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Why idiots often rise to the top

Guys.  I think I’ve inadvertently stumbled upon why the phenomenon of how idiots (as opposed to someone more qualified) are often found in positions of power occurs.  (I’m thinking of you certain possible GOP presidential candidate, certain former Venezuelan president, certain former Afghani president, a whole slew of former Taiwanese presidents, certain managers I’ve had the pleasure of witnessing in the act of managing, etc.)  Wanna know, wanna know??

Ahem…it’s because idiots are less dense than the surrounding matter and therefore, they will rise to the top (this totally needs to be on a shirt or a poster or something).

TADA!!  Makes so much sense, doesn’t it?

Think about it, say in a sea of normal, everyday employees, somehow the one with the least common sense and often the least courtesy toward fellow employees, the least idea about how a project should be managed, the least technical knowledge, the biggest ego, the most insecure, etc is somehow the one to be promoted to a management position.  Why?  Because everyone else with common sense is weighed down by their common sense (and technical knowledge and common courtesy).  The idiot managers don’t have (much) of that stuff, so they are relatively less dense and they rise to the top.

Have you ever thought about the expression “filled with hot air”?  I would argue that the idiot managers also tend to be filled with hot air.  Gasses at warmer temperatures are less dense than gasses at lower temperatures.  So again, idiots are less dense than the surrounding matter and therefore can rise to the top.

But what of the rare non-idiot manager, you ask.  Yes.  Those do exist.  I have worked for a few of them.  And well…you can get a metal pin to float on water.  Metal is denser than water so you wouldn’t think that would be possible.  But surface tension!  It’s probably surface tension that allows these rare non-idiot managers to achieve their management positions.  I guess the surface tension is all the employees with sense who like to work with caring, good managers.

The problem with this is that if you disturb the surface tension the pin sinks as you would expect it to.  I’ve unfortunately seen this with good managers too.  I guess they’re just too full of common sense (technical knowledge, common courtesy, actual care for their people, etc) to stay afloat.  It’s…so sad.

I make! Breakfast pizza edition

Pizza rat.  I’ve been told that this is actually me in rat form.

I continue to make pizza.  Because…why not?  You already know of my excessive fondness for pizza.  And now, I have expanded the pizza making to the early morning hours!  Huzzah!  While I think cold or reheated (via skillet) pizza is a wonderful breakfast, I’ve decided that I should also have the option of having fresh pizza at breakfast.  And so, breakfast pizza!

Thus, I recently made a breakfast pizza consisting of a garlicky olive oil, fresh asparagus tossed in that same garlicky olive oil and some grated parm, grape tomatoes, fresh mozz, and fresh eggs cracked on top.  Why?  Because I had all of that in my fridge already as well as pizza dough and I needed to get rid of some of it.  Also, pizza.  Duh.

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The pizza dough was a no-knead dough recipe as the last pizza post and it was unfortunately still a tad salty for my taste.  The salt didn’t magically disappear.  You know, as salt does sometimes (it does not).

But since I knew that crust would be somewhat salty, I purposely did not season any of the toppings with other than some fresh ground pepper.  I baked it on a quarter sheet pan, because I assembled it the night before, at 450degF.  The results were good…but soggy.  There were a lot of toppings and I wasn’t baking directly on the stone so the crust didn’t really have a chance to really get nice and crisp.  It tasted really good, still a bit on the salty side, but really good with the garlic and the asparagus and the runny egg.  But the texture…

I did think I could do better, so here’s attempt #2.  Attempt #2 was probably 4 days after originally making the dough.  The crust was definitely the most flavorful of the bunch.

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I used the same toppings but this time I brushed the dough with some olive oil and garlic and then parbaked the crust at 550degF for about 8 min.  I did forget to dock the dough and it puffed up a bit.  I had to try and work around that to make sure the eggs didn’t slide off.  Remember to dock the dough, guys.

Anyway, after removing the crust from the oven, I loaded up the toppings, arranged the eggs so they didn’t immediately slide off, and put it back in the oven for another 10 min to get the crust nice and browned.  The problem with leaving it in the oven for 10min was that the eggs were overdone.  They were gel set as opposed to runny.  Still delicious, but I think 8 min would be about the max you could leave the eggs in the oven and still have them be kind of runny.  So I had good crust but sub-par eggs this time.  There will need to be attempt #3.