Seven habits of highly ineffective F-students

1. Ditch or arrive late for class
2. Engage in personal conversations during class
3. Fail to follow instructions and pay attention
4. Use the term “etc.” in their assignments and exam answers
5. Study insufficiently for exams and put inadequate effort into assignments
6. Fail to think logically and/or make their reasoning clear
7. Overestimate their own performance, insight, and competence

Marketing Fundamentals (BUAD 307) course podcasts now online!

The audio from my Marketing Fundamentals (BUAD 307) course lecture sessions is now available as podcasts at http://buad307cast.com/audio/ .

My River

In Birkerod, Denmark--the town in which I was born--there was a river that passed through. It wasn't a big river, and the water level certainly would not have high enough to sustain a yellow submarine, but I was not at all too proud to call it "my river."

My memories of this are very vague, but back when I was something like 2-3 years old, my mother, my little sister, and I would, almost every day, walk down to the road to my great grandparents who lived on a farm, most of which had been converted into leased factory space and, later, a kindergarten. When we arrived, my great grandmother would usually boil an egg for me. On the way, we could see the river. Somewhere--whether it was at home or at the homes of relatives--I was apparently exposed frequently to the classical piece The Moldau, composed by the Czech composer Bedrich Smetana. When this song was played, I am told, I would say that it was about "my river." The piece, by the way, is about the Czech river Vlatana (Moldau is the German word), and the composer intended to incorporate the sounds of the river into the composition.

To this day, I always have a special feeling when I hear the composition about my river. I have fond memories of listening to this piece frequently when I woke up to the morning program of Dennis Owen at WGMS in Washington, D.C. during my years at the University of Maryland and The George Washington University.

It may not be a duck

Yesterday, I came across a bird on a car in a parking lot. The food it had in its beak made it look, from the front, like a duck. I am not sure, however, whether ducks have spots, so I can't determine if it looks like a duck. I am not sure how ducks are supposed to walk--nor, for that sake, how other birds walk--so I cannot use that criterion. The bird did not quack, but one cannot infer non-duck status based on the converse. Another practical problem is that I am not sure if there are any "non-duck-like" ways of quacking (other than in offering bogus medical services), so I am not sure what the standard of comparison would be.

Ultimately, of course, the question is whether I could make more profit on this bird than I could on a duck. Unfortunately, I did not see any commercial value here.

The Grass is Greener at USC

It is clearly evident that the grass on campus is now both literally and figuratively greener. Normally, I am rather suspicious of change, but, with green being my favorite color and with the environmental benefits of not having to irrigate artificial grass, this seems like a good one.

Valentine's Gift for Geeky Girlfriends

Costco features a deal at http://www.costco.com/Browse/Product.aspx?whse=BC&topnav=&prodid=11188565&ec=BC-EC877-CatHome&pos=6&lang=en-US where a $59.99 discount is given when a Magellan Maestro 3250 auto GPS system is bought along with three dozen roses.