If the posties do go out on strike, lets hope they don't elect to have a postal ballot before going back to work...

An doctor, an engineer and a computer scientist were arguing about which was the oldest profession and they had got all the way back to the garden of Eden. The doctor said - "God created Eve from Adam's rib - a medical miracle. Therefore medicine is the oldest profession".

But the engineer said "But God created the world out of chaos - which is a major engineering achievement. Engineering is therefore the oldest profession"

The computer scientist thought for a minute, and then said - "Ah, but where do you think all the chaos came from..."

Me again. A place I used to work had conference rooms named after birds of prey: eagle, hawk, kestrel. etc. The smokers' lounge was informally known as 'Puffin'.

I worked in an organisation where we named our servers after Marx brothers. When we ran out of Harpo, Zeppo, Chico and Groucho we added Karl, skid, birth, stretch and Deutsch. Then we changed to something more sensible.

...What makes them tick, eh?

Also, comment heard in suicide bombers' training camp: "Listen carefully I'm only going to show this once..."

This 'less is more' approach is enshrined in UK army doctrine where it is called 'mission command'. At all but the lowest tactical levels, a 'good' order should specify the overall context, the desired outcome, the resources available and any constraints (in particular the boundary of area within which the recipient has freedom to operate). The person receiving the order then uses his own skill and judgement to figure out the precise steps required. In some cases he will brief these back to the commander so that his actions can be checked against other people's plans (e.g. to make sure they are correctly 'deconflicted'). The whole point of this is that the commander focusses on the big picture, and delegates lower-level thinking to his subordinates.

These principles are in fact directly relevant in a commercial/industrial environment - they in effect describe the general principles of how to delegate a task to someone.