Long Term Memories

Saturday, September 24, 2005

FHWA Memory # 33 The Report on Reports

This may be my favorite memory of all time. One day, the head of our office was in the HQ building getting some face time with the chief of the agency. Our boss (Mr. M) complained about the number of reports that had to be done. The chief (Mr. B) said, "Well how many are there?" Mr. M didn't know so when he came back to Illinois he assigned our section (and our section assigned me) to compile the information. It was quickly called the "Report on Reports". After compilation, Mr. M sent it in to Mr. B with a note refering to the conversation.

A few months later, Mr. M went to HQ again. He repeated his complaint. Mr. B said, "we solved that problem so you don't have to do as many." Mr. M came back to Illinois and we compiled a report about the changes made to the required reporting. It was dubbed the "Report on the Report on Reports". It turned out that some reporting requirements had been decreased but others had increased and the net was pretty close to zero (there was a decrease but it was less than 1%). I think Mr. M sent this in but I'm not sure he did.

About a year later Mr. M went to HQ again. I don't know what happened but when he came back we did a third iteration which was called "The second annual report on the report on reports" by some and "The report on the report on the report on reports" by others and "Report to the 4th" by others.

This was the last iteration.

¶ 11:16 PM

Baseball memory with my dad

I was at a Washington National's game last week. I remember that in the early 60s when I was watching games with my dad; he constantly suggested that the Senator batters shouldn't try to hit home runs but instead try to hit soft line drives just out of the reach of the 1st or 3rd baseman.

This seems easy but it turns out to be almost impossibly difficult. The pitch comes to the plate pretty fast (try it at one of those batting machines) and you have to swing hard to hit it. Dad never batted much so he didn't get it. ¶ 10:11 PM

Saturday, September 10, 2005

A Prophesy Memory

Today I remembered something that happened in fall of 1971. It was at the Smiling Bear Cooperative. I was in a room with a Marxist and a Trotskyist. This was num of the conversation:

Marxist: How can you say Trotsky was a great prophet if none of his predictions have come true.

Trotskyist: Well. That shows why he is such a great prophet.

Marxist: How's that?

Trotskyist: Because none of his prophesies have come true yet.

I thought of this as we were discussing the part of Devarim where Moses notes the 'does the prophesy come true' test.
¶ 5:59 PM