James Drogan

From John Mauldin's Outside the Box of March 15, 2013 in which he quotes Dylan Grice.

Of the many elemental flaws in macroeconomic practice is the true observation that the economic variables in which we might be most interested happen to be those which lend themselves least to measurement. Th [sic] us, the statistics which we take for granted and band around freely with each other measuring such ostensibly simple concepts as inflation, wealth, capital and debt, in fact involve all sorts of hidden assumptions, short-cuts and qualifications. So many, indeed, as to render reliance on them without respect for their limitations a very dangerous thing to do. As an example, consider the damage caused by banks to themselves and others by mistaking price volatility (measurable) with risk (unmeasurable). Yet faith in false precision seems to us to be one of the many imperfections our species is cursed with.

Available at the iTunes Store > University of South Australia:

1. SP2- 2012 Society, State and the Individual Class 23209 (13)
2. SP5- 2011 International Management Ethics and Values Class 21628 (13)
3. SP5- 2011 Principles of Logistics and Supply Chain Management Class 23213 (11)

The production values are medium to low and the mannerisms of the lecturers may put you off a bit.  All and all, however, there is good information here.  The number in parenthesis is the the count of the lectures.  Length of the lectures is about one hour.

This past term I taught a section of LEAD 101, a course required of all freshman at Maritime.  The course description is:

This course is aimed at introducing the student to college life with emphasis on the unique history and goals of Maritime College, helping the student manage the difficult transitional first-year of college via the formulation of a plan for academic success, and fostering the student’s potential for leadership via the development of self-awareness and interaction with other students from diverse backgrounds.

In addition, in April I assumed the role and responsibilities of an academic department chair.

Thus the notion of leadership skills is doubley important.

This is a preamble to drawing your attenion to Why Executives Are So Bad At The Behavioral Side Of Management in Business Insider.  I suggest a read and a bit of introspection.

Daniel Pink (bio) has a provocative podcast regarding the intersection, or lack thereof, of education and work.  Students and educators alike should have a listen.

Your attention is called to Kurt Vonnegut, Joe Heller, and a Great Thanksgiving Message from Bob Sutton's blog.

I entered into the MA in Diplomacy program at Norwich for a number of reasons.  One of which was that I wanted to understand better the forces that impinged upon globalization and subsequently should affect the course of study in International Transportation Management at Maritime (ITM).

Emerging from the Diplomacy was the graphic to the left (I tend to think in diagams and pictures) in which I tried to imagine these major forces, often working, I would suggest, at cross purposes and how they would affect ITM, caught somewhere in the confluence.

ITM considers economic geography, but as the tyranny of geography has been overcome through innovation realized in massive alterations of the geography and a minimization of its impact, other forces are emerging to be dominant.

In particular, relations.

By relations I mean relations at an international, regional, national, state, and local level.  These relations are often political in nature and concern the distribution of power.  My working hypothesis is that graduates of the ITM program need to increasingly understand this force (and these forces) if they are to deliver value in the marketplace.

All the above is to introduce a recent Foreign Policy blog post (Walt, S. M. (2012, October 31). What’s the Foreign Policy Agenda for the Next Four Years? Foreign POlicy. Retrieved from http://walt.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2012/10/31/a_to_do_list_for_obama_or_romney) that is relevant to understanding the context in which globalization exists.

There is a need for us to continually push the boundaries of our education and understanding.  Formal eduction, such as the MA in Diplomacy and the MS in ITM, almost always are behind the curve.

From John Mauldin's Outside the Box of November 2, 2012.

I am going to write about the election this weekend, but not in the way you might think. This election offers a teaching opportunity about one of our biggest challenges as investors, and that is the problem with unreliable models that I have been writing about for the past three weeks. How can very smart people look at the same data and come to such different conclusions? Whether it is politics, investments, or the weather, there is a common theme and one that we very much need to be aware of if we hope to succeed...

That, at least, is how economists generally view things. However, economists do not run for office all that often; and what for the economist is the rational solution can be for a politician a recipe for electoral disaster.

Yergin, Daniel (2011-09-20). The Quest: Energy, Security, and the Remaking of the Modern World (Kindle Locations 11331-11332). Penguin Group. Kindle Edition.

From John Mauldin's Thoughts from the Frontline of October 29, 2012.

“As far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they are not certain; and as far as they are certain, they do not refer to reality.”

– Albert Einstein

“To trace something unknown back to something known is alleviating, soothing, gratifying and gives moreover a feeling of power. Danger, disquiet, anxiety attend the unknown – the first instinct is to eliminate these distressing states. First principle: any explanation is better than none… The cause-creating drive is thus conditioned and excited by the feeling of fear …"

– Friedrich Nietzsche

“Very few beings really seek knowledge in this world. Mortal or immortal, few really ask. On the contrary, they try to wring from the unknown the answers they have already shaped in their own minds – justifications, confirmations, forms of consolation without which they can't go on. To really ask is to open the door to the whirlwind. The answer may annihilate the question and the questioner.”

– Anne Rice, The Vampire Lestat

This most significant of questions has been posed by one of my capstone students (see TMGT 9100 Capstone, Graduate, Classroom and Online, Maritime College for a discussion of the context).

It seems to me that we too often shy away from this question.  If we do take it on, we generally do so in order to support a previously declared position.  What we need to do is to have the courage to examine it from the point of view of all affected.  I'm reminded here of a line attributed to the Nobel Laureate, Paul Samuelson; “There is no substitute for paying attention to the empirical facts of life, and no substitute for systematic reasoning about them.”

We do know how to pay attention to the facts of life and systematically reason about them, but we are either lazy (the tough questions demand hard work) or, more likely, fear the outcome.  Hence, we more-or-less muddle along hoping that someone else will resolve the matter or that a miracle will occur.