tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-82231722009-10-22T20:59:50.296-04:00Thoughts on politics, systems theory, change management, and anything else that comes to mind.<p ALIGN="center"> <i>"May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in him, <br>so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit." (Rom 15:13, NIV)</i>Katehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03907677291546557771noreply@blogger.comBlogger173125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8223172.post-55612823490003765752009-10-22T20:54:00.002-04:002009-10-22T20:59:50.304-04:00

Interesting story about geopolymers at Wired.com:Professor Davidovits was awarded the French Ordre National du Mérite, and is President of the Geopolymer Institute. His most remarkable claim is that the pyramids were built using re-agglomerated stone, a sort of geopolymer limestone concrete, rather than blocks of natural stone. This would explain many of the mysteries of pyramid construction.

Katehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03907677291546557771noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8223172.post-76503868851289429232009-10-21T21:34:00.004-04:002009-10-21T21:46:06.499-04:00

Would you like a nearly-free* copy of the book that changed Bob Proctor's life?Bob Proctor, you may recall, is one of the teachers featured in "The Secret" DVD. I've had the privilege of hearing him in person -- and getting a hug from him too!Bob's been carrying around the same copy of "Think and Grow Rich" by Napoleon Hill since 1963. He quotes from it frequently in his personal achievement

Katehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03907677291546557771noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8223172.post-63895525222664583562009-10-18T19:56:00.000-04:002009-10-18T19:57:18.124-04:00

Over at Pajamas Media, Michael S. Malone comments on T-Mobile losing all their customer's Sidekick data October 1st: The vehemence and paranoia of some of these rumors only underscored what was the single unassailable truth about this episode: that the Sidekick’s one million users had a deep emotional (and often financial) investment in the device . . .and that loyalty had been betrayed.

Katehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03907677291546557771noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8223172.post-61164478856804931372009-08-24T19:03:00.003-04:002009-08-24T19:05:30.266-04:00

Here's the text of an email I just sent my Congressman, who's a Democrat. He's holding a Townhall meeting tomorrow evening.Congressman,I regret that I'll miss your townhall meeting due to a prior engagement. However, I'm interested in getting the answers to a three questions.1. President Obama has made a lot of promises about "Obamacare". Why would you support legislation such as HR3200 that

Katehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03907677291546557771noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8223172.post-2740402805126900292009-06-23T20:23:00.002-04:002009-06-23T23:02:22.316-04:00

Speaker Pelosi has scheduled the Waxman-Markey Bill for a vote this week, even though the ink is barely dry on it. The bill is formally known as H. R. 2454, the American Clean Energy and Security Act.Politico reports, "House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) has overcome one of the last big obstacles standing in the path of his landmark climate-change bill, cutting a

Katehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03907677291546557771noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8223172.post-9826068333587784462009-06-17T22:05:00.000-04:002009-06-17T22:07:08.855-04:00

Rabbi Yonason Goldson writes about "The Language of Confusion":In his essay "The Principles of Newspeak," the appendix to his classic novel, 1984 (published 60 years ago this month), George Orwell describes how the leaders of his totalitarian future have contrived to assure their hold on power by replacing English with Newspeak, a language containing no vocabulary for concepts contrary to the

Katehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03907677291546557771noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8223172.post-59967836684270397552009-06-17T21:20:00.000-04:002009-06-17T21:22:10.893-04:00

In Greek mythology, the Gordian Knot was infamous for being so complex that it was impossible to untie. (Alexander the Great "solved" the knotty problem by cutting it with a sword.)Nowadays, our fearless leaders on Capitol Hill seem intent on creating their own masterpieces of knotty complexity that many conservatives fear will be impossible to undo once implemented, just like Medicare. But

Katehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03907677291546557771noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8223172.post-90545010789351805312009-06-16T16:10:00.000-04:002009-06-16T16:12:07.428-04:00

One of the challenges a designer should think about is that the real end-user may not fit the assumptions. Take the toilets on the International Space Station, for instance. From Pravda:Until recently, Russian cosmonauts and US astronauts did not distinguish between their toilets and used the one that was closer. However, the food, which space researchers eat, differs greatly. The Russian space

Katehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03907677291546557771noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8223172.post-22253782673760919062009-05-30T08:45:00.002-04:002009-05-30T09:01:31.772-04:00

[Editor's note: Compuserve is closing down its OurWorld website hosting after many years. So I decided to resurrect some articles I had online there. This one dates from 1994. Not much has changed about organizational behavior in the intervening 15 years.]***************************Fads and why they fail.Lots of management theories have come and gone during the past century. When I was a

Katehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03907677291546557771noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8223172.post-77764787235056756392009-05-26T08:00:00.001-04:002009-05-26T08:00:00.922-04:00

*There's no such thing as a free lunch.Ralph Ellis, in an essay posted at Watts Up With That, outlines the challenges of dependency on renewable energy sources:However, it is my belief that this sublime day-dream actually holds the seeds for our economic decline and for social disorder on an unprecedented scale. Why? Because no technical and industrial society can maintain itself on unreliable

Katehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03907677291546557771noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8223172.post-47408298578965507382009-04-28T20:25:00.001-04:002009-04-28T20:47:18.680-04:00

I've been thinking lately that the Republicans need a new message, focused on the positive and aspirational, rather than righteous indignation at the latest outrage committed by the Administration and Congress. And it has to answer "What's in it for me?"A public that has been lulled into complacency, victimhood, and dependency on the munificence of the government needs to relearn the joys of the

Katehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03907677291546557771noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8223172.post-40561504169495704142009-04-20T05:42:00.003-04:002009-04-20T06:43:11.260-04:00

The EPA has finally issued its proposed endangerment finding on greenhouse gases:The Administrator signed a proposal with two distinct findings regarding greenhouse gases under section 202(a) of the Clean Air Act: The Administrator is proposing to find that the current and projected concentrations of the mix of six key greenhouse gases—carbon dioxide (CO2), methane (CH4), nitrous

Katehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03907677291546557771noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8223172.post-71918837319215303072009-03-22T21:50:00.000-04:002009-03-22T21:50:56.936-04:00

Yesterday, I happened upon the PBS series "The Supreme Court". As I tuned in, they were explaining some of the landmark decisions made by the Court under the leadership of Chief Justice John Marshall. A featured case was McCulloch v Maryland, which took place in the midst of the Panic of 1819.I was intrigued by their description of the depression of 1818/panic of 1819, which featured a severe

Katehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03907677291546557771noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8223172.post-18607152751255280782009-03-22T20:55:00.001-04:002009-03-22T21:01:13.160-04:00

Andy McCarthy over at The Corner:Is there any evidence, since the government began nationalizing swaths of the economy last autumn, that Washington has a clue about what causes positive corporate performance or about what is in the financial interest of a business enterprise? Yet the more value the Obama administration and the Democrat Congress destroy — their demagoguery and fiscally insane

Katehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03907677291546557771noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8223172.post-8888666154419966972009-03-15T08:45:00.004-04:002009-03-15T08:55:41.226-04:00

If this article proves true, Airbus' fragile reputation for the A380 superjumbo is in for a drubbing (H/T Lucianne.com):DUBAI-BASED airline Emirates is unhappy with its first four giant Airbus A380 aircraft, which showed manufacturing faults that forced flights to be cancelled, a report said on Saturday.The German weekly Der Spiegel, in its issue to be published on Monday, said Emirates in

Katehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03907677291546557771noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8223172.post-17170208974602794222009-03-09T21:10:00.000-04:002009-03-09T21:11:49.615-04:00

The US and South Korea are running their annual war games. North Korea is objecting and being bellicose, China has harassed a US mapping ship, and Iran is closer than ever to being capable of building a nuclear weapon.Rather than deriding Vice-President Biden for speaking off the cuff too often, maybe we should consider him a prophet. Remember back in October when he said: "It will not be six

Katehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03907677291546557771noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8223172.post-33417148016262723092009-03-09T20:10:00.002-04:002009-03-09T20:27:12.305-04:00

Hugh Hewitt's favorite anonymous ad exec suggests that Republicans need a new watchword: "Truth".The Truth is powerful on its own. It can be spoken in short sentences.The Truth is simple. The Truth is pure. The Truth trumps opinion. And although "Free" is frequently considered the more powerful marketing word, the truth is, the Truth wins head to head. Irrefutable Truth eventually ends every

Katehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03907677291546557771noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8223172.post-79072446928584974042009-02-02T19:44:00.004-05:002009-02-02T20:54:04.497-05:00

On Saturday, WSJ ran an editorial "A Capital Strike" examining the latest economic statistics. It confirmed my surmise about velocity and uncertainty (Rules of the Game):The innards of the fourth quarter report are, if anything, uglier than the top-line decline. Business spending on equipment and software fell 27.8%, the worst in a half-century. Spending on durable goods fell 22.4%. The only

Katehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03907677291546557771noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8223172.post-17852714114741816452009-01-26T23:25:00.001-05:002009-01-26T23:25:37.389-05:00

In systems theory, rules determine the relationships between the system and its sub-systems, between the system and its environment, and inter-relationships among the components of the system. The "rule of law" is important, for it holds that the rules are the same for all, and aren't changed capriciously: they allow us to plan rationally for the future.Wretchard quotes management guru Peter

Katehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03907677291546557771noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8223172.post-76171744252505364342009-01-16T06:46:00.001-05:002009-01-16T06:49:37.595-05:00

Wow! What a feat to ditch an Airbus A320 safely in the Hudson River with no loss of life. As Miles Vorkosigan is wont to say, luck favors the prepared:An experienced pilot and recognized safety expert with a trained crewAn aircraft designed to stay afloatA very wide river near the airport to ditch inCommercial ferries and emergency craft on the scene quickly to rescue passengersFerry crews that "

Katehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03907677291546557771noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8223172.post-2433065101437981722009-01-14T20:02:00.000-05:002009-01-14T20:02:57.890-05:00

Browsing the WSJ op-eds, I spotted this howler in The Tilting Yard, "Obama Should Act Like He Won":Democrats have massive majorities these days not because they waffle hither and yon but because their historic principles have been vindicated by events.Say what? Principles like, control the media and you control the message? Outspend the other side on campaign ads and you can overwhelm the

Katehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03907677291546557771noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8223172.post-54779757946418373752009-01-09T23:20:00.000-05:002009-01-09T23:23:44.208-05:00

Over at American Thinker, Paul Carlson seeks to explain the differences between conservatives and liberals in terms of defect analysis (aka root cause analysis). While his explanations of "common cause" variations and "special cause" variations are sound, I think that he unfairly stereotypes both camps:The concepts of common and special cause also work in understanding why politicians do what

Katehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03907677291546557771noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8223172.post-48062698748256127322009-01-09T20:43:00.002-05:002009-01-09T20:52:19.648-05:00

I'm not the only one noting parallels between Ayn Rand's classic novel "Atlas Shrugged" and the current government fad of taxing productive people and companies to throw money at the less productive.In today's Wall Street Journal, Stephen Moore pens "From Fiction to Fact in 52 Years":For the uninitiated, the moral of the story is simply this: Politicians invariably respond to crises -- that in

Katehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03907677291546557771noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8223172.post-60057113849043584692009-01-06T18:10:00.004-05:002009-01-06T19:03:07.669-05:00

It's been 60 years since Mr. Murphy was credited with the "law" that bears his name: Whatever can go wrong, will go wrong.Marcus Dunk wrote a nice tribute to the US Air Force safety engineer in today's Daily Mail:Born in 1918, Murphy was the eldest of five children and attended the prestigious United States Military Academy, West Point, from which he graduated in 1940. He was immediately

Katehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03907677291546557771noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8223172.post-88662276140195023222008-11-06T02:17:00.003-05:002008-11-06T03:51:51.485-05:00

When I visited the People's Republic of China in 1984, I was struck by the enthusiasm the people had. As one professor at Fudan University put it, "yes, there have been excesses in the past. But look how far we've come in 35 years. And together, we are building the future!"With the advent of a new administration, there is always the jubilation of the victors combined with the sour grapes of the

Katehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03907677291546557771noreply@blogger.com0