Tag: Odds and Ends

Need a scapegoat? Pull a Candlewood

[William Candlewood] used to write rejection letters to authors. He was also the whipping boy. If something fouled up at New Directions it was always blamed on Candlewood. The apology letters said he would be fired immediately.We suspect a lot of companies end up doing something similar, especially those in tight-knit industries where personal relationships count for a lot.

Following the example of Oscar Wilde’s to Bunbury, we suggest that whenever you punish a made-up person [that’s right! William Candlewood does NOT exist] to impress a client or give a false name over the phone to an irate customer you have Candlewooded, or pulled a Candlewood. (The Informed Reader – WSJ.com)

The inconvenient fiscal truth

Taken together, the unfunded national commitments, including the national debt, future obligations on entitlement programs, and other commitments such as pensions, that fiscal exposures are $50.5 trillion or $170,000 for every man, woman, and child. The United States fiscal inconvenient truth should feel especially weighty for those in Generation X, Generation Y, and the generations to follow because according to the GAO, the total fiscal burden over the next 75 years represents $400,000 for every full-time worker in the United States and $440,000 per household.

“If we [the United States] were a company, we would be out of business.” (The Huffington Post)

Writing strategy – Harlan Coben

From the author of the Myron Bolitar novels (one of my favorite form of airport/airplane entertainment)

I don’t outline. I usually know the ending before I start. I know very little about what happens in between. It’s like driving from New Jersey to California. I may go Route 80, I may go via the Straits of Magellan or stopover in Tokyo… but I’ll end up in California. (HarlanCoben.com)

Beauty in the eye of the beholder?

HE EMERGED FROM THE METRO AT THE L’ENFANT PLAZA STATION AND POSITIONED HIMSELF AGAINST A WALL BESIDE A TRASH BASKET. By most measures, he was nondescript: a youngish white man in jeans, a long-sleeved T-shirt and a Washington Nationals baseball cap. From a small case, he removed a violin. Placing the open case at his feet, he shrewdly threw in a few dollars and pocket change as seed money, swiveled it to face pedestrian traffic, and began to play. (washingtonpost.com)

And hardly anyone took notice.

IF A GREAT MUSICIAN PLAYS GREAT MUSIC BUT NO ONE HEARS . . . WAS HE REALLY ANY GOOD?

It’s an old epistemological debate, older, actually, than the koan about the tree in the forest. Plato weighed in on it, and philosophers for two millennia afterward: What is beauty? Is it a measurable fact (Gottfried Leibniz), or merely an opinion (David Hume), or is it a little of each, colored by the immediate state of mind of the observer (Immanuel Kant)?

Now, how about performance evaluations in organizations?

How Americans pay

[N]early three-in-ten adults (28%) say the most common way they take care of their regular monthly bills is by an online or electronic payment. A bare majority (54%) mostly uses checks, and a small minority (15%) mostly uses cash.

[N]ear the top of the public’s list of regular expenses are cable or satellite television service (78% of adults say they pay such bills every month); cell phone service (74%) and internet connections (65%). These information age staples either didn’t exist or were in their infancy a generation ago.

When survey respondents were given a list of common household expenses, the only one they cited as often as these three was housing (76%). Another regular expense for most Americans is credit card bills. Among the 58% of adults who say they have a credit card as a regular household expense, about four-in-ten (41%) report that they generally pay their credit card bills in full each month while a 53% majority says that they usually make a payment. (Pew Research Center)