An accurate account of Iraq?

Ted Kennedy has recently given a speech in which he describes how he thinks the decision to invade Iraq was made. It's worth looking at not because there's anything very new in it, but because it's all there, expressed with remarkable clarity.

Dr Deming

I've just been reminded by a piece in the Harvard Business Review that if anyone can help me apply statistics to web analytics it's Dr Deming. The man who made Japan what it is today - namely efficient.

I've been struck recently by how much of web analytics is basically counting, I know of no off the shelf package that will run a regression or tell you the standard deviation in your daily traffic. Yet these are powerful statistical tools which aren't all that hard to understand.

I spy a gap in the market, and finally an incentive to unearth the MBA textbooks from the storage room they have been consigned too. (principally because they were shipped here in a 40KG book box and we live on the 4th floor, wheras storage is at ground level.)

Page Rank 5?!

My pagerank has soared from 2 to 5, how the bloody hell did that happen? My old blog took ages to get that much. Crickey, that's almost a valuable commodity.

Hire me, I'll link to my next employer for free...

I mean search for monograph and see what happens.

Day One

Of the ninety day fitness program was today. I've done this before and it's murder. It is however going to get me out of the house and make me use the weights I bought at the weekend in a constructive manner.

It might also make me look good, but last time my appearance remained virtually identical even though my physical strength, speed and stamina all benefitted enormously.

Slow Company?

I used to like Fast Company magazine. It was focused, it was punchy, it had an agenda. OK it was hardly a heavyweight one and it pandered to the worst tendencies of business gurudom but you knew what it was about. If you had ten minutes to kill and wanted to read something interesting about how to do business (as opposed to business news) you could go there.

I've just visited their site for maybe the third time in a month. On none of these visits have I got past the first page. I just didn't know what to click, and when I bothered to look closely at what was there there wasn't anything to interest me.

For all I know fast company may still be a fine magazine. However their website is now so bad I'll never find out.

Job Interviews

Just had my first Dutch job interview with a blue chip. Now in business school you get taught about things like European labour markets and how they're inflexible and don't give companies enough control over the workforce and restrict management and so on. I mention this because the terms and conditions conversation for this job went like this

Them : We're a big company, so we don't negotiate salaries. Every job is fixed to a position on the Hayes scale. What would you be looking for in this role?

Me : xx thousand

Them : Thats fine. Now to explain what we offer...

You get your annual salary
Plus a 'thirteenth month' bonus in December
Plus another months bonus in May
Plus a small tax free amount each month for expenses
Plus a group performance bonus of maybe 5%
Plus an individual bonus which might be 1-2%
Company laptop and mobile phone
No company car
We offer 25 days holiday
Plus up to 16 days holiday which was agreed in lieu of past pay rises forgone. You can take those or be paid for them, or trade them in for 'stuff'

Now either I missed the bit about them getting my immortal soul or this is a quite incredibly generous compensation package. I was completely sold on the job anyway, since it appears to offer me the chance to do many many good things with a corporate website and have an impact on a whole company. Now of course I just have to brace myself for any disappointment and start looking for other jobs to do when I don't get this one...

Must be a blue moon

It's not often George Bush does something I agree with, but this might be an exception. Legalising America's huge migrant underclass will doubtless improve their living and working conditions, and will certainly provide a boost to the US economy.

My business school professors were always keen to point out that under globalisation the movement of goods had become free, but the movement of people had remained restrained. Changing that would do a lot to improve global productivity. Interesting though that this is a bill which Bush will need Democrat support to pass, and which will face most opposition from the Republicans. My only question is 'why has he done it now?

Dean is saying that this doesn't go far enough - which is probably true, but I'm not sure any US presidet could go much further at the present time and come out with legislation enacted on the other side.