I can only write this because this blog is private, of course. Note well please….

A couple of year’s back I was approached to be a chairman at the CEO Institute. This is a nationwide forum for CEO’s to meet on a monthly basis in order to (and this bit has been pinched from their website):

• Connect with like-minded leaders and participate in leadership development in a supportive, confidential environment.
• Learn from others’ experiences. Talk with peers about common challenges and be exposed to alternative perspectives on possible solutions.
• Networking. Build a wider network of business and personal contacts.

Initially reluctant, I was eventually talked into taking a role as a chair of a syndicate (a group of say 12-14 CEOs meeting monthly). In a way, I actually talked myself into it, using the old dictum that one learn’s most from the new (to me).

They actually built a whole new syndicate for me, and for the first period I genuinely enjoyed learning how to chair such a thing. It is quite challenging; more so than, say, chairing a company board.

After a period they asked me to take over a second syndicate (the chair had retired), which I did. That didn’t go so well because the group was composed of CEOs, Managing Partners and Founder/Owners of small companies that were incredibly static and had no real desire to change in any way whatsoever.

Which is to say, I didn’t really know what they wanted. I did figure it out in the end. Some of them (the professional service providers) were there for leads, and the rest were there for a tea party, and in case something ever went wrong in their businesses.

Needless to say, that group and I parted ways by mutual agreement, and I focused entirely on the other, far more dynamic, group.

Then I was cold-approached to join The Boardroom. They were a bunch of ex-Chairs that had split from the CEO Institute to form a more ‘modern’ group with a better financial deal for the Chairs, etc. I said ‘no’ of course, just on the principle of professional integrity.

However, that conversation made me aware that the CEO Institute wasn’t a not-for-profit. It was in fact a privately owned and very profitable company. Not to worry, it’s not all about the money.

However over the last year the CEO Institute has had troubles with its sales and marketing, i.e. finding new CEO members. Also there has been an ever increasing number of people leaving due to time and cost pressures, amongst other reasons.

The problem is the ‘product’ itself. Essentially it is a Lions or Rotary Club on steroids. Developed in the early 1990’s, and the product just hadn’t been adapted to the changing business environment. The owner either doesn’t see the need, or isn’t interested in investing in R&D.

By way of example, all communications to members and chairs are via email. There is not a web-based communications system. Meeting reports and annual reviews are all done by paper and pen – I kid you not. These days, if I have to write anything longer than an departure and customs card by hand, I get cranky. Actually even the departure and customs cards piss me off given all that duplicated info I have to write time after time – why not an app?

The CEO Institute could only be described as one that is resistant to change, from the top down. And that is not a good thing for a CEO mentoring organisation, you would think, especially in these times of IT-led business ‘chaos’ (as they call it, LOL).

In a way, it doesn’t matter because the institute seems to attract CEOs from SMEs and not from the big end of town. And in Australia, SMEs rarely lead any change; generally they just respond to it when they are forced to.

So once again, I didn’t see any cause for concern from my point of view. It is someone else’s problem and this activity only represents a very small fraction of my monthly activities.

I was then confidentially approached by the CEO Institute’s head of Sales and Marketing. She told me that the conversion of new member leads had recently dropped precipitously, and that she couldn’t get the organisation to respond in any way other than to chase more leads.

She asked me what I thought the product would look like in the ideal world. I noted a number of recurring issues that the members of my group continued to complain about, which could be addressed by these changes to the ‘product’:

1. Shorter 2.5 hours long sessions – the current ones are way too long for my time-poor CEOs. I have come around to the early starts (730am for god’s sake!) and I believe if they were just 2.5 hours long we would get higher attendances.

2. Allow for additional and optional paid one-on-one mentoring and company strategic advisory efforts to enhance financial return to Chairs. At the moment the amount of money on the table for Chairs isn’t very high so they are not attracting the best possible Chairs.

3. I would weed out the Chairs that are consultants or professional mentors (an oxymoron if there ever was one). I would look to ensure all the Chairs were active senior executives and not professional advisers.

4. I would add an app-based membership information system complete with subscriptions to key journals like the HBR, calendars, messaging systems etc.

5. I would add business school qualifications to the benefits of time spent in the groups . This would help with attendance and membership.

6. I would only do guest talks from invited current CEOs, Senior Partners and VPs and not from consultants that are really just promoting their services. The inherent conflict of interest is too apparent in all but the rarest cases. Also active senior managers have much more interesting case studies to talk about.

7. This is the tricky one – but I would somehow get top executive head-hunters into the groups on a weekly basis for a quick meet and greet – these relationships would be a clincher for people wanting to join the groups (the hard bit is that their companies are paying but I can see how this could be managed).

Because most of my group are ’employed’ as CEOs, their strategic input into their business is unusually limited. None of them really get to define product initiatives or business strategy. None of them have ever raised equity or sold companies. This means that the group doesn’t really have any meaty strategic discussions that would help individual members. We only get to discuss second order stuff, which can get a little tedious after a while.

Interestingly, only one of member in my group has any interest in starting his own company. The rest of them have the career goal of jumping from one CEO role to the next bigger one, always remaining an employee in an established company. Therefore they are also strangely focused on learning how to get up that greasy pole whilst minimising the risks of slipping down it (namely, completely suppressing any functional individuality or strategic risk-taking).

One feature of the CEO Institute that I continually have to ignore is the CC email trains between the Chairs and the CEO of the CEO Institute. You have never seen so much vacuous dribble in your life (e.g. “Oh no! Susan, how I will miss your amazing kindness, intellect and warmth. You have inspired me as Chairman on so many levels”). Actually this stuff is so entertaining that I sort of see it as an upside in an odd sort of way.

By sheer happenstance, recently a number of my members left the group at the same time; this because they became unemployed or changed jobs and found their new employer less willing to pay for their membership, or less amenable to the time commitment of the CEO away from the business.

At this point (right now) the group becomes non-viable to the CEO Institute because costs are too high for the revenue it generates from membership fees. In the absence of new members (due to the drop in new sales conversions at head office), the only solution is to merge two groups into one larger group. It’s been happening all year to other groups.

Knowing all this, I believe that I have made sure that I won’t be promoted as the Chair of a merged group. Although all of these issues are ‘someone else’s problem’, I am also becoming a little bored of the format of the meetings. After two years, even with new invited speakers each month, it appears to me that we are starting to go around in circles that we have seen many times before.

One thing is for sure, this isn’t my problem. This is a for-profit company and if they can’t sort their own shit out, then that has nothing to do with me. Gone are the days when I feel the need to spuriously help others. The pigs, they never thank you, even if it works.

So how did I make sure that I won’t be the Chair of the upcoming merged group? Well I just filled out the Chair’s (hand-written) annual report with more honesty than would be expected from anyone in the corporate world. Not a lot of honesty, mind. Just a little more than the usual honey-coated bullshit that people say and write.

The clincher would have been this: Q: “The level of assistance provided by the Chairman (sic) in the recruitment of new members”. A: “My business networks are mostly in high-growth and high-tech industries and it would likely be ineffective to promote the CEO Institute’s product within these circles”.

And I think, with some luck, that it has done the trick. It was starting to worry me, how I would get out. I didn’t want to be seen to be abandoning my group. This way, it’s an act of god, or some-such.

And there endeth the lesson, for now. Who knows how I might apply these learnings in the future. But one thing’s for sure, it’s been damn interesting and certainly not time wasted, from any perspective.

But it is very important to recognise when you’ve hit the Pareto limit, where your potential for future benefits start to diminish asymptotically. This is of course a business judgement call; but if you can’t make one of these then why would you be a Chair in the first place!

A hierarchy of talk fests, from exclusive through to desperate;

• ”    ” (as in, say, Davos)
• Camp (as in, say, David)
• Conclave  (as in, say, Papal)
• Summit
• Congress
• Convention
• Symposium
• Conference
• Forum
• Seminar
• Colloquium
• Workshop
• Meeting
• Session
• Webinar
• Skype

It’s all in the marketing. You can call it whatever you want, so you may as well go upstream. 

Your local IP workshop luncheon could become Queen Street or The IP Conclave, or even Camp NicNac.

None of this, however, explains CHOGM.

I have defined the problem, O Lord, but the solution has evaded me.

Coconut oil.

It just happens to have these properties that make it the best personal lube (yes I did say that) known to mankind, as compared to the synthetic water soluble polymers that are usually pedalled for the purpose.

Namely, coconut oil:

1. Does not ‘dry out’ with excessive friction
2. Can be genuinely eaten without disgust
3. Introduces a coefficient of friction that is ‘just right’
4. Is a non-allergen
5. Is cheap and sold as a cooking oil at your local supermarket

Have you ever thought about the term ‘personal lubricants’? I guess they can be quite personal but most people are happier when they are shared. Maybe we should re-name them as ‘social lubricants’.

Moving on; there is one problem when it comes to coconut oil in this context and that is ‘application’.

The stuff comes in peanut butter jars (or jam jars, you get the idea) and is variably a solid or a liquid, depending on the temperature (it melts and solidifies around 25 degrees centigrade).

This is the cause of many issues that I suspect are holding back the uptake of this miracle product:

1. Coconut oil can be unexpectedly liquid in the dark, leading to unwanted and messy spills
2. Coconut oil can be solidified and beyond reach (at the bottom of the jar); bad in an emergency
3. It’s not exactly a portable packaging solution that one could, say, slip into one’s purse.

That’s about it really, but it’s enough.

What is needed, therefore, is an ‘applicator’ for coconut oil as a social lubricant.

Here’s  the embarrassing part of this blog entry; I started working on a solution, as I always do, by parking the problem in my brain and letting it ferment away.

After much time and day dreaming, the best I could come up with was to make an emulsion of the stuff with, in addition to all the surfactants, a water soluble polymer in the water phase to prevent the emulsion from breaking when the oil phase solidified. This would have the effect of keeping the mixture at a constant viscosity no matter what the temperature, and as such a normal applicator for viscous liquids could be used.

Even I felt ashamed at this Frankenstein of a solution. Imagine spoiling the lean and green nature of coconut oil? I felt as though I had passed over onto the evil side where food technologists do all their dark deeds.

And then, the true solution came from an hitherto unexpected source(s).

Felipe suggested using a screw applicator (like the ones used to apply lip gloss paste) to push the paste through.

And NicNac suggested a underarm deodorant style ball applicator to limit & control the passage of both the liquid or the paste onto the sociable and personable body bits.

Combined these two suggestions provide for a magically suitable coconut oil applicator, for both the solid and liquid form.

The paste would liquefy with the friction of the ball applicator, just FYI. And the paste could be forced in the ball applicator with the screw mechanism.

In liquid form you wouldn’t need the screw mechanism, but it won’t do any harm either. It would of course have to be made free of liquid leakage.

Query the ball applicator issues with pubic hair? Mostly this is becoming a non-issue in these nude days anyways.

In summary, this is a sure-fire winner of a new product, free of charge to anyone that could be arsed.

Ooooo, I just got invited to a (sic) Innovation Summit.

Here is a quick categorisation of the speakers – see below.

At least something is innovative!

Have you ever had this happen to you?

Someone asks how you are. You tell them.

Then you start getting a lecture on why you’re all wrong. Apparently the truth is elsewhere.

You say, ‘I just told you how I feel. It’s not up for debate.’ (you fucking idiot).

It’s a form of, I’d like to say cognitive dissonance, but it’s probably egocentricity.

Another example, the English backpacker overheard to say on the phone;

‘That sounds great, but to be honest,….’

My only take home is that she was signalling that she is usually not very honest. Verbal tics.

It’s not what she means but it’s what she said.

It’s almost as if you’d be well placed to carve off one of your minor lobes and have it run permanently in ‘other party’ simulation mode.

If you could be bothered.

The old square peg and round hole trick becomes a lot easier with a splash or daub (depending on the time and place) of coconut oil and a dash of devil-may-care attitude, usually, but not always, belonging solely to the peg.

When it’s time to withdraw, usually because the peg’s getting bored, it’s best not to look. This ain’t no gift horse situation.

You can teach a round hole to be temporarily pseudo-square but, and this should be completely self-explanatory, just don’t expect any thanks for your efforts.

You can teach a pig to be an archetype by editing it with Cognitive Behavior Therapy.

Just don’t expect any referrals.

Just an observation really, actually a generalisation, that is often at the root cause of mentoring.

People only want help when they have a specific problem that needs solving, or a specific opportunity that needs to be grasped.

Otherwise they just want to feel good about themselves.

So if you find yourself mentoring anyone, apply this filter and use it to tailor your approach.

You won’t go wrong.

Ponder this; “Resilience (noun) or Resiliency (noun) – able to recover quickly from misfortune; able to return to original form after being bent, compressed, or stretched out of shape. A human ability to recover quickly from disruptive change, or misfortune without being overwhelmed or acting in dysfunctional or harmful ways.”

Just to be contrary, sometime I am slow to recover from misfortune, but even so I am hardly ever overwhelmed, nor do I act in dysfunctional or harmful ways. I just put my head down and wait for all it to blow over.

In my view, resilience is the ability to (a) recognise when you have the blues, (b) keep to yourself when you have the blues, and (c) know when it’s all blown over.

In order to put the temporary non-stick surface onto cheap frypans they must use a sub-coating that is very stick indeed.

One week in and it’s easier eating the eggs straight out of the frypan!

My favorite dickhead of the moment isn’t Donald. It’s George Brandis.

I get the sense that he was the fat kid at school that every one picked on. Then he managed to get a law degree at Mudgee College or something like that, and ended up as a conveyancing solicitor before wedging his way into politics.

It is odd that the Liberal Party seems to attract the least qualified to hold any sort of office. They must have a multiple choice IQ questionnaire that you have to fail miserably before being promoted to a safe seat.

It must also help if you have beady eyes, sweat profusely, and bad breath. Oh, and a hatred of anything that would have been considered progressive in 1960.

And now George is the Attorney General, wreaking vengeance on all those that mocked him, times past.

He’ll end up destroying himself. But fortunately it’ll be slow and delicious to watch.

I’m sure it’s not just me that finds the adjustable strap mechanism on bike helmets simply not fit for purpose.

You can throw swimming goggles into that mix as well.

Surely an innovation waiting to happen.

It looked OK to start with; a nice late awakening, a sunny day, and a stroll down to the beach for a coffee.

And then my daughter calls to complain about my laggardness at topping up her phone account (which I had already done; she just hadn’t noticed).

Then I sent a humorous text message which wasn’t taken as such. Unexpected back-peddle.

On my bike, a tradie did his best to cut me down at a corner and then got very shirty with me when I pulled ahead of him at the next lights.

At  the very next set of lights another cyclist ran up the back of my bike and then abused me for the results.

Now that I am at work, I fear leaving the building in anticipation as to what may come down upon my head. Especially as the dark clouds have rolled in.

I may have to apologise to Apollo and Athena (they were sharing the arts portfolio back in the day) for slagging off at the artistes of this fine city of ours.

PS yep, sure enough, I just got roundly abused by a motorist for holding him up at a round about. I suggested to him that such behaviour was very unwise given that half the cyclists in Redfern are mad crack heads.

PPS so I’m riding home at the end of the day and it starts raining. Then I get a screw in the back tyre and have to walk the thing 5 km’s in the rain. Mind you, I just changed that tube two days ago. Oh, and I was very lucky not to have a head on with a motor bike as well.

Next year I might make a few hundred tiny, tiny micro-thongs and sprinkle them in the grass at Tamarama.

The juxtaposition and Lilliputian dissonance, not to mention the view from outer space, will inspire awe and religious fervour amongst the punters. It’ll make them reflect on their place in the universe. It may even cause them to consider the meaning of life. The sheer novelty and beauty of my creations will make our whole society pause for a moment to consider matters other than greed and consumption.

And, being hidden in the grass, my micro-thongs will be safe from acts of Poseidon.

The Chinese government has just announced a new plan that “aims to not only upgrade the economic environment, but also to reduce bureaucracy and enhance entrepreneurial spirit as well as innovation.”

The plan?

“The main step has been the substitution of the Business Tax with the Value Added Tax” and also “a cut in labour costs to decrease contributions for social security.”

Imagine an Australian government trying to sell a zero tax rate on corporations, a doubling of the GST, and a complete cut to corporate contributions to superannuation?

Clearly the Chinese government types are big believers in the trickle down effect and their own unassailable grasp on power.

Which is a bit of a paradox really; former communists with an authoritative clientelism political structure adopting self-serving neoliberal policies.

They are either right, and the trickle down effect is their best bet, or they are wrong and that gap between the rich and the poor will bite them in the bum one day very soon (my bet).

It is fascinating to ponder whether this approach is genuinely considered the best course of action (by the very soft-minded), or whether it is just greedy people getting even greedier.

Another pearler from China…

It’s very hard to let this one go through to the keeper.

Scene: Tamarama

Subject: Sculpture by the Sea

Object: Genius artiste takes some everyday little thing and makes it very big

Divine intervention: King tide and big seas

Result: where’d me fucking thong go?

Now that’s art.

It takes time, but once you’ve convinced yourself, if you apply a consistent mindfulness to the subject then eventually you can be the change that you want to see in yourself.

Changing the world however, now that’s quicksandish, no matter how well intentioned. At best, you might accidentally inspire a few people that know you, if they are so inclined.

Thereafter, it’s all grist to ego, or so I currently believe. The process of feeding the ego sucks out the capacity for mindfulness, as required in point one above.

This a paradox that can’t be subverted unless your penchance for subversion starts and ends in your own neocortex, wherein none of this would make any nonsense.

Because the Wallabies were only down by 5 points at half time I tuned in to watch the second half.

They lost the game, again, because the backs missed a series of tackles. And then the momentum just went against them.

There’s not a back in the entire NRL that would have missed one of those tackles. Just saying.

​Time flies like an arrow, fruit flies like a banana and nuts float by.

Now here’s a conundrum. 

They discover an interview of one of your all-time favourite (and very dead) authors on the subject of one of your all-time favourite (and just alive) singers/songwriter/poets.

“He can maybe get one good line in a song, and the rest is just gibberish,” Vonnegut said of Dylan.

This little beauty is part of a federal government product development grant application that my company is looking at right now.

“Add details of up to three types of usage. Usage costs are the costs associated with the uptake, application or adoption of research outputs by external parties that are not included in the input costs. Usage is the cost of deploying the research. The usage cost should take into account the amount of time and effort required to achieve impacts. Depending on the nature of the research activities within the project, usage might include – publication; patents; trials; products; prototypes; technologies; training packages; PhD student commencements and completions; SME or international engagement.”

I’ve read it, oooo, about ten times now and I still don’t know what they mean.

Do they mean for us to project future sales?

Or to project the costs to the company of taking the project outcomes to market, after the grant is finished and before sales start?

Or is it COGS and margin they are after?

Or to project the costs to the company of taking the project outcomes to market, after the grant is finished and before the whole thing is cashflow positive?

And why do they mention PhD students and publications?

Why do they say ‘time and effort’ when they ask for ‘costs’?

It’s oh so confusing.

Postscript: I figured it out. They see costs in three categories; the cost of the project (which they are co-funding), other ‘other costs’ of taking the technology to market including COGS when its in market, and the usages in the market – essentially the price times then number of units sold. Then they calculate a BENEFITS RATIO being the usages divided by the sum of the costs. Presumably they use this to sort the grant applications into some order of ‘impact’, probably a pre-filter so they don’t have to read half of the applications.

But it makes no sense because they don’t say use the top three in each of these categories, just any three. So it can be gamed. Also, ‘other costs’ and usages equates to COGS (to supplier) and price (to customer), so these are double counted. The BENEFITS RATIO should be (usages – other costs) / project costs – which is profit/project costs.

It shows a complete lack of understanding of business economics and finance.

Having said all that, the very worst thing that a parent can do to a child is give them cause to believe that they are not loved.

Many parents realise pretty quickly that they can’t create in a child the person that they themselves dreamed they could be.

Kids are who they are. Formed with whatever defines them from the soup of biochemistry.

In truth not many parents get this, only a few. The power of marketing overcomes many of the feeble minded.

What parents can do, by making their love conditional or, worse still, absent, is to create a tumour in the emotional centre of a child.

I suspect that these issues are multi-generational, passed on and on by folks unable to break the mould.

It’s been my privilege to know quite a few people that have taken it upon themselves to be the generational mould breakers.

Their lives aren’t easy but their legacy to the following generations is a testament to their strength and courage.

Being aware of and curating your feelings, in process, is a very personal experience.

My belief is that it’s so personal that you should be very cautious of expressing such manifestations outwardly.

Primarily because it’s a process that takes time and to share the journey can be akin to knifing the black cat in the box.

That is, shared observation run the risk of ruining the experiment by introducing false data.

The experiment doesn’t necessarily survive measurement, if you will.

The solution is to wait until you’ve arrived somewhere and test the results with those you trust and that have attained some degree of wisdom. 

Then the fat can be chewed when you’re in state to taste.

Feelings; at best they’re on your side, if you are too. 

But they have their own motives to be sure.

It all comes down to whether you see yourself as a gestaltian whole or a warring biosphere of greedy micro-replicants. Or both.

My faith on the subject, derived from some well-curated and totally uncorrelatable beliefs, is that the path to peace is twofold.

And the conundrum here is that the two approaches run contrary to each other.

Firstly, work through and embrace the feelings as if they are obscure pieces of a puzzle that will lead you to wholeness.

Others call this wellness, being the opposite of the illness of the soul.

But secondly, you must challenge the feelings too. Challenging them is very different to attempting to deny their existence.

It all depends where you want to end up.

Noting that feelings are both positive and negative, the common failing of us humans is to masticate on the negative ones and wallow in the positives 

There lies the beginners mistake.

There’s as much to be learned from picking apart those good vibrations.

And a final note; there’s no right path and there’s no right state of desire, when it comes to feelings.

One person’s hell is another’s warm oil bath.

I’ve known artists, for example, that would rather die than give up their driving existential angst.

And I’ve met folks without a care in the world that could be flattened with a warm lettuce leaf.

I’m really quite glad that Bob got a Nobel nod for literature, no matter what the motives were (probably shoring up the US market).

I can’t think of a wordsmith that’s had more impact. Yes, dot.

And mostly he crafted it with sublime and yet accessible originality. And with unphilosophical grace.

Uniquely, for the young and eager, it will be a pleasure to catch up on the works of the so awarded.

Many years back, under just such circumstances, I recall tough-mudding my way through Patrick White’s Voss.

Surely he could write, but I concluded that his primary motivation was to display this fact.

Towards the end of the Quixotic crusade I was planning a micro-bonfire.

When the purpose of, and the motivation behind art is art, then you have one of those situations where the question and the answer are Vennishly co-located.

The results can be clever and intriguing but never inspiring, nor motivating. Unless among the sponges one includes the similarly deluded and their fawning devotees.

Which brings me to my core hypothesis – great art requires two ingredients; great artistry and an absence of locational dissonance.

As in, if you’re heading anywhere interesting then you wouldn’t be starting from here, mate. If here is where I think it is, then so is there.

No one is quite sure whence Bob emerged. However it was undoubtedly not here nor there; he just made his rounds.

You could follow him to the end of the world and probably not regret it.

The latest Nobel Laureate once wrote;

“You either got faith or you got unbelief and there ain’t no neutral ground”

The way I look at it, you might have beliefs but you have to really care about them to curate them into a faith.

In which case there is neutral ground, being those beliefs that you don’t care too much about.

I’ve got plenty of these. 

An example would be that I truly believe that another person may have beliefs that they care about so much that they’ve curated them into a faith.

I’m not about to turn that one into a faith. 

I see it more as an emergency parachute for when I’m stuck chatting to the deluded faithful.

A team of scientists have just proven that spiders, although not possessing ears, can hear through the very fine hair on their legs.

Here’s some detail from the article…

My hotel room comes with a free loaner smartphone with unlimited usage of data and calls while I’m staying here.

Oddly enough they have turned off the hotspot function, which would be the only useful feature for me.

Now here’s the puzzling aspect of the beast; anyone inclined to use a smartphone probably has one by now.

So it’s either a case of a business innovation created by a government agency, or the true ROI is based on piracy of data (after some fool enters their Google account details into the loan phone).

Now that makes sense.

Overheard last week outside the song of hills church…

[earnest twenty something girl to a possibly less earnest twenty something lad]

“Because God’s not human he can’t tell a lie.”

Talk about scrambling one’s sophistry.

When you properly examine the proposition it’s at least four dimensions removed from any known form of rational thinking.

I wanted to yell back at her;

“Because humans ain’t gods they can’t tell the truth.”

Mine’s better.

Much delayed flight, but at least I should be safe. Check out my seating companion!

At the moment it’s hard to eat in Singapore without ingesting truffles. Bits, bobs, oil, you name it.

Damned odd; they’re in everything. It’s a fad; all in and bugger any sense of savoir faire, gastronomical or otherwise.

As nice as truffles are, their impact is somewhat kimchi-ish; after day two you’re looking for the exit.

Given the sheer quantity of truffles that are being consumed I’m suspecting that the Chinese have cracked synthetic truffle oil production. Sneaky buggers.

It’s damn interesting working with undergraduate students on genuine product development projects. 

Mostly they (the students) are technically fantastic and very motivated.

What they universally don’t have is any real appreciation for reporting and planning.

I’m trying to recall with no luck, but I’m sure it takes years to learn the hard way that a minute spent on reporting and planning is worth an hour in the bush.

The university tries valiantly to provide training in reporting and planning but I don’t think that it works because the trainers themselves are pretty shit at it.

No that’s unfair; the trainers know it’s important but their appreciation is cargo cultish. They themselves don’t need it much.

I can’t teach the students because they aren’t receptive as yet and I’ve learned over the years not to annoy one’s resources.

Indeed, I’ve also learned to do the planning and reporting for my troops where that is unfortunately the more efficient approach.

So the graduates will eventually learn it the hard way when they are usefully employed. Or not.

If true, rather than just mantra repeated, then the only solution is to ban all advertising and enforce plain paper packaging on all products.

And finally, an ‘explanation’ for peer pressure is given below. Truthfully, it’s a hypothesis that says pretty much nothing. The explanation looks the same as the behaviour it is trying to explain!

“An explanation of how the peer pressure process works, called “the identity shift effect“, is introduced by social psychologist, Wendy Treynor, who weaves together Leon Festinger‘s two seminal social-psychological theories (on cognitive dissonance, which addresses internal conflict, and social comparison, which addresses external conflict) into a unified whole. According to Treynor’s original “identity shift effect” hypothesis, the peer pressure process works in the following way: One’s state of harmony is disrupted when faced with the threat of external conflict (social rejection) for failing to conform to a group standard. Thus, one conforms to the group standard, but as soon as one does, eliminating this external conflict, internal conflict is introduced (because one has violated one’s own standards). To rid oneself of this internal conflict (self-rejection), an “identity shift” is undertaken, where one adopts the group’s standards as one’s own, thereby eliminating internal conflict (in addition to the formerly eliminated external conflict), returning one once again to a state of harmony. Even though the peer pressure process begins and ends with one in a (conflict-less) state of harmony, as a result of conflict and the conflict resolution process, one leaves with a new identity—a new set of internalized standards.^[35]“

My guess is that peer pressure is just another aspect of the socialisation benefits of reciprocal altruism towards family, friends and even strangers.

Reciprocal altruism must be catalysed by conformity because it reduces the barriers to communication by making others look less scary.

Conformity, in turn, is accelerated by peer pressure.

Nice one Wikipedia…

​”A variety of factors identified by Forsyth (2009) have been linked with likelihood to conform to peer pressure.

• Unanimity – When all of the members of a group are performing the same action, individuals are more prone to conform.
• Group size – Likelihood of conforming to a majority increases as group size increases with a peak conformity in groups of seven (although the difference in likelihood of conformity between a group of three and a group of seven is not statistically significant).
• Independence of decision – if group members reached their decision independently, people will be more likely to conform compared to decisions decided upon as a group.
• Gender – Women are more likely to conform than men, especially in face-to-face, non-anonymous situations (Nord, 19679; Hare, 1976).
• Culture – Members of Eastern (collectivist) cultures are more likely to conform than their Western counterparts, especially when the influence is a family member or a friend.
• Age – Conformity increases with age, until adulthood where people show more independence in decision making.
• Authoritarianism – Individuals who respect and obey authorities are more likely to act in accordance with social convention.
• Birth order – First-born children are more likely to conform than children born later.
• Intelligence – People who score lower on IQ tests are more likely to conform than people who score higher on IQ tests.
• Self esteem – Individuals with moderate to high self-esteem are less susceptible to peer pressure than individuals with low self-esteem.”

An interesting report from a solar industry analytics company…

“The company developed a machine-learning model to sort out which factors were most salient in predicting [a domestic rooftop solar panel] installation, using an impressive data set that included mutual-fund investment, interest in the outdoors and ‘high-life behaviour’. Among all these, [by far] the most likely predictor of having a solar panel was having a neighbour who had installed one.”

I’d imagine that if you talked to the average owner of a rooftop solar panel installation they’d waffle on about saving money (over time), energy independence and even ‘making the planet a better place’. However no one would suggest that the solar panels improved the look of the place; they’d go silent on that one.

And yet, it’s all about keeping up with the Joneses.

They call this ‘peer pressure’. Having never thought about the expression before I guess it is the pressure to conform to what ever the neighbours have done.

Having said that I am sure that the peer effect is broken up into two broad groups on a Gaussian distribution; those that want to keep up with the neighbours (those that feel peer pressure) and those that want to create the pressure on their neighbours in the first place (the early adopters).

Every strategic marketer must knows this. New product introduction would be all about identifying the early adopters and giving them all the incentives they need to fuck with their neighbour’s heads.

Assuming all the folks just want to fit in as much as each other, the early adopters must just calculate the risks and rewards of early adoption just that little differently.

The benefits of being first must carry a weighting factor for that internal calculation of ‘belonging’ that outweighs the odd failure (where none of the neighbours follow their lead).

I can feel a multiple choice questionnaire coming on, resulting in everyone getting a score out of ten on the ‘Peer Pressure’ index.

’10’ for the absolute early adopters (that probably built their own solar panels rather than waiting for them to be commercially available) and ‘0’ for the last person in the street to adorn their roof with the aesthetic blight of out times.

Wallabies, wallabies, wallabies … see exhibit A below. Their new plan is to be execute their losing strategy even more efficiently. They even announce their plan ahead of time to make sure of it!

Were I given the chance I would change their game-plan and the players. They are not going to beat the All Blacks at running rugby for, oooo, about another century or so.

So, I would suggest Kick Long and Defend Really Hard. Bugger running with the ball.

This would mean fielding the 15 best defenders in the game. I wouldn’t worry too much about their attacking capability or positions; this makes it easier to pick the best 15 defenders.

I would make sure there’s at least 2 great long kickers in there. And I would keep giving it back to Kiwis deep in their half. I would keep those kicks in the field of play and tempt the Black to run the ball out, which they would.

I wouldn’t get all fussed about contesting the line-outs; let them have it and take the benefit of not having a couple of useless jumpers in the team.

Tap re-starts from penalties would be the norm where possible rather than kicks for the line, followed immediately by long raking kicks deep into the other half..

If ever with the ball in hand on the attacking line then plan would be one of; (1) a rugby league bomb, (2) a drop goal, or (3) a rolling maul.

The scrum would need to be strong but I am guessing that a team of hard-nut defenders would have a good scrum. I’d push the scrum as hard as I could then roll it into a maul where possible. Then kick the ball long the second it comes out unless of course they happen to be near the line (bomb) or over the line by some miracle (place).

It sounds boring but Total Rugby needs to be counteracted with something quite novel like Total Defense.

If you can’t beat  the fuckers at their own game then don’t play their game, for god’s sake.

Take that, Baird.

My daughter’s assignment on Egypt’s water crisis.

Arable land after recent increases is now a stable fraction of global land mass – see data below.

This is because arable land is defined by the Food and Agriculture Organization as land under temporary crops (double-cropped areas are counted once), temporary meadows for mowing or for pasture, land under market or kitchen gardens, and land temporarily fallow (less than five years).

So the data below is not the amount of land that is potentially cultivable, rather that which is being cultivated.

The amount of land which is potentially cultivatable has probably decreased over the last few years due to climate change and environmental degradation.

But technology allows land to be cultivated that previously wasn’t viable.

So the more interesting plot would be the % of potentially cultivatable land that is actually being cultivated. My guess is we’re close to 100% already.

As an aside the arable land already uses about 70% of available fresh water sources.

My old mate in Melbourne has a ‘passion for writing’.

It results in one blog entry every six months.

I suspect it’s really a passion for having a passion for writing.

Let’s called that a passion-squared for writing.

“Prior to the industrial revolution Mercantilist corporations focused on trade. The Mercantile principle is that land is the source of all economic power, therefore the only way to grow value faster than your land holdings permit is to trade on advantageous terms. Mercantilist thinking is a fundamentally zero-sum way of viewing the world – you take and somehow else loses.

Then along came the Schumpeterian corporation and the industrial revolution. Innovation & ideas powered by essentially limitless fossil-fuel energy. The equation was simple; energy and ideas turned into products and services could be used to buy time. Specifically, energy and ideas could be used to shrink autonomously-owned individual time and grow a space of corporate-owned time, to be divided between production and consumption.

Two phrases were invented to name the phenomenon: productivity meant shrinking autonomously-owned time. Increased standard of living through time-saving devices became code for the fact that the “freed up” time through “labor saving” devices was actually the de facto property of corporations (e.g. through viewing of TV and magazines).”*

However we are close to Peak Attention. The ROI on developing new technologies that mine an individual’s time (which is finite) is getting pretty low. In essence we wandering into another zero-sum game.

As a corollary, you can also feel the affect of Peak Attention in business; the life-cycle of a new product is short due to competitive pressures (too many companies chasing the same opportunities). The ROI on innovation usually only makes sense when you lie to yourself and your shareholders. Even IP protection doesn’t help; the mountain of prior art has white-anted that angle too.

So what happens next?

I suspect that businesses simply won’t be able to employ all the people that they do today. In fact the corporate sector will shrink in size, both as a fraction of GDP and in the percentage of the population it employs.

Governments will therefore  step in and be the leaders in creating employment, whether that is directly or indirectly. This employment will have the sole purpose of keeping common people (the gammas) occupied for as much of the time as possible so that they remain vaguely satisfied and also such that their consumption is controlled. The precursor to this is the Nanny State where government mandated services create value-destroying employment.

In this process, some power will transfer from the corporate sector to the government sector. However the corporate sector will hang on to much power by controlling the dwindling physical resources. Governments will let this happen because it represents the best retirement plan for politicians. The corporates will essentially be wealth banks for a small fraction of the population, the alphas, that will consume much more than the rest.

A small fraction of the population (the betas) will freelance and not be captive to the unproductive services sector. These people will have the capacity to exploit the eddies in the flows of wealth created by all that government effort at near full employment.The beta’s existence will be for their own benefit only; the system will not depend on them because it will not need their incremental productivity gains.

Renewable energy will become essentially limitless unlike physical resources. This will favour the adoption of technologies that use up people’s “free” time with IT and not the consumption of physical resources.

The gammas will start to enter the Matrix. The alphas and betas will have the privilege of not doing so, if they so wish.

I didn’t need deltas or epsilons in this model.

* lifted from http://bit.ly/1fVTX8f – this author couldn’t imagine the brave new world

I’ve come to the conclusion (for now at least) that, as a principle of modern socialisation, the radiation of empathy towards strangers is much over-rated, simply because the scammers take advantage of all that misplaced empathy.

They do this by abusing yours or imitating it, or both.

New hypothesis; cautious respect towards strangers is far more useful.

There’s quite a difference between controlling one’s behavior and taming the subconscious.

I could expand on the theme but, for some reason, today I prefer to be economical with words.

If you’re capable of understanding this hypothesis, then you will.

Today is the day that they make the very last Ford Falcon.

Virtually unchanged since first released in 1960 (with the odd re-skin), Falcon sales have gone backwards of late.

It was a good idea at the time. It isn’t now.

It’s demise also foreshadows that of the taxi industry, it’s primary customer.

All up, it’s a very good day!

My antipathy towards the Falcon comes from a number of sources; 

(1) lack of excellence – it has very average engineering, 

(2) hypocrisy and delusion – self-serving local motoring pundits have always deluded themselves (and us) that it’s a great car, 

(3) exploitation – by an American corporation applying the lowest common denominator principle upon Australians, and 

(4) comfort and safety – before Uber a taxi ride was always cause for serious trepidation.

Look carefully; she’s videoing herself playing table tennis.

“The  IMF has urged governments to take action to tackle a record $152tn debt mountain before it triggers a fresh global financial and economic crisis … [this is] 225% of global GDP, with the private sector responsible for two-thirds of the total … [the debt is]  concentrated in the advanced countries of the west and some of the big emerging market economies such as China.”

The problem is that repayment of debt from the private sector relies on robust sales and a buoyant economy. Many times when companies can’t repay their debts the creditors end up with little or nothing. So a large fraction of that debt is at risk, which in turn puts fear into the markets that in turn can cause the very conditions that ensures that the debt is never repaid.

I believe that one of the largest issues is that lenders to Western companies haven’t adjusted (up) the risk factors associated with lending to operating companies that have Chinese competition.

Chinese competition, financed by low cost government-related finance, has made many business sectors totally unviable for Western competitors.

However the Chinese themselves often operate in loss-making bubbles, propped up by a government intent on jobs and growth in wealth, and with little investment in innovation.

The only answer, unfortunately, is that the Chinese bubble goes pop. Short of this I can’t see things improving.

It’s the only way they will learn that, although it appears that you can have a free lunch, don’t expect it to be magic pudding too.

And it will go pop. Because, apart from the the largest mismanagement of an economy ever undertaken, we also have the impact of rapid global unemployment as information technology J-curves on us.

I have no idea what the other side will look like.

Intrigued, I went looking into the Australian think-tank on Western Civilisation.

Heading straight to their prospectus (where do I buy shares?), I discovered the problem that they want to solve – see exhibits below.

In a nut shell, the Christian churches and related conservative religious types feel that they are being marginalised with respect to the influence they have on laws made in parliament.

With genuine Christian religious participation dropping to single digit percentages of the population one could counter argue that representation in parliament is as it should be.

Line up with the all other minorities, I say!

And they sort of know they’re up against it. They don’t call themselves the Christian Democrats or something like that. 

No they hide behind a visage of protecting Western Civilisation; an attempt to attract the racially exhausted bogans.

Both groups would like to conserve the whiteness of Australia but otherwise have little in common. It won’t work.

This is pyrite.

This is a case of a hipster taking streampunk tendencies too far; the two should never be twained.

Amazingly the thing is road registered in the nanny state where even dogs aren’t allowed to run in circles.

The personal space around a human being is actually a cylinder with the central axis running somewhere through the neck down to the groin and then the ground.

Oddly enough the radius of the cylinder is a fixed value and is not adjusted for fat. 

Indeed, certain fat people actually exceed their own radius of personal space!

In circumstances where this intrudes on the personal space of others they simply learn to adopt a disingenuous pose of unawareness.

They do this even if they go the whole hog and intrude on someone’s actual physical space, say in economy on an aeroplane.

My unrepentant view; if you’re this fat, don’t fly if you can’t afford business class. 

I’m imaging a latitudinal study looking for correlations between various mental illnesses and the time it takes to get a boarding pass at the old-school international counter (with service by humans and all that).

We all know there’s a correlation there. I don’t know how we know, we just do. The madder they are, the longer you wait.

Firstly there the delusional types that want a bunch of unpaid-for concessions such as upgrades, forward seats with empty ones next to them, four empty seats for a sleep, etc. 

Then there are the deeply insecure folks that worry about the type of plane, the experience of the pilot, etc, and expect the desk jockey to know the answers.

Those with Alzheimer’s ask time and again where the departure gate is.

The narcissist stands there for five minutes after being served, zipping up pockets and bags and checking for their various paper accoutrements, blocking the counter for use by others.

The family of dullards impacted by the lead in the soil under their house will certainly take half an hour to check in. Odd members will wander off only to be shouted at to come back at critical moments.

Yes, I believe a study of these behaviours would be very revealing. All it would take is a camera and a microphone, which are probably already in place.

I’m guessing that mental illnesses and deleterious character traits all act to concentrate the attention on the self (as do all illnesses) thereby reducing a person’s sensitivity to the needs and desires of those in the queue behind them.

Or, conversely, one could say that a sign of good mental health is empathy in its broadest sense, to kin and to strangers, whether one owes them favours or nowt.

Kharma begets kharma. Which is yet another reason why intervention in mental health issues is so important.

Donald “as a businessman has a fiduciary responsibility to pay no more income* tax than necessary.”

Who knew? But it’s probably true that in America one does have a fiduciary responsibility to the self.

It’s probably amendment 24 and a half, or something like that, to the constitution.

Imagine being jailed for charitable donations to the national treasury?

On the subject, America would be better off just scrapping taxation and printing ALL the money that their governments spend.

Oddly though, this would put the highest burden of taxation on the wealthiest 1% (that own some stupidly high fraction of the national wealth) by devaluing their currency at hand. 

They’d respond by getting out of cash or America (like they do now).

So all this flat-rate approach would do is save everyone else from filling out tax returns. Still worth it, I reckon.

* – reports on Donald’s tax aversion seen to be written by financially illiterate reporters. I can’t for the life of me figure out whether they’re talking about his personal income or the taxes of his companies and trusts.

Certain malaria drugs sensitise one to the burning effects of solar radiation.

It’s a wonder that some enterprising pharmaceutical corporation hasn’t looked for other drugs that desensitise one to solar radiation.

That is, I hate the slop in slip, slap, slop. A lot.

It is common wisdom to presume that the subconscious is part of the ‘self’ but I prefer to see it as an alien occupying some space in my skull.

The fucker needs to be challenged and carefully managed. It takes wits and perseverance.

At times the relationship is symbiotic. Sometimes not. The trick is to know when it’s intentions are it’s own and not aligned with yours.

You can’t ignore it outright because it has far better access to the memory and computation functions than you have. Like all good parasites it has made itself indispensable.

I suspect that some forms of mental illnesses are a result of the subconscious, for biological or other reasons, getting to run the whole show.

Believing that it’s capable of driving in Formula One, the bloody thing doesn’t even have basic driver training. The car inevitably ends up over the cliff.

And yet other forms of mental illness result from folks alienating the alien altogether. Vulcans.

A well managed and controlled subconscious can be a powerful ally. This blog for example was the result of a challenge that I posed mine last night.

At the same time I was also punishing it for an asinine attempt to intervene, against orders and against my best interests.

One needs to consider the subconscious as a metaphorical hermit crab. It honestly believes that, if required, it can just crawl into another skull when the current one is no longer habitable. This is the deluded source of religion; a type of mental illness where the subconscious rules the roost.

Spiritual types toil at a friendly merging of the conscious with the subconscious. Mostly they fail but the ones that don’t need to adopt a near comatose visage to pull it off. And the pig doesn’t thank them for their efforts either.

Contrary to popular beliefs, what people need most is subconsciousness training, which is like puppy training. Sit, beg, walk … there’s no pandering to the thing.

Maybe an opportunity for an app….

Say what?

On the subject of couples I suspect that a good approach to ironing out the bugs is to focus equally on those things that one needs and those that one doesn’t need.

And then merge the ones as best as two can.

Balance is needed in all things love and war, after all.

A professional mentor.

What’s the chances?

On the weekend I had cause for playing with my bike bell, the one long-hidden under my seat.

This caused it to be a little loose in its fixings, which in turn meant that I had to play with it to stop it jangling.

As a result, just yesterday, I imagined a conversation with a copper that had pulled me over for the absence of the same.

And there it was. I willed it into existence.

Today, just outside the QVB I pulled up at the lights (as you do these days) and stopped right next to a motorcycle cop.

He looked me up and down and asked me where my bell was.

I stated that it was under my seat and then reached under my bum to ring it as evidence of my veracity.

He smiled and told me that it has to be on the handlebars. I doubt that is written into the act.

And that was it. No fine. Hardly a warning.

But the long game paid off.

And the best story of the day was an accidental meeting with UTS’s gender diversity leader.

She’s hatching plans to get more women into engineering degrees.

It’s a sector that is already over-subscribed. Everyone uni had the same program targeting the same minority of left handed girls.

They’ll have to start paying women to do engineering degrees. Actually they already are.

I asked her why the program existed and she answered that they wanted to get more women into engineering.

I suggested that when the problem and the solution are the same that there might be an issue.

Confusion.

I asked her whether there was some evidence from overseas that gender balance in engineering provided better economic outcomes for engineering firms.

She knew of no such data and countered that my suggestion was a non-sequitur. The issue is apparently about the vibe of the thing.

Not much I could counter there.

So I suggested an alternative approach; squeeze more men into the degrees that women normally cluster into thus leaving the women with no option but to enter into unfashionable degrees such as engineering.

That was an abhorrent concept.

LOL. And I did.

Tonight I listened to an industry guru talk micro and macro economics in the Australian context.

A key advisor to government, his microeconomics was spot on.

Macro-wise, not so.

By way of example he noted that agriculture was only 3% of Australian GDP and therefore we could adsorb it’s hypothetical loss within 9 months. No matter.

In fact he was all for running the economy on services with tourism as the only export. Greece anyone?

What he didn’t grasp is that the more industries that we lose then the more we have to buy as imports. 

The value of imports has to be balanced by exports or else, Greece.

Can you imagine having just one cyclical export industry?

Managing risk well would imply having a few flourishing and world-leading export industries.

Fortunately government advisers don’t matter. Nor does government it seems. They couldn’t support or promote an industry sector if they tried.

Whatever will be, will be.

The scarier aspect of the whole charade was the general level of consensus amongst the self serving CEOs, mostly from the services sector.

From Fukuyuma; “​Natural human sociability is built around two phenomena: kin selection and reciprocal altruism. The first is a recurring pattern by which sexually reproducing animals behave altruistically toward one another in proportion to the number of genes they share; that is, they practice nepotism and favor genetic relatives.

Reciprocal altruism involves an exchange of favors or resources between unrelated individuals of the same species, or sometimes between members of different species. Both behaviors are not learned but genetically coded and emerge spontaneously as individuals interact. 

Human beings, in other words, are social animals by nature. But their natural sociability takes the specific form of altruism toward family (genetic relatives) and friends (individuals with whom one has exchanged favors). 

This default form of human sociability is universal to all cultures and historical periods. 

Natural sociability can be overridden by the development of new institutions that provide incentives for other types of behavior (for example, favoring a qualified stranger over a genetic relative), but it constitutes a form of social relationship to which humans always revert when such alternative institutions break down. 

Human beings by nature are also norm-creating and norm-following creatures. They create rules for themselves that regulate social interactions and make possible the collective action of groups. 

Although these rules can be rationally designed or negotiated, norm-following behavior is usually grounded not in reason but in emotions like pride, guilt, anger, and shame. 

Norms are often given an intrinsic value and even worshipped, as in the religious laws of many different societies. Since an institution is nothing more than a rule that persists over time, human beings therefore have a natural tendency to institutionalize their behavior.”

On Girard; “We borrow our desires from others. Far from being autonomous, our desire for a certain object is always provoked by the desire of another person — the model — for this same object. This means that the relationship between the subject and the object is not direct: there is always a triangular relationship of subject, model, and object. Through the object, one is drawn to the model, whom Girard calls the mediator: it is in fact the model who is sought. Girard calls desire ‘metaphysical’ in the measure that, as soon as a desire is something more than a simple need or appetite, ‘all desire is a desire to be’, it is an aspiration, the dream of a fullness attributed to the mediator.”

By me; “Modern society depends on natural sociability being overridden by the development of new institutions that provide incentives for specific types of behavior (for example, favoring a qualified stranger over a genetic relative).

Such behaviour itself requires the existence of unquestioned and almost unnoticed Mimetic desire. In effect, the adoption of the desire to be as others are, draws society together into a single institution, overcoming the disabling forces of kin selection and reciprocal altruism.

Following this line of reasoning, individual societies should be trending towards greater coherence as improved technologies allow the Mimetic message to be hammered home.

Driven by consumption, Mimetic desire can never be fully satisfied. There’s always some other improved model that has more. Modern society is effectively driven by a benevolent Ponzi scheme.”

I often care about not caring about caring about things.

But I suspect that this doesn’t mean that I’m left with just caring about things (due to the cancellation of one of the carings and one of the not carings).

Nope, anti-mimeticism comes in two forms:

1. Simpletons that actually care about things. Generally they wear sandals and socks.

2. Deluded souls that are desperately deep into the dissonance. The giveaway is novelty combined with a sense of style.

Is there a problem here? Hey, that’s a nice butterfly…

A casino where, on average, the house loses but yet where they use a negative currency. 

The more you win, the more chips you have, and the more you owe the Casino when you leave.

A punter couldn’t game the system because this casino would just have games of chance and none of those dodgy ones which actually include an element of skill.

You’d go in, win big or small, and pay your debt on the way out. The house could never lose because there’s no way to owe a punter any cash.

Statistically and financially speaking this casino would be identical to the current types. Everyone would regress to the mean and lose their bundles.

Except there’s nothing to stop them going infinitely into debt; that’s the genius. No running out of chips.

But I’m telling you, without the pain of losing interspersed with the odd win, your addicted punter might have little interest.

Or, knowing that the pain starts when they leave, maybe they’d go for it.

An interesting experiment indeed.

Thanks to Dave I now know that I have re-invented Girard’s concept of Mimetic desire, three years and my life span after the fact.

“We borrow our desires from others. Far from being autonomous, our desire for a certain object is always provoked by the desire of another person — the model — for this same object. This means that the relationship between the subject and the object is not direct: there is always a triangular relationship of subject, model, and object. Through the object, one is drawn to the model, whom Girard calls the mediator: it is in fact the model who is sought. Girard calls desire ‘metaphysical’ in the measure that, as soon as a desire is something more than a simple need or appetite, ‘all desire is a desire to be’, it is an aspiration, the dream of a fullness attributed to the mediator.”

Which brings me to another query; does it matter who or when?

I may have mentioned this before, but to reiterate in the context of Girard, the adulation of the pioneer is in itself a measure of the Mimetic desire of the pioneer.

In the case of Girard, were it not so, we’d have never known.

I’m not implying this is a bad, bad thing but I do wonder why, generally speaking, we pioneers prefer not to be viewed as in the grip of Mimetic desire? 

Personally I blame religion which cultured the relationship between the self and the god as unique and most valuable. Cue to dissonance, entering stage left from the public vestibule.

Maybe it’s time for a completely new movement that embraces overt Mimetic desire.

Hang on, I think we have one of those. It’s the one behind reality TV and social media.

Which might explain the general slow down in innovation.

Things that needs saving: the planet, the Syrians, the Palestinians, the ABC, old buildings, CSIRO, Australian innovation, fast dogs, slow reptiles, little frogs, the barrier reef, the whales, flatheads, mullets, and even sharks.

Do people really care about these things? I don’t think so.

My close observation would suggest that people mostly care about caring about these things.

And that is something quite different altogether.

The give away is a total absence of objectivity, humour or patience.

Conversely when someone really cares about something, as opposed to just caring about caring about it, they tend to be, for example, quite objective about the subject because that is a required skill for the educatation of others on the matter.

The washing machine, it’s a thing.

My particular front loading number from Germany even includes some electronics driven by bistrophysics. Quite the added bonus.

Enter into the standard washing mode and you find yourself at the wrong end of a hot process that endures for 3 hours and 12 minutes.

What, I wonder, takes so long? The clothes don’t appear to be any cleaner than the old top loader that had a 30 minutes cold cycle.

Ignoring that discrepancy, the advertised cycle of 3 hours and 12 minutes might actually take anywhere between 3 hours and 30 minutes and 4 hours and 30 minutes.

This morning the last minute actually took 5 minutes; see image below.

The fuckers are on Jetstar time! And both Bosch and Jetstar are using bistrophysics.

Einstein’s theory of relativity was based on the hypothesis that time was not an absolute, but based on an observer’s movement through space.

This theory is however just a limiting case of the more general laws of bistrophysics that state that time is not an absolute, and the degree of variation from the expected absolute value depends upon the attentiveness of the observer.

Bloody obvious when you think about it!

An albino indigenous artist recently won the “Your Very Good Idea” award and has used the proceeds to lay out a zillion white plastic things (miniature aboriginal shields, apparently) in the shape on an exhibition building that was once in Sydney’s botanic gardens.

The big idea is that the installation represents “loss and destruction”; the building burnt down, taking with it a collection of indigenous artefacts, amongst many other things.

Said art installation cannot be appreciated from ground level; the outline of the old building can only be seen from a helicopter. It’s a temporary installation so it can’t be lost or destroyed. And you’d have to be told what the white shields are.

I’d say it’s more of a visual cryptic crossword puzzle than anything else.

It just goes to show the power of artistic dissonance. It’s just a shame that it’s completely untransferable, except to a few well-meaning mates.

If I’ve said it once, I’ve said it many times; the black magic does not require refrigeration.

Left in a Floridian swamp with the lid missing, the gunk would be good to ingest a decade later.

First formulated in an era before the commoditisation of electrons, it can be ingested only by primates of the australopithycause genus.

It is in fact completely immune to all the usual first-world food degenerating concerns.

Simply stated, it’s better at repelling moths than your grandmother’s naphthalene balls. And there ain’t any moths in the cold white box.

Even the very worst dinner party can help resolve the imponderables. The take home message? Stay home at your peril.

Yesterday I received a draft non-disclosure agreement (NDA) from SolarCity (I can name them because as you will see, it won’t be signed).

This NDA contained a very unusual clause stating that the recipient couldn’t have any of the disclosing party’s confidential information (as incorporated into patents) ever used against the receiving party as part of a patent enforcement by the disclosing party.

This is effectively a free Covenant Not To Sue (CNTS), aptly named in this case.

Which got me to thinking that the VERY best form of marriage pre-nuptial agreement would be a CNTS after separation, with prescribed damages equal to the former couple’s entire combined wealth at the time.

This would force all financial negotiations to a mediated version of common law standards. And it wouldn’t be that divisive to sign before a marriage.

On the subject of professional tinnitus, the persistent buzzwords that confound the ears and minds of the employee classes are these old chestnuts; “innovation” and “creativity”.

On the surface, one might think that these modern attributes represent an essential capability of anyone wanting to get employed, remain employed, or even for those wishing to ascend glass pyramids.

But a close examination of the matter will reveal that success in these endeavours is actually engendered by an ability to appear to expend little effort in creating the impression that no effort is being spared in creating the further impression of a personal mastery of the dark arts of creativity and innovation.

In practise this means; (a) frequently using the words “innovation” and “creativity” in emails, reports and meetings, (b) attending the odd workshop and/or forum on the subjects and thereby becoming a subject matter expert, (c) not sniggering when anyone else uses these terms, and (d) (most importantly) having an up-to-date awareness of the best and most obscure second-order terms related to “innovation” and “creativity”; these are generally trademarked sub-buzzwords such as “guided imagery” and “ideation”.

Ideating backwards to the mercantile genesis, we can blame the Enlightenment and the Industrial Revolution for the situation that we find ourselves in. Let me explain.

The Enlightenment brought us creativity and the Industrial Revolution brought us innovation.

Both movements were based  on the then novel idea that the ‘things’ can always be improved upon, a belief that required, inter alia, a disrespect for all things ‘past’, and an apprenticeship in innovation and creativity.

Indeed, the Enlightenment was driven by the desire to free mankind from the shackles of Despots and the Churches; mostly “done” in the West.

The Industrial Revolution hoped to make everyone free from poverty so that a few could get very rich; again, mostly “done” in the West, at least according to the standards of the 1600’s.

So if these movements have been successful, why do we cling to the concepts of innovation and creativity, the vestiges of the key modi operandi of these movements?

If you think about it, it’s quite obvious…

Once the Enlightenment and the Industrial Revolution were successful in the West, we no longer needed a disrespect of the past. Accordingly it was not necessary to throw out the concepts of innovation and creativity just because (a) they were old-school and (b) we didn’t need them any more.

And without the formerly required truth-seeking apprenticeship no one was (or is) required to notice, or care whether any attributions of character (such as innovation or creativity) are real or otherwise.

My guess is that innovation and creativity are on the rotisserie of recycled buzzwords because of nostalgia for a time when things were a little more interesting. If you will, their continued use represents a metaphorical appendix (of the body corporeal type) in a bored and dull mind.

What, I wonder, is the peak decibel difference between a bell and a glockenspiel, both made of the same mass of the same metal, and both struck with the same hammer?

Somewhere there will be a somewhat inward looking fellow who will have the background and interest that would allow him to ponder this puzzle and estimate a credible solution.

But where does this fellow lurk? How do I find him? 

Probably not on a private blog,  I’m guessing.

Just say, for instance, someone put a gun against my head and said that I had to start a serious IP services business. What would I do?

Firstly, I would bypass copyright, trademark, design – these are being rapidly disintermediated and, to a large extent, the service providers in these areas are just undifferentiated form fillers that will be replaced by technology.

Which leaves patents where, even the most sagacious judge would admit, a keen sense of intellect is needed in order to do a good job as a service provider. It’s a complex business.

Of course I could provide disintermediating services to the service providers in the area. But who wants to be serving a supply chain that lives on hot air? It could just evaporate one day. That would be too uncertain for the likes of me. Plus, as I have learned, it’s best if you like your customers.

Then there are the pirates, picking over the pile of bones in the patent world, looking for nuggets of gold. Chinese diggers and their drunken publican masters; that’s how I see these guys. Patent trolls, brokers, patent banks, patent funds, industry funds etc. They are all just arbitraging fear without no intention of creating demonstrable value for anyone but themselves.

Which would leave me with patent service providers – the patent attorneys themselves – otherwise known as dickheads, nuggets and nerds (DNR).

I have said in the past that only ca. 1% of the owners of patents have a positive IRR on their investment in patents. And only about 10% of this 1% make that positive IRR on purpose. That is, there is about 0.1% of patents that are intended to be value creating and actually are.

Who are these unicorns that own these 0.1% of patents? Well, they fall into three categories only:

1. Genuine real-tech start-ups and SMEs that have brand new technology platforms. Each of these has a CEO that knows how to make money out of patents. They have sufficient investment for IP, and a vision of a substantial market monopoly; which is the basis of their value creation whether they remain private, list or exit via M&A.
2. A cash flow positive licensing corporation that focuses on one business segment and patents the hell out of every good idea they can invent, acquires technology and patents, and then forces all industry players to pay them a license fee. Think Qualcomm.
3. Large corporates whose monopolies depend solely on patents, e.g. big pharma.

As a rule of thumb, these are the only three categories of businesses where the CEO is intimately involved in patent strategy. That is the give-away.

As a service provider, the minute you start dealing with a VP, or worse still, a sub-VP (sometimes down to shit-kicker manager) then you know that your client has absolutely no idea what or why or anything. Then you are down to having boozy lunches with the IP manager as a means for keeping your business going.

So, back to the proverbial gun against my head; my patent services company would ONLY serve the three categories of customers above, companies that have proven they are in the 0.1%, and where the CEO is one of the direct client contacts.

Do these guys have a problem with their existing patent service providers that needs solving? You betcha.

Do they know? Nope, because no one has articulated an alternative.

The problems are as follows:

1. There are good patent attorneys but there aren’t good attorney firms. That is, the really good patent attorneys are distributed randomly throughout the market.
2. Patent attorneys perform a wide range of activities but very few of them are prepared to focus on the core activities that they especially excel at. They all do it all, from business development to claim drafting.
3. I have yet to see a patent attorney firm that has the first clue about patent strategy. The reason is that all patent attorney firms are run by patent attorneys; a big mistake.
4. Which means the patent drafting ends up being separated from IP and business strategy (which takes place in the operating companies). It’s an essay, but trust me, a lot of value is being left on the table because of this.

In my service provider company I would assemble the very best patent attorneys, patent strategists, licensing experts and patent litigators. The back office would include the best analytics people available. The patent attorneys would be free to focus on what they are good at and not be forced to work on the full gamut of activities.

Of course, there wouldn’t be a patent attorney as CEO of my vehicle. They’d be very well payed employees; no more.

I would have teams dedicated to a small number of major clients. They would work from day one to map out an execute the most aggressive value creating patent plan for the clients. Patents would be acquired and patents would be filed. Licenses would be granted and received. The team would work hand in hand with the clients to play cat and mouse chess with the company’s competitors. Litigation cases would be launched to warn the market, for example.

Think of an IP investment banker, working with clients from day one. My guess is that this model would be so profitable that it could be funded under a LP model and that my service provider could then just be an equity partner in the clients.

Woody has reminded me that I must mention the Thermomix.

A person that shall remain nameless has one.

It’s a very, very large and expensive ($2,000 expensive) blender incorporating a heating element and a mass balance.

Upon expression of my incredulity, the thing was defended on the basis of an example, being risotto.

Here is the recipe of choice…

1. Place parsley into Thermo bowl and chop 3 sec/speed 7. Remove from bowl and set aside.
2. Place zest and Parmesan into Thermo bowl and mill 8 sec/speed 8. Remove from bowl and set aside.
3. Place garlic, eschalots and olive oil into Thermo bowl and chop 3 sec/speed 4. Scrape down sides of bowl and saute 3 min/Varoma/speed 1.
4. Add rice and white wine and saute 2 min/Varoma/Reverse/speed 1.5. (Not rocket science here folks, find a spot between speed 1 and speed 2 and call it speed 1.5!!)
5. Add stock, Umami, lemon juice and salt and cook 16 min/100ºC/Reverse/speed 1.5.
6. Add chopped parsley and a splash of cream if using and stir through 3 sec/Reverse/speed 1.5
7. Serve piping hot with grated cheese amd lemon zest sprinkled over.

It’s bloody exhausting just thinking about it, and I love tech.

The old way looks like this:

1. Bring stock to the boil in a saucepan. Reduce heat and hold at a gentle simmer.

2. Heat the butter and oil in a large, heavy-based saucepan over medium heat. Add the leek and garlic, and cook, stirring often, for 4 minutes or until soft but not coloured. Add the rice and stir over medium heat for 2 minutes or until the grains appear slightly glassy.

3. Add the wine and cook, stirring, for 2 minutes or until almost absorbed. Add a ladleful (about 125ml/1/2 cup) of the simmering stock and stir constantly with a wooden spoon until completely absorbed. Continue to add the stock, a ladleful at a time, stirring constantly and allowing the liquid to be absorbed before adding the next ladleful, for 25-30 minutes or until rice is tender yet firm to the bite and the risotto is creamy.

4. Remove from heat. Add half the lemon rind. Stir in the lemon juice and grated parmesan. Season with salt and pepper.

5. Divide the risotto among serving dishes. Top with shaved parmesan and the remaining lemon rind to serve.

I am not sure I see the point of the $2,000.

I couldn’t find a single recipe that was demonstrably less work than the old fashioned way.

Unless you are into baby mush food. Simply shove in all your left overs and cook them to death…

For my own future reference; passing off is a common law action, which protects goodwill and reputation built up by the use of a trade mark or business name of a product or service.

The elements of the passing off action must satisfy:

• a misrepresentation; 
• made by a trader in the course of trade; 
• to prospective customers of their ultimate consumers of products and/or service
• which is calculated to injure the business or goodwill of another trade; 
• which causes actual damage to a business or goodwill of the trader by whom the action is brought. 

Some types of passing off include:

• a misrepresentation that one person’s goods are those of another;
• a misrepresentation that one person’s goods are of a particular class or quality;
• a misrepresentation that a connection exists between a person’s goods and those of another where there is no actual connection;
• using images or representations of a character or person to suggest an endorsement or a connection between that person or character with the goods where there is no actual connection and/or endorsement.

Essentially, passing off actions involve situations in which a representation is made in the course of trade, which deceives or causes confusion amongst customers either online or in the real world.

When your average consumer desires the new Subaru Forester does it believe that the Subaru Forester will help it fit right into the middle of the Gaussian distribution of consumers, or does it just believe that everyone else just believes that the Subaru will help them fit right into the middle of the Gaussian distribution of consumers?

Conversely, when your six sigma consumer desires not to buy the new Subaru Forester does it believe that the Subaru Forester will help it fit right into the middle of the Gaussian distribution of consumers, or does it just believe that everyone else just believes that the Subaru will help them fit right into the middle of the Gaussian distribution of consumers?

If you follow this closely you will see that there are two key issues here:

1. The lunacy of wanting to fit into the middle of the Gaussian distribution of consumers, or otherwise, and
2. A belief that other people believe something or other with respect to the issue

If you let go of beliefs regarding what other people might believe then you are just left with your own beliefs.

And because you have let go of worrying about what other people might believe then you don’t have to worry about, or have any beliefs with respect to what they might believe, with regards to your own choices.

Then you are just left with your own beliefs. But lacking the counter-weight of your own beliefs about other people’s beliefs, these will automatically disappear up the wazoo.

Then you will be free not to buy the Subaru Forester because of the 100 or so very annoying features, royally fucked up by the Japanese R&D team responsible for developing it’s interior and user interfaces.

Cars and houses; they represent a significant personal investment. 

Hence the designs of these are generally much closer to the conservative middle of the Guassian than cheaper and more consumable goods because their progenitors cannot afford the risks of low IRRs.

The question is whether the middle of the Guassian is really the middle, or whether everyone just believes everyone else believes it’s the middle.

Popular actionable truth absent hypothesis; also known as a belief. It’s all good until it’s not.

I, for one, would be opening the exit hatch. Bugger the bird. Maybe they’re worried about pterodactyls.

The hatch opens inwards and then you chuck it out, as instructed, at the bird. Makes sense to me!

It would appear to me that all those women are actually getting excoriated, not exfoliated.

Sponging off Miss Fisher, headphones disguised as a wrap-around necklace. Loose ends you notice, and kept in place by the loop around the neck. And beads instead of rubber.

But the lowlight was definitely the time when I let off the shooting ball firecracker (Roman candle) through an air vent, at foot level, during a school disco.

Ex, ex, ex excoriation, Ian.

Then there was the time I absent-mindedly set fire to the recently marked (with kerosene) baseball diamond whilst visiting Hunters Hill high for an inter-school match.

Now that was excoriation!

As I recall there were times when I left school early on the assumption that I’d get away with it. Excoriated almost every time…

I’m sick of my headphone cables breaking at the maximum stress point. Take one spring out of a cheap pen and one set of headphones and selectively merge.

“As reported by a Chinese top level official channel to Jesa (the news is not public yet), Shanghai Government will reduce the total surface dedicated to industrial production by 400 km2. This will have a great impact on many enterprises, which will be forced to relocate outside the whole Shanghai municipality territory. Also, industrial parks around the municipality will suffer from this guideline. In the near future, Suzhou zone could likely experience the same decision since a few signal in this regard are already clear.

Companies that will be soon forced to relocate are the ones that:
– Do not comply with the municipality’s environmental production standards;
– Are not profitable after years of activity;
– Are characterized as small-sized businesses.

The decision was taken in order to redevelop and modernize the territory surrounding Shanghai into a sustainable one. Industries working in “smart technologies” as well as the ones supporting the service sectors will be incentivized to establish in the transformed area.

Jesa warns regarding the probability of this guideline to happen since years. Nowadays, the trend in China is to upgrade the coast industrial areas into service oriented hubs. At the same time, heavy production industries are starting to move to the West and inner regions.

In light of these facts, Jesa strongly suggests to refocus the business strategy on time. If a company’s “China Project” has not yet started, it is fundamental to evaluate different solutions in terms of localization. Also, if a company already works in China, it is advisable to consider relocating the branch to provinces nearby Shanghai or even to further areas in the West.”

The new finance niche is invoice trading.

Essentially these financiers will give you cash for your company’s unpaid invoices at a discount to their face value.

Next these guys will bundle up their customers into unholy stacks with wide variations of risk and flog derivatives based on these and eventually being down the western economy.

Recent figures from IP Australia show that 70 per cent of local intellectual property protection filings in Australia come from SMEs.

This was then commented upon:

“It’s a sobering indication that start-up companies are failing to get on the front foot early enough to lock down their most valuable asset – their IP. Given the level of innovation in Australia, we would expect to see a higher proportion of IP filings by our innovators in smaller and start-up businesses, rather than the current dominance by established SMEs.”

Geez that confused me until I realised that the author was distinguishing between startups and SMEs in Australia; not something that I do. 

For mine, our startups are just unprofitable SMEs.

In any case there’s no inventions in our startups so why would they file patents?

All inventions are innovative, but very few innovations are inventive. Doo dah…

As for trademarks, copyright and registered designs, well the internet has killed them and the internet startups boys are the ones actually doing the killing.

I feel a big short coming on.

On how the Chinese Jack the Ripper was finally fingered. A quiet fruit store owner, his counter-ego has been in the rape and mutilation game since 1988. 

From the head of the Tate Gallery, a woman it would seem, explaining her rise to the top. Basically she was just better at her job than anyone else and couldn’t be arsed working for another wanker.