Dave’s Whiteboard

I once helped teach a course to my company’s subsidiary in Hong Kong, by far the most foreign-feeling place I’ve been. At lunch one day with the mainly Chinese staff, I mentioned a story I’d heard as an undergraduate taking a course on Chinese poetry (translated into English).

The quick version:

Long ago, a Chinese grammarian first developed the theory that Chinese depended on tones to give meaning to the spoken language. In other words, the same syllable, spoken in different tones, had different meanings. Eventually this theory reached the imperial court, and the grammarian was summoned. The emperor asked what these so-called tones were.

The grammarian answered, “Whatever you wish them to be.”

The punch line is that the answer in Chinese supposedly consisted of four syllables — the same syllable in each of four tones.

I wanted to know if the story were “true” even as a legend, as in a demonstration of the principle of tones. Alas, no one in the group had ever heard this story, and I know less Chinese than I do Zulu. I said that it must be something like George Washington throwing a coin across the Rappahannock, or chopping down the cherry tree.

That meant I had to explain some George Washington stories, which my tablemates seemed to find fascinating, though not quite as amusing as my reaction to “goose web” on the menu.

The only reason for mentioning this is that today I happened across The Lion-Eating Poet in the Stone Den. It’s apparently a poem with all 92 of its characters having the sound shi in classical Chinese.

So the title in Hanyu Pinyin is:

ShÄ« Shì shí shÄ« shÇ?
(The Story of Shi Eating the Lions)

According to the article link above, changes in the pronunciation of Mandarin since classical times mean that the poem becomes “completely incomprehensible” when spoken in modern Mandarin.

I’ll leave it to experts like Ken Carroll to opine on the quality of the Chinese.

Photo of stone lion from the Forbidden City by HK James Ho.

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I’ve noticed several articles lately dealing with the topic of intrinsic versus extrinsic rewards. I think it’s a bit simplistic to say, as some do, that money doesn’t provide any incentive to adults. Over time, though, the ceiling does turn into the floor; most of us tend to incorporate a raise into our base.

I often forget is that such incorporation continues right through the stratosphere. It took a messy divorce between former GE CEO Jack Welch and his second wife to reveal some of the incentives shoveled his way — um, offered to him by the GE board. Like memberships at five golf clubs. Or postage for his personal correspondence. Or vitamins.

I’m picking on poor Jack in part because I worked for GE, though not at his level of compensation. And, socialist that I am, I think that if your compensation comes to $12 million a year, you ought to buy your own vitamins. (Hint to Jack: they’re cheaper at Costco.)

Yesterday’s Washington Post had a similarly enlightening story about compensation for the bigwigs in the financial sector here. That sector includes outstanding performers like Sallie Mae, Fannie Mae, and Freddie Mac.

Richard Syron, chairman of Freddie Mac, had his bonus reduced 33% because of the institution’s poor performance in the past year — which means the bonus was only $2.2 million. (Boy, that would sting.)

A related story carried the same day noted that executives at firms like Capital One, Freddie Mac, and Sallie Mae received “executive financial counseling.” An “executive compensation consultant” explained that such financial advisors “can explain the company’s programs to the executive, explain what the executive is entitled to and how to get the maximum benefit out of it.”

Well, of course. Syron earned $14.5 million in 2007. After having $1.1 million whacked from his “performance bonus,” it would be far too much to ask him to pay for his own financial advice.

My favorite perk of all, though: Freddie Mac paid $100,000 for the lawyer who negotiated Syron’s contract. That’s negotiation on Syron’s behalf, not Freddie’s. True, the final package did have that 33% cutback in the bonus — but overall, Syron walked off with an 18% raise (nice way to beat inflation), as well as a $1.25 million “extension bonus” for agreeing to stay on the job till the company finds a successor.

Robert Graves wrote that, late in life, the emperor Augustus became somewhat forgetful. From time to time, he’d lose his train of thought while speaking in the Senate. Graves paraphrases Augustus’s fall-back phrasing, which seems especially apt:

My brother Senators, words fail me. Nothing I could add could possibly express the depth of my feeling in this matter.

Monopoly money photo by mtsofan / John.

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I admit — I use Wikipedia every day. However, I’m a wee bit skeptical.

I remember hearing Garrison Keillor say, speaking to an NPR group, that All Things Considered was the best news program on the air — except when you really want to know what’s going on. Then, you get a ten-minute word portrait about unemployed loggers in Oregon.

I feel that way about Wikipedia, which one seasoned editor refers to as “Unemployed Ph.D. Death Match.” The more passionate someone feels about a topic, the likelier the Wikipedia article is to reflect that passion (for the good, and for the bad).

This probably explains why, when I once read the Wikipedia entry on Robert Burns, a third of the article was devoted to his membership in the Masons.

Today’s browsing revealed this gem:

Clearly inaccurate — for one thing, there’s no space for Lord of the Rings (which would be at least as large as the “Libel” space).

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Karyn Romeis writes about her career frustrations, and gets both encouragement and advice from several people. I’ve felt similar frustration a time or two — in no small part because I’ve tended to remain in a position longer than average.

G. K. Chesterton said there’s a great difference between a man who wants to read a book and a man who wants a book to read. Something similar, I think, between a person who wants to do a job and a person who wants a job to do. I think the first is initially harder but clearer — you have some vision of the work you want to be doing, so it’s easier to recognize whether alternatives fit into that vision.

On the other hand, search doesn’t pay all that well.

The world of corporate or organizational (non-academic) learning is wide, but in many places it’s highly structured. I’ve never been a great fan of the corporate university concept; some time ago I encountered one that even had deans. For those who like that sort of thing, that’s the sort of thing they like. It did seem to me that, as with SCORM-heavy environments, an awful lot of time and energy went into justification by weight — the more paper you produced to ground your argument, the stronger it was.

After all, paper’s an insulator.

Not everyone’s able to do the job he’d like; sometimes we’re fortunate to have a job to do that calls for our skills and appeals to our interests. I haven’t worked in a corporate job for seven years — but nearly everything I’ve done since then has been for corporations or large organizations. Sometimes it’s been mainly to pay the bills. (During a debate during the presidential election of 1976, Bob Dole was asked why he wanted to be vice-president. He replied, “It’s inside work, and there’s no heavy lifting.”)

I think I’m a long-term relationship guy: I’d rather maintain and expand my connection with a few clients than go through dozens of them. That isn’t always possible, but it’s an ideal, and it helps influence how I deal with those I come in contact with.

I don’t have any useful advice for Karyn, other than to say that knowing what you want — and occasionally checking its viability — is a real advantage.

Hero help wanted photo by ewen and donabel / Ewen Roberts.

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I’ve been working on courses for people who want to become paralegals. I knew at the start that my direct experience with lawyers and the law was limited, but I didn’t realize how much so.

Take “the law,” for example. I would have said “the law” means…well, laws. The statutes passed by Congress, or the state legislature, or the county, or the city. As in, “it’s against the law to…”

That’s true, so far as it goes. All these things are statutory law. So too are the regulations from certain bodies like the Food and Drug Administration. Those are administrative law.

What I hadn’t thought much about was another ocean of law — case law.

I did realize that statutes are not always that well written. Even when they are, two parties can reasonably come to two different conclusions about what the law means. To resolve the disagreement, they go to court, where the judge renders a decision.

If the case is appealed, the appellate court does not re-hear the case. Instead, the court looks how the law was applied and, very often, how other courts have interpreted the law.

Case law is a bedrock of the Anglo-Saxon system: the notion that courts should do what courts have done. When an appellate court issues a decision, that decision can become mandatory authority for other courts within the appellate court’s jurisdiction, and persuastive authority for others.

That latter means, “We don’t have to listen to the Seventh Circuit, but they seem to know what they’re talking about.”

So, for example, the idea of a constitutional right to an attorney emerged from case law (Gideon v. Wainwright, 372 U.S. 335 — state courts required to provide counsel in criminal cases to indigent defendants), as did the idea that the police must advise you of your individual rights before questioning you (Miranda v. Arizona, 384 U.S. 436).

All of this to remind myself that things are usually more complex than you think. You’ll see lots of huffing in Congress and in the media about “unelected, activist judges” who should just “interpret the law, not create it.”

(And generally, that’s a sign the speaker disagrees with a recent opinion.)

What that bromide skips over is the fact that in interpreting the law, the court ipso facto is handing down case law that other courts — and other plaintiffs, and other respondents — can and will consider in the light of their own situation.

USCS photo by tellumo / Adam Engelhart.
Arizona police photo of Ernesto Miranda from PBS.org.

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