Gleanings Quick Links

Money is the new secret of a happy job: Maybe? “Over the past decade, the rich, professional classes have developed an increasingly unhealthy attitude to their jobs. We took our jobs and our fat salaries for granted and felt aggrieved if our bonuses were not even bigger than the year before. We demanded that the work be interesting in itself and, even more dangerously and preposterously, that it should have meaning.” (Lucy Kellaway, Financial Times • 2008 12 15)

Gee, One Bold Storm coming up….: “Oh, yes Stephen. That’s all very well, but you try being a CEO in the real world of share prices and financial officers. Bullshit. Any CEO who hides behind his shareholders isn’t worthy of their job: I’ve met enough business leaders to know that the good ones lead, they don’t follow. Isn’t that kind of what ‘leader’ means? I seem to be straying. But it’s all relevant really and it all needs saying again and again. Managers, corporates, finance people, executives in tech companies – they all need to understand for the sake of their pride and happiness as much as their success, this simple rule: ‘That’ll do’ won’t do. ‘That’s good enough’ is never good enough.” Also, a psychological insight on the success of the iPhone.  (Stephen Fry • 2008 12 10)

A biblical lesson for today’s bankers: From Spain: ‘Bringing the biblical idea up to date, Governor Ordóñez suggested financial regulators insist that banks build up their capital at an enhanced rate during prosperous years to put them in better financial shape should a serious slump follow with many boom-time loans turning sour. Actually, a predecessor of Ordóñez in the 1990s, Governor Luis Angel Roja, did just that. He put into practice a regulatory mechanism termed “dynamic provisioning.” This, notes Ordóñez, has reinforced the present stability of the Spanish banking system “and today commands wide recognition.” The biblical story indicates that economies are “unequivocally cyclical,” notes Ordóñez. Since Joseph, 4,000 years ago, “perhaps we have made some progress … it seems that the years of plenty are somewhat longer than the lean years,” he adds. “But little more than that.” ’ (Christian Science Monitor, h/t • 2008 12 10)

Lessons From the Great Books Generation: ‘The volumes included Adler’s “Syntopicon,” an index compiled at enormous cost that tracked the 102 great ideas, pointing, for example, to how different thinkers addressed concepts like virtue and obligation. These great ideas were criticized as arbitrarily chosen, but at least they were important ideas. A Google research project is now bringing massive computing power to data-mine quotes and ideas across one million digitized books, updating this approach to tracking ideas.’ (L. Gordon Crovitz, The Wall Street Journal • 2008 12 07)

• The Left Wing of America’s Civil Religion (2008 12 04)
• Beauty of Soul: Oscar Wilde & Anton Chekhov (2008 12 02)
• Children’s Books, Lost and Found (2008 11 21)
• John Piper explains Why Calvinists are so Negative (2008 11 19)
• Confessions of an Obnoxious Orthodox (2008 11 19)

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