Information exchange: An agreement among people

[ 1 ] XML stands for eXtensible Markup Language. Data is stored in XML documents. XML is actually an agreement among people (programming people) to store and share textual data using the same method.

[ 2 ] Literacy is actually an agreement among people to store and share textual data using the same method.

[ 3 ] Communication is actually an agreement among people to store and share using the same method.

[ 4 ] Communication is actually an agreement among people to share information using their preferred cognitive methodology (mental processing and way of remembering) and using a common format during the exchange. (format can mean any norm -type of body language, short or long sentences, Elizabethan English, to 1960's era NASA/AT&T english technical.)

[ 5 ] Communication is actually a disagreement among people on the agreed upon method of communication.

I prefer to operate with the goals of [ 2 ] and [ 4 ], the others plunge into an abyss of contention.

Post-Apocalyptic Technology: My Transportation Idea

I have become strangely obsessed with designing a vehicle that fits a particular niche/capability: Interstate highway travel, winter conditions with ice and snow, declining oil supplies, ability to repair by local unsophisticated means.

The Ural Gear-Up or Patrol models come so close, but the Russian motor is not good for Interstate travel and takes lots of tending to. I've checking in with owners and dealers over the years, and the motor has gotten better but still is fragile compared to Japanese engineering. A conversion to a more dependable Japanese or European small diesel might make the Ural the greatest hardcore, survive-anything vehicle. But I'm thinking up another design and showing the gist of it in this blog entry.

I've recently been seeing a Flyrite Bobber in my neighborhood. I'm not into choppers normally, but this is such a beautiful retro technology motorcycle. 1" tubing for the whole frame makes it very minimalistic and lightweight. Everything on it looks very early 60's tech. Flyrite constructs their own frames, and will take custom orders. I would like to take a Flyrite Bobber, have the manufacturer construct a sidecar frame with fender and wheel that matches the standard Bobber back wheel. On the Ural mentioned above, its amazing snow and mud traction comes from dual wheel drive. Having Flyrite make a sidecar frame would be an especially special order, but a transfer case sending power to another wheel might be beyond what they would ever offer as a service. If that is the case, I have a quirky hybrid idea to get power to that wheel. A hub mounted electric motor. Sound Speed Scooters is in my neighborhood, and sells hub mounted electric motors for scooters. I'm pretty sure the scooter motor may not propel a larger motorcycle at 70 MPH, but that may not be necessary. The benefit of the 2nd drive wheel is at slower speeds and especially when stuck or almost stuck with other tire not getting traction. Applying a conservative amount of power to the sidecar wheel might be all that is needed to get the true benefits of 2-wheel drive in winter road conditions.

Flyrite Bobber
EV hub motor

The Structure of the Human Condition

Below are schemas of my own design. They are copyrighted as reusable with attribution for non-commercial purposes.

The Problem Space Reinforcing Loop

• Initialization: Humans born with little climate or fight/flight protections (no fur, claws, or fast legs), but do have big brains, and high contrast eye coloration which enables finer grain communication.

1. The world is a problem space(A).
2. Innovation(A) occurs as answer to problem space.
3. Innovation(A) creates new problems. Problem space(B).
4. Innovation(B) occurs as answer to problem space(B).
5. Problem space( n )->innovation( n )->
   problem space(n+1)->innovation( n+1 ) .

As much as the above maps human cultural evolution, and I just simply like it, the map may be deficient. Maps are meant to be simple abstractions, so "missing information" is a good trait, not bad. But when one one has to call exceptions too many times then the map, or epistemology/world view, is a poor one.

The map "The Problem Space Reinforcing Loop" is a hunter/protection/war intensive scheme. That is maybe why it works so well with the initialization statement, a time when humans especially needed to think about hunting and protection.

I've long accepted the archeological narrative claiming somewhere in the Middle East women began demanding more protein from their mates in return for sex. It makes sense, women need lots of protein during pregnancy. These men became ever improving at the art of hunting animals, and the art transfered over to a heightened capability of warfare. A larger scale, more sustained, intensive warfare was spawned in this time and place of human cultural evolution. Let's call this the "birth of Big War".

So far in this blog posting the material is highly plausible and probably would not be scorned if uttered in academic discourse. What follows is a pet thesis I developed long ago that may be full of holes, or just plain wrong.

The Eurasian Progress Via Many Wars Narrative:

The Eurasian landmass is structured such that it propelled human cultural evolution in a "The Problem Space Reinforcing Loop" that was especially sustained by warfare. The natural boundaries of deserts and mountains ( e.g. the Gobi and Himalayas ) created the ancient divisions of Indo-Europeans, Han and so forth. The land structured an ability to isolate for periods of internal cultural iteration, then military/trade/tribal migrations across these deserts and mountains would spark exchange of culture or militant competition of cultures.

The "Eurasian Progress Via Many Wars Narrative" is a distinction which only becomes meaningful when mentioning the rest of the world. The narrative gains traction when looking at the early years of European colonialism. Before the Anglo-American incursion into India, China and Japan's economy, the list is mostly neolithic, aboriginal people who's lands are invaded. I believe in all these places of invasion, the aboriginal cultures lacked in their cultural evolution two things: 1) a "birth of Big War", and 2) thousands of years of escalating cultural competition such as my "The Eurasian Progress Via Many Wars Narrative".

It as this point of historical awareness that most people stop and take sides. Put simply, the liberal/left/moralist camp stakes a claim of victory in siting Eurasia as a dystopia and the cultures invaded as utopias, due to the very lack of Big War and escalating violent cultural competitions. The right, old school Protestants, and amoralists see the outcome as its own validation -the European inertia of Big War as something to proud of, rather than indicted for.

I believe these opposing camps are posing a problem for our present world and where we are going. They are both right, but claiming they are both right is a useless form of resolution, something more is needed. More maps of historical narrative, and human condition, are needed.

The "The Problem Space Reinforcing Loop" forked in the mid 20th century. In the 1950's visionaries within the largest industrial companies worldwide began to discuss client-side economics versus supply-side economics. From the little I've read it seems the Japanese and Scandinavian counties wholly embraced client-side economics. Client-side economics is driven by consumers, with industry making what consumers want. The consumer is god. Supply-side economics is where the suppliers determine more of the playing field, and consumers are convinced they are being served by use of marketing (called propaganda in its earliest days). The stockholder, and corporate culture, are god.

Supply-side is an escalation of the early modern power structure with an elite, small oligarchy of merchants who crushed Kings and built armed expeditions to extend their markets. Supply-side was a little more refined, it acknowledges consumers somewhat, but believes stacking lies in the right order will fool almost all consumers. American automakers were excellent examples -putting racing stripes and fins on vehicles with engines better suited for garbage trucks, while Japanese and Scandinavians were iteratively getting better at small efficient engines appropriate for family transportation. The Americans get way with it through advertising and national or racist pride, but lose sales every time gas goes higher than prejudiced or gullible people can afford. I should also add that supply-side players tend to develop products for both the military-industrial complex and American consumers.

Client-side economics, to get to my logical endpoint quickly, are more in tune with the interests of the commoner, and the technologies are more peaceful, and less for military application. But this logical endpoint, although I think is valid, has forked.

What are commonly called "terrorists" are using ubiquitous and affordable consumer goods, such as cell phones and automobiles, to carry out deadly militant attacks. This is the fork, in which consumer technological goods are spinning into an ironic competition with the supply-side technologies of the nation-state military.

Maybe the client versus supply side dichotomy has matured to a point where I can't place unlimited faith in consumerist bourgeoisie as the end all, cure all. I do think the answer is in getting more or all people into a bourgeoisie and technological economy. I don't mean "economy" really, but rather an ethos and culture. People should believe in being consumerist bourgeoisie. But the mix in which the counter to consumerist bourgeoisie is surprisingly not an anti-materialist posture, but rather government and corporate supply-side economics.

This belief in supply-side big budget and government encouraged activity as part of the solution comes a day after Barack Obama's speech ( transcript here ) in Berlin. He speaks of world cooperation, big projects such as mitigating climate change, and extending more of the footprint and benefits of bourgeoisie market economy/culture to classes of people that see mostly the exploitative end of the bourgeoisie construct. Maybe supply-side command economy structuring can be the solution when driven by the right visionary, such as Obama.

I will begin closing this blog entry with an iterative improvement on the "The Problem Space Reinforcing Loop". It is designed more for a peaceful consumerist bourgeoisie world without militant harassment from the anti-bourgeoisie nor prejudiced racial wars or social exclusion processes.

The Opportunity Reinforcing Loop

• Initialization: Humans are globally intertwined with almost endlessly recursive transactions, making the enrichment of all an enrichment of all, and the impoverishment of one a quantifiable subtraction of overall wealth.

1. The world is an opportunity space(A).
2. Industry(A) occurs as answer to opportunity space(A).
3. Industry(A) creates new opportunities. opportunity space(B).
4. Industry(B) occurs as answer to opportunity space(B).
5. Opportunity space( n )->industry( n )->
   opportunity space(n+1)->industry( n+1 ) .

There is an extremely new form of large social behavior that is possibly economic, and seems to grow inside the client-side population, still deeper inside that, to the internet-savvy with some amount of leisure time, able to commit to building up a cultural repository for free. Wikipedia is a prime example. The engine of this has some of the old problem space/opportunity space dynamic to it. It propels forward iteratively, with something reinforcing its existence against entropy or pathological attacks. It may be the glisteningly clean apex of consumerist bourgeoisie technological culture -washed of the taint of money and all that is left is serving the problem space/opportunity space transcendently -a different animal altogether because its asceticism is not mystical and its industriousness is not for personal profit but rather globally accessible enrichment.

Move On

This blog entry is going to start out talking about my education, jobs, then technological change, but the real focus is appropriate social justice agendas versus pathological social justice agendas.

I have a Bachelor of Science from Evergreen State College. While there I attended several great courses, interned as a streaming web server admin, and generally had an enriching experience. Came out smarter than I went in.

Through those years of school up till this year I was programming in a way that got the job done ok enough, and was cutting edge in 1999. I didn't even realize how behind I was because the programming worked perfectly well for purposes at my job and homebrew projects. I decided take several O' Reilly School of Technology certification courses. The first certification, Client-Side Web Programming, I am 75% done with. This is an area I have had proficiency in since the year 2000. I took the course just to learn a few things at the last of its lessons, but it turned out so much has changed across the whole field, and the course taught me how to do the most basic things in a more current powerful style.

Here I am in 2008 paying tuition and spending several hours between 3AM-7AM to redo what already sort of was working for me in a field in which I was noted as an overachiever during courses taken in 2000-2003. I am paying money for education, working several hours a day, to maintain my status in the world.

There was an article published recently observing that web programming technologies are constantly spinning off new entire frameworks that take intense investment of time and focus to learn. The point on this is, my experience of finding an old proficiency obsolete and needing to go back to school in order to be employable is very much the norm.

So far this entry you are reading seems to be about my schooling, programming jobs, or the Internet. But think about a piece of rhetoric at least I see all the time in news or opinion pieces:"these people are so destitute, so without hope, so they turn to drugs and crime. We need to provide more jobs in the area in order to reverse this trend". That rhetoric is usually for a rundown inner city neighborhood or a third world country. For the rest, the rhetoric "People want to work, we need to give them jobs" is usually meant to reference all suburbanites, Reagan Democrats and red state Republicans. Jobs? What an empty reference.

Anything I don't buy at the local grocery store I order through Amazon.com. I just bought some Crocs (shoes). The shoes travelled from the manufacturing plant in Mexico, to the company warehouse in Tuscon, and from there it rides in a USPS truck to my door. This Amazon purchase eliminates the need for a local physical store, and all those jobs that would have built and worked inside the store. My spending power eliminates as many unskilled worker jobs as possible. At work we order massive amounts of technology supplies on the same criteria. So do millions of other consumers that use online shopping and choose the cheapest sale of an item they want.

This is the new economy, and it is here to stay.

Just as our political rhetoric throws away the generic citizen into the garbage bin of generic worker, we do they same in claiming default high valuation of life, lifestyles, and cultures. Nothing in the dynamics of reality suggest equality of life, lifestyles, and cultures. They all have varying degrees of success, and the success is very very noteworthy because the diametric opposites are the failures which include slavery, starvation, and death.

To say "look at this, a person/lifestyle/culture, so automatically wonderful" is as ignorant as saying "I have a job now, I can buy everything I need and live happily ever after". Certainly I am not suggesting a hard and fast judgement of these. I am claiming that we've had a hard and fast judgement already for too long, one that is claiming equality. We don't need to swing to other incorrect pole, but need to both recognize the very real and uneven outcomes different people/lifestyles/cultures generate AND recognize the situation is dynamic and relative.

Reality has many rich and wonderful points of reference, but they migrate to new locations constantly. No human or class of humans has a right to these good points, and other humans locked out, perpetually. The good points are open to all, but only those that migrate to the points. Migration implies non-stasis, and implies good things are not everywhere and without access contingencies.

Point is: work for social justice, implore people to migrate to where the good things are, and the migration takes changes in intellect, location, lifestyle, epistemology, or more generally culture. Stasis means a likely eventual defeat.

McCain does not know the Internet, thus, does not know the economy he would lead

(source) Getting Old Versus Keeping Current

Comment by Leonard Steinhorn, Prof, School of Communication, American University
Getting Old Versus Keeping Current

Concerns about Senator John McCain's age may be less important than how he keeps himself current and young, and on that account we must ask some relevant questions. Senator McCain seems physically vigorous, and his medical reports all point to a generally healthy man who gets regular check-ups. And despite his occasional gaffes and verbal slip-ups, which some suggest may be a sign of a tired mind, he appears to remain sharp and mentally focused. But general health isn't really the issue. When Senator McCain admits that he really doesn't get the Internet and describes on-line searching as "a Google," it suggests that he doesn't have even a rudimentary appreciation of the new economy and the next generation he hopes to lead. Arguably, our economic vitality these last two decades has been built on an information and knowledge society structured around high technology, social networks, and the Internet. It's not that Senator McCain doesn't have the capacity to understand our new economy, but it's his lack of curiosity and interest that should give voters pause. How will he inspire young people who navigate a different communication and information universe than his? He claims to speak for small business, but how will he lead the many start-ups that advance the frontiers of on-line communication or at a minimum depend on it. The United States is the first nation in history to seek its wisdom from youth rather than its elders, and that's largely because we've been the most technologically advanced and dynamic society in history, and youth adapt to that far faster than their seniors. A president needs to be cognizant of these trends and currents, or at least interested in them, because policy that flows from the White House has consequences on our culture, society, and economy. So the real test for Senator McCain has nothing to do with his age. It has everything to do with the youthfulness of his thinking.

-Leonard Steinhorn, Prof, School of Communication, American University

See also: McCain in cyberspace: "Ich bin ein beginner".

Messiah Obama

Countercultural revolutionaries take note: In my country, the police will be the good guys working for me, and the criminals will be the bad guys.

Young black aggression on whites ends in death of white. Again.

Young black aggression on whites ends in death of white. Again.

This is a pattern, just as heinous as the white on black acts of violence that was a norm before the 1960's. The pattern does harm to black households, because white households with the money become more likely to move to more exclusive neighborhoods. I'm not at all for this, and think mixed-income mixed-ethnicity neighborhoods are the coolest....if they are equally safe for all classes. If whites receive more acts of aggression in these neighborhoods, they certainly SHOULD get out.

"described as an African-American man in his 20s, about 5 feet, 10 inches tall, weighing about 160 pounds, and wearing a gray tank top, black jeans and a blue do-rag"

• Fatal attack at traffic circle. Retiree gardening in traffic circle is punched and dies.
• Gardener's vigil a cry for safety.
• It's not just traffic-circle rage -- it's a life lost for nothing

Thinking through to the other side

In the last several weeks I went through a mini-identity crisis. This was confirmed by my wife who called it just that. After spending most of my adult life riding bicycles and walking rather than owning a car, living in the urban rather than suburban, and listening to punk rock icons Husker Du, Minutemen, and the Red Hot Chili Peppers....a few weeks ago I asked myself if I was now a Republican.

This was worrisome because I live in Seattle, and also because I have over 20 years invested in friendships forged somewhat on the grounds of being countercultural freaks. Seattle is a liberal victor in the culture war, a city that started making tangible differentiation from the homogenized mall-ification of the USA back in the 1970's. As for me and my friend's atypical stylizations, if you know any of us you'll know what I mean. I'm surrounded, literally, in a counterculture that consciously chose to leave Reagan's America, totally and forever.

If I was to embrace significant portions of Reagan's ideology, I would have no friends.

Then somethings happened: In a quest to save money, I stopped renting a Zipcar on Saturdays for the weekly grocery run to Fred Meyer. I've decided to haul even the big stuff the 2.4 mile roundtrip in a little $20 cart or in the cargo hold of my son's jogging stroller. This kind of self-propelled austerity doesn't fit the with the Republican lifestyle. The other was the death of Jesse Helms, and the Republicans and mainstream media positively framing his life. I danced irreverently on Helm's grave here. Other small incidents were the content of emails from conservative magazine Human Events. One email they sent out had Fred Thompson rallying the Republican zombies to continue supporting small government and little/no taxes by voting Republican. What kind of crack does one have be on to think the Republicans save us money and make us free from government regulations? The Bush regime handed out tax money to defense and police industry's like crazy, and notoriously in ways that don't solve real security problems. I don't join political parties that tell stories exactly opposite of how things are really happening.

Then a magazine article appeared before me, and I began to see the big picture of me, my political direction, and where I fit in it the world of ideas.

The magazine is Salon, and the news feature is Apocalypse Now by Mike Davis. After this point my personal journal morphs into a step-by-step critique of the Salon's Apocalypse Now, I'm changing the webpage format to black letters and white background for visual demarcation.

The article explicitly and implicitly accepts that the Earth is going through a dramatic climate change. I totally agree, and have for at least since 1990. On this logical level, the liberals/left/Democrats have typically affirmed there is a dramatic climate change, and it is man made. The Republicans, along with sister organization Right Wing Protestants, have tried every tactic of rhetorical denial of climate change. This summer I've made a daily announcement to my wife that tornadoes have killed some people in the red state midwest. Sometimes ignorance kills. The article tries to claim the oil dollars going to build skyscrapers in Dubai are a denial that our oil dollars are investing in alternative energy. I sense disinformation from Salon. It should be no surprise the oil sources are taking their income and investing more locally and within their cultural sphere. No one should expect anything else. A more precise question Salon could have asked is how much of US oil expenditures are going to US based companies, and if these companies are diverting this income towards alternative energy development. Salon didn't, and chose to make vacuous rhetorical points with anti-wealth readers by vilifying Dubia 's mega-capitalism. The article believes the rightful distribution of wealth should be communistic. Look at this paragraph and the carte blanche ownership of oil wealth Salon gives the "poor": "This super-charged Gulf boom, which celebrity architect Rem Koolhaas claims is "reconfiguring the world," has led Dubai developers to proclaim the advent of a "supreme lifestyle" represented by seven-star hotels, private islands, and J-class yachts. Not surprisingly, then, the United Arab Emirates and its neighbors have the biggest per capita ecological footprints on the planet. Meanwhile, the rightful owners of Arab oil wealth, the masses crammed into the angry tenements of Baghdad, Cairo, Amman, and Khartoum, have little more to show for it than a trickle-down of oil-field jobs and Saudi-subsidized madrassas. While guests enjoy the $5,000 per night rooms in Burj Al-Arab, Dubai's celebrated sail-shaped hotel, working-class Cairenes riot in the streets over the unaffordable price of bread." Here is my stance: the people born in a country do not inherent the wealth coincidently generated in it. Birth does not grant any resources. The masses are a meaningless glom, and worthless when discussed within a meritocratic space. The windfall profits of oil, computer, informational, or any other industry should never be given to people just because they were born. Birth is a biological event, not an economic qualification. Apocalypse Now states more of it system of justice: "The North's Ecological Debt The real question is this: Will rich counties ever mobilize the political will... to help poorer countries adapt...Will the electorates of the wealthy nations shed their current bigotry and walled borders to admit refugees from predicted epicenters of drought and desertification like the Maghreb, Mexico, Ethiopia, and Pakistan? Will Americans... be willing to tax themselves to help relocate the millions likely to be flooded out of densely settled, mega-delta regions like Bangladesh?" The phrase "The North's Ecological Debt" is a moral landscape I do not inhabit. If my culture's adaptions and empowerments have destroyed others, then it shouldn't be such a surprise tomorrow when we do it again. If I become captive to a political fascism that involuntarily diverts my tax dollars to the equatorial poor based on industrialized guilt, I care enough to stop that enterprise by any means possible. Why? Its not that I want more wealth at the expense of others, it is forcing a religion on me, imposing on me a certain valuation of life and specific cultures. It is an instance of fascism, the worst kind: self-righteous in its assumed benevolence.

So here I am at the end of this ridiculously long post screaming about anti-industrial leftist fascists. Am I semiotically pushed back in the corner of Republican? No. Of late I'm realizing I'm being semiotically pushed into appreciating the old American ideas of freedom and independence. They were not abstractions protected for their own sakes, rather these ideals were protected because they were the environment for innovation, enterprise, and industriousness in the individual (not just the corporation). To me, the civil rights movement was originally about allowing non-whites access to that same freedom and independence, so they could become wealthier or happier through successful business or professional acumen. After the initial gains for civil rights in the 1960's, white leftists have messed it up for everyone, embedding their anti-merit valuations of life into civic dialogue at every turn, disabling the road to prosperity or happiness for anyone not already wealthy. Centrists supporting the old values of personal industriousness shouldn't allow themselves to be pushed into the Grand Old Party of Low Levels of Competent Industriousness But High Levels of Spin, rather maintain stake in their plebian interests by reasserting meritocracy into the central assumption of civic dialogue .

There. Thats me.

Anthropocene

My son was born in late January 2008. We named him North Ultima-Thule, with the reasoning that he is beginning his life in the beginning of a geological era marked by immense changes especially at the North Pole and the lands immediately south of that point.

A few weeks after his birth the Stratigraphy Commission of the Geological Society of London declared an end to the Holocene Epoch, and the beginning of the Anthropocene Epoch. The London Society is the world's oldest association of Earth scientists, founded in 1807, and its Commission acts as a college of cardinals in the adjudication of the geological time-scale.

The importance of the Holocene Epoch can be stated in short form and without much political controversy: It is the epoch of the last 10,000 years. The last 10,000 years is exactly when agriculture began, and agriculture created settled lifestyles which created the first cities. Before 10,000 years ago humans were like the cavemen in bad movies. ( Not a joke )

That epoch just ended.

We nailed it naming our son based on the epochal change occurring at his birth. While others are wasting their time fighting to turn back the Earth to previous epochs, I'm raising my son and adapting my family for life in the Anthropocene.

While I lack an understanding of the science behind declaring geological periods, I do have personal experience that witnessed the epochal changes. While in Antarctica in 1995-6 I worked amongst scientists while they were gathering evidence of the climate change. After leaving, I received a scary email from a friend still at Mcmurdo Station. He said the road to the airport runway had just melted, a road built across ice these authorities on geological stability assumed would never melt.

Jesse Helms

Obligatory homages are being displayed by the major news outlets in the USA regarding the death of Jesse Helms. They gloss over the nuances of his life's work by simply calling him "conservative". The word "conservative" has a lot of ambiguity. We could confuse a Seattle restaurant owner of Asian descent, known for a only supporting politics that enriches her business and also for strong law and order, as "conservative". This hypothetical Asian I made up is conservative, and Jesse Helms made a career of not representing such an Asian business woman, rather his was a career throwing up barriers to any form of progress.

Jesse Helms was a type, and made a career expressing the political will of that type -dumb and useless whites who look fondly back to the Victorian era as a sanctuary within which they believe they would have had more (slaves). These are usually whites with little professional acumen nor born into a wealthy family, mediocre specimens (at best) of humanity loosing ground every day due to encroaching technological advancement that requires adaptable, functional, smart people to use it.

So Jesse Helms is just one of these dumb dogs in a people suit, and now dead. In the post-apocalypse, his skull will be dug up, kicked around, pissed in, sterilized, and sold to a Chinese warrior king.

Organizational Anti-Patterns

Found a great list of social pathologicals on wikipedia at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-pattern#Organizational_anti-patterns, I've reprinted the list below but the links are much more functional on the Wikipedia page.

• Analysis paralysis: Devoting disproportionate effort to the analysis phase of a project
• Cash cow: A profitable legacy product that often leads to complacency about new products
• Cost migration: Transfer of project expenses to a vulnerable department or business partner
• Crisis mode (a.k.a firefighting mode): Dealing with things only when they become a crisis, with the result that everything becomes a crisis
• Design by committee: The result of having many contributors to a design, but no unifying vision
• Escalation of commitment: Failing to revoke a decision when it proves wrong
• Management by neglect: Too much delegation
• Management by numbers: Paying excessive attention to quantitative management criteria, when these are non-essential or cost too much to acquire
• Management by perkele: Authoritarian style of management with no tolerance for dissent
• Management by wondering: Expecting a team to define their own objectives, and then wondering what they're doing
• Milk Monitor Promotion: A pseudo promotion (a better sounding title), with no additional responsibilities or pay increase, which is given as a quick and costless way to make the employee work harder.
• Moral hazard: Insulating a decision-maker from the consequences of his or her decision.
• Mushroom management: Keeping employees uninformed and misinformed (kept in the dark and fed manure)
• Stovepipe: A structure that supports mostly up-down flow of data but inhibits cross organizational communication
• Vendor lock-in: Making a system excessively dependent on an externally supplied component
• Violin string organization: A highly tuned and trimmed organization with no flexibility

• Death march: Everyone knows that the project is going to be a disaster - except the CEO. However, the truth remains hidden and the project is artificially kept alive until the Day Zero finally comes ("Big Bang")
• Smoke and mirrors: Demonstrating how unimplemented functions will appear
• Software bloat: Allowing successive versions of a system to demand ever more resources

• Cage match negotiator: When a manager uses a "victory at any cost" approach to management.
• Doppelganger: A manager or colleague who can be nice and easy to work with one moment, and then vicious and unreasonable the next.
• Fruitless hoops: The manager who requires endless (often meaningless) data before making a decision.
• Headless chicken: The manager who is always in a panic-stricken, fire-fighting mode.
• Leader not manager: The manager who is a good leader, but lacks in their administrative and managerial ability.
• Managerial cloning: The hiring and mentoring of managers to all act and work the same: identically to their bosses.
• Manager not leader: The manager who is proficient at their administrative and managerial duties, but lacks leadership ability.
• Mr. nice guy: The manager that strives to be everyone´s friend.
• Proletariat hero: The "everyman" worker who is held up as the ideal, but is really just a prop for management's increasing demands and lengthening production targets.
• Rising upstart: The potential stars who can't wait their time and want to forgo the requisite time to learn, mature and find their place.
• Seagull management (hit-and-run management): The manager flies in, makes a lot of noise, craps all over everything, then flies away.
• Three-headed knight: The indecisive manager.
• Ultimate weapon: Phenomena that are relied upon so much by their peers or organization that they become the conduit for all things.
• Yes man: The manager who will agree with everything the CEO says, but changes mind away from his presence.

• Napkin specification: The Functional/Technical specification is given to the Development team on a napkin (i.e., informally, and with insufficient detail) which is fundamentally equivalent to having no specification at all.
• Phony requirements: All requirements are communicated to the development teams in a rapid succession of netmeeting sessions or phone calls with no Functional/Technical specification or other supporting documentation.
• Retro-specification: To write the Technical/Functional specification after the project has already gone live.