January 2008

Mid-life crisis? (Friday, 2/1/08)
A new international survey of 2 million people from eight countries seems to suggest that there really is something about being in one's forties that can contribute to depression. Here's more from Sharon Jayson.

When actor David Niven was 58, someone asked how it felt to be "middle-aged." He replied, "Middle-aged? How many people do you know who are 116?" He was right too. Mr. Niven died in 1983 at age 73.

Today's NewWork News Web Tip: TechNewsWorld (Friday, 2/1/08)
Even if you're still trying to master the ball-point pen, TechNewsWorld can help you to catch up to the rest of the rest of the world, and better understand the technology revolution that is transforming lives all over the world as well as the world itself.

Today's NewWork News Web Tip: Statistical Understanding Made Simple (Tuesday, 1/29/08)
There are few studies more important that statistics, and few that can be more challenging. If the majority of people really understood even descriptive statistics, which, is a small part of what there is to know, the world would be a different place. If researchers at the University of Glasgow really have made statistical understanding simple, the world owes then a great debt of thanks.

Today's NewWork News Web Tip: Scanlon Leadership Network (Friday, 1/25/08)
Joe Scanlon had been a boxer, a corporate cost accountant, and a union leader. Along the way, he developed one of the first really effective "profit sharing" systems in American corporate life and it caught the attention of the "father" of organizational psychology, MIT's Douglas McGregor.

Dr. Carl Frost received his Ph. D. in clinical psychology at Clark University, where, on his only visit to the United States, Sigmund Freud spoke at the invitation of the inventor of adolescent psychology and president of the University, G. Stanley Hall.

Then, Dr. Frost then became Dr. Douglas McGregor's protege at MIT before moving on to Michigan State University, where he became legendary as a principle proponent of the Scanlon Plan. By the time he retired, Dr. Frost had worked with major corporations throughout America and abroad and had become a recipient of a Lifetime Achievement Award from the American Psychological Association. In fact, Dr. Frost had become so instrumental in helping corporations organize around the Scanlon Plan that many people now refer to it as the Frost-Scanlon Plan.

Whatever we call it, the Scanlon Plan has been spectacularly successful, because it encourages labor and management to work on the same team, rather than squandering their energies opposing one another. Research clearly shows that Scanlon Plan companies tend to be more effective and more profitable. However, as Dr. Frost has indicated in his books and elsewhere, the Plan is not a panacea. Just as a successful garden depends on preconditions, the organizational "soil" or "climate" has to be prepared properly before the Scanlon Plan can be expected to reach its full potential.

In part, because of the Scanlon Plan's success in companies such as Motorola, Herman Miller, Donelly, and others, many corporations have adopted it and have become members of the excellent Scanlon Leadership Network under the able direction of President Paul Davis.

Dobbs says that America's political leadership has squandered its wealth (Wednesday, 1/23/08)
CNN's Lou Dobbs has changed the nature of his television program and become well-known as a critic of current economy policies. In his current commentary, he asserts that President Bush's assurances ring fairly hollow under present circumstances, and the President isn't the only leader of which Mr. Dobbs is critical.

Incidentally, while we believe that we triggered media and political concern about the exportation of high-value jobs with a series of articles several years ago by one of our columnists, Dr. William Raynor, Lou Dobbs has become the most vocal critic of what he thinks is a war on the American middle-class.

Today's NewWork News Web Tip: Historic Campus Architecture Project (Wednesday, 1/23/08)
The modern university institution, as we understand it, is about a thousand years old, unless we trace it all the way back to the ancient Middle East, Asia, or Greece, in which case, it is much older.

However, following these very early institutions of learning, there was a very long interregnum, particularly in the West, before places established specifically for thinking, study, and learning arose again in Italy and Paris about a thousand years ago.

In our judgment, the synergistic interaction of the knowledge revolution with the technology revolution has left most existing institutions hopelessly behind. Many are scrambling to catch up, and this is causing tremendous cultural and societal tensions.

Some changes which used to take centuries or even millennia are now occurring in only a few years. There is no good reason to expect that higher educational institutions will remain recognizable much longer, either universities, or their satellite institutions, such as liberal arts or community colleges.

Why do most existing college and university campuses have a similar "look," and what difference does it make? Even if higher education continues to undergo fundamental rapid change, the historical significance of traditional campus architecture will continue, as we suggested in our piece yesterday about the importance of physical artifacts in maintaining accurate historical contexts.

Here is the Historic Campus Architecture Project from the Council of Independent Colleges.

Today's NewWork News Web Tip: Connecting to Collections: A Call to Action (Tuesday, 1/22/08)
Anyone who has had a family member with Alzheimer's disease knows how devastating loss of memory can be for individuals and families. Societies and cultures can easily undergo similar afflictions.

For instance, until the recent television documentary by Ken Burns and the books by former NBC anchor Tom Brokaw, the majority of Americans seemed to be forgetting the Second World War, even though it ended only a few decades ago. It was the most significant event of the 20th century and largely gave rise to the modern world we see all around us. There are many people still living who participated in it and have stories to tell, but this generation is passing from the scene very quickly now. A numerical majority of Americans don't remember the 1960s, let alone the 1930s or 1940s. The brevity of the human life span makes it imperative that we learn history.

Also, in relation to yesterday's national celebration of Martin Luther King's birthday, there have been many articles in the press bemoaning the fact that many Americans know almost nothing about Dr. King, his personal complexity, or his work, other than his "I've got a dream" speech. He was murdered only a few years ago, and, already, it seems, he is being turned into an icon or "plaster saint" like George Washington or Abraham Lincoln.

Those who recognize the importance of keeping the past alive, overcoming the development and maintenance of myth, and the significant role that physical artifacts can play in doing all this, were particularly disturbed by the looting of the Baghdad museum shortly after the invasion of Iraq.

Some American officials didn't seem to give very high priority to preserving the artifacts in the museum, bringing to mind the Biblical injunction, "They know not what they do." With only a few military personnel, the looting could have been prevented.

This was the museum in Baghdad, for heaven's sake, not a local museum in Rapid City or Casper, Wyoming, even though we are not trying to minimize the significance of the work that these organizations do either. Nonetheless, the museum in Baghdad contained physical artifacts from the birth of Western Civilization. Their importance can hardly be overestimated. To say that living people may be more important than the dead past seems to miss the point. The past isn't dead. We respond to things in terms of how they look to us, and historical context and perspective influence how they look.

According to the Institute of Museum and Library Services, hundreds of millions of items in collections require immediate attention if we are not to lose them, and, in the process, lose our origins and part of ourselves as well. Here's the MILS web site, Connecting to Collections: A Call to Action.

Stein on how to think about recessions, including the next one (Monday, 1/21/08)
Ben Stein has had a stunningly successful career in many fields. Of course, it may have helped to grow up in an affluent Washington, D. C. suburb with a father, Herb Stein, who was a distinguished author and economist, and who served as Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisors in the Nixon and Ford administrations. In fact, Herb's lawyer and economist son, Ben was a presidential speech writer in both of those administrations as well.

Moreover, both Ben and his father have been professors, and both have been highly published. Ben has written more than a dozen books. Nonetheless, Ben may be best known to most Americans as an actor and TV funny man.

Ben Stein still has a very serious side, even though he can be very entertaining. Here's what he has to say about "rethinking recessions."

Bad news, and the Administration's intended response (Thursday, 1/17/08)
Housing construction was down 25 percent last year, jobless claims have reached their highest level in more than two years, even though first-time claims were down a bit last week, and manufacturing activity has fallen off sharply as well.

Recent data have all the marks of a coming--or continuing--recession. We say "continuing," because, even though the official definition of a recession is "negative growth" for at least six months, what do you call it when the economy has been shrinking for three months or four months or five months and hasn't reached six months yet? It's possible to be in a recession, even before it can be called that, following a glance in the "rearview mirror."

At any rate, at least two high government officials--President Bush and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke--support the idea of a stimulus package either to head off a recession or to end it before it can be called what it is.

Do what you love, and the money will follow--or will it? (Friday, 1/11/08)
Many people are advised to follow their passions in their work, but, as BusinessWeek points out, there can be hazards.

Nonetheless, here are two examples of people who have "followed their bliss" with success. One is an Internet company, while the other has to do with cookies. Not the kind involving computers, but the kind involving sugar and other good stuff.

Meanwhile, Emily Keller writes about the perils and promise of making a career change to a job with an organization that doesn't make a profit--on purpose, while Douglas MacMillan writes about people whose passions have to do with "green-collar" jobs.

Today's NewWork News Web Tip: POTUS (Thursday, 1/3/08)
POTUS, in this case, is plural. It refers to PRESIDENTS of the United States. If you would like access to considerable information about the forty-two men who have served as President of the United, this site from the Internet Public Library is a good place to begin.

But, wait a minute--the FORTY-TWO men who have served as president? Aren't the Bushes always distinguishing between 41 and 43? Isn't the current President Bush the 43rd man to serve in the White?

No, he's the 42nd, and this is because, while Grover Cleveland served two terms--one in the 1880's, the other in the 1890s--they were nonconsecutive, separated by the four years during which Benjamin Harrison was President.