I Don’t Floss on My Commute

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…but this guy does. Check out this treatise on InsideHigherEd.com by a professor who lives in Pittsburgh about why he loves his 120 mile commute. He’s tired of defending his reasons for taking a job so far away:

Sometimes my inquisitors are mollified by these justifications; more often they still seem to doubt my veracity and/or my sanity. Occasionally when I’m feeling that I’m winning over my questioner, I’ll take a chance and reveal that not only do I not hate the commute; I actually enjoy it much of the time. I may add that I’m a busy father of three who rarely gets time to himself, that I appreciate the bubble time in the car, time during which I meditate, pray, ruminate, dream, and breathe. Warming to the opening, I may expound on how I use the time wisely, such that after quickly showering and dressing in the morning, I am into my car — there I can eat breakfast (fruit, protein bars, juice), shave (electric is best), floss teeth (it’s safe, really, when one is free of company on the road), comb hair (ditto), and, toward the end of my trip, put on and tie my shoes.

More good reading: take a look at my friend Penelope Trunk’s first article for TIME, “What Gen Y Really Wants” (some of you will get it in your mags if you subscribe). It’s about the predilection among young workers to smoothly blend work and play:

For these new 20-something workers, the line between work and home doesn’t really exist. They just want to spend their time in meaningful and useful ways, no matter where they are.

Concerned about workplace bullying? So is The New York Post, which makes no mention in the article of its famously strong-willed boss, ol’ Rupert:

Studies show that as many as 45 percent of American workers have experienced some form of harassment or abusive treatment during their careers. Antibullying lawsuits are on the rise. And legislation has been introduced in more than a dozen states, including New York, New Jersey and Connecticut, that would ease the way for workers to sue toxic colleagues for fostering “abusive conduct” or “an abusive workplace environment.”

USA Today has a piece on how diversity is a “business imperative” in a global era:

In past years, many U.S. companies lost their way in a business Babel, where international workforces are as likely to speak Spanish, Hindi or Mandarin as they do English. Today, though, as more multinationals race into the global economy, they’re tailoring their diversity policies and practices to the new cultural and business order to a greater degree than ever before.

Like cultural chameleons, they’re adapting to hundreds of countries, languages and religious practices. They’re juggling more cross-border teams on all continents. They’re recruiting and hiring diverse talent from Shanghai to Mumbai, India.