Child of Europe

There can be no question of force triumphant
We live in the age of victorious justice.

Do not mention force, or you will be accused
Of upholding fallen doctrines in secret.

He who has power, has it by historical logic.
Respectfully bow to that logic.

Let your lips, proposing a hypothesis
Not know about the hand faking the experiment.

Let your hand, faking the experiment
Not know about the lips proposing a hypothesis.

Learn to predict a fire with unerring precision
Then burn the house down to fulfill the prediction.
     — Czeslaw Milosz

Got My Black Belt in 'Bloated Bureacracy'

Seems like the larger a company gets and/or the more involved with federal regulations it gets, the more that company buys into certain ideas: 

• The cure for anything is a regulation, a new process rule, or a new standard.  The problem isn't that people aren't thinking for themselves; the problem is that they are doing entirely too much thinking for themselves. 
• The key to competitiveness is really optimization, not innovation.  That's why it's important to reward and recognize (and build whole hierarchies for) for optimizing (or really, the gesture of optimizing).   
• Better to automate "employee development" as much as possible. Personal mentorship is overrated, and only works if you actually encourage leadership anyway.  
• We can replace actual leadership with aphorisms about leadership.
• We can replace actual accountability with slogans about accountability.
• You can promote ethical behavior by coercing employees to sign documents averring they intend to behave ethically.  

Et cetera.

One of the effects on engineering (assuming that a big company has such a division) is that a company will expect their engineers to feel empowered to control his process [don't be dismayed is this sounds like gibberish--it is gibberish] while choosing their tools for them, both intellectual tools and instrumental tools.

The "leadership" in big companies tend to see nothing wrong with this.  (Until recently, Google may have been an exception.) They absolutely don't see where the conflict lies.  Big corporations nowadays tend to appoint short-sighted optimization junkies (i.e. lean process black belts [more gibberish]) out of the manufacturing area.  You see, in engineering we work with ideas and, so the story goes, don't actually make anything.

What good are ideas anyway?

Black Dahlia Avenger

I've been reading Black Dahlia Avenger and it's quite a page-turner.

I'll try not to give anything away, even though the identity of the killer is not something you find out at the end of the book.  Far from.  But that's not the most important revelation.

It is a "Columbo mystery" in case you are a mystery.  More of a howdunnit than a whodunnit.   But more of a whydunnit than a howdunnit, really.  As in the Colombo mysteries, the real mystery is how the truth will eventually come to light.  And a whoelsewasitdunnit-to.  And a whywuzzinitsolved. (That aspect might be especially scary.)

But even beyond that, the way the investigative material comes together with the personal remembrances of the author are amazing.

Steve Hodel paints a picture of a place on the Gold Coast where intellectual elite, the entertainment elite, the artistic elite,  and the elite of corruption and hedonism all converged on a certain home in L.A.  The personal remembrances touch upon several celebrities.  Doesn't come across as namedropping but a revelation of how, in Southern California, people-who-know-people actually tend to, well, know people.  The sordidness of the scene will revolt you, as artists purport to transcend morality by indulging a mix of egotism, vengeance, and thrill-seeking as they send their message to scoety that they are free of traditional morality.

It's an investigative odyssey.   One I recommend.

Shampoo ain't netchural

Washing hair with shampoo is not a natural act it would seem.  How long has humanity had soap and chandlers, let alone hair soap?  Shampoo is just soap modified specifically for hair.

Given this, why does it feel so unnatural for me to go without washing my hair?  I can't stand the way my head feels after a day without washing.  It's grimy and itchy.  I hate it.