Tag: Martin

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Review (DVD): It’s Complicated

5 Star, Culture, DVD - Light, Reviews (DVD Only)
Amazon Page
5.0 out of 5 stars Pure Fun with Great Visuals–a Fantasy Film to be Sure
March 29, 2010
Meryl Streep, Steve Martin, Alec Baldwin

Guatemala seems to be the place where Academy Award pre-release DVDs find a home and are replicated in the thousands, then sold for a few dollars if not less–I have never bought one, just borrowed from those who have. I am reminded of the VHS underground marketplace in Panama in the 1980's.

Alec Baldwin really surprised me–he rose to the occasion and turns in one of his best performances as a supporting actor to Meryl Streep, with Steve Allen coming in as third fiddle but the ultimate victor.

I take quite seriously the severe critic that complains this is a white super-suburban fantasy film, and this is absolute true. Having said that, I never-the-less recommend this film very strongly as engaging, with very strong visuals, and a total pleasure across the board.

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Journal: Sarah Palin Loses the Lipstick

05 Civil War, Civil Society, Collective Intelligence, Cultural Intelligence

Full Story Online & Video
Full Story Online & Video

A guide to who gets whacked

Andy Barr, Jonathan Martin – Tue Nov 17

Sarah Palin may claim to scorn elites, but her new book will ring familiar to its Beltway readership.

Getting even with those who crossed her, praising her allies and generally putting a self-serving sheen on last year’s presidential campaign, “Going Rogue” is typical of the political memoir genre of recent vintage. It’s the sort of book that will send the political class scurrying to bookstores, eager to see how they fared in what’s known as “the Washington read.”

With no index, though, Palin’s book has made that ritual more difficult.

Amazon Page
Amazon Page

So POLITICO, having obtained a copy of the book before its Tuesday release, has created a reader’s guide to “Going Rogue,” grouping the many characters into three categories: Friends, Foes, In Between.

Below the Fold we provide a commentary and links to a number of books about the prospects for honest independent government in 2012 and beyond.

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Journal: True Cost of Afghanistan

03 Economy, 08 Wild Cards, 10 Security, Civil Society, Ethics, Government, Military, Peace Intelligence, Threats, True Cost

Full Story Online
Full Story Online

Paul Kawika Martin, Political and Policy Director for Peace Action, said:

I think the question should be:  How much U.S. credit should we use on the war in Afghanistan? As it stands, the over $230 Billion we have already spent has mostly been borrowed money adding to the U.S. deficit.  Of course, just like buying a car or home, sometimes it's good to do things on credit.  But this isn't the true cost.  As Noble Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz and Harvard professor Linda Bilmes points out, that figure fails to include interest on debt, veterans benefits and other costs to society.  They estimate the costs for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan could top a staggering $5 trillion to $7 trillion.

Phi Beta Iota: Other “pundits” can be read within the full story.  The cost is far more than the “tangible debt.”  It includes the hollowing out of America–the loss of integrity, the failure of paradigms, the cheating culture, and on and on and on.  We have in essence sacrified the Republic in the name of partisan politics and corporate greed, enabled by civitas minimus.  America is less safe and less prosperous today than it was on 9/12.

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Review: The Design of Business–Why Design Thinking is the Next Competitive Advantage

6 Star Top 10%, Best Practices in Management, Capitalism (Good & Bad), Change & Innovation, Complexity & Resilience, Culture, Research, Economics, Education (Universities), Environment (Solutions), Future, Intelligence (Commercial), Intelligence (Government/Secret), Intelligence (Public), Nature, Diet, Memetics, Design, Philosophy, Public Administration, Strategy, True Cost & Toxicity, Values, Ethics, Sustainable Evolution
Amazon Page
Amazon Page
5.0 out of 5 stars In Its Niche Beyond a Six–In Larger Context a Four
October 11, 2009
Roger Martin
First off, what got me to buy this book does not appear in the book at all–the author on record as saying that Wall Street was not designed to make money for its investors, only for its mandarins–the same is true of how universities are designed, businesses, etc. but that one observation really got my attention. I bought the book before BusinessWeek featured it as one of four in the October 5th edition (Europe version), and after looking the others over, chose this one.
In the larger context of changes to the Earth that now take three years instead of ten thousand years, as an entire literature flourishes on The Philosophy of Sustainable Design, Green to Gold: How Smart Companies Use Environmental Strategy to Innovate, Create Value, and Build Competitive Advantage and Natural Capitalism: Creating the Next Industrial Revolution, the book is a four for narrow-casting and lack of context, but you can use Phi Beta Iota, the Public Intelligence Blog, to search and sort among my other 1,400 reviews, so no penalty is warranted, This book will be scored Beyond 6 Stars at PBI/PIB for the simple reason that it addresses the core need of all eight tribes of intelligence (academia, civil society, commerce, government, law enforcement, media, military, and non-governmental organizations), to re-design away from the Industrial Era waste (where Six Sigma stops), and to instead envision how the world could and should be, and set out to achieve that–a prosperous world at peace.
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Journal: Regulating Wall Street: Idiocy on Top of Illusion

03 Economy, Commerce, Ethics, True Cost
Full Story Online
Full Story Online

A Las Vegas Illusion

Roger Martin
Roger Martin

Roger Martin is Dean of the Rotman School of Management at the
University of Toronto

Amazon Page
Amazon Page

Pre-order his forthcoming book

In response to the question: What does Wall Street have to change to  produce better leaders, a different culture and a more long-term focus?

Forget about it. Don't even waste time thinking about it. The purpose
of Wall Street firms is to trade value for their own benefit not to
build value for the economy either short-term or long-term. While at
one point in its history, a non-trivial part of Wall Street's activity
involved financing the growth of American companies, that is now a
minor piece of its business. Wall Street is primarily engaged in
encouraging individuals and companies to trade value between one
another and tolling the parties for the service, and trading against
the outside economy for its own account.

Phi Beta Iota: This author not only gets it, he provides a solution.  Wall Street, and the Fed, need to be creatively destroyed, and we need to restore bottom-up Human Scale locality-based business.  Government “regulation” of financial crime is idiocy on top of illusion.

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Who’s Who in Collective Intelligence: Thomas Homer-Dixon

Alpha E-H, Collective Intelligence

Thomas Homer-Dixon
Thomas Homer-Dixon

Photo Credit: Bryn Gladdi

Interview with Thomas Homer-Dixon by Hassan Masum

The Internet and the revitalization of democracy–the Rt. Hon. Paul Martin in Conversation with Thomas Homer-Dixon

Thomas Homer-Dixon holds the Centre for International Governance Innovation Chair of Global Systems at the Balsillie School of International Affairs in Waterloo, Canada, and is a Professor in the Centre for Environment and Business in the Faculty of Environment, University of Waterloo.

His books include Carbon Shift: How the Twin Crises of Climate Change and Oil Depletion Will Define the Future, The Upside of Down: Catastrophe, Creativity, and the Renewal of Civilization (Knopf, Island Press, 2006), which won the 2006 National Business Book Award, The Ingenuity Gap (Knopf, 2000), which won the 2001 Governor General's Non-fiction Award, and Environment, Scarcity, and Violence (Princeton University Press, 1999), which won the Caldwell Prize of the American Political Science Association.

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Who’s Who in Collective Intelligence: Paul Martin

Alpha M-P, Collective Intelligence
Rt. Hon. Paul Martin
Rt. Hon. Paul Martin

Paul Martin was the 21st Prime Minister of Canada and is the Member of Parliament for LaSalle-Émard in Montreal, Quebec. He was first elected federally in 1988.

Currently Martin co-chairs, with Nobel laureate Wangari Maathai, a $100 million poverty alleviation fund for the Congo Rainforest Basin and is leading a new initiative in Northern Ontario designed to help Aboriginal youth complete high school.

Martin studied philosophy and history at St. Michael's College at the University of Toronto and is a graduate of the University of Toronto Law School. He was called to the bar in Ontario in 1966.

The Internet and the revitalization of democracy–the Rt. Hon. Paul Martin in Conversation with Thomas Homer-Dixon

The Book
The Book