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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)