Who or what is a Doofus ?

I freely admit to not having a clue about what a "doofus" was, until today, if you will pardon the pun. For, apparently, a doofus is a guy who doesn't have a clue. My vocabulary has since improved by one, thanks to Carol Bartz, the ousted CEO of Yahoo  who called her Board which ousted her, a bunch of doofuses.

Everything about the Yahoo saga stinks. Carol Bartz was fired by her Chairman over the phone. It has brought into question again how firings are done. Not just firing a CEO, but firing any employee. Firing by phone or by email must surely rank as one of the worst blunders you can make in a company. Topped only by having a security guard present and showing the employee to the door. Employees deserve to be told in person that they are fired and also told the reason why they are fired. The reason may have nothing to do with their performance - we are making losses and have to cut costs and you got the short end of the straw, is perfectly acceptable if that is the honest truth. If the employee is surprised that he or she is being fired, then clearly the boss hasn't done his job. Firings are rarely required overnight. You can see it coming and its the boss's job to be open and forthright in communication with the employee. The Board of Yahoo displayed appalling behaviour in firing Carol Bartz over the phone.

Carol hasn't covered herself with glory either. In her now famous mail to employees, she wrote "I am very sad to tell you that I’ve just been fired over the phone by Yahoo’s Chairman of the Board". She then proceeded to give an interview to Fortune where she has contributed to the increase in the vocabulary of bloggers like me. She also apparently said that " they  f---ed me over". She is going to collect a $10m severance pay but she may have put that in jeopardy because the severance agreement has the usual non disparagement clause (you don't throw garbage at the company, in lay man terms)

Then a pompous know it all (correction - rich pompous know it all) called Daniel Loeb who runs a hedge fund and has taken a stake in Yahoo writes a public letter asking for the Chairman of the Board to go and then naming a few directors who in his opinion have to go too. 

Excellent. With such worthy managers, Board and investors, what chance do the employees of Yahoo have. I am a regular user of Yahoo and its quite good at some of the things it does. But what a mess. Which sensible guy will now be willing to be the CEO. Probably only a guy who has some familiarity with doofusism !

The wonders of public opinion

Public opinion is often a cause of much entertainment. Public opinion, that is, as reflected in the comments section of a famous website. Let us say , for example, Reuters  reporting  a fairly innocuous news item as follows. You would have thought that there isn't much to comment about it. You would be wrong. Read on for this imaginary post and comments.

Cuba withdraws ambassador from Libya

Cuba has announced that it was withdrawing its diplomatic mission in Libya, reiterating that it does not recognise Libya's Transitional National Council.

Comments (325) 

Amyfalldown - First!

humanist7117 - Gaddafi is a thug. He is in  cohorts with Fidel Castro. He has run away to Libya

Nitinooroo - Мы работаем напрямую с импортерами парфюмерии в Россию, минуя перекупщиков. Это является гарантией реализации без наценок и каких-либо процентов. [url=http://www.voado.ru/optom/]Лицензионная парфюмерия производства ОАЭ[/url] – это имитация оригинальной селективной парфюмерии и духов.Настоящая лицензионная парфюмерия имеет хорошее

RobertBrewsterJr1 - IMPERIALIST THUGS ARE DESTROYING THE WORLD. OBAMA IS RESPONSIBLE FOR THIS. STOP GOVERNMENT SPENDING. THAT IS THE ONLY WAY TO BRING SANITY TO THE COUNTRY. LEFT WING LIBERALS ARE TAKING OVER THE WORLD. VOTE FOR MICHELLE BACHMANN

nicebrunido - %$#*%$ iPhones at half price. Visit ripyouoff.com today! #(#$@

elitaren - f*****g Gaddafi. b****** Castro. I don't give a s***


goodguy - MMS is corrupt. Sonia is corrupt. Narendra Modi for PM

        jidaspeak - @goodguy - you are a moron. RSS stooge. Go die somewhere

        goodguy - @jidaspeak  - You Porki. Go back to your mulla country and drown in blood

revengeofbutthead - wtf ?

Nihaonyan - This comment has been deleted by the moderator

oldman - The Libyan Transitional Council is a loose combination of different interest groups. So far the only glue holding them together was their common hatred and fear of Gaddafi. Now that Gadaffi has gone it remains to be seen whether they can form a sensible government. Uncertain times ahead for Libya

             lespaulrentals - @oldman - Who asked you ?

AnImmortalLove - Thumbs Up if you typed Viagra and landed on this site.

Padmanvasanth - GOOD STEP HAPPENED...

NOW THEY ADMIRE THAT THEIR WELTH IS THIS MUCH ONLY...

SO IT IS CLEAR THAT - OVER AND ABOVE THIS IS BLACK MONEY...

AND THEY MOST RETURN IT TO INtIA

LET US BRING BUCK ALL OUR HERD EARNED MONEY...


itshuyzz - People listen to me. Its all the fault of multinationals. Gaddafi was a stooge of Exxon, BP and the multinational oil companies. When he was no more useful, they have deposed him. Its all the fault of the evil oil companies.

Is this what public opinion has descended to ??

I am eternally thankful that readers who comment here are a million miles away from this lot. Truly salute those who take the time to make such informed and wise comments in this blog.

PS - This post was inspired by this article in the WSJ.

Can the world still feed itself ?

When Peter Brabeck-Letmathe speaks, you listen. He is the highly respected Chairman of Nestle. In his weekend interview with The Wall Street Journal published here, he speaks of the increasing danger of food insecurity in the world.

Food prices shooting up, the world over, is a serious cause of concern. This blogger has moaned about it here , here and here . The traditional activist response is to bleat about the evils of globalisation. But here is a world leader giving a simple way forward for what should be done.

His prescription is three fold and simple

- Stop using land for growing corn for biofuel

- Do not maniacally oppose technology in food cultivation, especially genetically modified crops

- Let the market price water for industrial use

I had no idea that this year American farmers would harvest more corn for fuel rather than for feed. This is the outcome of a subsidy policy that has encouraged bio fuel use to get away from the human addiction to petroleum. But look at the consequence for food - a perfect example of how policy in one sector can have serious consequences in another. Single issue activists please note - policy making is complex and interwoven and you can often cause more harm than good by manic obsession with a single issue. If you balance food prices with reducing petroleum dependence, it is not an easy choice. But as Brabeck-Letmather says, we should consider using land only to grow food.

The almost religious opposition to genetically modified crops is , in my view, absurd. We have been genetically modifying crops for virtually of all of human existence. It is called plant breeding. Wheat, Rice, etc as we now it, are all genetically modified. It appears that it is OK to genetically modify slowly, but not OK to modify quickly. World over, there are already laws to look after food safety and there are laws for labelling food containing genetically modified cops. So if you oppose it, that is certainly your right and you are free not to consume it. But to insist that nobody else should do so is unacceptable in my view. Again there is a policy choice. Between letting food prices go so high that some people starve or suffer malnutrition and being scared about the gap between reasonable surety and absolute surety on the safety of such crops. That whole argument has been hijacked by ranting against multinationals, globalisation etc, which is another story and beyond the purview of this post.

The third remedy is interesting. Apparently only 1.5% of the world's fresh water consumption is for personal use - washing, bathing, etc, The rest is for agricultural use or industrial use. Brabeck-Letmathe's solution is stunningly simple. Keep water for personal use free. But let the market price water for industrial or agricultural use. That will ensure that water 9100 litres of water are not used to make 1 litre of bio diesel.

A superb interview which I would strongly recommend for anybody interested in food security for the world.