"Someone like you"

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This woman has incredible pipes. Here's Adele at the 2011 Brit awards...

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"Good-bye to all that..."

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Harry Patch died last week in England. It was the expected outcome for a man of 111. But it is a notable death because with Harry Patch goes the last living memory of trench warfare experienced nearly a century ago during The Great War - known now as World War 1. This story on CNN.com is a wonderful summary of Patch's life. He was a plumber before and after his stint in the trenches. He saw some of the worst warfare man has ever experienced: "He fought and was seriously wounded in Ypres, Belgium, in 1917 at the Battle of Passchendaele, in which 70,000 of his fellow soldiers died -- including three of his close friends." That's a placid little sentence to describe the slaughter of 70,000 men. A horror Patch refused to talk about until he turned 100 years old. Here's a YouTube video that shows some photos and film footage from the Battle of Passchendaele: You can hear the survivor's voice in this video shot at Passchendaele about two years ag...
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Outsourced! (The Hyatt Way...)

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Thanks to the recession, the Hyatt hotels in Boston have experienced a significant drop in revenues - 21 percent. The corporation's response to such challenging times? According to this story , they fired their housekeeping staff - approximately 100 people. In their place, Hyatt brought in 100 housekeepers who agreed to work for half ($8.00/hour vs. $15/hour) of what the fired employees had gotten. And no benefits. The fired workers had been getting health insurance through Hyatt. Here's how Hyatt characterized the move: "'As part of an ongoing drive to address challenging economic conditions, the Hyatt hotels of Boston have restructured their housekeeping services,’ according to a statement from the hotel. 'Regrettably, the restructuring included staff reductions.'" Bringing in employees to replace the ones you've fired is not a "staff reduction." It's a transformation of the workplace. It's letting go of people, so...
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On the failure of "the invisible hand" to influence our financial sector

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In Alan Greenspan's book, The Age of Turbulence , one of the issues he explores is the failure of economic populism in Latin America. Here are his thoughts: " The dictionary defines 'populism' as a political philosophy that supports the rights and power of the people, usually in opposition to a privileged elite. I see economic populism as a response by an impoverished populace to a failing society, one characterized by an economic elite who are perceived as oppressors. Under economic populism, the government accedes to the demands of the people, with little regard for either individual rights or the economic realities of how the wealth of a nation is increased or even sustained." So in Greenspan's view as a self-described Libertarian Republican, economic populism comes to life in "failing societies" that have significant income inequality and are dominated by an economic elite. And in Greenspan's mind, it is not the government that can make t...
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