Free Republic

Jack Welch gives advice on how the new graduate can succeed in American companies. It seems to be good advice to succeed in any company -- anywhere. His number one piece of advice: OVERDELIVER - This is very un-American -- and very un-student-like. In school, students learn to meet certain objectives -- answer certain questions within certain time parameters. In the workforce -- it's not that way anymore. To get an A+ in business, Welch says, a person -- 22 years old or 62 years old -- needs to: 1. Expand the organization's expectations of what you can do --...

The Committee of 100 survey that I have mentioned here in the past asked the question of American opinion leaders - Americans were asked - What are the most admirable traits of the Chinese and their culture? Here are numbers four through one. 4. Commitment to Education - 13%. The Chinese are indeed diligent students. The only people I know who study harder than the Chinese are their children. Oh!, they are Chinese, too, I suppose. 3. One in six - the History - 16%. China has a looong history, and everything that was discovered, created, or found was done...

The gift had to be right, something she would never forget. After all, Adaline Davis had reared her grandson like he was her own, making him everything that he had become. He even called her "Ma." So on her birthday two years ago, Vernon Davis did what only a college freshman would do. He had her name tattooed to the inside of his left arm. Then he raced home with his surprise.

A slim 51% majority of New Yorkers support the opening of Wal-Mart Stores Inc. in the city, according to a poll released Friday. A new Quinnipiac University poll found that 74% of city voters agree that Wal-Mart’s lower prices hurt smaller businesses. Yet 70% agreed that the low prices benefit people who shop there. Forty-six percent said Wal-Mart should be allowed to open only if it allows workers to unionize. Still, 65% -- including 63% among voters from union households -- said that they would shop at Wal-Mart if one opened near them. “New Yorkers sympathize with the plight of...

While off for the holidays, I took my 90-year-old, former Marine, Republican dad to his inner-city barbershop. Dad goes to the same barbershop that my brothers and I went to when we were growing up. Different people now own the shop, and I hadn't set foot in there in probably 35 years. Is it still, I asked Dad, the same "afro-centric," white-man-done-me-wrong, trash-talking joint? "Yes," sighed my father, who taught my brothers and me to overcome racism through hard work and personal responsibility. When we get there, it's packed. Two barbers, cutting hair, with about six or seven people waiting....

No one knows another's life. Certainly no child really knows all there is of a father's. But in broad strokes I will try to tell the things which I knew were meaningful to my father. He was born in a small village in Poland. I've seen the name spelled in a variety of ways, but phonetically spelled it was Ravitz. Once in an Isaac Bashevis Singer short story he related stopping there briefly in a train trip from Lublin to Russia. My father said it didn't even have wooden sidewalks or outdoor toilets. His father, Morris, was a master tailor....

Some call them slackers. Others are more diplomatic. But whatever the moniker, "Generation Y" associates are getting a bad rap for what some say is a flabby work ethic and an off-putting sense of entitlement. Attorneys from Generation Y -- those born in 1978 or later -- are plenty smart and generally well educated, say firm leaders and industry experts. But these young attorneys also are lacking in loyalty, initiative and energy, so the criticism goes.

Are you not inspired and uplifted by the story of Carlos Gutierrez? When Gutierrez was but six years old, he and his family left their home in Havana, Cuba, for a vacation in Miami, unaware that they would never return to their homeland. Fidel Castro and his communists took over the island, confiscated the pineapple exporting business and property of Carlos Gutierrez’s father, and prohibited his family from returning. The Gutierrez family was forced to start anew in an unfamiliar place with an uncertain future. Carlos’s father worked for Heinz and began another business, though it was hit hard by...

Iraqi government district manager, Thayer Hamdallah, 28, village leader, Muktar Ismael Hamaad, 36, and Lt. Col. Rod T. Arrington, commanding officer of 3rd Battalion, 24th Marine Regiment, talk near a $22,000 Marine-funded generator which powers the village of Al Kabani on July 25, 2004. Earlier, the three men cut the ribbon to a new water purification station, which pumps fresh water to approximately 3,000 impoverished people in the area. That $175,000 project, also paid for by the Marines, brought construction and maintenance jobs to the villagers. Iraqis broke ground on the project June 8. Elements of the reserve infantry battalion...

Let's cut right to the chase: Are you going to lose your overtime pay under the new Labor Department rules? While lawyers, labor leaders and policy wonks pore through the 536 pages of regulations the government released Tuesday, a few clear winners and losers have emerged. If some of the critics are right, millions of U.S. workers are in danger of losing their overtime pay. And don't think the issue doesn't apply to you. If you are suddenly no longer eligible for overtime, what's to stop your boss from working you 60 hours a week? Or 80? So, let's get...

<p>BANGKOK, Thailand, March 29 (UPI) -- Thailand's prime minister was a tycoon before he entered politics but that didn't stop his daughter from taking a job at a Bangkok McDonald's restaurant.</p> <p>Paethongtan, the youngest daughter of Thaksin Shinawatra, even served her telecom magnate-turned-prime minister father two McFish and one Big Mac sets when he showed at the restaurant, the Bangkok Post reported.</p>

Today, reading Good Housekeeping while waiting for the doc, I came across an interview with this man about children and "laziness". I started reading, and within minutes was absolutely astounded by what he was saying. GH: You've often said it's hard to be a child in school today. Dr.L: Kids are expected to be competent in many things all at once:writing, math, sports, art. It's ten times easier to be an adult! GH: Where do kids usually have the most difficulties? Dr.L: Writing. Kids have to spell and generate ideas and remember punctuation and hold the pencil properly. It's a...

The 4th Earl of Kimberley, who has died aged 78, achieved a measure of fame as the most-married man in the peerage; once known as "the brightest blade in Burke's", he worked his way through five wives in 25 years before settling down contentedly with a former masseuse he had met on a beach in Jamaica.Johnny Kimberley was a jovial extrovert whose interests included shark fishing, UFOs and winter sports - for much of the 1950s he was a member of Britain's international bobsleigh team. There was a serious side to him too: he played championship tiddlywinks, bred prize pigs,...

Astronauts Bolt Girder to Station Sat Apr 13, 6:03 PM ETBy MARCIA DUNN, AP Aerospace WriterCAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) - The world's first pair of spacewalking grandfathers, nicknamed the Silver Team, floated outside and finished bolting a 44-foot girder to the international space station (news - web sites) on Saturday. Photos AP Photo Slideshows Shuttle Atlantis astronauts Jerry Ross and Lee Morin had to contend with some sticky bolts, but still managed to snap two three-pronged struts into place and complete the work begun by two of their colleagues earlier in the week.It was the first spacewalk ever by two...