“People don’t stop killers,” writes the Instapundit. “People with guns do.”
The idea is that if one of the Virginia Tech students had had a gun with him, he could have come to the rescue like Dick Dauntless, and shot the Korean.
Well that’s true. But what if 300 students had guns, and they were all on the look-out for a student with a gun? I’m failing to see the genius of this plan, though no doubt I’ve overlooked something obvious.
Cancer is Racist
From an American Cancer Society email:
While minorities have made great social strides in the United States in recent decades, many still experience disproportionately higher incidences of disease — especially cancer. The American Cancer Society is working to eliminate cancer disparities among minority populations and the medically underserved, a fact underscored by National Multicultural Cancer Awareness Week, which is April 15-21, 2007.
Sounds like more white people need to get cancer . . .
Online Map Shootout
The competitors: Windows Live Search, Yahoo! and Google.
I was looking at some really nice maps of Washington, DC, last night on Live Search. I’m not totally up to speed on the latest advances in mapping technology, so I wondered if Live Search had totally leapfrogged the competition with this stuff, or if I could do the same thing on the other map sites.
Here’s what I found:
This is the best view I could get of the Jefferson Memorial on Yahoo!
Google is able to zoom in quite a bit closer.
But Live Search can do this!
Thank you, Bill Gates!
The killer feature (obviously) is that Live Search gives you an oblique view into the scene, instead of just a flat, looking-straight-down view. Plus the image resolution is a lot better.
Final Ranking:
- Live Search
- Yahoo!
What I (Re-)Learned Today
An ironclad but widely ignored law of software development — you could probably substitute “product development” as well:
Customers never understand how something is going to work until they see it in action.
Thus spoke The Programmer.
Overpromise and Underdeliver
I heard one of our salesmen on the phone this morning telling a customer that “we underpromise and overdeliver.”
I understand the strategy, but doesn’t telling a customer that you underpromise and overdeliver neutralize the whole game plan? Haven’t you now promised to overdeliver?
And if you do overdeliver, you haven’t really overdelivered because you promised to overdeliver in the first place . . .
The Geometry of Politics
On the heels of my kid’s discovery that his tour group will not be break dancing their way across our nation’s capital, comes another disappointment — his tyrannical math teacher has been added to the list of chaperones.
“She’ll probably say, ‘Oh, Casey, I’m glad you’re here. Why don’t you calculate the volume of the White House?'”
I Have a Dream 2007
My son’s going to Washington, DC, next week with a group from his junior high school. Once there, they’ll hook up with a group from Martin Luther King High School for a 5 day, 4 night Discover DC educational tour.
Despite the name, MLK High School is not a predominantly black school, a big disappointment to my kid, who was looking forward to his travel companions “breaking out the cardboard mats and spinning on their heads.”
I Have a Dream, indeed!
Free Advice
I heard a radio commercial today for Robbins Bros., a local engagement ring chain, offering free advice on how to make your marriage proposal a creative and memorable event.
I’ll give you some free advice, I thought, although my advice won’t sell a lot of engagement rings . . .
The Difference
From xkcd.com:
Good News for Meth Addicts
I’m reading the ads on the back page of the current OC Weekly:
DO YOU USE CRYSTAL METH?
Alcohol Related Problems? We Can Help You!
ERASE YOUR CRIMINAL RECORD
I’ve never been a big fan of OC Weekly and now I understand why. It’s written for a target audience of criminals, alcoholics and meth addicts.
Good news though if you are in fact a meth addict: according to the ad, a professor at UCLA is doing a research study and handing out up to $1,075 in gift certificates to qualified participants.
Note that you don’t get the money in cash because you’d probably just go out and spend it on crystal meth . . .
Nothing Can Save You
Reserve your judgments and words
And you maintain your influence;
Speak your mind and take positions
And nothing can save you.Ritual
Well established hierarchies are not easily uprooted;
Closely held beliefs are not easily released;
So ritual enthralls generation after generation.Harmony does not care for harmony, and so is naturally attained;
But ritual is intent upon harmony, and so can not attain it.Harmony neither acts nor reasons;
Love acts, but without reason;
Justice acts to serve reason;
But ritual acts to enforce reason.When the Way is lost, there remains harmony;
When harmony is lost, there remains love;
When love is lost, there remains justice;
But when justice is lost, there remains ritual.Ritual is the end of compassion and honesty,
The beginning of confusion;
Belief is a colorful hope or fear,
The beginning of folly.The sage goes by harmony, not by hope;
He dwells in the fruit, not the flower;
He accepts substance, and ignores abstraction.Hitting a Moving Target
IT has got to be the world’s most unprofessional profession . . .
I’m sitting through a dry run of a presentation for our CEO, explaining why the company’s flagship IT project has taken so long and cost so much, with no end in sight.
It seems that, compared with two years ago when the project started, headcount is up 60 percent, sales volume has more than doubled, the product mix has changed significantly, as a result of of which, requirements and assumptions have had to be constantly changed.
Of course! Two years ago, who could have anticipated that the business might look a lot different two years down the road?
If you said “Uh, pretty much anybody,” you’re right.
Thus spoke The Programmer.
Drowning in Sewage
Further deadly sewage floods are feared after a wave of stinking waste and mud from a collapsed septic pool inundated a Gaza village, killing five people, including two babies. . . .
It highlighted the desperate need to upgrade Gaza’s overloaded, outdated infrastructure — but aid officials say construction of a modern sewage treatment plant has been held up by constant Israeli-Palestinian fighting.
In related news, the Jerusalem Post reports that Israel recently stopped selling metal pipes to the Palestinians after discovering that the pipes were being used to build rockets that were then launched back into Israel.
Bombed with their own metal — ironic!
The punch line is what the Palestinians were supposed to be using the pipes for: building a sewage system in Gaza.
Always Thank Your Dad
My boy is researching a paper on Darwin’s theory of evolution.
“How’s the research going?” I ask.
“I discovered an error and had to start over,” he says.
“You discovered an error in your paper or you discovered an error in Darwin’s theory?”
“Well, Internet Explorer discovered an error and had to close.”
“Because if you discovered an error in Darwin’s theory, there’s probably a Nobel Prize in it for you. Be sure to mention me in your acceptance speech.”
“Shut up.”
“[Imitating his voice] ‘I’d like to thank my dad, who always encouraged me to do my best.'”
“Shut up.”
Predicting the Unpredictable
A long range weather forecast should be obtained before leaving, as weather conditions are extremely unpredictable.I pulled that quote from a Ron Jeffries sig file. It’s a great Zen-like nugget that sums up the typical approach to software development, i.e., it’s an unpredictable business, so we’ll do lots of upfront planning . . . ignoring the fact that the inherent unpredictability makes dependable upfront planning impossible.
How Ancient Rituals Die Out
My son had an Irvine honor band concert last night. Along with the junior high group that he’s in, there were groups from the elementary and high schools.
I was looking through the program to see if any of his junior high friends had brothers or sisters in the other groups. That turned out to be an impossible mission.
To explain why, I’m going to plop my finger down at a random spot in the program and read off a list of the kids’ last names.
OK, here we go — Kim, Lin, Chang, Kim, Chang, Kim, Yang, Choi, Chiang, Chen, Tang, Huang, Lee, Tran, Lin, Lee, Yang, Lin, Yi, Oh, Krolewski (Krolewski! “He’s a white boy,” my son explains.) Kim, Song, Chen, Yang, Lin, Kim, Thomas, Tran, Chung, Chan, Lee . . .
When I was in school, it was a first-day ritual for the teachers to read through the roll call, recognize last names, and say things like, “Epps. Do you have a sister named M–?”
That’s a thing of the past obviously, at least in my neighborhood . . .
The Daily Puppy / Jiggs the Bulldog
The Halo Effect
The halo effect is a cognitive bias whereby people tend to make specific inferences on the basis of a general impression. It was first identified by psychologist Edward Thorndike in 1920.
I read an interesting article this weekend by Phil Rosenzweig, the author of The Halo Effect: … and the Eight Other Business Delusions That Deceive Managers, on the halo effect in the business world:
Imagine a company that is doing well, with rising sales, high profits, and a sharply increasing stock price. The tendency is to infer that the company has a sound strategy, a visionary leader, motivated employees, an excellent customer orientation, a vibrant culture, and so on. But when that same company suffers a decline–if sales fall and profits shrink–many people are quick to conclude that the company’s strategy went wrong, its people became complacent, it neglected its customers, its culture became stodgy, and more. In fact, these things may not have changed much, if at all. Rather, company performance, good or bad, creates an overall impression–a halo–that shapes how we perceive its strategy, leaders, employees, culture, and other elements.
For example, when Cisco Systems was riding high in the late 1990s, it was widely praised for its “brilliant strategy, masterful management of acquisitions, and superb customer focus.” When the tech bubble burst, Cisco was said to have “a flawed strategy, haphazard acquisition management, and poor customer relations.”
Another example: When ABB — a European engineering firm — was performing well, it had an “elegant matrix design, risk-taking culture, and charismatic chief executive.” When the company’s performance dropped off, ABB had “a dysfunctional organization, a chaotic culture, and an arrogant CEO.”
In reality, neither company had changed much; only the perceptions had changed.
Most of the business books I read are full of this type of after-the-fact “analysis,” where judgments are merely attributions reflecting a company’s performance. It appeals to managers who’d like to find a simple formula that ensures success.
If success could be reduced to a simple formula, there’d be a lot more successful managers and companies . . .
Charlie Hustle
For years, Pete Rose denied betting on baseball while he was manager of the Cincinnati Reds.
Now he admits to betting on his team every time they took the field.
Good for him! Managers and players should be required to bet on their own teams. You’d see those assholes running out ground balls for a change, I assure you.
