Interesting Links for 16-03-2015

• Russia's Putin reappears after 10-day absence
  (tags: Russia viaAlexTFish )
• This murder case is just _weird_
  (tags: murder WTF viaMyBrotherMike )
• Women on the Pill face increased risk of Crohn's disease
  (tags: hormones contraception health women )
• RBS – My Part In Its Downfall…
  (tags: banking rbs Scotland epicfail )
• 'Radical' business rates review launched
  (tags: business tax uk )
• So, why _do_ young men draw penises on things?
  (tags: penis school )
• Valve's astounding SteamVR solves big problems - and poses bigger questions
  (tags: virtualreality valve games )
• The different kinds of fanfic
  (tags: fanfic categorisation )
• An answer to the problem of evil
  (tags: evil religion god )
• How the women running three of Scotland's political parties deal with sexist attacks
  (tags: sexism women politics Scotland )
• It seems that Scottish Labour's problem is...Jim Murphy
  (tags: Labour Scotland politics fail )
• I had not realised I needed a sculpted stone to hold my charging cables.
  (tags: rock art technology )
• Kevin Bacon is not the centre of the movie universe. Care to guess who is?
  (tags: movies connection mathematics )
• If the neoliberal hegemony is crumbling, what exactly is going to take its place?
  (tags: economics )
• Academic subjects, as explained by The Emperor's New Groove
  (tags: Disney education funny )

Companies with no structure have a structure

A bunch of interesting links I came across in this discussion of companies with a flat structure. Including two about how Valve's "no structure" basically means that control lies in the hands of people who don't have to take responsibility - because technically they have none. here and here.

A nice reminder that when there's no formal structure, you end up with a structure anyway - but one that's a complete mess - the tyranny of structurelessness.

And a lovely quote:

Any sufficiently complicated company w/o management contains an ad hoc, informally-specified, bug-ridden, slow implementation of management

from here.

I think that when I first enountered the idea of ad-hoc structure in companies I thought it sounded awesome and freeing. Nowadays I more see it as a way of avoiding responsibility for making sure the company runs well, and avoiding power ending up in the hands of the loudest.

Why have I never seen this in a zombie movie?

I mean, if America has vending machines for ammo, then why has there never been a scene in which our hero fumbles desperately for the correct change while a zombie shambles slowly towards him?