“Isn’t that how the last depression started?”

September 25, 2008

Econ, government teachers:  Are you ready to explain this one?

“China banks told to halt lending to U.S. banks“

And then this one:

“China denies shunning foreign banks“

“Fasten your seatbelts; it’s going to be a bumpy ride.”

1 Comment | Business, China, Economics, Financial literacy, News, Newspapers | Tagged: , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Dallas to cut nearly 700 teachers

September 25, 2008

Let’s get back to education nuts and bolts for a while.  I have not commented on this partly because I’ve been on the road and just busier than most teachers with three preps, and partly because this is just jaw-droppingly unbelievable stuff.

Education nuts, anyway, maybe without the bolts.

Officials at Dallas Independent School District (DISD) announced over a week ago they had discovered an accounting error that led to hiring too many new teachers, and a $64 million shortfall.  The Board of Trustees asked for more details to a plan proposed last week that includes layoffs of teachers, including some that were newly-hired.

The second report is due this afternoon, and the DISD Board will meet tonight to consider action.  If people are not cut, the budget shortfall will double in the rest of this fiscal year.

Most teachers have been working on estimates that 750 teachers will be axed, which works out to about 3 from each campus.

The Dallas Morning News’s DISD Blog says fewer than 750 will go.

More employees could be laid off than expected. We’re hearing from a good source that 1,209 employees would be let go if the board approves to have a reduction in force at today’s 3 p.m. meeting.

The layoff numbers breakdown like this:

Central office – 164
Campus non-contract support staff – 250
Campus administrators – 50
Teachers – 675
Non-teaching campus support staff – 70

One more battle lost in the War on Education.  For Dallas, this is a big one, for the effects on morale alone.

Coupled with the collapse of schools in Milwaukee, lack of gasoline in Tennessee, the unmitigated and unreported natural disaster from the storm named Gustav that hit Baton Rouge, the known disaster caused by Hurricane and Tropical Depression Ike, one might be excuse for thinking much of the U.S. is sinking to second- or third-world status.  Oh, and did I mention that most of our larger financial institutions are in ruins, too?

As one of the more recent hires in Dallas ISD, excuse me while I go back to working with the kids.

What?  You thought I’d have time to chew my fingernails?  You don’t know jack about teaching, or teachers, if you thought that.

Stay tuned.  Check out resources listed below.

Resources:

1 Comment | Business, Education, Education spending, Government, No Child Left Behind Act, Politics, Teaching, Texas, War on Education | Tagged: , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Private, personal historian?

September 21, 2008

Here’s a career you don’t often see touted at high school career days:  Professional personal historian.

I’ve known of companies and non-profits who hire a historian to document their feats of derring-do, but this is the first I’ve heard of a personal historian.  Dan Curtis appears to be trying to make a career out of it.

It’s counterintuitive, but it might work.  As lawyers, we see a lot of people who would rather hide their histories than have them known more broadly.  But in the public relations game, we see professionals helping to polish the image and the stories of organizations and people.  Why not do it for yourself?

Perhaps, with professional help, you can find the narrative of your own history that will give you the hope, tenacity and guts to change your life for the better?

Seriously, check out the guy’s site.  He proposes several solutions for problems we have all faced — capturing history from terminally ill relatives, will-making, resolving end-of-life concerns, and simply recording the family history for posterity.

3 Comments | Business, Capturing history, Family, History | Tagged: , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Technology that doesn’t work – yet, or well

September 20, 2008

Episode One:  Finding a Toyota Dealer with misdirection from Verizon Wireless

We dropped the rental car off at O’Hare, and immediately I noticed the blower in our Toyota Camry wasn’t performing (2002, 128,000 miles, thank you).  We tried to live with it, but as the coolness of Wisconsin gave way to 80 degrees in Chicago, we thought we’d better get it fixed.

I’ve been faithful to Verizon Wireless, hoping to boost their stock and hoping that will benefit me as a former employee (but nothing yet).  I called their 411 service to find a Toyota dealer in Bloomington, Illinois, so we could get a quick check up on the blower motor, or whatever.  I should have been alert when the area code they gave me was 708, but I didn’t catch it.  The dealer was on Joliet Road.  I called them for directions, and they seemed perplexed, but gave me directions.  We steamed to Bloomington.  Literally.

Our atlas maps didn’t show Joliet Road in Bloomington.  We called for further directions, exit number, and landmarks.  When we entered the Bloomington area, we just couldn’t find it.

Did you know you can drive from Texas to Milwaukee and eat at Panera Bread outlets almost the entire distance on I-35?  We got lunch at Panera, gassed up the car, and then I had a fascinating conversation with a woman at the BP station, trying to get directions to Joliet Road.  She said she’d never heard of it.  We checked the maps.  No luck.  No listing in the index.  Then I had the good sense to ask what the area code of Bloomington is – it’s not 708.

Armed with the new information, we found Dennison Toyota in Bloomington (great place – see forthcoming post).  Joliet Road is near Chicago.  The dealer Verizon Wireless linked us to was miles behind us.

Technology 0, Humans 1.

Episode 2:  Walgreen’s automated prescription service

Kathryn came down with a doozy of the cold while fighting the remnants of Tropical Depression Ike, and when I spoke with her on Tuesday, she sounded nearly dead.  I feared sinus infection, but she refused to treat it like that.  So I flew up to help her drive back on time.

Wednesday afternoon, I started to get symptoms of a cold.  Since my sinus misfortunes while flying with American Airlines in a past life, most of the the time when I get a cold, I get a roaring sinus infection.  I call the physician with symptoms, he prescribes antibiotics.  Only once in the past ten years have we disagreed.

By Friday morning it was clear my work to keep the cold from becoming an infection had failed (I’ll spare you the specific clinical description).  From Wisconsin, I checked with my local Walgreen’s in Texas about picking up a prescription on the road.  Then I called the physician.  It was 1:00 p.m. before we got all the ducks lined up, and Springfield, Illinois, was the next major city.  I had to rely on Verizon Wireless again, but they at least got me to a Walgreen’s.

Walgreen’s’* people were most helpful.  I took the first available listing.  That store referred me to one just off the freeway.  Alas, my prescription had not yet shown up on the computer.  We had almost two hours to Springfield . . .

I confirmed the physician had phoned in the prescrip.  Then I checked with my local drugstore.  It didn’t show on their system.  We passed Springfield, Illinois, and focused on St. Louis.  Again, Walgreen’s’ people came through.  But the prescrip still didn’t show on the national computerized system.

One more check with the local, Texas pharmacy, and the technician let slip the problem:  While prescriptions are phoned in all day, the pharmacist doesn’t take them off the answering machine until the shift ends at 5:00 p.m.  Nothing would happen, technologically, until the humans intervened.

Walgreen’s found an outlet on the south and west side of St. Louis that would allow time for the prescription to show up in the system, and it was right off the freeway.  We got the prescription.  I’m on the mend.

Technology 1, Humans 2 more.

Final Score:  Technology 1, Humans 3.

*  What the heck is the possessive form of “Walgreen’s?”

3 Comments | Business, Business Ethics, Customer Care, Technology, Travel | Tagged: , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

African nations back off of limited DDT use

August 7, 2008

Anti-DDT business interests appear triumphant, if only temporarily,  in their efforts to stop the use of DDT in the fight against malaria.

ProtectAfrica.com reports use of DDT has been stopped in northern Uganda.  Nine corporations sued to stop the spraying.  New Visions reports a shift to a chemical named ICON for use in Indoor Residual Spraying, designed to protect people against mosquitoes in their homes.

I have links to stories saying Rwanda has abandoned DDT in the past few weeks, but none of the links work.

Meanwhile, from The East African in Nairobi, Kenya, comes the report that Tanzania became the first East African nation in recent years to use DDT for limited, indoor spraying. [But be wary of this source; the article also claims many nations outlawed DDT after 1972; not accurate in Africa, nor most other places.]

There is high irony in businesses opposing the use of DDT when environmental organizations in other nations do not oppose it.

6 Comments | Africa, Agriculture, Business, Business Ethics, DDT, Environmental protection, Health care, Science | Tagged: , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Russians leverage climate change for economic advantage: The Arctic Bridge

July 22, 2008

In the U.S. we still have people throwing themselves in front of Zambonis to protest doing anything about global warming. In Russia, warming is taken as a fact.

And so Russians get a leg up on U.S. companies, in this case working to open an Arctic “bridge” for shipping goods from Russia to Canada and back.

Bookmark this site, Arctic Economics, you economics and geography teachers.

3 Comments | Business, Climate change, Economics, Free market economics, Geography - Economic, Geography - Physical, Global warming, Globalization, Natural resources, oceans, Science, Transportation, Travel | Tagged: , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

News from Uganda? DDT, cotton, misreporting

July 13, 2008

In continuing efforts to slam environmentalists and Rachel Carson, Instapundit and RWDB complain (whine?) about the European Union’s efforts to block the importation of cotton from Uganda on fears of DDT contamination.

Meanwhile, back in Kampala, the news is that the EU has done the opposite, and is encouraging the use of DDT officially, not blocking its use at all. If DDT is used to fight malaria and not in uncontrolled agricultural use simply to keep products blemish-free, in carefully-controlled sprayings, EU has no complaints.

Is there any western news agency with a stringer in Kampala who could chase this story down? Beck and Reynolds still offer no evidence to back their odd claims, but the story could sure benefit from a solid chunk of reporting from BBC, or Reuters, or Agence France Presse, or someone who could talk with the EU and Uganda officials.

Other resources:

Full text of report, below the fold.

Read the rest of this entry »

2 Comments | Africa, Business, Business Ethics, DDT, Environmental protection, Health care, Hoaxes, Malaria, Rachel Carson, Science | Tagged: , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Instapundit screws up again (Uganda, cotton, DDT)

July 5, 2008

Instapundit loves to roil waters, but he’s low on content, and everytime I see it, low on accuracy, too.

This is the entirety of Glenn Beck’sReynolds’s post linking to the rabidly anti-Rachel Carson, RWDB with a rant about DDT that lacks several key points of accuracy:

THE HIGH COST OF fighting malaria.

Six words and he’s wrong already. That’s quite a skill to be dead wrong in six words.

Our friend, Mr. Beck, at RWDB, has a news report from Uganda, and rather than note it and check for accuracy, he uses it as a tee for numerous shots and mulligans against science, scientists, environmentalists, health care workers, the EU, and anyone else who inhabited his latest delerium.

The story out of Africa is that a buyer of organic cotton refused to buy Ugandan cotton due to DDT contamination. True to the line of recent events, it’s not environmentalists who do anything , though the news story finds a way to blame them in the last paragraph. Instead, it’s a businessman.

But here are problems with the story:

  • There is no indication EU has anything to do with this failed purchase.
  • There is no indication that any environmentalist ever played a role — this is a Dutch purchasing company, shopping for organic cotton.
  • There is no indication that Uganda farmers can’t sell their cotton to other buyers.
  • There is no reason to presume that the cotton must be sold as “organic.”
  • There appears to be no indication of any DDT contamination.
  • It’s illegal to spray DDT on cotton in Uganda, as I understand it — if this cotton is contaminated, the problem is that DDT was diverted from malaria control. That’s not a problem for environmentalists — and, according to the PAN story cited above, farmers have incentives to keep it from happening.

Are we to believe that marauding anti-insect people roam Uganda, forcing farmers to steal DDT from health authorities and spray it on their cotton instead, against the farmer’s better interests?

Neither Glenn BeckReynolds at Instapundit nor the other Beck at RWDB bothered to check the facts, nor even to see whether the first face story passes the smell test. Where would DDT contamination come from? Why would a buyer refuse cotton if there’s no DDT contaminant? Why wouldn’t there be tests? Where are the test results? If EU is so down on DDT on cotton, where is the document that says so?

The company in the news story, ineptly named as it is, Bo-Weevil, does exist, it appears, either there or in the Netherlands. That surely is not the only cotton buyer for the EU. The first BoWeevil isn’t an EU company, since it’s headquartered in Tennessee. From their website:

Welcome to Bo-Weevil Eco Sportswear Mfg. LLC., nestled in the hills of Tazewell, Tennessee.

Producers of the most earth friendly clothing on the planet.

Bo-Weevil Eco started manufacturing and supplying clothing with one main vision: “Provide our customers with the highest quality clothing that integrates current fashions with timeless style, to create lifestyle clothing that brings awareness to care what you wear.”

We are a company that practices to restore, maintain and enhance ecological harmony. Doing so by being at the forefront of U.S.A. factories producing a line of women’s, men’s, kids and k-9 apparel made by pre-consumer recycled fibres. We are working to create change in the textile industry; to offer one step on the path to more sensible and sustainable use of resources in the production of basic commodities.

So, how does the EU get into this story at all? The second company, I can find listed only through a post at Pesticide Action Network, a source that is not always reliable on such issues.

Smell test: Does this sound accurate to you? When was the last time you saw anyone at Wal-Mart demand organic cotton?

The use of DDT has now affected cotton prices in the region. Patrick Oryang from Lango Cooperative told All Africa, “We are buying cotton at sh500 per kilogram instead of sh750. The country will lose about US$20 million because EUREP-GAP, an EU exporters body, has suspended buying products from the region because the consumers in Europe and America want purely organic products.”

What’s the real story?

Neither Beck nor Reynolds seems to care. They get a dig at environmentalists, so what if Ugandans get malaria?

Update, sorta: News from Uganda, in New Vision, seems to indicate that the EU has okayed the wise use of DDT in Uganda, contrary to claims of an EU ban (July 10 story). You can’t help but wish there were some good, clear reporting of this issue, from BBC or Reuters, or someone in Kampala besides these few, shallow news dailies.

12 Comments | Africa, Business, Business Ethics, DDT, Environmental protection, Science | Tagged: , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Redefining “root canal”

June 28, 2008

It happens.  Last night I had a semi-emergency root canal. That’s not why I haven’t blogged, though — I feel fine.  I haven’t used any of the pain medication.  I’ve been able to work without the headache I thought was sinus, but now appears to have been an infected tooth.

But the story is Harry Sugg’s dental practice at Wheatland Dental.

There’s a lesson there for health care.  There’s a lesson there for professional services, like law offices.  There’s a lesson there for schools.

After a half-day wrangling with the dental insurance company — a phone system very unfriendly to clients asking questions, a fellow with bad information about which dentists in the area are on the plan — I got through in the late afternoon to Sugg’s office.  I’m a new patient, and I more than half expected them to offer an appointment late next week.

Instead, the receptionist said the entire staff, but for her, were out celebrating Dr. Sugg’s birthday.  But they’d be back in an hour, and I should be there when they arrived.

The waiting room has massaging chairs, two televisions running different, intrigueing DVDs, and a coffee pot.  Before I’d finished the paperwork I was offered a bottle of water.  Zip, zip, zip.  Oh, and no out-of-date magazines (a few interesting books, on history mostly, and astronomy).  The waiting room was not full at all — not a lot of waiting.  One group appeared to be there to support an aging family member.  They kept up a lively and often funny line of patter with the staff.  It was as if a co-ed barber shop had broken out in the waiting room.

The exam was quick, with digital x-rays, from a woman who noted most of the staff was in a training session in the lunchroom — the Guinness Book of World Records‘s champion speed reader was offering reading tips to the staff.  A quick diagnosis from Dr. Sugg — could I be back at 8:00 p.m. for the procedure?

That’s right:  8:00 p.m.  The office hours run until 9:00 p.m.  Other options were Saturday and Sunday.  It’s a ’round-the-clock, through-the-week operation.

I mortgaged our grandchildren, took the prescriptions to the pharmacy, got a quick dinner and headed back.  Dr. Linda Cha performed the procedure.  She deadened everything before I got a needle — didn’t feel any pain at any time.  Obviously highly skilled, she explained as much of the procedure as I needed, always solicitous to my comfort.

As I left the office at about 10:15 p.m., an attendant gave me a fresh red rose.  Today they called to check on my progress and spend a significant amount of time answering questions.

Could I get used to that kind of care?

So I thought back to the days I aided intake at Legal Services of North Texas — the cattle-call features, the crowded hallways, the lack of restrooms, the vending machines that often didn’t work, the impossible tasks of trying to match a sticky legal situation with an attorney to do the work for free.  Clients weren’t happy with much of anything there.  I did this often while I worked at Ernst & Young — free coffee, free soft drinks, free pastries, client-effusive hospitality.  Lots of training.   And at bigger lawfirms in town, with restroom attendants, shoeshine machines, on-site concierge for employees and clients if needed.

At one of our high schools in Dallas, men’s restrooms for faculty went without water to the sink for months.  The teachers’ “lounge” doubled as a site for a major computer node, so the ambient temperature was generally close to 90 degrees.  A coffee maker looked as though it hadn’t been used in months, nor that it could produce any coffee that wouldn’t resemble industrial sludge.  But teachers only get 30 minutes for lunch anyway.

Anyone who doubts there is a War on Education hasn’t been in most schools lately.

Harry Sugg runs a great business.  Professional offices and other businesses could learn a lot from how he operates his dental clinic.  Schools could learn a lot, too.  He could consult with school districts on how to treat employees and get good results.  I’ll wager the school districts wouldn’t listen.

Teacher meetings?  Frankly, I’d rather have a root canal.  And I’ll pay for the service.

1 Comment | Business, Customer Care, Education, Health care, War on Education | Tagged: , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Dallas Fed sessions for teachers June 30 and July 1

June 11, 2008

Federal Reserve Branch banks take seriously the Fed’s pledge to education Americans, and to support educators in understanding economics and the work of the Federal Reserve Banking System.

The educator support team at the Dallas Fed recently secured approval to provide continuing education credits for a two-day session on globalization planned for San Antonio, on June 30 and July 1. These sessions are easy, generally loaded with details, and tailored for educations. Plus they are usually well catered.

$35.00 gets all materials, two lunches, one continental breakfast, and 12 hours of credit.

All details from the Fed’s press release, below the fold.

Read the rest of this entry »

Leave a Comment » | Business, Economics, Education, Federal Reserve Bank, Financial literacy, Globalization, Texas | Tagged: , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Motivation 101 – How NOT to

June 2, 2008

Educators don’t know beans about motivation I think. I still see courses offered on “how to motivate” students to do X, or Y, or Z — or how to motivate faculty members to motivate students to do X. This view of motivation is all wrong, the industrial psychologists and experience say. A student must motivate herself. A teacher can remove barriers to motivation, or help a student find motivation. But motivation cannot be external to the person acting.

Frederick Herzberg wrote a classic article for The Harvard Business Review several years back: “One More Time: How Do You Motivate Employees?” Herzberg would get a group of managers together and ask them, “If I have six week-old puppy, and I want it to move, how do I get it to move?” Inevitably, one of the wizened managers of people would say, “Kick him in the ass!” Is that motivation? Herzberg would ask? Managers would nod yes.

Then, Herzberg would ask what about dealing with the pup six months later. To get the older pup to move, he’d offer a doggie yum, and the dog would come. “Is that motivation?” Herzberg would ask. Again, the managers would agree that it was motivation. (At AMR’s Committing to Leadership sessions, we tried this exercise several hundred times, with roughly the same results. PETA has changed sensitivities a bit, and managers are fearful of saying they want to kick puppies, but they say it in different words.)

Herzberg called this “Kick In The Ass” theory, or KITA, to avoid profanity and shorten the phrase.

Herzberg would then chastise the managers. Neither case was motivation. One was violence, a mugging; the other was a bribe. In neither case did the dog want to move, in neither case was the dog motivated. In both cases, it was the manager who was motivated to make the dog move.

Herzberg verified his theories with research involving several thousands of employees over a couple of decades. His pamphlet for HBR sold over a million copies.

Education is wholly ignorant of Herzberg’s work, so far as I can tell. How do I know?

See this, at TexasEd Spectator:

Death threat as a motivation technique

May 23rd, 2008
Education | MySanAntonio.com

The sad part about this is that I bet if a mere, ordinary teacher were to have made some similar statement, he or she would be treated more like the student rather than the principle.

Now imagine if some student at the school had said something along the same lines in a writing assignment. We would be hearing about zero tolerance all over the place. The student would be out of the regular classroom so fast it would make your head spin.

No charges will be brought against New Braunfels Middle School Principal John Burks for allegedly threatening to kill a group of science teachers if their students’ standardized test scores failed to improve, although all four teachers at the meeting told police investigators Burks made the statement.

Kick in the ass, knife in the back, knife in the heart — that ain’t motivation.

As God is my witness, you can’t make this stuff up. I’m not sure who deserves more disgust, the principal who made the threat and probably didn’t know anything else to do, or the teachers who didn’t see it as a joke, or treat it that way to save the principal’s dignity — or a system where such things are regarded as normal.

2 Comments | Business, Business Ethics, Education, Education reform, Ethics, Organizational leadership, psychology | Tagged: , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Not tardy: June 1 American Economics Blog Carnival

June 1, 2008

Still at Struck in Traffic.

So, have I missed them, or do posts from Becker-Posner and Café Hayek not appear?

Leave a Comment » | Business, Economics, Education, History | Tagged: , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Can I turn this in late? More economics carnivals

May 31, 2008

Struck in Traffic works to lay claim to the title of King of the Economics Carnival with his bi-weekly American Economics Blog Carnival. Two editions since I last posted on it (though I confess, I visited a couple of other occasions thinking I would post).

For those correspondents who argue with me that the U.S. faces a crisis of turning to socialism, I invite you to find either posts advocating socialist policies (5-years plans, anyone?), or from obviously Marxist or socialist economists. Tell us what you find in comments, please, I dare you.

And I wonder: Do students learn the meaning of the word “sepulchre” anymore? Would they get the reference to a “white sepulchre?”

Leave a Comment » | Business, Business Ethics, Capitalism, Economics, Education, History, Politics, Weblogs | Tagged: , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Trafficking workers’ bodies for profit

May 27, 2008

If a guy beats someone to death, it’s murder, right?  And so the nation’s labor laws hold an employer liable for the death of a worker when unsafe working conditions caused the death.

But what if the worker doesn’t die?  What if the worker only loses his arms, or legs, or arms and legs?

No death, no crime, U.S. law says. 

What if the employer poisons the worker with cyanide that eats away the worker’s brain? 

No death, no crime, U.S. law says.

My colleagues and I were shocked to learn that an employer who breaks the nation’s worker-safety laws can be charged with a crime only if a worker dies. Even then, the crime is a lowly Class B misdemeanor, with a maximum sentence of six months in prison. (About 6,000 workers are killed on the job each year, many in cases where the deaths could have been prevented if their employers followed the law.) Employers who maim their workers face, at worst, a maximum civil penalty of $70,000 for each violation.

Read a plea to change the law, in the New York Times, from David H. Uhlmann, a law professor at the University of Michigan.

1 Comment | Business, Business Ethics, Capitalism, Civil Rights, Economics, Environmental justice, Environmental protection, Free market economics, Freedom - Economic, Government, Gross Injustice, Health care, Human Rights, Labor and unions, OSHA, Politics, Public health | Tagged: , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

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