As if liv­ing through the eight­ies once wasn’t bad enough. I found a chan­nel on the dig­i­tal cable chan­nel line up that I swear wasn’t there before, VH1 Clas­sics. And like our nat­ural reac­tion to a car wreck on the high­way, I slowed my chan­nel surf­ing to watch. What was with the lit­tle aer­o­bic instruc­tor head­bands on guys. Rod Stew­art was very fem­i­nine back then. Yikes, who dresses Ste­vie Won­der, a pink v-necked cash­mere sweater!?! The last video I watched on the chan­nel before I sped away was by a group called Scan­dal with Patty Smyth singing, appro­pri­ately enti­tled “Good­bye To You.”

Got this via email today:

Despite all the whizzing lightsabers, daz­zling space bat­tles and polit­i­cal drama, it was clear what “Star Wars, Episode III: Revenge of the Sith” really is. It’s case study of bad management.

Why does Anakin Sky­walker turn bad? It sure seems like it’s because he didn’t get a pro­mo­tion. He really wanted that title, Jedi Mas­ter (and the com­pany car would have been nice).

But, you say, maybe Anakin wasn’t ready for that pro­mo­tion. Maybe he was still too imma­ture, too eas­ily angered, too likely to fur­row his brow at the slight­est provocation.

So why didn’t his man­agers give him a clearly defined path to pro­mo­tion? Not a bunch of Jedi mumbo-jumbo about using the Force and exam­in­ing his feel­ings, but a con­crete list of job skills he needed to improve (Using time more wisely? Pri­or­i­tiz­ing bet­ter? Keep­ing the Jedi break room cleaner? Think­ing up bet­ter dialogue?)

The worst Jedi man­ager had to be Mace Windu, who, when things got hairy essen­tially told Anakin to just stay put, don’t worry, and by the way we don’t need your help right now.

That’s not the way help an employee feel empow­ered and invested in the task at hand.

And it was dis­as­trous for Yoda to tell a trou­bled Anakin to give up that which was most impor­tant to him. That sounded sus­pi­ciously like “Don’t expect a raise any time soon.”

Obi Wan Kenobi wasn’t much bet­ter. A boss should know enough about an employee’s life to know what they’re wor­ried about. Obi Wan didn’t real­ize his appren­tice was hav­ing a child (well, twins, actu­ally) with Padme until it was too late. Those sorts of per­sonal issues wor­ried Anakin to the point of obses­sion, yet Obi Wan was mostly oblivious.

And sure, Pal­pa­tine appealed to Anakin’s ego. But what smart boss doesn’t, from time to time? It’s not enough to tell an employee that he’s the cho­sen one, yada yada. Obi Wan should have real­ized that the con­stant “you’ve got more to learn, young appren­tice” stuff gets old after a while.

If Obi Wan and the coun­cil had cho­sen Anakin for a few cru­cial solo mis­sions, maybe he would have been too focused on Jedi busi­ness to be tempted by Palpatine’s Sith pitch.

Still, Anakin must bear the respon­si­bil­ity for his even­tual deci­sion to join the staff of Dark Side, Inc. He was seduced by a boss who promised much, but actu­ally with­held vital infor­ma­tion that would have affected Anakin’s most impor­tant decisions.

Those kinds of bosses — the ones to hold on to infor­ma­tion and use it like a weapon, all in an effort to manip­u­late employ­ees into doing their bid­ding — are usu­ally very artic­u­late and seem like your buddy at first. They seem like they’re look­ing out for you. Then, one day, you’re cut off at the knees. Depen­dent on them for every­thing. And have nowhere to turn, espe­cially if your old bosses kind of want you dead.

So the lessons for bosses and employ­ees every­where? Give your employ­ees a stake in the enter­prise, and if they want to move up, use con­struc­tive feed­back to tell them how they can do so. Moti­vate their best qual­i­ties by giv­ing incen­tives for good behav­ior, but be will­ing to accept crit­i­cism when it’s warranted.

And don’t become the kind of boss who rules through FEAR, INTIMIDATION, SECRECY and appeals to GREED and ARROGANCE.

Unless you’re really good with a lightsaber.

In an effort to keep our country’s econ­omy going strong, I’ve made a few pur­chases recently. My Camp Maz­dami­ata T-shirt came in the mail yes­ter­day and is in the wash as I type, for wear this week­end. This past Mon­day both my WTF stick­ers and my LOB sticker came in the mail.

One of the WTF stick­ers is on my cab­i­net at work and the other I may stick on the car. SWMBO has decreed that it can’t go on the bumper, so my only other option is to put it on the inside of the trunk lid with the other assorted stickers.

The LOB sticker was printed off cen­ter. There was a white area on the left between the edge and the black oval out­line while on the right the black was touch­ing the edge. On Tues­day I used the Cafe­press con­tact form and com­plained. Within a cou­ple hours I had a reply that was apolo­getic and said they would sent me another one. It also said, “You may keep it or give it to a friend; or per­haps you can donate it locally.” Right, I’m sure the Sal­va­tion Army would appre­ci­ate some­thing like that. Today, Mr. UPS Man dropped off the cor­rected sticker and it looks much bet­ter. For a change, excel­lent cus­tomer ser­vice from someone.

Next July 20th is World Jump Day. Remem­ber that old joke about what would hap­pen if all the Chi­nese jumped up and then landed at the same time? Well we don’t want them to do it because it would throw the earth the wrong way. But if we can get 600,000,000 (right now they only have 212,482,665 peo­ple signed up) res­i­dents of the west­ern hemi­sphere to jump at the same time, we can change the earth’s orbit just enough to stop global warm­ing accord­ing to Pro. Hans Peter Neisward of the Depart­ment of Grav­i­ta­tion­sphysik of ISA/Munchen. The time for all of us in the East­ern Time Zone of the US is 06:39:13. So you won’t for­get you can sign up to get a one day warn­ing email. Tomor­row morn­ing one year in advance of the event I will be in my back yard doing a prac­tice jump. Oh, yeah, while you are wait­ing don’t for­get to buy the T-shirt.

I dis­cov­ered World Jump Day at a web site called Oh So Ran­dom, home to weird news, funny pho­tos, and other ran­dom stuff. Here you can learn how to make your own machine wash­able men­strual pads or find an ebay auc­tion of a french fry that’s shaped like the Nike sym­bol or learn how to hack those pesky WALK/DON’T WALK sig­nals so that they change at your command.

For some good clean fun, check out Thread­bared where you can find out the true sto­ries behind the pho­tos on the cover of sewing pat­terns. While you’re there don’t for­get to buy a T-shirt.

I saved the biggest bit of lunacy for last. Here is a site that is hav­ing a photo con­test for peo­ple who own a cer­tain small Japan­ese con­vert­ible sports car. “My Favorite Miata Pic­ture” Con­test. First prize is a T-shirt.

There is a big hole in the cycling world now. Lance Arm­strong has hung up his pro­fes­sional bike for good. It is going to be strange when next July rolls around and it won’t be, “Will he do it again?”, but who is the heir appar­ent. I cer­tainly hope for Amer­i­cans it is another fel­low coun­try­man. Not because I’m jin­go­is­tic, but more because it raises some aware­ness in Mr. & Mrs. John Q. Pub­lic that cyclists are human and you shouldn’t try and run them off the road for sport.

Dur­ing one of the “Chas­ing Lance” shows on the Dis­cov­ery Chan­nel last night, at one point Lance show us a gym bag with some of the Tour de France’s Yel­low Jer­seys he’s won in it and he calls them Mel­low John­nies. A play on the French term for them, mail­lot jaune. In honor of Mr. Armstrong’s accom­plish­ment of seven in a row, I have cre­ated a spe­cial T-shirt: Seven Mel­low John­nies. Buy one and I’ll donate the $1 mark-up to the Lance Arm­strong Foun­da­tion.