Mumbai Musings

Like most people, I was shocked and saddened to hear of the terrorist attacks in Mumbai, India last week. Close to 200 people dead so far, with untold numbers more injured. It is a tragedy of terrible scope.

Speaking as someone who works with violent crime survivors, I can attest that there is a hidden cost that very few of us will ever see. Thousands upon thousands of people were involved with the victims, from family members and close friends to coworkers and casual acquaintances. Most of those people will find their lives have been changed, and rarely for the better.

Although hardly an expert on terrorism, I have been paying attention to the issue over the years. I thought I’d share a few thoughts.

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Thanks

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Photo credit here.

I am thankful for a lot of things, but for this post I would like to thank Jonathan for being such a gracious host on this blog.  The comments and posts that I read at ChicagoBoyz are very beneficial to me and always entertaining. 

I would also like to thank Jonathan for inviting me to share some ideas here with what I consider to be one of the very best audiences on the internet.  The audience is not so large as to have a giant quantity of trolls, yet is large enough – and adult enough – to be able to engage myself and the other authors in thoughtful conversations.  Thanks to you, authors and commenters.

That said, Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday and as always I am on my 36 hour Pre Thanksgiving Fast which precedes my Thanksgiving Day Cocktails, Gorging, and Traditional Late Afternoon Thanksgiving Day Nap.  Happy Thanksgiving to all of you.

The EU’s New Reluctant President

Helen will have informed commentary on the EU; still, I couldn’t resist putting together a few links about the irrepressible Klaus.  He’s the next president in the rotating European Union.  It’s hard to see someone of his vitality as “reluctant” but it’s also hard to see him as president of the EU about which he has so many doubts.  Sure, during our election, I argued that it is generally a good idea to have someone like the body over which he presides.  Still, in sheer entertainment value, Klaus may be a plus.

In The Prague Post, Ondrej Bouda notes what may be a recurring problem:

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Drucker on Management Mentalities

Among liberals, “progressives,” and especially academics, there is great joy at the prospect of an administration dominated by people who had very high SAT scores and who possess advanced degrees.

At the same point in time, we are experiencing a serious credit crisis, brought about to a substantial extent by naive and inadequate mathematical models–mostly developed by people with very high SAT scores and very often with advanced degrees.

About 20 years ago, Peter Drucker wrote a wonderful pseudo-autobiography, “Adventures of a Bystander.” It tells his own story only indirectly, via profiles of people he has known. These range from from his grandmother and his 4th-grade teacher in Austria to Henry Luce (Time-Life) and Alfred Sloan (GM).

In the chapter titled “Ernest Freedberg’s World,” Drucker writes about two old-line merchants. The first of these, called “Uncle Henry” by those who knew him, was the founder and owner of a large and succesful department store. When Drucker met him, he was already in his eighties. Uncle Henry was a businessman who did things by intuition more than by formal analysis, and his own son Irving, a Harvard B-School graduate, was appalled at “the unsystematic and unscientific way the store was being run.”

Drucker remembers his conversations with Uncle Henry. “He would tell stories constantly, always to do with a late consignment of ladies’ hats, or a shipment of mismatched umbrellas, or the notions counter. His stories would drive me up the wall. But gradually I learned to listen, at least with one ear. For surprisingly enough he always leaped to a generalization from the farrago of anecdotes and stocking sizes and color promotions in lieu of markdowns for mismatched umbrellas.”

Reflecting many years later, Drucker observes: “There are lots of people with grasshopper minds who can only go from one specific to another–from stockings to buttons, for instance, or from one experiment to another–and never get to the generalization and the concept. They are to be found among scientists as often as among merchants. But I have learned that the mind of the good merchant, as also of the good artist or good scientist, works the way Uncle Henry’s mind worked. It starts out with the most specific, the most concrete, and then reaches for the generalization.”

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