SMUG PITTSBURGHERS

Mike Madison at Pittsblog (pittsblog.blogspot.com) has been corresponding with Jefferson Provost, who recently left Pittsburgh for a tech job in Seattle. One reason: Pittsburgh employers didn't seem to give a damn. Mr. Provost:

"The one Burgh tech company that did contact me got back to me more than two months after I first inquired with them. Most of the Pittsburgh companies I applied to didn't even bother to acknowledge that they had received my resume. With Amazon.com (in Seattle), the total elapsed time between my first contact and an offer on paper was 29 days. Are there any good engineers left by the time the Pittsburgh companies get around to talking to them?"

Mr. Madison goes on to wonder whether lazy, self-satisfied Pittsburghers in the private sector are the bigger obstacle to creating jobs and attracting professionals than the usual suspects: government and high taxes.

BUNGLING BARDEN

Like just about everybody in town, Pitt girl at theburghblog.com wonders what's going on with Don Barden and his North Shore casino, given that construction is being delayed because he can't pay his contractors on time, that long-term financing still isn't secured and that he wants to postpone the building of a boat dock, an amphitheater and other amenities:

"1. I'd like to know if it's too late to give the license to Franco or Mario or, you know, anyone with actual money or at least the ability to get their hands on actual money.

"2. I'd like to know why they picked Don Barden in the first place. I mean, really why. ... Like specifically, I would like to know who he has dirty pictures of."

SPEAKING PANGLISH

An article in Wired magazine (wired.com) suggests that with growing numbers of Chinese learning English without "enough quality spoken practice ... more and more spoken English will sound increasingly like Chinese."

Already, nonnative English speakers far outnumber native speakers, and in the next decade, native speakers will make up only 15 percent of those who use the language. English is "on a path toward a global tongue -- what's coming to be known as Panglish." And, "[soon], when Americans travel abroad, one of the languages they'll have to learn may be their own."

STODGY MICROSOFT

An Economist cover story suggests we may be seeing the end of the Microsoft age. Now stepping down from running the company he founded, Bill Gates realized early on two now-obvious tenets about the industry: that "computing could be a high-volume, low-margin business" and that "making hardware and writing software could be stronger as separate businesses."

But, the magazine says, today's Microsoft is "less well-equipped for the collaborative and fragmented era of Internet computing. ... Watching Microsoft in the company of Google and Facebook is a bit like watching your dad trying to be cool."

FEAR ME

The local Carbolic Smoke Ball, which provides "news unencumbered by facts," covered the sixth inauguration of Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe, noting that Mr. Mugabe "assured the people of this African nation they 'had nothing to fear except me, myself.'

"Mr. Mugabe emerged victorious in a hard-fought campaign in which he ran against himself. 'I was a tough opponent, and I congratulate me on running a good, clean race. I have nothing to be ashamed of, and now that the votes have been counted, I pledge to join myself in working together to build a better future for the people of this country.'

"He added that in the coming days, he would bring 'nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror' to every corner of Zimbabwe."

RADICAL PATRIOTS

A final thought from the Libertarian Party of Pittsburgh (lppgh.org) regarding this Fourth of July weekend:

"Please be careful for what it is you are waving that flag whose origins are in liberty, not global intervention and the at-home police state such folly requires."

Then this, from H.L. Mencken:

"The notion that a radical is one who hates his country is naive and usually idiotic. He is, more likely, one who likes his country more than the rest of us, and is thus more disturbed than the rest of us when he sees it debauched. He is not a bad citizen turning to crime; he is a good citizen driven to despair."