Infographic of Soccer Players, Fish and Gunshot Victims
Infographic idea: A multivariate analysis of who spends more time flopping around: soccer players, fish on a boat deck or people who’ve just been shot.
3 Links
Giving Clergy the Benefit of the Doubt
Seattle Archdiocese to pay $12 million to settle child sex abuse claims — MSN News
Giving them the benefit of the doubt, maybe they didn’t know that sex with children is wrong.
Two Mediocrities Are Not Better Than One
Effective executives rarely suffer from the delusion that two mediocrities achieve as much as one good man. They have learned that, as a rule, two mediocrities achieve even less than one mediocrity — they just get in each other’s way.
I Was Never More Hated Than When I Tried to Be Honest
I was never more hated than when I tried to be honest. Or when, even as just now I’ve tried to articulate exactly what I felt to be the truth. No one was satisfied — not even I. On the other hand, I’ve never been more loved and appreciated than when I tried to “justify” and affirm someone’s mistaken beliefs; or when I’ve tried to give my friends the incorrect, absurd answers they wished to hear. In my presence they could talk and agree with themselves, the world was nailed down, and they loved it.
I Know the Feeling
A leaf flattened itself against the window beside his head and leaped away into the darkness, and a feeling of profound despair came over him because everything he had done was useless. All that he believed in and had attempted to prove seemed meager, all of his life was wasted.
Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow
I believe what I believe, and I have not yet believed a single thing only because it was believed by others, nor do I intend to. I can be grateful for this, at least: that I have kept myself. I have not once dressed up in a costume. There may be stronger consolations, but not many. Be that as it may, I cannot live differently than I do. Whatever the reasons for this, good or bad, they exist. Evidently that is enough. So, early tomorrow, I must get up again to do what I have done today. I will get up early to do this, and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow, and there is nothing to discuss.
Antipattern: Daily Standup is Too Long
Scrum recommends timeboxing daily standup meetings at 15 minutes. If you can’t finish in 15 minutes, there may be something wrong with your format.
Are you actually standing up? What are you talking about? Each person should answer three questions:
- What have you accomplished since the last meeting?
- What do you plan to accomplish between now and the next meeting?
- What, if anything, is impeding your progress?
Focus on accomplishments, not just assigned tasks, i.e., don’t say “I’m working on A and I’m planning to work on B.” Don’t have discussions. Anything coming out at the meeting that needs to be discussed can be discussed after the meeting. Try saying this more often: Let’s talk about that after the meeting. Immediately after the meeting if necessary, without even leaving the room, but not during the meeting.
Anyone in the meeting who is not responsible for accomplishing things during the sprint should not be talking.
Are you clicking through a project management tool to review what each team member is working on? Don’t do that. Anyone who wants or needs that information can click through the project management tool on their own time. Talk about accomplishments and blockers.
Why is this important? Well, you can meet or you can work, but you can’t meet and work at the same time. I recently observed a daily standup with 20 attendees (including remote workers) that was running 30 minutes a day, i.e., 15 minutes too long. They were losing 300 minutes per day (15 minutes x 20 people), 25 hours a week, and 100 hours per 4-week sprint.
Do the math on your own standups and decide if it’s important to you.
Thus spoke The Programmer.
Thinking on Your Feet
I can forgive someone who lies, but if he can’t think on his feet, he has no business representing my interests. If he can’t lie to me, how can I expect him to lie, on my behalf, to the other guy?
Aside
Kindness to the wicked is cruelty to the righteous.
What Rock and Roll Really Is
It’s very easy for people to forget what rock and roll really is. Look man, I’m forty-seven years old, and I grew up in Wyoming, and I stole cars and drove five hundred miles to watch Little Richard, and I wanna tell you somethin’ — when I saw this nigger come out in a gold suit, fuckin’ hair flyin’, and leap up onstage and come down on his piano bangin’ and goin’ fuckin’ nuts in Salt Lake City, I went, “Hey man, I wanna be like him. This is what I want.”
Pink Shirt
As you get older and the color fades out of your hair and your face and your life, you need to compensate with more colorful attire. In case you’re wondering about the pink shirt . . .
One man who minds his own business is more valuable to the world than 10,000 cocksure moralists. — H.L. Mencken
People Who Have Died
I am getting aware of the fact that I keep writing and thinking about people who have died. I love living. I do not want to die for a long time because I am not ready. I suppose if I thought I was going to die, I could get ready given a period of time, but I am not sure about that. Some folks think that this is not a good thing to think about. I envy the control they must have over their thinking processes.
Pug Photos on Flickr
EppsNet Movie Reviews: We Are the Best!
Contrary to the IMDB summary below, only two of the girls, Klara and Bobo, have no instruments (or talent). The third girl, Hedvig, is a painfully shy classical guitar-playing schoolmate recruited to teach them about music.
This movie is a joy! I don’t know what else to say. See it.
Rating: 
We Are the Best!
Three girls in 1980s Stockholm decide to form a punk band -- despite not having any instruments and being told by everyone that punk is dead.
Director: Lukas Moodysson
Cast: Mira Barkhammar, Mira Grosin, Liv LeMoyne
IMDb rating: 7.1 (11832 votes)
Hard Deadlines
Does saying “This task has to be done by Friday” increase the chances that the task will be done by Friday?
No, but it increases the chance that it won’t be done before Friday.
Better question: Why isn’t it done now?
Thus spoke The Programmer.
Rickie Lee Jones at the Coach House
We saw Rickie Lee Jones at the Coach House Sunday night. I’ve been an RLJ fan since . . . I think it was 1979, when this young woman I’d never heard of showed up on Saturday Night Live and sang “Chuck E’s in Love”:
[youtube http://youtu.be/o-skfqam0-I]
It might be possible to watch that now and say, “What’s the big deal? I’ve heard women sing like that.”
Not in 1979, you didn’t. In case you’ve forgotten or blocked it out or you weren’t born yet, in 1979 we were listening to Olivia Newton-John, Debby Boone, and similar lame-ass bullshit. (Or Christopher Cross, Barry Manilow . . . the male singers were equally uninspiring.)
I couldn’t have been more electrified if she’d capped off the performance by whacking the Captain and Tennille across the face with her beret.
RLJ’s style influenced a lot of singers, including some who’ve been much more commercially successful, and she really hasn’t I think been properly recognized for that.
She didn’t have a band, just played guitar and piano and sang. She sounded great, reinventing some of her best-known songs with new tempos and phrasing. As I mentioned when we saw Neil Young’s stunning solo show in April, a lot of performers hide their shortcomings as musicians and singers by adding a band, backup singers, electronics and other accoutrements, but when you’re up there all by yourself, there’s nowhere to hide. It’s organic music.
She told some stories between songs, many about living in New Orleans after moving recently from LA. Topics included voodoo ladies, fireflies, impromptu parades and neighbors who sit out on their front porch and wave to you.
The venue was sold out. That’s good. I feel like we were part of something. There was a long standing ovation at the end of the set . . . people went on clapping for several minutes even after the house lights came up, which I don’t remember ever seeing before.
Here’s the set list, to the best of my recollection:
Weasel and the White Boys Cool
Sympathy for the Devil
Young Blood
The Last Chance Texaco
Satellites
It Must Be Love
On Saturday Afternoons in 1963
We Belong Together
Living It Up
The Weight
Company
Chuck E’s in Love
Dying at the Right Time
Paul McCartney has 5,700,000 Likes on Facebook. John Lennon has 15,000,000 Likes, despite being dead for more than 30 years.
As Nietzsche used to say, “One must discontinue being feasted upon when one tasteth best; that is known by those who want to be long loved.”