Interesting Posts I’ve Read this Week

Ikea Subway Ads

http://freshome.com/2010/03/12/ikea-subway-display-in-paris-an-insane-idea-or-a-genius-promotion-campaign/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed:+FreshInspirationForYourHome+(Fresh+Inspiration+for+Your+Home)

Guy Kawasaki Interview with great advice for college graduates and real world business advice

“My thinking was: I’m a natural leader, so I’m going to study what’s hard and mathematical like finance and operations research, not the touchy-feely stuff that would be easy.

When I finally got a management position, I found out how hard it is to lead and manage people. The warm, fuzzy stuff is hard. The quantitative stuff is easy — you either don’t do much of this as a manager or you have people working for you to do it.

Maybe it was just my education, but much of education is backwards. You study all the hard stuff, and then you find out in the real world that you don’t use it. As long as you can use an HP 12 calculator or a spreadsheet, you have the finance knowledge that you need for most management positions. I should have taken organizational behavior and social psychology — and maybe abnormal psychology, come to think of it.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/21/business/21corner.html?pagewanted=1

Another Post on Eco-Moralism Being a Net Negative to the World

“The general truth lurking behind these findings is that the feeling of being pure is a moral contaminant. In ethical terms, the best never think that they are the best, and those that believe themselves to be on the side of the angels are often the worst devils.

Why should this be so? One reason is that complacency is as dangerous in ethics as it is in any other area of life where we strive for excellence. If we think we are “good people” we might think less about the possibility that we might actually be doing wrong.”

http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2010/03/the-halo-of-green-consumerism.html

Quote I Enjoyed

“Generally speaking, we can observe that the scientists in any particular institutional and political setting move as a flock, reserving their controversies and particular originalities for matters that do not call into question the fundamental system of biases they share.”
—Gunnar Myrdal, Objectivity in Social Research

Best Article I’ve Read this Year

http://www.hoover.org/publications/policyreview/38245724.html

Plays to my biases, and talks about the puritanical moralization shifting from the religious right regarding sex to the atheistic left regarding food.

“When friedrich nietzsche wrote longingly of the “transvaluation of all values,” he meant the hoped-for restoration of sexuality to its proper place as a celebrated, morally neutral life force. He could not possibly have foreseen our world: one in which sex would indeed become “morally neutral” in the eyes of a great many people — even as food would come to replace it as source of moral authority.”

Tech Industry Deja Vu

http://gizmodo.com/5492737/inside-the-apple+google-war-its-personal

“At the heart of their dispute is a sense of betrayal: Mr. Jobs believes that Google violated the alliance between the companies by producing cellphones that physically, technologically and spiritually resembled the iPhone. In short, he feels that his former friends at Google picked his pocket.”

Take out Google and insert Microsoft/Bill Gates and you have the same exact story 20 years ago.  What does this say about Steve Jobs?  Is it coincidental?

Some food blog posts

Another post that maybe proves people don’t know anything about wine.

http://www.smartmoney.com/spending/deals/the-best-way-to-enjoy-wine-try-overpaying/

Food packaging good for the environment?

http://freakonomics.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/02/08/how-about-them-wrapped-apples/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed:+FreakonomicsBlog+(Freakonomics+Blog)