Recently, I was reminded of the above saying as I had a choice in my response: angry, cynical, or playing dumb. That choice also relates to my blog Choose your battles wisely. Moreover, a 2013 article in Foreign Policy argued that "There are many more ways to be a fool than there are to be a genius". Perhaps, I would have used vinegar if there had been a time...
In Dutch we have a saying: "Kan Niet is een broertje van Mag Niet en ligt op het kerkhof naast Wil Niet" (eg, Ensie). This translates like: 'I cannot' is the brother of 'I may not' and lies in the graveyard next to 'I don't want to'. All three excuses are considered platitudes in both languages. An obvious reply would be: just do it! We often say that we cannot do...
There's a Dutch saying that apparently has no English equivalent: "de vraag stellen is hem beantwoorden". In English, this would translate like: "asking a question is answering it". Many people will have once experienced this strange phenomenon. I think, feel and believe it only applies to asking the right question. A wrong question seldom gives a right...
A recent Telegraph Technology Intelligence newsletter featured an interesting comment: "The last decade has seen a surge in discussions of UBI, driven in no small part by anxious tech barons wondering what the rest of humanity will do once they’ve turned everything into an app. This industry always prefers to ask for forgiveness rather than permission, and so...
In my blog of last Thursday, I presented the following saying: "If you can’t convince them, confuse them. If you can’t confuse them, scare them". The article below provides an excellent illustration of the second part of the above saying. Project Syndicate title: Overheating About Global Warming Project Syndicate subtitle: Decades of climate-change exaggeration in...
In the late 1990's, a board member of our ultimate parent company paid a visit following a critical internal audit report. He made an everlasting impression on me. One of his sayings was: "If you can't beat them, confuse them" which is (probably) a paraphrase of a more familiar proverb: "If you can't beat them, join them". Latter is not always an option, the former...
Recent Comments