Spero Consulting

Archive for June, 2009

We’re in the process of updat­ing our theme; so, if you notice that some­thing isn’t work­ing or appear­ing cor­rectly, please let us know.

We took the best of our old theme, which we had adapted from a theme by Nate at Refu​eled​.net, and mod­ern­ized it quite a bit. Plus, we made it bluer; we didn’t like the pur­plish look on cer­tain monitors.

Reg­u­lar read­ers and friends, please let us know what you think.

There are still many small tweaks and annoy­ances to cor­rect, but it seems ready to be used.

The Wall Street Jour­nal is chock full of good op-​ed columns today, June 22, 2009. This is the third one we’ve writ­ten about, and we’d write about a cou­ple of more if we had the time.

Fouad Ajami’s may be the best of the lot. It is enti­tled Obama’s Per­sian Tuto­r­ial. It is much rec­om­mended, espe­cially because he does a nice job of sum­ma­riz­ing Obama’s world view and diplo­matic tac­tics and link­ing Obama’s per­spec­tive (and self-​perception) to Jimmy Carter’s failed world­view and Presidency.

Despite our high regard for the column’s con­tent, we do take issue with the title, and here’s why. It is a minor quib­ble, but one worth mak­ing as we believe it is illuminating.

Many years ago, a friend and for­mer col­league had an excel­lent line that he relayed to us. He men­tioned that he had been at a party the pre­vi­ous week­end, and he told another party-​goer that he was a pro­fes­sor. The per­son asked what he taught. Our friend replied that he wasn’t sure what he taught or if he taught any­thing at all, but he stood in the front of a room filled with MBAs and talked about finance. (For the slow-​witted who hap­pened upon our site by acci­dent: the fact that he was lec­tur­ing or “teach­ing” didn’t nec­es­sar­ily mean that any­one was learning.)

Now, as every­one knows, a “tuto­r­ial” is type of les­son. So, some­thing could be learned from a tuto­r­ial, or not. The ques­tion is: will Mr. Obama learn any­thing (of sub­stance) from the tuto­r­ial? We’re not sure. Why? Because it is quite pos­si­ble that his ego and his hubris will pre­vent it. He is cer­tainly bright enough. That hap­pens with MBAs (and other stu­dents) and with ath­letes of all ages. They “know bet­ter,” and may have been suc­cess­ful; so, why lis­ten and learn? They already know every­thing that they need to know. (What a won­der­fully sim­plis­tic world­view. (That’s what makes igno­rance so blissful.)

So, will Mr. Obama learn any­thing? Let’s hope pray so. Oth­er­wise, we could relive that tragedy know as the Carter Pres­i­dency, and that wouldn’t be much fun, now would it, precious?

We did noth­ing to deserve it, but we are very grate­ful to have been born in the United States. (Granted, that was tem­pered by being born near Pitts­burgh, but we write that qual­i­fi­ca­tion mainly in jest.) In fact, we doubt that we did any­thing prior to our birth to deserve it, and haven’t done much since that day to be wor­thy of cit­i­zen­ship, but, hey, we do tend to pay our taxes on time and under-​utilize our share of gov­ern­ment ser­vices. (That has to count for some­thing and likely makes us some sort of oppressed minority.)

One need read no more than the first Opin­ion page in today’s edi­tion of The Wall Street Jour­nal to get some indi­ca­tion of the enor­mity of our geo­graph­i­cal luck. In a pre­vi­ous post, we men­tioned L. Gor­don Crovitz’s col­umn on Chi­nese cen­sor­ship and the com­plic­ity of west­ern firms, which is at the top of the page. Glad we’re not there.

There’s also a col­umn about prob­lems in South Amer­ica that is in the mid­dle of the page. Glad we’re not there.

Finally, there is a short essay about Iran at the bot­tom of the page: Iran and the Tragedy of Bad Ideas by Andrew Kla­van. Glad we’re not there, too.

It is a very, very good essay. Mr. Kla­van writes about a movie, “The Ston­ing of Soraya M.” and why he found it to be so com­pelling. He explains why it shouldn’t be com­pelling, e.g., given the title, there’s not much sus­pense. More­over, she was inno­cent; so, it is no sat­is­fac­tion or jus­tice when pun­ish­ment is meted out.

Instead, Mr. Kla­van writes how one woman’s sense­less exe­cu­tion rep­re­sents all that is wrong with that nation’s gov­ern­ment and that cul­ture, and that is what he finds so grip­ping. We think the fact that such an appalling event occurred only 23 years ago and still occurs today is what strength­ens the movie’s grip on the viewer. Yes, it is a “tragedy of bad ideas” although “ideas” is an overly gen­er­ous term to describe the impulses, urges, and ten­den­cies that would per­mit such transgressions.

So, as we go to eat din­ner, and thank God for our bless­ings, we’ll also to remem­ber to thank Him for our geo­graph­i­cal good fortune.

“The Great Fire­wall of China”

Accord­ing to The Hol­land Ring, almost every Amer­i­can has heard of the tale of Hans Brinker. We’re not sure if that is true, but he is the lit­tle Dutch boy of fic­tion who noticed a small leak in a dike and plugged it with his finger.

Lit­tle Hans stopped the levee from fail­ing and pre­vented a flood that saved many fic­tional lives and much fic­tional prop­erty, and every­one lived hap­pily ever after. We heard the tale when we were a child, and being a skep­ti­cal youth, couldn’t imag­ine any­thing good hap­pen­ing at the break-​point of a levee. (That impres­sion was val­i­dated when we moved to St. Louis in the year of the great flood: 1993. Levee after levee failed, includ­ing one of the last ones in the Chester­field Val­ley. A nine square-​mile lake, approx­i­mately ten feet deep, filled overnight.)

While read­ing L. Gor­don Crovitz’s col­umn in today’s edi­tion of The Wall Street Jour­nal, we were reminded of that fic­tional lit­tle Dutch boy. The col­umn, High Tech’s Great Leap Back­ward, describes how the Chi­nese gov­ern­ment is attempt­ing to limit access to infor­ma­tion on the Inter­net and is try­ing to get West­ern man­u­fac­tur­ers, includ­ing U.S. firms, to assist them. That cen­sor­ship is noth­ing new. In fact, sev­eral firms, includ­ing Google, have a long and igno­ble his­to­ries of con­spir­ing with the Chi­nese gov­ern­ment to limit free­dom and the access to information.

What is dif­fer­ent and news­wor­thy is that on July 1, all new PCs sold in China must include that very strict cen­sor­ship func­tion – although dys­func­tion is a much bet­ter word. (If you missed it, last week there was an arti­cle in which a U.S. soft­ware firm claimed that the Chi­nese gov­ern­ment had stolen its code for use in the new cen­sor­ship effort; we don’t have time to find the link.)

In the fic­tional tale, lit­tle Hans was able to stop the del­uge. We doubt that the Chi­nese gov­ern­ment will be so lucky, and that’s a very good thing for many peo­ple yearn­ing to be free. We’re sure there are a mul­ti­tude of earnest, yet mis­guided, Chi­nese Hans – what’s the plural of Hans and how would Gol­lum pro­nounce it – attempt­ing to stem the ris­ing tide of infor­ma­tion from both within and out­side of China. In fact, we’re hop­ing to get blocked by the most pop­u­lous nation in the world as it will give us some­thing else to write about. There is joy in being free and subversive.

At our site, after elim­i­nat­ing the large, domes­tic search engines, we get more hits from Being than any other loca­tion – most likely from web index­ing servers. (They don’t show on our vis­i­tors’ map because we don’t count them as vis­i­tors, so we keep them in the dif­fer­ent sta­tis­tics database.)

We think the ini­tia­tive will fail because peo­ple aren’t that much like North Sea water. Well, there are sim­i­lar­i­ties: many peo­ple can dirty, pol­luted, smelly, suf­fo­cat­ing, and many seek the low­est level (of what­ever their near­est), but in one cru­cial way, they’re dif­fer­ent. When the lit­tle Dutch boy was pre­vent­ing water from enter­ing the val­ley, he did not face any army of folks dig­ging in the other direc­tion, i.e., seek­ing it. Humans will respond and react accord­ing to their own, God-​given free will. (That’s why in our mind social sci­ence is more inter­est­ing than phys­i­cal sci­ence, includ­ing fluid dynam­ics and levee-​building.) So, we sus­pect the regard­less of the inge­nu­ity shown by the cen­sors, through effort and deter­mi­na­tion and cre­ativ­ity and divine inspi­ra­tion, freedom-​loving indi­vid­u­als will seek their free­dom. (We wouldn’t be sur­prised if they’re string­ing fiber-​optic lines in tun­nels under the Great Wall. Now wouldn’t that be a story!

If any Chi­nese bureau­crats do read our posts and pages, we’d like to direct them to our essay, Com­mon Man­age­r­ial Mis­takes in Decen­tral­ized Orga­ni­za­tions. See lit­tle Hans, you can’t have it both ways: your orga­ni­za­tion – whether its a firm or an econ­omy – can be cen­tral­ized or decen­tral­ized, but you can’t gar­ner the ben­e­fits of decen­tral­iza­tion – the energy, the cre­ativ­ity, the local knowl­edge, the faster, more informed decision-​making to name a few of them – with­out bear­ing some of the agency costs, too. Through intel­li­gent design of con­trol and incen­tive schemes, those costs can be mit­i­gated but they can­not be elim­i­nated with­out what some may refer to as “unin­tended consequences.”

In other words, it’s not the old Burger King slo­gan: you can’t have it your way.

When you elim­i­nate all of the costs of decen­tral­iza­tion, you elim­i­nate all of the ben­e­fits, too. That’s some­thing that Extrem­ists never, ever appre­ci­ate. You see, if you elim­i­nate all of the costs of auton­omy, you’re left with a cen­tral­ized organization/​command struc­ture, i.e., no auton­omy. That may keep you in charge, but it prob­a­bly won’t do much for your nation’s GDP or its abil­ity to feed its own peo­ple or take care of its elderly. (Please see the end of the above-​reference essay for a few exam­ples of dys­func­tional man­age­r­ial types.

Finally, this is for our read­ers that work at related hard­ware or soft­ware firms or search engines and who cher­ish their free­dom and who love The Lord of the Rings. We ask, when did it become your career goal to assist Sauron and strengthen the vision of his lid­less eye? “Don’t be evil,” my ass. You may want to con­sider the trade-​off that we addressed in Prin­ci­ples Lost and More.

Com­puter, what type of moron talks to an inan­i­mate object like a bicy­cle? (For some rea­son, we find the gawky, spinster-​in-​the-​making red­head talk­ing to and then rid­ing the bicy­cle to be much worse than the dweeb talk­ing to the fish­ing rod.)

Dear com­puter, you sit there dusty with your fan whirring while I suf­fer an aller­gic reac­tion to the inane com­mer­cial. Yes, com­puter, I will require med­ica­tion to dull the pain and curb the ten­den­cies and impulses. Plus, com­puter, the TV is too expen­sive and the neigh­bors are too close and the sound of the 45 being fired is too loud to do an Elvis. (And, com­puter, it is less fun with mod­ern mon­i­tors – rather than it was with old CRTs – and why wake the chil­dren and spur a visit from mem­bers of the North­ern Regional Police Force?)

Hon­estly, com­puter, we find the woman so annoy­ing and voice-​over so irk­some that we can’t remem­ber which allergy med­i­cine they are try­ing to sell. To be extremely hon­est com­puter – if such a state exists – if it weren’t for the fact that we truly can­not recall the brand, then we would still dis­hon­estly pre­tend to not remem­ber because we have no inten­tion to help pub­li­cize the drug. We’re sure that you would under­stand, our elec­tronic friend, that a woman talk­ing to a bicy­cle could also be used for a mul­ti­tude of other drug ads, par­tic­u­larly for med­ica­tions used for depres­sion and ill­nesses of the mind. (Although we don’t see how it would fit with E.D. ads, espe­cially the ones with the two bathtubs.)

Yes, com­puter, there are many suf­fer­ers of allergy med­i­cine com­mer­cials and med­ical ads of all types, and we are one of those with chronic pain.

We’ll stick with our generic, CVS brand – with the good (federally-​protected) decon­ges­tants – to fight aller­gies, and we’ll self-​medicate to ease the psy­chic pain of being inflicted with cor­po­rate stu­pid­ity as we stare at your elec­tronic cousin my silicon-​based friend.

*Except, pos­si­bly the malicious.

There’s an op-​ed piece in today’s edi­tion of The Wall Street Jour­nal about some­thing called life­track­ing, Track­ing Life in Graphic Detail. It’s by Chris­tine Rosen, and it’s on the Taste page in the Week­end Jour­nal section.

It seems that many self-​absorbed indi­vid­u­als pub­lish all the details of their lives on the web, includ­ing graphic, sex­ual details and data like their GPS-​location details, too. (We pub­lish our opin­ions to strangers on the web for a vari­ety of rea­sons, includ­ing as a cathar­tic way to spare the fam­ily at the din­ner table. Whether the chil­dren deserve that cour­tesy is much in doubt.)

We sup­pose that such folks who pub­lish those kinds of details are too self-​absorbed to real­ize the risk and poten­tial harm they face from stalk­ers, bur­glars, and other mali­cious per­sons. Think of the human equiv­a­lents of Dig­ger the der­mato­phyte. They do exist and our cul­ture breeds no short sup­ply of them.

So, when you’re blast­ing the details of your oh-​so-​interesting-​life to the world, please real­ize that you may be annoy­ing a psy­chotic ex-​lover, inform­ing a stalker of you con­stant where­abouts or telling the neigh­bor­hood bur­glar that you’re not home. (Yeah, given their fallen natures, we’re deeply sus­pi­cious of men (and some women, too), which is why we believe that it is the Sec­ond Amend­ment that ensures the free­doms promised by the other nine.)

By the way, the pedant in us must take issue with one of Ms. Rosen’s state­ments. She writes: “Enthu­si­asts of life­track­ing com­pare their quest for turn­ing infor­ma­tion into self-​knowledge with the great diary-​keepers of ear­lier eras…” Sorry Ms. Rosen, but as we often write, details are not infor­ma­tion. Other than in a few rare cases or for those indi­vid­u­als who may use such details for the above-​mentioned mali­cious pur­poses, it seems that such self-​reported data are worth­less details that – by def­i­n­i­tion – are ignored and uncon­sid­ered. In that respect, they have sim­i­lar, zero, signal-​to-​noise ratios of most text mes­sages sent by teenagers: see the first three linked posts, espe­cially Tex­ting, Dante and McLuhan.

By the way, there’s another essay on the same page about equally obscene lev­els of self-​absorption. That col­umn is enti­tled, This Boomer Isn’t Going to Apol­o­gize, and it’s by Stephen Moore. Of course, it’s another story about baby-​boomers and how they think the the world should think and care (only?) about them. (Please grow up!)

In his col­umn, Mr. Moore notes the ten­dency at many grad­u­a­tion cer­e­monies this Spring for speak­ers in their fifties and six­ties to apol­o­gize for their generation’s many mis­takes. It seems that, child­ishly, they can’t let their children’s grad­u­a­tions be about the chil­dren. They feel com­pelled to inflict their own feel­ings (and short­com­ings) on their chil­dren and the pro­ceed­ings because it must always and every­where be about them.

While it is a pleas­ant sur­prise to see folks, who are quite old enough to be adults, attempt to take respon­si­bil­ity, we’d pre­fer that they just shut-​up and go away.¹ Because, frankly, it’s not all about you, and as we state in the title, it is the case that nobody cares. Tell it to your priest, but remem­ber, they’re only human and bore eas­ily, too.

That’s What It Is.

Thurs­day evening we posted a brief note encour­ag­ing the free­dom seek­ers who are now (quite bravely) protest­ing in Iran. We doubt that any of them will ever see our post, but we felt com­pelled to write some­thing nonethe­less. They are very brave peo­ple who deserve our sup­port and prayers.

We were about to go to bed this morn­ing when we decided to peruse The Wall Street Jour­nal’s web site, where we noticed a new col­umn by one of our favorite writ­ers, Peggy Noo­nan. Her essay is enti­tled, Whose Side Are We On? You Have to Ask?

In it, she cor­rectly notes that it is silly to even pose such a ques­tion to Amer­i­cans. It would be nearly impos­si­ble to find any­one in this coun­try, who is in full pos­ses­sion of their men­tal fac­ul­ties who does not over­whelm­ingly sup­port free­dom and the free­dom seek­ers in Iran (or any­where across the earth).

Unfor­tu­nately, she errors in defend­ing the President’s tepid, timid, and weak response to date.

He needn’t call for the fall of the mul­lahs or offer mil­i­tary assis­tance to the free­dom seek­ers. That would insert him­self and the USA into the event, and that might not be wise. We doubt that any of his sane crit­ics have demanded such statements.

Instead, all he needs to do is to state the truth: the Amer­i­can peo­ple over­whelm­ingly sup­port any­one seek­ing to acquire the same free­doms that we enjoy. As such, Amer­i­cans will endeavor to set an exam­ple of how a nation of the peo­ple, by the peo­ple, and for the peo­ple can be gov­erned by the rule of law and not by tyranny or whim. (As we have for the past 225-​or-​so years.) That as an elected rep­re­sen­ta­tive of such peo­ple, his thoughts and prayers are no dif­fer­ent than most Amer­i­cans; they are with all peo­ple yearn­ing for free­dom. What’s hard or wrong about that?

Note: it’s late, and we might edit this post in the morning.

We get only an occa­sional web site vis­i­tor from Iran.

We blame that absence on the repres­sive Iran­ian régime as we’re sure there are many intel­li­gent, knowl­edge­able, and sophis­ti­cated Per­sians look­ing for insights that span from deer to girls bas­ket­ball to the finan­cial cri­sis to risk-​neutral default rates.¹ We write the pre­vi­ous sen­tence in jest – but only slightly.

Dur­ing the past year or so, we have begun to truly appre­ci­ate the free­doms (of speech, of reli­gion, of the right to bear arms, of mobil­ity, etc.) that we pos­sess as a cit­i­zen of the United States. (We espe­cially enjoy the free­dom to crit­i­cize elected and appointed gov­ern­ment offi­cials and employ­ees.) We cer­tainly don’t think there’s any spe­cial about us, and wish all peo­ple of the world enjoyed the same free­doms that many of us take for granted. So, while it may not mean much, for you infre­quent vis­i­tors, know that our prayers and good wishes are with the pro­test­ers and free­dom seek­ers in Iran.

In his “Best of the Web” column/​blog, James Taranto cas­ti­gates Pres­i­dent Obama for his timid­ity on Iran.² What a per­fectly descrip­tive adjec­tive of the President’s inac­tion and near silence with respect to Iran: “timidity.”

That being said, timid­ity does have it place. We wish that Mr. Obama had been equally timid and reserved with his domes­tic poli­cies. Instead he felt free and bold to inter­fere in the finan­cial mar­kets, the auto­mo­bile indus­try, global warm­ing, the “stim­u­la­tion” of the econ­omy, and now the health­care indus­try. (Per­haps he thinks he knows more about those indus­tries and phe­nom­ena than he does about Iran, but is that an apt con­clu­sion? We doubt it.)

How­ever, regard­less of Mr. Obama’s mis­steps, Ira­ni­ans should know the the hopes and prayers of many Amer­i­cans are with them and against their auto­cratic rulers – even if Mr. Obama won’t say so. So, we’ll say it: good luck and God bless you in your strug­gle for free­dom against the tyrants.

(His Rec­om­men­da­tions Were Ours)

Paul Vol­cker had an excel­lent op-​ed col­umn in Tuesday’s edi­tion of The Wall Street Jour­nal that we’re finally get­ting around to men­tion. It is enti­tled, “Moral Haz­ard and the Cri­sis.” It’s not actu­ally a col­umn but excerpt of a speech that he recently gave in Beijing.

If they haven’t read it, reg­u­lar vis­i­tors of our site can skip Mr. Volcker’s speech because we have already dis­cussed just about every­thing that he pro­posed, includ­ing the elim­i­na­tion of prop-​trading at insured insti­tu­tions; the tit­u­lar prob­lems of moral haz­ard and the cri­sis and how the government’s response will exac­er­bate anti-​social behav­ior; our call for nation­al­iza­tion (or receiver­ship) as a way to mit­i­gate moral haz­ard; and issues with mark-​to-​market account­ing, par­tic­u­larly in our post on A Wee Bit on Mark-​to-​Market Pro­pos­als. (The account­ing issues are where we would dis­agree most as there are fewer true mar­kets by which to mark than Mr. Vol­cker seems to believe.)

Mr. Volcker’s rec­om­men­da­tions sound so sen­si­ble, con­ser­v­a­tive. and market-​oriented that we won­der how he could have endorsed Mr. Obama for Pres­i­dent in early 2008? Whether one con­sid­ers Mr. Obama’s approach to be a “light touch” (as Mr. Obama states) or heavy-​handed med­dling (as we see it), prior to (and after) the elec­tion, Mr. Obama has been con­sis­tent in his stated desire for more gov­ern­ment involvement. As we wrote many times prior to and after the elec­tion, we don’t see how such involve­ment would mit­i­gate any of the crit­i­cal prob­lems that the finan­cial sys­tem faces. It only makes them worse. (See our archive on TARP, espe­cially the older posts on the sec­ond page.)

Despite a few inter­est­ing weeks of activ­ity in the world, we have not posted much lately. That’s because we’ve had a vari­ety of com­puter prob­lems at world head­quar­ters. We woke up last Wednes­day morn­ing to a BSoD or Blue Screen of Death on our desktop/​network server. Our West­ern Dig­i­tal Rap­tor hard drive had failed. It was unbootable and inaccessible.

We replaced it the fol­low­ing day with a big­ger and slightly faster VelociRaptor.

At the same time, we decided to upgrade from Win­dows XP (Media Cen­ter) to Vista Ulti­mate. As we wrote a few months in Walt Moss­berg is Wrong, Again, in our expe­ri­ence Vista tends to be more sta­ble and faster than Win­dows XP. That’s not the sen­ti­ment (or should it be sed­i­ment?) that you’d get from dear old Walt or a vari­ety of other writ­ers or blog­gers, but skep­ti­cism is in order when read­ing “stuff” on the web (except, here, of course, where we have enough skep­ti­cism for our­selves and every­one who visits).

We must admit to mak­ing a mis­take when we pur­chased the new oper­at­ing sys­tem; we bought the 64-​bit ver­sion instead of the 32-​bit ver­sion that we wanted. When it arrived and we noticed the “64”, we fig­ured we’d give it a try, and we have been very pleas­antly sur­prised. Per­haps it’s the new hard drive, but the 64-​bit ver­sion is fast. It is sta­ble, and it has run every 32-​bit appli­ca­tion that we have loaded.

Many blog­gers and writ­ers have com­plained about the lack of 64-​bit dri­vers, but many of those com­plaints seem to be sev­eral years old, i.e., from 2006 or so. So far, we’ve had no prob­lems installing any of our hard­ware, includ­ing an older USB, HDTV tuner; an Epson R1900 printer, and a Canon MP830 mul­ti­func­tion device. We have one rather eso­teric piece of equip­ment left to install – a Graph­tec Robo Pro 5000 – but based upon what we read on-​line (oh dear) we think it will work, too.

Vista 64-​bit pro­vides a few other advan­tages over 32-​bit Win­dows, too. We’re finally able to use all 6GB of our installed mem­ory, so there is less hard-​drive caching, and 64-​bit oper­at­ing sys­tems are sup­pos­edly less sus­cep­ti­ble to 32-​bit viruses. (We have no per­sonal expe­ri­ence with that claim, but it makes sense to us.)

Despite being dis­rup­tive and time-​consuming, the crash wasn’t a total loss. Our sys­tems are stronger and bet­ter than they were. (Hah! Don’t you wish the same were true of the finan­cial system!) After almost of week of use, we only wish we had made the same “mis­take” dur­ing the recent pur­chase our two portable workstations.

Speak­ing of which, unfor­tu­nately, the desktop’s hard drive fail­ure was only 0ne-​half of our hard drive problems.

For a few weeks, our M4400 lap­top has been behav­ing badly with fre­quent, unex­plained crashes. After we fin­ished repair­ing the desktop, the con­di­tion of laptop’s hard drive wors­ened; how­ever, unlike the desk­top drive, the lap­top drive isn’t com­pletely dead, but it quite a nuisance.

Now that the replace­ment hard drive has arrived from Dell, we’ll spend the rest of the day rein­stalling our pro­grams. We should be back to post­ing our view­points either tonight or tomorrow.

By the way, we’re quite happy to have installed Nor­ton 360 backup. It worked auto­mat­i­cally and well on both machines, and spared us a lot of mis­ery and irri­ta­tion and time and money.

Last month, we wrote Let the Girls Play, which was sub­ti­tled, The Problem’s Worse when Coaches Can’t or Won’t Shut-​up.

Here’s another exam­ple of extremely bad coaching.

We recently attended a game in which we noticed that one of the start­ing point guards couldn’t drib­ble with­out look­ing at the ball. When she looked at the ball, she was a fine drib­bler, but unfor­tu­nately, she couldn’t tell when any­one was open on (1) fast breaks or (2) when she was “run­ning the offense” from the top of the key. Because we were sit­ting on the end line, it was quite easy to notice the bad habit every time she brought the ball up the court.

Short passes to other guards weren’t the prob­lem, but hit­ting the open per­son under the hoop was an impos­si­bil­ity unless she had already stopped dribbling.

When we inquired, we learned that the girl – who looked to be about 16 – had the same coach for the past sev­eral years; this upcom­ing sea­son is to be the fourth year in a row. It’s only in those sit­u­a­tions that you real­ize the dif­fi­cult odds that chil­dren face when deal­ing with incom­pe­tence in posi­tions of authority.

Look­ing at the ball while drib­bling is an easy enough prob­lem to fix – almost every six-​year does it, but most 16-​year-​olds don’t – but if your coach (or your par­ent) doesn’t notice, what hope do you have to improve? A bad habit remains a bad habit and becomes some­thing to cling to dur­ing stress­ful episodes, i.e., when the game is to be decided. Clearly, that can lead to bad out­comes for all involved.

What’s worse is that when we asked a few of the play­ers after the game, all were aware of it, but no one would men­tion it. Even the least expe­ri­enced player knew about it, but the coach, who was not young, did not. We sus­pect that at least a few of the girls didn’t men­tion it because it gave them an advan­tage when com­pet­ing against her. We sus­pect that oth­ers imag­ined that the girl wouldn’t take kindly to the criticism.

Yeah, we know, there’s almost a countably-​infinite num­ber of analo­gies in cor­po­rate and polit­i­cal life every sin­gle day. Regard­less, it’s still sad, but then that’s why we’re the pres­i­dent of our own firms.

So, accord­ing to many news agen­cies, Gen­eral Motors (GM) will enter bank­ruptcy today after at least forty years of mis­man­age­ment. We’ll leave it to older folks or his­to­ri­ans to pin­point the long-​ago begin­ning of the end. There is much to write about its epic fail­ure, but so much has already been writ­ten and will be writ­ten by oth­ers that there is lit­tle new to write.

From the reports we’ve seen, the fed­eral gov­ern­ment will own either 60% or 72.5% of the reor­ga­nized firm. (We tax­pay­ers have already spent tens of bil­lions and will spend many more tens of bil­lions – if not hun­dreds of bil­lions– more before it all ends.)

In Decem­ber, we wrote Auto-​makers and Man­age­ment Fads, in which we noted that GM and the other car mak­ers seemed to have embraced every sin­gle (and silly) man­age­ment fad of the recent past – to no avail.

With lit­tle left to say, today we ask only a few questions.

For a moment, let’s ignore failed com­mu­nist states around the world. We ask: is there any sur­viv­ing orga­ni­za­tion with a worse record of mis­man­age­ment, over-​spending, and inef­fi­ciency dur­ing that forty-​year time period than Gen­eral Motors?

Is there an orga­ni­za­tion that has embraced as many silly fads or hired more con­sul­tants than GM, yet still wastes hun­dreds of bil­lions – pos­si­bly tril­lions – of dol­lars per year?

How about one that has taken over other orga­ni­za­tions in sim­i­lar finan­cial peril, and promised quick and prof­itable turn-arounds? Ever heard of Amtrak, which was taken over in 1971, dear reader? That’s not quite forty years ago – merely 38.

Yes, we’re think­ing of our very own fed­eral gov­ern­ment of the United States of America.

Now that GM will be run with all the effi­ciency of the fed­eral gov­ern­ment, does the reader expect a turn-​around any time soon?

If so, we’d be happy to acquire some prime, Detroit real-​estate for the reader to pur­chase from us.

They Never Look Inno­cent & Prob­a­bly Aren’t

No, the title isn’t a code phrase nor does it have an alter­na­tive mean­ing. It is what it is; it’s about domes­tic cats that we occa­sion­ally see in the nearby woods and fields. (It’s called Penn’s Woods for a reason.)

Our lit­tle bit of exur­bia is sur­rounded by woods and a few fields. When walk­ing the Basen­jis, we see many kinds of wildlife, e.g., last evening we saw a white­tail doe suck­ling a new­born fawn in a small clear­ing new a mean­der­ing, zig-​zaggy stream. Across the road from the deer, there is a pond with a school of rather large carp, a cou­ple of goose cou­ples rais­ing their goslings, and at least one indus­tri­ous muskrat that we see most morn­ings when we head in that direc­tion. (In Decem­ber, we wrote about a big buck that was killed just west of the pond.)

Nowa­days, the old man, Bart, as in “Bart, Bart, the Basenji part” has no inter­est in that muskrat or any other one. Ten years ago in Min­nesota it was a dif­fer­ent story. When he was a mere five, the lit­tle mutt from the shad­ows of the Bud­weiser plant in South St. Louis and his leader at the time – our first Basenji, Scooter – caught one. Bart being a bit more ener­getic and a bit less bright than Scooter took the muskrat head-​on. Scooter, slyer and older, took it from behind. Scooter killed it but not before Bart required three stitches on the tip of his nose. Any­way, where were we…

Of course, already by the end of May, it’s dif­fi­cult to see any­thing in the local woods. It’s a jun­gle out there. Not a trop­i­cal jun­gle, but a tem­per­ate, hard­wood jun­gle. We’re not sure if it meets the tech­ni­cal def­i­n­i­tion of a rain for­est, but given the usual pre­cip­i­ta­tion dur­ing the warm months in West­ern Penn­syl­va­nia, it can’t be that far off: not many wild­fires, here. More­over, there are vines inter­min­gled with the trees: mainly wild grapes and prize-​winning poi­son ivy. Maybe it’s not poi­son ivy, maybe it’s poi­son oak, but a few vines have to be at least three-​inches in diam­e­ter. Any­way, where were we…

The cats that we see in the fields, and, when pos­si­ble, in the woods are not feral cats. They have own­ers and live in or near houses or barns. How­ever, when­ever we see them in nature they always look like they’re going to-​or-​fro trou­ble. They walk as if they’re either stalk­ing some poor lit­tle some­thing or are just com­ing back from killing a poor lit­tle some­thing. (Of course, their prey are only poor, lit­tle some­things when they’re out­side your house – not inside it. Then it’s “Eek! Eek! Where are the traps?”)

It’s not just our local, Wex­for­dian cats. After observ­ing the feline phe­nom­e­non, real­iz­ing it and pon­der­ing it a bit on a walk, we con­cluded that we couldn’t recall ever see­ing a cat in the woods that didn’t look guilty of something.

We have noth­ing against cats although we do tend to be more aller­gic to them than poi­son ivy, but we ask: has the reader ever seen a domes­tic cat in the woods behav­ing innocently?