A plethora of highly useful insight, challenges to convention and new data makes these a must-read.
Andrew McAfee. Big Data's Biggest Challenge: Convincing People Not to Trust Their Judgment slipped through the cracks in December. But McAfee, Associate Director of the Center for Digital Business at the MIT Sloan School of Management, studies the ways information technology affects businesses and business as a whole. This article is a classic take-down of the so-called expert. It teaches you that expertise in one area certainly doesn't mean that you're an expert in big data. Teaching people not to trust their judgment is a losing battle. But it needs to be fought. McAfee is one of those smart guys with the urge to impose order on chaos. Superb how-to. It's a keeper.
Laura Pappano. Learning to Think Differently. Now at the Center for Women at Wellesley, Pappano is at it again. The award-winning journalist writes in education, social issues, politics and gender and inevitably makes you think--often differently. But this article tells you how to do it. It shows a non-creative how to get creative. Most significantly, it warns that if you...
Boorstein and Craighill. Pope Francis Faces Church Divided Over Doctrine. This exceptionally large poll showcases the divisions. Western Europe, North America and Latin American Catholics are all fussing over the same issues: contraception, abortion, gender (GLBT), divorce and female priests. The more appropriate term is not "division," but a hemispheric chasm. No wonder Francis is downplaying social issues, including the gay problem for the church. I was surprised to learn that some of my hunches were dead-wrong. Obviously, I don't understand the Argentinians and Brazilians. But Francis, a Jesuit, is a member of a discipline that often leans liberal, politically and theologically, and is more concerned with social and economic justice than with matters of doctrinal purity. Jesuits were in the forefront of the movement known as liberation theology, which encouraged the oppressed to unite along class lines and seek change. Francis is probably not consistent, especially since he came down hard on some of the local liberation theologians in the priesthood.Still...?
Michael Gerson.A Coke ad crystallizes GOP’s immigration problems. Gerson won't win all of his Republican friends on this one. But typically--and thankfully, he hews to his Evangelical faith when it's in conflict with his political party. He also doesn't seem to mind giving the finger to the right-wing when he views it as appropriate. Here's a very thoughtful example, quoting his old boss, Jack Kemp, on immigration and color: "We sound like we don’t want immigration. We sound like we don’t want black people to vote for us. What are we going to do — meet in a country club in the suburbs one day?”
The Case for a Higher Minimum Wage. This has all the research. Especially valuable since over the past 20 years economists have been able to compare states that "raised the wage above the federal level with those that did not." Does the minimum wage kill jobs? NOPE! The evidence is settled. And a recent letter to POTUS and Congress, signed by 600 economists, answers the question. Of course, as many have demonstrated, you can always lie.
Schumpeter. Those Who Can't, Teach: The Business School Bubble. This is another one of the articles questioning the demise of some business schools. It doesn't really question their value, but that is a desparate need, too. Academic inflation, image problems and the threat of open online courses are just part of the problem. Schumpeter's tag is that business schools are better at analysing disruptive innovation that at dealing with it. As a consultant, I'm well aware that there are MBA's and there are MBA's. Hey, they ain't all the Big Seven (Chicago, Harvard, Northwestern, Penn, Columbia, Stanford and MIT--and sometimes Dartmouth's Tuck). There are also other more useful routes to graduate school. Especially since some MBA's are merely a reflection of trade school--with degrees outdated a year after graduation. Some of the wise guys are now taking different graduate school routes, like info tech. My buddy is going the route of applied economics. Which is to say that an MBA isn't the only potential route to business career success. (That's an understatement.) I never had a business course, either, but neither did Peter Drucker. That ought to prove something.
In addition, two obituaries on Philip Seymour Hoffman. I'm surprised to see a full page in The Economist.
But the other by Aaron Sorkin in Time is wise and knowing. Hoffman was "everyone and everything." He acted in two terrifying dramas I've never forgotten. I've never had the courage to finish the Talented Mr Ripley. It was too frightening. I would have loved to have seen him in Death of a Salesman, a play I've seen at least four times. But also a play that is the most terrifying work of human identity I've ever experienced. I still remember how much Salesman got inside my gut in college--and then, The Guthrie. Aaargh!
Flickr photo: Claudias Paper Crafts (NL)