Today I kept my boss from going home to put his kids to bed. Yep, Work First. That’s me.

He walked back into our work area with one of the bloodhounds from accounting. (I call him a bloodhound because he is very diligent at follow up and refuses to be brushed aside with vague assurances. Darn him to heck.)  They were discussing a big, world-peace type of question which I didn’t think was currently in discussion. I asked if I could butt in and was allowed to do so

It turned out that not only were we discussing a big world-peace type of question, but we had to have an answer tomorrow. Some of my initial suggestions were complicated analyses that might show something useful or might show nothing at all. But if the result has to be tomorrow, I know that tricky uncertain analyses are not the way to go. There is no direct data to go on that isn’t subject to interpretation in favor of either argument, or just as likely the result of a choice rather than the basis for a choice.

When you haven’t got the resources for an argument from evidence, you must make an argument from rhetoric or authority. My sense of effective rhetoric is consistently wrong, so we had to go for Authority. I suggested we ask Mr. Jeff Leggett. We agreed, though, that this could keep us very, very late. Mr. Jeff Leggett knows a lot and shares liberally.

I went and fetched him without even being asked.