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.

Michigan Civil Rights Initiative

Since I've worked in the area of equal opportunity for years, George Will's column on the Michigan Civil Rights Initiative has brought back a lot of memories.

Attend enough meetings of Affirmative Action and diversity groups and you'll enounter this stance:

"Affirmative Action doesn't mean reverse discrimination but banning reverse discrimination will destroy Affirmative Action."

Can you run that by me again?

Turner, Dershowitz, and the UN Show

Mark Steyn reviews the latest show at the United Nations:

The last intervention in public affairs Ted Turner made was a month or two back, when he recounted what an agreeable vacation he'd had in Kim Jong Il's North Korea. (I sent him a postcard saying, "Wish you were still there.") He's now weighed in on the ayatollahs, and his line's pretty straightforward: Why shouldn't Iran have nukes?

"They're a sovereign state," he said. "We have 28,000. Why can't they have 10? We don't say anything about Israel -- they've got 100 of them approximately -- or India or Pakistan or Russia. And really, nobody should have them. They aren't usable by any sane person."

Cut to President Ahmadinejad's address to the United Nations.

Read it all here.

Quote of the Day

He not only closed the subject, he sat on the lid.

- Mary Renault

HP Leak Investigation: Ethics Officer Leaves

In the wake of the HP leak investigation, the company's director of ethics has resigned.

Dangerous Buffoon

Jeff Jacoby on our friend to the south:

But Chávez, who went to prison in 1992 after trying to overthrow Venezuela's democratic government, has more in mind than striking obnoxious poses. As Franklin Foer noted in The Atlantic last spring, Chávez ``speaks incessantly about the coming military confrontation with the gringos." He has ordered his armed forces to study the Iraqi insurgency and prepare to mount a similar resistance if Venezuela is invaded. ``He has begun organizing citizen militias, purchased 100,000 new Kalashnikovs, and assigned books on asymmetric warfare to his top brass." When Foer asked Nicolas Maduro, now Venezuela's foreign minister, what Chávez foresees in US-Venezuelan relations, he answered: ``Conflict, in all likelihood war, is the future."

Click Fraud

Business Week examines the issue of click fraud which can cost advertisers as much as $8 a click.

The growing ranks of businesspeople worried about click fraud typically have no complaint about versions of their ads that appear on actual Google or Yahoo Web pages, often next to search results. The trouble arises when the Internet giants boost their profits by recycling ads to millions of other sites, ranging from the familiar, such as cnn.com, to dummy Web addresses like insurance1472.com, which display lists of ads and little if anything else. When somebody clicks on these recycled ads, marketers such as MostChoice get billed, sometimes even if the clicks appear to come from Mongolia. Google or Yahoo then share the revenue with a daisy chain of Web site hosts and operators. A penny or so even trickles down to the lowly clickers. That means Google and Yahoo at times passively profit from click fraud and, in theory, have an incentive to tolerate it. So do smaller search engines and marketing networks that similarly recycle ads.

Read the entire article here.

Oh, We Didn't Want To Hear That.

Christopher Swope takes out the stiletto in this analysis of community forums:

The notoriously ineffective D.C. Taxicab Commission is holding a round of "community forums" to hear passenger gripes. Here's how the press release sells it:

As the Commission consistently receives complaints about refusals to haul, overcharging, discourteous and unsafe practices among drivers, the lack of dispatch service, and inadequate service for the handicapped, it would like to hear from members of the wider community on their experiences...

In other words, we've heard you--and ignored you. So now we'll hear you again. Gee thanks.

South Park Insight

Although I’m no fan of South Park – I know a few people who love it – this article about the show’s creators hits the bulls eye with its analysis of how religions are handled:

"That's where we kind of agree with some of the people who've criticized our show," Stone says. "Because it really is open season on Jesus. We can do whatever we want to Jesus, and we have. We've had him say bad words. We've had him shoot a gun. We've had him kill people. We can do whatever we want. But Mohammed, we couldn't just show a simple image."

During the part of the show where Mohammed was to be depicted — benignly, Stone and Parker say — the show ran a black screen that read: "Comedy Central has refused to broadcast an image of Mohammed on their network."

Other networks took a similar course, refusing to air images of Mohammed — even when reporting on the Denmark cartoon riots — claiming they were refraining because they're religiously tolerant, the South Park creators say.

"No you're not," Stone retorts. "You're afraid of getting blown up. That's what you're afraid of. Comedy Central copped to that, you know: 'We're afraid of getting blown up.'"

[HT: Instapundit ]

FMLA's Baby Care Leave

An employee requests intermittent Family & Medical Leave Act (FMLA) leave to help his wife care for a newborn child.

The South Carolina Employment Law Letter notes what should be considered.

Elephant Ad

An elephant never forgets.

Check out this classic commercial.

Quote of the Day

For peace of mind, resign as general manager of the universe.

- Larry Eisenberg

What's Missing?

We often hear of employers who have harmed their chances in the courtroom by destroying evidence.

Here's a Ninth Circuit case in which an employee used a special software program to "clean up" his company computer before returning it to the employer.

Since the material on his computer was related to the reason for termination, the action was found to have damaged the employer's ability to present a defense.

Outsourcing Parenthood

A sign of our wacky times:

New York magazine describes the services available for parents who want to outsource their responsibilities.

Exxon Age Discrimination Case

The federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission has filed an age discrimination lawsuit against Exxon because of the company's age limit for pilots.

Travel Books

Simon Winchester has compiled a list of his favorite travel books.

Some ones I'd add:

The Great Railway Bazaar by Paul Theroux

The Innocents Abroad by Mark Twain

Roughing It by Mark Twain

Riding the Iron Rooster by Paul Theroux

Blue Latitudes by Tony Horwitz

Baghdad without a Map by Tony Horwitz

Facing the Congo by Jeffrey Tayler

What Am I Doing Here? by Bruce Chatwin

Islamist Irony

Charles Krauthammer on the response to the Pope’s speech:

Today's Islamists seem to have not even a sense of irony. They fail to see the richness of the following sequence. The pope makes a reference to a 14th-century Byzantine emperor's remark about Islam imposing itself by the sword, and to protest this linking of Islam and violence:

-- In the West Bank and Gaza, Muslims attack seven churches.

-- In London, the ever-dependable radical Anjem Choudary tells a demonstration at Westminster Cathedral that the pope is now condemned to death.

-- In Mogadishu, Somali religious leader Abubukar Hassan Malin calls on Muslims to "hunt down'' the pope. The pope not being quite at hand, they do the next best thing: shoot dead, execution-style, an Italian nun working in a children's hospital.

"How dare you say Islam is a violent religion? I'll kill you for it'' is not exactly the best way to go about refuting the charge. But of course, refuting is not the point here. The point is intimidation.

The Dog Handler

Here's an ethics question for you:

Do you prosecute an elderly woman who, years ago in Nazi Germany, was a dog handler at a concentration camp?

Oh yes, and after the war she lived in the United States where she was married to a Jewish man for over 40 years and contributed to Jewish causes.

Read the story from Der Spiegel.

Subway Wit

A great moment in customer service...from Overheard in Chicago, one of the funniest sites on the Internet.

Quote of the Day

Individualism is the death of individuality...if only because it is an ism.

- G. K. Chesterton

Anti-American Update

Mona Charen has some questions that she wishes the students at Columbia would ask the Iranian president. An excerpt:

If you had told me 20 years ago that Columbia would play host to a religious fanatic who believed in stoning adulteresses and homosexuals to death, who shut down newspapers and harassed journalists, who funded terror organizations around the globe, and who declared that the Holocaust never happened but that he might just do it right this time, I would have told you that he'd be in for a tough session. But today, with universities in America so cordial toward anyone who hates America (e.g., Princeton's Cornel West took time out of his busy lecture schedule to appear with Hugo Chavez in Harlem last week), perhaps the students and professors at Columbia could use a few suggestions on what to ask Mr. Ahmadinejad.

Read it all here.

Miscellaneous and Fast

A very unusual Jeep commercial.

Starbucks is raising prices!

From Finland: A sad tale of price gouging and sex. [HT: Dave Barry ]

And the HP saga continues: Now the CEO is being scrutinized.

Workplace Violence Prevention

The Workplace Violence Research Institute estimates that each day, 16,400 workers are threatened, 723 employees are attacked, and 43,800 employees are harassed. Even more disturbing is the fact that approximately 600 work-related homicides occur every year.
And estimates indicate that workplace violence costs employers $36 billion each year in lost productivity, loss of life, injuries, employee counseling, legal fees, and court awards.

From an article in The Nebraska Employment Law Letter.

Leadership By Example

The city manager of Coral Springs, Florida has asked for a reduction in his pay raise.

Commissioners wanted to give their city manager a 10 percent raise, but he asked for less.

"I appreciate the recommendation, but I am unwilling to accept any more than what our employees can receive," City Manager Michael Levinson told commissioners earlier this week. City employees can receive a maximum 7 percent raise.

[HT: 13th Floor]

Math Wars

A new group is pushing “back to basics” in teaching math. Check out this excerpt:

One Downstate high school math teacher stood up Wednesday after Fennell's presentation and complained that the widespread use of "new math" and a reliance on calculators has resulted in his students not knowing how to perform advanced math skills.The man declined to give his name, saying he feared reprisal.

He feared reprisal? I’m not mocking him. Anyone who’s ever seen the groupthink in academia can appreciate his concern.

[HT: 13th Floor ]

When More Money Isn't It

George Anders, writing in CareerJournal, explores cases in which the job that gives more money doesn’t mean more happiness:

For one thing, we're a lot shrewder in spotting the hidden ugly side of some high-paying positions. Some jobs, for instance, sound alluring, until you take a hard look at the travel involved. Oversee a bigger territory -- and your Thursday evening routine is likely to involve a barstool, a Personal Pizza and the Denver airport.

We also ponder whether our new colleagues and bosses will pass the "good people" test. No matter how fancy the title or how big the paycheck, we soon learn that it isn't worth joining an organization full of jerks, morons or crooks. In recent years, I've seen two friends shake hands on high-paying job switches and then back out within a matter of days because they suddenly realized there was something toxic about the new workplace.

Europe Wobbles

Gerard Baker, writing in The Times of London, finds that Europe – to borrow a phrase from Margaret Thatcher – has gone wobbly. An excerpt:

After a day of briefings in Kabul, our friendly Nato hosts flew us by military transport to Herat, on the western border with Iran. We were due to spend a day touring a Nato post in the city and then fly back that evening to the capital. But the Danish plane that had taken us developed propeller problems and was grounded. As we cooled our heels outside the airfield , we waited for word of the aircraft that was supposed to come for us: a German C-130.

It soon became clear that the replacement plane was not coming. The reason, it turned out, was that the Germans would not fly in the dark. German aircraft are not permitted by their national rules to undertake night flights.

Now to those who survived the Blitz and Barbarossa, the news that today’s Luftwaffe will not fly at night in potentially hostile environments might be regarded as a welcome historical development. But when you are trying to fight a war against a ruthless band of terrorists who operate 24/7, never pausing to consider the dangers of venturing out in the dark, limiting yourself to daytime operations is a little constraining.

The Germans are not alone. Many of the European nations with forces in Afghanistan are operating under similarly ludicrous restrictions. Though their soldiers and airmen are highly capable and indeed eager to take the fight to the Taleban, their governments are desperately fearful of the public reaction should their soldiers suffer significant casualties. They don’t think that their voters will stomach it. And the tragedy is, they are probably right.

Read it all here.

[HT: Real Clear Politics ]

Quote of the Day

To be in process of change is not an evil, any more than to be the product of change is a good.

- Marcus Aurelius

It changed the whole dynamic of the scene...."

What’s it like to work with Jack Nicholson?

According to DiCaprio, they filmed the scene once and Nicholson said to Scorsese: "I don't think he's scared enough of me; I have to be scarier."

DiCaprio continues: "So I came in the next day and Jack's hair was all over the place. He was muttering to himself and the prop guy tipped me off that he had a fire extinguisher, a bottle of whisky, some matches and a handgun somewhere. So I sat down at the table not knowing what to expect, and he set the table on fire after pouring whisky all over the place and stuck a gun in my face.

"It changed the whole dynamic of the scene, and that's what he does – he makes you so much better and he makes you react as an actor, and you take more chances because your character is reacting to this homicidal maniac."

Wahlberg, who plays a tough-talking detective, says succinctly: "Jack is crazy, man. He's always got some sort of weapon on him. He had everybody on their toes."

Read the entire story.

Dumb Moves by Bosses

On a whim, I started listing the dumb moves that I've known bosses to make.

The following is by no means exhaustive and you're invited to add to it:

1. Holding staff meetings on Friday afternoons just before 5 o'clock and then speaking for over an hour.
2. Assigning inexperienced people to unusual projects and providing no training or guidance.
3. Never walking through the work area to meet all of the employees.
4. Giving an award to an employee in front of his wife and referring to the man as a "go-fer."
5. Hiding from employees.
6. Following employees and watching them with binoculars.
7. Keeping time sensitive projects until the day before the due date and then delegating them to employees.
8. Reading correspondence while meeting with employees.
9. Reading email while meeting with employees.
10. Checking the Blackberry during meetings with the boss's boss.
11. Telling ethnic jokes to an EEOC investigator.
12. Leaving Playboy magazines on the end table in the boss's office.
13. Writing comments on a report that clearly show the boss has not really read the report.
14. Receiving a resignation from the worst employee in the department and then talking him out of resigning.
15. Letting top performers leave and not trying to persuade them to stay.
16. Showing up drunk.
17. Talking about ethics and then using racial quotas.
18. Waving a pistol and declaring, "This is how we handle problems!"
19. Posting a "mail order" diploma on the wall.
20. Promoting a problem employee.

Setting the Stage for Serendipity

Why is it that so many great ideas occur when we are engaged in activities that have nothing to do with the subject?

There is something about detachment that permits other perspectives to surface and, although this is far from a deep examination of the matter, I've noticed the following:

• The fact that you're not working on the subject doesn't mean you're not working on the subject. Pushing a project to the back of your mind is not the same as removing it entirely. Often, it will come forward when your mind is ready for it. Not directly addressing the subject better prepares the mind for that moment.
• Don't assume that the insight will be unforgettable. Carry notecards with you so you can write down the thoughts as they occur. If you don't do this, you lose some good material.
• Consider your environment. When do those moments of insights tend to occur? While you're on your daily walk or in the back yard or just before meetings? Try to pinpoint the times and circumstances so you can duplicate them.
• Recognize that one aspect of environment is that by being there you are not elsewhere and that "elsewhere" may be an idea inhibitor.
• Know when to back away. Why continue to stare at an office wall when you'll get greater insight in a coffeeshop?
• Don't force your thoughts. The more you do so, the less likely that anything original will occur. You want to create the setting and then see if the ideas appear.

Vigilant and Operational Leadership

At The Wharton School, George Day and Paul Schoemaker explore the differences between vigilant and operational leaders.

Quick guess: Which one is Ford and which is Toyota?

Quote of the Day

No matter what side of an argument you're on, you always find some people on your side that you wish were on the other side.

- Jascha Heifetz

Thursday Schedule

The Thursday posts are up early because most of the day I'll be teaching a workshop on Equal Employment Opportunity, one of my favorite topics.

This involves a drive from north central Phoenix to Chandler in the morning; not a long trip but far enough to spark the desire for simplicity.

Will be posting later in the day.

The Spine

Martin Peretz of The New Republic has started a blog, The Spine.

It's quite good. On occasion, I even agree with him!

Stellar Work

Christopher Hitchens looks at the Senate Intelligence Committee’s report regarding Niger and is less than impressed:

To summarize: The Senate report gives two versions of Zahawie's name without ever once mentioning his significant background. It takes at face value his absurd claim about the supposedly innocent motive for his out-of-the-way trip. It accepts similarly bland assurances made by the government of Niger. It is unaware of the appearance of A.Q. Khan in the narrative. It does not canvass the views of our allies, or of tried-and-tested experts like Ambassador Ekeus. It offers little evidence and no argument in support of its conclusions. It is a minor disgrace, but a disgrace nevertheless.

Carnival Uncensored - Part Four

Gus Van Horn looks at Wal-Mart and the public trough.

None of Your Business gives a tip on getting credit information.

Professional services firm management guru David Maister seeks some advice on strategy.

Lording the Land shows why you can make money in real estate.

TriplePundit sees a silver lining in China’s acid rain problem.

And finally - shameless plug - Execupundit.com looks at Myopic Dysfunctionals.

Carnival Uncensored - Part Three

life: personal, business, social gives tips to those who’ve landed that first job.

The Boring Made Dull wonders if there is a market for Air America.

The Business Word looks at what communities can do in a world of downsizing.

green rising looks at the marketing of health conscious tacos.

Critical Mastiff urges a shift from statism to one that taps into the role of the people.

Frugal Wisdom is glad business has discovered that less is more.

Free Money Finance interviews Wall Street analyst Dan Reingold.

Carnival Uncensored - Part Two

Here's part two of the Carnival:

SOX first examines the lessons that boards can draw from the HP scandal.
Scott On Money looks at the new version of the Monopoly board game and wonders about its deeper lessons.
Worker Bees Blog gives what to do when the loan falls through.
Purple Slog tells of confronting a suspicious security guard.
QueerCents discusses whether the pay gap should still be an issue for women.
The Liberal Republican tackles the raising of the minimum wage.
Searchlight Crusade advises on what to do when the loan falls through.
Free the Drones Personal Finance Blog discusses the personality type known as “The Moocher.” (Be sure to click through, then scroll down.)

Carnival Uncensored - Part One

Since the person who was supposed to host this week’s Carnival of the Capitalists chose to highlight only a few posts and slight all of the others, I’m listing ones in a series of posts the ones that he thought were too much for the readers. I apologize if I've failed to do justice to any of them in the brief descriptions.
Interested Participant has an update on the post-Katrina rebuilding of the Superdome.
Photon Courier examines the roboticization of customer service.
Scatterbox surfaces the public relations problems that come with outsourcing.
Econobrowser shows why gas prices may drop even more.
Financial Options cites three international economic indicators for this week.
Blog Business World advises what to do when you have to go through an exit interview. InsureBlog notes medical professionals who’ve added side businesses.

What? No "Turok, Son of Stone?"

Take a break: Check out the world's most valuable comic books.

Thoughts During A Meeting

BusinessPundit reveals the thoughts that occurred to him in a meeting. (Actually the accumulation of various experiences over the years). An excerpt:

I give up. I can't listen to this anymore. You just go on and on about him. No one here likes him. He's a suckup. Suck. Up. That's what he does. He won the Thompson account? I don't think so. Their CEO can't stand him. We won it in spite of him, not because of him.

You think we don't understand how this works? We know. The ones that make the most noise are the ones that get the next promotions. 360 degree reviews? Ha. More like rubber stamps.

I thought this place would be different, but... there were signs. That smug smile during the interview when I asked about your management style. You said you just "hire the best people and get out of their way."

Did you think that was original? I only heard it at 10 of my last 12 interviews.

I have lots of potential for advancement? Sure, if I'm willing to sacrifice my integrity to play the game.

I could be like him. I could play politics. I could intercept the good news and run to tell you before anyone else. I could blame the failures on people that aren't around or people that I know will take it. I just wouldn't be able to sleep at night.

Read the entire thing.

Top Business School

The University of Michigan has just taken first place from Dartmouth in The Wall Street Journal/Harris Interactive ranking of business schools.

See the entire CareerJournal article here.

European Outsourcing

Cartoon by Hugh Macleod and commentary by Frederick Forsyth.

In 1999 five Nato air forces – US, British, French, Italian and German – began to plaster Yugoslavia, effectively the tiny and defenceless province of Serbia. We were not at war with the Serbs, we had no reason to hate them, they had not attacked us and no Serbian rockets were falling on us.

But we practically bombed them back to the Stone Age. We took out every bridge we could see. We trashed their TV station, army barracks, airfields and motorways.

We were not fighting for our lives and no terrorists were skulking among the civilian population but we hit apartment blocks and factories anyway. There were civilian casualties. We did not do it for 25 days but for 73. We bombed this little country economically back 30 years by converting its infrastructure into rubble. Why?

We were trying to persuade one dictator, Slobodan Milosevic, to pull his troops out of Kosovo, which happened to be (and still is) a Yugoslav province. The dictator finally cracked ; shortly afterwards he was toppled but it was his fellow Serbs who did that, not Nato.

Before the destruction of Serbia, Kosovo was a nightmare of ethnic hatred. It still is. If we wanted to liberate the Kosovans why did we not just invade? Why blow Serbian civilians to bits?

Here is my point. In all those 73 days of bombing Serbia I never heard one British moralist use the word "disproportionate".

Humor in the Workplace

I once heard an attorney tell a workshop, "You should have a bland workplace. No joking. No teasing."

I'd hate to work in a place like that. Productivity would be poor. Morale would be in the basement. It might be a lawyer's dream but it would be a worker's nightmare.

Instead of banning humor, why not stress respect and professionalism? Both of those can head off the harassment problems that are feared by the humor-banners. So too can can some basic ground rules:

• Don't tell any joke that you could not tell without embarrassment in front of the average member of any group.
• Don't use humor to harm or divide.
• Recognize that there is a world of humor that doesn't mention race, national origin, religion, sex, or disability in a disparaging way.
• If you sense that a joke may be inappropriate, it probably is.
• Remember that outsiders are judged by a different standard than insiders.
• Don't underestimate the harm of a cruel joke. People can recall cutting remarks long after the words were uttered.
• Be extra cautious when joking in emails. Nuances may not be noticed and emails have a habit of being forwarded.
• Watch out for escalation. Joe tells a mild joke, Mary tops it, Yolanda tops that one, and then Elmer goes nuclear. Before you know it, the humor has gone from mild to mean.
• Just because you heard a joke on the radio or late night TV doesn't mean it is appropriate for the workplace.
• Don't play "gotcha." Give others the benefit of the doubt. We've all said things we regret. Respect and courtesy are important but so too is cutting others some slack.

George Washington's War

In addition to the usual management books, I've been reading George Washington's War by Bruce Chadwick.

It's a fascinating examination of Washington's management and leadership skills and how he evolved as a leader.

If you think you've faced some challenges, read the account of Valley Forge.

Quote of the Day

People who think they're generous to a fault usually think that's their only fault.

- Sydney J. Harris

Fictional and Real

Would you buy a Duff Beer?

That's the question of people who want to market fictional products from television shows.

Send the Patient to Punjab

Sorry for the delay in posting this article on the rise of “medical tourism” companies.

What do they do?

Arrange for medical operations in other countries. Excerpt:

In June, GlobalChoice sent a patient to Punjab for a hip replacement that cost about $13,000, including airfare and a 20-day hotel stay. The estimated cost in the United States for the surgery alone? $40,000.

Motivation Essentials

I once met a business owner who had a unique way of motivating the employees in his construction business.

He carried around a big wad of bills and, if he saw someone doing something extraordinary, he'd hand them $100.

I told him, "Show me how that works!"

He laughed and replied, "It doesn't. I gave a guy 100 bucks just the other day and he quit five minutes later."

Much has been written about the limitations of money as a motivator. The real answer, I suspect, falls in the category of "It depends." If you're talking about a young person who is saving for a car or a home, a pay raise can have a real appeal. An older person, on the other hand, with the mortgage out of the way and the kids out of college, may be less interested in a pay boost and more focused on a flexible schedule, a new job challenge, or a sabbatical.

One size fits all doesn't work when it comes to money, but there are some factors that are universal regardless of age, sex, or ethnicity:

• People want to be respected and appreciated.
• They want to receive a reasonable amount of pay.
• They want to be able to trust the boss.
• They want co-workers that are likeable.
• They want to feel that their jobs have meaning.
• They want a clear understanding of their roles.
• They want a sense of order in the workplace.

Put those together and you'll have a motivated team. Neglect any single factor and you'll have problems.

Defending Free Speech

Anne Applebaum feels that the West needs to stop apologizing:

True, these principles sound pretty elementary -- "we're pro-free speech and anti-gratuitous violence" -- but in the days since the pope's sermon, I don't feel that I've heard them defended in anything like a unanimous chorus. A lot more time has been spent analyzing what the pontiff meant to say, or should have said, or might have said if he had been given better advice.

All of which is simply beside the point, since nothing the pope has ever said comes even close to matching the vitriol, extremism and hatred that pour out of the mouths of radical imams and fanatical clerics every day, all across Europe and the Muslim world, almost none of which ever provokes any Western response at all. And maybe it's time that it should: When Saudi Arabia publishes textbooks commanding good Wahhabi Muslims to "hate" Christians, Jews and non-Wahhabi Muslims, for example, why shouldn't the Vatican, the Southern Baptists, Britain's chief rabbi and the Council on American-Islamic Relations all condemn them -- simultaneously?

Newhart Rocks

"Good evening. I'd like to welcome you aboard the Mrs. Grace L. Ferguson Airline (and Storm Door Company). I don't know how much you know about our airline. We've only been in business about a week. Our airline was founded on the premise that what the American public wanted was low-cost overseas transportation. We've attempted to eliminate what we call in the airline business 'frills and extras' . . . like maintenance and a whole bunch of technical instruments. . . . Have you ever had one that hangs on for about four or five days? I don't mind the headache so much, but it's that damn double vision. . . ."

- Comedy routine by Bob Newhart

Jonathan Yardley reviews a new book by Bob Newhart.

[HT: Arts & Letters Daily ]

Handling a RIF

The Louisiana Employment Law Letter provides some guidelines on how to handle a reduction in force. A big point:

In most situations, the circumstances that compel a company to reduce its workforce don't arise overnight. And they usually aren't entirely secret. If there's a downturn in the economy, a planned reorganization, or a prospective business deal that will lead to a RIF, there's usually a point at which the company can let employees know (without revealing confidential information or compromising the company's plans) that there may be significant changes affecting the number of jobs or employees.

Employers sometimes fear communicating that type of information, thinking that it could affect productivity, loyalty, and morale. Studies have shown, however, that employees value employers that keep them informed, particularly of developments that could affect their jobs, and that that type of communication actually fosters loyalty and morale (which also affect productivity).

Additionally, employees who know of potential changes are less likely to feel hurt or surprised if they're included in a RIF. Employers can always use tools like retention bonuses or other incentives to keep employees on board -- before or after RIF decisions are announced- -- through a target date.

[Execupundit note: Avoid NETMA; i.e., Nobody Ever Tells Me Anything. Let the word out as soon as possible so people can start to plan.]

Teacher Training

"Unruly and chaotic."

A new report goes after the training of teachers.

Shocking news. Right up there with the recent arrest of Willie Nelson.

Mavericks at Work

William C. Taylor and Polly LaBarre, authors of Mavericks at Work, have received a gushing review in US News & World Report.

Be sure to read the story of the executive who decided to fire a supersaleswoman.

Quote of the Day

"The rule was ‘No autopsy, no foul.’"

- Stewart Granger on the games of his youth

For That Kind and Gentle Look

Picture Dr. Evil or yourself in this beauty:
The Villain Chair.

Handing Over Privacy

Scott Berinato, writing at the CSO site, is onto something.

He’s upset about how much information you have to hand over just to get basic service with some companies. Here's his teasing lead paragraph... just before he goes after Apple:

At the grocery store the other night, I bought a half-pound of turkey from the deli. Only when I got home I discovered that they gave me ham by mistake. I went back to return the errant cold cuts, but before the store clerk would wait on me, he asked me for my name and phone number. I refused, telling him that my request had nothing to do with that information. Then he asked for my store "loyalty card" number. I wouldn't give him that, either. I mean, it was just ham, and it was the deli's mistake! So he told me he couldn't help me until I paid a $49 fee first.

What The Juror Saw

This brief Inc. magazine interview of Wendy Vaughan, an entrepreneur who served on the Enron jury, is one of the best articles I’ve seen on the case:

We learned a lot about Lay from videos of employee meetings that we were shown. At some points in the trial, we were so video'd out from hours and hours of those videos! But they showed him to be very dynamic, to be a very concerned individual. And the employees would ask him tough questions in those meetings, and he was welcoming of that scenario. I don't think you can develop that kind of relationship with employees and not be involved in the day-to-day activities in the office. You can't have it both ways.

Another thing that bothered me happened after the whistleblower Sherron Watkins was sounding the alarm, and some other people were sending letters to supervisors with concerns. Lay finally made the decision to supposedly investigate these concerns--I'll put investigate in quotation marks--and he had the same accountants who were responsible for the screwups go back and investigate themselves. That does not make any sense to me at all. Why wouldn't you bring in somebody who's never been in there? And Watkins even brought that up to Lay in a letter she wrote to him--that he shouldn't use the same accountants.

Sports Coats: $5.25

In The New Yorker, Calvin Trillin reports on his adventures in the world of thrift shops:

Men’s shirts or women’s blouses are three dollars. Evening gowns are nine dollars. A sports coat is five twenty-five. If it is an orange sports coat with a stain on the lapel, it is five twenty-five. If it is what appears to be a brand-new Ralph Lauren sports coat, it is five twenty-five. Sports coats are five twenty-five.

I am not averse to wearing a sports coat that costs five twenty-five. My basic position on clothing was formed in high school, in Kansas City, where my male classmates and I considered an intense interest in expensive clothing to be not exactly frivolous—after all, most of what we did was frivolous—but, well, sort of la-di-da. I suppose we also considered it unmanly; we took a broad view of what was unmanly.

U.S. - China Contrast

Alex Taylor III, writing in Fortune magazine, compares a factory in China with one in the United States. An excerpt:

China can be scary.

One reason is people like Pu Chaunming. He and his wife make exhaust systems in an industrial park outside Shanghai. They each earn about $1.56 an hour, commute to work by bicycle, and live in a small one-bedroom rental apartment. Because of their long working hours and lack of day care, their 4-year-old son lives with Pu's parents, 240 miles away. Pu and his wife talk with him every night on the telephone and visit him occasionally. Pu is philosophical about the separation, which he believes is a necessary investment in his child's future. "My son is having a better education," he says. "I believe he will have a better life than me."

For many people in high-wage countries like the U.S., Pu exemplifies the China threat - a hard worker making a tenth of U.S. wages. Who can compete with that? In 2005, China exported $202 billion more to America than it imported, accounting for more than a quarter of the U.S. trade deficit. There is no question that, thanks to the labor of tens of millions of people like Pu, China has become a genuinely fearsome economic competitor.

Read it all here.

Limitations of the Criminal Mind

It's getting harder to run the old "mouse in soup" scam nowadays.

Quote of the Day

It used to be said that you had to know what was happening in America because it gave us a glimpse of our future. Today, the rest of America, and after that Europe, had better heed what happens in California, for it already reveals the type of civilization that is in store for all of us.

- Alistair Cooke

Sunday Evening Reflections

• One of the pleasures of maintaining a lawn is you can actually see the results of your work as the work progresses. That is not the case in many professions where the payoff, if any, is delayed for months or years.
• I long for the days when ministers rarely gave their opinions on political issues. Political opinions are now so commonly dispensed in the guise of "social justice" that many churches resemble social service agencies with steeples.
• It's surprising that bookstores, which have separate sections for Mysteries and Science Fiction, don't have a section for novels devoted to Dysfunctional Families. Given the nature of modern fiction, that section would require many shelves.
• We study separate subjects in school and later appreciate just how interrelated those subjects are.
• The Liberal Arts profs who groan over business grads who've never studied Shakespeare are themselves colossally ignorant when it comes to capitalism.
• I love email but we lost a great deal when we stopped writing letters. Who's going to save old email messages?
• If there were any justice in the world, more people would be familiar with the novels of Patrick O'Brian.
• The most dreaded item in the doctor's office is the scale.
• All places look better in the early morning.
• All cars look better in black.
• Jerry Garcia may be remembered longer for his ties than for his music.
• Rather than seeing "The Black Dahlia," movie lovers should check out "True Confessions," a film based on a novel by John Gregory Dunne. The acting by Robert DeNiro and Robert Duvall in that film has to rank as some of the finest in the history of cinema.
• When to step back and when to engage are two of the toughest questions faced by managers.
• Leadership is better taught by leading than by any class.
• The invention of the cubicle was a sad day in the American workplace.
• There are few ideas so foolish that at least a few Fortune 500 CEOs won't embrace them.

Less Hostile Environment

Workplace Prof Blog examines a case involving Title VII obligations to protect prison guards from being harassed by prisoners.

Covering "The Lost"

Mark Steyn looks at the wimpish coverage of the 9/11 anniversary and wonders what it says about our ability to wage war. An excerpt:

The proper tone for 9/11 commemorations is to be sad about all the dead -- "the lost" -- but in a very generalized soft-focus way. Not a lot of specifics about the lost, and certainly not too many quotes from those final phone calls from the passengers to their families, like Peter Hanson's last words before Flight 175 hit the World Trade Center: "Don't worry, Dad. If it happens, it will be very fast." That might risk getting readers worked up, especially if they see the flight manifest:

"Peter Hanson, Massachusetts

"Susan Hanson, Massachusetts

"Christine Hanson, 2, Massachusetts"

No, best to stick to a limpidly fey, tastefully mopey, enervatedly passive prose style that suggests nothing very much can be done about the incomprehensible lost. This tasteful passivity is the default mode of the age: Five years ago it was striking, even in the immediate aftermath, how many radio and TV trailers for blood drives and other relief efforts could only bring themselves over the soupy music track to refer vaguely to "the tragic events," as if any formulation more robust might prove controversial.

Take It to Rio

Here's just the thing for the sophisticated attorneys, elitist college professors, or vicious Hell’s Angels on your gift list:

A Manilow Magic Stick.

[HT: Dave Barry ]

Tuition Bargain

Imagine one of your ancestors in 1866 bought perpetual tuition at Northwestern University for $100.

That happened and the heirs are still going there for free. Click here for the story.

[HT: Mary Ann Wade ]

Apple's Design Cult...and Pizza

A neat Business Week story on Jonathan Ive, the man behind Apple’s great designs. An excerpt:

Ive says he and his boss speak at least once a day. In fact, their lives are very much part of the same fabric. Despite great fame and fortune, both manage to guard their privacy. Ive lives with his wife, a historian he knew growing up, and their young twins in a house "with not a hint of ostentation," says Clive Grinyer, Ive's first business partner. Jobs, for all his self-promoting skills, lives a relatively quiet life as well. He owns no vacation houses and rarely shows up to Silicon Valley social and business events. The sneakers, the T-shirts, and Issey Miyake turtlenecks that he sports are not only for dramatic effect -- he likes the informal style, as do Ive and his team of designers.

But if Jobs is the public keeper of Apple's design zeitgeist, then Ive is the private leader of its talented design team. "Apple is a cult, and Apple's design team is an even more intense version of a cult," notes Riley. Actually, it's not a big cult -- just a dozen people or so. But they operate at an extremely high level, both individually and as a group. Ive has said that many Apple products were dreamed up while eating pizza in the small kitchen at the team's design studio.

Bogey Man

Christopher Hitchens on Frank Rich's account of Ari Fleischer's reign of fear.

Frank Rich is one of the players in the on-going soap opera known as "The Decline of The New York Times."

Kubrick Would Approve

Joyce Hughes and Miranda Burgess have written “HAL’s Thoughts While Trapped On A Desert Island, And Your Name Is Dave.”

A portion:

It's not the heat, Dave, it's the humidity.
That's quite a beard you're growing, Dave.
Shall I calculate pi to 100,000 decimal places for you again, Dave?
Ow. I told you, Dave, I'm not programmed for that.
I've got the conch, Dave.
Dave, would you mind putting sunscreen on my back?
You were Mary Ann last time, Dave.
I think that seagull likes you, Dave.

Read it all here.

Quote of the Day

He pays too high a price
For knowledge and for fame
Who sells his sinews to be wise,
His teeth and bones to buy a name.
And crawls through life a paralytic
To earn the praise of bard and critic....

- Ralph Waldo Emerson

Cards for Lawyers

Cards for lawyers at The Billable Hour cardstore.

The Virtue of Decentralization

Decentralization has saved many organizations from the "Management by Best Seller" syndrome that can infect head offices. Management can huff and puff about the latest corporate fad but the departments serve as the ultimate check and balance.

Battle-scarred department directors and managers nod and salute and then do just enough of the latest idea to get management off their backs. They know that time will reveal if management is serious and hope that, if the fad is truly wacko, upper management's traditionally short attention span will surface and the program will be tossed into a black hole.

Decentralization's virtues are self-evident. What is surprising is the extent to which organizations do not encourage the exchange of success stories. Far too often, lessons from superstar departments remain within their boundaries and other executives and managers can only speculate about what lies behind the success of their peers.

One way to mix motivation with education is to publish the success stories of executives, managers, and supervisors in a book that can be periodically updated and distributed throughout the organization. Similar steps can be taken with sales, professional, and other positions in which tips can be reasonably transferred. Stories of successful employees at all levels should be considered. Leadership is not a caste system.

This exercise can help to identify the practices that should be uniform as opposed to those that can be open to experiment and differentiation. It also recognizes the extent to which departments can be management laboratories and each team member can be an inventor.

Junk in Space

The sky may seem a little different after checking out this Wired article. An excerpt:

It's a junkyard out there in space and sometimes astronauts accidentally contribute to the litter. In 1965, the first American spacewalker, Ed White, lost a spare glove when he went outside for the first time. From that time on, astronauts have accidentally added some of the more unusual items to the 100,000 pieces of space trash that circle Earth.

Last July, spacewalker Piers Sellers sheepishly reported that he lost a spatula. Nicknamed "spatsat" by space junk watchers, it returns to Earth in a fireball early next month.
This week the Atlantis astronauts made their own contributions to the space debris in low orbit: a couple of bolts that escaped from the addition they were connecting to the international space station.

To engineers, this isn't funny. Many of those pieces of space junk can kill astronauts, puncture satellites or at the very least scratch up expensive space shuttle windows.

Defense of HP's Dunn

Fortune examines a defense of Hewlett-Packard Chair Patricia Dunn.

The lawyers, of course, are included in the blame. (It's the first time I've heard "not generally unlawful" as a positive phrase.)

Another factor is mentioned:

But the other explanation is more awkward for anyone to discuss, and as a result has been missed in almost all the coverage of this affair - even most of her supporters won't address it. It seems that Dunn is very sick. As David Kaplan in Newsweek revealed in his story Monday, even after having had breast cancer in 2000 and melanoma in 2002, Dunn was diagnosed with ovarian cancer in 2004 and underwent extensive surgery last month after doctors discovered a malignant tumor in her liver.

Think about that timing. It would have quite possibly been late July or early August when Dunn was preparing to go into the hospital for major liver surgery. The letters between Sonsini and Perkins in which the latter demanded the board investigate the practice of "pretexting", or impersonating someone in order to get their phone records, were exchanged during July. It wasn't until July 28 that Perkins wrote his most concrete and accusative letter, which he addressed to the entire board (for the first time) and which included the following well-crafted and persuasive sentence: "That the illegal pretext was done by a consultant is no excuse or defense to HP, which authorized, induced, and benefited from the illegal fraud."

You Know You Want One

Since it's the weekend, a post on an inflatable iceberg seems appropriate.

Going for the Coin

Novelist Ward Just has assembled an excellent list of novels about the pursuit of money.

Some I'd add:

The Bonfire of the Vanities and A Man in Full by Tom Wolfe

A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole

Hanson's Blog

Historian Victor Davis Hanson now has a blog. Since he is already a prolific writer as well as a professor and a farmer, my assumption is he never sleeps.

His blog is Works and Days.

An excerpt from a recent post:

Total all the mistakes in Iraq—and they are legion— and they do not match a month’s folly in WWII (cf. the daylight B-17 missions of 1943, the early torpedo scandal of US submarines, the shortcomings of the Sherman Tank, the Kasserine Pass, the lit-up cities along the Eastern seaboard that facilitated U-boat carnage, the surprise at the Bulge, the intelligence failures about the hedgerows, and on and on) or Korea (the surprise at the Yalu, the lack of winter gear in the retreat, the surprise at the efficacy of the Mig-15, the Korean- prisoner fiasco, or the ossification at the 38th parallel when momentum was once again with us, etc.). Who made such blunders and more? Men like Arnold, Bradley, Eisenhower, Halsey, MacArthur, Marshall, and more in the pantheon of now deified generals.

Quote of the Day

If there is any conflict between your values and strengths, always choose values. Performance that violates your values corrupts, and it will ultimately sap and destroy your strengths.

- Peter F. Drucker

Hang Up and Drive

California is going to be the fourth state to ban holding cellphones while driving.

Good move!

[HT: Drudge Report ]

Major Black History Discovery

The African-American past is an iceberg, still 90 percent submerged. Because so much material remains in family hands or lies piled in the unvisited attics and basements of libraries, newspapers, and even police stations, rich discoveries await. Currie Ballard, a historian in Oklahoma, has just made what he calls “the find of a lifetime”—33 cans of motion picture film dating from the 1920s that reveal the daily lives of some remarkably successful black communities.

Find the American Heritage article and some film clips here.

Germany's Hollow Military

One look at this chart and the accompanying article from Der Spiegel on Germany’s military spending and it is easy to see that although Germany has contributed troops to a number of peacekeeping missions, when it comes to major action they will expect the "cowboy Americans" to shoulder the burden.

An excerpt:

But the demand for the Bundeswehr has grown faster than its capabilities. While countries like Australia, France and Great Britain have increased their military spending in recent years, Germany's defense budget has declined almost continuously since reunification. "Germany is among the countries that spends a relatively small percentage of its budget on defense," says the chancellor, succinctly summing up the problem.

Indeed, Germany spends just over one percent of its gross domestic product of about €2 trillion on defense, which puts it at the tail end of NATO countries in terms of military spending.

Remember Maslow's old line about when all you have is a hammer, every problem is a nail?

Irish Gauntlet

William Sjostrom of Atlantic Blog recalls the grueling process of becoming an Irish citizen:

When I got Irish citizenship, I filled out a form that asked me exactly nothing about Ireland. After waiting a while, I got a letter saying I was approved. That is it. No expectation that I have a clue what is in the Irish constitution or even know it has one, no expectation that I know who or what the taoiseach is, no expectation that I have the barest knowledge of English so that I can follow what is happening in the country. (When I was sworn in at the courthouse, the court clerk checked to see if I needed an interpreter. I was going to say "Only in West Cork", but my wife gave me that look that told me if I said anything other than no, I would only maybe live to regret it.) If Ireland wants immigrants to take citizenship seriously, it is going to have to make citizenship mean something other than "we can't keep you out".

Now What?

Not good news for DaimlerChrysler in North America.

This may be a good month to buy a car.

Prediction: His Next Enterprise Will Involve Videotapes

An innovative Atlanta pilot is selling flights for couples who want to have sex on a plane.

Read the entire story and get creeped out.

A Devil of a Lawsuit

The Massachusetts Employment Law Letter has an interesting take on the dangers of finding information about job applicants via the Internet:

Many of you have chosen to create (or have your attorneys create) carefully crafted applications and interview outlines designed to avoid asking impermissible questions or soliciting information that's illegal to consider in making an employment decision.

With the advent of the information superhighway, however, a whole ocean of information about virtually everyone washes up on the shore of your computer screen. Type a name into any search engine, and you're likely to pull up all kinds of information. Gathering information in that manner is easy. What that information is, however, and how you use it can be problematic.
For instance, if you search an applicant's name, you might find that she is protected because of age (if she graduated from college before 1984). Of course, that's information you no doubt will be able to figure out when you meet for an interview.

But what if the name also showed up on the list of members of an unusual religious group, say The Satanic Community: 600 Club? (Many such websites name some members.) Such information can be the basis for an employment discrimination lawsuit.

Read the entire article here.

Their Big Break

Forbes has assembled reminiscences by a variety of business leaders of their first, big break.

Bobbi Brown’s story is one of the more interesting ones. An excerpt:

Freelance makeup artistry is a difficult job. You're overjoyed when you're working, and when it's quiet, you think, "Oh my God--how am I going to pay the rent?" To succeed, you always have to promote yourself and make contacts on the social scene, and I was never one of those people who went out a lot at night. But I did well because I always tried to be nice, which made me an anomaly in the fashion industry. You can see caricatures of the industry in The Devil Wears Prada, and guess what? They're not caricatures.

Read the rest of her story here.

Moneyed Midways Time!

On the Moneyed Midways, which gleans posts from a variety of business, finance, and management blogs, is up at Political Calculations.

As always, it is worth checking out.

Thinking About Iran

Charles Krauthammer takes a no-nonsense look at the impact of military action against Iran.

It is not a pretty picture but - as he notes - neither is the prospect of a nuclear Iran commanded by an aggressive and bizarre regime that is beyond the confines of normal deterrence theories.

I would love to see a viable alternative to the military one but every essay I've read on the subject eventually runs into the wall of this question: What if your option doesn't work and the worst case scenario comes about?

Advocates of any option must answer that question but one worst case scenario seems much worse than the other.

Lowlife Files Lawsuit

A radio host, who made vile threats against a competitor and the competitor's family, has filed a $10 million wrongful discharge lawsuit.

Remember the old days when lawyers told nutty clients to forget about suing? Many still do, but the number of attorneys who will run with meritless claims certainly appears to have exploded.

Income Gap?

Jerry Bowyer, writing in Tech Central Station, looks at the income gap:

This is the way the world works. At one time in the past the richest man in the world had a couple of cows and a couple of wives. The poorest guy had nothing. The Old York Times was, no doubt, pleased by the small gap in wealth. At one time in the future, some guy will own a whole planet (like Rod McBain in the Cordwainer Smith novel, Nostrillia) and some other poor schlub will be working in a Romulan salt mine. The gap will be huge, and the New New York Times will scream bloody murder about the impact of Federation policy on the trillions of people at the bottom of the curve.

It's not just sheer raw numbers, though: it's also participation in the system. Get more people into a game and make the rules fairer and the bell curve widens even more. It's showing up now in the current Texas Hold 'em poker craze: When more people play poker, we have a better chance of finding a truly great player. As the rules get fairer and more transparent, the next truly great player has a better and better chance of getting to the top. The better he gets, the more inequality there will be.

This works with wealth creation, too. If Bill Gates had lived in Czarist Russia, he would've been a schoolteacher. Warren Buffett, a traveling merchant. No great fortunes. No great inequality. No DOS, no Windows.

Ford Cuts Jobs

Ford (F) said Friday that it no long sees a return to profitability in North American by 2008, as it had planned, and laid out a series of new cost-cutting goals, including cutting 14,000 white-collar jobs, slashing manufacturing output 26% by 2008 and suspending its stock dividend.
The aim is to cut operating costs by $5 billion by 2008 and return to full-year North American profitability in 2009, Ford said in its news release.

"These actions have painful consequences for communities and many of our loyal employees," said Ford Chairman Bill Ford. "But rapid shifts in consumer demand that affect our product mix and continued high prices for commodities mean we must continue working quickly and decisively to fix our business."

Read the entire USA Today article here.

Job Life Update: Waiting for Courtesy

A little reminder from WaiterRant on the importance of class.

Quote of the Day

There is no point, in a situation like this, being an 80% ally.

- John Howard

Boss Calling

Take a break.

Check out this amusing commercial on what happens when the boss telephones an employee to see how he's doing.

D'accord

David Sedaris experiences the danger of learning just a little bit of French.

An excerpt from The New Yorker article:

Six months after moving to Paris, I gave up on French school and decided to take the easy way out. All I ever said was “Could you repeat that?” And for what? I rarely understood things the second time around, and when I did it was usually something banal, the speaker wondering how I felt about toast, or telling me that the store would close in twenty minutes. All that work for something that didn’t really matter, and so I began saying, “D’accord,” which translates to “I am in agreement,” and means, basically, “O.K.” The word was a key to a magic door, and every time I said it I felt the thrill of possibility.

[HT: kottke ]

When One Of Us Is Smarter Than All Of Us

I wanted to jump up and cheer after reading this BusinessPundit post on the idiocy of crowds and the limitations of brainstorming.

Many of us have been on teams with otherwise bright people who, once assembled, begin to lose brain cells.

Fashion at Work

This CareerJournal article on fashion in the workplace contains some helpful inks.

Old - and odd - bit of advice: Sometimes it makes sense to dress for the job you want and not just for the job you have. It makes it easier for people to envision you in that job.

The Myopic Dysfunctionals

You know the myopic dysfunctionals.

You've seen their sarcasm, negativity, and general jerkiness leave a wake of hurt feelings and anger in the workplace. You seen them clear out a break room as quickly as a stink bomb, transform a committee into warring factions, and drive off good people who are tired of their abrasive personalities.

Well, let me tell you a secret about them.

They think they're great.

Yes, hard though it may be to imagine, these walking bundles of poison and low morale think they are the real defenders of quality and that the rest of you are giving away the store. In their eyes, your "namby-pamby" efforts to respect people are only so much fluff. They're the ones with the real interests of the organization at heart. They are the stellar performers.

At least, they think so.

And in many cases, their delusions are understandable. For years, their supervisors, thinking that technical expertise is synonymous with excellent performance, have given them inflated performance evaluations. The unspoken message has been, "You may be a loathsome personality but if your numbers look good, we're willing to look past that."

Of course, that is a ridiculous way to rate job performance - technical expertise can mean little if some rude weasel sparks lawsuits or destroys a team - but many a manager has bought into the notion that people rank way below machinery. Fortunately, many more regard that as rubbish. As a manager recently mentioned to me, "If we caught an employee abusing one of our trucks, we'd take action and yet some of them expect us to look the other way when they routinely abuse co-workers."

It's way past time to confront the myopic dysfunctionals. They need to be told that far from being the best performers, they rank among the worst, and that the organization is tired of having to walk behind them on a weekly basis to sweep up the broken china they produce.

Their reaction to this hard truth will be predictable: They'll moan, groan, and feel highly offended. But that's just too bad. Their day is over. Organizations and individuals should not have to tolerate - much less reward - disrespectful and divisive behavior.

Let the myopic dysfunctionals soak in one final message in the sort of blunt language they'll understand: Shape up or Ship Out.

Paul Graham's Undelivered Speech

An excerpt from Paul Graham’s essay on what you’ll wish you’d known in high school:

Do you think Shakespeare was gritting his teeth and diligently trying to write Great Literature? Of course not. He was having fun. That's why he's so good.If you want to do good work, what you need is a great curiosity about a promising question. The critical moment for Einstein was when he looked at Maxwell's equations and said, what the hell is going on here?It can take years to zero in on a productive question, because it can take years to figure out what a subject is really about. To take an extreme example, consider math. Most people think they hate math, but the boring stuff you do in school under the name "mathematics" is not at all like what mathematicians do.

The great mathematician G. H. Hardy said he didn't like math in high school either. He only took it up because he was better at it than the other students. Only later did he realize math was interesting-- only later did he start to ask questions instead of merely answering them correctly.When a friend of mine used to grumble because he had to write a paper for school, his mother would tell him: find a way to make it interesting. That's what you need to do: find a question that makes the world interesting. People who do great things look at the same world everyone else does, but notice some odd detail that's compellingly mysterious.

Click here for it all.

Quote of the Day

[W]hen the eagles are silent, the parrots begin to jabber.

- Winston Churchill

No TV for You!

A Syrian interrogation of one surviving attacker will seek to determine whether the incident was in fact the work of al-Qaeda or that of other individuals seeking to add to the carnage.

- Time magazine report on the attack on the American embassy in Syria

“A Syrian interrogation?”

That’s a delicate way of phrasing it.

Blues Break

2Blowhards has a post and video on the blues great T-Bone Walker.

Good stuff.

The Paradox of Success

James Piereson suggests a new law of success:

Murphy's law says that if anything can go wrong it will go wrong; Parkinson's law tells us that work expands to fill up the time allocated to it. To these rules of perverse conduct we wish to add another which may be called the "Paradox of Success," to wit: the more successful a policy is in warding off some unwanted condition the less necessary it will be thought to maintain it. If a threat is successfully suppressed, people naturally wonder why we should any longer bother with it. This law might be named Mr. Magoo's law after the half-blind cartoon character who stepped through various unseen dangers (like open man-holes) while singing happily to himself. Alternatively, it might be called Sulzberger's law, the publisher of The New York Times, whose newspaper gives faithful expression to this paradox.

The Sulzberger-Magoo law is on frequent display in our personal conduct -- for example, in the woman who wonders why she should maintain a diet when her weight is at an acceptable level or in the golfer who wonders why he should maintain a practice regimen once he has reduced his handicap by five strokes or in the student who asks why he should continue studying so hard when he has succeeded in raising his grades from C to A or in the patient who wonders why he should keep taking his medicine when he has not had an attack in more than a year. These measures, difficult to maintain, have so far succeeded in their aim. Yet for this reason it seems unnecessary to maintain them.

Read the rest here.

H-P Mess

Some views of the Hewlett-Packard mess from:

U.S. News & World Report

Fortune

Business Week

USA Today

Newsweek

Carnival Up

The Carnival of the Capitalists, with its collection of business and management posts from a variety of blogs, is up at View from a Height.

Always interesting.

Time to Think

Some thoughts to consider when you slip away from the office to reflect on how things are going:

• What changes do I have to make personally in order to achieve the progress that I hope to make professionally?
• Is it likely that I'll achieve professional progress without making personal changes?
• What have I learned from my opponents?
• How can I stop focusing on removing my weaknesses and instead play to my strengths?
• Out of all of my current responsibilities, which one, in ten years, will I probably say that I've shortchanged?
• Do I have a tendency to overcommit? Why?
• Which aspect of my job do I dislike the most? Why am I still doing that?
• Which part of my daily activities should be delegated to others?
• How many of my important activities are in a "drift mode" instead of a "deadline mode?"
• Which of my virtues has become a vice?
• Does a striving for perfection produce a form of paralysis?
• Do I overwork in order to compensate for a sense that my job is a poor fit?
• Do I set aside sufficient time to complete projects or do I try to complete projects in between the time that is consumed by meetings?
• Have I committed myself to community activities that drain energy, produce little, and detract from my family or spiritual life?
• Do I have a clear and appropriate sense of my goals for the year? The month? The week?
• Have I translated those goals into my daily activities?

Miscellaneous and Fast

This Israeli company may have the right product at the right time.

The "Girls Gone Wild" sleazoids have been fined.

German journalist and historian Joachim Fest has died.

Quote of the Day

When the storm is brewing, and the winds are picking up all around you, moving to a different place in yourself is much more important than moving to a different place on the mountain.

- Michael E. Gerber

Truck and Mud Break

Nissan should just run this video as a series of commercials for its 4x4 vehicles.

The Fake Vacation Biz

I’m sorry I'm late in posting on this very creative but rather unethical business:

For a paltry $500, you can have all your buddies believing you spent the last week walking along the Great Wall of China, or fishing off a hut in Bora Bora, or even chilling surfside at a resort in Dubai — whatever floats your baloney-laden boat, according to the Times.

But for Persey Tours, faking a vacation is serious business. So serious, in fact, that they go out of their way to provide vacation vouchers like ticket stubs, doctored photos, souvenirs and forged hotel receipts, the newspaper reported.

Say, for example, a wayward husband wants the missus to believe he spent the weekend catching fish. Persey Tours not only provides photos of the phony fisherman on the river, but also a fraudulent long-distance cell phone number and a lodge that will say the customer is staying there but is currently ... ahem ... unavailable. They’ll even throw in a couple of frozen fishies to boot.

Read it all here.

[HT: Barry Moltz ]

Open Source Beer?

Emergence Marketing looks at "open source beer" and wonders what's next.

When do you gain by giving things away? As the article notes, there may be ways.

Retaliation or Restriction?

Workplace Law Prof Blog has a good take on the dangers of restrictive severance agreements in which employers require a promise not to pursue discrimination claims.

Those agreements can be too clever by half.

The Duh Factor

Kathy Sierra at Creating Passionate Users hits another home run.

I love it when managers say a concept is basic.

The immediate response, of course, is "If it's so basic, why aren't you doing it?"

Of course, consultants are not immune from that question.

Hoarders vs. Deleters

Trevor Person of Alexandria, Va., has what he calls a "squeaky clean" inbox; he keeps just 10 to 25 emails in it at a time. His wife has about 16,000 emails in her inbox.

Many people consider crowded inboxes to be status symbols, says Mr. Person. But he suspects that his wife's hoarding of emails actually exacerbates his compulsion to be an inbox neatnick. He has reached a realization: His wife feels "validated" by a jammed inbox. He feels validated by an empty one.

CareerJournal explores this deep philosophical difference.

The Beheading Schedule Goes High Tech

The House of Saud's toxic kingdom, a land where the beheading schedule is computerized, may be a more apt emblem of the way an "interconnected" world is heading than we like to think.
Read all of Mark Steyn’s article here.

Longevity Differences

WASHINGTON — Where you live, combined with race and income, plays a huge role in the nation's health disparities, differences so stark that a report issued Monday contends it's as if there are eight separate Americas instead of one.

Asian-American women living in Bergen County, N.J., lead the nation in longevity, typically reaching their 91st birthdays. Worst off are American Indian men in swaths of South Dakota, who die around age 58 — three decades sooner.

Click here for the rest of the USA Today article on longevity.

Quote of the Day

A few days after [General David Shoup] made his first inspection tour of the island, the following memo was posted on the bulletin boards of all units:

FROM THE COMMANDING GENERAL, REGARDING SWAGGER STICKS:
If you need one, carry one.

The next day, not a swagger stick was to be seen on Parris Island. If you go there now, almost thirty years later, you still won't find one.

- Owen Edwards

A Touching Memory

Andrew Sullivan has posted the video of the Buckingham Palace band playing the American national anthem after the September 11 attacks.

Arnold Hacked?

Governor Schwarzenegger's computer may have been hacked. An investigation is underway.

Let's see: California. Hackers. Arnold.

I wonder how long that suspect list is.

[HT: Drudge Report ]

Can We Name Them?

Geekologie has the scope on the latest office toy: a virtual ant farm.

The Age of Horrorism

Novelist Martin Amis on the war and “the age of horrorism.” An excerpt:

Until recently it was being said that what we are confronted with, here, is 'a civil war' within Islam. That's what all this was supposed to be: not a clash of civilisations or anything like that, but a civil war within Islam. Well, the civil war appears to be over. And Islamism won it. The loser, moderate Islam, is always deceptively well-represented on the level of the op-ed page and the public debate; elsewhere, it is supine and inaudible. We are not hearing from moderate Islam. Whereas Islamism, as a mover and shaper of world events, is pretty well all there is.

So, to repeat, we respect Islam - the donor of countless benefits to mankind, and the possessor of a thrilling history. But Islamism? No, we can hardly be asked to respect a creedal wave that calls for our own elimination. More, we regard the Great Leap Backwards as a tragic development in Islam's story, and now in ours. Naturally we respect Islam. But we do not respect Islamism, just as we respect Muhammad and do not respect Muhammad Atta.

Overlooking Ethics

I'm in the process of revising a couple of workshops and have been reviewing case examples that pertain to honor in the workplace.

One characteristic of many instances is that the perpetrators don't see their behavior as dishonorable. For example:

• The committee member who uses the inaction of the chairman of a committee as an excuse not to contribute or get the committee back on track. As a result of this, the project falters.
• The manager who selects people to please a boss and in doing so passes over higher qualified candidates. Eventually, those people leave or remain and are demoralized.
• The union member who automatically sides with another union member even if that person is in the wrong. The ultimate victim: Credibility.
• The attorney who uses advocacy as an excuse for discrediting a witness that he or she knows is telling the truth. The employer may win the battle and lose the war.
• The supervisor who gives an inflated performance evaluation in order to avoid confronting an employee about a problem. Other employees notice the lower standard and, in time, things get worse.

In each of these cases, the individuals will claim that they have other ethical concerns, that it is not their ethical choice, or that ethical considerations should not enter into the matter at all.

That may explain why some of the most questionable conduct is the product of some of the nicest people.

Hot Degrees

Fortune has an article on the college degrees that have hot job prospects.

Similar essays are published every year and each time I wonder, "How many people choose a major based solely upon job prospects and isn't doing so a formula for unhappiness?"

Doesn't it make more sense to pick a major that interests you and then figure out how to translate its skills into a job?

What We Should Know

Christopher Hitchens on loss of innocence:

Anyone who lost their "innocence" on September 11 was too naïve by far, or too stupid to begin with. On that day, we learned what we ought to have known already, which is that clerical fanaticism means to fight a war which can only have one victor. Afghans, Kurds, Kashmiris, Timorese and many others could have told us this from experience, and for nothing (and did warn us, especially in the person of Ahmad Shah Massoud, leader of Afghanistan's Northern Alliance). Does anyone suppose that an ideology that slaughters and enslaves them will ever be amenable to "us"? The first duty, therefore, is one of solidarity with bin-Ladenism's other victims and targets, from India to Kurdistan.

Read all of his essay here.

Offshoring Legal Work

DuPont is “offshoring” some legal work to Asia:

By going offshore, DuPont aims to save 40% to 60% on document work and cut up to $6 million from its annual $200 million-plus in legal spending. It also hopes to shave months off the discovery process in court cases. But the move is risky. In industries from software to customer support, corporations have run into myriad logistical and quality problems with offshore outsourcing. If OfficeTiger stumbles and doesn't have the evidence ready by December, when the asbestos case could go to trial, it could cost DuPont millions.

But if OfficeTiger delivers, it could mean big changes for the $225 billion U.S. legal services industry. DuPont's legal department has been a pioneer in cost-cutting since the early 1990s, saving more than $100 million over that time through automation, outsourcing, and reducing the number of outside law firms it uses. Offshoring is the logical next step. While firms in India, the Philippines, and elsewhere have been processing legal documents for years on a small scale, the size and complexity of DuPont's deal with OfficeTiger pushes it to a higher level. "If DuPont does well with this, you will find other companies taking a good look," says Bradford W. Hildebrandt, chairman of the legal consulting firm Hildebrandt International Inc., which estimates U.S. firms can save 25% to 35% by farming legal work to Asia. "Ultimately, there may be little limit to what can go offshore.”

The Evolving Ways of War

Victor Davis Hanson, who has written extensively on the history of war, wonders if the Western way of war is about to undergo an transformation.

Bad Guys Blog

U.S. News & World Report now has an investigative reporter blogging about bad guys.

This week's post is about the Mafia's new project to distribute South American drugs.

Rebuild the World Trade Center

I have to admit it: Donald Trump was right when he proposed building a new version of the World Trade Center.

It makes far more sense than some wimpish memorial.

NRO Symposium

National Review Online has a symposium on the 9/11 attacks. Some excerpts:

James Lileks: If 9/11 had really changed us, there’d be a 150-story building on the site of the World Trade Center today. It would have a classical memorial in the plaza with allegorical figures representing Sorrow and Resolve, and a fountain watched over by stern stone eagles. Instead there’s a pit, and arguments over the usual muted dolorous abstraction approved by the National Association of Grief Counselors. The Empire State Building took 18 months to build. During the Depression. We could do that again, but we don’t. And we don’t seem interested in asking why.The good news? We returned to our norm: cheerful industrious self-directed Americans who think in terms of fiscal quarters, not ancient grievances, and trust in Coke and Mickey to spread our message of tolerance and prosperity. The bad news? Same as the good. Or perhaps it’s the other way around.

Mark Steyn: Anyone who’s mooched about the Muslim world for even brief amounts of time is struck by what David Pryce-Jones calls its “intellectual poverty”: It has a remarkable lack of curiosity about anything beyond its horizons. That hobbled it for centuries in its wars against the west. But our multicultural mindset is its mirror image: For isn’t the principle characteristic of “multiculturalism” its almost total lack of curiosity about other cultures? The multicultis make bliss of ignorance: You don’t need to know anything about Islam, you just have to feel warm and fluffy about it, and slap that “CO-EXIST” bumper sticker on your Subaru. If you want to know how little changed on 9/11, look at how it’s being observed in the nation’s schools.

Andrew Stuttaford: It was never going to be a day when “everything” changed. Those days don’t exist. What did change, and changed most profoundly, was Americans’ idea that they could, if they so chose, somehow keep themselves at arm’s length from the rest of the world. That’s gone — and it’s gone for good. It was an idea that hung on — just — through the Cold War, preserved by the realization that in a contest between (reasonably) rational nations, deterrence generally works. Now that comfort has gone. The latest enemy is not made up of states (or not primarily anyway) but of individuals empowered by technology and, in some cases, a religious fanaticism that leaves them immune to the usual deterrents. Throw in the ease of global travel and the stage is well set for a repeat of that terrible morning.

[HT: Instapundit ]

The Falling Man

I often think of a man who went to work at the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001.

In my mind, I see him as up early to get his usual breakfast and then, after a quick goodbye to his family, going off to a day that he thought was planned.

One of the last things to be expected was that within a few hours, driven by intense heat and smoke, he would jump from the towers.

Trotsky said, "You may not be interested in war but war is interested in you."

I look at the photo of the man's fall and wonder about his last thoughts. He'd sought to have a normal day. Did he have any idea of the bizarre chain of events that brought him to that window's ledge?

Did he know that, in a far-away country, some evil men were quite interested in bringing him to that ledge?

Quote of the Day

"Once again, we are faced with an expansionist, terrorist ideology that uses the demonization of Jews as one of its major rallying cries. What more do we need to know?

- Andrew Sullivan

Miscellaneous and Fast

A New York woman has won the million dollar lottery...for the second time.

The City of Snyder, Oklahoma has encountered a constitutional freedom of expression question due to nude photos of the police chief’s wife on the Internet. [HT: Dave Barry ]

Next summer, some scientists will practice living on Mars in an Arctic desert exercise 900 miles from the North Pole.

Coca-Cola has opened a major bottling plant in Afghanistan. [HT: Fark ]

Behind the Scenes at Taliesin

A new book examines the architect Frank Lloyd Wright and his “fellowship.”

Founded in 1932, during a period when Wright, in his mid-60s, was floundering professionally and personally, the Taliesin Fellowship, modeled loosely on Arts and Crafts communities in Europe, offered a way to raise funds and keep his architecture studio fully staffed even when he had no clients. In fact, as Zellman and Friedland make clear, Taliesin deserves to rank among Wright's most brilliant creations as an ingenious ploy to keep his practice afloat and his expensive lifestyle from flagging.The apprentices, who paid the equivalent of a college tuition each year, were put quickly to work serving meals and farming — doing everything, that is, but sitting down for lectures on organic architecture or the Usonian house. The same was true once a satellite campus was established in the Arizona desert and Wright began spending winters there.

[HT: 2Blowhards ]

Dangerous Maxims

I’m late in posting this one but it’s quite good. Steve Rucinski looks at tired maxims such as:

• Failure is not an option
• The customer is always right
• Never be satisfied
• Nice guys finish last
• Grow or die.

Read the entire thing here.

Attractive Employers

Business Week looks at the most attractive employers for recent grads:

The numbers demonstrate only half the challenge. In crafting the perfect pitch these days, it's not enough to have a marquee name or competitive pay, although those certainly help. To land the most desirable young grads, employers need to put something far more valuable on the table: the organization itself. Companies with corporate cultures that stress social responsibility, diversity, and the environment, all values that align with those of the twentysomething generation, stand to get the lion's share of interest from job seekers.

Some of the old recruiting orthodoxies are rapidly disappearing. Financial services companies, once the refuge of business majors and quant jocks, now accept liberal arts grads in droves even if it means a bigger up-front training investment to get them up to speed. Almost half of entry-level hires at Lehman Brothers and JPMorgan and a third of those at Goldman Sachs fall into this category.

September 10

The New York Daily News looks at the world of September 10, 2001:

An excerpt:

On the eve of mayoral primaries, after eight years of Rudy Giuliani, a long-shot outsider named Michael Bloomberg appears to be picking up momentum with voters. The Yankees announce a new sports channel called YES. Israel is readying for another no doubt pointless round of truce talks with PLO chief Yasser Arafat. Education-minded President Bush is heading to Florida to read to schoolkids.

Five years ago today: We are not being searched in the subways. We are unalarmed by the sight of valises left on streetcorners. We are not asked to remove our shoes at airport security gates.

Our young men and women are not being blown up daily by roadside bombs in a land far away.

And 2,749 people who work at the World Trade Center or plan to be on airplanes in the morning go safely to their beds, for the last time.

[HT: Real Clear Politics ]

Brazil Goes After Google

A Brazilian case against Google can have implications for its privacy policies in other nations.

An excerpt from the Christian Science Monitor article:

The Brazilian government wanted the names of suspected criminals using Google's "Orkut," the most popular social networking site (think MySpace or Facebook) in Brazil.
The nasty fight pitting two powerful and implacable sides against each other climaxed last Thursday with a judge's order: Hand over the data or face a daily fine of $900,000. Google has complied. In doing so, the company moved a step closer to establishing a global legal precedent on how Internet firms cooperate - or not - with government requests for information about Web users. It's a contentious issue that involves principles of personal privacy, political and commercial free speech, and fighting crime - be it pornography, pedophilia, racism, or terrorist plots.

Some human rights and free-speech groups hailed the case because, unlike in China, Google forced a showdown. By refusing initially to comply with local government authorities who failed to follow the correct legal procedures, they forced Brazil to deal with the American company rather than the Brazilian subsidiary. That, they say, is an important marker.

"Google's decision to make the legal procedures go through the American justice system is a good thing," says Julien Pain, head of the Internet freedom desk at Reporters Without Borders.

The Media War

James Pinkerton, writing at Tech Central Station, examines how an ethically agnostic and anti-American news media assist the enemies of civilization. An excerpt:

But wait, there's more! Now we see that the mediafield just got deadlier. We might have thought that the principal source of enemy propaganda came from the Middle East, but now we learn that a new and noxious spigot has opened up in our back yard, in Great Britain. If you believe that the Great Satan of the current mediafield is George W. Bush, then you're going to love a new made-for-TV movie, "Death of a President", which premieres at the Toronto International Film Festival this Sunday, the day before the fifth anniversary of 9-11. No doubt there will be some cheers, or at least smiles, in the audience as a CGI-ed President Bush is shot and killed.

For the record, Peter Dale, chief of the UK's More4 TV, denies that his film is advocating any such thing, or even that he is putting assassinationist thoughts into the international meme-stream. As he puts it, the film "raises questions about the effects of American foreign policy, and particularly the war on terror." That is, Dale would have us believe that he is just asking innocent questions -- you know, as Rush Limbaugh might ask aloud about the killing of, say, Hillary Rodham Clinton. Just asking!

Dale's obvious false-frontery led Alex Massie, writing in The Scotsman, to observe: "I think we know what those 'questions' are: would America have brought this upon itself? Isn't a bully with a bloody nose still a bully? Wouldn't the killing be justified or, failing that, wouldn't it be understandable?" Massie puts his finger on it: "Death of a President" is, at minimum, an indictment, and, at maximum, an enticement: C'mon, somebody, be a hero for the anti-American team. Hurry up and rid us of this troublesome president.

Quote of the Day

Winston Churchill's habit of guzzling a quart or two a day of good cognac is what saved civilization from the Luftwaffe, Hegelian logic, Wagnerian love-deaths and potato pancakes.

- Charles McCabe

Scrabble Ads

An unusual but creative ad campaign for Scrabble, the game that promises to improve the vocabulary of graffiti artists.

Password Security Problems

The requirement of strong passwords and the requirement to change those strong passwords is now a common feature of IT security. They address two potential vulnerabilities in an IT security system. Strong passwords make it harder to hack into the system by guessing, either manually or using an automated program. Changing the password prevents an authorized user who has compromised a current password from continuing to use it. Unfortunately, these security measures create an even more glaring vulnerability: the password written on the back of the mouse pad, scrawled in a desk drawer or in the back of a Filofax. When this happens, your company's security is only as strong as the hiring process for your office cleaners. Chances are they did not go through a full background check.

Read the rest of this CSO article on password security by clicking here.

"Perfect Victims"

A video of former Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu speaking at New York University.

[HT: Instapundit ]

Mindless Entertainment Segment

Via Web Zen, the block jump game.

A Reasonable Request

Mark Twain recalls some wage negotiations in his days in Nevada territory:

I will remark, in passing, that I only remained in the milling business one week. I told my employer I could not stay longer without an advance in my wages; that I liked quartz mining, indeed was infatuated with it; that I had never before grown so tenderly attached to an occupation in so short a time; that nothing, it seemed to me, gave such scope to intellectual activity as feeding a battery and screening tailings, and nothing so stimulated the moral attributes as retorting bullion and washing blankets - still, I felt constrained to ask an increase of salary.

He said he was paying me ten dollars a week, and thought it a good round sum. How much did I want?

I said about four hundred thousand dollars a month, and board, was about all I could reasonably ask, considering the hard times.

I was ordered off the premises! And yet, when I look back to those days and call to mind the exceeding hardness of the labor I performed in that mill, I only regret that I did not ask him seven hundred thousand.

Upscale Spending Habits

How do the wealthy or almost wealthy, spend their money?

Much the same way as the rest of us, but on nicer things. It's very important to note, however that they are usually rewarding themselves after a fairly frugal lifestyle. This group is 328% more likely than the average consumer to own a Cadillac (possibly reflecting the older age of this demographic, sorry GM), and 162% more likely to drive a Benz. They tend to be patrons of the arts and give much more to charity than the average. They are 127% more likely to be involved in civic issues than the typical consumer. They are voracious readers, with two of their favorite magazines being Kiplinger Personal Finance and U.S. News & World Report.

Of those that are substantially wealthy, with net worths exceeding $2 million, 11% are self employed, only 5% are retired, and nearly all have incomes in excess of $100,000, with most far above that figure. 81% have a college degree. While those affluent consumers in the previous group can be found throughout the U.S., those in this wealthy group are concentrated in the major metro areas such as NY, NY, Boston, San Francisco and Los Angeles. This group spends big bucks on home improvements. They are 333% more likely than average to spend $5,000 or more annually on home improvements to their palatial residences. If you're watching the U.S. Open and remember Wimbledon, you doubtlessly noticed that half the ads seemed to be for luxury cars or investment companies. There's good reason for that. Those in this demo really do spend quite a bit of time and money on golf and tennis, just like the stereotype says. They love good beer too. Their fav domestic is Sam Adams. Like the others in wealthy demographic groups, these folks spend substantial monies on charitable causes.

Read the entire Debt Free article here.

Pain from the Seventies

A painful clip of ABBA that takes you back to the Seventies; a time of appalling fashion, nutty politics, and hokey music videos.

Plague Stories

Ah, there's nothing like the story of a good plague.

Steven Johnson lists five great ones.

Surviving Starbucks

Is it possible for small coffee shops to survive the shadow of Starbucks? Apparently so.

For some of Seattle's independent proprietors, the decision to keep things at a smaller scale is in part about quality of life. Dow Lucurell wakes up at 4:30 a.m. and gets his first latte of the day at the Uptown Espresso in Queen Anne, before embarking on a 12- to 14-hour day that will often take him to each of the seven Uptown locations he owns in Seattle.

The hours may seem long, but Lucurell says he knows the names of all 63 of his employees and has a job that allows him to have long lunches with his buddies or coffee with his parents. It's a life he says he wouldn't be able to maintain if he were running a bigger coffee chain or trying to answer to shareholders, like Starbucks does.

"I've always had a great niche," he said.

Read the rest here.

Cost or Standard of Living?

Café Hayek has had a great exchange with readers on the distinction between cost of living and standard of living. An excerpt:

Which brings us back to Cyberike's complaint about life today compared to the 1970's:

I had no cable bill, no internet bill, no cell phone's. Those items right there add about $200 to my monthly expenses. I see no one taking these types of items into account, yet they are certainly factors in the cost of living. Have they added to my quality of life? Yes. Do we consider them necessities? Also yes.

These are not the cost of living, as economists define it. But they are the cost of living in the everyday sense of the phrase. "I can't live without my cell phone." Or e-mail. Or my laptop or my GPS system. "I have to have my digital camera for my trip." Can you imagine having to wait for your film to be developed? Who would put up with that? Well, we could obviously, but few of us choose to. Or can you imagine putting three kids in one bedroom? Impossible. Actually, it's not. Some people do it today. Americans did it all the time 100 years ago. But the average American family today doesn't do it. Not because we have to give each kid his or her own bedroom. Because we're wealthy enough to choose to do so.