A thought on the removal of administrative and support staff from institutions.

As we all know, currently, institutions all over the Western world are removing "unnecessary" and "redundant" positions from their administrative and support staffs, focusing more specifically on their "core" functions.

Which is a reasonable concession to make in this economic difficulty.

The idea came to me when I was speaking to my husband about a friend who was commenting on an event at Harvard Law School. "Oh? He still has his post? I thought he'd been made redundant."

Redundant being current American slang for, "You're sacked." Its connotation is kinder than being sacked — it's more of a "This is none of your doing, but we need to take away your pay packets anyway. Hope you don't mind too much."

But, to return to my friend, my husband answered, "No, as far as I know, he's still there." He was a systems administrator and IT specialist, so presumably he has yet to be made "redundant", another interpretation of which is, "We can afford to let go of everyone in your department, as we'll handle this for ourselves from here out. So long!"

Somehow, my mind in turn related this to the television series Futurama.

In Futurama, there is a recurring character named "Scruffy". No one ever seems to know who he is or what he does, and in fact, they cannot identify him from scene to scene. He informs them, each time, in a rather dry voice, that he's "Scruffy. The janitor."

BENDER

Come on, we've gotta go fix the plasma fusion boiler.

[CUT TO: Basement of Planet Express. The boiler is rocking and steam is hissing from it. FRY and BENDER walk down the steps and find SCRUFFY reading a magazine called Zero-G Juggs.]

BENDER

Who are you?

SCRUFFY

Scruffy. The janitor.

BENDER

(Clearly agitated and annoyed.)

Well, why aren't you fixing the boiler?

SCRUFFY

(Indifferent to BENDER's agitation)

Schedule conflict.

SCRUFFY licks his thumb and turns a page in Zero-G Juggs.

— "Parasites Lost", aired 21 Jannuary, 2001

It occurs to me that, indeed, we could reach a point at which all "superfluous" administrative and support staff were reduced to, "Scruffy. The janitor."

"Excuse me, but do you know who I'm supposed to see? My pay wasn't deposited into my account this week." "I'm having difficulties with the audio-visual presentation for foreign students that allows for simultaneous translation." "Oh, God, send help! Someone just had a heart attack!"

With the removal of enough support staffers from any institution, we could indeed reach a point at which virtually all complaints were re-directed to, "Scruffy. The janitor."

¿Estás de cachondeo?

Bolivia's Morales: Army, police have CIA contacts.

It's telling that my first reaction is, "This surprises you?"

This time, Morales says a mid-level military official and Bolivian police officers are in contact with the U.S. spy agency. Morales made the allegations on Saturday, but offered no details or proof. He said he is personally investigating the matter "porque vender información a agentes externos es traición a la patria."

I hate to tell you this, sir, but I will anyway. The Monroe Doctrine was written as carte blanche for norteamericanos to fuck around with the rest of the Americas, and The Roosevelt Corollary did not help matters in the slightest.

Furthermore, señor, when entire sections of your country break off to declare independence, everyone with the common sense necessary to keep their own craniums out of their own colons is going to be keeping an eye on the exit door.

Beyond that, you have not only come up with the most hare-brained policy possible — Coca, sí, cocaine, no — you proclaimed upon taking up the presidency, ¡Viva coca! ¡Muerte a los Yankees! which is so not going to reverberate well with one of your most important trading partners. To further piss them off, you suspended U.S. anti-drug efforts.

Look, I'm a norteamericana. I can tell you exactly how hypocritical and stupid we're going to be about it — incredibly so. We'll happily tell you we don't support your production of cocaine as we tell you to ignore that glass coffee table in the living room. But being norteamericanos, we also know that the most powerful force that can be harnessed by ordinary man is money, a commodity that your population has in scarcity. As a coca farmer yourself, you want to preserve the existence of coca for traditional use.

Traditional use of coca is a subsistence use, limited to ceremonial functions and small amounts as a stimulant, rather similar to coffee or tea. Dry coca leaf trades at US $4.30 per kilogramme. Your private foreign investments (as opposed to soft money drops by the World Bank and IMF) is estimated between 8 and 12% of GDP, despite enormous natural energy reserves, and the inflation rate is in the double digits consistently. People tend to rank "being able to not starve" well above "participation in forward-reaching ideas with international importance."

At the very least, if you'd like for us to take this whole "not producing drugs, honest" thing seriously ... please stop giving Hugo Chávez coca in front of Alternativa Bolivariana summits with members of the Fourth Estate present, ¿vale?