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Week 27, 2005
THE BEST SELLERS (recent popular articles):
1) USA Today: Off-duty behavior can affect job [Encore un article sur l'ingérance des entreprises dans la vie privée des salariés.]
2) The Economist: Financing German companies [Proposition de créer une 'usine à crédit' en Allemagne pour faciliter les prêts aux PME.]

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THE REGULARS: Summary
3) Le texte plus abordable de la semaine/Scholastic: National Parks [Petite description de quelques parc nationaux américains.]
4) Car Talk/The Puzzler: Match in coffee cup [Un casse-tête. On vous sert un café avec une allumette dedans. Beurk !]
5) CNN/Global Office: Managers show their sensitive side [Les entreprises veulent augmenter le "quotient émotionnel" des dirigeants pour les aider à coacher leurs subordonnés.

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1) USA Today: Off-duty behavior can affect job [Encore un article sur l'ingérance des entreprises dans la vie privée des salariés.]
ttp://www.usatoday.com/money/jobcenter/2005-06-12-off-duty-usat_x.htm

Off-duty behavior can affect job

By Stephanie Armour and Julie Appleby, USA TODAYMon Jun 13, 6:56 AM ET

Some companies are cracking down on employees' off-duty behavior, raising questions about how far employers should go in policing what workers do on their own time.

Employees are being disciplined or fired for such behaviors as drinking on their own time, using competitors' products and displaying political bumper stickers. No one tracks the number of such cases, but some workers rights' groups are concerned that the practice is on the upswing.

"The shock is that there's no legal protection," says Lewis Maltby, of The National Workrights Institute, a non-profit based in Princeton, N.J., that focuses on employee rights. "You can get fired just for having a bumper sticker the boss doesn't like."

For example:

• At the Atlantic City, Borgata Hotel Casino & Spa, bartenders and waitresses can be fired if they gain more than 7% of their body weight. They are first given a 90-day unpaid suspension to lose the weight. Officials say it is a recent clarification to the company's appearance policy.

About 200 cocktail servers and bartenders, known as "Borgata Babes," are covered by the policy, and have to submit to weigh-ins. Weight gain for valid medical reasons, such as pregnancy, are exempt, but the waitresses have 90 days to comply with the target weight upon return.

"We believe the policy in place is not only legal and non-discriminatory, it is also fair," spokesman Michael Facenda said in a statement.

• Lynne Gobbell was fired from her job packing insulation by her Moulton, Ala.-based employer for displaying a John Kerry bumper sticker on her car, according to the Associated Press and numerous media reports. Gobbell could not be reached for comment.

• Ross Hopkins, who worked for a Budweiser distributor, sued after he says he was fired for drinking a Coors at a Greeley, Colo., bar after work.

But Jeff Bedingfield, attorney for American Eagle Distributing, says Hopkins was fired in 2003 for making disparaging comments about the company while at the bar wearing a company uniform. The case is expected to go to trial.

While about half the states have laws preventing employers from firing workers who smoke off duty, questions remain about other legal, off-duty activities. Some states have passed broader protections, says Kary Moss, executive director of the ACLU in Michigan.

"It's a growing trend," Moss says. "But whether or not they will go further to protect workers is an open question."

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Financing German companies: The loan factory
Apr 14th 2005 | FRANKFURT

How financial mass-production could help Germany's artisans

HANS REICH, head of Kreditanstalt für Wiederaufbau (KfW),Germany's national development bank, has a recurring dream: an inexhaustible well from which the country's small and medium-size enterprises, collectively known as the Mittelstand, can draw loans at reasonable rates of interest. The savings banks used to be that magic source, but new capital rules and the loss of their state guarantee from July 15th this year have made them pickier about credit risk.

German banks have plenty to lend, but processing costs and wariness of smaller credits mean that they are all chasing bigger borrowers, with sales of €50m ($65m) or more. For a loan of around €300,000, a bank's processing cost is far more than the risk premium it can earn, says Mr Reich.

His solution is a Kreditfabrik (loan factory), for processing standardised loans cheaply on behalf of many banks. The banks would deal with customers, as now; the factory would do the back-office work.

The idea is not new. The Länder, or states, and co-operative banks would claim to have the basis for their own loan factories already; the savings banks also have a project, Modell K, that they say has already cut processing costs. However, the division of German banking into private-sector, public and co-operative banks hinders industry-wide collaboration. Meanwhile, rising numbers of small firms complain that they “hardly have access any more to credit and reasonable development capital”, said Mr Reich this week.

A survey of Mittelstand companies, by Creditreform, a commercial-debt advisory group, shows that a slight upward trend in expectations last year has been thoroughly squashed: forecasts of turnover, employment and profits have fallen. Even so, these companies still intend to invest, if they can only get credit.

Mr Reich hopes that a change in KfW's refinancing programme will help. Since April 1st banks that refinance Mittelstand loans through the development bank have been allowed to charge borrowers a risk-based rather than a flat interest rate. That may encourage more lending.

However, progress on the Kreditfabrik is slow. Even if it does come to fruition, it will not solve another acute problem facing the Mittelstand: lack of equity capital. In the 1960s, shareholders' equity accounted for 30% of German companies' balance sheets; now the ratio is only 17%. And 37% of the Mittelstand companies surveyed by Creditreform this year had less than 10% capital; last year's figure was 31.4%.

Venture capital and mezzanine finance—essentially, debt with equity-like features—are still rare in Germany. That is changing slowly. Last month Deutsche Bank, the country's biggest bank, and IKB Deutsche Industriebank, a specialist industrial lender, touted “equiNotes”, a mezzanine instrument for Mittelstand companies. These would be standardised enough to trade as securities. In July the Munich stock exchange will open a new segment, called M:access, for Mittelstand companies.

Neither innovation, though, will be much use to run-of-the-mill companies. M:access demands minimum capital of €2m, a website and an annual analysts' meeting. EquiNotes are aimed at companies with sales of at least €50m and an investment-grade rating. Most of the Mittelstand will have wait to for Mr Reich's loan factory to open for business.

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3) Le texte plus abordable de la semaine/Scholastic: National Parks [Petite description de quelques parc nationaux américains.]
http://teacher.scholastic.com/

National Parks
By Rachel Laskow

Are you ready to take a trip outdoors this summer? A visit to a national park might be the perfect summertime treat. Hike on a trail, look at animals, or even go canoeing. The national parks offer many fun summer activities for kids, and even families. Check out what's happening at some of the national parks this summer, or go to http://www.nps.gov/ to learn about all of the parks. If you can't make a trip to a national park this summer, the national parks will come to you. Check out the Web Rangers Web site.

Bryce Canyon National Park
Bryce Canyon, Utah
http://www.nps.gov/brca/index.htm.

Bryce Canyon National Park is preserving darkness and inviting you to celebrate the night! The park is offering moonlight hikes. And be sure to check out the star parties. Use a telescope to look at the night sky and learn all about the sky from astronomers. You can also find out why plants and animals need the night's darkness. And from June to August, the park offers special programs for kids just like you! The 30-40 minute long activities will teach you all about the culture and natural history of the park. Also be sure to check out the Junior Ranger Program.

Everglades National Park
Miami, Naples, and Homestead Florida
http://www.nps.gov/ever/index.htm

The Everglades National Park extends throughout the southern tip of the Florida peninsula and most of Florida Bay. The park is known for its rich bird life. You might even see one if you go on a walk led by a park ranger. And if you want to get closer to the water, boat tours are available at Flamingo and Gulf Coast. You can also rent a canoe from the same places. Did you know that the Everglades National Park is the only place in the world where alligators and crocodiles exist side by side? Take a trip to the park and check it out for yourself.

Grand Canyon National Park
Grand Canyon, Arizona
http://www.nps.gov/grca/index.htm

If you are between the ages of 9 and 14, the Grand Canyon National Park has a program just for you. You can become a Dynamic Earth Junior Ranger or a Discover Park Junior Ranger. Attend programs, learn about the park, and get your very own ranger badge! Hiking in the canyon is another popular activity because it allows you to see the park's beauty. But be careful—the extreme summer heat might make hiking difficult.

Grand Teton National Park
Moose, Wyoming
http://www.nps.gov/grte/index.htm

Seeing an elk, moose, or bison in the 40 miles worth of mountains is common. You can also see 300 species of birds, including bald eagles! Hiking, walking, fishing, swimming, canoeing, and biking are popular summer activities in this park. The park also offers the Grand Adventure, an activity guide for kids. If you complete the activities and attend programs led by rangers, you'll get a Young Naturalist patch.

Rocky Mountain National Park
Estes Park and Grand Lake, Colorado
http://www.nps.gov/romo/index.htm

If you visit Rocky Mountain National Park this summer, you'll have the chance to travel along the highest, continuous paved road in the United States. Driving along Trail Ridge Road allows viewers to see many of the park's sites. If you would rather see the sites from the outdoors, the park has 359 miles of trail for you to hike, backpack, or even horseback ride. You might even see a cougar, eagle, coyote, or hawk along the way. Evening campground talks also take place throughout the summer. And don't forget to pick up your Junior Ranger Activity Book for some added fun!

Yelllowstone National Park
Yellowstone National Park, Montana, Idaho, and Wyoming
http://www.nps.gov/yell/index.htm

Yellowstone National Park has the perfect Junior Ranger Program for kids between the ages of 5 and 12. Kids will be introduced to the park's natural wonders and learn how to preserve them. Through the program, kids will hike on a park trail, complete activity pages, and attend a ranger-led program. Summer is also the perfect time to go on a Ranger Adventure Hike through the park. On the hike, you will explore wildlife habitats. Also be sure to check out the Mystic Falls Walk. This two-mile walk lets you see the park's ecosystem. Have you ever seen black sand? The Black Sand Walk explores Yellowstone's volcanic activity.

Yosemite National Park
The Sierra Nevada, California
http://www.nps.gov/yose/index.htm

Short walks and longer hikes to waterfalls are perfect summer activities in Yosemite National Park. Or you could always take a bus tour to Glacier Point to see a view of Yosemite Valley. In the summer months, Yosemite National Park gives people the opportunity to look at the night sky with telescopes. If you want to see the stars, be sure to go to Glacier Point on Saturdays. And you can become a Junior Ranger just by filling out an activity booklet, collecting a bag of trash, and attending a program.

Zion National Park
Springdale, Utah
http://www.nps.gov/zion/index.htm

Zion National Park is known for its great variety of plants and animals. If you're interested in learning more about nature, be sure to join a Park Ranger in an activity. You can go on a shuttle tour or guided hike. Daytime talks and evening programs are also available. Like the other national parks, Zion offers a Junior Ranger Program for kids. From now until September 4, you can earn a certificate/pin or patch just by participating in the program.

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5) CNN/Global Office: Managers show their sensitive side [Les entreprises veulent augmenter le "quotient émotionnel" des dirigeants pour les aider à coacher leurs subordonnés.]
http://edition.cnn.com/2005/BUSINESS/06/29/emotional.intelligence/index.html

Managers show their sensitive side
Wednesday, June 29, 2005 Posted: 1030 GMT (1830 HKT)

(CNN) -- Most employers wouldn't ever consider trying to build up a staff member's IQ -- either it's high or it's not, a product of birth and schooling rather than workplace training. But many companies are now prepared to invest in their staff's emotional intelligence and an industry is booming to cater for that multi-million dollar market.

At Ei World, classes involve brightly colored rugs, balloons and flip charts bearing motivational messages. It may sound like a self-help group, but this is the latest in management training, helping global companies to tap into a range of personal skills in their staff beyond those taught in business school.

"The way I look at it is emotions are our biggest resource and probably the resource we have least focused on," Ei Group founder Geetu Bharwaney told CNN. "So the way I look on emotional intelligence is it's helping people to tune-in to their emotions as a resource for their decision making."

Once dismissed as a passing fad, Bharwaney says that emotional intelligence is now widely recognized as a core part of a manager's leadership development. Author Daniel Goleman, whose bestselling 1995 book "Emotional Intelligence" brought the concept into the mainstream, also believes it has an essential role to play in business. "Technical skills are a baseline but do you have that something extra? The motivation, the drive, the empathy, that's the emotional intelligence," he told CNN. "The higher you go in the organization, the more it matters, so for top leadership, you're talking 80 to 90 percent of what sets the stars apart from average is based on emotional intelligence."

Shell is a company that deals with the hard realities of oil drilling and refining. But Dennis Baltzley, head of the company's leadership development program, is a convert to the EI cause. "If you want to lead in a large multi-national, in a highly-ambiguous, highly-complex environment, you must have the corresponding high emotional intelligence skills," Baltzley told CNN.

Others, however, remain skeptical about the benefits of investing in emotional intelligence. Trevor Merriden, the editor of Human Resources magazine, warned: "There is a danger that some managers can be over-workshopped. I think that lower down in the organization, there's not so much call for emotional intelligence training."

But Bharwaney insists that even the most ruthless executive sometimes needs to show their sensitive side: "People who have IQ and EQ working together are definitely more effective in business." Ultimately, the key to success may lie in understanding feelings as much as spreadsheets.

-- CNN's Diana Magnay contributed to this report.

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6) USA Today: Off-duty behavior can affect job [Encore un article sur l'ingérance des entreprises dans la vie privée des salariés.]
ttp://www.usatoday.com/money/jobcenter/2005-06-12-off-duty-usat_x.htm

Off-duty behavior can affect job

By Stephanie Armour and Julie Appleby, USA TODAYMon Jun 13, 6:56 AM ET

Some companies are cracking down on employees' off-duty behavior, raising questions about how far employers should go in policing what workers do on their own time.

Employees are being disciplined or fired for such behaviors as drinking on their own time, using competitors' products and displaying political bumper stickers. No one tracks the number of such cases, but some workers rights' groups are concerned that the practice is on the upswing.

"The shock is that there's no legal protection," says Lewis Maltby, of The National Workrights Institute, a non-profit based in Princeton, N.J., that focuses on employee rights. "You can get fired just for having a bumper sticker the boss doesn't like."

For example:

• At the Atlantic City, Borgata Hotel Casino & Spa, bartenders and waitresses can be fired if they gain more than 7% of their body weight. They are first given a 90-day unpaid suspension to lose the weight. Officials say it is a recent clarification to the company's appearance policy.

About 200 cocktail servers and bartenders, known as "Borgata Babes," are covered by the policy, and have to submit to weigh-ins. Weight gain for valid medical reasons, such as pregnancy, are exempt, but the waitresses have 90 days to comply with the target weight upon return.

"We believe the policy in place is not only legal and non-discriminatory, it is also fair," spokesman Michael Facenda said in a statement.

• Lynne Gobbell was fired from her job packing insulation by her Moulton, Ala.-based employer for displaying a John Kerry bumper sticker on her car, according to the Associated Press and numerous media reports. Gobbell could not be reached for comment.

• Ross Hopkins, who worked for a Budweiser distributor, sued after he says he was fired for drinking a Coors at a Greeley, Colo., bar after work.

But Jeff Bedingfield, attorney for American Eagle Distributing, says Hopkins was fired in 2003 for making disparaging comments about the company while at the bar wearing a company uniform. The case is expected to go to trial.

While about half the states have laws preventing employers from firing workers who smoke off duty, questions remain about other legal, off-duty activities. Some states have passed broader protections, says Kary Moss, executive director of the ACLU in Michigan.

"It's a growing trend," Moss says. "But whether or not they will go further to protect workers is an open question."

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7) The Wall Street Journal: Answering the odd question [Comment réagir lorsque votre employeur potentiel vous demande de faire un truc bizarre lors de votre entretien d'embauche.]
http://online.wsj.com/

By ERIN WHITE
Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
June 28, 2005; Page B6

Rodney Archer, a 51-year-old engineering consultant in Silicon Valley, had spent several hours interviewing for a job at a tech company when his would-be employer posed an unusual request: Would he submit a handwriting sample?

Baffled, he asked why. It turned out the company had an analyst in Israel who regularly reviewed potential employees' handwriting. "It's a very effective way to find out what people's true personalities are and what they're like to work with," he recalls being told.

But for job candidates themselves requests like these pose a quandary: You're asked to do something in the hiring process that just seems weird, and makes you uncomfortable. If you express hesitation or flat-out refuse, you risk losing the job. Employers may label you uncooperative or overly sensitive. But if you suppress your discomfort and perform the task, you may be ignoring a red flag telling you this company isn't the place for you.

"Some of these odd things really are sort of shining a light on what some of the company quirks are, and maybe you need to make the decision that it's not a good fit," says Linda Dominguez, an executive coach based in Coarse Gold, Calif. Of course, "when you're unemployed, that's a really hard thing to do."

A few years ago, a client came to Ms. Dominguez after receiving an odd request. The woman was meeting with an internal recruiter at a real-estate company about a senior human-resources job. The recruiter asked the woman to have her photograph taken. When she asked why, she was told only that the hiring manager liked to see candidates before interviewing them.

She felt uncomfortable but obliged. Later, she wished she had declined because she didn't think the company should have needed to know what she looked like before landing an interview with the hiring manager, Ms. Dominguez says. She wasn't offered the job, but ended up at a different company with a better job title, higher pay, and a culture she felt was a better fit.

Simply expressing reluctance to comply with a request can hurt your chances of landing a job, career counselors say. Dan Squires, a career coach in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., recalls an acquaintance who was interviewing for a senior executive position at a company in the entertainment industry. He was asked to take a psychological test. He was so taken aback that he said no. A few hours later, after asking Mr. Squires for advice, he called the company to say he would take the test after all. But by then, Mr. Squires fears, the damage may have already been done. When people refuse to do things, Mr. Squires says, employers may think, "What else are we going to ask him to do and he'll say, 'uh-uh, not me?' " He didn't get the job, and Mr. Squires suspects it was at least partly because he initially balked about taking the test.

It's hard to tell whether an odd request is indicative of a broader problem at the company, or just a meaningless quirk of its hiring process. That's why it's so important to research the company by talking with as many people as possible inside and outside the firm. "You should have some sense [whether] this is an anomaly or something they do because they think it's warm and wonderful," says Dave Opton, chief executive of ExecuNet, a career management and recruitment network for executives and recruiters, based in Norwalk, Conn.

Mr. Archer felt uncomfortable when asked to take the handwriting test. "It really made me think about what was going on with this company because I actually started to have doubts about whether I wanted to work there," he says. "It made me wonder what other processes this company had that would be kind of 19th century," he says.

But he realized he had liked all the people he'd interviewed with, and they didn't seem strange. "Everything seemed fine until then," he said. "I enjoyed the people I was meeting; they all had very good backgrounds, were all very competent, ethical people." He decided to dismiss the test as a harmless quirk of the hiring process.

He made the right call. He accepted an offer and found that "the company operated very normally other than that one experience."

Even if you're nervous about the test, a positive result can bolster your candidacy. Philip Rice, a 47-year-old financial consultant in Ross, Calif., was close to clinching a job as chief financial officer several years ago. Then his would-be employers asked him to perform one more task: To sit for a three-hour personality profile test. "I thought I had a pretty good shot at being offered this job," he says. "Then all of a sudden they throw this curveball." He wasn't sure what to do.

Mr. Rice asked a few friends what they thought. He was reassured when some told him they'd taken similar tests during their own job searches. "I thought, 'OK, I find this out of the ordinary but I'm going to go ahead and do it because I think it's worth it to see if I get offered the job,' " he says. "You don't know what you're going to get asked to do in interviews, so you basically have to kind of be flexible."

He met the test administrator at a Marriott hotel and sat down for three hours of open-ended questions. "You couldn't tell what was a good answer and what was a bad answer," Mr. Rice recalls. When he finished, he told his wife he had "no clue" how he'd done.

A week after the test, the CEO called with good news. The test administrator had told the company to hire Mr. Rice "as quickly as you can."

Wedding was canceled, but not the party

By Julie Muhlstein, Herald Writer

Put yourself in Katie Hosking's place.
Do you:
a) Pull a runaway-bride stunt?
b) Stay in your room and cry?
c) Turn an unfortunate event into a party for others?

After calling off her wedding 12 days before the planned June 18 ceremony, Hosking and her parents went with the third choice on the list. With a contract signed for a 150-guest reception at the Echo Falls golf and country club, it was too late for Bill and Susan Hosking to recover much of the money intended for their 22-year-old daughter's wedding. The Lake Stevens couple had made a $2,500 down payment and recently wrote another check for the $6,200 balance.

Susan Hosking said once she and her husband "got past the panic," they decided to host the dinner anyway. But their amended guest list included homeless people at the Interfaith Family Shelter in Everett. "They contacted one of our volunteers and asked if they knew of a shelter so they could donate this party," said Carol Oliva, manager of the shelter, operated by the Interfaith Association of Snohomish County. The shelter is in a former convent across from Our Lady of Perpetual Help Catholic Church, where the wedding was to have been.

"They invited us for dinner and dancing," Oliva said. About 40 shelter residents, staff members and volunteers joined the Hosking family. The shelter arranged carpools to the club between Monroe and Woodinville. "They had a DJ and really good music. It was a warm, friendly atmosphere. The food was delicious. It was a nice break, with people not worrying about anything for one night," Oliva said. "Toward the end of the evening, they packed up all the leftover food and we got to bring it back to the shelter."

The idea came from Susan Hosking's brother-in-law in New York. "His thought was to donate the food to a shelter," she said.

With would-be bride Katie, her young daughter Lindsay, her parents and four bridesmaids at the dinner, more than 50 were there. The buffet had been planned for 150. "That food would help feed people at the shelter for another three or four days," Susan Hosking said. "With the notoriety of the runaway bride, I would like people to know that these things do happen, and there is another outlet. The money is spent."

Jennifer Wilbanks is that "runaway bride." The Georgia woman's disappearance days before a 600-guest wedding prompted a massive hunt. The 32-year-old pleaded no contest earlier this month to telling police a phony abduction story. She was sentenced to probation and community service.

At Echo Falls, catering sales manager Jessica Gamble said if an event is canceled within 60 days of its planned date, "the entire contracted amount is forfeited." Couples are already booking dates for next summer, she said. In similar situations, Gamble has seen clients apply deposits to different events. But she had never seen anyone give a party away as the Hoskings did.

Without a wedding cake, chef Michael Greb added strawberry shortcake to his menu, which included baron of beef, salmon, shrimp cocktails, fettuccine and fruit. "Personally, it's a really hard time for a family," Gamble said. "It's a really awesome thing that they did. They made the best of it."

Understandably, Katie Hosking didn't share what happened. She simply said, "We broke up on June 6, and the wedding was supposed to be June 18." Imagine the pain that could be spared if others about to walk down the aisle were as wise and brave. At her reception-that-wasn't, this bride who didn't run wore "a cute strapless dress."

"Oh my gosh, we had so much fun," said Katie, a medical assistant at the Everett Clinic. Shelter residents, she said, "came up and thanked us several times - thank you, thank you, thank you. "We all danced. I still got to dance with my dad," she said.

Susan Hosking said one mother from the shelter had a son in a wheelchair. "That mother took that child out on the dance floor and picked him up and danced with him. It was a beautiful sight. "Our kids realized that even when something bad happens, somebody else has something worse," she said. "It was an eye-opener."

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9) Associated Press: Christmas in June? [Une conseillère municipale lutte pour que les ploucs de sa circonscription enlèvent enfin au mois de juin leurs décorations extérieures de Noël. AUDIO]

Un reportage radio sur le sujet:
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4712643

http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/news/weird_news/11910518.htm
Christmas in June? City says 'bah humbug'

Associated Press

AURORA, Ill. - Just about every neighborhood has them: a few homeowners who leave their Christmas decorations up long after the snow has melted - occasionally even after the Fourth of July bunting has gone up. But a few officials in this suburb 40 miles west of Chicago have decided to say "bah humbug" to the out-of-season tidings.

Aurora Alderwoman Juany Garza's recent canvassing of downtown neighborhoods turned up more than 100 homes still displaying Christmas decorations - from three white reindeer perched atop a roof to a plastic Santa flanking a front door displaying a "Feliz Navidad" sign. "It's almost the Fourth of July," Garza said. She left letters asking residents to take down the displays this week.

People in the neighborhood seem divided on the issue. "It looks kind of tacky," said resident Ray Anderson, a 66-year-old retired school principal. "It's not Christmas anymore. It's June and July, and you don't need Christmas decorations up."

But others say they're either too busy - or too lazy - to take down the displays, preferring to wait it out until they're way ahead of the Christmas lights curve, rather than woefully behind. "You're going to have to put them up again. Just leave them up," said 20-year-old Rolando Velasquez, sitting on a porch adorned with icicle lights. "I'd tell (the city) 'I'll take them off, but you've got to come back and put them back on.'"

There is no ordinance against untimely holiday decorations, so the city can't force residents to take them down. Garza said she hopes the letters - written in English and Spanish for her predominantly Hispanic constituents - will convince residents that the decorations reflect poorly on the community. Mayor Tom Weisner said the city will consider passing an ordinance to regulate the decorations if residents don't comply.

That would be fine with Barbara Bates, a retired telephone operator who has lived Aurora for more than 60 years. "We don't usually pick at petty stuff," she said. "But this really looks bad."

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10) The Economist: Project management: Overdue and over budget, over and over again [Alors qu'elle est désormais au coeur de l'organisaiton des entreprises, la gestion de projets semble poser de sérieuses difficultés.]
http://www.economist.com/displaystory.cfm?story_id=3886829

http://www.economist.com/displaystory.cfm?story_id=4065653

Project management: Overdue and over budget, over and over again
Jun 9th 2005
From The Economist print edition

Companies are increasingly keen on projects. Why, when so many fail?

WHEN George Stephenson built a railway from Liverpool to Manchester in the 1820s, it cost 45% more than budget and was subject to several delays as it made its way across the treacherous Chat Moss bog. In the intervening 180 years the management of large-scale projects seems to have improved but little. At the end of May the reconstruction of Wembley Stadium, the hallowed home of English soccer, was threatened when Multiplex, the Australian developer of the site, admitted that it faced mounting losses on the £750m ($1.4 billion) project. An unanticipated rise in the cost of steel (which doubled in 2004) and the extra labour required to ensure the building is ready for next May's FA Cup Final were said to have thrown the management's calculations out of kilter.

Even projects deemed a success these days sometimes fail to meet their targets. The 1,770km (1,106 miles) oil pipeline from Azerbaijan's Caspian wells to the Turkish Mediterranean port of Ceyhan was opened with much fanfare on May 25th by the presidents of the three countries under whose soil it lies (Azerbaijan, Georgia and Turkey). But the $4 billion project, led by BP (see article), is several months overdue and 5-10% over budget. Although oil has entered the pipeline at Baku, it will be another six months before the high-grade steel pipe is full and ready to disgorge on to tankers in the Mediterranean.

Big projects today are as likely to be built on software as they are on steel. But IT projects are no better at meeting budgets and deadlines. A £6 billion project to put the medical records of 50m Britons online by the end of this year is way over budget and has already been postponed by several months. In March, the FBI finally abandoned a $170m internal IT project, two years after problems with it had first surfaced. The Standish Group, a research firm which produces an influential annual evaluation of IT projects, judged that in 2004 only 29% of such projects “succeeded”, down from 34% in 2002. Cost over-runs averaged 56% of original budgets, and projects on average took 84% more time than originally scheduled.

It is not as if project management is a new science. It has its origins in critical paths and Gantt charts, planning tools first widely used in the early 20th century, and its own well-established international association, the Project Management Institute (PMI), based in Newtown Square, Pennsylvania. The PMI sets standards and professional exams that are taken by thousands every year. It boasts 150,000 members in 150 countries, all of them specialists in managing projects. So why do so many still go so wrong?

Projects, says the PMI, have five distinct phases: initiation; planning; execution; control; and closure. Problems arise most frequently when initiation gets separated from execution. To secure a project, bidders often make overly optimistic assumptions about costs and revenues—an example of what Max Bazerman of the Harvard Business School calls “self-serving bias”, a phenomenon he uses to explain why good accountants do bad audits. It may also explain why good project managers make bad forecasts, particularly in the public sector, where after-the-event accountability to a project's paymaster, the taxpayer, is less rigorous. This may be pronounced with prestige projects (such as Wembley Stadium) where bidders are chasing glory almost as much as commercial gain.

A study published this year in the Journal of the American Planning Association examined 210 big rail and road projects in 14 different countries, and found their forecasts of future passengers to be wildly optimistic: for the rail projects, they were, on average, an astounding 106% higher than eventually turned out to be the case, with one in eight out by over 400%; the road projects' miscalculations were more modest, by over 20% in more than half the cases. The article's authors, led by Bent Flyvbjerg, a professor at Denmark's Aalborg University, claim that the forecasts on such projects are no more accurate now than they were 30 years ago.

Projecting forwards

Greg Balestrero, the head of PMI, says that for years project management was largely ignored. But that is now changing. A recent PMI survey found that three out of four European companies employ project managers. When Compaq, a computer maker, was taken over by Hewlett-Packard in 2002, it had some 1,400 on its payroll.

Three years ago the board of Siemens launched a worldwide initiative to improve its project management. The German electronics group had worked out that half its turnover came from project-like work, and it calculated that if it could complete all of these projects on time and to budget, it would add €3 billion ($3.7 billion) to its bottom line over three years. A key element of the scheme was the introduction of project managers to the company's sales teams to try and temper their more extravagant promises, a move that requires a careful balance between reining them in and killing the deal.

Some companies have gone so far as to become more like project co-ordinators than producers of goods or services. The “business-as-usual” bits of their operations have been outsourced, leaving them free to design and orchestrate new ideas. Nike, for instance, does not make shoes any more; it manages footwear projects. Coca-Cola, which hands most of the bottling and marketing of its drinks to others, is little more than a collection of projects, run by people it calls “orchestrators”. Germany's BMW treats each new car “platform”, which is the basis of new vehicle ranges, as a separate project. Meanwhile Capital One, a fast-growing American financial-services group, has a special team to handle its M&A “projects”. For all these firms, project management has become an important competitive tool. Some of them call it a core competence.

Good project management can certainly make a difference. BP's fortunes were transformed when it converted its exploration division, BPX, into a portfolio of projects, each of them more or less free from head-office control—a structure which the company describes as an “asset federation”. Asset/project managers can no longer rely on head office for support. They are required to build their own self-sufficient teams.

Moreover, there are still difficult individual projects that get completed with time and money to spare. The winner of last year's PMI Project of the Year award was the Saudi-Aramco Haradh gas pipeline, whose original contracting document was lauded for the way it “defined the mix of contracts best suited to accomplish the project's objectives”. The three-year project to build a $2 billion gas terminal deep in the desert, 10km from the nearest road, was completed six months ahead of schedule and 27% under budget. Phew, what a scorcher.

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Europeans embrace the logic of cost-benefit analysis just as some Americans grow suspicious of it

ACCORDING to one of the European Commission's pettifogging regulations, cucumbers sold in the single market cannot be too curvy. According to another proposal, packets of coffee and chicory must conform to weights specified in Brussels.

The first regulation is largely apocryphal, a myth propagated by Euro-sceptic newspapers in Britain and debunked by the commission's team of counter-spinners. But the second regulation is quite real. It was one of several examples of regulatory overkill lambasted by Günter Verheugen, a vice-president of the commission, in a speech last month. Mr Verheugen wants to withdraw such needless regulations, simplify others and subject new proposals to “solid cost-benefit analyses”.

Cost-benefit analysis—which typically quantifies the attractions and drawbacks of a regulation, converts them into dollars or euros, then tots them up—sounds both dull and innocuous. But its findings can be revealing. For example, Robert Hahn, a scholar at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington, DC, calculates that over 40% of American regulations impose costs that outweigh the benefits they confer*. What might a similar review of the European Union's regulatory rule-book reveal? How many of the 90,000 pages of the acquis communautaire might be safely torn out, to the net benefit of the union?

The findings of Mr Hahn and other cost-benefit analysts in America have not passed unchallenged, however. A number of critics doubt the worth of the techniques and distrust the motives of the practitioners. They say that America's current administration is guilty of “regulatory underkill” and that cost-benefit analysis is its weapon of choice.

Whether or not this is fair to President George Bush's administration, is it fair to cost-benefit analysis? Is the method fatally flawed and intrinsically anti-regulatory? The Centre for Progressive Regulation (CPR), a think-tank that shelters many sceptics, thinks so. It objects to two features in particular: the “translation of lives, health, and the natural environment into monetary terms” and “the discounting of harms to human health and the environment that are expected to occur in the future”†.

Those who question cost-benefit analysis doubt that a price tag can ever be put on life. How could one seriously count the cost of death and injury caused by road accidents, for example? But, as Robert Frank, an economist now at Cornell University, has pointed out, even the fiercest critics do not get their brakes checked every morning. They have more pressing uses of their time. Road safety, then, does have an opportunity cost, and an economist will want to know what it is. Thus, when the CPR accuses economists of “pricing the priceless”, most economists would plead guilty as charged. They devote considerable effort, and not a little ingenuity, to discovering the implicit price of many things that are not traded directly in arm's-length markets.

As the critics allege, cost-benefit analysis works like a kind of universal solvent. It breaks qualities down into quantities, differences of kind into differences of degree, gold into base metal. A safe childhood, a breathtaking view, a clean pair of lungs—all are reduced to fungible “dollar-equivalents”. In doing so, the method forces into the open trade-offs that many would rather not face too squarely. Should taxpayers' money be devoted to keeping grandmother alive for an extra month in an intensive-care unit? Or would it be better spent reducing the risk of asthma faced by deprived children in the polluted inner city? Such comparisons may seem crass. But they are democratic.

The less sweet hereafter

Accused of pricing the priceless, economists are charged with under-pricing the future as well. Most practitioners of cost-benefit analysis assume that gains in the hereafter are worth less today than gains in the here-and-now. They discount future benefits, including lives saved, in much the same way that they discount future profits or costs.

Those who question cost-benefit analysis doubt that a price tag can ever be put on life

But are lives saved 12 months' hence really worth less than lives saved this year? To say so, the critics argue, is to make a false analogy between financial resources, which can be borrowed from, or invested for, the future, and human life, which cannot. By discounting future lives, economists also further an anti-regulatory agenda, the critics allege. After all, the costs of most health and safety regulations arrive upfront. The benefits can take time to emerge.

Discounting future lives is indeed awkward, and some economists have fretted about it for decades. But it is not necessarily anti-regulatory. If regulators discounted costs, but not lives saved, they would defer action indefinitely, Mr Hahn points out. The benefits would be the same if they waited a year (or a decade, for that matter) but the costs would always be less.

Cost-benefit analysis does not always argue for less regulation. It weeds out regulations that do not pay their way, but it can also identify measures not on the statute books, that should be. For example, defibrillators installed in workplaces might be a cost-effective way to save victims of heart attacks. The White House's Office of Management and Budget has sent about a dozen letters to the agencies it oversees prompting them to investigate such potentially beneficial regulations.

Fundamentally, it is not “anti-government” to weigh the costs of public action. On the contrary, the “regulatory excess” Mr Verheugen sees in the EU has doubtless damaged the prestige of Brussels. Some regulatory circumspection, nudged by cost-benefit sheepdogs, might even rehabilitate it. If the EU had not mandated the weights of chicory packets, perhaps people would not so readily believe that it regulates the curvature of cucumbers.

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http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/26/opinion/26sun2.html?

Editorial Observer: Face to Face With the Foie Gras Problem

By LAWRENCE DOWNES
Published: June 26, 2005

The web of life can be a trap for the conscience. Try twisting your mind around the human relationship with animals and it may quickly snarl in crisscrossing strands of compassion and guilt. Contortions may ensue.

Consider, for example, the strange role reversals behind an effort in Albany to outlaw the force-feeding of waterfowl to engorge their livers into foie gras, the fatty restaurant delicacy. One Senate sponsor, John Bonacic, is an upstate Republican who says he has no special sympathy for ducks or geese, despite what his bill says. He says he wants only to help a Sullivan County constituent - Hudson Valley Foie Gras, the nation's leading producer of fresh foie gras, which has not only lobbied for the bill, but also helped to write it.

Why? Michael Ginor, an owner of Hudson Valley Foie Gras, says he feels an anti-foie-gras mood building and is willing to be put out of business in New York if he can land on his feet somewhere else. The Bonacic bill, unlike others lurking in the legislative wings, does not take effect until 2016, giving Mr. Ginor ample time to make other plans - moving to Canada, maybe, or an Indian reservation - without worrying about losing his market dominance or facing prosecution for cruelty.

Animal welfare advocates have thus found themselves opposing a foie-gras ban, which in this case they say cynically gives a duck torturer a decade of indulgence.

That bill and others like it are going nowhere this session, but they'll be back. The battle against foie gras is being fought on many fronts - California, the country's only other producer, enacted a law to eventually ban its production and sale, as have other states and countries.

To animal welfare groups, the obscenity of force-feeding, known by the French word gavage, is self-evident. But Mr. Ginor and his partner Izzy Yanay, who runs the farm, accuse their critics of anthropomorphism and ignorance of duck anatomy and behavior. They say the practice is as benign as it is ancient, since waterfowl lack a gag reflex and have sturdy throats that easily tolerate grains, grit, stones and inflexible gavage tubes. To understand gavage, they say, is to accept it - as they insist poultry researchers have, after examining birds for signs of undue stress and suffering during gavage and finding none.

I visited Hudson Valley Foie Gras last week, seeing gavage for the first time. I saw no pain or panic in Mr. Yanay's ducks, no quacking or frenzied flapping in the cool, dimly lighted open pens where a young woman with a gavage funnel did her work. The birds submitted matter-of-factly to a 15-inch tube inserted down the throat for about three seconds, delivering about a cup of corn pellets.

The practice, done three times a day for a month, followed by slaughter, seemed neither particularly gentle nor particularly rough. It was unnerving to see the tube going down, and late-stage ducks waddling bulkily in their pens, but no more so than watching the epic gorging at the all-you-can-eat buffet at Shoney's, where morbid obesity is achieved voluntarily, with knife and fork.

The human appetite for sentient protein - food that flinches - is an ethical puzzle that many of us solve by deciding not to think about it. But those who lament the exploitation of God's creatures for human consumption and fun should be careful not to spend all their pity in one place. There is, after all, a vast universe of discomfort and death in American agribusiness, which processes 9 billion chickens and 98 million pigs a year, often in close confinement, ending in slaughter on a monumental scale. Against this backdrop - not to mention the misery of the veal pen, the mass agony of the trawler net, the sadness of the pet shop and circus - the sum of animal unhappiness in Hudson Valley's tidily run operation, which kills 250,000 ducks a year, seems trivial.

What seems brutal in isolation can be mitigated in context, as any parents who have had a baby circumcised might tell you. Singling out the foie-gras duck for salvation in Albany seems unwarranted and unwise, particularly when doing so would threaten the livelihoods of farmworkers and only drive foie-gras production somewhere else.

In Sullivan County - which could use all the economic activity it can get, beyond the force-feeding of dollar bills into video slots at Monticello Raceway - Hudson Valley Foie Gras gives a living to 175 people, mostly Latino immigrants. Many of them live in trailers on the grounds and worship in a tiny chapel of crepe-paper streamers and candles in a corner of a warehouse. Those who calculate the cruelty of foie gras would do well to include them in the equation as well.