DB's Pixnet

 
Harvard Business Review, June 2012
Page 135, Case Study
How should a business owner handle a conflict between two senior manager?
by H. Irving Grousbeck
When Key Employees Clash
The caller ID on Matthew Spark's phone read "Kid Spectrum, Inc." It was someone from the Orlando office, probably administrative director Ellen Larson. She had been in daily contact with Matthew since he purchased the company, a provider of in-home services for autistic children, eight month ago. He appreciated Ellen's eagerness to help him build the business, even if she was sometimes high-maintenance. Kid Spectrum's previous owner, Arthur Hamel, had told Matthew that Ellen, with nearly two decades of experience in health services, would be one of his biggest assets.
"Matthew, it's Ellen. I don't want to bother you again, but we have a situation down here."
Matthew sat back in his chair and readied himself. The "situation" could be anything from the copier running out of ink to the building catching on fire...
DB, SSN057-86-4042,
June 29, 2012, Friday,
National Central Library,
Taipei City

the psychologist, may 2012
page 360
At the interface
Jon Sutton interviews Trevor Robbins CBE(University of Cambridge)

 
Under the Dome, by Stephen King, 2009
ANTS
Page 911,
"Ants without a hill; Bees without a hive."
Page 922,
"Kids?" Andy asked. He wouldn't be surprised. When the devil got a preacher, he was apt to fall low, indeed. Low enough to put on a tophat and crawl under a rattlesnake...
"My wife," Andy said. "She was the first Dome casualty."
Page 933,
"Can we have the last Pepsi if I share it out?"
"Go ahead, but don't spill!"

 
The Economist, May 26TH-June 1ST, 2012
Page 48
Lexington; Moral quandary
Mitt Romney wants to talk about the economy, not social issues. It isn't working out that way
In many respects, Mitt Romney makes a perfect spokesman for America's religious right. He certainly looks the part: his clothes crisply creased, his hair neatly gelled, his face habitually frozen in a look of square-jawed conviction. His personal life seems blameless. He is a regular churchgoer, and appears to live by the tenet of his faith. He married his high-school sweetheart, who bore him five strapping sons, who in turn have provided him with 18 grandchildren. He is a teetotaller, but not, like George W. Bush, as a break with the waywardness of his youth. Mr Romney spent much of his youth as a missionary, trying to persuade the French to give up wine. He once told a reporter that his greatest failing was that he devoted only one day a week to helping the needy(smugness is clearly a bit of an issue, too). The closest he has come to a scandal is the revelation that in his teens he once forcibly cut the hair of one of his schoolmates, in a prank that strayed across the line into bullying.
Yet Mr Romney does not like to talk about his faith in any but the broadest terms, presumably to avoid reminding voters that he is Mormon, a religion that many Americans find peculiar and some doctrinaire Christians consider heretical...
David CK Chang, SSN057-86-4042,
June 6, 2012,
National Central Library,
Taipei City

 
The Economist, May 19TH-25TH, 2012
Page 41
Financing football stadiums
Bread, circuses and leather balls
Atlanta
Gouging taxpayers for sport
The Falcons, Atlanta's professional football team, have played their home games at the Geogia Dome, America's largest indoor sports arena, since 1992. It cost $214m to build and another $55m to renovate. In those 20 seasons they have an overall losing record, including seven losses and four wins in the playoffs, and no Super Bowl titles. Attendance has been respectable, but below capacity--perhaps because fans dislike the prospect of watching a football game indoors on a beautiful autumn day. That said, many may also dislike the prospect of watching a football game in the rain, or on a sweltering day in early autumn. The Georgia Dome also hosts non-football events, such as basketball games and trade shows, that require an enclosed space...
David CK Chang, SSN057-86-4042,
May 30, 2012,
National Central Library,
Taipei City

 
Bloomberg Businessweek, May 14-May 20, 2012
Page 40
Internet
Can Yahoo! Hang On in The Ad Market?
It's al the rage to predict the demise of online display ads and Yahoo!, the company that pioneered the business. Display advertising is the old man of online marketing--website banners are much less fashionable than, say, a personalized coupon delivered to your smartphone. Yahoo has had years of stagnation and leadership crises, the latest being Chief Executive Officer Scott Thompson's résumé inflation.
...The issue isn't the viability of display ads but whether Yahoo can stay in the game. From 2009 to 2011, the company's share of the market fell from 15.4 percent to10.8 percent, according to EMarketer. The drop was largely due to the growth of Facebook(its display revenue in the U.S. more than tripled, from an estimated $518 million in 2009 to $1.7 billion in 2011, according to EMarketer) and Google's YouTube($435 million to $1.7 billion over the same period)...
David CK Chang, SSN057-86-4042,
May 29, 2012,
National Central Library,
Taipei City

 
the psychologist april 2012   

Psychology Today June 2012 issue
Public occasion impromptu on health insurance topic of the soapbox preachers, a private jet passenger without 18-carat diamond-drop earrings, that was not whom you found in ordinary school days. However, you are in a summer vacation transporting something to the east continent of the dream land(Switzerland, Germany). Sunny sky, gentle weather, everything seemed so perfect. Then, a decade lapses, what happened at that time? How do you know? You know, therefore I know.
Recently I checked out several books from the New Taipei City Library using recently renewed library card, The Hunger Games, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, and this month with Stephen King's novel, Under the Dome. I have read a third of this dictionary alike, hardcover book. Hmm, living dictionary with 1074 pages. What I could say is that this is really a good book, teaches me a lot of things, since a decade ago when I first read his Different Seasons novel. When I was in my university days, borrowed a hard cover of Stephen King's novel but except for the first page the whole book left unread for that all check out period. This situation is improved quite a lot since I have this Psychology Today magazine subscription. To subscribe to the Psychology Today magazine is really, really helpful, and I mean it.

 
Bill Clinton, An American Journey, Great Expectations, Nigel Hamilton, 2003
Chapter 40, Declaring;
1. Before page 577 Chapter 40 of the 2003 Random House hardcover Bill Clinton biography, on page 575 titled Part Eight, Democratic Nomination, is a photo of (February 4, 1992) Star magazine's cover, with both Gov. Clinton and Singer Gennifer Flowers appeared on the cover. We can easily see that Clinton's head on the cover looked leaner and more slim than the pictures on page 519, Part Seven, The Sun King, Arkansas and on page 471, Part Five, Saying no to a presidential run, 1987. The face looks more like the November 1, 1990's "Daddy Long-Legs", when he seemed to get a replying word from me, a sophomore student of National Chiao Tung University(NCTU) at HsinChu City, Taiwan, as an Attorney General and Governor, but was described as a desperado alike character in Charles Dickens' novels David Copperfield and Great Expectations.

 
This Monday I used my recently renewed New Taipei City Library Card to check out Stephen King’s Nov. 2009 novel “Under the Dome” for 30 days to read the 1072 pages plus 2 pages of author brief. I have read 251 pages up to yesterday.
Most impressive characters up to this 251 pages is the Town Kids called Rory Dinsmore. He took a ride of the ATV with handlebars to go around the hill several hundred yards from his father’s farm house, with a double barreled 0.30 rifle with a box of grains from shelf called XPs reloaded. Sounds like Microsoft’s Windows software product or IBM’s Thinkpad series in the years. For general farmers and alike us ordinary students in those years, that may refer to the price was a little expensive but with premium quality.