Unlinking LinkedIn is celebrating its 20th anniversary this year. For me, that means that it really didn’t exist as much of an aid to my career, either as a source for employees or as a source for employment. These days, the business world uses LinkedIn as one of its foundational services and I imagine a goodly proportion of career-minded people use it in either direction on a daily basis. I’ve been on LinkedIn since the…
Twitterin’ Tesla It is Saturday morning and that time which will forever be cartoon time to me and those in my generation who grew up waiting expectantly for this very time of week. Do you remember Sylvester (a.k.a Sylvester James Pussycat, Sr.)? His catchphrase was a spittle-soaked version of “Sufferin’ Succotash!” We mostly grew up not having a clue what that meant, but being amused by its rhythmic sound. Perhaps we knew that the combination…
Teaching to Teach I have been teaching at the graduate business school level since 2007. That represents fifteen years or approximately 20% of my life (deducting a bit for the interregnum between teaching at Cornell and University of San Diego). I have taught a variety of subjects including hedge fund investing, securities finance, pension funds, project finance, advanced corporate finance and now business ethics. This semester I am teaching a course called Law, Policy and…
The Jungle of My Mind My readers have often heard me harp about my distaste for the tropics. I lived six of my first seven years in the tropics of Venezuela and Costa Rica and it has left an indelible mark. There are few places I would rather not find myself stranded in than a dense dark jungle. I think its a combination of the humidity-driven discomfort and the truly creepy crawly things that thrive…
The Magic Kingdom My visiting family just returned from a two-day stint at Disneyland. They are a Disneyworld family, but they enjoy Disneyland equally well. I wrote several months ago about my visit to Disneyworld and how impressed I was by the pleasure it evokes in so many people who visit and visit regularly. Yesterday, the state of Florida revoked Disneyworld’s special district permit that it has enjoyed for 55 years when it was used…
The Earth as Property I have written about the awareness that has come to me recently about the increasing importance of ESG (Environmental, Social and Governance) issues in managing corporations and, for that matter, all manner of investments. That awareness came prior to my formulating the syllabus for this semester’s course in Law, Policy & Ethics, so I added two full class sessions to focus on the policy and ethical issues of ESG in today’s…
Expert is as Expert Does Last night was a glorious last night in Rome for us after a little more than a week of enjoying the wonders of Italy. There were several things that made it so special, not the least of which was the venue itself. We had been invited by my Italian partner, Damiano, to join him at a restaurant owned by a childhood Palermo friend of his. That restaurant is on the…
All The King’s Men Every time I think we have finally gotten past the shadow of the Donald Trump presidency, something takes me back and I find myself thrown back into the desperation of feeling like I’m that poor inmate stuck under the thumb of Ida Lupino, who plays an evil warden in the 1955 film Women’s Prison. The horror of that film is less about what goes on physically in the prison than the…
Did Atlas Really Shrug? Who is Atlas anyway? We know, if we’ve been to Rockefeller Center, that he has the world on his shoulders. In mythology, he is a mere Titan, not a god, but a Titan, and he is tasked with holding up the sky and the heavens after he and his gang of Titans tried to overthrow the Olympians and failed. Failed coups are a bitch and there are consequences. Atlas must have…
Cut and Paste The expression of cut and paste has taken on a derogatory connotation. It implies a degree of laziness or casual composition. You cut and paste when you don’t want or need original thought. I think that is actually a very unfair characterization of what can be a true creative process. I write a lot. I write every day…usually several times a day. Sometimes I write stories for this blog. Sometimes I write…