, according to the SEC.” (Bloomberg)

The product was new and complex but the deception and conflicts are old and simple. Goldman wrongly permitted a client that was betting against the mortgage market to heavily influence which mortgage securities to include in an investment portfolio, while telling other investors that the securities were selected by an independent, objective third party.
Quotation from SEC Enforcement Director Robert Khuzami

I think the bartender was flirting.

I am not a sexy woman. I’m not beautiful. I’m not a sex kitten. I don’t flirt with people, yet I’ve been tagged more of a sex symbol than women who truly are– and I that’s solely because I don’t reveal too much. People are curious.
Quotation from Shirley Manson

I like my women like I like my coffee… covered in bees!
Quotation from Eddie Izzard

Face it: Wooing is out, Woo Woo is in. Courtship in America ended somewhere between the time the television shows The Brady Bunch and The Love Boat were cancelled.

One good idea would be to invite the Pisces lady to your home to show her your aquarium. You should start your seduction process when she is engrossed in seeing fishes in your aquarium. Give her a kiss on the shoulders and this will automatically lead her to your bedroom.
Quotation from “Seduction by Sun Signs” (TheSecretsofSeduction.com)

A tall well-built woman with good
reputation, who can cook frogs
legs, who appreciates a good fuc-
schia garden, classical music and tal-
king without getting too serious.
But please only read lines 1, 3 and 5.
Quotation from a Personal Ad (DateHookup.com)