Soundbites

Flecks of gold in heads of gray

Is it the bulge of Baby Boomer readers hitting the age of 65, or is it that business editors themselves are getting longer in the tooth? In any case, more business publications are urging employers to see older workers as assets rather than liabilities.

Today’s “oldies” are in much better condition than their forbears who may have been out of date and out of shape, says The Economist, adding “If Mick Jagger and Keith Richards can go on touring into their late 60s, their contemporaries can at least be trusted with a desk and a computer.”

It cites Managing the Older Worker, written by business professor Peter Capelli and former AARP head Bill Novelli, to bolster its case for more gray hair in the workplace. For starters, oldsters have decades of formal and informal knowledge that the younger set don’t have, and “more often than not they are the repositories of a company’s core values.”

The Economist points to data showing that in every year since 1996, U.S. workers between 55 and 64 have started more new businesses than those 20-34. “Conscientiousness also tends to rise with age: older workers have lower levels of absenteeism than younger colleagues,” it says.

Elsewhere in the press, evangelical pastor and author John Piper announces in World magazine that he, too, has crossed the threshold of 65 but has far too much work ahead to even ponder R&R. “I am still gagging at the pictures of leathery old sunbathers on white shores and green links,” he writes. “For 15 years, I have thrown hundreds of senior mailings in the recycle bag unopened. Not that I am opposed to saving 79 cents on lunch at Perkins. Just don’t try to sell me heaven before I get there. There is too much hell left to fight.”

Greening of China

In clean energy, China is busy setting themselves up as a world leader. If they meet their most ambitious targets for 2020, they’ll have the most wind, the most nuclear and the most hydro. But China is still playing catch-up on pollution. The air quality in Beijing does not exactly feel like London or New York. — Deborah Seligsohn of the World Resources Institute, commenting on the path China is blazing towards a low-carbon economy (Guardian Weekly)

Swizzle stick

I believe in traveling as a way to get to know God’s family. God made this great creation, and it’s peopled with all sorts of interesting cultures and ways of life. When you travel, you kind of carbonate your existence. It’s like a swizzle stick for life. — Travel entrepreneur Rick Steeves in U.S. Catholic

The milk of God’s providence

Next time you pour milk on your cereal, remember the train of events that brought it to breakfast

by Jeff Van Duzer

The market is truly astonishing. Consider a simple transaction. We go to the local supermarket and pay three dollars for a gallon of milk. This is such a simple and everyday occurrence that most of us would never stop to think about the web of activities needed to make this possible. A farmer has to milk a cow. Of course, even before the cow can be milked it must be fed and the feed (or the field for grazing) must be acquired from someone. The milk needs to be processed. Plastic jugs or cardboard cartons need to be constructed and delivered to the milk processing plant. The milk needs to be transported to a central warehouse. It needs to be refrigerated. Those driving delivery trucks need to know how many gallons of milk to take from the warehouse to each retail store. (Too much milk, it will spoil. Not enough milk, the store will lose customers.) Employees need to regularly restock the shelves of the supermarket. Lights need to be kept on. Electricity bills need to be paid, either through online banking or by mail. Cash registers need to have been manufactured and delivered. Point-of-sale devices need to be installed and related computers programmed. Parking lots need to have been paved. Safes are needed to store the cash until it can be delivered to the bank, where it is credited against the supermarket’s account. And so on.

All this so we can have milk in our cereal. Literally hundreds of individuals have performed some work or delivered some product in order to facilitate this otherwise very simple transaction. The marvel of the market is that all of these persons performed their services and delivered their products at the right time and in the right amounts without anyone organizing the whole project. Everything comes together without any central planning or coordination. Remarkably, it works without anyone knowing us or our lactose habits. And what’s more, it can adapt almost instantly if we (and others like us) were to stop drinking milk.

Frankly, it seems beyond imagination that such an elaborate system developed by chance. Somewhere in here lurks God’s providence. ◆

Taken from Why Business Matters to God: (And What Still Needs to Be Fixed) by Jeff Van Duzer. Copyright(c) 2010 by Jeff Van Duzer. Used by permission of InterVarsity Press, P.O. Box 1400, Downers Grove, IL 60515.www.ivpress.com.