Re: Jobs and Cookies

[David KUIJT <kuijt@umiacs.UMD.EDU>]

Poster: David KUIJT <kuijt@umiacs.umd.edu>


Greetings to Cheapside from Dafydd the Prolix Geezer;
 
Aurora, a fine and noble lady, writes:
 
> I've been playing around in funny clothes for several  years now. Not a whole 
> lot, only 5 or 6 compared to Dafydd's 72 Quadrillion-Zillion.

Damn, I feel old :^)  I had hoped, as I was keeping my hair, that nobody
would notice the grey.  Alas and alack, it is not so.  Luckily, any time
I start feeling really ancient, I look at my ancestors Duke Richard and
Duke Gyrth, and I realize that I'm WAY younger than them (hehehehe), and
I feel much better.


> In that time, I 
> don't remember seeing or hearing of anyone receiving a Kingdom level service 
> award who has not held a warranted job. It could have happened and I could have 
> missed it. In fact, I now know that it has happened because Dafydd said so, but 
> I have no knowledge of it, even from hearsay. I wouldn't count it as the norm, 
> however, and wouldn't rely on it to recognize people who put lots of time, 
> talent, and effort into something. If it were the norm, the misconceptions 
> wouldn't be as prevalent because everybody would know of somebody who knew of 
> somebody ... and those would be the stories that are told around the campfire. 

Fair lady, I did not mean to offend you, and I hope I have not done so.
It is the job of those of us who have been around for 72-quadrillion-zillion
years to correct this sort of misconception.  [Or perhaps I'm just pedantic,
and I saw an opportunity to wax philosophic :^)  ]

I responded because it is my constant wish to counteract this type of
common misconception.  And (as I said to Jonathan Blackbow in an earlier
note about squires/knighting, the most common misconception), just because
the vast majority of people who receive Kingdom level service awards have
had warranted jobs first, does not mean that the warrant has anything to do
with receiving the award.  The vast majority of people who get Gold Dolphins
were not born in The Year of the Rat (Chinese Calendar--happens once every
twelve years).  But I assure you, we do not consider (or even understand)
the Chinese Calendar in the Gold Dolphin meetings, and we have never had
a policy to restrict membership from people born in those years.

John Wayne once said "There are lies, damn lies, and statistics."  (OK,
maybe it was Sam Clemens, so sue me).  Any statistic (like most GD
recipients having held warranted office) is meaningless by itself.  It
is only through interpretation that we may add meaning to it.  In this
case, the common interpretation is that there is a cause and effect
relationship between warrants and GDs, because warranted office came
first.  Well, I tell you it ain't so.  Warrants have as much to do
with GDs as birth, or even less: GDs have been given to people who never
held warranted office, but never to people who were not born.

Regards

Dafydd
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