The passing scene: Links & comments 9/28/14

Emotion Is Not the Enemy of Reason by Virginia Hughes for National Geographic.

All normal human beings are both rational beings and emotional beings.  Someone who claims to be rational and above emotion is simply being dishonest, either with themselves or others, about their feelings.  Someone who claims to be intuitive and above reason is being dishonest, either with themselves or others, about their thought processes.

Rational people direct their feelings toward appropriate objects.  They fear that which is truly dangerous, admire that which is worthy of respect and yearn for that which will make them happy.

This is your brain on narcissism: The truth about a disorder that nobody understands by Sarah Gray for Salon.

Someone who suffers from narcissistic personality disorder has, on the one hand, an enormous sense of self-importance and entitlement and, on the other hand, an ego too fragile to accept criticism or recognize unwelcome facts.

Nations as well as individuals can be narcissistic.  Patriots are willing to defend their native lands.  Narcissistic patriots insist that their native lands are the greatest countries that ever were and any criticism or doubt is by definition disloyal.

Simplifiers and Optimizers by Scott Adams for boingboing.

Do you try to do things the best way, and never get done?  Or do you do things the easy way, and never get an excellent result.  Scott Adams, creator of the Dilbert comic strip, advises striving for excellence on the few things that are important to you, and looking for the simplest way to get through everything else.

 

How CEO compensation works

CEO compensation continually ratchets upwards because every corporate compensation board thinks its CEO’s pay should be above average, according to a study published in August by Charles M. Elson and Craig K. Ferrere of the Center for Corporate Governance at the University of Delaware.

Corporate compensation boards benchmark their CEO pay against what comparable companies are paying and the benchmarks set CEO pay at or above the industry median.  It is like a college class in which every student is guaranteed an above-average grade.  Or Garrison Keillor’s Lake Wobegon where every child was above average.

Click on CEOs of Public Firms Are Wildly Overcompensated for comment on the Elson-Ferrere study by Barry Ritholtz on his The Big Picture web log.

Click on CEOs and the Pay-‘Em-Or-Lose-‘Em Myth for a report on the study  by Gretchen Morgenstern of the New York Times.

Click on The official Dilbert website with Scott Adams for more from that cartoonist.