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February 28, 2012
So is it okay to admire Ernest Hemingway again?
Hemingway was proud that his books were so close to the earth and yet so high in the heaven of art.
--Milan Kundera, in Immortality
The author in 1918. Is the Weenie Era over yet?
Posted by JD Hull at 02:51 AM | Comments (0)
February 27, 2012
Marrakesh, Morocco: If you find yourself there.
Before Marrakesh, I surrounded myself with people who were just like me.
Visit Maryam and read "Marrakesh: and a Tale of Rescue?"
Posted by JD Hull at 11:29 PM | Comments (0)
NH 1st Congressional District in 2014: Sarah Kate Silverman.
We need leaders who will lead. Originally from Bedford, New Hampshire, Sarah Silverman is Smart, Young, Brave and Magic. Seriously, folks.
Posted by JD Hull at 02:31 PM | Comments (0)
February 25, 2012
Cross-Culture on Japan and Australia: "Disasters create strange bedfellows."
Read the excellent article "Accidental Diplomacy: Australian-Japanese Relations" by Philip Porter at Richard Lewis's Cross-Culture. Excerpts:
What good could anyone imagine would come from the horrors of the earthquake/tsunami/nuclear leak that hit the Japanese coast last year?
Let me suggest one, a profound one: Japan for the first time since WWII felt cared for by foreigners. Foreigners, the “barbarians” of Perry’s black ships, the crazy, arrogant, unfathomable gaijins who had turned up in their thousands to get a bit of the action when Japan was in bubble economy mode.
Australia has been a major trading partner of Japan since WWII, exporting raw materials and getting them back in the form of cars, trucks, computers, anything. On the softer side Australia has also been seduced by wide-eyed anime characters like Astroboy, introduced business cards into its business etiquette and sushi, sashimi and tempura have become Aussie standards.
Immediately after WWII Japan was single minded in rebuilding domestically, protecting itself against a China that was not only its traditional enemy but now communist and still expansionist. It was deep in the throws of American occupation and needing to find a dignified and profitable relationship with its victors, which included Australia.
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R.D. Lewis
Posted by JD Hull at 12:59 AM | Comments (0)
February 24, 2012
Bongs at Work: Dude, the Doritos are key. Screw the due diligence. Service via Facebook.
At Reuters India, see "For Optimal Work Commitment, Skip the Pot?". It begins:
(Reuters Health) - According to a real shocker from the world of bona fide science, smoking marijuana is tied to less motivation at the office.
The author of the study said it can't prove whether that's due to the drug's effects, the social environment in which it's used or whether pot smokers are just more likely to be laid-back from the get-go.
Though researcher Christer Hyggen suspects pot is the culprit, another possible explanation is that people who aren't so happy with their work situation or motivated on the job are more likely turn to drugs.
"There's a popular belief that people who smoke cannabis are slackers and that they don't want to work," Hyggen, from the Oslo-based social research institute NOVA, told Reuters Health.
To see how well that perception held up, he analyzed data from a 25-year-long study of close to 1,500 Norwegians. Starting in 1987, when they were in their late teens and early 20s, participants filled out surveys that included questions on their recent pot use on five different occasions, into their 40s and....
Brad Pitt at work as Floyd in "True Romance".
Posted by JD Hull at 12:00 AM | Comments (0)
February 23, 2012
Mike O'Neil and Rep. Jeff Flake on GOP Arizona Shoot-Out.
Posted by JD Hull at 04:41 PM | Comments (0)
February 21, 2012
Greece: Getting $172 Billion More, Facing Heavy Losses and Balking at Brutal Anglo-Saxon Work Regimes.
Well, dang. Greek debt is said to be at about 160% of its GNP. Its second recent bailout coupled with long- and short-term pain in markets both in and out of Greece--add to this more rioting in the streets--prompts one obvious question: Should Greece remain in the Eurozone? While we all think about this, do see this AP story via The Washington Post, "Greeks’ elation at new debt relief is tempered by prospect of years of sacrifice".
ATHENS, Greece — Greeks were torn between relief and foreboding on the news Tuesday that their country has received a new massive bailout — while the aid will protect them from a calamitous default and keep them in the euro bloc, it will also cost households years of economic hardship.
The initial relief created Tuesday by the 17-nation eurozone’s approval of a new €130 billion ($170 billion) rescue package was offset by a grim reality: Greece faces many more years of sacrifice, on top of a grueling 24 months of austerity measures that have contributed to record high unemployment and a rapidly contracting economy.
“I don’t see (the agreement) with any joy because again we’re being burdened with loans, loans, loans, with no end in sight,” Athens architect Valia Rokou said.
The deal in Brussels gives Greece its second financial lifeline in less than two years — a combined package of foreign loans equivalent to about €22,000 ($29,000) for every Greek citizen, children included. National debt already amounts to about €32,000 ($42,300) each.
Rioting in Athens: What can a poor boy do?
Posted by JD Hull at 01:29 PM | Comments (0)
February 20, 2012
Overheard in Venice: Turn off phones/computers 2 hours a day.
"You will miss nothing. No one will miss you."
Posted by JD Hull at 12:11 PM | Comments (0)
February 17, 2012
Double Secret "3-Way" Talks: Yanks, Afghans and Taliban?
With Kabul and Washington pushing for peace talks, Pakistan is regarded by both capitals as a major obstacle in the process. Afghan and American officials maintain that Pakistan's intelligence community continues to actively support Afghan Taliban insurgents.
"Taliban" always sounded to us like name of a Western child's toy--but it is anything but. And the Taliban, which the current Afghanistan president Hamid Karzai seeks to engage in talks, appears to have played this one expertly. It's clear that Taliban leaders based in both Afghanistan and Pakistan will negotiate with the West--but it seems extremely unlikely to us that anyone (except the U.S.) wants or needs to talk to President Karzai, a decent and smart human and snazzy dresser who is also a major tool. The Taliban laughs the guy off. See the Los Angeles Times today: "Afghan leader Hamid Karzai seeks Pakistan help in Taliban talks".
On the Good Foot: Last night in Islamabad, Afghan President Hamid Karzai and Pakistani Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani get ready to hit a few bars, discos and clubs, tip a few and pretend that Karzai has a real job. (B.K. Bangash/Associated Press)
Posted by JD Hull at 06:47 PM | Comments (0)
February 15, 2012
Besides, who else at your shop can make floral vests, khakis and wing tips work?
Just kidding. Old Boomers at WAC/P? continue to evolve. So please visit Schumpeter at The Economist and his/her excellent "Of Companies and Closets: Being Gay-Friendly is Cheap and Good for Business", a gem we missed published four days ago. Eye-opening, timely, brave and very well done. Excerpt:
The Human Rights Campaign (HRC), an American pressure group, measures corporate policies towards sexual minorities in its annual “equality index”. Of the 636 companies that responded to its survey this year, 64% offer the same medical benefits for same-sex partners as for heterosexual spouses. Some 30% scored a fabulous 100% on the group’s index.
Progress has taken place in a wide range of industries. The 100% club predictably contains plenty of talent-driven outfits such as banks and consultancies (including Mitt Romney’s old employer, Bain & Company). But it also includes industrial giants such as Alcoa, Dow Chemical, Ford, Owens Corning and Raytheon.
Lord Browne, the boss of BP who resigned after his sex life made headlines in 2007, said he always remained in the closet because “it was obvious to me that it was simply unacceptable to be gay in business, and most definitely the oil business.” Today Chevron, one of BP’s toughest competitors, has a 100% rating.
Graphic: The Economist/Brett Ryder
Posted by JD Hull at 11:55 PM | Comments (0)
February 14, 2012
Say it ain't so, Scott Greenfield.
Head Counselor at Camp Bedlam hangs up his keyboard. For now, anyway. Squeezing it all in between moments of a full-time upper-tier criminal defense practice, he woke up early each day and gave us five (5) years of smart, funny and enduring excellence in blogging on real issues at Simple Justice. Day-in day-out, and in one of the worst and least soul-searching neighborhoods on earth (i.e., the Web or Internet, Bubba), he wrote lots about lawyering done right, and pounded home that there is no shiny app or a shortcut for any of it on our new digital terrain. Yesterday morning, Scott Greenfield said he's done blogging. But writers--even with day jobs as fancy lawyers--well, "writers gotta write". Greenfield's a gifted writer and humorist, too. Expect to see more of the boy.
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Above: Greenfield in 2005--a few days before tragic hunting accident.
Posted by JD Hull at 08:54 PM | Comments (0)
St. Valentine's Day: You Gotta Serve Somebody.
"Romeo and Juliet" by Ford Madox Brown (1821-1893). Climb up out of yourself. Serve.
Posted by JD Hull at 12:00 AM | Comments (0)
February 13, 2012
"Counteracting declines" in the EU: Greece's austerity measures prompt some world markets gains. But...
We must show that Greeks, when they are called on to choose between the bad and the worst, choose the bad to avoid the worst.
--Greece Finance Minister Evangelos Venizelos
But will that do it? Yesterday in Athens, while being guarded by riot police, the Greek Parliament passed its austerity legislation for a nation edging toward fiscal collapse. The passage was tied to Greece's request for a second bailout for 130 billion-euro ($172 billion). See, via the San Francisco Chronicle at the consistently just-the-facts Bloomberg News, "Greek Parliament Passes Austerity Bill as Rioters Burn Buildings."
Above: Northern Ireland.
Posted by JD Hull at 07:09 PM | Comments (0)
February 12, 2012
New York Times this Sunday morning: Outsourcing Risk and Death in the Afghan War.
I'm reminded of the shockingly high percentage of deployed U.S. Merchant Marine civilian seamen--from old hands to students at Kings Point--who during World War II were killed or wounded at sea, generally unsung and almost always uncompensated. German U-boats coveted Allied supply ships. Merchant Marine vessels were frequent targets. It's true that both governments and the private sector "count funny" during wars. But based on new DOD and DOL statistics, more employees of civilian contractors than U.S. soldiers died last year in Afghanistan. See in the New York Times this morning "Risks of Afghan War Shift from Soldiers to Contractors". Excerpts:
Last year, at least 430 employees of American contractors were reported killed in Afghanistan: 386 working for the Defense Department, 43 for the United States Agency for International Development and one for the State Department, according to data provided by the American Embassy in Kabul and publicly available in part from the United States Department of Labor.
By comparison, 418 American soldiers died in Afghanistan last year, according to Defense Department statistics compiled by icasualties.org, an independent organization that monitors war deaths.
.......The biggest contractor in terms of war zone deaths is apparently the defense giant L-3 Communications. If L-3 were a country, it would have the third highest loss of life in Afghanistan as well as in Iraq; only the United States and Britain would exceed it in fatalities.
Over the past 10 years, L-3 and its subsidiaries, including Titan Corporation and MPRI Inc., had at least 370 workers killed and 1,789 seriously wounded or injured through the end of 2011 in Iraq and Afghanistan, records show.
In a statement, a spokeswoman for L-3, Jennifer Barton, said: “L-3 is proud to have the opportunity to support the U.S. and coalition efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan. We mourn the loss of life of these dedicated men and women.”
Other American companies with a high number of fatalities are Supreme Group, a catering company, with 241 dead through the end of 2011; Service Employees International, another catering company, with 125 dead; and security companies like DynCorps (101 dead), Aegis (86 dead) and Hart Group (63 dead). In all, according to Labor Department data, 64 American companies have lost more than seven employees each in the past 10 years.
Late 2010: Civilian contractors at the ABP Border Center in Spin Boldak, Afghanistan. Photo: Sgt. Richard Andrade.
Posted by JD Hull at 01:26 PM | Comments (0)
February 11, 2012
More China in Africa: China labor practices in Zambia's mines.
See "One Barking Dog Sets the Whole Street a-Barking" and related links and posts for a discussion on the upshot of a recent Human Rights Watch's report on labor practices in a Chinese company in Zambia. It's all at Deborah Brautigam's China in Africa: The Real Story, which we first noticed here at the year's end. If you're not watching the world's scramble for Africa's resources as many African nations seem to enter their competence phases--following those of achieving independence and across-the-board post-colonial mismanagement--you and yours run the risk of becoming a western Rip Van Winkle.
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Posted by JD Hull at 11:39 AM | Comments (0)
Imperfections: They rarely derail the Way Ample.
Don't let anybody tell you that you never want overweight jurors, or that you always want them -- or that you never or always want any other group. It just isn't true.
--Anne Reed
Fat people aren't jolly after all? We did worry for a while that the heavy-set, the lazy and work-life balance devotees were on the road to becoming quasi-suspect classes requiring intermediate scrutiny under 14th Amendment. Well, we checked this morning and it hasn't happened yet. But what about overweight people as jurors? We kind of like them on juries for defendants: to cut you some slack on petroleum spills, PCB contamination and the occasional insider-trading felony murder.
Jurors 8, 9 and 10 on break. Lucian Freud's (1922-2011) "Benefits Supervisor Sleeping"
Posted by Holden Oliver (Kitzbühel Desk) at 12:00 AM | Comments (0)
February 08, 2012
The Economist: Must a U.S. MBA degree take 2 years? (And must our law degree take 3 years?)
Probably not, to both questions. See at The Economist "Which MBA? Kellogg School of Management: The 21st-Century Knocks" on Dean Sally Blount's rethinking of things at Northwestern's fine B-school in Chicago. She has some brave and interesting thoughts to share. Quote from her:
...as I look back, 2000-2010 was some kind of worm hole that got us from the 20th to the 21st century. If you had told me in 2000 that in a decade the World Trade Centre would fall from a terrorist attack, we’d go into a number of wars, we would elect a black president and Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers would vaporise, I would have been stunned.
You can almost see the simplicity of the 20th century in retrospect. Business is still the dominant social institution of our time, as it was in the late 20th century, but it is very different now. The depth of understanding that you cannot separate private enterprise from public policy is far more profound than anyone saw. And that has huge implications on what you do as a business educator.
Posted by JD Hull at 11:47 PM | Comments (0)
February 07, 2012
Happy 200th, Boz.
Charles J. H. Dickens (February 7, 1812 – June 9, 1870)
Posted by JD Hull at 11:59 PM | Comments (0)
February 06, 2012
The Best News from Mexico in Months: Josefina Vazquez Mota.
See at MSNBC "'I will be the first woman president of Mexico in history',". Mexican Congresswoman Vazquez Mota, 51, shakes up the old boy political culture of Mexico, by winning--and winning easily--the National Action Party's primary last night:
The personable, cheerful Vazquez Mota invited party members to help her beat the telegenic and handsome Pena Nieto, who is married to a glamorous telenovela star.
"We begin a new road," said Vazquez Mota. "A road to defeat the real adversary of Mexico, who embodies authoritarianism and the worst antidemocratic practices; who represents the way back to corruption and offers impunity as a conviction. The adversary is Pena Nieto and his party."
Vazquez Mota is considered the PRI's strongest challenger, though Mexican voters seem weary of the ruling National Action Party which has governed for 11 years. Delegates are betting that a woman candidate could boost party appeal.
"It injects a certain new note of uncertainty. There's never been a strong female presidential candidate for any other major party before," said Eric Olson, a senior associate at the Woodrow Wilson Center's Mexico Institute. "It adds that historical element and maybe some excitement."
Posted by JD Hull at 09:31 AM | Comments (0)
February 04, 2012
"Frozen Fury": Mom-and-Pop Motherland Go After Putin Again.
Today in Russia, in a number of cities, the presumably-rigged presidential elections next month (March 4) brought out more middle-class crowds to protest the Putin regime. Despite Arctic temperatures, the number of protesters are said by observers to exceed the crowds of December 2011. See at NYT "Protesters Throng Frozen Moscow in Anti-Putin Protest".
AP Photo
Posted by JD Hull at 12:29 PM | Comments (0)
February 03, 2012
Once again, The Question: Can Non-Lawyers Own Shares in U.S. Law Firms?
And can you think of a more controversial yet important question for the legal profession? The New York Bar, with an assist from the Wall Street Journal's Law Blog, raised it again this week: "New York State Bar Revisits Nonlawyer Ownership".
Posted by JD Hull at 12:41 PM | Comments (0)
February 02, 2012
The Economist: How are you at reading Tribes?
"Reading a contract is useful, but you also need to be able to read people." The Economist, which has emerged as the weekly magazine for the 21st century world, has consistently underscored that doing business internationally requires an instinct for the multicultural. Business smarts and merit, of course, count, too. But the Multicultural is Now Everywhere, as nations and tribes down through history continue see their own move to locations all over the world. To encounter different tribes and folkways, you need not even travel. Tribes will come to you. To succeed at most things, you must be cognizant that increasingly tribes are all around you, and you need to start "getting" them. At The Economist, see columnist Schumpeter's excellent The Power of Tribes, and these examples:
Cultural ties matter in business because they lower transaction costs. Tribal loyalty fosters trust. Cultural affinity supercharges communication. Reading a contract is useful, but you also need to be able to read people.
Even as free trade and electronic communications bring the world closer together, kinship still counts. Indians in Silicon Valley team up with other Indians; Chinese-Americans do business with Taiwan and Shanghai.
One of the most vibrant cultural networks is also one of the oldest: the Sinosphere. China’s growing might is reinforced by its links with the overseas Chinese. Some 70m ethnic Chinese live outside mainland China. Some are descended from those who moved abroad during China’s imperial expansion from the 12th to the 15th centuries, settling in what are now Indonesia, Vietnam, Malaysia and Myanmar. More recently, many fled to escape the horrors of Maoism, or to seek a better life in America or another rich country. Together they connect China to every corner of the world.
Graphic: Brett Ryder/The Economist
Posted by JD Hull at 01:22 PM | Comments (0)
February 01, 2012
South Africa's bid to control African Union goes to Plan B.
Unfortunately, South Africa's plan to take effective control of the African Union (consisting of 54 nations), and then to make the AU a more dynamic global player, is on hold for a few months. See at Bloomberg "South Africa Fails in AU Bid, Setting Back Africa Plan". It begins:
South Africa failed in its bid to secure control of the African Union’s top decision-making body, setting back its plan for the continental organization to play a more forceful role in global politics.
South African Home Affairs Minister Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma didn’t win enough support in [Monday's] election in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, for head of the AU Commission. The incumbent, Jean Ping, who failed to secure two-thirds of the vote to win a second term, will remain in the position until the next AU summit in June, his spokesman, Noureddine Mezni, said.
It’s “embarrassing for South Africa that it has not been able to carry a majority,” Daniel Silke, an independent political analyst who has advised Telkom South Africa Ltd. (TKG) and Sanlam Ltd. (SLM), said in a phone interview from Cape Town. “It clearly shows South Africa will have to do some targeted lobbying in the run-up to any future elections.”
Posted by JD Hull at 12:21 PM | Comments (0)