In corporate seasonal rhythms, finance folks get worked up every month and every quarter getting the numbers ready for reporting.
For those managing businesses, while there could be aperiodic launches of products and initiatives, the end of the year tends to hit a peak. The combination of closing out the year and readying for next year, makes the time between September and early December one of the most intense times at work. A true walking and chewing gum at the same time.
In addition, post 2008 collapse and the subsequent great recession, the level of belt tightening has reached absurd proportions. Do more with less has become a mantra. In fact the other day it occurred to me that there could be a new mantra - 'do more with nothing.'
I wondered what the reaction would be to such a new mantra - 'do more with nothing'
Labor Leader: 'so, what else is new'
CEO: 'hmmm....interesting, tell me more'
Physicist: 'have you ever hear of the big bang? We got a whole universe out of nothing'
I am also feeling the strain of do more with less, and was feeling a bit sorry for myself.
Then I chanced upon the movie 'Day One' with Brian Dennehy and David Strathairn. These are two fine actors, I must say. Under-rated, but real talents.
Day One is a TV movie and is about the making of the atomic bomb - The Manhattan Project. The Manhattan Project is a great example of big science meeting big project management with the fate of the free world in balance with a thicket of moral dilemmas surrounding it. A feature length movie was made titled 'Fat Man and Little Boy' featuring Paul Newman. In my opinion, the TV movie far more ably captured the spirit of the story and Dennehy and Straithairn were perfectly cast.
All of us know the story. In short, the physicists who flee Germany (Leo Szilard et al), get to the US and warn President FDR through a letter from Albert Einstein that the Nazi's are working on a new kind of destructive weapon. FDR responds by commissioning a secret program called the Manhattan Project that actually develops and demonstrates this weapon.
Why the story intrigues me is as follows:
- General Groves who as an Army Engineer corp leader, just come of building the Pentagon, the world's largest office complex. He is itching for action in the Atlantic theatre. But he is asked to handle this mysterious project that he takes on reluctantly.
- He finds nothing that he can use between all the geniuses (literally) thinking about this idea. All they have to go on is Einstein's equation. In a highly comic scene he visits the Chicago lab and asks in frustration, "why aren't these people working'. And Leo Szilard retorts by saying, 'they work with their brains'
- He finds a partner in Robert Oppenheimer who sees the scope of this challenge. But Oppenheimer does not have a nobel prize and needs to earn the respect and cooperation of several who already do. And some are resentful that he has been given charge. In particular Edward Teller (who later developed the Hydrogen bomb).
- The intelligence services are hugely suspicious of Oppenheimer given his past associations with left wing groups. Much later they do get to him and strip him off his security clearance. And much later than that, Presidents JFK and Johnson restore and reward him.
- Meanwhile Congress is fretting about money going into this unknown effort.
- FDR suddenly dies and President Truman comes to know of this awe-inspiring weapon in the middle of trying to figure out how to be president and how to negotiate the peace in WWII.
Through all this Groves and Oppenheimer keep their eye on the prize. There are managerial, budgetary, scientific, technical, espionage, military, political and moral problems besetting them in every which way.
But they don't lose focus. And on July 16, 1945 the Trinity test is successfully conducted.
Both Groves and Oppenheimer know the destructive power of what they have created. Groves is focused on the successful completion of the project and almost deliberately brushes aside questions and concerns. In one telling episode, he does not forward a memo from Leo Szilard to President Truman expressing deep misgivings from the scientific community regarding this weapon.
Oppenheimer wants his scientific curiosity fulfilled. Neither one takes the step that Colonel Nicholson took in the final scene of The Bridge on the river Kwai.
In fact Oppenheimer is known to have quoted the Bhagavad Gita, as 'the gadget' as it was called, successfully exploded. He is said to have recited:
"Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds . . . "
Seeing this movie and reflecting on the scale, scope and import, I am transfixed. I am also deeply admiring of the way Brian Dennehy and David Strathairn captured these two leaders.
I contemplate what is in front of me as I push for year end, and I dimension my efforts in comparison to what Groves and Oppenheimer were faced with - my molehill to their mountain.
.... and I am inclined to say, 'never mind, I am happy I have a job!'
For those managing businesses, while there could be aperiodic launches of products and initiatives, the end of the year tends to hit a peak. The combination of closing out the year and readying for next year, makes the time between September and early December one of the most intense times at work. A true walking and chewing gum at the same time.
In addition, post 2008 collapse and the subsequent great recession, the level of belt tightening has reached absurd proportions. Do more with less has become a mantra. In fact the other day it occurred to me that there could be a new mantra - 'do more with nothing.'
I wondered what the reaction would be to such a new mantra - 'do more with nothing'
Labor Leader: 'so, what else is new'
CEO: 'hmmm....interesting, tell me more'
Physicist: 'have you ever hear of the big bang? We got a whole universe out of nothing'
I am also feeling the strain of do more with less, and was feeling a bit sorry for myself.
Day One is a TV movie and is about the making of the atomic bomb - The Manhattan Project. The Manhattan Project is a great example of big science meeting big project management with the fate of the free world in balance with a thicket of moral dilemmas surrounding it. A feature length movie was made titled 'Fat Man and Little Boy' featuring Paul Newman. In my opinion, the TV movie far more ably captured the spirit of the story and Dennehy and Straithairn were perfectly cast.
All of us know the story. In short, the physicists who flee Germany (Leo Szilard et al), get to the US and warn President FDR through a letter from Albert Einstein that the Nazi's are working on a new kind of destructive weapon. FDR responds by commissioning a secret program called the Manhattan Project that actually develops and demonstrates this weapon.
Why the story intrigues me is as follows:
- General Groves who as an Army Engineer corp leader, just come of building the Pentagon, the world's largest office complex. He is itching for action in the Atlantic theatre. But he is asked to handle this mysterious project that he takes on reluctantly.
- He finds nothing that he can use between all the geniuses (literally) thinking about this idea. All they have to go on is Einstein's equation. In a highly comic scene he visits the Chicago lab and asks in frustration, "why aren't these people working'. And Leo Szilard retorts by saying, 'they work with their brains'
 |
| Robert Oppenheimer and General Groves |
- The intelligence services are hugely suspicious of Oppenheimer given his past associations with left wing groups. Much later they do get to him and strip him off his security clearance. And much later than that, Presidents JFK and Johnson restore and reward him.
- Meanwhile Congress is fretting about money going into this unknown effort.
- FDR suddenly dies and President Truman comes to know of this awe-inspiring weapon in the middle of trying to figure out how to be president and how to negotiate the peace in WWII.
Through all this Groves and Oppenheimer keep their eye on the prize. There are managerial, budgetary, scientific, technical, espionage, military, political and moral problems besetting them in every which way.
But they don't lose focus. And on July 16, 1945 the Trinity test is successfully conducted.
Both Groves and Oppenheimer know the destructive power of what they have created. Groves is focused on the successful completion of the project and almost deliberately brushes aside questions and concerns. In one telling episode, he does not forward a memo from Leo Szilard to President Truman expressing deep misgivings from the scientific community regarding this weapon.
Oppenheimer wants his scientific curiosity fulfilled. Neither one takes the step that Colonel Nicholson took in the final scene of The Bridge on the river Kwai.
In fact Oppenheimer is known to have quoted the Bhagavad Gita, as 'the gadget' as it was called, successfully exploded. He is said to have recited:
"Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds . . . "
 |
| David Strathairn and Brian Dennehy |
I contemplate what is in front of me as I push for year end, and I dimension my efforts in comparison to what Groves and Oppenheimer were faced with - my molehill to their mountain.
.... and I am inclined to say, 'never mind, I am happy I have a job!'
3 comments:
It is a fantastic movie and I see it often.
It has many dimensions to it. On one hand, the scientists involved with absolutely no knowledge of how to go about producing the bomb from a mere idea and on the other hand the general who knew how to motivate people to fight but does not know how to deal with scientists who sit and think for their work.
Then there is the Sherlock Homes plot of espionage and intrigue about Oppenheimer and finally, the dilemma about dropping the bomb or not. All these are part of reality which is better than any fiction could provide.
The history of the world changed after that.
The even more well-known Oppenheimer quote was his statement later that it brought to mind words from the Bhagavad Gita: "Now, I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds."
Wikipedia:
Oppenheimer's diverse interests sometimes interrupted his focus on projects. In 1933 he learned Sanskrit and met the Indologist Arthur W. Ryder at Berkeley. He read the Bhagavad Gita in the original language and later he cited it as one of the books that most shaped his philosophy of life. His close confidant and colleague, Nobel Prize winner Isidor Rabi, later gave his own interpretation:
Oppenheimer was overeducated in those fields, which lie outside the scientific tradition, such as his interest in religion, in the Hindu religion in particular, which resulted in a feeling of mystery of the universe that surrounded him like a fog. He saw physics clearly, looking toward what had already been done, but at the border he tended to feel there was much more of the mysterious and novel than there actually was ... [he turned] away from the hard, crude methods of theoretical physics into a mystical realm of broad intuition.
In spite of this, observers such as Nobel Prize-winning physicist Luis Alvarez have suggested that if he had lived long enough to see his predictions substantiated by experiment, Oppenheimer might have won a Nobel Prize for his work on gravitational collapse, concerning neutron stars and black holes.
One wonders of this motif didn’t also play itself out with a modern secular spiritualism or faith-based ideology:
At his 1954 security clearance hearings, he denied being a member of the Communist Party, but identified himself as a fellow traveler, which he defined as someone who agrees with many of the goals of Communism, but without being willing to blindly follow orders from any Communist party apparatus.
Genius at the edge of madness. An oft-told tale….
Great Sunday reading!
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