Victor Rozek
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As I See It: The Finer Points of Relating
May 23, 2011 Victor Rozek
… Read more“How you do anything is how you do everything.” This is one of those intriguing truisms that grew out of the personal growth movement. Although by no means absolute, there is enough verity in the observation to make it useful for identifying patterns of behavior. For example, it could explain the irritable workplace demeanor of a parent with a teenager at home.
To understand why, you have to reference the work of John Gottman, a psychologist who has spent the better part of his career studying the nuances of relationships. He analyzes married couples the way an entomologist would consider
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As I See It: No Sitting
May 9, 2011 Victor Rozek
… Read moreOutside my window, the robins are working the morning shift, bouncing around in no apparent direction, searching for the unsuspecting worm. When they find one, they grab an end, lean back, and pull. The worm visibly stretches, like a glistening rubber band, and finally snaps into the waiting beak. After a couple of gulps, the bird hops off in search of fresh meat.
Exhausted from the excitement, I turn my attention to human nourishment: coffee. OK, not as yummy as a fresh worm, but at least I get to drink it sitting down. With all that bouncing around, and flying,
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As I See It: ‘He Kindly Stopped for Me’
April 25, 2011 Victor Rozek
… Read moreRichard was at work when his wife died. Although it was a Saturday, he was hunched over a keyboard, stringing together lines of code that would become a customized inventory control system. He had hoped to join his wife and some friends for a bike ride, but the project was late, the client was impatient, and Richard prided himself on being conscientious. When his phone rang, the caller ID said it was his wife, but the voice on the other end was male and the tone was grave. Afterward, he could not recall all of what the man said, just
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As I See It: Shared Sacrifice
April 11, 2011 Victor Rozek
… Read moreCorporate facilities are nothing if not spacious. Whether they are housed in towering skyscrapers, or spread out in campus-style configurations, the space required to accommodate a global corporate headquarters can be measured in acres. What, then, can be made of the magical structure known as Ugland House? It may only be a modest four-story building but, with a little fiscal slight-of-hand, it can become home to a countless number of corporations. Conveniently located in the larcenous Cayman Islands, Ugland House hosts not five, not 50, not even 500 companies, but an astonishing 19,000 global corporations.
Anyone inquiring about these companies
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As I See It: Rethinking the Resolution
March 21, 2011 Victor Rozek
… Read moreIf you’ve ever been an active member of a gym or health club, you’ve probably witnessed the annual fitness migration. Every January, the facility gets unbearably crowded as flocks of newbies, swaddled in spandex, stumble about solving the mysteries of the Nautilus. The regulars look at each other and shrug. They’ve seen this before. It’s the New Year’s resolution crowd, and they’ll all be gone by March.
Well, it’s March, a good time to revisit those New Year’s resolutions. Did you make any this year? If so, how’s it going? If you’re like me, probably not so well. More often
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As I See It: I Think Therefore I Lie
March 7, 2011 Victor Rozek
… Read moreIn retrospect, the cultural fascination with lying probably started with House. The popular FOX series features Hugh Laurie as the redoubtable Dr. House, a scruffy, pill-popping diagnostician with a mind like Aristotle, and a personality like sandpaper. House predicates his practice–as well as the conduct of his relationships–on the assumption that “everyone lies.” No sooner does a patient assure him that he isn’t on drugs, than House dispatches his minions to search the patient’s home for contraband. Don’t trust, do verify, and mess with people in the process. It’s healthcare at its finest: most everyone is cured and no
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As I See It: The Digital Uprising
February 21, 2011 Victor Rozek
… Read moreThese days it’s getting harder to find a restaurant that doesn’t play music loud enough to wilt your lettuce. And if you find one without music, chances are you’ll be eating surrounded by a flock of wall-mounted televisions. Not to be outdone, some eateries feature both: music, as an incongruous accompaniment to muted TVs. Most of the time I just tune it all out, but the other day the combination of violent images and soothing music made for a surreal experience.
There was Harry Connick, Jr., with a voice like melted caramel, singing the classic Irving Berlin ballad What’ll I
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As I See It: The Six Step Solution
February 7, 2011 Victor Rozek
… Read moreLike poker players, addicts also have a tell that betrays their addiction. The red nose and veined cheeks of the alcoholic; the yellow teeth of the smoker; and the soft, rotting teeth of the meth user. But technology addiction is a little different. Being a higher-order addiction (far superior to substance abuse), it has certain unique attributes. For one thing, it has spawned its own sub-species: Nerdus Americanus.
Pasty and lacking muscle tone, but chock full of brains and inventiveness, the image of the self-directed, slightly odd, programming virtuoso has become a cliché popularized by the media. Nerds have
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As I See It: Fractal Expressionism
January 24, 2011 Victor Rozek
… Read moreIf, like most of us, you have only a passing familiarity with the art world, and if someone were to ask you which artist’s work sold for a record amount of money, you might go with one of the Impressionists, perhaps Renoir or Monet, or the troubled Vincent van Gogh, or perhaps Picasso, or maybe one of the old masters like Rembrandt or Vermeer. Any one of those would be a good guess, but everyone would be wrong.
The highest price ever paid for a single canvas was $140 million, which purchased a piece that falls into the abstract expressionist
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As I See It: Return Of The Swami
January 10, 2011 Victor Rozek
… Read moreIt’s that time of year when The Swami dons his turban, dusts off his crystal ball, and peers into a future unseeable to mortal men. And you think your employment is uncertain. We Swamis once benefitted from the faulty memories and short attention spans of our adherents. Stay away from the screwball stuff someone might actually remember (DOS will make a comeback; Paris Hilton will graduate from Harvard), and your average Swami could sound believable.
But the Internet, which The Swami predicted Al Gore would invent, changed everything. A Swami’s prior pronouncements can now be recovered, plucked from the ether