DEBRIS.COMgood for a laugh, or possibly an aneurysm

Nature magazine:

In the build-up to the US presidential election, science is making a sizeable impact on the political agenda. But what will another four years of George W. Bush mean for science, compared with a term under Democratic challenger John Kerry?

To find out, Nature has asked the two candidates 15 questions about their science policies.

• Introduction and analysis
• The interactive version (in case it doesn’t appear inline at the link above)
• PDF version

How fast can you swim in syrup?

The dangers of playing bass in a drum and bass duo (Toast Machine).

Florida hurricanes are a message from God?

EnviroGlas is a terrazzo flooring made from recycled bottles.

Tool’s Ænima was recorded live, with no clicktrack?!

(Thanks to the usual suspects all the great linkage. You surf the web, finding cool stories, so I can concentrate on my job. Hey, wait a second…!)

The Goal is a business novel. It’s interesting enough to read after work, and valuable enough that you’ll be a little smarter when you return to work the next morning.

I would not normally expect a book written 20 years ago about a manufacturing plant to have much to say about modern-day information technology. But there are valuable lessons here about process management, meaning literally how to manage any process. They’re presented as lessons about how to run a manufacturing plant, but they’re really lessons about how to think.

The book is a novel, although you shouldn’t read it for tips on character development or crafty plot work. The format is a slave to the mission, or dare I say the goal? The characters arrive at answers after false starts and detours, enabling the reader to experience the analysis that would not be present in a one-page summary of “Eli Goldratt’s Ideas About Process Management.”

This is, in fact, one of the lessons of the book: learning is a result of doing, not of being told.

Even so, I’ll share one of the key concepts of the “Theory of Constraints,” an idea introduced here that apparently revolutionized the manufacturing world. Quoting from Goldratt’s consulting website: “just as the strength of a chain is dictated by its weakest link, the performance of any value-chain is dictated by its constraint.” If you can find the worst-performing section of any process, or code, or team, then you’ve found the limiting factor on the system’s overall throughput. Fix that bottleneck and you will have improved the system.

The main character in the book arrives at this conclusion in a long passage describing a hike with a group of Boy Scouts. I won’t recount the story here, because it’s the best part of the book — essentially, the main character proves the Theory of Constraints by analysing hikers on a trail. It’s far removed from running a manufacturing plant, or from managing a software project, or from being productive with your free time for that matter, but Goldratt’s ideas still apply.

I recommend The Goal. I learned from it, and I can imagine rereading it in a few years as a refresher course on clear thinking.

Patronize these links, man:

• Amazon (paperback)

I’ve only ever bought one car from a dealership. They played me like an AM radio. I was a novice and they knew it.

At one point, we’d been kept waiting for 15 minutes while the salesman supposedly convinced his manager to allow us to buy the car for such an amazingly low price. I got impatient and walked outside, onto the lot. Through a window I could see into the manager’s office. Our salesman and a couple more who looked just like him, jewelry and white Oxfords and ties, were sitting around drinking coffee and telling jokes and obviously not poring over our deal. Our salesman saw me, gulped, grab his paperwork and ran out to catch me. He thought I was leaving, and if I had it to do over, I would have kept moving toward my car. Every step would have been worth $250.

I’m not used to playing games when I don’t know the rules. Next time I buy a new car, I’ll be prepared, for I’ve just read the “cheats” guide to the car-sales industry.

Edmunds.com hired a journalist to get a job at a dealership and write about the dirty tricks employed therein. You’ve inferred many of these, but seeing them in print will likely still surprise you.

Well worth your lunch hour: Confessions of a Car Salesman