The best soprano in the world.  My favorite pieces:  the very familiar “Voi che sapete” from Mozart’s Le nozze di Figaro, “Bel raggio lusinghier” from Rossini’s Semiramide and “Nacqui all’affanno…Nonpiu mesta” from Rossini’s La Cenerentola.  In Rossini she has found a soul-mate for coloratura—the virtuosity and triumph simply stun the listener. Recorded in 1989-92.

Johann Sebastian Bach’s Goldberg Variations, performed by Glenn Gould

Bach wrote these monuments of keyboard music during 1742 while he was the court composer.  Usually, he didn’t like variations per se, but Bach had to feed a family and therefore he agreed when Count Kaiserling, Russian ambassador to the Saxon court, who employed as musician Johann Gottlieb Goldberg, one of Bach’s best pupils, asked Bach to compose restful keyboard music Goldberg could play at night so the insomniac Kaiserling could sleep.  In that can be ornamented.   Bach ranged far beyond and greatly outclassed the melody.  If Goldberg played this so Kaiserling could sleep, he didn’t play it well.   Glenn Gould’s 1955 performance, however, still rates higher than any other.

Insights gained from this book:

If you wear mismatching clothes at work, you’ll be treated like earwax.  If you wear smart suits, people will pretend to like you because you might be their boss some day.  If you wear sandals and beachwear, you’ll be worshipped as the only one who understands the computer.
 
If your tie falls in your tea, it’s time for your committee meeting.  Ties know these things.
 
He points out the obnoxious people who harp on other people’s every slight mistake.
 
One way to the top:  find strange-looking, powerless people to blame everything on.
 
Another way:  doing nothing rather than making mistakes.  Another:  taking credit for other people’s work.  Another:  write useless things that offend no one and mean nothing.
 
And increase staff and have them all make work for each other.  (Adams probably got this from Parkinson.)  I know offices (which shall be presently anonymous) operating this way.
 
Decentralize everything centralized, and centralize everything decentralized.  People think you’re a genius.
 
Offer to start new projects involving a lot more people.  They budget you more money.
 
If the boss gets a bonus for cutting expenses, some people will be out of a job and the others will work harder.
 
Writing resolutions or manuals or anything else by committee is ineffective and time-consuming, but people do it to mask blame.
 
People higher in the hierarchy take credit for other people’s ideas.  For instance, Kenneth Reeves sent manuscripts to the editing department and, lo and behold, other people wrote articles on the same subjects, stealing his ideas, before putting his words into print.  So now he left the hierarchy and has his work printed elsewhere.
 
When people call, give them information you have but that they don’t want, ask them to rephrase the question as many ways as possible, leave the phone and come back as someone else, hold for ten minutes, then disconnect them.  If they call back, refer them to recently deceased persons, or use a difficult foreign accent and start from the beginning.
 
People think that the more copies you receive of other people’s work, the more important you are.
 
The time
 a project will take is probably one week per the number of people involved.
 You can stall basically all productivity by demanding cost-benefit analysis, extensive discussion of alternatives, financial analysis.  By having good time management but different priorities, you can create gridlock.  (Find people who actually do this and kill them.)
 
Refuse to answer questions unless you know who is asking, why and what they will do with the information.  Heirarchies (like HQ) try to keep people from getting mad at them.  Small groups(like local churches) have more flexibility and can take advantage of opportunities.
 
Fancy titles mean that people at the bottom of the hierarchy can avoid “truly demeaning titles” like “boot-licking, lower-than-dirt assistant peon” (p43). 
 
Just hope you don’t have a boss who makes you ill slowly (ulcer or overwork) or kills you quickly (heart attack).  Hope you get a cheerleader or do-it-yourself person.  The boss won’t waste time clarifying instructions—use your own judgment.  When he says, “our workers are our more important asset” or “our strategy is to improve long-term results” or “we are studying that issue to prepare an appropriate action plan,” in each case he means nothing.
 
Bosses say, “Why don’t people come to me sooner?”  The reason is:  they chew out people who come to them.
 
Your performance appraisal will be “hastily prepared, annoyingly vague, and an insult to whatever dignity you might still possess” (p56).
 
The boss’s secretary must be placated by a blood sacrifice.  You say, “I need just a few minutes of the boss’s time,” and the gargoyle who serves as his secretary says, “First you must defeat me in a battle to the death in a pit of fire-breathing lizards” (p59).
 
You can adapt some of Adams’ thoughts to church work.  For instance, people in evangelistic teams speak in code:  when they say, “I prayed about it,” they mean, “I asked my dog.”  When they say, “I’m sure we can win a million souls,” the answer is, “Right.  When pigs floss.”  And when they say, “We’re working closely with the pastors,” they mean, “We told them our favorite colors.” (see p. 62).
 
Expense accounts:  order the most expensive thing in the restaurant when someone else is paying:  “I’ll have the endangered species kabob” or “Give me the yeti steak grilled on Everest rocks.”  I know people who treat me this way when I pay.
 
When you get a chance at feedback, enjoy it:  “This is garbage.  And what second-hand place sold you that terrible shirt?”
 
When you put your pen down and turn your eyes, someone will steal it.
 
In a meeting, look at the people to see who’s really in charge:  the person with no writing materials is a senior executive, the person trying to look more relaxed than anyone else is probably an executive, the person dressed out of style is in finance, the person eating a sack lunch is a technical person,” the person returning calls during the meeting is a middle manager.
 
And the intelligence of the meetings goes down the more people you have present.  1 person says, “The project is good.”  A second person says, “There are many issues.”  The third person asks,” Is it our mission to think of issues?”  The fourth person says, “What are issues?”
 
Meetings are so boring that you could die.  Solutions:  daydream, crack jokes, sleep.  (I’ve seen people do the last two on the Foreign Missions Board.  I did the first.)
 
Attending meetings is considered to be working, even if you do nothing.  Attend as many meetings as possible—task forces on productivity are the ultimate irony.
 
If the meeting contains more than three people, one of them is too distracted to participate meaningfully.  (Parkinson would say that over five is too many.  In India, many committees have three people and that seems to work.)  Finding a date you’re all available is another problem if the committee gets too large.  “The first time every body else is available is June 8 in the year 3057…Well, yeah, I suppose you will be dead by then…so I guess you’ll be free that whole day” (p76).
 
And if people ask you a question, drone on about unrelated topics.  This avoids giving the wrong information and also reduces the volume of future questions.
 
Don’t give bad news.  People just hate you for it—it’s called “shoot the messenger.”  So emphasize the positive, even if there isn’t any.  If everyone’s dying, say the number of funeral ceremonies is up.  If a project fails because your boss is an idiot, say he has “genetic predisposition to suboptimal performance” or, better, something more obscure than that.
 
And if someone wants something you don’t want to do, say, “We’ve proactively prioritized our quality mission objectives and reached a breakthrough strategic consensus that our bottom line would be negatively impacted by that path forward” (p80).
 
But don’t lie.  Lies tend to catch up with you when second lies contradict first lies.  Except on your resume, Scott Adams says.  Tell people you r job title, not what you DO.
 
When you’re late to a meeting, make your excuse more dramatic than that of people who were also late but got there before you.
 
Bosses who don’t understand technology will be slow to adapt new ways, especially in reducing paper.  If you create a computerized, interactive, multimedia training tool, they’ll want photocopies.  Technology has met its promise of reducing workload because it prevents us from doing any work at all when the equipment all breaks down.
 
All technological progress is based on faulty assumptions—people wouldn’t do it if they understood the consequences.  People who made the wheel and thought it would make things less complicated weren’t thinking about urban planning, pollution, etc.  People who invented TV and thought it would benefit culture and education weren’t thinking about human nature.  People who invented the computer and though it would eliminate paper while freeing us all from tedious, unfulfilling jobs weren’t thinking about modern life.
 
Throughout history, many great ideas started as scribbles on the backs of envelopes, match books, and cocktail napkins.  But unless you’re very confident about that idea of yours, you should use regular paper when you show it to the boss.  Don’t, for instance, write it on your cornflakes and staple them together.  The boss cares more about style than substance, good formats than good ideas.  And if you have LOTS of analysis, that helps to prevent people from having to think.
 
Delegating is getting other people to do your work.  And don’t admit you don’t know the answer to a question, but respond with a tougher question.  If someone asks, “Do you have the monthly report?” ask them in which of several possible forms they want it, blah, blah, blah—overwhelm them with options.  When they say they don’t know, ask, “Then why are you here?”  You’ll avoid criticism if you’re touchy (I know some bosses like that)—unless your people are as touchy as you are.  When they say, “Your report is almost perfect,” you can say, “Almost?!  You’re prejudiced, you bigot!  I know your type, all smiles, but secretly hating me.  I’ve got a lawyer!”  When they say, “O.K. it’s perfect, extraordinary, incredible,”  you can respond, “Really?  Or are you just saying that?”
 
When people ask questions, say you’ll get back to them, but never do it.
 
If you work for a large organization, they have procedures they have to follow that make dismissing anyone almost impossible.  If you have no career ambition and no pride, you can take advantage of this.
 
If work comes to you by mail, it’s totally unimportant and you can ignore it forever.  If by telephone, you can ignore the phone, since no important assignment comes that way.  If it’s by personal threat, you might be able to make some time on your calendar.
 
Assignments keep getting delegated until they arrive at the person who understands them the least.
 
And when we have a strategy, a plan, we know what we don’t do.  If we have no strategy, then, when the phone rings, we don’t know who’s supposed to answer it.  If we have a strategy, then, when the phone rings, we can answer it and say they have the wrong number.
 
As people have more job experience, they get more pessimistic.  New people say, “Great idea!  Let’s start right away!”  People employed five years say, “We tried that.  It didn’t work.”  People employed ten years say, “We’re all going to die.  It’s the end of life as we know it.”
 
Each person think the correct solution to a problem is the solution he personally knows.  A finance specialist will recommend budget allocations.  A technical person will recommend a technical solution.  A brute will recommend brutality.  A martinet will recommend command.  The fretful porpentine will say, “Listen to me, people!  We must stick them with quills—it’s the only way!” (p103).
 
Wild guesses become rumors, then “facts” through the miracle of communications.  Communications can also mean that strategies seem useless, or at least ridiculous, by the time they pass through several layers of management.
 
Job change?  Very traumatic and degrading.  Do it only when your current job becomes unbearable.  Not just when you’re tired, but perhaps start preparing a resume when you’re willing to risk financially and in comfort in order to change.  Meanwhile, keep in perspective—you might feel insignificant, but at the same time, you can’t seriously endanger the planet.

We’ve reviewed Wodehouse omnibus editions and

This is adventure 6 of 8 in the series, and, let’s see, Jack, Philip, Dinah and Lucy-Ann have been having adventures for five years, and they started when Jack was fourteen, and he’s still not out of school.  They said in the first book that he was an indifferent student (or, to be politically correct, differently abled, his one-track mind tending toward birds all the time.  But to still be in school at 19 or 20 is a bit much, or perhaps that’s explained because in the late 1940s and early 1950s (when the Adventure series was written), social promotion hadn’t yet become quite the thing.            Well, maybe they’re not all that retarded.  After all, Philip in this book can make travel arrangements, and this time Jack and Phillip and even Bill get roughed up a bit, instead of merely threatened.  Enid Blyton wasn’t, however, I somehow feel, thirsting for

Dr. Sloper is a brilliant surgeon.  His beautiful and intelligent wife dies in childbirth, and their dull daughter has her father’s scorn.  When a dashing and cruel suitor shows up, the doctor, convinced the young man is only after her money, uses his vast resources of intelligence to beguile and threaten her out of her growing affection.  He then finds she’s has some willpower of her own.  The novel shows how society can cruelly, pitilessly misuse people.

Seven years before, Anne Elliott had listened to well-intended but mistaken advice and had broken off an engagement with Captain Wentworth.  Now’s he’s back, and this time Anne lets love conquer all.  Author Jane Austen had also turned down a proposal, and might have been having second thoughts, but soon after writing his novel, she died of tuberculosis.  This is Jane Austen’s last and greatest novel.

If you long for classic literature contrasting modern literature’s emphasis on the bawdy, this is not the book for you.  The book does contain references to those activities perpetuating the human race.  However, the book does have elegant description, uproarious high spirits, and has been described as “epic, comic, tragic” and still true to life.

The story focuses on Tom, born in the mid-1700s of uncertain parentage, but of definite pure heart and warm blood.  In life, he meets virtue, vice and various people richly described, suffers funny misfortune finds fame and fortune.

This Time-Life book pictures South American civilization starting with the Chavin civilizations of 1400-400 BC, then the Paracas, Nazca and Moche cultures of 400 BC to 550 AD, then Tiahuanacans and Hauris of 550-900, then the Chimi of 900-1476, then the Incas, who established overall control, only to be defeated by the Spaniards in 1532.  By 1572, the last Inca resistance had been crushed with its last king’s death.            The Incas divided their society into 10s, 50s, 100s, 500s and 1,000s, and so on, almost the same as Moses divided

Dickens wrote during the height of the industrial revolution, when factories and mines hired children because their hands and bodies were small and they could do detailed work or fit in tiny places more easily than adults.  When children’s hands were chopped off by machinery, factory bosses said it was the children’s fault for carelessness.   Boarding schools were frequently simply stages on which frustrated adults could strike out physically, emotionally and psychologically at children under their so-called care.  Nicholas Nickleby contains one of Dickens’ most vivid characters, headmaster Wackford Squeers.  Along with Nicholas’ unethical uncle, Ralph, the title character goes through the usual heartaches we expect in Dickens, befriends a retarded orphan who had been abandoned at the boarding school, and comes out safe and sound at the end—we also expect that in Dickens.  In Great Expectations, the main character rises in society through writing; in Nicholas Nickleby, through drama.