Thanks, next for Feb call
Folks,
Great call last night about Job and Psalms.
Thanks to Kendall for volunteering to:
– lead the February call (Tues, Feb 5 at 8pm) on the other half of Psalms and Proverbs!
– and to send at least one e-mail out between now and then with a question or comment about the reading (Kendall asked that we use the e-mail and website more)
And thanks to Bruce for volunteering to lead the March call (Tues, Mar 4 at 8pm) on Ecclesiastes and Song of Solomon. Also congrats to Bruce for getting on Jeopardy (he was on the Dec 26, 2007 episode and came in second – missing the final question about Hadrian’s Wall – sorry, Bruce that we weren’t up to Roman history yet!)
Happy new year!
Phil
January 2008 Old Testament – Job, 1/2 of Psalms – audio recording
Here’s the audio recording for the Old Testament January call. Listenonline or download the mp3 file and listen to it as a podcast on youripod.
John Seroff (H2008)
John Seroff is the media, press and marketing associate for Joe’s Pub in NYC (www.joespub.com) where he listens to lots of music and explores what the world has to offer. His (now more or less defunct) blog, The Tofu Hut ( tofuhut.blogspot.com) attracted over 1.5 million visitors. He currently writes for Global Rhythm magazine, spends too much time with all sorts of media and loves to talk about all of it and enjoys referring to himself in the third person. Howdy!
Caroline Eichman (H2008)
Caroline Eichman is Director of Marketing Insights at Reuters. She leads the marketing research activities for Reuters Americas Data Quality division, where she focuses on improving the quality, delivery and support of content received by financial services professionals.
Previously, Caroline served as Global Head, Marketing Insights for Reuters.com, where she managed market research and audience analytics for global Media division. Between 1997 and 2004, Caroline lead and built the market research department supporting the worldwide ibm.com organization. In this role, she created customer-focused strategies related to marketing and branding, commerce, technical support and customer relationship management based on research data.
Prior to joining IBM, Caroline was Director, Market Research at Warner Music Group. Before joining the corporate world, Caroline held various positions in government and child care advocacy.
Caroline holds a doctorate in Public Administration from New York University, a masters degree from University of Chicago (public policy) and a BA in Political Science and Economics from Rutgers University.
She lives in New York City with her husband and two daughters.
Andrew Pancer (SW)
Andrew Pancer joined the About.com executive team in summer 2005 as chief operating officer. Andrew served as chief financial officer of About.com, Inc. from 2002 to 2004, overseeing the financial operations of About.com, Sprinks and About.com Web Services. Prior to re-joining About.com, Andrew served one year as chief financial officer of Direct Revenue LLC, a contextual advertising firm. Andrew was controller of ECS (Electronic Commerce Solutions), the web development, direct marketing and cross-selling arm of IAC/InteractiveCorp, from 1999 to 2002. From 1997 to 1999, he was controller at Sterling Development, Inc. Andrew began his career as a staff accountant for KPMG Peat Marwick LLP and then Ticketmaster Inc.
Andrew earned a B. S. degree in business administration from Washington University, St. Louis in 1992. He received his M.B.A. degree from New York University’s Stern School of Business in 2000. He is also a Certified Public Accountant.
Henry Seiden (H2008, T2008, A2009)
I’m a psychologist and a psychoanalyst. I live and practice–in the winter–in Forest Hills, NY but I spend as much of the summer as I can at our family beach house in Truro on Cape Cod.
I teach and supervise psychotherapy at several local universities and I’m on the Board of Directors of the Division of Psychoanalysis of the American Psychological Association. I see patients in my office about half time and, more and more, spend my free time reading (novels, travel writing, the classics) and writing–these days poetry and essays on poetry.
I’ve published professionally (on suicide, on narcissism, on metaphor) and I’ve been studying poetry and working seriously at writing it for many years. I’ve published poems in Poetry magazine, and in a number of other literary and professional journals. I’m looking for a publisher for a collection of Bronx childhood poems–tentatively titled Spaldeen.
Rob Larson (SW)
Robert Larson was named Director of Product Management &Development in May 2004. He oversees the navigation, search andclassification systems on NYTimes.com and manages the consumer archivebusiness.
Previously, Robert served as Education Editor for The New York TimesLearning Network beginning in July 1998, after having served asCommunity Developer for The Times s New York Today site. Previously,from October 1996 to October 1997, he was deputy editor and then editorfor The New York Times on America Online. He began his career at TheTimes as Producer for NYTimes.com in June 1996.
Prior to joining The Times, Mr. Larson was a freelance screenwriter.
Mr. Larson received a B.F. A. Degree in Film & TelevisionProduction from the Tisch School of the Arts at New York University in1992. He received an M.A. degree in instructional technology and mediafrom Teachers College at Columbia University in 1996.
Mr. Larson is married and lives in Maplewood, N.J.
Plato 2008 Schedule of Calls
For the Plato reading group you will need to purchase Plato Complete Works – edited by John Cooper
http://tinyurl.com/yuqlhm
All calls are Tuesdays @ 8pm NY Time/5pm California Time
1-866-628-8620
code: 112431
April 8 – Apology and Phaedo
May 6 – Theaetetus
June 10 – Sophist and Symposium
July 15 – Phaedrus and Protagoras
August reading (no call) – Gorgias
September 2 – Republic
October 7 – Republic
November 4 – Day of Dialogue in New York City
Daniel Blank (H2008, T2008, A2009)
Dan Blank is the Director of Content Strategy and Development for Reed Business Information. He works with 50+ B2B publications on their blogging strategy, and works with editors to create compelling text, photo, audio and video media for their brands. He also blogs at www.DanBlank.com, where he tracks the latest news affecting publishing and new media.
Housing crisis, Thucydides, Shakespeare and Job
Fellow Reading Odyssey members,
Three and a half years ago I started warning my clients and council members about problems in the housing market. I noticed that at a time when home prices had nearly doubled the average homeowner had significantly *less* equity in their home. Normally if home prices go up, equity goes up. For home prices to rise dramatically and equity to go down it means that homeowners are taking money out of their homes through refinancing at *huge* levels. Pair that with the fact that the consumer savings rate had dropped to almost *negative* numbers (and then preceded to go negative) while consumer spending was at a 75-year high (as a percentage of GDP) and anyone with eyes willing to read the data knew the party could not last. (Note: e-mail me if you want me to better explain this data or how structured finance like mortgage-backed securities work.)
While I could not forecast what would happen to end the party, that it would end somehow someday was evident.
I now see that I missed an important part of the picture: the violation of trust by the big banks.
Goldman Sachs, following the Athenian ethic expressed in the Melian dialogue, aggressively shorted the same mortgage-backed securities they were selling to investors. This means that they betted *against* – and they seem to have betted *heavily* against – the same products they were selling to unwitting investors. It would be like Mattel selling bad toys to consumers on the one hand and then betting that the toys harmed kids (and then making money if kids were in fact harmed).
Ben Stein writes in the Sunday December 23, 2007 New York Times about Goldman and this ethic.
“The biggest of the big names were among the most aggressive in betraying their clients’ trust, as I see it.“
No reading of the numbers cited above could have uncovered that “trusted” Wall Street firms like Goldman – while securitizing and selling these flimsy mortgage-backed securities – would actually turn around and hope that those same securities failed.
Ben concludes his article not by quoting Thucydides but rather Shakespeare (who, of course, read Thucydides) –
“We surely cannot remain a republic under law if there is no law except the axiom from ‘Richard II’ that ‘they well deserve to have, that know the strong’st and surest way to get.”
Perhaps the only positive way to end this note is to quote Job 20.18-19, which reading group 1 is reading right now.
…from the profit of their trading,
they will get no enjoyment.
For they have crushed and abandoned
the poor
They have seized a house they
did not build.
Phil
02. January 2008 by Arrian
Categories: Commentary, Shakespeare, Thucydides | Tags: Commentary | 1 comment