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November 17, 2007
Our Wunderkind in Berlin
Being a Very-Minor-Almost-Imperceptible-Celebrity, I sometimes get to hang out with Very-Major-Totally-Obvious-Celebrities...
Chris Abraham, in a post at Because the Medium is the Message
Learn a lot, grow a lot, get famous and make money. You have our permission. As long as you "serve somebody", like the man from Hibbing said, it's your world. To keep level, read T.S. Eliot, some Flaubert and maybe The Upanishads. But watch a little, too.
Watch this guy: WAC?'s talented DC friend and IT mentor Chris Abraham of internet experts Abraham & Harrison kept his old life in America and just started a new one in Berlin, Germany. Chris is a rising star in public relations blogging, new marketing, and search engine optimization (SEO). He amazes me. Chris, well under 40, is no geek,
and someone should run him for office the minute he turns too rich. The last time I saw Chris, a couple of months ago in Monterey, California, he introduced me to another way-talented fellow from NYC we should all watch named Jonathan Swerdloff. And then Chris just happened to invite me to dinner along with a former Fortune 100 company GC-turned-CEO an entire generation older (okay, my age) who I had been wanting to get together with for four (4) years.* Chris is creative, smart, marketing oriented--and charming. You can follow Chris in Berlin at this blog or his other blog. Watch him.
*This annoyed me. WAC? has uber-thick skin. But Chris is better at my job than I am--and he doesn't even have my job.
Posted by JD Hull at 05:09 PM | Comments (0)
November 16, 2007
You're smart when you're angry.
Give her credit when it's due. In last night's Gang War in Las Vegas, HRC does well fending attack from Dem candidates. AP: "In Feisty Debate, Clinton Fires Back". And see Salon coverage. Watch for some conservatives to start commenting favorably on her toughness, preparation and work ethic. Is she a CEO or what?
Posted by JD Hull at 11:59 PM | Comments (0)
Congress passes water bill over the President's veto
Last week's override of the President's veto marks the 107th time in U.S. history that Congress has taken such action--but the first for this President. See coverage from Tennessean.com and Reuters. The $23 billion appropriations bill clears the way for a number of projects, including the repair of the Wolf Creek Dam in Kentucky, funding for coastal restoration in Hurricane Katrina ravaged Louisiana and improving flood control and navigation on waterways. The appropriations bill, which was originally passed by the House in August and the Senate in September, was vetoed by President Bush on November 2. On November 6, the House voted to override the President's veto, and on November 8, the Senate did the same.
Posted by Holden Oliver (Kitzbühel Desk) at 02:46 PM | Comments (0)
Special holiday season marketing tip: do it early.
Don't mean to put pressure on y'all. But if you traditionally send holiday cards or throw a party, consider sending Thanksgiving cards (seriously) rather than Christmas cards and, better yet, doing a Thanksgiving or Fall party--like one WAC? just attended which was near perfect in its details, genuine thoughtfulness and client and marketing smarts. And if customarily you send cards and gifts and throw parties to celebrate holidays in December, do these things by the end of the First Week of December--or maybe just not do them at all, and save your money for next year. The reason for all of the above: by about mid-December,
you and your firm are just another gesture in the flood of well-wishing, it's not special, and nobody really notices your good cheer, sincerest holiday good will and "thank yous" through the barrage of increased mail and deliveries and making the rounds. At worst, doing it later gives the impression of going through the motions. The lesson: be at once thoughtful and noticed.
Posted by JD Hull at 12:17 AM | Comments (0)
November 15, 2007
Checking in with Charon QC
The urbane and refreshing Londoner Charon QC is in top form. See "Europhile Top Shelf…and Downing Street Matters" and his Saturday review of last week's news and UK blog posts. On January 7, CQC hosts Blawg Review, which will never be the same. Some lawyers are international lawyers. Charon is that, and much more: he's a lawyer and an international kind of guy. He would rather choke to death than just talk or write about The Law. We Yank working stiffs stand in awe.
Posted by Holden Oliver (Kitzbühel Desk) at 11:59 PM | Comments (0)
"Warren, you old hippie, that's easy for you to say."
Warren Buffett backs the estate tax in testimony before U.S. Senate Finance Committee. See coverage of yesterday's hearings at WSJ and TaxProf Blog. Unlike many others, Buffett would reform rather than repeal the estate tax. None of this was a surprise, as Buffett has been a supporter of the estate tax generally to check momentum "toward plutocracy". However, Buffett, Berkshire Hathaway's chairman, and with a net worth of approximately $52 billion, did say he would give all
you American mini-millionaires out there a break. He opposes reinstatement of the scheme in place before 2001 which gave decedents' estates a $1 million exemption from the tax and then taxed at a maximum rate of 55%. Instead, Buffett wants an exemption of around $4 million--twice the current $2 million--with lower but gradually increasing rates. The exemption would be adjusted for inflation. Under current law, the estate tax exemption will be gradually increased, and the maximum tax rate gradually decreased, until 2010, when the estate tax is repealed. However, unless Congress changes the law, in 2011 the estate tax will automatically return with a $1 million exemption and maximum tax rate of 55%.
Posted by JD Hull at 06:00 PM | Comments (0)
November 14, 2007
Hassett: "Do you want to learn how to close faster?"
And here is Jim Hassett's answer:
Me too. But we can’t. Teaching people how to close deals faster is a little like teaching gardeners how to pick tomatoes. Picking them isn’t the hard part. The hard part is growing them. [more]
Posted by JD Hull at 11:59 PM | Comments (0)
India LPO
Or Legal Process Outsourcing. An article we missed in last month's ABA Journal about India's Pangea3: "Manhattan Work at Mumbai Prices".
Posted by JD Hull at 11:59 PM | Comments (0)
Paris, Marrakesh, and Not-Law
No matter how hard we try, we can't stay away from Paris Parfait, where an American writer in Paris muses about art, antiques, poetry and politics. Or from My Marrakesh, where a "Moroccan blog girl-next-door" and her bemused American family build a guest house.
Posted by JD Hull at 05:19 PM | Comments (0)
Anne Frank's chestnut tree
We've followed this one over the last few months. According to the AP, the 150-year-old ailing chestnut tree in Amsterdam that Anne Frank saw daily outside her attic window during the two years she hid from the Nazis will be cut down. The Anne Frank Museum has taken grafts from the tree in hopes that a sapling can replace it.
Posted by Holden Oliver (Kitzbühel Desk) at 12:38 AM | Comments (0)
November 13, 2007
New American era: The Exotic First Partner
Kurtz--he got off the boat. He split from the whole goddamn program.
Captain Willard, in Apocalypse Now (1979)
We're barely even talking here about WAC?'s bud Wild Bill, who faces some serious competition in the "off-the-boat" (i.e., campaign bus) category. In today's Salon, see by Rebecca Traister America's Next Top Spouse. It's a guide to "the brassy, opinionated, loud, difficult and plum-crazy partners on the arms of their president-running partners".
Posted by Holden Oliver (Kitzbühel Desk) at 11:59 PM | Comments (0)
Lowland Libertarian lawyer.
"As a lowland Scot, I am as alien to Gaelic culture as I am to the ways of the inuit." Thus speaks the anonymous writer of Musings of a Reactionary Snob. He's a lawyer and Libertarian who lives in Edinburgh. He doesn't want his taxes funding Gaelic broadcasting--through the Gaelic Media Service--yet he personally supports the culture and language of Gaelic. He's got a point. See his post "Gaelic". Colorful and good writing.
Posted by Holden Oliver (Kitzbühel Desk) at 07:17 PM | Comments (0)
November 12, 2007
Norman Mailer (1923-2007)
I don't think life is absurd. I think we are all here for a huge purpose. I think we shrink from the immensity of the purpose we are here for.
Irish guys always liked Norman Mailer. About twenty five years ago Legs McNeil wrote, after doing an interview with Mailer, "nobody talks better than Norm". Mailer reveled in words, and the man could talk. And punch. But our best-ever American literary talker-brawler won two Pulitzers, and was famous for writing alone by the age of 25. He died at age 84 on Friday after nearly 60 years on a pedestal he built and maintained himself. He could be a blow-hard, but he knew something important. Strong opinions put strongly--about writing, men, women, politics, modern life--isn't about getting press. It's a way to have the Conversation in the midst of conformity and complacency. Enemies?
Natural provocateur Mailer knew also that, if you don't have a few, you simply aren't in the game. Like Mailer himself, the news coverage is spirited, opinionated, immense. L.A. Times: Mailer: An Ego with an Insecure Streak; The Irish Times: U.S. Literary Giant, Norman Mailer Dies Aged 84; NYT: Towering Writer with a Matching Ego, Dies at 84; The Guardian: Death of an Icon; The Huffington Post: Norman Mailer: Death and Remembrance. But Norm would have liked this next one the best. Via Pajamas Media, see at Chesler Chronicles: "Norman Mailer, one Tough Jew, is dead." And how many Jewish guys can drink like that? Gaelic retired toper WAC? is way impressed. Keep up the Conversation, Norm. We're bored down here already.
Posted by JD Hull at 07:36 AM | Comments (0)
Blawg Review #134...
...is a real marathon, and it's up at the New York Personal Injury Law Blog.
Posted by Holden Oliver (Kitzbühel Desk) at 05:44 AM | Comments (0)
58,000 gallons
SAN FRANCISCO (AP)—Federal investigators were considering Monday whether to file criminal charges against the crew members of a container ship that struck the Bay Bridge and ripped a gash in its fuel tank, creating the San Francisco Bay's worst oil spill in nearly two decades. [more]
Posted by Holden Oliver (Kitzbühel Desk) at 12:59 AM | Comments (0)
Thank-you notes, gratitude, real life.
A good thank-you--a real thank-you--means something. It is notable, memorable, important.
--TS, April 2007
Last April Esquire Magazine's Tom Chiarella wrote a piece on thank-you notes; as part of his unlikely experiment in doing them, he wrote 91 handwritten ones in one week. It's called "A Little Gratitude: How to Change the Way the World Sees You, One Thank-You Note at a Time". We liked it 7 months ago when it came out, and we like it now. For the same issue, Chiarella also wrote "How to Write a Thank-You Note".
Posted by JD Hull at 12:09 AM | Comments (0)