Institutionalized nonspecificity

Or How I try to explain to people what I do (and usually fail)
.....................................................................................

Them: I'm a sales manager at Widget Corporation (or Professor of History at Doomsbury University or in fact, any title where you can tell what the job is). How about you?

Me: (slightly embarassed) Uh..I'm a consultant.

The polite audience nods sagely before letting a slightly confused expression show. Others, they simply move on to the next question.

Them: What kind of consultant?

Me: (knowing that this is not going to make things better) Strategy consultant, actually. You know, we typically work with senior management at companies on large strategic issues.

Everyone realizes at this point that things are clear as mud, and the topic is dying. The more determined audience, in an effort to prove their determination, ask for examples. This is almost always a dead-end because management consultants typically won't give out specific examples.

The more creative audience decides to ask for my job title (or, politely, for a business card). And there, in bold print on the business card, it says...

Them:...Oh, so you are an Associate...

I wince, and wait for it. We both know they are thinking of the Associate at Bloomingdale's who helped them find the nice pashmina for Grandma.

Them:..which means..?

Me: It's kind of like a manager. That means I'm usually in charge of solving one particular problem, and sometimes I also have people working for me.

Them: oh. ok.

Silence. Then we move on.

Further thoughts on climate change

I just had to post this article. It is always a pleasure to encounter clearly articulated, internally consistent thoughts.

Best sentence: "...military intelligence bears the same relationship to intelligence as military music does to music."

Excerpt: " My first heresy says that all the fuss about global warming is grossly exaggerated. Here I am opposing the holy brotherhood of climate model experts and the crowd of deluded citizens who believe the numbers predicted by the computer models. Of course, they say, I have no degree in meteorology and I am therefore not qualified to speak. But I have studied the climate models and I know what they can do. The models solve the equations of fluid dynamics, and they do a very good job of describing the fluid motions of the atmosphere and the oceans. They do a very poor job of describing the clouds, the dust, the chemistry and the biology of fields and farms and forests. They do not begin to describe the real world that we live in. The real world is muddy and messy and full of things that we do not yet understand. It is much easier for a scientist to sit in an air-conditioned building and run computer models, than to put on winter clothes and measure what is really happening outside in the swamps and the clouds. That is why the climate model experts end up believing their own models."