Category: 40yrs

This Says Something Interesting About American Management

No Comments

Though I haven’t quite figured out what.

The CIA has released a WWII manual on sabotage, and it appears to describe life in modern American businesses frighteningly accurately:

In 1944, the CIA’s precursor, the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), distributed a secret pamphlet that was intended as a guidebook to citizens living in Axis nations who were sympathetic to the Allies.

The “Simple Sabotage Field Manual,” declassified in 2008 and available on the CIA’s website, provided instructions for how everyday people could help the Allies weaken their country by reducing production in factories, offices, and transportation lines. 

………

See if any of those listed below — quoted but abridged — remind you of your boss, colleagues, or even yourself.

Organizations and Conferences 

  • Insist on doing everything through “channels.” Never permit short-cuts to be taken in order to expedite decisions.
  • Make “speeches.” Talk as frequently as possible and at great length. Illustrate your “points” by long anecdotes and accounts of personal experiences.
  • When possible, refer all matters to committees, for “further study and consideration.” Attempt to make the committee as large as possible — never less than five.
  • Bring up irrelevant issues as frequently as possible.
  • Haggle over precise wordings of communications, minutes, resolutions.
  • Refer back to matters decided upon at the last meeting and attempt to re-open the question of the advisability of that decision.
  • Advocate “caution.” Be “reasonable” and urge your fellow-conferees to be “reasonable”and avoid haste which might result in embarrassments or difficulties later on.

Managers 

  • In making work assignments, always sign out the unimportant jobs first. See that important jobs are assigned to inefficient workers.
  • Insist on perfect work in relatively unimportant products; send back for refinishing those which have the least flaw.
  • To lower morale and with it, production, be pleasant to inefficient workers; give them undeserved promotions.
  • Hold conferences when there is more critical work to be done.
  • Multiply the procedures and clearances involved in issuing instructions, pay checks, and so on. See that three people have to approve everything where one would do.

Employees

  • Work slowly.
  • Contrive as many interruptions to your work as you can.
  • Do your work poorly and blame it on bad tools, machinery, or equipment. Complain that these things are preventing you from doing your job right.
  • Never pass on your skill and experience to a new or less skillful worker.

I’m sure that my dad, who spent much of his professional life as a consultant in management and organization, is familiar with these hallmarks of a dysfunctional organization.

I’m also wondering just how surprised he is that these behaviors are indistinguishable from deliberate sabotage.

I Have This Strange Urge to Be Taken into Custody in Sweden

No Comments

In Sweden, a police officer was out sun bathing with friends, when she discovered that a friend’s cell phone had been stolen.

She went into action in a thoroughly nontraditional uniform:

The Swedish off-duty police officer has told The Local about the story behind this viral picture [not posting it here, it’s at the link] capturing the moment she wrestled a brazen criminal to the ground – while wearing a bikini.

Mikaela Kellner and her friends were sunbathing in the Rålambshov park in Stockholm when a man walked up to them pretending to sell magazines for homeless people. When he refused to take no for an answer, but instead lingered around their blankets, she started suspecting that something was wrong.

“I told my friends to keep an eye on their things. But as soon as he left one of my friends said ‘where did my mobile phone go?'” Kellner told The Local on Thursday.

She explained that the man had used his magazines to cover the mobile phone, picking it up without anyone noticing when he left. Let’s just say this was a decision he would soon come to regret.

“There was no time, so I ran after him, maybe 15 metres or so. One of my friends is also a police officer, so we got hold of him. He tried to get away so we held onto him harder,” she said.

They called their colleagues on duty who were able to get there to arrest him.

Kellner has been a police officer for 11 years, but it is the first time she has nabbed a suspect while wearing a bikini. She said a picture she posted on Instagram quickly went viral after Aftonbladet wrote about it.

I’m kind of surprised that this hasn’t hit the late night talk shows, it seems ready made for them.

Quote of the Day

No Comments

Today, we went to the Ruckus Festival, a 7 hour long mmusic festival with about a dozen bands.

One of the bands was there was Parallel Heights, which put on a fine show, but they had some technical issues.

Specifically, one of the band members, in addition to backup vocals, played ukelele, saxophone, and bagpipes.

There were some technical issues, with the clip on mic for the Sax not working, and the bagpipes had a similar problem, and so it was downed out by the other (amplified) music instruments.

On the way home were talking about the concert, and when we discussed Parallel Heights’ set, and Charlie said, “That’s the only time that I wished I could hear the bagpipes better.”

Heh.

Time for a Massive Campaign of Civil Disobedience

No Comments

The elitists at the UK’s Natural Environment Research Council have decided to ignore the will of the people and name their new research vessel after naturalist and documentarian Sir David Attenborough, though they did throw a bone to the general public:

The UK’s new £200 million polar research ship will not be called Boaty McBoatface. The decision was announced early on Friday morning by the UK science minister, Jo Johnson. Instead, the new ship will be called the RRS (Royal Research Ship) Sir David Attenborough—a name that also picked up a few votes in the same poll that saw Boaty McBoatface come out way on top.

Showing at least a little bit of political savvy, Jo Johnson didn’t completely discard the people’s choice: RRS Sir David Attenborough will be outfitted with a number of remotely operated underwater vehicles (see gallery above), and one of those will be called Boaty McBoatface. Hopefully they’ll paint a dorky face on the front of its torpedo-like frame.

………

The Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) had originally planned to name the new ship via an online poll. Shortly after the poll began in March, James Hand, a former BBC radio presenter, proposed the name Boaty McBoatface. The name went viral and quickly picked up tens of thousands more votes than any other. The final tally was 124,109 votes for Boaty McBoatface, 34,371 for Poppy-Mai, and then a handful of others at around 10,000 (Sir David Attenborough picked up 10,284 votes).

………

Yesterday, following the naming debacle surrounding the ship, the UK’s parliamentary science and technology committee began an investigation into “science communication” and NERC’s approach to naming the ship.

You have to hand it to the science minister: if you’re going to take a huge political hit by ignoring the public’s choice, naming the ship after one of the few universally loved Britons is really quite smart. No one’s going to complain about a ship being named after Sir David—and it’s his 90th birthday this weekend. Damn you, Jo Johnson, damn you!

This is an outrage, and clearly it must not be allowed to stand.

Boaty McBoatface Wins!

No Comments

And the crowd goes wild:

The internet has spoken — and “RRS Boaty McBoatface” is the people’s choice to name a $300 million state-of-the-art polar research ship.

Over 7,000 names were submitted to the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) poll which closed April 16, but “Boaty McBoatface” won easily with 124,109 votes. 

It all began when the NERC invited the public to christen the 129-meter long icebreaker, the largest and most advanced British research vessel to date.

They asked for names that were inspirational, such as a historical figure or a landmark.

However, after former BBC presenter James Hand cheekily suggested the Boaty moniker it quickly became the crowd favorite over more traditional names like “RRS Henry Worsley” after the British explorer who died in January while attempting a solo, unaided mission across the Antarctic.

………

It spawned countless silly riffs.

A UK train service from Portsmouth to Waterloo was briefly renamed “Trainy McTrainface” much to the amusement of its passengers.

………

There’s no guarantee that they will follow through on the public’s choice but whatever its name, the vessel will be setting sail for Antarctica in 2019.

I think that an MP should bring this up during question time, because it would be epic.

It will Still Be #ASSoL or #ASSLaw

No Comments

It appears that in response to the internet discovering the potential initials of the Antonin Scalia School of Law, George Mason is attempting a re-branding:

Days after George Mason University’s law school announced that it was renaming itself after Justice Antonin Scalia, the school is slightly adjusting what it’s calling itself — thanks to unforeseen and unfortunate wordplay.

The name, officially, remains “The Antonin Scalia School of Law at George Mason University” in honor of the late justice who died in February. But on its website and marketing materials, the name now reads: “The Antonin Scalia Law School at George Mason University”.

That’s no accident.

The first five words of the “School of Law” version form an acronym that has a phonetic resemblance to a vulgarity, a source of amusement for some bloggers and tweeters and a source of non-amusement for George Mason’s administration, which agreed to rename itself after Justice Scalia at the request of an anonymous donor who pledged $20 million.

It’s not going to work.

When Allegheny (aka “Agony”) Airlines changed its name to US Air, it got nicknamed “Useless Air” at the press conference announce the renaming.

You need to embrace this, not try to sweep it under the rug.

I would suggest changing the name the the Scalia Hieratic Institute of Tutalge in Higher Educational Excellence in the Law.*

*Yes, it took me longer to come up with the acronym than it did to write the rest of this.

How Utterly Proper

2 Comments

George Mason University, a welfare program for reactionary economists and lawyers, has, with significant funding from the Brothers Koch, Decided to rename the George Mason University Law School to ASSoL, the Antonin Scalia School of Law:

George Mason was a founding father. He was one of the men who was responsible for the Bill of Rights — he wouldn’t sign the constitution without it (or at all, ultimately). Now, the law school at the university that bears his name is changing its name to the Antonin Scalia School of Law at George Mason University.

 ………

 Good lord. You are deemphasizing the name of a founding father to honor a man who fetishisized the beliefs held at the founding? A guy who didn’t go there, or have any connection to the school, who wouldn’t have hired a George Mason law student as a bathroom attendant, much less a Supreme Court clerk? That’s the guy you are renaming your law school after? Your Twitter hashtag is now #ASSLaw (Antonin Scalia School of Law). Who was in second place, Donald Trump?

 ………

 We talk a lot about the law school application crunch, and how that crunch disproportionately dings middling law schools like George Mason. There is a flight to quality, there is a flight to “free,” and schools that are neither are having a heck of a time filling their seats.

 But branding themselves as “Antonin Scalia,” who most people even lightly interested in law have heard of before, versus “George Mason,” who you should have learned about in AP History but probably didn’t because he’s not a Kardashian, might help them.

Even if Scalia Law generates some push in application and matriculation revenue, especially from right-of-center students, would it be enough to offset the negatives? Changing the school’s name in this way is sure to piss off some alumni.

Reports are that this was in response to, “$30 million in donations, $10 million of which came from the Charles Koch Foundation.”

This may very well be beyond parody, even ignoring the irony of naming a law school after a justice is on a fast track to be considered among the caliber of Roger Taney, James Clark McReynolds, Clarence Thomas, Henry Billings Brown, etc.

#ASSLaw #ASSoL

Don’t Tug on Superman’s Cape. Don’t Piss into the Wind

No Comments

Don’t rely on internet polls to name something:

A state-of-the-art research vessel in search of a name is getting some help from the general public and their top choice is flying in the face of British nautical convention.

Britain’s National Environmental Research Council (NERC) launched an online voting contest, asking for inspirational names of historical figures, landmarks and movements to christen the £200-million ship ($375-million CAD). The internet responded, and the current frontrunner is none-other than RRS Boaty McBoatface.

The 15,000-ton, 128-yard-long Royal Research Ship is currently under construction on the coast of Merseyside and is gearing up to be launched for a research mission to Antarctica in 2019.

The much more appropriate RRS Henry Worsley, RRS David Attenborough and RRS Pillar of Autumn are the current runners-up, though Boaty McBoatface is outpacing its closest competitor 10-1 with over 22,500 votes.

The online poll has proven to be so successful that NERC reported the high traffic caused the website to temporarily crash Sunday.

It appears that, much like many things on the internet, the meme started as a joke:

A man who suggested naming a new £200m ship Boaty McBoatface has apologised.

The suggestion has attracted more than 27,000 votes in an online poll of names for the Royal Research ship, causing the website to crash.

Former BBC presenter James Hand said he found the list of possible names “really funny” so decided to “throw one into the ring”.

He “apologised profusely” to the Natural Environment Research Council.

There is no guarantee the ship will be given the name that tops the poll, with the final decision to be made by the chief executive of the NERC.

Other names in the running are RRS Pingu, RRS Usain Boat and RRS David Attenborough.

A NERC spokesperson said staff were “very much enjoying hearing everyone’s ideas”.

Mr Hand said: “I read the story about naming the ship on the BBC website on Thursday and some of the entries were really funny – my favourite was Clifford The Big Red Boat.

“I thought I would throw one into the ring. By Friday night it was leading by a couple of thousand, and when the site crashed on Sunday it was leading by 8,000. It’s been utterly bizarre.”

Boaty McBoatface is 25,000 votes ahead of the second place suggestion, RRS Henry Worsley.

The boat is being built at the Cammell Laird shipyard in Birkenhead on Merseyside and when completed in 2019 it will study ice sheets, ocean currents and marine life as part of the Cambridge-based British Antarctic Survey.

“I’ve apologised profusely to the people behind the website,” the former Good Morning Jersey host said.

BTW, you can go to this link to vote.

I have already voted for Boaty McBoatface, because I am an asshole.

Remember This Come Pledge Week

No Comments

On her hand is the Celtic Cross, the logo for Stormfront, and NeoNazis throughout the world


On the other hand, “H H”, as in, “Heil Hitler”


And you can get it on T-Shirts and Pillows

The PBS news hour did a warm fuzzy about how politically engaged some Trump supporters in North Caroline were deeply involving themselves in the political process.

Somehow, they missed the fact that this family was festooned with white supremacist tattoos:

Last night, PBS NewsHour ran a story on the Tilly family of Fayetteville, North Carolina. The Tillys do not have a history of being active in politics, but various members of the family—both old and young—are being motivated to vote or work for a campaign for the first time by Donald Trump.

If you can put aside the fact that the Tillys are rallying behind Trump, this is a small but almost heartwarming story of a family choosing to engage with democracy. That’s also if you can put aside the fact that Grace, one of the central characters in the story, has large white power tattoos on each of her hands.

Someone at the News Hour has got a lot of explaining to do.

This sort of stuff is American Nazi 101, and I have no clue how everyone involved in this news report missed it.

Hard Core Badass!

1 Comment

Charlie, my son, and section leaders for the percussion section, was practicing in band for this Thursday’s concert.

He was playing the bongos, and there was an incident.

I got the following texts:

I pulled a Pete Townshend.

………

 I was playing the bongo part when I looked down and saw pink on one of the heads. I played too hard and the skin came off one of my knuckles.

I replied:

Thank God you didn’t pull a Keith Moon.

 We would have to pay to rebuild the f%$#ing stage.

No worries, ‘Tis but a scratch.

He’s still good for the concert.

My Wife Refuses to Appreciate My Beautiful Mind

No Comments

I was talking to my Sharon* and noted that she would never guess the latest place where the consequences of fracking.

She declined to guess, and I told her that it was Oklahoma, where they are freaking out over a 300 fold increase in the number of earthquakes brought on by rejecting waste water into deep wells.

This generated a blank look from my wife, and I said that pumping the water deep under ground causes earthquakes.

I got another blank look, and I explained how the water, when injected deep underground, lubricates between faults, and that the lubrication translates into more motion, Kind of Like Sex.

I got a “what the f%$# are you talking about?” look from her, so I further explained that proper lubrication allows for more motion.

And then I got That look from her.

If you have ever been married, you know the look that I’m talking about, the one that has you worrying about her sharp knives ……… and then you start to worry about her dull knives.

*Love of my life, light of the cosmos, she who must be obeyed, my wife.

I, For One, Welcome Our New Cow Overlords

No Comments

It appears that the Cows have begun their guerrilla campaign to take over the world:

The way to catch a cow is through its stomach – at least that’s what New Hartford police are hoping.

 On Monday, the department set a trap for the rogue cow that continues to make appearances along Route 840. Police previously told the O-D the cow weighs about 1,500 pounds and has been on the loose for several months. Efforts to identify its owner have been unsuccessful.

 “Currently we’re trying to feed it and trap it at the same time,” police Chief Michael Inserra said. “Clinton Tractor has been gracious enough to loan us what is called a headlock feeder … and as (the cow is) feeding on it, a spring-loading locking mechanism will trap the cow in the feeder by its head.”

 Headlock feeders are regularly used by farmers and trap cows in a way similar to how a child’s head could become trapped in a banister.

 Inserra said police placed the trap Monday and are checking on it hourly. If the cow is successfully trapped, a local farmer has agreed to take it, he said.

 “We’re assuming it’s going to take a few days for the cow hopefully to approach this trap,” Inserra said. “It’s a very skittish animal.”

 Stephanie Kelly and her friends spotted the rogue cow on Route 8 on Thursday, while she and other members of the Sauquoit Valley Garden Club were on their way back from a trip to Old Forge.

 Kelly said the cow appeared to be scared, and was running down the road for several miles – holding up southbound traffic – before it ran off into the brush shortly before the Washington Mills exit.

It’s like the beginning of Planet of the Apes.

This is not an isolated incident. This is the beginning of a bovine insurrection!*

*Yes, this is actually an isolated incident. Some cow jumped the fence, and is now out smarting local authorities. It is absurd to suggest that cows are plotting to take over the world.†

†Because cats have already taken over the world.