4038 Stuff

Sunday, May 17, 2015

The baby bird in the bathroom is getting feistier.  He sits and opens up if he's hungry, but if he's full he runs away and hides.  That's good, I guess.

If your feelings about modern art are anything like mine, you'll like the following video.  Seems like today, art is not about craft, or talent, or uplifting beauty, or leading us to see more than a simple picture, it's all about marketing.  About convincing people that this "creation" is art.  Usta be art was obvious, something extraordinary, something I couldn't do.  Well, I don't have the words.  This guy does:


[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lNI07egoefc]

Would you like to commit a murder and get away with it?  Even if there are witnesses?  Even if you confess?  See http://nowiknow.com/the-perfect-crime-scene/.  That article is very short, and has all the info you need, but it contains a link to an analysis by a law scholar that's quite a bit longer, but well worth reading if you happen to be, like me, a law wonk.

And now a list of my latest peeves:

• It's not free reign.  It's free rein.  Like a horse that's allowed to go where it wants.
• It's a necklace, not a neckless.  Sheesh!  I'm seeing this one more and more lately.
• It's a mock turtleneck, not a mock neck.
• To obey the rules is to toe the line, not to tow the line, unless you happen to be a mule on a canal towpath.
• Wander and wonder are different words.  Even my SIL Hercules screws this one up.
• You don't wreck havoc; you wreak havoc.
• Massive means having great mass.  It is NOT a synonym for huge.  A rock can be massive.  A large balloon is probably not.  And a spat is definitely not massive, no matter how angry anyone got.

It's Mensa election time, and I'm getting emails with candidate campaign statements.  A lot of people have been unhappy with the direction Mensa has been taking, so many of the candidates are promising to change things.  One woman's proposals sounded really good to me, I was ready for go out and campaign for her, and then she screwed it up royally, turned me off completely.  She started a paragraph at the end with the sentence, "If you have a complaint with no potential solution, then stop."  She doesn't mean that if there is no solution, then shut up.  The remaining paragraph made it clear that if you see a problem, don't bother bringing it to her attention unless you already know how, and have the means to know how, to fix it.  Provide a solution, or don't mention it at all.

I HATE that attitude.  Ran into it several times with managers in IBM. 

Sometimes you are in a position to see that a certain course of action is guaranteed to run into disaster, but you are not in a position to do anything about it.  You can see the danger, but you don't have all the pieces to figure it out what to do about it. The solution requires that several disciplines work together to figure it out.  Like engineering, financial, and legal, who each have their own view of the situation, their own goals.  No, you are not allowed to raise a red flag with someone who can take it up the line, pull multiple divisions together.  Nope.  If you can't tell them what to do to fix it, then you are supposed to just sit there and watch the train run off the tracks.  In parts of IBM, bringing up a problem without also supplying the complete ideal solution is known as "Eek-a-mouse".

I really really hate that.

I especially hated it when in the end, the train ran off the tracks, as predicted.
.