Michael Rosenbaum's Blog, page 6
December 30, 2009
My Y2K+10 Wish for You
There's a 10-year-old bottle of candy sitting on my shelf, a testament to our unending capacity to panic over the unlikely while we blithely ignore the real threats in our lives.
I had one dropped on every employee's desk when they returned from New Year's weekend in 2000. The bright gold label says, "I survived the Y2K hype at FRB."
Hard to believe it's 10 years since the Y2K debacle, when programmers extorted corporate America for billions of dollars to make sure computers wouldn't click...
December 28, 2009
Particularly Nasty Weather We're Having
It's a beautiful day in Arlington Heights with overcast skies and temperatures in the low 20s and clumps of snow dropping from the trees as a light breeze blows past my office window.
It's winter. It's Chicago. That's what we do here.
Or, maybe, it's what we used to do when we were really Chicagoans. Now, it seems, everyone I meet is a weather wimp. Great big SISSIES (one of my favorite words this year) who whine when the temperature drops below 40 and spend most of Thanksgiving talking about...
December 19, 2009
The Miracle of MultiTasking
Today we focus on the key to ultimate balance, wealth and happiness in life. I have finally discovered the secret that we've all been seeking, and I want to share it with all my friends on this world wide internet thing.
The beauty of my discovery is that it requires just four simple steps, and I'll try to explain them fully here, although you'll have to excuse me if the explanation is a bit disjointed. I'm writing this in between projects today. I'm multitasking.
In fact, multitasking is the...
December 3, 2009
Yes, I Want it Both Ways
Crain's Chicago Business has a great article this week about the travails of U.S. Cellular, which is having trouble competing for high-tech clients in the face of exclusive contracts such as AT&T's deal for IPhones.
It appears that U.S. Cellular is at a disadvantage when it comes to selling smartphones—even though the company seems to have a number of exclusive phone products—and the president of the company actually testified on Capitol Hill in June about the anti-competitive nature of other...
November 26, 2009
thanksGIVING
Maybe we've got this whole Thanksgiving thing backwards.
Not that I'm proposing anything heretical like missing the football games or skipping the Macy's parade or eating a tofu turkey.
I am, however, thinking about the words thanks and giving and I'm giving some thought to the emphasis we put on one versus the other.
I love to read the notes of thanks from friends and family for gifts of friendship and kindness—almost never for physical gifts—they have received. I'd even like to think I have...
November 20, 2009
How to Save America
In which our intrepid social commentator boils down all the challenges facing our great nation into a relative handful of simple—but not simplistic—solutions.
STEP FOUR: ELIMINATE CORPORATE TAXES
Here's a trick question for all my friends both liberal and conservative: What percentage of U.S. taxes are paid by for-profit businesses?
And the answer is: zero.
Yes, it's hard to believe at first, but corporations really don't pay any taxes to the government. Instead, they collect money from...
November 12, 2009
How to Save America
In which our intrepid social commentator boils down all the challenges facing our great nation into a relative handful of simple—but not simplistic—solutions.
STEP THREE: EAT LESS
No, those jeans don't make you look fat. Your fat makes you look fat.
Mine, too.
Every time I go to some steak place and they drop two pounds of dead cattle on the table—hey, don't I get a side of bacon with this??—my immediate thought is that there's no way I can finish it all. Within 20 minutes, though, it's...
November 4, 2009
HOW TO SAVE AMERICA: STEP II
In which our intrepid social commentator boils down all the challenges facing our great nation into a relative handful of simple—but not simplistic—solutions.
Step II: End voice mail.
If, as some believe, Alfred Nobel created the Peace Prize out of remorse for his invention of dynamite, what do you think Stephen Boies owes the world as atonement for inventing voice mail?
When Samuel F.B. (FaceBook) Morse invented the telegraph, he typed an awestruck comment, "What Hath God Wrought?" to an...
October 30, 2009
How to Save America
In which our intrepid social commentator boils down all the challenges facing our great nation into a relative handful of simple—but not simplistic—solutions.
Step I: Stop Buying Crap
China owns us. And do you know why they own us? Because we keep throwing money at them in exchange for junk we don't need, doesn't last and usually has more lead and mercury and fish guts in it than the law allows. Which isn't a problem, of course. Now that they own us, they can change the law.
It's very simple...
October 10, 2009
Thoughts on Life: The Guy with All the Answers
So I'm meeting with this guy and I start to tell him about a current project. And I'm not 30 seconds into the story before he says those dreaded words:
"You should….."
I haven't even finished telling him what I am doing, what I'm thinking of doing or whether I plan to do anything at all. And already he's telling me what I SHOULD be doing. Which means, of course, that my share of this conversation is over and the floor is now his.
And I'm wondering why he's doing this. I haven't asked for...
