Live Through This

Fuse TV has a new series called Live Through This about rock stars who have bad things happen to them. The show "takes a look at some of your favorite musicians and their heroic tales of recovery."

I was interviewed for the pilot show that featured Nikki Sixx from Motley Crue--remember them, 1980's, "Smoking in the Boys Room?" In the show, Sixx talks about the addiction problems that almost killed him. Since getting clean, Sixx is now working with Covenant House California to raise awareness of addiction in youth. He is also the author of a new book, The Heroin Diaries: A Year in the Life of a Shattered Rock Star and has released a new CD, The Heroin Diaries Soundtrack.

The next episode airs on Fuse TV on Sunday, March 2nd at 2:00 pm Eastern.

You can watch a YouTube clip with some of my interview here:

Percentage of Male Teachers Hits 40-Year Low

An MSN article notes that male teachers continue to take a nosedive (Thanks Mike):

According to statistics recently released by the National Education Association (NEA), men made up just 24.4 percent of the total number of teachers in 2006. In fact, the number of male public school teachers in the U.S. has hit a record 40-year low. Arkansas, at 17.5 percent, and Mississippi, with 17.7 percent, have the lowest percentage of male teachers, while Kansas, at 33.3 percent, and Oregon, with 31.4 percent, boast the largest percentage of men leading the classroom.....

Why the downward trend in male teaching? According to Bryan Nelson, founder of MenTeach, a nonprofit organization dedicated to recruiting male teachers, research suggests three key reasons for the shortage of male teachers: low status and pay, the perception that teaching is "women's work," and the fear of accusation of child abuse.

Many men once in the profession say they quit because of worries that innocuous contact with students could be misconstrued, reports the NEA.

In addition to worrying about being called a pervert, men also face discrimination in the interview process, according to the article:

For men thinking of heading into education, Nelson offered hard-won advice: Be persistent. Get practical experience first. Look for resources to help you get through school, and, when applying for a job, make sure you have thick skin.

"People will ask you inappropriate questions," he said, recalling a recent e-mail he received from an aspiring male teacher who was asked during a job interview, "Why would any healthy male want to work with kids?"

In such situations, Nelson suggests stressing the positive aspects of having a man in the classroom. "When kids see [a man] in front of them on a daily basis, it helps to contradict negative stereotypes," Nelson said.

So men are told to get a thick skin, get used to handling "inappropriate questions," and learn to contradict negative sterotypes. In other words, if men are discriminated against, it is up to them to deal with the fall-out and to change negative steroptypes and to expect no help from other people. So men are guilty unless proven otherwise. Reader Mike who sent me the article link had this to say about the sexist way male teachers are handled at interviews:

What would the NEA or NOW or NAACP or.... say if "gay & transgendered" or "woman" or "black person" or.... the acceptable list goes on & on, were it substituted for "healthy male"??? I do believe something stronger than "inappropriate questions" would be used to describe this - no? And I would expect the ACLU to be filing suit within hours - yes?

The ACLU filing suit for sexism against men? Uhh, doubtful. Expect the downward trend of males in teaching to continue, for just like the marriage strike, most smart men will be hesitant to enter an institution where being male puts them at risk of being charged with abuse, having their livelihood taken from them with little or no due process, and being taken from the children that they love.

Can Hybrid Cars Interfere with Your Pacemaker?

Dr. Wes on Pacemakers, Defibrillators and Hybrid Cars:

With the interest and popularity of going "green" with hybrid cars (even with a select few of my fellow physician-bloggers) I thought it would be worthwhile to share a few tidbits about the potential for electromagenetic interference between hybrids and pacemakers or defibrillators. (Heck, maybe they'll need this info when they get older and have their pacer installed...)

If you have a pacemaker or defibrillator like I do, this information is good to know.

The Truth about Domestic Violence

"Canada is the scariest country on the planet." So says Erin Pizzey, at a domestic violence conference in Sacramento, Calif. Pizzy is an Englishwoman who founded the world's first shelter for battered wives in 1971 (thanks Mike). However, she quickly learned in her work that domestic violence is reciprocal and that women were just as culpable as men. She states, "Canada is ..."scary to men who suffer because of it, certainly, but apparently not to most other Canadians, who remain curiously indifferent to the demonstrable misandry permeating the institutions that define and shape our culture."

Apparently, this head-in-the-sand approach to domestic violence is prevalent in the US as well as Canada. What happens when someone tries to break the code of silence?

Holding women responsible for their violence was so at odds with the received wisdom of the movement's activists that, for her whistle-blowing pains, Pizzey's dog was killed and her entire family received death threats. Undaunted, she pursued her equal-responsibility crusade in the United States for many years in a fusillade of articles and books.

And Pizzy is not alone:

Another outlier, University of British Columbia psychology professor Don Dutton, is acknowledged by his peers as a world expert on IPV. He has proven, over and over again -- most recently in his definitive 2006 book, Rethinking Domestic Violence -- that the tendency to violence in intimate relationships is bilateral and rooted in individual dysfunction: Men and women with personality disorders and/or family histories of violence are equally likely to be violent themselves, or seek violent partners.

But Dutton's scientific credentials and extensive 25-year archive of peer-reviewed research cut no ice with Canadian policymakers, none of whom has ever solicited his advice.

I tried on a smaller scale to get the Tennessee Department of Health to review their misconceptions of domestic violence but never got a response from them --although I did hear back from one of my state senators whom I sent a copy of my letters to. It seems that when it comes to domestic violence, the status quo remains, women are the victims, men the perpetrators.

It seems, the article in the National Post that I linked to above put it correctly:

...pseudo-science absolving women of violent impulses, delivered on demand to interest groups by the same tiny, incestuous coterie of ideologically sympathetic professionals, is routinely applied in training police, family law judges, social workers and women's shelter personnel.

Pathetic and sad.

Is Obama Feminized?

So I took a look at a book entitled The New Feminized Majority this week that purports to show how the values of American voters are dramatically shifting. How? According to the literature accompanying the book, there is a new feminized majority made up of both women and men that is:

...emerging as the pivotal force in American politics. Emerging trends show these values are broadly progressive and address not just the needs of women but the general interests of society. They are held by women substantially more than by men but have become the values held by a majority of all voters, including millions of men.

Like earlier eras in American history, such as the New Deal, the rise of the feminized majority today presents an opportunity for the Democrats to become the governing party for decades to come.

I love the presumption by the writers of the book description that certainly anyone reading it would be just thrilled to have progressive and socialist values shoved down their throats. There is no indication or question about whether these are good values to have, simply that they will "open up a window for major social justice movements to make progressive change."

Now, naturally, this "feminized" change may take the form of a male presidential candidate. The authors are not too keen on Clinton whom they describe as a "pathbreaking" but imperfect carrier of the feminized agenda. They seem to love Edwards but since he is out of the race, we will turn to their thoughts on feminized Obama:

Here is Obama's feminized philosophy in a nutshell. He highlights the importance of values in his own life and in the nations politics. He emphasizes that there is a "common good" or universal set of values that can bring all Americans together. He stresses change and the movement from self-interested patisanship to a feminized politics of the common good....

Obama is markedly feminized in his critique of the self-interested, greedy, "old politics" of partisanship. "It is such partisanship that has turned Americans off. What is needed is a broad majority who are reengaged and who see their own self-interest as inextricably linked to the interest of others." Here, the feminized Obama challenges the historic, masculinized American dream of looking out for oneself. Obama seeks to move American from narrow "self interest" (the masculinized narrative of Alone I Will) to a concept of shared interest with others (the feminized narrative of Together We Can, which Obama often cites as "Yes, We Can")...

Obama straddles the maculinized/feminized divide in foreign policy. As the 2008 campaign unfolds, he increasingly emphasizes soft power--diplomacy, international law, and cooperation--in the war on terrorism...

Funny, I can't help but think that the word feminized used by these authors is just another metaphor for socialism:

Socialism is the doctrine that man has no right to exist for his own sake, that his life and his work do not belong to him, but belong to society, that the only justification of his existence is his service to society, and that society may dispose of him in any way it pleases for the sake of whatever it deems to be its own tribal, collective good.

I think the new feminized majority is just another name for the same old socialist agenda. If so, count me out.

Are Single Sex Schools Really the Answer?

A Georgia school system is set to go single-sex:

Nearly four decades after this rural Georgia county stopped segregating its schools by race, it wants to divide students again�this time by sex. Greene County is set to become the first school district in the nation to go entirely single-sex, with boys and girls in separate classrooms�a move born of desperation over years of poor test scores, soaring dropout rates and high numbers of teenage pregnancies.

"At the rate we're moving, we're never going to catch up," Superintendent Shawn McCollough told parents in an impassioned speech last week. "If we're going to take some steps, let's take some big steps."

This pine-shrouded county of about 14,400 people between Atlanta and Augusta has in recent years become a magnet for retirees moving into luxury developments along the shore of Lake Oconee. But the vast majority of longtime residents�and most of the 2,000 students in the county's schools�are black and working class.

Will single sex classrooms lead to better outcomes in this Georgia school? It's hard to say, given that there are so many other variables that might be at play leading to the poor test scores, drop out rates and pregnancies. The article mentions that single sex schools tend to be private institutions with updated technology and ample resources, not poor school systems like Greene County's. It will be interesting to see if there is improvement or not.

Filmmaker Stuart Browning discusses the perils of public healthcare on Canadian National TV (CBC). You can watch it here.

Diary of a Wimpy Kid

Are you looking for a fun book for your elementary age or early middle school boy on the perils of navigating middle school? If so, take a look at Diary of a Wimpy Kid--a fun-filled book that is reviewed over at BooksForKids blog:

Greg is a scrawny, socially untalented middle school newby who longs to be a popular and muscular ladies' man, but totally lacks the motivation to make the effort to get there. Instead he spends a lot of his energy trying to avoid schoolwork, get his hands on a video game called "Twisted Wizard," and hang out with his sidekick Rowley. Now, clueless as he is, Greg realizes that Rowley is still stuck in kidsville and admits that Rowley's status as "friend" is no sure thing...

Frankly, the book sounds a bit painful to me but perhaps the idea of making middle school trials fun instead of traumatic is a better why to go. Anyway, if you want to learn more about the book, read the review here.

A New Twist to the Prenuptial Agreement

At least this one does not involve the groom (Hat tip: Dave)--but maybe it should get him thinking:

There's a new prenuptial agreement in town - and it's beyond anything even Ron Perelman's lawyers could cook up.

Young brides are drawing up bridesmaids contracts that are sure to cause rifts between BFFs in bad floor-length dresses everywhere.

The agreements include specific grooming and behavior clauses - specifying everything from the required length and style of bridesmaids' fingernails to prohibitions on gaining weight before the big day - with the threat that those who don't comply will be dumped. ...

More than 20 percent of brides-to-be said they would use a contract to control bridesmaids, and half of them said they would sack one if she refused to follow the script, according to a survey conducted by UK magazine You & Your Wedding.

It seems to me that this type of pre-nup should serve as a warning sign to the groom. Think about it, if a bride is this controlling of her bridesmaids' behavior, what is she going to do to you after the wedding?

How well do you know your company? (my guess is not very well at all�)

In the 1970s, there was a series of academic studies which looked at managers� perceptions of the �volatility� of their company�s business environments. These studies all found that different managers within the same organization usually had widely varying views on how volatile their business was: the correlation between different people�s assessments was virtually zero.

In addition, these studies found that there was hardly any relation between objective measures of business volatility and managers� estimates of these measures (if anything, the correlations were negative; managers in stable environments thought their business was relatively turbulent and vice versa). Similar results were obtained for other variables. The researchers concluded that managers� perceptions of their own businesses were usually plain wrong.

Two business school professors � John Mezias and Bill Starbuck; at the time at New York University � set out to examine this claim further (and published their results a few years ago) simply because they found it hard to believe; at least at first�

They thought ��business volatility�, that�s a bit vague and abstract, let�s start with something simple� and they asked executives from a wide range of companies to tell them what their business unit�s sales were in the previous year. Then they looked up the units� actual sales figures. The average answer was 475.7% wrong. That�s 475.5%...! Sales of their own business unit!!

Then John and Bill thought, �perhaps we should pick something they find really important�. So they approached a blue-chip company and asked them what the company�s absolute top-notch priority was: the CEO declared that the absolute top priority throughout the entire company was �quality improvement�.

And indeed, they had put their money where their mouth was: many managers attended quality improvement training courses, each division had a dedicated department focusing on quality performance and the company had developed various quality metrics. Furthermore, all managers received quarterly quality improvement reports, and 74% of them indicated in a survey that they expected to receive large increases in their personal rewards if their divisions managed to increase quality. Yep, �quality� was important to them!

Quality was measured in the company, following the specialist training techniques, in terms of �sigma� (a measurement of the error rate). When John and Bill asked the managers what the sigma of their department was, the average error in their answer was�(wait for it)... 715.1%. A whopping 715%! They really had no clue�

Note that these had even been managers brave enough to give any answer at all; 7 out of 10 managers, when asked, had refused to give any estimate, declaring �I don�t know�. It seems likely that they had realised they had no clue and rather than make a complete fool of themselves, they opted not to say anything.

Granted, when John and Bill finally asked the brave ones who dared to give an answer to express their unit�s error rate not in terms of the illustrious �sigma� but in the plain human terms of �what percentage of products have errors?� they did a lot better: almost 7 out of 10 managers managed to give an answer which was less than 50% off the mark.

Of course these people are not all fools. They are usually smart, well-trained and hard-working. It is just that they have no clue about the numbers describing their own business � and managers usually don�t. We spend a lot of time, money, effort and attention quantifying all sorts of aspects of our organisations but, at the end of the day, make decisions ignoring all these numbers, using our experience, qualitative assessment and gut instinct.

And that�s probably for the better; if we�d base decisions on our (alleged) knowledge of the numbers, we�d be prone to not only shoot ourselves in the foot, but also in the chin, the head, the back-side and the bodily parts of several of our neighbours.

Thoughts on a Sunday Morning at Panera

It's amazing how honest most people are; I was in line this morning at Panera when a man handed the cashier a large Louis Vuitton purse and said, "There was a group of people who just took off and one of them left this purse." The cashier took it, shrugged and told the man, "I'm sure they will come back. I'll put it in a safe place." I then watched her tell her co-workers to be aware that a woman had left her purse and would probably be back to get it soon.

"Such quick organizational skills and honesty," I thought. I imagine the woman who left her purse will be relieved to find that a group of honest people made sure that her property was safe. I wonder what would have happened if this woman had found her purse? I think about how amazing it is that the default setting for most of us is honesty and doing what's right. It comforts me when I think about all of the terrible things that we human beings do to each other that seems so prevalent when clustered together on the evening news, but seem so much an aberration in the day-to-day world.

Victor Davis Hanson has an interesting piece up over at PJM on how we ended up with Obama:

One wonders how the United States has come to the brink of nominating and probably electing someone with almost no experience as either an executive or national legislator, replete with ratings and rankings that suggest he will be about the most liberal Presidential candidate since George McGovern.

You can read more here.

Weird Food Cravings

Do you ever have weird food cravings and think that it's because you're missing something in your diet? Apparently, that's not the case:

MSNBC.com recently posted some of the weird food cravings their readers have. Apparently craving peanut butter burgers or banana bacon sandwiches doesn't mean you're missing something from your diet. "Scientists haven't been able to link cravings in humans to specific nutritional deficiencies, says Joy Bauer, TODAY's nutrition expert and author of Food Cures: Treat Common Health Concerns, Look Younger & Live Longer.

When I was pregnant, I ate the Korean dish Bibimbap everyday which is a dish of rice, vegetables and in my case, seaweed, which I loved. I thought I craved the dish because I needed postassium or some other mineral but maybe I was just weird.

Naomi Campbell--Political Candidate?

David Harsanyi states in his Denver Post column entitled, "The Truth About Castro":

Supermodel Naomi Campbell claims that Fidel Castro is "a source of inspiration to the world." Actually, in South Beach, dingbat stick-figures can pocket millions strutting down runways, but in Cuba, young women are destined to toil in a socialist economy with little hope. They aren't inspired by Castro. Suicide rates are estimated to have tripled since El Caballo began running things.

Maybe Campbell should stick with modeling, sounds like she has a better career there than in politics; on the other hand, the way that some of our politicians appease and admire dictators, maybe not.

Obama and guns: "In 1999, Obama proposed to make it a felony for the gun owner if a firearm stolen from his residence and used in a crime was not �securely stored� � effectively negating the homeowner�s right to self-defense."

Scary stuff.

Ask Dr. Helen: Is Male Bashing Curable?

My PJM column is up:

�We�re tired of the way the media portrays us as either abusive, career-driven, slovenly, or one of the myriad of other male stereotypes,� one married man complains to Dr. Helen Smith. She sympathizes.

Okay, that is the PJM editor's interpretation. I don't sympathize, I say, mobilize and do something constructive. Others may disagree and just ignore negative male stereotypes. Go read the column and tell me what you think.

Sirens and investment bankers � two of a kind?

Some time ago, I was interviewing a CEO of a FTSE100 company, which had acquired several dozens of companies over the past years, when we came to speak about investment bankers. He then asked me �do you know who the Sirens were, in Greek mythology?� I said �yes� (because I did and, of course, also because I did not want to appear ignorant).

Sirens were beautiful maidens located on a small island surrounded by cliffs and rocks. They would lure seamen who sailed near the island with their enchanting singing, to shipwreck to death onto the rocks.

�Well� this CEO continued, �investment bankers are just like Sirens�. That caught my attention�

�How�s that?� I asked. �They constantly try to seduce you into doing another deal, and they don�t care at all whether that deal actually make sense for the company�. Ok�

Of course, firms and their shareholders are not the only parties potentially benefiting from a transaction. A vast industry exists that initiates, values, negotiates, and closes deals. However, the interests of such parties, for instance investment bankers, may not always be aligned with those of the firm. Especially when M&A times are relatively slow, investment bankers may attempt to initiate deals from which it is not clear that they are to the benefit of the potential acquirer.

As an ex-investment banker told me some time ago, �when times were slow, we�d all go through our address books and discuss �who hasn�t done a deal for a long time�, because we would usually be able to talk such a person into doing one�.

Yet, one could make a good argument that investment bankers are not necessarily to blame for this; they are supposed to follow their interests and it is up to the manager to say �no� to a proposed transaction.

Yet, deals � and investment bankers � can be seductive. Sometimes, CEOs who are inclined to at least listen to their investment bank would do well to do like Odysseus; Odysseus wanted to hear the mythical Sirens sing but was less keen on shipwrecking. So he asked his sailors to plug their ears with beeswax and to tie him firmly to the ship�s mast. They then sailed past the Sirens; Odysseus was overwhelmed by their music but, being restrained, could not free himself to follow his urges and run his ship onto the rocks.

All we need now are boards with beeswax and offices with a mast. I will bring the rope.

Podcast: How to Raise a Future Millionaire

Do you ever wonder if you are teaching your kids the right lessons about money and how to use it wisely? Author Troy Dunn has seven kids and has taught them how to start businesses of their own. He talks with us today about his new book, Young Bucks: How to Raise a Future Millionaire.

He explains what five word phrase parents should never say to their kids when it comes to money, why college is not that important in becoming a millionaire, what businesses are good for kids, and why you should not give your kid an allowance (uh- oh).

You can listen directly -- no downloading needed -- by going right here and clicking on the gray Flash player. Or you can download the file and listen at your leisure by clicking right here. A lo-fi version, suitable for dialup, cellphones, etc. is here. And you can always subscribe via iTunes -- and why wouldn't you, since it's free?

Music is by Mobius Dick. Show archives are at GlennandHelenShow.com.

Rules for Radicals 101

I read with amusement this little piece over at CBS News on Hillary Clinton's hunting history:

At a campaign stop this afternoon, Hillary Clinton�s focus was on the economy and health care but some in the crowd had other things on their minds. Clinton was asked to discuss gun control which prompted Clinton to talk about her days holding a rifle in the cold, shallow waters in backwoods Arkansas.

So instead of talking directly about her policy on gun control and her crappy second amendment record (an F rating on gun rights, Clinton was one of 16 Senators who voted against the 2006 Vitter Amendment), Hillary instead tells a little story about being with some men in a swamp and how she shot a duck--to show how aligned she is with gun owners. Then she takes a pot shot at Dick Cheney to promote her "sensible" gun control legislation:

Clinton continued, �Once he (Cheney) is out of office, the Secret Service is not around to protect people from him. We better be careful about where he goes hunting. Safety protocol would be useful, don�t� you think?�

Her responses to questions about gun control indicate that perhaps she has just fallen back on the old tired techniques of Saul Alinsky, author of Rules for Radicals, on whom she wrote her senior thesis.

In Rules for Radicals, Alinsky opens with a Prologue in which he describes some elementary techniques for those who want to change the world. Communication is key, and one should communicate with the experiences of the audience, and "give full respect to the others value." By telling a story about herself hunting, Clinton has aligned herself with the nearly two-thirds of Americans who say they believe the Constitution guarantees each person the right to own a gun. Next, by making fun of Cheney, Clinton uses another level of communication described by Alinsky:

...humor is essential, for through humor much is accepted that would have been rejected if presented seriously.

By poking fun at Cheney, Clinton could laugh with the audience, but notice the twist, "Safety protocol would be useful, don't you think?" She is now shifting to Alinsky's chapter on "Communication." Here is one of Alinksy's maxims:

Another maxim in effective communication is that peple have to make their own decisions. It isn't just that Moses couldn't tell God what God should do; no organizer can tell a community, either, what to do. Much of the time, though, the organizer will have a pretty good idea of what the communtity should be doing, and he will want to suggest, maneuver, and persuade the community toward that action. He will not ever seem to tell the community what to do; instead, he will use loaded questions. For example, in a meeting on tactics where the organizer is convinced that tactic Z is the thing to do:

Organizer: What do you think we should do now?

Okay, so this interchange goes on until everyone has decided that tactic Z, as the organizer suggested is the thing to do. This is generally reached through manipulation on the part of the organizer but the community feels that they have made the decision themselves. But they didn't. They were manipulated.

Will Americans fall for Clinton's manipulative tactics, especially in the area of gun control? It's possible, but then again, many Americans know when they are being fed a big pile of bull. Or at least, I hope they do.

PJM has an interesting article on Desperate (Green) Housewives:

The New York Times has turned environmentally conscious mothers into their latest target of derision. Unfair, says Laura McKenna. If you�re going to mock, why not make fun of the whole green movement?

Read the whole thing.

Right again! � managers and their self-fulfilling prophecies

Ok, I realise I might have given the impression to be slightly sceptical about the mental abilities of top managers of late. But that�s a faulty impression, honest! I am merely trying to point out that they, too, are only human.

Or, let�s say, near human (just like business school professors and other suspected mutations of the human genome) because the following academic study yet again did not quench but just fuelled my scepticism.

My former colleague at the London Business School, Olav Sorenson (now at the University of Toronto), together with his colleague David Waguespack, examined distributors in the US film industry. Distributors have certain pre-conceived ideas about what films will be a success at the box office � for instance, the number of stars in the film, the actors� prior successes, previous experience of the production team, etc.

When Sorenson and Waguespack analysed data on over 5000 movies, they discovered that these distributors seemed correct in their beliefs; films that corresponded to their prior beliefs indeed reaped more revenues at the box office.

Yet, then Sorenson and Waguespack did a clever thing; they also analysed the scarce resources that these distributors assigned to their films, such as budget, promotion efforts, number of screens on opening day, favourable timing in the year (e.g. around Christmas many more people go to the cinema). What they found was striking: The reason why those films that the executives had high hopes for beforehand indeed did become successes could 100 percent be explained by the fact that the distributors in their subsequent allocation of resources very significantly favoured them.

When Sorenson and Waguespack, in their statistical analysis, corrected for the fact that distributors assigned so much of their scarce resources to those films, it turned out that the executives' assessments were completely wrong; those films usually did comparatively worse at the box office! The only reason why the films that they beforehand had thought would become successes indeed did reap "profits" is because they assigned more resources to them. Yet, they would have been better off assigning the scarce resources to the other movies. The executives' prior beliefs were false; they just seemed correct afterwards due to their own, self-confirming actions.

Do such self-fulfilling prophecies only exist in silly Hollywood? My guess is not. Self-confirming dynamics are abound everywhere. Human beings develop prior beliefs about what will work and what won�t, and subsequently (unconsciously) work hard to make sure they�re right. And, really, top managers are often almost human.

Queens Man Arrested for Killing of Psychologist

A Queens man has been arrested (via Drudge) in the murder of NYC psychologist Kathryn Faughey:

The NYPD arrested a 'mentally disabled' 39-year-old Queens man, David Tarloff for the murder of Upper East Side psychologist Dr. Kathryn Faughey.

Tarloff was taken into custody in the morning, after investigators matched his prints with three palm prints found at the bloody crime scene, said Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly. Tarloff was questioned for about 20 minutes. The interrogation stopped when he asked for a lawyer. Kelly said murder and attempted murder charges were pending.

During questioning, Tarloff said he had gone to the office because Shinbach had him institutionalized in 1991. He said he planned to rob the psychiatrist and leave the country with his mother, who lives in a nursing home, but until recently had lived with him in an apartment in Queens.

It is unclear why the man killed Faughey if he was angry with psychiatrist Shinbach but the important thing is, the killer, hopefully was been found.

Feel the Fear and Do it Anyway

I have written about two of my phobias in past blog posts--fear of flying and public speaking. I did an interview for WZTV Fox 17 in Nashville a while back that I just found on line. I talk about what it's like to have these fears and why it's important to Feel the Fear . . . and Do It Anyway.

You can see me here talking about my phobias here. Watch the video and then tell me what you are afraid of--if anything.

In light of the recent Northern Illinois University shooting and the NYC murder of therapist Kathryn Faughey, Neo-Neocon reflects on liberty vs. safety.

Psychology: Riskier than You Thought

I have a piece up at PJM in response to yesterday's brutal murder of psychologist Kathryn Faughey in her NYC office:

Reacting to yesterday�s gruesome murder of New York therapist Kathryn Faughey, Dr. Helen Smith is both horrified and surprised it doesn�t happen more often.

Many professions are risky, but people imagine a psychologist's office to be fairly safe--but this is not always the case. Go read the column to see the stats on the number of us who are stalked, harrassed and threatened.

Kim du Toit has some more observations about why men don't want to get married.

Why are Diamonds a Girl's Best Friend?

So tomorrow is Valentine's day and everywhere you look, stores are pushing candy, flowers, and jewelry--especially diamonds. I have always been rather put off by the Kay Jewelers commercials that liken women to whores when they state, "Every kiss begins with Kay."

I never understood the whole concept of a woman wanting jewelry from a man, especially diamonds, until I read the book Why Beautiful People Have More Daughters. In the book, two evolutionary psychologists explain why people do what they do. Why are diamonds a girl's best friend? The authors conclude that women have to discriminate between "dads" and "cads" among male suitors. In order to find the guy that will stay with her and help her with children, she looks for two qualities: "the ability to acquire and accumulate resources, and the willingness to invest them in her and her children."

A good way to screen for men who are both willing and able to invest is to demand an expensive gift--known as a courtship gift or nuptial gift in evolutionary biology. Not just any expensive gift will do. A Mercedes or house does not usually fill the bill--for these might have intrinsic value to the man if he likes European cars or is interested in real estate. A courtship gift, according to the book, must be costly and lack intrinsic value and be useless.

Diamonds and flowers are beautiful and their beauty lies in their inherent uselessness; "this is why Volvos and potatoes are not beautiful." So guys, apparently, gifts that are "costly but worthless"--facilitate courtship, according to a recent study mentioned in the book.

"The researchers note that such extravagant gifts have the added benefit for men of deterring 'gold diggers,' women who promise to mate in exchange for a gift but then desert without mating after receiving it."

So, it seems that diamonds serve as a litmus test for how a woman feels about you. I still have trouble with the idea of "demanding" expensive gifts but it all makes a bit more sense to me now.

Customers�? Ah, forget about them

Some time ago, for an ongoing project about �organising for innovation�, I interviewed a guy called Farooq Chaudhry; a founder and producer of the Akram Khan Dance Company. The Akram Khan Company is a small but extremely innovative (and extremely successful�) company which focuses on creating contemporary dance.

Farooq had several interesting things to say about creating an organisation that excels in delivering continuing, successful innovation. One of them, that stuck to my mind, was �In order to be truly innovative, you have to forget about your customer�.

What?! I don�t know much about Marketing (and would prefer to keep it that way), but don�t these people always go on and on about �customer-focus�, �client-driven innovation�, �the customer always comes first�, and so on?

So I tried, �Farooq, do you perhaps mean that you should only have the customer in the back of your mind?� �No, no, I mean, customers � just forget about them altogether�. Ok�

What (on earth) did Farooq Chaudhry mean � after all, this is one of the most innovative companies of their kind, since� well, like ever?

According to him, if you want to be truly innovative, you have to purposely not try to give the customer what he wants. Because, as he argued, if you set out to develop what you think the customer will like, you end up satisfying existing needs and tastes; you follow the customer, rather than that you lead him. True innovation, according to him, is about changing the tastes of customers, and giving them something that they have never seen or even imagined before.

Finding Freedom in an Unfree World?

Well, it's the start of tax time again and as a small business owner, it's often a time that gets me more than a bit cranky. I remember a point made long ago by libertarian Harry Browne--that we often (some of us) work until July 27th of the year for the government and the rest of the year for ourselves. Browne asks a good question about the state of our economic life, "If this is freedom, at what level of confiscation are we no longer free?"

At times, I think we are approaching it and I imagine that, depending on the upcoming election, it will only get worse. In 1995, when Brown wrote his book Why Government Doesn't Work, he stated that if we continue down the path of large government programs, the government will no longer be able to keep its promises--leaving only two choices:

1) The repudiation of promises made to Social Security recipients and others who have become dependent on the government; or

2) Tax rates of 50%, 60%, 70% or more to pay for all the IOUs the government has signed on your behalf.

Over 12 years have passed since Browne said these words and it seems that they were prophetic in a sense. The age for full Social Security benefits has been raised to 67 for those of us born after 1960 and the current crop of Democratic candidates is mentioning even more of a tax burden to pay for ever more expanding programs. Are any of us free anymore and the more important question to me is, does anybody care? I do.

I decided after contemplating this depressing question to dig up the old book by Browne, How I Found Freedom in an Unfree World: A Handbook for Personal Liberty. I have always wanted to read it and found it at the library (you can find it at the Amazon link above but I'm not paying $124.00-$635.00 for it and neither should you!)

The book might interest those of you with libertarian leanings (I consider myself a bit of a Heinleinian libertarian/independent and all around curmudgeon). Browne plays a pseudo-psychologist in the first part of the book --explaining that our attempts at freedom often depend upon our ability to change the minds of other people--and so optimism ultimately turns into frustration and despair (been there, done that, check).

In the chapters that follow, he covers freedom from social restrictions, family problems, high taxes, bad relationships, the treadmill and government repression. Some of the ideas are good: "negative emotions can act as signals to you, letting you know that there's an uncomfortable part of your life that needs attention," some are bad: "I don't believe that you do anything for your country by fighting in a war (any war), giving up your money, or sacrificing in any way" and some are just downright kooky with a section on using illegal methods to break laws. "If you want to start a new business, don't go looking for all the licenses and regulations you are supposed to observe, just operate." Uh, okay.

Anyway, the book is an interesting read, especially for the personal information, but I'm not sure about all of the advice, sounds like one might just end up in a much less free place: jail.

For "Feminists" Only Well Behaved Women Make History

Bridget Johnson at Pajama's Media has an interesting column on Golda Meir and today's brand of female leadership:

As I watched the life of the former prime minister unfold onscreen, I chuckled at the thought of how our 2008 obsession with identity politics seems to forget the great leaders � who just happened to be women � who have long had the attention of the rest of the world. After all, Oprah is not the most powerful woman in the world; that woman is, as ranked by Forbes, German Chancellor Angela Merkel.

But Merkel is a conservative. Meir fought for Israel�s survival in the Yom Kippur War. Even Condoleezza Rice�s term as secretary of state has not been hailed as a great advance for women and/or African-Americans. So is a leader who happens to be a women only hailed as advancement if she pursues a feminist agenda outlined by NOW or the Code Pink sisters?

It would seem that the answer to that question is a resounding "yes."

Getting lucky � fortune favours the prepared firm

Ok, let me tell you one more story. Once upon a time there was a plumber, called Geoffrey Ward, who lived in London. One day a local government official told him he would have to vacate his workshop and office because it was located in an area reserved as a retail zone.

Geoffrey decided to place an old, slightly exotic-looking, artistically shaped radiator, which he had removed for a client because it was broken, in the window of his workshop, just to make it look like a shop. Yet, in the following days and weeks, people kept knocking on this door asking whether they could buy that funny-shaped radiator. Not for long, Geoffrey realised that he could have made quite a lot of money had he been able to sell such a �designer radiator� and decided to change profession. This was how the company Bisque, who produce and distribute designer radiators, was founded.

Luck you say? Of course but, as said before, many people don�t take advantage of luck even when it is staring them into the face; Geoffrey did.

Andy Grove, former CEO of Intel, called it �strategic recognition capacity�. He could have said �know it when you got lucky� (but I�m sure you agree that that wouldn�t have sounded as fancy). Intel, who of course became one of the most successful companies ever by producing microprocessors, also got lucky. In the early 1980s, they were working on microprocessors when they did not have a clue what they would be able to use them for.

They even made a list of potential applications � which had anything on it ranging from handheld calculators to lamp-posts. Yep, lamp-posts. What was not on it was: the computer. It was not until IBM kept persistently knocking on their door that they said �alright then, you can put our product in this thing you call a PC�.

Yet, was this all down to luck? Of course not, Andrew Grove and his partners recognised the opportunity when it came knocking on their door (in the shape of Big Blue�s rather sizeable fist). But there�s more to it.

�Fortune favours the prepared mind�, Louis Pasteur famously said. He got lucky several times, making important yet serendipitous discoveries (such as a rabies vaccine). Yet, it was not mere chance that it was Pasteur who made these discoveries: 1) he recognised opportunities that presented themselves to him, but 2) also had the skill, knowledge and ability to turn them into something useful. That required many years of careful practice and training.

Moreover, and importantly, he wasn�t sitting in his kitchen waiting for lucky events to fall into his scientific lap. He was actively experimenting with lots of things. Most of them were bogus; others not.

And that is what Intel did: running many experiments in the margin. Most of them failed and wasted money. But one sunny day, one of these experiments just might result into a thing called �microprocessors� and, believe me, you won�t shed a tear about all the other ones that failed.

Is Settling for Mr. Good Enough Really Good Enough?

If you haven't read it already, take a look at the Atlantic Weekly article excerpted over at MSNBC.com entitled Why it�s OK to settle for Mr. Good Enough. The article is about whether women should stop looking for "Mr. Right." The most interesting part of the article are the comments but be careful, I just got sucked into reading them for over an hour.

My thoughts? "Settling" for anyone, whether you are male or female seems sad and somehow wrong. I won't say it's always the wrong thing to do, but it seems to me that it would be much better to be alone than to be with somebody you didn't really want. It's unfair to them, and to you. On the other hand, perhaps some of the women commenting over there overlooked perfectly fine men because their standards were impossible to live up to. In that case, it makes more sense to learn to treat a man less as someone to "live up to your standards" and more like a human being who may have some great qualities that would be good in a partner.

Can You be too Happy?

Can being too happy be bad for you? Turns out the answer may be "yes" according to a study discussed at Yahoo Finance (Hat tip: Instapundit):

But while relationships are better for the joyous, it turns out that there's a big deficit to perpetual euphoria: Super-happy people don't live as long as the moderately happy, according to a long-term study of gifted children. "We were shocked that the happiest people didn't live longer," says Diener.

And it's possible that buying into the whole self-help culture may be self-defeating if you are already mildly happy:

If you feel generally satisfied with your life, your work, and your relationships most of the time, think twice before buying into the self-help movement and its search for a continuous streak of "peak moments."

"Happiness, like spirituality, is partially a private pursuit, defined by individuals based on their personal values," says Diener. "Be wary when people tell you to live for the moment, to strive for an exciting life, or that you ought to be happier. Chasing super-happiness is a mistake that can lead you astray and be self-defeating."

Chasing supper happiness (whatever that means) always struck me as being a bit cult-like; perhaps moderation in all things is not a bad strategy.

Single or Divorced: Either way, Pass the Lo Mein

Joanne Jacob's position on the marriage strike:

I don�t think it�s really that tough to be a man or that marriage is such a bad deal compared to living on take-out in your parents� basement. Men, feel free to comment. And women, of course.

Some of her commenters take her to task for this view; my favorite comes from commenter F451:

��[not] such a bad deal compared to living on take-out in your parents� basement.�

You mean like my divorced friends?

Single Men in Never-Neverland?

My PJM column is up:

Why do today�s men run from commitment - indefinitely delaying settling down in a marriage they take seriously, and having kids? Dr. Helen Smith asks whether they are indeed pampered eternal adolescents more interested in exploding toilets and video games than real life, or if they are simply making a logical choice when �the reward for being an adult in our society is so low, especially for men.�

Do you think today�s single young man is a �child-man in the promised land,� as proposed by Kay Hymowitz, author of Marriage and Caste in America or a rational adult who is turning to video games and alternative lifestyles because those are more rewarding activities?

Go read the column and let me know what you think.

�Time compression diseconomies� � too much, too fast

I started playing the cello when I was nine. And ever since, I have worried about time compression diseconomies. Yes really. I didn�t know they were called time compression diseconomies, but I did worry about them.

As a child, I used to have cello lessons on Saturday morning. I would play a certain piece in front of my teacher and then she would give me a new piece to practise for the next week.

Some weeks, I practised for half an hour on Sunday, then half an hour on Monday, the same on Tuesday, etc., so that when my next lesson would be up, I would have practised for a total of three hours (6 days; half an hour each). And I usually would be able to play the piece in front of my teacher reasonably well.

Some weeks, however, I did not practise on Sunday because I was out playing football. On Monday, I was at the Boy scouts, on Tuesday playing at a friend�s house, on Wednesday I forgot about it altogether, and so on. By the time it was Friday, I would realise, �oops, it�s my cello lesson tomorrow, and I haven�t practised at all yet�!�

What then I would usually do, is think, �I will just practise for three hours in a row now; that�s the same amount of time as half an hour each day for six days, and I am sure I will be fine�. But I never was.... It never worked. The noises coming out of my cello would be outright terrifying, reducing innocent passers-by to tears; with my teacher�s ears (and mine) hurting for hours after she'd hastily sent me away.

And I wondered, as a nine year old, how is that possible? Three hours is three hours, right? Why does this not work: three hours on Friday instead of half an hour each day for six days in a row?!

Of course, as adults, we realise that our brain needs rest in between practice sessions. It needs to recuperate before you can put new information and skills into it, and the periods of �inactivity� are just as important as the practice itself. Practice sessions are much less effective if you don�t have the slow periods in between them.

Yet, nowadays, examining corporate strategy, I see many firms who have set themselves ambitious growth targets fall into the same trap. In order to catch up with competitors, for instance, they enter new markets at double the speed, undertake twice as many acquisitions, or hire double the number of employees. But, unfortunately, it doesn�t work that way. Just like me practising the cello, organisations need rest and time in between growth spurts to recuperate, and digest the effort. Trying twice as hard does not mean you�ll get twice the benefits. There are limits to how fast you can grow, without starting to suffer from it.

We call this �time compression diseconomies� � a term cornered by professors Dierickx and Cool from INSEAD. When you, as an organisation, try to compress lots of effort and growth into a short period, it will not be as effective as when you spread it out over a longer period of time (which is why we call them �diseconomies�).

A large research project I undertook examining the growth strategies of 25 multinational companies showed exactly this: growing at a moderate yet steady pace increased profitability much more than did short outburst of rapid expansion. And, unlike the effect of my youthful cello efforts on my teacher�s auditive organs, these firms� performance really was music to their shareholders� ears.

"We 'R' Not Monsters." "They Treat Animals Better!!!"

These are the words of sex offenders living under a bridge in Florida (Hat tip: Tam):

The state of Florida is trying to dissolve a community of sex offenders living under a bridge that includes a gym, kitchen, living room and two dogs...

The men have lived under the Julia Tuttle Causeway for a year. They say limited money and strict local ordinances make it nearly impossible for them to live anywhere else.

But state officials are telling them to leave.

"We're urging them to find a residence. We want them to be able to reintegrate into society," said Gretl Plessinger, a spokeswoman for the Florida Corrections Department....

Juan Carlos Martin, a 29-year-old on the sex offender list for lewd or lascivious exhibition to a victim under the age of 16 -- a crime he says he didn't commit -- said it's been impossible for him to leave the bridge. He has been rejected from 15 jobs because of his record and can't find a place he can afford that's in compliance with the law.

Martin sits on his couch and sucks on a cigarette as a tiny white kitten peaks out from behind a stereo that no longer works. A gold crucifix hangs from his neck. He is off probation now, but he says he feels no freedom.

"What the law's doing to us is totally wrong," said Martin, who has lived here about six months. "Society will see that we aren't animals."

Tam has a good question in relation to the bridge dwellers: "What happens when the state turns someone out of prison, won't let them live anywhere near anyplace children might be, but doesn't want them living under a bridge, either?"

Where can they go?

"Pinky-Swear You'll Vote for the Guy on YouTube!"

I was sitting at the doctor's office today watching a Fox News segment on why young voters are pulling for Obama. The commentary was almost like a parody from an Onion post, "Don't know who to vote for? Just ask your 14-year-old." Apparently, parents like Caroline Kennedy are supporting Obama because her children made her promise to. Wow, was there a pinky-swear involved in there somewhere, too?

The middle-aged woman sitting next to me looked rather disturbed that the commentator and others were bragging in the segment about voting for Obama because their "14-year-old told them to." "I wonder how many of those kids have been out in the world, brought home a paycheck and seen what programs like what Obama and others endorse would cost them?" she stated. The veteran next to her looked equally incredulous and said, "Yeah, I can tell you how national healthcare would go over. I just went to the Veteran's clinic the other day with an emergency, they told me they could see me in three months. If that's universal healthcare, count me out!" Another patient in the waiting room said, "I wonder how many of the youth votes Obama will get because of that You Tube video?"

I can perhaps (okay, not really) understand 18 year olds turning out to vote for the guy they saw on a YouTube video, but there is no excuse for parents who vote for a candidate because their kids want them to do so. Because popularity and charisma is no way to pick the next President of the United States. Much less being told how to vote by your kids. Parents are supposed to be the adults, remember?

Update: At five years old, SayUncle persuaded his parents to vote for Jimmy Carter:

I decided, based on what I was being taught about presidential races at school, that my parents should vote for Jimmy Carter. My reasoning was simple enough: he had some shiny white teeth......To this day, my dad blames me.

Dad has no one to blame but himself--don't listen to your kids-- especially if they go to public schools.

Thomas Sowell on Economic Facts and Fallacies

John Hawkins interviews Thomas Sowell on his new book, Economic Facts and Fallacies. Sowell discusses why women supposedly make 76 cents for every dollar a man makes:

There are lots of reasons. Men and women do not work the same number of hours. They do not work in the same occupations. They do not work continuously the same, and so on.

You know, if it was really true that you could hire a woman for three quarters of what you could hire a man with exactly the same qualifications, then employers would be crazy not to hire all women. It would be insane to hire men. Not only would it be insane, it would probably put them out of the business because the ones that were smart enough to hire women would have such a cost advantage that it would be really hard for the others to compete.

There are lots of gross differences between men and women and other groups and some of them shocked me when I first started doing the research. For example, I found that young, male doctors make considerably more than young, female doctors. But, when I dug into it a little deeper, I discovered that young, male doctors work an average of 500 hours a year more than young, female doctors. Obviously, a doctor that works 500 extra hours is going to make more money than the other doctor.

Wow, that's almost ten hours more per week that young male doctors work. With the soaring number of women going into medicine (usually in specialties like psychiatry, pediatrics,OB/GYN and dermatology) along with the aging population and possible universal healthcare on the horizon, I wonder how this fact will play out in older patients getting the care they need.

Anyway, it's a good interview, take a look.

Which Deadly Sin are You?

Okay Instapundit, I'll take your stupid quiz--Uh-oh:

Which of the Seven Deadly Sins Are You?

Pride -- Self-love. You have a way-too-high opinion of yourself, and anyone who contradicts you is stupid and wrong.
Take this quiz!








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Toads and acquisitions � where does CEO �hubris� come from?

The famed investor, Warren Buffet, once said that many corporate acquirers think of themselves as beautiful princesses, sure that their kisses can turn toads into handsome princes. The acquirers pay substantial premiums over market value, believing that they can release the imprisoned princes. But, as Buffet said, �We�ve observed many kisses but very few miracles�.

Because, as you may know, when a firm acquires another company, it usually pays a rather hefty premium. That is, the firm pays quite a bit more for the company�s shares than the price it is trading at on the stock market before the take-over, just to be able to obtain a majority and hence a controlling stake.

According to academic research, this premium usually lies somewhere between a thoroughly whopping 50-70%, dependent on the industry, the size of the firm, etc.

The justification for paying such a significant premium is the idea that the acquiring firm will be able to get much more value out of the company than the seller does. As I�ve said before, the facts show that they�re usually wrong, but firms still do!

It gets interesting when you analyse who pays the biggest premiums. My former colleague at the London Business School, Mathew Hayward, now at the University of Colorado, together with his colleague Don Hambrick performed a slightly mischievous analysis. Because they figured that CEOs who are rather full of themselves would pay higher premiums � because they suffer from �hubris� and are more likely to overestimate their own ability to turn around �failing� companies � they counted the number of favourable articles that had appeared about them in the business press (such as the Financial Times, Business Week, etc.).

Subsequently they computed whether CEOs who had received more media praise paid more for their acquisitions. The answer was: absolutely YES!!

To be precise, each highly favourable article about a company�s CEO would increase the premium paid with no less 4.8%. For an acquisition of a billion, this would be 48 million� And that is for every article!

And this really is 48 million down the drain, because Hayward and Hambrick also showed that CEOs with more favourable press were completely unable to create additional value out of those acquisitions. They had simply overestimated themselves.



It is tempting to blame these stupid, arrogant executives, and their silly companies and boards. However, what I find equally interesting is that this research also indicates where hubris comes from: It comes from us!

We glorify top managers, print their pictures in newspapers and magazines, praise their decisiveness and vision, give them awards and treat them like superstars. All they�re guilty of � the poor bastards � is believe the BS we write about them.

Neo-Neocon on conservative's disdain for McCain and their subsequent faulty logic in saying they will vote for a Democrat or sit out the election should McCain get the nomination: "The logic�if you can call it that�is to allow the nation to hit rock bottom, somewhat like an alcoholic, in order to finally see that its true salvation lies in electing a conservative purist."

I'm with Neo--alcoholics often hit rock bottom and stay there.

Interview: Mitt Romney on the Fight for Super Tuesday

Super Tuesday is fast approaching and we caught up with Governor Mitt Romney on the campaign trail. We talked with him about everything from his views on gun rights and his battle with John McCain for the nomination, to whether he is mean enough to be president. Can he pull off a Turnaround?

You can listen directly -- no downloads needed -- by going here and clicking on the gray Flash Player. You can download the file directly and listen at your leisure by clicking right here. And you can get a lo-fi version, suitable for cellphones, Treos, etc., by going here and selecting "lo fi." You can also get a free subscription via iTunes and make sure you never miss an episode. Show archives are at GlennandHelenShow.com.

Can't Pay the Mortgage? Just Burn down the House.

MSN money has a story on the growing number of arsonists setting their house on fire due to the mortgage crisis:

Many observers say there's no question that people commit arson under economic stress. "Traditionally, there will be some acts of fraud that are driven by the economic conditions, no question about it," Scafidi says. A slice of the normally law-abiding population -- in every economic stratum -- will seize on arson as a solution under the right set of pressures, he says.

I love the way the article makes it sound like any normal law-abiding citizen will burn down his or her house if the pressure gets high enough. Sorry, this is like saying that law-abiding citizens with gun permits shoot people just because they are mad and have a gun nearby. It almost never happens. Arsonists are a particular group of people with a particular strain of negative psychological traits. They are not "normal" mentally healthy people who just get a wild hair up their ass when the economy takes a downturn.