Quote of the Day

People are much more alike inside than they are on the surface.

- Verne Burnett

Replacing College with Certification

Imagine that America had no system of post-secondary education, and you were a member of a task force assigned to create one from scratch. One of your colleagues submits this proposal:

First, we will set up a single goal to represent educational success, which will take four years to achieve no matter what is being taught. We will attach an economic reward to it that seldom has anything to do with what has been learned. We will urge large numbers of people who do not possess adequate ability to try to achieve the goal, wait until they have spent a lot of time and money, and then deny it to them. We will stigmatize everyone who doesn't meet the goal. We will call the goal a "BA."

You would conclude that your colleague was cruel, not to say insane. But that's the system we have in place.

Read the rest of Charles Murray's article.

[HT: Stefan Beck in The New Criterion ]

Ingratitude

One of my favorite insights is attributed to Vice President Alben Barkley who, after being informed that a particular person was an avowed enemy, replied, "What did I ever do for him?"

Barkley knew one of the oddities of life: some individuals are shockingly ungrateful. I suspect many of these sad souls construct scenarios that conveniently edit out the assistance they received. The reason for such omissions is unclear - there are others who are similarly situated and yet remain grateful - but it happens frequently enough to be a matter of comment.

You might think that the ingratitude is sparked by some heavy-handed behavior on the part of the favor bearer and that after repeated references to the good deed that was done, the recipent of the favor simply explodes. No doubt that happens and yet I've never found it to be the case.

In my life, I can recall individuals who took the time to help me at certain key points. They didn't have to do any of those acts of kindness, but they did and their intervention made a difference. Should I have resented their actions? Did their good intentions in any way diminish me? I think not.

Ingratitude may be beyond explanation. In one case, when asked by a person to write a job recommendation, I gladly did so. I never heard from the man again.

Blogs You Should Visit: Cultural Offering

Cultural Offering is a marvelous blog.

You can find posts on philosophy tucked in-between ones on music, management, and politics. The overall tone is that of an extremely interesting conversationalist. Good stuff always.

Check it out.

Quote of the Day

Reason often makes mistakes, but conscience never does.

- Josh Billings

21 Warning Signs of a Dysfunctional Workplace

1. Vague and frequently changing job descriptions.
2. No job descriptions.
3. Overlapping areas of authority.
4. Redundant delegation of work.
5. Managers and supervisors who shout at or belittle employees and/or one another.
6. Grossly inadequate resources.
7. Impossible workloads.
8. Superficial or nonexistent training.
9. Extreme multi-tasking.
10. High turn-over.
11. Lack of clear-cut procedures.
12. High emphasis on not making mistakes combined with a near absence of guidance on how to perform the job correctly.
13. Indifferent upper-management.
14. Stressed-out middle management.
15. Frequent crises.
16. Rigid enforcement of minor rules.
17. Turf wars.
18. An absence of laughter.
19. Omnipresent fear.
20. Favoritism.
21. Factions.

The Looming Meeting

The meeting that you do not want to attend snickers and snorts on your calendar and conveys a vague sense of dread.

The unease is not produced by any fear of confrontation. This is not an occasion when you have to deal with an unpleasant person and where the best thing to do is to get the darned thing over with.

This is a mandatory meeting that will be a boring, time-waster. You can easily think of twelve things you'd rather be doing and that includes looking at clouds.

But you have to be there. Your presence is important because you are representing others and your rank, such as it is, demands that you fill a chair. All possible ways of delegating your role to others have been exhausted. You are trapped.

All that remains is to adjust your attitude. Here are several approaches that have worked for me:

1. Be in but not of the meeting. Attend with the idea that you'll be pleasant and cooperative, but you'll have an invisible shield of indifference that will prevent an overreaction to any nonsense. Regard the session as the near-equivalent of a cocktail party rather than a business meeting. This will lower your expectations and frustration.
2. Attend with the goal of getting to know one or two of the attendees better than your schedule has previously permitted. This puts you into more of a journalist role as you seek to find out what is happening in their areas. You'll leave with a better relationship with some people.
3. Pretend that you are an anthropologist of meetings. Carefully note what disturbs you about the meeting and what is done well. Go with the assumption that everyone else has the same reservations as your own and yet all of you have somehow gotten snared by an unproductive process. Try to pinpoint just what you would change to improve the meeting.

In my experience, you are not the only person who is shy, bored, and irritated by the process; in fact, the majority of the meeting participants probably share your feelings. That raises the questions of How and When to surface your concerns. You can't do it if you're the new kid on the block. At least three meetings may be required before you'll have the credentials to propose some changes.

By checking with others outside of the meeting, you may discover a surprising number of allies.

Censorship in China

The strategy seems clear: Give China's professional journalists a longer leash to cover breaking news even if it's not positive -- since the news will come out anyway and unlike bloggers, the journalists are still on a leash. At the same time, clamp down on blogs, chat rooms and video-sharing sites that might allow too much unfettered discussion of the news. A similar thing happened in July after large riots took place in Weng'an, a town in Guizhou province, after a young girl died under suspicious circumstances. Many large Chinese Web portals deleted or prevented publication of any blog and chat room posts mentioning Weng'an. Instead the Web portals ran extensive coverage of events in Weng'an reported by China's professional media.


Read the rest of Rebecca MacKinnon's Wall Street Journal article.

Quote of the Day

Capitalism without bankruptcy is like Christianity without Hell.

- Frank Borman

Fleeing Ourselves

I am not religious, at least in the sense of believing that I have the answers, but I am religious in the sense of knowing the questions. I know that there are things we can’t know, things even more important than making partner before the age of thirty. Doubtless most of us know this. Yet the tenor of life is not easily escaped. We try. People rush to Europe in search of the old, the quiet, and the pretty. Peddlers of real estate understand the urge, and hawk tranquil rural life while building the malls that will make it impossible. And so hurry comes to Arcadia. People then think of escape to the next small town. We spend a remarkable amount of time fleeing ourselves. Maybe instead we should build a place we like.

Take some time out today and read the rest of this.

[HT: Eclecticity ]