Wednesday, February 25, 2009

A comet, some Uncle Jay-isms, and a CEO

Here's one for all you star gazers and comet watchers. Yesterday, Comet Lulin passed its closest to Earth, and so the comet will remain near its brightest over the next few days. The following photograph was taken of the skies over New Mexico (USA) two days ago.


For more details on where it will be in the sky and how to find it, go here. Now, those New Mexico skies really lend themselves to star-gazing, but I thought I might try my hand at it tonight and go out for a while to see if I can spot it. Will let you know if I'm successful. [Just talked to my daughter and told her about this. They have a telescope. Altho supposedly you should be able to see this with the naked eye (I don't have wide-field binoculars), the odds on my being successful just went up!]


Selected Uncle Jay tongue-in-cheek-isms ...

1. The economy's fundamentals are sound, but right now the sound is turned down.
2. The most annoying Oscars are the ones for movies you didn't see.
3. Hell hath no fury like a chimpanzee scorned.
4. MLB players using steroids will face severe consequences ... perhaps one day even from MLB!
5. If you think they hate us now, just wait until we stop buying their oil.
6. It's hard to compose a tune for "Buddy, can you spare seven hundred and eighty-seven billion dollars invested over a three-year period?"


A different kind of CEO ...

Now here's a name you might not be familiar with, Haruka Nishimatsu. He is the CEO of Japan Airlines, one of the world's largest airline companies. In this day and age of corporate jets, limousines, and other business perks; when some CEO's are spending upwards of a million dollars to redecorate their offices (Merrill Lynch, for example) and enjoying salaries of many hundreds of thousands - not to mention millions in a few cases - of dollars, Mr. Nishimatsu rides a bus to work, knocked out the walls of his office so that fellow employees could access him more directly, and eats lunch with them in the company cafeteria.

I first heard of this remarkable man this morning, when I was going through some of my "Favorites". Although the interview you're about to see is not brand new, a story as good as this one deserves to be told often and is never out of date.




If you're interesting in reading more about this humble man, go here.

Here's what he said in a 2006 interview* ... "JAL used to consciously work to be No. 1 in terms of scale. Although it is important to pursue a high ranking and profits, it is wrong to make those one's only objectives. We can only win the support and understanding of the people around us by swiftly responding to social needs and fulfilling our social responsibilities."

*For the complete and extensive interview with Mr. Nishimatsu, go here.

6 comments:

Tammy said...

Oh, man...I'm so tired. When I first saw your post title, the first thing that came to mind was: Sounds like the makings of a bad joke...What do a comet, Uncle Jay and a CEO have in common??? Apparently I need sleep. I enjoyed reading your post, though.

I wish we had more Haruka Nishimatsus in our world.

Goldenrod said...

You must have stayed up too late last night watching "Dances with Wolves" ... ... am I right? :) (And how did THAT go, by the way?)

I can see where the title of my post might have led you to believe that it had all the makings of a bad joke, Tammy. I combined them rather than doing three separate posts. Sorry about the confusion!

Everything OK there? Did you have a terrible storm during the night? Did your electricity go out and all of you ****** near froze to death? What?

Am definitely with you in wishing there were more Haruka Nishimatsus in the world!

Tammy said...

Oh, definitely no confusion, lol...just the way my loopy mind works!

Actually we did lose power, but it was in the nighttime between Monday and Tuesday and not yesterday. The weather....yada, yada, yada. I keep seeing posts all over blogland of signs of spring. Not gonna happen here for a couple of months yet.

And we are watching Dances with Wolves this morning as soon as Emily gets home. Can't wait!

Where was I last night? And why am I tired???

PINOCHLE. These ladies are so much fun to play with. 5pm-after midnight last night. Then it took forever to unwind, and before I knew it, it was 4am and time to get up with Monty. I'm functioning on very little sleep, but it's all good. I had so much fun last night!!!!!!!! :)

Goldenrod said...

PINOCHLE?!?!? Now I'M jealous, Tammy! I thought that Tuesday night was pinochle night, but I was sure you'd forsake that to watch the film. :)

I'm ROFLOL here, actually.

Tammy said...

Pinochle takes priority over everything but death.


;)

Craig Peihopa said...

A very interesting post. Thanks again