How To Handle Pseudonym On Resume

Book Review: 'Keys to the Kingdom' by former Florida Sen. Bob Graham

Occasionally, you pick up a book and wonder what the author had in mind and why.

Former Florida governor, former senator and beloved elder statesman Bob Graham has written a thriller novel dealing with the current state of world affairs. "Keys to the Kingdom" goes on sale this week. The "Kingdom" in the title refers to Saudi Arabia (bad guys in this book).

The novel opens with a retired U.S. senator's op-ed piece (like Graham, he's from Florida and was chair of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence) questioning "our ally" Saudi Arabia's role in the 9/11 attack, its "willingness" to contribute to future attacks and trashing recent presidential administrations for covering up these facts.

The fictional essay goes on to warn about nuclear proliferation among terrorists states, especially Saudi Arabia, and calls for the United States to move decisively to keep WMDs from the hands of terrorists - our No. 1 fear.

Wow! What a setup. At this point, insider Graham has the thriller fan licking his chops; this has the potential to be one of the best "kiss and tell" novels in years.

As the real former head of the Senate Intelligence committee, a member of the 9/11 commission and confidant to presidents, Graham certainly has been privy to information in an area that because of "national security" will never be revealed. A cover blurb for the novel says "it reads like a true story because Graham knows where the truth lies."

Sad to say, this is not so. Graham may know "where the truth lies," but he is not telling us. This is not a whistle-blower or even an insider novel. It's just another run-of-the-mill thriller.

Graham states in an afterword, rather proudly, that he submits all his writing to the CIA's publication review board, and they have assured him that it does not "compromise national security."

Graham kills off his avatar in the first chapter. His hero is a dashing young Cuban-American intelligence officer in the state department, who, while attempting to ferret out the senator's killers, uncovers a plot to destroy the world by none other than Osama bin Laden. (Recent affairs kind of messed up this plot device.) With help from the Saudi royal family, bin Laden gets three nukes. He sets off two (Mumbai, India, is destroyed by one). The last is destined for the United States but our young hero saves the day (a la James Bond and Jack Ryan). A cliff-hanger ending promises a sequel or maybe even a series.

Blind Resume

Because brand names are really social/commercial means, they are powerful communicative tools. They are also, however, a great source of inefficiency in buying value. It costs more money to get the information/do the research up front and in the short term, but in the long run the dollar cost on non-brand products tends to be substantially lower despite comparable value. Take, for instance, batteries. It costs roughly $5.00 per four pack of AAA or AA Ultra Alkaline batteries by the brand names (Duracell, Enegergizer), while the generic Ultra Alkaline brand at Walgreens costs $2.99 for four of the same. Did you know, however, that Walgreens' batteries are made by one of the brand companies? Walgreens just pays to rebrand the batteries with its generic house label. Same production, different costs to consumer. These reputations usually reflect past production more than present/future production. How often do you hear someone say that player X has to bounce back? Sometimes that's are correct and current numbers are depressed by poor luck, but sometimes poor present production is also the byproduct of skill erosion or other declines in peripherals that are attributable to more than just random noise. Long introductions aside, let's play blind resume. What follows are the statistics of an unnamed outfielder whose identity will not be revealed until the very end of this article. (Don't cheat!). His stats come from the entirety of his tenure on his present team (over 1,000 plate appearances). Let's dub him "Player X" for the purpose of this article. Now, this player's BABIP with his current team is only a cumulative .272, compared to a career BABIP of .310 and a current-team xBABIP of .325, but he is no spring chicken, and on the tail end of his prime (no longer in his 20s) at best. This player does not walk very much (approximately 6.5 percent walk rate), but also does not strike out very much (14.3 percent strikeout clip). Jeffrey Gross is a 24-year old law student (and die-hard Cubs fan) who currently resides in Madison, WI. In addition to writing for The Hardball Times, he currently writes baseball analysis for the Game Of Inches blog under the pseudonym David "MVP" Eckstein and has previously worked for The Daily Illini and Northern Star newspapers as a film critic and sportswriter (respectively).