Twitter: 2010-05-10

 
Twitter
  • RT @mccarthyjim1 In almost every case, action will produce many times more results than planning. http://post.ly/dMei #
  • RT @eddiepepitone: In honor of my mom I burnt a meal, ignored myself and accused my dad of aloofness. #
  • RT @eddiepepitone: The only thing stopping me today is my childhood, my genetics, my income, my innate laziness and my parole officer. #

The Authority of Ideas

 

A team committed to providing great products or services on time will shift its point of view on authority.

It will move from viewing authority as emanating from bosses to viewing authority as emanating from ideas and from the nurturing and championship of an ecology of ideas.

People I Thought Were Dead

 
  • Marty Allen – comedian
  • Ed Ames – actor
  • Lauren Bacall – actress
  • Roger Bannister – runner
  • Ben Bradlee – editor, The Washington Post
  • George Kennedy – actor
  • Ralph Kiner – Hall of Fame baseball player
  • Jake LaMotta – boxer, middleweight champion
  • Shirley Temple – actress

Updates

  • Marty Allen – died 2/12/2018, age 95
  • Ed Ames – died 5/21/2023, age 95
  • Lauren Bacall – died 8/12/2014, age 89
  • Roger Bannister – died 3/4/2018, age 88
  • Ben Bradlee – died 10/21/2014, age 93
  • George Kennedy – died 2/28/2016, age 91
  • Ralph Kiner – died 2/6/2014, age 91
  • Jake LaMotta – died 9/19/2017, age 95
  • Shirley Temple – died 2/10/2014, age 85

Time and People Shortages

 

High-tech workers fervently believe in time and people shortages.

Much of the time, you have no idea whether a shortage really exists. You assume that the shortage is real, instead of carefully examining the situation. Many explanations based on insufficiencies arise from unexamined assumptions.

Unintended Consequences of Healthcare Reform

 
Medical Cost Versus No Coverage Penalty

Many large companies are examining a course that was heretofore unthinkable, dumping the health care coverage they provide to their workers in exchange for paying penalty fees to the government.

That would dismantle the employer-based system that has reigned since World War II. It would also seem to contradict President Obama’s statements that Americans who like their current plans could keep them. And as we’ll see, it would hugely magnify the projected costs for the bill, which controls deficits only by assuming that America’s employers would remain the backbone of the nation’s health care system.

Hence, health-care reform risks becoming a victim of unintended consequences.

— Fortune, May 5, 2010
 

We have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it.

— Nancy Pelosi, March 9, 2010

Someone Needs to Take the Fall

 
Chuck Klosterman

Whenever I meet dynamic, nonretarded Americans, I notice that they all seem to share a single unifying characteristic: the inability to experience the kind of mind-blowing, transcendent romantic relationship they perceive to be a normal part of living. And someone needs to take the fall for this. So instead of blaming no one (which is kind of cowardly) or blaming everyone (which is kind of meaningless), I’m going to blame John Cusack.

Who You Are

 

“True culture is in the mind, the mind,” he said, and tapped his head, “the mind.”

“It’s in the heart,” she said, “and in how you do things and how you do things is because of who you are.”

“Nobody in the damn bus cares who you are.”

“I care who I am,” she said icily.

— Flannery O’Connor, “Everything That Rises Must Converge”

In Praise of Stoicism

 

Over the course of my lifetime, it certainly seems like there’s been a strange American emphasis on embracing any emotion you happen to be having at any given moment, and that there’s something psychologically wrong with you if you’re not constantly confronting your emotions in public. I don’t like that quality. I think it’s bad for society.