SHORTY AWARDS GONE WRONG?

The images above are screen shots from after nominations concluded. Below is a partial list of Shorty Awards rules. At the end of the nominations the votes will be counted and the top five candidates will move on to the finals. In the case of a tie, in nominations, a sixth nominee will be included.

There were no ties between any of the top six contestants. This being the case, only the top five nominees are eligible in the finals per rules set out before the competition. Inexplicably, the startups category somehow had six contestants move into the final round. 

Rules are from http://shortyawards.com/about/ and retrieved on Monday January 26, 2009.

How do the finals work?
The five (or in one case of a tie, six) people with the most nominations in each official category have gone on to the final voting round.
All finalists are encouraged to register ASAP to get free guaranteed admission to the awards ceremony and to be notified if they win.
The people with the most votes in their category will be the winner of the Shorty Award in that category.
The finals round lasts from Monday, January 12 through Friday, January 23 at midnight (Pacific time).
The Shorty Awards' 26 winners will be offered $1,000 grants to travel to New York and attend the awards ceremony, thanks to support from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation. Winners must attend the event to claim the grant.
We will do a final audit for spam, hanging chads, and other shenanigans, before announcing the winners.
Follow @shortynews or join the mailing list for updates.

Ed: Color and bold added to aid the reader.

The contestant @hanniversary had 23 votes in nominations originally. You can see that Shorty Awards has recently changed the nominations results [past few days]. They removed 2 votes from @orgsync to make it appear that @hanniversary was #5. @orgsync had 24 votes in nominations [see screen shots above]. They appear to be covering their tracks as to why an ineligible nominee was allowed into the finals in the startup category.

QUESTIONS:

• Why were the nomination numbers not accurate before finals voting started?
• Why were the vote numbers for @orgsync changed?
• If the numbers for @orgsync were wrong and only recently noted, how did nominee number six [@hanniversary] make it into finals? 

These questions, left unanswered, undermine the integrity and fairness of the entire process known as the Shorty Awards. 

HEALTH CARE COSTS

Whirlpool Factory Suspends 39 Workers, Saying They Lied About Tobacco Use

When filling out documents you should always be truthful. Firms are trying to keep costs under control. Health care is an expense that is rapidly increasing ["Since 2000, employment-based health insurance premiums have increased 100 percent"]. Firms are assigning costs to people who are more expensive to insure. Apparently some people may have lied in paperwork they filled out stating they were not tobacco users. This may have been done to save the $500 extra the firm charges tobacco users for insurance [< $10 a week]. A small excerpt is below. Full story can be found here.

"A 2007 national survey showed that 16 percent of all large employers -- those with 20,000 or more employees -- adjust health care premium contributions according to the worker's smoking status, according to the human resources consulting firm Mercer."

Thoughts & Analysis

This is surely going to increase [above 16%] across employers of all sizes in the coming years. Especially if health care expenses are significant for the firm. Some firms have such high turnover that employees are not employed long enough to gain coverage. This is most certainly the exception to the general trend.

If it turns out the employees committed fraud in their paperwork they will be terminated. Now is bad time to be losing a job [not that there is ever a good time to lose a job]. Hopefully there are some lessons learned from this situation.

Always be honest. Even if it is going to cost you.

Start thinking about your health and fitness level. You should take good care of your body; it's the only place you have to live.

The choice is yours. What are you going to choose?