The Ghosts of EphBlog Past, Present and Future
An anonymous comment in the thread of presidential searches provides occasion for me to give my view on EphBlog’s past, present and future. Come join me in navel study . . . Dickensesque it will not be.
Alumni Gifts
Stewart Menking ‘79, who will be making his inaugural post to EphBlog any day now, writes in to note that:
This year, I am making my gift to the Alumni Fund in Honor of Katherine Sharpe Jones ‘79. When you give a gift in honor of someone,
the College sends that person a notice letting them know that a gift
was given in their honor. While it is a small gesture, I will be proud
to have my name on the list of those who will be honoring Kathy this
year.
Coming Soon to the Alumni Review?
Todd Gamblin ‘02 has a Williams picture that will probably not be showing up in the Alumni Review. But that’s one of the reasons for EphBlog! This comes to us via Gamblin’s blog Waruiyatsu, easily the best looking of the Eph blogs in our blogroll. Alas, Waruiyatsu does not seem to be a part of EphPlanet, which seems a shame for all concerned.
Presidential Search Documents
Many thanks to Chemistry Professor (and secretary of the presidential search committee 5 years ago) Hodge Markgraf ‘52 for taking the time to answer some of my questions about the search process. Hodge pointed out that the search was thorough and professional. It involved a serious examiniation of 150 candidates, many telephone and in-person interviews, and meetings with the finalists by the full board of trustees.
Hodge was also kind enough to supply copies of many of the updates that Ray Henze ‘74 (chair of the board of trustees at the time) sent to the entire community. (The College, or even WSO, really ought to archive documents like this in some public space. Future historians will thank you!)
Otis ‘77 new CEO of Darden
Great article about former Williams trustee (and CEO of Darden Restaurants) Clarence Otis ‘77.
Otis was an unlikely choice in the eyes of some Wall Street observers to replace the retiring patriarch, considering his financial, rather than operational, background.
But Darden’s former chief financial officer did serve a two-year stint starting in 2002 at the helm of the company’s Smokey Bones barbecue unit, which doubled in size under his direction.
He is a decided change of pace for the company and its 141,000 employees. During a recent interview, Otis balked at discussing himself or his past, saying he didn’t want the spotlight during this important time of change at Darden.
I can’t think of an Eph who has more people working for him than Otis does. He is one of only three Ephs in charge of a S&P 500 company. The other two are Mayo Shattuck ‘76 of Constellation Energy and Henry Silverman ‘61 of Cendant.
Fans of the web of Eph influence will note that Otis serves on the board of St. Paul Travelers, along with trustee Robert Lipp ‘60 and Dean Nancy Roseman. Lipp, chair of the executive committe of the board of trustees (i.e., lead trustee in charge) is almost certainly the person who recruited Otis (and Roseman) to the board.
There is nothing wrong with that, of course. Indeed, part of Lipp’s job as chairman of Travelers is to find smart, hard-working folks like Otis and Roseman to recruit to the board of directors. But critics of, say, George W. Bush’s business career should note that personal relationships play a role for everyone.
Indeed, one of the quips back in the day was that the main thing that we learned at Williams was how to make conversation aroun the keg. There was more than a little truth to that, of course. But what I didn’t realize till many years later is that being able to make conversation around the keg is a critically important skill in the business world.
Although I have never met Otis (or Lipp, Silverman, Shattuck, et al), I feel certain that he is a charming, engaging, personable fellow. It is almost impossible to climb to the top of a large company without these sorts of people skills, as well as many other talents.
So, current Ephs should be sure to spend a lot of time standing around the keg and making conversation this Winter Study. Your future success in the business world depends on it!
The whole article is a great read, but, for me, the best part is:
Family and friends describe Otis as intelligent, humble and driven to succeed.
His father, Clarence Otis Sr., 72, remembers the day he picked up the phone to hear the news of his son’s promotion at Darden: “I finally made it to the top, dad,” his son told him.
Otis is not the only Eph who hopes to impress his father some day.
Petersen ‘90 for Lt. Gov of Virginia
Whitney Wilson ‘90 writes in with news that
Chap Petersen ‘90 (whom you probably remember) has formally declared his candidacy for Lt. Governor of Virginia. Chap is currently a Democratic State Delegate representing Fairfax, and was formerly on the Fairfax City Council. Chap has bucked recent trends in the Virginia Assembly by prospering as a Democratic legislator in a body which has turned overwhelmingly Republican since I’ve lived in Virginia. Chap’s monthly newsletters are very interesting, giving a rare (to those of us not in politics) insight on how the legislative process actually works.
The Democratic primary is expected to be hotly contested. Surprisingly, Democrats have been reasonably competitive in statewide elections in Virginia, despite the horrible beating they have taken in the Assembly. Here are links to a recent Washington Post article about Chap (registration, but not payment, required) and Chap’s website.
As always, EphBlog supports the election of Ephs, regardless of faction or party, across the US and around the world. It is interesting to note that Chap’s biography does not mention that he is a graduate of the Marine Corps OCS program. Perhaps the fact that he choose not to accept a commission after graduation makes this more trouble than it is worth to mention.
Younger Ephs interested in seeking political office should consider this program as an easy way to see if the military might be for them. It is hard to believe that having served in the military won’t be an advantage in political campaigns for years to come.
Alas, the Petersen campaign does not seem to have a blog, although the monthly newsletter comes close. Since Chap is a smart and serious guy, I have no doubt that this will change soon. Chap’s daughters are quite adorable, like all mixed race children.
MMC Update
The New York Times has an update on the MMC saga that references a recent 8-K filing by the company. (By the way, is there a single class at Williams that assigns even one 10-K, 10-Q or 8-K in its reading list?)
The Marsh & McLennan Companies, the world’s largest insurance broker, said yesterday that the Securities and Exchange Commission had begun a formal investigation into investments by its executives and directors in partnerships set up by the company.
Marsh, which was accused of bid-rigging and steering of business in a lawsuit filed by the New York attorney general in October, said that the commission had requested documents and other information about “related-party transactions” in which directors, executives, or large Marsh shareholders acquired a material interest. The transactions included dealings with the company’s Trident funds, the filing says.
We covered this story back in October. I’ll stick with my prediction from then. Although several then-members of the board of directors of MMC should be very worried about this development, Morty is extremely unlikely to be one of them. He is way too smart to have gotten involved with this.
For those who care, MMC (the stock) has bounced back significantly from its October lows. Once the new management settles with Spitzer, the scandal should fade away.
One of the last remaining questions concerns what the non-executive members of the board, like Morty, will or should do once a settlement is complete. By all accounts, the board, as a group, has done a pathetic job over the last 4 years. Other boards (e.g., Worldcom, NYSE, Enron) involved in similar scandals did the honorable thing by first, saving the organization by bringing on new management and, second, resigning as a group so that an untainted board could then take over.
Whether or not the board of MMC will or should resign is an open question.
The final (hopefully) word on e-mail notifications
Upgrading to the newest version of MovableType has broken essentially every customized part of the blog that we had outside of the colors.
So it comes to no huge surprise that the notifications were also broken in the upgrade.
The good news?
You can still get notifications and there are even some new features that should let you manage them on a personal level.
The bad news?
If you were previously subscribed, the current system is no longer aware of you (technically you are in the section reserved for MovableType notifications, but the old notification system won’t work and the new one doesn’t use that setup).
So what this means is that if you want to receive e-mail updates, then you need to go to the About Ephblog page, down at the bottom, and fill out that form with the e-mail address that you want to subscribe for EphBlog.
With each e-mail that you get from EphBlog, it will have a link that will allow you to remove yourself (or an admin like myself can do it too if you can’t figure it out).
If you are an author on the site, and you are also subscribed to the notifications, then you get two e-mails (it did this before as well).
Previously we had the option to subscribe to a specific thread, even without commenting on the thread. I wasn’t sure how much this was even used, so I removed it for now.
If there is demand for it back, I can put it back in since the current system will allow for that as well (meaning that if you are subscribed to get all of the new posts for the site or not, you could still subscribe to a single post and get an e-mail for each new comment on that post).
If you saw some other broken behavior today, it was likely due to a problem in enabling dynamic content. The documentation says one thing, but the site behavior decided to do something else – so I am going to put that one off for a bit.
Still working out the kinks
It appears that notification still isn’t quite working properly, and there is also a problem in the code that was there for the “EphBlinders” pages. I have removed them for now and will eventually have something else once we can get a more dynamic system in place here.
It is possible that for a few days some of the small things won’t look/work quite right – just keep me posted on it and I can keep looking into them.
Upgrades are in place
EphBlog is now running MovableType 3.14 and I am now trying to iron out the wrinkles in the upgrade. Please post up comments to anything odd that you see.
I notice that there are comments out there that are on the wrong post (my own included), but I am not sure if that is due to people not reading the actual post (myself included) or if it is due to an error in the system here.
Also, if you are subscribed to get updates, it was not working for about a day during the upgrades. But now I have upgraded the notification system as well, so it “should” be working now.
Most of the nice features of the new system are in the background so that the end user doesn’t need to know/care about the difference. So the less you notice the better.
That said, I am hoping to change the look/feel of the site here over time so that it is easier to read. If there are areas that you find particularly confusing/annoying/ugly, please speak up (or if you have an idea for a look for the site).
The most common complaint on this type of layout is that people can’t tell who wrote what comment. This is most prevalent in users that aren’t familiar with discussions on blogs, and unfortunately they are the ones that get most disturbed if you raise the question of how new they are to blogs.
So I am going to try to redesign the post/comments look and feel so that it is hopefully more clear who wrote what.
This post is also testing out the “post in the future” feature. This will allow authors to post things today and they show up at some date in the future. You should see the hundreds I have ready to go for 2029 after the asteroids come.
Christmas Quandries
Do you have Christmas protocol questions? Emily Thorson ‘02 has answers!
Eph Tail
Stephen O’Grady ‘97 has thoughts on the Long Tail — the idea that much of the activity on the internet occurs in very small, niche markets. In the land of blogs, this means that, while there will always be widely read blogs like Instapundit and Daily Kos, more than half of all blog reading will be of small blogs that 98% of all blog-readers have ever heard of. EphBlog will always live in that Long Tail.
Over Confident
Boxer Day EPh readings should include this interview with Professor Mark Taylor. Taylor claims that
According to market fundamentalist dogma, investors are rational and markets operate efficiently in a world where every risk can be hedged. This is a religious vision — but a misguided one.
Given my own oft-stated suspicion of invocations of “market forces,” I am not sure that I qualify as a “market fundamentalist” in Taylor’s world. But the market fundentalists that I read (e.g., here, here, here, here), are not huge fans of rational expectations or market efficiency. They do believe in the Hayekian argument that freedom and the rule of law leads to wealth, at least faster than any of the other alternatives. I would be more likely to buy Taylor’s book if I thought that he took more seriously the arguments of his opponents.
Any large-scale solutions to the world’s current crises will have to involve recognizing that the simplistic ideologies and instruments we’ve invented to minimize political, cultural, and economic volatility always end up increasing it.
I am not smart enough to know whether Taylor is being extremely subtle or obviously stupid here. I am aware of no measure of “economic volatility” — the variance in, say, stock prices, unemployment, inflation, industrial production, et al — that is higher today than it was 30 years ago, at least in the US. Reasonable people might disagree about the cause of this phenomenon (perhaps financial derivatives haven’t had anything to do with the decline) but no one sensible should deny the facts.
Again, I really ought to read the book, ideally along with some smarter people who could explain the tricky parts to me.
Jones ‘79 Christmas Card
Pride of place in the EphBlog Holiday Card project must go to Kathy Sharpe Jones ‘79. Thanks to Stewart Menking ‘79, founder of the AdoptAnAlum and a new author at EphBlog, for passing along this picture.
Kathy writes:
EphBlog Upgrades
At some point over the next 4-5 days, I will be upgrading EphBlog’s blog software, as well as hopefully tweaking a few of the styles to help readability.
I will likely be doing this in the late evenings, so it is entirely feasible that you won’t even notice that anything is changing. But if by any chance you do happen to come here and notice any oddities and/or downtime, that is likely the cause.
I will post an update once the upgrades are completed.
Letters from Iraq Part XIV
Felipe is safe and sound. He sent a number of pictures, which I believe you can access (if anyone has trouble, let me know in the comments and I’ll post them on Ephblog).
Monday, 20 December 2004Subject: Still Here
I’ve been uncharacteristically quiet lately, but that’s only because I’ve actually been busy. It’s a relief, actually, making the days fly by much quicker.
One of my long, wandering accounts of my lame life here will surely follow, but for now I just want to share with you all pictures I took while out on a mission last week. The pictures tell the story- I spent an amazing day meeting friendly, hopeful, beautiful Iraqis. I hope you enjoy the glimpse of another side of the story here.
Much Love,
Felipe
PS Here’s the link to the pictures- I’ll add captions soon, but for now just take them at face value.
Lots of cute pictures of kids. Fans who want a face to go with Felipe will be pleased with photo #45.
And today at Ephblog, readers get a two for one special.
Tuesday, 21 December 2004Subject: The Other Shoe
Dear Friends-
Today’s horrible explosion occured in Mosul, but at a base across town from us here. Please pray for those killed and wounded, and for their devastated families.
Always-
Felipe
Dunn ‘02 Senior Thesis
As always, we here at EphBlog want to bring attention to the excellent work done by Ephs far and wide. Of special concern is work done by current undergraduates. My personal hobby horse is to urge the College to do a better job of putting senior theses on-line. As a small contribution to that effort, I am pleased to have pestered Richard Dunn ‘02 into making his thesis available. Excellent holiday reading.
As before, special congratulations to the economics department which, as best I can determine, is the only department at Williams to proudly display the theses completed by members of the class of 2004. I believe that Professor Steve Sheppard was the driving force behind this effort, but David Zimmerman, as chair of department, deserves credit as well. Also praise-worthy are the efforts of Professors Kim Bruce and Joe Cruz to publicize and save the work of their theses students.
It is a shame that other departments at Williams are not, seemingly, that proud of the work that their students do.
Random Williams Sighting
I may be mistaken, but just came from seeing “Meet the Fockers.” On the “Wall of Gaylord” a young Gaylord Focker appeared to be wearing a Williams College t-shirt. Did anyone else spot this, or am I just nuts? I am not sure if it is such an honor, because the rest of the wall of gaylord celebrated mediocrity — such as a tenth place horseshoe toss ribbon. If it was indeed Williams, the shirt would be, most definitely, misplaced.
Asians Walking
Luis Taboada ‘02, EphBlog’s favorite amatuer anthropologists, notes that:
No one walks anywhere on Long Island. Instead, everyone drives anywhere. I’ve even seen people drive from one part of a parking lot to another when they’re going to different stores found in the same strip mall. I swear I’m not making this stuff up! So the only people I ever see walking are this crazy homeless looking guy and random Asian people. I always wonder why I never see anyone else walking along the streets/roads of Stony Brook. Or why these random Asian people are walking, instead of driving like everyone else. As Cory puts it, it’s like we live in a “only-Asians-walk” zone. Everyone else gets to drive except for the random Asian people who have been destined to walk. This all seems quite unjust to me. I’m going to go ahead and blame white people for it since they already get blamed for everything else. Damn white people…
I blame Amherst for this injustice.
WMS 58
Emily Thorson ‘02 is no fan of vanity plates.
Who are these people, and are they really that hard up for somewhere to spend their money? Note to crazy people: check the internet, there’s some stuff for sale there.
I wonder if she would object to the “WMS 58″ plate that my father has had for more than 40 years or the “WMS 88″ and “WMS 90″ plates that my brother and I had several years ago . . .
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