Why Nerds Are Unpopular

In this 2003 essay, Paul Graham has a theory about why nerds are unpopular:

The main reason nerds are unpopular is that they have other things to think about. Their attention is drawn to books or the natural world, not fashions and parties. They're like someone trying to play soccer while balancing a glass of water on his head. Other players who can focus their whole attention on the game beat them effortlessly, and wonder why they seem so incapable.

Even if nerds cared as much as other kids about popularity, being popular would be more work for them. The popular kids learned to be popular, and to want to be popular, the same way the nerds learned to be smart, and to want to be smart: from their parents. While the nerds were being trained to get the right answers, the popular kids were being trained to please.

The Homework Wars

Here's another report on the question of whether children get too much homework and whether it is beneficial.

Frank Lloyd Wrong

The story of a house designed by Frank Lloyd Wright that benefited from the architect’s neglect:

His inability to visit the site was a blessing in disguise for the Hagans. He was notoriously uncompromising about aesthetics and often sacrificed solid construction to get the look he wanted. Fallingwater has needed millions of dollars in restoration work, and the Guggenheim is currently undergoing large-scale renovation. Since the Hagans first moved in, 50 years ago, Kentuck Knob has needed only superficial work. Herman Keys, a local contractor, oversaw the construction and made sure the building could withstand the region’s hard winters. He added more heating pipes and varnished the cypress. (Wright had originally stipulated that the wood remain untreated, which could have led to warping and cracking.) The original heating system, involving a maze of pipes installed under the floor to avoid unsightly radiators, is still in use. Two local masons, Jess Wilson and Jess Wilson, Jr., cut the home’s sandstone blocks from nearby boulders, hand-incising each one.

Moneyed Midways Up

On the Moneyed Midways, the collection of posts from various business, finance, and management carnivals, is up.

There is a lot of variety this week.

S - E - X Update

A fifth grade art teacher takes her classes to a local art museum where they see, among other things, nude statues.

A parent complains.

The school administration loses its mind.

Click here for the story.

[HT: Althouse ]

Negligent Referral: A Multi-Million Dollar Mistake?

Employers who think that they are protected against litigation if they only give dates of employment in response to queries about former employees aren't completely safe.

This article from the Vermont Employment Law Letter shows the danger of negligent referral.

No Dummy

Let me tell you, Annie, some of these people are unbelievably rude. Either they treat me like a piece of furniture (no hello, no eye contact) or they think I'm their errand girl. (Just this morning somebody sent me out to Starbucks, and it wasn't the first time this happened.) Lately, my two bosses have started asking me for my impressions of job candidates. So far this week, two have been discourteous and dismissive, so I gave both the thumbs-down. Neither is getting called back for the next round of interviews. I don't know how common this is, but please advise your readers who are job hunting that the dummy at the reception desk may be anything but.

- Not "Just a Secretary"

Anne Fisher in Fortune on why you should always be kind to the receptionist.

Eat Your Vegetables?

Kathy Sierra analyzes why telling people that something will be good for them is not an effective motivator.

Goebbels in Iran

Here's a video, with English subtitles, of an Iranian report on the Holocaust cartoon contest that was held in that country.

One look at the vicious anti-Semitism of the images and it's clear that the Iranian regime is not simply totalitarian, it's Nazi.

[HT: Drudge ]

Quote of the Day

No one can have a higher opinion of him than I have, and I think he's a dirty little beast.

- William S. Gilbert

Female and Male Generosity

Which sex is more generous?

Christina Hoff Sommers examines the evidence.

One clue: If you're a panhandler and have been helped out, most likely the giver is a woman. If you are rescued from a car accident, most likely the rescuer is a man.

Miscellaneous and Fast

Margaret Heffernan is advising us to work less and achieve more.

Andrei Hagui argues for multi-sided software platforms.

The Brookings Institution finds that political refugees in the United States are moving to smaller communities. [HT: Governing ]

Michael Kinsley wonders if newspapers are into dinosaur mode. [HT: kottke ]

HP's CEO says he's not resigning. [Cynical reaction: I wonder if that means he is resigning.]

There's a debate over evidence that drinking may help your career.

Business Week looks at the world of corporate private investigators.

Security Scan

What airport scanners see.

Covenant Eyes?

I think the product described in this Wilson Quarterly article is more than a little creepy:

Most of us who live with children and computers know about software for controlling how the former use the latter. But what about the grownups who can’t control themselves? For adult Internet users ready to admit that they’re in the grip of a higher power, there is Covenant Eyes, a website that will keep track of all the other websites you visit—and e-mail this potentially incriminating list to an “accountability partner” of your choosing. Covenant Eyes even rates websites on a kind of taboo scale (the higher the score, the raunchier), so that your spouse or pastor can tell at a glance whether you’ve been poring over market research online or taking in a peepshow.

EEOC Sues Denny's

The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission is suing Denny's under the Americans with Disabilities Act because of the restaurant chain's maximum leave policy.

It's not a wise move to set a limit when you may have a situation in which additional leave could be provided without producing undue hardship.

Mono-Derailed System?

13th Floor has the sad story of Seattle's mono-rail system.

It's going to be difficult to maintain ridership when service is unreliable.

Did they anticipate the extra weight of all those Blackberries and lattes?

Accelerated Achievement Day

Have you ever noticed how productive you are on the day before a vacation?

Things that are of minor importance get tossed aside while significant projects are either wrapped up or delegated. Associates are brought up to speed on your activities. A sense of urgency gives your energy level a certain boost. No drifting or daydreaming. Things must get done.

By the time you walk out the door, you feel that everything is under control and a great deal has been accomplished.

I'll refrain from asking why we can't duplicate that achievement every day, but why can't we do that at least once a week? Why not designate a day as "Accelerated Achievement Day" and work as if we are leaving for the beach in 24 hours?

If we seriously adopt that practice, I suspect:

• Our priorities will be clarified.
• We'll delegate more tasks that should have been assigned to others in the first place.
• We'll break the bonds of paralyzing perfectionism.
• We'll achieve a greater sense of control and, along with that, less stress.
• Our overall productivity will increase.
  

On the Book Shelf

I'm still reading - and enjoying - Bruce Chadwick's George Washington's War and Michael E. Gerber's E Myth Mastery. (The latter is a sequel to Gerber's extraordinary book on small business, The E Myth Revisited.)

Am also reading Alan Furst's Blood of Victory. If you haven't read any of Furst's spy novels and you've enjoyed film noir of the Thirties/Forties, you might want to give him a try. Blood of Victory starts on a freighter from Odessa to Istanbul in 1940. France has fallen and Istanbul is crawling with German, Russian, and British agents. It doesn't get more exotic than that.

I recently received a copy of Andy Cohen's Follow The Other Hand, a book that uses magic lessons to illustrate marketing techniques. I'll be reviewing it soon.

There are two other management books - one on stories of success and the other on the growth of Disney - that I'll be discussing later. Paul Johnson's book, Intellectuals, is also near the top.

Please let me know if there are any books that you'd recommend.

Obesity Case

A man who weighed 340 pounds was hired as a driver/dock worker.

His weight went up to a high of 450 pounds. He later was injured on the job.

Click here to see what happened to his ADA lawsuit.

Quote of the Day

For we hear that there are some which walk among you disorderly, working not at all, but are busybodies.

- 11 Thessalonians 3:11

Truly Revolutionary

Work has begun on the first Moscow area business school.

There are reports that Lenin's body has started to rotate.

Into The Mind

One of the most amazing things I've ever seen.

An autistic man named Stephen Wiltshire is taken on a helicopter ride over Rome and then asked to draw what he saw.

Click here for the video.

When Academics Host Thugs

Victor Davis Hanson looks at the new anti-Semitism:

We're accustomed to associating hatred of Jews with the ridiculed Neanderthal Right of those in sheets and jackboots. But this new venom, at least in its Western form, is mostly a leftwing, and often an academic, enterprise. It's also far more insidious, given the left's moral pretensions and its influence in the prestigious media and universities. We see the unfortunate results in frequent anti-Israeli demonstrations on campuses that conflate Israel with Nazis, while the media have published fraudulent pictures and slanted events in southern Lebanon.

The renewed hatred of Jews in the Middle East - and the indifference to it in the West - is a sort of "post anti-Semitism." Islamic zealots supply the old venomous hatred, while affluent and timid Westerners provide the new necessary indifference - if punctuated by the occasional off-the-cuff Amen in the manner of a Louis Farrakhan or Mel Gibson outburst.

EEOC Sues University of Phoenix

The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission has filed a lawsuit against the University of Phoenix, alleging the school favors Mormon enrollment counselors over non-Mormons.

[HT: Lou Rodarte]

Juan Williams Breaks Loose

Mark Steyn reviews Juan Williams’s new book. An excerpt:

Juan Williams is a certified liberal, but he's not a certifiable liberal. And so he's looked at the numbers -- 70 per cent of black children are born out of wedlock, a higher proportion of black men are in prison than of any other racial group (two statistics that are not unrelated) -- and concluded that the post-civil rights black leadership and its policies are a total bust. For having the impertinence to wander off the Democrat victim-culture plantation, he's been damned as merely this season's "black conservative"; a black man who's no longer authentically black, in the way that Colin Powell and Condi Rice's success within the Republican party in effect negates their race; or, if you like, the latest "Oreo" -- a black man who's white on the inside, like the famous cookies, which were supposedly hurled at Michael Steele, a black Republican candidate in this year's Senate race in Maryland.

The concept of "authenticity" -- that one's skin colour mandates particular behaviours, such as voting Democrat and supporting "affirmative action" -- is, of course, racist. But the peculiar touchiness of the black community on this question recurs again and again in Williams's book. "The defence of gangster rap, with its pride in guns and murder, was that it was all about 'keepin' it real,' " he writes. "In that stunning perversion of black culture, anyone who spoke against the self-destructive core of gangster rap was put down as acting white."

Bully Boss

What should you do if your boss is a bully?

This CareerJournal article has some good tips and winds up with an old favorite:

Flee.

You Know You Want One

This t-shirt is available at ThinkGeek.

Project Runway Investigation

There's been an internal investigation at Project Runway, the fascinating Bravo show featuring a Darwinian competition among fashion designers to make it to Fashion Week.

It appears that Jeffrey Sebelia, the bad boy of the competition, was suspected of taking the phrase "Make it work" a bit too far by outsourcing his sewing. (One of the other contestants, Laura Bennett, allegedly made the accusation.

The investigative results have not been announced. Click here for the New York magazine story.

Jingle-Jangle

There's a new box set of music by The Byrds.

BTW: Roger McGuinn is 64.

Hewitt Interviews Edsall

Hugh Hewitt interviews Thomas Edsall, former senior political reporter for The Washington Post and author of Building Red America, on the issue of media bias.

It’s one of the more intelligent – and polite – exchanges on the subject. I wish we’d see more.

Harvard Mag

Yes, there is a private magazine that covers Harvard University alumni.

02138 is named after the University's zipcode. Pick it up if you want to read about Harvard alums such as Al Franken and Bill O'Reilly although they seem to have overlooked the Unabomber.

Unfortunately, you won't find it on the newsstands.

Great Moments in Advertising

Via Neatorama:

For more ads, click here.

Quote of the Day

Tell your boss what you think of him and the truth shall set you free.

- Anonymous

College Students and History

Among college seniors, less than half--47.9%--correctly concluded that "We hold these truths to be self evident, that all men are created equal" was from the Declaration of Independence. More than half did not know that the Bill of Rights prohibits the governmental establishment of an official religion, and "55.4 percent could not recognize Yorktown as the battle that brought the American Revolution to an end" (more than one quarter believing that it was the Civil War battle of Gettysburg that had ended the Revolution).

Read the rest here.

The Jury

Michael Barone gives an account of serving on a jury in the District of Columbia:

This was a criminal case. There was no question that the defendant had stabbed the victim three times after an argument in the parking lot at the end of an hours-long party, at which almost everyone had been drinking. The issue was whether the stabbing was in self-defense. The prosecution and defense presented two different and inconsistent narratives of what had happened.

The New Rules

James Lileks notes the new rules of discourse:

Clip and save, for this may come in handy: If you mock Islam with a drawing or a novel, you get riots and dead people. News of mishandled holy books yields riots and dead people. Insufficiently reverent short films by a Dutchman yields a dead person, specifically the Dutchman.

Now we add this detail: Quoting medieval religious colloquies is a reasonable justification for burning churches, shooting a nun and holding up signs demanding that the pope convert to Islam or saw off his own head. (There have been reports of carpal tunnel syndrome among radical Islam's enforcers, and they have requested we all help out.)

This is a new twist: Now history itself cannot be discussed.

[HT: Tim Blair ]

Rudeness Increase?

Have you noticed that rudeness is increasing in the workplace?

That's the sort of subject that you can haul out once a year and, in many areas, are likely to find people nodding that it has indeed increased. I don't know if it has, but you don't have to look long to see incidents of inadvertent discourtesy.

"Inadvertent" because the practitioners appear to be so divorced from etiquette that it's unlikely that they even know they are being rude. In the past year, I've heard of or witnessed these infractions:

• Not returning phone calls.
• Sending abrupt e-mail messages.
• Agreeing to a course of action, then changing positions but not telling others of the change.
• Using profanity in mixed company. (And by that I mean in front of people whose position on such language is unknown.)
• Not even pretending to listen to the other person.
• Failing to acknowledge the presence of others.
• Putting heads on desks during meetings.
• Mocking a person who lacks the power to mount a defense.
• Requesting customized material from another person and then not thanking the person upon receipt.
• Taking credit for the work of others.

Have I missed anything?

Considering The Basics

I recall an interview with Peter O'Toole in which he spoke of a teacher who used to make his classes discuss basic concepts, such as loyalty.

Not a bad technique. We could use similar discussions in the workplace. For example:

Courage. What is it? How do we gain it? What can be done if it's missing? Can we be ethical without being courageous? How can a lack of courage create problems in the workplace?

Teamwork. What does it require? Which types of behavior harm it? Can true teams have castes? What are the characteristics of a sick team?

Fairness. What does "fair" mean? Can it ever be achieved? Is it wiser to strive for fairness or to avoid behavior, such as discrimination, that are opposites to fairness?

Respect. What are the basic elements of respect? Are there any actions that we take on a regular basis that can reasonably be perceived as disrespectful? Do we tolerate disrespect?

These, of course, are just a few. I've found that employees welcome the opportunity to discuss the basics because they hunger for clarification in the area of ethics. Management spends a great deal of time talking about what to do and not about what to be and when there is a gap between the two, it is extremely easy for people to slide into their old habits.

Kramer Does Shakespeare

Michael Richards as Caliban in a commercial for the National Endowment for the Arts.

He's pretty good!

[HT: Adfreak ]

Quote of the Day

When some moralists write about the importance of having character, they appear to mean only the importance of having a dull character.

- G. K. Chesterton

Chinese Cars Go Dodge

It looks like DaimlerChrysler is going to import cars from China and sell them as Dodges.

Hugh Macleod Break

From gapingvoid.

A Real Carnival This Time

A real version of the Carnival of the Capitalists is up at Crossroads Dispatches.

This time, it's very well done.

Suspicions, Stories, and Stereotypes

Four employees in a workplace. Their supervisor is Maria.

Charles is wary of trusting Maria because he believes she set him up to fail on a sensitive assignment. He's never talked to her about his feelings, but has formed a lasting opinion that she can't be relied upon. He regards any kind behavior on her part as a ruse.

Ellen is wary of Maria because Charles has talked to her about his experience and Ellen likes Charles. She has no reason to believe that he's lying.

Harold is wary of Maria because of a bad experience with his last employer. So far, Maria has treated him well and yet Harold is still cautious. After all, Harold thought he could trust his last supervisor and then one day he caught it in the neck.

Darrin is wary of Maria because this is his first job and his father told him never, ever, to trust management. In fact, the nicer Maria is to him, the more suspicious Darrin becomes.

Maria likes all of her employees. She sometimes senses a lack of trust, but has concluded that once they see how nice she is, they'll start to accept her.

The Impossible Customer

As this WaiterRant exchange shows, sometimes the customer isn't right.

Litigation Breeding

What types of behavior create a lawsuit-fertile environment?

Unbecoming Behavior. Indiscreet, cruel, and vulgar conduct as well as inappropriate humor.

Unethical Behavior. Lying, deception, discrimination, favoritism, and failure to consider the common good.

Uncaring Behavior. Insensitivity to the needs of others, disloyalty, and indifference.

Unskilled Behavior. Committing and/or tolerating avoidable mistakes and errors that could have been prevented by reasonable amounts of training and diligence.

Keep in mind that the employer may win lawsuits triggered by this behavior, but time and money will be squandered on legal fees. That's a big reason why demanding decent and professional behavior is one of the most effective complaint-reduction strategies.

Back to the Thirties

Christopher Hitchens goes after Stanley Baldwinesque foreign policy:

You may if you choose take the view that resistance to jihadism only makes its supporters more militant and, given the fact that all wars intensify feeling on both sides, there must be some truth to this. But the corollary is a bit disturbing: The most prudent course of action then seems to be compromise or surrender. This is a rather contemptible conclusion. And it also overlooks the unpleasant fact that the jihadists don't seem to be that much interested in compromise. Indonesia and Canada, to take two very different countries, both opposed the Iraq war. But both of them have been targets of vicious terrorist attacks, as have Turkey and Morocco, which likewise opposed the overthrow of Saddam Hussein.

Quote of the Day

There may be said to be two classes of people in the world: those who constantly divide the people of the world into two classes, and those who do not.

- Robert Benchley

Mind Games

I'm under the weather today.

Am following a time-tested cure of sleeping interspersed with staring at the ceiling.

I did manage to read a Wall Street Journal article about traffic accidents in Belgium where the traffic experts bridle at the thought of stop signs at intersections. The best part of the story was the revelation that once upon a time, the person with the more expensive carriage or the higher social status had the right of way.

I'd like to meet the genius who thought of that.

Last night, I tapped out some posts on management issues but they're being held off by an iron rule: Don't post anything that looks good when you are ill.

Some items may be posted later once the steroids kick in.

Ignore anything involving cold medicine and visions of giant woodchucks.

300 Million

It took the United States 139 years to get to 100 million people, and just 52 years to add another 100 million, back in 1967. Now, one day in October-after an interval of just 39 years-America will claim more than 300 million souls. The moment will be hailed as another symbol of America's boundless energy and unique vitality. It is that, of course. But it is also true America has grown every time the Census Bureau has taken a measurement, starting in 1790, when the Founders counted fewer than 4 million of their countrymen-about half the population of New York City today.

The recent growth surge has been extraordinary. Since 2000 alone, the nation has added some 20 million people. Compared with western Europe, with birth rates plunging, or Japan, its population shrinking, America knows only growth, growth, and more growth. It now has the third-largest population in the world, after China and India. "Growth is a concern that we have to manage," says Kenneth Prewitt, former head of the Census Bureau, "but it's much easier to manage than losing your population."

U.S. News & World Report examines the ramifications of the population increase.

Where the CEOs Studied

Most CEOs of the biggest corporations didn't attend Ivy League or other highly selective colleges. They went to state universities, big and small, or to less-known private colleges.

Check out the details from the CareerJournal article.

Biz Grad Students More Likely To Cheat

Not good news:

A study of graduate students in business in the United States and Canada has found they are more likely to cheat than their counterparts in other fields.

Many seem to feel it comes with the subject.