The Best War Ever is about a war that was devised in fantasy and lost in delusion. It highlights the futility of lying to oneself and others in matters of life and death. And it offers lessons to the current generation so that, at least in our time, this never happens again. In this book,… Read More »
Last weekend, I watched a Frontline/Washington Post special entitled “Rumsfeld’s War” on cable TV (can’t remember which channel) that suggested the Iraq “war” (perhaps invasion would be a better word) was very much one man’s fanatical drive to bitch-slap the uniformed military command at the Pentagon into submission and turn the U.S. military into a… Read More »
Acclaimed author Jostein Gaarder, best known for the novel Sophie’s World, has written a critical opinion piece on Israel in Aftenposten, a Norwegian newspaper. Not surprisingly, it sparked a fiery debate on political, religious and cultural fronts. There is an unofficial translation of Gaardner’s article, but I doubt it will ever make its way to… Read More »
One of the many business trends in the 1990s was “three nines“, i.e. businesses should strive for 99.9% accuracy, 99.9% customer satisfaction, 99.9% quality, etc. But is 99.9% good enough? If so… 268,500 defective tires will be shipped each year. 132,412,800 cans of soft drinks produced in the next 12 months will be flatter than… Read More »
I’m glad a mainstream magazine finally came out of the woods to debunk Jack’s rules (see FORTUNE‘s “The New Rules“, August 7, 2006). FORTUNE‘s story essentially argues that it’s very much time for new rules of success, ditching an obsession with managing quarter-to-quarter earnings to please Wall Street and in the process, disinvesting in the… Read More »
Amid concerns about the security risks posed by travellers who bring their laptops into aircrafts, Dell has struck a further blow to the product’s safety credentials by issuing a recall of 4.1 million Lithium-ion laptop batteries after a series of public reports of its laptops catching fire. According to The Economist, such batteries have been… Read More »