occupations

"Red sky at night, sailors' delight. Red sky at morning, sailors take warning."

"O well for the fisherman’s boy, That he shouts with his sister at play! O well for the sailor lad, That he sings in his boat on the bay!"

"In Tenedos I met by accident, two French Merchants of Marseills, intending for Constantinople, who had lost their ship at Sio, when they were busie at venereall tilting, with their new elected Mistresses, and for a second remedy, were glad to come thither in a Turkish Carmoesalo. The like of this I have seene fall out with Seafaring men, Merchants, and Passengers, who buy sometimes their too much folly, with too deare a repentance."

"I fear thee, ancyent Marinere! I fear thy skinny hand; And thou art long and lank and brown As is the ribb’d Sea-sand."

"Where lies the land to which the ship would go? Far, far ahead, is all her seamen know. And where the land she travels from? Away, Far, far behind, is all that they can say.On sunny noons upon the deck’s smooth face, Link’d arm in arm, how pleasant here to pace; Or, o’er the stern reclining, watch below The foaming wake far widening as we go.On stormy nights when wild north-westers rave, How proud a thing to fight with wind and wave! The dripping sailor on the reeling mast Exults to bear, and scorns to wish it past.Where lies the land to which the ship would go? Far, far ahead, is all her seamen know. And where the land she travels from? Away, Far, far behind, is all that they can say."

"A Shipman was ther, woning fer by weste: For aught I woot, he was of Dertemouthe. He rood up-on a rouncy, as he couthe, In a gowne of falding to the knee. A daggere hanging on a laas hadde he Aboute his nekke under his arm adoun. The hote somer had maad his hewe al broun; And, certeinly, he was a good felawe. Ful many a draughte of wyn had he y-drawe From Burdeux-ward, whyl that the chapman sleep. Of nyce conscience took he no keep. If that he faught, and hadde the hyer hond, By water he sente hem hoom to every lond. But of his craft to rekene wel his tydes, His stremes and his daungers him bisydes, His herberwe and his mone, his lodemenage, Ther nas noon swich from Hulle to Cartage. Hardy he was, and wys to undertake; With many a tempest hadde his berd been shake. He knew wel alle the havenes, as they were, From Gootlond to the cape of Finistere, And every cryke in Britayne and in Spayne; His barge y-cleped was the Maudelayne."

"I think if you're a young woman on a set, which is largely peopled by men, the crew will be 90% men and the women won't be on the set with you, because generally speaking we do not have parity on any level on film sets, it's all men. And that's a very uncomfortable position for a young woman who's starting in the industry, but it is absolutely essential that there is someone there to protect them. Absolutely essential. It's not to say that they're going to be in there all the time arranging your boobs, it's that they can be there in case you might feel that there's a position that you've got into that you're not quite comfortable with, you know, your bum hole's waving in the air, and you just think I don't feel quite comfortable… I've worked with young actresses who've been truly traumatised by their experiences on set. And so, my passion for intimacy co-ordinators and protection for young women particularly, and young men, I mean, it's not necessarily an easy thing for any person."

"Lots of people have lots of opinions about intimacy coaches and it's a relatively new job and I think people are still working out certain parameters. Some people will say, "Oh, I don't need them." But if that intimacy co-ordinator prevents that one actor from experiencing life-changing trauma then of course it justifies the other 99 people who don't need it. I needed it on this, definitely."

"I want to dedicate this award to the director of intimacy . Thank you for your existence in our industry, for making the space safe for creating physical, emotional, and professional boundaries so that we can make work about exploitation, loss of respect, about abuse of power, without being exploited or abused in the process. I know what it's like to shoot without an intimacy director — the messy, embarrassing feeling for the crew, the internal devastation for the actor. Your direction was essential to my show, and I believe essential for every production company that wants to make work exploring themes of consent."

"Due to the deficient levels of lactase, milk ingestion can lead to GI upset including diarrhea and vomiting. Additionally, whole fat milk or other dairy products may contain too much fat and can also lead to diarrhea and vomiting too."

"I think that sick people in Ankh-Morpork generally go to a vet. It's generally a better bet. There's more pressure on a vet to get it right. People say "it was god's will" when granny dies, but they get angry when they lose a cow."

"The harder farmers push animals beyond their natural limit, and the more closely animals are confined, often the greater the risk of disease and the heavier the reliance on vets to keep herds alive. Their weapon of choice is antibiotics. According to Dil Peeling, who qualified as a vet in the UK but spent much of his career working in developing countries: "A vet's worth is now measured by his or her ability to deliver on production and animal health – not welfare. It is difficult to persuade vets who have invested so much of their careers in propping up intensive farming to turn their back on such systems.""

"One day my friend the barber called me aside: "Say, kid, I've been delegated to tell you that you've got lice." ... ... I could scarcely have felt more beyond the pale, more a pariah. I had not detected them before, because I was ignorant of the thought of having them, and because their grey colour was exactly that of the inside of my woolen shirt. ... I look back with a shudder even yet to that experience. During my subsequent tramp-career I never could grow callous to vermin, as a few others that I met, did. Once I met a tramp who advised me not to bother about 'em .. and you would soon get used to 'em .. and not feel them biting al all .. but most tramps "boil up"—that is, take off their clothes, a piece at a time, and boil them—whenever they find opportunity."

"It has become a common expression to say "dirty tramp," or, "as dirty as a tramp"; but this is not always true, except occasionally in the large cities; although such a term may be applied morally to them all. There is one species of tramp who wanders from workhouse to workhouse; and this man, having every night to conform strictly to the laws of cleanliness, is no less clean, often cleaner, than a number of people whose houses contain bath rooms which they seldom use. Another species of tramp is proud of being a good beggar, who scorns the workhouse, but who knows well that a clean appearance is essential to his success."

"The tramp's real means of livelihood is begging. He can tell at a glance a house where he will get a "hand-out." A "hand-out" is a parcel of food, which derives its name from being handed out through a half-opened door. Yes, the tramp develops into a skillful and expert beggar. Some people may think that there is no art in begging, but if they do they are much mistaken. It takes a clever man to know what stranger to ask for money. As he goes along the street he must be able to single out at a glance the giving type of man; for, as the tramp will inform you, there are really in existence men who like to give money to anyone who asks for it. They are rare, but they do exist. The thing is to be able to single out this man, and then to know if he has money in his pocket, and if he be in the right mood. To do this requires genius."

"Every once in a while, in newspapers, magazines, and biographical dictionaries, I run upon sketches of my life, wherein, delicately phrased, I learn that it was in order to study sociology that I became a tramp. This is very nice and thoughtful of the biographers, but it is inaccurate. I became a tramp—well, because of the life that was in me, of the wanderlust in my blood that would not let me rest. Sociology was merely incidental; it came afterward in the same manner that a wet skin follows a ducking. I went on "The Road" because I couldn't keep away from it; because I hadn't the price of the railroad fare in my jeans; because I was so made that I couldn't work all my life on "one same shift"; because—well, just because it was easier to than not to."

"Clearly the attitude of disrespect that many executives have today for accurate reporting is a business disgrace. And auditors, as we have already suggested, have done little on the positive side. Though auditors should regard the investing public as their client, they tend to kowtow instead to the managers who choose them and dole out their pay. (“Whose bread I eat, his song I sing.”)"

"It is the duty of the auditor to see that the authority to charge is not made a pretext for extravagance or favouritism."

"There is nothing more sacred in the auditor-client literature than the notion of auditor independence, dating from the emergence of a professionalized service in the 19th century. According to the self-congratulatory atmosphere among the regulators of the world's securities markets, the problem of dubious accounting would be fully solved by strictly limiting the kinds of services that auditors can provide to clients. Yet with each of the surviving Big Four burdened by the weight of a litigation list of cases large enough to be fatal, this unexamined burden has become yet another millstone. To be both blunt and unconventional — it is time to stop making nice, and to discard this 165-year-old piece of conventional wisdom. The concept of auditor independence does not serve the interests of investors."

"One of the biggest problems facing regulatory compliance is individuals running testing applications without understanding all the other simultaneous objectives still required. Running software will never make a person a competent auditor."

"Workers in lower status jobs tend to have more stressful working conditions—they have lower pay, poorer pension arrangements, less control over their work, and report more unsupportive colleagues and manager."

"I am pretty confident in saying that the physiological stress levels (as measured by cortisol) of bosses are lower than their employees—in other words, the bosses are not as stressed as the employees they manage, this is shown not just by my study, but loads of other studies that show exactly the same results. Stress levels increase (not decrease) as we go from the top of the occupational ladder to the bottom."

"My husband is the tax collector of the sea, Nindara is the tax collector of the sea."

"There is one difference between a tax collector and a taxidermist — the taxidermist leaves the hide."

"If you drive a car, I'll tax the street, If you try to sit, I'll tax your seat, If you get too cold, I'll tax the heat, If you take a walk, I'll tax your feet. Taxman. ‘Cos I'm the Taxman, Yeah, I'm the Taxman."

"Everything I have written in these lectures underlines the importance to the intellectual of passionate engagement, risk, exposure, commitment to principles, vulnerability in debating and being involved in worldly causes. For example, the difference I drew earlier between a professional and an amateur intellectual rests precisely on this, that the professional claims detachment on the basis of a profession and pretends to objectivity, whereas the amateur is moved neither by reward nor by the fulfillment of an immediate career plan but by a committed engagement with ideas and values in the public sphere."

"As a way of maintaining relative intellectual independence, having the attitude of an amateur instead of a professional is a better course."

"In the end, I am moved by causes and ideas that I can actually choose to support because they conform to values and principles that I believe in."

"The intellectual's spirit as an amateur can enter and transform the merely professional routine most of us go through into something much more lively and radical; instead of doing what one is supposed to do one can ask why one does it, who benefits from it, how can it reconnect with a personal project and original thoughts."

"There is no getting around authority and power, and no getting around the intellectual's relationship to them. How does the intellectual address authority: as a professional supplicant or as its unrewarded, amateurish conscience?"

"When the master-builder has taken up the work concerned, he is to re-establish securely any place where the fortification has fallen into ruins. Let him reinforce and also rebuild it."

"If a scribe knows only a single line but his handwriting is good, he is indeed a scribe!"

"The wisdom of a scribe cometh by his time of leisure: and he that is less in action, shall receive wisdom."

"A chattering scribe's guilt is great."

"What kind of a scribe is a scribe who does not know Sumerian?"

"The scribe trained in counting is deficient on clay. The scribe skilled with clay is deficient in counting."

"Because, Renisenb, it is so easy and it costs so little labour to write down ten bushels of barley, or a hundred head of cattle, or ten fields of spelt - and the thing that is written will come to seem like the real thing, and so the writer and the scribe will come to despise the man who ploughs the fields and reaps the barley and raises the cattle - but all the same the fields and the cattle are real - they are not just marks of inks on papyrus. And when all the records and all the papyrus rolls are destroyed and the scribes are scattered, the men who toil and reap will go on, and Egypt will still live."

"A scribe who does not know how to grasp the meaning -- from where will he produce a translation?"

"The pencil that once freely traced the line Along the ruler’s straight and even side— The blade that shaped the reed-pen’s edges fine— The ruler too, the hand’s unswerving guide— The rugged pumice-stone, whose rasping kiss Sharpened the blunted reed-pen’s double lip— The sponge, uptorn from Neptune’s deep abyss, To cleanse the text from accidental slip— The desk of many cells, that did contain His ink, and all materials of his trade— The scribe to Hermes gives. After long strain, Palsied by age, his hand to rest is laid."

"At new year, on the day of rites, the lady libates water on the holy. [...] On the day when the bowls of rations are inspected, Nance also inspects the servants during the appointments. Her chief scribe Nisaba places the precious tablets on her knees and takes a golden stylus in her hand. She arranges the servants in single file for Nance and then it will be decided whether or not a leather-clad servant can enter before her in his leather, whether or not a linen-clad servant can pass before her in his linen. Any registered and [...] hired person about whom observers and witnesses claim to witness his fleeing from the house will be terminated in his position. [...] The king who always cares for the faithful servants, Haia, the man in charge of registration, registers on a tablet him who is said to be a faithful servant of his lady but deletes from the tablet her who is said not to be the maidservant of her lady."

"Cameron Lynne Macdonald, a former nanny and medical sociologist, found in research for her 2010 book, “Shadow Mothers: Nannies, Au Pairs and the Micropolitics of Mothering,” that some families expect nannies to play a paradoxical role she called the “shadow mother.” (Yes, nannies can be men, and serve as shadow fathers, but research tends to focus on women.) In such cases, parents expect a nanny to form a strong bond with a child but also appear invisible in the family, “to be simultaneously present and absent in the children’s lives,” she wrote. By asking a nanny to work in the shadows, parents may avoid their own feelings about how psychologically important the nanny has become, and so may be less sensitive to their children’s needs around the separation. Some parents do this because they are afraid that a deeper bond with a nanny will interfere with their child’s healthy attachment to them. In fact, studies show the opposite. When a child has a high-quality bond with a caregiver, this can actually help complement and reinforce parental attachment. Therefore, children who are more securely attached to both their nannies and parents feel more secure over all."

"As they walk out the door each morning, working parents are grateful for the nannies who care for their children in their absence. And yet, those same parents often struggle with the knowledge that their young children spend more waking hours with their nannies than with their mothers and fathers. So when the time comes for the nanny to move on, parents may underestimate how profound the loss can be. As one mother in my women’s mental health psychiatry practice said, “I didn’t realize that she had become part of our family until she told us she had to leave.”"

"Families and the child-care workers they hire share a complex relationship that merges the personal with the professional. Around transitions, parents, children and nannies alike may experience a range of emotions including competition, guilt, abandonment, relief, resentment and love. An open and reflective dialogue including all parties — parents, nannies and children — can make saying goodbye a little easier."

"Many of the roughly 17,500 au pairs who live and work in the United States every year have positive experiences. But according to a dozen current and former au pairs as well as former au pair company employees, ordeals like Juliana’s aren’t unusual, either. They relay horror stories of au pairs who are overworked, humiliated, refused meals, threatened with arrest and deportation—even victims of theft. Worst of all, they say, complaining about exploitative, unsafe working conditions rarely makes any difference. Sometimes, reporting abuse makes the situation worse."

"Thousands of young people are admitted each year to the U.S. as cultural exchange participants through the J-1 visa program, often to work as live-in childcare providers known as au pairs. Now, a lawsuit lodged on behalf of 90,000 current and former au pairs alleges sponsor agencies are exploiting the program as a source for cheap migrant labor."

"Au pair companies set au pair wages at $195.75 per week for 45 hours of work, or $4.35 an hour—a number that comes from subtracting 40 percent from federal minimum wage for room and board. Labor rights organizations call this a legally dubious arrangement for several reasons, including because deducting housing costs in programs where providing housing primarily benefits the employer (like the au pair program) isn’t allowed by law."

"The influence of nannies and other significant caregivers on a child's psychological and emotional development may be profound and if unrecognized may contribute to psychopathology in adulthood. However, the significance of the nanny has been relatively neglected within the psychoanalytic literature."

"Mercenaries?" I ventured. "Agh! Mercenaries!" Bob exclaimed, like I had stabbed him. "Now that's the worst thing you can be. Worse than a prostitute. Your life is the most valuable thing you got. Die for your own freedom, that's great, but kill and die for a buck? He looked at me again, shooting more wisdom out of his violently pointing finger. "Never do anything just for money!"

"Today, more contractors are killed in combat than soldiers—a stunning turnaround from the start of the wars Iraq and Afghanistan, when fewer than 10 percent of casualties were contractors. By 2010, more contractors were dying than troops. However, the real number of contractor deaths —versus the “official” tally—remains unknown."

"Today, 75 percent of U.S. forces in Afghanistan are contracted. Only about 10 percent of these contractors are armed, but this matters not. The greater point is that America is waging a war largely via contractors, and U.S. combat forces would be impotent without them. If this trend continues, we might see 80 or 90 percent of the force contracted in future wars."