Phligm Phlagm 1

[philmophlegm]

Seven Fantasy / SF Epics That Can Inform You About The Real-World Political Scene

The Jewish Chronicle gets hold of the report into Labour anti-semitism that the Corbynistas tried to bury

Headline of the Month (1)

Getting onto Stanford's MBA course. (I’m not involved in admissions, but I can’t imagine that any of my MBA students had to do anything like this.)

The Complete Conceptual History of the Millennium Falcon (including the influence of Space 1999)

A cube in a cube in a cube. Metalwork was easily my worst subject at school. This guy, not so much.

A weird (or perhaps not) correlation between maths and religion.

World rankings of country by average IQ.

How the West can win the new Cold War

Brexit - a story in maps (thanks parrotknight)

A really comprehensive fake name generator.

Comments

[topum.livejournal.com]

Which BSchool is it? If you don't mind disclosing.

[philmophlegm.livejournal.com]

Mine? The University of St Mark and St John in Plymouth. Very obscure and very small. I teach the Financial Management module.

http://www.marjon.ac.uk/courses/mba-business/ (Those are actually BA Management students in the video rather than MBA students. They were all my students, although the lecturer you see isn't me.)

The university dates back to the 19th century (when it was originally two separate colleges to train people for the priesthood), but the business school is only two years old.

Most of the lecturers are professionals rather than academics. (I used to be a senior manager in a Big 4 accountancy firm.)

[topum.livejournal.com]

Oh, I can imagine that you guys attract a rather different pool of applicants compared to the the human piranhas the top rated US MBA programs do.

I worked with Big 4 partners and directors quite a bit, almost exclusively from technical desks (financial instruments and SPVs). We required our clients to discuss the impact of exotic trades we structured and traded for them with their accountants and we did so ourselves too.

My brother worked for a professional services firm, he was a partner at McKinsey.

[philmophlegm.livejournal.com]

"...I can imagine that you guys attract a rather different pool of applicants compared to the the human piranhas the top rated US MBA programs do"

Yes. You could say that.

My specialism when I worked for the big 4 firm which shall remain nameless was audit methodology and in particular audit quality control. (I ran the audit quality review programmes for the UK and Europe.) The ability of Financial Sector audit teams (often reliant on short term secondees from overseas and from other departments) to truly appreciate the audit and financial statement implications of complex financial instruments genuinely scared me.

[topum.livejournal.com]

We had fun with the occasional poor audit manager sent to the trading floor to interview us. The poor guys were so clueless that there wasn't even a slightest chance for them even to begin to understand what we did there.

When it came to specific structures involving multiple SPVs, consolidation, embedded derivatives and application of hedge accounting between different entities there were just a handful of partners and directors worldwide we could really talk to.

[philmophlegm.livejournal.com]

To illustrate that we get rather different applicants than the likes of Stanford and Harvard do for their business schools, my best student last year was a librarian. (In fact, she was the university librarian, being sponsored to do the MBA by the university, which is quite generous.)

We also had a few public sector high flyers (including a policewoman) and a rich and successful local businessman who was there not to score career points but to genuinely learn stuff. They were a pleasure to teach.

[meistergedanken.livejournal.com]

Ah, "Space 1999." I watched that as a kid, played in reruns in the late 70's. That show used to creep me out - the episodes had such a somber tone, typically. My brother and I made a $50 bet way back then that by 1999 we would have a base on the moon, and when the date came and went, I immediately called him up - AT NASA - where he worked as a project manager - and told him to pay up. And he was expecting my call, too(no, he didn't pay with cash, but did send me a promotional Space 1999 book that I suppose is collectible?) Anyway, the late 70's was a heady time for SF, not just in move theaters, what with Battlestar Galactica AND Buck Rogers on TV. I think all those shows only lasted 2 seasons each. It wasn't until the 90's, with the various Star Trek shows, Babylon 5, Stargate and Farscape that SF recovered its mojo.

[philmophlegm.livejournal.com]

Of course the best SF TV show of the late 70s is Blake's 7...

[meistergedanken.livejournal.com]

We didn't get that in the States and I've never seen it. We did watch Dr. Who avidly on public television, however.

[philmophlegm.livejournal.com]

You totally missed out.

[prester-scott.livejournal.com]

Re: the religious math quiz.

I got the correct (analytical) answers and I am quite religious, so I break the model.

I think the conclusion assumes too much. At best, it shows a correlation between education in mathematics/analysis and Western atheist beliefs. There are any number of possible explanations for it besides their psychobabble about intuition (which I frankly don't believe is not a tongue-in-cheek way of saying that believers are stupid).

ETA: I would also expect results to vary based on the religion, and on the place of that religion within the culture of the respondent.

[daniel-saunders.livejournal.com]

I also got the correct answers (although I worked the first one out with trial and error, having spotted the trap answer, rather than algebra) and am very religious. Although I've heard it suggested that Orthodox Judaism (that would be my religion) encourages logical, analytical thought through its emphasis on study of Talmudic logical reasoning as a key part of religous practice.

[philmophlegm.livejournal.com]

Which I suppose supports prester_scott's point about results varying based on the religion.