BCD 11.09.2023

In haphazardly scouring the internet for some royalty-free (read: cheap; still not making any money off this blog like WordPress keeps telling me I can) pictures of the chaos involving with boarding an airplane for an upcoming entry, I came across this one associated with an article entitled “Passengers boarding airplanes: we’re doing it wrong”:Continue reading “BCD 11.09.2023”

Big blue boneheads

Another little administrative tidbit from today. I’m sure they meant well. I just wish that they also thought well while doing it sometimes … Apparently the university here in Not-Bielefeld has recently mandated that all new teaching staff have to take a one-hour, online “welcome workshop” within their first two months. Among other topics designedContinue reading “Big blue boneheads”

BCD 11.06.2023

Perhaps one of the few segments of the workforce that has as little grounding in reality as admin is marketing. Unfortunately, however, reality too often plays into their weirdly warped worldview. (Or is shaped by it.) Case in point is the latest invention of some too clever marketing-type that I saw the other day: limited-editionContinue reading “BCD 11.06.2023”

Severely handicapped information technology

Everyone knows the abbreviation IT these days. (But probably no one knows that it dates to 1958 …) My feeling is that its modern incarnation is often missing a few letters ahead of IT. Just like admin, IT departments love to inform us how they are only there to serve us when the reality isContinue reading “Severely handicapped information technology”

BCD 13.05.2023

Here we go again … Once more the American legal system is punishing businesses for underestimating the creative stupidity of their customers. Remember the famous 1994 McDonald’s coffee case where McDonald’s was sued successfully for selling “defectively manufactured” (i.e. hot) coffee that was “unreasonably dangerous” because an older lady managed to spill an entire cupContinue reading “BCD 13.05.2023”

BCD 23.04.2023

With Russian forces stalled menacingly close to the EU’s eastern borders for over a year now, it’s comforting to know that similar threats are being recognized and neutralized here in western Europe on a daily basis too. Case in point: this CNN story yesterday on how Belgian customs in collaboration with the Comité Interprofessionnel duContinue reading “BCD 23.04.2023”

Discover the unfriendly skies

These are boom times for the airline industry and thank God too! After the recent corona pandemic scuttled any number of airline companies and forever left its mark on our meeting structures and travel habits, it was an open question whether or not the industry would ever recover or even be as relevant any longer.Continue reading “Discover the unfriendly skies”

BCD 09.04.2023 (Easter Sunday edition)

If, unlike me, you’ve ever wondered what day Easter Sunday will fall on in some given year, you could look at a calendar. Or you could ask Google. Or you could quickly work it out for yourself using this simple calculation for our bonehead calculation of the day (BCD): (The following figure is the sameContinue reading “BCD 09.04.2023 (Easter Sunday edition)”