I always roll my eyes when the President declares that ObamaCare is the law of the land and nobody wants to re-litigate it..
I hate to resort to facts, but, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation, a majority of the country now views the law unfavorably .. only 34% view it favorably.
The trend isn’t good for the President’s claim.
And, remember the uninsureds – the folks that ObamaCare was designed to help?
No secret, men are shopping more than ever.
Around one-third of primary shoppers for groceries reportedly are now men.
Yet 40% of men feel unwelcome in retail stores …
As men shop more and more,retailers need to make them feel comfortable in their stores, Here’s how …
In class this week, I was noting that for many (most ?) retailers, the difference between low (on no) profits and extraordinary profits is getting people to throw just one more item into the shopping cart.
Well, Business Insider must have been listening in …
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Specifically, BI offered up 18 ways that retail stores get us to buy more stuff.
Here’s the list …
In this and a couple of preceding and subsequent posts, i’ll be excerpting the 13 reasons from:
Why We Make Mistakes, Joseph T. Hallinanm, Broadway Books 2009
Today, we finish the list … ending with an old standby: The Grass Looks Greener …
Couple of weird things going on with this year’s Super Bowl.
First, the question of when it’s being played.
The odds-on answer is that Denver and Seattle are scheduled to kick off the Super Bowl in East Rutherford, N.J., at 6:30 p.m. on Sunday, Feb. 2.
Notice the words “are scheduled” … that could change
In this and a couple of preceding and subsequent posts, i’ll be excerpting the 13 reasons from:
Why We Make Mistakes, Joseph T. Hallinanm, Broadway Books 2009
Today, we add reason #10 to the list. we all think we’re above average
In this and a couple of preceding and subsequent posts, i’ll be excerpting the 13 reasons from:
Why We Make Mistakes, Joseph T. Hallinanm, Broadway Books 2009
Today, we add reason #9 to the list. Men shoot first, then …
In this and a couple of preceding and subsequent posts, I’m excerpting the 13 reasons from:
Why We Make Mistakes, Joseph T. Hallinanm, Broadway Books 2009
Today, we add reasons 6, 7 and 8 to the list.
In this and a couple of preceding and subsequent posts, I’m excerpting the 13 reasons from:
Why We Make Mistakes, Joseph T. Hallinanm, Broadway Books 2009
Today, we add reason #5 to the list: the myth of multi-tasking…
In this and a couple of subsequent posts, i’ll be excerpting the 13 reasons from:
Why We Make Mistakes, Joseph T. Hallinanm, Broadway Books 2009
Today, the first 4 reasons on the list …
Earlier this week, I posted a chart showing that the LFPR among Blacks (the Fed’s data series description)
My observation was:
Black’s LFPR increased by about 7 percentage points since the mid-1970s (earliest that the data is reported) to 2000 – when it peaked at about 66% …. the rate has dropped to just over 60% …. the declining trend has steepened.
A loyal reader suggested that I put those numbers in context … and linked me to a chart that displays all of the Fed’s demographic categories.
His observation: the recent trend has been fairly consistent across all racial categories,
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Note that in the late 1990s, LFPR’s were roughly equal for all groups
Since then, Hispanics have run above average LFPRs …
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… then comes Daddy with a baby carriage.
The verse was drummed into my generation, but I bet many of you are too young to have ever heard it, right?
Well, the essence of the rhyme’s message was captured in a WSJ op-ed this week.
Ari Fleischer – one of Bush’s press secretaries wrote:
“The U.S. is steadily separating into a two-caste system with marriage and education as the dividing line. In the high-income third of the population, children are raised by married parents with a college education; in the bottom-income third, children are raised by single parents with a high-school diploma or less.”
A better and more compassionate policy to fight income inequality (than redistributing wealth from working families) would be helping the poor realize that the most important decision they can make is to stay in school, get married and have children — in that order.
One might dispute the conclusion, but here are some facts …
Cool TED pitch by a dude named David Pogue … demonstrating 10 handy tech tips.
For example, how to skip by cell phone voicemail greetings (Hi. This Ken. I’m not able … blah, blah) and get straight to leaving a message.
For Verizon, just press the star sign (*) … for AT&T, press the # sign.
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What to do when a web page’s text is too small to read?
One of the big headlines last Friday was that the Labor Force Participation rate continued to fall December (which is why the unemployment rate ticked down despite paltry job growth).
More specifically, the LFPR is down more that 4 percentage points since the financial crisis hit.
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Let’s put the current LFPR is perspective: Now, about 62.5% of the able-bodied adult population either has a job or is actively looking for one.
Said differently, over 37% don’t have jobs and aren’t actively looking.
Let’s drill down to a couple of demographic groups ….
First, let’s lay down a marker by flashing back to the late Steve Jobs.
One of the things that bothered Steve Jobs was the time that it took to boot when the Mac was first powered on.
To motivate the designers, Jobs reportedly exhorted them:
“If it could save a person’s life, would you find a way to shave ten seconds off the boot time?”.
The engineer allowed that he probably could.
Jobs went to a whiteboard and showed that if there were five million people using the Mac, and it took ten seconds extra to turn it on every day, that added up to three hundred million or so hours per year that people would save, which was the equivalent of at least one hundred lifetimes saved per year.
A few weeks later the engineer had the Mac booting up twenty-eight seconds faster.
Keep that story in mind the next time that a digitized phone answerer asks you to “press or say 1 for English; press or say 2 for Spanish”.
Not a big deal, right?
It only takes about 5 seconds to work thru the prompts.
But take Jobs rules and multiply the 5 seconds times a few million calls per day getting the prompt and you’ve got a statistically significant number of “lost lives” … or at least, lost productivity.
Rather than getting better, it’s getting worse.
I have proof.
OK, I was asleep at the switch on this one … completely missed that Monitor – the consulting outfit started by strategy guru Michael Porter – went bankrupt last year and got acquired by Deloitte.
How ironic … an uber-strategist’s own company goes belly up.
Here’s the scoop …
A couple of week’s ago, I posted Life: E + R = O …
I’ve often told students: “You can’t control everything that happens to you, but you can always control the the way you respond to it.”
I didn’t always walk the talk, so I needed a booster shot.
And, I got one from Urban Meyer – Ohio States’s head football coach – who preaches the E + R = O principle to his players … even has them wear wristbands.
Say, what?
Answer: Event + Response = Outcome
Well, E + R = O was put to a test when Ohio State lost to Clemson in the Orange Bowl
The E was the loss.
The R was …
Ouch.
Not a big deal, but doesn’t exactly advance the cause.
Now, there’s a bigger test for Coach Meyer and the E + R = O philosophy …
When I heard the news report, I thought it was a joke.
The full force of the DOJ is being thrown at, believe it or not …
THE LITTLE SISTERS OF THE POOR.
Not just nuns, “little” nuns.
Not just little nuns, little nuns who dedicate their lives to God and spend every waking hour praying or caring for the poor.
Not just little nuns who care for the poor, little poor-caring nuns who are, on average, probably about a hundred years old.
These are the nuns who are literally icons for the helpless.
So much so that weak sports teams – like those on Georgetown’s early season basketball schedule — have forever been referred to as representing The Little Sisters of the Poor.
Those Little Sisters of the Poor.
What’s the government’s beef?
The Homa Files 