WSJ: The Poor Little Rich People Are Getting Slugged

David Atkins:

So this is apparently a real thing from the Wall Street Journal.

The Onion couldn’t top this. Whether it’s the sad faces of all these put-upon dejected rich people, or the elderly minority couple who is depressed despite not paying extra taxes (or was that the point?), or the distressed single Asian lady making $230,000 who might not be able to buy that extra designer pantsuit this year, or the “single mother” making $260,000 whose kids presumably have a deadbeat, indigent dad just like any other poor family, or that struggling family of six making $650,000 including $180,000 of pure passive income and wondering how to make ends meet, mockery is almost superfluous. The thing mocks itself. That $650,000 family in particular is bizarre to the point of incredulity: those people could literally stop working entirely, live extremely well on $180,000 while doing nothing but watching television all day and staying home with their kids, and leave their high-salary jobs with their oh-so-onerous tax requirements to people who actually appreciate them.

This is astonishing, and exactly the kind of thing that enables people earning two hundred thousand dollars a year to think they are ‘poor’ or ‘middle class’. Holy hell, these cartoons would make more sense if the incomes mentioned above were all cut to 1/10th shown. But then the tax increase wouldn’t be there, and the WSJ would have nothing to report on, would they?

Lean Pursuit

Hey, just a little cross-promotion, my dad’s new site for his consulting firm is up at Lean Pursuit – they specialize in implementation of Lean principles for process improvement in a variety of companies, such as the manufacturing industry. If you haven’t heard of Lean techniques, you might know of Six Sigma – similar concept, all about reducing defects and smoothing the process of production.

Anyway, I’m helping out with the site, so fingers crossed it gets up and running soon enough.

 

Count la Rochefoucauld, Spy Extraordinaire

Fantastic obituary to make anyone think their life is pretty boring – Count Robert de La Rochefocauld, former Resistance fighter in WWII:

Cycling to Bordeaux to meet a contact who was to arrange his return to England, however, he ran into a roadblock, taken prisoner, and imprisoned at the 16th-century Fort du Hâ. His explanations that he had been out after dark on a romantic assignation were not believed and, in his cell, La Rochefoucauld considered swallowing the cyanide pill concealed in the heel of his shoe.

Instead he faked an epileptic fit and, when the guard opened the door to his cell, hit him over the head with a table leg before breaking his neck. After putting on the German’s uniform, La Rochefoucauld walked into the guardroom and shot the two other German jailers. He then simply walked out of the fort, through the deserted town, and to the address of an underground contact.

Once there, however, he found that joining the rest of his escape line was impossible, as checks and patrols had been stepped up. Then the man harbouring him, whose sister was a nun, suggested that La Rochefoucauld slip into her habit. Thus dressed, he slowly walked through the city, eventually knocking on the door of Roger Landes, code-named Aristide, a bilingual Briton whom he hoped would take care of his return to England.

He wasn’t just done in WWII, either:

La Rochefoucauld was demobilised in 1946 in the rank of captain but immediately recruited into the French secret services. After training near Orleans, he volunteered for a tour of duty in Indo-China, leading commando raids against the Viet Minh. But his methods, which included launching ambushes dressed as a Viet, were frowned upon by senior officers, and after five months he returned to France. Life there bored him, and he travelled: first to Cameroon, for three years, then to Venezuela for two. He returned to rejoin French special forces in time for Suez

These are the kinds of exploits that make Bond seem tame.

Failbook

Bronte Capital on the ‘Failbook’ IPO:

The Wall Street Journal… derides Michael Grimes (the Morgan Stanley Banker) for not standing up to David Ebersman (Facebook’s CFO) and allowing Facebook to sell too many shares at too high a price. This is tits-up-backward. David Ebersman in this context is the client. He paid the fees. Michael Grimes had a duty to act in Ebersman’s interest. Ebersman wanted to sell more shares at a higher price. Michael Grimes and Morgan Stanley obliged even at the cost to their own franchise.

And for that he is being pilloried in the press.

What we have here is an investment banker acting ethically. And the whole financial press is a twitter about it.

And the SEC is investigating.

The financial world is slowly sinking into a circle-jerk of farce. (via)

Aaron Sorkin on Relationships

Aaron Sorkin delivered a commencement speech at Syracuse University last week, ranging over a wide field of topics as is usual for Sorkin. Two things I found were incredibly poignant and to the point on relationships:

There’s a story about a man and a woman who have been married for 40 years.  One evening at dinner the woman turns to her husband and says, “You know, 40 years ago on our wedding day you told me that you loved me and you haven’t said those words since.” They sit in silence for a long moment before the husband says “If I change my mind, I’ll let you know.”

I don’t know the full story, but this is now stored in my head as my favourite anecdote about the male way of thinking. The next was part of a wish for success:

For the class of 2012, I wish you joy. I wish you health and happiness and success, I wish you a roof, four walls, a floor and someone in your life that you care about more than you care about yourself. Someone who makes you start saying “we” where before you used to say “I” and “us” where you used to say “me.”

Perfect sentiment.

The Value of Interface Design

If you can recall, a couple of years ago Air France flight 447 crashed in the Atlantic off the coast of South America. The follow-up investigation is returning a report finally, and the conclusion is a bit grim:

It seems surprising that Airbus has conceived a system preventing one pilot from easily assessing the actions of the colleague beside him. And yet that is how their latest generations of aircraft are designed. The reason is that, for the vast majority of the time, side sticks are superb. “People are aware that they don’t know what is being done on the other side stick, but most of the time the crews fly in full automation; they are not even touching the stick,” says Captain King. “We hand-fly the aeroplane ever less now because automation is reliable and efficient, and because fatigue is an issue. [The side stick] is not an issue that comes up – very rarely does the other pilot’s input cause you concern.”

Boeing has always begged to differ, persisting with conventional controls on its fly-by-wire aircraft, including the new 787 Dreamliner, introduced into service this year. Boeing’s cluttering and old-fashioned levers still have to be pushed and turned like the old mechanical ones, even though they only send electronic impulses to computers. They need to be held in place for a climb or a turn to be accomplished, which some pilots think is archaic and distracting.

The American manufacturer was concerned about side sticks’ lack of visual and physical feedback. Indeed, it is hard to believe AF447 would have fallen from the sky if it had been a Boeing. Had a traditional yoke been installed on Flight AF447, Robert would surely have realised that his junior colleague had the lever pulled back and mostly kept it there. When Dubois returned to the cockpit he would have seen that Bonin was pulling up the nose.

Somewhat scary to think something so seemingly simple could cascade so catastrophically. That’s not to say the entire blame lies with Airbus, but it certainly highlights the message that making things obvious in a complex interface, even if feedback from users contradicts the decision, can pay off in situations not commonly envisaged.

(via df)