In case you have not already heard, no furloughs for now.
It all went a lot better than a fire + aceylene has any right too.
I have known for a long time that nobody really understands water. It pleases some evil part of me that something as common as water has stumped the best minds of men for so long. That confusion may or may not be over. Time will tell. But I still learned a lot I did not know about water’s weirdness from this article.
Speaking of water, it is now being blamed for 30% of Global Warming. Maybe this new bit of info will take some of the blame off the cows.
But my reading has not all centered around high minded things like water. I have also been following dark and mundane things like the rank fear that has been emanating out of Europe. It has gotten so bad that Hungary’s Minister of Finance is responding in full force to blog posts by Edward Hugh. Nothing against Edward Hugh, but when your country’s Minister of Finance fells compelled to address his arguments, you have serious problems. But as this Guardian article reminds us, Europe’s current problems are nothing considering what they are going to face.
Speaking of reading dark things, I have got some books by Gene Wolfe out of the library. I have seen his name splashed around here and there. But I don’t have much use for fiction these days. In spite of this, I was intrigued by the Wikipedia article about him. There was a lot of things that intrigued me. But they are all summed up in the first two lines…
Gene Wolfe (born May 7, 1931) is an American science fiction and fantasy writer. He is noted for his dense, allusive prose as well as the strong influence of his Catholic faith, to which he converted after marrying a Catholic.
I don’t think I would have given the “dense, allusive prose” a second thought if had been for the part about being a Catholic. Something about the Catholic faith seems to be good at creating or attracting people who really get metaphor and symbolism. It will be interesting to see if Gene Wolfe falls into the same category or not.
One of the managers–one of those types who likes to monologue–was telling me that when the plant manager comes to the daily meeting, everyone is posturing to make themselves look good, by making other people look worse if necessary. He said it becomes a useless meeting where everyone is tearing each other apart, and that he and other managers had tried to explain this to the plant manager.
I had to think of the time for a few months when it seemed like the plant manager had quit coming to the meetings and was no longer interested. The other managers were rarely seen, and the meeting devolved into little more than a handshake on the day’s work, with some friendly (or not so friendly) put-downs thrown in.
This is not the first time I have heard that the plant manager has no business in a meeting about the day to day operations. But I think he can only afford not to be there when someone else is going to take care of the business for him. Somehow it still seems to require the plant manager emphasizing that their are customers who want their orders shipped before people become really eager to solve problems. People may point fingers more when he is around, but they volunteer a lot more, too.
So this is when we say that the plant manager needs to work on his management team. But we say this after a year of multiple general layoffs that included the elimination of two management positions and the firing–sorry, sudden resigning–of another. And even aside from the volatility of these changes, we are speaking of the great gamble: whether you can get someone better than you have now. When ordinary budgetary approvals are going two and three levels up, and you are located far away from attractions for the business elite, it is no small thing to speak of improving the caliber of your management team.
Is the US punishing Georgia for helping Israel?
Should Iceland be punished? Read the comments, the answer is not as clear cut as you might think. On the other hand, you can’t get blood out of a stone, so what does the U.K really hope to accomplish?
And it should be noted that it is not quite accurate to say that Iceland’s president vetoed the measure to pay back the U.KIceland. At least, he did not veto it in the way that Americans think of the word veto.
An amazing number of people think that genius is doing something random and then marketing it. A perfect example of this is an 18 button gaming mouse. The Inquirer has an amusing review. Reminds me of Wes Peden’s juggling. . . It’s different, totally random, and completely unappealing.
Business has been picking up. We got caught out by unexpected sales driven by desperate promotions, followed by major months-long issues with our supply of steel (almost as important as electricity). We’re behind the curve, and we have been hiring back some production people to help ramp up production.
I ran into one of those people on Friday. I was surprised to see her as she had been let go quite a long time ago, before the cutbacks had affected any salaried employees. There could be more to this story, complexities I am not aware of, but the effect of seeing someone so far back in the queue working again was to provoke the suspicion that many people earlier in line had turned down the opportunity to work here. And I doubt too many of them have jobs elsewhere.
I’ve been told before that statistically we are very competive in our pay and benefits for this area. And I’ve heard stories from the other manufacturing facilities that can make this place seem enlightened. I wonder if the lack of enthusiasm for returning to work for Acme should reflect on Acme’s reputation, or on the work ethic of the departed? I know some of the salaried people had every intention of running out the last drop of their unemployment.
The best thing I could make of it is perhaps this person had a good reputation and was preferred on the call-back. But this doesn’t line up with my understanding of the context of her departure. So I am pretty sure it is a bad sign one way or the other.
They say the New York’s system of juvenile prisons is broken. I am sure they are right. I am also sure they have no idea of what they are talking about. I could not stand reading the article, but I made myself finish it.
I guess I sound like I am some kind of wanna be Zen master. But I really don’t know how to express myself to people who have not seen what I have seen and don’t know what I know. And I know that few people want to consider this problem honestly and no one has the brains to figure out a good solution.
It is so easy to play the populist. I would probably play one myself if I didn’t know better.
Let’s play the populist game. Let’s play different parts of the article against each other.
First we have this….
The state spends roughly $210,000 per youth annually, but three-quarters of those released from detention are arrested again within three years.
Then we have this….
“These institutions are often sorely underresourced, and some fail to keep their young people safe and secure, let alone meet their myriad service and treatment needs,” according to the report, which was based on interviews with workers and youths in custody, visits to prisons and advice from experts.
What a contrast, eh? How can a system that spends a couple hundred grand per kid per year be sourly underresourced? I mean, how much more do we really want to pay to take care of young thugs?
Yet the system is sorely underresourced. But that does not change the fact that the state cannot afford to spend more money on its prison system.
To explain this sad state of affairs fully would take essay upon essay. But you can quickly grasp the nature of the problem by understanding that the only two “good” choices are at opposite ends of the spectrum.
Choice number one: You can shoot every kid who has been convicted of anything that resembles a serious crime with no appeal allowed. This would be very cheap and it would dramatically cut the crime rate.
Choice number two: You can hire the best Drill Sargents that the military can produce and give them lots of discretion and money. This will produce the best chance of turning young criminals into productive citizens as long as you keep the Drill Sargent to youth offender ratio low and hold the Drill Sargents accountable for the results that they achieve.
The disadvantages of the first choice is obvious to the modern mind. The disadvantage of the second choice is that it is hideously expensive. People who have the skills to be good Drill Sargents have lots of career choices. And without significant monetary compensation, most of them are not going to put working with young thugs on their list of dream jobs.
The fundamental problem is that the closer you get to the middle ground between these two choices, the closer you will get to creating a system that is the worst of all possible worlds.
And the worst of all possible worlds is a bureaucracy were nobody has the authority to punish or reward. A bureaucracy where any kind of meaningful interaction with the wards of state is against the rules. A bureaucracy whose only goal is to carry the kids through their term safety so that they can come out more dangerous and hardened then when they went in.
And that is what New York State has now.
Today I have science on the brain. Or at least some vague approximation of the word (I have real trouble spelling it, for some reason).
I spent some time reading up on Robert Hooke just because I did not know much about him other then he was Newton’s nemesis.
Reading it made me kind of depressed. If you ever get to thinking that you’re smart, you should read about some of the early giants of the enlightenment. When they weren’t making ground breaking discoveries in 42 separate areas of study (all of which they were pursuing at the same time), they were designing buildings, hard to counterfeit currencies, and building better watches. I think they benefited greatly from living in a time that was wealthy enough that many men could devote themselves to thought and yet it was still expected that a man of thought would be able to build things with his own hands.
But be that as it may, those biographies of early scientists are depressing for reasons other then how small they make us feel. The early giants of the scientific revolution repeatedly demonstrated they could be awfully small minded. They stole ideas from each other and did not give credit. They jealously guarded their own data and ideas lest someone else steal them. They slandered each other and tried to destroy all the works that their opponents left behind.
Reading all of those things, one can’t help but think of the recent climategate scandal. One is tempted to trot out the old adage “the more things change, the more things stay the same.”
But there is a crucial difference. The early giants of the scientific revolution had ideas that would change the world and stand the test of time. And they knew the value of what they had. That is why they fought like cats and dogs over who thought up the ideas first.
On the other hand, the scientists involved in global warming research have no clue what they are doing. They can’t even reproduce their own work, much less have it be tested by others. They hide their data not because they know it is of great worth, but because they know that it is next to worthless (and that’s being kind.)
Speed is not part of the true Way of strategy. Speed implies that things seem fast or slow, according to whether or not they are in rhythm. Whatever the Way, the master of strategy does not appear fast.
I was reading A Book of Five Rings by Miyamoto Musashi. It’s a book about sword fighting and strategy, but I found it interesting to think how his ideas can be applied to juggling.
The posture he describes in his “Water Book” is a great description of a correct juggling stance. He also talks about deliberate use of peripheral vision—”The Gaze in Strategy”, and his description of how to do it and how it works is also useful. His description of how to use a sword is well applied to holding clubs.
My favorite part was in his “Wind Book” when he talks about speed. The beginning paragraph I quoted at the top of this post, but the entire section is a good description of how juggling should feel. Reading this section reminded me of this video: Last Day in Penza.