Category Archives: News and Events

The Barometer demands reasoning and analysis from her students, not “I feel.”  Were well trained ethics students charged with the assignment of evaluating whether a Muslim community center and mosque should be built three blocks away from Ground Zero in … Continue reading →

   Has every male in America forgotten “Fatal Attraction”? There’s a fine line between romance and sexual harassment – a line that becomes noticeably brighter once one party in the romance loses interest, drops out, or quits awarding contracts. Expense … Continue reading →

The New York Times ran a piece on Sunday, August 1, 2010 that highlighted, as it were, research on the tendency of students today to cut and paste information from the Internet without attribution.  The Times discovered a phenomenon with … Continue reading →

The SEC announced the Goldman fine with fanfare.  But the amount Goldman Sachs will ante up for its role in the Abacus mortgage fund was small potatoes.  Howard Chen, a banking analyst, had the best take on Goldman’s lack of remorse … Continue reading →

Richard Scrushy, the former CEO of HealthSouth who was acquitted of the criminal charges  related to his role at that company but later convicted of bribery, has asked for an early release from prison based on the U.S. Supreme Court … Continue reading →

The consumers are different and the products worlds apart but there is a common thread.  When the sudden acceleration issues with Toyota vehicles first emerged, the company hedged on a floor-mat cause, opted not to make disclosures and filings, and … Continue reading →

Bank of America has joined the ranks of companies ‘fessing up to “repos.”  “Repos” do not mean the same thing to banks as they do to those rather large fellows with tow trucks and crow bars.  To the latter, repos … Continue reading →

Some years ago, Intel poo-pooed the protests of a math professor who complained that once you got past a certain number of digits in your calculations the Intel chip resulted in incorrect answers.  Intel hemmed and hawed and initially allowed … Continue reading →

P = f(x).  The probability of a safety conscious decision being made is a direct function of budgets and margins. Put them both together in a meeting and budgets will rule.  When all the analyses on BP’s Deepwater Horizon well … Continue reading →

I have lived in Arizona since 1976, a choice of residence that finds tongues clicking about me around the country.  Before giving a speech last week, a potential attendee queried the sponsor, Where is she from again? He responded, Arizona.  … Continue reading →

The SEC complaint against Goldman is a stunner.  Stunning because Goldman had a 31-year-old flying about as close to the treetops as one can get without crashing.  Or maybe Fabrice Tourre has indeed crashed now.  If the SEC is right, Goldman’s Tourre put together … Continue reading →

A man who has struggled through a period of stress and strain with his family won the Masters at Augusta National.  The pseudo family guy/super star, with a secret “other” life that has been enough  to make John Edwards blush, finished fourth.  Phil Mickelson’s wife, … Continue reading →