Ambiguous Replies to CYA

...while emailing a co-worker here yesterday - trying to find some answers to questions - i finally realized the answers given me could just as easily come from a magic 8-ball.

.... on about the 12th email reply, I told her this. She didn't think it was funny, but all her answers were buttressed with caveats such as "I believe blah blah is the case", "blah is true unless your boss tells you otherwise", "as far as I know...", etc.

... i can't write computer programs based on that. Computers and logic have a strong tendency to be binary.

After analyzing this some i've realized this is a corporate cultural tendency - so i went to my favorite corporate guru and tried to find a dilbert cartoon that utilizes the Magic 8-Ball. I couldn't find one but i did find a quote and the list of 8-Ball responses - both published here. [please forward the dilbert comic if someone finds it.]

The Necessarily Ambiguous List of Acceptable Corporate Replies

Reply hazy, try again.
Better not tell you now.
Ask again later.
Concentrate and ask again.
Cannot predict now.
Signs point to yes.
Most likely.
As I see it, yes.
You may rely on it.
Outlook good.
It is decidedly so.
My sources say no.
Very doubtful.
My reply is no.
Outlook not so good.
Don't count on it.


I've didn't include the following absolute statements from the original Magic 8-Ball because they don't really fit in with our corporate culture:

Yes.
Without a doubt.
Yes - definitely.
It is certain.


Scott Adam's 8-Ball Corporate Wisdom

Dilbert.com - DNRC - Read the Newsletter: "If you replaced all of the CEOs of the Fortune 500 companies with Magic 8 Balls (tm), and came back in five years, you would discover that some of those companies had compiled excellent track records by pure chance. The CEO's job in a huge company is essentially the same as the Magic 8 Ball: saying yes, no, or maybe, without the benefit of understanding the questions. A Magic 8 Ball is highly qualified for that sort of work."

Manic Management

I koined this phrase "Manic Management" trying to describe what I see as a fractured-focus quasi attempt to solve problems that results more in churn than in productivity. It's measured more by the high energy input and frantic interactions than by success for the long haul within short periods of time. Meetings burst open and slam shut and you're back next week on the same problem, each time thinking you've solved something but you haven't.

Churn is a new term I've learned here at work also. It can best be described as walking hard on a treadmill and then looking up asking, "Hey, are we there yet?" And everybody does it.

Anyway, I thought I was being witty and wrote these 7 tips addressing the concept. Now, it's been on my whiteboard in my cubical for more than a couple of days, and I may be offending people with it - the cardinal sin of office cube etiquette. I need to erase it, so I'll slap it on this wall and see if it sticks.

7 Tips to Avoid "Manic Management"

1. Less is usually more
2. Don't confuse multi-tasking with multi-accomplishing
3. Sound coming from the mouth does not equal expressed knowledge
4. Remember: Your $.02 probably won't pay the tax
5. It can be planned without being done
   It can be done without being planned
   It cannot be done without being done
6. Too much information is the problem - not the solution
7. "Fractured Focus" is a symptom of our age. Avoid it.

Why I don’t want Burnett Ranch Turned into Another Subdivision

1. I hate subdivisions
2. Less water for everybody
3. Subdivisions suck
4. If I wanted to look out my window into someone else's window, I would move back to suburbia
5. Burnett Ranch wasn't meant to turn into suburbia
6. I like walking to my neighbor's house and it taking longer than 30 seconds
7. I like wildlife
8. I'd rather see deer, raccoons, rabbits and foxes, than concrete, driveways, roofs, cars, and bulldozers
9. Enough is enough
10. I lived in tract homes and didn't like it
11. Trees are better than buildings and concrete
12. I'm looking for a peaceful co-existence with neighbors and nature
13. I am not looking for a peaceful co-existence with developers, businessmen and real estate profiteers that live somewhere else
14. I clear cedar and own and live on the property I bought and want others to be able to experience that same joy
15. I believe in clearing, working and living on your own land - a way of life nearly extinct
16. Bulldozers destroy nature, they don't make it
17. I'm sick of living elbow-to-elbow with commonly designed housing projects designed by some developer for his benefit
18. I moved to Burnett Ranch to live different than the 99% of Americans - is that so wrong?
19. I like nature
20. I hate subdivisions, tract homes, "custom"-housing-that-looks-the-same and grieve the loss of the last bit of American frontierism which is still alive in Burnett Ranch
21. People buying property to chop up into smaller units to sell most likely aren't planning on living here and planting a garden and becoming a good neighbor
22. Light pollution from the concentration of homes blots out that pretty starry night I've gotten used to seeing
23. I seriously dislike traffic
24. Hays County already has water wells going dry. How much more water do you think is down there?
25. A good thing is a good thing is a good thing. The style of living and the size of lots existing in Burnett Ranch provide a good thing. This good thing will erode away once we start allowing the further subdividing of the existing land into smaller and smaller suburban-style lots.

Meet the Life Hackers - New York Times

Meet the Life Hackers - New York Times: "This is part of the reason that, when someone is interrupted, it takes 25 minutes to cycle back to the original task. Once their work becomes buried beneath a screenful of interruptions, office workers appear to literally forget what task they were originally pursuing. We do not like to think we are this flighty: we might expect that if we are, say, busily filling out some forms and are suddenly distracted by a phone call, we would quickly return to finish the job. But we don't. Researchers find that 40 percent of the time, workers wander off in a new direction when an interruption ends, distracted by the technological equivalent of shiny objects. "

American Kitchen: 2 Raccoons Still Alive

ahhh doggone it.... spilled my coffee all over the floorboard of my car this morning... swerving off to the shoulder of the road trying to miss two raccoons crossing the road.

well i missed them at least. my wide-based coffee, sitting in on the floor, tipped over and i didn't realize it till i got all the way to work. 2 coons crossing and i suddenly come upon them... hitting the brakes at the same time and pulling over into the gravel shoulder of the road the first one decided not to continue and turned back. ironically i didn't spill my other cup of coffee i was holding in my hand... building up speed i drove off thinking, "wow... that was a good job. calm. smooth. still got my coffee."

i immediately started worrying about the raccoons and the next car or cars coming down the road.


American Kitchen: Dead Animal Survey

The Resurrection and the Postmodern Dilemma by N.T. Wright

I thought this was a great description of the present cultural and intellectual crossroads we find ourselves in today. Throw Christianity into the mix and you've got a real good story.

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The Resurrection and the Postmodern Dilemma by N.T. Wright: "Postmodernism. To oversimplify, this has focused on three areas."

First, knowledge and truth. Where modernism thought it could know things objectively about the world, postmodernism has reminded us that there is no such thing as neutral knowledge. Everybody has a point of view, and that point of view distorts. Everybody describes things the way that suits them. There is no such thing as objective truth. Likewise, there are no such things as objective values, only preferences. I heard somebody say at a meeting in 1996, “Today, attitudes are more important than facts—and we can document that!” That statement trembles on the brink between modernity and postmodernity. The cultural symbols that encapsulate this revolution are the personal stereo and the virtual-reality screen; everyone creates their own private world.

Second, the self. Modernity vaunted the great lonely individual, the all-powerful “I,” symbolised perfectly in Descartes’s cogito ergo sum and in the proud claim, “I am the master of my fate. . . the captain of my soul.”1 But postmodernity has deconstructed the self, the “I.” The “I” now may be just a floating signifier, a temporary and accidental meeting place of conflicting forces and impulses. Just as reality collapses inward upon the knower, the knower deconstructs itself.

Third, the story. Modernity implied a narrative about the way the world was. It was essentially an eschatological story. World history had been steadily moving toward, or at least eagerly awaiting, the point at which the industrial revolution and the philosophical enlightenment would burst upon the world bringing a new era of blessing for all. This huge overarching story—such overarching stories are known in this postmodernist world as metanarratives—now has been conclusively shown to be an oppressive, imperialist, and self-serving construct. It has brought untold misery to millions in the industrialized West, and to billions in the rest of the world, where cheap labor and raw materials have been ruthlessly exploited. It is a story that serves the interest of Western industrial capitalism. Modernity stands condemned of building a new tower of Babel. Postmodernity has gone on to claim, primarily with this great metanarrative as the example, that all metanarratives are suspect. They are all power games.
Collapsing reality, deconstructing selfhood, and the death of the metanarrative—these are the keys to understanding postmodernity. It is a ruthless application of the hermeneutic of suspicion to everything that the post-Enlightenment Western world has held dear. It corresponds exactly with the microchip revolution, which has generated and sustained a world m which creating new apparent realities, living in one’s own private world, and telling one’s own story, even though it does not cohere with anybody rise’s story, becomes easier and easier. This, on one level, is what the Internet is about. We live in a cultural, economic, moral, and even religious smorgasbord. “Pick-n-mix” is the order of the day.

IN MATTERS OF JUDGEMENT

...wrote a poem on the way to work this morning ...simply dealing with the "definition of Self" conundrum as initiated by Descartes and his mind/body dualism and as answered by John MacMurray and as painfully experienced by every thinking Westerner ever since... it's simple but pure - but heck, i'm not a poet - so there. :)

IN MATTERS OF JUDGEMENT
(breaking out of the knot-thought mess of Descartes)

It's what I do
  Not what I say [that matters]
 It's what I say
   Not what I feel
  It's what I feel
    Not what I think

     (what I think hardly matters)

    What I do
   Is what I am
  And what I am
 Is what I do

I do therefore I am