The stock market had an interesting day Thursday, with the Dow down 311 points. How interesting is that? Well, it is the second-biggest one day drop this year. But when you’ve got a number in the 13,000s, subtracting 311 just isn’t something to get too worked up about. Today’s 2.26% drop was just the 94th-biggest the Dow has experienced …
Chinese currency manipulation, Chuck Schumer and Senate bean soup
The Senate Finance Committee voted 20-1 this afternoon to send some “anti-pussyfooting legislation,” as John Kerry dubbed it, to the full Senate. I know because I was there for all the action at the lovely Dirksen Building. I also ate at the all-you-can-eat buffet in the basement and had a little bowl of Senate bean soup. Big fun.
The …
Lousy boss? Vent, then act
I don’t have a bad boss right now, but if I did, I sure as heck wouldn’t blog about it on my employer’s web site. I could, however–insert image of me with my pinkie at my mouth–crab about him or her anonymously on the AFL-CIO Bad Boss web contest. Although from the first entry I read, already I can tell I can’t beat these stories:
My
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Yeah, the dollar really is hitting record lows, sort of
I always get a little irked when I read an article stating that the dollar has hit a “record low” against the euro. The euro’s been around for less than a decade, and happened to come into existence at a time when the dollar was extremely strong. Record lows against it are meaningless.
Of far more interest is the value of the dollar …
Robert Scoble fails to solve my Google Reader problem
I use Google Reader to keep up with blogs that I think might be useful to me in my own blogging and columnizing.
Actually, that’s being far too generous to myself. For days, sometimes even weeks at a time, I use Google Reader to keep up with the 16 blogs whose feeds I’ve subscribed to. There are many other blogs and news sources that …
Boss, don’t tell me how to vote
…is what some workers wish they could say to their managers. According to a survey released today and conducted in May and June 2007 by Harris Interactive for The Marlin Company, which calls itself “The Workplace Communications Experts,”
nearly one out of four (24%) U.S. workers believe their top managers are openly expressing their
…
A statement from Ford’s Alan Mulally that I’d like to hear more about
This little tidbit was in an interview in yesterday’s W$J (yes, I’m behind) with Ford CEO Alan Mulally. The interviewers asked him what had been the biggest surprise he’d encountered since coming over to Ford from Boeing last September. Mulally responded:
The biggest learning was the fact of how all our customers are aware of the brand
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Reader book review! ScreamFree Parenting Works
When I started this blog back in November 2006, I had little sense of what it would yield me, career-wise. Yeah, yeah, a blog is about building a community and all that. But what kind of community could a daily jot about the workplace beget?
In the shadow of my colleagues blogging about presidential politics and American Idol, my wee …
Lessons from the Democratic debate, courtesy of Hillary
Case Study A on how working women can publicly and skillfully sing their own praises: I submit to you Sen. Hillary Clinton’s performance in last night’s CNN/YouTube debate among Democratic presidential candidates.
Time after time, she managed to pepper her responses with phrases like, “I have done tremendous work on this…” “This is …
Another way to look at the S&P 500
A reader e-mailed to ask if it was possible to put together an inflation-adjusted chart of the S&P 500. Well, yeah: Anyone with Excel and an Internet connection can do it (the data here is from Yahoo! Finance and the Bureau of Labor Statistics). But I was curious, so I put together this chart going back to the beginning of the great …
Why I’m still a Catholic
I’ve got a book by that title on my nightstand. I borrowed it from my church’s library about a year ago. The writing is erratic–it’s a compilation of essays-slash-testimonies by famous Catholics like Maria Shriver–and I’m find I’m resisting it for literary and psychological reasons.
There’s another book I’d like to read: Christopher …
I’m going to church this weekend
I haven’t said confession in years, but I may have to for writing this essay in this week’s magazine. My regular friends on this site will recognize its origins in a post of the same subject. I’m coming to realize having a blog is like having a therapist: you’re compelled to barf out your half-formed opinions on things, and suddenly they …