This article foregrounds the voice of an IT professional who is directly employed by a large British company and who, along with colleagues, is experiencing career uncertainty resulting from a management initiative to replace the established workforce with an alternative labour supply provided by a global IT services company. As an account that reflects the uncertainty of the age, the narrative offers insights into current discussions concerning the contemporary nature and experience of work generally. More specifically it tells of a loss of confidence and status of technical professionals as they are methodically undermined by the confident assertion of a 'shareholder value' rhetoric. The suggestion is made that the application of commercialprofessional rationality to the outsourcing of IT operations may underestimate the commercial risks associated with the loss of embodied technical knowledge gained across time as IT systems evolve to become complex constructions.

Monitoring stations were installed in three small watersheds in the Cumberland Mountains and three in the Cumberland Plateau of east Tennessee to evaluate the effects of surface mining on water quality. Each set had a recently minedl old mined and unmined watershed. Stream flow and concentration levels for 5 water quality parameters, collected every four weeks from 1981 through 1984, were evaluated. Differences in water quality were found between mined and unmined watersheds, with mined ones generally having generally higher levels of minerals and greater turbidity. However. one unmined watershed yielded poorer water quality than its old mined counterpart water for most of the parameters tested, apparently due to an unpaved road. Water quality of one new mine also continued to deteriorate following mining due to controlled road use, trash dumping and poor reclamation.