Keming reloaded.
For anyone who's still not quite sure what kerning's all about, here's a pretty good example of the lack of same.
Vitello tonnato - thinly sliced veal topped with a creamy mayonnaise-based sauce of tuna, anchovies, hardboiled egg yolks and capers. - turns into Vitello tomato.
I don't think so.
Thanks all the same ....
I've almost killed myself on a number of occasions.
Fell into the water trough at my grandparents' place when I was 3 and to this day I can relate every detail of the event. Must have been veeeery close.
Fell off my bike and almost put the brake lever into my brain via my right eye.Rode into the back of a truck at full speed on the same bike. (Only tore open my knee on that one)Drove into the back of another truck on a motorbike. Brakes locked, only dinged the front mudguard.Electrocuted myself by not understanding the concept of serial switchesFell off a ladder onto the concrete floor and broke two ribs.Done a couple of million kilometers in the air which must place me in some statistically very dodgy risk segment
But definitely the most stupid thing I've done is this.
I bought a Suzuki 150 in 1967.
It was the first vehicle in our household.
Dad didn't get around to buying a Mini 850 until a year later.
A caveman discovering fire would rank close to how I felt.
No more buses. No more going nowhere. No more hoping that someone would come by and pick you up.
I went crazy.
I'd head out to Henderson in West Auckland and buy rough homemade red wine from the Dally farmers.
I'd head out to Muriwai and blast up and down the beach as if it was the Bonneville salt flats.
I'dp otter round up Warkworth way on a Sunday and then decide to go up to
Whangarei - 150 km - to see Isla and Bill and then drive back down next
morning and go straight to work.
And I rode to the very tip of the South Island in early 1969.
Down the west coast of the North Island, across to Picton on the ferry and
then down through Arthur's Pass to Christchurch, south through
Ashburton and Geraldine and over the Omarama Pass and down to
Invercargil and Bluff.
Back in those days, main roads were sealed.
The rest were metalled - dirt covered with coarse aggregrate.
Keeps you on your toes (the Fast Learning Curve School of Power Drifts) and hell for the bike.
Spokes started fracturing.
I just cut them out.
Didn't think.
But like plants, the more you prune the more they grow.
Or fracture.
I knew that I had to get them fixed at some stage, but I figured I'd wait until I was back in Auckland.
Snip, snip.
Snip, snip.
The mechanic's face turned ghostly white when he saw what was left.
He had no idea how the front wheel was still (sort of) round.
No physical justification for it.
None at all
For the graphic designers and typesetters amongst you....
I don't take hallucinogenic drugs and I don't suppose you do either.
So can you explain how it is that agriculture is now facing an historically unprecedented combination of major challenges and crises and yet most people - even in the agricultural community - seem remarkably complacent?
It's as if a big truck were speeding straight towards us on a narrow, one-way road, but we've decided not to talk about it because we can't quite bring ourselves to believe it's real.
But it is.
Not my words.
Read more here.
The Global Crop Diversity Trust officially opened the Arctic Seed Vault today in Svalbard in Norway.
It's important because it's the ultimate safety net for the world’s most important natural resource - 4.5 million seed samples, equivalent to about 2 billion seeds.
They'll be stored at least two other separate locations, but if everything goes pear-shaped and GM screws everything up, we'll be able to fall back on heritage strains.
I'm really happy that it's there, but the fact that it's necessary worries me no end....
Just back from a chat with Inland Revenue.
Routine sort of stuff and nice enough people, too
My 7 year old friend from up the road, Sophie, was lurking around when I got back and our encounters normally turn into a mild version of the Spanish Inquisition.
Today was no exception.
After determining in detail what I'd been up to, she asked "How much tax do you pay? €1000"
"Bit more than that, Sophie"
"€10,000?"
"More"
"€20,000?"
"More"
Pisses me off just to think about it
This is a VERY simple way to understand the tax laws.
Suppose that every day, ten men go out for dinner. The bill for all ten comes to $100.
If they paid their bill the way we pay our taxes, it would go something like this.
The first four men—the poorest—would pay nothing;
The fifth would pay $1:
the sixth would pay $3;
the seventh $7;
the eighth $12;
the ninth $18.
the tenth man—the richest—would pay $59.
That’s what they decided to do.
The ten men ate dinner in the restaurant every day and seemed quite happy with the arrangement—until one day, the owner threw them a curve.
“Since you are all such good customers,” he said, “I’m going to reduce the cost of your daily meal by $20. “So dinner for the ten only cost $80.
The group still wanted to pay their bill the way we pay our taxes.
So the first four men were unaffected. They would still eat for free.
But what about the other six—the paying customers?
How could they divvy up the $20 windfall so that everyone would get his “fair share?”
The six men realized that $20 divided by six is $3.33.
But if they subtracted that from everybody’s share, then the fifth man and the sixth man would end up being paid to eat their meal.
So the restaurant owner suggested that it would be fair to reduce each man’s bill by roughly the same amount, and he proceeded to work out the amounts each should pay.
And so the fifth man paid nothing, the sixth pitched in $2, the seventh paid $5, the eighth paid $9, the ninth paid $12, leaving the tenth Man with a of $52 instead of his earlier $59.
Each of the six was better off than before. And the first four continued to eat for free.
But once outside the restaurant, the men began to compare their savings.
“I only got a dollar out of the $20,” declared the sixth man.
He pointed to the tenth. “But he got $7!”
“Yeah, that’s right,” exclaimed the fifth man.
“I only saved a dollar, too. It’s unfair that he got seven times more than me!”
“That’s true!” shouted the seventh man. “Why should he get $7 back when I got only $2?
The wealthy get all the breaks!”
“Wait a minute,” yelled the first four men in unison. “We didn’t get anything at all. The system exploits the poor!”
The nine men surrounded the tenth and beat him up.
The next night he didn’t show up for dinner, so the nine sat down and ate without him.
But when it came time to pay the bill, they discovered something important. They’re $52 short!
And that, boys and girls, journalists and college instructors, is how the tax system works. The people who pay the highest taxes get the most benefit from a tax reduction.
Tax them too much, attack them for being wealthy, and they just may not show up at the table anymore.
Unfortunately, some politicians who decide on tax law changes cannot grasp this straightforward logic!
Lucy Kellaway's my kind of girl.
(I use the term somewhat loosely... her Fountain of Youth appears to have become somewhat drought-stricken recently and - from her publicity shots, at least - she's morphed from waif - top left - to rather attractive early middle-age - bottom right - in a matter of months.)
But we'd be the ones in senior management meetings, rolling our eyes and exchanging knowing looks at the jargon and general mindlessness before being bollocked by the CEO for playing bullshit bingo too obviously.
Not that it'd never happen - she's hugely talented and famous, I'm neither nor (well, perhaps moderately talented. And mildly notorious in some circles) and our paths won't cross.
But it's OK to dream
She writes a management column/podcast for the FT (and I suspect that she's "Buttonwood" at "The Economist") that kept me sane for big chunks of my executive management "thing".
As did her book, "Sense and nonsense in the office", based on her 9 rules of management, which she describes as 'glaringly obvious, but then management ideas are obvious. Any that aren't obvious tend to be wrong'
So it's really all about heeding your bullshit detectors and calling a spade a bloody shovel.
Here's yesterday's podcast episode, here's the column and here's her book
And the 9 rules:
Rule 1 - Management is one of the most difficult jobs going and is harder now than ever because the challenges are greater.
Rule 2 - Most people are bad at managing, some are very bad. Hardly anyone can do it well.
Rule 3 - Good managers need to be both hard and soft, decent and ruthless, good at the big picture and at the small detail.
Rule 4 - In view of the above, the market for management consultants, trainers, gurus, business books is expanding, apparently without limit.
Rule 5 - While most of the management help industry is of dubious value, managers do need the experience and advice of wise outsiders. But to follow that advice blindly - as many companies do - is, of course, idiotic.
Rule 6 - Any new management technique that comes with a catchphrase is suspect. It almost certainly will not suit the company in question and even if it does, the management will probably fail to apply it properly.
Rule 7 - It is hard to teach a middle-aged dog new tricks. People who are rotten communicators do not become better by virtue of having been on a course or having read a book. Improving and changing is a long, painful slog.
Rule 8 - People like security. They like to be told what to do. Empowerment and flat structures are over-rated.
Rule 9 - All work is tedious for much of the time. If everyone accepts this, then so much the better.
Glaringly obvious, really.
But thanks anyway, Lucy.
Rex Musik Theater, a converted village cinema in a village about 30 minutes south of Frankfurt
90 minutes of the Hamburg Blues Band with Clem Clempson (Humble Pie, Colosseum), 15 minutes break and then 75 minutes of Chris Farlowe.
67 years old, a bull of a man, voice recovering from the flu and a microphone that came in for a fair bit of verbal abuse during the evening.
But what a brilliant concert.
The usual slapstick of Chris trying to detune guitars while his mates are playing, finishes up with multiple Jack Daniels being passed from bar to stage to lubricate the vocal cords, followed by All or nothing.
And Out of Time.
As always
Not forgetting "Stormy Monday Blues", of course
Here's a nice little story (YouTube, no embedding) behind it - Chris Farlowe with the wonderful Albert Lee
"For me, a great rock song is a good tune, plus some inspired irritant - a shout, a noise, an enigmatic line, a raucous solo."
John Pareles - now the chief music critic of the Arts section of the New York Times - wrote that when he was a contributing editor at Rolling Stone in the 1980s.
I clipped it and it's stayed on my pinboard to this day.
There are songs that - when I hear them - I instantly know where I was when I first heard them. They're indelibly linked to the taste of the air or the person I was with or the taste of the coffee or the record store I subsequently bought the album from. Or. Or. Or
Tracks that literally stopped me in my tracks
My "Stop you in your tracks²"
#5 in a series of n
In a previous life, I did the Executive Management "thing" with a major aviation group.
I had a UK-based customer (2nd largest UK airline, actually) and they'd invite me over for their annual management conference.
Very slick, very marketing department-driven (this is the outfit that insisted on ultra corporate-design boarding passes against our recommendations and wondered why passengers couldn't read the information - black print on a dark blue background. Hello? - that hadn't smudged to illegibility on the high gloss surface. I was in a board meeting at which this debacle was discussed and the look on the CFO's face when he found out that they'd ordered 6,000,000 was priceless...), some true snake oil salesmen in senior management, but a CEO who was one of the nicest guys I've met.
It's 2002.
The industry's in post-9/11 turmoil, the customer's handing out pink slips like confetti, they've just started a transatlantic service in an economic climate that was - politely put - was inclement and the CEO has to sell this to his senior management team.
So he gets up on stage and tells it like it is.
"The year after 9/11 probably isn't the best time to start a transatlantic service from a regional airport" he says and - in a self-deprecating aside to himself- "Well done, Austin" and continues on to give his people hard facts and some very unpleasant truths.
But then he says "But there are some good things that have happened and we've made this wee (he's Scottish) film that I'd like you to see. So thanks very much"
He's followed by the Chief Snake Oil Salesman (later moved on to CEO roles in 2 Middle East carriers) whose rabble-rousing attempt at a Tom Cruise impersonation in "Magnolia" was embarrassing in its contrast and utter lack of sincerity and then they run the film.
Warm fuzzies, feel-good thingie about values and change and how working with Supplier X (us) is going to save the day, interviews with people getting onto the maiden transatlantic flight.
And then comes the image that sticks with me to this day.
A long telephoto shot down the runway of their A330-300 , the music's building in the background, at 00:20 you see the vortices and the shimmering of the heat patterns as the turbines go to take-off power, the aircraft gets closer and closer, nose wheel lifts and - as the weight comes off the main gear and the aircraft crabs to starboard to compensate for the crosswind factor - Bono kicks in at 00:59s with
It's a beautiful day - U2 from All That You Can't Leave Behind
Bloody magic.
