How the author helped Afghans build a thriving soap and body-oil business — and overcame the incompetence of America’s aid establishment

Scents & Sensibility

Following up on The Race for the Tallest Skyscraper (sort of):

Plans are underway to create the world's biggest building in Moscow, a gigantic monstrosity dubbed Crystal Island that'll dominate the skyline. The $4 billion "city in a building" will cover a whopping 2.5 million square meters of floor space and feature all sorts of smaller buildings in its interior. There'll be hotels, apartments, museums, cinemas, and more, with enough space to house 30,000 residents. In fact, it'll have 3000 hotel rooms, 900 serviced apartments, offices and shops, and an international school for 500 pupils.

It'll feature spectacular views from its 1,500-foot-high peak, to be sure. It's not just a design that'll never be made, either; plans are underway to get this thing under construction within 5 years. Fortunately, eco-friendly energy usage is at the heart of the design, utilizing on-site renewable and low-carbon energy generation. Perhaps this will actually make me want to visit Moscow. We'll see.

Crystal Island in Moscow to be the world's biggest building

Hackers often go into technology precisely because they feel uncomfortable with the amount of fakeness required in other fields.

The lessons are clear. A woman is sexier when she is most fertile.

Satellite radio is soaring in popularity. Of course, that may not be a reflection of XM or Sirius' quality so much as the mundanity and drollery of Clear Channel America.

Why not rejoin that inner circle of the select for an evening?

Selling out is the only way to escape childhood.

What appears to be wasted time is really jell time.

There are a lot of talented groups out there that you've probably never heard of.

Many hedge fund managers ... are just picking up pennies in front of a steamroller. And sometimes the steamroller accelerates.

Funny. (British Funny.)

A long wave of foreclosures seems inevitable.

Even if necessary changes in policy are implemented, the odds now favour a US recession that slows growth significantly on a global basis. Without stronger policy responses than have been observed to date, moreover, there is the risk that the adverse impacts will be felt for the rest of this decade and beyond.

Most people who try Second Life do not like it.

If you want to be an innovator, you have to take the long-term approach.

The number one thing not to do is other things.

Climate change offers “the greatest business opportunity that has ever come along."

In truth, the perverse reality of luxury consumption today is that so few people are complaining.

The 2008 pay rates will become effective on the first day of the first applicable pay period beginning on or after January 1, 2008 (January 6, 2008) if no further action is taken by Congress.

Federal Employees: Draft 2008 Salary Tables and Related Information

The one forecast we can safely make for 2008 is that the consensus will prove to be wrong.

Swan Song | Economist

The 2007 IPO market has had the highest volume and largest proceeds since 2000, with 231 offerings raising $53 billion as of Dec. 17. The IPO market's performance was driven by Chinese companies and some blockbuster U.S. technology deals. VMware is now the fourth-most-valuable software company in the world, behind Microsoft, Oracle and SAP.

The Strongest Year for U.S. IPOs Since 2000

Concentration is essential for creative work - certain stages of the creative process require single-minded focus on the task in hand. When we’re really in the zone, we experience ‘creative flow’ - the ‘almost automatic, effortless, yet highly focused state of consciousness’ that psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi has identified as characteristic of high- level creative performance. Interruptions, multi-tasking and the anxiety that comes from trying to juggle multiple commitments - these are in danger of eroding the focused concentration that is vital for your creativity.

If you’re worried about the effect of all those interruptions, frustrations and distractions on your creative work, this e-book is for you. Over the next seven chapters I will offer you some principles and practical methods for maintaining your creative focus under pressure, and for managing the stream of information and demands so that it informs and stimulates your creativity instead of drowning it out.

And that means being organised.

Time Management for Creative People

What really goes on in the back rooms of car dealerships across America?

What does the car salesman do when he leaves you sitting in a sales office and goes to talk with his boss?

What are the tricks salespeople use to increase their profit and how can consumers protect themselves from overpaying?

These were the questions we, the editors at Edmunds.com, wanted to answer for our readers. But how could they really know that our information was accurate and up-to-date? Finally, we came up with the idea of hiring an investigative reporter to work in the industry and experience, firsthand, the life of a car salesman.

Confessions of a Car Salesman

We need white space to think blue thoughts.

Mr. Judkins spends his day moving around the agency’s offices, which are in a converted elementary school. The former gym, now filled with couches and tables, is a good place for creative thought, he said. The “rocket sculpture,” an abstract piece in a central hallway that has a bench inside it, is a favored spot when he doesn’t mind colleagues stopping to chat. There are hidden corners and crannies where no one can interrupt (best for writing).

What Mr. Judkins is doing is looking for “white space,” a term creeping into the language of work to describe a place where the actual work gets done. Desks suffice for answering phones and filing forms, but when it comes to the creative or introspective aspects of a job, desks can be uninspiring at best, or formidable obstacles at worst.

So we leave those desks. Because we can. We take our laptops and seek shelter (and WiFi) either elsewhere in the building, as Mr. Judkins does, or farther away in libraries and bookstores.

The term “white space” implies a place set apart, physically and mentally. It is not only used by graphic artists to describe the empty space in a layout, but also by time managers to explain the minutes frittered away between appointments on office calendars.

Andy Hines, who studies the future of work at the Washington office of Social Technologies, a global consulting firm, said white space is “what we are looking for when we have thinking to do.”

You Won’t Find Me in My Office, I’m Working

Find out the uncomfortable truths about how organizations really work, what's wrong with the way we design and manage businesses, what makes managers tick... and how we can make things work better.

f-LAWS (or flaws) are truths about organizations that we might wish to deny or ignore - simple and more reliable guides to managers' everyday behaviour than the complex truths proposed by scientists, economists, sociologists, politicians and philosophers.

Management f-Laws: the common sins of management