straydog
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Re: B-School prof laments American firms' 'suicidal' outsourcing
On Thu, 30 Dec 2004, R. Martin wrote:
> Date: Thu, 30 Dec 2004 03:24:03 GMT
> From: R. Martin <russell.martin@wdn.com>
> Newsgroups: sci.research.careers
> Subject: Re: B-School prof laments American firms' 'suicidal' outsourcing
>
> afia boy wrote:
>>
>> BMJ wrote:
>>
>>> One of the first things I learned early in my career is that a gram
>> of
>>> image is worth a kilo of performance.
>>
>> That's it. In today's western world and especially in America the
>> stronghold of it, people became used to the easy and comfortable life.
>> They are perfectly adjusted to living in the current version of today's
>> world, but they do not have the moral strength to survive should the
>> world change. (Western) people rather die than adjust to a different
>> world. They havve no skills of survival in a physically challenging
>> world. I am sorry for the people who died in the last Sunday's tsunami
>> in South and South-East Asia (70 thousand by the last news), but they
>> are an example. When tsunami came, first it drew water out of the
>> shore. Instead of recognising it for the first signs of tsunami, they
>> rejoyced that they can collect water animals out of the water which
>> suddenly became shallow. For quite a part of them, the life was easy,
>> and it bring even more life pleasures -- the opportunity to collect
>> water animals from the drained shores. They had no living memory of
>> tsunami, and besides, no bad tsunami had not happened to them before.
>> They learned it the hard way, and paid by their lives for their
>> ignorance.
>
> While your point about western people not being able to survive under
> more primitive conditions is largely true I suspect, it would be lack
> of knowledge, tools, and enough land to support the population that
> would kill them if civilization's infrastructure collapsed, not lack
> of moral strength. OTOH, maybe our new leaders would be homeless
> people who'd learned how to survive.
>
> As for people not knowing that the extreme receding of the sea was a
> sign of a tsunami, as you noted few people have ever experienced one
> and so would not have first hand knowledge. You can bet those who
> survived will know if they encounter it again. Otherwise, one might
> chalk it up to poor science education, but how many scientists know
> that? I only know because I saw a special on TV a few years ago about
> tsunamis with a survivor's account. I never had in in a course.
Well, I'm about 12+ miles from the Atlantic Ocean and there was some kind
of strong 'noreaster'-type storm around here back about 40-50 years ago
and it _did_ push the ocean inland a good 5-10 miles in lots of places
around here (Lewes-Rehoboth beaches) and left standing waters in the
several feet high depths!!!! This was all printed up in a newspaper
article I saved somewhere just to let myself remind myself that freak
things can happen and what would I do just in case? Hurricanes bother me,
too, to think about.
>> Same might well happen with the people of the US. They will
>> give away their technical industries, and become the nation of service
>> industry. Then, one day, they will have to defend their land agains
>> either enemies or natural disasters, and they won't be able to do that.
>> Most of the Americans will perish. It might be possible that an a-bomb
>> will be detonated by the terrorists in the US, and much more than 70
>> thousand people will die. But at the moment, people can continue to
>> live and enjoy in delusions, all the while building their delusional
>> virtual world where what kind of image of yourself you built is more
>> important than youur survivability skills in the harsh physical world.
>> One might get envious to Art Sowers who is not going to see most of it.
>> \|/.
>
> Well, it won't be because no one warned us, including some of us.
We've also got that asteroid.....
Weird freak EMP-like cosmic ray pulse after some black hole goes
supernova or something hitherto unknown? After 90% of our economy -- for
example -- is switched over to the internet and computers, this EMP pulse
comes out of outer space and frys all of the transistor elements in the
CPUs and totally mucks up our economy (can't buy anything because your
"smart card" is a pile of melted silicon? and the store's computer is a
pile of melted silicon?) Who runs the new economy? The guys with the guns,
its obvious, right?
> Cheers,
Cheers? Are you kidding?
Volcanos? Earthquakes? Asteroids? Terrorists get an a-bomb?
> Russell
> --
> All too often the study of data requires care.
>
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