Month: October 2015

Workers May Prefer to Have More Workcations than Fewer Vacations

(p. B6) . . . for various reasons, people might choose or need to work from remote destinations, and logging in from the beach may be more relaxing than clocking into the office.
Adds Kenneth Matos, senior director of research at the Families and Work Institute: “Is the workcation detracting from the vacation you were going to have, or is it enabling the vacation you otherwise wouldn’t have had?”
. . .
For Bill Raymond, Disney World proved an ideal workcation destination. In February, Mr. Raymond and his wife flew from their suburban Boston home to Orlando, where they spent a couple of days touring the theme park.
For the next two days, Mr. Raymond, a solutions architect at enterprise search firm Voyager Search, clocked full workdays from the Orlando resort, hunkering down with his laptop and taking sales calls by the pool.
Mr. Raymond even wrote a post on his personal blog with tips on how to be a productive “workcationer” at Disney, pinpointing locations at the resort that offer fewer distractions. (Among his top picks were the pool at the Disney Port Orleans French Quarter resort, which he says wasn’t “overrun with kids being kids.”)
Brian Goldin, Voyager’s chief executive and Mr. Raymond’s boss, was “totally fine” with the arrangement. “The idea of the traditional office environment doesn’t really exist that much,” Mr. Goldin says.
. . .
The working vacation kept Ms. Granzella Larssen, 32 years old, current with her email; she also felt more productive in a tropical setting because she wasn’t being pulled into impromptu meetings. And despite being by the beach, “I felt completely plugged in.”

For the full commentary, see:
RACHEL EMMA SILVERMAN. “This Summer, How About a Workcation?” The Wall Street Journal (Weds., June 24, 2015): B1 & B6.
(Note: ellipses added.)
(Note: the online version of the commentary has the date June 23, 2015, has the title “This Summer, How About a Workcation?”)

FCC Gains Arbitrary Power Over Internet Innovation

(p. A11) Imagine if Steve Jobs, Larry Page or Mark Zuckerberg had been obliged to ask bureaucrats in Washington if it was OK to launch the iPhone, Gmail, or Facebook’s forthcoming Oculus virtual-reality service. Ridiculous, right? Not anymore.
A few days before the Independence Day holiday weekend, the Federal Communications Commission announced what amounts to a system of permission slips for the Internet.
. . .
As the FCC begins to issue guidance and enforcement actions, it’s becoming clearer that critics who feared there would be significant legal uncertainty were right. Under its new “transparency” rule, for example, the agency on June 17 conjured out of thin air an astonishing $100 million fine against AT&T, even though the firm explained its mobile-data plans on its websites and in numerous emails and texts to customers.
The FCC’s new “Internet Conduct Standard,” meanwhile, is no standard at all. It is an undefined catchall for any future behavior the agency doesn’t like.
. . .
From the beginning, Internet pioneers operated in an environment of “permissionless innovation.” FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler now insists that “it makes sense to have somebody watching over their shoulder and ready to jump in if necessary.” But the agency is jumping in to demand that innovators get permission before they offer new services to consumers. The result will be less innovation.

For the full commentary, see:
BRET SWANSON. “Permission Slips for Internet Innovation; The FCC’s new Web rules are already as onerous as feared and favor some business models over others.” The Wall Street Journal (Sat., Aug. 15, 2015): A11.
(Note: ellipses added.)
(Note: the online version of the commentary has the date Aug. 14, 2015.)

Stress Can Help Us Do Well

(p. C3) “We’re bombarded with information about how bad stress is,” says Jeremy Jamieson, a professor of psychology at the University of Rochester who specializes in stress. But the conventional view, he says, fails to appreciate the many ways in which physical and psychological tension can help us to perform better.
In research published in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology in 2010, Prof. Jamieson tested his theory with college students who were preparing to take the Graduate Record Examination, which is used for admission to Ph.D. programs. He invited 60 students to take a practice GRE and collected saliva samples from them beforehand to get baseline measures of their levels of alpha-amylase, a hormonal indicator of stress. He told them that the goal of the study was to examine how the physiological stress response affects performance.
He then gave half the students a brief pep talk to help them rethink their pre-exam nervousness. “People think that feeling anxious while taking a standardized test will make them do poorly,” he told them. “However, recent research suggests that stress doesn’t hurt performance on these tests and can even help performance. People who feel anxious during a test might actually do better…. If you find yourself feeling anxious, simply remind yourself that your stress could be helping you do well.”
It worked: Students who received the mind-set intervention scored higher on the practice exam than those in the control group. Nor could the difference in GRE scores be attributed to differences in ability: Students had been randomly assigned to the two groups and didn’t differ, on average, in their SAT scores or college GPAs.

For the full commentary, see:
KELLY MCGONIGAL. “Stressed Out? Embrace It; To perform under pressure, research finds that welcoming anxiety is more helpful than calming down.” The Wall Street Journal (Sat., May 16, 2015): C3.
(Note: ellipsis in original.)
(Note: the online version of the commentary has the date May 15, 2015, and has the title “Use Stress to Your Advantage; To perform under pressure, research finds that welcoming anxiety is more helpful than calming down.”)

McGonigal’s book, related to her commentary quoted above, is:
McGonigal, Kelly. The Upside of Stress: Why Stress Is Good for You, and How to Get Good at It. New York: Avery, 2015.

The research article mentioned in the passages quoted above, is:
Jamieson, Jeremy P., Wendy Berry Mendes, Erin Blackstock, and Toni Schmader. “Turning the Knots in Your Stomach into Bows: Reappraising Arousal Improves Performance on the GRE.” Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 46, no. 1 (Jan. 2010): 208-12.

Affluent Are More Likely to Work During Retirement

That the affluent are more than twice as likely to work past retirement, may be a sign that the better paying jobs are also the more satisfying jobs.

(p. B9) But retirement isn’t for everyone. Affluent individuals are more than twice as likely as other people to keep working in retirement, according to a July survey by Bank of America’s Merrill Lynch and Age Wave, a research firm based in Emeryville, Calif., that specializes in aging populations.

Some 33% of retirees with $1 million to $5 million in assets are working, as are 29% of those with more than $5 million. Most say they do so because they want to, not because they have to, according to the survey.
Half of affluent working retirees have shifted to a different line of work, most often because of greater flexibility of scheduling, the opportunity to experience new things, and the pursuit of a passion or interest, the survey found.
The results show how important it is to consider what you will do with your time and to think hard about whether that will be satisfying.

For the full commentary, see:
LIZ MOYER. “Can You Afford to Retire Early?” The Wall Street Journal (Sat., Aug. 2, 2014): B7 & B9.
(Note: the online version of the commentary has the date Aug. 1, 2014.)

“We Embrace New Technology”

(p. 2D) . . . , the first digital images created by the earliest digital cameras “were terrible,” Rockbrook’s Chuck Fortina said. “These were real chunky images made by big, clunky cameras.”
Viewing those results, some retailers dismissed the new digital technology and clung doggedly to film. But Rockbrook Camera began stocking digital cameras alongside models that used film, Fortina said.
“Film sales were great, but we just knew digital was going to take over,” Fortina said. As those cameras and their images improved, the retailer saw a huge opportunity. ”Instead of thinking this is going to kill our business, we were thinking people are going to have to buy all new gear,” Fortina said of the switch from analog to digital.
“By 2000, film was over,” he said. Companies that didn’t refocus their business found themselves struggling or forced to close their doors.
Today, Rockbrook Camera is constantly scouring the Internet, attending trade shows and quizzing customers and employees in search of new technologies, Fortina said. “We embrace new technology,” he said.

For the full story, see:
Janice Podsada. “More Ready than Not for Tech Shifts; How 3 Omaha-area businesses altered course and thrived amid technological changes.” Omaha World-Herald (SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 27, 2015 ): 1D-2D.
(Note: ellipsis added.)
(Note: the online version of the story has the title “How 3 Omaha-area businesses altered course and thrived amid technological changes.”)

Entrepreneurs Creating Healthy, Tasty Meat, Without Killing Animals

(p. B2) “The next couple of years will be exciting ones,” says Joseph D. Puglisi, a Stanford University professor of structural biology who is working on meat alternatives. “We can use a broad range of plant protein sources and create a palette of textures and tastes — for example, jerky, cured meats, sausage, pork.”
“The true challenge will be to recreate more complex pieces of meat that are the pinnacle of the meat industry,” he added. “I believe that plausible, good-tasting steaks and pork loins are only a matter of time.”
Puglisi is advising Beyond Meat, a start-up that is a leader in the field, with investments from Bill Gates and both Biz Stone and Ev Williams of Twitter fame, not to mention Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, the venture capital firm that backed Google and Amazon. Beyond Meat says its sales are doubling each year.
“We’re really focused on the mainstream,” said Ethan Brown, the founder of Beyond Meat, over a lunch of fake chili, meatballs and hamburgers.
. . .
“We want to create the next great American meat company,” Brown says. “That’s the dream.”
. . .
The mainstream food industry isn’t saying much publicly. But recently released documents from the American Egg Board, a quasi-governmental body, show it regarded Hampton Creek’s egg-free “Just Mayo” spread as a “major threat.” In one internal email, an Egg Board executive jokingly suggests hiring a hit man to deal with Hampton Creek.
. . .
. . . if I can still enjoy a juicy burger now and then, while boosting my health, helping the environment and avoiding the brutalizing of farm animals, hey, I’m in!

For the full commentary, see:
Nicholas Kristof. “The (Fake) Meat Revolution.” The New York Times, SundayReview Section (Sun., SEPT. 20, 2015): 11.
(Note: the online version of the commentary has the date SEPT. 19, 2015.)

John Paul Stapp Thumbed His Nose at the Precautionary Principle

(p. C7) In the early 19th century, a science professor in London named Dionysus Lardner rejected the future of high-speed train travel because, he said, “passengers, unable to breathe, would die of asphyxia.” A contemporary, the famed engineer Thomas Tredgold, agreed, noting “that any general system of conveying passengers . . . [traveling] at a velocity exceeding 10 miles an hour, or thereabouts, is extremely improbable.”
The current land speed for a human being is 763 miles an hour, or thereabouts, thanks in large part to the brilliance, bravery and dedication of a U.S. Air Force lieutenant colonel named John Paul Stapp, a wonderfully iconoclastic medical doctor, innovator and renegade consumer activist who repeatedly put his own life in peril in search of the line beyond which human survival at speed really was “extremely improbable.”
. . .
Initial tests were carried out on a crash-test dummy named Oscar Eightball, then chimpanzees and pigs. There was plenty of trial and error–the term “Murphy’s Law” was coined during the Gee Whiz experiments–until Stapp couldn’t resist strapping himself into the Gee Whiz to experience firsthand what the cold data could never reveal: what it felt like. On May 5, 1948, for example, he “took a peak deceleration of an astounding twenty-four times the force of gravity,” the author writes. “This was the equivalent of a full stop from 75 miles per hour in just seven feet or, in other words, freeway speed to zero in the length of a very tall man.”
Stapp endured a total of 26 rides on the Gee Whiz over the course of 50 months, measuring an array of physiological factors as well as testing prototype helmets and safety belts. Along the way he suffered a broken wrist, torn rib cartilage, a bruised collarbone, a fractured coccyx, busted capillaries in both eyes and six cracked dental fillings. Colleagues became increasingly concerned for his health every time he staggered, gamely, off the sled, but, according to Mr. Ryan, he never lost his sense of humor, nor did these ordeals stop Dr. Stapp from voluntarily making house calls at night for families stationed on the desolate air base.
. . .
After 29 harrowing trips down the track, Stapp prepared for one grand finale, what he called the “Big Run,” hoping to achieve 600 miles per hour, the speed beyond which many scientists suspected that human survivability was–really, this time–highly improbable. On Dec. 10, 1954, Sonic Wind marked a speed of 639 miles per hour, faster than a .45 caliber bullet shot from a pistol. Film footage of the test shows the sled rocketing past an overhead jet plane that was filming the event. The Big Run temporarily blinded Stapp, and he turned blue for a few days, but the experiment landed him on the cover of Time magazine as the fastest man on earth. The record stood for the next 30 years.

For the full review, see:
PATRICK COOKE. “Faster Than a Speeding Bullet–Really.” The Wall Street Journal (Sat., Aug. 22, 2015): C7.
(Note: first ellipsis, and bracketed word, in original; other ellipses added.)
(Note: the online version of the review has the date Aug. 21, 2015.)

The book under review, is:
Ryan, Craig. Sonic Wind: The Story of John Paul Stapp and How a Renegade Doctor Became the Fastest Man on Earth. New York: Liveright Publishing Corp., 2015.

Should You Care How Other People Perceive You?

(p. B2) Sadly, it does appear that being flawed in one area may help in others. In an article in The Atlantic titled “Why It Pays to Be a Jerk,” the author Jerry Useem quotes several studies that show that nice guys don’t usually win. Donald Hambrick, a management professor at Penn State, told the magazine, “To the extent that innovation and risk-taking are in short supply in the corporate world, narcissists are the ones who are going to step up to the plate.”
Not everyone thinks Jobs was a jerk. Eddy Cue, Apple’s senior vice president for Internet software and services, wrote on Twitter that he felt the Gibney film was “an inaccurate and meanspirited view of my friend. It’s not a reflection of the Steve I knew.”
But the black hat-white hat version of Jobs may be too confining.
In a fascinating interview last year with Graydon Carter of Vanity Fair, Jonathan Ive, Apple’s famed designer and longtime friend of Jobs, recounted a telling story. He remembered a time when Jobs had been tough — too tough, in Mr. Ive’s estimation — on his team. Mr. Ive pulled him aside and told him to be bit nicer. “Well, why?” Jobs replied. “Because I care about the team,” Mr. Ive responded. “And he said this brutally, brilliantly insightful thing, which was, ‘No, Jony, you’re just really vain,’ ” Mr. Ive recalled. “He said, ‘You just want people to like you, and I’m surprised at you because I thought you really held the work up as the most important, not how you believed you were perceived by other people.’ ”
That story and the documentary left me with me with two questions: Would you rather do something extraordinary that benefits the lives of millions of people? Or be liked by several hundred? And does it have to be an either-or question?
The answer, like Jobs, is complicated.

For the full commentary, see:
Andrew Ross Sorkin. “Decoding Steve Jobs, in Life and on Film.” The New York Times (Tues., SEPT. 8, 2015): B1-B2.
(Note: the online version of the commentary has the date SEPT. 7, 2015.)

French Billionaire Entrepreneur Starts Small and Cuts Costs

On Mon., October 13, 2014, Iliad dropped its bid for T-Mobile, after lack of interest from some of the T-Mobile board and from the majority owner, Deutsche Telekom AG.

(p. B1) Iliad wants to improve T-Mobile US’s cost structure by applying its own ultraslim cost base, under which it has kept costs to a minimum in everything from IT services to back office to equipment purchases. Iliad estimates it will be able to save about $2 billion annually by cutting out costs such as sending paper bills, and savings on equipment and IT systems, Mr. Niel said.
. . .
(p. B4) . . . before Mr. Niel can execute his American dream, Iliad has to win over T-Mobile US’s board, which could prove a formidable challenge.
. . .
He says he is sticking to the same principle that has guided his ascent from a teenage computer programmer in a working class Paris suburb to one of France’s richest men.
“I always follow the same idea: Start small and disrupt to create something big,” he said.

For the full story, see:
RUTH BENDER. “Will This Billionaire Bring $3-a-Month Phone Plans to U.S.?” The Wall Street Journal (Sat., Aug. 2, 2014): B1 & B4.
(Note: ellipses added.)
(Note: the online version of the story says it was updated on Aug. 4, 2014.)

Feds Constrain Startups

(p. A15) Virtually every state has suffered a drop in startups, which suggests that this is a national, and not a regional or state, problem.
. . .
If history is any indication, many of today’s economic heavyweights will ultimately decline as new businesses take their place. Research by the Kaufman Foundation shows that only about half of the 1995 Fortune 500 firms remained on the list in 2010.
Startups also have declined in high technology. John Haltiwanger of the University of Maryland reports that there are fewer startups in high technology and information-processing since 2000, as well as fewer high-growth startups–annual employment growth of more than 25%–across all sectors. Even more troubling is that the smaller number of high-growth startups is not growing as quickly as in the past.
. . .
Surveys by John Dearie and Courtney Gerduldig, authors of “Where the Jobs Are: Entrepreneurship and the Soul of the American Economy” (2013), show that entrepreneurs report being hamstrung by difficulties in finding skilled workers, by a complex tax code that penalizes small business, by regulations that raise the costs of doing business, and by difficulties in obtaining financing that have worsened since 2008.

For the full story, see:
EDWARD C. PRESCOTT and LEE E. OHANIAN. “Behind the Productivity Plunge: Fewer Startups; New businesses were created at a 30% lower rate in 2012 than the annual average rate in the 1980s.” The Wall Street Journal (Thurs., June 26, 2014): A15.
(Note: ellipses added.)
(Note: the online version of the story has the date June 25, 2014.)

“You Can Recognize the People Who Live for Others by the Haunted Look on the Faces of the Others”

(p. C21) In her first book, “Strangers Drowning,” Larissa MacFarquhar, a staff writer for The New Yorker, reports . . . about extreme do-gooders, people whose self-sacrifice and ethical commitment are far outside what we think of as the normal range.
. . .
A line from Clive James’s memoir “North Face of Soho” comes to mind. He quotes the journalist Katherine Whitehorn: “You can recognize the people who live for others by the haunted look on the faces of the others.”
. . .
(p. C26) It was Kant who observed that, as the author writes, “it was fortunate that so few men acted according to moral principle, because it was so easy to get principles wrong, and a determined person acting on mistaken principles could really do some damage.”
. . .
Charity begins at home, most of us would agree. Not for many of the people in “Strangers Drowning.” In their moral calculus, the goal is to help the most people, even if that means neglecting those close by, even spouses or children.
One of the interesting threads Ms. MacFarquhar picks up is the notion that, for extreme altruists, the best way to help relieve suffering may not be to travel to Africa, let’s say, to open a clinic or help build a dam. It is far more noble and effective — though less morally swashbuckling — simply to find the highest-paying job you can and give away most of your salary. She finds people who live this way.

For the full review, see:
DWIGHT GARNER. “Books of The Times; Samaritans and Other Troublemakers.” The New York Times (Fri., SEPT. 25, 2015): C21 & C26.
(Note: ellipses added.)
(Note: the online version of the review has the date SEPT. 24, 2015, and has the title “Review: ‘Strangers Drowning’ Examines Extreme Do-Gooders.”)

The book under review, is:
MacFarquhar, Larissa. Strangers Drowning: Grappling with Impossible Idealism, Drastic Choices, and the Overpowering Urge to Help. New York: Penguin Press, 2015.