The 212:The Extra Degree metaphor is fundamentally broken in both its inspiration and its application. Excellence is typically not a state change achieved by just a bit more, but rather, something else entirely.
Turtle Index: Healthcare, Ethanol and Video Games
For this month’s Turtle Index: focus on healthcare in America. The number in square brackets refers to the source, given below. 4 dollars: portion of the cost of a $299 iPod made in China that actually stays in China, according to University of California study [1]. 160 dollars: amount that stays in the United States […]
Celine on The Value of Education
I was recently listening to someone on the radio who had worked with the Rwandan truth and reconciliation commission and she was saying how one of the things that surprised her was how the people who participated in and fomented the genocide were often the best educated. Priests, doctors, teachers. The heros she found were […]
Single-issue customers – How to count vegetarians
You’ve no doubt heard of single-issue voters. People who vote for a candidate purely based on issues like abortion, capital punishment, gun control and so on. But what about single-issue customers? That is, customers who won’t patronize your business because it’s so unfriendly to smokers, vegetarians, or whatever. How many of those groups can you […]
Legacy of Ashes: A History of the CIA (book)
If you want to be really afraid, read Tim Weiner’s Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA, a prize-winning history of the CIA based heavily on recently declassified internal documents and hundreds of interviews with former and current agents, including most living directors and some dead ones (the author has been covering the intelligence […]
The Problem with Courage (book)
Review of Michael Beschloss, Presidential Courage I had high expectations of Michael Beschloss’ Presidential Courage: Brave Leaders and How They Changed America 1789-1989, but must say that I was disappointed. I had expected stirring narratives of cases where presidents stuck to their guns in the face of criticism and opposition. That’s more or less what’s […]
Do Social Drinkers Really Earn More?
According to a recent study, social drinkers earn more — lots more. Drinking alone at home doesn’t count. Barhopping without drinking apparently doesn’t count either. What’s really interesting here, though, is not that this study may lack rigor, but who wants you to know that social drinkers may earn more. Having been alerted by Paul […]
Waste is Food (book: Cradle to Cradle)
Every so often I come across a book that makes it onto my “must read” list. It’s been a while, but William McDonough and Michael Braungart’s Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the way we make things is one of those books. For people unfamiliar with McDonough’s work, he is an environmentalist, architect and designer who has […]
Nation of Sheep (book)
In the summer of 1959 there occurred a series of events which demonstrated our national ignorance in a shameful and nearly fatal manner. Briefly, the United States threatened intervention in a foreign country for reasons which, it turned out, had no basis in fact… Our Secretary of State called the situation grave; our ambassador to […]