Some Chicago Boyz know each other from student days at the University of Chicago. Others are Chicago boys in spirit. The blog name is also intended as a good-humored gesture of admiration for distinguished Chicago School economists and fellow travelers.
The Waiting Room DJ was not kind to me – songs on PA while I waited:
Sharp Dressed Man – ZZ Top
Love Rollercoaster – Ohio Players
Waterloo – ABBA
Hold Me – Fleetwood Mac
Baby Blue – Badfinger
Conga – Miami Sound Machine
Mercifully, I only made it halfway through “Conga” and it was my turn.
There have been some articles lately, in Financial Times and The Wall Street Journal for example, concerning efforts to give Artificial Intelligence systems something resembling a simulated sense of humor.
Interesting research, perhaps, but at this juncture I’m less concerned above providing a sense of humor for AI systems than maintaining a sense of humor for human beings. Several professional comedians have commented about the increasing difficulty of doing comedy in an environment of hysterical political correctness. But even more important is the degree to which fear of denunciation and mobbing seems to be affecting personal life and workplace behavior.
Effective organizations, at least in this country, have tended to involve a certain level of easy interaction–including kidding around–among people. What happens when we lose this?
I suspect that the productivity impact, although hard to measure directly, will be quite significant. As will the impact on the happiness and mental health of individual humans.
The Kavanaugh-Ford-Feinstein kerfuffle appears to be this week’s progressive-tantrum du-jour, just as the Kavanaugh hearing itself was of last week, and John McCain’s funeral and epic post-mortem diss of his former running mate was that of the week before. The whole thing a hazily recalled teenage memory of a clumsy grope at a booze-fueled suburban bacchanal reminds me nothing so much as Great Aunt Ada Doom in Cold Comfort Farm and her incessant insistence on having “seen something nasty in the woodshed” which sight so traumatized her that she was able to ride roughshod over the rest of the clan at Cold Comfort for decades. What the ‘something nasty in the woodshed’ was is never actually described in the story but Great Aunt Ada wields her hysterical claim of having suffered from it with the expertise of a master in conducting guided guilt trips through most of the book, until she is talked down from her room by the clever heroine.
Bless our New Age friends!
You need cancer remedies,
They suggest. . . massage.
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It’s the Age of Waze:
Rush hour turns across traffic,
Third World risk taking.
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Windows networking –
Still a huge pain in the ass.
Some things never change.
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Turns out your girlfriend
Ran an asset search on you.
Time to hit the road?
“Of course they make a ton of money, they’re a non profit.”
(Said by a friend who used to work for a nonprofit organization.)