Friday, December 31, 2004
INTERESTING NUMBERS
Yesterday's WSJ (12/30) has some interesting numbers on unemployment rates. Out of the total unemployment number in the US, 8.5% were classified as long-term unemployed--that is, unemployed for 12 months or more. (This is 2002 data.) The data including corresponding numbers for certain other countries is shown below:
U.S. 8.5%
Britain 23.1%
Japan 30.8%
France 33.8%
Germany 47.9%
Italy 59.2%
I knew that Europe had a serious problem with long-term unemployment, but the differences from the US shown by these numbers are so dramatic that I first thought that perhaps the data was being skewed...by the set of people who have just plain given up on finding work dropped out of the job market. But evidently not--the "workforce participation rate" in the US is around 76%, which compares with rates of 61% to 72% for Japan, Germany, France, and Italy. So these differences are apparently real.
So, whatever our problems in the US with jobs--and I do not mean to minimize them in any way--Europe has a very serious issue with long-term unemployment (as does Japan, apparently), and it is going to be a difficult one to solve.
Financial Times (12/31) has an article on the attempts in Germany to deal with this problem. Effective Monday, benefits to the long-term unemployed will be cut substantially. Everyone claiming unemployment benefits after more than a year will receive the same amount regardless of their prior earnings, and failure to seek work seriously will bring cuts in benefits. There will also be more emphasis on job placement services. Not surprisingly, many Germans are not happy about the changes.
There is substantially less flexibility in most European economies than in the US economy, and the problems of long term unemployement there will not be easily solved.
7:22 AM
Thursday, December 30, 2004
TSUNAMI INFORMATION
A good collection of information can be found at The Command Post, together with ways to contribute.
UPDATE: In today's Wall Street Journal (12/31), Daniel Henninger offers these thoughts:
I think if one experiences enough human tragedy by watching it on a screen, a TV or a PC, tragedy starts to look like a show. Rather than real, life becomes "realistic," moving us where we don't want to go, close to the experience of a video game.
Modern television news provides little context to its data and images. Print--old-fashioned, line-by-line reading--particuarly in the best newspapers, as provided the most help in comprehending this incomprehensible event.
Television's round-the-clock feeds of raw images, such as we are now seeing from Thailand, India, and Sri Lanka, are known in some circles as "data-passing." In daily life or as now amid catatropic disaster, technology pushes large amounts of information at us--data--that we don't have time to process and that we don't altogether comprehend. Who has time to think much about the images hopscotching around Sri Lanka, India or Malaysia when there's more drama on the way, adnd more after that/ The visual of shattered villages and broken families enthralls the eyes, but the emotions, like a pinball machine banged too hard, finally "tilt" and stop.
7:14 PM
Tuesday, December 28, 2004
TRANSCONTINENTAL RAILROAD, PASS II
Every morning 'bout seven o'clock
There were twenty tarriers workin' on the rock
And the boss comes along and he says "keep still!
And bear down harder on that cast-iron drill"
And drill, ye tarriers, drill
And blast, and fire
(The above lines are, of course, from the song Drill Ye Tarriers Drill. A "tarrier' was an Irish railroad construction worker.)
The transcontinental railway was completed on March 10, 1869. Now, both the Union Pacific and the Burlington Northern Santa Fe are engaged in major projects for the complete double-tracking of their main lines between Chicago and Los Angeles (See WSJ 12/28). BNSF is ahead, but neither railroad is expected to finish the project before 2008.
Ironically, over the last few decade much American railroad mileage has gone from double-track to single track. One reason has been reduced traffic on some routes due to competition from trucks. Another reason is technology-driven: Centralized Traffic Control (CTC) allows switches and signals to be controlled from a point that may be hundreds of miles away...this allows better coordination and hence better utilization of line capacity. But even with CTC, the capacity of a single line is limited, and when traffic grows substantially, there comes the time to call out the tracklayers.
Even with benefit of modern machinery, it's still hard work. But working conditions are hopefully much better than they were the first time around:
The foreman's name was John McCann
By God, he was a mighty hard man
Last week a premature blast went off
And a mile in the air went big Jim Goff
And when next payday came around
Jim Goff a dollar short was found
When he asked, "What for?" came this reply
"You were docked for the time you were up in the sky"
And drill, ye tarriers, drill
4:53 PM
Sunday, December 26, 2004
Book Review: They Made America
Harold Evans
Rating: 4 Stars
You probably learned in school that Robert Fulton invented the steamboat. They probably didn't tell you, though, that Fulton lived in a menage a trois while he was in Paris. (And he didn't really invent the steamboat, though he made important improvements to it.)
This book is subtitled Two Centuries of Innovators. The category "innovators" includes, but is not restricted to, the classic inventor/entrepreneur. Along with people like Fulton, Edison, Ford, and George Eastman, the book profiles A P Giannini, founder of the Bank of America, Georges Doriot, who established the first true venture capital firm, Martha Matilda Harper, creator of the first retail franchise network, and Walt Disney. They Made America will be good reading for anyone who is interested in the history of technology and/or the history of business (and in my view, any practicing businessperson or serious investor would do well to become a student of business history.)
A couple of interesting tidbits: (continued)
2:52 PM
Friday, December 24, 2004
CHRISTMAS EVE, 1906
98 years ago this evening, a few shipboard radio operators--listening through the static for signals in Morse code--heard something that they had never before heard on the radio, and that most had never expected to hear. A human voice.
The first voice radio broadcast was conducted by Reginald Fessenden, originating from his experimental station at Brant Rock, Massachussetts. After introducing the transmission, Fessenden played a recording of Handel's "Largo" and then sang "O Holy Night" while accompanying himself on the violin. Fessenden's wife and a friend were then intended to conduct a Bible reading, but in the first-ever case of mike fright, they were unable to do it, so the reading was conducted by Fessenden as well.
The signals were created by a high-frequency AC generator, an electromechanical device created by Ernst Alexanderson of GE and modified by Fessenden. The transmission took place at around 80KHZ. (Low frequency compared to today's normal radio, where the AM band starts at around 500KHZ; high frequency compared to the 60HZ that rotating machines normally produce.) I believe that the generator was powered by a steam turbine.
The Alexanderson machines were expensive and very large--broadcast radio on a commercial scale was not practical until the introduction of the vacuum tube for both transmitting and receiving, many years later.
More about Reginald Fessenden and his pioneering broadcast here.
1:26 PM
Thursday, December 23, 2004
CHRISTMAS IN THE RADAR ROOM
If you're travelling by air this holiday season, give a thought to the people behind the scenes--the men and women in the control towers, the radar rooms, and the flight service stations. They have a lot to do with getting you there safely, and in as timely a fashion as possible. Almost all the time, they do a great job in orchestrating a vast and complex aerial ballet.
Here is an Air Traffic Control version of "The Night Before Christmas."
The FAA has recently announced a plan to hire as many as 12000 new controllers over the next several years. The controllers' union believes that the plan is not aggressive enough, and that the hiring needs to proceed on a faster-paced timetable.
8:46 PM
INTERESTING JUXTAPOSITION
Right next to the NYT article on Jeri Ellsworth (see below), there is the lead-in for an article headed An S.A.T. Tool Aimed at Children: A popular gift for children facing ever more standardized tests is the Time Tracker, which is meant to help children as young as 4 learn to manage their time. A professor of education and economics is quoted as saying, "Lower-middle-class parents are concerned about their school quality and their children's grades. The upper middle class is less concerned about the quality of the school than about the performance of their own kids on these make-or-break tests." The product's manufacturer, Learning Resources, describes it in these words: Perfect for: Study sessions, Projects, Tests, Experiments, Practice sessions, Classroom Assignments, Cooking, Hearing impaired and hundreds more uses!
Whatever the intentions of the manufacturer, I suspect that this product will be bought largely by those parents who are highly focused on getting their kids into "top colleges" and are, to a substantial extent, programming the kids' lives to that end.
And that brings me to my question. If Jeri Ellsworth's parents had micromanaged her early life with college admissions in mind--rather than just letting her hang around her father's garage and play with the Commodore 64--would she have become the creative and entrepreneurial person that she obviously is?
Let's just say that it surely wouldn't have improved the probability.
9:58 AM
Tuesday, December 21, 2004
A NEW OLD PRODUCT
Here's a heartwarming story of entrepreneurial creativity, from the New York Times business section. Jeri Ellsworth, now 30, has always been intereted in both technology and business. At the age of 7, she started using a Commodore 64 computer, and soon learned to program it. As a teenager, she designed and sold dirt-track race cars, using her father's service station as a workshop. She later started a business to assemble personal computers, and eventually owned a chain of five computer stores. With declining margins in the industry, she sold the stores, and decided to return to one of her early enthusiasms, electronics. She enrolled in a circuit design program at a college, but left after less than a year--she was a cultural mismatch for the program where, she says, questioning the professors' answers was frowned upon.
She then decided to design a specialized chip that would emulate the behavior of her first computer, the Commodore 64. It eventually could also mimic other early home computers, including the Atari, TI, Vic, and Sinclair. After demonstrating her chip at an industry convention, she received considerable notice, and a series of job offers.
Mammoth Toys engaged her to turn her prototype into a commercial product. The chip was embedded in a joystick that connects by cable to a TV set. The product, which sells for $30, runs 30 video games from the early 1980s. It sold 70,000 units in one day when it was introduced on QVC last month. During the productization effort, Ms Ellsworth travelled to China to work directly with the manufacturing facility involved.
Andrew Singer, CEO of Rapport, says that Ms Ellsworth has abilities that engineers with advanced credentials often do not. "It's possible to get a credential and not have passion," he said, while comparing her to Steve Wozniak and Burrell Smith, the hardware designer of the original Macintosh--neither of whom had formal training when they made their most significant contributions at Apple.
The NYT reporter found Ellesworth leafing through a copy of MOS Integrated Circuits, a handbook from 1971, so more retrocomputing projects may well be in store.
Michele, who is an aficionado of old video games, should be very proud.
7:46 AM
Monday, December 20, 2004
THE BROKER INDICATOR
Yesterday, I wrote about a stock market indicator based on the buy/sell decisions of corporate directors. Here's another indicator, which is currently giving opposite results. The Wall Street Journal (12/20) reports on a study of activity by stockbrokers, other brokerage employees, and investment bankers: specifically, trading decisions by these individuals with regard to their own companies' stock. An attempt is made to compensate for option positions: for example, if an individual exercises 10,000 options, sells 5,000 shares, and holds the rest, then this is regarded as a net "buy" transaction.
The article reports that over the time period 1990-2004, consistent buying of their own firms' stock by brokerage employees has been a good leading indicator for the S&P 500 in the next year. At present, such buying activity is going on with a consistency not seen in 7 years, and selling among the same population is the slowest it has been in 10 years.
This indicator is a bit counterintuitive to me...after all, most Wall Street people are, directly or indirectly, in the business of selling securities. It's hard to sell something you don't believe in, so I would think psychological factors would lead to a consistent bullish bias on the part of this group of people. But maybe not. Anyhow, an interesting contract with yesterday's indicator.
As always, nothing on this weblog should be considered as investment advice.
4:06 PM
Sunday, December 19, 2004
THE BOARD INDICATOR
Trading by insiders is often used as a stock-market indicator. (As used here, the term refers simply to the buying and selling of securities by people--officers and directors--who by virtue of their position are corporate insiders. It carries no implication of illegal "insider trading" activity.)
One problem with the indicator, at least in recent years, is that senior corporate officers generally have substantial option positions--often representing a high proportion of their personal assets. So for reasons of pure portfolio diversification, it often doesn't make sense for them to buy company stock directly, even if they think the price is attractive, and it does often make sense for them to sell stock, even if they think the price is likely to be headed up...simply to avoid overconcentration and the associated risks.
These considerations seem to be much less applicable to Board of Directors members, though, since (a) the option grants to board members tend to usually be more modest that those to top officers, and (b) board members often serve on the boards of several companies. Thus, I think that trading by board members may be a more interesting indicator than trading by officers.
Barrons (12/20) has an chart of buy/sell ratios by directors of U.S. public companies over the last 24 years. An eyeball analysis of the chart indicates that the sell/buy ratio, which is quite volatile, has most typically been in the range 1 to 3....on rare occasions, it has been as low as .4 (ie, twice as many "buys" as "sells"), and these occasions indeed presaged significant upward movements of the S&P Index. The sell/buy ratio currently stands at 6, a ratio which has been exceeded only once before in 30 years, although ratios above 4 have been encoutered several times. My superficial analysis of the chart suggests that high ratios are not as good an indicator of an overvalued market as low ones are of an undervalued one...nevertheless, interesting and somewhat worrisome data.
As always, nothing on this weblog should be considered as investment advice.
See also: The Harvard Indicator.
1:19 PM
Thursday, December 16, 2004
60 YEARS AGO TODAY
On December 16, 1944, the Battle of the Bulge began. The Germans had managed to secretly concentrate large forces in what the American command considered to be a quiet sector. Snippets of intelligence had suggested that something was going on, but the dots had never been connected. The German assault, when it came, was a complete surprise, and was on a massive scale. By Christmas, the Germans had forced a 50-mile-deep bulge in the American lines.
By the time the battle was over, sixteen thousand Americans had been killed, and sixty thousand had been wounded or captured. German casualties were probably at least twice that.
A good summary by Paul Greenberg is here.
See also this description.
4:00 PM
Wednesday, December 15, 2004
***BRIEFLY SURFACING--MORE RERUNS***
Taking advantage of a wideband connection to post a few more reruns for your reading pleasure...
MISVALUING MANUFACTURING
(Originally posted 12/10/03)
In the blogosphere and in the media, there have recently been many comments running basically as follows: "We're better off without all those manufacturing jobs, anyhow...let the boring assembly line jobs be done somewhere else, and let our people concentrate on high-value knowledge work."
I believe that comments like these reflect a fundamental misunderstanding of the nature of manufacturing. (continued)
***
AN ACADEMIC BUBBLE?
(Originally posted 5/2/03)
Over at Critical Mass, there's recently been much discussion of Brooklyn College. This is the institution at which English professor Frederick Lang was removed from the classroom--evidently in large part due to his hard-nosed grading policies and his unpopular habit of writing honest comments on student papers.
The devaluation of standards in academia has been going on for a long time. Eric, a commenter at Critical Mass, reports on a conversation that took place at SUNY--Stony Brook when he was a professor there. Faculty members were discussing the math final grades:
"What should the minimum D be?"
"180 out of 420."
"No, we'd fail too many people."
They eventually decided on 140 out of 420. At this point, Eric asked:
"Bernie, would you trust someone who got 140 out of 420 to do your taxes?"
"Eric, that's not the point."
"Would you trust him to be your doctor?"
"Eric, that's not the point."
"Would you trust him to build a bridge for you?"
"Eric, that's not the point."
So what is the point?
Of course, we all know what the point really is. (continued)
***
SPIRITUAL LEADERSHIP
As the U.S. prepared for war with Iraq, many American religious leaders vehemently opposed such action--and continue to do so. And the tone of their statements is often, as Michael Novak has noted, "bombastic, fiery and murderously polemical. They are not content to disagree civilly. They describe their opponents as evil, venal, and brainless. They calumniate."
Writing in The Weekly Standard, Joseph Loconte looks at what religious leaders were saying during an earlier debate about war and peace--that which took place in the late 1930s and early 1940s, as the threat grew from Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan. These statements, although made 60 and more years ago, have a contemporary ring to them.
German militarism, said one Methodist minister, "may be provoked by bitter belief..that there is no peaceful way of solving a desperate economic problem." Condemnation of Hitler, according to a leader in the United Church of Christ, was a "short-circuited, adolescent hatred of individual leaders." And a Unitarian minister in New York said that "If America goes into the war, it will not be for idealistic reasons but to serve her own imperialistic interests." The it's-all-our-fault line was echoes by a Reverend Holmes, who said that a German victory should be viewed as "the punishment for our transgressions." Stunningly, comments along these lines continued to be made in 1940 and even in 1941.
One wonders if the people who said these things ever reflected on just how wrong they were. One wonders, also, if the outspoken Reverends of our own day are familiar with this history.
(Hat tip to Relapsed Catholic for the Novak article.)
1:25 PM
Thursday, December 09, 2004
***RERUN SEASON***
I'm going to be travelling for the next few days, and may not have Internet access. Here are reruns of some previous posts that I think are still relevant and hopefully thought-provoking.
SUPERHEATED 'STEEM
(Originally posted 10/31/02)
A kid I know got his first introduction to self-esteem training a couple of years ago, when he was six. All the children in the kindergarten had to watch a video on the general theme "You are wonderful." Sam came home and asked his mom, "How can the people who made the video be so sure I'm wonderful? They don't even know me!" So a 6-year-old has more sense than the mainstream of our educational establishment. (continued)
***
A DIFFERENT SEPTEMBER 11 ANNIVERSARY
The Heroism of Noor Inayat Khan
(Originally posted 9/11/04)
60 years ago today, a woman named Noor Inayat Khat was executed at the Dachau concentration camp. The name is not something one would expect among a roster of concentration camp inmates in 1944. She was not Jewish, nor indeed European. Although she had been in France at the time of the German invasion of 1940, she had escaped with her family to England, and could have remained there safely for the duration of the war. Why was she in Dachau?
Her story is one that deserves to be better known.
Noor (the name means "light of womanhood") was the child of Hazrat Inayat Khan, a leader of the Sufi movement, and his American wife. She was a descendent of Tippu Sultan, a prince who had been one of the most effective enemies of British rule in India. Strangely, she was born in Moscow, where certain members of the Czar's court were interested in Sufiism. After the Revolution, the family moved to a suburb of Paris. Noor is remembered as gentle, shy, musical, dreamy, and poetic. She was noted for her kindness to animals, and it was to her that neighborhood children often brought an injured kitten or puppy. She attended the Sorbonne and became a writer of children's books and stories; she broadcast some of her stories on the radio. (Her book, Twenty Jataka Tales, is still in print.) (continued)
***
BOOK REVIEW: The Forging of a Rebel
Arturo Barea.....Rating: 5 Stars
(Originally posted 1/1/03)
We had to fight them. This meant that we would have to shell or bomb Burgos and its towers, Cordova and its flowered courtyards, Seville and its gardens. We would have to kill so as to purchase the right to live.
I wanted to scream.
The Spanish Civil War is more relevant to Americans than it might have seemed a few years ago. In the aftermath of 9/11, it is easier to imagine the reality of a Madrid under sustained shellfire. In the environment of hysterical political correctness which exists on so many campuses, it is easier to understand how a casual remark could land someone in front of a firing squad. And in a time of suicide bombings, the slogan "Long Live Death" (first adopted by the Spanish Foreign Legion and later by the Fascist movement) becomes even more chilling.
This book is "about" the Spanish Civil War, but it is not conventional military or political history. It is the story of Spain in the first half of the 20th century, as seen through the eyes of one man. The writing is so rich, dense, and vivid that reading it is like finding yourself inside someone else's dream. (continued)
***
MANAGEMENT MENTALITIES
(Originally posted 6/27/04)
About 20 years ago, Peter Drucker wrote a wonderful pseudo-autobiography, "Adventures of a Bystander." It tells his own story only indirectly, via profiles of people he has known. These range from from his grandmother and his 4th-grade teacher in Austria to Henry Luce (Time-Life) and Alfred Sloan (GM).
In the chapter titled "Ernest Freedberg's World," Drucker writes about two old-line merchants. The first of these, called "Uncle Henry" by those who knew him, was the founder and owner of a large and succesful department store. When Drucker met him, he was already in his eighties. Uncle Henry was a businessman who did things by intuition more than by formal analysis, and his own son Irving, a Harvard B-School graduate, was appalled at "the unsystematic and unscientific way the store was being run." (continued)
***
THE DICTATORSHIP OF THEORY
(Originally posted 6/22/03)
Professor "X" teaches at a prominent private university. Recently, he taught a course on "Topics in Theory and Criticism." He thought the class was going poorly--it was difficult to get the students to talk about the material--but on the last day of class, he received an ovation.
"I didn't understand what was going on until a few days later," he writes (in an e-mail to Critical Mass.) "Several students came to see me during office hours to tell me that they had never taken a course quite like this one before. What they had expected was a template-driven, "here's how we apply ****ist theory to texts" approach, because that is how all of their classes are taught in the English department here...Not a single one of these students had ever read a piece of theory or criticism earlier than the 1960s (with the exception of one who had been asked to read a short excerpt from Marx.) They simply had never been asked to do anything other than "imitate without understanding.""
(continued)
***
WORTH PONDERING
(Originally posted 6/28/03)
Man loves, men hate. While individual men and women can sustain feelings of love over a lifetime toward a parent or through decades toward a spouse, no significant group in human history has sustained an emotion that could honestly be characerized as love. Groups hate. And they hate well...Love is an introspective emotion, while hate is easily extroverted...We refuse to believe that the "civilized peoples of the Balkans could slaughter each other over an event that occurred over six hundred years ago. But they do. Hatred does not need a reason, only an excuse.
This from the incisive writer and former soldier Ralph Peters (in his book Beyond Terror.)
6:30 AM
Wednesday, December 08, 2004
PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT
If you've ever gone on a road trip with your dog(s), you've probably experienced problems in finding hotels/motels that will accept them. Check out DogFriendly.com to find suitable places.
8:12 PM
JUST RIDICULOUS
The Washington Times reports as follows:
Thomas Quinn, director of the Federal Air Marshal Service (FAMS), paid a surprise visit to Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport on Thanksgiving to thank the law-enforcement officials for their holiday work. He reportedly was angered when nearly 30 marshals deplaned and only one was dressed satisfactorily.
In response, supervisors are being assigned to airports nationwide to inspect the air cops before and after flights to make sure business suits or sports coats are being worn, according to numerous memos issued last week and obtained by The Washington Times.
and
Air marshals are being told that if their dress is not up to snuff, they will be suspended from flight duty. They are referring to the incident as the "Thanksgiving Day massacre."
and
Marshals say the strict code does not take climate into consideration. In the Miami heat, marshals are required to keep their suit coats on at all times, yet in Pittsburgh, agents are forbidden from wearing overcoats in cold weather. "You wear a sports coat, or you wear a suit coat, or you look for another job," agents were told Monday.
Several points. First, an insistence on a rigid dress policy does not help the agents to "blend in" with the general flying public--quite the contrary. People might have gotten dressed up to fly back in 1975--they rarely do today. This is especially true during the holiday season and on vacation routes. Second, removing people from duty because of a dress code, at a time when we already have a shortage of Air Marshals compared with what we need, is irresponsible and dangerous. This sin is compounded by the assignment of supervisor resources to track this issue. Third, this kind of policy rigidity is almost certain to be devastating to the morale of the organization. And finally, I think that when executives focus excessively on issues like dress codes, they are usually taking their eye off the ball on things that really matter.
Sounds to me like some serious management change is called for at this agency.
1:51 PM
Tuesday, December 07, 2004
BAD BUSINESS WRITING
The New York Times has an article about the problems caused by inadequate writing skills of many people who work in business. They seem to think that the problem is caused largely by the expansion of e-mail...that many people who previously communicated orally must now communicate in writing, and aren't very good at it.
Although there are indeed many badly-written e-mails floating around, much bad writing also occurs in forms that predate e-mail...such a press releases. Last year, I wrote the following:
Many corporate press releases read as if they were written by the pointy-haired guy in Dilbert. I was just reading one that goes, more or less, as follows (with names changed to protect the guilty):
Amalgamated Entities today announced its enhanced, best-of-breed Gerbilator product. The Gerbilator 5000 represents an industry-leading solution, using state-of-the art technology...
So what is a Gerbilator 5000? A piece of software? A consumer electronics device? An industrial robotics system? A diesel locomotive? The catch-phrases could apply equally well to any of them.
This isn't good writing, and it isn't good selling. Your potential customers aren't going to be impressed with chest-thumping: they want to know what the product does and why they should want it.
Part of the problem here is that, too often, press releases are drafted by outside agencies or internal marketing communications people who have minimal familiarity with the business, and thus fall back on generic terms because that's all they can do. The fault lies equally with them and with the line management of the business--with the line management, because they need to take a more active role in the creation and review of press releases, and with the PR people, because they need to insist on this and to broaden their knowledge of the business (and also maintain some minimal level of writing standards.)
I'm a strong advocate of the PR function: properly done, it can be more effective than advertising--and usually a lot cheaper. But "properly done" occurs in far too few cases.
Press releases don't usually contain obvious grammatical or spelling errors, like those in the e-mails cited in the NYT article...but they do often fail to communicate information effectively.
6:00 PM
DECEMBER 7, 1941
Today is the anniversary of the attack on Pearl Harbor by the forces of Imperial Japan. Good historical summary here.
1:26 PM
Monday, December 06, 2004
NEW FRONTIERS IN OFFSHORING
Via Daniel Drezner comes this article on teleradiology (registration required). The idea is that medical images (x-rays, CAT scans, etc) are digitized and sent to India for review, rather than being analyzed locally. Two advantages: first, the time zone effect helps with getting work done when a scan needs to be analyzed in the middle of the night, and second, radiologists in India are said to work for about 1/10 the stated median $350K salary for U.S. radiologists.
This example of offshoring raises questions for people on both sides of the debate about offshoring and international trade.
For those who favor restrictions on offshoring: If teleradiology indeed has the potential to be successful on a large scale--and if it were to be restricted--the U.S. would be foregoing a reduction in healthcare costs (or, at least, in the rate of increase in healthcare costs) while at the same time using government action to protect the incomes of a fairly well-compensated group of professionals. Is this a good thing, and if so, why? (And, if your answer is that offshoring should be restricted in most cases but not in this case--what decision rule do you propose for distinguishing betweeen cases where it should and should not be restricted? And is there any evidence that government decisions on this kind of thing would be made on any basis other than political infighting of the lowest kind?)
For those who oppose restrictions on offshoring and favor unrestricted free trade: An argument often made by those on your side of the debate is that it is lower-skill jobs that will tend to be outsourced, allowing Americans to concentrated on higher-skilled and more-rewarding activities. If teleradiology succeeds on a large scale, can this belief still be justified?
6:04 PM
Saturday, December 04, 2004
WORTH PONDERING
The true aim of literary studies is to lift the student out of his provincialism by making him "the spectator," if not of all, yet of much, "time and existence." The student, or even the schoolboy, who has been brought by good (and therefore mutually disagreeing) teachers to meet the past where alone the past still lives, is taken out of the narrowness of his own age and class into a more public world. He is learning the true Phaenomenologie des Geistes; discovering what varieties there are in Man. "History" alone will not do, for it studies the past mainly in secondary authorities. It is possible to "do History" for years without knowing at the end what it felt like to be an Anglo-Saxon eorl, a cavalier, an eighteenth-century country gentleman. The gold behind the paper currency is to be found, almost exclusively, in literature. In it lies deliverance from the tyranny of generalizations and catchwords.
( C S Lewis )
previous Worth Pondering
7:57 PM
Friday, December 03, 2004
LOVE ON THE NET
George McCutcheon was in the business of selling periodicals, and he wanted to be able to take orders on the net. He wasn't very into technology, so he asked his teenage daughter, Maggie, to handle that part of the business. Maggie soon had the connection working, but also used it to flirt with many men she met on-line. She invited one of them, Frank, to visit her in the real world. Her father found out, and was furious...furious to the point that he threatened to kill her if she saw Frank again. Maggie had her father arrested and charged with threatening behavior.
Yawn, you say...why is this newsworthy? Things like this probably happen all the time.
The above incident, though, happened in the 1880s, and was written up in the 1886 edition of Electrical World. The "net" referred to above was the telegraph network.
The early history of telegraphy shows many parallels to the recent history of the Internet. These parallels are explored in the book The Victorian Internet, by Tom Standage, which mentions the above story. (Also referenced in the link here.)
Turns out there were many female telegraph operators, and on-line romances were fairly common. There were also many telegraph-oriented scams (though as far as I know none of them involved Nigerian businessmen)...and there were optimistic views that the telegraph, by bringing nations closer together and preventing misunderstandings, would help make war obsolete.
3:00 PM
Thursday, December 02, 2004
GOON SQUAD
The entire press run for the November issue of the Yale Free Press, a conservative publication, has been stolen. Stealing of publications that challenge the prevailing campus orthodoxies--for the purpose of preventing them from being read--has, of course, become common on America's campuses. The perpetrators are usually people who consider themselves to be "progressives."
Based on the linked article, it doesn't sound like the Yale administration is being very aggressive in investigating this crime.
Previous Goon Squad post
3:18 PM
Wednesday, December 01, 2004
DUMB COMPANY TRICKS
A couple of weeks ago, I bought a CD player with an adapter for an automobile tape deck. The CD player works fine, except for one irritating trick. Whenever you start it/ stop it/ pause it/ skip a track, it emits a high-pitched, very loud and irritating beep.
After I finally got around to reading the instructions, I discovered that there was some way to use a "menu" function to disable the beep. But why was the beep ever used in the first place? You can tell when the music starts, because you hear it. You can tell when it stops, because you stop hearing it. A beep seems totally redundant. But even if the manufacturer felt it necessary to provide it as an option, why didn't they set the default to no-beep rather than to beep? It would probably be less irritating to 90% of customers, and the remaining 10% could use the menu to enable the beep.
This particular user interface was perpetrated by Sony. If any Sony people in the relevant organizations happen to read this, I'd be curious to know what your thinking was.
Yeah, in the scale of things this is a really trivial matter. But the choice of a particular low-priced consumer electronics product from among many competing alternatives is also a pretty trivial matter, in the galactic scale of things. The next time I see the Sony logo, I'll remember how irritating the beep was.
User interfaces are a key part of product design, and few companies cover themselves with glory in this area.
3:55 PM
Monday, November 29, 2004
SIGNS AND PORTENTS
Here's an analysis that says there are now around 4 million weblogs, and that the number has more than doubled since the beginning of the year.
Most of these, of course, will have very little traffic--indeed, the linked article says that 45% of "older weblogs" have not had a post in 3 months. Certainly, many of these blogs will sooner or later be flat-out abandoned.
But. It seems very probable that people who create blogs are likely to become blog readers--and that the blog-reading habit will in many cases continue, even if their own blogs are soon dropped.
It doesn't seem entirely improbable to me that we will soon have an aggregate blog readership on the level of 10 million or so.
1:29 PM
Sunday, November 28, 2004
THE HARVARD INDICATOR
Many different indicators have been used in an effort to project future stock market directions--everything from interest rates to transportation volumes to the length of women's skirts. Here's a new one. Roy Soifer suggests that the collective career decisions of Harvard MBA graduates are a contrarian market indicator...that when the graduates are heading for Wall Street in droves, then the market is likely headed for a fall--whereas, when they are choosing jobs that aren't stock-market-oriented, then the future of the market will be bright. Specifically, Soifer (who is himself a Harvard MBA)says his data implies that: when the percentage of Harvard MBA grads going into market-related jobs is under 10%, it's a signal that stocks are a long-term buy...and when the number is over 30%, it's a sign that the markets are overvalued and due for a fall. (The most recent number is 26 percent, at the very high end of "neutral" territory.)
Right after reading the post describing Soifer's analysis, I chanced across the following, in the Roger McNamee's new book, The New Normal. (McNamee is a well-known venture capitalist, not to mention a rock guitarist.)
When it comes to career planning, no group is more predictably short term in its thinking than business school students. Most of them want to pursue a career in whatever sector is hot right now. For a whiole it was the Internet. Now it's private equity. For some, that choice makes sense. For most, it merely reflects business school groupthink.
To the extent that the Soifer indicator works, I suspect that it's mainly simply a reflection of the Wall Street jobs outlook. When the market is booming, the related firms are recruiting heavily; when it's suffering, they will have fewer positions to fill. But one would hope that MBAs from a leading school--who have certainly studied business cycles--would reflect more on the principle of "buy low, sell high" before deciding among their various offers. The best time to get in any industry is usually just before a time of dramatic expansion--not right after that expansion has already occurred. Following the herd is rarely profitable, and it may also conflict with true job satisfaction.
To quote McNamee again: Most careers last decades, if not lifetimes. They should be chosen carefully, after a thorough analysis of strengths and interests and in conjunction with other factors.
As always, nothing on this weblog should be considered as financial advice.
6:02 PM
SIGNS AND PORTENTS
Browsing through the magazines at Borders the other day, I ran across a copy of Red Herring. For a moment, I thought I was caught in a time loop, or alternatively that an old copy had somehow managed to remain on the shelf for almost a year and a half.
Red Herring followed the venture capital and startup-company fields, and was a popular--and very thick--magazine during the days of the Internet boom. After the fall, it struggled for a while and finally ceased operations in early 2003. (The name "Red Herring" comes from the colloquial name for a preliminary prospectus form, which is required to have red lettering identifying it as preliminary.)
Now Red Herring is back, under new management--much thinner, and with more of an international focus.
(Their website is here.)
9:32 AM
Saturday, November 27, 2004
BLAME IT ON BYRON
Movie stars and popular musicians have probably never heard of Lord Byron, for the most part...but Joy of Knitting suggests that many of them are following in his footsteps.
9:33 PM
SIGNS AND PORTENTS
Nissan has temporarily halted auto production at three plants in Japan, because of a steel shortage.
Hot-rolled steel is now quoted in the US at $704/ton, up from $273 a year earlier, and up 17 percent from the second quarter.
The Wall Street Journal (11/26) suggests that Nissan's heavy use of "just in time" supply-chain practices has likely exacerbated the impact of the shortages, since minimal inventories of components and materials are kept on the plant premises.
11:38 AM
Thursday, November 25, 2004
INDIAN WORDS OF THANKSGIVING
Via Common Sense and Wonder, here is the Seneca thanksgiving addresss, and also the Mohawk version. And here is the Iroquois version.
And Don Sensing offers a fine Thanksgiving photo essay.
Happy Thanksgiving to all!
8:48 AM
Wednesday, November 24, 2004
THROUGH IMMIGRANT EYES
Ralph Peters rides with a Pakistani-American taxicab driver, and passes along this man's (very positive) thoughts on life in the United States. I'm not sure if Peters meant this explicitly as a Thanksgiving column, but it makes a good one, in that it reminds us that many things we view as ordinary are not really--in a global and historical context--ordinary at all.
2:12 PM
Monday, November 22, 2004
DEEPLY DISTURBING
The New York Daily News has an article entitled Hate 101: Climate of Hate Rocks Columbia University. Sample:
In classrooms, teach-ins, interviews and published works, dozens of academics are said to be promoting an I-hate-Israel agenda, embracing the ugliest of Arab propaganda, and teaching that Zionism is the root of all evil in the Mideast.
In three weeks of interviews, numerous students told the Daily News they face harassment, threats and ridicule merely for defending the right of Israel to survive.
and
After the showing of a student-made documentary about faculty bias and bullying that targets Jewish students, six or seven swastikas were found carved in a Butler Library bathroom last month.
and
...even some faculty members say they fear social ostracism and career consequences if they're viewed as too pro-Israel, and that many have been cowed or shamed into silence.
Definitely read the whole thing. If this is even approximately correct, then Columbia University is a very sick institution.
Unfortunately, there is increasing evidence that this kind of thing is occurring at many American universities. See Berkeley vs the Jews, and note the comment of the student who says Berkeley is now the epicenter of real hatred.
There appear to be multiple such "epicenters" in American academia. Many universities, in fact, appear to be functioning to a significant extent as factories of hate and as training grounds for the repression of dissent.
8:28 PM
DOG STORY
Rose's dog was sick, but is happily now better. She finds in the incident some lessons about the role of wealth and technology in society.
1:08 PM
Friday, November 19, 2004
WORTHWHILE VIEWING
Shanti links to a fine set of photographs from India.
6:10 AM
Wednesday, November 17, 2004
JUST UNBELIEVABLE
Please go and read this. I don't have the emotional energy right now to write about it in the way it deserves. More on this later.
6:02 PM
OL' MAN RIVER, STILL ROLLIN'
In the early days of the United States, river transportation was critically important. There was no other cost-effective way to transport heavy freight over long distances inland. Major canal-building projects, like the C&O Canal and the Erie Canal, were implemented to extend the natural river systems. But with the coming of the railroad, and later the automobile/truck and the airplane, river transport lost its dominant position. It has continued to play an important role in the national transportation system, but has been limited to bulk commodities such as grain, coal, and chemicals.
Comes now Osprey Line, a Houston-based shipping company, which is introducing container-freight services over the vst Mississippi river system. A single Osprey "service" (a towboat and its associated barges) can carry up to 400 containers, the equivalent of 200 truckloads (or of 2-3 trainloads, I would guess.) Initial service wil be available at New Orleans, Baton Rouge, Memphis, and Chicago, with an additional 3-4 container ports to be added in coming months.
The tradeoff, of course, is between cost and speed. To get freight by truck from New Orleans to Memphis will cost you about $40/ton and take 8 hours; by barge it will cost about $6/ton and take 3 days. Osprey is betting that there will be a significant set of customers for which the tradeoff makes sense. One exaple is coffee importers, who can easily transfer their cargoes from ship to barge. And a logistics expert at Georgia Tech thinks the biggest application of river-based container freight will be in returning empty containers to their point of origin.
No one thinks that river-based container freight in the US will reach the levels it has in Europe, where 40% of inland container freight goes by river, but even 5-10% would help in relieving the rail and road systems (and would be a great opportunity for Osprey.)
See Financial Times (11/16)
UPDATE: See also this article in Inbound Logistics, which discusses container-on-barge service in the context of the overall highly-stressed condition of the U.S. freight transportation system.
9:22 AM
Tuesday, November 16, 2004
PROF DRUCKER'S 95th
A friend once took a college class from Peter Drucker--who is, of course, renowned for his writings on managment and for his work as a management consultant. The class my friend took from Drucker was't a business class, though--it was a class in oriental art. This is just one indication of Prof Drucker's versatility. In addition to his work on business, he has written extensively on broader societal issues, and even has a novel to his credit. A true intellectual, in the best sense of the word.
Financal Times (11/16) reports that today is Drucker's 95th birthday. Drucker was born in Austria, but came to the U.S. in 1937. All of his writing is very worthwhile; I especially like "The Practice of Management," "The Age of Discontinuity," and Drucker's autobiography, "The Adventures of a Bystander."
3:45 PM
Monday, November 15, 2004
WORTHWHILE NEW BLOG
Larry Kudlow, he of the CNBC show Kudlow & Cramer, has a blog. He does have comments enabled, but the level of the discussion has mosly, IMHO, not been terribly sophisticated on the average. Y'all get on over there and check it out.
3:01 PM
Sunday, November 14, 2004
ARAFAT, ONCE AGAIN
Trying to Grok is a very fine blog written by Sarah, an American who lives in Germany while her husband is serving in Iraq. He is on leave now, and has taken time out to put together a post with his thoughts on Arafat. Please go and read it--even though Sarah's husband is only 24 and is a soldier rather than a professional writer, what he has to say is a lot more worthwhile than most writing on this subject that you'll find in the mainstream media.
6:59 PM
BUGGY WHIPS, REVISITED
Just about everyone in business has heard the old saw about the company that went broke because it thought of itself as being in the buggy-whip business rather than being in the transportation-equipment business, or something like that. It's alwasys struck me that there is something dangerously superficial about this formulation, and I've been intending to write a post on the subject for some time. It turns out that Mike Hammer (former MIT professor and now President of Hammer & Co) has pretty much beaten me to it:
Every MBA knows the story about the company that failed because it thought of itself as being in the buggy-whip business when it should have seen itself in the transportation business. In fact this old chesnut entirely misses the point. Strategy is not primarily about markets, either the narrow market for buggy whips or the broader one for transporation. Indeed a company that made and sold whips was highly unlikely to be positioned for manufacturing automobiles. What would have enabled it to succeed in a world of internal combustion engines? The company that sold buggy whips should have asked itself what it did best, at what processes it excelled. Perhaps its real strength lay in its leather fabrication processes, or in its process of filling orders from a network of independent small manufacturers, or in its product development process. Its future was more likely to lie with leather gloves or bags than with metal chassis. What a company does is central to deciding what it is, and where and how it should compete.
My thoughts:
In the development of strategy, markets do matter a great deal, of course; however, they must be assessed at a much more specific level than "transportation," and they must be viewed in the light of actual and potential corporate delivery capabilities. The buggy-whip company should have analyzed who their customers were, and where they were going. Were the customers carriage manufacturers who had a decent chance of succeeding in the automotive world? If so, then perhaps it would have made sense for our buggy-whip company to pursue the automotive market--most likely by providing leather interiors for cars, sold through the medium of companies they were already doing business with. They might then be able to expand into supplying other components, including components having nothing to do with leather. But if the customers were carriage manufacturers who were not pursuing automotive product lines, or unlikely to succeed with them, then a leather car-interior strategy would be less attractive--our company would have no relationship advantage with the new automobile manufacturers over any other potential supplies, since our company hasn't been selling to the new guys anyhow. In that case, we might do better with gloves, handbags, and luggage--although there might be branding issues (as we now call them) in following such a path. Still other considerations would apply if the company was selling buggy whips through retail stores or via mail order, rather than to the buggy manufacturers.
Sometimes strategy needs to follow a customer vector--sell new products to the existing customers. And sometimes strategy needs to follow a capabilities vector--build on existing capabilties to provide (existing, new, or modified) products to new customers. Neither model should be assumed be be optimum in advance of analysis, which is what is wrong with the buggy-whip parable: It assumes that because you are selling products that have something to do with "transportation" now, you should continue to do so in the future--which may or may not be the case.
(The Hammer quote is from his book, Beyond Reengineering.)
4:33 PM
ARAFAT AND HIS ENABLERS
If you seek his monument, look around you.
The above words appear on a plaque in St Paul's cathedral (in Latin, to be precise) and they refer to Sir Christopher Wren, the architect who designed the cathedral.
If you look around you to see what Arafat has wrought, many things are conspicuous by their absence. He was not interested in the creation of schools, hospitals, farms, highways, factories. He had no interest in the arts of peace. His only creations were violence and hate. He was the initator of the wave of terrorism that is now causing so much human suffering in so many different parts of the world. In the words of Investors Business Daily (11/12):
Arafat built no schools or hospitals. Most of the money he was given by his American and European benefactors was either deposited in an unknown number of personal accounts around the world or used to buy weapons and explosives...In 1970, starting with the bombing of SwissAir flight 330 bound for Tel Aviv, he pioneered the hijacking of airliners for terror. in 1973, decades before al-Qaida got the idea, Palestinian terrorists attacked the Saudi embassy in Sudan, killing U.S. Ambassador Cleo Noel and others..In 1985, terrorists reporting to Arafat hijacked the Italian curise ship Achille Lauro, shooting Leon Klinghoffer, an elderly, wheelchair-bound American, before throwing him overboard. Arafat's time line of terror goes on and on. ...Not since the Third Reich have a people been so thoroughly indoctrinated in hate, with children taught that their life's mission is to die killing Israelis, and mothers told their job is to raise martyrs..This is the key to understanding Arafat's "legacy," if you can call it that. Generations of Palestinian children have been raised to hate their Jewish neighbors...
But Arafat's career of terror was encouraged and enabled by many in the West, who thought his actions were courageous, or progressive, or even chic. And they're still doing it--look at the outpouring of fulsome praise for the man over the past few days. Without these enablers, Arafat would never have become the force he became, and the threat of global terrorism would not have reached the level that it has now reached.
One of the most important questions of our time is why so many educated people make are eager to make excuses for terrorists of the Arafat stamp--are eager, indeed, to admire and even romanticize the Arafats of the world. There has been nothing secret about Arafat's atrocities; the "we didn't know" excuse doesn't work here.
Some of the enablers are motivated by cynical realpolitik. Some are motivated by outright anti-Semitism. Many are mere conformists, people who will go along with whatever is fashionable at the moment. And many, I feel certain, are basically nihilists--people attempting to make up for the cold and emptiness at their cores with a frisson of second-hand violence.
Whatever the motivations, it is frightening that so many people in our society--many of them in quite prominent positions--are willing to normalize a terrorist mass murderer.
Update: See these comments by an Archishbishop in Wales. Melanie Phillips characterize these comments as "warped and disgusting," and I don't think she is wrong. See also my post below.
Update 2: See also this, from the Jerusalem Post:
Several French municipalities governed by communist and left-wing majorities are considering naming a street or a square after Yasser Arafat.
2:11 PM
Saturday, November 13, 2004
UNBELIEVABLE BUT NOT SURPRISING
The World Counsel of Churches has issued a press release on Arafat, The press release includes a copy of the letter sent to Palestinian Prime Minister Ahmad Qurei, which is quoted below in full:
Your Excellency,
On the sad occasion of the death of President Yasser Arafat, we extend our condolences to the Palestinian people and to the leadership of the Palestinian Authority. We also ask God’s comfort for the members of his family in this time of deep grief.
President Arafat will be remembered for bringing the Palestinian people together and for his unique and tenacious contribution to the cause of establishing their national home.
We stand with the Churches of the Holy Land to honour his commitment to their place in the Palestinian society, its affairs and its future. President Arafat often made sure to mention the church as well as the mosque as core institutions of Palestinian national life. True to the customs of mutual respect among his diverse people, he celebrated Christmas with the churches of Bethlehem as circumstances permitted.
On his long road as a leader, Yasser Arafat came to the recognition that true justice embraces peace, security and hope for both Palestinians and Israelis. His path has now ended, amid the rocks and thorns of occupation, at a distance from the goal he sought. As he is laid to rest the world will see - from the location of his final resting place - how far the Palestinian people must still travel together.
In solidarity with the Palestinian people, the World Council of Churches will continue to work for human rights, sustainable livelihoods, medical care and basic freedoms, in the days and years that lie ahead and until there is peace.
Yours truly,
Peter Weiderud
Director
Commission of the Churches on International Affairs
World Council of Churches
In response to this travesty, Midwest Conservative Journal has this to say;
Let's see now. Adolf Hitler will be remembered for bringing the German people together and for his unique and tenacious contribution to the cause of the establishment of the dominance of the Aryan race. Josef Stalin will be remembered for bringing the Russian people together and for his unique and tenacious contribution to the cause of establishing a socialist Russia. Pol Pot will be remembered for bringing the Cambodian people together(out in the country) and for his unique and tenacious contribution to the cause of establishing a new Cambodia. Osama Bin Laden will be remembered for bringing Muslims together and for his unique and tenacious contribution to the cause of reestablishing the Caliphate.
Who are these people? What on earth is wrong with them?
2:17 PM
Thursday, November 11, 2004
VETERANS DAY 2004
Winds of Change has two excellent Veterans Day posts; the first one written in 2003 and the second written in 2004. Both are well worth reading.
8:43 PM
Wednesday, November 10, 2004
NEW FRONTIERS IN COWARDICE
A march commemorating the anniversary of Kristallnacht was held in Oslo (Norway) last night. But according to TV2 News, no Norwegian Jews were present. The authorities, saying that they did not want any trouble, forbade any Jewish symbols, including Stars of David and Israeli flags. On the TV2 evening news, a group of Jews and their friends who wanted to take part in the commemoration were shown being firmly told by a policeman to "please leave the area." (from Andrew Sullivan)
The authorities "did not want any trouble."
I am reminded of a character in Walter Miller's A Canticle for Leibowitz who observes that the excessive pursuit of maximum security and minimum suffering often leads to its converse, minimum security and maximum suffering. I'm afraid that the people of some countries are soon going to find out the truth of this observation.
UPDATE: The Oslo affair might not be quite as bad as it sounded. Another correspondent of Andrew Sullivan's indicates that Stars of David were not banned; "only" Israeli (and Palestinian) flags ("displays of partisanship for either side in the Middle East conflict")...also that the banning was not by government officials but rather by demonstration organizers. (Andrew's letters column here)
Still...I don't much like the moral equivalence involved in equating "partisan" support for Israel--a legitimate democratics state--with support for an organization that stands for terrorism.
7:57 AM
Tuesday, November 09, 2004
AN ATYPICAL SILENCE
Roger Simon, a novelist and screenwriter, says this:
It's stunning how silent the American artistic community, Hollywood in particular, has been about the murder of Dutch filmmaker Theo Van Gogh in Amsterdam. Do they even know what happened to one of their own? Have they even heard of him? Do they care someone was killed for making a film which protested violent abuse against women? Are they even interested?
The "American artistic community, Hollywood in particular" is a set of people who, of course, usually just can't wait to share with us their opinions on any subject whatsoever.
7:20 AM
Monday, November 08, 2004
CARNIVAL TIME!
Carnival of the Capitalists is up. Lots of worthwhile posts; check it out.
9:12 AM
Sunday, November 07, 2004
EDUCATION FOR BUSINESS
Classics and Computer Science for the Aspiring Executive?
Michael Hammer, the renowned management consultant, says this: I often recall advice once offered to me by a senior executive at a major pharmaceutical firm, an Englishman with the advantage of a traditional public school education. "All one need learn," he said, "is Latin and computer programming--Latin for communication and programming for thinking." He wasn't far off
It's very unlikely that this executive ever writes any computer programs at work, and it's even more unlikely that he uses any Latin in his job. So why did he say what he did, and why does Hammer agree with him?
Hammer argues that learning programming is a good way to develop thinking skills of a particular kind. "...computer programming is nothing but an exercise in systems thinking. Each line of software that you write will interact with each and every other line of software. Unless you develop some big-picture thinking capability, your program will never work. The marvelous thing about a cognitive capability is that it operates across domains; the thinking style that one needs to write and debug a substantial computer program is the same one needed for solving problems in a business process. Once the synapses are put in play, they'll snap on anything." Exposure to other kinds of engineering can also help develop these cognitive skills, in Hammer's opinion: "The heart of an enginering education is not learning and applying equations but learning how to create large systems built from small components...once again, I am not concerned with the content of the discipline but with the cognitive style it requires and engenders. I like the old definition of education: what remains when you forget what you have been taught."
Hammer goes on to argue that the conceptual skills developed by programming/engineering are only part of the mental set needed by today's businesspeople; 'They must know how to ask why...Once again, I would submit that critical thinking operates across domains. Once learned in one area it can be applied to virtually any other. To this end, I maintain there is no better preparation for our technological age than a classical education...It might seem odd to suggest that the works of Plato and Madison and Joyce prepare one for the twenty-first century, but they are constants in a world of change...Wrestling with questions of good and evil, of democracy and justice, of personal and communal responsibilities is a quest without end. But, having engaged in this struggle, one is better prepared to deal with the more mundane, but nonetheless challenging, issues of the workplace."
Hammer's (rather contrarian) recommendation for aspiring businesspeople is this--a double major in computer science and classics. For those who don't find this combination particularly appealing, he suggests alternative double-major possibilities:
--electrical engineering and philosophy
--mechanical engineering and medieval history
--aeronautics and theology
The general idea is one "hard" and one "soft" discipline. (I'm sure, though, that Hammer would be looking for humanities disciplines/programs which, while "soft" in the conventional sense, are taught in a highly-rigorous manner.)
Hammer goes so far as to say "If you aspire to a career in the business world, avoid an undergraduate major in business at all costs. You may learn some superficially useful skills, but not the fundamental capabilities needed for the long haul...There is plenty of time to develop expertise on the job or in a professional school." This experise must include "An appreciation of the basics of business--the concepts of strategy, cost structure, market economics, cash flow, and capital utilization.."
I think Hammer's argument is fundamentally sound: the student who pursues (for example) both an aeronautical engineering program and an intellectually-rigorous theology program is likely to develop conceptual skills that will serve him well in industries and jobs having nothing to do with either aviation or religion. When pursuing his first job out of school, however, he may well face a challenge in explaining to the hiring manager (and the HR people) why he is a better choice for the position than is the garden-variety undergraduate marketing major.
Universities need to do a better job of thinking out what business education should consist of, and businesses need to do a better job of giving them input--and more, a better job of thinking out what the hiring criteria for particular jobs should really be--rather than just doing the easy thing and going with the obvious keywords. Mike Hammer's thoughts on this matter have, once again, made a significant contribution to the general level of business thought.
The Hammer quotes are from his book Beyond Reengineering (1996).
5:25 PM
Friday, November 05, 2004
UPDATE
I'm travelling right now, and probably won't have the opportunity to post again before Sunday evening.
I did want to express my appreciation for Senator Kerry's decision to concede in a reasonably prompt manner rather than engaging in scorched-earth litigation tactics. While I didn't see the concession speech, by all reports it was appropriate and even gracious.
On the other side of the ledger, there have been a number of extremely vitriolic comments from media personalities (and many others on the left) that reveal very clearly just how they really feel about this country and most of its people. More on this later.
7:43 PM
Wednesday, November 03, 2004
WORTH PONDERING
During the Spanish Civil War, Antoine de Saint-Exupery travelled widely in Spain, meeting people on both sides of the conflict. Here, he writes about the way in which the political beliefs of an individual are formed by his experiences:
One man finds that his essential manhood comes alive at the sight of self-sacrifice, cooperative effort, a rigorous vision of justice, manifested in an anarchists' cellar in Barcelona. For that man there will henceforth be but one truth--the truth of the anarchists. Another, having once mounted guard over a flock of terrified little nuns kneeling in a Spanish nunnary, willthereafter know a different truth--that it is sweet to die for the Church.
(In Wind, Sand, and Stars)
Previous Worth Pondering
8:06 PM
Sunday, October 31, 2004
THE PHOTON COURIER ENDORSEMENT
RE-ELECT GEORGE W BUSH
To regular readers, it will come as no surprise that I'll be voting to re-elect President Bush. Herewith, a summary of my reasons, beginning with some of the issues that, while important, have received relatively little recent attention in the campaign.
1) EDUCATION. America's public schools have long been dominated by a coalition of people who are much more concerned with the maintenance of certain bureaucratic forms than they are with education. The Democratic Party is completely in bed with these forces, and there is no possibility whatsoever of substantial improvement in education under a Democratic administration. A budget allocation is not, by itself, a strategy, but the Democrats are devoid of any ideas--except directing more money to people and institutions who have already proven that they can't or won't use it effectively. President Bush's plan may not be perfect, but he has at least demonstrated a willingness to consider new approaches.
If you are an academic, ask yourself: do you really enjoy having to teach high school graduates who known less than a 10th-grader should know, and are in some cases still semi-literate? Do you want to spend the rest of your career doing this? If you are a parent, or plan to become one, are you willing to sacrifice the future of your children to bureaucratic rigidity and false "expertise?" If you are a teacher, don't you think you could do a better job if relieved of some of the weirdness that originates with the educational Establishment? If you are anyone at all, do you really think America can survive as a society and a democracy when our schools are producing people with levels of historical knowledge like this and this?
Of course, education in the U.S. is primarily a state and local responsibility. However, the Federal Government does have a certain amount of leverage, and President Bush has demonstrated a clear willingness to use this leverage for genuine structural change.
(2) LITIGATION. The system of civil litigation in this country is out of control. Lawsuit fever is seriously damaging the economy and raising healthcare costs. More importantly, it is destroying the idea that the legal system is connected in any important way to justice, as that concept is generally understood. Out-of-control litigation also has a lot to do with the problems of the public schools: the inability to maintain minimal standards of order, combined with unfair and draconian "zero tolerance" policies.
A new Bush administration will rein in lawsuit abuse, while preserving the reasonable use of litigation. A Kerry administration would be a government of lawyers, for the benefit of lawyers.
(3) ANTI-SEMITISM. It would be incorrect to assume that this is an issue that concerns only Jews. Every society in which anti-Semitism has been widespread has also been a society in which other groups were sooner or later treated abusively--and usually it has been "sooner."
The Democratic Party has tolerated anti-Semitism in its midst to a very disturbing extent. This toleration has gone a long way toward making anti-Semitism once again "respectable" in polite society. Although I don't think that John Kerry is himself anti-Semitic, a Kerry administration would clearly increase the power of the extreme Left in American society--and it is from the extreme Left that most present-day anti-Semitism comes.
The Democratic Party, thru its tolerance of anti-Semitism in its midst, has disqualified itself as a governing party for the United States.
(4) THE ECONOMY AND SOCIAL MOBILITY. I see no evidence that John Kerry understands how a market economy works or that he understands the positive and creative role that business can play. His trade proposals, as I argue here, could have a serious negative effect on the economy. His ideas on tax policy seem to be based almost entirely on playing group against group, rather than on any serious thought about what would be good for the economy as a whole (as in the case of dividend policy.) He has been unsupportive of employee stock options, which are important both for the promotion of innovation and as a key component of social mobility.
Kerry's economic ideas could easily lead to a static economy, with perpetually high unemployment rates and with increasing class stratification.
(5) TERRORISM AND NATIONAL SECURITY. Most fundamentally, Kerry does not seem to understand the nature of our enemies. For example, he believes that we should foreswear the development of bunker-busting nuclear weapons--in order to provide the right role model to nations like Iran and North Korea. The primary issue here is not whether this particular weapons system is a good or a bad idea: it is the stunning naivite of a man who believes that the Iranian mullahs--people who are capable of gleefully hanging a 16-year-old girl for the "crime" of having sex--will be influenced by a U.S. example of disarmament. It is about as likely as the idea that Nazi Germany would have given up its expansionist plans had the U.S. and Britain agreed to give up the B-17 bomber and the Spitfire fighter.
Kerry has placed great emphasis on the creation of alliances. Alliances can be very useful; however, there are times a nation must take a stand, whether others will follow or not. Consider Britain's lonely fight against Naziism in 1940. The U.S. was then not available as a fully-fledged ally: should Britain therefore have declined to make a stand? Or consider the German armed movement into the Rhineland in 1936. France failed to take military action, due in part to Britain's probable unavailability as an ally. Had France acted alone, the Hitler regime would have almost certainly fallen--and WWII and the Holocaust would have been averted.
Experienced negotiators know: if you pre-announce that you are desperate for a deal, then that deal is going to be very expensive. Kerry has made such a major issue out of European alliances that any help he could get in Iraq from nations like France and Germany would be very expensive indeed. The abandonment of Israel would likely to be part of the down payment--but only part.
Throughout has career, Kerry has demonstrated sustained bad judgment on matters of national security. For example: in the wake of Saddam's invasion of Kuwait, Kerry voted against a U.S. military response. Had Kerry's view prevailed, Saddam's economic power would have been tremendously expanded by the addition of Kuwait's oil resources. His diplomatic influence would have expanded accordingly. By now, we would almost certainly be facing a Saddam Hussein with nuclear weapons and long-range delivery systems.
(6) LEADERSHIP AND MANAGEMENT SKILLS. Kerry has had very little experience in actually running anything. Executive management is not a trivial skill, and I have seen no evidence that Kerry possesses it.
Whenever anything goes wrong, Kerry has shown a disturbing tendency to instantly blame someone else. If he takes a tumble while snowboarding, it's "I don't fall down. That son of a bitch ran into me." And, in the wake of the Swift boats issue, there was this: Sen John Kerry is angry at the way his campaign has botched the attacks from the Swift boat veterans and has ordered a staff shakeup that will put former Clinton aides in top positions.
"The candidate is furious," a longtime senior Kerry adviser told the Daily News. "He knows the campaign was wrong. He wanted to go after the Swift boat attacks, but his top aides said no." Kerry could, of course, have overridden their advice--but chose to accept it, and then, with advantage of hindsight, was "furious."
This is not the behavior of a leader.
(7) VIEW OF AMERICAN SOCIETY. In recent years, the Democratic Party has come to view American society as nothing more than a collection of competing interest groups--with the task of politics being to take from some groups and give to others, in a zero-sum fashion. I believe that John Kerry fully shares in this view.
It is as if the captain of a ship were to view a voyage soley in terms of taking sides in conflicts between the deck force and the engine room staff, or the bridge personnel and the galley stewards, without showing any concern over where the ship is, where it's supposed to be going, or into what dangers it may be running, and without any effort to build the sense of identity of the ship's crew as a whole. A bad thing at any time, but particularly under current circumstances.
(8) FREEDOM OF SPEECH. Over the last decade, it has become clear that wherever self-defined "progressives" take power, they act to shut down dissent--as demonstrated with great clarity in the case of many universities. During this campaign, Kerry supporters have again and again demonstrated their willingness to silence the speech of others. Yes, some Bush supporters have done the same, but the anti-free-speech pattern is much, much stronger among Kerry supporters. (See the Goon Squad series.) I don't want these people anywhere near the levers of national power.
(9) THOUGHT PROCESS. Finally, I believe that John Kerry has mental processes that are not up to the Presidency. His verbal style is convoluted; he uses words to obfuscate rather than to enlighten. His ideas are rigid: they are in part based on received New Deal wisdom and in part based on his own experiences in the late 1960s. I have seen no evidence that he has learned anything over the last 20 years or so, or that he has the creativity to develop new ways of looking at things or seriously innovative approaches to problems.
Although President Bush is not a great orator, I believe he uses words to clarify and communicate. He may not be an intellectual, but I believe he has the mental ability to cut through to the heart of a problem, rather than following hundreds of dead-end branches on an infinite decision tree. And that's what a leader needs to do.
Bush vs Kerry. In my view, it's not even close.
Re-elect President George W Bush.
5:40 PM
HALLOWEEN, CONTINUED
Dream tonight of peacock tails
Diamond fields and spouter whales
Ills are many, blessings few
But dreams tonight will shelter you.
Let the vampire's creaking wing
Hide the stars while banshees sing
Let the ghouls gorge all night long
Dreams will keep you safe and strong
Skeletons with poison teeth
Risen from the world beneath
Ogre, troll, and loup-garou
Bloody wraith who looks like you
Shadow on the window shade
Harpies in a midnight raid
Goblins seeking tender prey
Dreams will chase them all away
Dreams are like a magic cloak
Woven by the fairy folk
Covering from top to toe
Keeping you from winds and woe
And should the Angel come this night
To fetch your soul away from light
Cross yourself, and face the wall
Dreams will help you not at all
(Thomas Pynchon, in his novel "V")
4:39 PM
HALLOWEEN
From the hag and hungry goblin
That into rags would rend ye
And the spirits that stand
By the naked man
In the Book of Moons, defend ye!
That of your five sound sense
You never be forsaken
Nor wander from
Yourself with Tom
Abroad to beg your bacon
The moon's my constant mistress
And the lonely owl my marrow
The flaming drake
And the night-crow make
Me music to my sorrow
I know more than Apollo
For oft, when he lies sleeping
I see the stars
At mortal wars
And the rounded welkin weeping
With a host of furious fancies
Whereof I am commander
With a burning spear
And a horse of air
To the wilderness I wander
By a knight of ghosts and shadows
I summoned am to tourney
Ten leagues beyond
The wide world's end
Methinks it is no journey
(Not specifically a Halloween poem, but it certainly sets the mood, doesn't it? This is Tom O'Bedlam's Song, dating from sometime around 1600. There are lots more verses, and many different versions.)
8:37 AM
Saturday, October 30, 2004
A GENUINE HEROINE
Humalia Akrawy is a 22-year-old Iraqi Kurdish woman. Her father was tortured by Saddam's regime, and lost the full use of his hands. Her brother was killed: one of his legs and part of an arm were sent back to the family. She tells of what happened in Iraq following the 9/11 attacks on the United States: "When 9/11 happened, Saddam ordered a 3 day celebration with feasts and parades. Some people did not want to celebrate those attacks. He had those who did not participate brutally executed in public."
Following the invasion by Coalition forces, she volunteered to become a translator for the 101st Airborne Division of the U.S. Army. In revenge, the enemy ambushed what they thought was her car, killing her sister instead. She then received a letter: "We know we missed killing you, but we will be back," and her home was blown up.
Humalia Akrawy helped her remaining family members move to a relatively safe area, in the far north of the country and then returned to her job. In fact, she accepted a new position as the translator for Lieutenant General Petraeus himself--a position carrying even more risk because of its high profile.
People like Michael Moore compare the enemy in Iraq to the American Minutemen and to the members of the French Resistance. Actually, it is courageous individuals such as Humalia Akrawy who should be compared to the Minutemen and the Resistance.
These are individuals who would face a gruesome death in the event of a precipitous American withdrawal from Iraq.
(Definitely read the whole thing at Winds of Change. You may have to try again later as they are currently having bandwidth-limit problems.)
4:56 PM
KERRY'S TRADE PROPOSALS
Many people are concerned about potentially losing their jobs to "outsourcing" (more properly called "offshoring.") Senator Kerry has proposed a plan that he claims would reduce such job losses. But how would Kerry's plan actually work in practice?
The plan isn't very detailed (and, when InfoWorld magazine called Kerry HQ to ask for more specifics, the call wasn't returned.) But here's the essence, as I understand it:
Under the Kerry plan, companies with operations abroad would no longer be able to defer U.S. income taxes on the activities of their foreign subsidiaries. Every if a company is already paying foreign taxes on their operations in country "X," they will also have to pay U.S. income taxes, and pay them without deferral. Exception: "Kerry's plan will still allow companies to defer the income they earn when they locate production in a foreign country that serves that foreign country's markets."
Now, consider this scenario. An American company assembles products in the U.S., using components that it produces offshore. (This is a pretty common way of doing things; see example here.) Let's say they assemble air conditioners in Ohio, while producing the electric motors for the product in Snarkistan. Under the Kerry plan, they will suddenly find themselves paying a (potentially very high) combined tax rate on their Snarkistan operations. What to do? The obvious reaction will be to close the Snarkistan plant, and buy the motors from some other company--Siemens, let's say. The direct production work for the motors will stay in Snarkistan, while product designers and project managers in Ohio (who were assigned to the motor products) will lose their jobs. Indeed, the company might will decide to simply stop producing air conditioners itself and subcontract all production--assembly as well as components--to a contract manufacturer in Snarkistan. Why would this be a good thing for workers in Ohio?
Understanding the likelihood of the above scenario requires only a very basic knowledge of business. Why wasn't this obvious to the Kerry crew?
In his remarks quoted a few posts down, Jack Welch said that a leader should have the ability to "see around corners." When it comes to business and economics, I don't think John Kerry can see around corners even if the walls are made of glass.
9:44 AM
THOUGHTS
I've read a great deal about the French collapse of 1940. It's not an aspect of history with which most Americans are very familiar, but in my view it's a very important one. In his book 1940: The Fall of France, Andre Beaufre writes: The collapse of the French Army is the most important event of the twentieth century. This may sound strange to American ears, but in my view Beaufre is pretty close to correct. Had the French Army held, the Hitler regime would have almost certainly fallen. And, as I said in an earlier post: "There would have been no Nazi conquest of Western Europe, no Nazi assault on the Soviet Union, no Holocaust, most likely no Communist takeover of Eastern Europe."
So, why did the defeat occur? To understand the roots of this catastrophe, one must study social history, political history, and military history. While the proximate causes are to be found in military factors (dispersion rather than concentration of armored forces, in particular), the root causes lie in social and political factors. Anyone reading about France in the 1930s will be struck by the deep divisions in its society, and the extraordinarily vitriolic nature of its politics. Consider, for example, the matter of Leon Blum. In the late 1930s, the following phrase was popular among French elites:
Better Hitler than Blum.
So, who was Blum? A murderous monster, with his fangs dripping blood? A Stalinist outdoing his master in cruelty and madness? No...Leon Blum (Premier 1936-37) was a fairly mild Socialist, best known for his advocacy of the 8-hour day. Something about him inspired crazed hatred on the part of French Conservatives and Rightists. "A man to shoot in the back," wrote Charles Maurras, and he was by no means alone in such sentiments. As Julian Jackson puts it in his book The Fall of France: "Politics in France in the 1930s had reached a pitch of violence that had something of the atmosphere of civil war."
And when the Germans invaded in 1940, this atmosphere continued. Far too often, events were judged in terms of their political impact, rather than their impact on the survival of France. Again from my earlier post: After the German attack began, Georges Mandel, the courageous Minister of the Interior, observed a Deputy (legislator) whose district had been bombed by the enemy...he went about the lobbies (of the Chamber of Deputies), screaming "I will interpellate the government on this outrage as soon as the Chamber meets!" Mandel remarked to his friend, the English General Edward Spears, about the disconnect of this behavior from reality. "Paris is bombed by the Germans? Let's shake our fists at our own Government."
It is virtually impossible to win a war when politics is being conducted in such a manner...when the "enemy" across the aisle is hated more than the enemy in the bombers overhead.
Leon Blum and George W Bush are, of course, two very different men, believing in very different kinds of things. But it is hard not to hear an echo of the insane Blum-hatred of the late 1930s in the insane Bush-hatred of today. And it is hard not to hear the echo of that Deputy of 1940 in John Kerry's intemperate attacks on President Bush.
Let us hope that the outcome is not so disastrous this time.
UPDATE: An article by David Brooks provides an excellent example of the irresponsible Kerry behavior referenced above. Following the release of the Osama bin Laden video: Kerry did say that we are all united in the fight against bin Laden, but he just couldn't help himself. His first instinct was to get political.
On Milwaukee television, he used the video as an occasion to attack the president: "He didn't choose to use American forces to hunt down Osama bin Laden. He outsourced the job." Kerry continued with a little riff from his stump speech, "I am absolutely confident I have the ability to make America safer."
Even in this shocking moment, this echo of Sept. 11, Kerry saw his political opportunities and he took 'em. There's such a thing as being so nakedly ambitious that you offend the people you hope to impress.
But politics has shaped Kerry's approach to this whole issue. Back in December 2001, when bin Laden was apparently hiding in Tora Bora, Kerry supported the strategy of using Afghans to hunt him down. He told Larry King that our strategy "is having its impact, and it is the best way to protect our troops and sort of minimalize the proximity, if you will. I think we have been doing this pretty effectively, and we should continue to do it that way."
But then the political wind shifted, and Kerry recalculated. Now Kerry calls the strategy he supported "outsourcing." When we rely on allies everywhere else around the world, that's multilateral cooperation, but when Bush does it in Afghanistan, it's "outsourcing." In Iraq, Kerry supports using local troops to chase insurgents, but in Afghanistan he is in post hoc opposition.
There is nothing irrational about using local allies--who know the language, know the terrain, may even know some of the local people--to perform a sensitive mission. And, as Brooks noted, Kerry supported this approach at the time, which is when the decision had to be made. But now he attacks it, because it gives him the opportunity to make a cute play on the word "outsourcing." This is not the behavior of a man who is a serious player in matters of national security.
(link via Betsy)
8:21 AM
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