personal
The Nature of the Biz: Pragmatism, Expediency, Conscience, and Insanity
prag·mat·ic: related to matters of fact or practical affairs.
ex·pe·di·ent: concern with what is opportune; especially : governed by self-interest.
con·science: a faculty, power, or principle enjoining good acts.
insanity: lack of good sense or judgment.
Is it pragmatic to do what we are told when reason and experience tells us we will not succeed?
Is it expedient to divert ourselves from meaningful contribution?
Some achieve success by accomplishing little. They don’t create, they consume. They wring wealth from the sweat of another’s brow.
For the rest of us, playing along defies sense. We surrender our best selves to a creeping mediocrity which will eventually rob us of much more than we risk by acting from conscience now.
Why surrender to the group insanity of business as usual?
Posted: February 15th, 2008 under personal.
Comments: 5
Hans the Hedgehog
I’ve been reading Grimm’s fairy tales to my daughter.
Hans the Hedgehog is a 19th century, Germanic mind !#@$ — for children.
“…he made the cock fly on to a high tree with him, and there he sat for many a long year, and watched his asses and swine until the herd was quite large, and his father knew nothing about him.”
“While he was sitting in the tree, however, he played his bagpipes, and made music which was very beautiful.”
Gorgeous, grotesque and entirely insensitive to gender and race; daughters sacrificed and an enchanted youth whitened by ‘precious salves’.
Posted: February 5th, 2008 under personal.
Comments: none
Moment in Time
Washington D.C. in August. Co-workers, spouses, children walking a bland but unfamiliar sidewalk. A mundane but entirely new experience.
A fact unknowable but the thought occurs.
This team — this particular ascent will come to an end. We are as close to our summit as memory and quantum physics allows us to mark.
I plant my flag and move on.
Posted: January 31st, 2008 under personal.
Comments: none
Low Traction Subtraction
This is what a solved subtraction problem looks like using the technique my second grader is learning.
At first she was drawing all sixty squares. I talked her into drawing tens as long rectangles.
A page of homework is 20 problems. Each problem takes 3-5 minutes. She also has writing and reading.
To fight the tedium, we used legos one day and a whiteboard another.
But the teacher likes to see the written squares to confirm the kids understand. So while making things physical makes it more fun it only adds time.
I know she’s drifting when she starts climbing the table or erases mistakes until the paper rips.
Any constructive advice?
Posted: January 29th, 2008 under personal.
Comments: none
Addition Problem
I was helping my daughter with her homework.
She said her teacher didn’t want her carrying over tens the way I was showing her, “she hadn’t taught it to them yet.”
Stumped by that one, the best I could suggest was doing it anyway and erasing the evidence.
- 5+7 = 12,
- write 2 in the ones place,
- carry the ten into the tens place,
- 10+20+30 = 60,
- write the 6 in the tens place,
- ERASE the hell out of that damn ’1′ so you don’t get a crying child who hates arithmetic…
Posted: January 25th, 2008 under personal.
Comments: none
Thanks
My old team gave me a Despair, Inc. calendar for my birthday.
Posted: January 20th, 2008 under personal.
Comments: none
Gentle Rain
The quality of mercy is not strained.
It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven
Upon the place beneath. It is twice blest:
It blesseth him that gives and him that takes.
Tis mightiest in the mightiest; it becomes
The throned monarch better than his crown.
His scepter shows the force of temporal power,
The attribute to awe and majesty,
Wherein doth sit the dread and fear of kings.
But mercy is above this sceptered sway;
It is enthroned in the hearts of kings;
It is an attribute of God himself;
And earthly power doth then show like God’s
When mercy seasons justice.
It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven
Upon the place beneath. It is twice blest:
It blesseth him that gives and him that takes.
Tis mightiest in the mightiest; it becomes
The throned monarch better than his crown.
His scepter shows the force of temporal power,
The attribute to awe and majesty,
Wherein doth sit the dread and fear of kings.
But mercy is above this sceptered sway;
It is enthroned in the hearts of kings;
It is an attribute of God himself;
And earthly power doth then show like God’s
When mercy seasons justice.
Shakespeare, The Merchant Of Venice Act 4, scene 1
Posted: December 11th, 2007 under personal.
Comments: none
Executive manager, software developer, father and husband trying to do more good than harm.
