{"id":5205,"date":"2010-11-18T08:10:13","date_gmt":"2010-11-18T08:10:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/scienceblogs.com\/principles\/2010\/11\/18\/links-for-2010-11-18\/"},"modified":"2010-11-18T08:10:13","modified_gmt":"2010-11-18T08:10:13","slug":"links-for-2010-11-18","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/2010\/11\/18\/links-for-2010-11-18\/","title":{"rendered":"Links for 2010-11-18"},"content":{"rendered":"<ul class=\"delicious\">\n<li>\n<div class=\"delicious-link\"><a href=\"http:\/\/suburbdad.blogspot.com\/2010\/11\/mini-me.html\">Confessions of a Community College Dean: Mini-Me<\/a><\/div>\n<div class=\"delicious-extended\">&#8220;Fans of cheesy-bad movies will remember Mini-me as Dr. Evil&#8217;s sidekick\/mascot in the Austin Powers movies. Dr. Evil had his share of great lines (&#8220;the Diet Coke of evil&#8221;), but his true awfulness shone forth in his creation of Mini-Me. Mini-me was exactly how he sounds &#8212; a smaller, but recognizable, version of Dr. Evil himself. <\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;ve seen managers hire Mini-me&#8217;s to help them, and I really have to wonder what they&#8217;re thinking. It&#8217;s much smarter to hire your opposites.<\/p>\n<p>We all have strengths and weaknesses. Mini-me&#8217;s have the same strengths and weaknesses you have. That means that certain tasks will either get ignored or will get done badly, since they fall under everybody&#8217;s weaknesses. Hiring people with similar priorities to yours, but different strengths, makes delegation easier and far more effective. If I can play to my strengths and my staffers can play to theirs, and among us we get most things done, then everybody wins.&#8221;<\/p><\/div>\n<div class=\"delicious-tags\">(tags: <a href=\"http:\/\/www.delicious.com\/orzelc\/academia\">academia<\/a> <a href=\"http:\/\/www.delicious.com\/orzelc\/blogs\">blogs<\/a> <a href=\"http:\/\/www.delicious.com\/orzelc\/dean-dad\">dean-dad<\/a> <a href=\"http:\/\/www.delicious.com\/orzelc\/politics\">politics<\/a> <a href=\"http:\/\/www.delicious.com\/orzelc\/business\">business<\/a>)<\/div>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<div class=\"delicious-link\"><a href=\"http:\/\/slacktivist.typepad.com\/slacktivist\/2010\/11\/tf-born-to-sorrow.html\">slacktivist: TF: Born to sorrow<\/a><\/div>\n<div class=\"delicious-extended\">&#8220;This illustrates Nicolae Carpathia&#8217;s main flaw thus far in the Antichrist business: staffing.<\/p>\n<p>The man is trying to run a global evil empire with a four-person crew consisting of himself, Hattie, Chaim and Steve. That&#8217;s just not going to work. He needs minions. To go global, he&#8217;ll need millions of them. If you trying to become the evil totalitarian ruler of the entire planet, you&#8217;re going to need minions and lackeys and secret police in every corner of every village of the globe. Mind mojo notwithstanding, you just can&#8217;t expect to pull this off with only a press secretary, a botanist and your girlfriend working for you.&#8221;<\/p><\/div>\n<div class=\"delicious-tags\">(tags: <a href=\"http:\/\/www.delicious.com\/orzelc\/books\">books<\/a> <a href=\"http:\/\/www.delicious.com\/orzelc\/blogs\">blogs<\/a> <a href=\"http:\/\/www.delicious.com\/orzelc\/slacktivist\">slacktivist<\/a> <a href=\"http:\/\/www.delicious.com\/orzelc\/religion\">religion<\/a> <a href=\"http:\/\/www.delicious.com\/orzelc\/politics\">politics<\/a> <a href=\"http:\/\/www.delicious.com\/orzelc\/society\">society<\/a> <a href=\"http:\/\/www.delicious.com\/orzelc\/culture\">culture<\/a>)<\/div>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<div class=\"delicious-link\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.filmcritic.com\/features\/2010\/11\/accurate-but-misleading-movie-synopses\/\">John Scalzi &#8211; An Experiment in Accurate But Misleading Movie Descriptions &#8211; Filmcritic.com Feature<\/a><\/div>\n<div class=\"delicious-extended\">&#8220;Blade Runner<br \/>\nPoor product design leads to trouble for a manufacturer and one exasperated policeman. (Note: this is also the description for I, Robot.)&#8221;<\/div>\n<div class=\"delicious-tags\">(tags: <a href=\"http:\/\/www.delicious.com\/orzelc\/sf\">sf<\/a> <a href=\"http:\/\/www.delicious.com\/orzelc\/movies\">movies<\/a> <a href=\"http:\/\/www.delicious.com\/orzelc\/silly\">silly<\/a> <a href=\"http:\/\/www.delicious.com\/orzelc\/culture\">culture<\/a>)<\/div>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<div class=\"delicious-link\"><a href=\"http:\/\/mysteriousmatters.typepad.com\/mysterious_matters_myster\/2010\/11\/for-gods-sake-buy-your-friends-books.html\">Mysterious Matters: Mystery Publishing Demystified: For God&#8217;s Sake, Buy Your Friends&#8217; Books<\/a><\/div>\n<div class=\"delicious-extended\">&#8220;It all started innocently enough. &nbsp;We were having a call with the publicist to discuss a few ideas, and I made an innocuous comment about the first hundred copies sold being the easiest, due to the friends\/family effect. &nbsp;That&#8217;s when she said to me, &#8220;I don&#8217;t tell my friends and family about my books any more. It hurts too much when they don&#8217;t congratulate me, don&#8217;t buy them, and don&#8217;t read them.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>You know, this is not the first time I have heard this. So, I must therefore ask anyone who has had a friend or relative who has a book published, and who has not bought a copy of that person&#8217;s book: &nbsp;WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH YOU?&#8221;<\/p><\/div>\n<div class=\"delicious-tags\">(tags: <a href=\"http:\/\/www.delicious.com\/orzelc\/books\">books<\/a> <a href=\"http:\/\/www.delicious.com\/orzelc\/publishing\">publishing<\/a> <a href=\"http:\/\/www.delicious.com\/orzelc\/blogs\">blogs<\/a> <a href=\"http:\/\/www.delicious.com\/orzelc\/business\">business<\/a> <a href=\"http:\/\/www.delicious.com\/orzelc\/mystery\">mystery<\/a> <a href=\"http:\/\/www.delicious.com\/orzelc\/literature\">literature<\/a> <a href=\"http:\/\/www.delicious.com\/orzelc\/culture\">culture<\/a>)<\/div>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<div class=\"delicious-link\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2010\/11\/17\/science\/space\/17dark.html?_r=1&amp;ref=science\">A Costly Quest for the Dark Heart of the Cosmos &#8211; NYTimes.com<\/a><\/div>\n<div class=\"delicious-extended\">Sitting and being fussed over by technicians in a clean room at the Kennedy Space Center in preparation for a February launching &#8212; and looking for all the world like a giant corrugated rain barrel &#8212; is an eight-ton assemblage of magnets, wires, iron, aluminum, silicon and electronics that is one of the most ambitious and complicated experiments ever to set out for space.<\/p>\n<p>The experiment, if it succeeds, could help NASA take a giant step toward answering the question of what the universe is made of. It could also confer scientific glory on both the International Space Station and a celebrated physicist reaching one last time, literally, for the stars. If it fails, it will validate critics who think it a scandal the experiment was ever approved.<\/p><\/div>\n<div class=\"delicious-tags\">(tags: <a href=\"http:\/\/www.delicious.com\/orzelc\/science\">science<\/a> <a href=\"http:\/\/www.delicious.com\/orzelc\/space\">space<\/a> <a href=\"http:\/\/www.delicious.com\/orzelc\/physics\">physics<\/a> <a href=\"http:\/\/www.delicious.com\/orzelc\/particles\">particles<\/a> <a href=\"http:\/\/www.delicious.com\/orzelc\/nytimes\">nytimes<\/a> <a href=\"http:\/\/www.delicious.com\/orzelc\/overbye\">overbye<\/a> <a href=\"http:\/\/www.delicious.com\/orzelc\/academia\">academia<\/a> <a href=\"http:\/\/www.delicious.com\/orzelc\/funding\">funding<\/a>)<\/div>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Confessions of a Community College Dean: Mini-Me &#8220;Fans of cheesy-bad movies will remember Mini-me as Dr. Evil&#8217;s sidekick\/mascot in the Austin Powers movies. Dr. Evil had his share of great lines (&#8220;the Diet Coke of evil&#8221;), but his true awfulness shone forth in his creation of Mini-Me. Mini-me was exactly how he sounds &#8212; a&hellip; <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/2010\/11\/18\/links-for-2010-11-18\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Links for 2010-11-18<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"1","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[21],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5205","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-links_dump","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5205","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5205"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5205\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5205"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5205"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5205"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}