Plus ça change? Not quite

When one thinks of "thought leadership" in the business world and what comes under the heading of "must reading" The Economist is one of the names that come immediately to mind. So, when my colleague Lauryn Franzoni sent me a copy of a recent piece entitled Plus ça change? Not quite I wasn't quite sure what to expect, but one thing I didn't expect was to end up laughing to the point of tears.

Maybe it's just my love of British humor or maybe my envy of wonderful writing or maybe it's just because it's Friday, summer and sunny, but whatever it is, this piece really struck a chord.

It's not all that long, so even if it doesn't make you laugh out loud it won't take that much time from your day. Here's a taste:

In a technological age ever more clichés are being untethered from their origins in this way. People write out plenty of metaphorical cheques, whether blank or bouncing. Many of them are to be found in the post, but fewer in real life (some shops no longer accept them). There is no need to keep your cards close to your chest, or indeed an ace up your sleeve, when so much gambling happens online. Thanks to reviews, awards and celebrity book-club stickers, you can in fact judge a book by its cover. If you carry a mobile phone, write e-mail or post entries on MySpace, being out of sight does not mean being out of mind. And in the age of the iPod, no one can be accused of being unable to carry a tune.

The rest can all be found here if your curiosity has been tweaked.

Love Those Brits!

Has anybody out there discovered Martin Lukes, Chief Personal Ethics Champion aka Martin.Lukes@a-bglobal.com? Those who are steady readers of the Financial Times probably instantly recognize this email address, but at the risk of exposing, yet once again, my lack of intellectual capital, I have to confess that I am not a daily reader of this outstanding paper. It is all I can do to look at the WSJ for a few minutes. In any event, I was introduced to Martin Lukes by a colleague in the office, Lauryn Franzoni, who is indeed not only a subscriber to the paper, but also reads it on a daily basis.

Anyway, it is one of the funniest satires I have seen in years, and while it follows a "soap opera like" story line, you can drop in on it at any time because the writing is so good and so funny that even though you may not know who some of the characters are right away, Martin's style and typical British humor just pull you in immediately anyway.

Aside from the humor, it also will help you to improve your British vocabulary and you can learn the translation of terms like: "cavorting starkers", "deep dive", and "brain-bang."

If you were ever a fan of Are You Being Served, Faulty Towers, Black Adder, or some of the other British sitcoms then you should check this out. I think it runs on Thursdays.