Eclipse

We missed it here because it happened during the day.  In case you missed it, too:

Winter Solstice Lunar Eclipse from William Castleman on Vimeo.

$11 million dollar tree

Imagine I bought a Christmas tree for $40.  My wife thinks putting her $2000 engagement ring on it would make it look great!  (Remember, we're in the land of make-believe.)  What you say is the value of the tree?

My response:  I'm married?  How the hell did that happen... er, I mean, it is a $40 tree with an expensive piece of jewelry on it.

Emirates Palace (which is a hotel, not a palace) has a Christmas tree with $11 million in gold, diamonds and sapphires hanging on its branches.  After Christmas the jewels will not be thrown away.

There are many things in this country that are legitimate targets for humor, but the fact someone decided to put tons of jewelry on a tree doesn't strike me as a big deal.  If they do it next year would people say, "Another $11 million tree?  They've spent $22 million on Christmas trees???"

Of course, they won't do it next year.  Thanks to the bad publicity they clearly regret ever doing it.

I simply don't understand why it is a big deal, but I hope to make it to Abu Dhabi to see this in person.

Living vicariously - to salvage a day

I got up at 6AM and left for Dubai before 7.  Fog was very dense and less than a hundred feet in spots.  Not a fun trip.  I checked e-mail on my phone and discover that while I was driving I had been notified that 4 of the 6 people I needed to see had been given the day off.

I won't say the day went downhill from there but it certainly didn't make much of a recovery.

So today is a day to live vicariously:  Three friends separately received great news.  I'm trying to feel their energy and joy... but I'm not quite there yet.

Save a nickel, save a dime

Imagine you are running BAA, the company that maintains London's Heathrow airport - the largest airport in Europe.  You have two options:
1.  Spend a lot of money on snow/ice removal equipment and hurt your short term profit.
2.  Don't spend the money, pad the profits and hope there is no major snow storm.

If you chose 2. you think like the management of BAA.*

The result?  Over 100,000 may not make it home for Christmas.  I had previously decided to do what I could to avoid flying through London and now I think many will join me.  Business history is replete with examples of companies going cheap and losing in the long run... The Ford Pinto is the classic example.  (Hit from behind Pintos would explode.  An $11 fix would have prevented it but Ford calculated the cost of paying off the families of dead victims would be cheaper.)  And the classic example of a company forgoing short-term profits to do the right thing was Johnson & Johnson with Tylenol.

*****
While researching for this post I discovered that the short-term thinking permeated the British government as well.  Last summer there were 43 recommendations - including a suggestion to stockpile salt - that went unheeded.

* Earlier today I read the story that explained how little was spent on snow removal equipment.  Tonight I've tried to find the same story and couldn't, but the link I provided describes the incompetent management.

What does this chart make you think?

Several weeks ago I asked, "What does this chart make you think?"

I appreciate the responses which can be read here...   

Anonymous said...

Here is my comment:

I wonder if that shade of blue would look good in my bathroom?

Travis

Chad Morrison said...

It's all relative huh

denise said...

Okay, you asked for it:

1. There's a pattern.

2. What's the definition of "company"?

3. What do the "IV III II I" mean after the years?

4. 2008 just sucked.

5. "Companies" are still making a nice tidy profit during our recession.

6. I hope Coe doesn't want my business major back.

Anonymous said...

Tells you companies have figured things out much better than cost cutting you cannot go on on life support ad infinitum, at some point you have to take a hair cust and let the market clear. What companies have done is adjusted, sadly that has meant reducing work force but it has helped their bottom line. One of the biggest issues we face in the US today is the housing issues (bubble) one arguement is to perhaps buy a lot of houses dynamite them thereby reducing suply - as good as any idea out there as currently it is chinese water torutre...fly by the seast of your pants and hope that time will heal things like in the 80's south american banking crisis. Unfortuantley this is bigger and years of living beyond our menas is catching up so adjustments need to be made, companies have done them (perhaps not to our liking but they have)- there is another chart showing how much cash companies have also horded - sometihng huge number which is also rather interesting...if they have record profits and record cash holdings why are they not spending it more aggressivley what gives?

my two bits

Rahul

cthurston said...

I'm skeptical of the context the information is presented as. I mean, it's saying "the rest of the economy"... well if the rest of the economy goes to shit and the big corporations do slightly better than "shit" then they will go up as a percentage of economy.

The first thing I think, is that less money is going into independent businesses, more consumers are shopping/buying with their money going to corporations in an attempt to save money; obviously this hurts the little guy and makes it so the corporations get more profit, especially as a % of national income.

Also, Screw Wal-Mart. *shakes fist* AND GET OFF MY LAWN YOU DAMN KIDS!

So Travis is painting his bathroom this color, Chad is correct that it is all relative and Denise is concerned that her degree will be taken away.  (To answer your questions, the I, II, III, IV refer to the different quarters in a year.  I'm not sure how they measure corporate profits for this.)

Chip, you are right to say a larger percent of a lower total is not growth.  In this case, however, the economy only shrunk a little and has been growing for almost a year and a half.  So this is showing a larger percentage of the economy is corporate profits... and it does mean corporate profits have done quite well in the past two years.  

Rahul, the resident economist/financier commenter, has an interesting suggestion:  Why not buy all of the excess houses and simply blow them up.  It would do wonders for the housing industry and miraculously housing prices would stop falling.  There's a twisted logic there if you think about it!

Rahul's last point is the one I wanted to make:  "if they have record profits and record cash holdings why are they not spending it more aggressivley what gives?"

Exactly.  Both the Obama administration and Republicans favor tax credits to urge new hiring.  It might work a little but the fact is corporations are making record profits now.  (Not all, obviously, but the chart is proof that this recession has not hurt corporate profits.)  If they wanted to hire more and expand they could.  They just don't want to... and I don't blame them.  Until demand picks up there's not much point expanding.  Having your scared workforce put in 60 hours/week and denying all pay raises is doing wonders for the bottom line and there's no need to hire more.

It's also why I think extending the tax cuts for the wealthy was foolish.  If the wealthy have a great idea they can borrow at very low interest rates to fund a new business.  Hoping they'll use the tax cut to fund a new business is wishful thinking.

My preferred stimulus would have been revenue neutral, meaning it wouldn't add one cent to the deficit:  Allow the tax cuts for those over $250,000 to expire.  Take that money and invest in schools, bridges and hospitals.  It would lower the unemployment rate, put money in working people's back pockets and thereby help demand for everything.  It would get a hell of a lot more bang than what just passed congress. 

Christmas Party

Once again, my ridiculously large hallway came in handy for a party:

 

The two empty tables in this picture were for the food brought by guests.  From mince pies, to a birthday cake, to chicken wings... there was a lot of food.

 I think this is the first pic since the lanterns and new wall hangings from Nepal have been hung.

The guy in the left-hand side of this picture is Abdel.  He's engaged to Adrienne, the mother of the Coke fridge.  Tonight is the first time Adrienne has seen the machine since the day she gave it to me.  Did I get a picture of Adrienne or the two of us with the working machine? Nooo...  She's brings this life-changing machine into my world and I didn't even get a picture with her.  (Bad Steve, no soup for you...)

How is a Coke machine life-changing?  For me, it is life-changing with or with out discussing parties... but, as I've said before, the fridge absolutely makes a party.  Guests feel totally at ease in a place with a glass door on a refrigerator full of beer/wine/pop.  Locked behind a regular fridge door people feel the need to ask permission and are reluctant to go back.  With the Coke fridge people get what they want when they want.  It doesn't get much better at a party.

It's 2AM.  The guests are gone and the Coke bottle candles are nearly dead.  The party was a success and I'm very happy.

Tax cut deal in perspective

Here's an interesting comment on the HuffingtonPost:

(Item)....­..........­..........­..........­..........­..........­..........­..........­..........­...(amount­)...(% of deal)...(p­arty priority)


Continui­­ng Middle Class tax cuts: ..........­­.........­.­........­..­.......­...­.....(­$480 billion) ...57% ...(Dem priority)

Continui­­ng High-incom­­e tax cuts and Estate tax changes: ..($129 billion) ...15% ...(REP priority)

Payroll Tax Reduction: ..........­­.........­.­........­..­.......­...­......­....­.....­.....­....­.($112 billion) ....13% ...(Dem priority)

Unemploy­­ment Insurance Extension: ..........­­.........­.­........­..­.......­...­.($57 billion) .....7% ...(Dem priority)

Tax Credits for working families (EIC, Child credits): ..........­­.....($44 billion) .....5% ...(Dem priority)

Expensin­­g Provision: ..........­­.........­.­........­..­.......­...­......­....­.....­.....­....­......­($2­2 billion) .....3% ...(Dem priority)

Dems are getting 85% of what they wanted. Only a bitter partisan would see getting 85% of what you wanted as a failure.

Help me!

I have a new training session in 3 weeks.  I do not want a repeat of what happened to me in the past 48 hours.  (See the next post.)  Please, please, dear friends... Think of workplace issues, dilemmas, problematic co-workers, uncomfortable situations... anything, ANYTHING I can use as a case study in these training situations.  All I need is a rough story.  A germ of an idea.  I can flush it out.  (Or simply flush it if it is a story I can't use in this highly segregated, moralistic society.)

Don't want to write it out?  I'll call you.  Really, I need your help.

Too close for comfort

I had training sessions on Sunday and Monday... easy enough as they were repeats.  I was set to deliver a new one today.  I can remember writing a couple of months back that I liked having the freedom to cover what I wanted.  That freedom has come to scare the hell out of me.

The guy who initially proposed this series gave each session vague titles.  Today's topic:  "Making Organizational Impact."  Please.

Thanks to teaching at Hamilton/Kaplan I have taught over 20 different courses so I have done prep for a pretty wide range of topics.  The people I'm seeing today have been in 16 hours of classes with me.  There should be plenty of material left for me to cover, right?  Sadly, no.  Many of those in my sessions are people who run the dorms, manage the IT crew, work in HR, etc.  Discussing globalization, currency exchange, operations management, management policy and strategy, etc., would be absolutely meaningless to them.

I struggled to find a topic.  I assumed I'd find material to cover.  By 7PM last night I had nothing.  I was frantically pulling up every course I taught.  Surely there must be something from the HR classes I've taught!  Not really.  Why?  I've learned a lot about how messed up this place is over the past couple of sessions.  Talking more about how HR is supposed to work in theory would not go over well.

By 9PM I was in a full blown panic.  I've never stood in front of group and said, "Yeah, I got nothing."  I found a group exercise that might take an hour.  I found another... there was no coherent theme to anything I was finding...

I began cursing my decision to do this.  I have loved the information I've learned from them and I certainly love the extra income.  (Assuming I ever get paid.)  But, oh my god, I am standing in front of this group 10 hours!

I took a full ambien and went to bed.  I set the alarm for 4AM.  I woke up before the alarm and I thought of a way to put it all together.  I went to work on my computer and by 6:30 I was ready.

The group I had today is my fantastic group of extroverts.  I could have come and said, "Let's discuss your favorite cookie recipe" and we'd have talked for four hours.  I ended up using only about half of what I had prepared.  Wow.

I dodged a bullet.  Or pulled one out of my ass.  Either metaphor works.

"A car in every garage and a pot for each to sit on."

Hmm.  I think I may slightly misquoted a famous Iowan.

Two years I, umm, broke this and just this week it has been fixed.  BTW, The bathrooms on the men's campus never have toilet paper.

What are the odds?

Imagine you gather 10 managers.  What are the odds that all 10 would be introverts?

Yesterday I gave a training session and couldn't get any discussion going.  At the end I assigned them a personality survey as homework.  Today they brought back their results and all ten were introverts.  "That explains a lot!" I said.  Today I lectured, asked questions, got no response and simply moved on.  The 4 hour training session was done in 2.5 hours.

My next session is new material and I have to be ready in 36 hours.  How ready am I?  I think I've picked out a topic...

Building a better teacher

I spend a lot of time thinking about my job - teaching - and how to do it better...

Bill Gates is using part of his fortune to fund research about teaching.  One pioneering concept is videotape teachers and allow outside reviewers to evaluate.  Another idea is rate teachers as "value-added":  Test the students each year to see which teachers help their students progress more than a grade level in one year.  Teachers' unions don't like the idea, but it sounds good to me.  A teacher that has class after class not progressing is obviously doing something wrong.

Another part of the research has discovered that student evaluations are pretty good at identifying good teachers.  I don't find that surprising but many in my profession don't consider student evaluations important.  Also, they found that teachers spend most of their time teaching to the test produce students with lower scores.  Hallelujah!

I am always trying to find ways to be a better teacher.  I wish others in my profession had the same attitude.  The "I'm here to collect a paycheck" attitude is something I've seen too much of at Coe, Hamilton/Kaplan and here.  I think outside reviewers, believing student evaluations, and measuring student progress are all good steps.  I am not sure that even a foundation with backing as powerful as Bill Gates will be able to convince my fellow teachers.

Tales from the training camp

Today was not a great day.  This is the fourth set of managers I'm training for this session so I know the material cold.  At one point I'm talking about "Type A" and "Type B" people.  I was surprised that none of the 11 participants today had heard of the term.  After describing the differences the chair of a science department says, "In my experience in this university, faculty are Type A and staff are Type B."

The other 10 participants were all staff and it is safe to say they didn't like being called Type B.

U-G-L-Y.

I did my best.  I pointed out that usually faculty in Business/Economics are Type A's but most of my colleagues are Type B's... but it didn't help.  The well was poisoned.

In eight hours I will be standing in front of them again to give part 2 of this session.  Yippee!

The view from my sister's window

E-mail from Miriam: 

I will be sending some pictures your way, so you can feel the cold.  We had one of the freakiest starts to a blizzard I can ever remember.  It was in the upper 30's and raining all night and most of the morning.  Rain switched to snow and within, I believe just 2 hours, we had blizzard conditions.  Not sure yet how much snow we got, but we'll be shoveling for a while.  

It's odd how a picture can me homesick.  This one does.  I love weather.  I love snow.  I'd be happy to be back home scooping all of this out.  I know, I know... By the third storm it's not fun any more.  By the fifth storm you are questioning the wisdom of living in Iowa and by the 33rd storm like we had in the winter 2007-2008 you pretty much question the wisdom of your ancestors for ever thinking of moving to such a god forsaken place.

Home improvement

With McGyver back in Bangladesh, his brother and associate came to hang up the new lanterns and wall hangings from Nepal.  So far it looks good...

"You're better than that."

Awhile back I spent 12 hours reading all the blogs I could find attached to Cedar Rapids.  Some of the more humorous blogs were written by angst-ridden teenagers who felt a friend had betrayed them and they had to tell the world via a blog.  I am pretty sure if I had started writing a blog when I was 16 it would have been full of entries like that.

But I'm not 16, I'm 41 42. (I had to think for a minute.)

I have written many posts about my friend below.  She has a personality that is quite remarkable in many ways.  In the past I have decided to save the post and wait until the next day to publish.  The next day I'd re-read the post and decide not to publish.  Some of the stories were really good.  In my 40-something years I've never met a person with her combination of generosity, neediness and ability to alienate.  I could easily make 10-20% of this blog about her; she's that interesting.

But I won't.

Why?  First, I don't want this blog to become a bitch session where I seek to settle scores.  Second, I don't want any of my friends to be concerned that a fight with me will turn into a blog post.

And most importantly, it's a lesson I learned in sixth grade long ago.  (I was taught the lesson in sixth grade but it didn't sink in until at least a decade later.)

There was a guy in my class named Mike.  He was bright but very socially awkward.  He didn't have many friends, but hey, neither did I so we'd often talk.  One day he really pissed me off about something I can't remember now.  I took to mocking him.  I mimicked his mannerism of pulling his t-shirt up over his nose.  I think I may have made fun of his clothes (remarkable coming from me, the kid who two years earlier wore green jeans and almost always had K-Mart sneakers.)

The ability to make caustic, demeaning comments is a trait inherent to my people and I can play the game with the best of them.  The next day I usually feel sick about it.  Self-loathing is another trait of my clan.

Anyhow, I was in the middle of ripping into Mike when my teacher called me into the hallway.  Mr. Leib was a fantastic teacher of life.  He was pretty much worshiped in my elementary.  Fearing authority I was almost in tears as I walked out.  "Am I in trouble???"

In the hall I quickly launched into a defense of why I was making fun of Mike.  Mr. Leib interrupted, "Stop.  You're better than that."  I continued defending my actions.  He put his hand on my shoulder and repeated, "You're better than that."

*****
I won't promise to not write about Gwenn because she really is fascinating.  I will try to make it as an "observation" and not a "judgement."  Am I concerned that she may find what I write?  Nah.  She's way too self-absorbed* busy with important matters to ever read this blog.

*Sometimes it is so hard not to let my bitchy side show.  I know I'll feel guilty about this line tomorrow...  Or maybe not; it is a pretty accurate observation!

Somewhere, Mr. Leib is shaking his head.

With friends like these...

I am very grateful that I have a fantastic, eclectic group of friends in the US and here.  Having said that here's two experiences with the same friend in the past week.

We share the same maid.  Our maid is good but is certainly better early in the day so Gwenn created this contorted story that made absolutely no sense as to why the maid had to clean her place first.

No problem, I didn't really care.  On a bad day the maid is 50x better than me so no big deal.  The maid went to her place and then came to mine and she went overboard:  In addition to cleaning she rearranged my cupboards!

So it's fine that Gwenn manipulated that she got to go first because there was no loss for me.

Fast forward to tonight...

Yesterday I called McGyvor's brother (McGyvor is back in Bangladesh with his new wife and child... damn those family values...) to come tonight.  I have several projects, like getting lanterns hung, hanging stuff, etc.  He was supposed to be here at 6.  At 7 he still wasn't here (unlike him) and I was about to call.  Before I could I received a call from Gwenn.  A couple of hours earlier I had told her that McGyver's bro was coming to my place so she called and asked him to stop her place first.  That's why he was late coming to me.

What a cheap ass punk move.  Gwenn kept saying, "Please don't be mad at me.  Tell me you are not mad at me."  The best I could utter is, "I hope he can get all of my work done tonight."  Not surprisingly, he couldn't.

Gwenn, realizing that what she did was pretty damned selfish, followed up by stopping by my place.  She was shocked, shocked! that it hadn't all been finished.  I said, "It was late, he said he'd come back tomorrow."

Gwenn is like the scorpion the tortoise's back going across the river.  Before the journey he reasons with tortoise, "I won't sting you.  If I do and you die I will die, too."  So the tortoise agrees to take him across the river.  Half way across the scorpion stings the tortoise who asked, "why did you do that?"

"I don't know," said the scorpion.  "I guess it is just who I am."

Gwenn has no evil intent to screw her friends, it's just what comes naturally.   And I am wondering how my friends would react in a similar situation.

Life is like a box of chocolates

As I was leaving class today a student said, "Sir, I was in Switzerland over Eid and I brought you these chocolates."

What I've sampled so far is really good.

I'm a bit surprised that most of it is milk chocolate.  I thought milk chocolate was more of an American phenomena thanks to Hershey's and that Europe was all about dark chocolate.

When is making $130,000 not good enough?

Answer:  When your brother is in a lower position, does less work, and makes $330,000.

Tales from the training camp:  My university is a federal university, funded by the federal government.  We are located in the Abu Dhabi emirate.  Abu Dhabi is the one emirate of the seven with a lot of oil, hence it has a lot of money.  Much more money, it would seem, than the federal government.  The story I heard today is one I've heard many times before:  Those who work for a federal institution are paid far less than those working for the Abu Dhabi emirate.

In the case above, the guy in the training session was not happy that his brother makes almost 3x as much money simply because he works for the Abu Dhabi emirate.  He went on to make the point that he's accepted his fate but sees no reason to work extra hard at his job.  Why should he work hard for a meager $130,000?

Obviously, the question is snark, but after living here for a couple of years I kinda understood his point.

Good economics is often not good politics

It's less than 24 hours after the budget deal and Republicans are partying it up and Democrats are ready to jump off a cliff.  I've read much more of the details of the plan and there's not much to like, but the alternative - no deal - would have been very bad economically.  This deal will give a moderate boost to the economy, albeit nothing like a real infrastructure jobs program would have.  I would love to take away the tax cut for the rich and spend that money on new roads, bridges, hospitals, schools, etc.  But that had zero chance of happening.

Democrats are right to be upset at the politics of this.  If we can't win even when the majority of the public agrees with us... wow, we really are losers... but the politics should have played out before the election.  I honestly believe my side would have faired better in the election had we forced Republicans to vote against the middle class tax cut in favor of tax cuts for millionaires.  We didn't seize that opportunity and the election is over.

Whatever political points scored in December 2010 will long be forgotten by November 2012.  What's important now is getting the economy back on its feet.  This bill is not great.  It's not even very good, but a tenth of a loaf is better than no loaf.