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From the New York Times: US universities are partnering with international schools to add global reach to existing executive MBA (EMBA) programs. UCLA awards EMBA degree to students from National University of Singapore, after the students complete residency programs in Los Angeles, Bangalore, Shanghai and Singapore.

HPU’s EMBA program is conducted entirely in Honolulu. Surely there are universities around the world that would send their EMBA students to Hawaii for a few weeks. The University of North Florida is located in Jacksonville, and according to this article, students are willing to attend UNF’s Global MBA program.

The EMBA degree is expensive, but there are alternatives. Henry Mintzberg picks apart MBA programs in his book, Managers Not MBAs. He makes some excellent points. The MBA is not a cure-all or a golden ticket. I earned my MBA in 1988 with limited work experience. I spent a few years in the late 1990s in industry, and I consult on Oahu. My life is like an never-ending post-doctorate in management.

USA: Florida got spanked by Charley. This was a big one, a freaking nightmare of a hurricane that many residents were ill-prepared to handle. It got stronger and veered inland before it could hit Tampa, and a lot of people who thought they would be safe ended up in harm’s way.

These people need help yesterday, and I hope things get better for everyone there, including my family and friends, very soon.

Charley’s path was also rough: Fort Myers to Orlando to Daytona Beach. It could have been worse, but not by much. Andrew really concentrated his wrath on Dade County and Miami in 1992, by comparison.

A cynic might say that W is piling on the favors and attention to Florida, given what happened in 1992 (Hurricane Andrew) and 2000 (Hurricane Chad :). Whoever wins Florida will win the presidential election.

Of course, this article points out that Charley’s path also covers a lot of GOP territory. Kerry was leading W by 7 points in Florida last week.

It’s hard to ignore the political damage, but the storm’s damage has been a lot worse. I’m hoping that Florida gets a pass on hurricanes for the rest of the year: Charley was enough.

Space: From the Washington Post, Board Urges Capability for In-Flight Repair: “The board investigating the Columbia disaster strongly urged NASA yesterday to develop a system to enable astronauts to inspect and repair ‘the widest practicable range’ of damage to shuttles while orbiting in space.”

I was calling the shuttle the “Space Porsche” back in 1983, as it spends much more time in the repair shop than NASA was willing to predict. Gregg Easterbrook’s 1980 article illustrated some problems that contributed to Columbia’s doomed reentry:

To truly grasp the challenge of building a space shuttle, think about its flight. The ship includes a 60-by-15-foot open space, narrow wings, and a large cabin where men must be provided that delicately slender range of temperatures and pressures they can endure. During ascent, the shuttle must withstand 3 Gs of stress — inertial drag equivalent to three times its own weight. While all five engines are screaming, there will be acoustic vibrations reaching 167 decibels, enough to kill an unprotected person. In orbit, the shuttle will drift through -250°F. vacuum, what engineers call the “cold soak.” It’s cold enough to embrittle and shatter most materials. During reentry, the ship’s skin goes from cold soak to 2,700°F., hot enough to transform many metals into Silly Putty. Then the shuttle must glide along, under control, at speeds up to Mach 25, three times faster than any other piloted aircraft has ever flown. After reentry, it cascades through the air without power; finally thunking down onto the runway at 220 m.p.h. The like-sized DC-9 lands, with power, at 130 m.p.h. Rockets are throwaway contraptions in part so that no one piece ever has to endure such a wild variety of conditions. The shuttle’s design goal is to take this nightmare ride 100 times.