Interview with T. Boone Pickens on America's Energy Future

T. Boone Pickens is known as the �Oracle of Oil� because of his uncanny ability to predict the direction of fuel prices, and is the author of a new book, The First Billion Is the Hardest: Reflections on a Life of Comebacks and America's Energy Future. Mr. Pickens talks about his "Pickens Plan" to end America's dependence on foreign oil and secure our energy future through renewable energy sources and natural gas among other things. He talks about windmills, pipelines and natural gas for cars among other things.

You can listen directly -- no downloads needed -- by going here and clicking on the gray Flash player. You can download the entire show and listen at your leisure by clicking right here. Or you can get a free subscription via iTunes if you like -- and why wouldn't you?

Music is "Time's Right" by 46 Long, and "69365" by the Nebraska Guitar Militia.

My Thoughts on Sarah Palin

I have a PJM column up on the nomination of Governor Sarah Palin: "Why Palin is a Fantastic Choice."

The Monkey Story

The experiment involved 5 monkeys, a cage, a banana, a ladder and, crucially, a water hose.

The 5 monkeys would be locked in a cage, after which a banana was hung from the ceiling with, fortunately for the monkeys (or so it seemed�), a ladder placed right underneath it.

Of course, immediately, one of the monkeys would race towards the ladder, intending to climb it and grab the banana. However, as soon as he would start to climb, the sadist (euphemistically called �scientist�) would spray the monkey with ice-cold water. In addition, however, he would also spray the other four monkeys�

When a second monkey was about to climb the ladder, the sadist would, again, spray the monkey with ice-cold water, and apply the same treatment to its four fellow inmates; likewise for the third climber and, if they were particularly persistent (or dumb), the fourth one. Then they would have learned their lesson: they were not going to climb the ladder again � banana or no banana.

In order to gain further pleasure or, I guess, prolong the experiment, the sadist outside the cage would then replace one of the monkeys with a new one. As can be expected, the new guy would spot the banana, think �why don�t these idiots go get it?!� and start climbing the ladder. Then, however, it got interesting: the other four monkeys, familiar with the cold-water treatment, would run towards the new guy � and beat him up. The new guy, blissfully unaware of the cold-water history, would get the message: no climbing up the ladder in this cage � banana or no banana.

When the beast outside the cage would replace a second monkey with a new one, the events would repeat themselves � monkey runs towards the ladder; other monkeys beat him up; new monkey does not attempt to climb again � with one notable detail: the first new monkey, who had never received the cold-water treatment himself (and didn�t even know anything about it), would, with equal vigour and enthusiasm, join in the beating of the new guy on the block.

When the researcher replaced a third monkey, the same thing happened; likewise for the fourth until, eventually, all the monkeys had been replaced and none of the ones in the cage had any experience or knowledge of the cold-water treatment.

Then, a new monkey was introduced into the cage. It ran toward the ladder only to get beaten up by the others. Yet, this monkey turned around and asked �why do you beat me up when I try to get the banana?� The other four monkeys stopped, looked at each other slightly puzzled and, finally, shrugged their shoulders: �Don�t know. But that�s the way we do things around here��

I got this story from my colleague, the illustrious Costas Markides. It reminded him � and me � of quite a few of the organisations we have seen. Over the years, all firms develop routines, habits and practices, which we call the firm�s �organisational culture�. As I am sure you know, these cultures can be remarkably different, in terms of what sort of behaviour they value and what they don�t like to see, and what they punish. Always, these habits and conventions have been developed over the course of many years. Very often, nobody actually remembers why they were started in the first place... Quite possibly, the guy with the water hose has long gone.

Don�t just beat up the new monkey � whether it is a new employee, a recent acquisition or a partner; their questioning of �the way we do things round here� may actually be quite a valid one.

Ellen Tien: Wife of the Year!

Okay, I've had a number of readers email me and commenter papabear linked to this article originating in the Oprah magazine and now brought to you by CNN.com entitled, "She's happily married, dreaming of divorce." Wife of the year Ellen Tien writes:

I contemplate divorce every day. It tugs on my sleeve each morning when my husband, Will, greets me in his chipper, smug morning-person voice, because after 16 years of waking up together, he still hasn't quite pieced out that I'm not viable before 10 a.m.

It puts two hands on my forehead and mercilessly presses when he blurts out the exact wrong thing ("Are you excited for your surprise party next Tuesday?"); when he lies to avoid the fight ("What do you mean I left our apartment door open? I never even knew our apartment had a door!"); when he buttons his shirt and jacket into the wrong buttonholes, collars and seams unaligned like a vertical game of dominoes, with possibly a scrap of shirttail zippered into his fly....

Don't misunderstand: I would not, could not disparage my marriage (not on a train, not in the rain, not in a house, not with a mouse). After 192 months, Will and I remain if not happily married, then steadily so. Our marital state is Indiana, say, or Connecticut -- some red areas, more blue. Less than bliss, better than disaster. We are arguably, to my wide-ish range of reference, Everycouple.

Nor is Will the Very Bad Man that I've made him out to be. Rather, like every other male I know, he is merely a Moderately Bad Man, the kind of man who will leave his longboat-sized shoes directly in the flow of our home's traffic so that one day I'll trip over them, break my neck, and die, after which he'll walk home from the morgue, grief-stricken, take off his shoes with a heavy heart, and leave them in the center of the room until they kill the housekeeper. Everyman.

Tien's husband may not be Very Bad Man but Tien is a Very Bad Woman or Wife. She says she would not disparage her husband for anything, but she has aired her dirty laundry in front of everyone and disparages her husband in every word she writes. She has called him bad, messy, oblivious and worst of all, announced to the world that she wants to divorce him everyday. Does he know this? Does he care? Does she give a damn about his feelings?

I hope one day that Will is strong enough to file for divorce from a woman who does not love him, for if she did, she would not write this narcissistic diatribe against him and his gender. If I were him, I would take a copy of this article to divorce court as proof of her lack of loyalty and her dishonest feelings toward him. His only crime seems to be smiling too much, being a bit clumsy, and poor choices in women. I would fight for custody of their son and hope that I could have this woman put out of the home, for she is not worthy to be there.

�Work-family initiatives�...?! We're a company not a leisure park!

�Work-family human resource initiatives�; sounds rather soft and fluffy, doesn�t it? Guess it does. It concerns stuff such as on-site childcare centres, flexible work arrangements, family stress initiatives and other such humbug.

Which tough, self-respecting corporation would want to be associated with that? Or should they� I guess it might actually help you become a more attractive employer, which should ultimately help your performance. Hey, even the stock market might appreciate such a thing, right?

Some time ago, Professor Michelle Arthur, from the University of New Mexico, set out to examine stock market reactions to the announcement of Fortune 500 firms adopting such work-family initiatives, which she collected from the Wall Street Journal. For example, one of them said �IBM began a childcare referral service for its employees� or �Procter & Gamble are broadening the scope of their family-friendly policies�, etc. She found 231 of them and then, for each of them, tested the stock market reaction to the announcement, through what in statistics is known as an �event study�.

The results were clear. In the early 1980s, the stock market would hardly react at all to such fluffy initiatives; if anything the effect of the fluffy announcement on a firm�s share price was slightly negative (-.35%). However, that changed quite a bit into the 1990s. When in that period firms would declare a work-family initiative, stock price immediately jumped up, with on average .48%. Now that may seem peanuts to you, but if you�re a $5 billion company, it means that even one such initiative would already immediately increase the value of your firm with 24 million. That�s a lot of peanuts. And a lot of share-holder value.

I�ve long thought that, for example, an investment bank which would be able to come up with a formula that enables people to have a real career without working 70 hours or even 5 days per week, should be able to turn that into a momentous competitive advantage in their industry (and it actually doesn�t seem that hard to do). But macho culture and self-delusion � and not much else � seems to always stand in the way of developing such a practice. What Michelle�s study suggests is that such firms are simply stuck in the 1980s; nowadays even the stock market recognises the sheer monetary value of work-family initiatives.

Time to wake up I�d say, and join the new millennium. Because if you don�t, you�re actually destroying shareholder value, and that�s not a very macho and serious thing to do now is it?

Getting Stronger

If you can treat personal tragedy like a heavy set of 20 squats, you'll do better than someone who has never met any challenge.--Mark Rippetoe

Now that my health is somewhat better, I have been working out more--mainly with light weights, aerobics and Kra Maga once a week. I wanted to take it up a notch so I decided to read up on some tips for strength training more effectively. I was delighted that Glenn received two books by Mark Rippetoe recently in the mail: Strong Enough? Thoughts from Thirty Years of Barbell Training and Starting Strength. I used to weight train religiously in my twenties up until my thirties when I had my heart attack. I am taking it slow but I still love reading about weight training. If you do, you might also enjoy Rippetoe's books.

I picked up the "Strong Enough" book because it looked like it had some good advice. Rippetoe explains that the squat, press, deadlift and bench press have been used by the strongest athletes on the planet:

There is a reason for that. Any program that doesn't use them is inferior to one that does, and an athlete that leaves them out of the program is doing less than possible for performance, and less than absolutely necessary to have the best strength possible.

He describes each exercise in separate sections and gives some pictures and details about how to do each one correctly. Interestedly, Rippetoe does not believe that full squats are bad for the knees and thinks that doctors and physical therapists who warn people against them just do not know how to do a squat properly:

What generally happens is that when one of these professionals explains why you will die if you do squats, he will demonstrate with squat technique so incorrect that even unweighted, it hurts to watch, and then he'll say SEE, THERE, SQUATS ARE BAD FOR YOUR KNEES. This is like saying that if you burn the beans, they stink up the house, so you shouldn't eat beans. You don't get to define the argument in terms that prove you're right, and then charge money because you won the argument.

Apparently, this guy has never been in academia. But that's beside the point. I have often heard that full squats are bad for one's knees but they seem to be the best exercise for me as they really work the back of the legs and glutes. I sometimes do them with no or little weight. Anyway, the rest of the book is good with sections on biomechanics, good form, and "being very alive" in which he makes fun of the term "wellness." Why? "Wellness means having a salad and baked potato after your aerobics class." Rippetoe believes exercise should be mentally and physically challenging. While I concur, I must say that after experiencing what it is to be very ill, I am pretty happy with a baked potato and aerobics class but then, maybe I'm not his target audience.

If you are, check out his books, they are inspirational.

The Democratic Convention: the fun begins...

I have been watching the Democratic convention and laughing my ass off, frankly at some of the hilarity. For example, seeing the look of disdain and disgust on some of the faces of the interviewees of Fox News reporters is worth a laugh all by itself. I saw one woman who (I think) said she worked with Michelle Obama--she was irate with the Fox News interviewer for even asking questions. She kept mentioning that he was "taking things out of context as their opponents, the Republicans often did." She was obviously very much on the defensive and seemed downright hostile. Many of the other Democratic interviewees were defensive and seemed openly antagonistic towards Fox News.

Protesters, including a far left group run by none other than Ward Churchhill , (the professor who believed the victims of 9/11 were involved in provoking the attack and was later fired for research misconduct), were such intellectual giants that all they could do when asked what their message was by Fox News reporter, Griff Jenkins, was chant: "Fuck Fox News." Yes, that will really persuade people. Here is the video, for those of you who would like to see some visuals:



Democrats and those on the left are so used to getting away with saying anything in the media, that they are just plain angry that in this election, it's not working as well. Thank goodness that Fox News and the alternative media are there to cover other views, not just the one the left wants people to hear.

"Fatherlessness can sometimes be a result of the mother's choices."

Finally, a mom who is starting to get it (via Glenn Sacks):

I share this journey with readers because I know men aren't always the only ones to blame when Daddy isn't a part of his children's lives. Women have a larger role in that than we'd like to admit -- before and after conception.

That means single women need to shoulder some of responsibility for having unprotected sex with the wrong men, especially those who have no history of making investments in their other sperm donor deposits.

And women of divorce need to lose the anger so our children don't become unintentional pawns in a game to prove how much we don't need a spouse to survive. At times, a man's character, life circumstances or domestic violence keep children from having access to their father. Sometimes, though, women just need to get out of the way.

There is still a long way to go for women to understand how much children need their dads, but it's a start.

Biden and Obama: Bad for Dads

Gordon Finley, PhD has a piece at Mens News Daily entitled: Obama/Biden: Escalating the war on fathers and families:

Tragically � but true to the radical feminist agenda � the Obama/Biden Democratic ticket portends an escalating war on boys, men, fathers, and families. On Father�s Day 2008, Sen. Obama could have spoken on any number of topics. His choice was to castigate African-American fathers and blame fathers, and fathers alone, for the ills of the African-American family.

He called upon African-American fathers to be more involved in their children�s lives (certainly a worthwhile call) but he also castigated them for failing to endorse �responsible fatherhood� which essentially means signing up for 18 years of overly highly calculated child support. Economists understand, but Sen. Obama ideologically overlooks, the reality that child support currently is calculated at a level far above what the majority of fathers � including poor and unemployed fathers � actually are capable of paying or that children require (see W. S. Comanor, The law and economics of child support payments, 2004).

Remember, Senator Biden is the guy willing to give ex-wives free attorneys to help in their divorce cases. As I asked in a post here:

Why should only women get "free" attorneys basically provided by the government? What about low income men who cannot get custody of their children or men who are falsely accused of domestic violence--where is their free attorney? Isn't this unfair?

It is obvious that Biden does not have men's interests at heart. If he is willing to throw aside men's constitutional rights and due process in order to look chivalrous and get votes from women, what else is he willing to do?

Are Teenage Boys Just Stupid?

A 15-year-old teen was shot and killed at Central High School in Knoxville last Thursday:

The bell rings again this morning at Central High School, a day after the shooting that killed a sophomore, panicked more than a thousand Knox County students and their parents, and left a freshman student charged with murder.

Classes hadn't begun Thursday morning when a single shot struck 15-year-old Ryan McDonald in the chest as students gathered in the cafeteria just after 8 a.m. Doctors pronounced him dead less than an hour later at the University of Tennessee Medical Center, Knoxville Police Department Deputy Chief Bill Roehl said.
Police said the bullet came from a gun in the hand of Jamar B. Siler, a 15-year-old with a troubled past. He faces a charge of first-degree murder.

Katie Allison Granju, a blogger at KnoxNews has a post on the shooting with the title, "Teenage boys are stupid" (Hat tip: Instapundit). Here is what Ms. Granju had to say:

By the time a male is about 16 years old, he has the body of an adult male, an adult male with a brain under assault by a dramatic rush of hormones the likes of which he'll never again see during any other period of his lifetime. Teenage boys are more impulsive and aggressive than any other group. WItness their penchant for crashing cars, diving headfirst into rock quarries, experimenting with drugs, and deciding to "play chicken" by draping themselves across dark country roads in an attempt to prove something to their similarly stupid peers.They are driven by sexual curiosity to the point of insanity, and they hold a misguided sense of immortality.

Yes, I'm generalizing. Many teenage boys are polite, respectful, accomplished individuals, but those of them who are are pulling this off are doing so by fighting the natural impulses to be idiots that threaten to overtake them every day.

Having dealt with numerous violent teens in my career and understanding the complexities that go into the making of a killer, I have to say that I find the sweeping generalization that teen boys are stupid about as helpful as a band-aid on a gunshot wound. What I find interesting is that this boy's own sister is on the run for allegedly killing a woman and yet, where is the similar story with the headline, "Teenage girls are stupid" by Granju? We don't know why this particular boy took another teen's life at this point. But one thing I do know, saying that "boys are stupid" is not the answer to the very complex and emotional problem of teen murder. It is merely a sexist and ineffective response to a very troubling and complicated issue.

You can read more about the complexities of teen murder in my book, The Scarred Heart : Understanding and Identifying Kids Who Kill at Amazon.com or download it for free here.

Duke Accuser is Writing another Story

Crystal Mangum, the woman who accused the Duke Lacrosse team of rape, will now be writing her memoirs:

Disgraced Crystal Mangum, the former stripper and prostitute who accused three Duke University lacrosse players of strangling, beating, and brutally raping her (vaginally, anally, and orally) in a tiny bathroom at a house party back in March 2006, is writing her memoirs. Not an Internet rumor. It�s true!

The Last Dance for Grace: The Crystal Mangum Story, scheduled for release on October 1, is Mangum�s sob story of a story. It, like everything else about her, will generate ridicule�unless it contains a big, fat apology to Reade Seligman, Collin Finnerty, and David Evans.

The men who were falsely accused of rape had their reputations and lives ruined. Their accuser writes a book and graduates from college with a degree in Criminal Justice. Men deserve better than this.

Carla Howell: Abolishing the Income Tax in Massachusetts

Like many states, Massachusetts has an income tax. But in Massachusetts, people are trying to do something about it. Libertarian activist Carla Howell organized an initiative in 2002 that would have abolished the state income tax. It got over 45% of the vote, and now she's back with another effort.
We talk to her about libertarian politics, politicians and taxes, and whether this initiative might start a national anti-tax trend. Plus, what you can do, if you want to help.

You can listen to the file directly -- no downloads 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. And, of course, you can always get a free subscription via iTunes. Free!

Music is by Audra and the Antidote ("Revolution") and Carla Howell ("The Tax Song.") Show archives are at GlennandHelenShow.com.

It looks like we don�t have a strategy�

Whenever I interview people at a particular company regarding their firm�s strategy � for instance because I am writing a business case about them � I try to make a point of not only finding out exactly what their strategy is, and why it works, but also where it came from. That is, how they came up with the strategy in the first place. And usually, I get a perfectly logical and rational answer � at least at first�

However, often, when I subsequently �dig deeper� into the organisation, by interviewing middle managers and engineers (who have been there for a long time), by talking to the CEO again, by reading up on some company documentation, etc., it appears that the (wonderful) strategy was not the result of some sort of rational analysis at all. Instead, invariably, it seems, there was some lucky moment or unexpected event which triggered the company to alter its course and move into a new direction.

Hornby accidentally saw itself appear in the hobby market (instead of the toy market) when they spent their cost savings from outsourcing on adding detail and quality to their products; CNN figured out it could become a global (instead of US) news company when Fidel Castro (picking up the American satellite signal in Havana) told founder Ted Turner he watched it all the time, Southwest invented low-cost airlines when competition forced them to sell a plane but decided to try and fly the same routes with three instead of four aircraft, and Bisque founder Geoffrey Ward switched from being a plumber to selling designer radiators when people kept knocking on his door asking whether they could buy that funny-shaped radiator which he had just removed for a client and placed in his workshop window to make it appear shop (to see off the civil servants who had told him he was illegally located in a retail zone).

But why do people, in retrospect, almost always want to make it sound like it was the result of some thorough analysis and innovative thinking? Ego? Embarrassment? I guess that might play a role; �rational thinking� sounds better than �ehm� we stumbled upon it, I guess�� But, I�ve also found that people I interviewed who weren�t there at the time of the strategic switch at all � and therefore can�t take any credit or blame for it anyway � make it sound all logical. And that�s, I guess, because in retrospect, it all sounds so bloody obvious: moving into the hobby market, becoming global, not handing out food, newspapers and hot towels on a 45-minute flight (but instead focusing on turning the darn thing around on the tarmac in 20 minutes and fly again). It just makes so much sense, that it just had to be the result of thorough analysis and thinking � surely.

But admitting � even if alone to yourself � that the best strategies often emerge when you weren�t really planning for it, could actually help you get lucky more often. Andy Grove � former CEO and Chairman of Intel � figured that one out when Intel moved its microprocessors into computers after IBM (finally) convinced them that they could be applied in their PCs and, �yes, they really wanted to buy them�. After that, he said:

�We say we have a top-to-bottom strategy. But don�t act top-to-bottom. You can look at it positively or negatively. Positively, it looks like a Darwinian process: we let the best ideas win; we match evolving skills with evolving opportunities. Negatively, it looks like we don�t have a strategy��

And you want to make sure ideas reach you from everywhere: suppliers, customers, competitors, bloody civil servants and, yes, even Fidel Castro.

Ask Dr. Helen: Workplace Discrimination Against Men

My PJM column is up:

Reader Len writes in to ask for advice on how to handle discrimination against men in the workplace.

If male, have you dealt with discrimination in the workplace? If so, how did you handle it? Read the column and let us know.

Rachel Lucas explains why she is steamed that stores are selling male bashing merchandise: "Some have asked me why I bother getting pissed about this kind of thing, and the reason is because it�s wrong. It�s hypocritical and unproductive. It deepens the rifts between men and women, it puts men on the defensive, and personally I don�t LIKE men being on the defensive because they�re just as difficult to deal with as bitchy women. It foments contention and has absolutely no redeeming value. It�s just like �reverse� racism - which we all know is actual racism - and any woman who thinks those captions are �cute� or �funny� is no smarter or more enlightened than your average chauvinist pig."

Star knowledge workers � you really should not pay them that much, you know

Why do we pay certain employees so much?
Duh, because they make us a heck of a lot of money!

Sure, that may be true, but I guess that�s not enough. When a team of 5 salespeople earn you 7 million, you might pay them 100k each. But when a team of 5 consultants, attorneys or security analysts makes you 7 million, you often end up paying them 1 million each! And why do we do that!?

Perhaps because their skills are more specialised and scarce and if they walk out of the door we�d have a hard time replacing them�?

Sure, that may be true, but I guess that�s not enough either. Because if we would have a highly specialised sales team, with technical knowledge perfectly attuned to our particular product range, we would likely still not pay them 1 million each, although we�d have a hard time replacing them if they�d leave. And that�s because they too would not find it easy to find a replacement job. Their skills are so specialised, attuned to our particular product, that they would not be able to make the same kind of money for any other company, and hence would be much less valuable anywhere else, to anyone else. Nope, we don�t have to pay them that much to keep them; they don�t have anywhere else to go!

But the consultants, attorneys and security analysts do. They can just take their rolodex, their files, their client base and expertise with them, and stroll into the office and payroll of our competitor, and earn them the same 7 million, right?

Well� maybe not. We often think they can just �take it with them�; they think that they can just take it with them, and our competitor usually thinks they can just take it with them. But often we�re all wrong.

For example, Professor Boris Groysberg � at the Harvard Business School � examined the portability of star security analysts� performance. Security analysts, as you may know, are employed by investment banks to analyse companies in a particular industry. They, among others, produce earnings forecasts, buy and sell recommendations, and detailed reports on individual companies. If they�re any good � because they, for instance, produce quite accurate earnings forecasts � they can easily make a million or three per year � and, yes, that is British Pounds millions.

Investment banks pay them so much because they think they can easily take their skills, financial models, industry contacts, etc. to a different bank if they wanted to, and analyse the same sectors and companies. However, Boris found that that is actually not as simple as it seems�

He analysed the performance of 316 top-ranked security analysts who switched firms, using rankings published by �the Institutional Investor All-America Research Team poll�. He found that star analysts who switched employers immediately experienced a significant decline in their performance. The effect was substantial. For example, the chance that a particular analyst would come out top of his sector�s league table (having made the most accurate forecasts etc.) would drop with 50% if he had just switched firms. Actually, on average, it would take such an analyst five years to recover and make up for the switch and subsequent drop in performance.

Hence, even security analysts, whose work seems highly individual and not dependent at all on the particular organisation that they are working in, experience a very significant decline in their performance when they switch firms. Apparently, the soft stuff, such as the intellectual capital embedded in the fabric of the organisation, their relationships with colleagues, and all sorts of other social and tacit processes (which are difficult to identify, observe or even name!) play a huge role, even in the work of such star performers. Take them out of their organisation and their ability vanishes with the severance of the social ties.

This means that we probably all overestimate the portability of our star workers, and of ourselves...

It also means we pay them too much.

Amy Alkon: "My question: Was the reason our founding fathers fought for free speech really so tiny little thugs who call themselves "progressives" can foil any possibility of it on the websites of anyone whose opinions they disagree with?"

"...girls strip to their underwear and get wet sliding through water on a plastic sheet."

Okay, I know you're just reading this post to find out why girls are doing this but I'll get to that in a moment. First, I want to tell you about a good article by Joe Manthey, educational consultant and trustee for the Boys Project, in the Press Democrat in California entitled, "What about helping boys?"

We as a community, as well as a nation, need to ask the next obvious question that was not asked by any news reporters or editors who covered the National Science Foundation-sponsored math study: If girls are now the equal of boys in math, and that fact is due to the boost the schools gave to girls through teacher trainings, curriculum development, conferences, and programs for the girls themselves, then why are there not similar efforts to close the biggest gender gap of all in K-12 education -- language arts -- where boys are behind girls at every grade level?

When girls were thought to be in trouble academically, we said "There must be something wrong with the schools," and we changed them to be more girl-friendly. But there is no similar push to assist boys academically. Instead, when boys don't do well in school, we blame the boys.

Manthey also points out that 2 out of 3 students who drop out of high school in California are boys. Does anyone there care? Apparently not, perhaps pandering to girls and women is more important than whether or not boys get an education. But in the long run, those who let boys go by the wayside when it comes to education may be harming the girls in the end.

Richard Whitmire, writer of the whyboysfail.com website, had a story in the Chronicle of Higher Education recently entitled, "A Tough Time to Be A Girl: Gender Imbalance on Campuses." The article is hard to access so I will describe the gist of it. The shift of American colleges to predominately female is resulting in more of a hook-up culture as described in author Laura Sessions Stepp's Unhooked: How Young Women Pursue Sex, Delay Love and Lose at Both. Why? Because fewer men are attending college, they are in high demand and young women have to compete for their attention. Girls are so desperate at some colleges where girls outnumber guys that they will do anything to get a guy's attention--including stripping to their underwear and getting wet sliding through water on a plastic sheet, according to a senior at James Madison University.

Bureaucrats, politicians and women's groups may think they are doing the right thing for girls and women by looking the other way when it comes to boys and education--or lack of it, but when their daughters are slip-sliding away, or just not able to get a date in college, they may not be so happy with their decisions.

"Justice doesn't always move this slow, but at least it is moving forward."

Raynella Dossett Leath, a woman whose two husbands died suspiciously, has been indicted for the death of her first husband, Ed Dossett:

KNOXVILLE, Tenn. (AP) - A former nurse surrendered Thursday on a murder charge in the death of her first husband, a district attorney who authorities initially believed was accidentally killed 16 years ago when he was trampled by cattle.

Raynella Dossett Leath, 59, also faces a murder charge in the death of her second husband. Prosecutors have said there are similarities between the two cases. She was the first person to find both men and call police, and prescription drugs possibly played a role in each of their deaths.

The widow was indicted this week in the 1992 death of former prosecutor William Edward Dossett, 44, who was found dead in his pasture. His breastbone and some ribs were broken and he had a hoofprint on the chest of his overalls. Officials originally concluded he was knocked down by his cattle and ruled it an accidental death.

Well, it's a start.

Democratic Platform is Bad for Men

Glenn Sacks and Mike McCormick: DNC Platform: Bad News for Dads:

If the Democratic Party is interested in garnering men�s votes, one certainly would not know it from their platform. The Democratic National Committee�s "Renewing America's Promise" is bad news for American fathers.

The platform�s "Fatherhood" plank puts all blame for father absence squarely on men, and promises to "crack down" on fathers who are behind on their child support. It also promises to ratchet up draconian domestic violence laws which often victimize innocent men and separate them from their children....

Fathers� ties to their children are more tenuous than at any time in American history. Child support and domestic violence policies have helped drive a wedge between fathers and their children. Sadly, the Democratic Party has committed itself to policies which will make the problem worse.

No self-respecting man should support this platform and any woman who gives a hoot about civil liberties should be wary of laws that lead to arrests of citizens just because of their sex. These draconian laws deprive men of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Is this really the message the Democratic Party wants to send?

Neo-Neocon: Political disagreement: Can these marriages be saved?

Is Obama's New Tax Plan a War on Women or just a Bad Plan?

The New York Sun has an interesting op-ed entitled, "Obama's War on Women":

It amounts to a declaration of war on two-income families, a marriage penalty of punitive proportions. If those two single persons with income just under $200,000 get married, Mr. Obama is going to hammer them with a huge tax increase. If the second earner, who in many cases is the woman, is going to have to give 54% of what she earns to the government, she might as well stay home with the children. Mr. Obama may be able to get away with symbolic slights to women, such as not picking Senator Clinton as vice president. But punishing them with confiscatory taxes for participating in the workforce at a high income level moves the slight into the realm of substance.

I have never thought punishing people--whether men or women--for making more money and rewarding them for making less was a good strategy. How can you tell your kids to grow up to be successful and earn a good living when Obama's tax plan is to take a good percentage of it if you are "too successful?"

Is innovation over-rated?

Innovators are always the heroes of the story. They saw the opportunity when no one else could see it; they persisted stubbornly when everyone said they were a fool; they suffered hardship but eventually defied the odds to make it big, and so on and so forth.

And innovation is great. But we hear very little about the (undoubtedly many) poor sods who think they�re seeing something but it really is just their imagination, who persist stubbornly and foolhardily with something that ain�t never going to work, who continue suffering hardship till they vanish.

Do innovating firms perform better? Evidence from academic research on the topic is certainly equivocal: it is very hard to find solid evidence that firms that innovate (e.g. obtain more patents) perform better.

It so happened that I had a database of about 1300 firms active in some segment of the pharmaceutical industry, and all their innovations. Note, innovations do not all have to be real blockbusters but could just be new types of products or applications. These new types really can concern truly novel drugs new to the world but more often they concern a new dosage of some existing drug, a new intake form (e.g. pills versus injections), a new application of the same drug (i.e. a different disease for which a particular existing drug might also work), etc. Thus, not all of them are very radical innovations, but they are all new enough for them to have required clinical trials before their launch.

Using these data, I first tested, through some fancy statistical methodology, whether such innovations contributed to the growth of the firms over the subsequent years. The answer was a clear �no�; in fact, innovators grew more slowly.

Then I thought �perhaps they are innovating because they�re running out of growth�, so I applied a different (and even fancier) statistical technique to correct for that. Still, the answer was a resounding �no�: innovators subsequently really had more trouble growing and it was a direct consequence of the innovations.

So then I thought, �Perhaps I am looking at the wrong thing; and I should not be looking at growth but at firm survival�. Therefore, I changed my (already fancy) statistical methodology to test the impact of innovations on firm survival. But no, innovators died (i.e. went bankrupt) more often than non-innovators.

Then I thought �ah, it must be because innovation is risky; innovators may be the big failures of the industry but they are probably also the biggest success stories (I should really have thought of this earlier� better not tell anyone�)�. So I used an even fancier statistical methodology to model not only the average survival probability of the innovators (vis-�-vis the not-so-much-innovators) but also their �variance�. But no� innovators really did fail more often than non-innovators and with very little �risk�! In layman terms: they died pretty quickly and you could be sure of that. No risk-return trade-off here: do not innovate and you�ll get higher return for less risk�!

So then I gave up.

Might the answer simply be that innovation really is not such a very smart thing to do for a firm�? It seems, as an organisation, your chances of success are quite a bit better, and with little risk, if you simply stick to your guns, or at least not try come up with the new stuff yourself (but just wait patiently to imitate it).

But if that is the case, perhaps we shouldn�t tell anyone� Because innovation really is great and, as a society, we need it. But if everyone finds out that you, as an individual firm, are better off without it, nobody might do it anymore� So let�s keep this one under wraps, and between you and me, alright�?

A reader sends in this story of a New York state man who was arrested and jailed for getting too close to his bride on his wedding day.

Brad Pitt as John Galt in Atlas Shrugged? Somehow, it doesn't seem right.

Who should come first? Shareholders? Are you sure�?

Herb Kelleher� the founder and former CEO of American icon Southwest Airlines � used to say: �We place our employees first�.

That�s a fairly extreme thing to say though, especially in corporate America, that you do not place your shareholders first.

Of course he would always be quite quick to continue: �Because if you have happy employees, you will get happy customers, and if you have lots of happy customers, shareholders will inevitably become quite happy to�. Now you could be inclined to say �ah, so it�s all the same; at the end of the day all parties� interests are aligned�. In the long run that may be true, but in the short run such an �employee orientation� � the choice of who comes first � can lead to rather different decisions than a �shareholder value orientation�. And at Southwest they do put their money where their mouth is; they for instance provide perfect job security. Consider, for example, Southwest�s response to 9/11, which triggered a global airline crisis, prompting many companies to execute the hatchet on their employee head-count:

Southwest Airlines� current President and COO (Colleen Barrett) said: �Southwest has not had a layoff in its thirty-year history and is not contemplating one now� (after which employees collectively organised an internal giveback effort, called �Pledge your Luv�, offering up to thirty-two hours of pay during the last quarter of 2001).

In contrast, US Airways paid $35 million in lump-sum retirement benefits to its former top three executives, while 12,000 employees were laid off and pilots agreed to $565 million in concession in their own retirement plans. Rakesh Gangwas, briefly chairman and CEO (who received $15 million of the 35 million) declared, a few days before resigning, that �the September 11 attacks had allowed the airline to restructure and downsize in ways that would have been impossible otherwise�.

Of course US Airways filed for bankruptcy in 2003, while Southwest recovered in less than a year.

Placing employees first may be suboptimal in the short run but in the long run it�s a different picture. You don�t become a better organisation by having �better shareholders� (whatever that may be). You can most definitely become a better organisation by having better employees. Truly prioritising the well-being of your employees just might pay off financially in the long run too. Loyalty, trust, extraordinary effort, etc. are reciprocal things; we give it to those from whom we receive it. And organisations and employees are no different.

New Book on Fathers and Daughters

Dr. Linda Nielsen, the president of the American Coalition for Fathers & Children, has a new book out, Between Fathers and Daughters: Enriching and Rebuilding Your Adult Relationship. Although I haven't yet read the book, Glenn Sacks has a post up on the book and makes note of "an excellent chapter on the devastating effects that divorce often has upon the father-daughter relationship." He points out a quiz daughters can take to determine if they have picked up negative views of their divorced dad:

The chapter contains a �Divorced Dads Quiz" that every adult child of divorce should take. Nielsen writes:

As for your father-daughter relationship, remember: the negative beliefs that you have about any group of people influences what you remember about how they behaved in the past and how you treat them - even when your beliefs are wrong.

This is why it�s important to ask: what did you, as a daughter, believe about divorced dads at the time your parents divorced. By taking the 'Divorced Dads' quiz, you can see which beliefs were affecting you then � and might still be affecting you now.

Since children mainly reside with mothers after a divorce, it is likely that if a mother says negative things about a father, it will impact the child's view of that relationship strongly. The mother's reality often becomes the child's and they often come to view dad with more contempt and anger than the circumstances might warrant.

If you would like to view the quiz and see if you have false beliefs about divorced fathers in general, you can view it here.

"..on the internet, there is a punky attitude that disguises itself as sort of an electronic libertarianism"

So says internet lawyer, Ron Coleman, during an interview with John Hawkins at Right Wing News on legal issues for bloggers and blog readers. Read it, there is some good advice for all of us who read and write blogs.

Will Arrogance be Obama's Downfall?

Neo-Neocon: "...Obama is most definitely arrogant, and if he ends up losing this election I think it may have been his arrogance more than anything else that did him in."

Where have all the Vikings Gone?

This morning, I read the magazine What Is Enlightenment that Glenn picked up for me from a local health food store because the cover had a number of articles about men including "Constructing the New Man," "19 Powerful Women Tell the Truth about Men," and "A Scandalous Look at Scandinavia: Where women are women and men are too."

Uh, okay, I thought, this can't be good, it's a magazine from a crunchy organic healthfood store with what I assumed would be a somewhat biased picture of the male gender complete with articles describing how men should be more like women. I was mildly surprised to find out that the articles were actually somewhat enlightened themselves. While I didn't exactly love them, I didn't hate them either. The articles were not too bad.

Due to time constraints, I will tell you about the main article that caught my eye--the one on men acting like women in Scandinavia. The author, Elizabeth Debold, sets out to Scandinavia to find out how "gender equality" is playing itself out in that culture. She starts out the article describing how in Sweden, for a man to pee standing up is increasingly considered to be "the height of vulgarity and possibly suggestive of violence." Debold seems surprised to find out that gender equality is not all it's cracked up to be, especially when she discovers that the new equality is nothing more than "patriarchy in drag." Despite progressive sources that suggest that Scandinavians, particularly Danes, are the happiest people in the world, possibly because they are so egalitarian, Debold finds out that men there are not doing so well.

Apparently, relationships and having a good sex life is of the highest value in places like Denmark. Yet, Denmark has one of the world's highest divorce rates. In eight out of ten cases, the woman ends the marriage. Debold attends a men's group in Copenhagen and notes that "the men speak about a vague, almost inchoate experience of victimization."

One man responds to the sense of victimization, "There's a kind of victimization with not knowing which way to go, how you are supposed to be, what to do in a relationship. We're in a double bind." Another man states, "I have tried to give women what they say they want, but they always want something else. Women think that what they want is for the man to really talk and to be at home with the kids. But she doesn't want that for long. She wants a strong man."

A guy named Bo states, "We end up relating to women in a way that is more like woman to woman, not man to woman. We are feminized in our relationships, and they don't last."

There is constant fear in the men there that they are always doing something wrong, and who can blame them? They are told that they are somehow guilty of oppressing women from a young age. In Sweden, little boys are given dolls to play with and girls are given tractors. Pupils in Demark are sent to do traditional women's jobs because of an "equality" project. All of this indoctrination and brainwashing is, in my opinion, sick and abusive.

Let's hope the US never goes the way of Scandinavia--for all the talk about equality, it sounds like the men there are nothing but second class citizens who are lost, lonely and victimized. We must all keep up the fight for men's rights and fight male bashing and misandry whenever we see it in order to keep this from happening in our country.

Narcissus versus Humble Bloke � and the winner is�?

Have you heard of Narcissus � the character in Greek mythology? Narcissus was an exceptionally beautiful young man. He was so beautiful (and full of himself) that he fell in love with his own reflection in the water. He could not bring himself to stray from the well and did not even drink the water; fearing he�d disturb the water reflecting his image and would not see himself again. Our word �narcissistic� � to describe someone full of himself � is derived from it.

How would you recognise a narcissistic CEO (as certainly not all of them are exceptionally beautiful)? Seriously, think about it, what would you say are signs of a CEO who is narcissistically full of himself�?

Someone who always has his photograph displayed very prominently in his firm�s annual report? The CEO�s prominence in the company�s press releases? How often he uses first-person singular pronouns (such as I, me, mine, my, myself) giving interviews to the business press? Or his financial compensation relative to the second-highest paid executive in his firm?

Arijit Chatterjee and Donald Hambrick, of Pennsylvania State University, measured all of these things, among 111 CEOs, and used them to construct a measure of their narcissism. They selected their 111 CEOs from the computer hardware and software industries because prior writers on Leadership had suggested that narcissism in a CEO might actually be a good thing in very dynamic, fast-changing industries � which these two are. They then examined a bunch of characteristics of a firm�s strategy, to figure out what narcissistic CEOs do differently than their more humble counterparts (in between periods staring at their own reflection I guess).

And guess what, they found that the more narcissistic types changed their firm�s strategy more often than the humble blokes. Moreover, they also tended to undertake a lot more � and a lot bigger � acquisitions. The performance of their corporations (perhaps partly as a consequence) fluctuated quite heavily, in comparison with the humble types.

But what about the level of their firms� performance; it may have fluctuated more heavily but did the narcissistic guys on average achieve higher or lower performance?

Neither. They didn�t do better, and they didn�t do worse (both in terms of return on assets and total stock market performance).

Arijit and Don concluded, �that narcissistic CEOs favor bold actions that attract attention, resulting in big wins or big losses, but that their firms� performance is generally no better or worse than firms with non-narcissistic CEOs�.

However, I�d say they�re worse; you�re better off without them. It is not only money that matters; these types are plain annoying. If they don�t bring in more dosh than their more pleasant counterparts, you�re better off with humble bloke.

How to make a compelling corporate strategy in six easy steps

What is the �strategy process� that I observe in most corporations?

Step 1: On the 15th of October (or whatever month), we send a memo to our business unit managing directors that we will need their unit�s strategy input by the 1st of December, including an explicit elaboration of how it fits in with the corporation�s overall strategy.

Step 2: BU�s management thinks, �What was the corporate strategy again?� and looks up last year�s document.

Step 3: It takes note of what its business unit�s input needs to be � in terms of the guidelines provided by corporate � and, after a week or so, assigns some junior staff members, consultants or interns to provide the numbers about the market, forecasts, benchmarking (in terms of what competitors are doing) and so on. They give them last year�s document and also send round an e-mail to all team leaders urging them to diligently provide the necessary data (�because it is that time of year again� and corporate wants it by the 1st of December).

Step 4: After two weeks, BU management thinks, �Wonder how that is going?� and finds out that the team leaders have not been very quick to provide the necessary information. After another e-mail (marked �urgent�), information starts flowing in and by mid-November there is a big pile of data. In the subsequent two weeks (while flipping through last year�s documents a bit), they write a number of pages about what the unit has been doing over the past year (which corresponds remarkably well with what they said last year they would be doing), what they will be doing next year and how it is all contributing to (yes, even driven by!) the overall corporate strategy. On the 1st of December, we note from our e-mail inbox that we received their document last night on the 30th of November (just in time!), at 11:37pm, which makes us realise, with a slight feeling of guilt, that we had just gone to bed at that time (after finishing that rather good bottle of Australian Shiraz).

Step 5: The next day, we flip through the various units� strategy documents and put them aside. Some time during the first week of January, we flip through them again and take last year�s corporate strategy document out of the drawer. We then think about all the activities the corporation is engaged in and � usually with the aid of our strategy department or, in the blissful absence of such a group, a consultant or two (they usually hunt in packs) � we come up with some overarching logic (and a quite compelling one, we proudly congratulate ourselves) of why we are doing the various things we�re doing anyway.

Step 6: On the 1st of February, we send the document to all company directors and business unit managing directors. They look at its shiny cover (with a picture of us standing in front of our new corporate building � we first objected against having our own picture on the cover, but PR convinced us it would give it a more personal touch), read the first page (checking the acknowledgements for their name), briefly flip through some of the other chapters, and put it in a drawer.

Where it remains until the 15th of October, when we remind them �it is this time of year again�.

Killer Mary Winkler gets her kids back. I have no words to describe how unfair the justice system is towards men who are slaughtered by their wives.

Ask Dr. Helen: Preparing for Disaster--Prudent or Paranoid?

My column is up at PJM:

So when does preparing for the worst shade over from prudence into paranoia? That�s a question that often comes up when people talk about preparing for disasters, financial meltdowns, or confrontation with criminals. How much is enough, and how much is too much?

Read the column and let me know, is preparing for disaster or crime prudent or paranoid?

Dating Advice for Men

John Hawkins at Right Wing News interviews three dating professionals on dating advice for men. "Doc Love," author of The System: The Dating Dictionary and The System has some advice on why nice guys finish last:

Because nice guys are weak guys. They wear their heart on their sleeve and they don't make the girl work for it. ...What happens is that the guy says, "I had a good time, did you? Can I see you again? You're really a nice girl! You're sure good looking." This girl is 28, she's good looking, and ever since she was 12, guys have been telling her she's beautiful. So, what effect does that compliment have? It's a negative.

...The nice guy is too happy to be there and when she walks away from the first date she says, "Here's another one I own" versus "I don't know where I stand with this guy." When you start tweaking that detective in her mind, she goes bonkers and her interest level goes through the roof.

Perhaps this explains why women like mysteries so much, that detective in their mind. Anyway, if you want to read more, take a look at the interviews.

Blogger Problem Resolved

Yesterday, blogger flagged my blog as spam as they did to a number of other blogs from around the web:

While we wish that every post on this blog could be about cool features or other Blogger news, sometimes we have to step in and admit a mistake.

We've noticed that a number of users have had their blogs mistakenly marked as spam, and wanted to sound off real quick to let you know that, despite it being Friday afternoon, we are working hard to sort this out. So to those folks who have received an email saying that your blog has been classified as spam and can't post right now, we offer our sincere apologies for the trouble.

We hope to have this resolved shortly, and appreciate your patience as we work through the kinks.

So, hopefully, Blogger has been fixed but it makes me wonder if I should move this blog to another hosting source at some point. I like Blogger for the most part but there is probably a reason so many bloggers don't want to use it.

Executives: super-human after all�

It is a well-known aspect of our everyday behaviour: when we perform well, we credit ourselves; when something goes wrong we blame something (or someone) else. This effect � known as attribution bias � has been well-documented by social psychologists, but I guess we didn�t really need their research; it is quite a common phenomenon in everyday life.

Professors John Wagner and Richard Gooding, at Michigan State University, examined whether managers suffer from the same bias. They rounded up a 102 executives and subjected them to some lengthy experiment and statistical analysis � the details I won�t bore you with because the answer was (surprise, surprise), yes. When a company�s performance is great, executives claim (and actually believe!) that it is due to their brilliant efforts; when, vice versa, their company�s performance sucks, it�s someone else�s fault and they�re really really not to blame, honoust. Yep, executives are just like humans.

Then, however, John and Richard did something rather interesting. They did not only ask these executives to interpret the performance of their own companies (as explained above); they also asked them about what they thought caused the performance of their peers/competitors�

As said, when their own company was performing well they attributed it to their own efforts, while when they were performing badly they blamed some external circumstances. Yet, when assessing their colleagues� performance, the bias flipped! When other executives� firms performed well, the managers said �it�s due to some external circumstances� while when their colleagues� firms were underperforming, they attributed it to these persons� errors!

I believe this extremity hadn�t been documented before, among humans, other mammals or reptiles. But I guess it is just very very human, which is perhaps some sort of a consolation? After all, it just shows managers are the most human among us.