Re-humanization

Its been discussed and written about ad-nauseum, but so often forgotten. Our "enemies" are people too. In conflicts of all types, the idea is to de-humanize your adversary, so as to make it easier to make their defeat more palletable. Americans today must recognize and respect the humanity of everyone. We don't have to like them. We don't have to agree with them. But we must treat them with dignity and respect. And, as a Christian, I must love them. We live in a polarized country and a polarized world. Demonization doesn't help anyone but besides the media & the war-mongers.

I saw a quote from Kerry Patterson (of Crucial Conversations fame) in an email this week:

I learned that if I put grandpa’s fedora on a stranger—instantly transforming him or her into a person I loved dearly—the stranger became someone worthy of my care and attention. Putting a face on the faceless masses, assigning a name to a crime or war victim, thinking of the people who cause you grief —thinking of them as real people with children of their own—well, this humanizing act has a dramatic impact on how you first think about and then treat them.

Who do you need to re-humanize?

Driving 85

I'm driving 85 in the mini-van this week. Not just on the highway, but in our subdivision too. No, not I-85. Or even 85 mph. I'm actually driving E85. As in Ethanol-85. That means what's in the gas tank is only 15% traditional gasoline and 85% ethanol.

A few weeks ago, Durham got its first E85 pump at a gas station easily between work & home. I'd read the news accounts with curiousity, but not much else until I noticed a sticker on the gas lid of the van, indicating that E85 was an acceptable fuel for it. Cool! So I did some poking around to find out what to expect (this link has a wealth of information) and filled it up. And what's it like to drive 85? Well, not very different. The van seems to be driving pretty normally, with one big caveat. Fuel efficiency is about 20-25% less than with "pure" gasoline. So given that the E85 was only a little cheaper than gas, I'm paying more per mile.

But, looking at it another way, I've reduced the amount of gas used in the US by about 1 barrel's worth over the 2 weeks that it'll take me to go thru the tank. For those keeping score at home, that's about 0.0000004% of the gas used in this country during that time. Give or take.

Ok, its not much, but I suppose its a start.

Clueless, insensitive, or careless?

I haven't really been following the saga of Northwest Airlines very closely. They aren't a major player at RDU and given that they rate as the absolute least favorite airline of my dear wife (who has some ugly air war stories to justify it), their woes just don't make it onto my radar screen.

Anyway, it seems that bankruptcy hasn't gotten NWA back to a viable business, so there is talk of additional layoffs and potential strikes. And as if things weren't bad enough between mgmt and employees, it seems last week an "employment assistance company" (management rule #1: blame it on the consultants) passed on some helpful tips to some machinists who are about to be layed off, titled "101 Ways To Save Money".

Unfortunately, the tips fail any miniscule test of sensitivity towards these employees. For example, #46: Don't be shy about pulling something you like out of the trash. Now I'm pretty cheap. Ok, really cheap. And the list has some good ideas in it. In fact, I do some of those things. But sensitively presented or suggested they are not. Speaking as someone who's just gone thru this, this is in no way the type of thing you give to folks about to be layed off. Google shows me that the same list appeared on the web page of the San Franciso Credit Counseling Center, which seems like a more receptive audience for the tips as presented - folks who are actively & desparately looking for ways to cut back, not ones who just got hit in the head by a 2x4 by their union and their employer.

I can see how this happened though - some poor guy (who has probably been sacked & in real need of the list right now) was trying to be helpful, found a list somewhere out in cyberspace and did a quick cut and paste. But didn't read it. Nor did the person putting together the packet at the consulting firm. Nor did anyone at Northwest.

Or at least let's hope that nobody read it before it was distributed, because if anyone did and actually thought this was a good idea, they should be the ones getting layed off.

A Vocational Crisis

I had a major career crisis today. Actually, I suppose it would be better described as a vocational crisis. The difference being a career crisis is one of those quite frequent "what do I want to be when I grow up?" moments. A vocational crisis is much more rare; its one of those "am I really an engineer?" moments. And given that I've wandered a bit off the pure nerd path, gotten an MBA, and have just done some management, this is a bit of a soft spot for me, even though I am really an engineer to the core of my being.

Anyway, the crisis is all Jodi's fault. She sent out an email with the Subject line: "So Many People Just Won't Get This . . ." If that isn't a challenge, what is? So I opened the email with the full expectation of "getting it" and having a good chuckle. Jodi usually sends out funny stuff. Upon opening, the email contained this Dilbert cartoon and, well, I Didn't Get It. Or, what I think I got just didn't make any sense. Uh oh.

This precipitated the crisis. Not only was I looking at the archetypical diary (hmm, is that an oxymoron? can a diary be architypical?) of the life of an engineer in a large company and not understanding what the venerable Mr. Adams was writing about today, my friend Jodi Got It. My friend Jodi, the sole non-technical person in our house of 9 folks during senior year of college. My friend Jodi, who... well, let's just say that she didn't really need to be subjected to the frozen tundra of Houghton, Michigan and its gaggles of geeks and nerds, other than she was married to one of them.

In the midst of my crisis, I stopped in for some validation from a longtime friend on my hallway at work who was definitely an engineer. She has not one, but two engineering degrees. And deals with Linux all day in her current job. Definitely an engineer. So explained my dilemma and showed her the cartoon. She told me what she thought it meant and well, I'd understood it. The problem is that it just wasn't funny. But there's that nagging feeling there, since Jodi found it funny. Funny enough to send around to all her friends.

It was engineering management. Really.

Seen on a t-shirt

"The voices may not be real, but they do have some good ideas"

Long range forecasting

There was a weather forecast in the newspaper yesterday: "The possibility of rain... is between 30 and 40 per cent. If it does rain, it will most likely be only a drizzle." Its not so unusual for a newspaper to carry a weather forecast. What was unusual about this forecast was

(a) it was made by a government official who had nothing to do with the Chinese equivalent of the weather service, and

(b) it was for two years in the future, August 8, 2008. Greg Fishel, eat your heart out.

And why the interest in that day? August 8, 2008 is the day the XXIX Olympiad opens here in Beijing.

So is it the power of positive thinking or one of the advantages of a planned economy?

P.S. Aug 8, 2008 also happens to be the 20th anniversary of the first attempted night game at Wrigley Field.

Tastes like chicken?

As I mentioned in my last post, I'm in China this week for work. Beijing to be exact. The heart of the beast, some would say. Life is very different here, although some of the differences have more to do with being in a city of 10-12 million people vs the Triangle. Not that there are nearly so many bikes in Manhattan (probably wouldn't hurt though!)

My Lenovo colleagues have been typically gracious hosts, treating us to a couple of excellent meals. The food is radically different though - and very good, especially, I find, if you don't insist on asking what everything is before eating it. I've decided that when your Chinese host says "I don't know how to translate the name of that food," it really means "you don't want to know".

Definitely no chickens were harmed in the writing of this post... nor, unfortunately, in the making of my dinner.

Anyone who says "the world is shrinking" has never flown non-stop to China

I flew to China on Sunday. And most of Monday for that matter too. While its an amazing feat of engineering to create an aircraft that can carry hundreds of people over 5000 miles, I couldn't help but wonder (sometime during hour 11 or so of the flight) whether actually doing it was a good thing. There's something unnatural about packing a bunch of folks into a hunk of metal and zooming a 6 miles up into the air to go around the world. This definitely falls into the category of "just because we can, does that make it good"?

Still, I admit, its pretty cool. I had a window seat this time. A window seat in business class (with huge thanks to a very clueless check-in agent at RDU). And even better yet, that seat was on the upper deck of a 747. I'd never been in the upper deck of a 747. Check off something else on my list of things to do before I die.