My Parting Gift to the English Department

(1) When Chomsky and Halliday show up, ask them to build a working model or a prototype. If they refuse or if they can't, laugh in their faces or roll your eyes.

(2) When Sylvia Plath and co show up, ask them to write without a formula, If they refuse or if they can't, laugh in their faces.

(3) When fake ESP(English for specific purposes), EAP(English for academic purposes), EPP(English for professional purposes) experts show up, ask them how many hotel staffs, business people, geologists, chemical engineers, doctors, nurses, sailors, insurance people, software engineers have found their stuffs useful. If they don't have a specific number/figure, laugh in their faces.

As this lovely book illustrates, keep this in mind: Sophisticated elaborate ruses can be easily countered with very simple moves. Be simple, be even stupid.

Simplicity : Be Stupid --- 3

Even the book title is arresting: "Piercing the Fog of War: Recognizing Change on the Battlefield: Lessons from Military History, 216 BC Through Today."

Full of case studies. Comprehensive analyses.

As usual, I retain only the key points truly relevant for me.

The book says, the battle field is full of black swans, surprises, what he calls "extraordinary," "aberrations," the unknown-unknowns, etc.

I am nervous about even the known-unknowns. I am so more worried about the unknown-unknowns. What to do amidst these abnormal, totally unexpected aberrations?

The answer echoes my last two posts: Be simple, be stupid.

Aberrational actions do not necessarily aberrational re-actions. We can simply answer them with responses from our personal repertoire, personal experience.

Isn't that delightful?

Pandora's Curse, Pandoru's Dice, False Hopes and True Hopes

Pandora's Curse

This Greek king was immoral, corrupt, sadistic and incompetent. A king from one neighboring country was waging a punitive expedition against him. The king had no chance since his own people were reluctant to fight for him, since his wise ministers had been demoted or worse, and since his war-hero generals had been banished or worse.

Yet, the king was not prepared to give up. He still had Pandora's Box, with all its troubles and its supposedly redeeming Hope!

He still hoped that by invoking national honor and patriotic fervor of hist people to a frenzy, he could still face down this foreign invasion.

False Hope had blinded him to the reality.

Pandoru's Dice

Pandora had four younger sisters : Pandore, Pandori, Pandoro, Pandoru. Maybe their parents were so fond of English vowels A,E,I,O,U.

Now Pandoru was aghast about the king. What was she to do about people hoping against hope?

She could not intervene in human affairs as duex de machina. She could not save others, only their kamma can save them. She was a Buddhist. Yet she could not stand by while innocent people suffer for some misguided king's delusions.

What was she to do? Luckily for humanity, she recalled her grandpa's dice. Originally, the divine dice had six sides with dots numbering 1 to 6 like today's dice but eyes for the dots instead. It was rather large, almost the size of a human head.

Pandoru gave the dice to the king in a dream. When the king woke up in the morning, he saw it at the foot of his bed.

Pandoru was the Goddess of Maths, Marketing and Mass Communications. So she calculated by Probability Theory how many eyes at the least and at the most the king will see. This king was unlucky, he saw the least number of dots and the second least number of sides: 1 dot on one side and 2 dots on the other side.

The first dot/eye showed him his troops perishing in battle, his towns being burned down and him and his family members being sent to torture chambers. He became sober at once.

The second eye showed him another possibility: he was committing suicide after all his wives and children had been killed and captured.

The third eye showed him recalling his banished ministers and generals, taking their advice, pledging to his people to rule fairly after the war, and his people fighting the enemy to a stalemate at great difficulties. He also saw some of his re-instated ministers negotiating a peace treaty with the enemy, giving away some of his kingdom but still keeping him in power. He became hopeful again.
The more he played with the dice, the more possibilities he saw.

Pandoru had brought True Hope to mankind for the first time!

Cao Cao's Assurance

Cao Cao was a famous warlod during the Three Kingdoms Period in Chinese history. At one time, hist troops were camping uneasily, there were alarms throughout the day and the soldiers were too fearful to sleep as the night came.

Cao Cao told them

1. that he knew there were enemy troops nearby far outnumbering them
2. that they had seen him outwitted the enemy many times before in similar situations
3. that they must "put their hearts at peace and have a good night's sleep" for the coming battles

This is the voice of True Hope.

This how Andrew Carnegie added meters to his rather diminutive stature.

This is how I intend to sell my vision, my ideas, my products.