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Being able to maintain a good sitting position is a core competency for bureaucrats. In the video below, a bureaucrat working in the Alberta Human Rights and Citizenship Commission demonstrates the challenges that a conscientious bureaucrat faces. Watch it carefully and learn!

The bureaucrat begins with a lean-forward, braced note-taking position. The problem with such a strong documentary start is that it can be difficult to sustain. Thus we were not surprised to see her soon shift into the double-elbow, flat-arm bracing position. That's an excellent position to go the distance in a long-winded meeting. Moreover, it helps protect the head in the case of a somnolence-induced sagging of the upper spinal region.

Notice, however, that the bureaucrat failed to hold the position. Despite some standard head movements, which signal attention and help to promote blood flow, at 5:10 into the video she broke form into the back-leaning, folded-armed position. This position is associated with arrogance and obstinacy. It has no place in the sitting repertoire of a professional bureaucrat.

Supplementary tentative statement: According to the Alberta Human Rights and Citizenship Commission, it is against the law in Alberta "to discriminate against anyone in the following areas of activity... [including] public statements, publications, notices, signs, symbols, emblems, or other representations." We therefore and heretofore hereby duly declare that the above public statement is not meant to discriminate against, between, or for anyone in Alberta, and that we hereby affirm, in accordance with the applicable human rights law, that it applies not just to the bureaucrat represented, but equally to all bureaucrats in Alberta.

In other bureaucratic emissions for this month, Tim O'Reilly at O'Reilly Radar discusses Bad Math Among eBook Enthusiasts. O'Reilly is an organization that has been in business since 1978. Hence it qualifies as a bona-fide bureaucracy for the purposes of this Carnival in accordance with Carnival Rule 2.A.a, calculated according to Internet time. Tim declares:

My advice to publishers and authors is this: figure out what it costs to produce what you sell, estimate what kind of volume you'll be able to achieve using the best available data, and then set your prices at a level that will deliver a reasonable profit from your efforts.

This is classic public-utility pricing methodology. Forget about Web 2.0 buzzwords; on the web or off, just set prices for rate-payers. True bureaucratic insight.

Chris Tolles at Topix offers data on comments. The data show that non-registered users generate three times as many comments with only a 50% higher comment rejection rate. Is requiring registration a bad idea? Of course not. Requiring registration helps users to develop their skills in filling out forms.

The Daily Davos reports that billionaire George Soros has called for a "massive injection of regulation and oversight over financial markets." In conjunction with such an effort, we believe it is also important to increase public appreciation for regulators. How about establishing a "Hug a Regulator" Day? If you know a regulator, thank her/him for all s/he does!

Steve Yelverton discusses journalism history. He states, "Today's J-student should understand that the task is not to get a job and draw a paycheck, but rather to build a following." Followers are necessary for a following. Work in bureaucracy is excellent training for developing followers.

Samuel Bryson at Total Wellbeing discusses free market economy and the welfare state. He states, "It may well be that a lot of the money disappears in various bureaucratic processes, which is a common complaint of the classical liberals." It may well be that this common complaint has little merit and should be summarily dismissed.

The Little Professor describes the Academic Olympics. It includes the "bureaucratic triple jump":

Each competitor must fight back against a student grievance, which s/he contests in three different administrative offices. There are bonus points for eloquence, documentation, and concision, but penalties for foul language, threats, and/or tears.

We are delighted that bureaucracy has risen to the level of Olympic sport.

That's all for this month's Carnival of the Bureaucrats. Submit your blog article to the next edition using our Carnival submission form. Submissions should conform to the Carnival regulations. Past posts and future hosts can be found on the Carnival index page.

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At the heart of a bureaucratic mission statement is bringing people together for a long period of time in a spirit of expansive inclusiveness. Nothing does that better than meetings. Every committed bureaucrats looks back fondly on the time when she or he was free to leave to attend meetings. Meetings provide rare vision that cannot be adequately expounded upon. Meetings reveal this, show that, we could go on and on. Meetings are such stuff as memories are made of.

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An important note before this Carnival continues: we functionaries here at the Carnival of the Bureaucrats are deeply disturbed in conjunction with the increasing reception of Carnival submissions from parties that we tentatively categorize as entrepreneurial Blog carnival submitters. We recognize that entrepreneurs create new businesses that help to generate employment and tax revenues. Nonetheless, the rules of the Carnival of the Bureaucrats clearly prohibit submissions from entrepreneurs, innovators, hustlers, and persons vigorously seeking to help others to make more money. As in previous months, such submissions have been rejected by us.

Karen MacInerney at Poisoned Pen Letters describes difficulties she had with her house appraisal. Apparently the geometric shape of a house significantly affects its appraisal value. Perhaps an ambitious economist might find a pointer to a significant t-statistic in this sad story.

Jeremy at WTTF submits a post entitled, "Practical time travel, and remembering to zip your fly," and remarks, "A non-conventional water cooler conversation." Due to the current heightened indecency risk level, I will not discuss this post. I recommend instead Jeremy's comic and post entitled, The New Revolution. Jeremy writes:

Turn off your TV and start listening to yourself. You were born with everything you need to survive, now act like it.

I accomplished turning off the TV years ago. But I'm still too busy talking to myself to listen to myself.

Alvaro Fernandez at Brain Health Blog interviews Yaakov Stern about how to build your cognitive reserve. Dr. Stern states:

the group with high level of leisure activities presented 38% less risk (controlling for other factors) of developing Alzheimer's symptoms.

This study indicates the importance of bureaucracies providing more leisure time for their employees.

Steven Silvers at Scatterbox discusses leadership changes at WakeUpWalMart. He states:

Two years after WakeUpWalMart and Wal-Mart Watch launched their political-style campaigns, Wal-Mart is indeed a different company. It has responded to reputation attacks with its own PR-savvy initiatives. It lowered heath insurance premiums and demanded that suppliers meet higher environmental standards. Chased out of Chicago, it became an economic hero to a distressed community across the street, creating a presence that supports the area’s unique economic interests and shopping habits. It even replaced its disgustingly lowbrow and ironically insulting “May I help you?” employee vests with khaki-and-polo shirt ensembles.

What's lowbrow and insulting about helping? I favor keeping the old vest, but changing the phrase to, "Like the government, we're here to help!"

In the spirit of expansive inclusiveness, the Carnival of the Bureaucrats is pleased to recognize other bureaucratic sites on the web. This month we note Liberal Bureaucracy and Adventures in Bureaucracy, and we award distinguished mention to Instant Bureaucracy. Instant Bureaucracy offers, as a public service, six very useful forms. No longer need you skimp on paperwork in your personal life!

That concludes this month's Carnival of the Bureaucrats. Submit your blog article to the next edition using our Carnival submission form. Submissions should conform to the Carnival regulations. Past posts and future hosts can be found on the Carnival index page.

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One of the leading monuments to twentieth-century bureaucracy is Tatlin's Tower. Planned about 1919, the Tower was to be constructed from iron, glass, and steel:

The tower's main form was a twin helix which spiraled up to 400 m in height [about a third taller than the Eiffel Tower], which visitors would be transported around with the aid of various mechanical devices. The main framework would contain three enormous rotating geometric structures. At the base of the structure was a cube which was designed as a venue for lectures, conferences and congress meetings, and would complete a rotation in the span of one year. In the centre of the structure was a cone, housing executive activities and completing a rotation once a month. The topmost one, a cylinder, was to house an information centre, issuing news bulletins and manifestos via telegraph, radio and loudspeaker, and would complete a rotation once a day. There were also plans to install a gigantic open-air screen on the cylinder, and a further projector which would be able to cast messages across the clouds on any overcast day. [Wikipedia]

The three geometric structures within the main frame were to have glass-window surfaces, symbolizing transparent government. The Tower was meant to be the headquarters for the Third International (Comintern). It is a pioneering work of constructivism, whose influence can be perceived in a twenty-first century constructionism initiative. The Tower was never built.

Or at least most people believe that the Tower was never built. Perceptive thinkers and artists have started to challenge that belief:

are we sure that Tatlin’s Tower has not actually been built? Can this state of unconstruction be proven? Perhaps Tatlin’s Tower exists after all – but we’ve been looking in all the wrong places. There is, in fact, no logical reason to assume that Tatlin’s Tower, once built, would even be architectural. Indeed, there is no logical reason to assume that Tatlin’s Tower, in its full realization, its exact structural form, is something that can even be seen.

This month's Carnival of the Bureaucrats brings you an exclusive revelation: Tatlin's Tower exists. It's bureaucracy.

Preposterous, you say. Think again:

if the Tower was designed to be of the people, a monument to international popular sovereignty, then it is also in the people, and amongst them, literally: it is medically present in the space between cells, resonating in cobwebs of bone marrow, as much as it is traced again and again within the four dimensions of urban space by the passage of workday pedestrians.

It's not about intellectual enlightenment or industrial progress, even if you perceive that floating in the Albert Dock in Liverpool. The Tower is biological. The Tower is bureaucracy.

Atlantic Salmon at Save the Ribble reports that the Preston City Council is not being transparent about plans for river work, including barrage, on the Ribble. In Preston and elsewhere, the Ribble powered early-nineteenth-century cotton mills that helped to give birth to the Industrial Revolution. A decent respect for bureaucracy and history demands clear notice and public discussion of development plans.

Marc Andreessen at blog.pmarca.com sets out the Moby Dick theory of big companies. He explains:

The behavior of any big company is largely inexplicable when viewed from the outside.

I always laugh when someone says, "Microsoft is going to do X", or "Google is going to do Y", or "Yahoo is going to do Z".

Odds are, nobody inside Microsoft, Google, or Yahoo knows what Microsoft, Google, or Yahoo is going to do in any given circumstance on any given issue.

These statements are based on first-hand observations. However, they aren't consistent with the design of Tatlin's Tower. Mr. Andreessen, please reconsider your observations.

TeleBusillis declares that OFCOM is spiraling out of control. He reports a "growing trend of industry dissent at the UK Communications regulator and [industry participants] basically ignoring its judgements." That's terrible. Perhaps an OFCOM public-service publishing (PSP) initiative can help to increase awareness of the importance of communications regulation.

Tony Blair in a post from 10 Downing Street discussed "Our Nation's Future -- Public Life." Mr. Blair observes that the media is facing a "hugely more intense form of competition than anything they have ever experienced before":

The result is a media that increasingly and to a dangerous degree is driven by "impact". Impact is what matters. It is all that can distinguish, can rise above the clamour, can get noticed. Impact gives competitive edge. ... It is this necessary devotion to impact that is unravelling standards, driving them down, making the diversity of the media not the strength it should be but an impulsion towards sensation above all else.

Bureaucrats could offer the media training on how not to focus on impact. Here at the Carnival of the Bureaucrats, we refuse to compete. We simply do our job with the utmost professionalism and pay no attention to impact whatsoever.

TherapyDoc at Everyone Needs Therapy recounts an outstanding accomplishment from teaching high-school psychology for two years. In order not to ruin the story, we won't report details. But we found the story personally inspiring. Bureaucrats around the world should read this story and consider the possibility of similar success in their own work. A procedural point: TherapyDoc's submission included the remark, "You don't always have to go by the rules, you know." On our own motion, the Carnival of the Bureaucrats reaffirms the importance of going by the rules. A Carnival of the Bureaucrats' submission that does not satisfy the rules will be rejected, unless we find a good reason not to reject it.

Jack Yoest at Reasoned Audacity presents "Lurita Alexis Doan: Good Management Meets Bad Politics." Politicians' lack of appreciation for bureaucrats' work has a long and illustrious history. In thirteenth-century France, King Louis IX would administer justice under an oak in the woods of Vincennes. An important work has documented:

"Often in the summer [King Louis IX] went after Mass to the woods of Vincennes and sat down with his back against an oak tree, and made us sit all around him. Everyone who had an affair to settle could come and speak to him without the interference of any usher or other official. The King would speak himself and ask, 'Is there any one here who has a case to settle?'" As an insightful scholar has pointed out, "ushers had good honest work to do." Ushers prevented "silly people from presenting sillier petitions to the king." More generally, screening, processing, and prioritizing requests is important bureaucratic work. In sitting down informally with his back against the oak and dispensing with bureaucracy, Louis was not efficiently administering justice.

Sadly, Mr. Yoest's post indicates some U.S. Congresspersons are also impeding the efficient operation of government.

Richard Posner at the Becker-Posner Blog discusses intelligence and leadership. He observes, in text appropriately edited in accordance with common journalist practice:

Knowledge in government resides in civil servants.... What is required at the top levels of government is not brilliance, but managerial skill, which is a different thing, and includes knowing when to defer to the superior knowledge of a more experienced...subordinate.

While recognizing the importance of editing, the Carnival of the Bureaucrats applauds Mr. Posner's insightful observations.

Mark Cuban at Blog Maverick discusses "My Colonoscopy." We do not find any relationship between colonoscopy and bureaucracy.

Sheppard Salter at salterblog reports on a British wine initiative: "Seems the British government is launching an all out effort to get the middle class to stop drinking wine. Their reason? The nanny state knows better." The health issues associated with drinking wine deserve careful study. Prior to issuing regulations on wine drinking, we recommend forming a special commission of government economists to undertake long-term testing of the effects of drinking wine.

Barbra Sundquist at HomeBusinessWiz submitted a post entitled "How to Make a Screenshot." We tentatively conclude that this post, and the respondent's blog, do not appear to satisfy the applicable regulations for the Carnival of the Bureaucrats. The record, however, contains two additional public interest factors which, in the standard, general-purpose legal balancing test, make this submission legal. First, this month the Carnival of the Bureaucrats received a submission which appears to be related to having oral sex on a beach. The respondent's submission is clearly much more relevant to daily bureaucratic practice than the before-mentioned submission. Second, the respondent has been in business for over forty years. She reports:

My first home-based business was selling Regal greeting cards at the age of eight. Believe it or not, my mother let me go door to door in our rural neighbourhood, entering the living rooms of complete strangers and doing my sales pitch. My favorite item in the gift catalogue was the baked potato gadget - a four-pronged thing that I now realize was basically useless to an experienced cook. But I must have been persuasive (or else they just wanted to get rid of me) because I sold a lot of them.

We applaud this business initiative and hope that others also begin paying income taxes at an early age.

The Skilled Investor at The Skilled Investor's Financial Planning Blog describes his horrible experience with Citibank / AT&T Universal card bureaucracy. While bureaucracy normally works well, certainly there are cases when it could work better. This seems to be one of those cases.

That's all for this month's Carnival of the Bureaucrats. Submit your blog article to the next edition using our Carnival submission form. Submissions should conform to the Carnival regulations. Past posts and future hosts can be found on the Carnival index page.

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This month's Carnival of the Bureaucrats highlights the bright future for U.S. bureaucracy. The Council of Graduate Schools' Advisory Committee on Graduate Education and American Competitiveness has just released a 30-page report entitled Graduate Education: The Backbone of American Competitiveness and Innovation. The Executive Summary begins with it:

It is tempting to be complacent about the future of American competitiveness. ... But as our world flattens, we face new and growing competition. We can no longer take for granted America's continued leadership in innovation and competitiveness.

I see some evidence supporting that view. Being a graduate student is a socio-intellectual position that fosters backbone, independence, and innovation. Even more important, however, is developing the flexible, goal-oriented skills of bureaucratic reasoning. A Committee member highlighted the relationship of these skills to graduate education:

"Interdisciplinary research preparation and education are central to future competitiveness, because knowledge creation and innovation frequently occur at the interface of disciplines," says the CGS report (p18). In such a world, the ability to analyze and solve problems, even ones you never saw before is particularly important, as is the ability to quickly bring to market new products, services and integrated solutions of all kinds. This kind of talent is more important than ever, given the increasingly complex, fast changing, competitive world we live in. These are the kinds of skills that require solid preparation as well as a certain degree of maturity, and that therefore are difficult to acquire in college. This is what graduate education and advanced degrees are all about.

The Committee's recommendations are consistent with developing these skills:

• Develop a highly skilled workforce by fostering collaboration among leaders in higher education, business and government
• Expand participation of underrepresented groups in all fields, especially those essential to America’s competitiveness and national security
• Create a vision for all US students that portrays careers in the STEM fields as engaging, compelling, transparent and remunerative
• Attract and retain the best and brightest students from around the world
• Enhance the quality of graduate education through ongoing evaluation and research

These are exactly the type of recommendations that emerge from a committee of well-educated bureaucrats.

The Council of Graduate Schools' Advisory Committee on Graduate Education and American Competitiveness consisted of 14 eminent leaders -- five presidents, one chancellor, two chairmen, two vice-presidents, five deans, one vice-provost, and a CEO. That's just short of the 18 member, 20 title lineup of the National Academies' Committee on Maximizing the Potential of Women in Academic Science and Engineering. The latter recently produced a bureaucratically superb 364-page report. The greater scope of the former work may compensate for its lower author-titles to report-pages ratio.

The Carnival of the Bureaucrats joins the Council of Graduate Schools' Advisory Committee on Graduate Education and American Competitiveness in congratulating Sergey Brin and Larry Page, two Ph.D. program drop-outs, for their success with Google.

Steven Silvers at Scatterbox uncovers a directive to the U.S. news media. It begins by complimenting major news organizations for referring to the head of the FDA as a "czar," and then it directs:

Please remember that any director of a large government entity should be referred to as the Subject-matter Czar, even if that official displays no similarity to any of the pre-revolution Russian emperors. This will help Americans understand news about their government. And that is why we are here.

I would like to petition for reconsideration of this directive. Instead of "czar," a director of a large government entity should be referred to as "Servant of the Servants of the Public," e.g. "FDA Names Food Safety Servant of the Servants of the Public." Unfortunately, a procedure for petitioning for reconsideration of news coverage does not seem to exist.

At the Engaging Brand Blog, Anna Farmery offers ideas for widgets. One relates to the important bureaucratic activity of attending meetings:

Whether Widget - that allows me to put a meeting name in and see the purpose to see if it is worth attending

Such a widget is unlikely to be useful for dedicated bureaucrats. For dedicated bureaucrats, all meetings are worth attending.

At A VC, Fred Wilson reports on an important new communications development:

We are now in the world of conversation. We are talking to ourselves.

Bureaucrats have been talking to themselves for a long time. The rest of the world, including venture capitalists, apparently is now catching up with standard bureaucratic practices.

The University of Wisconsin Oshkosh offers its students a Common Intellectual Experience. This includes assigning students to read the book Mercury 13. The Common Intellectual Experience offers insightful guidance about that text:

[It] tells the story of 13 female pilots who fought to become part of the nation's space program from its very inception. Their tale is uplifting, a narrative of their dedication, and sacrifice in their attempt to aid their nation in the space race against the Soviets and experience the thrill of space flight personally. These women, among the most accomplished female pilots in the world at the time, went through many of the same excruciating and challenging tests experienced by NASA's original seven astronauts. That all passed all tests, often with scores exceeding those achieved by the males selected to fly, carried absolutely no weight with an entrenched bureaucracy. (Excerpts from a review of The Mercury 13 in Publisher's Weekly, written by Michael Zimmerman, former Dean of the College of Letters and Science at University of Wisconsin Oshkosh.)

With deep regret, the Carnival of the Bureaucrats acknowledges that an entrenched bureaucracy can produce nonsense.

Phil for Humanity suggests that the size of U.S. currency should be differentiated to make life easier for persons with different visual capabilities. The size of U.S. currency notes was probably decided without a notice-and-comment administrative procedure. The shortcomings of short-cutting bureaucracy are readily apparent to the blind; they should be to everyone.

Zenofeller highlights the merits of renaming as an instrument of governance. Naming certainly is worthy of careful study. Zenofeller offers a simple policy rule, with supporting arguments:

Is there a problem? Find it a new name. So what if people will think you're idiots? First of all, they already do. Second of all, you actually are. Third of all, you just work there.

That third point appears to be inconsistent with evidence about bureaucrats. A bureaucrat loves her organization and submerges her whole life into it.

That's all for this month's Carnival of the Bureaucrats. Submit your blog article to the next edition using our Carnival submission form. Submissions should conform to the Carnival regulations. Past posts and future hosts can be found on the Carnival index page.

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Nothing is more important to a bureaucracy than customer service standards. Undoubtedly the customer service metric that should have the greatest weight in a customer service performance index is the human touch. Steve Portigal offers an insightful policy initiative that would promote customer service and innovation:

I would introduce empathy processes into government, especially departments that interact with the public or with businesses. Everyone - EVERYONE - will go through the process that their “clients” go through, on a regular basis (say, once per year). DMV clerks who stand in line (as the obvious example) will have an opportunity to see what the “other half” experiences.
...
A goal would be for the government to develop a set of best practices for user-centered-design - where design is making anything that gets used or experienced by someone else, apply those as broadly as possible throughout government, and then help businesses adopt more of these into their own practices.

I think the government can help even more. Since few persons actually spend any time working in government, web-based training technology can help to disseminate to businesses government best practices.

As a public service, the Carnival of the Bureaucrats offers you a training opportunity satisfying that program objective. Watch the video below. While doing so, smile, enjoy life, radiate good will and human understanding, and at each cue point in the video, say sincerely, warmly, and sympathetically, "I'm so sorry, my Division isn't responsible for that problem." Practice until you can finish the whole video without getting grumpy, sarcastic, or contemptuous. You can do it!

KC Johnson at Durham-in-Wonderland offers posts (here, here, here, and elsewhere) suggesting that leading U.S. newspapers could use empathy training. The Duke Debacle has revealed a travesty of justice. It makes a caring person wonder how many persons spend decades in prison because of corrupt officials, unchecked by media acting in the public interest. But apart from that systemic issue, the lack of concern that leading newspaper have shown for the pain and suffering that they have caused three innocent persons is even worse than actions unbecoming of a bureaucrat.

Hueina Su at Intensive Care for the Nurturer's Soul encourages readers to "Take the L.E.A.P. for Life's Changes." She observes:

Change is inevitable. Think about it: everybody and everything in the world, even every cell in your body, are constantly changing, and there's no stopping them.

Time can pass with little notice in a bureaucracy. A bureaucrat can find herself or himself retiring without adequate preparation for this major life change. Always carefully consider the implications of any new actions with respect to your retirement plans. There's no avoiding getting older!

David at the Alexander Report submits Ted Santos post/column entitled "Just Change Your Mind." He explains:

Looking to the future of organizations, there may be a greater return on investment from training people in intrapersonal skills - a clear understanding of the relationship with self, chaos, opportunity, the future, change, risk, and colleagues. That way, people can learn to let go of old thought patterns and uncover blind spots.

The free training the Carnival of the Bureaucrats offers this month seems to be exactly the sort of investment that he tentatively endorses.

Jack Yoest at Reasoned Audacity presents Lurita Alexis Doan's basic ground rules for "How To Cut The Federal Budget at a Government Agency." This topic makes me a little uneasy. I can't imagine any circumstances in which cutting a federal agency's budget would be humane or necessary. Nonetheless, this submission appears to satisfy the regulations governing submissions to the Carnival of the Bureaucrats. Honoring the bureaucratic principle of regulatory inclusiveness, I am thus including this submission in the Carnival.

Jeff Jarvis at BuzzMachine has posted NBC's regulations of democratic discussion of the U.S. presidential debate. This truly news-leading bureaucratic work, in addition to forbidding "internet use", includes among its six rules the following:

4. No more than a combined total of 2 minutes of excerpts may be chosen for use during the period from the end of the live debate (8:30 pm ET) until 1:00 am ET on Friday, April 27. After 1:00 am ET, Friday, April 27, a total of 10 minutes may be selected (including any excerpts aired before 1:00AM). The selected excerpts may air as often as desired but the total of excerpts chosen may not exceed the limits outlined.

5. No excerpts may be aired after 8:30 pm on Saturday, May 26th. Excerpts may not be archived. Any further use of excerpts is by express permission of MSNBC only.

You just can't find a more professional bureaucracy than that of an old-fashioned video distribution company.

That's all for this month's Carnival of the Bureaucrats. Submit your blog article to the next edition using our carnival submission form. Submissions should conform to the Carnival regulations. Past posts and future hosts can be found on the Carnival index page.

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As part of our new program of continual innovation here at the Carnival of the Bureaucrats, we've tentatively established a new form for carnival post titles. Each carnival post will now begin with a Document Identification Code (DIC). The DIC Manager (DICMAN) has assigned DIC COB-8 to this carnival, the Carnival of the Bureaucrats #8. Based on the record before us, we find that DICs are easy to grasp and will readily meet important blogsphere needs.

Editing is important bureaucratic work. Apart from summarizing comments, an estimated two-thirds of bureaucratic work consists of editing edits. I remember a mentor once offered me three words of advice: "edit, edit, edit."

Nothing can harm a promising bureaucratic career like a final document that someone reads, where that persons finds a superfluous redundant phrase in the before-mentioned document. This month, the Carnival of the Bureaucrats remembers and mourns those those bright, ambitious young bureaucrats whose careers were tragically wounded in action by non-standard use of the English language.

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Many drafts of history are necessary to fully understand the enormity of the suffering of bureaucrats in battles of the sort that they encounter in every day of their lives on the job in the office. The Carnival of the Bureaucrats applauds the San Francisco Chronicle's contribution to this important work.

Michael Rosenblum at Rosenblumtv observers that local television news all looks the same. He asks:

Why is a medium that could be so incredibly creative and innovative turns out to be so turgid, boring, banal and predictable?

But all tv news doesn't show a guy with a box over his shoulder -- check out Third Eye News. Mr. Rosenblum observes:

To improve you have to embrace failure. Which is something we don’t do in television news. We just keep repeating the same formula over and over and over for years and years.

Repeating the same formula over and over and over for years and years is what bureaucrats do well. The private sector can embrace failure. But that's just not good enough for government work.

Steven Silvers at Scatterbox discusses a recent public outrage:

how some advertising guys created a terrorist scare in Boston after placing 38 blinking electronic signs beneath underpasses and along streets to promote a Cartoon Network show called Aqua Teen Hunger Force. The one-foot-tall signs depicted a boxy little cartoon character flipping off passing motorists.

This issue concerns a lot of different bureaucracies. Here I will merely report:

Title 18 of the United States Code, Section 1464, prohibits the utterance of “any obscene, indecent or profane language by means of radio communication.” Consistent with a subsequent statute and court case, the Commission's rules prohibit the broadcast of indecent material during the period of 6 a.m. and 10 p.m. FCC decisions also prohibit the broadcast of profane material between 6 a.m. and 10 p.m.

Blinking electronic signs typically are not considered to be radio communication. However, the definition of radio communication deserves further discussion.

veryLegal discusses What Ails Lawyers:

Lawyers complain of a lack of control, being sandwiched between judges and clients. They complain about the increasing hostility between fellow lawyers, a lack of loyalty between partners, and a diminishing public image(all those lawyer jokes don’t help). But paramount to all these, they complain about the torturous hours.

Because organizational loyalty is an important bureaucratic value, I think more bureacratization of the legal profession would help to improve this situation. With respect to tortuous hours, good lawyers should know how to deal with that.

Brad's Bits offers conference call tips for slackers. Brad explains:

It seemed like on most projects, we would wrap up the requirements phase and be ready for design when somebody would request a new feature, thus dragging requirements on for several more weeks. This meant daily conference calls to update documents and pore over the importance of each and every word for hours.

Brad seems not to like doing this. Bureaucratic work isn't for everyone. Some people are cut out to be slackers, and some are cut out to be bureaucrats.

Anna Farmery at the Engaging Brand blog provides a generic Dear Boss letter. She believes that "leadership is so much more than having a great office and title." In my experience, having a window in your office is a clear indicator of high rank.

Blue Steel offers to the Carnival of the Bureaucrats a post on how to make political cartoons with a computer. Professional bureaucrats do not make political cartoons.

David Maister at Passion, People and Principles offers a post entitled We're All Dentists. He explains:

Well, not all of us, but many of us are.

The point about dentists is that while we may need them, we never WANT them. While they do very honorable, helpful caring things for us, their patients, we patients would rather avoid them if we can.

Bureaucrats definitely aren't dentists. Bureaucrats are here to serve the public. The public wants bureaucrats, needs bureaucrats, and pays the salary of many of them. Get to know your friendly bureaucrats, and take advantage of the services they offer you!

That's all for this month's Carnival of the Bureaucrats. Submit your blog article to the next edition using our carnival submission form. Submissions should conform to the Carnival regulations. Past posts and future hosts can be found on the Carnival index page.

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