[Paul Graham] wanted to isolate patterns that portended ill, which he called “negative predictors.” He was already aware of a few — investors tended to be biased against older founders, for instance. “The cutoff in investors’ heads is 32,” Graham says. “After 32, they start to be a little skeptical.” And Graham knew that he had his own biases. “I can be tricked by anyone who looks like Mark Zuckerberg. There was a guy once who we funded who was terrible. I said: ‘How could he be bad? He looks like Zuckerberg!’ … But after ranking every Y.C. company by its valuation, Graham discovered a more significant correlation. “You have to go far down the list to find a C.E.O. with a strong foreign accent,” Graham told me.
Mr. Murray grew up in Baltimore, about the farthest thing from a crusader that you could imagine. “I was the kid you didn’t want your daughter to date,” he said. “I stole baseball cards and cheated on Spanish tests and made fun of the fat kid in the corner with glasses.”
He got a lot of second chances thanks to an affluent background and basketball prowess. He eventually landed at Goldman Sachs, long before many people looked askance at anyone who worked there.
Mr. Kerviel, 33, was also ordered to pay restitution of €4.9 billion, or $6.7 billion — the entire amount the bank lost in unwinding his trades in early 2008.
Mr. Kerviel was sentenced to five years, with two suspended, and barred for life from working in financial services. Wearing a dark suit, black tie and starched white shirt, he stood impassively while the verdict was read, betraying no emotion.
Rogue Trader at Société Générale Gets Jail Term
Even the perp walk is more dignified in France.
thingsidontunderstandand:
- “Do you like me more than dinner?” she asked.
- His response: “Dinner as a concept, or this dinner?”
- Then, and without hesitation, she started to cry.
- He waited what was probably an appropriate amount of time (two minutes, it was their first date), he put down some money, presumably for the check, and he left.
- She sat, still, at the table, and cried.
- He doubled back, and handed her a twenty-dollar bill, “For your cab ride home.”
'This American Life' Completes Documentation Of Liberal, Upper-Middle-Class Existence
asphalteden:
youmightfindyourself:
In what cultural anthropologists are calling a “colossal achievement” in the study of white-collar professionals, the popular radio show has successfully isolated all 7,442 known characteristics of college graduates who earn between $62,500 and $125,000 per year and feel strongly that something should be done about global warming.
“We’ve done it,” said senior producer Julie Snyder, who was personally interviewed for a 2003 This American Life episode, “Going Eclectic,” in which she described what it’s like to be a bilingual member of the ACLU trained in kite-making by a Japanese stepfather. “There is not a single existential crisis or self-congratulatory epiphany that has been or could be experienced by a left-leaning agnostic that we have not exhaustively documented and grouped by theme.”
The institute was judged a success by Morris S. Viteles, one of the pioneers of industrial psychology, who evaluated its graduates. But Bell gradually withdrew its support after yet another positive assessment found that while executives came out of the program more confident and more intellectually engaged, they were also less interested in putting the company’s bottom line ahead of their commitments to their families and communities.
Sergey Brin and Larry Page. I guess being a kazillionaire means no one tells you not to wear Crocs to the office.
