Weekend wrapup
Sunday, February 27, 2011 at 09:39AM No Associated Press content was harmed in the writing of this post
Our image in the Muslim world would probably improve if we stopped killing so many (via) Muslims. Oh, and for those ghouls who believe in doing a cost/benefit analysis on the amount of innocent life it is acceptable to snuff out in pursuit of whatever on God’s green earth it is we’re doing over there, here’s your updated scorecard.
Combat operations have concluded for:
- Sgt. Robert C. Sisson Jr.
- 1st Lt. Daren M. Hidalgo
- Lance Cpl. Andrew. P. Carpenter
- Sgt. Matthew J. Deyoung
- Staff Sgt. Bradley C. Hart
- Airman 1st Class Christoffer P. Johnson
- Spec. Jonathan A. Pilgeram
- Airman 1st Class Corey C. Owens
- Sgt. Lashawn D. Evans
This week felt different. Maybe I was radicalized by my trip to Columbus, but it felt like something changed. The protesters in Madison have sustained their campaign for almost two weeks now, something that would have seemed unimaginable anywhere in the country at the start of the year. People are joining in from all over. It feels like a movement has begun, something totally organic. Our leaders have absented themselves (at times shamefully and hypocritically) and masses of people suddenly stepped into the vacuum. Not just in Madison, but Lansing, Richmond and many other locations.
And while the protests are either being ignored or greatly downplayed by many large or traditional outlets, word is still getting out. Sites like Corrente and First Draft have been posting throughout the day, with folks from all over relaying their experiences. I was checking my Twitter feed regularly and it was keeping me up to date. I checked the 24 hour cable networks twice the entire day. We are no longer dependent on them to mediate the stories. We no longer have to rely on their weak, inadequate, Washington DC conventional wisdom-approved take on what’s happening. We are creating our own networks and getting the word out through them. The script has flipped; they are no longer ignoring us. We are ignoring them. And don’t it feel good.
Now that Feingold’s gone it looks like the most outspoken defender of civil liberties in the Senate hails from Oregon:
“Americans deserve laws that strike the best possible balance between fighting terrorism ferociously and protecting the rights and freedoms of law-abiding American citizens,” Senator Ron Wyden, a senior member of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, said in a statement.
In case you didn’t see this already, the military is deploying propaganda against our highest ranking elected officials. You know, the phrase “bad apples” comes from the proverb “a few bad apples spoil the whole barrel.” Meaning, once you find a few bad apples it doesn’t matter if the rest of them are good! It means, time to clean house! What it doesn’t mean is, throw out the bad ones as you find them, reach in, grab another and blindly bite into it! Anyone using the phrase “bad apples” ought properly to conclude the sentence with “…and that’s why we need to turn that entire fucking joint upside down.”
Gallows humor of the week in this headline from quixote.
I know Susan of Texas has been blogging for a long time, but I’ve only recently gotten turned on to her. Bloggers usually put something like “[snip]” to mark a cut of quoted text. Here is how Susan marked it for one of Megan McCardle’s interminable “baffle ‘em with bullshit” treatises:
[yapyapyap]It shouldn’t be legal to be that funny. But she’s got more than snark in her arsenal! Here’s her response to someone saying she ought to engage McCardle’s argument sincerely: “McArdle is arguing in bad faith for ulterior motives and to soberly and seriously engage her arguments would be a big mistake. Someone who lies about data will always win an argument because she can just make up anything to counter reasoned arguments and facts.”
Last week the media reader on our PC started having trouble reading our SD cards. So we arranged for a new one to get swapped in by the manufacturer. It literally destroyed the system. After a complete manufacturer’s reinstall, which included a format of the hard drive, it still would not come up. This was just the latest chapter in the troubles we’ve had with it for the last few months. So we ended up getting an entirely new computer. Between that and the trip to Columbus this week I didn’t have my usual time for link gathering, hence the short (by my standards) post today.
And just as a public service: If you don’t already back up your important files, do so! An external hard drive can be had for under a hundred bucks and can hold probably all of your important personal files. It’s a hassle, but in my case made the difference between losing a few weeks of pictures and losing absolutely everything I’ve accumulated on my computer. There are two types of computer users: those who have had their hard drives fail on them, and those who will.
ECONNED EXCERPT from p. 176 (emph. in orig.):
What is striking about these cases is that both CEOs chose to back employees who were breaking rules in a particularly flagrant way. They risked their careers and lost because they wanted to keep the profits these managers generated.
A reader might argue that Wheat and Gutfreund were simply lousy leaders. But that’s a simplistic view. They were both celebrated for many years. Their cases illustrate a fundamental problem: that it is all too easy for the top level of the firm to become hostage to the needs and demands of profit centers. And as the Mozer case illustrates, a profit center can be as small as a trader plus his trading assistants.
Strange as it may seem, the closest analogy to the problems faced by investment banks are in the military, and the military has many more routes for controlling staff. The trend in modern warfare has been to drive decision-making authority down into the ranks, because more mobile and powerful apparatus (missiles, tanks, fighter planes) and better communications allow for considerable firepower to be deployed opportunistically. The Germans had started moving this way well before World War II, and it paid off handsomely. In World War II, there is compelling evidence that the German army units were more effective in combat compared to all other armies, and that was because they had pushed decision-making authority down the command chain.
But despite the high stakes, the military has greater control over its troops. First, you cannot just up and quit. Thar difference isn’t trivial. When key producers, or even sometimes staff, in rapidly growing new businesses leave, it takes time to fill the hole. Because the role requires particular know-how (and in certain cases, established relationships), unless the boss worked in that same business, he can’t do what managers in other lines of work do: pinch hit until the replacement arrives.
That means compensation is a competitive weapon. A firm that consistently outpays other players can cherry-pick people from other firms, grabbing the best franchises. And if one house takes enough key players from another, the victim can slide into serious decline. The industry neuroticism about league tables and competitive standing is not completely unfounded. But the effect of this pattern is to justify higher levels of pay, again favoring short-term considerations over the long-term viability of the business.
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