What with getting the Carnival of the Liberated up on Dean’s World first thing in the morning, Tuesdays sometimes just get ahead of me. Here’s what’s caught my eye so far:

• There doesn’t seem to be a lot of commentary from the blogosphere on the reported death of the elected leader of the Chechens, Asland Maskhadov, in operations by Russian special forces. Maskhadov was widely held responsible for the school hostage situation and subsequent death of more than 150 children, teachers, and others in Beslan last fall. Siberian Light seems to be on top of the situation with a run-down of major media reportage.
• Amarji posts from Syria on knowledge, change, and cutting his hair.
• American Future relays a story from Spiegel than an Iranian defector contradicts the mullahs’ claims that the Iranian nuclear research project is solely for peaceful purposes. Read all about it!
• CommonSenseDesk has a round-up of blogospheric reaction to the bankruptcy reform bill.
• While we’re on the subject of credit card debt, Max Sawicky of MaxSpeak asks a genuinely good question: would creditors be able to attach the private accounts and annuities being proposed for Social Security reform? Hat tip: Brad DeLong
• CodeBlueBlog fills us in on what’s actually going on with Bill Clinton’s health.
• There’s another chapter from Westerville, the Red State Lake Wobegone, over at Dennis the Peasant.
• Reflections on the state of both political parties from The Talking Dog.
• There’s a round-up of reactions from Lebanese bloggers at The Word Unheard.

That’s the lot.

The lastest edition of Carnival of the Liberated, a sampler of some of the best posts from Iraqi bloggers, is now available on Dean’s World. This week we’ve got
Mandaeans, lots of reactions to the Giuliana Sgrena matter, another family
member heard from, a death in the family, and lots more.

I almost let the day go by without wishing everyone a happy Pulaski Day! Casimir Pulaski, Polish patriot, American Revolutionary War general, and Father of the American Cavalry was born on March 4, 1747. He died in 1779 of the wounds he received holding the city of Charleston against the British. After Lafayette he is probably the most honored of all the foreign fighters who came to defend our young republic. In his first letter to Washington after joining the struggle here he wrote:

“I came here, where freedom is being defended, to serve it, and to live or die for it.”

He was true to his word.

You can read more about Casimir Pulaski here.

I have been remiss in not mentioning Nip and Tuck lately. They just turned eleven a few weeks ago and I’ve been meaning to comment on them ever since. They still don’t think much of me (they love my wife) but they’ve learned to tolerate me over the years. They’re still pretty active and feisty as the dickens. This picture was taken last night at dinner time.

Winter seems to be very, very hard on all of our animal companions. I note that Mover Mike has lost his golden retriever, Amber, and Marc Danziger (Armed Liberal) is bidding a slow, sad farewell to their 18-year old cat. Since 14 is the oldest recorded age for a rabbit (to my knowledge), we know that some day in the not-too-distant future either Nip or Tuck won’t be with us any more. They’ve never been separated since the day they were born so I suspect that will be quite hard on the survivor—I doubt that he’ll outlive his “brother” (they’re not actually brothers but were born to separate litters on the same day) by a great deal. But if they live through this shedding season I suspect they’ll make it through the summer. Melancholy stuff.

On a somewhat lighter note I notice that Silflay Hraka is also doing bunny-blogging (but in a more cheerful vein). And I’ve recently located a new blog, Lagomorphic Tendencies (contrary to common opinion rabbits are not rodents but lagomorphs). It’s worth a look if only for the very amusing blogroll.

Here’s what’s caught my eye this morning:

• Across the Bay critiques the Juan Cole history of Lebanon I linked to a while ago.
• Austin Bay comments on Iran and the oil weapon. Wretchard puts in his two cents.
• Becker and Posner comment on the interrelationship between economic and political freedom.
• Brad DeLong comments on Alan Greenspan in a thoughtful, balanced post.
• Steve Antler, the Econopundit, has a very interesting post about “moon-lighters”—people holding more than one job. I’ve been thinking a lot about this since I met two people both of whom were working two full-time jobs. I actually think there’re a lot more of them. Nearly every firefighter I know, for example, has a part-time (or full-time) job in addition to his regular job. Does anyone know how this counts in the unemployment statistics?
• A tale of two Marshalls from Matthew Yglesias. Could the problem that Yglesias identifies be that there is no commonality of principle, merely common support for particular policies?
• The Health Care Blog notes the role of fad and fashion in surgery.

That’s the lot.

Research being conducted on behalf of the U. S. military at this year’s Iditarod may be able to help bomb-sniffing dogs in Iraq stay cool:

Researchers working on behalf of the U.S. military took infrared video of the first 50 dog teams to complete Saturday’s 11-mile ceremonial start in Anchorage. Their mission is to find out if there’s a way to help working canines, such as bomb-sniffing dogs, keep cool in the Middle East. But they couldn’t help but grade the Iditarod teams based on how well the dogs regulated heat on the unusually balmy first day of the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race.

As it turns out the dogs’ ability to deal with heat was a pretty good predictor of how they ended up doing in the race itself.

Infrared and regular video is being taken of dog teams to discover hotspots and gain understanding of how the dogs disperse heat. But heat isn’t all they’re studying:

Veterinarians will be examining dropped dogs, taking blood samples and studying race dogs at the finish line. The research, which has gone on for about four years, has already helped the sport, but it’s funding comes from the U.S. military. Sports medicine is also keenly interested in the research. The hope is that by studying how these incredible dogs run 100-plus miles a day for 9 or 10 days, soldiers and, say, marathon runners, can better prepare their bodies for the rigors of long-term exertion or week-long intense missions.

The Iditarod, the last great race, began today just outside of Anchorage at 2:00pm Alaskan time. The more than 1,150 mile race from Anchorage to Nome commemorates the famous serum run of 1925 when a dogsled relay brought life-saving serum from Anchorage to Nome, where diphtheria had broken out. Seventy-nine teams are competing in this race—a grueling test of determination and ability in drivers and dogs alike. They’re competing for a total purse of more than $750,000.

Here’s the official Iditarod web site. I’ll be covering the race for its duration so you can come here for daily updates on how things are going.

No major broadcast or cable outlet appears to be covering the race live (or semi-live) this year. Looks like an opportunity for vid-bloggers to me!

This is the first of what I hope will be a regular weekly feature here on The Glittering Eye: Rent Seeker of the Week. What’s rent-seeking? See here. And here’s a succinct definition:

In their quest for value, people choose between two paths. They can obtain value through exchange by providing a good or service that others consider valuable. Alternatively, they can seek to have value transferred to them without providing anything in return. The first path is one of profit seeking, and it has the desirable side effect of forcing people to serve the public by providing products the public wants at prices they will pay. The second path has become known as rent seeking, a term descriptive only to those who know something of the history of economic analysis. Unlike profit seeking, rent seeking has no desirable side effect, but rather can cause a serious waste of society’s scarce resources. In different terms, profit seeking is a positive-sum game, whereas rent seeking is a negative-sum game.

There’s no question where this week’s award should go: credit card issuers. I linked to this post on the Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act of 2005 earlier in the week. As I see it this bill is an attempt to secure for the credit card issuers, some of the biggest of all contributors to political campaigns, what was formerly unsecured credit and reduce their risks.

I don’t have any problem with credit card companies making money. And I do think that people should be responsible for their debts. But there’s a simple solution to reducing the exposure of the credit card issuing companies: stop giving unsecured credit. I do have a problem with the credit industry improving their bottom lines by having the government do the heavy lifting for them. They knew what the rules were when they issued cards to people who couldn’t pay.

So congratulation, MNBA and other credit card issuers. You’re the Rent Seekers of the Week.

I’m accepting nominations for the next “Rent Seeker of the Week”. Or ideas for a suitable graphic.

A few weeks ago, Frank Scavo of the Enterprise System Spectator linked to a post on “IT propaganda” from “CEO Blogger”, and I’ve been meaning to respond to these posts since. (I don’t usually write about it, mostly because I don’t want to spill on any of my clients, but this is actually my area of expertise.)

Frank Scavo actually asks the right question: “Is information technology a strategic investment that should be leveraged to produce a competitive advantage? Or is it a utility that should be managed to lowest cost once minimal levels of service are established?”

And answers it correctly, too: “[W]hether IT is a strategic investment or a utility cost depends on what the company needs information technology to do. If information technology is a key element of the firm’s product, service, operations, or strategy, then IT should be viewed as a strategic investment. … On the other hand, if information technology is not a key element, then it should be viewed as a cost of doing business, seeking to maintain acceptable levels of service with managed levels of risk, at the lowest cost.”

There are a few myths about IT, and the anonymous CEO at CEO Blogger has fallen into some of them without apparently realizing it. Here’s the key part of his post:

The IT industry is always trying to convince those outside of IT that IT matters, that if you don’t spend enough money on IT it will hurt your company.

But most of us are not convinced. IT is not a profit center, it’s a cost center. Once your IT department grows past the minimum size needed to maintain your company, additional money spent on IT is a loss. But IT is always trying to shake down extra unnecessary money in order to bleed away profits.

I really can’t recall reading any company news releases about IT security breaches, but I certainly recall reading news about companies writing off tens of millions of dollars after an “investment” in new enterprise software failed and was abandoned.

Like every career, there are good IT managers and bad IT managers. (At all levels, including directors, CTOs, CIOs, and so on.) If you can’t hire the good ones, that may say more about you than about IT in general. (In particular, I’m referencing the comment about a “shake down” for more money.)

The truth is, IT can or cannot do what you want, depending on what you want. And if the CEO is not sufficiently clear of his desires, and if his employees from CIO to assistant night-shift operator are not sufficiently understanding of their duties, there is likely to be a gap between expectation and delivery. I see the gap a lot, and it almost always starts from the top down, not the bottom up. (When it comes up from the bottom, with IT suggesting all kinds of large projects to automate this or that, or to buy expensive off-the-shelf solutions that kind-of do what the company needs, it’s usually a sign of bad discipline in the business management, for not compelling IT to concentrate on the provision of services at request. IT should never be allowed to run the show, unless the business of the company is provision of IT services, any more than should the accountants or lawyers or HR people.)

This whole problem, of whether IT is cost or profit, relates to the “build vs. buy” debate: do you hire programmers and build an application, or do you buy COTS software (commercial off-the-shelf) and customize it? Well, it depends on your need. If you need a word processor, just buy something off the shelf: that problem is solved generically for everyone. If you need an access and identity management system (what I’ve been doing the last couple of years), it depends on your requirements: are you selling your security, or something heavily dependent on your security (for example, are you a bank?), or are you using the AIM system to protect what you are selling (such as an online retailer)? If you are selling your security, you will get better results faster and more reliably by building the key components yourself than by buying and customizing COTS software. The reason why is that you are seeking an edge in your business, not a reasonable solution that works for most people.

This gets really big as the system get large. For example, implementing SAP or PeopleSoft (the whole package; not the accounting software alone) is almost always more trouble than it’s worth. You can easily spend more on customizing such a package than you would have doing the job manually. This leads to my next point: productivity.

IT cannot make a company more productive, except in limited ways. What IT can do is allow a company to take on jobs it could not have done at all without IT. For example, Wal Mart has built a large amount of custom software, some based on or using COTS components and some entirely internally. This has not increased the productivity of their retail employees; rather, it has allowed Wal Mart to operate a larger amount of stores as if their purchasing managers were present in each store. By automating their purchasing for all stores, the net effect has been more efficiency; this was achieved not by increasing productivity, but by doing things that were previously not possible.

WYSIWYG word processors, similarly, have eliminated the typing pool. Not by making typists more efficient, so that fewer are needed, but by making every employee capable of typing their own documents well at composition. In other words, a whole category of work – turning composition into finished documentation – has been eliminated. There is still frequently a need for tech writers or similar specialists to fine-tune documents, but there is not a need to turn notes into the documents in the first place.

The extent to which IT can deliver benefits to the business is less dependent on IT than the business. If a company has a competent IT department, competently managed, their ability to produce is entirely dependent on the requirements they get from the business managers. A good example of a mismatch in this area is when a company’s business managers want something, but cannot explain exactly what they want, nor formulate requirements that will be testable at the end of the project. In this case, the application or infrastructure that emerges can probably be made to work, but will almost certainly not be a good match for the business needs – especially if the business need has evolved. Combine this with the inevitable “vanity features” – filling in checkboxes that have no relation to reality, or giving someone a chance to “make an impact” on the project, or what have you – and you get a bloated project that doesn’t do its job. It is then usually IT that is blamed, even though the fault lies with the poor initial specification that IT was given. This is the most common set of circumstances I’ve seen where large IT projects fail: overreach combined with poor initial requirements specification.

(And, while I’m on the topic, guard against your CIOs being wined and dined by large consultancies. It’s not too unusual for large projects to be let on the basis of what amounts to bribery, and the results are usually less than stellar.)

In the end, the way to make IT work for the business is to make sure each project fits one of a few categories before approving the project. These categories are:

• The project will do something already being done (either automatically or manually), but cheaper, so that the ROI alone justifies the project.
• The project will do something new, that makes it possible for the business to do something new and profitable, and will cost sufficiently little that the business can still be run profitably. (SAP is a key example of where this often fails: the business sometimes cannot make enough profit to pay for the cost of building and operating the systems it needs to run SAP.)
• The project will do something which may or may not help the business, but where the costs are small enough that failure is not problematic. This is usually a research or proof-of-concept project. Where these work, they often evolve into a full-featured product or infrastructure.
• The project meets a legal requirement (such as SOX or HIPAA compliance), and that requirement cannot be met more cheaply with process.

If you can’t fit the project into one of those frameworks (without shoving and twisting the numbers), then the project will probably fail, and will likely be an expensive failure at that.