The future of work at American Express and everywhere else

Businessweek.com is talking about an a new program American Express has launched. In a nutshell:

“Rather than retiring and leaving the company at once, participants gradually give up their day-to-day responsibilities, while replacing some of their free time with activities like mentoring and teaching master classes to their successors. In addition, they get more time out of the office doing whatever they want—be it planning for life in retirement or doing charity work. The phased retiree continues to receive a portion of his previous salary, benefits as usual, and the company in turn gets to hold on to some of its most valuable employees a year or more past traditional retirement age.”

The history of modern sculpture in a few paragraphs

In the “1960s and ’70s public sculpture was contemporary art’s foremost fatality — deader than painting actually. The corpse generally took the form of corporate, pseudo-Minimalist plop art.” Amen to that. But sculpture has been changing, as this article, Public Art, Eyesore to Eye Candy in the NYTimes.com neatly explains and illustrates with a great slide show. And what is it about the new sculpture that makes it “So Different, So Appealing“? 🙂 Well, by…

“Freely mixing elements of Pop, Minimalism, conceptual art and realism, these pieces also often benefit from new technologies and materials that make them dynamic and provocative.”

I highly recommend the article. A good overview of what is happening in sculpture, with a bit of a review of two of the more signifigant artists in sculpture today, Jeff Koons and Richard Serra, and a little shot taken at Damien Hirst, too. 🙂

More good tumblelogs from tumblr

make it (freshly sliced) has a selection of these superb illustrations of lyrics. (Can you tell which one this is? 🙂 )

I found this from another good tumblelog, http://marclafountain.com/

Lots of good stuff from tumblr. You should get your own.

The pace of women marathoners and other world records

Over at the NTimes.com is a feast for folks like me who like to look at sports statistics. It’s a History of World Records – Interactive Graphic. For many sports, it appears that the improvements have made a gradual progression over many decades. But not all. One that stuck for me was the women’s marathon.

In May of 1967, just over 40 years ago, Maureen Wilton of Canada set the record time for the women’s marathon with a time of 3:15:22. In just a few months, Anni Pede-Erdkamp of West Germany beat that with a time of 3:07:27. Ten years later, Grete Waitz of Norway is bringing it down to 2:32:30. That’s seems incredible. But that’s has been the way it has been for the women’s marathon. In April of 2003, Paul Radcliffe ran a time of 2:15:25.

Who knows what women will do in this sport? From the looks of things, two words: greatly improve.

Go here for your all the stats.

(flickr photo from Conor Lawless’ photostream)

Really practical advice on visiting NYC

You can easily find lots of articles on what to do when you go to New York City. Having visited many times myself, I think this article, Gridskipper: 18 Steps to Having a Good First Trip to New York, is one of the better ones.

Rules like “Fear Not the Subway” and “Get the Hell out of Midtown” and “Identify and Avoid Freaks” are excellent pieces of advice, and just three of eighteen good tips. Go read the article, then go to NYC.

(flickr photo from aturkus’ photostream)

So, what is that Starbucks barista thinking about…

If you have worked at Starbucks, wanted to work there, or (much more likely) ordered a coffee at one of the many stores they have, you now have a chance to hear what the people behind the counter think by going to this tumblelog at tumblr: 147xxxx