Requisite Reading

Higher Education Bubble (video and infographics)

Forrest Christian — Mon, 30 Apr 2012 14:29:28 +0000

Education News has put together an video and accompanying infographics about the Education Bubble Crisis. They don’t separate out undergraduate from graduate education, but the basic principle the cite still applies: you need to do some real research into what your potential field actually pays. 25 years ago when I went to university these numbers [...]

Thinking of Grad School? You’ve Got to Look at the Money

Forrest Christian — Wed, 18 Apr 2012 21:32:15 +0000

John Fea was a Lilly Fellow at Valparaiso University back when my wife was. He has always been interesting — his book Was America Founded as a Christian Nation? was a George Washington Book Prize finalist — and recently he has commented about graduate school in the humanities on both his Facebook page and his [...]

Dragon’s Den, here she comes! Huzzah for Mary & Luigi!

Forrest Christian — Thu, 29 Mar 2012 20:34:55 +0000

A big congratulations to commenter (and all around cool person) Mary McQueen for making the cut onto Dragon’s Den. DD is kind of the Canadian version of Shark Tank for the Americans. If you’re not in North America, I really don’t know what it compares to. Hopefully I will be able to point Witopia to [...]

The iPhone in Doctor Who (c. 1984)

Forrest Christian — Wed, 28 Mar 2012 19:19:38 +0000

Ever wonder whether Apple has a case against other “tablet” makers? The Atlantic today has a blog post about how the patent office rejected a “scrotal support” by referencing the movie Borat, showing that he had already invented it. Madrigal went on to point out that using pop culture in movies was not just a [...]

Putting Flattery to Work by IT Staffers: Flatter 4 Success, Part 4

Forrest Christian — Thu, 01 Mar 2012 05:31:56 +0000

Flattery really does work and it works in real life and not just for politically savvy types. We’ve seen that flattery works, that flattery has no upper limit and works even when they know you have an ulterior motive, and that the people who poo-poo flattery as only useful for the politically savvy are full [...]

Flattery Only Works For the Politically Savvy, Which Is All of Us: Flatter 4 Success, Part 3

Forrest Christian — Wed, 29 Feb 2012 05:19:37 +0000

I’ve been telling you this week that flattery works, and that it’s not just researchers who believe that flattery apparently has no real upper limit. Most of you haven’t really believed this and you’ve been waiting for the other shoe to drop. So here’s those caveats I’ve been talking about: (...)Read the rest of Flattery [...]

Flattery Will Get You Everywhere: Flatter 4 Success, Part 2

Forrest Christian — Tue, 28 Feb 2012 05:12:39 +0000

I know that flattery doesn’t work on you, as you some of the world’s more intelligent people who see right through such things. But the rest of the world isn’t as savvy as you. You can get much more and be seen as much more effective at work by simply flattering your boss. Yesterday we [...]

Be a Suck-Up and Get Ahead: It’s Science!

Forrest Christian — Mon, 27 Feb 2012 05:33:49 +0000

You’re a smart person with great ideas. Other people may not see this but I do. It’s because of this that I want to tell you about a key way to get your boss to like you. Because a boss who likes you will give you better assignments, more time off, and better pay. Even [...]

What Is Real Executive Work? (That Executives Aren’t Doing)

Forrest Christian — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 15:53:41 +0000

Japanese workers call their executives “tea drinkers” I got some strong comments regarding my post that executives are boobs. I probably should have said “worthless drags on shareholder value who ought to be golden parachuted into a live volcano that resembles the eternal hell they deserve for being lazy good-for-nothings.” But let’s not quibble. Let’s [...]

Most Executives Are Complete Boobs (or “Why the Recovery Won’t Happen”)

Forrest Christian — Tue, 17 Jan 2012 22:35:16 +0000

If you are banking on corporate executives to make the high-level market decisions that will pull the world out of this spiraling recession, you’re betting on a nag. Most executives not only don’t know how to do executive-level work, they couldn’t do it if they did. Executive work is not line work, nor is it [...]