Clarke Ching's Rocks and Snowballs

Poor quality of Mercedes cars dents profits

Yikes! 

Probably the last front-page Financial Times headline Mercedes wanted to see - ever:

Poor quality of Mercedes cars dents profits
By James Mackintosh, Motor Industry Editor
Published: October 29 2004 03:00 | Last updated: October 29 2004 03:00

Found: father of mass production

Found: father of mass production

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Ford

[I'm finished now]

Found: weapons of Mass Instruction

Found: weapons of Mass Instruction

 

Found: weapons of maths instruction

[via office world]

Found: weapons of mash construction

Found: weapons of mash construction.

 

[sorry.]

Technology

This true story really gets to me every time I hear it:

Still, there is an eerie poignancy about those high-tech goodbyes from people trapped inside burning buildings and runaway planes. A similar quality clung to the story of Rob Hall, the leader of a doomed 1996 expedition up Mount Everest. Marooned in a snowstorm, Hall reached his pregnant wife in New Zealand by radiophone, and together they chose a name for their unborn child. The imbalance is almost crushing: if they could hear each other's voices, name a child, say goodbye, how could he not have been rescued?  [via Jennifer Egan's excellent, brief, article]

Time telling in New Zealand

Since I'm from New Zealand, I'd like to thank Eric Mack for clearing up a few issues: http://www.ericmackonline.com/ica/blogs/emonline.nsf/dx/time-measurement-for-kids 

The book

I'm currently writing a novel.

An ex-colleague from my pre-voluntary-redundancy employer made a few suggestions:

How goes the book? Plenty of sex - you can't go wrong!

Suggested plot

Young? good looking?? analyst [he means me, obviously] working on a project for an insurance company suggests ways of making the project more efficient

These suggestions are not well received and analyst leaves employ. He continues to propagate his ideas via a personal website, and the logic and perspicacity of his ideas brooks no argument.

However it turns out the company is intended to run at a loss as it's a front for Al Qeida. The company leaks funds to terrorist front organisations masquerading as IT contracting companies. It uses these funds to buy arms. Osama, becoming worried at the young? Good looking?? analyst's remarkably insightful website analysis puts out a contract on the young analyst and it's a question of time as to whether he can garner the necessary evidence using his investigative/hacking skills before he is murdered.

The sex is, of course, gratuitous and can be added in wherever necessary

Hmmmm, I think a rewrite is due ...

A conversation with Malcolm Gladwell

Cool!

Author of "The Tipping Point", New Yorker journalist, and one of my favourite writers, Malcolm Gladwell:

• Talks about human nature [30 minutes audio from itconversations.com].
• has been unusually busy and has two new articles on his website this month.
• And, he has a new book coming out in January - just too late for xmas [via Seth Godin].

Enjoy!

re-Introducing Tony Rizzo

Tony Rizzo is one of my hero's.  I've learned so much from him over the years.  His speciality is Critical Chain multi-project management.  He is one of just a few original thinkers on the subject and has previously shared much of his thinking and success via the Constraints management sig.

Now he has started two blogs: The Project Management Soap Box and Shareholder value.  

These aren't like your typical blogs. They read more like chapters from a book (and I expect one day they will become chapters in a book) so they'll require more effort on your part to read them.  Tony doesn't just link to other items of interest (like I do most the time), instead he's providing new, powerful, thinking on how to manage projects and product development organisations.

Go read them.  Read them twice.  Study them even.  Then ask him questions.  Please.