The Bishop and the Butterfly: Murder, Politics, and the End of the Jazz Age
    cmaukonen's picture

    Possibilities

    By cmaukonen on Tue, 02/08/2011 - 12:51pm |

    One of the areas I have the most trouble with when I construct a project for my radio interests is the physical layout of the larger components. The big variable capacitors and switches and coils and the like. I usually look at how others have done this and sometimes use this as a guide.  But I usually go with some current traditional method and am not always happy with the way it turns out. Oh it works OK but quite often it is larger than I want or not as elegant as I would like. This last time was no different.

    There was a product for doing part of this that would have made this exercise a whole lot easier and simpler and direct but it has not been available for quite some time as the company that produced it no longer does so. It was bought out and the new owners decided to take the company in a different direction. I have seen this product a number of times and though about making one myself but as it used ceramic parts that were specific to it and producing these parts as shown would be out of my ability, I dismissed this though out of hand. My thought was that in order for it to work, I had to make it exactly the way was originally made.

    WRONG !!

    It finally occurred to me that I could make one that would work as well (if not better), look good and be easy to put together. I did not have to make it exactly like the original at all. Just use the basic concept and currently available materials. I had become my own victim of absolute thinking.  My knowledge and experience in this situation had worked against me.

    In the beginner's mind there are many possibilities. In the expert's mind there are few. - Shunryu Suzuki

    Far too often we find that our knowledge and experience works against us in solving problems or finding new and different ways of accomplishing what we need or want. Those that manage to invent and create and solve problems in spite of their vast knowledge and experience - who think nearly always outside of the box - we at first refer to as ludicrous. After we have seen their wisdom we call them genius.  They have managed to retain the view and insight of the beginner. People such as Tesla and Einstein and DeForest.

    Too often we think in absolutes. Something HAS to be done a particular way.  It did not work before therefore it can't POSSIBLY work now.  We let our knowledge and experience box our thinking in and lose our imagination in the process. We become our own automatons too willing to accept  ideas as categorical with out further examination of them.
    When instead we could look at a solution and say "Hey...this might work. All we need to do is change this part or do it a bit differently." 

    We need more beginners and fewer experts.

          “There are those who look at things the way they are, and ask why... I dream of things that never were, and ask why not?” - RFK

    Comments

    Beginnner's mind.  I like that concept. 

    Nice post.

     


    by EmmaZahn on Tue, 02/08/2011 - 4:47pm

    This post is enlightening.

    People raise holy hell on the left when our President tells us that some regulations are repetitious or out of date...

    Yeah, besides the fact that regulation is rather a broad term and could mean anything.

    And we already know that the regs dealing with Wall Street did not work. That does not mean that we need more regs, we just need different regs and we need to make sure those regs are put into force.

    Everything is not right or left, rural or urban, up or down.


    by Richard Day on Tue, 02/08/2011 - 5:20pm

    I cannot help thinking that our educational environment tends to breed technocrats like flies. Highly educated but completely unimaginative people that when you suggest anything that is not within the realm of what they had drummed into their abused little brains, are totally at a loss. Most in Washington fit this description.


    by cmaukonen on Tue, 02/08/2011 - 6:20pm

    So are Federal government employees clueless inside the beltway box pigs at a trough or aren't they?

    It's just that it often strikes me how the liberal blogosphere often agrees with two opposing opinions on this topic at the same time, often on the same page, as now, on this site..

    And no one ever seems to point the contradiction out.

    Not realizing that when most conservatives and tea partier types bitch about government employees, they basically mean the very same DC people you are talking about, not their local firemen. They don't like those working at the alphabet soup Federal agencies inside the beltway, they think they are not only useless but an impedient to doing a lot of things, to innovation, the very same thing you are pointing out.

    Either you're rooting for all those Fed "experts" working at EPA, USAID, HUD, USDA, SEC, HHS, FCC, FAA, GSA, FEMA, USGS, et. al., and are happy with the job they are doing, or you aren't, can't have it both ways.

    Personally, I liked Obama at least talking about a review of regulations, whether it actually results in doing anything or not, but I sure didn't notice a lot of  liberal blogosphere support for him saying that, to the contrary, it was taken as another attack by Obama on all that is good and true and the legacy of the New Deal. (including apparently, you.) But at the same time, I still see a lot of bashing of the all the DC somebodies--who they are, I know not since they apparently aren't the Fed employees that all liberals support--who are so clueless and can't think outside the box (i.e., saccharin--once a hazardous waste, always a hazardous waste.)

    Are you suggesting that the GS senority system should be thrown out and have new, less stagnant people constantly rotated in and out of all these DC jobs, bringing with them fresh innovative ideas?  No trough, no job security?


    by artappraiser on Wed, 02/09/2011 - 4:29am

    Some of the biggest technocrats, least imaginative people I have known work for the government. But that is not necessarily the fault of government as such.  A lot of this rests on the shoulders of the people who wrote the laws and regs that set up the departments in the first place. Which points right back to the people who elected them.

    Oh and by the way....the private sector is no damn better these days. Maybe that is why were are being beaten by some clowns working rice patties in china.


    by cmaukonen on Wed, 02/09/2011 - 9:44am

    Oh and it's past 5, you can stop being snotty now.


    by cmaukonen on Wed, 02/09/2011 - 9:45am

    There's a lot of grey area, of course, so it's not really either-or. As with teachers, there are some great, hard-working, dedicated public employees and some who are just showing up. If there is an easy way to clear out the dead wood I'd be glad to hear it. My experience in watching a private firm downsize is that the first to go are the outspoken, creative types, the socially unpopular and people who have pissed off an empire builder. Middle-management empire builders want people who are loyal, and layoff survivors are often simply good at keeping their heads down.

    I'd be dead set against throwing out GS because then we'd open government to even more industry flacks.


    by Donal on Wed, 02/09/2011 - 10:15am

    I  agree in general about the contradictions although those are not exclusive to the liberal blogosphere.  The degree of cognitive dissonance from reading the conservative/libertarian side is much worse.  

    Also, you may recall how much I dislike the endless stream of ineffective and inefficient rules and regulations issued to placate some silly public interest group that end up punishing the innocent more than anything else.   Again both sides of the political divide do this.   Examples: drug war, anti-smoking campaign. 

    That said, I do not think the 'pigs at the trough' meme and bemoaning civil service incompetence (or worse) are the same thing at all although there may be some overlap.  How much depends on how many civil services jobs result from political spoils, nepotism or cronyism.  It is those jobs that tend to gum things up especially if a status-seeking person holds them.  

    So, yes.  Maybe it is time to throw out the senority system and share the 'work' with others.  Term limits for civil servants!

     

    Disclaimer:  Trying to change a single aspect of a fubared system will not make things appreciably better.  Term limits on government jobs would have to be part of a whole new paradigm.  

    ----------

    Addendum:  Maybe thinking about issues outside the total system is what causes so many contradictory thoughts.

     


    by EmmaZahn on Wed, 02/09/2011 - 1:09pm

    I realize we're just thinking aloud, but I think term limits is not at all a good idea. What's needed is an easy way to fire incompetents without creating an easy way to fire "troublemakers" (i.e., those who are working too hard or are too honest, etc.). Unfortunately, this distinction is incredibly difficult to maintain and usually requires on having good, intelligent people in charge (which also translates to a certain amount of luck, IMO). Term limits, however, fire competent experts just as easily as they fire incompetent dawdlers.


    by Verified Atheist on Thu, 02/10/2011 - 12:28pm

    One reason incompetents are rarely fired is the social stigma attached.   Add in the extra difficulty of firing a friend or relative for incompetence and the result is a bureauacracy much like what we have now both private and public.  Remember The Peter Principle?

    Our current social model teaches us to self-identify with our jobs, to own them and to embue them with their various statuses.  We treat them just like we do other personal property.  Often we end up embroiled in office politics that make the UN look like kindergarten.  My question is whether or not we should continue with that model or try to think of a new one.

    My personal experience leads me to prefer redundancies and a deep bench when there is real work to do.  There should always be someone to take up the slack when a worker is out whether planned or not.   No worker should be considered indispensable.*   All workers should have sufficient reserve capacity to deal with an emergency, that is, they should not routinely be worked to their absolute limits.

    Shorter version, I would prefer a new social model that separates much of the status and territory elements from 'jobs' so their true functions and values can be recognized.

     

    * I think it was DeGaulle who observed that cemetaries are full of indispensable men.

     


    by EmmaZahn on Thu, 02/10/2011 - 2:35pm

    My personal experience leads me to prefer redundancies and a deep bench when there is real work to do. There should always be someone to take up the slack when a worker is out whether planned or not. No worker should be considered indispensable.

    Although this is probably true more often than not, we need to be careful about over-generalizing. I work in a field that values the deep bench (it's a feature of agile programming), but in a subfield that values my specific knowledge (I have advanced degrees in physics and computer science as well as a strong background in the neurosciences). If I were to quit working, the work I'm doing would most likely no longer get done. The only thing that makes me not indispensable is that my company could exist without the work I do (although they would lose a revenue stream). I think this might not be the rule, but I'm definitely not a solitary exception.


    by Verified Atheist on Thu, 02/10/2011 - 2:51pm

    I don't think I am overgeneralizing.  Maybe you are overspecializing. :)

    Our current social model has lead us afield in overemphasizing an individual accomplishments by failing to reveal the societal foundation on which they are built.  As wild and chaotic as we may seem, there is (maybe was) a degree of cooperation at our base that empowers us and enables us to achieve as individuals.  Without it,  we really would live in a free, dog-eat-dog market and then we would find out who is truly a tall poppy.  I feel like that foundation to our society is crumbling just like much of our physical infrastructure.   When it goes, so will some of our freedom to be or become or self-actualize or whatever .....

    Anyway, the jobs I write about sharing are the foundational ones.  The ones that are necessary to enable and empower us all to pursue our individual interests.  Personally, I believe our society is big enough to accomodate both IF overweening status can be stripped from some of the less necessary 'jobs'.

    Mostly my thoughts on jobs evolved from supervising a staff of single women, many of them single parents as well.   The thing about single parents is that they often have family things to deal with that interfere with their job performance.   Often the single non-parents take up the slack even to the point of giving up their own scheduled time off which in a way penalizes them or makes them a kind of non-custodial parent however you prefer to think of it.  Maybe because we were all women, we knew the interests of the children took precedence over all our jobs even if we did not really like the mother.  The ethical and moral considerations of supervising that group were not abstractions; they were regular in-your-face dilemmas and decisions.

    I am discovering that thinking about this stuff is a whole lot easier than writing it down.  Thanks for the exercise.

     


    by EmmaZahn on Thu, 02/10/2011 - 3:39pm

    We need to be bold......Go for it C. 

    “not wishing—as he confessed—to risk the scorn "to which he would expose himself on account of the novelty and incomprehensibility of his theses."....http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicolaus_Copernicus  

    I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work. ,,,  Results! Why, man, I have gotten a lot of results. I know several thousand things that won't work…….   The chief function of the body is to carry the brain around....... There's a way to do it better - find it.
    Thomas A. Edison


    by Resistance on Tue, 02/08/2011 - 10:21pm

    If we are doing quotes, here is United Technologies in the WSJ ad from long ago.

    You’ve failed
    many times,
    although you may not
    remember.
    You fell down
    the first time
    you tried to walk.
    You almost drowned
    the first time
    you tried to
    swim, didn’t you?
    Did you hit the
    ball the first time
    you swung a bat?
    Heavy hitters,
    the ones who hit the
    most home runs,
    also strike
    out a lot.
    R.H. Macy
    failed several
    times before his
    store in New York
    caught on.
    English novelist
    John Creasy got
    753 rejection slips
    before he published
    564 books.
    Babe Ruth struck out
    1,330 times,
    but he also hit
    714 home runs.
    Don’t worry about
    failure.
    Worry about
    the chances you miss
    when you don’t
    even try.

     

     


    by EmmaZahn on Wed, 02/09/2011 - 1:44am

    Related post from the Wall St Journal:

    A Key Lesson of Adulthood: The Need to Unlearn

    For adults, one of the most important lessons to learn in life is the necessity of unlearning. We all think that we know certain things to be true beyond doubt, but these things often turn out to be false and, until we unlearn them, they get in the way of new understanding. Among the scientific certainties I have had to unlearn: that upbringing strongly shapes your personality; that nurture is the opposite of nature; that dietary fat causes obesity more than dietary carbohydrate; that carbon dioxide has been the main driver of climate change in the past.

    I came across a rather good word for this kind of unlearning—"disenthrall"—in Mark Stevenson's book "An Optimist's Tour of the Future," published just this week. Mr. Stevenson borrows it from Abraham Lincoln, whose 1862 message to Congress speaks of disenthralling ourselves of "the dogmas of the quiet past" in order to "think anew."


    by Donal on Wed, 02/09/2011 - 4:27pm

    Hummm...reminds me of a Woody Allen flick. Sleeper.

    Dr. Melik: This morning for breakfast he requested something called "wheat germ, organic honey and tiger's milk."
    Dr. Aragon: [chuckling] Oh, yes. Those are the charmed substances that some years ago were thought to contain life-preserving properties.
    Dr. Melik: You mean there was no deep fat? No steak or cream pies or... hot fudge?
    Dr. Aragon: Those were thought to be unhealthy... precisely the opposite of what we now know to be true.
    Dr. Melik: Incredible.


    by cmaukonen on Wed, 02/09/2011 - 5:07pm

    It reminded me of this:


    by EmmaZahn on Wed, 02/09/2011 - 7:22pm