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Grueling

2008-07-24T17:30:00.003-07:00

Another photo depicts the eventual resolution of the Little Rock standoff, when the military enforced desegregation rulings at President Eisenhower’s command. The caption reads: “On September 25, 1957 federal troops escort the Little Rock Nine to their classes at Central High School.” The student is asked, “Based on this photograph, what was the job of the United States Army troops in Little Rock, Arkansas?”

Read the rest of Marc Epstein on New York's state-wide exams.

Miscellaneous and Fast

2008-07-24T05:43:00.004-07:00

Central nervous system: Hewlett-Packard wants to measure everything.

Creative editing: Ronald Radosh on the upcoming Dalton Trumbo documentary.

Right. When kayaking in dangerous waters, I want the boat to be one that I built.

Puzzle maven: Visual proof of Eclecticity's brilliance.

Press Bias: This story may be related to this story . [HT: Instapundit ]

News you can use: Surviving an Anaconda bite.

I like the gun: Great dorm photo and music at Cultural Offering.

Speaking as a westerner, there are some stretches of road where a mandatory 55 mph speed limit would induce insanity.

SoloLawyer points to a lawsuit over huge law fees and asks some questions.

My Thermos gives a nifty list of the best of Lyle Lovett.

Detour Needed

2008-07-24T05:35:00.001-07:00

In "Death in the Fast Lane" employment attorney John Phillips looks at a CEO suicide that is getting major attention here in Phoenix.

Helpful Non-Biz Courses

2008-07-24T05:02:00.000-07:00

Business Week lists five non-biz courses for business majors.

I'd add History and Government courses.

Quote of the Day

2008-07-24T05:00:00.000-07:00

In 1969 I published a small book on Humility. It was a pioneering work which has not, to my knowledge, been superseded.

- Lord Longford

Avanti

2008-07-23T21:13:00.001-07:00

I've a suggestion for some enterprising car maker: Use the Avanti design for a hybrid.

It's still an attractive car.

[HT: Instapundit ]

The Good Intentions Paving Company

2008-07-23T15:33:00.002-07:00

He once studied the effect of installing air bags in cars at a time when automakers were offering customers the option of buying cars with and without the safety devices. Winston found that people who bought cars with air bags tended to be the safest drivers to begin with. And now, lulled into a sense of security, they tended to drive faster, effectively canceling out the safety benefits.

Read the rest of Shankar Vedantam's article on well-intentioned interventions.

[HT: Arts & Letters Daily ]

SOX and Fraud Detection

2008-07-23T11:33:00.003-07:00

Check out SOX First on whether Sarbanes-Oxley makes fraud worse.

The point about violations being discovered via tipsters instead of audits reminds me of a section in The Crime Fighter by Jack Maple, the late NYPD Deputy Commissioner:

Common detectivespeak: "We solved this case using information developed through investigation."

Usual translation: "Somebody called our tips hotline and told us exactly who did the crime and where we could find him at that very moment."

That's Not What We Do

2008-07-23T07:29:00.002-07:00

You walk into a restaurant that serves sandwiches and hamburgers and tell the counter staff, "I notice that your business is a little slow right now. How about making me a pizza or grilling some chicken?"

They will say no.

Many businesses in other disciplines, however, rush for the ingredients. Their view is, "If the customer requests a product or service and it is roughly in our area of expertise, we will customize and alter in order to please the customer."

Sometimes that works. On most occasions, however, it is a time-killer, a money-waster, and a diversion from the main mission. You've heard of mission-creep with regard to the military? There is also mission-creep in business. An alteration here and there and you can wake up with a bunch of new products that were designed for a small fraction of your customers.

Now if you charge a hefty fee for customization, you may come out ahead in the short run. The larger question, however, is whether the distraction from the larger picture has strengthened or weakened your efforts.

It can be difficult to say "That's not what we do" and watch business stroll out the door but it can be one of the wisest decisions you make.

The Horror

2008-07-23T07:28:00.000-07:00

McArthur's Rant has a great excerpt from a witty BBC article about an HR "strike" in Britain:

On the ground, employers were really beginning to feel the pinch as senior management attempted to cover the void left by their missing HR departments for yet another week. ‘We just have no idea which of the first-aid kits are fully stocked,’ confided a director of one major corporation. ‘And we are already more than a month late on our annual office chair audit. If things continue like this, who knows, I could lose half of my staff to repetitive strain injury. Or whatever it is they monitor.’

Quote of the Day

2008-07-23T07:26:00.001-07:00

Help thy brother's boat across, and lo! thine own has reached the shore.

- Hindu Proverb

The Fuller Life

2008-07-22T14:04:00.002-07:00

Well, there’s nothing wrong with concentrating on the “uses” of something. The difficulty comes when we operate with too narrow a definition of “use.” At some point, we have to consider the ultimate goals toward which our life’s actions are directed. What makes for a genuinely meaningful human life? Of what “use” are things that fail to promote that end? If you’re so rich, we must ask, why aren’t you wise—or happy?

And that brings me to a characteristically humanistic way to relate a truth: by telling a story. The tale begins with a tourist on holiday, wandering through the back alleys of San Francisco’s Chinatown, where he comes upon a little antique shop, filled with curious pieces of bric-a-brac and art objects. What especially catches his eye is a beautifully wrought, life-size bronze statue of a rat. He asks the elderly shopkeeper the price. “The rat costs $12,” says the shopkeeper, “and it will be $1,000 more for the story behind it.” “Well, you can keep your story, old man,” responds the tourist, “But I’ll take the statue.”

Read the rest of the story in Wilfred M. McClay's essay in The Wilson Quarterly on the burden of the humanities.

Best Business Books?

2008-07-22T06:44:00.003-07:00

Omnivoracious gives a list of the "best business books, ever."

Note: They are business books, not management books.

Very thought-provoking.

[HT: Instapundit ]

Smooth and Rough

2008-07-22T06:07:00.002-07:00

If you've been in the workplace long enough you've probably seen these two personality types:

Rough Bark
Smooth Bark.

I've found that the Rough Barks are often old softies who hide a caring nature beneath a gruff exterior and that there are plenty of Smooth Barks out there who are, to alter an old expression, as fine a person as ever slit a throat or scuttled a ship.

Organizations often worry about their Rough Bark managers and executives. They are concerned that the bluntness and lack of refinement might trigger a harassment case. Those thoughts are not without merit. I've seen far fewer organizations, however, that worry about the Smooth Barks.

That omission is a major blunder. It can be akin to worrying about the flu when a far more serious illness is moving down the corridors. Smooth Barks, of course, are far more formidable adversaries. They possess the people skills and eloquence to dart between the rain drops and their appetite for revenge is unquenchable.

It is as if many companies make a deal with the devil. They ignore the predations of the Smooth Bark because that slickster always gives them an explanation with just enough plausibility to permit them to pretend that nothing bad really took place. They discipline the Rough Barks because those renegades might embarrass them and provide no decent defense for doing so.

What will they do, however, if the day comes when the Smooth Bark turns on them?

Quote of the Day

2008-07-22T05:42:00.002-07:00

My rule always was to do the business of the day in the day.

- The Duke of Wellington

I Think I'll Sue Television

2008-07-21T16:16:00.003-07:00

A lawyer has sued a newspaper alleging that a decline in quality makes the paper not worth the cost of his subscription.

Reacting to the suit, Stephen J. Dubner wonders:

Shall I sue the New York Yankees if I take my family to a game and the team underperforms? I can certainly think of a restaurant or two that deserves my legal attention. And what about all the schools I’ve ever attended, none of which managed to teach me everything I wanted to know?

HT: Overlawyered ]

Politics and Courtesy

2008-07-21T16:00:00.002-07:00

Writing in Fortune, Nadira A. Hira on - not office politics - but politics in the office. An excerpt:

Now, I have to admit that when I brought this outrage up with my sister, expecting equal amounts of ire, her response surprised me. Social justice-minded 23-year-old who she is, she went in six seconds from, “That’s an, um, conservative tack for you take,” to, “Why isn’t it okay to say, ‘anyone who thinks coastal oil drilling is a good idea is an idiot’ at work?!”

Maybe she’s right to feel that, in the face of problems we have today, your comfort or mine shouldn’t be her primary concern. But here’s the trouble: When you take that fight to a coworker, you’re assuming that they agree with you, and if they don’t, you’re forcing them to pretend they do, or admit they don’t, opening the door to a potentially volatile situation.

[Execupundit note: I work with a pretty politically diverse bunch. Great people. Very bright. We occasionally argue about politics but have managed to soften the remarks before duels are scheduled. And no one has ever sent emails around presuming that everyone agrees with a particular candidate. Perhaps we've been saved by an office culture that stresses courtesy.]

GPS versus Photo Radar

2008-07-21T13:40:00.003-07:00

The astute reader known as Cromagnum has passed along this story of a GPS defense in a speeding case.

If this develops into a common and viable defense, you can imagine a not-so-distant future where GPS is used as the primary evidence of speeding.

On the Cheap Warholian Fame

2008-07-21T12:34:00.003-07:00

Allison is the latest, and perhaps purest, iteration of the Warholian ideal: someone who is famous for being famous. Like graffiti writers who turned their signatures into wild-style gallery pieces, she has made the process of self-promotion into its own freaky art form. Traditionally, it takes an army of publicists, a well-connected family, or a big-budget ad campaign to make this kind of splash. But Allison has done it on her own and on the cheap, armed only with an insatiable need for attention and a healthy helping of Web savvy.

Read the rest of the Wired story on Julia Allison here.

Emphasizing Reasoning

2008-07-21T07:19:00.002-07:00

Years ago while in the Army, I had the good fortune to encounter senior officers who, rather than rushing to blame if subordinates chose a course that didn't work out, would instead ask for the reasoning. At first I was stunned when they'd say "That was a reasonable decision" but I quickly learned that the culture had enormous respect for the person on the ground who had to make choices rapidly and with incomplete information.

Other professions, such as academia and politics, lean in the exact opposite direction. A decision is made and the second-guessers descend to pronounce why this or that was wrong. The critics have the advantage of time and more information, of course, but that doesn't inhibit them from grilling what Theodore Roosevelt called "the man in the arena" and announcing that the decision maker was grossly deficient. I routinely see political criticisms of decisions that are so shallow that they say far more about the ineptitude of the critic than of the person who had to decide.

Emphasizing reasoning will ultimately produce a consistently higher level of performance. Emphasizing the results without analyzing the reasoning behind them will produce an inconsistent record and will discourage initiative by those who have to make hard decisions.

"People Aren't Our Most Important Asset" Update

2008-07-21T07:16:00.001-07:00

Writing in Business Week, Liz Ryan gives six signs that your company doesn't care about its employees.

Quote of the Day

2008-07-21T07:07:00.003-07:00

Fear less, hope more; eat less, chew more; whine less, breathe more; talk less, say more; hate less, love more; and all good things are yours.

- Swedish proverb

Cosmic Justice

2008-07-20T20:07:00.002-07:00

This is periodically worth a visit. From a speech by economist Thomas Sowell on the quest for cosmic justice:

Presumably, the vast ranges of undeserved inequalities found everywhere are the fault of "society" and so the redressing of those inequalities is called social justice, going beyond the traditional justice of presenting each individual with the same rules and standards. However, even those who argue this way often recognize that some undeserved inequalities may arise from cultural differences, family genes, or from historical confluences of events not controlled by anybody or by any given society at any given time. For example, there was no way that Pee Wee Reese was going to hit as many home runs as Mark McGwire, or Shirley Temple run as fast as Jesse Owens. There was no way that Scandinavians or Polynesians were going to know as much about camels as the Bedouins of the Sahara-- and no way that these Bedouins were going to know as much about fishing as the Scandinavians or Polynesians.

In a sense, proponents of "social justice" are unduly modest. What they are seeking to correct are not merely the deficiencies of society, but of the cosmos. What they call social justice encompasses far more than any given society is causally responsible for. Crusaders for social justice seek to correct not merely the sins of man but the oversights of God or the accidents of history. What they are really seeking is a universe tailor-made to their vision of equality. They are seeking cosmic justice.

No Values Voters

2008-07-20T08:48:00.001-07:00

The Onion looks at the No Values voting bloc.

Michael Novak: No One Sees God

2008-07-20T08:00:00.002-07:00

It certainly seems like our conscience comes from a light over which we are not master, a light greater than ourselves, which often faults our own behavior down to its roots far below the surface of our rationalizations. It certainly seems as if the questioning of our own long-held assumptions, and the relentless probing of our comfortable beliefs about ourselves, comes from somewhere within ourselves—but greater than ourselves and not subject to our own self-deceptions. Thinkers since Plato have discerned this, quite rightly—you can test it in your own experience.

Read the rest of the First Things interview with Michael Novak on his new book.