Quick Hits

Jesse:
Some smatterings follow...

Interesting essay by Naomi Wolf in today's Globe. This whole "communitarian = good" thing that she hints it is, frankly, not something I think I have a clear grasp on (and what I do grasp I think I'm against so far). But this is a neat piece, and I really like the question it raises about whether progressive efforts should be focused at home, or abroad.

This piece from last week on how the Justice Minister / Attorney General has a responsibility to be more than just a political hack, and Rob Nicholson (federal JM/AG) isn't so much doing that when it comes to the Abdelrazik situation. This is just another symptom of my deep concern with our system; I don't think it works if the parties involved aren't interested in playing by the rules (sort of like the British "unwritten constitution"). If the AG decides not to do his or her job, people and the system will suffer, but we don't really have a mechanism in place to say "hey, guys, your AG has to be an adult who will uphold the rule of law". So when the government is opposed to playing nice...

Finally, has anyone ever thought have making performance evaluations "relative"? What I mean is, give supervisors 10 (or 100, or whatever) points to allocate on an evaluation, and insist that they spend them on a series of categories, to give future potential employers a sense of where the individual's strengths lie? I mention this because it might help mitigate some of the randomness associated with evaluations (and reference letters), wherein some evaluators will, inevitably, be much more effusive with their praise than others.