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

Google and advertising revenue

An interesting point that relates, at least indirectly, to one of Google's revenue sources: advertising:

Google is [a] brand-killer. Time and again, I've seen that consumers find the information they want via Google without being very aware of who ended up providing that information: They ask a question; Google takes them to the answer; they leave, satisifed; they don't pay attention to where they were. This can harm brands that get advertising based on syndicated research that asks consumers how often they visit or how aware they are of a brand; they may well visit a brand's site but if they don't pay attention then the brand doesn't get credit in the survey and looks smaller than it is. In spite of that, I can't imagine a publisher who wouldn't want to come up in Google searches; hell, they all pay companies in the new industry of search-engine optimization to make sure they come up higher and higher in those searches.

Yet some of the ads on these sites that are visited anonymously as Google ads -- does it reduce the value of Google ads if a site is accessed via Google?

An article in Wired News addresses some of the complexities of Google's business model as applied to GoogleNews. If Google is a "brand killer," it benefits the sites it links with greater traffic but diminishes the benefits of greater traffice by making the sites more anonymous and the advertising on those sites less visible or memorable -- or linked. Net result? Time will tell.

Beslan website

A local website has been set up in Beslan by several people who were teachers at Beslan Middle School No. 1, and an article describing it runs in Canada's Globe and Mail.

The Guardian describes the activities of the site:

Beslan.ru is compiling a list of all the victims, in what the paper calls "filling in for a government gone AWOL in the wake of the siege".

The site - which is being translated into English - includes news on the political and social aftermath of the violence, appeals for help for the victims and their families, and details on how to donate money. [emphasis added]

The high cost of stress

In a September 5 article, The New York Times reported on the high cost of stress:

Workplace stress costs the nation more than $300 billion each year in health care, missed work and the stress-reduction industry that has grown up to soothe workers and keep production high.

$300 billion? That's an awfully round number, isn't it? How accurate is it? Forbes, NPR, MSNBC and others quoted the number as though it were right. Did they check?

That estimate comes from the AIS: the American Institute of Stress.

According to Dr. Paul Rosch of the AIS, the statistics are based on a 1979 book titled “Stress and the Manager” by Karl Albrecht. Even though “Stress and the Manager” warns that “any attempt to estimate a dollar cost of chronic stress in a business organization or in American business in general, would of course involve gross guesswork and speculation,” Albrecht “brazenly” (his word) speculates: he guesses an absenteeism rate due to stress, guesses a turnover rate due to stress, guesses an “overstaffing” cost for reduced productivity due to stress, and estimates a cost per absentee day per worker. Then he concludes that the approximate cost to U.S. businesses totals $150 billion per year.

Perhaps AIS adjusted these “guesses” for inflation.

One additional source of errancy is that the number confuses correlation (things that happen at the same time) and causality (one causes the other). It assumes that because these various traits show up in the workplace, they are not just correlated with stress but actually caused by it. Technically, these workplace problems are stress-related, not stress-caused.

Unfortunately, even the estimate that stress-related costs amount to $300 billion is not justified, as the AIS did not bother to apply their percentages (such as 19 percent of absenteeism) to actual costs per worker ($645 per year in 2003, according to CCH, Inc.) times the number of workers in the United States, to obtain the cost of absenteeism related to stress. In fact, the costs associated with stress may be much higher (or much lower) than $300 billion.

Check out the whole evalution of this analysis here. It is a great example of how, when deadlines are approaching, major media outlets often present pure guesses as being good estimates of things that often are difficult to even define, let alone measure.

More on outsourcing

Six months ago or so there was a lot of attention given to the number of jobs that were going "off shore." Millions of jobs were being lost, mostly in the "knowledge" businesses (writing code, developing systems, even answering "help lines").

Where have they all gone? "Nowhere" is the assessment of this economist.

Now ... we can add some actual figures to the overheated debate. The Government Accountability Office has issued its first review of the data, and one undeniable conclusion to be drawn from it is that outsourcing is not quite the job-destroying tsunami it's been made out to be. Of the 1.5 million jobs lost last year in "mass layoffs'' - that is, when 50 or more workers are let go at once - less than 1 percent were attributed to overseas relocation; that was a decline from the previous year. In 2002, only about 4 percent of the money directly invested by American companies overseas went to the developing countries that are most likely to account for outsourced jobs - and most of that money was concentrated in manufacturing.

Read the whole thing. Here are footnotes to the article (links to the various information sources quoted in the article).

It's just business

Remember the Montreal Expo's. Because that's all they will be -- a memory. They are moving to Washington, DC. How are local fans taking the news? Here are the comments of one of them:

What will [I] do when they're gone?

I won't root for them, that much I know. Washington is a great city, and I think the Expos will find a warm home there. A waterfront site revolving around a long-planned redevelopment in the promising, but still hardscrabble, Navy Yard area has major potential. Given the rabid interest in landing a team that I saw during my two years living in The District, I strongly believe the 'Spos/Sens/Nats/Feds will be a success.

As Jerry Seinfeld liked to say, rooting for a sports team is like rooting for laundry. Sure, you grow attached to certain players. But trades, free agency--all of that means your favorites may not be around long.

And then, remembrance of some of the biggest events in the Expo's stay in Montreal, starting clear back in 1982, nearly a quarter-century ago:

Aug. 1, 1982: A game charged with pennant fever featured Steve Rogers and the Cardinals' Joaquin Andujar going head-to-head. Both pitchers were in the midst of Cy Young-caliber seasons, and 51,353 crazed fans turned up for this showdown; this was in the days when the far-off outfield seats stayed open, all the way to the upper deck flanking the scoreboard. A dramatic three-run seventh inning gave the Expos a thrilling 5-4 victory. Not yet eight years old at the time, in one of my first games ever at the Big O, I remember wondering if all games were this much fun.

Read the whole article.

Current interactive electoral map

Here is an interactive map (click map to enlarge -- go to site to use interactive features) showing the current best guesses on how the electoral vote will go in the upcoming presidential election.

Jamming in church

It's happening in Mexico. To help reduce the number of interruptions from cell phones ringing during the service, several churches have installed "spy ware:" devices that jam signals so that the phones won't ring at the wrong time:

In four Monterrey churches, cell phone blockers the size of a hand-held radio have been tucked among the paintings of the Madonna and clay statues of saints to bring peace back to Mass.

"There are still many people who don't understand that being at Mass is sharing a moment with God," said Juan Jose Martinez, a priest and spokesman for the Monterrey Archdiocese. "Sadly, we had no other choice but to use these little gadgets."

The churches began using the cell phone blockers, made by the Tel Aviv-based Netline Communications Technologies, after Rodrigo de la Mora, an insurance salesman, imported them as a personal favor for a priest.

And the congregation.

What the high-tech bubble got right

Quite a lot, actually. True, stocks like Yahoo were trading at $200 per share when normal calculations put their value at about $12. And when the bubble burst, Yahoo stock lost 95% of its value. But it still had quite a bit of value left.

even with all the fat trimmed off its market cap, Yahoo was still worth a lot. Even at the morning-after valuations of March and April 2001, the people at Yahoo had managed to create a company worth about $8 billion in just six years.

The fact is, despite all the nonsense we heard during the Bubble about the "new economy," there was a core of truth. You need that to get a really big bubble: you need to have something solid at the center, so that even smart people are sucked in. (Isaac Newton and Jonathan Swift both lost money in the South Sea Bubble of 1720.)

What was the core of truth? Read this great article by someone working at Yahoo during the blow-up and the burst to see what aspects of business and value the bubble had good insights into. A starter: the internet (it actually is a big deal); choices (more than ever); youth (a source of energy, different points of view, a market-moving sector of the economy); and more.

Atomic wrist watches

The great book Longitude tells the story of the development of clocks that were accurate within very tight bounds under a wide range of sea-going conditions. In the late 1600's and early 1700's, clocks were so expensive that only the very rich could afford them -- even on land. That's why castle towers routinely showed a clock face: not only was it a gift of sorts to the surrounding inhabitants, it was a sure statement of the wealth of those in the castle.

Small clocks -- small enough to carry with you -- were even more expensive. They weren't available until the 1800's and well into the 1900's a small and accurate clock was still quite valuable. That was one reason why retirement gifts were often pocket watches (later, wrist watches) -- these were rare, expensive and something that a person was not likely to buy for himself or herself. A real gift.

The 21st century equivalent of "a good wrist watch" is on the horizon: an atomic clock small enough to fit inside a watch, a cell phone, a GPS hand-held unit. The technology is almost here:

Atomic clocks, which rely on the oscillations of atoms, not quartz crystals, are far more precise. But the smallest models currently on the market are about the size of a pack of cigarettes, bigger than most devices in which they might find a home. Now several researchers are developing tiny atomic clocks that could be made using standard semiconductor processes and slipped into cellphones, hand-held computers and Global Positioning System receivers.

"If you have a small, low-power clock available, all kinds of technologies or innovations will flow from it," said R. Michael Garvey, the chief technology officer at Symmetricom, a maker of atomic clocks. Mr. Garvey's company is among the research groups looking at miniature atomic clocks under a program funded by the military.

this article details their development.

Music and technology

Beginning with a casette tape recorder when he was nin, Yo-Yo Ma (shown at right with recording specialists -- click to enlarge) has creatively used technology to improve his performances. He noticed that the tempo of his pieces sounds different depending on where the audience is located -- he learned this by putting microphones in different places in the venues where he played.

Recently he has started integrating live performance with digital images, voices and instrumentals.

Mr. Umezaki [a music and voice instructor at McGill University and a recent collaborator with Mr. Ma and his Silk Road music group] came across an 18th-century Chinese scroll that depicted an Imperial voyage to China's south. Because the scroll is about 30 feet long, it can never all be displayed at once.

Inspired, the [Silk Road] group not only wrote a 30-minute musical piece but also digitized important sections of the scroll. At a performance at Carnegie Hall this month, those images were displayed in motion and in harmony with the music. The spell was broken only when the big letters "DVD'' inadvertently appeared on the screen at the end, prompting knowing laughter from the audience.

Read the whole piece.

Checking on the "reinstating the draft" story

CBS reporters are interviewed here on their news story that President Bush plans to reinstate the draft after the upcoming election, should he win. The emails with this information have been shown to be hoaxs. Here is the response of the producer Linda Karas:

"The truth of the e-mails were absolutely irrelevant to the piece, because all the story said was that people were worried. It’s a story about human beings that are afraid of the draft. We did not say that this (e-mail) was true, it’s just circulating. We are not verifying the e-mail." [emphasis added]

The producer didn't say how she knew people were worried -- maybe that was a hoax, too. The emails claimed inside information on the draft and that people were worried; that prompted a news report that, the producer says, has no link to the emails. [original link via here]

Drought plans

this state is in a very severe drought," said [State Representative Jake] Flake, R-Snowflake. "But some people in the cities are not doing anything any differently than they were 10 years ago. They're still watering their lawns the same, letting the water run into the street and taking 10-minute showers instead of two-minute showers."

Arizona's drought task force presented new guidelines yesterday in response to criticisms that their earlier work didn't recognize that the state is in what is already nine years of drought. Under the new recommended guidelines, restrictions on water use increase as the level of drought get worse. The two worst levels:

• Severe. State agencies would be required to reduce water use by 15 percent, and the governor would likely declare a drought emergency in the hardest-hit areas. Cities would be asked to ration water for large turf users, impose time-of-day, day-of-week watering schedules, and prohibit the use of outdoor misters. Individuals would be asked to further reduce indoor use by recycling water and using only commercial carwashes.

• Extreme. The state would eliminate all non-essential outdoor watering, except for wildlife protection, and could work to buy water from farmers at fair market price for use in communities. Cities would be asked to eliminate outdoor watering, including misters and fountains, and to ban winter lawns. Individuals would be asked to eliminate outdoor watering.

36.01

It is the new speed record, set this week by IBM's Blue Gene/L supercomputer. The new IBM system has a working speed of 36.01 teraflops (trillions of operations per second), edging past the old record, set three years ago by a Japanese system, of 35.86 teraflops.

This isn't fast enough for some users, such as the National Laboratories at Los Alamos, Lawrence Livermore and Sandia:

"Actually they need a pedaflop," he [Turek, IBM Vice President] said, referring to a system capable of performing a quadrillion, or 1,000,000,000,000,000 calculations a second. "But we're getting there."

Oil and gas prices

There is some uncertainty about the degree -- timing and amount -- to which changes in oil prices influence gas prices. The chart at right (click to enlarge) shows a high degree of correlation over time. The recent run-ups in oil prices have yet to be reflected in gas prices, but the current indicators are that gas prices will follow as they start to inch up.

A fuller discussion (and context for the chart) is in this article.

The second graphs shows, via the WSJ, the influence that changing oil prices have on the prices of other oil-derived fuels such as heating oil; all are expected to move up in cost this winter. This shift is further enhanced by the loss of some U.S. processing capabilities due to the recent hurricanes in the East. More discussion here.

Bull or bear market?

Answer: neither

Both the Standard and Poor Index and the DOW were at the top of their respective trading ranges two weeks ago. As the chart shows (click to enlarge), however, both are experiencing lower highs and lower lows. Is this the glide into a bear market or just post-2003-gain adjustment?One economist's opinion:

We are working our way through a post-bubble, post-stimulus economy. The Nasdaq remains more than 60% off from its highs. We continue to suffer the hangover from the bubble’s aftermath: Capacity utilization is lingering in the ~75% area, thanks to all the overbuilding and over-investment from the ‘90s. End-user demand remains anemic, and manufacturers find themselves unable to pass along price increases, despite the rising prices of many commodities.

All this suggests to us that economic growth will remain in the modest 2.75–3.5% range. Inflation will primarily be found in commodities, as opposed to wage pressure. Job growth will continue to be mostly mediocre.

The announced growth rate today was 3.3% for the quarter, at the top end of the predicted range for the remainder of the year.

Transportation futures

From Berkeley, see transportation futures -- past futures (what, in the past, they thought the future modes of transportation might be like) and future futures (what will future modes of transportation be like -- something beyond "light rail").

Six steps to a memorable customer experience

This manefestor lists six steps to designing, developing and delivering a compelling retail experience for customers, as practiced (successfully) by Apple. Here is a retail marketer's review of the manifesto:

[it] contains thought-provoking yet actionable strategic advice on designing and delivering compelling store experiences for customers.

If you are a retail marketer … this is a must-read. (Absolutely. No excuses. Read it today. Read it now.) And after reading … share, share, and share some more.

Here's a start to whet your appetite:

LESSON ONE: Create an Experience. Not an Artifact.
This attention to the customer’s line of sight is carried through the whole space. One thing completely obscured from view as you enter the store: the cash registers. It feels more like walking into a hands-on museum than walking into a retail store. Sure, Apple wants to sell products, but their first priority is to make you want the products. And that desire has to begin with your experience of the products in the store.

LESSON TWO: Honor Context
Instead of being organized according to product type — printers over here, cameras over there — the first floor of the store is organized by the context in which people use the products.

LESSON THREE: Prioritize your Messages
Instead of having to find a place for every message, Apple focuses on the handful of messages that count. Aside from a few strategically placed signs to promote upcoming events, most of the graphics in the store are more general in nature rather than trying to communicate some specific details; more decorative than informational.

Donna Brazile on grassroots

THE TOP-DOWN WORLD IS GONE.No longer can you grow your non-pro fit, your candidate, your cause or your business with nothing but money and noise. It ’s now impossible to get your project approved, your candidate elected or your funds raised just by buying some media or knowing a few people.

You need to know the 10 laws of grassroots.

She provides a primer on the 10 laws that are fundamental to growing awareness of your message using grassroots techniques.

Can there too much of a presence in advertising?

From the Chicago Tribune, September 13:

Under a proposal being studied by Gov. Rod Blagojevich's administration, the state could sell the rights to its name to a yet-unchosen beverage company, which would then market a nonalcoholic drink as the official state beverage.

Why non-alcoholic? Maybe they should try to cover all the food groups -- maybe a car that bears their name, as well, some home appliances, a shoe, ... State names will become product names, as well: Arizona's Bank One Ballpark can now be Arizona’s(TM) Bank One(TM) Ballpark where you can get a nice cold cup of Arizona(TM), wear your Arizona(TM) and enjoy your Arizona(TM) Diamondbacks(TM) in action.

Conatus and what it means to the TV networks

Conatus (con-nat-us) is the tendency of all living things to pursue self-preservation. Succintly put, “What exists tends to persist.”

Conatus is the seminal source of self-preservation behavior. We don’t so much “choose” to preserve our individual existences as we respond to deep-seated primal urges that originate outside of our conscious minds to do so. Our choices come in the form of how we answer those urges.

Conatus is like gravity – an ever-present force that influences us in what we perceive, think, do and are, all in service self-preservation.

David Wolfe at Ageless Marketing applies this principle for the TV networks to aid them in understanding what they need to do to avoid extinction:

The erosion of network audiences is an outcome of behavior, not of data sets. So the networks need to study viewer behavior more than they study the representations of 0’s and 1’s in processed data. Television viewers are not eyeballs to be counted, but flesh and blood organisms with beating hearts to be connected with.

They need to stop looking externally and blaming good weather, computer games, errors in viewer ratings systems, etc for disappointing audience counts and start looking internally to what they've done to lose relevance to viewers thereby driving them into cable television.

In other words, they need to enter an introspective mindset that acknowledges both their own humanness and that of viewers to have any hope of plotting a plan to be around as the next decade begins.

[via here]

The Wal-Mart TV network

Were you aware of it? It almost has both the reach and the fees of network TV:

According to the Wall Street Journal, Wal-Mart TV airs commercials from 110 advertisers, up from 50 advertisers three years ago. Media schedules cost advertisers anywhere from $50K to $300K for a four-week flight on monitors located throughout 85% of the 3,000 Wal-Mart stores in the U.S. And according to Brandweek magazine, Wal-Mart TV reaches 100 million shoppers/viewers per week … that’s a shade below the reach numbers of the major television networks.

A recent survey conducted by A.C.Nielsen indicates that brands advertised on the Wal-Mart TV network have a product-recall rate that is much higher than the average for all brands. This site doesn't believe their numbers. They are asking for your comments.

Virtual photo albums

One of the easiest and most convenient ways to share photos now is through Flickr, which is sporting some new upgrades. PC Magazine calls the site (and technology) "...cutting-edge real-time photo sharing."

Check out the on-line albums and how easy it is to share photos digitally. It is especially attractive for those who are waaaaayy behind on their "scrapbooking" projects.

Mount St. Helens cam

This site provides real-time views of the mountain as well as a direct link to the USGS, who is monitoring activity on the mountain.

One done, one to go

One space flight completed and one to go for the $10 million prize. But it wasn't easy. A failed rocket motor may have been the cause of some tense times during the ascent.

A test pilot returned successfully to earth today after a foray into space that was marked by a white-knuckle ascent in which his rocket ship rolled at least 16 times in about 16 seconds and he had to fight to regain control.

The white plume behind the rocket ship visibly corkscrewed, and spectators on the ground were gasping and holding their breath as the pilot, Michael W. Melvill, displayed the very highest flying skills.

After he landed he insisted to reporters that the roll was not the fault of the aircraft and that it was probably pilot error. But to many on the ground that seemed like a little bit of spin control on his part.

Credibility in the business model: II

The photograph at the right (click to enlarge) ran in a recent National Geographic article on elephant hunting in Tanzania by the Barabaig people. The picture illustrated the activity, allegedly showing local hunters coming back from a hunt with tusks.

Readers called in to say that they could see numbers on the tusks. National Geographic checked and found out that the photographer they had hired staged the picture by checking the tusks out from the local wildlife authority and asking some locals to hold them while he took a picture.

National Geographic immediately published the errant photos (there are two more), an apology and an explanation about the true origin of the pictures.

A clinic, really, in protecting their credibility with their audience. [via Glenn Reynolds]

Evening news business model

What is the product of network evening news? Many say, it produces an audience -- its product is its viewers. It delivers this product to advertisers who pay for it. If programming can't produce, it can't make money and since the networks are all owned by publicly-traded corporations, the stockholders will demand a change in productivity or invest their capital elsewhere.

What characteristics of network evening news are key to producing an audience? Breaking news stories (interesting content), famous or attractive reporters (personnel), presentation style (fast-paced, lots of graphics) have all been investigated and heavily invested in. It looks like recent empirical evidence indicates that credibility plays a significant role, too.

The New York Post reports that CBS Evening News' market share in New York was down an amazing 49% the week before Dan Rather apologized for the documents he used in a "60 Minutes" broadcast. They have rebounded some since the apology but are still down a third from before the episode. There is also a decline nationally.

At issue now is how long the corporate parent can wait until productivity improves.

Fred Whipple has died

The Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory in Southern Arizona bears his name: Fred Lawrence Whipple Observatory. He passed away at the end of August at age 97.

As a graduate student at UC, Berkeley, he gave up a possible career as a professional tennis player to pursue his love of comets (his two cars had license plates PLANET and COMETS). He was the first to propose that comets were actually large, frozen objects -- "icy conglomerates" was his term, "dirty snowballs" as they were called in the press -- and this view was finally verified in 1986 when a space craft got a picture of the returning Halley's comet.

He served as director of the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory for almost two decades; invented and refined the “Whipple Shield” for spaceships, which protected them from damage from meteors; and, at the age of 92, began work on a new NASA space probe. An observatory in Arizona, suitably equipped with a gigantic telescope, is named after him. So is a minor planet—and six comets, all of which he had discovered by his 40th birthday.

The value of courses in "management"

The most recent annual meeting of the Academy of Management seems like the right group of people to discuss this, though it might be expected that their assessment of the value of their own courses may lack something in objectivity.

Despite being "insiders" to the discussion, the exchanges were lively. Mr Mintzberg was there -- himself a professor of management -- blasting traditional MBA programs. His latest book, "Managers, not MBA's", details the problems he sees in current business education, especially that delivered to MBA students. The idea that a student with no management experience can take courses for as little as one year and come out ready to manage is a "sham," he says. But the debate ranged farther than just Mr. Mintzberg's comments:

Will Lidwell, president of the Applied Management Sciences Institute, said to an audience of professors: “Does management matter today? I’m sceptical.” Next door, a panel of professors was even more contemptuous. Paul Shrivastava of Harvard Business School described the Academy of Management as “at the margins of the margins” and Ed Freeman, who teaches ethics at Darden Graduate School of Business Administration at the University of Virginia, proclaimed that “Most of what we do is stupid and frivolous.”

How will business colleges respond? For starters, the Academy of Management is planning to invite more managers to their annual conference next year.

Read the whole article.

Using the opinions of virtual tourists

The Swiss government heavily subsidizes farmers to graze their cattle on mountain sides. Why? Because cows, they believe, improve the view for tourists and that brings more tourists to the country.

But do cows really improve the view for tourists? To test this, and other, propositions, Switzerland is enlisting the help of virtual tourists, asking them to take a look at various scenic views and evaluate how attractive they are.

colleagues at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, in Zurich, have developed computer models of the Alps and populated them with virtual tourists (or “autonomous agents” in computer-speak) that can wander the electronic landscape. The agents are programmed to behave, as far as possible, like real tourists, and to record their impressions as they go.

The model only provides useful information, of course, if the "agents" in the model have preferences that reflect those of real, currency-spending tourists. To build the agents, the programmers talked to hikers in the Alps and asked them their view preferences. Are Alp-hiker tastes the same as tourist tastes?

To make their model realistic, Duncan Cavens and Christian Gloor, the students who did the actual programming for Dr Nagel, walked through the Alps and talked to hikers they met along the way. They asked people what aspects of their hike they found most pleasurable, where the best viewpoints were and why they had chosen their route. And now that the model is up and running, Mr Cavens and Mr Gloor plan to test the accuracy of their agent-building by inviting real people to come and explore their virtual Alps. The feedback from the electronic hikes these people make will be used to program the agents to behave more realistically and thus point out those places where the cow-bells would ring to greatest effect.

MOT investment in productivity

To increase productivity, Motorola has announced it will cut another 1000 jobs, taking the $50 million severance-pay hit in the third quarter. After selling a portion of their Valley business to General Dynamics and spinning another large portion off as Freescale, Motorola, formerly the Valley's largest employer, has little presence here compared to its earlier size.

Windshield tour

Drive across the U.S. -- LA to NY -- in a little over a minute. With accompanyment.

Too much talent

The major networks are losing market share each year among viewers -- in fact, during the Republican National Convention, Fox News Channel had the largest viewership for the first time -- but they feel they have the corner on talent. NBC has announced, five years in advance, that Mr. O'Brien of their late late show will be taking over for Mr. Leno, who hosts their late show.

Like the passing of the throne, the event itself is now settled and focus can be put on the attending pagentry commemorating the transition as these two giants of entertainment -- Mr. Leno and Mr. O'Brien -- shepherd late-night audiences into the next decade. Mr. Leno is comfortable with the five-year plan as is Mr. O'Brien, who felt his talent was being hidden under a bushel by keeping him in the late late time slot. Assured of his chance to shine before a greater audience in the future, the gifted host is said to be more comfortable with the responsibility he feels to the public for providing them with the very best in night-time talk-show hosting.

The semantic web

Tim Berners-Lee developed the basis for the world wide web while a programmer at CERN in Switzerland. He gave away the design and basic software to run the web with the blessing of his employer. While others made a fortune off developing the web, Berners-Lee went on to pursue what has always been his real goal: a semantic web.

He is now director of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) at MIT. He has received some recognition for his contribution to the development of the web: he was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II this past summer and he was last month awarded Finland's million-euro Millennium Technology prize for his work.

But he is still focused on what has been his objective for two decades or more:

the 49-year-old native of England is busy overseeing hundreds of projects at the W3C. He is also personally engaged in developing his second big idea: the Semantic Web, which adds definition tags to information in Web pages and links them in such a way that computers can discover data more efficiently and form new associations between pieces of information, in effect creating a globally distributed database. Though part of Berners-Lee’s original intention for his invention, the Semantic Web has been 15 years in the making and has met its share of skepticism. But Berners-Lee believes it will soon win acceptance, enabling computers to extract meaning from far-flung information as easily as today’s Internet simply links individual documents.

Written in silver

"May the Lord bless you and keep you; may the Lord cause his face to shine upon you and be gracious to you; may the Lord lift up his countenance upon you and grant you peace."

This benediction, taken from Numbers chapter 6, verses 24 to 26, has been found inscribed on two strips of silver that were discovered in 1979 in a tomb outside Jersalem and are the earliest known artifacts to bear the words. The silver was initially dated as coming from the seventh century B.C., or 400 years earlier than the Dead Sea Scrolls.

There were doubts, however, about how accurate this dating was and about the accuracy of the wording because it was difficult to read. A decade of work on recovering the wording, computer imaging and more precise dating has verified the earlier estimates:

In a scholarly report published this month, the research team concluded that the improved reading of the inscriptions confirmed their greater antiquity. The script, the team wrote, is indeed from the period just before the destruction of Jerusalem in 586 B.C. by Nebuchadnezzar and the subsequent exile of Israelites in Babylonia.

Rollin G. Osterweis

Although he passed away in 1982, he will still be one of the most influential people on the upcoming Presidential debates. The reason is that he taught oratory at Yale (a course called The History of American Oratory) and both Mr. Kerry and Mr. Bush took the course. Mr. Kerry went on to join the Yale debate team, of which Prof. Osterweis was coach.

David Boren, a former United States senator and a 1960's Yale debater who is now the president of the University of Oklahoma, said that Professor Osterweis, his mentor, taught students two main lessons. "First, you have to have substance - values and principles that are worth conserving," Mr. Boren said. "Then you have to communicate them in a way that makes the audience feel that they have ownership of the ideas. It's almost like you have to become part of the crowd, and have them go away adopting the ideas as their own."

Were Professor Osterweis living, he would definitely be watching. And probably grading, but with a smile:

"He would be so proud," said Ms. Selig, his daughter. "He would be like a father of newborn twins."

In remembrance

At right is a picture of the physics classoom in the Beslan Middle School 1 after terrorists took hostages there. A full photo essay and article detail the story and show images from the school now. It has been turned into a shrine and a memorial to the children and adults who lost their lives there.

Grande'

The price of crude has hit $50 a barrel, the price of gas has approaching $2.00 a gallon and the price of Starbucks' latte is about to go up, too: 12 ounces of latte is currently $3.00 on the East coast and will be going up about 11 cents across the country in the next month, as will the rest of Starbucks' prices in response to increasing costs -- the price of sugar has gone up, among other things, says Starbucks.

For budget-planning purposes, latte is now running about $16.70 a gallon or just under $700 a barrel.

Organization Theory

How does an organization survive in the face of new and fiercer competition? Al Qaeda is providing an example:

By and large, the terror organization has evolved in response to U.S. actions out of a desire to survive and perpetuate its ideology and mission. The result is a network which is far more dispersed, loosely connected, and survivable than the one in Sept. 2001 — and one which will probably be harder for us to dismantle.

An extended article in the LA Times looks at the ways in which Al Qaeda has adpated to the new environment:

Even before the Sept. 11 attacks, Al Qaeda was a loosely organized network, but core leaders exercised considerable control over its operations. Since the loss of its base in Afghanistan and many of those leaders, the organization has dispersed its operatives and reemerged as a lethal ideological movement.

Osama bin Laden might now serve more as an inspirational figure than a CEO, and the war in Iraq is helping focus militants' anger, according to dozens of interviews in recent weeks on several continents. European and moderate Islamic countries have become targets. And instead of undergoing lengthy training at camps in Afghanistan, recruits have been quickly indoctrinated at home and deployed on attacks.

The United States remains a target, but counter-terrorism officials and experts are alarmed by Al Qaeda's switch from spectacular attacks that require years of planning to smaller, more numerous strikes on softer targets that can be carried out swiftly with little money or outside help.

The impact of these smaller attacks can be enormous. Bombings in Casablanca in May 2003 shook Morocco's budding democracy, leading to mass arrests and claims of abuse. The bombing of four commuter trains in Madrid in March contributed to the ouster of Spain's government and the withdrawal of its troops from Iraq.

It is not exactly true that counter-terrorism experts are surprised at the switch in target size by Al Qaeda; most of the intelligence community that has worked with terrorist organizations in other countries (the U.K., France, Japan, Israel) has been saying since September 11 that the focus on massive acts and WMD-use by Al Qaeda was completely out of sync with the mode of operation of terrorist groups over the past ten years. These groups have a pattern that has been replicated in many settings: many smaller attacks, each slightly larger than the previous, but low-tech in the sense that they are local, rely on a few individuals and use explosives. These build in size over a period of years to a large-scale event (like the WTC attack or the attack in Madrid). Then they go back to smaller, scattered events.

The ability to keep an organization this decentralized -- and with the communications challenges it has -- "on message" and coordinated is a case study for many decentralized organizations.

How you can do your job better

These members of Congress say, in Runner's World, that an important aspect of the quality of their work is their commitment to running:

Also in the new issue, RW looks at the importance of running to the 75 or so members of Congress who run regularly, and why many of them are convinced that they better serve the public by doing so (“Every one of us who exercises regularly would say we do our jobs better because we take this time out,” says one.)

Among the notable runners in Congress are, of course, Rep. Jim Ryun (R-KS), the former world record holder in the mile; Senator Max Baucus (D-MT), who’s run seven marathons as well as the John F. Kennedy 50-Mile race in Maryland; Sen. Bill Frist (R-TN), the senate majority leader who once ran two marathons in 13 days; and 72-year-old Sen. Dick Lugar (R-IN), referred to as the dean of the unofficial Congressional Runners Caucus

US News asks "why?"

Remember the Fred Friendly group discussions on PBS where Fred would ask difficult ethical questions of famous persons? US News' John Leo recalls a similar production he was asked to participate in:

I was assigned the role of a newspaper editor who had the option of running a political expose that would have had many wondrous effects on his town but that simply did not check out as true. I said I wouldn't run the story until my reporters nailed it down. This apparently unexpected position brought the whole poorly thought-out hypothetical to a screeching halt. No complex ethical dilemmas could be built on it. The Fred Friendly stand-in that day, assigned the role of badgering me to run the big story that didn't check out, was Dan Rather.

He poses the obvious question and proposes some answers to why CBS ran with the story when it clearly had not authenticated the central portion of it: the "break out" memos:

This brings us to a little-asked question about Rathergate: Why was CBS so determined to broadcast its alleged scoop about George Bush's National Guard service before the story was properly checked out? Four of the six documents involved had been in the possession of 60 Minutes for only two or three days, and three of the four experts consulted by the network said they couldn't authenticate them. Why didn't CBS just wait a week and do some elementary checking? A halfway decent high school paper would have done as much. One explanation is that the Democrats and much of the Democrat-friendly media were about to reopen the subject of Bush's Guard service as a payback for the August damage done to John Kerry by the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth. Maybe CBS feared losing its big scoop. More likely it was just reluctant to come in behind the new wave of retaliatory Bush-bashing instead of leading it.

Read the whole article.

Building a new server?

The new Shark case is compact, light (about 15 pounds), has 12 drive bays and seven expansion slots and the equivalent of a radiator!

One major facet of this new design is that the Shark is set up to incorporate water cooled systems with some of its advanced features. Today, we are fortunate enough to have a thorough look at Thermaltake’s latest box to see what’s where and why. As always, let’s begin with the basic specs.

Check out the specs.

REVERSE

See how well you can guide your cursor when its movement is the mirror image of what you are doing with the mouse.

Today's rites of passage

It used to be riding a bike on your own, no holds from parents. Now it's the first iChat:

I am IMing for the first time with my six year old daughter who is upstairs and she just picked me up on my spelling and did a wink smiley!

Bear in mind that she has never used iChat before and I hadn't explained to her how to use smileys.

Check out the screen capture for this first iChat -- part of the memory book for this family. How did she know how to use smiley's?

Blogging successes will mean the end of blogging?

This LA Times article says that the recent praise that the blogging community has received for bringing the CBS memo-authentication problems to the fore has the "faint smell of the deathbed to it," and not for mainsteam media but for blogs.

Count the author among the mourners, he says:

Even as it collectively achieves celebrity status for its anti-establishment views, blogging is already being domesticated by its success. What began as a spontaneous eruption of populist creativity is on the verge of being absorbed by the media-industrial complex it claims to despise.

In the process, a charmed circle of bloggers — those glib enough and ideologically safe enough to fit within the conventional media punditocracy — is gaining larger audiences and greater influence. But the passion and energy that made blogging such a potent alternative to the corporate-owned media are in danger of being lost, or driven back to the outer fringes of the Internet.

But in yesterday's Washington Post, Anne Applebaum says it marks a sea-change in the other direction. It solidifies what has already begun to happen through the broader use of other media: cable channels, niche news sources, the internet. The only ones who didn't realize that "network news" no longer holds the high ground were network news people:

Rather took the position he thought he, as a national icon, had a right to take: He dismissed his critics as "partisan political operatives," and spoke of how CBS "took heat during the McCarthy time, during Vietnam, during civil rights, during Watergate." He attempted to defend the "truth of the information," as opposed to the authenticity of the documents, as if the two could somehow be separated.

What became clear, as the story wound down to the inevitable apology on Monday night, was that Rather and his fellow network newsmen are stuck in a Vietnam/Watergate-era time warp. Most of us regard network anchors as faintly pompous talking heads, people who read other people's prose off teleprompters. But the anchors, rather extraordinarily, still regard themselves as the conscience of the nation.

The New York Times Sunday Magazine's cover story was on blogs and the way in which they are changing coverage of politics -- in this case, the political conventions. "Are they ruining political journalism?" The article profiles several of the better known political blogs.

Add to this coverage of blogs the CNN interviews with CBS executives saying that there is no comparison between network news and its many layers of verification of fact and bloggers, typing away while sitting in their frontroom in their pajamas: blogging is not an important story in news.

Anytime the New York Times, the LA Times, the Washington Post, and CNN are all devoting Sunday space to the same topic, it's hard to believe it means the death knell for that topic.

UPDATE: Here's an amazing perspective on the potential change in the "business model" of how to advance in the field of journalism as a whole and news reporter in particular. From David Broder at the Washington Post, first a take on the problem:

We don't yet know who will win the 2004 election, but we know who has lost it. The American news media have been clobbered...

It is hard to overcome the sense that the professional practices and code of responsibility in journalism have suffered a body blow. After almost a half-century in this business, I certainly feel a sense of shame and embarrassment at our performance...

Then his assessment of what the cause of the problem is:

When the Internet opened the door to scores of "journalists" who had no allegiance at all to the skeptical and self-disciplined ethic of professional news gathering, the bars were already down in many old-line media organizations. That is how it happened that old pros such as Dan Rather and former New York Times editor Howell Raines got caught up in this fevered atmosphere and let their standards slip.

Broder's position is that the internet and blogging seems to be the cause of the media failure at CBS. The response of bloggers is similar to this post from one of them:

Memo to all (self-)important journalists: You can insult us all you want and tell us that we don't belong to your profession (perhaps because most of us don't get paid.) But your accusations will become more and more pathetic if we keep exposing your failures, instead of vice versa.

So long as mainstream media keep blaming their difficulties on others, it prolongs any real solution to those problems. Even Tony Robbins knows this: you've got to take responsibility for your own situation.

Check the travel section of your paper

By the end of the decade, Virgin Galactic LLC - the most exciting development in the story of modern space history - is planning to make it possible for almost anyone to visit the final frontier at an affordable price.

Virgin Atlantic is expanding to fly routes heretofore unflown. You can sign up now for email updates and to be put on the list of those who will be the first to travel "into space."

The site as a "what will it be like" enactment of the countdown, launch, weightless space flight and return to the planet. Within a decade, they will be checking your carry-on's for nail clippers and pocket knives as you board for launch. "Flight 484 now ready for launch at gate 12."

"get back our credibility one story at a time"

In a very brief interview with CBS's Bob Schieffer, he says that he plans to keep his role as moderator for the upcoming Presidential Debates: .

..there's been some e-mail that says that I should excuse myself ... but both the White House and the Kerry campaign have said that they think that I can do a fair and honest job. So as long as it's ok with them, I think it's ok.

Staging the Presidential debates

The negotiations reflect the assumption on both sides of the debate that perception will be at least as important as content. A person formerly in charge of the affairs of State and responsible for negotiating peace between warring parties in the middle East -- James Baker -- is handling negotiations over the use of lights: whether or not the audience can see the "warning" light that tells a candidate that he is over his time limit (they can). A person in charge of public funding and a confidant of former presidents -- Vernon Jorday -- is handling issues regarding lectern height: Kerry is 6'4" and President Bush is 5'11" and if the lecterns are made to be too high, it will make the President look short (50" was the compromise height).

The candidates have worked with image consultants. It is especially important for Kerry, given the current polls, that he appear to be likeable, warm, "not aloof," and informed, the article says. Debating is "his turf," they say; he formed a debating society at his prep school, he was on the debate team in college, and he enjoys the give and take. Bush, on the other hand, has been preparing since mid-summer, understanding that the stakes are very high. The first debate will focus on foreign policy

The third contest, on Oct. 13 in Tempe on the ASU campus at the Wells Fargo Arena, will focus on domestic issues.

Measuring human capital

One of the curiosities in economic research is that increases in the value of human capital (years of schooling is sometimes used as a measure of this) are hard to link to increased economic growth.

A group of researchers may have found why:

A team of economists at the University of Ottawa, working with Statistics Canada, has concluded that the problem may be one of measurement. They argue that literacy scores (i.e. actual skills) might be a better proxy for human capital than the typical measure, years of schooling, and furthermore, literacy scores are not subject to the usual problems related to the comparability of education systems across countries. Their human capital indicators are based on the results of the 1994 International Adult Literacy Survey, as nicely explained by The Economist:

They use the International Adult Literacy Survey, which tested 16-65-year-olds in [1994], to estimate the skills of people in 14 countries entering the workforce at different times between 1960 and 1995. This is achieved by looking at tests of different age cohorts. For example, the literacy levels of people aged [51-59 when tested in 1994] are used to estimate the competencies of 17-25-year-olds in 1960, and hence the human-capital investment that had just been made in the course of that cohort's education.

In other words, performance is a better indicator of growth in human capital than credentials. Many employers would very likely agree with this.

Go here to read an executive summary of the study or here to read the whole thing.

Bargains in real estate