Moscow Subway

Some bizarre and - in some cases - memorable photos of people on the Moscow subway.

[HT: Linkbunnies ]

Calling Amateur Archaeologists

If you are an Indiana Jones wannabe, you might be interested in the 2007 Pecos Conference in New Mexico where amateur archaeologists mingle with professionals in the great outdoors.

Just don't wear a polo shirt.

IQ Test

Here's a one question IQ test.


[HT: Newsvine ]

Exec Pay

The rise of executive pay, its defenders claim, is no more problematic than the fact that, say, Red Sox slugger Manny Ramirez is paid much more than earlier stars like Ted Williams.

But the process affecting the compensation of star athletes is quite different from the one that determines CEO compensation. A team executive negotiating with an athlete can be expected to be guided by the club's interests, while the player's agent is looking out for the client's demands. When independent buyers and sellers hammer out a transaction this way, the market's invisible hand is commonly expected to produce efficient arrangements.

But in setting executive pay, as we document in our research, directors have not been guided solely by the interests of shareholders. Instead, they have had various economic incentives, reinforced by social and psychological factors, to go along with arrangements favorable to top managers.

See all of the article by Lucian Bebchuk and Rakesh Khurana of Harvard Business School here.

Loon Watch

Mark Steyn looks at 9/11 conspiracy buffs and debunkers and has some interesting side observations. An excerpt:

Just for the record, I believe that a cell of Islamist terrorists led by Mohammed Atta carried out the 9/11 attacks. But that puts me in a fast-shrinking minority. In the fall of 2001, a coast-to-coast survey of Canadian imams found all but two insistent that there was no Muslim involvement in 9/11.

Oh, well. It was just after 9/11, everyone was still in shock.

Five years later, a poll in the United Kingdom found that only 17 per cent of British Muslims believe there was any Arab involvement in 9/11.

Ah, but it's a sensitive issue over there, what with Tony Blair being so close to Bush and all.

Spirit of 76

Warren Buffett, on his 76th birthday, has married a 60 year old vixen.

Anna Nicole Smith is distraught. They had so much in common.

Painting Recovered

I knew the M&Ms would work.

The downside: Will this encourage chocoholic art thieves?

By Any Means Necessary?

The campaign against an initiative to end quotas in Michigan has been very ugly. Terrence Pell, writing in The Wall Street Journal, notes:

Just a few weeks before the deadline for Proposal 2 to get onto the state ballot, the "Coalition to Defend Affirmative Action By Any Means Necessary" (BAMN, loosely) argued that the signature gathering process used to qualify the referendum was tainted by racially targeted fraud. From the beginning, BAMN has claimed the initiative disguised an anti-black and racist agenda. But because many black individuals had signed the petition, BAMN had to show they'd been duped.

So the group launched an "investigation." They systematically called and personally visited blacks who'd signed the petition. In some cities, they had friendly talk show hosts read the names of black signers over the radio. In all cases BAMN's message was the same: How could you, a black person, sign a petition to roll back affirmative action?

That Which Does Not Destroy Me

What recent graduates do when they encounter those "post-grad blues."

How to Screw Up a Meeting

The following steps are by no means all-encompassing but experience shows that if you follow them carefully, you can sink any meeting:

1. Don't have a goal. Better yet, have a vague goal and change it during the meeting. Just never let anyone know that you're doing so.
2. Forget the agenda. Get a bunch of egos in a room and let them drone on. Ask your secretary to summon you after an hour. Turn over the meeting to the biggest bore. Don't return.
3. If you must have an agenda, rigidly stick to it regardless of reality. Has the third item become moot? Discuss it anyway.
4. Circulate the agenda to only a few of the attendees. The others will enjoy looking over their shoulders.
5. Pick the meeting room with care and select either of the following: a spartan, poorly ventilated cell with hard chairs that the participants will be eager to escape or a comfortable, lavish board room with large, leather seats that induce fantasies and napping.
6. If it is to be a long meeting, don't have refreshments. Empty stomachs produce creative minds. If some malcontents insist upon food, bring in the left-overs from an earlier meeting. That'll teach them.
7. Address the most difficult item at the beginning of the meeting. If discussion bogs down and no time is left for the other subjects, that's no problem. The agenda for your next meeting is already written!
8. Call on the senior people and ignore the junior. Rank hath its privileges. Besides, after listening to their betters the junior team members won't be inclined to interrupt with semi-rebellious witticisms. They'll either be comatose or mentally composing their resumes.
9. Get as many people as possible into the room. Line the walls with smirking staffers. Pack the table with those who possess only a remote knowledge of the subject but are armed with plenty of opinions. The more people, the more complicated the personal relationships and alliances. In large organizations, you can usually count on having at least four people who hate one another. That always livens things up.
10. At the close of the meeting, make sure that responsibility is unclear and deadlines are hazy. Don't schedule the next meeting. Let that be a subject of mystery. Linger with other participants so you can squelch any questions that might clarify matters. Drop a few acerbic remarks to encourage acrimony. Stroll back to your office. Mission accomplished.

Quote of the Day

He started out at the bottom, and sort of likes it there.

- Tennessee Ernie Ford

Before and After

Be sure to read Kathy Sierra's post at Creating Passionate Users on why marketing should write the user manuals.

Humor in Nazi Germany

Spiegel reviews a new book on humor, and its use as a means of dissent, in Nazi Germany. One of the bits of dark humor:

Two men meet.

"Nice to see you're free again. How was the concentration camp?"

"Great! Breakfast in bed, a choice of coffee or chocolate, and for lunch we got soup, meat and dessert. And we played games in the afternoon before getting coffee and cakes. Then a little snooze and we watched movies after dinner."

The man was astonished: "That's great! I recently spoke to Meyer, who was also locked up there. He told me a different story."

The other man nods gravely and says: "Yes, well that's why they've picked him up again."

Atlantic City Air Show

A video with highlights from the 2006 Atlantic City Air Show.

A lot of Blue Angels action. You might want to turn down the volume.

Work + At Home + Children

Dane Carlson gives his tips for working at home with children.

Headphones?

[A friend once recalled how, because his father worked at home, he and his brother developed the art of fighting quietly. They'd slug and throttle away without a shout or a whimper. I think it affected him.]

Kluxer Reinstatement

Workplace Prof Blog reports on an arbitrator's decision to reinstate a Nebraska state trooper who was fired for being a member of the Ku Klux Klan.

Would you trust that trooper's testimony in any case involving a black person?

Zero Tolerance?

Malcolm Gladwell tells the story of a young man who tried to poison his teacher.

It has a surprise ending.

The Big Not-So-Easy

If you read anything about the efforts to rebuild New Orleans, this Fortune article by Charles C. Mann is a good place to start. An excerpt:

Erin Levins returned to the city in early October, as soon as the checkpoints opened. As a manager at Cox Communications, he'd used Google Earth to learn that his house was standing.
But the blurry images on his screen had not prepared him for what it was like to see his neighborhood vacant and wrecked. Or to discover that every surface inside his home had been transformed into a garish ecosystem - pink, black, white, and green - inhabited almost exclusively by molds. Like tens of thousands of other homes in the city, the Levinses' house was structurally intact but completely consumed.

Wearing a respirator and a Tyvek suit, Erin ripped out the washer and dryer; the dishwasher, stove, and especially the refrigerator; and all the furniture, clothing, linens, and papers, including his wife's collection of art books, 3,000 strong. Out to the sidewalk went every scrap of wallboard, pipe and electrical fixture, insulation batt, and most of the floor.

Strange Victory

Although this happened over 20 years ago, I can still recall the call from Ed.

He was in a jovial mood, so my defenses immediately shot up.

"Do you remember Francis, the man you pushed us to hire last year?"

I did. Ed's department had an abysmal record when it came to hiring African Americans. As the EEO Officer, I finally told them that they could not make any job offer until it had been cleared with me. They danced around a bit with Francis, but even Ed - who would have been sent by Central Casting if you'd requested a white bigot - had to admit that a black man was the best qualified candidate, so Francis got the job.

His success was part of a long journey that I'd taken with Ed.

Ed had started out regarding any outreach program as a bleeding heart employment project for incompetents. In time, he began to realize that we were serious when we emphasized hiring the best person and that the best candidate could even be a woman or minority. You would never have reached Ed by extolling Affirmative Action much less diversity but he could buy into equal opportunity and he was even more enthusiastic about getting people who'd do a decent job. It took a few years, but some sources began to report that the bigot from Central Casting had become a closet supporter of equal opportunity.

That's why I was more than curious when he called about Francis. "What's up?"

Ed drawled out, "I have some good news and some bad news."

"You are enjoying this far too much. Tell me the bad news first."

"Well, the bad news is Francis, that fine worker you recommended, got into an argument with another employee this afternoon."

"Yes."

"And he stabbed him."

"Good Lord! Did the guy die?"

"No, no. The man will live. The stab wasn't that bad, as stabs go."

I stared out the window. "What's the good news?"

Ed lived for moments like these. "The good news is that it appears the other man started the fight and Francis can claim self-defense. So we aren't going to fire Francis. We'll suspend him for a few days, but he'll keep his job."

It was then that I knew that Francis had achieved a whole new status in that department. If he'd been a poor employee, Ed and the team over there would have jumped to toss him out the door.

Now, they were twisting and turning to save his job.

I asked Ed to keep me briefed and put down the phone. Some days, you take your victories where you can find them.

Quote of the Day

The British created a civil service job in 1803 calling for a man to stand on the Cliffs of Dover with a spyglass. He was supposed to ring a bell if he saw Napoleon coming. The job was abolished in 1945.

- Robert Townsend

The Team

The other team members were capable, but early on they chose to defer to Harold.

Harold decided to play a greater role because the others seemed passive and he wanted to move things along.

As Harold did more, the others grew used to it. Some resented it, feeling that Harold was treating them like second-class citizens. A few secretly hoped that Harold would fail so they adopted a passive-aggressive approach: If he directly asked for help, they've give it, but they wouldn't volunteer assistance and any contributions that they gave would be minimal.

Time passed and Harold started to feel overwhelmed. The work piled up, the others didn't pitch in, and Harold harbored a slow anger toward the rest of the team.

The others in turn blamed Harold. "We would have helped," they muttered to one another, "if only he had permitted us to participate."

"Gloryhound!" they charged.

"Slugs!" fumed Harold.

Each side thought it had behaved properly and the other was at fault.

The only amusing part of the tale is they all thought their story was unusual.

Posner's Prescription

Ann Althouse has a good post on an interview with Judge Richard Posner, author of Not a Suicide Pact, in which he discusses the Constitution and the war against terrorism.

One of several interesting points:

How much privacy did we have years ago with "party lines" for telephones?

Ah, those were the days!

Telecommuting Dissenters

It didn't take Tony Bono long to figure out he had a problem with telecommuting: "My mailman was scared of me," he says.

A new job assignment had led him to start working from his Cherry Hill, N.J., home. But Mr. Bono soon grew so lonely that he found himself waiting for the mailman each day and racing to greet him: "Hey! Hi, Tom, how are you doing? Want to come in and have a drink?" Mr. Bono recalls saying. He wasn't surprised when the postman started avoiding him.

It's an ironic twist on corporate America's march toward telecommuting: A small but significant number of foot soldiers dislike the trend. As more employers encounter work-at-home employees who yearn for a cubicle again, a few are developing specific strategies to help.

Read the entire CareerJournal article here.

Female CEOs

Here's a commentary from The Christian Science Monitor on whether we can expect to see more women as CEOs in the near future.

My recommendation to those companies: Increase outreach and employee development, but don't use quotas and always select the best person regardless of sex.

Another recommendation: Pay more attention to achieving intellectual diversity.

Wind-Powered "Creatures"

Some things are simply neat.

Check out this short video about a "kinetic sculptor" who builds wind-powered machines that walk.

[HT: Adfreak ]

"May I Reword That?" Quiz

This is from a quiz that I use in classes on discretion. The answers are at the bottom of the post.

On some days, life needs a rewind button. Who said the following?

1. “Whenever I watch TV and see those poor starving kids all over the world, I can’t help but cry. I mean I’d love to be skinny like that, but not with all those flies and death and stuff."
2. “Outside of the killings, Washington has one of the lowest crime rates in the country.”
3. Referred to the retirement community of Leisure World as “Seizure World.”
4. “Everybody knows [Hitler] was good at the beginning but he just went too far.”
5. “I suppose I could have stayed home and baked cookies.”
6. Repeatedly referred to an NAACP audience as “You people.”
7. “If you’ve seen one slum, you’ve seen them all.”
8. Told a 13-year-old who expressed interest in being an astronaut, “You’ll have to lose a bit of weight first.”
9. "I drank a fair amount of Scotch on an empty stomach and a colleague and I ended up dancing on a tabletop to 'She Drives Me Crazy' by the Fine Young Cannibals. For weeks after that, everyone who had been at the party started humming the tune whenever I walked into a room. It was funny but I don't think it did my career any good."
10. “We have every kind of mix you can have. I have a black, I have a woman, two Jews and a cripple. And we have talent.”
11. “It’s the most hectic, nerve-racking city. Imagine having to take the [Number] 7 train to the ball park, looking like you’re [riding through] Beirut next to some kid with purple hair…next to some dude who got out of jail for the fourth time right next to some 20-year-old mom with four kids. It’s depressing.”
12. “We’re going to Hymietown.”
    
    [Answers: (1) Mariah Carey; (2) Marion Barry; (3) John McCain; (4) Marge Schott; (5) Hillary Clinton; (6) Ross Perot; (7) Spiro Agnew; (8) Prince Philip; (9) Person recalling holiday party; (10) James Watt; (11) John Rocker; and (12) Jesse Jackson.]
    

Defenders of Buick and Pontiac

James Surowiecki, writing in The New Yorker, explains why General Motors won’t get rid of Buick and Pontiac. An excerpt:

When General Motors was the biggest and most profitable auto manufacturer in the world, its strategy was to provide “a car for every purse and purpose.” G.M. offered a panoply of distinctive brands, each targeted at a particular category of buyer—Buick for the successful but conservative driver, Cadillac for the wealthier and more flamboyant, and so on. This was a tremendously successful strategy in the days when G.M.’s domination was unchallenged. But now, with G.M. losing billions of dollars a year and struggling to restructure, it just looks like a waste of time and money. When analysts talk about how to turn G.M. around, most start with the need to slim down the company and get rid of less popular brands. (Buick and Pontiac are perennial nominees.) It’s an eminently sensible approach, but it’s unlikely to happen anytime soon, because it would challenge the interests of some of the most powerful players in today’s auto industry—car dealers.

Before the Protests Begin

What some companies do to head off ethics-related consumer boycotts.

Quote of the Day

Anger makes dull men witty, but it keeps them poor.

- Francis Bacon

Hackers

Neatorama presents "A Short History of Hacking."

Who Leaked the Gervais Videos?

Remember the Ricky Gervais training videos for Microsoft?

I posted them on the blog several days ago.

Apparently, Microsoft is not amused that they were leaked.

They should relax.

The company's reputation probably shot up when the word was out that they were cool enough to hire Gervais and his unconventional humor.

The Kinkster Cracks Down

From the Governing blog, the story of an innovative disciplinary action:

“I don’t want this picking-on-each-other, back-biting stuff to go on. It’s not the cowboy way.”

Texas musician/humorist/novelist/independent gubernatorial candidate Kinky Friedman, disavowing the criminal complaint his campaign manager, Dean Barkley, filed against gubernatorial opponent Carole Keeton Strayhorn — while declining to withdraw it or apologize for it — and saying he would punish Barkley by forbidding him to visit his favorite Austin bar for two weeks.

Original source: Houston Chronicle

Word of Mouth Marketing

Guy Kawasaki gives a "preview" of Andy Sernovitz's book, Word of Mouth Marketing.

Good ideas - I especially like the resort's move with the cab drivers - but Thomas Mann was onto the the word of mouth barrier years ago:

"There is at bottom only one problem in the world and this is its name. How does one break through? How does one get into the open? How does one burst the cocoon and become a butterfly?"

Profound Judgments Dept.

Take a break.

The Onion reports: Teacher Sees Potential In Student With Glasses.

Google versus Microsoft

Google today announced the launch of a suite of Web-based applications for small businesses, a step analysts say moves the company toward more direct competition with Microsoft.

Google Apps for Your Domain (google.com/a) bundles several of the tech giant's popular features--E-mail, group-scheduling calendars, voice calling and instant-messaging services, and Web design and hosting features--adding some administrative controls. The launch version is free, supported by advertising. Google plans to introduce a paid version of the service that will include more storage and some technical support. It most likely will be ad free by the end of the year; its price has not been set.

Read the entire US News & World Report article here.

Carnival Time

This week's Carnival of the Capitalists is up at Business & Technology Reinvention.

It has its usual variety of helpful posts on management, finance, and biz.

Retirement Party

I went to a retirement party the other day. It was for a city executive and, at her request, was very low-key. Speeches were kept to a minimum and she had a chance to get around and see the sizable group of people who worked with her recently or years ago.

The tone was just right and she eloquently spoke about her plans for the future.

As I looked around the room, the old thought occurred of just how much talent was going to walk out the door. At the same time, of course, her departure opens up some opportunities for others who will, in time, make their own mark.

That's the way it works. You spend years creating and maintaining and then head off; preferably at a time of your own choosing and while you can still do other things. Later on, you may return and new people will wonder just who you are. And, of course, by then you are indeed a different person from the one who left.

She plans on traveling and reading more and the usual indulgences one dreams of when the daily routine is packed. Knowing her, she'll do all of that in a year and then will be looking for something more challenging. That's good news.

If her only goal was to play golf, I'd be really worried.

Hallucinating to The Sixties

Rod Dreher, reflecting on an article by Robert Hughes, remembers the nightmare that was the Sixties and an encounter with Abbie Hoffman, icon of loons.

Quote of the Day

A loafer always has the correct time.

- Frank McKinney

From "Nearing Zero"

Check out the site here.

Geek Marketing

Creating Passionate Users examines Geek Marketing Myths.

I think I'll re-read this on a regular basis.

Creativity and Ice Cream

One of the better business strategies is to take a known commodity and improve upon it.

In this case, it is the ice cream sandwich.

White Guilt

Shelby Steele sees “white guilt” as a factor in the war:

White guilt in the West--especially in Europe and on the American left--confuses all this by seeing Islamic extremism as a response to oppression. The West is so terrified of being charged with its old sins of racism, imperialism and colonialism that it makes oppression an automatic prism on the non-Western world, a politeness. But Islamic extremists don't hate the West because they are oppressed by it. They hate it precisely because the end of oppression and colonialism--not their continuance--forced the Muslim world to compete with the West. Less oppression, not more, opened this world to the sense of defeat that turned into extremism.

Read his entire article here.

[HT: Real Clear Politics ]

Neutral UN?

This article from The Weekly Standard should get more attention. An excerpt:

UNIFIL--the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon, a nearly 2,000-man blue-helmet contingent that has been present on the Lebanon-Israel border since 1978--is officially neutral. Yet, throughout the recent war, it posted on its website for all to see precise information about the movements of Israeli Defense Forces soldiers and the nature of their weaponry and materiel, even specifying the placement of IDF safety structures within hours of their construction. New information was sometimes only 30 minutes old when it was posted, and never more than 24 hours old.

Meanwhile, UNIFIL posted not a single item of specific intelligence regarding Hezbollah forces. Statements on the order of Hezbollah "fired rockets in large numbers from various locations" and Hezbollah's rockets "were fired in significantly larger numbers from various locations" are as precise as its coverage of the other side ever got.

Generation ADD?

Here's a strange report of cell phone habits indicating the extent to which some people are addicted to technology.

What Are You Looking At?

According to a Men’s Health study, the top 10 angriest cities are:

1. Orlando
2. St. Petersburg
3. Detroit
4. Baltimore
5. Nashville
6. Wilmington
7. Miami
8. Memphis
9. Jacksonville
10. St. Louis
    

If your city isn’t listed, find it here.

Quote of the Day

"How come you never told us any of this?" the bosses inquired. "How come you never asked?" the workers replied.

- Christopher Locke, Gonzo Marketing

No Mind-Numbing, Time-Wasting TV? How Could He Bear It?

Steve Pavlina went without TV for 30 days.

He reports. You decide.

[HT: 2Blowhards ]

Now Hear This

After someone’s cell phone rang for the third time, an angry Indiana judge detained a row of spectators in her courtroom and — after she couldn’t get an answer as to who owned the chirping phones — held two people in contempt for not fessing up. After unsuccessfully questioning the five potential suspects, Lake County Criminal Court Judge Diane Boswell ordered them all to sit in chairs reserved for prison inmates. There they sat for more than an hour until the court session ended.

Read what else happened to these hardened criminals here.

Discretion Needed

An intern in London sends an email inviting people to her 21st birthday party. Its snobbish tone quickly becomes the subject of ridicule as the message is forwarded.

Ms Gao is only the latest in a procession of employees whose cringeworthy personal emails have been sent around the world. Last year legal executive Richard Phillips resigned after insisting his secretary pay a £4 dry-cleaning bill for a ketchup stain on his trousers. Perhaps most famously, when the boyfriend of Claire Swire forwarded her email praising his sexual prowess to his mates, it soon ended up across the world. The chastened boyfriend and his lawyer mates were disciplined; Ms Swire went into hiding.

Read the entire article here.

To Give or Not To Give

It’s late at night. The Bistro’s closed. The busgirls are putting up the chairs. The kitchen crew’s mopping the floors. I’m in the back counting the evening’s take. There isn’t much to cou