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The Final Frontier I dreamed that Spock saved our planet, The Daily Planet of journalism. Instead of swooping in to figure out the dimensionality and logarithms to rescue the world from red matter, as Spock does in J. J. Abrams’s dazzling new “Star Trek,” I imagined Spock rescuing read matter for the world. Newspapers are an “endangered species,” as John Kerry called us in a Senate hearing last week, just as the Vulcans are in the new prequel. I know Barack Spock likes newspapers. An aide told me during the campaign that Mr. Obama would get cranky if he didn’t...

NASHVILLE, Tenn. -- The headmaster of Montgomery Bell Academy in Nashville announced late Thursday afternoon that the school will be closed on Friday and for up to seven days over concerns related to the H1N1 flu virus. Headmaster Brad Gioia said the decision was prompted after a student appears to have the virus. Gioia said the student was taken to an area hospital, treated, released and was resting at home. The school notified MBA parents about the school's closure at about 5 p.m. "It is concerning," said MBA parent Worrick Robinson. "I don't remember anything of this magnitude coming through...

BofA withdraws job offers to foreign MBAs By Della Bradshaw in London Published: March 9 2009 00:07 | Last updated: March 9 2009 00:07 Bank of America has become the first US bank to withdraw job offers made to MBA students graduating from US business schools this summer, citing conditions laid out in its bail-out deal as the reason. The recently passed $787bn stimulus bill in effect prevents financial institutions that have received money from the government’s troubled asset relief programme from applying for H1-B visas for highly skilled immigrants if they have recently made US workers redundant. BofA, which...

If his fellow Harvard MBAs are all so clever, how come so many are now in disgrace? If Robespierre were to ascend from hell and seek out today’s guillotine fodder, he might start with a list of those with three incriminating initials beside their names: MBA. The Masters of Business Administration, that swollen class of jargon-spewing, value-destroying financiers and consultants have done more than any other group of people to create the economic misery we find ourselves in. From Royal Bank of Scotland to Merrill Lynch, from HBOS to Leh-man Brothers, the Masters of Disaster have their fingerprints on every...

Throughout our nation's history, the size and scope of government has grown by leaps and bounds during times of crisis, financial or otherwise. The political class' natural instinct is for government to rush to the rescue, particularly when an election is near. The current financial meltdown appears to be no exception, as our government responds with a $700 billion taxpayer-funded bailout proposal that was at best a Band-Aid and at worst a more deadly strain of the same disease. Rather than punishing taxpayers, an array of smarter options is at the government's disposal: abandon cheap-money policy; remove financial incentives that...

Students' career hopes in disarray as crisis batters bank industry BY MELISSA GRACE DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER Saturday, September 20th 2008, 1:50 PM Dolores Adams, a finance major at Baruch College, is one of many business students nervous about career options in the midst of the crisis on Wall Street. Mendez for News Dolores Adams, a finance major at Baruch College, is one of many business students nervous about career options in the midst of the crisis on Wall Street. The meltdown on Wall Street has some nervous business students across the city rewriting their résumés. "You think, 'What is...

The economy's in the toilet, but at Harvard Business School, the tycoons of tomorrow have different concerns. Like finding the perfect getup for the big cross-dressing bash, and fitting in a little learning amid the nonstop schmoozing and boozing. The sound system at the Fort Point Channel warehouse is blasting power ballads on a Friday night in October, and the future titans of industry are wasted. This is understandable, because the future titans of industry are wearing pink feather boas, fishnets, and amateurishly stuffed bras. It's the night of Harvard Business School's Priscilla Ball, an annual rite that calls for...

<p>Mark Morford: Is Obama an enlightened being?</p> <p>Spiritual wise ones say: This sure ain't no ordinary politician. You buying it?</p> <p>I find I'm having this discussion, this weird little debate, more and more, with colleagues, with readers, with liberals and moderates and miserable, deeply depressed Republicans and spiritually amped persons of all shapes and stripes and I'm having it in particular with those who seem confused, angry, unsure, thoroughly nonplussed, as they all ask me the same thing: What the hell's the big deal about Obama?</p>

(RE:) ...the changing demographics of the American work force and the increasing globalization of business interactions. "Many individuals are likely to find themselves directing--or under the direction of--someone demographically dissimilar," business professors Derek R. Avery and Kecia M. Thomas write in the journal "Academy of Management Learning & Education" (2004). "Hence, understanding diversity and its impact of workplace relationships has become a critical business competency." ( ... ) as a sample, I looked at the course listings of BusinessWeek magazine's top 10 U.S. business schools to see what they offered in diversity management. The magazine ranks MBA programs based on...

You think a $100K salary is a lot? $500K? Please. The truly wealthy scoff at your paltry breadcrumbs. Then it came to pass that I stumbled across this story from Forbes magazine, which is officially called "Forbes" but is actually called "Forbes oh my God we worship ruthless CEOs like shiny meth in the summertime," and among the glittering ads for luxury intergalactic travel and sleek private jets and $50K Rolexes and big phallic yachts and surreal 20-page ad inserts for Abu Dhabi megadevelopments, there was an article about the new home being built in Mumbai right now for Mukesh...

Campus Populist by: Bethany Stotts, April 11, 2008 Campus Progress (CP), a program of the Center for American Progress, argues that “30 years of heavily-funded conservative organizing has made its mark” on universities and it’s time to push back. To that end, CP recently promoted a new book highlighting the successes of countercultural “uncorporations” and political activists. “I come to you as a Democrat, by the way, but I get very disgusted with my party leaders sometimes. You know, like gratifying Bush’s illegal domestic spying program by making it legal. I got an email from a guy saying he hoped...

NEW YORK - Could any reality TV show rival the swift falls and ignominious exits of top executives in 2007? Call it "MBAs Gone Wild" or "Survivor: Wall Street," since the only thing missing were tribal councils of teammates talking about their deep disappointment. For instance: _BP's chief resigned after admitting he lied to a judge about how he met his boyfriend. (The truth: An escort service's Web site.) _HBO's CEO was arrested for assaulting his girlfriend in a Las Vegas parking lot. He explained in a memo to employees, "Two years ago, I decided that I could handle drinking...

The Master of Business Administration degree has been a holy grail for decades. If you wanted a career that mattered and didn't have the aptitude for medical school, an MBA was a good ticket to prestige and riches. But things aren't so clear anymore. If the MBA used to be the entrance fee to climb the corporate ladder, there are few corporate ladders to climb anymore -- and people are increasingly experimenting with ways to speed up that climb anyway. One way is to skip the MBA altogether. So if you're thinking of getting an MBA, you should probably think...

Who, pray who, is still sucked in by grotesque fast-food ads? Shouldn't there be a law? I admit scattershot naivete. I admit to a strain of blind optimism, a sort of sporadic myopia, a weirdly sanguine tunnel vision that makes me somehow think that we as a species and a culture and as a mad gaggle of individual human souls who are coupled with functioning hunks of semi-rational gray matter, we must, at least occasionally, be learning something, ever-so-slightly advancing our awareness of those things on this planet that want to harm us and sicken us and even kill us,...

I must confess to being disappointed five years ago when my son, Vineet, told me he had no interest in applying to any of the schools I consider elite. He said he would fit in better at a public state university and he didn't believe that choice would lessen his chances of career success. Perhaps it was the bias that my company's venture capitalists showed toward management teams from top-tier colleges that skewed my thinking. Whatever the cause, I have since concluded I shouldn't have been upset in the least. An education from one of the world's top schools may...

Best Books for an MBA As the New York Times recently highlighted, a business student (or CEO’s) best friend is a well-constructed library. The following are the books that I highly recommend to any current, aspiring, or “damn, why did I go to law school!” MBA student. Certain titles may be a bit ‘atypical’ at first glance; indeed they are anything but. [Note: each title links to the listing on Amazon.com] The Power of ProductivityAtlas ShruggedAgainst the GodsThe Little PrinceWSJ Guide to Understanding Money & InvestingWikinomicsThe Art of WarThe Long Tail George Soros on GlobalizationWhen Genius FailedGuns Germs & SteelBeating...

BARACK OBAMA looked as if he needed a smoke and he needed it bad. Everyone knows you're not supposed to make two big changes at once. But Michelle Obama's price for letting her husband run was that he quit. So there he was, trying to meet the deep, inexhaustible needs of both Iowa activists and the global press behemoth on his first swing across the state, while giving up cigarettes. He was a tad testy. Traipsing around desolate stretches of snowy — and extremely white — Iowa to go into living rooms and high school gyms and take questions like...

The Defiant Ones came striding from the Pentagon yesterday, the troika of warriors marching abreast in their dark suits and power ties.W, Rummy and Dick Cheney were so full of quick draw confidence that they might have been sauntering down the main drag of Deadwood.Far from being run out of town, the defense czar has been on a victory lap in Baghdad, Mosul and Washington. Yesterday's tribute had full military honors, a color guard, a 19 gun salute, and Old Guard performance in Revolutionary War costumes, & John Phillip Souza music. Even Joyce Rumsfeld got a Distinguished Public Service Medal...

Maureen Dowd: Good gracious - It's the truth Staff Report Article Launched:12/06/2006 10:16:33 PM PST FIRST, JUNIOR TOOK over the house with big plans to remodel it and make it the envy of the neighborhood. But then he played with matches and set the house on fire. So now he's frantically trying to stop the flames from torching the whole block. The Bush administration has gone from a breathless plan to change the Middle East to a breathless plan to preserve it, from democracy promotion to conflagration avoidance. That was the cold shower offered Tuesday by Robert Gates, the former...

After 9/11, Americans had responded to bellicosity, drawn to the image, as old as the Western frontier myth, of the strong father protecting the home from invaders. The macho poses and tough talk of the cowboy president were undercut when he seemed flaccid in the face of the vicious Katrina. Even former members of the administration conceded they were tired of the muscle-bound style, longing for a more maternal approach to the globe. ?We were exporting our anger and our fear, hatred for what had happened,? said former Deputy SoS Richard Armitage. He said America needed ?to turn another face...