From Sarah Wilson, Archivist at the Stanford Law School, comes note of a video discussion on Technology and the Future of the Book. Part of the annual conference of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the panel discussion was held on March 1. Panelists include eminent scientist Edward Feigenbaum of Stanford, Donald Lindberg, Director of the National Library of Medicine, Daniel Clancy of the Google Book Search Project, Stanford University Librarian Michael Keller and others. It's a two-hour discussion; I am told that one can skip the first 10 minutes of introductions.
In a blog by Felix Salmon, of Condé Nast Portfolio, we hear from a GSB Alum class of ’72 who discusses the seven rules he learned while at the GSB and why these have stood him in good stead over the years. He/She also mentioned by name, James T.S. Porterfield, emeritus faculty, as a big influence as well as other emeriti and current faculty. Read all the details in the blog entry entitled What they Used to Teach You at Stanford Business School.
Last week I watched an interesting Frontline program called "Ten Trillion and Counting". This program talked about our massive national debt and what has happened in the recent past to make it ballon.
From Frontline's introduction:
"All of the federal government's efforts to stem the tide of the financial meltdown have added hundreds of billions of dollars to an already staggering national debt, a sum that is expected to double over the next 10 years to more than $23 trillion. In Ten Trillion and Counting, FRONTLINE traces the politics behind this mounting debt and investigates what some say is a looming crisis that makes the current financial situation pale in comparison."
Tesla Motors announced it's newest electric car, the Model S, this week. This sedan targets more practical buyers and will (hopefully) potentially transform the San Carlos, Calif., company from a fringe player to a mainstream automaker.
Read more about it in the San Francisco Chronicle, and see it in action at Scientific American.
The Treasury Department’s new public/private partnership plan to buy back toxic assets from banks was unveiled this week. The idea is that the U.S. government work with the private sector to buy up toxic assets and depending on the outcome either reap the rewards or minimize risk to private investors, all in an attempt to get markets moving again. In this plan TALF or Term Asset-Backed Securities Loan Facility will be expanded to help bring private investors back into the market. NPR has done a good job of synthesizing the Treasury plan in an article entitled Treasury & Toxic Assets.
Are we living in the 'entrepreneurial society'? Tom Peters on his blog cites an Economist article by Adrian Woolridge that claims our emergent world economy is becoming just that. He notes that Americans are still global leaders, but the Chinese and Indians are figuring the game out fast (Europeans and Japanese he pronounces 'hopeless'.) On the other hand, Stanford Professor Bob Sutton muses on studies about power relationships and where people sit in meetings, and notes in particular an article of 1983 that remarked on the disadvantages women had when trying to (literally) position themselves around the table. Sutton asks "Does it still hold today?" Stanford Business School instructor (and alum) Ed Batista contemplates mortality, the joys of good health, and missed martinis in Things You Learn When You're Sick. Haven't we all been there? And finally, Diego Rodriguez of Stanford's Hasso Plattner School of Design on his blog metacool correlates a daredevil manoeuver by one Travis Pastrana (watch the video) with admonitions about the future world economy. Well, I suppose insights are everywhere, if one but looks.
As is our custom, we announce the new issue of NPQ (New Perspectives Quarterly), a compendium of commentary by thought leaders and politicians around the world on topics of current global interest. Crash is the word for the latest issue cover, with opinion and observations about the ongoing financial meltdown, the Obama victory, and other matters. Contributors include the usual constellation of stellar personalities: financier George Soros, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, former World Bank President James Wolfensohn, novelist Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Peking University Dean of International Relations Wang Jisi, chess champ Garry Kasparov, French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner, celebrated writer Carlos Fuentes, European intellectual Bernard Henri-Levy, and more. It's all at your fingertips -- on our Current Periodicals rack in Jackson Library.
No, this isn't a Monty Python routine. This month’s JacksonLine is asking your opinion on furniture for the new Business School Library at the campus on Serra Street. JacksonLine also shows you an easier way to access our databases from off-campus (no more WebApps!) In the current issue you’ll also find Drs Drucker and Deming sharing space with (gasp) Barbie and Ken. Check it out.
Sierra Nevada Brewery in Chico, California is installing a system developed by EFuel that can turn sugar, water, and yeast into a high grade biofuel. BusinessWire reports that this system, called the EFuel100 MicroFueler, will take millions of gallons of discarded yeast from the brewery and use it, in combination with sugar, to produce an inexpensive biofuel (Stanford users can read this article online). The best part of the EFuel100 MicroFueler is that it can take unsold beer from the brewery and convert it to an energy source. If you can’t drink it, drive it. And next time you get pulled over just say, "Officer, it's not me -- it's the car!"
In an article entitled Lithium Batteries Charge Ahead, the magazine Nature reports that researchers at MIT have found a way to recharge batteries in a fraction of the time it takes currently. The implications of this new discovery are huge for everything from cell phones to electric cars, who wouldn’t like to be able to charge a device within seconds as opposed to hours.
It's being heralded as the next big rivalry of Silicon Valley according to the SF Chronicle. The two companies offer different services but they do overlap in social networking.
Facebook last week unveiled changed to their site which makes it a "destination for real-time posts, turf the Twitter is famous for."
So the question is will you twitter or Facebook?
If the title of this post sounds weird to you, here is a translation: New Language. Though both expressions are written in plain English, they signify different contemporary cultural trends. The Nu Speak is the language of IMs and short text messages and it’s expressed primarily in abbreviations. And, according to the author of the Changing Language of Search article, the new lingo cannot be ignored. With over two billion mobile devices users, the conventions of Nu Speak seep into communication with a broad audience including librarians or even college professors. For some people all these abbreviations are easy to decipher, but others are puzzled at their meaning. The good news is that you can now find online dictionaries which translate the Nu Speak shortcuts into traditional English language. If you are interested in reading the article, ask for a copy of January issue or Seacher magazine at the Info Desk at Jackson Library. Stanford users can read the article online.
Crooked Timber takes its name from a quote of Immanuel Kant -- "Out of the crooked timber of humanity no straight thing was ever made". How true, on this day of Bernie Madoff's trial. But I digress. The site, which we have mentioned before on this blog, is a compendium of reflections, speculations, polemics and whatnot from academics, intellectuals and social thinkers on a gamut of topics. A quick check yielded quite a smattering, ranging from dissections of the current economic crisis to political ruminations about GOP leader Michael Steele to book reviews to advice for prospective grad students to a post on kissing to a site of resources on Rousseau to the recent Chinese 'mud horse' phenomenon. Perhaps the (frequently) whimsical nature of the beast can be captured by this self-description of one of the regulars : "A man of excellent naturall Parts; but very Sarcastick and the greatest Buffoon in the Nation."
I came across an article at Seeking Alpha and the first sentence is, "When it comes to the U.S. financial crisis, it’s tough to know just what to think or who to believe these days." The author goes on to compare the different opinions and scenarios to "Goldilocks and the 3 bears" and the movie "The Good Bad and the Ugly".
I suppose you could view the current financial crisis as a dream (or nightmare) or a fairy tale and one day you will wake up and it will all be over.
In Learning To Live With Radical Islam, Fareed Zakaria believes we should take a step back from heated rhetoric and try to understand the phenomenon of Islamic radicalism. Not all radicals are terrorists, and Zakaria proposes we pick our battles. He makes a powerful argument for recognizing the reality of radical Islam, though this is entirely different from accepting any extremist ideas. We must defend our own values and views and pursue policies that will make others accept the shared aim of reducing cruelty and corruption. If we walk the walk, others will follow.
Guy Kawasaki has posted a continuation of his interview with Emanuel Rosen, author of The Anatomy of Buzz Revisited. In this post, Rosen explains when to use Facebook and MySpace, and offers advice about generating buzz for a sample online property. Check this out (as well as the first part of the interview) if you’re interested in whipping up buzz for your own company.
No, it's not Elmer Fudd running for cover ... retweet is when you forward someone else's 'tweet' to your own Twitter followers. Guy Kawasaki has written a blog How To Get Retweeted, offering tips and techniques on how to get your own tweet disseminated by others. Aside from including a link to a description of Twitter (for those benighted souls still trapped in the 20th century), Kawasaki points to two sites that measure retweeting, as well as a list of the Twitterers with the most followers. Are we ready to tweet?
Late last year, Bloomberg surveyed around 400 financial professionals on where they think M&A and capital markets are heading this year. The survey found that the most attractive targets for takeovers would be distressed companies and assets. The industry expected to produce the most IPOs is consumer discretionary. Where will companies get most of their capital? By a wide margin it’s going to be via bonds. You can read more about the survey on pp.132-133 in the March 2009 issue of Bloomberg Markets.
Forbes has reported in its latest issue that more women on wall street are taking the brunt of the recent layoffs.
Chia Siu, Brittany Sharpton, Lisa Conley, Amy Bartoletti and Nadine Mentor have filed actions against Citigroup, alleging discrimination, the article states.
The high proportion of men in public finance, coupled with the large numbers of women laid off, are a "clear indication that gender was a reason for selecting the people who were let go," says Wigdor, the attorney for the women executives. He recently filed charges with the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission -- a first step before seeking a class action -- alleging they were terminated because they were women. He calls it a case of "recessionary discrimination."
Taking blame for mistakes can be empirically shown to be linked to better corporate performance, argues GSB Professor Bob Sutton. He and colleague Professor Jeff Pfeffer in their research on evidence-based management note studies that demonstrate the practical wisdom of being honest and sincere with staff and stockholders. Sutton contrasts this with the shameless evasiveness of some of the names in the news these days, such as Lehman Brothers' CEO Richard Fuld, pleading that the largest bankruptcy in history was "beyond his control", and former Countrywide CEO Angelo Mozilo, claiming he was helplessly blindsided by industry developments. Perhaps these executives would do well to read Sutton and Pfeffer's Hard Facts. On the other hand, Sutton approvingly cites Warren Buffett, who frankly admitted his mistakes in his annual letter to Berkshire Hathaway shareholders, writing "I made some errors of omission, sucking my thumb when new facts came in that should have caused me to reexamine my thinking and promptly take action". A refreshing admission in an age of mendacity.
|
