Category Archives: Angst

On wrecking your career

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It’s the end of a rotten day and I’m fuming. There are many ways to see harm to or the obliteration of your career in the fabulous world of industry. It can be self-immolation or you can catch a bullet just by standing there. Sometimes you can be removed for reasons that are never clear- your division or your job description can be rendered obsolete by the geniuses driving the boat. Industry demands loyalty and the ability to absorb abuse through many forms of institutionalized intimidation.

Sometimes working in industry just sucks. There is no way around it nor is there a better description. The trick to weathering bad times is to find a way to reign in your temper when things get stupid. Speaking for myself- a large irritable mammal- this can be really hard to do. I am a smartass with a good vocabulary and a decent imagination- a detonable configuration and am unable to keep my mouth shut sometimes.

I had to learn this temper thing the hard way. I once beared my teeth and snapped back at a senior staff member who was behaving just horribly. He had a need for dominance and used his lengthy time in service to leverage it. Skipping to the conclusion, I ended up leaving and he stayed.  Moral of the story- for long term survival, find a way to let bad characters implode through their own weaknesses.  If you want to stay, then resolve to stay.

In industry it is quite important that your “deliverables” are not just visible, but also mission critical. Industry is cyclical and companies inevitably expand the head count. When times get tough, the head count is one of the first things they want to trim. While times are good, try to remain on important projects that are highly visible and valuable to management. Try to avoid being put on invisible projects.

Be judicious in how you use email. Don’t give others a stick that they can beat you over the head with. Never compose an email while you are angry. Always be fair and generous, especially to despicable characters. Even handedness in the face of conflict will always win friends and allies. Try to avoid blind copying and excessive cc’s to upper level people. Try to settle your disputes without making a comedy show of it in front of management.

You will eventually find that one of the major problems in life is the matter of control. Many kinds of conflict and ordeals derive from the need for control. Some people harbor pernicious control issues that disrupt everything around them. They are like typhoid carriers. I have yet to find a rule of thumb for such a situation. But the thing to remember is that such people could cause you to behave badly as well.  , so a person has to be on guard when certain people are around. This sounds simple, but it can be quite hard to do. I am writing this very post as a way to process my own frustrations.

Mt. Kraznydang Climbers Perish in Avalanche

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5 July, 2008. Boulder, Colorado. The climbing community mourns today as the recovery of six bodies continues from the 2008 Mt Kraznydang expedition.  A makeshift morgue was set up in the capital city of Bleeny, in the Zapore Islands off the Kamchatkan coast near Gnoyniechok, Siberia. The international climbing team was lead by Gon Anandachopbalmanchoda, well known Thai explorer, climbing apparel designer, and raconteur.

Mt Kraznydang is the tallest mountain in the Podguznik range in the volcanic Zapore island chain. Also known as Stalin’s Carbuncle, 33,459 ft Mt Kraznydang has resisted several attempts at its summit since its height was revised in 2005 by satellite radar, making it the second tallest peak on earth.

The Anandachopbalmanchoda team was reportedly near the summit when an earthquake loosened a bank of snow, bringing the team careening down to the 9000 ft level in the avalanche. The last radio transmission was from an unidentified climber who exclaimed ” … Oh, for Petes sake!! … Son of a(garbled) … refund! (static)….”.

Bleeny is the Sister City of Boulder, Colorado. Services will be held at the Podguznik Mountaineering Center on the Pearl Street mall. Donations are appreciated.

From NIMBY to BANANA

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The 2005 government report entitled Peaking of World Oil Production: Impacts, Mitigation and Risk Management, by Hirsch, Bezdek, and Wendling, is a sobering tally of the current picture of oil production and consumption in the world today. Often referred to as the Hirsch Report, the authors take a “now shot” of the global oil production scene and speak directly to the matter of mitigating the approaching economic disruption that must usher an unprepared nation into a future of peak and declining oil production.

If you read the Hirsch Report and pay attention to current events, you may be gripped by a kind of cognitve dissonance, or a haunting sense resembling a schizophrenic episode of contradictory voices in the collective consciousness.  While the global warming showboat is paddling up and down the Mississippi blowing steam and calliope music, nationalized oil producers are failing to answer calls for increased production in reply to a dramatic ramp-up in petroleum demand. Some call for increased exploration and others call for drop in replacements for petroleum. All the while, evidence accumulates that the ecosystem suffering from consumption and waste generation.

As with any discussion involving economics, it is possible for people to speak imprecisely when discussing supply and demand. Econobrowser takes Hirsch to task in this manner. It seems that many of us confuse demand with desire.

Supply equals demand today, supply will equal demand in 2025, and supply will equal demand in 2050. Whatever Hirsch means by “peaking of world conventional oil production,” it certainly isn’t the condition that “production will no longer satisfy demand.”

Our news media, now almost fully morphed into a perverse mix of gibbering Bill O’Reilly clones and entertainment news programming, prattles endlessly about the hurtful gasoline prices and truncated vacation plans. Government makes flatulent noises about more drilling, but hardly a peep about reduced consumption.  Where is the journalist corps? Who is asking the tough questions?

In isolation, either climate change or an exponential oil shock are more complex than nimrods leaders in the Bush administration can process. Together, these stresses add up to a major challenge to the way we live.  Maybe the situation is more complex than any nation can reasonably respond to. With global prosperity comes global demand for resources.  Western nations have built a house of cards based on cheap petroleum. Instead of wage growth in the past 20 years, we have been given easier access to credit. Instead of increased savings, we have found ways to burn up discretionary income.

A major part of what has to happen to adapt to the new reality of petroleum scarcity is a remodel of our infrastructure. We need more passenger rail lines and terminals with the necessary right-of-way issues taken care of. Workers need to live closer to their place of employment. The airlines have to figure out how to operate profitably with reduced passenger miles. We must upgrade our electric power distribution system to accommodate the increasing reliance on electrical energy. If wages do not change, we must adapt to having less discretionary income to spend. 

But a remodel of infrastructure will require that we adapt to living nearer to it. In the past, a proposal to build a power plant is met with a chorus of outrage or “concern”. It used to be called NIMBY- Not-In-My-Back-Yard.  The latest acronym is BANANA- Build-Absolutely-Nothing-Anywhere-Near-Anything. New power transmission lines and generating plants will have to go up and it will have to happen somewhere. People naturally fret about real estate prices and their view from the dining room window. I foresee more exercise of eminent domain in the future.

Farewell George Carlin

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June 22, 2008, Santa Monica, California. Comedian and satirist George Carlin died sunday evening after checking into a Santa Monica hospital complaining of chest pains. He was 71.

Carlin was a brilliant social satirist and comic. He had the ability to look at ordinary things from a different angle and see the obvious obsurdity in things most of us accept as simple background noise. This is one of the key attributes of a successful satirist and comedian.

I think it’s the duty of the comedian to find out where the line is drawn and cross it deliberately. 

The very existence of flamethrowers proves that some time, somewhere, someone said to themselves, “You know, I want to set those people over there on fire, but I’m just not close enough to get the job done.”

I went to a bookstore and asked the saleswoman, “Where’s the self-help section?” She said if she told me, it would defeat the purpose.

There’s no present. There’s only the immediate future and the recent past.

Not only do I not know what’s going on, I wouldn’t know what to do about it if I did.

-George Carlin

Carlin was a serial quipster who pushed the boundaries of social norms. His Seven Dirty Words ended up as the center of a 1978 Supreme Court ruling that affirmed the right of the state to bar “indecent” of speech on the public airwaves.

While it is common for contemporary comedians to exploit “indecent” speech for shock value today, few seem to have the facility with language that Carlin had. He was able to reduce to a few short humorous sentences the dark uncertainties that many of us have with common subjects.  Carlin’s observations on taboo subjects put him well ahead of his time.

Secular Marriage. Gaussling’s 8th Epistle to the Bohemians.

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Below is a comment that I left on the Volokh Conspiracy some time ago. Rather than squander perfectly good ramblings there, I have reproduced it here and attached a link.  Th’ Gaussling

Broadly, we have two kinds of marriage in the USA. One is before a god and the other is before the state. Marriage before a god is a supernatural arrangement that is beyond the scope of this letter.

It would seem that the states compelling interest in marriage is mostly confined to the disposition of debts, assets, and minor children during the marriage and in the event the marriage fails. Married partners have an obligation to the welfare of minor children born to them or adopted. Married partners also have a status that allows for decision-making in critical care situations. It seems to be a kind of partnership whereupon responsibility for the secular aspects of married life are defined. After all, the state is called in to make decisions as to the disposition of civil matters in the event of a divorce. Surely the state can clearly define certain basic responsibilities and privileges in advance.

The moral/spiritual aspects of marriage “can” be interpreted as being perpendicular or orthogonal (like the x and y axes in a graph) to the legal dimension of property rights and other secular aspects of married partners. The state is without supernatural powers, thankfully, so it is inherently impotent in the spiritual dimension. If that is the case, and in the absence of a uniform interpretation of supernatural governance, it should be silent on spiritual matters.

The state should have no interest in how married partners conduct their lawful affairs beyond the normal confines of civil and criminal law.

A code defining the responsibilities of married partners in a variety of configurations could be modeled easily. If you accept the premise that secular marriage is confined to the mundane matters that are already contestable in a court, then it is a simple matter to imagine same sex or plural marriages under the same constraints. What is the compelling interest of the state in barring same sex partners from having automatic authority in giving comfort to a dying partner? We already have codes regulating many other kinds of complex relationships between people- corporations, partnerships, LLC’s, government, etc. Minimally, the state should entertain the prospect of recognizing limited entry of some new definitions of marriage to adult parties wanting to be responsible members of society with the rights and responsibilities thereto appertaining.

Poorer Living from Better Things

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I’m not an apologist for the chemical industry. Chemical industry has a checkered past in many ways. The pesticide, petrochemicals, and mining industries have left a deep and abiding foul taste in the mouths of many communities. In a previous era, heavy industry has fouled rivers, lakes, air, and ground water. It has lead to illness, death, and loss of livelihood to many people.

But in the modern era much of this wanton issuance of hazardous industrial material into the air and waters has been halted or greatly diminished. At least for the US, Canada, and the EU. And it is not because industry suddenly found religion. The “regulatory environment” became so compelling a liability cost factor that industry set its mind to engineering plants into compliance. 

I would make the observation that today, the major chemical health issues before us are not quite as much about bulk environmental pollution by waste products. Rather, I would offer that the most important matter may have to do with the chronic exposure of consumers to various levels of manufactured products. High energy density foods, particularly, high fructose corn sweeteners; veterinary antibiotic residues, endocrine disrupters, smoking, highly potent pharmaceuticals, and volatiles from polymers and adhesives to name just a few.

Modern life has come to require the consumption of many things.  A modern nation must have a thriving chemical industry to sustain its need for manufactured materials. It is quite difficult and isolating to live a life free of paint and plastics or diesel and drugs. Choosing paper over plastic at the supermarket requires a difficult calculation of comparative environmental insults. Pulp manufacture vs polymer manufacture- which is the least evil? I don’t know.

Our lives have transitioned from convenience to wretched excess. Our industry has given us an irresistable selection of facile ways to accomplish excess consumption. Individualized portions meter out aliquots of tasty morsels that our cortisol-stressed brains cry out for. These same portions are conveniently dispensed in petroleum- or natural gas-derived packages within packages within packages. These resource depleting disposable nested packages are delivered to our local market in diesel burning behemoths because some pencil-necked cube monkey decided that rotund Americans needed yet one more permutation of high fructose corn syrup saturated, palm oil softened, sodium salt crusted, azo dye pigmented, extruded grain product on Wal-Mart shelves.

Enough already.

All Rights Reserved. Copyright 2008.

Tornado Dreams

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This afternoon over lunch hour at the plant I stepped outside and saw a rotating wall cloud just a few miles west. It is unusual for tornadoes to form this close to the mountains. I’ll admit that I was disappointed to not witness an actual funnel.  

At about the same time 15 miles NW near my home, a funnel cloud was spotted. From that location, my daughter reported that fellow middle school students were huddled under their desks for an hour waiting for the storm to pass. Another 15 miles north, my wife was busy herding elementary school students under their desks in what they call the “squat and scream” position. Sadly, a nearby town suffered a strike by a tornado that resulted in one fatality and a bunch of heavily damaged homes.

Imagine if the area that comprises what we refer to as the Middle East was an area that suffered tornado activity. That would be the area from Lebanon to Iran to Egypt.  It is fun to speculate how the Abrahamic religions might be filled with parables and stories detailing the wrath of God through the agency of a tornado.

Perhaps the exodus of the Israelites might have been aided by the thrashing of Pharaoh with a tornado rather than drowning as the parting seas collapsed. Or colorful tornado-related dream accounts of the end times in the New Testament’s Electric Koolaid Acid Trip of the Book of Revelations.

After the excitement it was back to business. Work is a seemingly endless carnival of intractable problems and sticky layers of nuance.

All Rights Reserved. Copyright 2008.

Thus Begins Cold War II

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Russia celebrated a holiday recently with a large scale military parade on Red Square. Just like the bad old days. Putins sock puppet, President Dmitri Medvedev, smiled while Putin stood stern-faced at his side at the annual Parade of Hardware.  Insiders claim that Russia’s effort to modernize its military forces is anemic and plagued with corruption. Putin and followers are plainly appealing to that voice in the Russian soul that longs for strongman leadership.

China, on the other hand, is quietly constructing a secret underground nuclear submarine base on Hainan. Hmmm. A secret underground lair. Sounds like Dr. No.  I doubt there are miniskirted nubiles with machine guns. Bummer.

Whereas Russia is fighting infrastructural inertia in its return to the platform, China is methodically ramping up its military with an economy flush with cash. With funding from its exports of Wal-Mart inventory and other Cheap Plastic Crap (CPC) marketed through its many outlets in the USA, China is moving closer to a blue water Navy and an SSBN fleet.

In the next 20 years, we are likely to see China flexing its muscle by positioning naval (carrier ?) groups and hints of Chinese submarine fleets prowling the continental shelves of the world.  Just like us.

While the USA shadow boxes with multiple terrorist threats around the world, China plods forward minding its own business and funding its own growth.

Four US presidential terms were squandered following the fall of the Soviet Union- 2 x Clinton and 2 x Bush.  US efforts to engage Russia in economic cooperation were weak at best. The highlight was perhaps the downgrading of Soviet era nuclear materials.  Instead of building friendships and trade cooperation, US presidents were distracted by faulty nation building exercises and dubious foreign adventures. Mikhail Gorbachev himself recently lamented that “… every US president has to have a war…”. 

US government needs to spend a 4 year term focused inwards. We must address US infrastructure as eagerly and aggressively as we land troops on the sandy reaches of the earth. The US needs an upgrade in electrical power distribution, bridges, its rail “system”, and its ports.

Collectively, we must find ways to keep factories and businesses in the USA. We need to reconsider the structure of the Code of Federal Regulations. Our regulatory structure is now so complex and extensive that we face the real risk of killing innovation. Our tax code is too complex and too burdensome on citizens and businesses. The government is funding far too many activities.

In short, the USA must get back to basics. The country is in a existential crisis and we need to get grounded again. We need fewer rules in our lives, not more. We need fewer people telling us how to live an authentic life. More of us need to spend a bit more time in the pursuit of happiness.

More snow.

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May 1, 2008.  Snowflakes are blowing around the lilac blossoms. Predictions call for 8″ to 16″ of snow in the northern mountains. Rain & possible snow for the northern front range. Lordy.