Seasons Greetings

Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukah, and Happy Kwanzaa
By: Joseph Walther


Brace yourselves. As seemingly impossible as it is to believe, I am going to keep my comments brief this week.

There are hundreds of millions of people throughout the world celebrating Christmas. Similar numbers believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God. Add to this the fact that millions of others believe in some other Deity and we conclude that many people believe in some form of Deity. In fact, by about a three to one margin, believers outnumber nonbelievers.

It is Christmas Day. I wish all of you the happiest of times and the fulfillment of your hopes and dreams for the future. It does not matter what form your religious faith takes; nor does it matter if you have no religious belief. It would be a wonderful world we’d all show some genuine respect for one and other’s beliefs.

The world appears to be in a constant state of chaos, not because it is, but because that sort of thing sells newspapers and raises television ratings. I think we could solve many of out human problems if we could find a way to achieve some balance relative to whatever we refer to as “good and bad.”

Have a great holiday season and be careful out there. Next week I’ll get back to concentrating on the chaotic side of things. I might even kick it up a notch or two.

Joseph Walther is a freelance writer and publisher of The True Facts. Send email to: publisher@thetruefacts.com

Don't look now but the tent's gone!

Someone Has Stolen Our Tent!
By Joseph Walther

Last week I wrote about Meme Theory (pronounced MEAM) as it applies to the group dynamics of corporations. Recall that, based on my lifelong dedication to watching stuff happen, I modified the original theory. According to Richard Dawkins, the discoverer of Meme Theory, memes are like genes. Nature copies them and permits them to mutate. The useful ones survive and multiply while the useless ones vanish.

It’s the vanishing part that I find troubling. Useless memes do not vanish. True, the private sector discards some memes as useless; the public sector entities of government and academia always find them and reintroduce them to an unsuspecting society as the latest divine revelation. Government, at all levels, continually raises our taxes in order to finance increasing volumes of nonsense. Academia (motto: Advancing conceptual stupidity through exorbitantly priced workshops and seminars) does its part, too.

It’s a fundamental life truth that government could not be as inefficient as it is without the use of committees. This is a sad commentary, but its application pales in comparison to the world of secondary and post-secondary academia. Without committees and meetings to attend, academic administrators have nothing to do. Committees are undoubtedly the very lifeblood of academic administration. However, the mother lode of all memes is committee procedure.

Geneticists the world over know that adenosine, quinine, thymine, and cytosine are the building blocks of DNA. Sociologists and behavioral psychologists, on the other hand, know that agendas, quorums, proposals, amendments, new business, old business, going forward proclamations, and motions for adjournment comprise the foundation for the meme of committee procedure. And, the level of political viciousness is always an inverse relationship to what’s at stake. Based on my latest copy of Snotty People in Academia, there is a perceived pecking order of institutions. It places the self-absorbed Ivy Leagues at the pinnacle while the lowliest of local community colleges falls at the bottom. However, the farther down the perceived pecking order, the more pompous an administrator’s behavior, especially that of senior administrators.

In fact, looking at the committee structures at the community college level, every committee ever formed knows its collective mission: arriving at a conclusion preconceived by the senior administrative authority that created it. Since the administrative authority won’t actually spell out what it wants, it makes sure that every committee is comprised of a sufficient number of gullible members combined with the right number of “wink-wink” members who know exactly what senior administration wants. The “wink-winkers’, all administrative wannabee types, will always ensure the proper outcome. These members know that senior administration is not interested in upsetting the status quo. The essence of their mission is to make sure that nothing too upsetting happens.

Essentially, these “in-the-know” committee members make sure that potential “problems” do no blindside senior administrators, from the president down through the vice presidential level, and make them look “stupid.” They keep the process moving in the “right” direction in several ways; always making sure that process trumps substance. The committee chair, who’s always “in-the-know,” never hesitates to sacrifice efficiency for the sake of internal consistency. These “winkers” know that nothing disguises inept problem solving like numerous, mindless meetings that rehash the same things ad infinitum. In fact, they make sure that the meetings evolve into becoming more important than the original problems.

Sooner or later, but not too soon nor too late, the committee has to form a conclusion and produce a report. The conclusions have to look sincere and the report must have a very high pomposity index. Thus, all committee conclusions and reports must adhere to the long-standing principle that baffling people with bullshit is infinitely preferable to dazzling them with brilliance. This is especially soothing to senior administrators.

The committee chair, always an adept “wink-winker,” will write the report using passive voice, an ideal tool for projecting more intellect than actually exists. And it will always be loaded with academic jargon and positive buzzwords: “going forward”, “my reality mirrors your reality, “paradigm shift”, “enabler”, “empowerment”, replacing the term problems with challenges, along with a myriad of other smoke-screen phrases, aimed at achieving the highest caliber of baffling bullshit.

The primary goal of the report is to project existing culture forward, no matter the cost. The fact that the existing culture is self-serving, inept, and detrimental to everyone but senior administrators is a non-issue. And, let’s not ignore an implied side benefit for those “wink-wink” committee members: the accumulation of brownie points to assure their eventual promotions to senior administration. New faces and minds full of fresh, potentially revolutionary new ideas are a no-no for these kinds of institutions.

I don’t want you to get the wrong impression. I’m not saying that people have to be “wink-wink” committee members in order to climb up the administrative ladder. If you are not a team player type, you can still make it. Just get yourself elected to an important state office, such as a state representative or state senator. Make sure that you excel by whatever means is the most convenient once elected; and then get yourself appointed to powerful political committees, such as bond bill or joint finance. This puts you into the enviable position of being able to cause “them” more trouble that “they” can cause for you. If you can do this, even if you’re dumber than a rock, you will succeed in academic administration, especially at a community college level. Hell, this is a primary purpose for the “acting” designation.

I need you to understand that academic institutions generally employ three types of personnel: administrators from junior to senior levels, credentialed faculty, and common sense oriented support staff. Each level has a different approach to day-to-day thinking. Let me use a fictitious scenario to demonstrate the point.

Imagine that you and a friend have decided to camp out on a hillside for a couple of nights. The two of you pitch a two-person tent beneath a beautiful dark sky illuminated by a full moon and surrounded by millions of stars as far as your eyes can see. Once inside the tent, lying on your backs, you each pull your blanket up to your chin and fall dead asleep. For some reason, you both awake about 3 AM. Your collective eyes behold a dark sky speckled with an untold number of stars, sparkling like a million little dots of light. What you deduce from this marvelous spectacle of nature will depend on whether you are an administrator, credentialed faculty, or common sense oriented support staff.

If you are an administrator or an administrator wannabee, the majestic nature of what you see will astound you. “Wow”, you might exclaim, “I guess George Bush was right. The jury is indeed still out on evolution!” You will wonder how all of those stars got there. You may also wonder what keeps them from falling on you. It is truly a sight to behold and you will undoubtedly contemplate Creationism or Intelligent Design. Thoughts of an omniscient, all-powerful and ever-present Being may permeate your thinking as you contemplate the wondrous nature of it all. You will definitely make a point of exploring these feeling in more depth. You won’t be able to wait until you get back to campus to enlighten your staff.

If you are a faculty member, you’re probably going to be upset that you have awakened before daylight. You have an early morning class and you need your sleep. “Oh, crap!” you mumble to each other and contemplate going back to sleep. The wondrous thoughts I ascribed to the administrators are simply below your dignity. You consider yourselves “boat rowers” and have little time for thinking such thoughts. Besides, you’re pissed over the fact that you have no faculty titles. You’re experts in your respective fields. You just want the administration to leave you alone and let you teach your classes in peace. But, you’re not too groggy or angry to understand that you will be able to make millions in consulting fees that the administrators will gladly pay you to develop workshops to help them understand what they’ve seen. You make a mental note to start developing some in the morning and go back to sleep.

Finally, members of the support staff: secretaries, administrative assistants, clerks, technical support, security guards, etc, are going to be upset over what they see. They’ll recognize the problem immediately. “Some lowlife has stolen the tent!” they’re likely to conclude. These people can think the same “deep” thoughts as administrators, but they are too practical to let themselves do it. They have known all along that most administrators are mindless airheads. Knowing that they need their jobs and not likely to take anything administrators do or say too seriously, they take the practical approach not to rock the boat. The Institution hired them to do a job. They just want to be left alone long enough to do it. “Leave us the hell alone long enough to do it’ they’ll continue to say. The faculty members can think of themselves as boat rowers all they want, but these folks know in their collective heart of hearts that they are not only the boat rowers, but the water bailers, too.

I guess that the real rub is this. Resentment doesn’t stem from the idea that senior administrators indulge themselves in childish, stupid, and ass saving games much of the time. It stems from the idea, as often projected by senior administrators, that everyone else is too stupid to realize what’s going on. This is what really upsets people to a point of numbness.

Senior administrators, why not stop all of the phony nonsense. Stop forming all of those rubber-stamp committees and simply issue directives. This way, everyone knows the score and can just hang on until retirement. Besides, the money you’ll save will permit you to hire enough lawyers to keep your actions just as obfuscated as before.

A large number of people read this column each week. I know this from the stats my web host provides. This particular column will generate more emails than I can read in a month. Most of the writers, from coast to coast and everywhere in between, will tell me that I have described their particular organizations to a tee. I’m glad. I want you to know that my purpose for existence is to help people. Well, that and stirring the pot as much as I can!

Have a great week. There will be a column next Sunday. I will never take a day off as long as I know there is an opportunity to… to… um… well, I’m not quite sure, but whatever it is, I enjoy doing it as much as I can.

Joseph Walther is a freelance writer and publisher of The True Facts. Send email to: publisher@thetruefacts.com

You are now one of THEM!

Resistance is FEWTILE!
By Joseph Walther

I have finally completed my labored research regarding Murphy’s Laws of Corporations. Meme Theory (pronounced MEAM) appears to be robust as it applies to corporations in general and as it applies to academic institutions in particular. Yes, we can now say with a reliable degree of certainty that a majority of academic administrators display the intellectual capacity and personality traits of amoebas. In the paragraphs that follow, I hope to show how significant the correlation is. Before jumping into this, however, I have to tell you about a neat experience I had this past week.

I had to visit a drug store. When I entered the door, I noticed a gathering of adults around a little six-year-old girl named Amy. As I attempted to walk around the group, I overheard one of the adults ask Amy how her Christmas Pageant went and whether it had been fun for her. Amy, it seemed, had a lot of fun and she was proud of the fact that she got to announce the arrival of the Three Wise Men bearing gifts for Jesus. “What gifts did the Wise Men bring Jesus, Amy?” asked one of the adults gathered around her. With a hint of impatient condescension but absolute conviction, Amy replied, “Gold, Common Sense, and Fur!”

Thankfully, no one in the group laughed at or attempted to correct the child. The woman who asked the question smiled and said that she’d love it if someone would give her those kinds of gifts, especially the Common Sense and Fur. Amy’s reply also points up; once again, that young children hear what seems to make sense to them. “Hail Mary full of grapes” still makes sense to me. Now, let’s get back to Murphy’s Laws of Corporations.

The mirror neuron is DNA’s psychological equivalent. It makes group behavior both remarkable and often hilarious to behold. Just as DNA’s impact on biology has been scientifically confirmed, the impact of mirrored neurons in explaining group behavior is every bit as measurable using the same scientific tenets of hypothesis testing. As the discovery of DNA revolutionized biology, the mirror neuron is an astonishingly accurate predictor of group behavior. If you’re inclined to do so, read about this in an article called Language within our grasp by G. Rizzolatti and M. A. Arbib, written for Trends in Neuroscience.

Simply put, however, the implication is that two brains can be slaved to each other. By merely watching, brain X’s learning transfers to brain Y instantaneously without any communication between them. Person A, merely watching Person B, can proceed to do the same thing. One person, by watching another person doing something, can do the same thing and even modify the method to improve on it. The two can mimic each other, continuously improving on the other’s method. Neither of the participants need to say a word. Together the two of them can solve problems or make the situation worse; proving that when mirror neurons are involved, two heads may or may not be better than one.

Richard Dawkins discovered Meme theory thirty years prior to mirror neurons. He explained the phenomenon in his book, The Selfish Gene. Again, you can read the book for the scientific details. Essentially, though, Meme Theory tells us that cultural units and learned characteristics, called ‘memes’ pass themselves down through the generations with the useful ones surviving and the useless ones disappearing.

Here is where I have to modify all of this based on my own painstaking research. I believe that while useless DNA fades away, useless memes do not. The latter go into a sort of global trash dumpster for possible recycling. Unfortunately, before anyone can recycle the garbage, academic administrators, engaging in an activity called dumpster diving, retrieve as much of the useless stuff as they can gather. They then unleash it on society-at-large as the latest in academic divine revelation. Is there a better explanation for the new math?

There is a relationship between all of this and corporations. Corporations, governments, and public administrators disguise memes as “corporate culture”, which tends to reflect the nature of the individual running the corporation. In private sector corporations, where profitability is an essential ingredient of long-range survival, useless memes end up in that global dumpster I referred to earlier. Don’t get the wrong idea here. I am not saying that all private sector businesses are efficient. While many are, the efficiency ratings of more than a handful are nothing to brag about. Often, it comes down simply to being less inefficient than a competitor is. This is the only possible explanation for McDonald’s, AT&T, and Burger King. Oh, and let’s not discount the value of customer apathy and stupidity in this process.

There are only two ways to survive with any degree of success in private sector bureaucratic corporations. One is to adapt to the meme… I mean corporate culture and go along to get along. The other is to put yourself in a position where you can cause more trouble for the bureaucracy than the bureaucracy can cause for you.

All bets are off in the public sector, though, because public entities constitute a different situation. Governmental and other forms of public bureaucracy, most notably public school administrators at every level, including post-secondary, don’t give a hoot about profitability. Within the walls of these kinds of institutions, political expediency outranks practical efficiency; process trumps substance; committees are rubber stamp signatures, and cronyism rules the day. This is where Mr. Murphy is in his glory. Let me try to explain it.

The next time you come across a piece of rotting wood and notice a slimy looking substance on the surface, think about what that substance is made of and what it is doing on the wood’s surface. The official name for the substance is Dictyostelium. It feels slimy to the touch because it is nothing more than a mass of amoebas slithering over each other. The amoebas are feeding on the bacteria in the wood. The group feed stops occasionally to give each of the members a chance to split down the middle into two: the amoeba equivalent to a sex life. Once sexually fulfilled, the amoebas have a smoke, bask for a while in the sexual afterglow, and then continue with the eating frenzy.

All the while, the individual members have felt completely autonomous, masters of their own destiny so to speak. Then something happens!

The local food supply begins to run out. Suddenly, as though nature itself compels it, the amoeba gang instinctively turns inward into a slug-like growth and begins to move farther up the rotting wood piece. The members still insist that they are individuals. However, there is a Borg-like higher collective calling. The slug becomes the collective and each member now assumes a specific function based on its position within the collective. At the back end, the function is to keep moving the slug forward. At the front end, the function is to find creative new ways of making the slug want to move forward.

The slug will run out of wood and when it happens, another change will occur. Fear not, though. Nature provides a stalk at the end of which is a survivor pod containing a small group of surviving amoebas. The stalk will die but the wind will blow the pod to another location, and the cycle starts over again. Every life cycle begins the same way, beginning with the birth of a single, independent amoeba. They have sex and double exponentially, congealing at a slug-paced assimilation into the collective, doing whatever it takes for the welfare of the collective so that the few top-level pod occupants survive to carry on the collective.

To American society, collectives are the stuff of the Borg and Star Trek. Amoebas, bacterial slime, and slugs are the things of biological science. Public and private social groups don’t like to think of themselves in such terms. This is one of the reasons that evolution is such a repulsive idea to so many people. Replace the term collective with the term corporation, government, or academia and replace the term stalk with committee and we automatically create the fertile soil needed for Mr. Murphy to survive.

I am going to continue this series on Murphy’s Laws of Corporations next week. Each of you should be thinking about your own circumstances. Where do you work, for a private sector corporation, the government at some level, or a public school at some level? Which part of the slug are you? Have you ever served as part of a stalk, holding the survivor pod members? Do you have what it takes to make it into that survivor pod? What do you think makes a stalk tick? I will answer all of these questions in scientific detail over the next couple of weeks. God, how I love research, especially the parts concerning sex!

In the mean time, maybe some Wise Men will bring you some gifts of Gold, Common Sense, and Fur. Let us all pray. Our Father whose art is in heaven, hollow be thy name…

Have a great week.

Joseph Walther is a freelance writer and publisher of The True Facts. Send email to: publisher@thetruefacts.com

Murphy's Law

Those F#%!*N Maps!
By Joseph Walther


The guy went bananas! He was trying to get a new paper bag to open so he could put some stuff inside and it just wouldn’t cooperate. God, did he struggle with that bag. Finally, in a hail of profanities, he wadded the thing up in a ball and tossed it onto the checkout counter. This happened in a grocery store at the checkout in front of four witnesses. I was the closest. As Bugs Bunny would say, “Whadda whack job!”

The checkout clerk calmly picked up the wadded bag, unraveled it, opened it, and bagged the five items he had purchased. He handed her his money. She methodically counted it and placed it into the cash drawer. She handed him his change and receipt. “Thanks for shopping at Super Fresh and have a great weekend”, she told him with a pleasant smile on her face. He just mumbled something, took his bag, and walked out of the store.

I told the clerk about a similar occurrence back when I worked as a checkout clerk during my high school days. A customer did the same thing and just stormed out of the store. My boss had been observing just a few feet away. He told me that in order to control a paper bag; a person had to have an IQ higher than the paper bag.

Two weeks ago, I watched another man struggling to refold a road map. This was not one of those regular sized, 5 x 3 folding maps. This was one of those large, 8 x 5 folding maps. This means that it had eight panels in one direction and five panels in another direction. He had spread it out over the entire surface of his car’s hood. As he struggled to refold it, he became so enraged that he tore it up and threw the pieces on the ground, climbed back into his car, and drove off with tires squealing.

This sort of behavior reeks of Murphy’s Law. We all get a kick out of Murphy’s pronouncements. However, any competent psychologist can debunk, in vivid scientific detail, every one of those laws. All it takes is a thorough understanding of the human brain’s working relationship with its attached human body. Unfortunately, this kind of thing takes some time to accomplish, at least a couple of weeks. Since I’m retired, I plan to expand on this in a later column.

For the present, I’m going to stick to the map incident. Let me quote Murphy regarding open plan maps. “Open-plan maps cannot be refolded without using scissors.” Yes, this is what Mr. Murphy says about such maps. Road maps are classic examples of open-plan maps. They can be difficult to refold, just as some times those unused large paper grocery bags can be difficult to open up. However, since they are all inanimate objects, they can’t plot against humanity.

Consider this. The map I described above opened to eight panels in one direction and five panels in another direction. The total number of ways that we can refold such a map is seemingly absurd, but mathematically certain. The formula is n! times 2n. The translation for this is n factorial multiplied by 2 raised to the nth power. We can calculate a number’s factorial by sequentially multiplying backwards. The factorial of three (3!) is 3 x 2 x 1 or 6. To calculate 2 raised to the 3rd power (23), is to multiply 2 by itself 3 times (2 x 2 x 2) or 8.

Let’s apply this arithmetic to our eight by five-panel map. The formula (n! x 2n) becomes (8! x 28). Now 8! is 8 x 7 x 6 x 5 x 4 x 3 x 2 x 1 or 40,320 and 28 is 2 x 2 x 2 x 2 x 2 x 2 x 2 x 2 or 256. The formula— 8! x 28— calculates to 10,321,920 different possible refolds of the original map. Since there is only one “right” way to fold it back the way it was, the chances of getting it right in one try come to .000009688%.

Every new map comes pre-folded. As our calculations point out, there is no shame in failing to refold it precisely that way. Some people are able to do so, but it has more to with cerebral hemispheric dominance than dumb luck.

Humans in general, hate to look foolish. Failing to master a paper bag or a map in front of others is embarrassing. However, since virtually every one of us has experienced it, the failure itself is not the culprit. The thing that makes us look so stupid is trouncing the bag or the map as though an inanimate object can plot against us. This kind of behavior causes people to assume that your IQ is two digits.

Remember! The next time that you stub your toe on the dresser as you make your way to the bathroom in the middle of the night, don’t cuss the dresser. Just punch it! It’ll make you feel much better.

There will be more on Murphy’s Law next week. In the meantime, watch yourselves around those paper bags and maps. And for God’s sake, wear slippers when you walk around in the middle of the night!

Joseph Walther is a freelance writer and publisher of The True Facts. Send email to: publisher@thetruefacts.com