"Open wide the doors"

Earlier this year, I was elected to a term on the departmental Policy Committee. It now appears that I have been named to the unofficial position of Department Policy-Writer. Not policy-maker, mind you; the committee meets to discuss some issue, and we kick around ideas, and finally settle on which points ought to appear in the official department policy. Then they ask me to write it up. I guess they think I'm more fluent in Bureaucrat than they are. Not exactly a saleable skill, but I suppose there's some sort of cachet to it...

On a wider field: the Illinois Legislature recently passed a new Ethics Act for state employees, and the university has just promulgated policies implementing the act. The policies include the following statement: "Employees shall not engage in prohibited political activities during compensated hours." (A list of prohibited activities follows.) What bothers me is that I have no idea what "during compensated hours" means for a salaried employee. I think I'd better find out, just in case, someday, I feel like engaging in "prohibited political activities". I'd be playing Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young right now, but I only have them on vinyl and I don't have a functioning turntable.

Bear again

I finished reading Vitals this evening, and I have to say it left a bad taste in my mouth. Of all of his long fiction that I've read, I think this is the first that's been so relentlessly downbeat. Yes, The Forge of God was sad, but there was some bittersweetness to it - more melancholy than anything else. The worlds Bear has depicted in the past have been wonderful, in the literal sense of that word; this one was just nasty. Bah. If I want to be depressed, I'll read something by Joe Haldeman. I expect something else from Bear.