confused of calcutta

Sitting comfortably? Take a look at this excerpt from what appears to be a manual written maybe sixty years ago:

Do you identify with any of it? Recognise those behaviours from anywhere?
Stay seated. Now take a look at the cover page of the manual in question:

Yup. Simple sabotage, as practised and trained for by the OSS. [...]

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Have you ever seen Adelson’s Illusion?
The squares marked A and B are the same shade of grey.
I won’t spoil it for you by giving you the proof here. Instead, why don’t you go visit the original site and see for yourself? There are a number of really worthwhile illusions there. I first saw it maybe [...]

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Found these in a completely different context (a discussion group about Prediction Markets); thought that they were wonderful descriptions of the “provisionality” of blogs. See what you think.
Richard Feynman:
In physics the truth is rarely perfectly clear, and that is certainly universally the case in human affairs. Hence, what is not surrounded by uncertainty [...]

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Or not, as the case may be.
One of my favourite pieces of apocrypha. (Ex-boss, if this is not true, blame Stu Berwick). And even if it is not true, it should be. So there. Ex-boss of mine on stage somewhere, part of a panel. Some other member of panel unwittingly says something like “With [...]

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Michael Massing makes an interesting point in the FT today, you can find an excerpt of the article here.
My takeaway from his comments is as follows:

1. US corporates spend an awful lot of money lobbying government on a variety of issues
2. The sectors that do the lobbying (eg automobiles, utilities, entertainment) spend this awful lot [...]

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I am privileged to work with many talented people, people who like thinking about what they are doing and why. As we began our circuitous route on to an internal blogosphere, two questions kept coming up.
One, should we start with an open approach to information and then close those bits and pieces that need closing….or [...]

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Euan Semple commented on something I’d posted earlier, and it stimulated me to checking out his blog, something I had been remiss about for a while. My bad. I particularly liked the David Maister piece on blogging behind the firewall. You can check it out here. I’ve been a fan of Maister’s ever since Managing [...]

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