Baby Steps

I guess someone is interested in sorting through the chaos of the SIPRnet. Of course most of the problems Lockheed Martin’s new Contrail system solves could be fixed by eliminating the vast majority of middle management within the intelligence community.

Of Mice and Men

If not for the cat,
And the scarcity of cheese,
I could be content.

Effortless…the way a haiku should sound. From the book by Jack Prelutsky.

Only in Providence

The August meeting of the Providence Society of Financial Analysts featured a presentation on corporate governance by the president of the Providence Consulting Group, Dennis Michaud. The entire presentation centered around a study he recently conducted on the adoption of stock based compensation. Somehow, this man got several organizations to sponsor an 18 month study which resulted in a regression that shows stock based compensation has no effect on either ROI or EVA. Apparently some of the Brown University grad students earned credit for collecting data on CEO compensation as well as calculating ROI and EVA. While I am as astounded by his results as I am surprised that companies actually hire this man, I feel that the free lunch did not adaquately compensate me for two hours of my life that I will never get back.

China is not Russia

So often western reporting on China is skewed due to cultural misunderstanding and apparent unwillingness of journalists to write articles that might require critical thinking from their audience. The discussion of Chinese Internet controls is particularly skewed because western reporting often disregards the long term impact on behavior under a system that avoids Soviet style outright repression which might inspire rebellion in favor of intermittent blocks which make access so frustrating that the user eventually gives up. James Fallows of The Atlantic has an excellent article on this subject with much more detail. Western audiences would be better served by media that addressed how Chinese view the world so that western countries can make more informed foreign policy decisions. This would promote a more efficient allocation of defense spending by making soft power more effective and reducing the need for unnecessary conflicts.