A metaphor / parable on how tax payers’ money is burned within some internationally (un)-coordinated organizations aka multinationals aka United Nations.
The underlying story is based on actual experiences in the field of Information Systems / Information Technology (IS/IT) within one of the largest UN organizations. While - as we hear - since then things got even worse, this short story not only tries to demonstrate the lack of professionalism in those organizations, but also what happens when people who “know what they are doing” come to those organizations without political protection by their own governments. The sad endings to these stories are often like in the underlying true case used for this metaphor.
With that case we know about the professional coming in (who was an IS/IT manager with real hands-on knowledge that had earned him some of the most prestigious awards of the industry that money can’t buy) got pushed out of the organization with criminal means and Mafia like methods, threatened, smeared and witch hunted and already till today had to endure besides this multi-million dollar personal damages. The people responsible for the mess and disasters got promotions and after running the whole organization into the wall with almost 10,000 people suffering for years because of that and far beyond USD 100 million direct damages caused (indirect a multiple) were at best just moved aside to some other posts or even further palmed off.
We have recently spoken with one of their senior directors who (and that person really didn’t like that) had to acknowledge / confirm the amounts and damages mentioned above, and that they have to do almost everything of that multi-year program again.
Not that they would now consider hiring some real professionals - they seemingly continue to use people coming in by nepotism, with “legends / success stories” on their CVs from other similar failures as their achievements. The key reasons for failure of that program in the past were lack of business, IS/IT knowledge and management skills. The writing was already on the wall when they started up the program a few years ago with an almost “skill free zone” as the program management team after having excluded the few skilled ones that tried to participate by dodgy maneuvers and shady deals with some of their buddies.
What a waste of time, talent, ideas and money. And in the case of that organization also of lives. Not that anyone of those pulling the strings would care. And of course this complete failure was declared a success.
But now the metaphor / parable:
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This quote is from James Clavell’s well known novel Shogun:
The blue sky above the earth
White clouds rise towards heaven
Life is only a butterfly’s dream
Death the way to eternal life
Charles Edmund Dumaresq Clavell, 1924 - 1994, Shogun
More information:
James Clavell at Wikipedia
A video interesting in a few ways.
First historically of course, then because we will almost certainly hear a more or less similar speech in about a week, and third as times of today might turn out to be rather similar too.
Click on the image below for the link (multimedia)
“…This nation is asking for action, and action now…“
A great viral advertising idea. For every 10 (virtual) friends you defriend at Facebook you get a free Whopper from Burger King (U.S. Residents only).
Finally someone is putting a price tag to virtual friendship (1/10 of a burger - xxx calories, xxx USD) and a way to bring all these SEO spammers to a better use. So far more than 12,000 friends have been un-friended.
Interestingly they have chosen Facebook and not, for example, MySpace. Maybe because they want to sell some Burgers as well.
Click on the image below for the link
More information
Whopper Sacrifice web site
Internationally celebrated British guitarist Julian Bream plays Johann Sebastian Bach’s Sonata No. 1 for violin (G minor, BWV 1001), second movement Fuga (Allegro) on the guitar.
Click on the image below for the link (multimedia)
More information
If you want to try to play this yourself here are the tabs
A short documentary on Bartitsu, a self defense system created by E.W. Barton-Wright in 1899 by combining Asian and European defense techniques including jujitsu, boxing, french (kick)-boxing, stick fighting and improvised fighting for example by using your overcoat to defend yourself. It was so popular in the UK at the beginning of the 20. century that Arthur Conan Doyle had his best know character, Sherlock Holmes, practicing Bartitsu in one of his books.
Click on the image below for the link (multimedia)
“…Bartitsu was a method of cross-training between jiujitsu, savate, boxing and stick fighting; it was the first fighting art to have incorporated both Asian and European styles.
After a few brief years of glory, Bartitsu was all but forgotten throughout most of the 20th Century…”
More information
Bartitsu at Wikipedia
Bartitsu.org
The video “Running with the Beast” for the band zZz is interesting in two ways.
First there is of course the music and then the project shown “…about two artist who have created the conditions to capture rage in a systematic way…” by letting two colored cocks print their fight on a sheet of paper.
Click on the image below for the link (multimedia)
video by: Conditional Design
One of W.H. Auden best known poems “Funeral Blues” in its second (shorter) and changed version. We are still searching for the original version with five stanzas which Auden wrote together with Christopher Isherwood in 1936.
Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,
Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,
Silence the pianos and with muffled drum
Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.
Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead
Scribbling on the sky the message He Is Dead,
Put crepe bows round the white necks of the public doves,
Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves.
He was my North, my South, my East and West,
My working week and my Sunday rest,
My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;
I thought that love would last for ever: I was wrong.
The stars are not wanted now: put out every one;
Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun,
Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood;
For nothing now can ever come to any good.
Wystan Hugh Auden, 1907 - 1973, Funeral Blues
More information:
W.H. Auden at Wikipedia
An outstanding time-lapsed video of the sky, the sun, moon and the stars.
“…Set the sky in motion! Not seen in real-time by naked eye, but a time lapse technique speeds up the motion of the celestial objects. About 7000 individual photographies were assembled showing the apparent motion of the sun, moon, and stars due to earths rotation…”
Click on the image below for the link (multimedia)
video by: Ansgar Rudolf and Till Credner
More information
More great time lapsed videos available at The Sky in Motion
A video with a little puzzle to start the new year.
The Yoshimoto Cube - a transformation of two stellated rhombic dodecahedrons from one cube.
Click on the image below for the link (multimedia)
More information
A discussion of the video and the topic at Reddit
