It’s been a while since I’ve done a news chum, but today’s lunchtime reading has identified a few, ahem, bullet points of interest:
- From the “That Insidious Microsoft” Department: The Department of Defense has identified a new enemy in the war in Afghanistan: Powerpoint Charts. Quoting the NY Times, “Like an insurgency, PowerPoint has crept into the daily lives of military commanders and reached the level of near obsession. The amount of time expended on PowerPoint, the Microsoft presentation program of computer-generated charts, graphs and bullet points, has made it a running joke in the Pentagon and in Iraq and Afghanistan.” Or, to quote Gen. James N. Mattis of the Marine Corps, the Joint Forces commander: “PowerPoint makes us stupid”. In other words, complex offensive and defensive interrrelationship cannot be boiled down to 7 +/- 2 bullet points. Does this come to any surprise to those that work with the DOD?
- From the “Should I or Shouldn’t I?” Department: The Los Angles Times/Chicago Tribune has an interesting ethical question: Should you Facebook-friend your doctor?. Its an interesting question: although it might give them insight into your life, it might give you too much insight into theirs. Where do you draw the line? I just faced the question the other day when I was trying to decide whether to friend a financial advisor. Doing it would give them more insight into what I do (and how funds are spent), but it might give me more insight into them as well. Quite a large number of ethical questions: the article is an interesting read.
- From the “Restuarants Past and Gone, or perhaps not…” Department: The LA Times magazine has a nice article on Orhan Arli, who has preserved the memory and the dishes of famous Los Angeles restaurant, Chasens. I never ate there (I always percieved it as too expensive and hard to get into), but I found this article interesting for the description of the dishes, and how such a “fancy” restaurant really had down-home cooking.
- From the “Pop Goes The Bubble” Department: Many many years ago, Tom Paxton sang a song of a scourge that couldn’t be stopped: Too many lawyers. Turns out he was quite prescient: it looks like there’s a bubble forming in the value of a law degree. In other words, tuition hikes in law schools, combined with the number of lawyers out of work is creating a situation where it is no longer the guaranteed high-paying career to go into law. I’d argue this isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but it is still people we are talking about.
