On Being Lazy

Lazy is unwilling to do work or use energy.

Engineers use the word to describe part of a system that doesn't do anything unless it has to.

Lazy people don't avoid doing things. (That's indolence.)

They avoid making a big fuss and bother about getting whatever it is done.

Lazy people tell the truth. Then they don't have to remember what they said.

Lazy people tidy the house up once and then put stuff back where they got it from.

Lazy people have a routine. Then they don't have to think about what to do.

Lazy people have simple wardrobes. Then they don't have to think about what to wear.

Lazy people cook simple, healthy food. Because it takes three minutes to make an omelette, and thirty minutes to leave a chicken breast in the oven.

Lazy people work for a living. Have you any idea how hard criminals graft?

It's how you do the work, not the work you do, that makes you lazy.

Lazy people use the right tools for the job. It's easier that way.

Lazy people start a new job by working hard to understand and master it. Then they can do it all in the morning and kick back the rest of the day.

Napoleon said he preferred clever lazy Generals: they would get what he wanted done with the minimum of fuss. What did he do with the stupid, energetic ones? Those he had shot.

Lazy people do things that need doing, not things that some busybody thinks should be done.

Lazy people have time to do the things they want to do, because they are not busy doing make-work.

"Busy" does not mean "useful". It means "occupied with a task" or "having too much to do" or just "fussy".

Lazy people work smart, not hard.

And never do today what could be done tomorrow if there's something else you'd rather be doing today.

Because, when someone else describes you as "lazy", what they mean is you're not doing what they want you to be doing, when they want you to do it.

The boss gets to call you lazy, because he's paying.

No-one else does, because they aren't.

If This Is "Vintage Wolfe" What Does That Make Me?

 Browsing the fiction department in Foyles the other week, I found this...

Um. I read this when it first came out.

It's now "Vintage".

That wasn't supposed to happen.

And yet, it did.

Two Shots of Regent's Park

 

Sis and I took a stroll from Primrose Hill through Regent's Park the other Saturday. The view from Primrose Hill needs more than an iPhone to do it justice, but the view over the Regent's Canal and the playing fields are okay. I had no idea there was so much space given over to football pitches, and it looked like every third amateur football team was out that Saturday. And why not?

The Drums Are In The Middle

Where are the drums in your audiophile soundstage?

They're in the middle.

Which is odd, because in the studio, the drummer is usually in an isolation booth. A very isolation booth. Nowhere near the middle of anything.

In the mix, the drums are always in the middle.

Those are the rules.

Because at a live gig, the drums are always in the middle. (Even in an orchestra.)

Here's your starter for ten. All those speakers on and around that big stage. Stereo or mono?

Nope. Those speakers are mono. Maybe different frequencies from different parts of the speaker cabinet, but all the speaker units are relaying the same thing on both sides. (Unless they want a sound effect.)

Live concert speakers have to be mono, or most of the audience would get a horrible sound experience. Like sitting behind the horns at an orchestral concert.

The soundstage on a CD is not an attempt to present what was in the studio (there's no studio for EDM, for one thing).

It's an attempt to create a kind-of-live experience.

So now you're going to mix the first CD from a new band. There's a limited budget for mixing time. What do you do?

Make all the channels equal, both sides.

Just like it would be at the gig.

Then throw in enough differences to spread the sound between the speakers. Maybe shift the guitar slightly to the right, the bass to the left, the keyboards to the right of the guitar, but keep the sax solo in the middle. Because that's what would happen at the gig. Maybe someone wants the chorus voices to be well to the left and the synth to the right.

Yep that sounds good. Next track.

A bunch of the CDs I have must have been made like that.



And a lot were not.



(YMMV via You Tube and your hi-fi.)

Modern abstract music depends on sound design for its effect. Orchestras have a bias to the right where the horns, cellos and basses are. EDM is designed to swirl around between the speakers. Though the voice is usually in the middle, because that's where we expect the singer to be on stage.

But the results all have one thing in common.

The drums are always in the middle.

How To Avoid an Understaffed NHS and Logistics Industry Next Time

The next time there's a pandemic, or some other major incident, we cannot have a crucial proportion of the nurses, lorry drivers and other such key people upping and going home, never to return.

It's obvious we can't leave it to employers to be sensible about this. For the last couple of decades, at least, the NHS has preferred to use agencies to strip entire graduating classes out of third-world countries, instead of training UK-resident and rooted people. No adults in charge of recruitment and training there then.

The UK's time in the EU let UK employers get away with egregious recruitment and training policies. The last industry that messed-up that badly was banking, and that is now regulated to within an inch of its capacity for mis-behaviour.

Same thing has to happen with employment.

Bear with me for a moment.

The Employment Regulator would, on an industry-by-industry basis, review the roles and tasks within each industry, and separate them into essential and non-essential. A proportion of those roles judged 'essential' would have to be staffed by UK resident and rooted people, and the employer would need to demonstrate that they had training schemes in place to maintain that proportion. That proportion is the Essential Role Threshold (ERT). Expect it to be around 95%+ of the roles.

Non-essential roles can be staffed by anyone.

What's an essential role? One which is required to ensure the proper functioning of the society and economy. Lorry drivers. Nurses. Doctors. Firemen. Paramedics. Train and bus drivers. The guys who clean sewers. Telecoms engineers. Supermarket workers. Farmers. Policemen. Judges and other Court officials. Electricity, gas and water maintenance guys. Air traffic controllers. Pilots and aircrew. Plumbers. Builders of all trades. Armed Forces, MI5/6 and GCHQ (for which the ERT is 100%).

What's a non-essential role? Anything to do with marketing, sales, accounting, media, entertainment, fashion, cosmetics, restaurants, sports, and general management. Nurses and doctors are essential, but NHS bureaucrats are not. Neither are HMRC staff, journalists, lawyers, local and central government workers and any other bureaucrat.

It will get subtle. I'd say the people who run the BACS and other banking payment systems are essential, but the people who run the management information systems are not.

Anyone can do a non-essential job. Important to understand that point.

A company with essential roles would need to meet the ERT for those roles. Only legal UK residents with roots here would count towards a company's meeting its quota. The company can hire who it likes to do what roles it likes, but a multi-lingual renting bachelor who speaks three languages and has a readily transferrable skill doesn't count towards the 95%. Neither does anyone with dual (or more) nationalities or foreign partners. Or who has a property for personal use outside the UK. Outsourcing not allowed for essential roles. Onshore only. (Details to be clarified.)

Companies with over a certain number people in essential roles would need a training scheme in place for those roles. The NHS has to have training. A small firm of plumbers does not. People could do the training on spec and pay for it themselves, as lorry drivers do now, or companies could pay for someone to train, in a refund-or-work arrangement.

For these purposes "employing" includes "using subcontractors", so Pimlico Plumbers, which does not employ plumbers, would need to demonstrate that it has training scheme in place to replace its subcontractors as they leave. Swiping other people's staff does not count. (Details to be clarified on this one. Courier companies have the same problem.)

An organisation looking to make staff cuts would not be allowed to cut essential workers unless it could demonstrate that it had cut all the non-essential workers that it could.

Companies that could not reach the Essential Role Threshold within, say, five years of the Act coming into force, would be required to close down that part of their business.

The whole thing is monitored by the Employment Regulator.

The effect would be to restrict employment in essential roles to legal UK residents. People from other countries would still be able to work in market research, banking, advertising, women's fashion, non-food retail, manicure and personal care, restaurants, and a scad of other industries and roles.

It's a thought.

"Trait Conscientiousness"

I've been listening to Jordan B Peterson telling us that the people who do well in work have decent IQs and are high in "trait conscientiousness". 

I was working at the time, so I nodded along as it fitted my experience.

But not me.

Which I have noticed since retiring.

Conscientious people are supposed to miss working. So much that they go volunteer, or do something part-time. Or fall apart if they can't.

Not going to happen to me.

It's not that I don't give a toss about details. I do when it matters.

I didn't get my meaning from my employment. I called it my "day job" for heaven's sake.

I don't miss it one bit.

I'm not sure where I do get "meaning".

If I get any, and more to the point...

If I need any.

There are things I like to do.

There are things I need to do, such as regular exercise, and the usual slew of household and personal maintenance.

None of them are the kinds of things that conscientious people call "meaning" or "purpose".

Maybe I'm more chilled than I think I am.

Or to say the same thing another way: I am (very) low in "trait conscientiousness".

Pretentious Art Commentaries (More)

I don't usually link to someone else's work, but in this case, it's just so apposite to the recent Tate Modern post about BS commentaries accompanying art. It's a post by the legendary Dave Trott (okay, legendary if you know the UK advertising business) and it's about the same subject, but from a participant's point of view.

It's here.