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?”

A correspondent of mine recently opined thusly:

The founding fathers KNEW that situations change, which is why we have the 9th Amendment:

“The enumeration in the Constitution of certain rights shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.”

They were wiser than we even realize most of the time. They gave us this explicit statement that the Constitution IS a living document.

Suspecting that she misunderstood the Ninth Amendment, I asked her if she had any idea why the Ninth Amendment was included, its significance. She replied:

“Yeah. They were leaving wiggle room for the future in case there were any rights they neglected to mention.”

As I suspected, she didn’t understand the Ninth Amendment. To put it in more modern English, the amendment says: “Even though we listed some rights in the Constitution, that doesn’t mean there aren’t a lot more rights that the people still have.”

My response was as follows:

“In case” there were any they failed to mention? Hardly. The whole point is that we have all the rights except for the very few we delegated to FedGov. They knew there was no way to list all of a citizen’s rights. There is no “in case” since they didn’t even try to list all our rights. it’d be impossible. But then, there’s no need to list our rights, since FedGov is a government of limited powers. That is what some states believed. But others wanted certain rights guaranteed in writing nonetheless. So we have the Bill Of Rights.

Other states were concerned that listing *any* rights: assembly, petition, speech, press, religion, bearing arms and so on, might cause some knuckleheads to say, “If it’s not in the Constitution then you don’t have that right.”  Such people miss the point that the Constitution does not grant us rights; it only mentions a few of the more important ones explicitly, saying that they shall not be infringed. The rights exist whether or not the Constitution exists and cannot be infringed unless the Constitution specifically says they can.

So we have the Ninth Amendment to keep the knuckleheads at bay.

The Bill Of Rights is all about pre-existing rights that the amendments remind us cannot be infringed by FedGov. Absent an amendment specifically mentioning freedom of speech, the press or religion, we would still enjoy these rights because FedGov was NOT empowered to infringe them.

Thus, I’m always amazed that no one sounds an alarm when some knucklehead Supreme Court nominee or “Constitutional scholar” says something like: “There’s no right to privacy in the Constitution” to justify the latest FedGov snooping measure.

We enjoy a right to privacy because we are born with it. It can only be encroached upon by powers specifically delegated to FedGov by the states. If the Constitution does not expressly grant power to FedGov to do something (like invade our privacy) then it is unconstitutional.

Where we disagree is on the whole “living Constitution” concept. We neither want nor need a living Constitution. The Constitution is not about granting rights. It did just two things:

1. It created a federal government and;
2. Delegated certain, limited powers to that government.

The powers delegated to FedGov and the rules for running FedGov are all in the Constitution.

Those who favor a “living” Constitution are in favor of continually expanding FedGov’s powers and, since the powers on which they have designs are not actually granted to FedGov by the Constitution, they claim a “living” Constitution that can constantly be reinterpreted to find all manner of heretofore unknown powers not actually delegated to FedGov by the states. This has been going on for over two hundred years now.

A living Constitution is not a good thing because it serves only to increase FedGov power and reduce our rights and liberties.

A living Constitution is not needed because FedGov can only infringe our rights and liberties within the very limited powers granted to it by the states.  If, that is, it follows the rules set forth in the Constitution.

Now, if only we could get FedGov to follow the damned rules.

An acquaintance recently described his exit interview when he left his last job. It reminded me of a meeting I attended in that it was somewhat of an exit interview for me when I left the navy.

I was a nuke, that is, qualified as an operator of a nuclear propulsion plant. The U.S. navy had a real problem with retention of nuclear-qualified personnel such as myself. I served aboard one of only four (at the time) nuclear powered surface craft.

The navy was concerned enough that, while we were in the Tonkin Gulf in 1972, the folks in D.C. sent out a commander to meet with senior nuke petty officers such as myself to find out why we were leaving the navy. I was one of several nuclear-qualified men intending to get out when my enlistment was up.

After explaining why he was there, the commander went around the room and gave each of us a chance to explain, frankly, what was wrong or lacking with the navy’s nuclear program and what needed to change to increase retention.

The most common reason, and the one I offered, was that the program had too much “chicken-shit.” (It was chicken-shit that caused our ship to go dead in the water some months previously, but that’s a story for another time.) We cited examples of how the program was being stifled with rules and operating procedures that prohibited initiative and, in effect, wasted our knowledge and talent. Trained monkeys could have done our job. There was little job satisfaction. Some of the policies actually endangered the ship.

Now you’d think that after coming all the way from Washington, D.C. to Vietnam just to hear our thoughts, the commander would come away with valuable feedback. You’d be wrong because his mind was made up before he even got there. After hearing from all of us who cared to speak, the commander said something like, “I can’t believe that’s the real reason you men are getting out.  I think it’s more a matter of pay. We need financial incentives to keep you guys on board.”

And then he doubtless returned to D.C. and told his bosses exactly that.

If I needed any confirmation that things were not going to get better, that was it.

I was so fed up that I turned down a promotion to warrant officer in favor of civilian life. (Later I would realize that office politics were far worse than chicken-shit. I should have stayed in for 12 more years and retired at 39.)

Looking for a parking place at WalMart today, the first spot I might have taken was occupied by a shopping cart. The space immediately across the aisle also had a cart but it was sufficiently off to one side such that I could squeeze in.

Now, the first space mentioned was immediately adjacent to the shopping cart return area. To have returned the cart, the person who left it blocking a parking space would have had to push it a whopping 3-4 feet.

The one across the aisle would not have had to be pushed all that far to return it.

I’m wondering why the people who left these in parking spaces didn’t bother returning their shopping carts. Were they just incredibly lazy? Are they, perhaps, just so hugely self-centered that it never occurs to them that leaving a shopping cart in a parking place might inconvenience others?

I can understand that some people would not return a cart if they had to take it a couple of aisles over, but, geez, why would they not bother when the distances are very small?!?