Family Businesses

I recalling some article or radio story not so long ago, expressing outrage (what else) that "nepotism" was rampant, meaning a lot of people in companies had family members, including relatives, in the company.

What's so unusual about that?  Come on.  Put on your sociology hat.  People employ people they know and think they might have a chance of getting along with.  And also:  family loyalty is a real thing.

If you reach for the word "corruption" at the drop of an "I'd like a job for my brother" hat,  then yeah, you'll see corruption everywhere.  I see family looking out for family.  Mia famiglia.  Ma-fia.  Mafia.

Lets remember another common architectural pattern:  an entire complex, an apartment building, or maybe a suite of free-standing dwellings, all belonging to a single extended family, maybe with a few renters.  There's a shared courtyard in the center.

A family-owned company might well make use of some of that same building.  What if the family owns a high rise?  Maybe most of the apartments are rented out, but there's also lots of storefronts and schools, not to mention a gym, several museums, each with gift shops.  Mixed use.  A lot of the employees are also related.

Yes, there's the problem of choosing someone less capable or qualified, because of these other criteria, in the hopes of someone growing into the job.  Not everyone needs to be in top form to fit in.  Work does have a way of sculpting people, after they land the position.  Learning on the job is not a crime, usually (sometimes it might be).

People are often too quick to charge "corruption" when it's actually a matter of killing multiple virtual birds with one stone, i.e. efficiency is in more dimensions than just the one or two considered relevant by some onlooker.  Who made those onlookers the judge?  Some onlookers are too ready and willing to judge, as if that's their role in life.  Says who?

"Who made you the judge?" that ask in the est Training,  In one exercise, two lines of people would snake around, one walking in the opposite direction to the other (if memory serves).  The objective was to be aware of one's judgements, as various people passed by.

To be a higher judge, learn to judge your judge, and then judge that judge and so on.  Get up to the supreme court level in your own mind at least.  That way, you still get to judge.  But that doesn't mean you always wallow in outrage.  You might even have mostly positive judgements, without wearing rose colored glasses.

Remembering Carol

Carol Urner:  April 21, 1929 - January 30, 2023

a presentation at the Meeting House in 2016

ET TV

I ran out of fuel oil (for home heating), more ordered, rather to my surprise as last I'd measured, not so long ago, with this wooden yardstick, we had fourteen inches left in the tank under the driveway.  

This will all sound very obscure and/or shocking to those of you who would never burn valuable fossil fuel just to space heat.  Others feel that way about electricity, already pitched at 60 cycles and a specific voltage, what we have out here thanks to hydro-dams mostly.  What a waste to burn that for heat, right?

That'll be my segue to MarsTV, an idea of a franchise, one might call it, wherein the ET motif is somewhat celebrated and also used as a tool by means of which to impart what higher intelligence of the day we, the ordinary humans, might have on hand to pass on to a next generation.  

I'd be encapsulating (time capsuling) some of the synergetics stuff.  You've probably seen my other connections thereto.

My office, which used to be Tara's room, and Alexia's before that, is still multi-purpose.  It's a python's now too.  Which reminds me, I need to get off my duff and go get someone's breakfast.  

We're blessed to have a nearby pet supply store (walkable).  We used to have two, and got Barry from that other one.  The owner retired right when he reached the pinnacle of his career, with an article about him and his pet store in Willamette Week.  Which story I just failed to find, after searching concertedly.

We have candles going in Carol's old room, which Tara helped clean and order.  She's back in her office upstairs.  It's not really that cold here in the unheated living room, so with a jacket on, I'm fine in the big chair, another of Carol's haunts.  The dog is snoring serenely on the couch.

The storyboard I've envisioned focuses on teaching the principles of electricity starting at a macro level, with municipal level circuitry, tracing back to whatever power plants, possibly wind farms.  Substations with transformers and all that.  Many "for kids of all ages" books already start at this level.  SimCity had the same focus.  

Zooming further back gives the rounder sense of interconnecting grids.  The ETs are keen to join Earthlings in perfecting this technology.  I've tended towards a southwest style mesa, echoing an aesthetic in Half Life, a computer video game.  Let's just say Valve aesthetics were influential.

The basic plot line is not meant to be especially dark, more like Clock of the Long Now, i.e. there's a sense of geological time around it.  We're not at war with the ETs nor they with us.  We're a valuable resource for each other.  Intelligent life has found a friend.  Why should it have to get ugly?  

But on the other hand, once the door is open, to science fiction as a genre, we're open to the whole utopia versus dystopia spectrum, not implying that all scifi is even trying or aspiring to be on that spectrum.  When readers read, they relate.  I'd transport myself to Narnia, and to Middle Earth, when reading stories by those guys (C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien).

I'm especially a fan of using the career of Orson Welles as an access point into the history of movie-making, not forgetting the New Jersey chapter.  A lot of studios moved to California from New Jersey in case you didn't know.  

Orson Welles was being his bold genius of a self in Manhattan, racing between gigs in a rented ambulance was it?  Shakespeare from Harlem.  H.G. Wells (mnemonic) on the radio, in War of the Worlds, with Orson for CBS.  

I definitely want to talk about all that, but without the framing program itself spreading panic about an ET invasion, which is no diss implied regarding those quality (as in effective) theatrics.  

People should just blame themselves for being overly gullible, not the artists.  Some April 1 Fools Day stories have worked on me (i.e. I suckered for them).

Some big earthquakes have just happened in the Türkiye-Syria region.  I texted Leela about it in Kathmandu.  She lived through that recent earthquake in Nepal, back when I was still working for the O'Reilly School of Technology, and was at a distance education conference in St. Louis.

Live from New York

:: A Talk @ 52 Living Ideas ::