Paradoxically, the strength of Wal-Mart is one of the major factors driving today's aesthetic imperative. If you can't be Wal-Mart, and only one retailer can, you've got to give customers something valuable for the extra money. Great goods and a pleasant shopping experience are one possiblity. Another is quick convenience--the 7-Eleven strategy. Yet another is an appeal to personal identity, such as Whole Foods' earthy-crunchy approach (brilliantly analyzed in this old column by Jonah Goldberg).

Speaking of Wal-Mart, Hugh Hewitt recently suggested that I might have some thoughts on the stores' aesthetics. Here they are: Most traditional Wal-Mart stores are ugly inside and out, with bad lighting and crowded aisles. I have it on good authority that Wal-Mart customer surveys show that when asked what they most enjoy about the "Wal-Mart experience," people say, "Leaving the store." Not good--though not dissatisfied either. (They like the stuff they buy.)

That's not the end of the story, however. Wal-Mart exists in the same competitive world as other businesses. So the company can't entirely ignore aesthetics and, over time, we can expect Wal-Marts to get moer attractive. And, judging from the new one near me, their new Neighborhood Markets--which are grocery stores--are not only better looking than ordinary Wal-Marts but slightly more attractive than the typical Albertson's. The merchandise doesn't go as far up the food chain as I'd like, but at least they keep up their stocks and don't regularly run out of Diet Coke.

Finally, having just returned from New York, I can say there are major swaths of America--or at least Manhattan--that would be aesthetically improved if their existing "super"markets were replaced with even the world's ugliest Wal-Mart.

Through broad initiatives and individual requests, corporations have been actively recruiting veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts, turning military hospitals like Walter Reed into de facto hiring centers.

Job offers aren't being handed out carte blanche, and companies say talent and fit are still the main priorities. But executives seeking out wounded soldiers claim that many of the skills acquired in the military are applicable in the private sector -- particularly within companies that serve the government. A soldier who has led a platoon into war is probably capable of leading a unit at a private company, executives say. With government contracting in the midst of a boom, the security clearances and knowledge that soldiers bring home with them are also highly valued.

We're a long way from the plaintive TV commercials of the 1970s, which begged employers to hire Vietnam vets. The recruitment trend represents a triumph for the All Volunteer Force--a military of skilled professionals.

Washington Examiner needs Assoc. Editorial Page Editor

The Examiner seeks an opinion pro to join a small team going toe-to-toe with The Washington Post. We have speed and innovation ... they had Watergate. We have new ideas ... they have writers with centuries of experience. We have a sense of humor ... they have E. J. whatshisname. We’re looking for someone who can help us remake a dead art form. Skills are more important than politics as long as you can work among people who disagree. The job centers on conceiving newsmaking op-eds, finding the perfect people to execute them and then editing the copy. All our editors are also expected to write frequently.

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And Steve Shu (whose wife, Professor Shu, is a colleague and friend of Professor Postrel) passes on the unwritten advice that circulates among female grad students.

Biology has its own rules, which culture and technology can change only so much. One of those rules is that it's really hard to get pregnant if you're 40 but pretty easy to father a child at that age. Men postpone child rearing into their 40s with little consequence. Women cannot. That's a problem for professional women in general, but it's a much bigger problem for women on a tenure clock. And the later that tenure clock starts, the bigger a problem it is. That's why an amibitous female scientist faces problems that an ambitious female lawyer doesn't. Law school takes only three years; you're out at 25, and only 27 if you spend a couple of years clerking for judges. Work like a dog for seven years, postponing any thought of kids, and you're just 34. Your biological clock hasn't yet run down. (That's even more true in my profession, one of the few that doesn't require graduate training.)

If, however, you spend six years in grad school and another two as a postdoc, you'll be 30 when you get your first tenure-track post--and that's assuming you don't work between college and grad school. I don't have the numbers, but science training is notorious for stretching out the doctoral/postdoc process, in part because the researchers heading labs benefit from having all that cheap, talented help. Female scientists who want kids are in trouble, even assuming they have husbands who'll take on the bulk of family responsibilities.

So, if a university like Harvard wants to foster the careers of female scientists, this is my advice: Speed up the training process so people get their first professorial jobs as early as possible--ideally, by 25 or 26. Accelerate undergraduate and graduate education; summer breaks are great for students who want to travel or take professional internships, but maybe science students should spend them in school. Penalize senior researchers whose grad students take forever to finish their Ph.D.s. Spend more of those huge endowments on reducing (or eliminating) teaching assistant loads and other distractions from a grad student's own research and training. If you want more female scientists, ceteris paribus (as the economists say), stop extending academic adolescence.

Take Summers's use of the word "marginal," a concept so central to modern economics that economists can hardly think without it. Even as a journalist who tries hard to avoid jargon, I know from personal experience that if you slip and say "marginal" rather than "additional" or "incremental"--the economic meaning--people will think you mean "unimportant," "wasteful," "worthless," or just plain bad. If misunderstandings can happen in a speech on the economic importance of aesthetics as the absolutely critical "marginal value" that determines whether a good or service succeeds, imagine what happens when you're talking about affirmative action.

Then there's the concept of "path dependence." Biology and discrimination aren't the only possible explanations for why a group would be underrepresented in a particular profession. History plays a major role. Especially to a liberal economist like Summers, whose scholarly work looked for examples of market failure, history can lead to bad results that market interractions won't correct. So when he looks at workplaces that reward employees who devote nearly every waking hour to thinking about their work, he sees a bad equilibrium that unfairly penalizes women--a system stuck in a dysfunctional groove because it developed under different historical conditions.

I, on the other hand, think the system is not only efficient but pretty darned fair, regardless of how it may differentially affect the sexes. "Time on task" makes a huge difference in productivity and problem solving. People who spend all their time thinking about work are more likely to be better at what they do than people who have other interests and priorities, just as people who actually spend time with their kids are probably better parents than parents who are never around. The general culture stigmatizes that single-minded dedication to work as weird or morally suspect. The workplace rewards the added productivity, and also pays a "compensating differential" (as the economists say) to make up for the sacrifices elsewhere. That seems reasonable to me. A research university is an odd institution to join the campaign for "balanced lives."

Finally, I find it quite possible that more men than women are really, really great at math and science, just as I find it not only possible but likely that on average women have poorer spatial abilities than men. (That goes quadruple for me, which only proves the importance of motivation and social assumptions. If I can drive a car, a lot more kids can learn calculus.) I doubt, however, that "fat tails" make a huge difference in the run-of-the-mill Ivy League job. In a country of nearly 300 million (not to mention the rest of the world) even a skinny tail includes a lot of women. My guess is that, aside from family issues, temperament and interests matter as much as raw ability.

In this message we are asking your help in finding new members of the Spirit of America team. We have both job and volunteer opportunities. Please forward this message to those you think may be interested. More information on these positions is here: http://www.spiritofamerica.net/site/about/488.

When I met with General Tommy Franks in December he said he thought that Spirit of America had a better opportunity to reduce/defeat terrorism than anything happening inside the Government bureaucracy today. That's a great responsibility to live up to.

We see the potential to make the contribution that Gen. Franks sees. Certainly the need is there. Most importantly, we think the American people are ready to participate and contribute to a broader effort to see freedom, democracy and peace prevail. Your support has provided very encouraging evidence of that. To realize this potential requires a great team of people - a team that will be able to produce even greater results in Iraq and Afghanistan and also look at appropriate ways for Spirit of America to advance freedom elsewhere, e.g., Iran, Syria and No. Korea.

Here are the key positions where outstanding men and women are needed.

Vice President, Project Management: an uber project management and operations executive with potential to be COO or Executive Director.

Vice President, Communications: a marketing, media and communications genius.

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Project Managers - Military Requests: these are volunteer positions to work with and support requests from U.S. military personnel in Iraq and Afghanistan.

We're also looking for a Development Director, Logistics Manager and Administrative Assistant. Most positions are in Los Angeles, some are in Washington, DC and a few can be anywhere. Click this link for more information and job descriptions.

These are great opportunities for talented, experienced professionals who after 9/11 have been looking for a way to make a significant contribution.

Please forward this message to anyone that would be interested in these key positions. Updates next week on many projects in the works - tools, sewing centers, Polaroid cameras, etc. -- visit our website at http://www.spiritofamerica.net for current information.

With Best Regards,
Jim Hake and the Spirit of America team

DALLAS--WHEN Bob Duncan was studying engineering management at the University of Texas in the mid-1980's, Japanese competition had American businesses terrified. "There was great concern that Japan would eliminate the U.S. manufacturing base just totally," he recalled.

To the confident young Mr. Duncan, however, Japanese manufacturing was not a threat but an inspiration. After graduation, Mr. Duncan worked for Andersen Consulting (now Accenture), teaching clients lean manufacturing techniques originally developed in Japan.

Within a couple of years, he had an idea for his own company. He decided to do for leather furniture what Japanese companies had done for cars, steel and shipbuilding: shake up a staid, complacent industry by rethinking the manufacturing process. In 1990, with another Andersen consultant, Sanjay Chandra, as his partner, Mr. Duncan set out to turn this concept into a business, the Dallas-based American Leather.

Instead of making sofas in big batches, with each step handling a week's worth of material at a time, they would treat each order as a single batch and make it in a few days. Rather than segregating cutting, sewing and upholstering, they would organize the plant in smaller teams, called "cells" or "minifactories," making it easier to spot quality problems and track a single sofa from start to finish. They would apply just-in-time techniques and keep the backlog to a week and a half, compared with the industry's six to eight weeks.

With this process, Mr. Duncan figured, their company could give customers quicker turnaround and more choice. If they wanted a sofa in a color other than black, brown or burgundy, they would no longer have to wait months for container ships from Italy. They could pick from dozens of colors and count on delivery in 30 days.

But raising money and selling furniture proved much harder than Mr. Duncan, now 41, expected. "At 26, you just don't know," he said. "You assume, Why couldn't you? It just seemed so obvious."

American Leather took more than a decade to hit $30 million in sales, not the projected three to five years. But the business was profitable by its second year, and today it is flourishing. "American Leather has literally come from nowhere to be one of the most popular leather companies in the United States," says Jerry Epperson, a furniture analyst with Mann, Armistead & Epperson in Richmond, Va.

Read the rest here. The Times website also has a slide show of photos from the plant, with audio commentary from American Leather CEO Bob Duncan.

After nudging from Reason editor-in-chief Nick Gillespie, I've established an email list to send out my articles. If you'd like to receive them by email, send an email to postrel-list-subscribe@yahoogroups.com with the subject line and message "subscribe."

No one loves authenticity like a graphic designer. And no one is quite as good at simulating it. Recently on Speak Up, Marian Bantjes described the professional pride she took in forging a parking permit for a friend. "And I have to say," she admitted, "that it is one of the most satisfying design tasks I have ever undertaken." This provoked an outpouring of confessions from other designers who gleefully described concocting driver's licenses, report cards, concert tickets and even currency.

Every piece of graphic design is, in part or in whole, a forgery. I remember the first time I assembled a prototype for presentation to a client: a two-color business card, 10-point PMS Warm Red Univers on ivory Mohawk Superfine. The half-day process involved would be incomprehensible to a young designer working in a modern studio today; with its cutting, pasting, spraying, stirring and rubbing, it was more like making a pineapple upside-down cake from scratch. But what satisfaction I took in the final result. It was like magic: it looked real. No wonder my favorite character in The Great Escape wasn't the incredibly cool Steve McQueen, but the bewhiskered and bespeckled Donald Pleasence, who couldn't ride a stolen motorcycle behind enemy lines, but could make an imitation German passport capable of fooling the sharpest eyes in the Gestapo.

And the illusion works on yet another level. Consider: that business card was for a start-up business that until that moment had no existence outside of a three-page business plan and the rich fantasy life of its would-be founder. My prototype business card brought those fantasies to life. And reproduced en masse and handed with confidence to potential investors, it ultimately helped make the fantasy a reality. Graphic design is the fiction that anticipates the fact.

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