the lifespan of a fact

The Lifespan of a Fact,by John D’Agata, author. Jim Fingal, fact-checker.

I heard about this book from a podcast out of Wisconsin, TTBOOK. Listen to the interview if you have a few minutes. But you might be wondering what this has to do with bureauphiles. Well, lots of our government’s time, and energy, all joking aside, is spent checking facts before government publications are published. As an intelligence analyst I spent days double and triple checking reports before they were “sent forward” for review and action upon my recommendations.

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greenbelt

Greenbelt Elementary School, 1937. Greenbelt, MD. (rockcreek)

Twentieth Century history is littered with experiments in government social engineering gone disastrously wrong.

habit

We plan on reviewing (commenting on) books that have some nexus with bureauphilia. Our first review is for The Power of Habit: Why We Do the Things We Do in Life and Business? By Charles Duhigg

You might be inclined to think we were stretching a bit when we decided that Habit had anything to do with governing. However, the book spends a fair amount of time with former Treasury Secretary, Paul O’Neill. Prior to that post he was the CEO of Alcoa where, according to the book, he refocused the company towards safety, which had a net effect of changing the whole company and increasing its profits. With respect to governing, he said: