Author: philg

According to this Washington Post article, the unemployment rate in the DC area is the lowest in the nation.  In the well-educated Maryland and Virginia suburbs unemployment is between 1.6 and 2.2 percent, ridiculously low compared to the national average of 6.6 percent.  Best of all the standards for working hours and difficulty are set by the federal government.  A doctor I talked to said that she went to work for the Food and Drug Administration:  “It felt like a 2-year vacation compared to working in a private practice.  The funniest part was that the people who worked there complained about how hard their jobs were.”

Want a job?  Go East Young Man!

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Norfolk’s standard tourist gem is the Chrysler Museum with its comprehensive collection of glass from ancient Greece and Rome through Tiffany and into the modern era (mercifully there is only one piece by Dale Chihuly).  Karen, Robert, and I visited a newer downtown attraction:  the Wisconsin, an Iowa-class battleship completed in 1944, mothballed in the mid-1990s, and installed in Norfolk harbor in December 2000.  The Iowa class are the largest battleships ever built by the U.S. Navy.  We strolled among the 16-inch guns, festooned with photos of the shells, each of which weighs as much as a Honda Civic, zooming off towards Iraqi military targets during the 1991 Gulf War.  It occurred to me that the Wisconsin represents a stage in a cycle of taxation.

We tax ourselves to create a small government capable of taking actions, some of which make foreigners angry.  We then have to tax ourselves even more so that our government can build battleships that go forth and drop 2700-lb. shells on our new enemies.  After those enemies are all dead and/or cowed the surplus tax revenues are used for more government activity, which angers new and different foreigners.  So we have to raise taxes again to build more weapon systems to attack more foreigners.  And the cycle continues…

[Visitor info:  There is no charge for visiting the Wisconsin and the volunteer guides are very knowledgeable.  You can’t go below decks, however, because the interior is preserved with dehumidifiers.  An oil-powered battleship doesn’t figure into the Navy’s carrier-centric needs right now.  However, the Navy still owns the Wisconsin and may recommission it one day if its capabilities are required.]

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I asked a new friend for enough information to fill up a Microsoft Outlook record for her.  Here’s part of what she came back with…

• HEIGHT: 5’6.5″
  
• WEIGHT: negotiable
  
• EYE COLOR: hazel
  
• HAIR COLOR: light brown before appointments with Anna and blonde after apts. with Anna
  
• MEASUREMENTS: small, large, large

If only public companies reported this accurately…

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In the unlikely event that anyone cares and/or wants to get together…  Alex and I are flying Diamond Star N505WT down the East Coast this week.  The plan is as follows:

• Sunday:  Bedford, MA to Teterboro, NJ for lunch with cousin Lynn and family, proceeding to Gaithersburg, Maryland to see parents, siblings, and friends
  
• Tuesday:  to Norfolk, VA to see friends
  
• Wednesday: to Gettysburg, PA to visit Matthew Amster, professor of anthropology at Gettysburg College
  
• Thursday or Friday:  back to Bedford

I don’t expect to be able to get Internet access so if you want to get together in one of these places call 617-818-1256 (the cell phone).

[Oh yes… for those who wonder about the safety of letting a dog fly the airplane… I passed my Commercial pilot’s certificate checkride two weeks ago and now am working on the Certificated Flight Instructor (CFI) rating.  So it is good practice to fly from the right seat and let a student try his/her hand/paw at the stick…]

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An architect comments on MIT’s latest dormitory.  Well you can’t please everyone…

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It is tough to imagine anyone being nostalgic for this past winter in New England but perhaps this photo of sammies in the snow will do the trick.  It comes to us from Willie Stromeyer, whom I met as an 8-year-old son of a friend.  He’s now married and living in Upstate New York.

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In this interesting New York Times editorial, Nicholas Kristof looks at CEO pay from the perspective of “what would this guy do if we didn’t pay him $200 million per year?”  (the $200 million/year is what Michael Eisner earned during some of his better years at Disney (oftentimes those were bad years for stockholders and employees but that’s another story)).  Kristof points out that

“There is a huge supply of would-be C.E.O.’s and negligible demand from companies for new ones, so their price should be cheap — if boards would use their leverage. When Jack Welch retired, General Electric held a contest among three underlings to succeed him. Each was desperate to get the job. If G.E. had done its usual tough bargaining, it could have signed Jeffrey Immelt on a 15-year contract for a mere $750,000 a year in salary, plus reasonable incentives for long-term success.

“Except for turnaround experts, C.E.O.’s have few transferable skills and are in little demand elsewhere. The average 63-year-old head of a plastics company has almost zero chance of finding a better job elsewhere. One study found that of 77 cases when a major company had to find a new boss, only twice was this because the C.E.O. had left for another corporate job.

“Think about it. If Mr. Eisner, who turns 62 on Sunday, wanted to switch jobs now, what other public company would hire him as its new chief executive? Frankly, Mr. Eisner is so desperate to hold on to his job that Disney should try to charge him for the privilege of remaining in his post.”

Eisner has transferred at least $1 billion from Disney’s shareholders’ pockets into his personal checking account over the years.  So he probably could afford to pay quite a bit to keep his job!

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According to this New York Times story, a B average in high school is very rewarding…

“Finally, my parents told me if I got a 3.0 G.P.A. or higher on my report card, they’d buy me any car I wanted, within reason.”

Daddy’s Little Girl is now driving the 2004 Cadillac Escalade EXT (5700 lbs.; 12 mpg; $53,000) that she got for her 16th birthday.

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A man goes to see Mel Gibson’s new movie, The Passion, and is inspired to take his family to Israel to see the places where Jesus lived and died.  While on vacation his mother-in-law dies.

An undertaker in Tel Aviv explains that they can ship the body home to Wisconsin at a cost of $10,000 or the mother-in-law could be buried in Israel for US$500.

The man says, “We’ll ship her home.”

The undertaker asks, “Are you sure? That’s an awfully big expense and we can do a very nice burial here.”

The man says, “Look, 2000 years ago they buried a guy here and three days later he rose from the dead. I just can’t take that chance.”

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Today’s New York Times carries an article entitled “Microsoft, Amid Dwindling Interest, Talks Up Computing as a Career” about Bill Gates going around to universities encouraging young people to major in computer science.  The chairman of EECS at MIT worries about the decline in enrollment (10 years ago his predecessor fretted about the explosion in enrollment; sic transit gloria major).  All too close to home…

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