Goats. In trees.
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Breakfast Black Beans
Dice 1 medium onion finely, place in a sauce-pan with 1/2 tsp olive oil , and cook on medium-high, stirring frequently, till they are dark-brown/caramelized (around 5 minutes or less). Put to one side. While the onions are cooking, rinse 1 can of black beans , and rinse the heck out of the beans to get rid of the "canned" taste. Place in a medium-sized bowl, and mix in 1 large tomato diced into 1/2" chunks In a small sauce-pan (or ladle, or some such), add 1 tsp cumin seeds 1 tbsp olive oil and heat on high till the seeds just start crackling. Then, add in 1/2 tsp chilli powder 1/4 tsp turmeric salt to taste stir, and m ix this into the beans/tomatoes. Get yourself some peeled & cooked shrimp (i just buy 'em frozen at the supermarket. Defrosting is fast - just run some water over it for a minute or so). Finally, scramble up 4 eggs. And no, I'm not going to tell you how to do that :-) (ok, if you really want ...
Human Capital - How times have changed
From 1923 and Lutz : An Introduction To Economics Human attributes, talents, and qualities are also scarce, but we must be careful not to regard them as wealth. The reason for the distinction is that the person who possesses the unusual gift or talent is first and last a human being, whose personality is to be respected and whose well-being is the goal of all economic activity. If we class the talents of the gifted as wealth, it is a short and easy step to regard the possessors of these gifts as existing mainly for the services which they render, and not as free and independent persons. Under slavery, the talents of the slave might have been regarded, properly enough as part of the wealth of the owner. It is inconsistent with the principles of human freedom, which we now hold sacred, to confuse man as a means for the production of wealth with man as the end of economic action. No person should be degraded to the position of a mere means to the enjoyment of others. We might be ...
Volkswagen Emissions, and Big Pharma
You know the basic story at this point - the emission control system was programmed to detect when emissions were being checked (brakes, steering, gear, etc.), and then, and only then , have the system work properly . Why do this? Well, costs, most likely (or , "costs, of course! "). By minimizing the operating time and conditions, you can save gobs of money per car, and money is good. <sarcasm> Besides, its only emissions y'know? I mean, what difference does that make? Its not like it actually hurts anybody, not to mention "clean air" is just one of those liberal things that nobody except a bunch of tree huggers actually cares about </sarcasm> Which, to my mind, is exactly what Big Pharma does. Y'know how Pfizer / Merck / J&J / Glaxo / ... have paid over $13 Billion over the last few years in fines ? Its almost always over them actively promoting "off-label" uses of their drugs - which basically consisted of the...
Roast carrots with cumin-flecked olives and tomatoes
Roast 1 lb carrots . How? Well, cut them into 2" chunks (or, if they're "baby carrots", just use 'em whole), put it in a large bowl, and drizzle with 1 tbsp olive oil and salt to taste . Mix this all up till the carrots are well coated. Place the carrots in a baking pan, and roast in an oven at 400°F for 20-30 minutes . You basically want this to - at least - be "done" to the point where a toothpick enters with no resistance. After that, you can caramelize (burn!) it to the desired level of brown-ness (blackness! yes - I like it somewhat burnt-y) While the carrots are roasting, in a medium-sized bowl, mix the following 2 large tomatoes diced into 1/2" chunks 1/2 lemon - juice thereof 10 Taggiasca olives chopped 1/2 jalapeno minced In a small sauce-pan (or ladle, or some such), add 1 tsp cumin seeds 1 tbsp olive oil and heat on high till the seeds just start crackling. (Yeah, this is kinda like what we call...
Chickpeas salad with pan-roasted onions and a cumin/poppy-seed dressing
In a medium-sized bowl, put the following 1 large tomato diced into 1/2" chunks 1 small handful mint leaves (if they're large leaves, chop them) 1/2 lemon - juice thereof Drain 1 can of chickpeas, and rinse the heck out of the beans to get rid of the "canned" taste. Mix it in to the above mis en place , and add salt to taste . In a small sauce-pan (or ladle, or some such), add 1 tbsp olive oil 1 tsp cumin seeds 1/2 tsp poppy seeds and heat on high till the seeds just start crackling. (Yeah, this is kinda like what we call "voggarne" in south india) Add 1 red onion , chopped, to this and stir frequently (you want it to brown rapidly , but not so rapidly that it blackens) till the onions are cooked through (around 2 - 3 minutes) When they are almost done, add in 1 tsp red pepper flakes and stir Place a handful of baby spinach each into 4 bowls. Divide the bean/tomatoes mix on top of the spinach. Divide the pan-roasted onions ...
Stereotyping impairs performance. A *LOT*
Michelle G points out that the simple act of thinking about stereotypes can impair your performance (if you're the one being stereotyped) To be precise, as you probably have heard of from the "women should know their place" crowd, A large-scale 1995 meta-analysis found that on average, men outperform women in a cluster of tests related to spatial ability by nearly a full standard deviation, and in attempt to explain this, researchers have hypothesized about the impact of testosterone and differences in brain wiring in capacity for spatial thought. As you might have guessed, this has - only recently! - turned out to be be bullshit. How so? Well, at the University of Utah, they put men and women through pretty much the same test, except they "primed" them beforehand by asking some of the women to imagine themselves as stereotypical men, and some of the men to imagine themselves as stereotypical women. The result? Well, As it turns ...
Coding Truths
/via @jlouis666 " Making software go fast is a result of investigation into why it is slow. Not rewriting the software in new language X. " /via Douglas Crockford "The making of good software takes time. If you try to make it take less time, it will take more time."
When I grab code from an online source
Or, heck, look at anything I wrote over 6 months ago /via CommitStrip
You have Strategy, but your execution Sucks. Because...
HBR dives into " Why Strategy Execution Unravels, and What to Do About It " - it's an ongoing project that has already covered 9 years, 40 experiments, 250 companies, and 4000 managers, and basically points out that a lot of the received wisdom on how to Execute on Strategy is, well, bullshit. I strongly urge you to read the whole thing, but the TL;DR is basically the following We Rool, You Suck : Individual teams (silos / business-units / whatever) can get very good at executing on Teh Strategy, but co-ordination across these units tends to suck. A lot. For all the usual reasons... Ignore von Moltke (**) : Once Teh Strategy is in place, companies feel honor bound to stick to it, at all costs, and lack the agility to deviate based upon circumstances. Speaking == Understanding : Management assumes that because they have explained Teh Strategy, everybody has understood, and internalized it. Which, as it turns out, couldn't be further from the truth A Playe...