All posts by Dale Connelly

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The Long Weekend

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With the arrival of summer, the luckiest ones among us (those who have work) may also have the privilege (if they have the resources) of taking an occasional break from the routine – a long weekend to kick back and relax.

This was certainly more than we expected.

I’m not saying that I get to do that, but if I did, I’d resist taking pictures. Taking pictures is work. A Long Weekend is supposed to be the opposite of work. Plus, receiving pictures of someone else’s vacation can be a very mixed blessing. While it’s nice to see that your friends get to travel and have fun, when you’re stuck in place it can be thoroughly annoying to see that your friends get to travel and have fun. No one wants to be so selfish and resentful in response to someone else’s joy. It just happens.

The room had a memorable view!

It’s even worse if they give you a detailed description of the fun they’re having without you. I sometimes imagine there are darker truths behind the “having a wonderful time” e-mail – horrible things vacationers try to obscure with their overly cheerful accounts of sights seen and towns toured. You know – petty arguments over where to eat and tales of disappointment about the lodgings. An update on THAT part of the trip would be much more compelling. Perhaps.

Flora and Fauna

But I would never burden you with that. Like I say, I might not even be having a long weekend right now. Thursday morning is pretty early to start – that’s almost BEYOND a long weekend – nearing AWOL status. It’s the sort of embarrassing behavior a shy and humiliated person apologizes for at length in a roundabout way without even admitting it. And since I wouldn’t take pictures anyway, you’ll just have to use your imagination with these photos, which were definitely NOT taken this weekend.

Where do you go for a long weekend?

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The Break Dance

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Summer is about to start, officially. This is a time when the urge to work slows down and hours are wasted gazing out windows at sunny scenery. Idea man and dealmaker Spin Williams knows all about this – though it is no longer an issue in his company.
Spin is also an efficiency expert!

Here at The Meeting That Never Ends, we’re always trying to find new ways to hike our productivity to levels far beyond those posted by other idea factories. That’s why we moved to the Around The Clock Meeting paradigm in the first place – we were simply taking too much time convening and adjourning our conferences, planning them and scheduling them and re-convening and re-adjourning, etc. Valuable inspiration-generating time was being being burned the same way your car guzzles gas on jackrabbit starts from a red light!

Now that our meeting is constantly in session, we’ve been able to dispense with pleasantries and stay productive 24/7 courtesy of regular breaks! Yes, experts from famous high-productivity workplaces like The Mayo Clinic and The New York Times agree that people do better when they interrupt their workflow with some down time. So at TMTNE, we work for twenty minutes, break for ten minutes and repeat, ad infinitum. That means in a typical day we can have up to 48 productive discussions! And people still get 8 whole hours off every single day, which is plenty of time to get some sleep, or a little food, or a bit of both! If they want to skip a nap or a meal, they can change clothes or spend intensely focused quality time with a relative or some sort of friend. Who needs more than that?

Not only does our perpetual professional parley promote productivity, it discourages a host of other social and environmental ills. With no time for employees to go “home”, there’s no longer any need for the economy to support a domicile outside the workplace! Land-use stresses are reduced. Commuting is no longer a problem. Romance is still possible, but it’s limited to ten minute interludes. That’s better because it reduces unwanted pregnancies (you have to be very focused and intentional) and keeps the mystery alive. Casual “dalliances” become a thing of the past – there’s simply no time to dally. Domestic unrest is unheard of – every conflict is a workplace situation of one sort or another, which can be easily handled by the experts in the HR department. Children are raised and educated in a series of meeting of their own, which happen just down the hall. When we go on vacation, we go together and keep working! Under this system we could (and sometimes do) switch to a year-round holiday schedule without losing a moment’s productivity because time off is simply a calculation that happens as part of the paperwork.

Some people (i.e. Corporations) call our company a “cult” or a “commune”, but I think name-calling by the competition is a sure sign that you’re doing something right! I’d love to hear what you think of our plan, but the meeting is about to resume. Let’s touch base in twenty minutes!

Efficiently yours,
Spin

I think Spin’s scenario is the wave of the future! This is where we’re headed, but I’ll have to become much more productive if I’m ever going to make it happen.

How often do you need to take a break?

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Unexpected Sideline

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Today is the birthday in 1903 of bandleader Guy Lombardo, conductor of the Royal Canadians and the cultural figure who “owned New Years Eve” before Dick Clark took it over. Lombardo’s music is clean and precise and by the more modern standards of those who were raised on rock and roll, sterile and empty.

But he wore a nice red jacket and made a name for himself at a time when a person could become a popular star simply by smiling and waving a baton. And for people in my age group, he carried an air of mystery because he did his best known work on TV, in front of my parents, after we were sent to bed.

The other thing Lombardo did is unexpected (to me). He raced hydroplanes, roaring across the surface of rivers and lakes at frightening speeds powered by engines that were loud and obnoxious in a way his music decidedly was not.

He was good enough at it to be inducted into the Canadian Motorsport Hall of Fame. I never would have guessed this – it makes about as much sense as discovering that Liberace was a heavyweight prizefighter. (Can we start that rumor here?)

We assume people who are known for a particular thing or make their living in a specific realm love only that and never indulge in anything different. But it’s undeniable that the Guy who seems so mild and pleasant in the video above enjoyed having the wind in his hair and could have swamped a slow boat going anywhere when he was having fun on the weekend.

What is your unexpected sideline?

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Wayfaring Stranger

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I felt silly last week while going through a mild panic about hail hitting my new car. There was no actual damage, and in the larger scheme of things, what’s the difference?  I’m planning to keep the car for at least ten years and suck all the value out of it anyway. When it comes time to sell, there will be many more concerns than a few little dimples on the hood.  And really, aren’t there much better things to be alarmed about?  Just about then, I ran across a NASA Press Release with this title:

Giant Black Hole Kicked Out of Home Galaxy

WASHINGTON — Astronomers have found strong evidence that a massive black hole is being ejected from its host galaxy at a speed of several million miles per hour. New observations from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory suggest that the black hole collided and merged with another black hole and received a powerful recoil kick from gravitational wave radiation.

“It’s hard to believe that a supermassive black hole weighing millions of times the mass of the sun could be moved at all, let alone kicked out of a galaxy at enormous speed,” said Francesca Civano of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA), who led the new study. “But these new data support the idea that gravitational waves — ripples in the fabric of space first predicted by Albert Einstein but never detected directly — can exert an extremely powerful force.”

The press release goes on to say that while this is probably a rare occurrence … “it nevertheless could mean that there are many giant black holes roaming undetected out in the vast spaces between galaxies.”  And because they have consumed all the gasses surrounding them, “… these black holes would be invisible to us.”

Thank you NASA!  This is exactly the sort of thing I was hoping for – a new reason to worry about armageddon arriving in a way I have not yet imagined.  Black holes absorb everything in their vicinity – even light doesn’t escape.   I had become relaxed about the ever-present potential for the sudden, random strike of a massive, undetected asteroid, exploding like a thousand nuclear bombs over my back yard.  The odds haven’t changed on that one, but now that I’ve had a few years to factor it into my nightmares, I’m accustomed to that particular level of dread.

I’m Not From Around Here

A black hole wandering into our galaxy would crush my car and me and all my stuff into something smaller than a hailstone, so let’s get our priorities straight!   This exciting new bit of dark information opens up a higher level of paranoia because it combines an existing, somewhat abstract fear of outer space with an old horror film classic – the mad, wandering loner.

The notion that there are orphaned Black Holes roaming the cosmic countryside with nothing to lose means I can marry my trepidation about galactic surprises to my conviction that all strangers are potentially insane and probably homicidal.

It’s not so farfetched. If you had just been ejected by gravitational slingshot from the center of your home galaxy, wouldn’t you nurse a grudge against pretty much everything, but especially against tiny planets where some clueless people place too much importance on a flawless paint job?

Tell us about a surprising encounter with a stranger. 

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Balancing Act

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It has been a few weeks since we’ve heard from Bart, the bear who found a cell phone. Apparently he’s been scouring the news wires, and is feeling a little sensitive about inexplicable inequalities. This has been translated from its original language – Ursus Textish.

Hey, Bart here.

Couldn’t help noticing this.

Bart – The Bear Who Found a Smart Phone

A bear shows up on a college campus, climbs a tree, draws a bunch of gawkers.

A guy shows up at Niagara Falls, climbs a wire, draws a bunch of gawkers.

The guy gets a live TV show and applause from a crowd of more than a hundred thousand.

The bear gets shot with tranquilizers, which makes him fall out of the tree, and then gets trucked off to “the forest”.

I’m not saying bears and people should be treated exactly the same, but what’s up with this? The bear was humiliated for doing what bears do naturally. What’s the crime? Yet there is nothing natural about a guy walking across a waterfall on a wire. Did you know bears have very, very good balance? We do!

The guy got celebrated and called a “daredevil”. But if I said I was a “beardevil” and tried the same thing, Animal Control and PETA would have a cow (yet another violation of the natural order)!

This cell phone really troubles me. Since I got a data plan, I’m seeing all sorts of things that just don’t make sense.

Your friend,
Bart

How good is your balance?

Songs

Reef Raff

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We have already heard that microscopic organisms outnumber us in a global scale and live in and on our bodies in places so private it would make us blanch if we could see them languishing there. This sure knowledge has made it easy for me to willfully ignore every new and breathless description that urges me to marvel at how we teem with unseen life.

I simply can’t afford to comprehend it.

True awareness of exactly how many tiny monsters I harbor would trigger an “Ish Factor” reaction that would be personally catastrophic. And yet it appears we are bound to know, regardless. Researchers now say the number of hangers-on is something on the order of 100 Trillion.

The good news – it’s a functioning community. Everyone hosts a distinct “microbiome” that may help determine what diseases you get and which ones you’re able to fight off. Be kind to your friendly neighborhood bacteria – they surround you. Maybe that’s the real “cloud of witnesses” following us around in Hebrews 12:1 – not dead predecessors, but very alive hitchhikers.

But these are the lines that stood out for me inside a New York Times article:

Dr. Barnett Kramer, director of the division of cancer prevention at the National Cancer Institute, who was not involved with the research project, had another image. Humans, he said, in some sense are made mostly of microbes. From the standpoint of our microbiome, he added, “we may just serve as packaging.”

“Humans”, said Dr. David Relman, a Stanford microbiologist, are like coral, “an assemblage of life-forms living together.”

I have never thought of myself as a walking sack of microbial congregations, and certainly not as a coral reef.

I guess when Simon and Garfunkel sang “I Am A Rock”, they were right about being an island and a fortress. But they were wrong about being alone.

How do you get along with the residents of your microbiome?

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The Foggy Foggy Dew

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Today is the birthday of Burl Ives, the round, bearded, pipe-smoking, banjo-playing folk singer immortalized in claymation as a balladeer for the 1960’s TV special “Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer.” He was also blacklisted in the 50’s and snubbed for a time afterwards for keeping his career going by testifying before the House Un-American Activities Committee.

My favorite thing about Burl Ives is that he was an itinerant folk singer during the Depression, and got arrested in Utah for singing the song “Foggy Foggy Dew” in public on the grounds that it was a bawdy song. This, in spite of the fact that no one could pin down exactly what the term “Foggy Foggy Dew” meant. Some suggestions – Tuberculosis, Virginity, Being Sent to a Nunnery, and of course, Bad Weather.

This is an infectious little tune and there are multiple versions. It is uncommonly friendly to finagling via the folk process. So in keeping with our Theme of the Week, I’ll adapt it to fit one of the more arduous tasks of my youth.

When I was a juvenile I lived with my folks
And a hungry St. Bernard.
And the only, only thing that I sang was this song
As I walked around the yard.
I walked there in the wintertime
And in the summer too.
And the only, only thing that I did all day long
Was to pick up all the Doggy Doggy Doo

One night the hound came too my rooms
Her whimpers left no doubt.
She’d stolen a whole box of prunes
And needed to go out.
She yipped, she skipped, she nearly flipped
So what else could I do?
I leapt out of the sack and I let her go out back
And she filled it up with Doggy Doggy Doo.

Now I’m older than I was and I live with my son
And a different St. Bernard.
And every single time that the dog is in the house
The kitchen has a cupboard guard.
We lock it up in wintertime
And in the summer too
And all the fibered food is protected by alarms
Just to cut down on that Doggy Doggy Doo

What chore do you despise most?

Songs

That’s A Ponzi!

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Just yesterday, a verdict was reached in another Ponzi Scheme case, with three Minnesota men found guilty of defrauding investors who were promised sure-fire double digit returns. What they got instead were double digit remains – most everything was lost in their six and seven digit gambles.

Bernie Madoff, Tom Petters and Trevor Cook all skipped past my door when they were out seeking investors for their fraudulent empires. I’d like to think I would have declined the opportunity because I can be as suspicious and reticent as the next guy, but I also know I’m a pushover for a good story. And you don’t get very far with a Ponzi Scheme if you’re not a compelling storyteller. Otherwise smart people fall for these things – they’re not all dopes. Aside from some kind of surgical removal of the greed gene, how can you protect yourself?

Because we’re all stuck in the musical parody mode this week, perhaps there’s a little ditty that can be fabricated to serve as a reminder when the deal seems “too good to be true.” Dean Martin provides the template:

When they say “Tsk tsk tsk,
Have no fear, there’s no risk.”
That’s a Ponzi.

When you ask for a look
But you can’t see the books
That’s a Ponzi.

Bells should ring
You’re a ding-a-ling
You’re a ding-a-ling
It will sting when they tell ya.

You are broke
What a funny joke
What a funny joke
Can’t retire, poor fella!

“The return’s guaranteed.
This plan’s all that you need.”
That’s a Ponzi.

When you ask for your dough
And they say “There’s no mo’” You are screwed.
You can’t have happy days
Unlike Richie and Pottsie and Fonzie,
That’s too bad. You’ve been had.
Money’s gone. Oh so sad. That’s a Ponzi!

How can you know if a deal is for real?

Songs

Left Slide Story

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Over the weekend, tim and Chris started putting together a political musical – a weirdly appropriate tangent since Sunday night was Tony Award night in New York.

tim suggested the idea as part of a discussion of divided loyalties. He recalled that West Side Story is based on Romeo and Juliet, and figured (correctly) that the story could be re-told in a modern political setting with “a tea party princess falling for a lift wing do gooder.”

Chris took it from there:

Well this is just too much fun. Writing parodies of well known songs is irresistible – like eating handfuls of potato chips. I feel compelled and a little sick to my stomach after an hour of doing it non-stop. It’s a guilty pleasure that many other people see as extremely unattractive. So I’m delighted when great minds like tim and Chris insist we do it anyway.

A liberal political musical may still be possible in America as long as the book and lyrics don’t have to march in lock step with positions taken by the backers. Newsies is unabashedly pro-union, though its creator, the Disney Corporation, has had some contentious relations with workers along the way. A conservative musical may not be totally out of the question. Perhaps there’s an Ayn Rand or a NASCAR musical in the works somewhere, but would anyone choose to go of their own free will? In the meantime, we’ll just have to proceed with West Slide Story.

Let your imagination run free.

There is at least one scene in every show where the main character has a moment of realization – something has changed. We need to identify that point, and I think it would be wise to match the Bernstein/Sondheim/Laurents structure and bring it in where Tony finds he has fallen in love with Maria. Except in West Slide Story, Tony realizes he and the ultra-conservative Maria have something in common, so he sings “Agree, ah” and then segues into “You’re Right”.

Agree, ah
I’ve just realized we agree, ah –
– bout something. Now I think
Your politics don’t stink
to me.
Agree, ah
That means that we eye-to-eye see, ah!
And when our thoughts align
I take it as a sign
we’re free!
Agree, ah
Say it loud – I hear donkeys braying
Say it soft – there’ll be elephants spraying
Debris, ah.
But let them protest. We agree, ah!

Maria:
You’re right, you’re right.
I realize you’re right.
You’re right and I think you always were!

Tony:
You’re right, you’re right.
In fact it’s you who’s right.
It tickles me, at last, to defer.

Both:
Give way
And dogma doesn’t dog us.
Our talking points are pointless.
We have no need to fight!
Don’t be uptight
Let’s talk it over dear, without spite
You’re right!

But this is a truce shadowed by ill omens. The Nits and the Snarks have too much invested in continuous warfare to allow romance to break out. After a lot of energetic dancing, some smooching, hand grabbing, fire-escape climbing and a bit of unfortunate gunplay, everybody winds up dead at the end.

Instant classic!

Give us a lyric, a plot point, a character or just a line to add to Left Slide Story.

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Impending Merger

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Possibly the most intriguing bit of news I’ve heard in the past few weeks is the new level of certainty reached by scientists that our Milky Way Galaxy and the Andromeda Galaxy will merge in about 4 billion years.

There had been some doubt. Sky watchers have noticed the movements and have wondered if the two galaxies might be drawn together by their gravity – this at a time when the universe itself is expanding faster and faster, leaving even more emptiness between the objects. But these two galaxies are close enough that the expansion will not draw them apart.

Galaxies, as big as they are, have their own destiny and ours apparently is to join with Andromeda.

We’re talking about billions of stars, some (maybe all) dragging a retinue of planets, asteroids, comets and debris, coming together in one grand conglomeration. And yet none of the stars will hit each other! This was said with certainty in one article I read – yet how can they know?

And if the merger of two galaxies is anything like the acquisition/merger of two corporations here on Earth, there are bound to be casualties. Several hundred duplicate retail outlets and half the staff of the PR department, for example.

Two things drove the magnitude of this event home for me –

One is a video simulation of the galaxies as they are expected to interact – an initial co-mingling 4 billion years from now with momentum that carries them apart again, and a final, second alignment 2 billion years later. Looks like fun if you’re not in the middle of it!

The other is a simulation of the night sky as seen from Earth with Andromeda approaching – about 3.75 billion years from now. Imagine if you went outside and saw this.

Beautiful, romantic, and a bit like looking down the train tracks at the onrushing southbound commuter as your wheels spin in the mud. Gulp.

Who knows if we, as humans, will still be around to witness the merger? Probably not. But I did see a cockroach the other day and I tried to tell him (her?) to keep an eye on the sky for big changes. I got the usual disappearing act for an answer.

In such an unpredictable world, I’m amazed whenever we KNOW something is going to happen for certain and for sure. Galaxies will collide. Neither Congress nor the Koch brothers will be able to stall it or stop it or spin it.

As in corporate mergers, making everyone feel comfortable with joining the new entity will be a challenge. Maybe a clever name and some good signage will help.

What should we call the new galaxy?