The Economist had a good article last week about the death of the CEO as rock star phenomenon, which was really overdue. Next thing you know, we’ll actually see executive pay brought more in line with the pay of the people who actually do the real work. Don’t get me wrong, there are executives out there who are doing a great job, but I know for certain that the people who get the headlines and the people who deserve them are distinct groups with very little overlap.

What did I learn from A Picture of Weblogs? That I’m a butthead who doesn’t link to other weblogs. There are actually reasons for that, perhaps even good ones.

Chris Patten defends Europe against charges of increasing anti-Semitism on the Washington Post op-ed page today. The best thing about the article is that he uses the word “recrudescence” in a sentence. I had to look it up.

With the acquisition of Navision, it looks like Microsoft might be taking a swing at Siebel.

For detailed coverage of what’s going on in the Netherlands, a reader pointed me to Adam Curry’s Weblog.

Here’s the Economist story on Pim Fortuyn. You can always count on Economist for a good general overview of whatever is going on. Interestingly, the Economist’s headline says Europe’s “right” gets a martyr. That tells you all you need to know about the difference between US and European politics. Fortuyn was an openly gay man who opposed immigration from Muslim countries mainly because of the homophobia and misogyny that are prominent features of many Islamic cultures. In America, homophobia and misogyny are usually associated with the right wing.

Salon Premium has a long piece today on the Israeli art student scandal that has been discussed here and there since 9/11. The story comes with quotes from all sorts of unnamed government officials, warnings to the writer to drop the story, and a CIA source code named “Stability.” Unfortunately, while it is known that a large number of young Israelis posing as art students selling art have been snooping around federal facilities, including some secret federal facilities, nobody really knows what they were doing. It’s sort of silly to jump to any sort of conclusions, but the facts that are in evidence certainly bear further investigation.

What in the world is going on in Europe? An anti-immigration Dutch politician, Pim Fortuyn, was shot dead walking out of a radio station, sparking widespread protests around the Netherlands. (Fortuyn’s political views were a bit more interesting than Jean-Marie La Pen’s, although taken in total, nearly as loathesome.) What’s scary is that this guy was expected to get about 15% of the vote in the upcoming general elections. One wonders what this trend indicates when it comes to European angst about Muslim immigrants, and European nationalism in general.

William Safire’s New York Times column today discusses terms of a possible agreement between Israel and Palestine, or at least the type of agreement that Ariel Sharon will propose. It’s interesting only in that what Safire writes is nearly certain to be what Israel proposes, being that he’s the unofficial spokesman of Israel’s right wing in the US.

Somehow I missed the news that Jordan K Hubbard resigned from the FreeBSD core team. The fact that one of the reasons he cites for leaving is that he’s not happy with the way the core team is operating doesn’t speak too well for the project. A coworker just pointed out that jkh is on the core team of the OpenDarwin project.