Ed Driscoll examines an odd generation gap in Hollywood:
Why do so many stars seem immature?
Has the culture in general become more child-like due to the influence of Boomers who resist growing up?
[Suggested poster boy for that movement: A 55 year old man wearing a baseball cap turned backwards.]
Monday, July 02, 2007
Cover Stories
The workplace is filled with convenient cover stories for those who would seek to avoid responsibility by pretending that they have taken appropriate action. Among them are:
Role: "I can see how you might assume that task is part of my job but it's not written in my job description."
Delegation: "I gave the assignment to Mary. Is it my fault that she didn't complete it?"
Paperwork: "I sent everyone a memo giving my expectations of their performance. That should have been enough."
Resources: I didn't have enough people and money to do everything and that's just one of several priorities that I had to ignore."
Research: "We didn't act because we didn't have all of the information."
Deadlines: "True, it didn't make sense to act at that point but we had a deadline to meet."
Authority: "No one told me to take initiative."
Widely Accepted Behavior: "Everyone else does it."
Worse Behavior: "My conduct isn't as bad as that of some other employees."
Results: "Who cares about process? We got the results that we wanted."
Trust: "Monitoring performance would have been a sign of distrust."
Loyalty: "My boss told me to do it."
Money: "I can't afford to lose my job."
Litigation: "Sure it's unethical but it will help us to avoid a lawsuit."
Quote of the Day
Textbooks teach people subject matter, but they don't teach them how to think. And I would say that the ability to look at complex problems and break them into manageable parts is much more important. People need to be able to do that instantly, in the moment. That capabiliy is just not one you can get from a book. But these are the skills you really need.
- Dick Parsons
- Dick Parsons
Sunday, July 01, 2007
Demonization Alert
Bruce Bawer on the bizarre demonization warnings:
Meanwhile "London Mayor Ken Livingstone called on Britons Saturday not to demonize Muslims...." Who's demonizing Muslims? In the West nowadays, it's those who talk frankly about the facts of Islam and jihad who are routinely demonized. When somebody like Livingstone "calls on" the public not to "demonize" Muslims after incidents like this, what he seems to be trying to do is to scare people away from mentioning, discussing, and making an effort to understand the theological underpinnings of these acts, lest they be labeled racists or "Islamophobes."
Meanwhile "London Mayor Ken Livingstone called on Britons Saturday not to demonize Muslims...." Who's demonizing Muslims? In the West nowadays, it's those who talk frankly about the facts of Islam and jihad who are routinely demonized. When somebody like Livingstone "calls on" the public not to "demonize" Muslims after incidents like this, what he seems to be trying to do is to scare people away from mentioning, discussing, and making an effort to understand the theological underpinnings of these acts, lest they be labeled racists or "Islamophobes."
Vagabonding
Kevin Kelly at Cool Tools looks at Rough Guide's First-Time Around the World, a guidebook for vagabonding. A sample of its advice:
Fake police scam
A kid comes up and asks for change for a small banknote. Not long after (most likely in a city park or on a quiet road), a man approaches, flashes a badge quickly and tells you he's a police officer. He explains that the note you just received from the boy was counterfeit and that he needs to take it back to headquarters and you will be fined for your involvement. At this point, just as you are starting to wonder if it's real, a large muscular "colleague" arrives and pressures you to pay up.
How you beat it: take a good long look at the badge and tell him that, although he is certainly a genuine officer, there are many impersonators and that, according to their own tourist ministry, you're supposed to make all such spot payments at police headquarters, and you'll be happy to follow him there on foot. Under no circumstances should you get into their "unmarked police car".
Proposed Fuel Standards
Can Detroit's automakers catch up with Japan's fuel-saving vehicles without going broke? An excerpt from Alex Taylor III's Fortune article:
Indeed, the Detroit Three have been getting a free pass on fuel economy for more than two decades. Instead of devoting its considerable technical resources to improving gas mileage, it has been cranking up the horsepower of its engines and selling modified trucks as SUVs.
As a result, Bank of America figures Toyota has a five-year lead in the development of hybrid gas-electric vehicles, a technology that Detroit soft-pedaled until recently. Although GM is promising a breakthrough in fuel cells by 2010 and developments in plug-in hybrids even sooner, production of fully-functional gasoline-free vehicles still seems years off.
Still, there is no point in kicking them while they're down. GM (Charts, Fortune 500), Ford (Charts, Fortune 500) and Chrysler are on the brink of collapse. All three companies start the miles-per-gallon race far behind Japan's Big Three.
According to data compiled by Lehman Brothers, GM - the domestic leader in car mileage with 29.3 average miles per gallon - can't touch Toyota, which notches an average of 34.7 miles per gallon. And Chrysler - the American leader in truck corporate average fuel economy (CAFE) standards with 21.9 mpg - is light years behind Honda's 24.5 mpg.
Rushdie, Appeasement, and Societal Suicide
Mark Steyn examines the cycle of weakness in responding to the original Salman Rushdie fatwa:
This is where we came in two decades ago. We should have learned something by now. In the Muslim world, artistic criticism can be fatal. In 1992, the poet Sadiq Abd al-Karim Milalla also found that his work was ''not particularly well-received'': He was beheaded by the Saudis for suggesting Mohammed cooked up the Koran by himself. In 1998, the Algerian singer Lounes Matoub described himself as ''ni Arabe ni musulman'' (neither Arab nor Muslim) and shortly thereafter found himself neither alive nor well. These are not famous men. They don't stand around on Oscar night congratulating themselves on their ''courage'' for speaking out against Bush-Rove fascism. But, if we can't do much about freedom of expression in Iran and Saudi Arabia, we could at least do our bit to stop Saudi-Iranian standards embedding themselves in the Western world. So many of our problems with Iran today arise from not doing anything about our problems with Iran yesterday. Men like Ayatollah Khomeini despised pan-Arab nationalists like Nasser who attempted to impose a local variant of Marxism on the Muslim world. Khomeini figured: Why import the false ideologies of a failing civilization? Doesn't it make more sense to export Islamism to the dying West?
And, for a guy dismissed by most of us as crazy, he made a lot of sense. The Rushdie fatwa established the ground rules: The side that means it gets away with it. Mobs marched through Britain calling for the murder of a British subject -- and, as a matter of policy on the grounds of multicultural sensitivity, the British police shrugged and looked the other way. One reader in England recalled one demonstration at which he asked a constable why the ''Muslim community leaders'' weren't being arrested for incitement to murder. The officer told him to ''f - - - off, or I'll arrest you.'' Genuine ''moderate Muslims'' were cowed into silence, and pseudo-moderate Muslims triangulated with artful evasiveness. Sir Iqbal Sacranie, who went on to become leader of the most prominent British Muslim lobby group, was asked his opinion of the fatwa against Rushdie and mused: ''Death is perhaps too easy.''
Read the entire article here.
This is where we came in two decades ago. We should have learned something by now. In the Muslim world, artistic criticism can be fatal. In 1992, the poet Sadiq Abd al-Karim Milalla also found that his work was ''not particularly well-received'': He was beheaded by the Saudis for suggesting Mohammed cooked up the Koran by himself. In 1998, the Algerian singer Lounes Matoub described himself as ''ni Arabe ni musulman'' (neither Arab nor Muslim) and shortly thereafter found himself neither alive nor well. These are not famous men. They don't stand around on Oscar night congratulating themselves on their ''courage'' for speaking out against Bush-Rove fascism. But, if we can't do much about freedom of expression in Iran and Saudi Arabia, we could at least do our bit to stop Saudi-Iranian standards embedding themselves in the Western world. So many of our problems with Iran today arise from not doing anything about our problems with Iran yesterday. Men like Ayatollah Khomeini despised pan-Arab nationalists like Nasser who attempted to impose a local variant of Marxism on the Muslim world. Khomeini figured: Why import the false ideologies of a failing civilization? Doesn't it make more sense to export Islamism to the dying West?
And, for a guy dismissed by most of us as crazy, he made a lot of sense. The Rushdie fatwa established the ground rules: The side that means it gets away with it. Mobs marched through Britain calling for the murder of a British subject -- and, as a matter of policy on the grounds of multicultural sensitivity, the British police shrugged and looked the other way. One reader in England recalled one demonstration at which he asked a constable why the ''Muslim community leaders'' weren't being arrested for incitement to murder. The officer told him to ''f - - - off, or I'll arrest you.'' Genuine ''moderate Muslims'' were cowed into silence, and pseudo-moderate Muslims triangulated with artful evasiveness. Sir Iqbal Sacranie, who went on to become leader of the most prominent British Muslim lobby group, was asked his opinion of the fatwa against Rushdie and mused: ''Death is perhaps too easy.''
Read the entire article here.
Mansions and Ambani's Tower: 600 Servants?
Maya Roney, writing in Business Week, on one of the latest trends among the very rich:
In the near future, there may even be a billion-dollar home. Almost a decade after the Rennert estate debate, Indian billionaire Mukesh Ambani is causing a stir in Mumbai, where he is building a 60-story, vertical palace that will include three floors of Babylon-inspired hanging gardens and three rooftop helipads. Ambani will reportedly spend $1 billion on the project, which is scheduled for completion in 2008. That's $1 for almost every citizen of his native India.
In the near future, there may even be a billion-dollar home. Almost a decade after the Rennert estate debate, Indian billionaire Mukesh Ambani is causing a stir in Mumbai, where he is building a 60-story, vertical palace that will include three floors of Babylon-inspired hanging gardens and three rooftop helipads. Ambani will reportedly spend $1 billion on the project, which is scheduled for completion in 2008. That's $1 for almost every citizen of his native India.
Giuliani Inteview
The Wall Street Journal interviews Rudy Giuliani. An excerpt regarding Iran:
He started by explaining how he understands the problem, before getting around to how it ought to be handled: "Well, I think that if we've learned any lessons from the history of the 20th century, one of the lessons we should learn is [to] stop trying to psychoanalyze people and take them at their word.
"If we had taken Hitler at his word, Stalin at his word, I think we would have made much sounder decisions and saved a lot more lives. I don't know why we have to think that [Iranian President Mahmoud] Ahmadinejad doesn't mean what he says. Therefore, the more cautious, prudent way to react to it is, he means what he says.
He started by explaining how he understands the problem, before getting around to how it ought to be handled: "Well, I think that if we've learned any lessons from the history of the 20th century, one of the lessons we should learn is [to] stop trying to psychoanalyze people and take them at their word.
"If we had taken Hitler at his word, Stalin at his word, I think we would have made much sounder decisions and saved a lot more lives. I don't know why we have to think that [Iranian President Mahmoud] Ahmadinejad doesn't mean what he says. Therefore, the more cautious, prudent way to react to it is, he means what he says.
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