Or... your company should be training potential replacements. This is what the US military and "white shoe" consulting companies do. While expensive, it guarantees that critically needed skilled staff are always available.
I recommend the article "Up or Out: Solving the IT Turnover Crisis" [0] which gives a reasonable argument for doing exactly that.
Hanlon's razor still applies: "never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity" [0]. He might be such a foreign agents, however we know that he is unintelligent and narcissistic, therefore everyone who makes him look stupid/bad is suddenly "public enemy number one."
One provision of the Sony Bono Copyright Extension Act [0] (which expired 6 months after passage of the law) allowed next-of-kin to revoke (the sale of) copyrights sold by the author without recourse (by the folks who paid for them). Allegedly, this was added by Disney in order to cut costs hundreds of millions of dollars in a dispute over licensing Winnie The Pooh IP/rights [1].
Expect something similar when the next big author dies; my prediction: JK Rowling.
I blame the "contest" started by the magazine US News and World Report, which started their college rating. This led to university execs aiming to raise their rating at the expense of education. Higher rankings meant higher bonuses for top employees - especially the president of the university. This race for ratings is why the cost of a university education has skyrocketed far faster than inflation.
I am not aware of any college that uses reports like US News and World Report rankings in the compensation packages of their executives.
I agree with your main point, but see a different cause, though. The problem is that parents and students use these reports as a bellwether for identifying prospective schools. Campus visits (short visits) where you see what the campus looks like, but don't actually learn what its about is the second problem.
There is too much PR and not enough focus on substance in higher education, just like there is in many, many, many areas of life in the United States today.
The podcast "Revisionist History" by Malcom Gladwell did a great episode on the US News and World Report college ranking list, and the (often perverse) incentives it's created.
After taking university music courses, and then private singing lessons, my observation is that most men learn to pitch their voices into a lower register - in order to sound more manly. Gay men tend to stop pitching their voices downwards and this leads to the perception that gay men use high pitches. Likewise, girls are taught to pitch their voices upwards and lesbian voices seem "mannish" due to stopping to pitch their voices to a higher register. It is my theory that men's natural voice/register is a lot higher and that if boys didn't try to sound macho, there would be a lot more tenors and counter-tenors (which is where my natural singing voice goes - not baritone like I thought it was supposed to be).
I doubt this is correct. Women tend to be mezzos and men tend to be baritones entirely based on the structure of their vocal apparatus, not because they are trying to force a sound (with the possible exception of gay men). In most cases, men who are good singers tend to sing high because that is where the demand is (tenors in classical music and also very high pop music), but as they learn to relax their larynx their comfortable range often drops.
One small company I worked for had a similar mandate come from their large clients - since offshoring was fashionable in business journals, they must offshore the next project for those clients. That company spent more time reworking the offshored software than if we had done the development in-house.
This is just another business fad, but because the execs want to seem to be cool and seem to be doing what their "peers" claim to be doing, well, then by gosh, all of the workers have to do the same fad.
My office uses ZScalar and lots of sites automatically block that because the company running the product make the product seem like an "open anonymous proxy".
Doesn't every musician with money have this problem? Every rockstar owns like 50 guitars. And they don' like to admit they're just collecting. They always got some story about why they need to buy the nth guitar that's missing from all the other tens of guitars they already own.
Almost all of them own instruments and gear they'll touch once and never do anything meaningful with ever again. Then it becomes a fixture on their walls or den.
It all seems wasteful.
But still, by rich people standards, it seems cheaper than other things like buying a huge boat.
Yeah I mean many people with disposable income seems to be doing this, it's just that the music community has a name for it, GAS, and it's a bit of a meme in the community.
I have a friend who seemingly collects mechanical keyboards. He keeps saying he needs them for various purposes, but always seems to be using the latest one, then the old ones go up on a shelf and sit there.
Another friend is obsessed with football, so he has a bunch of shoes, also "depending on the grass/ground" yet keeps using 1 or 2 the most, the others seems to in some cases be "collectors items" and never gets used.
Another friend is a avid golfer, literally has a wall in the garage with clubs, but seems to mostly stick with the clubs they have in their go-to bag.
I'm sure I could come up with more examples, it just seems pervasive among all people who can spend money on their hobbies.
I have a friend who plays tennis. He literally has like 100 tennis balls, all neatly packed and sorted on a shelf. Of course, all you need for a tennis match is like 3-4, since more won't fit in the pockets anyway.
If you're practicing your serve alone it's convenient to have a lot of tennis balls. It's quicker to gather all the balls in a big batch than individually.
I don't currently have any physical instruments while I have had quite a collection and nice studio in the past.
I think it comes down to the fact that it is fun collecting gear and a lot easier than actually making music. Making music is really hard.
I also don't think it even cost me $2k when it was all said and done with all the gear I bought. So much of the gear held its value and one piece of gear I had I sold for 3x what I bought it for so that paid for so much depreciation on gear that didn't hold its value.
Some gear heads I know have money to burn but others just have their savings in gear instead of a savings account at the bank.
Or any community that involves conspicuous consumption. There's always what feels like a majority of people who collect/buy/show off more than they use things
and that's fine in some sense if you're honest about what you're doing.
I have at least one guitar that I rarely play but I keep because I consider it a work of art and a collectible. But, I have others which are workhorses and I play daily.
It gets awkward when collecting is presented as a way to be a better musician, which is clearly false.
It also percolates into reviews, too. When a nontrivial fraction of the community is buying dreams and is about collecting as opposed to using whatever it is, some reviewers style their content towards that crowd and overlook issues or benefits that pop up when actually using the gear.
I don't have a problem with collecting, but I'd love for the distinction to be more upfront.
On that note I absolutely love Matt Johnson (Jamiroquai)'s youtube channel because you can tell he likes gear but spends a huge amount of time actually playing it and making his own patches. So much of the review market is just GAS-inducing paid promo stuff.
It's kind of easy to detect though. I usually read three/four paragraphs before I realize that the person reviewing doesn't actually make music and doesn't consider the music making parts of the hardware, and instead focuses on very generic stuff that basically the manufacturer handed to them and said "make sure this is included".
I recommend the article "Up or Out: Solving the IT Turnover Crisis" [0] which gives a reasonable argument for doing exactly that.
Notes:
0 - https://thedailywtf.com/articles/up-or-out-solving-the-it-tu...
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