Today is Blog Action Day and the topic is Climate Change, so I asked Chris Blackman, who is a strategic consultant specializing finding both private and public funding in the green and clean technology sector, to offer her thoughts on a subject that enrages me every time it comes up—which is more and more often. The subject is the sacrificing of one limited resource for the sake of another.
From Chris…
Would you choose to go hungry and thirsty so that you could have energy?
That choice is the dark side of clean energy.
A ‘clean coal’ power plant uses tens of thousands of …read more

Last Friday I wrote Narcissism and Leadership and how much narcissism has increased over the last few years.
I’ve never understood the preoccupation with the glitterati, but I have wondered how much our celebrity-worshiping culture affects kids?
According to Drew Pinsky MD, AKA, Dr. Drew on radio and TV, and S. Mark Young, a social scientist it may be especially dangerous for young people, who view celebrities as role models.
“They are the sponges of our culture. Their values are now being set. Are they really the values we want our young people to be absorbing? … It harkens back to the question …read more

I don’t understand the current obsession with other people’s lives, in fact, I find it very weird.
Whether it is a public figure or not, the desire (need?) to know every little detail, what they are doing every minute of their lives, the products they use, their ups and downs to be almost obsessional.
This kind of interest used to be reserved for the intimacy of real friendship or close family relations—and even then there were boundaries—but now anyone is fair game.
Apparently I’m not as out of it as I thought; many people are shutting down their Facebook pages for a variety …read more

Last April Steve Tobak, who writes BNET’s The Corner Office, did a post on 5 classic blunders when presenting to the board of directors. Good post, interesting and useful if you’re in that arena.
But his current post, 5 Classic Dumb Executive Moves is priceless; not just the five of his own that he shared, but the dozens shared by readers.
The great thing is that they apply to everyone, so you don’t have to be an executive to learn from them.
Many talked about email sent to the wrong people or the entire company instead of the one person for whom it …read more

This stress is chronic, but this is a sign of our times.
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Thursday I wrote about today’s excessive hypocrisy using, among other examples, Senator John Ensign.
Like most bloggers, I post ahead, so that I wasn’t able to include South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford.
Today I want to offer up some quotes from him and tomorrow I’m going to address the subjects brought up by Dan Erwin and Becky Robinson in the comments on Thursday’s post.
“The bottom line, though, is I am sure there will be a lot of legalistic explanations pointing out that the president lied under oath. His [Livingston] situation was not under oath. The bottom line, though, is he still lied. …read more

Click to see the solution for these times
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An article in the NY Times gives a first look at new directions for education,
“…the Obama administration will use a Congressional rewriting of the federal law later this year to toughen requirements on topics like teacher quality and academic standards and to intensify its focus on helping failing schools. … The stimulus requires governors to raise standards to a new benchmark: the point at which high school graduates can succeed — without remedial classes — in college, the workplace or the military.”
Sounds great, but all I can say is good luck.
Not because of teacher quality; not because of money, since …read more

It doesn’t seem that the financial crisis is really changing things all that much.
The exodus of Wall Street bankers is mostly smoke and mirrors, not change, as many of the so-called disgraced leave for banks that didn’t accept bailout money, taking their clients and attitudes with them.
“Banks paid out some $18 billion in bonuses last year, down 44 percent compared with a year earlier, and many workers viewed them as paltry payouts… Sensing a shifting tide, talented bankers who fear a dimmer future at banks that have taken taxpayer money are migrating to brash boutique firms like Aladdin, which are …read more

Or is this more accurate?
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