You don't want another Enron? Here's your law: If a company, can't explain, in ONE SENTENCE....what it does....it's illegal.
Lewis Black

If you owe the bank $100 that's your problem. If you owe the bank $100 million, that's the bank's problem.
J. Paul Getty

What is Two and Two?

A business man was interviewing applicants for the position of divisional manager. He devised a test to select the most suitable person for the job. He asked each applicant, "What is two and two?" The first interviewee was a journalist. His answer was "Twenty-two." The second applicant was an engineer. He pulled out a slide rule and showed the answer to be between 3.999 and 4.001. The next person was a lawyer. He stated that in the case of Jenkins v Brown, two and two was proven to be four. The last applicant was an accountant. The business man asked him, "How much is two and two?" The accountant got up from his chair, went over to the door and closed it then came back and sat down. He leaned across the desk and said in a low voice..."How much do you want it to be?" He got the job.

Embarrassing typo On Eric Schmidt's business card teaches us these valuable lessons

 

Eric Schmidt, "Chariman of the Executive Committee and CEO of Google. FORTUNE magazine highlights this.

"Chariman." Yea, right.

It's easy to consign this typo to carelessness.

Of course that is an appropriate indictment. But rather than chortle about this rather big "duh," I'd rather point to some teachable best-practices we can learn from this.

The answer is that in an era where an increasing amount of Web-based content is created in and by third-party software, plug-ins, blog authorship tools and widgets- rather than only by Web page authoring software- every one of these objects needs to have a spellchecker.

I'm talking about everything from calendar authoring to blogging tools. Some of the utilities I have mentioned have built-in spellcheckers while others do not. In too many cases, the downloadable third-party spellcheck app is a pain to insert, at least iteratively.

That's lesson one.

But tools can only take us so far.

Lesson two: if you have spellcheck tools and are creating any type of content, do a spellcheck.

Your "chariman" should insist on nothing less.

Tearing Picasso a new one...

After striking a deal to sell Picasso's "Le Reve" ("The Dream") for a record $139 million, casino mogul Steve Wynn decides to show the masterwork to a group of visitors in his Las Vegas office.

As he gestures, Wynn hits the painting with his elbow, causing what's later reported as "a distinct ripping sound." Wynn cancels the sale and spends $85,000 to have the painting restored.