Miscellaneous and Fast

Fidel Castro, before undergoing surgery, has given provisional power to his brother.

Northwest Airlines flight attendants have rejected a contract. Strikes are possible in August.

An interview with Roger McGuinn of The Byrds. (Thanks to Ann Althouse!)

Dumb headline of the day.

A review of whether sports psychology works.

Airport Security

The Heritage Foundation is arguing that there should be a new approach to airport security; one that focuses more on the person than on the bomb. An excerpt:

An improved risk-based approach to identifying dangerous people would entail separating passen­gers within the terminal checkpoints into at least three defined groups, based on the quantity and quality of information known about each:

Low-risk passengers, about whom a great deal is known;

“Ordinary” passengers (mostly infrequent flyers and leisure travelers); and

High-risk passengers, about whom nothing is known or there is specific negative information.

Not Quite 85 Years

Sure, you were convicted of a white collar crime, but you know you've had a good day when the prosecutor asks for an 85 year prison sentence but the judge only gives you 42 months.

The Wall Street Journal Law Blog looks at two very different sentences.

Happy Birthday Milton!

Today is Milton Friedman's birthday.

In contrast to the late and amusing John Kenneth Galbraith (taken to task here by Tom Peters), Friedman has made an enormous difference.

Carnival of the Capitalists is Up!

Click here for the Carnival of the Capitalists, which is hosted this week by the Selling to Small Business blog.

You'll find interesting posts from a variety of business bloggers.

P.S. Welcome to all Carnival visitors!

Tools with Curves

Barbara Kavivot’s marriage and company collapsed, but she picked up her toolbox and rebounded:

The Manhattan single mother has resurrected herself as a home-repair guru with a sleek set of tool kits to help women who want to do handiwork. Her tools are designed to better fit a woman's size and strength, such as lighter hammers with distinctive curves and screwdrivers with thumb rests.

She hasn't become the blue-collar Martha Stewart just yet, but she is making a bid for just such a moniker with her products at major retailers, two books and a new position as the home-improvement coach for America Online.

Read the entire article here.

Leaving Well

There is, as this CareerJournal article notes, a certain style that should go with leaving a job.

The two most important tips, I believe, are not burning bridges and not taking too long.

The first is crucial. Although it may be tempting to unload a few grievances about the efficiency or I.Q. level of certain executives, it is not wise. (As one observer noted with regard to another issue, "If you fire the boss's son because he's the dumbest person in the company, perhaps he was the second-dumbest person in the company.") Go with grace. Remember the maxim: All the brothers are valiant and all the sisters are virtuous. Trust me. You will cross the paths of some of those people in the future.

Go quickly. Two weeks notice and you're out of there unless you're the CEO and then perhaps you should make it a month. The point is you will rapidly become a ghost and if your departure is too long, people will begin to jump when they see you in hallways. "Are you still here?" will be the unspoken - and in some cases spoken - question. Don't kid yourself that there are megaprojects that need to be shaped up before you leave. The minute you announce your resignation, your clout on those projects will start to drain.

A word to those who receive the letter of resignation: If it comes as a total surprise, you haven't been paying enough attention to your employees.

Feminization of the Classroom?

Teacher Gary Garibaldi believes the feminization of the classroom is responsible for the poor academic performance of boys.

Outsourcing War

Mark Steyn worries about the “ghettoization” of war. An excerpt:

A nation that psychologically outsources war to a small career soldiery risks losing its ability even to grasp concepts like "the enemy": The professionalization of war is also the ghettoization of war. As John Podhoretz wondered in the New York Post the other day: "What if liberal democracies have now evolved to a point where they can no longer wage war effectively because they have achieved a level of humanitarian concern for others that dwarfs any really cold-eyed pursuit of their own national interests?"

That's a good question. If you watch the grisly U.S. network coverage of any global sporting event, you've no doubt who your team's meant to be: If there are plucky Belgian hurdlers or Fijian shotputters in the Olympics, you never hear a word of them on ABC and NBC; it's all heartwarming soft-focus profiles of athletes from Indiana and Nebraska. The American media have no problem being ferociously jingoistic when it comes to the two-man luge. Yet, when it's a war, there is no "our" team, not on American TV. Like snotty French ice-dancing judges, the media watch the U.S. skate across the rink and then hand out a succession of snippy 4.3s -- for lack of Miranda rights in Fallujah, insufficient menu options at Gitmo.

World Map of Happiness

A University of Leicester psychologist has prepared a world map of happiness.

The top ten are Denmark, Switzerland, Austria, Iceland, The Bahamas, Finland, Sweden, Bhutan, Brunei, and Canada.
Other rankings were: 23 - USA, 35 - Germany, 41 - United Kingdom, 62 - France, 82 - China, 90 - Japan, 125 - India, and 167 - Russia.

Lohan Gets Reprimand for Partying Too Much

Lindsay Lohan receives a letter of reprimand.

Rather well done too.

Illycaffe

Good news. Now that Illycaffe is making out there, you can go to Starbucks and feel less yuppy.

Even so, Andrea Illy says he's not aiming to unseat Starbucks. Instead, his game is to create an exclusive destination with an emphasis on quality and aesthetics. The Espressamente experience will be oh-so-Italiano, focused on coffee served short and dark with perfect crema, or foam, in a designer demitasse. Illy hopes that great espresso, combined with surroundings that ooze modern cool, will have coffee cognoscenti purring buonissimo with every sip. "Starbucks is less about coffee and more about community," says Wendy Liebmann, president of market researcher WSL Strategic Retail. "Illy is about the elegance of coffee.... It is elitist."

Read the rest of the Illycaffe story here.

Quote of the Day

Appeasers believe that if you keep on throwing steaks to a tiger, the tiger will become a vegetarian.

- Heywood Broun

On The Moneyed Midways

Political Calculations has released its weekly collection of business and money-related posts from a variety of blogs.

Good stuff. Find it here.

Naturally Born Organizers' Tricks of the Trade

Okay, the new week is looming. It's time to get stuff together.

Read this if you are not a naturally born organizer.

Unfortunately, It May Not Be That "Dead"

Scrappleface reports that Mel Gibson has previewed a new "dead language" film.

Little Miss Sunshine

I haven't seen any previews but the buzz from several sources is that Little Miss Sunshine is an extraordinary movie. It will be opening soon.

Reviews from some very diverse reviewers:

Slate

Roger Ebert

Michael Medved

The American Enterprise

Can it be that Hollywood has discovered the importance of a story?

How to Manage Your Boss

Recently, I was re-reading Jacques Horovitz's 10 rules on managing your boss.

They're quite good.

Decision Papers

I’m surprised that decision papers are not commonly used in large organizations. They can reduce meetings and save a huge amount of staff time.

The classic decision paper is written by the department proposing a particular course of action and circulated to other departments that have an interest in the topic. The paper has a cover memo noting the topic and the list of individuals to whom the paper should be circulated. If an individual agrees with the proposals, the person can simply write “OK” next to his name and then pass the paper on to the next party on the list. If the person opposes the proposed decision, then the person can note that he disagrees and that his comments are attached at a tab.

Protocol dictates that once the paper has been fully circulated, it is returned to the author so that person has the chance to see any dissenting comments prior to taking the paper to the main decision maker. Some proposed decisions die at that stage if a dissenter has made a good point. If the paper moves on to the main decision maker, however, then that person has the advantage of reading an analysis of a proposed course of action that has been reviewed by all of the interested parties. The decision maker may choose to meet with some of the parties or may decide to accept or reject the proposed action.

Savvy operators learn to incorporate the concerns of the other parties into their recommendations. The decision paper process requires coordination – failing to include an obviously interested party on the coordination list is a major mistake – and the ability to write a persuasive recommendation. Far from being bureaucratic, decision papers streamline decisions. The papers can be circulating through the system as the parties are doing other things. One important requirement is that the papers must be logged in as they enter and leave each department so they can be tracked.

Large organizations that operate strictly through meetings should consider a decision paper system as an alternative. Odds are, they’ll like it.

Dig It

The largest public works project in history may be a classic lesson in the arcane workings of Massachusetts politics.

A systemic problem?

Islamic Imperialism

A review of a new study of Islam . The book's author, the head of the Mediterranean Studies Program at the University of London, notes a movement that is more political than religious. An excerpt from the review:

In his nervy, tightly documented Islamic Imperialism, Karsh challenges scholars and Muslim leaders to refute his own picture of Islam: an imperialist seventh-century Arabic movement that forced itself on neighboring lands such as today's Pakistan, Iran, Iraq, Syria and Egypt for secular colonialist payoffs - money, booty, territory.

According to Karsh, Muhammad, by claiming Allah's authority to act as both a political and religious leader, was able "to cloak his political ambitions with a religious aura" and "channel Islam's energies" into geographic expansion.

[HT: Arts & Letters Daily ]

Pandemic Checklist

Here's a Business Pandemic Checklist from the U. S. Chamber of Commerce.

It - and others like it - will probably be dragged out only after a pandemic strikes.

Quote of the Day

Rudeness is the weak man's imitation of strength.

- Eric Hoffer

Vanilla?

July is National Ice Cream Month.

(Just a few more days to celebrate with vast quantities of ice cream.)

Some stats from The Christian Science Monitor:

America's Favorite Flavors
1. Vanilla, 29%
2. Chocolate, 8.9%
3. Butter Pecan, 5.3%
4. Strawberry, 5.3%
5. Neopolitan, 4.2%

Read the entire article here.

Bo Diddley and Civilization

Sometimes, great anthropologists work in indirect ways.

Using two Bo Diddley videos, Michael from 2Blowhards presents irrefutable evidence that civilization declined from 1964 to 1970.

I'd forgotten how cool Bo Diddley was. Michael's analysis of the two audiences is dead-on. Bo was probably thinking, "What is with these people?"

Possible explanations:

• Faux sophistication;
• Having to sit on the floor;
• Stoned and fearful that Bo has turned into a giant woodchuck.

The "Yes Man" Boss

This CareerJournal article on the downside of having a boss who keeps saying yes to upper management and taking on new and unnecessary work should be read by all of those management advisors who tell people never to refuse an assignment.

A crucial skill in anyone's career is the ability to say no in a diplomatic but firm manner.

Chinese Teens

An interesting study by McKinsey & Co. on the attitudes of Chinese teenagers.

They are like teenagers elsewhere but are (1) more nationalistic; (2) more inclined to save money; and (3) interested in being able to support their aging parents.

Re-Fumbles

I suppose if you live long enough you get to see everything at least twice, and in recent days I’ve seen replays of two old blunders that I’d hoped I wouldn’t have to endure again. The first is the Friend Who Has Gone Too Far, and the second is the Enemy Who Is Really Our Friend.

Read the rest of Michael Ledeen’s article on the repeat of blunders here.

Casual Dress Friday

George's Employment Blawg examines the natural course of casual dress Friday.

Security Scan

A hospital in Troy, Michigan had problems with employees stealing drugs from a storage area.

Its solution was simple.

Risk Calculator

Citigroup's geopolitical risk calculator charts the state of the world.

These calculations are interesting, but the human element is always the wild card. Examine the origins of the Korean War and you find it was sparked by the buzz between Joseph Stalin's ears.

Is "Nuts" a Foreign Word?

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has ordered government and cultural bodies to use modified Persian words to replace foreign words that have crept into the language, such as "pizzas" which will now be known as "elastic loaves," state media reported Saturday.

Click here for the entire article.

["Domino's Elastic Loaves?"]

Science for Us Non-Science Types

Russell Seitz has picked out five science books that even non-scientists can enjoy.

[I've read none of them. The guilt begins to build.]

Richard Branson Thinking Out Loud

When we entered the airline business, the very first plane Boeing sent over to us ran into a bunch of birds and lost an engine. Because it hadn't been delivered yet, the insurance didn't cover that, so we were $1.5 million down before we flew our first flight, which took the whole Virgin Group beyond its overdraft facility.

Two days later, as I returned from the inaugural flight, our bank manager was sitting on my doorstep and telling me that he's going to foreclose on the whole business if we don't get the money in by Monday - and that was a Friday.

Read the entire interview with Virgin Group founder Richard Branson here.

Quote of the Day

Nobody ever gossips about other people's secret virtues.

- Bertrand Russell

Selling Soap in a Kleptocracy

What is it like to run a company in the world's worst place to conduct business?

Risky but exciting.

Miscellaneous and Fast

Wal-Mart is selling its 85 stores in Germany and will instead be focusing on Central America and China.

The trial of Saddam Hussein has come to an end. How many other trials he may have is unclear. Get a rope.

In a sign of the times, the Milwaukee Brewers have added chorizo to their famous home game sausage races.

Ana Marie Cox, the founder of Wonkette blog, has been named the Washington editor of Time.com. It must be Time's way of balancing its coverage from Left to Saucy Left.

Crime Writing, Fried Chicken, and Edna Buchanan

For those of you who like good writing, here’s a marvelous article about Edna Buchanan by Calvin Trillin. An excerpt:

In the newsroom of the Miami Herald, there is some disagreement about which of Edna Buchanan's first paragraphs stands as the classic Edna lead. I line up with the fried-chicken faction. The fried-chicken story was about a rowdy ex-con named Gary Robinson, who late one Sunday night lurched drunkenly into a Church's outlet, shoved his way to the front of the line, and ordered a three-piece box of fried chicken. Persuaded to wait his turn, he reached the counter again five or ten minutes later, only to be told that Church's had run out of fried chicken. The young woman at the counter suggested that he might like chicken nuggets instead. Robinson responded to the suggestion by slugging her in the head. That set off a chain of events that ended with Robinson's being shot dead by a security guard. Edna Buchanan covered the murder for the Herald—there are policemen in Miami who say that it wouldn't be a murder without her—and her story began with what the fried-chicken faction still regards as the classic Edna lead: "Gary Robinson died hungry."

Ebbers Conviction Upheld

The conviction of WorldCom CEO Bernie Ebbers has been upheld.

Deliver Criticism, How Not to

Delivering criticism is an important task in any workplace and yet relatively few people receive any formal training on how to do it well.

I've seen executives, managers, and supervisors who fumbled their delivery by:

• Bringing in unrelated issues;
• Weaving in a personal attack with what should be a discussion of performance;
• Acting as if they enjoy being the bearer of bad news;
• Behaving like an adversary instead of an ally;
• Failing to give examples;
• Using unnecessarily provocative language;
• Failing to show its impact on others;
• Rushing through the process; and
• Failing to put the problem in context.

It is surprising to see how often people make comments that can only trigger anger or defensiveness. When questioned later about what they thought would be the reaction of the other person to their remarks, they frequently concede that the comments would create a barrier but - and this is the important part - they don't really care. The ostensible goal of the session is to improve the other person's performance and yet the real goal is to make the critic feel better. The moment that shift occurs, all hopes of a productive session are finished.

As one of the smartest executives I've ever known put it, "When you're mad, don't do anything that feels good."

United 93

Lest we forget:

The trailer for the film United 93.

If you missed the movie when it was in the theaters, you might want to catch the DVD.

(I had to be dragged to the theater, but found the film to be engrossing. It should be shown in crisis management classes.)

Tips from Big Warren

Not a bad guide at all: Warren Buffett's Five Rules for Success.

[HT: PRDifferently ]

Funny Bunny

Roberto Cavalli has designed a new Playboy bunny outfit.

The old one looked weird. This one looks dangerous.

[HT: Adfreak ]

When Street Gangs Get Missiles

Daniel Henninger, writing in The Wall Street Journal, raises some chilling questions on the meaning of the Katyusha missile attacks.

The world is confronted by fanatical groups - death cults in many cases - that willingly fire inexpensive, unguided, missiles at civilian areas. They aren't interested in political settlements or in coexistence. China, North Korea, and Iran are their eager suppliers.

And the West will be the target.

Where the Ideas Hide

In large organizations, the people with the power are so consumed by their schedules and job demands that they lack the perspective of those who are within but looking upward.

The latter have the perspective and the ideas, but they lack the power.

That's why talking to the folks in the mailroom or the person who climbs the poles or the new management assistant makes sense. It's not some glad-handing political stunt; it's a way of picking up different perspectives.

Over time, the astute executive or manager who knows how to listen for what is meant and not just to what is said will strike gold in those meetings.

Running Room

Some ideas are so basic they get overlooked:

CareerJournal examines the virtues of career paths.

The Count of Fashion Gothic

“I spend my whole life with women and I know quite well what goes on in their minds,” Lagerfeld says, his rapid, accented English mumbled through fascinatingly fleshy lips. Occasionally, he gives a delicate flutter of his hands, encased in grey fingerless driving gloves that match his signature Hedi Slimane gear. He laughs like Dracula. His eyes are hidden behind visor-like bespoke shades. He revels in political incorrectness, denouncing fat (or “volume”, as he now tactfully calls it) and appending highbrow answers to lowbrow questions with the coda, “But I don’t think you are well informed enough to make a discussion with me about this.” In short, he is a thoroughly evil genius, a piece of fabulous fashion gothic.

An interview with Karl Lagerfeld.

[HT: Adpulp ]

Hitchens on Bombing Germany

Christopher Hitchens, writing in The Weekly Standard, on whether the bombing of Germany's civilian areas in WWII can be justified.

When Cars Were Cars

The car that made Ralph Nader's career:

Check out the 1961 Corvair catalog.

[HT: Swankpad ]

Quote of the Day

Memory is a crazy woman that hoards colored rags and throws away food.

- Austin O'Malley

Iraq Options

Frederick W. Kagan analyzes some of the options in Iraq. An excerpt:

The idea of creating some sort of Lebanon-type solution in Iraq is foolish for several reasons. First, Iraq is not Lebanon--its large numbers of ethnically mixed cities and regions would require substantial population movements to create stable ethnic zones. Since places like Baghdad and Mosul, two of Iraq’s largest cities, are also both heavily mixed and strategically important, it is almost inconceivable that such population movements could be accomplished without ethnic or sectarian violence on a vast scale. That violence would delay and disrupt progress toward any sort of new political solution and might well generate the kind of long-term vendetta mentalities that it has taken more than a decade of peacekeeping efforts in Bosnia just to keep under control. Nor has the Lebanon solution produced a Lebanon that is stable and able to resist the control of stronger neighbors, as recent events have made clear. Instability in a tiny country with few resources might be stra-tegically acceptable; instability in a country like Iraq, with vast oil reserves and troublous neighbors, is intolerable. Any solution that weakens the power of the central Iraqi government positively invites increased Iranian intervention, and perhaps the meddling of Iraq’s Sunni Arab neighbors in response. Such interventions would further destabilize and delegitimize the Iraqi government, increasing the likelihood of its total collapse.

Beyond Sand Castles

Take any casual endeavor and eventually it becomes formalized and very serious.

And, in this case, very impressive:

Sand sculptors are now competing for $15,000 in prize money.

Getting the Goods to Market

Is there any distribution system more poorly conceived than the one used by most U.S. car manufacturers and dealers? In the prevailing system, car prices are initially jacked up by locked-in labor concessions. Manufacturers pit dealers against other nearby dealers. Dealers are pressured to accept more vehicles than they can sell and—unable to make money from new cars—turn to service and trade-ins to eke out margins. And at the bottom of the chain are customers trapped in high-pressure negotiations for a car that isn't the exact model they want.

Sean Silverthorne interviews Harvard Business School professor V. Kasturi Rangan regarding his book on the strategic way to get goods to market.