September 2006

Here's another way in which this for-profit company may not resemble a real university (Saturday, 9/30/06)
Can academic freedom be alive and well at a higher educational institution that engages in religious discrimination? If the EEOC's discrimination suit is correct in its assertions, your career at the University of Phoenix is more likely to flourish if you're a Mormon. However the government's Equal Employment Opportunity Commission's charges haven't been proven correct yet, so stay tuned.

Incidentally, if true, it's really nothing new in higher education. Not so many years ago, you'd have to send Lewis and Clark out in order to find a Jew on the faculties of some of the most famous American east-coast universities. Now, at many institutions throughout the United States, it probably won't help your chances of being hired if you're a Muslim, even if you have the strongest possible scholarly credentials.

Wanna buy The Donald's The House? (Saturday, 9/30/06)
Donald planned to trump the market by asking $125 million for his Palm Beach, Florida home, but, as Jessica Gresko reports, there already are houses on the market that have higher price tags.

Are you impressed by wealth or opulence? As we've said so many times, it's not what you have but what you do that's important, including what you do with what you have.

Warren Buffett has far more billions than The Donald, and we don't expect that he lives in a two-room efficiency apartment. Nonetheless, it is said that he still drives himself around Omaha in a car that is several years old.

His younger friend, Bill Gates, has even more money and does live in a house which cost him about $60 million to build some years ago when he was making about $200 million per week. Though palatial, the Gates house is part home and part laboratory. It's where he tries out hi-tech gizmos that may or may not be part of the average home of the future.

At any rate, among the things that distinguish Gates and Buffett from Donald Trump, in addition to the fact that they are "rich billionaires," while Donald is, well, a relatively "poor billionaire," is that Donald likes to show off his wealth, while friends have difficulty getting Bill Gates to wash his glasses. Moreover, Gates and Buffett are the world's most generous philanthropists, who, in short order, will give away about as much as Donald has altogether.

Why are so few organizations marketing to the boomer generation? (Wednesday, 9/27/06)
While it is true that the 18-49 market is most desirable to most advertisers, not all businesses are trying to sell products to relatively young people. Those who want to target older people need someplace to go.

In fact, if all radio stations, television programs, etc., target the younger audience, they will fragment it so that their actual markets may be far smaller than those made up of older people. For instance, the "boomer" generation is enormous, but, of course, it comprises a major age range: people born between 1946 and 1964. Some "boomers" could be the very young parents of others.

The Internet seems to suffer from the allergy to older markets as well, as Business Week's Olga Kharif reports.

Do you hear the planet gasping? (Tuesday, 9/26/06)
The Earth is warmer than it's been for a lonnnnnng time. Research published in the new edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences indicates that Earth's temperature has reached a level that it hasn't seen since thousands of years before the onset of what we call Civilization. Have we already passed the so-called "tipping point?"

But wait--the fact that it seems to have happened before--long before there was an Industrial Revolution with its high levels of CO2 production--is human activity the culprit this time?

Actually, the preponderance of the evidence from many research studies points to too many people in the world and too much carbon being transferred from below ground to the atmosphere. Both the atmosphere and the oceans are heating up, and human activity during recent history seems to have a lot to do with both.

Global population didn't reach a billion until about the 1840s. During the approximately 165 years since, it has grown to more than 6.5 billion, which is roughly the period of the Industrial Revolution and its aftermath.

Presently, about 1 billion people can be regarded as living in "rich" countries, including Western Europe, the U.S., Canada, and a few other places. If the latest data on climate change are correct, it would appear that Earth can't even sustain itself with fewer than a sixth of its population consuming resources and energy and generating waste at such high levels. Meanwhile, a large proportion of the remainder of the world's people aspire to living like those in the rich countries. So, now what?

Is six and one-half billion people too many for the planet to support? Brad Knickerbocker of the Christian Science Monitor is wondering if 300 million is too many for the United States.

Will the U.S. slowdown spread to the rest of the world? (Monday, 9/25/06)
If the global economy had been so highly integrated years ago, it would have caught pneumonia whenever the American economy sneezed. However, American economic dominance isn't quite as great now as it might have been during earlier years. The European Union is about as big as the United States and it's rich. China and India are far larger than both put together and growing economically at faster rates than any other countries in the world. Nonetheless, the American economy is still very influential, and Chris Flood has been thinking about the global implications of a U. S. slowdown.

Here's the case for relaxing if you're a Walgreen and CVS investor (Monday, 9/25/06)
Vitaliy Katsenelson says that Wal-Mart's new generic medication policy shouldn't hurt the two largest drugstore chains all that much. Prescription medications account for about two-thirds of the sales of Walgreen's and CVS, but amount to "a rounding error" for the world's largest retailer.

Still, with its enormous buying power, we wonder if Wal-Mart will be able to negotiate lower-price deals with the major pharmaceutical companies in a way that Medicare is legally prohibited from doing. That is, will Wal-Mart be able to force down non-generic drug prices as well?

Incidentally, in case anybody ever asks, CVS has the most stores, but, for the moment, at least, Walgreen's has the greatest yearly sales.

The skepticism of major biz people is beginning to give way, but why? (Sunday, 9/24/06)
Brit phee-nom Sir Richard Branson says he has been skeptical about global warming for years, but Al Gore recently helped change his mind over breakfast. As a consequence, he has committed $3 billion to finding ways to deal with the problem, which he now believes is real.

Why have so many business people been skeptical? Is it because they have identified methodological flaws in the research? Probably not, because it's likely that most of them really haven't a clue as to what it takes to be right about anything empirical, and may not even really understand why their own business judgments have worked as well as they have so far.

People's attitudes, including attitudinal belief components, tend to support what they perceive as being in their own self-interest, and this applies to successful business people as well. It doesn't have to have anything to do with the facts as they can best be understood at a particular time.

The attitudes of politicians can be even easier to understand, given that their self-interest tends to reflect the attitudes of their constituents, and, at any particular time, the majority of people in most societies are likely to be rooted in traditions extending back centuries or millennia. This makes things complicated--and very dangerous--in societies around the world, not limited to the United States, given that the synergistic interaction of the knowledge and tech revolutions has left most human institutions and most individuals hopelessly behind.

Clinton's three-day total (Saturday, 9/23/06)
From all indications, Bill Clinton left the White House in debt, but has managed to gain high-income and high-net-worth status over the years since from book royalties and speeches throughout the world.

However, his wealth--whatever it is--pales in comparison to the net worth of people he managed to gather together at the second-annual three-day meeting in New York City of the Clinton Global Initiative. The meeting was by invitation only, and it cost $15,000 to get in. Nonetheless, at least a thousand people attended, and many of them contributed to total pledges of $7.3 billion to help finance global programs.

At the very least, former President Clinton has demonstrated that it isn't only money that can make a difference. His celebrity status, not only in the U.S., but around the world, makes him much more influential than if he were simply one more unknown billionaire with philanthropic impulses.

Today's NewWork News Web Tip: Clinton Global Initiative (Saturday, 9/23/06)
The Clinton Global Initiative is a creation of the Clinton Foundation and just completed its second-annual meeting in New York City yesterday. The success of this meeting, not only in raising billions of dollars for global programs, but also in cutting across ideological and political party lines, reinforces the extent to which many of the world's privileged are prepared to do what they can to impact critical world problems.

However, it isn't necessary to be wealthy in order to engage in philanthropic activity (Pop quiz: What's the difference between charitable and philanthropic activity? We'll provide an answer at some later time). If you have competencies or gifts of some kind, you can share them, rather than money. As we've said numerous times, it's not what we HAVE but what we DO that matters, including what we do with what we have.

Bloomberg and Schwarzenegger to collaborate on reducing greenhouse emissions (Friday, 9/22/06)
We've reported that an increasing number of states have decided not to wait for Washington to raise the federal minimum wage. Similarly, California Governor Schwarzenegger and New York City Mayor Bloomberg have decided to work together on the reduction of greenhouse gasses, thinking there is no time to wait for the Bush administration to begin taking action.

Schwarzenegger and Bloomberg are both Republicans, but not Bush-type "neo-cons." Ideologically, Schwarzenegger is similar to Bill Clinton on economic and social issues. Bloomberg, on the other hand, was a Democrat all his adult life until running for mayor of the Big City. New York is a Democratic town, and there were lots of candidates in the Democratic primary. It appears that Bloomberg decided he would have a better chance of winning if he ran as a Republican.

But, a billion isn't what it used to be (Friday, 9/22/06)
If your net worth is only about $999 million, you're out of luck. For the first time, the Forbes list of 400 richest Americans contains only billionaires. It's particularly interesting, because there was a time during the 1960s when Howard Hughes and J. Paul Getty were thought to be the only American billionaires. However, a billion dollars in 1968, say, was worth more than $5 billion in current dollars.

Speaking of billionaires, a number have been present at the second-annual Clinton Global Initiative conference in New York, and some have committed impressive amounts of money to CGI's programs. For instance, yesterday, British entrepreneur Richard Branson committed $3 billion to programs intended to reduce global warming. Today, the former President announced a $1 billion program dedicated to the development of renewable energy sources.

Those who believe that Bill Clinton wants to be Secretary General of the United Nations might be dissuaded by seeing the success of the second annual CGI conference. The Clinton Global Initiative may be able do a far better job of accomplishing things that the UN has been attempting. Moreover, CGI seems to be bringing people together for work on its programs who have not been seen in the same room too often in the past. Laura Bush spoke, and, as former President Clinton said, he can't think of another time that people like Rupert Murdock and Barbra Streisand have worked together.

Incidentally, what convinced Richard Branson to pledge $3 billion to combat global warming, despite his long-term skepticism about the problem? He had breakfast with Al Gore, who apparently closed the deal.

Today's NewWork News Web Tip: The 400 Richest Americans (Friday, 9/22/06)
Forbes magazine has released its latest listing of the 400 Richest Americans. The ranking is headed by some familiar names, such as Gates and Buffett, who are still numbers 1 and 2, respectively.

Also, Oprah is no longer simply a billionaire, but now a billion-and-a-half-aire, according to the magazine's estimates. Some years ago, it appeared that Bill Cosby would become the first performer in history to reach the $1 billion mark in assets, but, apparently, that didn't happen. Oprah's a performer, of course, but the principal reason that she has become stupendously wealthy, rather than simply fabulously wealthy, is that she owns the production company that produces her television show as well as others.

There are a lot more people with net worth of at least a billion dollars now than there used to be, so check the list carefully to see if you're on it.

Are these employers telling us about their employees or themselves? (Thursday, 9/21/06)
Are most employees fundamentally dishonest? Some employers seem to think so, but an obvious question is how much of this is a consequence of the well-known psychological mechanism of "projection?"

It's common for many highly competitive business people--who are often competitive socially, as well as in strictly business relationships--to assume that everybody is working to maximize wealth; that everybody is scrambling to play the same game, and that the world is divided into "winners" and "losers."

Problem is, many of these people seem to be telling us more about themselves than about other people. Visit any academic library, for instance, and you will be surrounded by tens of thousands of books that some of humanity's most talented, hardest working individuals have labored long and hard to write. Most of these authors never expect to make a living from their writing alone, and most of those expectations are fulfilled.

Nonetheless, it's probably true that there is quite a lot of workplace theft, and Gladys Edmunds have been thinking about the reasons for it as well as what might be done about it.

Today's NewWork News Web Tip: National Institutes of Health (Wednesday, 9/20/06)
Americans often spell the National Institutes of Health with a missing "s." There isn't one national institute of health, but several, and that's why this agency of the United States Department of Health and Human Services is plural.

It may only be coincidental, but quite near Washington, D. C. is a great Baltimore university that often suffers from a missing "s" as well. It is The Johns Hopkins University. It not only claims to be the first RESEARCH university in the United States, but also continues to be known as one of the world's most important medical centers.

But wait--haven't universities always been known as centers of original scholarship? No, in fact, until a hundred years ago or so, universities were considered to be mostly socialization instruments, much as K-12 education is still regarded by many people. Until Johns Hopkins started a new trend following the Civil War, it wasn't thought necessary to conduct research in order to determine what is true about the world or its people. In European-based cultures, at least, one needed only to look in the Bible or the writings of Aristotle, and the job of universities was to pass these "truths" on to the next generation.

Are we about to revisit the "good old days?" Many of the world's people, including many in the United States, as well as many political leaders, seem to believe that the most reliable way of formulating trustworthy answers to empirical questions is to consult our remote ancestors who had zero access to any of the information from the past dozen centuries or more. An unfortunate problem is that even the smartest of them didn't know that the blood circulates or what the heart is for. That was the level of information during the times in which many of our current institutions are rooted.

Moreover, some of the largest higher educational institutions in the United States are now called "universities," but are for-profit organizations that operate in an entirely parasitic manner; i.e., they do not support or encourage original scholarship.

Also, some university textbook publishers apparently feel that they can save money by no longer including a list of citations at the ends of their books. Whenever assertions are not supported by specific research references, it would seem that even university textbooks may too easily become propagandistic and slip into ideology.

Isn't it nice that you may live longer than you expect? (Tuesday, 9/19/06)
Well, maybe--but only if you don't last longer than your money. How will you pay for a retirement that could be longer than your work life? Everybody wants to go to heaven, but nobody wants to die. Everybody wants to live a long time, but, well, how long could be too long? Pat Regnier of CNNMoney has been giving some thought to an issue that is becoming highly practical for more and more people. Kathleen Day tells about the growing number of Americans who are feeling particularly squeezed by the prospect of living a long time without the pensions they were expecting.

Of course, one solution for many people is not to retire, or, at least, not right away, but, instead, begin a new career during one's sixth or seventh decade or so. We know of a man who had a long and distinguished career as a design engineer with a major hi-tech corporation. In his early 60's, he started law school so that, by the time he retired from his first career, he was able to take the bar and open a legal practice, which he maintained for a decade or more. Karen Hube has similar stories about the "new retirement."

Not only sick of work, but maybe sick at work or sick from work? (Tuesday, 9/19/06)
Sandra Brown writes about the research at the University of Arizona that finds that bacteria tend to congregate in the modern office. In fact, you're more likely to exchange bacteria in some occupations than in others. Teachers top the list, as their family members have long suspected, because they seem to bring home all the illnesses suffered by students and staff when school starts in the fall.

Radio DJs are fourth on the researchers' list, which may surprise people who don't know what happens in radio station control rooms. Many people who work on the air for several hours each day work with microphones touching or nearly touching their mouths, and mouths are FILLED with bacteria. One dentist told us that he and his proctologist friend, who work on opposite ends of the human body, seemed to agree that dentists have the dirtier end. We don't know enough to be able to say whether that's hyperbole or not.

Today's NewWork News Web Tip: Infectious Disease News (Tuesday, 9/19/06)
Not so many years ago, many people were contrasting modern American life with health circumstances during previous decades when infectious diseases killed large numbers of people of all ages. Then, infant mortality was reduced, more Americans who managed to survive past childhood were living into old age, and the principal causes of death seemed to be degenerative diseases which favored--if that's the right word--older people.

However, with HIV, drug-resistant super bacteria, and the vulnerabilities that come from a highly interconnected world which enables infection to spread rapidly or otherwise affect huge numbers of people quickly, infectious diseases clearly have made a comeback. Some experts are saying that we seem to be entering an age which resembles the period before antibiotics that lasted up until about 60 years ago.

As we've reported numerous times, researchers are communicating faster with one another on the Internet now, as well as saving a great many trees. Infectious Disease News is an online publication which may be of interest to members of the general public as well as health professionals.

Survival of the fittest? (Sunday, 9/17/06)
Joseph Chamie of The Globalist writes about what he calls "Darwinian Migration." He believes that a contradicory message is being sent to potential migrants in poor countries: "We don't want you to come in, and we'll try to keep you out, but, if you can get in, you can stay, and we'll provide support."

Incidentally, despite widespread belief, the term "survival of the fittest" did not come from Charles Darwin. Instead, it is a metaphor for Darwin's biological "natural selection" concept introduced later by social Darwinist, Herbert Spencer. In modern times, the term "survival of the fittest" has been popular among people who feel a need to justify their own privileges, but Darwin had nothing to do with it.

A new twist on outsourcing (Saturday, 9/16/06)
If you believe that private organizations always perform better than government. you must be in favor of turning the next war over to paid mercenaries. After all, U. S. military personnel are government workers as well.

Nonetheless, Oren Dorell reports in USA Today that a growing number of new municipalities are finding that it can be advantageous to hire outsiders to run local government.

Today's NewWork News Web Tip: The Power of Continuing Education (Friday, 9/15/06)
Do you think education should end when you graduate? Not so. Lifelong learning is required in order to participate competently in the new global economy as well as for effective citizenship in an increasingly integrated world.

Two dozen higher education institutions offering service in the Twin Cities region of Minnesota have joined together to form the Twin Cities Adult Education Alliance in order to organize and conduct education fairs for companies that support "business-related continued education opportunities for their employees." The Alliance includes leading two-year institutions such as Normandale Community College, private institutions such as the University of St. Thomas, and state universities, among others.

Today's NewWork News Web Tip: Top American Cities For Savings (Wednesday, 9/13/06)
On average, Americans aren't great savers. Instead, they have an international reputation for spending money they don't have to buy things they really don't want or need. As a consequence, so many Americans have built up huge personal debt, while, collectively, expending enormous amounts of energy and producing tremendous quantities of waste.

Some Americans save more than others, though. Yesterday, we pointed out that there is great variability across the U.S. population with respect to life expectancy and religiosity. This seems to be true of savings as well. Forbes magazine lists American cities that have the highest rates of savings.

Multiple Americas (Tuesday, 9/12/06)
In 1962, Michael Harrington's The Other America was published, calling attention to poverty in the United States. There has been increasing evidence over the years since that an undeveloped country continues to share space with a prosperous country on the North American continent.

However, with respect to life expectancy, it appears that there are several Americas, some of which resemble undeveloped countries, and the mortality statistics are correlated with life style and social class, which, of course, also are correlated with economics.

Another major study helps describe contemporary America. Cathy Lynn Grossman of USA Today writes about a new survey of 1,721 Americans on their religious attitudes and practices. Among many other things, the results show that most Americans say they believe in God, but they have highly varied views of what the concept of "God" refers to.

Incidentally, University of North Carolina religious historian Bart Ehrman says that religious diversity in the modern world, extending across hundreds of denominations and sects in the United States alone, from Episcopalian to Roman Catholicism to Appalachian Snake Handlers, pales in comparison to diversity during the early years in the history of Christianity. Also, former Roman Catholic nun and Oxford scholar Karen Armstrong, in her book, A History of God, traces the many meanings of the concept of God throughout history, including its evolution within the history of Christianity itself.

Europe carries more weight (Monday, 9/11/06)
It may be good news to Americans who have been fearing that Earth might start wobbling in its orbit because of the increased weight of Americans. However, it may not be good news to Europeans, because the obesity epidemic has hit that region of the world as well. Is it one of the diseases of affluence suffered by people whose ancestors so recently had to eat as much as they could find in order to increase their odds of survival.

Today's NewWork News Web Tip: Remembering Slavery (Saturday, 9/9/06)
If you believe that slavery in the Americas happened so long ago as not to be relevant to today's society, you may want to listen to the actual voices of former slaves telling their own stories. A number of institutions, including the Library of Congress and the Smithsonian Institution, have used digital technologies to remove the random noise from recordings made in the 1930s. The Remembering Slavery recordings are easy to listen to now from a technical standpoint, but very hard to listen to, considering their content.

When you look at a dinosaur's skeleton in a museum of natural history, you're looking at a real thing that is almost unimaginably old. If you walk through the houses of people who lived in Pompeii or Herculaneum near Naples, you may feel like an intruder, and that their owners stepped out for awhile, fearing that they will return soon and wonder who you are and why you're examining their still-good-looking frescos. Nonetheless, human beings last lived in those rooms during the morning of August 24, AD 79, nearly two thousand years ago.

On the other hand, if you listen to recordings made by former slaves, you're listening to real people who no doubt had conversations with people who are still living. No wonder one can still hear the echoes of America's most primitive institution and of Africa in the speech of so many Americans.

Here's a related site from the Museum of the African Diaspora in San Francisco. It's Slave Narratives, introduced by Dr. Maya Angelou.

Going for broke in college--literally (Friday, 9/8/06)
The majority of American college students have to borrow in order to get through school, and one in ten ends up owing $35,000 or more by graduation. Does it have to happen? George Mannes offers some advice on how students can gain some degree of control over the debt monster. Some parents of college students who have made particularly unwise borrowing decisions step in to bail them out, but Laura Rowley might not approve of this practice. On the other hand, student debt can be life-determining. That is, it is capable of influencing a person's entire life following graduation.

Are you a worker, and are you really CELEBRATING Labor Day? (Monday, 9/4/06)
Some American workers don't feel they have all that much to celebrate. At least one Ohio steel town has reason to be in a somber mood, according to Terry Kinney. Niala Boodhoo writes in the Miami Herald that many workers aren't as excited as some government officials about the increase in productivity, because, by definition, it means that fewer people are doing more work, and it isn't all a matter of more effective use of technology. For instance, Shankar Vedantam reports that it seems to be the greatly stressed and overworked who are winning the rat race, and Jay Gallagher reports from Albany that, while productivity has been increasing in New York, job growth has been lagging.

Also, Danny Hakim tell what pension costs mean to a factory town, while Hugo Kugiya tells about the effects of a plant closure in Michigan.