Vespa Nation?

Is a scooter in your future?

This is a pretty nifty list of some energy-efficient options.

Book Smarts

Paul Graham, heretic, surfaces the notion that perhaps it doesn't matter all that much where you went to college. An excerpt:

Practically everyone thinks that someone who went to MIT or Harvard or Stanford must be smart. Even people who hate you for it believe it.But when you think about what it means to have gone to an elite college, how could this be true? We're talking about a decision made by admissions officers—basically, HR people—based on a cursory examination of a huge pile of depressingly similar applications submitted by seventeen year olds. And what do they have to go on? An easily gamed standardized test; a short essay telling you what the kid thinks you want to hear; an interview with a random alum; a high school record that's largely an index of obedience. Who would rely on such a test?

And yet a lot of companies do. A lot of companies are very much influenced by where applicants went to college. How could they be? I think I know the answer to that.

Less is More

Some background: I use PowerPoint sparingly and generally regard it as the equivalent of petting a loathsome insect. Any slide must be essential, the speaker - not the PowerPoint - should provide the fireworks, and the best instructors can teach by drawing in the sand with a stick.

That's why I so enjoyed Rowan Manahan's witty post and slide show on making presentations.

The Traveler

Andrew Rice reviews the amazing works of Ryszard Kapuscinski:

Kapuscinski is an extremely personal writer, yet his literary persona is elusive, always vanishing just shy of the moment of true revelation. He wrote about every place he went, but to assemble these accounts into a biographical narrative, a reader must jump around from chapter to chapter and book to book. It was not Kapuscinski's way to tell the story straight. He wrote fairly little about his early life, at least in his main body of work. (There are apparently quite a few of his books that have yet to be translated from Polish.) Kapuscinski was 7 years old in 1939, when Germany and the Soviet Union carved up Poland, and his hometown, now part of Belarus, fell on Stalin's side of the bargain. In his book Imperium, he describes how the NKVD marched into town and leveled its church with cannon fire. "A person who lived through a great war is different from someone who never lived through any war," Kapuscinski writes elsewhere. "They are two different species of human beings. They will never find a common language."

[HT: Arts & Letters Daily ]

Supporting Employees in the Military

Samantha Sault looks at what some companies are doing for their citizen soldiers:

Creative Healthcare Solutions "decided to make the transition [to active duty] a little less painful" for Weikert and his family, says company president Norman Stalsberg. The company not only made up the difference between his current salary and his new Army paycheck, but also provided Weikert with full benefits, a 60 GB iPod, and a number of other items. While he served on Multi-National Security Transition Command-Iraq (MNSTC-I), advising the operations and plans group, Creative Healthcare Solutions looked after the Weikert family. Two company executives even flew to Atlanta to take Weikert's sons to an Atlanta Thrashers hockey game, complete with personalized jerseys, autographed pucks, and their names on the scoreboard.

Cheap Fares, Kiwis, and No Barf Bags

Ryanair's Michael O'Leary in another memorable interview. An excerpt from the introduction:

There's a bit of P.T. Barnum in Michael O'Leary, the chief executive of Irish low-fare air carrier Ryanair. He's pulled such stunts as driving a tank to a competitor's headquarters to declare a price war and dressing up as the pope to promote new routes to Rome. Most recently, when Britain's Advertising Standards Authority said Ryanair was incorrectly claiming that its flights were faster and cheaper than the Eurostar train for traveling between London and Brussels, he sent the frowning officials a copy of "Mathematics for Dummies."

Along the way, he's built Ryanair into Europe's largest airline by passenger volume and, along with such rivals as easyJet, transformed travel on the Continent. From London or Dublin one can fly not just to Nice but to Nantes, not only to Rome but to Riga, and often for less than the price of a cab ride across town.

Quote of the Day

There was an inscription on a stone found in North Africa that read: "I, the Captain of a Legion of Rome, serving in the desert of Libya, have learnt and pondered this truth: There are in life but two things, Love and Power, and no one has both."

- Malcolm Muggeridge

"Reward excellent failures"

Here's a dash of Tom Peters speaking on too much talk, too little do.

Skin Games

What's not fair is that she told me not to wear a specific sleeveless top, while about 10 other women in the office wear sleeveless. She told me mine was a little to far over the shoulder, therefore showing more skin. Sleeveless tops are sleeveless tops. Depending on your body type, they might fit differently. The top I wore was very professional and not too far over the shoulder. I let her know how I felt, and that I believed this was absurd because I have been trying really hard to go by her suggestions, but how am I supposed to feel when other women are wearing what I was told not too?


See how Evil HR Lady responds to this complaint about dress standards in the workplace.

Surprising Yourself

Nicholas Bate gives you a list of things to do today.