The jungle primary {partial $}, that is. What I found rather amazing was that nobody called out clear (and, to my mind for one of them, disqualifying) conflicts of interest in four of the candidates. And, to be perfectly clear: "Conflict of interest" includes "running for limited-scope office when the candidate or family is A Player within that limited scope." It's not all one faction, either…
- In an almost Kafkaesque twist, Orwell's archives may disappear, bit by bit — perhaps not into the Ministry of Information where one can dial up past issues of The Times for, umm, retrospective editing, but nonetheless to even-less-trustworthy custodians than at present.
- Unfortunately, the problems with Orwell's archives are merely symptomatic of shortsighted, standard-accounting-friendly (in an industry group for which accounting standards apply, realistically, to less than a third of its activities) inept or worse (sometimes outright corrupt) management seeking marginal advantages for corporate bottom lines without actually engaging with the material. Leadership means, first of all, that one must engage with and try to fully understand both the substance and the people…
- …like Medal of Honor winners. Perhaps that's because Medal of Honor winners, as a group, tend to disrespect draft dodgers from a family with a history of dodging the draft in multiple nations, so they don't show "the respect that is due." Even more likely, it's because that individual — consciously or unconsciously — disdains sacrifice for others. I've been unable to identify a single such sacrifice in his public biography; anything even close to it was for his own benefit more than for others. And that is the antithesis of the Congressional Medal of Honor… too, the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
- An opinion column suggests that students should study the arts and humanities if they love them — because (good and perceptive) employers already do. Although I agree with the conclusion, the piece aims at the wrong target. Before and at the college/university level, STEM studies are not "the enemy" of the humanities. At least until the graduate-school level, both STEM and humanities (grudgingly, most social sciences, too) are about preparation to learn more, to adapt to and improve circumstances as actually dumped in one's lap. Consider, for the moment, the utterly brilliant programmer who is unable to write coherent documentation, leading others to misunderstand and misuse her work; the claims processing civil servant (or insurance adjuster!) who spots some "common problems" but can't analyze their prevalence well enough to determine the appropriate scope of any policy change; the nine lawyers who can't understand basics of molecular genetics but opine (fundamentally incorrectly) on their partial patentability anyway.
The enemy is monomania, not any particular field of study, although I'd probably make an exception for marketing and "business administration" — even more than the athletics department. Of course, as a holder of degrees across the curriculum I would say that, wouldn't I?