don't we all!

Mark Goucher has produced a musical at the Edinburgh Festival based on the 1978 adult film Debbie Does Dallas. The Guardian reported on Wednesday: "Goucher's main concern is whether Debbie should be seen having sex. 'I don't want it to be offensive, but we need a bigger climax.'" - Sic! WORLD WIDE WORDS 2007Aug11

for Wayne

CHANGING THE STANDARD

Conductor to orchestra at the beginning of a rehearsal:

"Please get your pencils out . . . we have some marking to do on this score:

The first two bars are in 3/4, not 4/4 as written.
Next, in the 5th bar, change it to 7/8 and this remains to the end.
Now, in bar 7 we lower the pitch 1/2 step.
In bar 13, lower the pitch one whole step and this will remain to the end.

Thank you. Now, let us begin."

Soprano soloist: "Excuse me, Maestro. What would you like for me to change?"

Conductor: "Nothing, madam. Just sing it exactly as you did yesterday."

When we vary from the standard, there are two things we can do. We can alter our lives to meet the standard, or (as in the story above) we can alter the standard and expect everyone else to meet this new flawed standard.

The spiritual application should be readily apparent. What should we do when someone is teaching that which is not according to the Word of God, our spiritual standard? Do we hold to the standard and require them to comply, or do we attempt to change the standard?

There can be no choice -- the standard cannot change. Breaking the scale won't fix our weight problem, breaking the mirror won't change the way we look, and changing (or ignoring) God's Word won't make our sinful behavior acceptable.

"Sanctify them by your truth. Your word is truth." (Jn 17:17)

"The word of the Lord endures forever." (1Pt 1:25)

I love poetry

A Day of Poetry for the War

Fine whine is meant to be shared

Of risk, bridges and business 2007Aug6

Tom Clancy, in A Sum of All Fears, offered this smug assessment:

The Roman bridges of antiquity were very inefficient structures. By modern standards, they used too much stone, and as a result, far too much labor to build. Over the years we have learned to build bridges more efficiently, using fewer materials and less labor to perform the same task.

Seven years ago, InfoWorld published this response in KJR's predecessor, the Survival Guide (The sum of all projects)

... some of those Roman bridges are still standing a millennium later, while some of our more efficient ones have tumbled into the bay. Adherence to budgets and schedules is our preeminent ethic. One suspects Rome held different values.

Last week, another American bridge, just 40 years old, tumbled into the Mississippi river in the middle of Minneapolis. Those built by the Romans continue to stand.

What exactly went wrong in Minneapolis isn't yet certain. We do know already that recent inspections of the bridge did not report that all was well. They reported risk.

The state of MN, my home state, has underinvested in its transportation infrastructure for at least 25 of the last 25 years.

So has the rest of the country. We have no reason to believe the 35W bridge collapse will be the only consequence. Current estimates suggest we'll need to spend $10 billion a year for 20 years to catch up just on bridge maintenance. That will require new taxes. Do you think many voters would support a preventive maintenance platform, should one party or another be to propose it?
In the meantime, roughly 150,000 bridges have a similar risk of failure.

For those who propose the BIG/GAS theory (Business Is Great/Government and Academics are Stupid) as the culprit -- don't even think about it. Business leaders are at least as prone to the same thinking. As a recent KJR explained (The value of a little failure here and there,), they are far more likely to invest in revenue enhancement or cost reduction than in addressing risk, because investments in revenue enhancement and cost reduction yield tangible returns.

In that column I used risk mitigation to cover all ways of handling risk. Two correspondents -- Tom Reid and Max Fritzler -- recommended a different vocabulary and a more sophisticated way to think about the subject.

The proper cover term, which will be used here from now on, is "risk management." To manage risk you can Avoid, Insure, or Mitigate (Max supplied the acronym, AIM).

Avoidance means reducing the likelihood that the risk will become an event. Preventive maintenance is one of the most important ways to avoid risk. Staff training, to increase competence, is another.

Insurance includes all tactics that deflect the consequences of risk to someone else. Insurance is the label because that's the best-known way to deflect the consequences of risk, but there is another. It's called blame-shifting and it's quite a popular alternative. Quite a bit of political propaganda goes into blame-shifting. In business, backstabbing often has the same goal. Both are annoyingly effective at deflecting the consequences of risk.

Mitigation means reducing the impact should the risk turn into actual events. Fault-tolerant system design and business recovery planning are well-known risk mitigation tactics. So are cross-training and succession planning.

There is, of course, a fourth risk management tactic. It's probably the most popular of them all. It's called hoping.

Synonyms are keeping your fingers crossed and denial. Theoretically, you can also accept the risk -- consciously choose to do nothing. Usually, though, acceptance is just another synonym for hoping.

Denial has an antidote -- developing a culture of honest inquiry. It's how you get an accurate assessment of risk.

It is, perhaps, the most difficult change in business culture you can attempt. You have to constantly and insistently ask,

Are the data we have trustworthy? Complete? Can we get better data? Are we drawing the right inferences? Will they lead to the results we want?

And then,

Do the data say our decisions gave us the results we want? If not, what did we miss? What was wrong about our inferences and decisions? What will we do differently next time?

Tough questions.

You'll note that most risk management fits our definition of a decision -- it requires the commitment of time, staff and money. The exceptions are blame-shifting and hoping, which don't.

Is it any wonder, then, that blame-shifting and hoping are the most common risk management strategies in America today?

Or that another American bridge has crumbled?

---

Copyright and other stuff -- The great KJR link point

TO ALL THE KIDS WHO SURVIVED the 1930's, 40's, 50's, 60's and 70's!!

First, we survived being born to mothers who smoked and/or drank while they were pregnant.

They took aspirin, ate blue cheese dressing, tuna from a can, and didn't get tested for diabetes.

Then after that trauma, we were put to sleep on our tummies in baby cribs covered with bright colored lead-based paints.

We had no childproof lids on medicine bottles, doors or cabinets and when we rode our bikes, we had no helmets, not to mention, the risks we took hitchhiking .

As infants & children, we would ride in cars with no car seats, booster seats, seat belts or air bags.

Riding in the back of a pick up on a warm day was always a special treat.

We drank water from the garden hose and NOT from a bottle.

We shared one soft drink with four friends, from one bottle andNO ONE actually died from this.

We ate cupcakes, white bread and real butter and drank Kool-aid made with sugar, but we weren't overweight because, WE WERE ALWAYS OUTSIDE PLAYING!

We would leave home in the morning and play all day, as long as we were back when the streetlights came on.

No one was able to reach us all day. And we were O.K.

We would spend hours building our go-carts out of scraps and then ride down the hill, only to find out we forgot the brakes. After running into the bushes a few times, we learned to solve the problem.

We did not have Playstations, Nintendo's, X-boxes, no video games at all, no 150 channels on cable, no video movies or DVD's, no surround-sound or CD's, no cell phones, no personal computer! s, no Internet or chat rooms.......WE HAD FRIENDS and we went outside and found them!

We fell out of trees, got cut, broke bones and teeth and there were no lawsuits from these accidents.

We ate worms and mud pies made from dirt, and the worms did not live in us forever.

We were given BB guns for our 10th birthdays, made up games with sticks and tennis balls and, although we were told it would happen, we did not put out very many eyes.

We rode bikes or walked to a friend's house and knocked on the door or rang the bell, or just walked in and talked to them!

Little League had tryouts and not everyone made the team. Those who didn't had to learn to deal with disappointment. Imagine that!!

The idea of a parent bailing us out if we broke the law was unheard of. They actually sided with the law!

These generations have produced some of the best risk-takers, problem solvers and inventors ever!

The past 50 years have been an explosion of innovation and new ideas. We had freedom, failure, success and responsibility, and we learned HOW TO DEAL WITH IT ALL!

If YOU are one of them...CONGRATULATIONS!

You might want to share this with others who have had the luck to grow up as kids, before the lawyers and the government regulated so much of our lives for our own good. While you are at it, forward it to your kids so they will know how brave (and lucky) their parents were.

Kind of makes you want to run through the house with scissors, doesn't it?!

The quote of the month is by Jay Leno:

With hurricanes, tornados, fires out of control, mud slides, flooding, severe thunderstorms tearing up the country from one end to another, and with the threat of bird flu and terrorist attacks, are we sure this is a good time to take God out of the Pledge of Allegiance?

Delaware is an exciting place

THIS is TRUE: 29 July 2007 Copyright http://www.thisistrue.com
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LOW BROW, HIGH TECH: Two employees of a restaurant outside New Castle DE went into the office after closing and found a man inside. The man ran out the back door, but was caught by police nearby. Police identified him as Branden M. Tingey, 28, who was a manager at the restaurant three years ago, but was fired. "This was a burglary," said police Cpl. Joseph DiStefano. "He meant to rob the safe." The problem was, he didn't know how. Investigators checked a computer in the office and found Tingey was trying to get instructions over the Internet. "The [current restaurant] manager moved the mouse on the darkened screen" for investigators, DiStefano said, "and 'How to Crack a Safe' came up on the screen on the Yahoo page." (Wilmington News Journal)...Remember, kids: successful safe robbers choose Google.

previously

Another reason to love Delaware

Kids say the darndest things

A teacher arranged her young students into a circle. She then went around the circle and asked each one a question. "Davey, what sound does a cow make?" Davey replied, "It goes 'moo.'"

"Alice, what sound does a cat make?" Alice said, "It goes 'meow.'"

"Jamie, what sound does a lamb make?" Jamie said, "It goes 'baaa.'"

"Jennifer, what sound does a mouse make?" Jennifer paused, and said, "Uhh ... it goes ... 'click!'" - Deborah q."The Good, Clean Funnies List"