Saturday, December 31, 2005
AN EXTRA SECOND
Today will be one second longer than usual. A "leap second" is being added to keep clock time in sync with variations in the earth's rotation.
The Global Positioning System (GPS) satellite navigation system is now being used as a primary time source for many purposes. According to the GPS Operations Center, here is what will happen tonight at midnight:
Normally at midnight, the sequence of time transmissions is from the satellites is:
23h 59m 58s
23h 59m 59s
00h 00m 00s
Tonight, the transmission will be:
23h 59m 58s
23h 59m 59s
23h 59m 60s
00h 00m 00s
...and, hopefully, all the various software systems that receive this unusual message sequence will know how to handle it.
1:27 PM
THE ART OF THE PRESENTATION
Venture capitalist Ed Sim had what sounds like a pretty painful meeting with an entrepreneur who was seeking funding, and has put together some thoughts on how to pitch to a VC. Actually, I think his points will be useful to anyone who is trying to sell an idea (or a product or service embodying an idea) of any kind, particularly when presenting to an individual or a small group. There's also a good discussion.
One of Ed's points that sparked some controvery is this: "Deal with questions as they come up, not later. VCs can be impatient at times, and it really bothers me when an entrepreneur says, "Let's wait until slide 15" especially when you are just on slide 3. Meetings have a rhythm so be in sych with your audience."
One commenter, also a VC, responded with a different view: "I don't like to interrupt an entreprenur's pitch to have him talk about something on slide 15 if we're only on slide 3. To me it's more valuable to learn about him by listening to the entire pitch. How he's crafted his pitch is a critical piece of my evaluation. I don't want to shortcircuit that learning."
My view is that the presenter's response to questions should be very dynamic and context-sensitive. In general, I think it's a good idea to address the question very briefly, then returning to the flow if that's OK with the audience. Let's say you're pitching a startup which will develop an improved version of the glomperon. You're on slide 4, pitching your little heart out on the state of the glomperon market and the vast potential for your new design. Then:
VC: So, how are you going to actually manufacture these things?
ENTREPRENEUR: We're going to outsource the parts to Hungary and the Philippines, and assemble the products to order here in the U.S. I've got a few slides on manufacturing strategy later in the pitch.
Most likely, the VC will say "OK" and you can return to the flow of the presentation. But suppose he wants to dig deeper into the question:
VC: Yeah, but I understand these things are really hard to make. All the glomperon companies I know of have put a lot of money into custom production equipment, which is apparently really tricky to build and to align properly, and there aren't a lot of people in the world who know how to do it.
Now you've discovered that the VC is really worried about manufacturing issues, and he probably isn't going to pay of a lot of attention to your market forecasts until he is satisfied that you're actually going to be able to make the stuff. So now is probably the time to switch gears:
ENTREPRENEUR: Actually, we've put a lot of thought into design-for-manufacturability, and we think we can avoid most of those problems. Let me get into that a bit now.
...and then go to the appropriate section of the pitch.
8:14 AM
Thursday, December 29, 2005
A COOL STARTUP STORY
Red Herring, the venture capital magazine, has a piece on a company called Theranos, founded and being run by Elizabeth Holmes. The company has been developing a device which detects adverse drug reactions. It works by analyzing a tiny amount of blood from a person's finger or arm, then transmitting the data to a Theranos server, which uses biostatistics algorithms to profile the information. In 2004, there were more than 400,000 adverse drug reactions reported to the FDA, and Ms Holmes wants this device to bring the numbers down. She also believes that the device could fundamentally change healthcare by determining of a particular drug is working on an individual basis.
She just turned 21--and this is her second company. Theranos has funding from Draper Fisher Jurvetson, among others.
Startups like this are vital to the future of the American economy. Remember, every Fortune 100 behemoth was once a startup.
As a side note: I've written before about the tendency of many companies to be overly-specific in their hiring specifications, focusing on things like years of experience with specific software tools--often to the detriment of attributes that matter much more. In poking around the Theranos website, I was happy to see that they seem to have avoided this trap. In their job posting for an electrical engineer, for example, they are looking for things like "(experience in) integrating electrical and electro mechanical mechanisms in a small consumer product," "exceptional skills in CAD for circuit simulation and logic design," "experience designing, executing, and documenting experiments and presenting the data to management in a clear manner," and "ability and personality to take responsibility for several projects at one time." In my not-so-humble opinion, that's the right way to do it.
UPDATE: More on this story at Daily Duck
9:09 AM
Wednesday, December 28, 2005
WORTHWHILE READING
I won't try to summarize it; just click:
The Suicidal Pursuit of Perfection
9:40 AM
Tuesday, December 27, 2005
BOOKS BY BLOGGERS
Seems like a whole lot of writing has been going on, not all of it on blogs...
Education blogger Joanne Jacobs has written Our School, the story of a charter school in San Jose. Most of the students earned D’s and F’s in middle school and are years behind in reading and math when they enroll as ninth graders at DCP. Yet the school now outperforms the California average on the Academic Performance Index and sends all its graduates to four-year colleges.
Paul Holton, known to the blogosphere as "Chief Wiggles," has written about his experiences in Iraq in Saving Babylon. Paul is the founder of Operation Give, which sends toys by the container load to kids in Iraq, and he will send you an autographed copy with a $100 donation.
Robert J Avrech wrote and published The Hebrew Kid and the Apache Maiden, which is set in the years immediately following the Civil War. The entire book is downloadable (PDF), but is probably more convenient to read if you get it the old-fashioned way.
And Roger Simon's wife, the screenwriter Sheryl Longin, has written Dorian Greyhound: A Novel, which tells of the dog's adventures from his own point of view.
I haven't read any of these yet (except for a few pages of the PDF version of the Hebrew/Apache book), but I'd be surprised if any of them were less than excellent.
1:53 PM
Monday, December 26, 2005
CARNIVAL TIME!
Carnival of the Capitalists is up.
And so is Carnival of the Insanities.
4:29 PM
Sunday, December 25, 2005
CHRISTMAS DAY, 1944
Listen to this radio news broadcast from December 25, 1944. The Battle of the Bulge began on December 16 of that year, and was still very much in progress on Christmas day.
(via Midwest Conservative Journal)
5:11 PM
GREAT IMAGES
Reflecting Light has some really beautiful images that were created mathematically. Follow the links for lots more.
UPDATE: Don't miss this snowflake picture. Remarkable, the things you can find on an economics blog.
7:26 AM
Saturday, December 24, 2005
MERRY CHRISTMAS AND HAPPY HANUKKAH
Here are some Christmas-time posts from previous years:
Christmas Eve 1906--the first voice radio broadcast
Christmas in the Radar Room--an air traffic control version of "The Night Before Christmas"
A Christmas reading from Thomas Pynchon
6:33 PM
Friday, December 23, 2005
AWWWW
Here's a whole blog devoted to cuteness.
10:15 AM
Thursday, December 22, 2005
CATCH AND RELEASE
Germany has released terrorist Mohammad Ali Hamadi, who participated in the hijacking of TWA flight 847 (in 1985) and the murder of Robert Stethem, a U.S. Navy diver. Stethem was so brutally beaten that he could be identified only by his fingerprints. The terrorist was supposedly serving a "life without parole" sentence in Germany.
Debbie Schussel has been following this case closely. Most recent update and links here; also read the post she did on the 20th anniversary of the hijacking back in June.
Also this week, the U.S. and Iraqi governments chose to release the biological weapons experts known as "Dr Germ" and "Mrs Anthrax."
Is there some sort of contest going on this week as to which government can make the dumbest decisions?
UPDATE: From today's Wall Street Journal comes this description of what the terrorists did to Robert Stethem:
"They singled him out because he was American and a soldier," said one eyewitness. "They dragged him out of his seat, tied his hands and then beat him up...They kicked him in the face and knee caps and kept kicking him until they had broken all his ribs . Then they tried to knock him out with the butt of a pistol--they kept hitting him over the head but he was very strong and they couldn't knock him out...Later, they dragged him away and I believe shot him."
After Hamadi was captured, the U.S. requested extradition, but this request was denied by the German government, which does not consider the use of the death penalty in America to be civilized. Well, now we see what "life without parole" actually means under present German laws and policies.
It's not clear if the decision to release Hamadi was a policy decision at the highest levels of the German government (possibly as part of a hostage exchange) or if it resulted from the "normal" operation of a parole board; either way, it's very disturbing. This case is being tracked closely by the German blog Medienkritik; check in there for updated information.
The appeasement mentality seems to be very strong in Germany, along with the anti-American and anti-Israel attitudes which usually accompany it, but fortunately these views are not shared by everyone there. See this courageous article by Mathias Doepfner, CEO of the publisher Axel Springer AG.
And don't miss this Dr Seuss cartoon--it was directed at American appeasers in the pre-WWII, but Medienkritik finds it equally applicable to European appeasers today.
1:27 PM
Monday, December 19, 2005
UNBELIEVABLE BUT NOT SURPRISING
The United Nations recently held a "Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People." The meeting, which was attended by Kofi Annan and other UN officials, featured:
1)A so-called "map of Palestine" which did not include Israel...a country which has been a member of the UN for 56 years. The map does not even demarcate the partition lines of November 29, 1947.
2)A request to everyone present "to rise and observe a minute of silence in memory of all those who have given their lives for the cause of the Palestinian people and the return of peace between Israel and Palestine.“ According to Anne Bayefsky, who reported on the event for the Eye on the UN organization, the ceremony's wording was aimed at giving honor to suicide bombers. (There was, of course, no moment of silence for their Israeli victims.)
The video of the opening of the meeting is here. Click the link, and see and hear the "moment of silence" for yourself.
After watching this video, I was reminded of some words by C S Lewis:
The greatest evil is not now done in those sordid "dens of crime" that Dickens loved to paint. It is not done even in concentration camps and labour camps. In those we see its final result. But it is conceived and ordered (moved, seconded, carried, and minuted) in clean, carpeted, warmed, and well-lighted offices, by quiet men with white collars and cut fingernails and smooth-shaven cheeks who do not need to raise their voice.
5:14 PM
MORE ON LIEBERMAN
Integrity and common sense are evidently not very welcome in today's Democratic Party. (via Sister Toldjah)
See my earlier post on Lieberman and the Democrats here.
4:53 PM
CARNIVAL TIME!
Carnival of the Capitalists is up at Coyote Blog.
And Carnival of the Insanities is at Dr Sanity.
Both of these are excellent blogs, in addition to their carnival-hosting role.
3:46 PM
Sunday, December 18, 2005
PROF DRUCKER AND THE BUSINESS SCHOOLS
In a BusinessWeek retrospective on Peter Drucker (11/28), the following passage appears:
..he was always thought to be an outsider--a writer, not a scholar, ignored by the business schools. Tom Peters says he earned two advanced degrees, including a PhD in business, without once studying Drucker or reading a single book written by him. Even some of Drucker's colleagues at NYU had fought against awarding him tenure because his ideas were not the result of rigorous academic research. For years professors at the most elite business schools said they didn't bother to read Drucker because they found him superficial.
Responding to this article, one reader had this to say:
A few years after completing my MBA in 1964 and then my PhD at the Wharton School, I was assigned to teach a beginning management class at a major state university. Having been introduced to Drucker in the first business course I took as an MBA student at Wharton, I chose three Drucker books to constitute the course readings: Concept of the Corporation, The Practice of Management, and The Effective Executive. The students kept asking about the absence of a textbook and my colleagues thought "nonacademic" material should not be included in the course. (12/19 issue)
Considering Prof Drucker's accomplishments and his vast scope of learning, it seems fairly presumptuous for a group of garden-variety B-school professors to regard his work as "nonacademic." (It also seems fairly bizarre that students would rather wade through a "textbook" than deal with Drucker's easy-to-read books, but that's for another time.)
In their article How Business Schools Lost Their Way (Harvard Business Review, May 2005), Warren Bennis and James O'Toole point out some real problems with the way today's business schools think about their mission. They believe that the paradigm of business teaching and research suffers from a phenomenon they call "physics envy," and go on to say:
Why have business schools embraced the scientific model of physicists and economists rather than the professional model of doctors and lawyers? Althought few B school faculty memers would admit it, professors like it that way. This model gives scientific respectability to the research they enjoy doing and eliminates the vocational stigma that business school professors once bore. In short, the model advances the careers and satisfies the egos of the professoriat. And, frankly, it makes things easier: though scientific research techniques may require considerable skill in statistics or experimental design, they call for little insight into complex social and human factors and minimal time in the field discovering the actual problems facing managers.
The authors point out that practical business experience is not highly valued in today's B-school environment. While once, many years ago, the course in production management at MIT was taught by the manager of a nearby General Motors assembly plant, "Virtually none of today's top-ranked business schools would hire, let alone promote, a tenure track professor whose primary qualification is managing an assembly plant, no matter how distinguished his or her performance." Indeed, they remark that "Today it is posible to find tenured professors of management who have never set foot inside a real business, except at customers."
So on the one hand, the B-schools reject the "big picture" work of someone like Prof Drucker, which has been of value to many CEOs and other high-level executives. On the other hand, they also tend to discount the teaching potential of individuals with hands-on practical experience, like an auto assembly plant management--even though the experience and insights of such individuals could be of particular value to people early in their careers. To a large extent, what they (the B-schools) seem to be primarily concerned with is formal, and preferably quantitative, research, and the development of methodologies and techniques. And excessive emphasis on technique, of course, leads to what Henry Mintzberg has called "the rule of a tool": "Give a little boy a hammer and everything looks like a nail." (More of Prof Mintzberg's critique of management education here.)
Modern society is, in Drucker's phrase, "a society of organizations," and management is a critically important skill. Substantial resources are being spent on the education of future managers, and it's time for some serious rethinking about the effectiveness of this process. I'm glad to see people like Mintzberg, Bennis, and O'Toole showing leadership by raising the questions that badly need to be asked.
8:24 AM
Saturday, December 17, 2005
HAPPY BIRTHDAY!
On December 17, 1935, the Douglas DC-3 airliner made its first flight. It's an airplane that has had a tremendous impact on the aviation industry. More than 10,000 were built (including the military version, the C-47.) Quite a few are still flying. Interestingly, the first flight of the DC-3 came exactly 32 years after the first flight of the Wright brothers at Kitty Hawk.
The plane was originally known as the Douglas Sleeper Transport, and was configured to carry 14 passengers in reasonable comfort, with Pullman-style convertible berths. It was intended for long flights, specifically the American Airlines New York-to-Chicago run. (Cruise speed of the DC-3 is about 160 mph.) A version was soon created that eliminated the berths, but seated 21 passengers (more in some cases), and it was this configuration that accounted for most of the production. The DC-3 is given much of the credit for the almost 600% increase in airline passenger traffic between 1936 and 1941.
During the war, DC-3s were built in large quantities, and served in all theaters. Their contribution in delivering supplies "over the hump" after the Japanese closed the Burma Road, was particularly noteworthy.
After the war, DC-3s were heavily used for short and intermediate-length airline routes, as well as for freight. DC-3s also played an important role in the Berlin Airlift.
To celebrate the 70th anniversary, pilot and aviation writer Julie K Boatman got her DC-3 rating at an airport in Georgia. The plane she flew was originally license-built by Fokker in the Netherlands in 1938 and originally flown by SwissAir. From 1955 to 1967, it worked for Ozark airlines in the U.S., and hauled cargo from 1974 until 2001. Comparing the plane with her experience in light airplanes, Boatman found that the main difference was this: "You think about making a turn, and a few seconds later, the airplane thinks about making the turn as well." Along with this slow response goes stability: "While setting up a turn takes forethought, once the DC-3 settles in and hunkers down, it feels like it's carving through the turn on rails. This staility makes for a pleasurable ride, and also translates to other fundamentals of flight." She found the DC-3 particularly nice to fly on the landing approach: "Once it's configured, the DC-3 traks the course like a knife through butter, smooth and true. I'll take an instrument checkride in a DC-3 any day."
Boatman was pleased to find that the pilot's side window in the DC-3 slides open, and she was able to fly along with her elbow out in the breeze. Can't do that in your modern airliner.
Here's the Wikipedia article on the DC-3.
More DC-3 history here.
A summary focusing on the military aspects of DC-3 history.
Julie Boatman's article about her DC-3 experience appears in the December issue of AOPA Pilot magazine (subscription required.)
7:57 AM
THE ELECTIONS IN IRAQ
In case you haven't already seen it, there's lots of excellent coverage in the blogosphere, considerably better in aggregate than anything in the mainstream media.
Iraq The Model provides an Iraqi view, direct from Baghdad.
Pajamas Media has extensive coverage and links.
Dustin Hawkins has a great set of photos.
Mudville Gazette has thoughts and observations from American military people in Iraq.
7:26 AM
Tuesday, December 13, 2005
BEING MR BULTITUDE (RERUN)
A couple of years ago, I excerpted some thoughts by C S Lewis about what it might feel like to be a nonhuman animal (from his novel That Hideous Strength.) I'm reposting this in memory of my wonderful dog Abby, a miniature poodle, who died last Saturday at the age of 15. She often lay right beside me while I used the laptop, on the couch where I'm blogging this now.
Lewis was writing specifically about a pet bear, but the thoughts seem equally applicable to a dog.
Mr Bultitude's mind was as furry and unhuman in shape as his body. He did not remember, as a man in his situation would have remembered, the provincial zoo from which he had escaped during a fire, nor his first snarling and terrified arrival at the Manor, nor the slow stages whereby he had learned to love and trust its inhabitants. He did not know that he loved and trusted them now. He did not know that they were people, nor that he was a bear...everything that is represented by the words I and Me and Thou was absent from his mind. When Mrs Maggs gave him a tin of golden syrup, as she did every Sunday morning, he did not recognize either a giver or a recipient. Goodness occurred and he tasted it. And that was all. Hence his loves might, if you wished, all be described as cupboard loves: food and warmth, hands that caressed, voices tha reassured, were their objects. But if by a cupboard love you meant something cold or calculating you would be quite misunderstanding the real quality of the beast's sensations. He was no more like a human egoist than he was like a human altruist. There was no prose in his life. The appetencies which a human mind might disdain as cupboard loves were for him quivering and ecstatic aspirations which absorbed his whole being, infinite yearnings, stabbed with the threat of tragedy and shot through with the colours of Paradise. One of our race, if plunged back for a moment in the warm, trembling, iridescent pool of that pre-Adamite consciousness, would have emerged believing that he had grasped the Absolute...Sometimes there returns to us from infancy the memory of a nameless delight or terror, attached to any dlightful or dreadful thing, a potent adjective floating in a nounless void, a pure quality. At such moments we have experience of the shallows of that pool. But fathoms deeper than any memory can take us, right down in the central warmth and dimness, the bear lived all its life.
7:27 PM
Sunday, December 11, 2005
ABOUT DECISION-MAKING
One of the people interviewed for the Fortune issue on leadership (12/12) was Fred Brooks, who managed the development of IBM's OS/360 operating system and then wrote a book about the experience. (The Mythical Man-Month, 1975)
Brooks was asked what advice he would give to a young manager--although the question was specifically about advice to someone managing software development, I think the response is more generally applicable:
The best single advice is a motto I read on the ceiling of a German drinking fraternity in Heidelberg--this cave had been there, I guess, since the 16th century. It said, Numquam incertus; semper apertus: "Never uncertain, always open." Sometimes the first part is put as saying, "You can't steer a ship that's not underway." At any given time, you ought to have pretty clear goals, and know where you're going, and be going there. On the other hand, you should always be open to saying, "Is that really what we ought to be doing? Here's another idea." But sitting still in the water waiting to decide which way to go is the wrong thing to do.
The other is when I was a new IBM employee and heard Vin Learson, a VP at the time, later CEO. He said, "The problem is not to make the right decision; it's to make the decision right." I thought that was the most anti-intellectual thing I had about ever heard. I was fresh out of graduate school, and of course to me, the problem is to make the right decision.
I came to understand that he was talking from an executive-level point of view. As decisions bubble up they are first 80/20 decisions, then 70/30, then 60/40, and then they are 49/51 decisions. At that level the arguments on each side are pretty strong; going either way can be made to work, but it's very important to pick one and then go whole hog.
(Brooks gives as an example IBM's PL/I language, which he believes suffered from indecisiveness in execution.)
Although may usually be true that decisions that bubble up to the top are 49/51, in the sense that either alternative can be made to work with proper execution, I don't think it's always true. Indeed, had IBM's then-CEO (Tom Watson Jr) not chosen to pursue the development of System/360--had he chosen instead the more conservative course of continuing the development of separate and incompatible product lines, which would have been a much easier decision psychologically and politically--then I think it's pretty clear that IBM would have been far less successful than it in fact was. But it's true that there are many decisions that are 49/51, and for these it's more important to pick something and do it than to sit around agonizing about which path is optimum.
9:07 AM
HOW THE DEMOCRATIC LEADERSHIP THINKS
The Democratic Party leadership is not happy with Joe Lieberman's support for U.S. policy in Iraq, and that's putting it mildly. The Washington Post quotes a "senior Democratic aide" as saying: "Senator Lieberman is past the point of being taken seriously in the caucus because everything he does is seen as advancing his own self-interest, instead of the Democratic interest."
I guess the idea that a Senator might do things that he believes advance the national interest, or the interest of the entire world, is not something that exists in the mental universe of today's Democratic leaders.
7:39 AM
Thursday, December 08, 2005
WHAT KERRY SAID
A few days ago, John Kerry referred to American soldiers in Iraq as "terrorizing kids."
An excerpt of the Kerry statement: "And there is no reason, Bob, that young American soldiers need to be going into the homes of Iraqis in the dead of night, terrorizing kids and children, you know, women, breaking sort of the customs of the--of--the historical customs, religious customs. Whether you like it or not..."(You can read the Kerry interview for the complete context at the link above.)
Sarah has a response to Senator Kerry, complete with pictures.
If Kerry wanted to argue that it would be better to have all internal security operations (such as searches) performed by the Iraqi forces, for reasons of language and culture, that would have been a legitimate expression of opinion. It would have been wrong, in my opinion, because the Iraqi forces are not yet ready to handle this responsiblity in all cases. But it would have been much less destructive than what he in fact did say. Using wildly inflammatory language--referring to American soldiers as "terrorizing kids and children"--is certainly destructive of the morale of Americans serving in Iraq (or elsewhere), and only a person seriously lacking in empathy could fail to see this. Also, Kerry's clumsy statement surely gives encouragement to enemy leaders who are hoping for a collapse of American willpower. Unfortunately, this kind of thing has become quite common among the Democratic leadership.
Also: Here is another story about American soldiers and Iraqi kids which is well worth reading.
2:23 PM
PICTURES FROM EGYPT
The Mighty Jimbo is traveling in Egypt, and has posted a fine collection of photos.
(via Sheila)
9:12 AM
Wednesday, December 07, 2005
PEARL HARBOR DAY
DECEMBER 7, 1941
Here is a summary produced by the US Navy.
And here is a story about teachers in Montana who are working to ensure that their students know about this history.
UPDATE: La Shawn Barber has an extensive collection of Pearl Harbor links. And Sheila has an interesting historical document.
7:59 AM
Sunday, December 04, 2005
THE POWER OF METAPHOR AND ANALOGY
I've written before about the way in which verbal imagery affects decision-making. In stock market investing, the phrase "Caterpillar jumped up by 5% today" will be interpreted differently from "The price of Caterpillar increased by 5% today," even though the two statements are semantically identical. Here's an even more interesting example of why metaphors matter:
During the opening campaigns of WWI, in 1914, the British Commander-in-Chief (Sir John French) was tempted to withdraw his army into the fortress of Maubeuge. General Sir Edward Spears, who in 1914 was a liason officer between the British and French armies, describes the C-in-C's thought processes:
Sir John often spoke to me in after years of the lure of the fortress, so inviting, so protective with its belt of forts. It had loomed out of the fog of war like a safe and welcoming haven in the eyes of the leader of the small British force, who saw his command assailed in front by greatly superior numbers, his left flank threatened, his Ally melting away to his right. Why not take refuge in Maubeuge? As he reflected, so he told me, faintly, insistently, a sentence, not clear at first but demanding attention, began to echo in his memory. What was it he wanted to rememer? How did the sentence go? Suddently he had it. It was a phrase out of old Hamley's "Operations of War," read many years before; he did not remember the exact words, but the sense of it was clear: "The Commander of a retiring Army who throws himself into a fortress acts like one who, when the ship is foundering, lays hold of the anchor." Whether Sir John took this as a warning, or whether the image evoked gave him a truer picture of the situation, I do not know, but the fact remains, and he often said so, that suddenly the fortress appeared to him as nothing but a snare; the mirage of safety faded, the illusion of a place of refuge vanished, and Maubeuge seemed to cry out: "I am Metz, would you be another Bazaine?" (The latter phrase referring to a disaster of the Franco-Prussian war.)
The Commander of a retiring Army who throws himself into a fortress acts like one who, when the ship is foundering, lays hold of the anchor. As General Spears points out, had Hamley chosen an image less vivid to express his meaning, it would probably not have remained engraved in Sir John's memory. The C-in-C might well have withdrawn into Maubeuge, which, in the educated opinion of General Spears, would have likely been a serious mistake.
This passage shows vividly the power of the right verbal imagery. But it also shows the danger, as well as the power, of metaphor and analogy. For there certainly were situations during WWI in which withdrawal into a fortress was a rational thing to do--indeed, there were probably situations in which it was the only sane thing to do. Suppose Sir John had been confronted with one of those situations..would the power of the "anchor" image then have seduced him into doing the wrong thing?
It would be impossible to communicate well, indeed even to think, without the use of metaphor and analogy. But while we should all strive to use verbal images effectively, we should always remember: Metaphors and analogies are only conceptual models--they are not reality itself. A stock is not really an animal that "jumps," and a fortress is not really an "anchor."
(The Spears quotes are from his memoir, Liason 1914. General Spears also played a liason role during WWII: he was Churchill's personal represenative to the French army and government, and has described those experiences in the well-titled Assignment to Catastrophe. Brief excerpts from this book are here and here.)
7:16 AM
Saturday, December 03, 2005
GOOD!
In a test, Israel used its Arrow missile defense system to intercept and destroy a ballistic missile similar to Iran's Shahab-3. In October, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in October said that Israel must be "wiped off the map," and Israel is within Shahab-3 range from points in Iraq.
More information about the Arrow system can be found here. Substantial components of the system are built by Boeing and 150 other U.S. companies, with integration and final assembly done in Israel.
For three decades now, American and European "liberals" have opposed work on antimissile systems. Very fortunately, R&D on these systems has continued despite their efforts.
11:03 AM
Friday, December 02, 2005
ANYBODY SURPRISED?
The Green Party of the United States is calling for "divestment from and boycott of the State of Israel." Link here.
These days, being anti-Israel seems to be pretty much a prerequesite for being a leftist, or a "progressive," or a "liberal," or whatever they call themselves at the moment.
If you read the linked post, you'll see that this particular anti-Israel move seems, like so many bad things in today's world, to have originated on a university campus.
10:17 AM
Thursday, December 01, 2005
GOON SQUAD
Grey Eagle is a female American soldier (combat medic) serving in Iraq. She's also a blogger. She has received many offensive e-mails and comments from "antiwar" people, and these individuals have recently been vandalizing her blog and attempting to shut it down.
Here's a particularly repellant form of vandalism: Grey Eagle has been posting tributes to the 49 female soldiers who have been killed in Afghanistan and Iraq, and also to the women who have won awards for valor. Some cretin hacked the script so that when Grey Eagle attempts to add a new tribute, the script displays "you have been hacked....Bush lied" on the website.
This kind of hacking is, of course, is a crime. I hope that the perpetrators will be caught and convicted and, in the meantime, I hope that some helpful techies will drop by Grey Eagle and help her fireproof the site.
And everyone should take a stand against the goons who attempt to shut down free speech. Read Grey Eagle and, if you're a blogger, link to her.
2:45 PM
Wednesday, November 30, 2005
LIEBERMAN ON IRAQ
Senator Joe Lieberman just returned from Iraq (his fourth trip in the last 17 months), and has some pretty strong opinions.
UPDATE: Because of his stand on Iraq, Senator Liberman is being stridently attacked by various leftists, "liberals," and "progressives."
(via Sister Toldjah)
2:29 PM
Sunday, November 27, 2005
HORATIO ALGER, ASIAN STYLE
Abandoned at birth, Olivia Lum grew up in a tin-roofed hut in Malaysia. She attended high school and college in Singapore, and became a research chemist at Glaxo (now GlaxoSmithKline), where she developed an interest in water treatment technologies. Although entrepreneurship was not popular in Singapore at the time, she quit her job, sold her car and apartment, and started a company: first, acting as a distributor of equipment made by others and later developing new filtration technologies. Hyflux is now a substantial enterprise, with 600 employees in Singapore and China and with revenues last year of about $51MM (US dollars). The company recently completed a large desalination plant in Singapore, and is now building two desalination plants in northeast China. Hyflux is public, but Ms Lum, now 45, still owns a third of the shares.
Hyflux competes with large international companies such as Suez and General Electric (which has been building its capabilities in the water treatment business over the last several years.) "We are a company that focuses on filtration technology, while water treatment is just one part of bigger conglomerates like GE," says Ms Lum. "We are small enough to be nimble and flexible, and since we are in Asia, we understand Asian culture."
She should be careful not to put too much reliance on these factors as competitive advantages, though. GE understands decentralized management better than just about anybody, and while it's true that water filtration is just "one part" of GE as a whole, it's a very big thing for GE Water & Process Technologies and for the CEO of that business unit..and that's who she's going to be face-to-face with in the marketplace. Moreover, GE Water is now part of GE Infrastructure, a group of business which are especially focused on providing products and services to developing countries, and as cynical as I usually am about the concept of "synergy", I think there will probably be some genuine synergies in that grouping. So while I think the "focus" advantage and the "culture" advantage for Hyflux vs GE are real, I don't think they are decisive. It will come down to innovation, sales and project management execution, and business creativity. The latter attribute has been demonstrated by Ms Lum throughout her career, and currently, she is turning her creativity to financial matters (such as the creation of "business trusts", similar to the real estate investment trusts, for the financing of water projects.)
The competition between Hyflux and GE Water should be very interesting, and should benefit everyone by driving the development and deployment of new technologies. Somebody should sell ringside seats! (I don't mean to shortchange the other major player, Suez, but don't know enough about them to comment intelligently.)
Ms Lun beleives that Hyflux's biggest contribution will be to break down cultural barriers toward entrepreneurship in Singapore. "When I statrted the business, people would say that I did it because perhaps I didn't do well in school or nobody wanted to hire me. The whole culture discouraged entrepreneurship. But attitudes are changing. The cultural barriers are disappearing and the government knows they must promote entrepreneurs because Singapore can not longer rely on MNCs and government-linked companies."
(quotes are from Financial Times, 11/23)
8:49 AM
Wednesday, November 23, 2005
CONDEMNING HIZBULLAH
...AND MAKING EXCUSES FOR IT
Remarkably, the UN has issued a condemnation of Hizbullah's Monday attacks on Israel:
Following intense US pressure, the United Nations Security Council on Wednesday issued an unprecedented condemnation of Monday’s Hizbullah attacks on northern Israel.
This condemnation - slamming Hizbullah by name for “acts of hatred” - marked the first time the Security Council has ever reprimanded Hizbullah for cross-border attacks on Israel. The condemnation followed by two days a failed attempt to get a condemnation issued on Monday, the day of the attack, when Algeria came out against any mention of Hizbullah in the statement.
When asked what changed from Monday to Wednesday, one diplomatic official replied: “John Bolton,” a reference to the US ambassador to the UN. Bolton lobbied vigorously for the passage of the statement. (emphasis added)
Meanwhile, here are some remarks made to the Lebanese press by the spokesman for a delegation sent by the Presbyterian Church (USA):
We do not wish to defend the U.S. administration. We all elected the Democratic Party against the Republican Party. Rest assured that we will return to the U.S. in order to continue our activity for peace, and we want to hear about the charity activities and the cultural and social activities organized by Hizbullah in south [Lebanon]. The Americans hear in the Western media that Hizbullah is a terrorist organization, and they do not hear any other opinion. They know nothing about the party's concern for the people of the south.
Should one also conclude that the Roosevelt administration should have had more appreciation for the charitable activities conducted by the Nazi party of Germany, (such as the Winterhilfe)? Could any rational person maintain this position? How would that be different in principle from the position taken by the church spokesman quoted above?
(hat tips: LGF, Damian Penny)
7:22 PM
WORTH PONDERING
Half of our mistakes in life arise from feeling when we ought to think, and thinking when we ought to feel.
--John Churton Collins (quoted in IBD, 8/29)
Previous Worth Pondering
9:42 AM
Monday, November 21, 2005
JUST UNBELIEVABLE
Speaking to political science students in Toronto, Chris Matthews of CNBC said this:
The period between 9/11 and Iraq was not a good time for America. There wasn’t a robust discussion of what we were doing,” Matthews said.
If we stop trying to figure out the other side, we’ve given up. The person on the other side is not evil — they just have a different perspective.
Just a different perspective, huh, Matthews? Wonder how the parents of the Iraqi kids deliberately blown up by those with a "different perspective" would feel about your theory.
And note the headline in the Toronto Sun article, Matthews. I know you didn't write the headline, but you certainly set it up. Are you proud of that?
7:36 PM
SOME PHOTOGRAPHS FROM IRAQ
Wonderful photos from Michael Yon. No explosions, ruins, or people in tears. Michael visited 50 schools all over Iraq, and this is what he saw.
(via Sister Toldjah)
7:08 PM
END OF AN ERA
On Friday, SBC Communications completed its acquisition of AT&T. The combined company will adopt the AT&T name.
Prior to the board vote on the acquisition, Dave Dorman, CEO of (the old) AT&T had two portraits moved into the boardroom: Alexander Graham Bell and Theodore Vail, who created AT&T and ran it for many years.
"Those guys built this company," Dorman said. "This is a historic company, one of the most enduring and widely used by mankind, in terms of the telephone. I just wanted them there."
7:14 AM
Sunday, November 20, 2005
HUNTING THE FIVE-POUND BUTTERFLY
The Wall Street Journal (11/16) covers the growing tendency of companies to do hiring based on a long string of highly-specific requirements. The article deals specifically with engineering jobs, but the same trend can be seen--though maybe not quite to the same level--in other fields, such as marketing and sales.
A couple of examples: A company that makes automobile bumper parts was looking for a shift supervisor at a plant in Pennsylvania. They eliminated all candidates who didn't have a BS degree, even though many had relevant experience. They also insisted on experience with the specific manufacturing software that was in use at the plant. Although the job came open in February, the woman who finally got the job wasn't selected until August. That's six months.
Wabtec, which makes components for railcars and buses, needed a mechanical engineer. They wanted a BS and appropriate work experience; they also wanted experience with a computer-aided design system Pro/Engineer. And they would only consider candidates who had experience with Pro/Engineer Wildfire, not an earlier version of the software which was called 2000i. "The basic difference between Wildfire and 2000i is not that significant," says Mike Sylvester, VP at the recruiting firm that handled the search. "I say smart people can learn sister applications, but there is a reluctance among hiring managers to see that. If they use a SAP database system, they won't even look at someone with experience with a PeopleSoft system. There is a major fear of having to bring someone up a learning curve. They want them to hit the ground running."
Wabtec's HR VP says that the company usually specifies jobs more broadly, and is willing to train new employees, but that in some cases "you get in a jam where someone left and we have a very specific search." Maybe so. But I suspect that if a newly-hired mechanical engineer doesn't work out, or does less than a stellar job, the cause will usually not be his lack of experience with the latest version of a CAD system. More likely, it will be a lack of good design intuition...or poor interpersonal skills...or an inability to integrate mechanical design with electrical and electronics aspects of the same product...or fit with the cultural style of the organization. Maybe he comes from an environment where he was closely supervised, and the new environment is more open and requires more self-starting...or vice versa. These things are not easily represented in "checklist" form, as is knowledge of a specific software package and version, but they matter a lot.
Mike Sylvester says that there's a lot of this sort of thing going on. He was asked to find an engineer to oversee a heating, ventilation, and air conditioning system at a hospital. "A pump is a pump and a duct is a duct, but they wouldn't even look at candidates who had HVAC experience in a mill instead of a hospital," he says.
The WSJ article blames much of the claimed "shortage" of engineers on such overly-specific hiring requirements. "Companies are looking for a five-pound butterfly. Not finding them doesn't mean there is a shortage of butterflies," says Richard Tax of the American Engineering Association.
The article doesn't mention it, but the same kind of excessive specificity in hiring is also happening in fields other than engineering. I'm quite sure that there are talented salesmen who won't be hired this week because of a lack of experience with some particular sales automation or customer resources management system...representing knowledge that they could have easily picked up during their first couple of weeks on the job.
And for the employer, this kind of thing has real costs. It's a basic reality of life that you can't optimize everything at once. So, if you insist on a perfect fit for certain things, you are probably getting less of some other attributes--and these may be ones that matter more. I'd personally rather have a salesman who has demonstrated (for example) skill at managing the customer politics in a large and complex sale than one who has specific experience with the Snarkolator CRM system. It's a lot easier to train for the second than for the first.
Why this increased focus on "checklist" items? The WSJ article blames it largely on Internet job boards, which encourage a flood of resumes and enable the use of keyword screening as a means of coping with that flood. That's certainly part of it. I also think that fear of litigation has led hiring managers to focus on more "objective" criteria and less on intuition, and that this tendency has now been internalized to the point that people do it without even understanding why they do it.
But I think there's something else, too. Our society has focused so much on the importance of education and training that we have to some extent lost sight of just how much people can learn on their own. Human beings are not some kind of special-purpose machine that is manufactured with a fixed program and can't do anything else without going back to the factory for rewiring, and too many people seem to treat them as if they are.
To further develop Richard Tax's analogy: There are many beautiful butterflies in the world, and success in hiring will go to those who develop an astute appreciation of butterly beauty. It's not easy, and it can't be learned entirely from books--but it's very worthwhile.
6:05 AM
Saturday, November 19, 2005
MEDIA TRENDS
Investors Business Daily reports that combined ad revenue for ABC, CBS, and NBC fell 21% in the third quarter (vs same period in prior year.) January thru September revenue was $7.95B vs $8.47B in 2004, which I calculate as an 8.4% drop. Not clear if the rate is increasing or if the 3rd quarter is just a fluke, but 8.4% would be bad enough.
Overall newspaper ad revenue is not cited, but average weekday circulation fell 2.6% over the six month ended September 30. The Los Angeles Times is cutting 85 newsroom jobs, The New York Times says that it is cutting 500, and Knight Ridder, under pressure from investors, is putting itself up for sale.
In contrast, U.S. online ad revenue grew 26% in the first half of the year. "Premium ad pages on top Web sites in many cases are sold out months in advance," said Rick Bruner of DoubleClick. "In certain categories like automotive web sites, they an be sold out more than a year in advance." (See comments from Jeff Jarvis on the whole idea of "sold out" in the online ad space--here and here.)
Somehow, this post seems to go very well with this one.
5:43 PM
Friday, November 18, 2005
AMERICAN UNIVERSITIES, ISRAEL, AND THE JEWS
The American Enterprise (Oct-Dec issue) says that anti-Semitic attitudes in Europe are on the rise, and that these attitudes are being imported into the U.S.--with the ports of entry being America's universities.
Luntz interviewed 150 randomly chosen graduate students from elite colleges in five cities. A majority espoused the point of view now common among the European Left: that Israel "is an aggressor against the helpless, victimized Arab masses of Palestine." Luntz suggests this shift in views of Israel is "also having a negative impact on attitudes to Jews right here in America." Most of the U.S. graduate students surveyed now consider Jews to be too politically influential. As one student put it: "Palestinians are poor, thus they have less value to American politicians."
These grad students may be opinionated, but they're not very knowledgeable:
Few of the grad students surveyed by Luntz knew anything about pre-1948 Palestine, the original U.N. plan for a two-state solution, the repeated Arab threats to destroy Israel, or the fact that israel has been the lone functioning democracy in the region, with considerable safeguards for human liberties. "Liberalism is increasingly the politics of ignorance--it's amazing what these kids don't know," worries Fred Siegel, who teaches history at Cooper Union in New York City. Luntz traces student views to the information they are geting from the professoriate, which is increasingly anti-Israel and toleratnt of anti-Semitism. The establishment media--particularly the BBC, CNN, and the New York Times--were also identified as sources of misinformation.
Americans have generously supported higher education in part because of a belief that university education helps to develop the ability to think about public issues in ways that are broadminded, knowledge-based, and tolerant. I don't think the universities are doing a very good job in holding down their side of the bargain.
UPDATE: Here's an article about anti-Israel attitudes among academics and journalists, and another one about the growth of virulent anti-Semitism in Europe.
1:31 PM
ABOUT THE NEW YORK TIMES
The New York Times and the Jews. The American Thinker says that coverage has been negatively slanted over a long period of time.
The New York Times and the Ukranians. A Ukranian-American group will demonstrate in front of the Times building today, demanding that the newspaper relinquish the 1932 Pulitzer prize awarded to Times reporter Walter Duranty, whose coverage of the Stalin-imposed famine was--to put it mildly--extremely misleading. Making the case against Duranty, Volodymyr Kurylo (President of the United Ukrainian American Organizations of Greater New York) cites Zara Witkins memoir "An American Engineer in Stalin's Russia," which recalls how New York Herald Tribune reporter Ralph Barnes asked Duranty how he was going to report about the Stalin-made famine.
Duranty reportedly replied: "What are a few million dead Russians (Ukrainians) in a situation like this? Quite unimportant. This is just an incident in the sweeping historical changes here. I think the entire matter is exaggerated."
Kurylo also talks about the rather flippant attitude that the Times has displayed toward this matter:
In November of 2003, the Pulitzer Panel announced that it wouldn’t revoke Duranty's 1932 prize. Arthur Sulzberger, Jr. issued a statement which ended with: "We regret his [Duranty's] lapses and we join the Pulitzer Board in extending sympathy to those who suffered in the famine."
Lapses? We're talking about 7 to 10 million human beings, not car keys. And, we're not looking for Arthur Sulzberger's sympathy. We want Duranty's blood-stained Pulitzer.
8:09 AM
Wednesday, November 16, 2005
IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENT TODAY
The enterprise formerly known by the working title Pajamas Media is being launched today under its official title, Open Source Media.
UPDATE: Pamela has pictures from the pre-launch dinner.
12:12 PM
THE CLINTONS AND TERRORISM
So here's Bill Clinton doing what he does so well: emoting in public, this time in Jordan.
Stepping over broken glass, silver knives and napkins on a carpet soiled by blood and plaster dust, Bill and Hillary Clinton held hands to affirm their abhorrence of the bomb that tore through Wednesday’s wedding party.
But The Anchoress remembers some recent history:
I read this and all I can remember is Hillary kissing Suha Arafat on the cheek after Mrs. Arafat’s speech wherein she charged that Jews were killing Palestinian children by poisoning the water. Afterward, Hillary’s people said she hadn’t realized what Arafat was saying…she “had a bad translation.”
Everyone else there had an accurate translation, but the First Lady of the United States got a substandard one. Got that? You totally believe that, right?
Even if, unaccountably, Hillary really didn't know about the "poisoning the water" comment, there was still no excuse for a demonstration of affection toward Suha Arafat. If there is anyone who played a leading role in creating the plague of modern terrorism, it was Yasser Arafat. Surely, the "understanding", acceptance, and even romanticization of terrorism by so many in the Western world has played a role in its spread. Arafat should not have been treated like a normal leader of a normal state, and the actions of the Clintons in doing so played a part, however small, in the train of events that led to the atrocity in Jordan.
Can anyone imagine a scenario in which Eleanor Roosevelt would have kissed, say, Magda Goebbels on the cheek? The cases aren't absolutely identical, but they are pretty close.
8:30 AM
Monday, November 14, 2005
PAWN WISCONSIN?
Here is the latest attempt to force "divestment" from Israel.
The people who push these things are delegitimizing Israel's right to protect its cititens--and, implicitly, legitimizing the terrorist tactics used against those citizens. They are bluring the line between civilization and barbarism, encouraging those who commit acts of terror everywhere in the world.
I think there is blood on the hands of the "divestors." Israeli blood, and the blood of many others as well.
(via Pamela)
7:48 PM
CARNIVAL TIME!
Carnival of the Capitalists is up. There's a special section on Peter Drucker, and lots of other stuff as well.
And Rob has temporarily replaced his blogroll with Drucker links.
9:49 AM
Sunday, November 13, 2005
DRUCKERFEST, CONTINUED
In Managing in the Next Society, Drucker writes about the tension between liberty and community:
Rural society has been romanticized for millenia, especially in the West, where rural communities have usually been portrayed as idylic. However, the community in rural society is actually both compulsory and coercive.
One recent example. My family and I lived in rural Vermont only fifty years ago, in the late 1940s. At that time the most highly popularized character in the nation was the local telephone operator in the ads of the Bell Telephone Company. She, the ads told us every day, held her community together, served it, and was always available to help.
The reality was somewhat diferent. In rural Vermont, we then still had manual telephone exchanges...But when finally around 1947 or 1948, the dial telephone came to rural Vermont, there was universal celebration. Yes, the telephone operator was always there. But when, for instance, you called up to get Dr Wilson, the pediatrician, because one of your children had a high fever, the operator would say, "You can't reach Dr Wilson now; he is with his girlfriend." Or, "You don't need Dr Wilson; your baby isn't that sick. Wait till tomorrow morning to see whether he still has a high temperature." Community was not only coercive; it was intrusive.
And that explains why, for millenia, the dream of rural people was to escape into the city. Stadluft macht frei (city air frees) says an old German proverb dating back to the eleventy or twelfth century. The serf who managed to escape from the land and to be admitted into a city became a free man. He became a citizen. And so we, too, have an idyllic picture of the city--and it is as unrealistic as the idyllic picture of rural life.
For what made the city attractive also made it anarchic--the anonymity; the absence of coercive communities. The city was indeed the center of culture. It was where the artists and the scholars could work and flourish. Precisely because it had no community, it offered upward mobility. But beneath that thin layer of professionals, artists, and scholars, beneath the wealthy merchants and the highly skilled artisans in their craft guilds, there was moral and social anomie.
and
The city was attractive precisely because it offered freedom from the compulsory and coercive rural community. But it was destructive because it did not offer any community of its own.
And human beings need community. If there are no communities available for constructive ends, there will be destructive, murderous communities...
7:06 AM
DRUCKERFEST, CONTINUED
On Picking People:
In The Frontiers of Management, Drucker observes that what appears to be exactly the same job may at different points in time require very different kinds of people:
When putting a man in as division commander during World War II, George Marshall always looked first at the nature of the assignment for the next eighteen months or two years. To raise a division and train it is one assignment. To lead it in combat is quite another. To take command of a division that has been badly mauled and restore its morale and fighting strength is another still.
When the task is to select a new regional sales manager, the responsible executive must know what the heart of the assignment is: to recruit and train new salespeople because, say, the present sales force is nearing retirement age? Or is it to open up new markets because the company's products, though doing well with old-line industries in the region, have not been able to penetrate new and growing markets? Or, because the bulk of sales still comes from products that are twenty-five years old, is it to establish a market presence for the company's new products? Each of these is a different assignment and requires a different kind of person.
6:33 AM
Saturday, November 12, 2005
DRUCKERFEST
Peter Drucker, who died yesterday, was best known as a writer on management and as a management consultant. But he was also an astute social analyst and a genuine renaissance man, with interests ranging from psychology to Japanese art. A true intellectual, in the best sense of the term.
On this blog, I've frequently posted excerpts from Prof Drucker's writing and references to his thought. Here are some links:
On the history of pluralism
Second careers, and why they matter
The specific case and the general principle in management practice
...and a few short quotes:
On Craftsmanship: In his pseudo-autobiography Adventures of a Bystander, Drucker tells of what he learned while taking wood shop in elementary school in Austria....even Miss Sophie could not make a craftsman out of me...But I took from her a lifelong appreciation of craftsmanship, an enjoyment of clean honest work, and respect for the task. My fingers have never forgotten the feel of well-planed and sanded wood, cut with rather than against the grain, which Miss Sophy--her hand on mine and guiding my fingers--made me sense.
On Academic Arrogance: In The Age of Discontinuity (1970), Drucker writes: It is highly probably that the next great wave of popular criticism, indignation, and revolt in the United States will be provoked by the arrogance of the learned.
On Knowledge as a Battleground: ...it is quite possible that the great new 'isms' of tomorrow will be ideologies about knowledge. In tomorrow's intellectual and political philosophies knowledge may well take the central place that property, i.e. things, occupied in capitalism and Marxism. (Also from The Age of Discontinuity)
On Courage: Whenever you see a sucessful business, someone once made a courageous decision. (quoted in Investors Business Daily)
UPDATE: See also Drucker on picking people and Drucker on the tension between liberty and community.
5:43 PM
SAD NEWS
Peter Drucker died yesterday.
Rob is looking for Drucker-oriented posts for Carnival of the Capitalists. They are due tomorrow afternoon.
UPDATE: Some good thoughts on Prof Drucker's work at ChicagoBoyz, and an interview with Drucker here.
9:09 AM
Friday, November 11, 2005
VETERANS DAY
Donald Sensing has several links.
UPDATE: A nice pictorial tribute from Sarah.
And a "thank you" from the Kurds.
And Damian writes about somebody who really doesn't seem to get it.
UPDATE 2: Read the heartwarming story of what happened to Buster, son of The Anchoress, while visiting Washington DC in his scout uniform. Some Europeans still remember.
And Blackfive writes about some people well worth knowing.
7:21 AM
Wednesday, November 09, 2005
A VERY WORTHWHILE CAUSE
Project Valour-IT stands for Voice-Activated Laptops for Our Injured Troops. The idea is to provide soldiers, sailors, airmen and marines who are recovering from hand and arm injuries or amputations with voice-response software installed on laptop computers: operating a standard keyboard would be difficult or impossible for many of these individuals. Bloggers are trying to raise significant funds for this project by Nov 11.
More information, and a link for donations, here.
UPDATE: CalTechGirl eloquently explains why you should donate.
7:34 AM
NOVEMBER 9, 1938
Kristallnacht.
7:26 AM
Sunday, November 06, 2005
A REAL "COWBOY CAPITALIST"
If you fly on the airlines a lot, you've probably been on an Embraer recently. These airplanes are made in Brazil by the eponymous company--which, when privatized in 1994, was near bankrupt and in disarray. It's now a thriving business, and Fortune gives much of the credit for the turnaround to Embraer's CEO, Mauricio Botelho, who is profiled in the 11/14 issue.
Betelho grew up in Rio de Janeiro, but often visited his family's cattle ranch in the interior. One of his vivid childhood memories is of the time he joined his father on a roundup:
We stayed three days and two nights getting the cattle into the corral to have them vaccinated and marked. Imagine you were 12, driving a horse for three days and sleeping in the woods in a hammock, with your father and other cowboys, crossing rivers. It's something you never forget.
What did he learn from the experience? "I was not made for that sort of business," he tells the interviewer.
But I suspect Botelho did indeed learn some other things from his experiences on the cattle ranch.
When he took over Embraer, there were four separate cafeterias: for assembly workers, for engineers, for office workers, and for senior staff. He got rid of the separation, and put in a single cafeteria where everyone now eats. Things like this may seem trivial, but they make a real difference in the culture and spirit of an organization.
If Botelho had not had his experiences on the ranch--if he had had a hermetically-sealed upper-middle-class upbringing, associating only with people of his own economic status--would the weirdness of the 4-cafeteria system have still hit him? Or would he have accepted it as normal?
9:23 AM
THE RIOTS IN FRANCE
Lots of interesting thoughts over at Chicago Boyz, including one intriguing post on the way in which bad architectural ideas have contributed to the problem.
9:21 AM
Saturday, November 05, 2005
SERIOUS SPY CHARGES
Four people have been arrested in Los Angeles and charged with smuggling vital defense secrets to China. The information believed to have been transferred includes details on the Aegis battle-management system, a vital component of U.S. cruisers and destroyers, and on the new Virginia-class attack submarines. Officials said that based on a preliminary assessment, China now will be able to track U.S. submarines. It is also believed that information was provided which would facilitate the development of electromagnetic pulse weapons, which could disrupt electronics over a wide area, as well as information on unmanned aerial vehicles.
U.S. intelligence officials said the case remains under investigation but that it could prove to be among the most damaging spy cases since the 1985 case of John A. Walker Jr., who passed Navy communication codes to Moscow for 22 years.
Here is the (rather brief) New York Times article on this matter. Read it for yourself, and see if you think it properly represents the seriousness of what has apparently happened here.
Do you think that this will receive anywhere near the media attention which has been devoted to the Valerie Plame affair?
7:30 PM
MANAGEMENT EDUCATION AND THE ROLE OF TECHNIQUE
In his book Managers Not MBAs, which strongly criticizes the current state of affairs in graduate business education, Henry Mintzberg (McGill University) muses about the role of technique in business education and in business itself. "A technique might be defined as something that can be used in place of a brain," he writes, and continues;
MBA programs tend to attract pragmatic people in a hurry: they want the means to leap past others with experience. Techniques--so-called tools--seem to offer that, so this is what many such students demand, and what many of the courses offer; whether portfolio models for financial resources, competitive analyses for strategic resources, or empowerment techniques for human resources. Offer enough of this, and you end up with schools of business technology.
and
Technique aplied with nuance by people immersed in a situation can be very powerful. But technique taught generically, out of context, encourages that "rule of the tool": Give a little boy a hammer and everything looks like a nail. MBA programs have given their graduates so many hammers that many organizations now look like smashed-up beds of nails.
and
Managers can certainly use a toolbox full of useful techniques--but only if they appreciate when to use each. As the chief executive of a pharmaceutical company told a group of MBA students, "My problem is that when I face a problem, I don't know what class I'm in."
This critique of an excessive reliance on contextless technique in business is, I believe, also applicable to the current excessive dominance of "theory"--ie, specific techniques for things like textual criticism--in the teaching of the humanities. See my earlier post The Dictatorship of Theory; also Management Mentalities, which immediately follows it.
Note especially Mintzberg's comment about "pragmatic people in a hurry (who) want the means to leap past others with experience." I don't think there's any question that a focus on technique can represent an effective strategy for age-group warfare: after all, if a technique is powerful enough, who needs the tacit knowledge that comes from experience? The assertion of the importance of technique can tend to level the playing field between the 28-year-old and the 45-year old. This is as true in academia as it is in business. The problem is that while there are indeed many circumstances where technique can partically replace experience, there are also many cases where the claims of technique turn out to be overstated--and often, this overstatement is discovered the hard way. And the problem of wisely choosing which technique to apply is, as Mintzberg says, a very nontrivial one.
UPDATE 10/16/06: See also these posts:
Management Mentalities
Education for Business: Classics and Computer Science?
The Dictatorship of Theory
1:57 PM
Friday, November 04, 2005
SOME GOOD NEWS FROM ITALY
In response to Iran's call for the elimination of Israel, Wednesday evening in Rome, thousands, probably tens of thousands, will demonstrate in support of the Jewish state. The demonstration has been organized by Giuliano Ferrara, the larger-than-life editor of the feisty daily newspaper il Foglio, and the demonstrators will range from members of some Italian Islamic organizations to foreign minister Giancarlo Fini (long a bete noire of America's "leading" newspapers and networks), just back from a trip to the Middle East.
It takes courage to stand up publicly for Israel against the world's leading sponsor of terrorism, especially in contemporary Europe, where anti-Semitism is on the rise, where the Jewish population is minuscule (there are slightly more than 40,000 in all of Italy, less than one percent of Italians), and where the Islamic population is expanding rapidly. I have not noticed any such demonstrations here, for example.
Read the whole thing.
(via Damian Penny)
3:45 PM
MORE WORDS FROM SVEN
On Wednesday, I posted some remarks from Sven about anti-Semitism in Sweden. Sven is now living in the U.S., and has written about his experiences teaching in an American university. Important reading.
(note: Pamela's blog is very graphics-intensive, so it may take awhile if you use dialup. Worth it, though.)
3:34 PM
Thursday, November 03, 2005
WORTHWHILE READING
Thoughts about realism and idealism, from Cassandra, at Blackfive.
7:21 PM
THE ELEVATOR CLUE?
One might assume that elevator technology is fairly static, but then one would be wrong. The New York Times (11/2) has an article about significant improvements in elevator control systems. The idea is that you select your floor before you get on the elevator, rather than after, thereby allowing the system to dispatch elevators more intelligently--a 30% reduction in average trip time is claimed. Some vendors are also linking the elevator controls (for office buildings) to employee identification cards, so the system knows automatically where the individual wants to go..no button-pushing required. (The advantage here is that the elevator system can keep track of exactly how many people are going where, allowing it to better manage its capacity.)
All good stuff; shorter waiting times and presumably lower energy consumption as well. But what struck me was this quote from an installation director at Schindler:
Say I'm a VIP, and I really don't want to ride with anybody else...So when I swipe my card, the system assigns me an elevator with nobody in it, and that elevator gives me an express trip to my floor.
Dear Schindler: Please publish a nice set of customer case studies with the names of companies using this feature prominently displayed. That way, I can be sure to avoid taking long positions in any of them.
Because any senior executive who deliberately cuts himself off from the people of his organization is doing something very unwise, and this unwisdom will, sooner or later, show up in the business results.
I certainly don't think George Westinghouse would have chosen to use the "nobody in it but me" feature.
See also: The Edifice Clue and The Harvard Indicator.
9:35 AM
Wednesday, November 02, 2005
DANCING FOR THE BOA CONSTRICTOR, CONTINUED
In Wind, Sand, and Stars, Antoine de Saint-Exupery refers to the legend of the monkey that dances for the boa constrictor--in the hopes that the snake will be so enchanted that it will let the monkey go on living. (St-Ex was making an analogy with a man he met in a village during the Spanish Civil War, who was trying very hard to be extra-friendly to his neighbors...in the hope that they wouldn't shoot him for political differences.)
A lot of people in the world are dancing for the boa constrictor right now, and apparently some of them live in Sweden. Sven, a Swede now living in the U.S., writes to Pamela, and I'm posting his entire letter here since her blog pretty much requires a wideband connection.
Subject line: A beacon in the twilight of civilization
I like your blog. It is refreshingly free of
compromise and attempts to tell both sides of every
issue. I share your values all the way, and I am
especially appreciative of your support for Israel.
Where I come from, Sweden, being a Jew is almost like
trying to be anything except a muslim in the nexus of
islamo-fascism. Jewish students are assaulted on a
regular basis in schools, and even Jewish teachers are
bullied by students without any reaction from school
administrators. Jewish students in public schools use
code words when talking about, e.g., bar mitzvah or
going to the synagogue. They try to use Swedish family
names instead of their Jewish names, and they
certainly try to avoid wearing religious symbols in
public.
Anti-semitic violence is at an all time high. Last
winter an anti-racist rally in Stockholm, organized by
leftist groups and muslim organizations, culminated
with a raging assault on a small group of Jewish
teenagers. Other anti-racist events have been held on
the same day as Jews commemorate the victims of the
Kristallnacht, but the organizers have purposely
chosen to locate their events as far away as possible
from the Jewish commemoration ceremony. The Swedish
supreme court has even ruled that it is not racism if
a muslim speaks in defamation of Jews, but it is
racism if a native Swede does it.
Islamo-fascism is spreading like bonfire among muslims
in Scandinavia. I have tons of anecdotes to tell about
this.
I came to America three years ago, much because I wanted to give something back to the country that has stood so relentlessly by Europe's side against totalitarianism. Today, many Europeans have turned their back on America, and more do it every day. Some are scared by the onslaught from islamo-fascism, but
they still try to find a reason to blame America for it. It is a sad thing to witness, and it infuriates me at the same time because Europe was the cradle of modern, Western civilization. Today, it seems almost as if Europe is going to become the grave of that same civilization.
It was not easy to come here, though. As a
conservative college professor I soon realized that I
had left the lion's den only be hurled into the snake
pit instead. I taught for three years at Skidmore, a
small liberal arts college here in upstate NY that
does its best to put two meanings into "liberal". It's
a long story that I won't bore you with now. Suffice
it to say that I soon discovered that the venom that
is slowly killing free society in Europe is also being
injected into America, little by little, day by day.
Postmodern collectivism opens the door for
totalitarianism and tyranny. It is the greatest threat
to free society. It must be stopped. You are doing a
great job at it with your blog. Keep it up!
/Sven
"Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction."
Ronald Reagan
He attaches a cartoon from a Swedish newspaper, which can be seen, together with appropriate commentary, here. The post on Pamela's website is here.
Note particularly Sven's comment about what is happening in the United States, as viewed from a college campus.
See also my previous Dancing For The Boa Constrictor post.
3:33 PM
Tuesday, November 01, 2005
WHAT'S WRONG WITH THE MOVIES?
Roger has some thoughts and an interesting discussion.
8:32 PM
Monday, October 31, 2005
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.)
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")
3:16 PM
Sunday, October 30, 2005
BOOK REVIEW: On The Rails: A Woman's Journey
Linda Niemann
Rating: 5 Stars
(previously published under the title Boomer: Railroad Memoirs)
What happens when a PhD in English, a woman, takes a job with the railroad? Linda Niemann tells the story based on her own experiences. It's a remarkable document--a book that "is about railroading the way 'Moby Dick' is about whaling", according to a Chicago Sun-Times reviewer. (Although I think a better Melville comparison would be with "White Jacket", Melville's book about his experiences as a crewman on an American sailing warship. Which is still very high praise.)
Niemann had gotten a PhD and a divorce simultaneously, and her life was on a downhill slide. "The fancy academic job never materialized," and she was living in a shack in the mountains and hanging around with strippers, poets, musicians, and drug dealers. Then she saw the employment ad for the Southern Pacific railroad.
When I saw the ad in the Sunday paper--BRAKEMEN WANTED--I saw it as a chance to clean up my act and get away. In a strategy of extreme imitation, I felt that by doing work this dangerous, I would have to make a decision to live, to protect myself. I would have to choose to stay alive every day, to hang on to the side of those freightcars for dear life. Nine thousand tons moving at sixty miles an hour into the fearful night.
Niemann is hired by the Southern Pacific to work at Watsonville, a small freightyard whose main function is to switch out all the perishable freight from the Salinas Valley. Other pioneering women are also joining the railroad at this time, and Niemann soon finds herself a member of an "all-girl team," assigned to work the midnight shift during the rainy season. Their responsibility will be to reorganize all the cars that have come in during the day, positioning them on the correct tracks and in the correct sequence. They will have at their disposal a switch engine and an engineer, but it will be their responsibility to plan the moves as well as to execute them--coupling and uncoupling cars and air hoses, setting and releasing handbrakes, throwing switches. Before work, they meet at a local espresso house.
It was an odd feeling to be getting ready to go to work when everybody else was ending their evenings, relaxed, dressed up, and, I began to see, privileged. They were going to put up their umbrellas, go home, and sleep. We were going to put rubber clothes on and play soccer with boxcars... (continued)
7:16 AM
Saturday, October 29, 2005
THE ASCENDANCY OF THEORY
(This week, I'm rerunning a selection of my favorite posts from the last 3 years. Here are two posts that at first glance may appear to have little to do with one another. The first is about academia and particularly about literary criticsm. The second is about business management and involves things like the mix of hat and bra sizes in a department store. But they're really both about the same thing, which is the growing ascendancy of theory and abstraction in American society.)
THE DICTATORSHIP OF THEORY
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.""
In university humanities departments, theory is increasingly dominant--not theory in the traditional scholarly and scientific sense of a tentative conceptual model, always subject to revision, but theory in the sense of an almost religious doctrine, accepted on the basis of assertion and authority. To quote Professor "X" once again: "Graduate "education" in a humanities discipline like English seems to be primarily about indoctrination and self-replication."
The experiences of Professor "X" are far from unique. Professor "Y," chair of an English department, describes his experiences in interviewing for a new job (also in an e-mail to Critical Mass). "How truthful could I afford to be about my growing dissatisfaction with theory? Should I trump up some ghastly theoretical allegiances, or should I just come clean about my desire to leave theory behind to try to become genuinely learned?" He decided to do the latter, cautiously. In his job talk, he said:
"The writings I've published draw on a number of different theoretical perspectives...the overarching goal I've set for myself in my scholarship, though is gradually to lessen my reliance on the theories of others..." He sensed at this point that he had lost the support of about three quarters of his audience, and he was not offered the job. Those who did like the statement were older faculty members--one of whom later told Prof "Y" that she hadn't heard anyone say something like this in twenty years.
Why is theory (which would often more accurately be called meta-theory) so attractive to so many denizens of university humanities departments? To some extent, the explanation lies in simple intellectual fad-following. But I think there is a deeper reason. Becoming an alcolyte of some all-encompassing theory can spare you from the effort of learning about anything else. For example: if everything is about (for example) power relationships--all literature, all history, all science, even all mathematics--you don't need to actually learn much about medieval poetry, or about the Second Law of thermodynamics, or about isolationism in the 1930s. You can look smugly down on those poor drudges who do study such things, while enjoying "that intellectual sweep of comprehension known only to adolescents, psychopaths and college professors" (the phrase is from Andrew Klavan's unusual novel True Crime.)
The dictatorship of theory has reached its greatest extremes in university humanities departments, but is not limited to these. Writing 50 years ago, C S Lewis says the following about his sociologist hero in the novel That Hideous Strength:
"..his education had had the curious effect of making things that he read and wrote more real to him than the things he saw. Statistics about agricultural laboureres were the substance: any real ditcher, ploughman, or farmer's boy, was the shadow...he had a great reluctance, in his work, to ever use such words as "man" or "woman." He preferred to write about "vocational groups," "elements," "classes," and "populations": for, in his own way, he believed as firmly as any mystic in the superior reality of the things that are not seen."
It's unlikely that the phenomenon Lewis describes has become any less prevalent in the intervening half-century. But in the social sciences, there is at least some tradition of empiricism to offset an uncontrolled swing to pure theory.
The theoretical obsession has even made a transition from academia into the business world, via MBA programs. Many newly-graduated MBAs have in their head some strategic "paradigm," into which they will fit any business reality like a Procrustean bed. The 4X4 strategic grid, or the mathematical decision tool, are far more real to them than the actual details of manufacturing and selling a particular product. Like Lewis' sociologist, they believe in "the superior reality of things not seen." The attractions of theory-driven kind of thinking in business are similar to those that make it attractive in university humanities departments. By emphasizing theoretical knowledge, an MBA with little experience can convince himself (and possibly others) that he deserves more authority than those with broad experience and "tacit knowledge" in a particular business.
I'm not arguing that theory is useless in business management, any more than I'm arguing that it's useless in academia. I am arguing that theory should be balanced by factual knowledge and empiricism, and that it should never be allowed to degenerate into dogma.
There's an old saying: when the only tool you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. In today's world, we have an epidemic of people metaphorically trying to use hammers to drive nails, or to use saws to weld metal. Academia bears a grave responsibility for this situation. Too often, professors have acted not like true scholars, but like preachers believing that their salvation lies in getting people to accept the One True Doctrine, entire and unmodified--or like salesmen who have only one product to sell and will do their best to sell it to you, regardless of whether it has anything to do with your actual needs or not.
The correspondence on Critical Mass gives hope that this situation may giving rise to a reaction within academia. Professor "Y" also tells about a discussion with a senior professor of English at Oxford. "he was recounting the various theoretical steamrollers he'd seen come and go over the past forty years when someone asked him, "What comes after theory?" He paused dramatically, crooked one evebrow, and said, "Honesty."
Bring it on.
MANAGEMENT MENTALITIES
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."
Drucker remembers his conversations with Uncle Henry. "He would tell stories constantly, always to do with a late consignment of ladies' hats, or a shipment of mismatched umbrellas, or the notions counter. His stories would drive me up the wall. But gradually I learned to listen, at least with one ear. For surprisingly enough he always leaped to a generalization from the farrago of anecdotes and stocking sizes and color promotions in lieu of markdowns for mismatched umbrellas."
Reflecting many years later, Drucker observes: "There are lots of people with grasshopper minds who can only go from one specific to another--from stockings to buttons, for instance, or from one experiment to another--and never get to the generalization and the concept. They are to be found among scientists as often as among merchants. But I have learned that the mind of the good merchant, as also of the good artist or good scientist, works the way Uncle Henry's mind worked. It starts out with the most specific, the most concrete, and then reaches for the generalization."
Drucker also knew another leading merchant, Charles Kellstadt (who had once run Sears.) Kellstadt and Drucker served together on a Department of Defense advisory board (on procurement policy), and Kellstadt told "the same kind of stories Uncle Henry had told." Drucker says that his fellow board members "suffered greatly from his interminable and apparently pointless anecdotes."
On one occasion, a "whiz kid" (this was during the McNamara era) was presenting a proposal for a radically new approach to defense pricing policy. Kellstadt "began to tell a story of the bargain basement in the store in Chillicothe, Ohio, where he had held his first managerial job, and of some problem there with the cup sizes of women's bras. he would stop every few sentences and ask the bewildered Assistant Secretary a quesion about bras, then go on. Finally, the Assistant Secretary said, "You don't understand Mr. Kellstadt; I'm talking about concepts." "So am I," said Charlie, quite indignant, and went on. Ten minutes later all of us on the board realized that he had demolished the entire proposal by showing us that it was far too complex, made far too many assumptions, and contains far too many ifs, buts, and whens." After the meeting, another board member (dean of a major engineering school) said admiringly, "Charlie, that was a virtuoso performance. but why did you have to drag in the cup sizes of the bras in your bargain basement forty years ago?" Drucker reports that Charlie was surprised by the question: "How else can I see a problem in my mind's eye?"
From these two encounters, Drucker draws this conclusion:
"Fifty years or more ago the Uncle Henry's and the Charlie Kellsadts dominated; then it was necessary for Son Irvin to emphasize systems, principles, and abstractions. There was need to balance the overly perceptual with a little conceptual discipline. I still remember the sense of liberation during those years in London when I stumbled onto the then new Symblolical Logic (which I later taught a few times), with its safeguards against tautologies and false analogies, against generalizing from isolated events, that is, from anecdotes, and its tools of semantic rigor. But now we again need the Uncle Henrys and Charlie Kellstadts. We have gone much too far toward dependence on untested quantification, toward symmetrical and purely formal models, toward argument from postulates rather than from experience, and toward moving from abstraction to abstraction without once touching the solid ground of concreteness. We are in danger of forgetting what Plato taught at the very beginning of systematic analysis and thought in the West, in two of the most beautiful and moving of his Dialogoues, the Phaedrus and the Krito...They teach us that experience without the test of logic is not "rhetoric" but chitchat, and that logic without the test of experience is not "logic" but absurdity. Now we need to learn again what Charlie Kellstadt meant when he said, "How else can I see a problem in my mind's eye?""
(emphasis added)
Update 10/30/05: I want to make it clear that I'm not attacking theory and abstraction. Without theory and abstraction, we couldn't build and fly airliners. Without theory and abstraction, it wouldn't be possibe to run a business much bigger than a single store. But when theory is not based on observation and reasoning; when it becomes dogma, then it does more harm than good. When people using an abstraction forget that it is an abstraction--that "the map is not the territory"--and treat it as something concrete, then there can be malign consequences. Professor Drucker's advice that "we again need the Uncle Henrys and Charlie Kellstadts" is, I believe, correct.
9:08 AM
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