It sometimes crosses my mind that the Algonquin Round Table of our age is to be found at the Nielsen-Haydens': Electrolite: Reality-based and ready to rumble and Making Light: Reality-based language, fraud, folly, truth, history, and knitting. Et cetera.
Right now they are making up *real* motivational posters--posters to motivate the boss that is:
Making Light: Motivation and doubt: The point of motivational posters isn't to give people good advice about business management; it's to flatter the egos of the executives who buy them. Here are some motivational posters you'll never see:
1. Photo: A wilderness EMT/rescue operation on the slopes of Mt. Washington. Slogan: Remember: In a crisis, it's the people below you who are going to save your sorry ass.
2. Photo: An artful, luminous photo of several pages of a legal document that have been accordion-pleated and partially shredded by a copier jam. Slogan: The copier will keep breaking down as long as the person whose job it is to estimate the necessary copying capacity doesn't talk to the people whose job it is to make the copies.
3. Photo: An earnest young employee with several three-ring binders and a sheaf of printouts spread out around him, working in front of a computer screen far into the night. Slogan: If you aren't training your staff to eventually take over your job, you aren't getting nearly as much work out of them as you might.
4. Photo: Closeup of a flock of ducks taking off from the surface of a lake. Slogan: Don't expect your best people to stick around for the next round of firings.
And lapsing into Anglo-Saxon, quoting verse from "The Battle of Maldon":
Posted by DeLong at October 19, 2004 09:50 PM | TrackBackMaking Light: Motivation and doubt: ða se eorl ongan for his ofermode alyfan landes to fela laþere ðeode...
Hige sceal þe heardra, heorte þe cenre,
mod sceal þe mare þe ure maegen lytlað.
With regard to motivation and doubt:
http://www.demotivators.com/
Posted by: abc at October 19, 2004 10:21 PMOne nitpick only. There is no hyphen in the Nielsen Hayden Empire. (That sounds like a motivational poster in itself. )
Posted by: Andrew Brown at October 20, 2004 12:21 AMMan, you have been in a literary mood.
That Anglo-Saxon fragment means
"Will shall be the sterner, heart the bolder, spirit the greater as our strength lessens."
- translated by JRR Tolkein
Somehow in a business context that seems to suggest a failing small business. This is not the heroic age.
Posted by: No Preference at October 20, 2004 04:55 AMIt was quoted in reference to the fate of people who have to clean up after someone in power turns out to be member of something other than the reality-based community.
Which is what's going on in the original, and what's going on now, and, you know, there isn't all that much actual difference between the stupidity involved at the top in either case.
Posted by: Graydon at October 20, 2004 05:16 AMAs in the original, the key word is 'ofermod' (I've removed the inflection). Unfortunately, this word is found nowhere else in the Anglo-Saxon canon, so we can only approximate its meaning. Usually (since Tolkien anyway) it's translated as 'excessive pride', or 'arrogance', since the poet is critical of Byrhtnoth. But arguably it just means 'strong spirit', or something like that, given the usage of 'ofer' as a prefix elsewhere in the literature. Regardless, he makes a bad decision and his men are slaughtered. As Graydon says, the point is that other people suffered for one man's failings as a leader.
Posted by: Ginger Yellow at October 20, 2004 09:49 AMGinger --
I believe it *is* found one other place, describing the cause of Satan's fall, but I don't have the source I think mentions that to hand.
And while, yeah, 'great in spirit' is a plausible meaning, these are the people whose notions of immaterial things were not sharply split into good and bad. Consider 'wod', 'inspiration', which got applied to both the poetic/creative kind of inspiration and the unfettered frenzy of the berserk.
Posted by: Graydon at October 21, 2004 05:58 AM