Widgetitis: Obsessive compulsion to build canals with teaspoons – or meet program goals with showerheads. A short story about economist Milton Friedman from The Wall Street Journal sort of sets the stage for effectively meeting program/portfolio goals in big chunks: “Milton recalled traveling to an Asian country in the 1960s and visiting a worksite where a new canal was being built. He was shocked to see that, instead of modern tractors and earth movers, the workers had shovels. He asked why there were so few machines. The government bureaucrat explained: “You don’t understand. This is a jobs program.” To which…
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I swear we were introduced to the food pyramid when I was in grade school but a little web searching gives me just a couple – the one from 1992 and the new and improved one in 2005.The 1992 edition is shown in Figure 1. If you can’t read it, good. The 2005 vertical colorful edition with the stickman and skewers for hands and feet is shown in Figure 2. For 2011 (Figure 3), the USDA has switched to this brilliant “plate” that looks like a pie chart developed by a group of kindergarteners employed by Microsoft, except I really…
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Some things in life you have to fully commit yourself to or they will end in colossal failure, or immeasurably small success. When I was a kid I played Evel Knievel by setting up ramps of 2x12 planks and concrete blocks. I jumped my bike across maybe a five foot “canyon”. Note, this was before mountain bikes. Gary Fischer may have been developing his mountain bike in his garage but there was nothing available on the market. I used a purple girl’s bike, single speed, no shock absorbers, no foot clips, and certainly no helmet. Why the girl’s bike? The…
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I stay in hotels/motels probably 40-50 nights per year, at least it seems so. If lodging facilities were in a league of teams competing to be the greenest facilities, these guys would be the Detroit Lions. Most franchise motels, those not located in downtown high rise buildings, are built with the cheapest, crappiest stuff possible. The only thing that is decent in them is the TV but sometimes even that is a junky 19 inch CRT clunker. Who has spent a night in room with through-wall air conditioner/heater with a temperature control knob that spins round and round like the…
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Last week these columns featured Wal-Mart and its silencing of critics via green and sustainable business practices. Are they really saving energy compared to their peers? Skylights, dimming fluorescent lights, and LED refrigerated case lights triggered by occupancy sensors – but what’s the totality? Lexus makes hybrid vehicles. One is a $110,000 sedan with a 5 liter V8 with fighter-jet horsepower weighing in at 20 miles per gallon. A Caterpillar earth mover may get that kind of highway mileage. The point is, a facility / organization can be green in name only. Note that in no way am I inferring…
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Unless you were living in a cave four or five years ago, you know Wal-Mart was under relentless assault by, I’ll just call them activists. Complaints included: They weren’t providing health care to enough people. They weren’t paying overtime. Their goods were manufactured in sweat shops overseas. When unions tried to organize their meat cutting operations, Wal-Mart exited the meat cutting business. Their executives were making too much money. The company was making too much money. Part of the real gripe was that Wal-Mart had saturated the rural and small town markets and they had started to impinge into larger…
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