January 31, 2003

Unconscionable

Why is it that young black men who benefit economically from their profession, are censured and penalized if that profession happens to be sports?

We don't penalize 18-year-old stock pickers, dancers, singers, entrepreneurs, or any other class of 18-year-old prodigies other than our sports stars. It's not fair and it falls disproportionately on young black men.

More dangerous skullduggery from Korea!

North Korea has withdrawn from yet another internationally recognized effort to halt a spreading world menace.

January 30, 2003

Excrement of the Devil

A sad, enduring truth is hidden in the 1970s saying of OPEC co-founder Juan Pablo Perez Alfonzo:

"Ten years from now, 20 years from now, you will see, oil will bring us."

WHich is why he had his own name for the black gold.

And it's strange that he's been proven right, Venezuela has gone from the richest country on the continent, with an educate dpopulace and a democracy, to a country poorer, less stable, and less certain of its future. Is oil to blame?

I'd say yes. When the earth spits up gold, folks don't focus on making themselve better, the pie bigger, the country stronger. They squabble over the gold. And become very adept at that, rather than creating value.

Where's the free speech crowd now?

Whenever corporations refuse to pay for the kanoodlings of leftist fringe by not paying for somebody else's 'art', 'free speech', or 'expression', the war mantra of "Free Speech" is chanted far and wide. Yet when it comes to speech they don't agree with, the Left will *actively* suppress it. Here, by their own definition, they are suppressing free speech by drowning out the lone voice of a karge man, and driving advertisers away from the Rush Limbaugh show.

So, do corporations have a moral duty to support objectionable speech outside the mainstream or not?

January 27, 2003

Nationalize This Man!

We need Andrew Sullivan to be writing for the White House. His clear thinking on matters of import demands it.

The other strategy is to take 9/11 not as an isolated event but as a stark warning. Defense alone won't work. These groups are guided by a philosophy that is not amenable to suasion or deterrence. And they are aided by a complex network of allies - governments and non-governments - throughout the Middle East that share at least some of the same ideology and a lot of the same methods. Worse, new technology means that these groups could very soon perform their evil with weapons far more powerful than anything we have experienced before. 9/11 is therefore best understood as an early tremor before a real earthquake. So the best defense is offense. We cannot wait for catastrophe to strike again. No one disputes Saddam's malign intentions or brutality. No one seriously doubts he has weapons of mass destruction, and may at some point get nuclear weapons if we don't do more than we have done to stop him. The point of remembering 9/11 is not to prove that Saddam did it; but to remind ourselves that some combination of Saddam and others could do far worse in the future. So what should we do? Wait and hope we can keep this thing under control by a series of defensive actions? Or go on the offensive and do what we can to stop, deter and reverse this threat?

January 26, 2003

Pedagogy Anew

WHile Instapundit finds this abhorrent it is actually just a clever mean sof educating the security screeners. We remember especially well "inside tips"; even more so if it's the hidden answers to a test.

January 24, 2003

Japanese Emoticons

An entirely different dialect.

About Stone

Updated July 2005

Well, it's worth inserting a few words here about me.

I'm Marc Cenedella, born in Fredonia, NY in the last century (Wikipedia entry on Fredonia here.) I currently live in Manhattan's East Village and am publisher of the world's largest $100K+ job website, TheLadders.com.

Since starting in August 2003, we've grown to over 440,000 subscribed readers and send out over 20,000 $100K+ jobs in sales, marketing, finance, HR, operations, IT and general management in our newsletters each month. We're now 60 employees strong and are very proud to have Matrix Partners as our venture capital partner -- one of only 3 firms with 5 partners named to the Forbes Midas 100. We've also been very fortunate to have Andy Kaslow and Brian Swette join our Board.

I was previously SVP, Finance & Operations at HotJobs.com, which we sold to Yahoo! in spring 2002 for $436 mm. Due to clever timing on my part, I missed a good bit of the economic benefit of that :)

Prior to that, I've been an LBO investor, an investment banker, and an exporter of dog food to Japan.

My interests include Worst, Worster, and Worstest Ever Album Covers, the history of writing systems, writing reviews on Amazon, and Third World travelling.

I'm a graduate of Fredonia High School (where I swam the butterfly under the banner of our mascot -- I kid you not -- the Fredonia Hillbillies), Yale (B.A. in Political Science) and Harvard Business School (M.B.A., High Distinction), where I was named a Baker Scholar.

Updated July 2005

More Phases than the Moon

To see the sad history of Michael Jackson's face is to be disturbed. The weird conflagration of fame and race.

January 23, 2003

Watch where you put your claws!

According to some insiders, lobster is the most romantic food:

'Lobster is the perfect dish for a romantic, special occasion,' said Keith Keogh, executive chef for Red Lobster, the world's largest casual dining seafood company. 'It is an exotic delicacy that results in an intimate moment with a loved one, because lobster is hand-held and shareable. Shellfish, especially lobster, is a catalyst for connection like no other food.'

And here I thought it was oysters.

January 22, 2003

Visualizing the Google Web

TouchGraph GoogleBrowser V1.01

Yeah, but does it have a remote?

671,000 homes in the United States have outhouses and 514,000 homes have TiVo.

January 20, 2003

Iraq Ops

He is one of the most paranoid, but also one of the best-defended, leaders in the world."

Sounds like he has
good reason to be. With these troops slinking around in his desert, virtually at will, what does Saddam believe his best case outcome to be? On the other hand, he likely knows that even exile is unlikely to be spent lolling around on beaches sipping caipirinhas. There's a bullet out there for him. I hope it finds him.

January 19, 2003

A First Post

This is my new blog, Stone, where I will be looking at finance, technology, history and language. Appropriately enough, I'll start with a few Rolling Stones mentions.

Firstly, our quickly unpopularizing Mayor Mike tries to issue a summons to the boys for smoking on stage!

While Keith is elsewhere quoted on terrorists:

"I say to Osama and the boys bring it on, evaporate me," Richards said on the eve of the band's Australian tour.

"If it gets to the stage where these guys are dictating if we rock or not, then forget about it."

January 01, 2003

Stone's Guide to Working Safely: Five

Stone's Guide to Working Safely: Four

Stone's Guide to Working Safely: Three

Stone's Guide to Working Safely: Two

Stone's Guide to Working Safely One