I’m just saying. It is sometimes called the fourth branch of the government. Unlike the other three it is not structured but appears to be an inevitable byproduct that forms when the system we call government is created. I think our best attempts to get rid of it have failed. And as we sometimes see, that may not altogether be a bad thing. In the case of your own gut biome, you cannot directly control it. I sometimes refer to a “brain in my stomach”, and I will admit to the idea that it has an awareness that seems quite independent of my conscious will. It seems to know when I’m not home. It seems to know when I am home. But in the case of the government it acts as a form of viscous impedance. That viscosity is generally considered a bad thing, but it does serve to keep things from coming off the rails, whether the rails represent a good direction or a bad direction.

From “the rock” by TS Eliot:

Where is the life we have lost in living?
Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge?
Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?

To this I add:

Where is the discovery we have lost in [Google] search?

In my various build and repair projects, I am always straining to read the markings of sockets and drill bits.  Being an electrical engineer, I was accustomed to the “old school” color code scheme used to mark resistors, and I thought I could adapt it as a way to establish an at-a-glance approach for identifying which socket or drill bit I was using.  I am not aware of any other description of this simple concept, so I thought I would share it here.  This post describes the method I used to adapt the code for socket/drill bit sizes and the approach I used to mark these items.  It’s still an experiment, so I cannot at the moment vouch for its utility or for the durability of the marking paints I selected (in case you want to mimic this concept).  Also, I am interested in any better alternatives.

A new year to change the world

New board game

“What if the examined life turns out to be a clunker as well?” — Kurt Vonnegut

Before I know what I’m deep into mind mire trying to organize the whole universe. Doesn’t take long before I bog down. Steam and time, and I never touch that priority. I must. Stop. This. Insanity. As in the book “the war of art”, I find myself escaping into the easy intellectual comfort food, away from the things I really need to focus on.

Maybe it would be a good idea to identify projects based on complexity levels
o L0 – one hour or less
o L1 – two hours
o L2 – four hours
o L3 – one day
o L4 – two days
o L5 – one week
o L6 – two weeks
o L7 – one month –(reflecting on …”month”)  “seize the month” (STM).  How can we create a built-in sense of urgency? How much of this would I do if I only had one month to live? The idea of seizing the month is to try to drive this sense of urgency into everything we do, but not recklessly.
o L8 – two months
o L9 – quarter
o L10 – six months
o L12 – one year
o L13 – two years
o L14 – five years (10,000 hours, based on an 8-hour day) this is the level Malcolm Gladwell would define as expert.

I guess another year has elapsed, and I haven’t posted anything. I believe this puts me in the upper 90 percentile of blogs.