The Persuasive Wizard

Order from Amazon.com, The Persuasive Wizard: How Technical Experts Sell Their Ideas, for the low price of $12.95.  Now available in Kindle e-book for $7.45.  The Persuasive Wizard is an excellent gift for anyone seeking a better job, a raise in their current job, investment funding, or just needing to persuade others.

At a dinner last week, someone asked if I thought there were more earthquakes now than at any time in the past and, if so, what I thought that might imply.  The correlation being that one of the signs of the end times was “earthquakes in different places.”

I first read that passage (Bible, Mark 13:8) when I was a boy.  The venerable King James Version translates (from the original Greek) “earthquakes in divers places.” What was I to think?  Of course, we should look for earthquakes under the ocean, where divers go.

Silly boy, this was just the King’s English saying “diverse places,“ or better, “different or various places.”

So, now at the dinner, I am asked, “Are there more earthquakes now than in the past?”   The problem with the past is that John Milne had not yet invented the seismograph, so Aristotle did not have one and Alexander the Great could not carry one around measuring the seismic activity of every tiny city he slaughtered.  Plus, the world was not as populated so the density of measurements would be questionable.  As often is the case, perhaps I was aiming too high.

I lowered my sights and decided to investigate the seismic activity over the last 41 years.

Earthquakes are classified according to their magnitude.  Charles Richter (1900-1985) developed the Richter Scale in 1935.  In this logarithmic measurement, each whole number represents 10 times the magnitude of the number prior.  Thus, an earthquake of magnitude 6 has ten times the shaking amplitude of an earthquake of magnitude 5.  An earthquake of magnitude 7 has ten times the shaking amplitude of an earthquake of magnitude 6, and so on.  There is no defined upper bound; I guess the earth could bulge enharmonically and wobble out of orbit.

In practical terms, what are the Richter magnitudes?

Richter 5.0–5.9: Major damage to poorly constructed buildings over small regions.

Richter 6.0–6.9: Destructive damage over areas up to about 50 miles radius.

Richter 7:0–7.9: Serious damage over areas 50 -100 miles radius.

Richter 8.0–8.9: Serious damage over areas a hundred miles or so in radius.

Richter 9.0–9.9: Devastating damage over areas as much as a thousand miles in radius.

Richter 10.0-beyond: Never recorded.

The United States Geological Survey (USGS) monitors and records earthquakes over the entire earth.  I took their data and plotted it.  The problem is how far back do you trust the data for the entire earth?  I was unwilling to go back farther than about 1970 because I believed the global recording would not be reliable – sensors too far apart, for example.

It seemed pointless to be concerned about earthquakes less than 5.0 on the Richter scale as these would be minor disturbances and impossible to track globally.

Every year there is globally no more than one (if any) earthquake that measures 8.0-9.9 or greater.  Thus, it would be impossible to tell if those are increasing because so few occur, anyway.

Thus, we should investigate whether the number of earthquakes of Richter magnitude 5.0-8.9 have been increasing since 1970.

Examine the chart where I plot the earthquakes reported globally since 1970 that had a Richter magnitude 7.0-8.9.  From the data, it would be difficult to make any kind of statistical argument that the rate of seismic activity had increased over the last 41 years.  Statistically, the data look flat. 

However, when I plotted the number of earthquakes across the world with Richter magnitude 6.0-6.9, then those clearly have increased in number.

A plot of the earthquakes with Richter magnitude 5.0-5.9 shows the same trend.

Are we on to something?  It looks like the number of earthquakes since 1970 has increased almost two-fold.

The question arises.  Has there been an actual increase in the number of incidents greater than 5.0 on the Richter Scale, or do the data simply show an increase in our coverage and in our ability to detect and record global seismic activity?  Remember, a Richter magnitude of 5.0-7.9 is still pretty local.

I had an idea for how to check this.  It would seem that if the number of earthquakes in the US also shows an increase since 1970, then one has an argument for believing the world-wide data are real and not just an artifact of more sensitive techniques and better global coverage.  After all, from a geographic point of view, statistically, there should be nothing unique about the US land mass.

Thus, I plotted the total number of US earthquakes of Richter magnitude 5.0-9.9 for just the United States

The data for the US clearly show the number of quakes in the US not to be increasing over the last 41 years.

I hate data like this where you have no solid conclusion.  However, the lack of a concomitant increase in US data forces me to conclude that the so-called increase world-wide is just an increase in sensitivity and scope.

The answer?  No, the number of global earthquakes has (probably) not been increasing over the last 41 years.  (I do not certify my data for end-time prognostications.)

The good news is, I will be the social magnet at the next dinner party.  If an innocent dares disclose earthquake curiosity, I am armed and dangerous.

Order The Persuasive Wizard: How Technical Experts Sell Their Ideas to Non-technical Decision Makers at Amazon.com for the low price of $12.95.  For a limited time, my blog readers can receive it at a special discount.  Go to this site, Wizard and enter the code 7PBGMXNC.  The book is an excellent gift for anyone who needs to persuade others.

If you enumerated the 100 greatest ever scientific minds, Aristotle (384-322 BC) would be on your list.  Possibly, he could make the top 25.  For millennia, his genius was practically worshipped.  Ironically, that renown probably held science back for centuries.

Aristotle taught that the speed of a falling object is directly proportional to its weight.  He taught that celestial motion is always circular.  He taught that the world was earth centric.  All three concepts were wrong, but it was unacceptable to challenge Aristotle.  For two millennia his theories held sway.

It would take Nicolaus Copernicus (1493-1543) to establish that the planets were heliocentric.  It would take the experiments of Galileo Galilei (1564-1642) to show that the speed of a falling object was independent of its weight.  It would take no less than Isaac Newton (1643-1727) to invent calculus and show that the orbits of the planets were not circles, but ellipses.  If Aristotle had been a lesser figure, his theories would have toppled earlier.  As it was, Aristotelian bias stretched through centuries.

Science and scientists often are biased and the net result is that innovation and creativity are stymied.

One example is DOS, the Disk Operating System introduced by Bill Gates.  The early dominance and monopoly of DOS retarded computer operating systems by at least a decade.  I do not denigrate the invention of DOS, I simply maintain that its tyrannical dominance hindered what would have been more rapid and creative development.

Cold Fusion is the name given to a (hypothetically existing) low energy nuclear reaction.  In 1989, Stanley Pons and Martin Fleishmann, at that time widely respected electrochemists, announced that they had discovered Cold Fusion.  One or two labs quickly replicated their results.  Then, no lab could replicate their results.  Now, of course, it is almost universally accepted that the Cold Fusion verifications were bogus.  However, the announcement by Pons and Fleishmann pushed some of the labs to actually “replicate” the results (which did not actually happen).  Controversy over the Cold Fusion results persist.

Science caters and leans to established authorities, sometimes without sufficient examination.

Scientific bias pervades areas that are not even science.  For example, in his popular book, A Brief History of Time, Stephen Hawking, an icon of gravitational physics, spends an inordinate portion of the book denying the existence of God.  (Why the passion to insist that atheism and science are brothers?)  Hawking, and many other physicists, seek to ensure that physics is properly biased against any notion of God.  I suspect this bias to be so strong that if an asteroid hit the earth labeled “Made by God in Heaven,” Hawking would champion the search for extraterrestrial beings who, obviously, are attempting to beguile us

Statistics from our most prestigious drug laboratories show that 67% of the results published in national, refereed journals cannot be duplicated or verified.  The Wall Street Journal summarized these findings.  As an example, Amgen, Inc. had 24 researchers working for six months to try to duplicate the findings of a Boston academic group.  It was a waste of time and money.  The message is clear.  Established scientists (and some non-established ones) create immense bias.

Why is there an insidious and pervasive movement to bias science?  In a field that supposedly touts openness, why is it so closed?  What causes this bias?

The first reason is a valid one.  If you open the door to every crazy notion someone dreams up, you spend all your time chasing aliens or ghosts or whatever wild scheme anyone can fathom.

The second reason is not as sound.  Great scientists take a position, often stubbornly, and thereby stymie creative thinking and opposing ideas.  Niels Bohr (1885–1962) was the physics poster child at this.  Bohr was an icon who managed to oppose Albert Einstein on the theory of the light being a quanta, denounce Erwin Schrodinger for his quantum approach using the Hamiltonian, discourage Paul Dirac’s work on the relativistic quantum theory, oppose Wolfgang Pauli’s prediction of the neutrino, and denigrate Richard Feynman’s approach to quantum electrodynamics.  The point is not that he was wrong five out of five times but that he used his elevated position to block the view of others.

The third reason for bias is that researchers like to get positive results.  It creates Ph.D. dissertations and gets them out of graduate school and into a job.  Favorable discoveries are far superior to status quo.  To my knowledge, only Albert Michelson and Edward Morley received a Nobel prize for finding nothing.

The fourth reason is that research most often is funded by organizations that gain from Result A and do not gain from Result B.  Whatever your position on the cause of global warming, the companies that fund the research stand to gain personally, politically, or economically from favorable results.  This may or may not produce incorrect data, but it most assuredly generates bias.

Academic research is almost never doubly blind. Without a doubly blind experiment only the very best of researchers can refrain from unintended bias.

Spurious data often are deleted for the obvious reason that they do not agree with the majority of the data.    This is self-defeating.  It extends the bias.  The correct approach is to identify and quantify the reason for the outliers.

The fifth reason is if you know the answer, (or at least what you think is the answer) you tend to get that answer.  I balance my checkbook that way.  I add it up twice.  If I get the same answer twice, I quit.  I never consider that I may have made the same mistake twice (until I get a note back from the bank).

High school physics students get an A+ for bias.  An example is a typical physics lab experiment measuring the intensity of light as a function of distance.  Now, only about 10% of the class remembers from my lectures that light intensity dissipates in inverse proportion to the square of the distance.  After the laboratory is complete and everyone has their data, it takes about eight minutes before this insight “filters” around the room and all the students know that the data should fit an inverse square law.  Now, in any given class, there will always be at least one group of students that does not even measure the right things.  For example, they do not put the sensor directly in the line of the beam and get who-knows-what for the intensity.  Not to worry.  I rest soundly at night knowing that each lab report will show the data “perfectly” obeying the inverse square law.

Beware of bias.

If you want to be the Persuasive Wizard, you must recognize and eliminate bias in every aspect of your work.  Ensure that you, yourself, do not establish biases and misdirect your team.  Loosen the reins.  Accept and pursue some ideas you do not totally believe it.  Vice versa, do not let your team force biases on you.  Know when to quit and move on.  Thou Shalt Not Beat Dead Horses.  Make decisions.

Understanding and reducing bias is a key ingredient of the Persuasive Wizard.

Order The Persuasive Wizard: How Technical Experts Sell Their Ideas to Non-technical Decision Makers at Amazon.com for the low price of $12.95.  For a limited time, my blog readers can receive it at a special discount.  Go to this site, Wizard and enter the code 7PBGMXNC.  The book is an excellent gift for anyone who needs to persuade others.

To get an automatic email reminder of every new post, send your email address to lgivens@thepersuasivewizard.com.  Make the subject Notify Me. I will not sell or distribute your email information.

I have posted For Sell items on Craigslist a number of times with good success.  I like Craigslist.  However, my last advertisement resulted in three attempted scams.  I give some details here with the hope that not only can you be the persuasive wizard but also the wise wizard.  Here is the sequel and some guidelines that may help you spot the culprits before you commit an error.

The Posting: My actual posting was not important, but two elements of it were.  One, it was a posting to sell camera equipment.  Camera equipment is easily identified and valued worldwide.  It is a commodity easy to turn and conveniently packaged for transportation.  Second, the posted equipment had considerable value, about $4,800 new and selling for $2,500 used.

Quick Response: I observed that all three scam attempts came within as many hours of the posting.  This was not totally unexpected as my posted price was a good buy.  Also, Christmas is just around the corner and I live in a large city.  I have had “immediate” responses on Craigslist before, but those replies were for items I was giving away (literally), not items for which I expected compensation.  Be cautious if responses chase your posting.

No Dickering: In all my life, not once have I sold anything for a substantial price that the buyer did not haggle.  On all three of these scams, the email came back immediately and said, “I want to buy it.  I will pay you the $2,500,” or something similar.  Now, anyone who will immediately pay $2,500 for camera equipment based on four pictures posted on Craigslist is to be eyed askance.  As a matter of course, I recommend that you refuse to sell to anyone who will neither haggle, complain about the price, nor ask for something more.  You need to sell to people who have a life.

Foreign Addresses: In the past, my buyers on Craigslist have been “locals.”  One of my scammers claimed to be from Denver.  His email address ended in “.com.au” so I asked him how a person who lived in Denver could route his mail through a server in Australia.  His reply was that he was an Australian citizen living in Denver.  Really?  He doesn’t like his bits and bytes going through the good ol’ USA?

One of the scammers wanted me to ship the camera directly to his “cousin” in Nigeria for whom the scammer was buying this as a “special gift.”  A 2,500 gift for a cousin?  I definitely wanted an 8×10, 12 Mpixel photo of her.

Language: All three scammers wrote faulty English.  The punctuation was not exactly right, the phrasing awkward.  Now, I realize many responses are sent via hand-held devices and that some use speech recognition, prone to errors.  In addition, I know that not everyone was privileged to make an “A+” in Ms. Dalrymple’s 8^th grade English class, like I did.  Nevertheless, the punctuation was incorrect in odd ways, lots of commas, few periods.  The English phrasing was run-on sentences.

Politeness: My wife noticed that the emails were too polite.  Lots of “please this” and “please that.”  From my firsthand experience, this is characteristic of Indian, Asian, Latino, and Middle Eastern culture.  “I like them myself those countries so please, do not be offended, if I then refer to someone, now as being too polite.”   See what I mean?  Awkward.  Plus, Americans are more direct and not nearly so polite, especially if negotiating the departure of their US dollars.

Brevity: The emails were brief.  None of the scammers would answer a question directly.  They would give an answer to some quasi-related question, but not the question I asked.

Shipping: Interestingly, all three scammers said they would give me $100 (exactly) for shipping.  I do not know how they all simultaneously came up with the same dollar figure except it probably was just a round number that sounded generous.  In the ad, I never stated how much the equipment weighted nor even spoke of shipping because I expected a local to purchase it, examine it firsthand, and take it home.

Xoom and PayPal: All three scammers claimed that I would receive cash.  Now, Craigslist is a legitimate company, but that does not prevent scamming.  Xoom may be legitimate, too; I do not know.  Xoom has a web page, of course.  Legitimate or not, one of my scammers was using it as a third party.  The plot was this.  I was to receive an email from Xoom telling me that the scammer had put  $2,500 + $100 shipping in this Xoom escrow-type account.  Once I received an email from Xoom, I was to ship the merchandise to Nigeria and send the receipt to Xoom.  Then, supposedly, a Xoom truck would back up to my front door and unload $2,600 in cash.  (I wish now I had specified gold Krugerrands.)

Well, I did receive an email from “Xoom” or something posing as Xoom.  The email “looked” like a real website with a number of great photos.  When I traced back the photos, though, I was able to detect that they had been lifted from other, legitimate web sites and pasted onto this site.  Furthermore, the English in this website was still just a little stilted and awkward, repeated words, incorrect punctuation.

Please, don’t think I’m a stickler for grammar.  It was supposedly Thomas Jefferson who claimed he had nothing but distain for a person who could think of but one way to spell a word.  Punctuation is harder.  An editor once told famed William F. Buckley, Jr. that he “had no notion of the proper sense of a comma.”  I have no notion either, but I follow Ms. Dalrymple’s 8th Grade Rule #1 Concerning Commas:  When In Doubt, Leave It Out.

The other two scammers wanted to use PayPal.  PayPal is a legitimate company, of course, and I have used them a number of times.  However, Craigslist warns against using this except from people you know.  I’m not sure how that scam works but my searches through the internet turned up an interesting case.  One seller actually received a real check.  She went to cash it and did receive the money – for a short time.  Unfortunately, it was a stolen check from yet another company.

Those are my observations.  I hope they help you and keep you from being defrauded.

As for me?

Might you be interested in some great camera equipment?  It’s priced to sell at $2,500 … please, sir, or ma’am.

Order The Persuasive Wizard: How Technical Experts Sell Their Ideas to Non-technical Decision Makers at Amazon.com for the low price of $12.95.  For a limited time, my blog readers can receive it at a special discount.  Go to this site, Wizard and enter the code 7PBGMXNC.  The book is an excellent gift for anyone who needs to persuade others.

To get an automatic email reminder of every new post, send your email address to lgivens@thepersuasivewizard.com.  Make the subject Notify Me. I will not sell or distribute your email information.

In the final scene of Gone With the Wind, the chagrined Katie Scarlett O’Hara agonizes over the departure of the dashing Rhett Butler.  Scarlett inwardly affirms she will win him back because, “After all … tomorrow is another day.”

Maybe you wake up that way, feeling every morning brings a new day.  You don’t know why you have that feeling, but you do.  “I wake up every day in a new world,” a friend once bragged to me.

Solomon, that wisest of all men, scribed, “There is nothing new under the sun.”

Perhaps he should have looked farther, as I shall explain.

In the early morning of February 24, 1987, three separate neutrino laboratories reported a “burst” of neutrinos plummeting in from outer space.  One laboratory was in Japan, one in Russia, and one on Mount Blanc, high in the Alps.  (Neutrinos are electrically neutral, weakly interacting elementary particles.  They have the tiniest of mass and can travel through millions upon millions of miles of solid lead without the slightest effect.)  What was the source of those neutrinos?

Four hours later, Las Campanas, Chile, Ian Shelton and Oscar Duhalde, astronomers, were at their telescope observing a dwarf galaxy on the perimeter of the Tarantula Nebula in the Large Magellan Cloud.  They noticed that a star suddenly brightened. What was going on?

Some 14 hours later, New Zealand, astronomer Albert Jones spotted the star taking on increased glow.

That star, now called SN 1987 A, continued to increase in brightness, its luminance greater by the hour.  Astronomers turned their telescopes to watch it, to see what might happen.  Within days, every professional and amateur observer was focused on that star.

By March, ultraviolet emissions were detected by the satellite Astron, at that time the largest ultraviolet satellite telescope.  The light from SN 1987 A was spread across the entire electromagnetic spectrum.

Over the next several months the star continued to increase in intensity, getting brighter and brighter.  By May, the star was visible to the naked eye.  (Because of its position in the sky, it was naked-eye observable only in the southern hemisphere.)

NASA sent radio commands to the satellite, Voyager 2, en route to Jupiter, to turn its cameras upon this epochal event.

It was brightest in May.

Over the next several months, the star began to dim.  It remained visible to the naked eye for about a year.

It faded into obscurity, but blazoned into history.

Not since the year 1604 had such an event been recorded.  Shakespeare and Galileo were both 40 years old and Newton was 38 years to the future.  A star in the constellation Ophiuchus, in the Milky Way galaxy, brightened so much that it became the brightest star in the sky.  For a period of three weeks it was visible in the daytime with the naked eye.

Both those events were supernovas, stars that violently explode.  The brilliant light was produced by the exploding star.  These stars are so massive that it takes years for the explosion to dissipate.  The supernova of 1987 was fascinating, to say the least.  Clearly, it interested every scientific mind in the world.

But, what interests me at the moment is not the brightness of the supernova, nor that only two supernovas have occurred in the last 400 years.  What interests me, today, is that the supernova of 1987 did not even occur in 1987.  No, not by any stretch of the imagination.  It occurred in the year 166,000 B.C.

“What?” you say.

Yes.  In the year 166,000 BC, the star exploded into a supernova.  Bright, intense light was emitted from that explosion.  The light spread throughout the universe.  But, the star is so far from earth that it took 168,000 years for the light to reach us so that we could “see” the explosion.  It was not until 1987 that the first light beams reached us, the beams originally emitted in the year 166,000 BC.  (I have rounded numbers to the nearest thousand.)

New events reach us every day from outer space.  Events that, until today, no one “under the sun” (in our solar system) has seen.  It is no wonder that every day seems new because every day is new.  And it is not just supernovas and great events.  We have seen only two supernovas in the last 400 years.  No, there is more.  Every day, new parts of the universe appear to us that never before were visible, because the light from those distant stars is just now reaching us for the first time in the history of the earth.  Thus, not only are old stars changing, some going supernova, for example, but new stars are forming and appearing.  Some are being formed and some are just so far away that we are seeing them for the first time since the beginning of the Big Bang. New events are on the horizon each moment.

Take heart.  There is, indeed, a new day dawning.

Order The Persuasive Wizard: How Technical Experts Sell Their Ideas to Non-technical Decision Makers at Amazon.com for the low price of $12.95.  For a limited time, my blog readers can receive it at a special discount.  Go to this site, Wizard and enter the code 7PBGMXNC.  The book is an excellent gift for anyone who needs to persuade others.

To get an automatic email reminder of every new post, send your email address to lgivens@thepersuasivewizard.com.  Make the subject Notify Me. I will not sell or distribute your email information.

Among technologists, the value of the administrative assistant often is unnoticed and unappreciated.

Consider top performing technologists.  They are creative, innovative, out-of-the-box thinkers.  ADD is a rite of passage.  “Twiddle” and “Fiddle” are line-items on their time cards.  Giddiness and euphoria are reactions experienced after hours of labor result in an Android application blinking the Christmas tree lights in syncopation with their ringtones – or any other similarly useless application.  Such are the descriptors of the technologists.

Consider typical administrative tasks you might require from technologists, like filling out an expense statement, following up with a customer, writing a report, or attending a meeting.  You should as well ask them to refill the moon craters.

Every organization has a myriad of administrative tasks.  Someone must do the job.  An administrative assistant who supports a manager may also have duties for an entire group.  Trying to balance all the needs and keep everyone happy at the same time is an impossible undertaking.  The duties of the administrative assistant are important and time-consuming, but seldom appreciated because technologists have no idea how long some of these tasks take.  Nor, do they want to learn.

If you desire to become the persuasive wizard, start by expanding the opportunities for your administrative assistant.  Both you and she (or he) will be the better for it.  Administrative assistants want their bosses to look good.  In their minds, if you look good, they look good, and vice versa.  Here are some things to consider.

1.  Define the Job.  Bring out the talents of your assistant.  “Answering the phone and making coffee” are not job descriptions for an assistant.  Ensure the job is challenging.  In the job description, omit vague terms like “help,” or “assist.”  Use meaningful verbs.  Ensure that you can quantitatively measure fulfillment of those tasks.

2.  Give Honest Reviews.  No one improves if you routinely give “superior” for every criteria on the review sheet.  When I was general manager of a medical company, we had a dozen or more administrative assistants, ranging from the office of the vice presidents down to the managers.  Like all employees, some of the administrative assistants were good at their jobs, some were not.  At the end of the year, I tabulated the reviews of all the administrative assistants in my company.  Every one of their bosses had ranked them as “performs far above expectations.”  Well, either the expectations were too low or some bosses were lying.  I required all the managers to change their administrative job descriptions to match the specific tasks and to quantify their evaluations accordingly.

3.  Compensate Appropriately. Make the pay commensurate with the tasks and the responsibilities, not solely with the level of reporting.  Pay for performance.

4.  Avoid Replication. Left to themselves, administrative assistants will take on the personality of their bosses.  Work to ensure that your administrative assistant’s personality complements, not copies, yours.  If you are blunt and factual, hire an assistant skilled in tact.  If you are wishy-washy, seek an assistant who sticks to the plan.  If you can never be on time, employ an assistant who commands punctuality.

5. Require Integrity and Loyalty. Ensure that your assistant is trustworthy and discrete.  Nothing hurts a manager or an organization worse than an employee who continually stirs the pot.  Administrative assistants can alert you to what is happening among the employees,  yet assistants should be thermometers and not generators.

6.  Keep It Business. Ensure that your relationship with all employees is professional and business, not personal.  Ironman and Pepper Pots are Hollywood fabrication.

7.  Show Your Appreciation. Show your appreciation for a job well done.  You should not make the administrative assistant’s job special; you should make every employee’s job special.

Follow these guidelines.  Hire the right assistant, nurture that assistant, and you will find that your advancement in the company will skyrocket.  When the spaceship takes off, ensure that your assistant is onboard with you.

Order The Persuasive Wizard: How Technical Experts Sell Their Ideas to Non-technical Decision Makers at Amazon.com for the low price of $12.95.  My blog readers can receive it at a special discount.  Go to this site, Wizard and enter the code 7PBGMXNC.  The book is an excellent gift for anyone seeking promotion or looking for a job.

To get an automatic email reminder of every new post, send your email address to lgivens@thepersuasivewizard.com.  Make the subject line Notify Me. I will not sell or distribute your email information.

If you are involved with any group of creative individuals, you know that interactions can get complicated in a hurry.  Upon reading in my book about an imbecilic incidence between two otherwise intellectual giants, a reader asked, “But, why would anyone do that?”  I could think of no good reason.  I can expound on the “what,” but the “why” is often translucent.  Why does an ordinary person do the unimaginable?

Take, for instance, Karen, one of our highest paid administrative assistants.  She had been with our company about three years, was divorced and supporting a teenage son.  One day, Karen informed us that she was having a swimming pool built at her house.  For weeks we heard nothing but “swimming pool this,” and “swimming pool that.”  Once the pool was complete, however, she went mute on the subject.  If I inquired and asked how she liked the pool, she would answer briefly, quietly, and then change the subject.

I should have recognized the iceberg approaching.

Three weeks later, we terminated Karen, walked her to the door.  Told her to come pack up her stuff the next morning.  She was forging her timecard to create hours she had not worked.  Apparently, she was unable to pay for the pool and needed extra income.  That stupid solution cost Karen her job, her respect, and her self esteem.  She was an ordinary person who one day decided to do something very unordinary, very damaging.  Why?  I think it too simple just to say she needed money.

Alfred was one of my engineers, highly compensated, working on a highly competitive circuit design.  He worked long hours.  He even took equipment and designs home, working on his own time.  What dedication!  After awhile, though, I noticed that the dedication did not produce a proper amount of progress.  I investigated.  Alfred, it seems, was using the technology and equipment to start his own company.  Why?  Why would a highly paid engineer take this route?

One of our sales staff noticed that our specialty electronics equipment was showing up on eBay.  This, in itself, was not overly disconcerting as the ad said that the equipment was “used.”  Clearly, our customers had a right to resale it if they so chose.  Still, those parts were specialty components.  In a few weeks we saw a particular component on eBay that was part of our to-be-released ensemble.  How can a component be “used” that is not yet even sold?  It reeked of being an insider job so we contacted Jim, the manager in charge of ethics for the group that made the components.  Jim set up an investigation and began to snoop around.  He was unable to identify the culprit, if there was one in the company, but the illicit sales did stop, for awhile.  Then, they started back up again.  Curious, we purchased the eBay product through a third party.  We found the culprit.  It was Jim, the person in charge of ethics.  Go figure.  He was terminated and charges were filed.  Why would someone, highly respected, do such a thing?

Tim Harris was the vice president of Human Resources for my division.  He told me, “Lynwood, it has been my experience that when you see the first signs of unusual human behavior, know that you are only observing the tip of the iceberg.  You will chip away at it and discover massively more than you ever expected.  It will go from bad to worse.”

Now, of course,  I had heard this expression hundreds of times before, the tip of the iceberg. But in that instance, an epiphany occurred.  It was no longer an aphorism.  It was insight.  It was a tool I could use in technology persuasion, not just a saw I could repeat.  I understood that I must observe.  I must discern.  I must take time to examine each situation.  If I found the surface to be veneer, I should get out of the way because the structure will soon be crumbling.

Take Joe Paterno of Penn State.  Today, the Wall Street Journal published numerous emails from Penn State executives in 2005.  They showed that Paterno, had protected athletes for years, hiding events, inflicting trivial reprimands for severe crimes, not requiring athletes to be held to the same standard as other students, apparently not holding them to any standard.

Let the epiphany arise.

When you see disconcerting events begin to unfold, know that more, much more, is at the core, and that it will all be bad.  In the specific case of Paterno, expect more eyebrow-raising revelations.  It may not be Paterno, himself, but, rest assured, there is much more to follow.  Other administrators.  Other schools.  NCAA rules.  We are only at the tip of the iceberg.

As you become the Persuasive Wizard, use this.  Learn to be circumspect and discerning.  Be aware of aberrant behavior, at the first signs.  Be suspicious of absolute fiefdoms and unusual happenings.  Look for those iceberg tips sticking out of the water.  Take action immediately.  Get to the bottom of it.  Do not sit on it.  Perhaps you can steer the ship to safe harbor while there is still time.

Order The Persuasive Wizard: How Technical Experts Sell Their Ideas to Non-technical Decision Makers at Amazon.com for the low price of $12.95.  For a limited time, my blog readers can receive it at a special discount.  Go to this site, Wizard and enter the code 7PBGMXNC.  The book is an excellent gift for anyone who needs to persuade others.

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Throughout my experiences, I have gathered nuggets of value.  Some of these I wrote about in my book.  Others, I discuss in this forum.  Collectively, they constitute elements of Technology Persuasion.  All are aimed at trying to make technologists more effective and more successful. Today’s coin is this:

“If you’re not in the know, you’re not in the go. “

Now, what in the world does that mean?

Well, let’s look at it this way.  Suppose there is a new position opening in the company.  The rumors have been flying around like missiles.  It would be a great advancement for you if they selected you for the position.   All your associates tell you that you are the ideal candidate and they cannot wait to work for you.  It’s Monday, and you understand from the rumor-mill that the president will make his choice by Friday.  No one in management has contacted you, yet.  Will you be selected?

No.

If you’re not in the know, you’re not in the go.

In other words, if you were the selectee, you would already have been interviewed.  You would already have had some hints from management.  Someone in decision-making authority would have been asking you questions, giving you hints, priming you for the event.  You would know something. The fact that you know nothing means you will not be selected.  People who are on the “go” list are, of necessity, on the “know” list.

I have never been to the Oscars and know nothing about the process for announcing the best actress, actor, movie, or director.  However, I have been on this earth long enough to know that such announcements are not surprises.  There are too many things that have to fall into place.  Too many things that must be right.  People vote.  People influence.  Movie clips have to be made.  The “envelopes” must be printed up.  The losers may not know, but the winners certainly do know.

Understand what I am saying.  Bad news can, and usually does, come as a complete surprise, without your knowing ahead of time.  Bad news is a tsunami.  Without the slightest inkling, you might be told that the company is reorganizing and you will be left out in the cold.  You might even be fired without any prior warning.

Because of certain circumstances involving my company and national security, I have been in the position of having to fire a number of persons who were given no prior notice whatsoever.  Was this fair?  No.  Was this reasonable?  Not in the minds of the people who were fired.  Was this really required?  The government and the company thought so.

But good news is never a surprise.  Rest assured that the person who will inherit your group, the person who will be promoted over you does, indeed, know, and not at the last minute.  First of all, the company must ensure that person will accept the job.  The company must validate compensation, staff, and other factors.  The company will want to ensure that the individual to be promoted is the right choice, that he or she will actually accept the position.  The company will want that person to hit the ground running.  The last thing they want is for that person to be dumb as a post and have no idea what to do.  No.  That person is in the know. You are not.  Thus,

…. if you are not in the know, you are not in the go.

Now, you can fret about this or you can be the Persuasive Wizard and use it to advantage.  Let us consider that the company plans a reorganization.  Rumors have been flying around for weeks and no one in the decision making authority chain has talked to you.  Why?  Simple.  You are not part of the mix.  Face it.

But, knowing this, you can begin to think about your strategy.  You can think about how you will respond, for example.  When Friday’s announcement comes, you can plan how you want to react.   You can begin, now, to set your actions in place.  If you are a woman, the last thing you need to do is cry.  If you are a man, the last thing you need to do is sulk and pout.  Man or woman, it is not a time for retreat.  Always be the Persuasive Wizard.

What might be good actions?   What can you do with the knowledge.  What actions will be helpful to you and your career?

That would depend upon the particular circumstances, which would be different for different cases.  The important part is that you know something that none of your peers know (probably).  You will not be selected.  Maybe you want to put some “feelers” out for other jobs that might be available.  Maybe you want to live to fight another day.  Whatever you decide to do, you, at least, are circumspect.  You have one piece of information that is valuable.  You just have to decide how to use it to advantage.

Do not make the mistake of thinking that you might be selected, that you will use this nugget to brace yourself just in case you are not selected.  It does not work that way.  Why do you think I’m writing this?   All the disappointment will still show.  All your reactions will be there.  You are not an actor or actress.  You are the Persuasive Wizard.  Take the coin and recognize its face value.

If you are not in the know, you are not in the go.

Spend the coin to advantage.

Order The Persuasive Wizard: How Technical Experts Sell Their Ideas to Non-technical Decision Makers at Amazon.com for the low price of $12.95.  For a limited time, my blog readers can receive it at a special discount.  Go to this site, Wizard and enter the code 7PBGMXNC.  The book is an excellent gift for anyone who needs to persuade others.

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Joe Paterno, age 84, ended 46-years as the iconic head coach of the Penn State Nittany Lions.  Paterno reached a pinnacle this year by winning more football games than any other coach in the history of college athletics.  His storied accomplishments were tackled short of the goal line by the recent revelation that he failed to act efficaciously regarding the rape of a 10-year old boy by one of his associates and, furthermore, that Paterno continued to support and maintain close affiliation with the rapist.

Solon, age 74, ended a 10-year period of writing the laws and constitutions of ancient Athens and set out on a world voyage.  He was then known as the “wisest man in Athens.”

Everyone knows of the great empires of Babylonia, Persia, Assyria, and Egypt.  Prior to these, the greatest empire was Lydia, in what is now western Turkey.  Circa 560 BC, Croesus, son of Alyattes, was the king of Lydia.  He ruled a world empire that amassed so great a fortune we still refer to someone as being “richer than Croesus.”  At the height of his wealth, Croesus heard that the wise man of Athens, Solon, was to visit him.

Upon the arrival of Solon at Sardis, Croesus orders his servants to “give Solon a tour through the treasuries and point out all the great riches of Croesus.”  This they do for three days.  On the fourth day, during a great feast, Croesus poses the following question to Solon.  “My Athenian guest, word of your wisdom and travels has reached us even here.  We hear you have wandered through much of the world in the search for knowledge, so I really cannot resist asking you now whether you have yet seen anyone who surpasses all others in happiness and prosperity?”  Croesus thinks, of course, that the wise Solon will declare him, Croesus, to be the happiest, most prosperous, and most fortunate man in the entire world.  Solon hesitates not a moment with his response.

“Sire, the happiest, most prosperous, and most fortunate man in the entire world would be Tellus the Athenian!”  Croesus, flabbergasted, questions sharply how this could be so.  Solon elaborates.  “To begin with, Tellus lived in a famous city and had good and noble children, and he saw all his children and grandchildren surviving him.  Besides, he was well off, at least by our standards of living, and he ended his life in the greatest glory, for he came to the aid of the Athenians in a battle against their neighbors in Eleusis and forced them to flee before he died most nobly on the battlefield.  The Athenians buried him at public expense in the very place where he fell and gave him great honors.”

Solon continues to elaborate the good fortune of Tellus when Croesus is spurred to interrupt, “Well, then, who is the second most happy and fortunate man in the entire world?”  To which Solon interjects, with no pause whatsoever,

“Why, sire, that would be Cleobis and Biton.”

“Who?  Why?  What? Croesus explodes.

Solon explains.  “These young men were Argives who had enough resources to live on and, in addition, were physically fit, as is shown by the fact that they both won prizes at athletic contests.  Furthermore, the Argives were giving a festival to Hera, the wife of Zeus.  The mother of Cleobis and Biton was of ill health and required to be taken to the shrine in a wagon.  As it turned out, the oxen were still far away in the fields and could not be brought in.  With time running out, her sons, Cleobis and Biton, put themselves under the yoke and, while the mother rode, ran, pulling the cart the five miles to the shrine.  Everyone there saw this feat: the men showered praises on the strength of these athletes and the women commended their mother for being blessed with such good sons.  The gods looked so favorably on this that when the two sons fell asleep in the sanctuary, they never awoke again.  This was the end of their lives.  The Argives made statues of them and gave dedications to them at Delphi.  No man could have greater fortune.”

Well, at this point, Croisus is thoroughly exasperated and explodes, “Solon, seeing all my wealth, how can you say such nonsense?”

The undaunted Solon explains.  “Croesus, during a man’s life he will see and experience many things.  Every day of his life brings with it something unlike any other day.  A great many things happen to a man, not of his own doings, but by chance.  Many of these things are bad.  Some good.  You appear to be very wealthy and to rule over many people, but I cannot yet tell you the answer you asked for until I learn how you have ended your life.  You see, the man who is very wealthy is no more happy and prosperous than the man who has only enough to live from day to day, unless that wealthy man retains his wealth and good fortune right up until the day he dies.  If a man lives his life well and ends it well, then he, alone, deserves to be called happy and prosperous.  But before he dies, refrain from judging him.”

As you might guess, Croesus dismissed Solon, thinking him worthless and extremely ignorant for overlooking the obvious magnificence of Croesus.

During the next five years, the oldest son of Croesus is killed in a hunting accident, apparently the unwitting fault of the father.  Croesus is grief-stricken for two years.  Following this, Croesus sends to the oracle at Delphi asking if he should attack the Persians.  The oracle responds, “If you wage war against the Persians, a great empire will be destroyed.”

Croesus leads the largest army in the world against the second largest army in the world.  The Persians defeat the Lydians.  Croesus tries to escape.  The only remaining son of Croesus, a mute, unknowingly betrays his father to the Persians.  A great empire is, indeed, destroyed, Lydia.

Now, we come to the point of our story, a strong point, indeed.  As a technologist, there are many things in your experiences that have the potential to trip you up, things that can negate all the good you have done, tackle you short of your goal.  Decisions will arise that can tear down your credibility, destroy your integrity, bring down your kingdom, so to speak.

Be cautious and on guard.  Every day brings different opportunities and new exposures.  Some are life changing.  Be circumspect.  Choose wisely.  If you make a mistake and subsequently ignore it, it will most assuredly come back to haunt you, probably at the peak of your career, as with Joe Paterno.  Correct your mistakes while you can.

Sustain and maintain your integrity, especially as you get higher and higher on the ladder of responsibility.  Do not let your increasing maturity and status in life allure you into being complacent.  Stay alert.

If you do these things, you will find yourself a master at technology persuasion.  Solon would deem that you lived and died the most fortunate of men, the most fortunate of women.

Herodotus (484-425 BC) compiled the world’s first history, a treatise he titled the “Inquiries.”  It is from the “Inquiries,” translated by Andrea L. Purvis, that I have paraphrased.

Order The Persuasive Wizard: How Technical Experts Sell Their Ideas to Non-technical Decision Makers at Amazon.com for the low price of $12.95.  My blog readers can receive it at a special discount.  Go to this site, Wizard and enter the code 7PBGMXNC.  The book is an excellent gift for learning persuasion – for any audience.

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Sometime around 1990, I was driving my rental car up the mountain road from Oakland, California to the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL).  This was my first visit on a secret collaboration with LLNL.  Awed by the landscape, I was amazed that anyone could ever visit this beautiful area and not fall in love with it.  Although I was  pressed for time, I slowed to admire the verdant mountain slopes ablaze with yellow and red spring wildflowers and an early morning sunrise.  Then, over the next hill, the skyline belched and barfed the ugliest sight I had yet beheld.  I found that instead of scenery, a cancer was eating the vital organs.  The skyline was blotched with ugly.  I no longer wished to stay.  My desire was to leave and never return.  Humans had destroyed the beauty of nature and of California.  For the next visit to LLNL, I sent one of my subordinates.  The memory has lingered, lo, these twenty years hence.

A few years ago, we were motoring through Spain, weaving down from the glorious Seville to the coastal Malaga and threading the Mediterranean coastline.  We watched the locals parasail in the Alboran Sea, drifting as high in the air as I have even known, and then droping down so low as to seemingly ski across the frothing waves and spraying foam.  We took time to frolic along the beach, change into dry clothes, and drive back up into the mountains toward the spectacular Granada.  Around the hill I turned and there they were, again.  The zombies.  The ugly monsters were ravaging the Iberian coastline, now, poking out our eyes so that we could no longer enjoy our mountain view of the parasails, or the sky, or God.

Three months ago, we flew to Seattle, rented a car and drove the spectacular ten hours to Glacier National Park.  (There is no finer park in the entire US than Glacier).  On the way, across the interim range, there the scabs appeared again, blocking our vision, destroying our very image of nature, repose, and expanse.  I moaned a verse better sung by Willie Nelson and Lacy Dalton,

This Land that I travel, Once fashion with beauty,

Now stands with scars on her face.

And the wide open spaces are closing in quickly

From the ways of the whole human race.

Yesterday, I found myself traveling across Texas from Dallas, northwest on US 287.  This four-lane divided highway wanders up to the Red River and then parallels it for a distance of more than 100 miles before it splays into what is called West Texas.  Day by day, flatbed tractor trailers rumble along this thoroughfare, each carrying a giant dagger, a turbine blade 90 – 120 ft. in length.  The trucks are headed out to the expansive west Texas, some to the panhandle region, and some beyond.  Three of these blades will be joined to a hub.  The tri-spoked hub will be mounted on a 200 foot pole that will permit the entire monstrosity to stretch 325 feet into the air, rotating, destroying any semblance of horizon.  These mechanical egrets stand and gawk, each generating about a 1 megawatt of electricity.

The term, “West Texas,” once conjured visions of wide open spaces.  Once conjured.

The largest wind farm in the US (rated by power output) is the Roscoe (Texas) Wind Farm in which over 400 land owners agreed to construct 627 wind turbines and share in the royalties.  These three-armed beanpole cobras extend across four counties and 100,000 acres, an area considerably larger than Manhattan.  All this to generate 780 MW of electricity.

If you want something uglier, try the Altamont Pass Wind Farm in Central California where thousands of much smaller turbines litter a much prettier landscape like so many Coca-Cola cans thrown out the car.  Altamont Pass “boasts” 4,930 of these ugly flailing creatures.  These certainly give a squalid context to “meet me at the pass.”  More like, “Meet me at the eyesore.”

Thirty-seven states have wind farms.  Drugged by political correctness and intoxicated with anti-carbon propaganda, the US is cluttered with these mistakes.  And what do you get for it?  If you took all the wind power in the entire US and looked at the proportion of power it delivers on an annual basis, all the wind turbines in the US provide us with the equivalent of only 6 days of electricity the entire year, 1.6% of the total US energy use. (Source: Energy Institute of The University of Texas).  The “cost” in terms of ruining our landscape is far, far too great for so miniscule a payoff.

We have cut off our face to spite our nose.

There are much cheaper and better (less carboniferous) means of providing electricity, ways that do not violate every spot of open ground.  Aesthetics should be part of our concern, also.

My prediction is that in less than 25-years we will wake up, come out of our intoxication and view these wind monstrosities with the same distain that we now view the mine tailings in Colorado or the open pit coal dredges of Pennsylvania.  In 25-years, the Greenpeace sheep, the people campaigning to erect more, now, will be campaigning then to tear them all down.  They will use taxpayer dollars, of course, and probably want to recycle every windmill.  Why not avoid this problem, now?  Windmills are ugly personified.

It does not matter with what ferocity the green-politico-eco-liberal winds currently blow, it is not worth the destruction of our landscape.

Order The Persuasive Wizard: How Technical Experts Sell Their Ideas to Non-technical Decision Makers at Amazon.com for the low price of $12.95.  For a limited time, my blog readers can receive it at a special discount.  Go to this site, Wizard and enter the code 7PBGMXNC.  The book is an excellent gift for anyone who needs to persuade others.

To get an automatic email reminder of every new post, send your email address to lgivens@thepersuasivewizard.com.  Make the subject Notify Me. I will not sell or distribute your email information.

Ask total strangers to name a physicist.  Their response, if any, will be Albert Einstein.  (One can only hope that Morgan Freeman‘s name is not suggested.)  Require a woman’s name and the reply can only be, “Marie Curie,”  the only name any will know.

Madame Curie can teach you a great deal about technology persuasion, as will soon be revealed.

Manya Sklodovska, as she was called by her family, was born in Warsaw, November 7, 1867.  Publicity concerning this, her 144^th birthday, has, unfortunately, descended to the customary 21^st century pretentions, a graphic biography in which art displaces science, and a Google Doodle that spells her name with left-over Halloween pumpkins.  Regretfully, we have drained the intellectual pool of any physics, chemistry, or mathematics interest.

The real Marie Curie was an ocean.

She was born the fourth girl and the fifth child of a moderately successful Polish headmaster.  In a Poland oppressed and suffocated by Russian rulers, a Russian-appointed bureaucrat soon replaced her father as director of the school.  When Marie was eight years old, a sister died of typhus, brought to the house by borders her father had taken in to raise money for her mother’s long bout with tuberculosis.  That bout ended two years later.  Marie was ten.

After finishing what we would term High School, Marie made a pact with her sister, Bronya.  Since they were too poor for both of them to go to college, simultaneously, Marie would work as a governess (a lowly position) and send money to Bronya so that Bronya could go to college in Paris.  To the credit of both young women, after Bronya graduated, she reciprocated and supported Marie.  Manya Sklodovska first enrolled in Physics, Mathematics, and Chemistry at the Sorbonne (University of Paris) at the age of 24.  It was 1891.

Once set in motion, her fame rocketed skyward.  She shared the 1903 Nobel Prize in Physics with husband, Pierre, and also with famed physicist Henri Becquerel.  She won the 1911 Nobel Prize in Chemistry outright.  By the time she died, July 6, 1934, she had received no less that 129 (I counted them) awards of national merit.  I think it cheapens her accomplishments to add that Madame Curie was the “first woman” to do this or that.  She was the first person to do a lot of things.  Period.  Surely, the generation of the 21^st century is beyond that need.

At the age of 66 years, Marie Curie died of leukemia, undoubtedly produced by radiation exposure.  She was within days of publishing a scientific book describing her life’s work, Radioactivity.  It was published posthumously with the help of her students.  Four years after Marie’s death, her daughter, Eve, wrote Marie’s biography, Madame Curie. The memories were fresh and the acquaintances were still alive.  Eve Curie’s biography of her mother cries out for modern readers.  As Eve stated in her introduction, “I have not related a single anecdote of which I am not sure.  I have not deformed a single essential phrase or so much as invented the color of a dress.  The facts are as stated; the quoted words were actually pronounced.” (Eve Curie Labouisse lived to be 102 years old and died in 2007.)

Others have, and will, relate what Marie Curie accomplished.  I feel no need to repeat that.  This is an article on technology persuasion.  I think my readers are best served by learning how Marie Curie accomplished what she did.

First, let’s discuss her innate assets.  She was born to a scientific father who taught his children science, history, music, poetry, and other subjects of value.  This cohesive and loving family spent considerable time in study and serious pursuits.  Manya Sklodovska was born with a phenomenal intellect and a great deal of beauty.

Second, let’s talk about her liabilities.  She was poor.  She was shy.  She was a Pole downtrodden by the Russians.  Her sister and mother died when she was young.  She had to learn four languages to be successful (Polish, Russian, English, and French).  She worked her way through college and almost starved to death.  I could add that she was a woman, but her biography makes far, far less of that than we do.

Now, how about you?  How do you compare with Marie Curie?  Your assets and your liabilities.  It is highly unlikely that you have the genius of intellect or carry so comely a stature as did Madame Curie.  But, regardless of your genetic endowments, what Marie did with those assets can be done by anyone with any assets.  If you make her habits, your habits, success in technology is assured.  Absolutely assured.  I summarize briefly, here.

Integrity. Marie Curie kept her word with her sister, kept her word with her students, kept her word with her father, kept her word with everyone.  She could be trusted over the long haul.  She would stick to her word even when it meant personal sacrifice and injury.  She was undivided in spirit.  She was undivided in deed.  She possessed integrity.

Hard Working. I cannot count how many geniuses I have had working for me who were lazy.  Technologists with far less intellectual acumen rose to far greater successes than did those geniuses.  It’s the Tortoise and the Hare.  All the ability in the work cannot compete with someone who is willing to work harder, longer, and more intensely to put their lesser capabilities into practice.  No other asset will serve as well as working hard.  Thomas Edison (1847-1931) was a strong advocate of this principle.  In Marie Curie’s own words, “I acquired the habit of independent work.” Again, when referring to her free time, “When I feel myself quite unable to read with profit, I work problems of algebra or trigonometry, which allow no lapses of attention and get me back into the right road.”

Perseverance Against All Obstacles. Pierre Curie, her husband, was killed by a horse-drawn vehicle in 1906.  Marie, 38-years old, was left with two daughters to raise on her own.  She remarked, “First principle: never to let one’s self be beaten down by persons or by events.” I, myself, tell engineers to throw away their rear-view mirrors.  Don’t even think about going backwards.  Retreat is not an option.  Smash your rear-view mirror.  Where you have been and what you have done does not matter.  What does matter is where you are going and how you plan to get there.

Absorption. Eve tells the story that Marie, still a young girl, was at home with her four siblings, all supposedly studying at the dining table.  The brothers and sisters took all the chairs and made a bridge behind her.  The makeshift structure fell just as they were getting it over the top of Marie’s head.  Only when it landed on her was Marie even conscious of what they were doing.  She learned to concentrate and shut everything else out.  As a college student, she moved out of her sister’s apartment because it was too noisy.  She chose an apartment, alone, where she could concentrate, even though she had to starve herself to afford it.  She forced herself to focus and put everything in place to make it happen. Every successful technologist I ever knew had this ability to utterly concentrate and focus, to be totally absorbed in the task at hand.

Stubborn. While this may not be a virtue at all times and in all circumstances, it is required.  You will never get anywhere if you do not believe in what you are doing.  The wise person does learn to change his mind, of course, but most people fail, not because they are unwilling to change their minds, but because they are unwilling to make up their mind and to stick to their made-up minds.

There is more, of course, but I must shorten an already long introduction and continue another day.  Until then, celebrate Madame Curie’s birthday by making her principles your principles.