March 2007

Around the cafe’ we’re just happy to have you all feel at home here. That’s reward enough. But when a major local magazine comes a callin’, we brush our teeth, comb our hair and make sure we’re all perty to see what they have to say.

Well, what they said was that, Spirit Boston, Boston’s Premier Gay and Lesbian magazine, has given Beck’s Cafe the nod as one of the Boston Blog’s to Read in the Transgender category. Well isn’t that nice! If anyone has a copy of the Decemeber/January issue we’d love to see it. I heard from the reporter that the mention was in that issue.

Of course the only reason this wonderful award happened at all is because of YOU, our wonderfully caffeine juiced up readers. We just whip out the content but YOU put us where we are ’cause you read us So thank you all very much from the bottom of the team’s heart

(We’re leaving this post up as our top post for a bit as we follow this)

Tenessa Thomas, age 13 of Auburn, Maine went missing on Thursday, 3/22/07 around 7am. She took none of her things for school, no jackets, and all of the doors and windows have been locked with no sign of any entry. Basically, the parents have no idea about anything what so ever. If ANYONE has ANY information about her where abouts or even nows someone who knows something PLEASE call (3/23/07: phone numbers deleted as Tenessa was found).

I got this message from an acquaintence via email. We’ve emailed back asking that the parents contact the Maine police to kick off the nationwide Amber Alert System for this little girl. We’ll post updates here to this post to keep everyone informed as this very serious issue develops.

***updates***
3/23/07 12:10PM While we are waiting for some further news you might like to read this post here at Beck’s Cafe I did here on one of my kids, just click here.

3/23/07 9:43PM Great NEWS! We just talked to a woman who is a relative of Tenessa’s. She was found, is back home and is a-okay!! Thanks to everyone for their concern Free Mochacino’s for everyone

If you look around you might find a few, but not a whole lot. The “few” are women in management. Grant Thornton, a U.K. based international accounting and consulting firm, published an interesting study on March 5, 2007, to coincide with International Women’s Day. The survey solicited the opinion of some 7000 privately held businesses in 32 countries. To give you a sense for the size of these enterprises, they represent 81% of global GDP. The findings may or may not cause you to think.

• 38% of businesses do not have any women in senior management roles, a figure which has remained unchanged since 2004.

• 97% of businesses in the Philippines have women in senior management positions, the highest in the survey

• 25% of Japanese businesses have women in senior management, the lowest in the survey

• 18% of United States businesses have women in senior management, about in the middle of all developed countries

• The EU’s proportion of women in senior management has remained static at 17%, while NAFTA’s figure has increased from 20% to 23%.

April Mackenzie, Grant Thornton’s Executive Director of Public Policy had this comment on the survey. It’s a wonderful summary:

It is disappointing that the participation of women in senior business management has not increased more dramatically over the last three years. It is however encouraging to see some of the Asian economies leading the way. North American and European businesses in particular continue to disappoint. Hopefully we will see this change in coming years as more women play increasingly prominent roles in business and public life such as Indra Nooyi, the new chief executive officer of PepsiCo, Angela Merkel, German chancellor, Margaret Whitman, chief executive and president of eBay and Anne Lauvergeon, chief executive of France’s state-owned nuclear group Areva.

You can read a brief on this fascinating survey at Grant Thornton’s website by visiting their site at this link HERE.

The Economist magazine posted a splendid chart form of the results. Well worth a quick visit by skimming to The Economist via this link HERE.

Finally, some thoughts on why this happens might be found in my post, “Pelosi media coverage covered by gender“. It’s an article on media coverage and women, but the why of it might apply here too.

(A hat tip to rebecca blood, author of rebecca’s pocket for the lead for this post)

I used to publish with Blogger and then Typepad but finally settled on a self hosted blog at A Small Orange using Wordpress. You can read about my odyssey in my comment on the article, “What Blogging tool Do You Use And Why”on Lorelle on Wordpress, at my article,”Thoughts on Moving On“, and at my article “A New Home for Beck’s Cafe”

One of the (many) great things about Wordpress is how responsive the community is. To that end if your running Wordpress 2.1.1 HEED this ANNOUNCEMENT from the Wordpress Development Blog:

If you downloaded WordPress 2.1.1 within the past 3-4 days, your files may include a security exploit that was added by a cracker, and you should upgrade all of your files to 2.1.2 immediately.

Clearly malicious hackers still have way too much time on their hands…

• Download 2.1.1 from Wordpress.org by visiting this link HERE
• See the official notice of the 2.1.1 code risk at this link HERE
• Reach the Wordpress community support site at this link HERE