W. P. Carey MBA - Executive Program - Arizona State University

Learning from leaders

When Andy Grove got his PhD from the University of California , Berkeley , in 1963, he was a corporate recruiter's dream candidate. He had a number of job options, perhaps the best of which was with Bell Labs, then the Mecca of research in solid-state physics. But Grove made a different choice. Rather than head for Bell Labs, he joined Fairchild Semiconductor, a West Coast upstart, where he worked under the legendary Gordon Moore, who led the company's research operation. That was an early example of out-of-the-box thinking from Grove, who five years later left Fairchild with Moore and others to co-found Intel.

Learn about personal growth from 25 of the most influential leaders of our era. Andrew Grove is given special attention:

Grove's leadership of Intel -- marked as it has been by unconventional thinking, imagination and integrity -- contributed this month to his being named the most influential business leader of the past 25 years by Wharton and Nightly Business Report (NBR), the most watched daily business program on U.S. television.

The 25 leaders selected as most influential are these:

Mary Kay Ash, founder of Mary Kay Cosmetics; Jeff Bezos, CEO of Amazon.com; John Bogle, founder of The Vanguard Group; Richard Branson, CEO of Virgin Group; Warren Buffett, CEO of Berkshire Hathaway; James Burke, former CEO of Johnson & Johnson; Michael Dell, CEO of Dell Computers; Peter Drucker, the educator and author; Bill Gates, chairman of Microsoft; William George, former CEO of Medtronics; Louis Gerstner, former CEO of IBM; Alan Greenspan, Chairman, U.S. Federal Reserve; Andy Grove, chairman of Intel; Lee Iacocca, former CEO of Chrysler; Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple Computers; Herb Kelleher, CEO of Southwest Airlines; Peter Lynch, former manager of Fidelity's Magellan Fund; Charles Schwab, founder of Charles Schwab Inc.; Frederick Smith, CEO of Federal Express; George Soros, founder and chairman of Open Society Institute; Ted Turner, founder of CNN; Sam Walton, founder of Wal-Mart; Jack Welch, former CEO of General Electric; Oprah Winfrey, chairman of the Harpo group of companies; and Mohammed Yunus, founder of Grameen Bank.

Illustrated history of China

Here is a beautifully illustrated timeline of China's history with maps and drawings.

The cost of college textbooks

The average cost of textbooks for an undergraduate is now just under $1000 a year . What makes college textbooks cost so much? This article explores the ways in which publishers are "bundling" products and increasing prices.

No life on Mars but plenty of bugs

Here's an interview with the person responsible for maintaining computer operations on the Mars vehicles:

In today's edition of Wired News, I interview Mars Rover mission chief software architect Glenn Reeves about the challenges of maintaining a functioning operating system on another planet -- and what it's like to live life on Martian Standard Time.

Social (virtual) networks

Orkut has started a new social network and it's by invitation only. The response has been both positive and negative -- positive in that a lot of people have signed up and negative in that a lot of people have felt it is elitist or biased or in some other way not really a fully open network.

The statistics on the ramp in traffic at Orkut versus existing social networks (Friendster, LinkedIn and Tribe) are shown here.

The web as a social institution and its influence on social patterns is only starting to emerge.

UPDATE: Here is an article in Wired on social nets and how they are not all making friends. And here is an analysis of the "many to many" networking scheme -- it's strengths and weaknesses and where Orkut may be vulnerable.

UPDATE: Orkut = roach motel? You can check in but you can't check out. Here is another take on this social web.

David Bradley

The name probably doesn't ring a bell but one of his contributions to the IBM PC will. He is the inventor of -- and wrote the code for -- the most famous combination of keys on any PC: control-alt-delete.

The engineers knew they had to design a simple way to restart the computer should it fail. Bradley wrote the code to make it work.

"I didn't know it was going to be a cultural icon," Bradley said. "I did a lot of other things than CtrlAltDelete, but I'm famous for that one."

He's retiring today (Friday) from IBM. Once on a panel with Bill Gates, he was asked if he really was the inventor of CntrlAltDelete. He claimed credit for that, but added, "I may have invented it, but Bill made it famous." Bill didn't laugh.

Outsourcing -- it's causes and cures

Much talk about the movement of "knowledge-based" jobs overseas has led some to wish for political protection -- make it illegal. Glenn Reynolds paints the fuller picture:

I read Dan Pink's cover story in this month's Wired about outsourcing. The Wired cover features an Indian woman as "the new face of the silicon age," and the piece makes clear that Americans need to be focusing more on valuing smartness and hard work. As a sidebar piece by Chris Anderson puts it, India represents a "practically infinite pool of smart, educated, English-speaking people eager to work." And behind India, there's China.

So what's going on in America? Nothing that should frighten the Indians too much. Oh, there's some talk of legislation to limit outsourcing, but that won't work -- and, if it does, will simply constitute a cure worse than the disease. Or, we could be working to make our education system more challenging and effective, encouraging our kids to work harder, and develop their intelligence.

We're certainly not doing that. In Nashville, schools have stopped posting the honor roll. In other schools, cheating is routinely winked at, to the point where a speaker on academic dishonesty reports that she was practically laughed off the stage.

The wealth that the United States has accumulated is due in large part to working hard. When being smart is something to mock and working hard is for dullards, we won't be smart enough to figure out political protections to keep anything but busy-work safe from outsourcing. As Reynolds concludes:

Part of that hard work lies in educating the next generation. It's pretty clear that we're dropping the ball in that department. Instead of worrying about outsourcing, maybe we should be worrying about that.

UPDATE: More comments on the relative merits of challenges from other countries for knowledge work:

"The United States will be a Third World country in twenty years." So intoned Paul Craig Roberts, a former Reagan administration Treasury official and supply-side economist, at a Brookings Institution briefing on January 7. Roberts makes this prediction because of white-collar job losses from the outsourcing of service sector employment to India and China. As a result, whole classes of high-wage service sector employees--from software programmers to radiologists--now find themselves in competition with highly skilled workers abroad who earn a fraction of what their U.S. counterparts make.

Read the whole article.

UPDATE: A review of Roberts' protectionist stance is provided here.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Here is a collection of comments on the outsourcing debate, referencing the Wired cover story, the New York Times article and web references from various sources.

Who to vote for

With so many choices, it can sometimes be confusing. To help, there is President Match. Answer the questions and it will tell you which Presidential candidate is the right one for you. An acquaintance, who thought he was for Clark, answered all the questions and found that, really, the one he wants is Kucinich; Sharpton was second. Clark came in fourth, right after Kerry. So, it really does help.

Campaign director perks

The Washington Post reported that the Dean campaign has decided to forego further advertising in this round of the primaries. There's more:

The New York Times says the campaign "has upended its advertising strategy. Dr. Dean, who last June was the first candidate to advertise, is now the only major candidate to be off the air right now, and his strategists said Wednesday night that they were in no hurry to return." Furthermore, Dean campaign officials "said they were only confident of having enough money to compete through next week."

But the kicker, sure to anger Dean contributors, is buried later in the article: Joe Trippi "forfeited a salary as a campaign manager but collected commissions -- said to be as high as 15 percent in some cases -- based on advertising buys."

Comments here question how a campaign can justify paying a commission to a manager who places buys for ads for the campaign? There are probably a lot of people who could place $40 million in ads, pick up their 15% fee ($6 million!) and lose both primaries. Do you really need to pay that high a commission to get that kind of service?

The 101 dumbest moments in business

Business 2.0 has just published its own list of the 101 dumbest moments in business for 2003. Here's the winner (there are 100 more, though, and all interesting):

In August, the board of the New York Stock Exchange decides to give CEO Dick Grasso his $139.5 million pension up front, ostensibly to save the estimated $10 million it would cost to deliver the payout at retirement. Grasso offers a succinct if not altogether satisfying explanation: "I'm blessed." When a firestorm erupts over Grasso's payday, he graciously agrees not to take another $48 million he has coming to him. Then, a week later, Grasso "resigns"—and quickly claims he was fired, which entitles him to another $58 million, including the $48 million he had promised to forgo.

Hidden masts

Envirocom, a South African firm, is addressing the aesthetic side of cellular communications:

Mobile phone operators go to extraordinary lengths to conceal the masts that form their networks. They are being disguised as chimneys, clocks, drainpipes, telegraph poles, and even weathervanes.

A firm in Europe is putting up the masts as fake trees -- green, with branches and foliage, and micro-wave capability.

Digital pony express

In Cambodia, motorcycles equipped with Wi/Fi pull up to a local school, download all the local email to a laptop, drive to the next school or village and upload those emails destined for that location, simultaneously downloading local email destined for other locales.

It is a digital pony express: five Motomen ride their routes five days a week, downloading and uploading e-mail. The system, developed by a Boston company, First Mile Solutions, uses a receiver box powered by the motorcycle's battery. The driver need only roll slowly past the school to download all the village's outgoing e-mail and deliver incoming e-mail. The school's computer system and antenna are powered by solar panels. Newly collected data is stored for the day in a computer strapped to the back of the motorcycle. At dusk, the motorcycles converge on the provincial capital, Ban Lung, where an advanced school is equipped with a satellite dish, allowing a bulk e-mail exchange with the outside world.

Science

This is an experiment in which 320,000 ping pong balls are released down a ski jump. The experiment is described and there is video of its execution at the ping-pong ball avalanche home page. It isn't completely clear which tenets of science were being tested, but it's one of the few experiments that gets its own homepage. There are some experiments where lab assistants really earn their money.

Take a look

This is amazing: from the Milky Way to a carbon atom, each step an order of magnitude. Take a look.

A practical catalog

For practical jokes, that is. It's the 1930 edition of the Burlesque and Side Degree Specialties, Paraphernalia and Costumes for Freemasons, scanned and posted to the Web. It appears that this was an interesting decade in which to be an adult. An entire catalog detailing costumes, activities, fun games (with instructions), and practical jokes with helpful diagrams to make sure you understand exactly how funny they will be. A disclaimer at the front says that any unfortunate consequences are the responsibility of the perpetrators only. (via BoingBoing.)

"Gauc cops"

They are

a special squad of San Diego-area cops who specialize in busting -- and jailing! -- sneak-thieves who rob small avacado growers of thousands of dollars' worth of "green gold," especially around Superbowl season, when the fences are greedy for chip-dip.

Although there is no set profile of an avocado thief, law enforcement officials say many of them are transients or petty thieves who steal to support a drug habit, sometimes selling avocados to naive or unscrupulous roadside stands and restaurants or to wholesalers in Los Angeles. Last summer, in broad daylight, avocado thieves in Bonsall, west of Valley Center, shot at grove workers as they made their getaway. There were no injuries, but he thieves were never caught.

Ms. Cruz of the San Diego County sheriff's office said there tended to be a correlation between price and theft. Although reputable packing houses require documentation showing where avocados were grown, including an authorized signature, she said it was not difficult to launder avocados -- especially around the Super Bowl, which, along with Cinco de Mayo, is the biggest avocado day of the year. "They go anyplace you can think of," she said of rustled fruit. "There's a lot of guacamole out there."

Expanding set of cellular service offerers

The real money in cellular services is in the minutes -- the revenue streams are huge. Anyone who doubts this should consider the new entries in this marketplace: Disney, Sony, Nike, and Wal-Mart are all considering getting into the cellular service market.

Amazon has a P/E ratio!

Having finally managed positive earnings over a full year, Amazon shares have now acquired that most basic measurement of value, a price-earnings ratio. With shares at $53 and earnings of 17 cents per share, it's a bit over 300 to 1, which suggests that perhaps the New Economy is not dead after all.

This bit of financial news made the NYTimes. There's an interesting discussion here of the new economy and the implications for valuation of companies.

New Nikon digital out today

Nikon has unveiled it's new budget digital SLR camera today. Under $1000, compatible with the full line of Nikon AF and DX Nikkor lenses, and a six-megapixel sensor. There's picture and more detailed description at Gizmodo.

Confessions of a car salesman

What really goes on in the back rooms of car dealerships across America?

What does the car salesman do when he leaves you sitting in a sales office and goes to talk with his boss?

What are the tricks salespeople use to increase their profit and how can consumers protect themselves from overpaying?

These were the questions we, the editors at Edmunds.com, wanted to answer for our readers. But how could they really know that our information was accurate and up-to-date? Finally, we came up with the idea of hiring an investigative reporter to work in the industry and experience, firsthand, the life of a car salesman.

Read the whole inside story, told by a writer hired by Edmunds to work for 10 weeks as an actual car salesman. The article is a great read. Here is some of the vocabulary he learned:

Pounder - A deal with $1,000 profit in it. "Doctor comes in and buys the top of the line model, fully loaded - and he pays sticker! That'll be a two pounder for me."

Rip their heads off - This describes taking a customer to the cleaners. "I stole their trade in, I sold them the car at a grand over sticker - I mean, I just ripped their heads off."

Roach - A customer with bad credit. Not to be confused with the "roach coach" (see entry below). "The guy looked good. But we ran his credit and he turned out to be a roach. We're talkin' a 400 credit score here."

New type of matter

A new, sixth, form of matter has been created to go with the first five (solid, liquid, gas, plasma, and Bose-Einstein condensate).

"What we’ve done is create this new exotic form of matter,” said Deborah Jin, a physicist at the National Institute of Standards and Technology’s joint lab with the University of Colorado, who led the study.

“It is a scientific breakthrough in providing a new type of quantum mechanical behavior,” Jin added during a news conference.

The new material, called Fermionic condensate, is created from potassium atoms and has potential uses in many electrical conductance applications:

The cloud of supercooled potassium atoms brings Jin and fellow researchers one step closer to an everyday, usable superconductor — a material that conducts electricity without losing any of its energy.

The condensate was formed by cooling potassium atoms to one-billionth of a degree above absolute zero and then exposing them to a magnetic field to get them to pair up.

Jin stressed that her team worked with a supercooled gas, which provides little opportunity for everyday application. But the way the potassium atoms acted suggested there should be a way to translate the behavior into a room-temperature solid.

Make money with good spelling

On eBay, people pay for what they recognize. If they can't recognize what you're selling, they may not bid very much. And there is a lot they might not recognize:

Such is the eBay underworld of misspellers, where the clueless — and sometimes just careless — sell labtop computers, throwing knifes, Art Deko vases, camras, comferters and saphires.

But good spellers are spotting good deals, getting good prices because there are few competitors, and then reselling the goods at market value:

Mr. Green once bought a box of gers for $2. They were gears for pocket watches, which he cleaned up and put back on the auction block with the right spelling. They sold for $200. "I've bought and sold stuff on eBay and Yahoo that I bought for next to nothing" because of poor spelling or vague descriptions, he said.

Baseball musings

Speaking of statistics (last couple of posts), if you enjoy the technical details of baseball and more in-depth discussions of baseball topics of the day, a new web site -- Baseball Musings -- is up and has lots of current baseball information. The author of the site is part of Baseball Information Solutions, a new company that provides baseball statistics for various organizations.

Blog roundup

If you find blogs to be a useful source of information, you might be interested in this very useful listing of some of the most informative blogs out there. Keep the list -- it's a great set of references if you are interested in a particular news item and want to see what others are saying about it.

New Hampshire roundup

Here is a roundup of comments on the New Hampshire primary from all the usual pundits. The Wonkette asks how much Dean has to lose by before he calls a primary a "loss." The results (Kerry, 39%; Dean, 26%) were close to those predicted by the "hardcore" statistician, reported earlier here, and he is now the only one to come close on both primaries.

UPDATE: The forecasters' are changing their forecasts as the results come in, so more of them are getting the New Hampshire primary correct. Zogby, for example, changed his forecast from statistical dead heat between Kerry and Dean (last night) to Kerry blow-out (this morning). Nailed it.

Interest in space exploration continues

It seems that there is still broad public interest in space exploration. The New York Times reports that over 32 million people have visited the websites to view pictures sent back by Rover. This number may even top visits to all the presidential candidate web sites. Combined. The crowd in Denver at the museum to view the images is shown at right.

Google bombing

You get a note from a friend on your birthday and it says "type 'over the hill' into the Google search engine." You do it; first on the list of retrieved sites is the one at your company displaying a picture of ... you! You've been "Google bombed."

By figuring out how Google's algorithm prioritizes the sites it lists, a group of people can get together and use this information to manipulate the order of retrieved sites for a chosen search phrase so that the site they want is right at the top of the list when that phrase is used.

Until recently, if you typed "miserable failure" into Google, it brought back, at number 1, George W. Bush's resume. Now it brings back a tie, including former President Carter, Senator Hillary Clinton, movie maker Michael Moore and maybe, by now, a few others. All the results of Google bombing, a fad that was practiced by only a few net-savvy groups of friends a year ago but now is spreading out to the suburbs.

Learn how to present the perfect practical joke for your boss's next birthday.

In the Mini-Cooper waiting room

Many car makers must rely on big discounts to woo buyers, but some models are so popular that would-be owners face long waiting periods. They include the Mini, from BMW; the Maybach, from Mercedes-Benz; and, to a lesser extent, the Mazda RX-8 and the Nissan 350Z. The companies are aiming to make those delays, whether caused by high demand or custom orders, a bit more bearable for the consumer.

This is a problem for the new Mini-Cooper, says Ms. Martin, the "guardian of brand soul" at the car company:

"These people are super-excited for their cars, but they have a long way to go before they see them," Ms. Martin said. The wait for customized Minis, which make up 95 percent of sales, is now 8 to 12 weeks.

How to address customer anxiety? Let them track how the delivery process is going. Mr. Meyers, a lawyer in Philidelphia awaiting his new Mini S felt he was part of the process from the beginning:

To keep track of his purchase, he logged on at least once a day, if not two or three times, to the Owner's Lounge area of the Mini Cooper Web site (www.miniusa.com). Using his vehicle identification number, Mr. Meyers tracked his car's status from the day he ordered it, Nov. 11, to when it arrived at the port in Jersey City on Jan. 6. By the time he picked up his Mini at a local dealer on Jan. 15, he had already named it Chili Palmer, after John Travolta's character in the movie "Get Shorty."

"This car is definitely a guy," Mr. Meyers said of his Mini, which is chili red with a glossy white roof. He had also introduced Chili to other Mini owners by posting its specifications on the owners' section of the site. "I have become absolutely obsessed with my Mini," he said.

In earlier times, auto manufacturers did little for buyers awaiting their ordered cars -- why? the sale had already been made. That attitude has adjusted some and the internet is now a key to keeping interest and brand enthusiasm high:

Mini, for example, regularly sends out welcome kits to its new buyers as part of its "Make Waiting Fun" program. The kits include retro 1950's games like Interstate Highway Bingo and a stencil that can be used to spray-paint a "Mini Parking Only" sign in the garage.

George Carlin being serious

George Carlin is 66 and still very active as a comedian. Why has he been able to keep drawing an audience for so long?

I'm one of the best ones out there. I sell 250,000 tickets a year.

What motivates him and gives him direction in developing new material? Businessmen.

I'm not liberal. I'm just about (being) anti-United States. I don't like the way this country operates. I think we've ruined this place. And I think it's largely because of businessmen

How badly have businessmen treated the United States? Shattered it.

This country has been, for about 180 years now, badly mishandled. And it's been in the wrong hands. It's been in the hands of the business interests. And a lot of the beauty of this country has been shattered by them.

About the only area one can think of where it hasn't failed miserably is in making George Carlin rich. And providing him with the occasional business endorsement, network special, album production, book publication, movie part (he's in the new Ben Affleck film), and newspaper publicity. He hates that.

Tailoring supply to changes in demand

Here is an example of supply that varies with demand -- a web site that changes its design and content four or five times during the day: in the morning, they found that site visitors were interested in the day's headlines -- hard news; by afternoon, the interests of site visitors were broader and more eclectic; in the evening, site visitors were at home and looking for more in-depth discussions of various areas of interest.

So the site changes its look several times over a 24-hour cycle, the better to meet the changing interests of its visitors.

This same idea, carried on at a higher level, drives store design at Seven-Eleven Japan, a chain of stores that change their layout several times a day. Customers who enter in the morning are looking for different products (coffee, bagels) and have different time constraints than customers who enter the store in the late afternoon. So the stores change their layout, what products they feature, and as a result are the leading retail establishment in Japan.

In Japan, 7dream.com, a joint venture between the Seven-Eleven Japan convenience store chain and six other Japanese corporations, including music vendor Sony and Fuji Photo Film, allows customers to order tickets and books off the Internet and download music at their local store. Cashiers estimate the age and record the gender of each customer. The information is compiled overnight and distributed to give both the store and its supplier a precise picture of who buys what, when, Whang says. Based on that information, stores change their layouts several times daily in response to expected customer demand.

Security in the curriculum

New studies in supply chain management coupled with the United States' increased needs for security have yielded results that aid the Government in increasing international security without overburdening business enterprise. The understanding that the U.S. must incorporate security into its business planning over the long run has prompted Prof. Hua Lee at Stanford, as well as faculty at some other schools, to start including it in the supply chain curriculum:

As he learns more, Lee, who is now on sabbatical, expects to make security a larger part of the curriculum in his MBA classes at Stanford. "The links between security and the supply chain are becoming increasingly important. The subject deserves much more attention."

FDIC web site hacked?

In case your firm received email from the FDIC requesting personal information, be aware of this warning from the FDIC:

Emails to financial institution customers that fraudulently claim to be from the FDIC attempt to obtain highly sensitive personal information, including bank account information. These emails falsely indicate that FDIC deposit insurance is suspended until the requested customer information is provided.

There is more information available here.

Pepsi's musical ad

Pepsi aims at a new generation: music downloaders. A new ad by Pepsi features twenty of the young people who have been sued for "unauthorized downloads" of music from the web. The ad has some fun with this practice and then introduces Pepsi iTunes: 100 million free -- and legal -- downloads Pepsi is making available from Apple's iTunes site. The ad will run during the Superbowl.

"It's all in good spirit," says Dave Burwick, chief marketer, Pepsi, North America. "This has been a huge cultural phenomenon. It's highly relevant and topical for consumers. We're turning people to buying music online vs. stealing it online."

RIAA is supportive of the ad as well: "This ad shows how everything has changed,"

Twenty-year anniversary

Twenty years ago this past weekend (January 24th), Apple launched its Macintosh. It was so new and so different, newspaper articles had to include a definition of Macintosh (not apple, the fruit). And it had strange new features: "icons" on the computer screen; and a strange attachment called a "mouse." Ted Friedman of Georgia State University says:

"This was the product that inspired people in graphic design, and students, and other creative people. It was the whole idea of computers not just being something you would see in the office."

Techies trace that change in thinking to a TV ad that teased the Mac's debut during the 1984 Super Bowl. Even today that ad is considered one of the best ever produced.

"It was a pivotal moment in the history of computers and the history of advertising," said Friedman, whose book "Electric Dreams," on the cultural history of personal computers, is due out soon.

UPDATE: There is a collection of stories from the early days of Macintosh here, plus a gallery of photos documenting its development, the design team (shown here) that put it together, and its launch.

Mars Grand Canyon

Here's a view of Mars from the European craft orbiting the planet. The crevice shown in the middle of the picture has dimensions approaching those of the Grand Canyon in our own State. The canyon is about 1000 miles long and about 40 miles wide. You can view a full slide show here.

Change in the zeitgeist

Who is the most admired person in China? There is evidence that it is "Chairman Gates." A recent web hoax claiming that he had died elicited a huge out-pouring of grief on Chinese internet chat rooms. This fundamental shift in who the young generation venerates and who its heroes are speaks volumes, many believe, about how profound a change has taken place in the world view of PRC young people -- the next generation of leaders sees a leading capitalist not as an exploiter but as a role model.

Test this forecast

Here's a stats site that has posted exact predictions for the New Hampshire primary: Kerry wins by about 10%, receiving somewhere in the mid-30%'s of the votes. The forecast was up on Sunday, 48 hours before the actual election.

Diversity

If it isn't already more than apparent, there are specialty interests of just about every type available on the web. Right now, for example, you can get a full description of Marth Stewart and her trial, including shoes (heels, spike), pants (grey), handbag (Hermes), Juror 1, Juror 108, consultants and where they sit. And, even more surpisingly, you can get it from Newsweek. The web continues to be the most visible example of the specialization of products and segmentation of the market: products of every kind are now aimed precisely at niche markets, customized to the tastes of special interest groups. The era of one-size-fits-all, even in news sources, fades further.

Greenspan's future

Howard Dean has said that Alan Greenspan should be replaced and that he would do so if elected as President.

There is precedent for this position -- CNN reports that Dan Quayle held a similar position when running for Vice President.

Please, take MORE time off

Swedish law provides for 13 months of parental leave following the birth of a child, the time to be split as desired between the father and mother of the new-born. The government pays up to 80% of the lost wages during the time off.

Fathers have taken proportionately less of the available time -- mothers take about 85% of it. The goverment has added financial incentives for fathers who will take additional parental leave and is considering an ad campaign, including the slogan "How many men on their deathbeds say they spent too little time with their boss?"

The aspirin theory of university funding

There are, broadly, two models for running universities. They can be autonomous institutions, mainly dependent on private income, such as fees, donations and investments, or they can be state-financed and (as a result) state-run. America's flourishing universities exemplify the former, Europe's the latter.

Britain wants to move toward the American model, reports the Economist, and makes a modest beginning this next year by allowing its universities to charge variable fees rather than the current flat fee for all.

Increased fees raises the issue of providing higher education for all classes, including the financially disadvantaged. The British Government proposes to address this problem through large-scale funding -- enough to provide university education for 50% of its high graduates, up from the current 20%. This has been referred to as the aspirin theory of education -- if two aspirin are good, then five will be better.

But some economists are questioning the premise behind the spending plan, that is, the assumption that more spending on higher education will result in better education and a better-off country.

Amid much blather about the “knowledge economy”, the core of this belief is that more higher education means higher productivity and more wealth. In reality, there is no proven connection between spending on universities and prosperity, nor can there be. Those rich countries that spend a lot on higher education may do so for the same reasons they subsidise opera: because they like it, rather than because it makes them richer.

A few have even gone so far as to say increased funding and the resulting increased attendance at university might be a bad idea.

Indeed, faced with ageing populations, Britain and most European countries arguably should be encouraging their young people to start earning earlier in their lives rather than later.

One-dollar ads

You're looking at the newest type of advertising: pasting ads on circulating dollar bills. Marketplace reports that the USA Network is advertising its newest series by putting ads on 50,000 dollar bills, put into circulation at "hipster bars in Los Angeles and New York."

Marketplace wonders what kinds of revenue the Government might be able to raise if it sold advertising space on its circulating currency. This is probably a trend that won't last very long.

Really?

Do you worry that being out in the cold without enough warm clothing might give you a cold? Or, does it seem to you that people have less free time than they used to -- that everyone seems to be running around more? Or, perhaps you feel that running around is necessary because it now requires two incomes to keep a home going.

You should have watched John Stossel's program on Myths, Lies and Downright Stupidity on 20/20 this week. You would have found out that these are just three of the 10 most common myths about life. For example, regarding free time Mr. Stossel reports:

Surprisingly, since 1965 we've gained almost an hour more free time every day.

"There is a discrepancy between what people say and what they report when they keep a time diary," [sociologist John Robinson of the University of Maryland] said.

We have more free time now, say the experts, because we're working less, marrying later, having fewer children, and retiring earlier.

If we're so stressed for free time, it's hard to explain how 36 million people can find time to golf, and 65 million go camping, and hundreds of millions go to the beach, the movies, and sports events.

He has a new book out, too, describing how he has exposed hucksters and other scam artists.

You can read about other popular myths at the 20/20 Program site -- that may help you decide if you want to buy the book. Now that you know you have more free time than you thought, this might be a way to find out about other things you didn't know you had.

No More "Bennifer"?

It appears that the once sensational relationship has come to an end. According to a report by the Associated Press, a spokesperson of Jennifer Lopez confirmed the end of relationship between Lopez and Ben Affleck.

While this bit of entertainment news might not mean anything to the rest of the world, Affleck's career has taken its toll since he began the highly publicized relationship with Lopez. Affleck's recent downfall was evident with the disastrous release of the movie Gigli and the mediocre box-office performance of John Woo's sci-fi flick Paycheck.

The show business fuels on make-ups, break-ups, and celebrity gossips. With the release of Affleck and Lopez's latest collaboration - Jersey Girl - draws near, perhaps this news is yet another chapter of the never-ending "Bennifer" marketing saga.

Plants compute!

New research shows that the leaves of plants adjust their "breathing" based on making problem-solving calculations.

It's the same form of maths that is widely thought to regulate how ants forage. The signals that each ant sends out to other ants, by laying down chemical trails for example, enable the ant community as a whole to find the most abundant food sources.

This might not sound much like what a computer does, but it is. In distributed computation, signals exchanged between components of the system define the process for solving a problem. Researchers are now exploring the possibility of using distributed computing with swarms of simple robots to carry out tasks, such as searching a landscape, more efficiently than a single, more sophisticated robot could manage.

Performance vs potential

Laura Trombley, President of Pitzer College in California, has written about her college's decision to make optional the taking of the SAT test as part of the application for admission. Students with a high school GPA of at least 3.5 and standing in the top 10% of their class will be admitted. Those who don't have this academic standing can select to be evaluated on other criteria. Whether this new admission method will identify those with real academic potential versus those who have had the benefit of a great high school performance remains to be seen. The reason for dropping the SAT requirement, however, had nothing to do with evaluating academic potential but, rather, because the test is inconsistent with the college's values. Pitzer joins several East Coast colleges that no longer require the SAT for admission.

Converting LP's to CD's

Does anyone still have LP's? Or casette tapes? If so, here is a basic tutorial on how to convert them to CD's. You'll need a computer, a CD-RW drive, some cables and something to play the original LP or casette on -- and the software RipEditBurn. It's explained in the tutorial.

The ultimate alternative energy source

An earlier post linked to venture capitalists who believe that alternative energy is the next big investment opportunity. What kind of alternative energy? Here is one point of view:

Society is straining to keep pace with energy demands, expected to increase eightfold by 2050 as the world population swells toward 12 billion. The moon just may be the answer.

"Helium 3 fusion energy may be the key to future space exploration and settlement," said Gerald Kulcinski, Director of the Fusion Technology Institute (FTI) at the University of Wisconsin at Madison.

Scientists estimate there are about 1 million tons of helium 3 on the moon, enough to power the world for thousands of years. The equivalent of a single space shuttle load or roughly 25 tons could supply the entire United States' energy needs for a year, according to Apollo17 astronaut and FTI researcher Harrison Schmitt.

A single delivery meets U.S. energy needs for one year -- how much is that worth?

Composure

Using various mixing techniques, including Apple's new GarageBand (made available only last week), several internet sites have made available their own compositions based on Howard Dean's concession speech this week in Iowa. A summary article at MSNBC shows how the internet's creativity can be both a blessing and a curse. Two of the most popular composers are Lileks with his one-minute "dance worthy" tune and Barlow Farms' (using GaragaBand) 15-second version.

Einstein in Berlin

In his book Einstein in Berlin, Thomas Levenson describes Einstein's move to Berlin once his status as a world-class physicist had been well established. An interesting review article summarizes Einstein's decision:

An extraordinary offer was required to bring Einstein to Berlin (he had renounced his German citizenship twenty years before to avoid military service): a faculty appointment at the University of Berlin, with no teaching responsibilities; the directorship of a laboratory named for him, under the imprimatur of the famous Kaiser Wilhelm Institutes; and immediate election of the Prussian Academy of Sciences as the youngest member. Implicit was the promise that the powerful industrial community of Berlin stood behind the offer. The pitch was made to Einstein at his home in Zurich by two of the greatest scientists in the world, the physicist Max Planck and the physical chemist Walther Nernst. His response underscored the drama. He would require a day to think it over. Then he would meet the Berliners the next day on a railway platform, carrying a flower — white if he declined, red if he was willing to come.

Berlin became one of the five most important cities in the world and one of the truly outstanding centers of science. Germany is today focused on regaining the elite scientific status it enjoyed before World War II, after which scientific leadership moved to the United States. But the German plan is facing problems:

The latest controversy has to do with Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder’s plans to create "elite universities" to compete with German’s ubiquitous state universities, estimable institutions which provide top-down education to all comers, more or less as a matter of course. As in 1914, the problem comes down to incentives. When faculty salaries, departmental hires and student tuitions are set by political authorities, the brightest people in a global market will show a white flower more often than red.

The problem is especially clear in Berlin. The city is knitting together nicely as a political and cultural capital now, after some hard times in the 1990s. But despite its three universities, it still doesn’t have a readily identifiable economic base. Life sciences? Media? Maybe so. But for the moment, Berlin lacks even a single direct flight to the United States. That’s a market signal that is hard to miss.

Cell phone as bar-code scanner

At least four software companies have products that allow the photo-enabled cell phones to be used as bar-code scanners for getting information on products the cell-phone holder is considering buying:

Like the CueCat, the applications automatically trigger the download of coupons, reviews and other information about a given product whenever a user takes a photo of its bar code.

But whereas the CueCat needed to be plugged into a computer, shoppers can use the new services wherever they can take their camera-equipped mobile phone, and no special hardware is required -- features that proponents say will help make these systems far more successful than their much-mocked predecessor.

Although the technologies are still in their early stages, the trend is rekindling talk of a shopping revolution.

Read the whole thing.

Microsoft moves into your family room

Apple has always been the leader in easy user interfaces but some of the news on iLife versus developments at Microsoft on their Media Center makes this position of leadership seem a bit more fragile:

When Steve Jobs delivered his keynote at Macworld a couple weeks ago, lots of folks like myself were rooting for him to announce hardware and software that would integrate iLife into the stereo and television. No such luck. And because iLife remains a closed platform, there are no third party developers building sanctioned software or devices to achieve that integration.

On the other hand, Microsoft's Media Center Edition is a classic open platform. They have developed a UI that works well for the television, as well as standards for mapping to their universal remote, but they are relying upon third parties to develop interesting applications and device to support the platform. And it is working. Folks like Movielink, Musicmatch, Napster (the new, legal Napster), Ofoto and others have written applications for the platform. More importantly, however, a number of CE companies have begun developing devices to bring music to the stereo, photos to the television, etc.

Read about it here.

Really good athletes are Bayesians

An interesting article in the New York Times explores the ways in which good athletes think:

Most decisions in our lives are done in the presence of uncertainty," Dr. Karding said. "In all these cases, the prior knowledge we have can be very helpful. If the brain works in the Bayesian way, it would optimally use the prior knowledge."

The researchers drew the analogy to tennis in their paper, and it is not the first study to suggest that athletes have a more sophisticated understanding of mathematics than even they may realize.

U of A economists did much of the original investigation. If you're a Bayesian, you may want to re-evaluate participating in professional sports -- you may be better than you think.

The Iowa markets

Much has been said about the predictive capabilities of the Iowa Electronic Markets, but this picture shows they did no better forecasting the Iowa caucuses than anyone else.

(Over)simplifying the market

Presidential hopeful Kerry has included in his campaign such concerns as this:

401-K's decimated by scandals of Enron and World

This leaves out the bursting of the stockmarket bubble as a factor affecting investments. It is sometimes satisfying to feel like catastrophies can be traced to one or two "bad" people because they are, thus, much more easily remedied. As bad as the Enron collapse was, the market is still much bigger and more complex than a couple of bad actors.

Vintage sounds

If you love vintage music from the 1925-1935 decade, then you'll love this site. They have a 24-hour web station and a selection of the week each week along with the selection's background.

Another large acquisition

Cingular is close to closing a deal for the all-cash acquisition of AT&T Wireless, making it the largest wireless communications firm in the world.

Looking for a new car?

The upcoming Barrett-Jackson car auction, held each year in Scottsdale about this time, includes Michael Jackson's personal Bentley. There is a wide range of other choices, as well.

A new news-aggregator

Topix. This is their description of what they are trying to provide at their site:

Our project is a news aggregator that reads all the news, everywhere, and sorts it into thousands of categories depending on what the stories are about. One kind of sorting we do is geographical, so we produce an online news rollup for each of 30,000 towns and cities across the US. We also track every mention of a celebrity, sports team, health condition, country, music group, public companies, and some other stuff...

If you're looking for a news aggregator to help you get through the day's main stories quickly, consider adding Topix to your bookmarks.

The next big investment area

Silicon Valley start-ups are very much yesterday. Where is the next big set of opportunities?

I was visited yesterday by a good friend who is a silicon valley serial entrepreneur. He was way out in front of the Internet and saw the need for things like content delivery systems, spam filters, and a host of other critical technologies. This guy is a real money maker. And he is spending all of his time on alternative energy now.

You can read more about this and a lot more from a practicing venture capitalist with his own blog. Check it out.

Why CEO's fail

They do sometimes. A new book called Why CEO's Fail gives eleven reasons for failure. They are listed in short form here. A couple of the top items:

Arrogance (you're right, eveyone else is wrong)

Volatility

Melodrama (you have to be the center of attention)

Excessive caution

Read the whole thing. These reasons don't seem limited to CEO failure -- they are likely at the root of a much broader range of failures.

ASU scientist "stoned"

Last week at a NASA press conference, the following was broadcast:

ASU rocket scientist Phil Christensen said at a nationally televised NASA press conference that schoolkids were welcome to send rocks that they are curious about to ASU for analysis

School kids, and others, from as far away as Berlin, Germany, took him at his word and in the first several days of mail, ASU has received several tons of rocks. Analysis is the least of their problems -- just figuring out where to put them is challenge enough.

The Beast in the Garden

David Baron's new book The Beast in the Garden is a story about the reintroduction of cougars into the forests around Boulder, Colorado. In this true story, he tells of how protection of wildlife and restricted hunting resulted in an increase in the number of cougars around the town. Some people became worried about safety, but at any meetings that were held to discuss the issue as many people showed up to "speak for the cougars" as were worried about the cougars. At first there were just sightings; then, pets started disappearing; eventually, the cougars started eating people. Cougars, he reminds us, are meat eaters.

One of the points of the story, as parable, is that there are real threats and no matter how much you ignore them or how much you explain them away, they are still real.

Now mountain lions are starting to eat people in Northern California. The LA Times ran an editorial written by an Alaskan (as reported by Instapundit) with this realistic advice:

I am puzzled now by the strange way people here are dealing with mountain lions — which is to say, letting them kill you. . . .

Why would anyone go into mountain lion country without the means to protect themselves from attack? I notice the police are armed. The wardens and rangers are armed. Indeed, anyone with any clue where they are would be armed.

You can read more here on this topic. In earlier days, people living near nature viewed animals like cougars and mountain lions as a risk to life and a competitor for game; they were so successful in controlling these risks that a good portion of this generation has ceased to think they really are dangerous and find the idea of living near a "wilderness area" idyllic rather than risky. The cost to relearn some of these lessons has been dear for some.

The business of journalism

"It's more like 'Survivor.' You have to do all sorts of things you thought you'd never have to do, and the stakes are high. At the end of the day, we're all judged on how much money we made for the company."

It isn't the "Mary Tyler Moore Show anymore," the article says. Has it really taken this long for news reporters to feel like they need to make money for their companies? And then to feel as though this is some new survivor-status threat with "high stakes" and doing things "you thought you'd never have to do." Read more of this incredible story about companies trying to make money and requiring employees to be able to add value to the organization. It's news to the news department.

A Rosie "win"?

He looks happy enough. But, according to the WSJ, Dan Brewster will be fired as head of Gruner + Jahr by this Thursday. His only comment has been that he is unaware of any change in his employment status. According to the WSJ, it is a result of the conflict with Rosie, questionable circulation data, "unfortunate" acquisitions and failing performance.

Control

Time on your hands? Want the sense of taking control? Try this flash exercise. (Move your cursur around -- you'll see what to do from there.)

The use of email blasts in presidential campaigns

Here are the comments of Jay Rosen on the costs of using email (political spam) as a campaign tool:

Spammers pay no cost for annoying the 99,999 who do not buy the toner cartridge. It is a dim intelligence indeed that assumes this is so in politics. Via e-mail, the Lieberman campaign lost me as a listener, and he now has zero chance to change my mind. That's a cost. After all, I am Jewish, blessedly undecided, a registered Democrat in New York, which is a Super Tuesday primary state, so I fit his profile. And I doubt the campaign knows or cares whether these costs are greater than the gain from sending "Liebernotes" out en masse.
Spam is a stupid medium, knows it's stupid, does not care that it's stupid, and knows you hate it for its stupidity. Lieberman's spam (telling me of the "Joe-Vember to Remember outreach program") is stupid, but does not know any of these things. So there's another cost: advertising your own cluelessness, which the Lieberman web site also does in most every detail. On top of that, spam is not supposed to be solving the spam problem in Congress, but Lieberman is. And on top of that, he thinks I don’t notice that by using only his first name as much as possible he plays down his Jewish last name—as if that would fool anybody. The big story on his website today: “Joe Unveils New Ad.” You can watch it, you can read about it, and you can send money to keep it on the air.

Do we need a new pattern in presidential politics? Yes we do, because this kind of politics is dumber than spam.

Weblogs and journalism

Jay Rosen is head of NYU's Department of Journalism and a leading thinker about the interface between journalism and the web. His article on ten things that make weblogs radical journalism is here and worth reading the whole thing. Here's one of his points:

10.) Journalism traditionally assumes that democracy is what we have, information is what we seek. Whereas in the weblog world, information is what we have—it’s all around us—and democracy is what we seek.

The home of his weblog is here. He has been a leading advocate of "bottom-up" journalism for many years and his book What are Journalists For? expresses his arguments for this approach.

Here is a great review of Rosen's book and a discussion of the roots of public journalism and its role in a democracy.

The (electronic) town square

Harvard Magazine: "Welcome to Weblogs at Harvard Law, an experimental community where more than 350 students, faculty and staff members, and alumni have signed up to publicly express their thoughts about everything from social issues to software, from literature to love. Based at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society, the initiative is free and available to anyone with a Harvard.edu e-mail address. And except for a few private blogs limited to specific classes, all Harvard-hosted blogs can be read by anybody on the Web."

Creating a community and a meeting place.

2003 Darwin Awards

The chef at a hotel in Switzerland lost a finger in a meat cutting machine and, after a little hopping around, submitted a claim to his insurance company. The company, suspecting negligence, sent out one of its men to have a look for himself. He tried the machine and lost a finger. The chef's claim was approved.

The 2003 Darwin Awards are out.

After stopping for drinks at an illegal bar, a Zimbabwean bus driver found that the 20 mental patients he was supposed to be transporting from Harare to beltway had escaped. Not wanting to admit his incompetence, the driver went to a nearby bus stop and offered everyone waiting there a free ride. He then delivered the passengers to the mental hospital, telling the staff that the patients were very excitable and prone to bizarre fantasies.. The deception wasn't discovered for 3 days.

These are just part of the "honorable mentions." Check out the actual winners. Here's one last "honorable mention:"

The Ann Arbor News crime column reported that a man walked into a Burger King in Ypsilanti, Michigan, at 5 a.m., flashed a gun, and demanded cash. The clerk turned him down because he said he couldn't open the cash register without a food order. When the man ordered onion rings, the clerk said they weren't available for breakfast. The man, frustrated, walked away.

Importing an adult

An interesting article in Fortune (subscription required) evaluates the corporate structure of Google. It makes about $350 million a year on an annual turnover of about $900 million. It has about 1,000 employees, 30% of whom are contractors and the bottom layer of a caste-like corporate structure. It's current financial success isn't due to its technological creativeness but rather its exploitation of contextual advertising, a source of revenue that has become important through the efforts of Eric Schmidt, their "imported grownup." He has been less successful, according to Fortune, in bringing anything like sound corporate structure to the search-engine giant.

The Fortune article indicates that as a corporate entity, the company is in disarray: no one pays attention in meetings (they're playing with gadgets), it's hard to know who is in control, several corporate leaders from other companies have been offered senior management positions at Google and have backed away because of concern about their ability to manage the complex organization. The current estimates are still that the IPO should raise over $4 billion, however.

A summary article in The Register discusses Google structure and management, and another article describes Google's new venture into email, to be announced in the next day or two.

Corporate analog

David Winer describes the activities and mood at Dean headquarters as the Iowa caucus results come in. One interesting aspect of his discussion is the analog to corporate life. Dean has a start-up firm (as opposed to a subsidiary of some corporate giant, a closer analog had the DNC initiated, blessed and supported his candidacy with its own infrastructure); it is filled with very young, very new, mostly single, mostly very mobile workers. They have just been working very hard for several months -- the last stretch being, according to some sources, a canvassing of about 200,000 homes, door to door, in Iowa. Unexpectedly, their first returns from the marketplace were different from their sales forecasts and not only did their product not dominate, it came in third. Dean's reaction was primarily a sense that he was not treated fairly by the marketplace (the media weren't fair and the DNC wasn't fair) and anger, not analysis. At least publicly. Within the firm, he is apparently urging the workers to work even harder.

It's an interesting example of life within a start-up: the slender starting resources, the personal commitment and investment of the participants, the incredibly hard work, the exhiliration and the exhaustion. It may also be an example of the fact that while start-ups can sometimes be surprisingly successful, the statistics show that not many are able to survive the long run.

UPDATE: Another corporate analogy: an internet bubble popped last night in the Iowa caucuses. Dean's over-reliance on the internet made him vulnerable to his opponents who integrated grass routes with "in person" presentations on TV and radio. You can read the whole thing.

Adaptability

Here is an interesting collection of pundits' explanations of the Kerry victory in the Iowa caucuses. What makes it, in some ways, more interesting is that these were the same people who were just a week ago explaining why Kerry would lose and Dean would win. Follow the links for more in-depth discussion.

Iowa caucus news from Iowa

An Iowa blogger has at-the-front news on the Iowa caucusus, including a round-up of news from other Iowa bloggers. These news sources often beat the local press by about half-a-day to a day.

New business roundup

This week's carnival of capitalists is up -- the weekly round-up of web news related to business and economics.

Mandatory check

McGill has introduced a trial policy in which students must first submit their papers to an anti-cheating web site (turnitin.com) to be compared to existing net-available papers and research work before turning it in to their professor. Some students have refused to submit to this new policy. As one site points out, this appears to be something like the academic analog of mandatory drug checks for athletes (an anti-cheating policy of its own).

Twentieth anniversary

This week is the 20th anniversary of the Supreme Court decision supporting Sony and the right to copy broadcast shows onto tape -- that is, supporting the use of videotape recorders. This same week comes the announcement that casettes will no longer be supported (or sold) since they have been overrun by CD's.

But for many, CD's seem no newer than casettes -- all their music is digital, stored in flash memory on an iPod or similar memory device, after having been downloaded from a server somewhere.

Read commentary on an anniversary that almost marks the end of the era it introduced.

Dutch treat

Jacuzzi on a budget: one way is with a wood-burning hot tub, available now for the Dutch. It is portable, weighs only 165 pounds, requires no running water, no electricity, no plumbing, and can be put in your SUV with some room left over for the wood. Original link.

Extreme visualization

Here is an interesting site: it provides visualizations of a very large number of math and physics phenomena: vector calculus, waves, accoustics, loaded strings, quantum mechanics. And thermal photos (pictures taken with a thermal camera). The picture at the right shows the site's owner: mouth is dark (cool), nose tip is cool, cheek bones a little cool, but temples are hot (white). There are lots of other thermal camera pictures plus hundreds of applets including such things as hydrogen atoms, electron orbitals, sky charts, moon phases, earth-moon distance, and even a "funny cartoon."

Accent on English

Please call Stella. Ask her to bring these things with her from the store: Six spoons of fresh snow peas, five thick slabs of blue cheese, and maybe a snack for her brother Bob. We also need a small plastic snake and a big toy frog for the kids. She can scoop these things into three red bags, and we will go meet her Wednesday at the train station.

English speakers from 297 different regions read the paragraph above to illustrate different accents of English speakers. Farsi, Fanti (Ghana), rural Georgia, ... they're all there. The ipa transcription of the "Stella" paragraph for a 62-year-old male from Virginia is at the right. Try to read it out loud -- if you do it right, people will swear that you sound just like you're from Virginia.

More from Google

It's a spell checker, a calculator, and more:

Area Codes, e.g. 650, bring up maps.

UPC codes, e.g. 073333531084 or 036000250015, bring up some information about the product.

Flight numbers, e.g. usair 50, provide links to flight tracking

Vehicle ID (VIN) numbers, e.g. JH4NA1157MT001832, link to a CARFAX report on what kind of car and its status.

U.S. Postal Service tracking numbers link to package status

Follow the link for even more.

Waitless

"Why can't a PC simply turn on like a TV?" It is the question that has been bugging people who use multimedia PCs as the heart of their home entertainment systems. When they want to watch TV, play a DVD, listen to internet radio or play CDs and MP3s, they have to spend fruitless minutes watching the Windows egg timer while the PC boots up.

No more. A new InstantOn computer is available that runs on Linux, which is stored on a chip and can boot and be ready to run DVD's, MP3's, CD's and more in 10 seconds flat. The InstantOn PC uses the Windows operating system for what it calls "drudge" work like word processing, but if all you want is entertainment, there's no wait.

Netizens

Fill in the blank:

the typical [blank] is an avid reader of books and spends more time engaged in social activities than the average.... And, television viewing is down among [blank] by as much as five hours per week compared with [the average]....

If you guessed "internet user," you are right. The results of a new study of internet users in 14 countries, conducted by the UCLA Center for Communication Policy, show that the average net user is not a geek but rather a well-rounded, book-reading individual who spends more time in social activities than the typical non-net user.

Non-profit audits

A new and massive audit of the Nature Conservancy is being launched by the IRS, as reported in the Washington Post today. The initial findings are significant:

The institution made major loans to employees and board members, bought and then resold land to trustees and supporters at reduced prices, and drills for oil on nature preserve land. The tax records of the institution are considered a complete mess. The institution has over $3 billion in assets, so this is hardly a small matter.

This kind of publicity is not good for other non-profits that run tighter organizations. Because most donors to non-profits just assume they are run well, it is rare that there is a public demand for financial scrutiny. The lengthy article in the Post makes clear that donor assumptions can be wrong.

Candle power

A new breakthrough in safe but powerful rocket fuel identifies an unlikely source of launch power: candle wax.

Paraffin was previously thought to be weak, easily broken and unsuitable for use as rocket fuel. But Cantwell's team found that it is quite strong -- at least twice as strong as conventional solid propellants. The paraffin they use as rocket fuel is the same material used as hurricane candles and sculptor's wax. "Paraffin" is a generic name for a family of simple hydrocarbons with carbon chain lengths ranging from 20 to 40. Different group members are suited to different applications.

Two out of three IS bad

Recent research by a British email filtering firm revealed that just at 63% of all email sent during December, 2003, was spam.

The scourge of junk email reached new proportions at the end of 2003 with nearly two out of every three messages sent worldwide being an unwanted advertisement.

It isn't going to get better, either:

[The firm] predicts that the next spam battleground will be instant messaging (IM), which is expected to supersede email as the most popular form of internet communication. "As email morphs into IM some of the same problems will morph too," he says.

Both the U.S. and Europe are attacking the spam problem:

The seemingly inexorable rise in spam suggests recent legislation introduced in the US and Europe aimed at curbing the problem has had little effect.

What? Legislation didn't stop spam? I thought if there was legislation against something, people weren't allowed to do it. Maybe the problem is that people aren't aware of this legislation. They should get the word out. Use email.

It's the little things

How to get to the top in management -- there are a lot of theories: work hard, avoid controversy, exhibit leadership. A new book makes a different point:

So what matters? Your personal reputation. What D’Alessandro calls your “personal brand.” You build it by avoiding the myriad ways described in the book of crashing your career – no matter how good your performance appraisals. You build it by, among other things, paying attention to seemingly minor moments that can push you forward.

“On my first day at John Hancock," writes D’Alessandro, “my boss said to me: ‘While you were chosen because you were the right fit, my secretary said to me that of all the people who came here, you were the nicest.'” D’Alessandro is left to wonder what might have been his fate had he been rude to the boss’s secretary.

It's back to "branding," but at a very personal level. In his new book, Career Warfare: 10 Rules for Building a Successful Personal Brand and Fighting to Keep It, David F. D’Alessandro, chairman and CEO of John Hancock Financial Services, discusses the importance of the little things in building up a personal reputation, one small interaction at a time.

Read the whole review.

The top 100

Here are the 100 most-often misspelled words in the English langauge.

Panorama

A beautiful 360-degree panorama of Mars

Honest audits

Do large consulting fees bias the auditing of a company if the firm doing the consulting is also doing the auditing?

“There is a populist notion floating around out there saying that if a firm does a lot of consulting it will pay more attention to the consulting income than the audit,” says Larcker. “There’s no denying big audit failures have occurred.” But the question to ask, he adds, is how “systemic” this behavior is.

The answer is, "not very." Only about one case in 20 shows evidence of a link between a large consulting fee and a purposeful audit adjustment. If that.

All the large accounting consulting firms except Deloitte have divested their conulting practices, meaning (in most cases) smaller salaries for the audit partners because of the loss of the higher-margin consulting fees. Does this make audit practices more reliable overall? It isn't clear -- some argue that having the same firm do both auditing and financial consulting gives better insights into the overall health of a firm. In any case, the drafting of laws to stop bad behavior of a very few isn't a very effective way to assure quality, this article argues.

Back in court

Some cases are difficult to settle. New Mexico has re-opened the case of Billy the Kid. There is controversy over whether he was, in fact, killed by Sheriff Pat Garrett or lived until about 1950 in Texas. DNA can settle the dispute, some believe:

"There are a number of people who believe that," [attorney] Tippett said. "And now that we have the tools to determine the truth, don't we have the responsibility?"

Check them out

The Carnival of the Capitalists is up for this week with a collection of blog news on economic, business and some academic issues.

Laser advance

Professor Li of the University of Wisconsin in Madison has adapted the laser used to do eye surgery so that it can also be used to cut cheese. In many States, this might not make the headlines; in Wisconsin, it's news.

Using a blade has always had several problems: it attracts bacteria, it can't cut the cheese very thin without ripping it, and it has to be changed, cleaned and sharpened periodically. The new laser adaptation gets around all these problems.

At first, Li tried using a traditional commercial laser that uses heat to cut by melting or evaporating; it fried the cheese.

"It smelled really bad," he said.

Li tried again using a new class of laser that emits light in ultraviolet, and therefore shorter, wavelengths. That laser, known as a cold laser, cuts by blasting apart the molecular bonds that hold materials together.

The best thing since sliced bread.

Guadalajara

Both classes of the Executive Program plus faculty and staff -- about 85 people in total -- participated in an off-site executive session in Guadalajara the first week of January. Students visited the dairy company Yakult and the glass bottle manufacturing processes at Vitro. Economics Professor Velez of ITAM gave insights on the current state of the Mexican economy and Professor Belausteguigoitia, an expert on family businesses, spoke on that aspect of the Mexican economy. This international session began with Prof. De la Garza of the Cronkite School of Human Communications speaking on opportunities in culture shock; Steve Sullivan, Director of the State of Arizona Office of Trade and Investment in Guadalajara, discussed business opportunities and international trade in Mexico. The session ended with a visit to the small lakeside town of Ajijic, on the shores of Lake Chapalla.

Beef Lover!

This person sure loves his/her beef!

(Note: Picture was taken in a parking lot somewhere in Tempe, AZ)

New appointment

I believe this is the first time a professional wrestler has held an appointment at the Kennedy School of Public Affairs at Harvard:

MSNBC’s loss may be Harvard’s gain. Former Minnesota Gov. Jesse Ventura, whose talk show was canceled by the cable network, has been offered a new gig — as a visiting fellow at the Institute of Politics at the John F. Kennedy School of Public Affairs at Harvard, according to institute Director Dan Glickman.

Howard Dean strategy session

The Howard Dean campaign invited reporters to link in to a PR conference call but got conference calls confused and ended up linking the reporters into a strategy conference call. As a result, the reporters got to hear the Dean campaign planning the next several days of the campaign.

"Tomorrow, (Tuesday) we're going to start by having Bradley do sort of a subtle thing, if we can, by saying that Dean is a real Democrat, and then follow that up the next day with an in-state person that's probably a little more direct," one unidentified staffer said.

The "in-state" appeared to be a reference to New Hampshire, where Bradley, Al Gore's opponent for the 2000 Democratic presidential nomination, was to appear this morning at a previously unscheduled breakfast.

Another staffer indicated that in a survey of voters Monday by telephone, people expressed concern that "this guy (Dean) is indecisive" and Bradley, a former Hall of Fame player in the National Basketball Association and a three-term senator from New Jersey, could help counter that.

"The Bradley message could be, like, (Dean) knew where he stood on the war, is still a Democrat, takes . . . positions, blah, blah, blah," the staffer said.

There's more on targeting other Democratic candidates:

The next day, the speaker said, "surrogates" for Dean, both local and national, could "then hit Clark on the flip side of the argument: that he's indecisive, didn't know what party he's with, doesn't know his position on the war," she said.

The conference call ended when one of the reporters who joined the call late told a staffer he might have the wrong call-in number.

Earlier information from Mars

Here is a newspaper clipping from the New York Tribune of February 8, 1920, depicting mainstream Martians going about their daily tasks. The caption reads:

Scientists agree that the people of Mars differ from us in many ways. The Martians are believed to have very large noses and ears and immense lung development, because of the rarefied atmosphere. Their legs are poorly developed, because matter on Mars weighs less than here and sturdy legs are not needed to bear their weight. Birds and butterflies are very large and beautiful.

Go here for more 1920 perspectives on life on Mars.

The land of opportunity

Interested in this property? It's a ways out of town -- a little over a million miles. So the commute would be something to take into consideration if you were thinking of it for a residence. As an investment property, it has some advantages: great view, one tax-deductible trip per year, no neighbors so you could camp there without any problems. There's more information and pictures here.

UPDATE: There are some panned shots in a video at the same site as above that are stunning. Scroll down and it is on the left.

The third degree

The U.K. has a reputation for excellence in graduate education and a number of "new" universities are cashing in on this reputation, including Shepperton University, whose web site advertisement includes this:

"Maintaining academic integrity free from fraud and deception is an important objective of Shepperton University."

It turns out that Shepperton is one of many U.K. "web-based" universities that are frauds, offering degrees that have no academic content or accreditation. The government is working to stop these web-based operations but in the meantime they recommend carefully investigating any web-based academic offerings.

Department of logic, circular

It's baseball Hall of Fame election time, which means that some form of publication from Pete Rose could be expected. It arrived yesterday and it adds some content to the argument that Rose should be allowed into the Hall of Fame. The two main points of the argument are (1) I actually did bet on baseball, though not against my own team and (2) although I've been lying for the past 14 years, I really am telling the truth now. The summary argument is that Rose should be allowed in the Hall even though he bet on baseball (against the rules of baseball) on the grounds that he admitted he bet on baseball.

Automated social networks

Few doubt the value of a good network, but software that models social networks as a business venture may have to wait a while to see profits. This discussion of the value of social networks and the value of the software packages that automate them is interesting.

Menu options

Now that the holidays are over and the traditional meal menus are no longer binding, you may be looking for some options, especially for the kids who may have adjusted to the more extensive offerings of the past month. If so, here is a site to help: Pork-4-kids! Lots of handy recipes for everything from the main dish to a nice after-meal treat. Looking for a new appetizer idea? Look no further, there's pork-ball appetizers:

These meatballs are convenient to have on hand, in the freezer. Serve for snacks with dipping sauces. Add halved meatballs to potato, macaroni, three-bean and chef salads. They’re great for making grinder sandwiches, too.

Sugar and fat

There is little mystery about how to make food taste good: fat and sugar almost always are part of the recipe. The Wall Street Journal is reporting today that there is mystery in how to make a good-tasting donut that doesn't have fat (subscription required). One firm is being prosecuted for packaging regular donuts and selling them as fat-free, low-cal, and good-tasting, too. One out of three isn't enough to keep you legal, though -- these were regular donuts and that's why they tasted good.

There are fat substitutes but many of them, like the long-fiber substitutes, have side effects that are unattractive and donut makers are afraid to use them.

As one obesity expert was quoted, "if it tastes that good, it isn't good for you." That's a cheery rule-of-thumb.

Get your checkbook

Get ready for the biggest IPO in many years -- Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs have been chosen to manage the IPO of Google, the most-used internet search engine. In addition to its search engine, Google has added Google News, Google print (looking in printed documents for links, not just web sites), spell checker (just type the word you're curious about in the search window), calculator (type your equation into the search window) and a host of other services. The IPO is expected to raise about $4 billion.

Choices and happiness

It isn't really easy to measure either of these, but a new book on the Paradox of Choice points out (again) that having more options can actually lead to less happiness, not more. Read the review.

Mars in 3-D

If you have access to those red-and-blue 3-D glasses, then you can see the "hazy hills" of Mars in three dimensions by looking at these specially produced pictures.

Rover simulation

This scientifically-accurate computer simulation shows how the Rover space mission has gone. It takes a while to run but is worth the wait.

Email from Mars

"This just keeps getting better and better," according to one NASA spokesman. The pictures are mesmerizing. Many more to come.

New course on ethics

A new course on ethics is being introduced:

Harvard Business School is introducing the most comprehensive revamping of its ethics instruction in the school's 95-year history. First-year MBA students at Harvard, a school known for grooming many of the nation's captains of commerce, will be required to take a new ethics course in their second term, starting in January.

It will be team taught by ten faculty members to all 900 members of the HBS MBA program. You can read about it here.

The value of an MBA

A "bold new reality series" (the Apprentice) is scheduled to start, showing how 16 people from various walks of life ranging from an MBA to a person with no business training at all perform in terms of street smarts, chutspah and ability to perform. They live in close quarters, lots of personal interaction, stressful settings, ... Sound familiar? It's one step beyond "case competition." It will be interesting to see who the advertisers are for this series -- who do they think will actually be watching a show like this? People thinking about getting an MBA?