Percolating thoughts

An idea occurred to me this morning concerning CEO wages. An odd subject to dwell on, but one that is timely and currently important. Since the start of the great recession the media has been reporting on the multimillion dollar “Golden Parachutes” that are given to outgoing CEOs of spiraling companies. The ongoing #Occupy protests point to them as signs of corruption on Wall Street. This little blurb on Daring Fireball about Research in Motion, the makers of the Blackberry, references some past speculation on why Co-CEOs Mike Lazaridis and Jim Balsillie still have jobs. And finally, the obituaries of Steve Jobs brought up his $1 yearly salary (plus stock options).

All this made me think that companies would be much better served by their CEOs if they were paid these high-end, 1% salaries, primarily in company stock. Their worth would be directly tied to the company they run. Their retirement packages (and golden parachutes) are predetermined and paid in not a dollar amount, but a set amount of stock. They run the company into the ground they don’t get to walk away with more of the companies money. Would HP, one of the largest PC makers in the world, have had to deal with a CEO who tried to dismantle a money-making arm of the company after 11 months in office if that loss in revenue affected his ability to make ends meet?

This, of course, would not happen in most companies. After booting out a bad CEO a board would pay almost anything for one with a proven track record, and those can be very costly. But even a high five-figure salary, augmented by heavy stock options, can pay off more in the long run for a good CEO.

It would take some backbone for a board to insist on paying primarily in stock, and most won’t do it. Boards of directors seem to have short memories, thinking their new CEO will always be better than their last one. Of course, if the new CEO was better than the old one they would want to get mostly stock.

Oh, and as I was writing this, Sony posted a 1.2 Billion dollar loss for the year, mostly caused by their TV business, which hasn’t been profitable in eight years. How does Sony CEO Howard Stringer still have a job?

Riots in london

I'm not in london, but some friends are, and some more are moving there at the end of the month. As the riots start to spread from london to the midlands and scotland there is a chance they could spread further, however it's very doubtful that they will spread it Ireland. The Irish had several good opportunities to rise up over the past year and since they haven't already I doubt they ever will.

The Guardian has had wonderful accounts of the nights and days of riots, much better than the BBC. From today's liveblog:

At the 8:32am marker:  Diane Abbott, Labour MP for Hackney North and Stoke Newington — an area that has seen a lot of the trouble — has told BBC Breakfast a curfew should be imposed.

"I have not heard of a curfew on mainland Britain in the past century. [It's] very difficult to impose. I'm not saying that it is definitely the way forward but it is something we have to consider. These young people, who seem to have no stake in society, are trashing their own communities. We cannot continue to have increasing numbers of looters on the streets night after night."

I understand the need to first put the fire out before investigating what started it, but it's quotes like this, wherein they show that they know what started the riots, how it's been that way for years and no one has tried to fix it, really grinds my gears.

Also, if you read it line by line it almost starts to steer into the philosophical with "These young people, who seem to have no stake in society, are trashing their own communities.." I kinda wish she went on to say "When this is over we need to take a look at ourselves to find the causes of these horrible symptoms..." but she jumps right back into the safe political rhetoric.

Also interestingly, there was a similar incident that sparked riots in Tottenham in the late 70s, where a mother, after the police busted down her door, died of a heart attack.

Lockdown Dublin

To prep for the arrival this morning of Queen Elizabeth II the city of Dublin has pulled out all the stops, but with good reason. Before she landed the Gardai had found two pipe bombs, which were disposed of safely.

They blocked off O'Connell Street, the main north/south road in town, and have blocked off street-side parking everywhere in city centre. According to one of the papers there are over 8,ooo uniformed police around for the visit, the first time the sitting monarch has come to the Republic. There was apparently a near riot (with only a couple of arrests) near the Garden of Remembrance, the park north of the river that serves as a memorial to those that died in the rebellion and civil war. The pictures that have come out have not helped out the protesters, who were, apparently, just the normal sweatpants and tracksuit wearing thugs that populate the north Dublin scene.

The Guardai also spent the last week going around and sealing every manhole, water main, and hole in the sidewalk. They actually went around twice. The first pair went around with a can of spray paint and a wrench, saw an opening to the sewers, dropped the wrench on top of the cover, sprayed the wrench with paint, picked it up and moved on. The second pair followed up in a couple of days and actually sealed them.

Note that it's not even the end of the first day, and there are two more days of this. And then we do it all over again with Obama, which should be a comparatively easy time.

Year in Pictures Day 2

, originally uploaded by morndry.

Vampire fang ice cubes, one of Meg's Christmas presents.

Year in Pictures Day 1

, originally uploaded by morndry.

Trying this year in pictures again, hopefully this time I'll stick with it. This was taken early, early this morning at a pub.

Thing to do before you come visit

Meg and I have been talking to some of you who are planning to come visit sometime in the next year. We're really looking forward to seeing you and can't wait for you to get here. That being said, I've come up with a list of things you need to do before you get here to make your stay easier.

1. Call your credit card/bank and tell them you're coming.
Let them know when you are coming over so they won't put a hold on your card when it's suddenly used on the other side of the world.

2. Unlock your phone.
If you have an AT&T or T-Mobile phone, go into the store and ask them to unlock it for you. I think they will do this with every phone except the iPhone. When you get here we'll give you a local SIM card that you can use while you're here so you won't have to pay the crazy international fees.
If you have verizon or sprint then your phone will probably not work here, and if it does it will be crazy expensive. Let us know if you need to borrow a phone and we'll see if we can work something out. It might not be the most fashionable of phones, but we'll make sure it works.

3. TBD
I'm sure we'll come up with other things, and we'll let each of you know closer to when you're coming.

Routines and Work Space

I've been having a difficult time getting into a routine here, and I think the biggest problem is that I have no designated "work space" like I did in the states. Hopefully that will change soon, as we are finally settled in with internet.
Of course I also haven't had to actually DO anything yet, so work space has not been at the top of my to-do list. That will change pretty soon as school is ramping up (my professors took last week, the third week of class, off to go to a conference in Hamburg) and I'm applying for some jobs. If I do get some work-at-home type jobs then I'll have to reconsider my work area.

I've thought at length about what my favorite work area would be, and luckily Meg and I both agree it would be more a library than a study. I would like it to have chairs for reading, and possibly a partner's desk so two people can work at once. Meg and I found a very nice antique partner's desk in Paducah before we left, but where we found one we can find another.