Controlled Avalanches

I recently ran across this article in Yahoo News about the serious problems that Colorado has been having with avalanches crossing over highways. Several vehicles have even been knocked off the road and carried hundreds of feet. The article starts off with this attention-grabbing statement:

Crews fired artillery shells Sunday to safely trigger avalanches before they could pose a threat to traffic on a mountain highway...

I was struck (sorry, I just had to put it that way) with the cleverness and the directness of this approach. Although I had never heard of it, I figured this idea had been around for awhile. A Google search amply proved that, but I was floored by this claim that there are over 100K explosions per year just for triggering avalanches, in the Western U.S. alone.

Perhaps you half-remember, as I do, various action movies where the heroes or villains deliberately trigger an avalanche by making a loud sound, such as a gunshot. Apparently that is yet another myth, or at least an exaggeration. In almost every case, the avalanche is triggered by a direct force, such as the weight of a person or the concussion of an explosion. According to the page I mentioned above, the preferred triggering technique is for a skier to approach the area from above, light a dynamite stick with a two-minute fuse, heave it down onto the potential avalanche site, and then ski like crazy to get away. If it is too difficult to get to the area from above, the other approach is to fire at the area from a distance with heavy artillery, as was done in Colorado.

I still think it's pretty cheeky to refer to these as 'controlled avalanches', though. It makes it sound like an overly confident military policy of some sort.

Merry Something-Or-Other

I have been wanting to wish all my readers a Merry Christmas for several days, but I've been wondering how I should do it. The PC notion of a completely neutral seasonal greeting still irks me, although I know perfectly well why people feel that is necessary. Of course, I don't want to offend anyone deliberately, or attempt to manifest my allegiance to a Christian American cultural hegemony. Still, it seems obvious to me that, if someone gives me a greeting or blessing or good wish or whatever that is pecular to their particular culture or group, they are doing so with a good intention. If someone is doing something from a good intention, and it doesn't actually harm me, why should I do anything except gratefully receive it? After all, they aren't cursing me or saying bad things about my ancestry.

A number of years ago, my employer sent me to an affiliate company's site in Paris. While there, I was often caught off-guard when people would wish me a pleasant Bon Jour as I passed them in the halls or on the streets. It was the appropriate greeting for them, and they clearly meant it well. Only an Ugly American would have taken offense. Instead, I took some small delight in the greeting and its novelty to me, and did my best to return the greeting (although doubtless my American accent immediately gave me away).

Given all that, let me wish you a very Merry Christmas, and express my hope that you find this day and the whole season a happy time for yourselves and for those close to you.

The Journey Metaphor Doesn't Go Anywhere

Everyone has heard the journey metaphor. Sooner or later, every political or religious leader facing the necessity of taking an unpopular course of action always tells his faithful "Remember, we are all on a journey together, and we have to be ready to act accordingly." Somehow this is supposed to help people tighten their belts, gird up their loins, and brace themselves as they go back out into the storm. Having heard variations of this line all of my life, I'm afraid I now take a rather jaundiced view of it.

There are some problems with the journey metaphor. For example, you may realize that rather than being on a journey, i.e., going from one point to another, in reality you are just going in circles. An example of this came up a couple of months ago when I was talking with a friend about cancer and the impact it has on a family's life. We talked about my bout with multiple myeloma and her father's struggle with some other kind of cancer. I no longer remember exactly what brought it up, but somewhere in the middle of the conversation I remarked "I really hate the journey metaphor", and she vigorously agreed. She mentioned how when her father was first diagnosed, he was in a lot of distress, as were she and the other family members trying to care for him. Some social worker at the hospital, in trying to be helpful, told her "Now, remember, you are all on a journey together ... ". Before the social worker could finish, my friend interrupted her and said "This is no journey! It's a nightmare!" Certainly my own experience with cancer seems very far from being journey-like. Yes, there were constant changes, but they were cyclic, or even chaotic, to the point that it seemed at times I was making progress more on the basis of Brownian motion than because I was actually going anywhere. (Happily, I eventually did start improving, and am now in much better shape.)

Another problem with the journey metaphor is that it encourages the wrong set of priorities. If you are on a journey, then you won't be coming back to the point again. So you have no incentive whatsoever for cleaning up your messes. It's easier just to pack up and move on, leaving your trash behind. Even figuratively this is not a good idea. Unresolved problems left behind can certainly come back and bite you, especially if it turns out that you are not journeying, but going in circles.

A much better metaphor, it would seem to me, is construction. You are trying to build something, whether it is a healthy body or a new organization. With construction, you have to pay attention to the details. You have to make sure that you have the tools and materials you need, and you have to take care of the trash.

A grimmer but more apt metaphor sometimes is war or battle. If you are facing a genuine obstacle, perhaps other people or even the perversity of nature, you might well find yourself conducting metaphorical military operations. However, don't get carried away with this. The war metaphor is way over-used, too.

Nevertheless, if you are facing a problem and are responsible for getting a group of people to deal with it, for heaven's sake, don't tell them they are on a journey. Be honest with them, and tell them that they have a problem, and they have to deal with it, perhaps by fighting something or building something. Going on a journey is just running away.

Another Marketing-Created Term I Hate

I have come to thoroughly detest the term 'user experience', as in 'these new features will enhance the user experience'. I'm sorry, but I don't want to experience your software at all. I may want to use it, but that's all. I'll keep my experiences to myself.