Nobel Laureates and Limitations: The Perils of Unearned Omniscience

All accounts balanced

James Watson, who died at the age of 97 on November 6, 2025, was a DNA pioneer who won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1962 jointly with Francis Crick and Maurice Wilkins at the age of 34.

When I received news of his death, I remembered that I might have written something about him. That was back in 2007, when, during a book launch, he veered from the science of genetics to the pseudoscience of eugenics by suggesting that intelligence could be genetically differentiated by race.

There was swift retribution for that aired opinion: a suspension followed by a resignation. The controversy became the benchmark by which Dr Watson was judged, rather than on his more significant work with DNA.

Intelligent monkey talk

I had also forgotten that in writing my first blog in October 2007, I recounted a story of someone suggesting I was a monkey and how I was blessed with the wit to respond, not out of offence, but with a willingness to engage. If I were a monkey, I would have become so intelligent that I could communicate with human beings; alternatively, my interlocutor would have acquired the ability to cavort with simians.

An apology followed, of course, but the damage had been done. Way back in innocent 2007, Dr Watson was cancelled, ostracised, and consigned to a scrapheap of ignominy. His groundbreaking work in discovering the double helix structure of DNA at the age of 25 and subsequently winning the Nobel Prize was overshadowed by controversy. His eugenics remarks created a dual legacy of brilliant scientist versus reprehensible public intellectual.

Dr Craig Venter, known for leading one of the first draft sequences of the human genome, had this to say at that time: "Skin colour as a surrogate for race is a social concept, not a scientific one. There is no basis in scientific fact or in the human genetic code for the notion that skin colour will be predictive of intelligence."

The folly of universal expertise

The Nobel Prize is a high accolade, but it does not confer polymath status on the recipient. Upon being named, laureates do not suddenly become omniscient or experts in every imaginable field outside the sphere of their expertise. They should also possess the self-awareness and presence of mind to dismiss questions that seek their opinions on issues beyond where they have been accorded due recognition.

Contrasting Dr Watson with Dr Arthur Kornberg, who won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1959, for his work on RNA & DNA, and died around the same time as the 2007 controversy, one sees that Dr Watson could have learnt how to carry oneself and manage one's opinions when conferred with the Nobel Prize. There should be a resounding memento mori in the ears of a Nobel laureate, for in the mortality of man lies the enduring power of memory.

Though he paid a heavy price for his indiscretion, the work he accomplished was worthy of celebration and commendation. May his soul rest in peace.

References

Blog - Doctor Neutralises Africans [October 2007]

Blog - Happy Retirement, Dr Watson [October 2007]

Blog - Arthur Kornberg - DNA Pioneer, dies [October 2007]

We are experts in our prejudices

Weeds in the garden of the mind

In times of reflection and introspection, I allow myself some searching scrutiny of my views, my opinions, my beliefs, my principles, and most importantly my prejudices. The blind spots that limit the range of vision in areas where ideally, I should normally be able to see, but I do not.

Like a gardener, it is a process of planting, trimming, weeding, pruning, grafting, uprooting, cleaning and much else that allows the garden to appear first well looked after and hopefully beautiful as a projection of what is aesthetically pleasing to myself and then to others. This is necessary for the mind too, things we have learnt that we need to relearn, unlearn, or have mislearnt through ignorant, incomplete, or bad education that needs jettisoning before it becomes the foundation for bad choices and decisions.

Arrogance is disabling

It brings to mind something Peter Drucker, the management guru said some decades ago, “discover where your intellectual arrogance is causing disabling ignorance and overcome it.” Discovery is always a process of searching and curiosity, that one has acquired some set views left without reassessing and questioning to ascertain their validity and application for the context, the time, the situation, or the circumstance will leave one prone to error.

The Merriam-Webster defines arrogance as an attitude of superiority manifested in an overbearing manner or in presumptuous claims or assumptions. When reading Peter Drucker’s quote, I tend to drop the ‘intellectual’ qualifier of arrogance.

Arrogance is bad and sometimes it is difficult to notice it in ourselves, the sense of superiority, that makes us think we are better than others, the overbearing manner that prevents us from being accommodating of alternative and different situations, the presumptuousness that denies us the benefit of knowing the limits of our understanding, expertise, abilities, competence, and even open-mindedness.

We are prejudice experts

It is strange is it not that arrogance does cause disabling ignorance, the lack of knowledge, information, insight, context, premise, understanding, the list in synonyms and similar inferences can be limitless. However, the point is arrogance disables you and when you are disabled, you are unable to perform like those who are able can. This construct can be applied to anything, what we do to compensate, mitigate, or eliminate that disability can make all the difference.

Nowhere is the issue of arrogance more evident than in our prejudices, the quickness with which we rush to the judgement of others, castigating, excoriating, and condemning them, based on our limited worldview contextualised within the constraints of knowledge and the mistake of assuming we are all-seeing when we have many blind spots.

We are experts in our prejudices, qualified and lettered to the point of being unchallengeable and unassailable, it is dangerous for ourselves first and then others. It is easy to be unaware of it because we are comfortable and secure in what we know.

The open mind like parachutes

This brings me to another quote, part of which is popular, but the provenance and the context in which it is used differs, depending on who it attributed to, the one attributed to Lord Dewar, Thomas Robert goes, “I have an open mind. Minds are like parachutes—they function only when they are open. I believe in collecting information on every important topic and verifying it. That is why I am here tonight—in the spirit of enquiry.” [StackExchange: A mind is like a parachute]

There is no better way to learn, to unlearn, to relearn and create scope for new knowledge that changes perspectives, perceptions, or prejudices, than to have an open mind, it is for our development and our safety, it allows us to acknowledge our blind spots and adjust our line of vision, it enables us to see better, it addresses deep-seated arrogance and brings us to the realisation of new possibilities.

You wonder why I have written a treatise on open-mindedness, simple, someone published a picture of themselves in interesting attire, adornments and makeup, the commentary that followed whilst a few celebrated and commended the bold difference in embracing the alternative and sometimes misunderstood, too many from the Nigerian opinion pool could not see the aesthetic blinded by their prejudices and leading to outright condemnation.

Open all windows to light and air

You have to be openminded you cannot be selective of where you are open-minded, streams of knowledge and enlightenment come from unexpected places when we are ready to explore the unfamiliar and sometimes threatening. We cannot access new knowledge pools when we have closed our minds to the avenue or route to that new experience. Like in the daytime, any window closed is closed to letting light and fresh air into the room.

To that, I wrote two tweets, “I would suggest that a little open-mindedness to the alternative, the different, the unusual, the atypical, the unconventional, or the chimeral can open up areas of creativity and genius closed to sight just because we can't countenance the radical. Nigerians should let go.” [Twitter]

“I just saw an interesting fashion statement of difference, the commentary that followed showed how people are limited in vision, bound by the myopia of conformity, that despite their talents and academic achievements, they never reach their potential by judging others.” [Twitter]

The politics of arrogance in the office

My mercenary career

I have been doing office politics for longer than I care to be concerned, it is probably why I have preferred the role of being a consultant rather than an employee, there is a sense of independence it entails without having to pander to hierarchies of management and human resource departments.

Obviously, you still somehow report to someone within the organisation and it is the organisation’s decision to either retain or terminate your contract. I would be the first to concede that I am not your pliant mercenary, supine as to be invertebrate and given to masochistic tendencies.

Autonomy matters and where it is non-existent, I would well be on to something else than endure the situation. Gosh! I have standards and the traditional ones of respect, courtesy, and consideration rank highly in my book.

A nasty trait of arrogance

Quite recently, I have run against a cohort of intellectual arrogance that deadens the capacity for the comprehension of basic facts. They have decided in their fiefdom that they must retain absolute control that even the most reasonable argument leaves them unpersuadable. It is a sorry sight to watch.

When engagement for understanding, cooperation and facilitation simply elicits infantile truculence you are left with the wise saying of Peter Drucker, the once upon a time eminent management consultant, “discover where your intellectual arrogance is causing disabling ignorance and overcome it.”

Not the easiest thing to do, but it goes a long way to fostering professional and work relationships if you willing to listen, understand, appreciate and allow. There is always another perspective to the way you see or do things if you get off your high horse.

Nigeria: Ibrahim Gambari caught in the arrogance of indispensability

A distinguished ambassador

The appointment of Ambassador Ibrahim Agboola Gambari as the Chief of Staff to the President of Nigeria, Muhammadu Buhari is one of particular interest. On the matter of the appointment, he is eminently qualified and that is by the way. [Wikipedia]

I probably got a bit more acquainted with the man as a friend of mine who I met in the early 1990s was a classmate of his at the London School of Economics in the 1960s. Interestingly, this was also during the time when my father was in the UK reading accountancy.

Of my parents’ generation

My parents who are within a 5-year age range of the ambassador have had interesting and commendable careers in their different professions, my father in rose to various C-suite positions before shipping out to retirement. My mother went into education and was appointed a pioneering principal to a school that is now over 40 years in existence.

The old students’ body returns to the school to contribute to buildings, facilities and equipment, every time inviting their old principal who has been a pillar in her school community since she first took that position, in retirement, she is by no means forgotten, she is the constant guest of honour at those events and recently one class arranged a fully paid pilgrimage to Israel as thanks for her service and leadership.

My mother went on to head other schools, but the affinity the old students have towards her is unstinting and full of gratitude. I usually say to her, she has many children and for those relationships we, her blood children, are exceedingly proud.

On the side of my father, the people he has supported, mentored, tutored, advised, promoted, and recommended are innumerable, he is a community person to his bones. Many have gone one to forge enviably successful careers, he did his bit and moved on. They can still call on him for advice and guidance, but he has left the stage for the generally active life of an octogenarian in his village.

An abject failure of leadership

Now, at 75, Ambassador Gambari does have utility and usefulness, that is why he has been called upon to serve Nigeria again. However, he could have gone one better, he has had a reputable academic career and a distinguished diplomatic career, along the way he has taught and mentored people, he was recommended and brought into the diplomatic corps by others who recognised his potential, this of all times might have been one to pay it forward. [This Day – Another Testimonial on Gambari]

From his network of proteges, when the President made that phone call, it could not have been beyond the capability of the ambassador to thank the president quite gracefully, decline the opportunity and actively recommend probably two or three proteges for the role, vouching for their bona fides, qualifications, and expertise whilst giving assurances that for whatever difficulties they might encounter, he would be available to help.

Again, this is not to pull up the ambassador, but we need to address the matter of Nigerians who have been in positions of influence and in the corridors of power for up the four decades and somehow cannot find ways to call time on their service to allow others succeed them in generational capacity building that a country like Nigeria with a majority youthful population needs to launch into the future.

A gerontocracy, I observe

One could be forgiven for thinking Nigeria is hardly a democracy and closer to a gerontocracy, there are times I have wondered it is not caught in the grip of an unconscionable kakistocracy. Leaders of a certain generation marooned in the time warp of an era of bad history, fossilised somewhere in a distant past reluctant, unwilling, and impervious to considerations of the 21^st Century.

Fundamentally, they are disconnected from their electorate and have failed in the basic test of leadership, which is the ability to raise other leaders to carry on their legacy. In countries around Africa, many leaders have overstayed their welcome, they have arrogated to themselves omnipotence and omniscience to the point of delusion believing no one else of their fellow countrymen can do those jobs or even do better. They think themselves indispensable and irreplaceable by anyone else.

The arrogance of indispensability is an affliction and an addiction, I hate to think the ambassador has succumbed to this unfortunate ailment.

Suffocated by ultracrepidarians

The wisdom of madding crowds

Never have we needed a surfeit of expertise in these trying times, people who have not just an idea of what they are talking about, but are ready, willing and patient enough to take the time to inform and educate to the point that others begin to understand and grasp the basic knowledge of things.

It’s been difficult to navigate the deafening cacophony of those in captivity of the Dunning-Kruger effect, those who have not even conspired to dilettantism that enter the fray to pontificate and postulate as authorities in subjects where they have no schooling but are so opinionated to the point that experts are relegated to the inconsequential or forced into the feigned balance of pitching their vocations against novices. Ultracrepidarianism is rife.

Conspiring conspiracies

With the Coronavirus pandemic, the person we probably need most to shut is President Donald Trump, he needs to get out of the way and let the experts take control. He speaks like an idiot, spewing a multitude of jumbled words redolent of someone who has done nothing in a long time to improve his faculties. [Jolted by Her Own Illness, Pandemics Scholar Gains Insight into Botched COVID-19 Response - Scientific American]

Excerpted from Scientific American

Hitching a ride on the Coronavirus bandwagon, 5G technology has now branched out into a deluge of conspiracy theories promoted by every useful idiot from religious leaders through politicians to celebrities.

I cannot begin to repeat or perpetuate much of what I have read or heard, only that the ignorant and illiterate have become willing hosts of propagating the contagion of pseudo-science, fables and incredulous stupidity with property at risk of destruction and possible loss of life and livelihood. They have become the personification of a virus. [The Coronavirus Collection: Conspiracy Theories – Snopes] [5G Conspiracy – Snopes]

The church online

I guess the only respite I had was in the celebration of Palm Sunday, we have reached the end of Lenten season and entered the Holy Week. Quite inauspiciously, we have now completed 2 weeks of the intended 3-week lockdown to expire on Easter Monday. There is a likelihood it would be extended. [Palm Sunday - Wikipedia]

The etymology of quarantine is Venetian of the 14^th to 15^th Century spoken in the northeast of present-day Italy, quarantena meaning 40 days anglicised to quarantine of which the Lenten period is also 40 days. [Quarantine – Wikipedia]

Yet, what a relief it was that I would able to attend the online Palm Sunday eucharistic season of the Manchester Cathedral, streamed life on Facebook from the homes of the clergy presided over by the Dean of the cathedral. There is a daily morning (09:00) and evening (16:30) prayer service streamed live too. [Manchester Cathedral – Facebook]

Experts of mercy

In a week suffused with the excess of illusory superiority, hubris, and cognitive dissonance almost presenting as schizophrenia, here were people not given to the eschatological incomprehensibility of those of another creed, but with humility, patience, service and love for their congregation led us in worship, adoration, and celebration of the day.

Was I glad to see so many clerical collars? We must be thankful for small mercies. In other news, I joined the Labour Party on the 19^th of January, the day before the close of eligibility to elect a new leader. That contest is over, and Sir Keir Starmer was elected, my choice for deputy leader came second. It is my hope that the Labour Party that I have voted for since 1992 now has the opportunity of becoming a party of government after 4 straight electoral losses. I wish Sir Keir, every success. [BBC News]

To what end ... is ingratitude?

Be thankful for everything

I saw a tweet earlier that made me reflect on the power of gratitude and the curse of ingratitude. This person out of the blue had paid into the account of a cousin, not substantial and yet not insignificant. The cousin rather than thank his benefactor suggested he was too big for the ordinary sum of money paid into his account. As fate would have it, the transaction was reversed, the benefactor richer with the opportunity to bless someone else, the cousin left with nothing.

So many thoughts crossed my mind about the reaction of that cousin, the thinking that informed him that it was better to project entitlement rather than gratitude. We make interesting assumptions about others when we have needs and ask for help without any inkling about the other responsibilities and calls upon the resources of the benefactor.

The tendency to feel that in the midst of our pressing need we have become the centre of the world to which everyone else should beckon first with priority before anything else is inconsiderate, selfish and demonstrate a lack grace.

You can’t decide for others

You cannot decide for a benefactor how they should dispose of their resources whether they be parsimonious or generous, it is their prerogative alone to decide who to give to and whether they are disposed to give at all. Now, even if the beneficiary is a person of great means that the gift is little or insignificant, the better sentiment is to think of the motive and the consideration with a thankful response.

I constantly check on my thankful spirit, whether I have been appreciative of the little as I have been of the much. I want my sense of gratitude to be alert, full of initiative and ready to give expression long before it is instigated. Its importance can never be overstated.

Gratitude as talent

I am reminded of the parable of the talents in the Bible, where a master about to travel distributed 8 talents amongst three servants. To one was handed 5 talents and I presume that servant had the capacity, the aptitude and the responsibility to handle 5 talents, when the master returned, he had doubled the investment. To another was given 2 talents according to their ability and the same doubled that investment. [Wikipedia]

The last was given one talent, my view is the servant given the talent for that sake of not being left out, the servant from the master’s opinion had none of the capacity of the other two servants and the master was proven right, the servant buried rather than invested the talent, then blamed the master for his failure to act like his wiser colleagues.

That one talent servant had the talent taken off him and given to the servant who managed 5 talents. The one talent servant was then thrown out of their job into destitution. In today’s setting it could be an unproductive employee who gets no promotion then gets sacked and receives no positive references to help them along.

Appreciating the power of gratitude

Yet, the spirit of gratitude is an enabler in ways we can never fully appreciate, it is in the being helpful, being considerate, being respectful, being available, being generous, being empathetic, having a listening ear, it is the open mind, the open heart, the open hand, the accepting rather than rejecting, the presence of mind to find a good perspective regardless, overlooking offence in the quest for agreement.

You get remembered favourably when opportunity comes, next time the benefactor has much more to give, I doubt the cousin will be in the list of those to be blessed. Ingratitude closes the small doors that lead to the grand gateways to amazing things in life. Sometimes, we need to have periods of introspection that help us realise whether a sense of ingratitude might have closed the door to new opportunity and make to redress that failing.

I have too many examples of where my perception of the power of gratitude as expressed in this blog has given me amazing opportunities and successes. I am thankful for the little and the plenty, every blessing is worthy of a sincerely grateful heart. There can be no good end to ingratitude but loss, penalty, punishment or to be forgotten where others are remembered, it is self-harm masquerading as arrogance, pride, delusions of grandeur, or an inflated sense of self.

Courtesy of the William Kentridge exhibition at Zeitz MOCAA, Cape Town.

Thought Picnic: Sometimes, forgiveness is arrogance and ignorance defeated

Giving and getting without the for

The ability to differentiate between forgiving and forgetting was brought home to me again when I visited the District Six Museum and followed the guided tour hosted by a former resident.

She told her story with depth and feeling, it was palpable, we maintained such respectful silence as she relayed how Apartheid dehumanised an entire community in the pursuit of fulfilling a policy of the segregation of races.

She had not forgotten every single detail of what happened to her up to her mother dying within 48 hours of being forcefully ejected from a home where she raised 11 children.

History, not misery

For me, there is a lot to remember and much else I must never forget, all these in their recollections and stories are part of my life, my history, my narrative, and forms part of how my worldview is defined.

We all need our stories and some of us get to tell them in brutal and excruciating detail. Forgiveness, however, is how we allow those experiences to define us. Whether we would allow the wrongs and those who have wronged us to continue to have a hold on our lives and by their presence become an interminable upset brewing unmitigated resentment and bitterness.

People are who they are

This is where I begin to compartmentalise, some people are pathological sociopaths, they would never acquire an iota of emotional intelligence. I know I few and I have extricated them from my purview, our lives have diverged and long may that divergence continue until distance and time has obliterated every smidgen of whatever constituted our encounter.

Some may not know how to empathise, they think the world revolves around them. To some, I have been as blunt as I can be, to others, I have refused to be wrapped around their fingers, to be at their beck and call. I jealously guard my independence, it is with great difficulty that my autonomy would be subdued for longer than it takes for me to realise I am being played.

People are really who they are

I excuse a lot because for all sorts of reasons, the lives of others have followed courses I cannot begin to understand. Once I find a context within which to characterise that expression of themselves, I can deal with the situation. Between taking liberties and making allowances, you find a way to coexist with consideration out of contemplation.

I do not know if I am my own greatest critic, but I have been able to look at myself at certain times and accept I have flaws, faults, frailties, foibles, falsehoods, and foolishness. Some things I am about to do on impulse would be trammelled by premonition and conscience. I hope to be more alert to these guardians of my soul. I have learnt not to condemn myself in the things I have allowed and in that, I find some forgiveness for myself.

Even in the many cohorts I have identified, I probably have to seek forgiveness for things done and said, in omission and commission, it is a process of getting to be at ease with both oneself and others. Have there been times I have come across as supercilious? At times, it is where I have put myself and in others, it is a projection redolent of where they have put themselves. I strive to lift than to debase.

Disabling my ignorance

In terms of hypocrisy, I am of the opinion that it is not entirely a bad thing, it is a source of knowledge, both the person with a speck in their eye and the other with a beam in their eye need the speck and the beam removed so they can both see clearly.

In the process of managing oneself and understanding the work of forgiveness, in the words of the management sage, Peter Drucker, I need to “discover where your intellectual arrogance is causing disabling ignorance and overcome it.” Take out the word ‘intellectual’ and much more can be done to better oneself, by learning and unlearning with the view to overcoming fundamental flaws in our humanity.

The importance of nurses, bedpans to my career

Exuding the arrogance of expertise

Many a time, I have been caught up in what I might now with humility call the arrogance of expertise, where your confidence and assertiveness find voice in sound bites to make the listener very understanding of your position.

I have never really been able to persuade any manager of mine to send me on an assertiveness course, maybe I have been just a tad dishonest, when I look at it, and I am usually able to get my views across with much clarity without having to repeat myself.

When it comes to my profession, I offer solutions and experiences in the enterprise that sometimes requires radical change, but I always strive to ensure that change is not disruptive as I also try to persuade the reluctant of the need to step out into a proven adventure guided by a man with skill rather than with a cowboy who attaches horse-shoes to his heels.

Must work at commissioning

Despite the constraints of projects, budgets and time, my goal is to implement something that works at commissioning rather than deliver something on time and then spend months trying to get things to work, this is what gives IT a bad name and reinforces the blurred vision of outsourcing.

One area where I am not like your usual big-lettered architect, specialist or a good majority in Information Technology departments is I like to see the user’s perspective of my solutions, I do not mind sitting amongst users for days just t discover where they might have issues and then I return to the design with ideas for improvement that I forcefully put through the system.

This is what I call the User Experience Perspective, when I get involved in a project, my solutions affect the users the most, then the operators and administrators need tools for management and support that do not complicate their laden, busy and cumbersome chores and workflows and finally the enterprise that expects to benefit greatly from the ideas proffered and implemented.

Worth doing well

I have no qualms with the old saying which goes, “What is worth doing at all, is worth doing well”, when I am involved in a project, people can get sickened with the emphasis on “doing well”, that Utopia is usually not achievable but there would be enough fights to bring it as close as possible to a project done well.

With all this in mind, it is no wonder that I generally prefer to report to some infrastructure manager at Vice-President level and would rather not an operations manager because operations is about keeping things running, no matter the tools and problems, one can understand why change is immediately viewed as disruptive with the foreboding of catastrophe.

I cannot stress enough how I have the greatest consideration for operations and in finding ways to simplify, improve and/or eliminate manual procedures that are prone to error.

Can I put this in a CV?

How you bunch all this up into a marketing profile or curriculum vitae, I do not know, but once I am in the organisation, I am usually able to prove my mettle and value, it stands to reason that in the last 10 or so years, my jobs as a freelance consultant have come from the network of colleagues and recruiters I have once before worked with.

Recently, after writing a commendation to a manager I last worked for some 10 years ago, I received an email stating if our paths ever crossed again, he would not hesitate to employ me again. Thanks.

However, back to the inspiration for this blog that seems to have digressed but is still on topic is the importance of operations in an enterprise and nursing in a hospital.

Nurses and bedpans are critical to treatment

That arrogance of expertise is expressed in these words, “I am doctor, I don’t do bedpans”.

Implying, whatever it means but whilst I was glad to see the doctors every once in a while when they did their rounds, it was the nurses that the carers with the extraordinary commitment to their jobs, their care, compassion and unflinching ability to do beyond bed pans and much more that has humbled me.

One morning when I could get out of bed on my own to have a shower, as my feet got under me, the rush of lively blood to my feet was accompanied with pain that could only have been like my feet being set on fire over an over-acting barbeque, I was in tears and in serious agony.

They are up to task

So, as I sat under the shower, I told the nurse, I did not care and like she was prompted she got the sponge and soap, scrubbed me all over and showered me completely. Even the crown jewels were handled with such sensitivity.

You can be so vulnerable in hospital and then have these nurses, some still students who get in, get on and are part of the essential lifeline of the treatment process. Where one does not have guests, you can imagine how we all light up when a kindly nurse returns after each break according to their rota.

Even where I thought a few nurses were a bit tough, you soon experienced the milk of human kindness and compassion beyond words.

Commending the nurses at OLVG

I took the trouble to learn all their names and address them by name, keeping friendly and accepting with deep gratitude their help, conversation and service. I do not believe that matter of bedpans would cross my lips again as a tribute to these nurses.

Without naming their names, I still must make a direct reference to these people with the angelic disposition of goodness and kindness.

I was at the Onze Lieve Vrouwe Gasthuis (OLVG) [1] for 18 days and this is for the nurses, porters and service personnel at section B.06. Thank you, one and all, I am full of gratitude, appreciation and deep acknowledgement of your service and care.

May all you lay your hands upon to do prosper and may your be rewarded beyond measure for the acts of kindness that continually flow out of your bowels of mercy and consideration. May great an abundant blessings flood your lives. In the name of Jesus Christ. Amen.

Sources

[1] About the OLVG – Onze Lieve Vrouwe Gasthuis

Causing Disabling Ignorance

First week over - thankfully

Am I grateful that my first seminar week has is over and one can start all over again in the second seminar week.

It all adds up eventually in the final end of module score, but the scoring is per weekly activity added up at the end rather than cumulative.

Having had a really long break, getting back into the flow has been difficult and stressful. I produced work which a year ago I would not have offered up for my proof-reading, talk less of submitting it for assessment.

This is just not me, but that is now done and gone.

I have a bit of a head start this week and hope to do a lot better and get on with things without ending up in a time bind.

My only big thing is the using Endnote for my bibliography, I am still struggling with the making the Harvard style of reference in the application match up to our customised Harvard offering.

I cannot begin to think of the amount of time I have expended in fine-tuning the stuff only to find that our library has not done any work on providing support for the tool.

No-hard-work man

All my life, I know was born for a labour-saving world, there has to be easier, better, smarter ways of doing things and one has to find them and utilise them.

My voice goes into a shrill at work when inertia allows people to just accept shoddy work on the prompting of an emergency in fulfilling urgency.

We then find that we have urgently implemented a solution that has just exacerbated the problem; I must be from Mars where there is a similitude of joined up thinking.

Call it histrionics bordering on apoplexy, I am your drama queen nightmare if I cannot see the benefits of brain cell activity in a situation – we have architects a-plenty whose drawings would never lift off the paper because they know nothing of the strength of materials.

Intellectual arrogance disabling ignorance

Yours truly is caught up in this papier-mâché of designs that do not work and in the whole time I have been in the company, not one architect, no, not one egomaniac technical ignoramus has deigned to visit to see how their design is not fit for use, but by some manic depressive.

Even I always want to discover where my intellectual arrogance is causing disabling ignorance and do well to overcome it. I know too many people who have been overwhelmed. Peter Drucker, I you owe big-time for this amazing insight, I cannot continue to suffer from disabling ignorance.

If only I could say to the disabled – Rise up and walk – my life would also be bliss at work.