A Completely Significant Insight

The No Asshole Rule by Robert Sutton has been reviewed on Guy Kawasaki's blog. I think I should go out and buy it, despite my dislike of public profanity. Everyone should at least read this very useful and entertaining book review. Yes. Everyone.

The other half of this insight is not so much what should be avoided as what should be embraced. Innovation and enterprise both sound like good things. The main problem is to receive them 'pure', without the contamination of other retarding factors. To extinguish a spark in a charcoal fire and then say, "Hey, we have hot ash and a hole full of unburnt fuel here, so we can do a barbecue!" is somewhat reasonable (I suppose) if you are interested in the short term only. Certainly, for long-term effect, some means of sustaining the spark(s) should be developed.

Then again, the cold and beautiful stars might not want competition from a barbecue pit, as I've often reflected while looking outward from the south coast of where I live. And that, of course, is a perfectly valid aesthetic judgement.