Tired Road Warrior

I’ve always admired the oximoronic idea of “organized chaos” or “creative pandemonium” or “efficient tumult.”  For me, organizations spend way to much time perpetuating their institutional structure and not nearly enough time on their stated mission.  Organizations, as they mature, get increasingly rigid, and less creative.  Maybe they even have life cycles just like all of God’s creatures.  It is difficult for aging institutions to stay vibrant and young, to maintain their creative juices.  They frequently don’t know when to die.

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The following appears on page 32 of the 2009 Lonely Planet “The Netherlands:

“The 1960s were a breeding ground for discontent and anti-establishment activity, and in the Netherlands this underground movement led to the formation of the Provos.  This small group of anarchic individuals staged street “happening” or creative, playful provocation (hence the name).

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In his book Working in the Shadows, Gabriel Thompson describes and analyzes the year he spent working undercover alongside Guatemalans, Mexicans, and others at a variety of extremely low paying jobs.  He quickly determined that the jobs, some of which were very dangerous, failed to provide enough income to survive at even the lowest standard of living.  Gabriel was generally successful at lasting 2 months at each job except two:  (1) his subterfuge is discovered at a chicken plant and he is fired and (2) he hangs up his delivery bike after seven weeks of risking his life in New York City traffic.  According to reviewer Frances Romero (Time Magazine, 8 Feb 2010, p. 16)  “Therein lies perhaps the only blemish on the book’s premise:  Thompson has the luxury to quit.”

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The following was written in a review by Mary Pols of the book Devotion by Dani Shapiro:

“Devotion does not provide a template for finding your personal Jesus (or whoever).  It’s a history of Shapiro’s quest to explore her own faithlessness.  She grew up in an Orthodox household but cast aside her Hebrew religious study as a teenager.  As an adult, her sense of God was that if he existed, he was not a micromanager.  (”As far as I knew, he had never gotten me a parking space.”)  She wants to believe in something but doesn’t know what.”

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While I was on my Mormon mission in the Franco-Belgian area in the 1960s, I found somebody’s list of the 100 most important novels of western civilization.  On the list were two novels by the french writer Albert Camus:  The Stranger (or The Outsider) and the Plague.  I purchased a copy of The Stranger and in short order read it.  I found it very compelling, perhaps in the same way other young people find J. D. Salinger’s “Catcher in the Rye” haunting.

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“The legacy of (Alan) Turing the mathematician rises above any possible sensationalism.  His contributions were supremely elegant and foundational.  He gifted us with wild leaps of invention, including much mathematical underpinnings of digital computation.  The highest award in computer science, our Nobel Prize, is name for him.

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The Sunday before last, there was a one-hour tribute on 60 Minutes to the recently deceased Don Hewitt.  Don created and was the inspiration behind one of TV’s longest running shows: 60 Minutes.  While I don’t usually watch shows that pat themselves on the back, this one caught my eye.  Unfortunately I didn’t get to watch the entire show.

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The following is an excerpt from an article by Peggy Fletcher Stack which originally was published in the SLTrib on Feb 13th, 2009:

(Daniel) “Fairbanks (associate dean at UVU in Orem) believes with most biologists that evolution is the unifying theory in the field. . . .

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The book “The Moral Underground” was recently given a short review in Time Magazine (Dec. 14, p. 23).  In her book, Lisa Dodson (BC sociology prof.) paints a rather dismal image of corporate America, who she feels is building wealth by abusing low-income workers.  “Helping the less fortunate in this context becomes as a form of civil and corporate disobedience.”  Time lists three of her examples:  (1) supervisors who alter time cards so that employees can take better care for their families; (2) the school nurse who keeps cots in her office so those with bad home situations can get a few hours of sleep; and (3) the doctor who thumbs his nose at insurance regulations in order to provide medicine for an entire household.  ”All see their behavior as necessary and moral acts of conscience.”

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According to Time Magazine, the 17th best invention of 2009 is:  “The Planetary Skin.”

“What happens to Earth when a forest is razed or energy use soars?  We don’t know because environmental data are collected by isolated sources, making it impossible to see the whole picture.  With the theory that you can’t manage what you can’t measure, NASA and Cisco have teamed up to develop Planetary Skin, a global “nervous system” that will integrate land-, sea-, air-, and space-based sensors, helping the public and private sectors make decisions to prevent and adapt to climate change.  The pilot project–a prototype is due by 2010–will track how much carbon is held by rain forests and where.”

This is the type of effort I would like to see on a river-basin scale.