The Round-Up #3

Welcome to the Round-Up. Throughout the week, I will be posting links to the most interesting, funny, and/or unique articles I read on DWG's Twitter feed, downwithgt. Then, on the weekend, I will post links to the 3(ish) most interesting, funny, and/or unique articles I tweeted. Here, ladies and gentleman, is the Round-Up #3:




Note: I am not going to link to any articles about WikiLeaks because there are too many interesting ones to list here and because so many major publications have already compiled them anyway. If you really need direction, I've been using Der Spiegel's page.

Link 1 (On brilliance bowing to conventional wisdom): Howard Schultz is a brilliant man. He created Starbucks using his intuition and instincts. He didn't need statistics and he didn't take the normal path because he didn't need to and that is how Starbucks was able to distinguish itself from all other companies. Its creator was simply intelligent enough to eschew the wisdom of the day and be better off for it.

But now that the recession is affecting Starbucks, Mr. Schultz is hiring people with normal ideas and normal ways of gathering information. He is allowing these data-mongers to draw him into the box he had so successfully ignored without any fight other than the occasional expression of regret. Predictably, Starbucks is slowly becoming like every other company, as data overwhelms analysis and intuition. I have no special love for Starbucks but I mourn the willful submission of great intelligence to normalcy.

Link 2 (On what President Obama may really want to tell us): What if Barack Obama became so frustrated with the stubbornness of Republicans and the fickleness of the public that he sent us an e-mail telling us exactly what he thought of us, the public? What would it say? What would it contain? I don't think the Onion is far off.

Link 3 (On how I knew the truth about aliens before the scientists did!): At the end of my long response to the mid-term elections, I went on a brief tangent about how we need to stop assuming where aliens can and can't exist based on how similar other celestial bodies' are to our own. It's entirely possible that we could find alien life on a planet we could never survive on. Well, scientists are starting to come around. Finally!