Analogies. "You know," says Ann Marie, "as someone who got a 780 on the verbal SAT, I find these analogies very hard." I come over and look at the Nine-Year-Old's homework. It says: journey is to trip as BLANK is to spin. And I too go, "Huh?" The Nine-Year-Old has decided that BLANK is swirl. I am sure that is not what they are looking for. But I can think of nothing alternative that is significantly more compelling...... [Semi-Daily Journal]

I loved reading this and the comments are a hoot. Analogies are always hard without a multiple choice. But I think the last couple of comments are on the right track.  11:04:39 PM    

Personality indicators and working style. Whenever a team starts a project, it's helpful to openly discuss individual styles and preferences, especially in the areas of communication and decision-making. It's probably as important for the success of the project as having a good plan. We'll work better together if we both seek to understand (and take into account) how we each operate.

Jerry Weinberg: The four dimensions of the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator [MBTI] are significant in the workplace because they describe four elements that determine much of a person's working style. For each dimension of the MBTI model, there is a pair of letters to choose from:

• Internal or External, according to how I prefer to get energy
• Sensing or iNtuitive, according to how I prefer to obtain information
• Thinking or Feeling, according to how I prefer to make decisions
• Judging or Perceiving, according to how I prefer to take action

[via Tony Bowden] [Jinn of Quality and Risk]

The outplacement company I am working with gives the Myers-Briggs test for free so I am going to take it at the end of this month. Hope it does not go like that Monty Python routine.  10:57:12 PM    

"Iraqi's are linked to the Oklahoma City bombing" [Daypop Top 40]

Something for those conspiracy addicts among you.  10:48:02 PM    

More Optimism. Alan Greenspan is dumbfounded by the pace of productivity growth in the past year, and optimistic about the pace of growth in the future: FRB Speech, Greenspan -- Productivity -- October 23, 2002: The increase in nonfarm business output per hour over the past year will almost surely be reported as one of the largest advances, if not the largest, posted over the past thirty years. We at the Federal Reserve, along with our colleagues in government and the private... [Semi-Daily Journal]

Time to buy stocks?  10:21:15 PM    

This does not aect Macs. WHat I love about this is that MS ALWAYS says that it wishes that they had all the time they needed to fix the problem. They want everything to be secret, so that the only ones who know that there is a problem would be the hackers and them. What a crock? The more eyse that examine this problem the feaster it can be fixed. The problme is that only MS can fix them, and they would rather release a single service pack every 6 months than to release a patch. And I love their rationale that this is what their customers want. How about a safe computer?  9:03:08 AM    

Go Planet-hunting at Mauna Kea. Astronomy Magazine Oct 23 2002 3:03AM ET [Moreover - moreover...]

This is so cool. Bid for a chance to be involved with an astronomer and his search for extra-solar planets. I wonder how much the winning bid will go for.  8:57:37 AM    

Stanford gives distributed computing an A. A university team shows that thousands of low-end PCs wrangled together into a loose network can be used effectively on problems scientists encounter in the lab. [CNET News.com]

Leave it to a scientist to provide this quote, after getting a paper published in Nature detailing their work with Folding@home (a distributed program allowing them to examine the way a protein could fold up): 'I would like to think that we will one day have something that is not insignificant.' Let's not go TOO far out on a limb now. I don't think Vijay Pande will be accumulating too much venture capital with those sorts of comments;-) Which is refreshing.  8:55:25 AM    

British Biotech merger talks collapse. Ananova Oct 23 2002 3:46AM ET [Moreover - moreover...]

Companies with money will be buying those without. It is hard to tell from this article, though, which one has the money and which one does not. It is kind of like a breakup - both parties say they were the ones who initiated the ending.  8:47:26 AM    

(update) HP's Fiorina paints grim picture for 2003. HP CEO expects long-term growth rates of less than 10 percent for the industry [InfoWorld: Top News]

Hey, it is always a great strategy to blame your customers for your problems. As Carly says, 'Most CEOs know they overspent on technology in the 1990s.' I always wanted to deal with a company that fixes the blame for its poor performance only on external factors, like the economy or its customers (although I believe that they would prefer to call them consumers.). It must be something they learn getting their MBAs.  8:45:30 AM    

Lucent posts 10th quarterly loss in a row. Telecommunications customers continue to cut spending [InfoWorld: Top News]

How much money HAVE they lost? And they are going to save evenb more by getting rid of about 25% of their employees. If they keep this up they will have saved so much money that they no longer have anyone working for them.  8:39:18 AM    

Internet's foundations shaken by attack. New Scientist Oct 23 2002 6:55AM ET [Moreover - moreover...]

Net attack fails. Assault on Net servers fails. A distributed denial-of-service attack hits the computers that serve as the address books for the Internet, but the effort appears to have little real effect. [CNET News.com] [Mac Net Journal]

Okay, which was it? Since I can still access all these sites, I would say that the New Scientist headline is a little misleading.  8:37:19 AM