Grey Matters

I’m reading the Walter Isaacson biography of Steve Jobs in ePub form from the iTunes store. It’s a pretty good read. I hadn’t intended to read this book (I think I’m lacking what I call the “People Magazine Gene”, that makes people want to know about the personal lives of celebrities) but this was a gift so I’ve been reading it. I’m currently on chapter 35.

I’d heard many times about the Steve Jobs Reality Distortion Field and assumed it applied to, primarily, his product introductions and promotions. How wrong I was. He constantly used his RDF to bend people to his will. His was a very strong personality.

I am alternately appalled and amazed, astounded at the man that was Steve Jobs. Though he could turn on the charm when he wanted to, his normal mode was boorish to the point of cruelty. Yet he seemed to intuit the way to develop great products.

It was more than just a marriage of art and technology that he sought. Eschewing the standard, sequential product development paradigm: engineering -> design -> manufacturing -> marketing, he created a system in which all departments — even marketing — worked in parallel on product development. He called it “concurrent engineering” and “deep collaboration”. That is just not the way things are done, but it is brilliant.

When building a new facility for Pixar, he didn’t want the groups involved with their various projects to be isolated from each other as is done at conventional studios.

Quoting from the book:

So he had the Pixar building designed to promote encounters and unplanned collaborations. “If a building doesn’t encourage that, you’ll lose a lot of innovation and the magic that’s sparked by serendipity,” he said. “So we designed the building to make people get out of their offices and mingle in the central atrium with people they might not otherwise see.” The front doors and the main stairs and corridors all led to the atrium, the cafe and the mailboxes were there, the conference rooms had windows that looked out onto it, and the six-hundred-seat theater and two smaller screening rooms all spilled into it. “Steve’s theory worked from day one,” Lasseter recalled. “I kept running into people I hadn’t seen for months. I’ve never seen a building that promoted collaboration and creativity as well as this one.”

I am convinced that, although Steve Jobs may have micromanaged the assorted products brought to market under his reign, he also put into place the infrastructure to ensure that on-going development in his absence will receive the same collaborative treatment that has made so many Apple products such successes.

I recommend this book.

Zombies seem to be almost as popular as vampires and werewolves. On the show Walking Dead a while back, they had some sort of promotion where people could apply to play a zombie on the show. That could be fun.

I wonder though, does all that growling, moaning and other vocalizing that zombies do qualify as a speaking part?

I can just imagine shooting a scene with me playing a zombie: “Grrraaahhwwll yaarroowwww aahhhhrrrlll … … … uh.. Line?”

In response to a charge that he is anti-immigration, Mitt Romney stated that his father was born in Mexico.

Does that make George Romney an “immigrant”?

George Romney was born to American parents living in the Mormon Colonies in Mexico.  But was he then of Mexican nationality? Or was he in fact an American, born to American parents, who happened to be living in Mexico at the time?

Mitt was clearly implying that his father was a Mexican immigrant when he stated that his father was born in Mexico. But was George Romney in fact an immigrant? Of course not. He even ran for president, something he could not have done if he had been an immigrant.

This is indicative of two things.

1. Where one is born does not, in and of itself, determine your nationality or citizenship. Parentage is important too, specifically, their nationalities.

2. Mitt is either stupid or he was dissembling when he mentioned where his father was born, in an attempt to deflect the criticism that he is anti-immigration.

On the NBC network news tonight, discussing Romney’s 1040, the talking head made a matter-of-fact reference to “a tax code that favors the rich.”

Sure.

Taxpayer “A” pays $2,000 in income tax.
Taxpayer “B” pays $20,000,000 in income tax.

And the conclusion is that the tax code favors taxpayer “B”.

Uh-huh.

And if inmate “A” is sentenced to 2 years and inmate “B” gets life in prison, I guess the penal code favors inmate “B”.

It’s been said that the love of money is the root of all evil. Nonsense. The root of all evil is a sense of entitlement.

When a burglar steals from your home, he feels entitled to what he takes; he would not take it otherwise. When a rapist assaults a woman, he feels entitled to have his way with her. It’s hard to imagine that a mugger, demanding your wallet, doesn’t feel entitled to take what he wants.

When a Madoff or a Ponzi takes your life savings, he likely feels entitled to it owing to his superior intelligence or cleverness. You have it coming, due to your own stupidity or failure to do your homework. You don’t deserve to keep your money. He deserves it simply because he’s able to get it.

The thief with a heart of gold, the one who feels guilty about victimizing others, is in very short supply. Mostly, they take what they want out of a sense of entitlement.

The sub-prime mortgage crisis that put a majority of the world’s economy into a steep decline was conceived by the Clinton administration’s sense that people who could not afford to make mortgage payments were nonetheless entitled to get mortgage loans.

You’d think then that we’d be teaching our young that they need to work for what they get, that prosperity comes from hard work; it is not something to steal from others. You’d think that and you’d be wrong.

Instead, for many decades now, moonbats all around the world have been teaching that we are all entitled. They tell voters: “We can have it all and someone else will pay for it. You want it, they have it, vote for me and I’ll get it for you. You’re entitled.”

This came as very good news to people who were afraid they might have to work for a living. Imagine their relief to learn that they are entitled to cradle-to-grave security. Naturally, they voted the moonbats into office in droves in most of the civilized world. The moonbats, as promised, created vast entitlements by law.

The problem is that the math didn’t quite work out as planned. The “they” who earn the money don’t actually have as much as imagined. Not only that but raising their taxes is a powerful disincentive to producing wealth in the first place. The moonbats hadn’t counted on that. They envisioned an unceasing supply of wealth to be siphoned off to placate the entitled. Worse, the entitled really took their entitlement to heart, and began demanding more and more.

When taking from those who earned wealth proved to be inadequate to satisfy the needs of the entitled, the moonbats began taking from those who had yet to earn. Governments the world over borrowed money, obligating future generations to pay for the “entitlements” of today’s citizens.

Not surprising then that this Ponzi scheme eventually came unravelled, as all such do. Governments in the sudden throes of reality find they must reduce entitlements or declare bankruptcy. The entitled, for their part, are not protesting the policies that brought their governments to the brink of insolvency, rather, they are demanding that the entitlements not be curtailed. <http://www.otfb.com/blog/?p=1180> The sense of entitlement learned at the moonbats’ knee was learned a bit too well.

The “Occupy” movement is born of this sense of entitlement. “We’re entitled to jobs.” “We’re entitled to health care.” “We’re entitled to college educations.” “Gimme, gimme, gimme.”

After many weeks of floundering about, with an eclectic list of grievances and demands, someone has distilled the “Occupy” movement down to “a protest of corporate greed.” But, actually, it’s about entitlements. Every person there wants something and rather than going out and working for it, they are demanding it. They feel entitled.

The “Occupy” movement is just a bunch of extortionists, demanding we provide them with various things and giving us a taste of the violence that will ensue if their demands are not met.

“What do we want?”
[fill in the blank]
“When do we want it?”
“Now!”

As with thieves, looters and robbers everywhere, it’s all driven by a sense of entitlement. “Gimme, gimme, gimme!”