IBM Sending Skilled Jobs to China and India

Politicians, pundits and perhaps even some economists that write about globalization simply don't understand how the dynamic has changed. 

Woody Allen's "Tails of Manhattan"

The comic relates in this short piece from The New Yorker how two lobsters brought Bernie Madhoff to justice. Have to laugh to keep from crying. 

Is Tennis Too Slow?

In 1998, Goran Ivanišević beat Richard Krajicek in a marathon Wimbledon semi-final 6–3, 6–4, 5–7, 6–7, 15-13 that might have been the worst, professional tennis match of all time, at least from a spectators' perspective. That match catalyzed a progression of changes that altered tennis ---  perhaps too much. 

As I recall, their average rally, if you want to call it that, was a little over 1 stroke -- one single stroke. After one exchange of three (count 'em 3) strokes, legendary commentator Bud Collins exclaimed, "Holy cow. Tennis broke out.". 

Clearly big-serve tennis had gone too far. So, the tennis powers went about slowing the game down. Unfortunately, the pendulum has swung too radically in the other direction. 

Tennis is at its best when players with dramatically different styles meet in big matches -- Bjorn Borg, the ultimate baseliner, vs. perhaps the best volleyer of all time, John McEnroe; Stan Smith vs. Rod Laver; Arthur Ashe vs. Jimmy Connors, Patrick Rafter vs Michael Chang. 

Today, tennis is dominated by defensive players that camp out often 12 feet behind the baseline. Rafael Nadal, Andy Murray, Giles Simon, David Ferrer, Gaels Monfils, Fernando Verdasco. 

Simon is a favorite of mine. I love Murray's game, and admire Rafa. But when those two met at Indian Wells last week they produced what may be the worst match since Krajicek-Ivanišević. 

Mint.com A Financial Dud

If you're looking for software to help with your financial planning, you may have seen reviews of Mint.com, a personal-financial Web site that is getting traction because it fits the trendy Web 2.0, software-as-a-service in-the-cloud mantra. Save some time; Mint is a dud. 

While Mint competes with much older, traditional services such as Quicken and Microsoft Money, it lacks many of their features, and what it offers often doesn't work well or at all. 

Some of the problems are bugs, which will presumably be fixed, while others are conceptual. Mint tries to over-simplify the process and in doing so sacrifices control. When I set up links to my various financial accounts, Mint handled three out of five successfully, and failed on the other two. The error messages had no bearing I could find on reality.