Editing 898: Chain of Command
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| titletext = Themistocles said his infant son ruled all Greece -- "Athens rules all Greece; I control Athens; my wife controls me; and my infant son controls her." Thus, nowadays the world is controlled by whoever buys advertising time on Dora the Explorer. | | titletext = Themistocles said his infant son ruled all Greece -- "Athens rules all Greece; I control Athens; my wife controls me; and my infant son controls her." Thus, nowadays the world is controlled by whoever buys advertising time on Dora the Explorer. | ||
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==Explanation== | ==Explanation== | ||
− | {{w| | + | {{w|Themistocles}} was an Ancient Greek politician and this comic and image text are about uncommon chains of command. |
− | + | The President of the United States is at the top of the US Nuclear Chain of Command, but the engineer is ''de facto'' above him because the engineer is in charge of configuring how the button works. The "Red Button" is usually a worst case scenario as it launches all nuclear capabilities. | |
− | + | In the image text is a similar joke placed at the top of the chain of command, this time in Ancient Greece. The title text refers to Plutarch's [http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Plutarch/Lives/Themistocles*.html#p53 ''Life of Themistocles'']: | |
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− | + | Of his son, who lorded it over his mother, and through her over himself, he said, jestingly, that the boy was the most powerful of all the Hellenes; for the Hellenes were commanded by the Athenians, the Athenians by himself, himself by the boy's mother, and the mother by her boy. | |
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+ | This paradoxical situation applies in many other fields. In a major corporation commercially sensitive information is generally hidden from employees at lower levels but available to management, but the database administrator (who usually sits low on the hierarchy and doesn't manage any other employees) can access not only the sensitive information but the raw data that it's calculated from. Not only that, but the database administrator is usually responsible for controlling who has access to the information - making him/her the most powerful person in the company (as far as the database is concerned). Many managers think of themselves as being "above" engineers and have trouble coming to grips with this concept. | ||
==Transcript== | ==Transcript== | ||
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:US NUCLEAR CHAIN OF COMMAND | :US NUCLEAR CHAIN OF COMMAND | ||
− | {{comic discussion}} | + | {{comic discussion}} |
− | + | [[Category:Charts]] | |
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[[Category:Politics]] | [[Category:Politics]] | ||
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