PN:
Joe’s Comment – The Ides of March are passed, and past, too. Caesar, a brilliant but flawed man, stabbed to death for his politics, found no succor from his fellow Senators. Or his best pal.
I’ll make it clear. I haven’t been stabbed. For my politics or anything else. Life is good. Ice cream is still ice cream, politics still politics.
But, when politics goes awry, lessons from history beg study.
Otherwise, won’t history repeat, or do something even worse?
There was a time the Dutch ate their Prime Minister.
Was the cause of Caesar’s demise, or that of Johan de Witt, a matter of policy?
Personality?
One (or more) of the “Carnal Sins”?
As the Dutch historians said, “het volk was redeloos, de regering radeloos, en het land reddeloos.”
Which, in English, translates as “the people were irrational, the government helpless, and the country beyond salvation.”
Thanks to Shakespeare, we know what Caesar said.
“Et tu, Brute?”
Brutus’ reply is lost in the mists of antiquity.
There are so many politicians that merit no respect, there are many more who are sanctioned criminals, and a few who deserve the gallows.
All over the world.
That is enough to put a bad taste in yer gob.
Anyone who has read my Sunday Rants knows I love a good meme.
Celebrating/mourning the Ides, anticipating the rise of Spring, I shall now declare my abhorrence of politics, and love of memes.
Canadiana
Quick Dick McDick
A bit of blue language from Saskatchewan’s ambassador to the world in this episode.
QDMcD has been missing in action for weeks. The reason is calving.
Looks to be a surplus of snow in Tuffnel at present.
The ire of QD was raised to boiling because of CSIS leaking information about the CCP interfering in Canada, whether politics or citizenry or economics or whatever.
Just another day in the Great North:
Americana
Scott Adams Controversy
Mr. Adams made a statement during a recent podcast wherein he decried the violence perpetrated against white people by none white people.
Using his Scott Adams copyright logic, he made a statement based on reported data that identified more than 50% of American blacks had animosity toward white Americans.
Mr. Adams said if that data is so, then goodbye, I don’t want anything to do with you.
As you can imagine, the hair of every progressive spontaneously ignited!
The controversy over what he said is a firestorm.
Here’s one of his mia culpa videos:
Joe and I agree with the premise. That is, why in the world would you have anything to do with a hate group, a group who condemns your existence?
However, in Scott Adams World, your logic can get you in deep hot water.
The memes are out there and are sublime!
Here are a few –
Joe’s Garage
Irresistible Force vs Immovable Object
The following walk through the past with Sandy Munro and his friend Michael Liedtke, reminiscing about their shared time at McDonnell Douglas, is old gold.
The time period they are discussing is the very late ’80s and early ’90s.
The subject is complex, but a distilled description of what they are talking about is ossification of a company.
When used as a verb without object, “ossify” means “to become rigid and inflexible in habits, attitudes, opinions, etc.” When used as a verb with an object, it means “to convert into or cause to harden like a bone”. Another word to describe the process is “fossilization”, or “fossilize” more so as the company dies.
Joe and I experienced our own version of this phenomenon working in our career with Okanagan Telephone, BC Telephone, and TELUS.
Because the “soup of the day” in those years was “Quality Circles” and the concept of lean development was young but promising, our company struck a project to investigate improving various processes within the company, especially in engineering. All of the teams that were formed except one did not produce earth shaking results. Our team produced a mechanized engineering program for inside plant design and implementation. It took 5 years of struggling and change to make a reality. It made redundant a large number of positions (over 100) as it was rolled out, while improving and standardizing inside plant engineering output. To Joe and my knowledge, it is still in existence today, albeit far from the original release. What Joe and I did to make these changes wasn’t unique – we thought it an obvious and essential part of the process. We involved the people doing the work in designing out all the bad aspects, and designing in their wish list. We did this from outside suppliers to end users.
The resistance our team met spanned the entire company from first line workers up to the top executives. Each of these disciplines had and always have different mandates to meet; the overall objective is efficient delivery of the desired output.
We also found acceptance and relief from many folks who were frustrated with the way things were done. The trick is to find the people who embrace change who have better processes or products, no matter the source.
A good example of two movies that briefly touch this theme are “Ford vs Ferrari”, and “The Flight of the Phoenix”.
A wise manager once told us that, in a publicly owned company, as you advance up the management hierarchy your focus becomes less on the actual work, and more on the financial manifestation.
We have heard of many organizations whose management team was at odds with the production team, because of misdirected objectives.
The following video is a conversation about a company, McDonnell Douglas, that was no longer on the leading edge of development. Their upper management team was focused not on meeting AND exceeding customer requirements, but on financial performance.
Changing the world is hard when the world doesn’t want to change:
Carnivore Diet
This summary of the benefits of eating a high fat low carb diet hits many high points.
The author “Stoium”, has a Ub2b channel.
Joe and I couldn’t find who is this person in a short Internet search, so Stoium he remains.
Joe and I endorse this video. It covers the problem with eating plant foods, and processed “food”. A good primer if you’ve not considered what your body needs. It explains why the carnivore diet works so well in only 13 minutes. Bargain!:
Joe’s Comment – I’m antsy. Waiting impatiently for Spring to magically effuse around me. The yard is a wet clay mess. The projects are all waiting, unmoved since the early onset Winter came on November 1st, with 8 below zero Celsius temperatures. The slow warming of the last three weeks has diminished the snow to the point that you can walk around it if your gait is sufficiently serpentine.
Joe’s Comment – Another week of winter weather. Another week of avoiding all my projects: in the house, in the shop, on the Internet, in the yard.
I suspect it is related to daily sunshine exposure.
Way back when in the ’70s, I decided to move to the Okanagan Valley. Part lifestyle, part demographics, mostly climate.
Druthers is a Canadian news source. Their motto is “If I had my druthers, we all would know the truth“. Free subscriptions. Voluntary donations accepted. All issues available on line. The Druthers website is 
