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After downsizing and moving to an apartment with his family, Georges (yes with an "s") and his dad are in the basement throwing out garbage when they see a sign posted on a door.  "Spy Club Meeting -- TODAY!".  Much to Georges' chagrin, his dad writes "What time?" on the sign, setting off a series of events that will occupy Georges' days for the next while.

Georges himself, is a big of an awkward kid.  He puts up with the daily microbullying that his mom says aren't part of the big picture.  The big picture of life is kind of like the Seurat print they have in their living room.  If you look at it close up, it's just a bunch of dots, but back away to see the big picture and everything comes into focus.  Thinking about the big picture doesn't make school any easier, however.  The sarcastic clapping at his volleyball moves, the renaming him Gorgeous, the fact that his friend Jason came back from camp completely different -- these things all pepper Georges days.  Add onto this the fact that his nurse mom is always at the hospital, and his dad works plenty as well, and you get a sense of what Georges is going through.

So when somebody answers on the Spy Club sign that there is a meeting at 1:30 and Georges' dad encourages him to go, nobody is more surprised than Georges to find a kid waiting in the basement room.  He first meets Candy, then Safer and their family from the 6th floor.  Safer says that he's a spy and that he's got his eye on one of the building's tenants.  He's creepy -- always wears black and is constantly hauling big suitcases in and out of the building.  Safer teaches Georges some of the art of being a spy, and before he knows it, he is in over his head.

Rebecca Stead has written what could be called the perfect tween/middle grade novel.  She gets kids, and the situations the characters get into as well as their voices are spot on.  Each setting rings true, and the slow simmer and reveal are plotted precisely and perfectly.  Stead manages to pay close attention to detail without slowing the pace of the story.  There is a message in Liar & Spy about empathy and bullying and being an ally, but it doesn't feel the least bit didactic.  Liar & Spy has quickly risen into my top five for the year.

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copyright 2011 Elizabeth Rose Stanton http://www.rightbrainwrong.blogspot.com

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By Simon Chesterman

The ongoing police investigation into phone-hacking in Britain by the tabloid News of the World has revealed the widespread use of surveillance techniques by private actors, with predictable outrage expressed at the violations of privacy. Yet the recent inquiries only began in earnest after a major story in the New York Times.

This is the paradox of today’s media: investigative journalism is often key to revealing abuses of surveillance powers, yet the commercial reality of today’s market drives unscrupulous journalists themselves towards ever more dubious methods.

That market has been radically altered by the “new media”, with WikiLeaks as its poster-child — ably exploiting the Internet’s capacity for widespread dissemination of data, but at the expense of credible efforts at analysis or minimizing the potential harm to named individuals. It is “journalism” by quantity rather than quality.

These two trends — muck-raking and unfiltered dissemination — become all the more serious when linked to the extraordinary tools of surveillance available to government and, increasingly, private actors.

The spread of surveillance powers through Britain has long puzzled outside observers. On the one hand, Britain is a rare example of a country that developed a comprehensive identity card regime during the Second World War and then dismantled it after the conclusion of hostilities — apparently to the dismay of many in law enforcement circles. Later in the century, however, the absence of constitutional protections of rights, a general belief in the benevolence of government, and episodes like the 1993 James Bulger murder encouraged the growth of a sophisticated surveillance state.

Britain now enjoys the highest concentration of CCTV cameras in the world, manages the London Congestion Charge by recording details of every car entering and leaving the capital, and stores DNA samples from an ever growing proportion of the population.

In the 2010 general election, Britain’s Conservative Party campaigned on a platform of scrapping plans for an identity card that would have been linked to a National Identity Register. Interestingly, the arguments that resonated with the public had less to do with privacy concerns than the expense involved, doubts about government competence to manage the data, and a general wariness that the whole enterprise looked a little too “European”.

Does this mean that Britons do not care about privacy? Certainly not. But as in many other countries it is hard to reconcile the apparent sincerity of individuals claiming to be concerned about their privacy with the nonchalant behaviour of those same individuals in revealing personal information voluntarily or engaging in activities where there is manifestly no reasonable expectation to privacy.

This is not limited to teenagers. The current head of MI6, Sir John Sawers, was embarrassed by photos that his wife posted on Facebook in 2009 revealing the location of their London flat and the whereabouts of their three adult children. Last October his daughter uploaded a suggestive photograph of herself holding a golden Kalashnikov — quickly cut and pasted from Facebook to the Mirror.

There is, however, a generational element to attit

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Clayton P. Alderfer

Undercover Boss, one of reality TV’s newest additions, is based on a truth that many thoughtful CEOs grasp: they do not have a thorough understanding of what goes on at the middle and bottom of their organizations.  There are multiple reasons why.  Immediate subordinates do not know either.  Middle and lower ranking managers withhold their understanding from those above them.  First level managers cut deals with hourly workers that permit the employees to do well enough financially while not working too hard – lest the employees act disruptively.  CEOs hired from outside have even less of an idea about what goes on, as insiders feel resentful about being subject to outsider rule and choose not to tell what they know.  The reasons why CEOs face this predicament are thus far reaching.  The question for CEOs who grasp this tough reality is whether they can do anything about it.

Undercover Boss provides one solution to the top boss’s dilemma: Change clothing; create a new identity; become a temporary hourly employee; expose one’s shortcomings as a worker; [eventually] reveal one’s identity to those who helped; provide high profile rewards (and an occasional punishment) to employees who were encountered; hold a public meeting to reveal the charade; and, finally, go back to work as an apparently enlightened CEO armed with the knowledge acquired.  Here the TV episode ends.  But is this the whole story?

As someone who has spent several decades studying organizations, serving as a middle manager in universities, and working as an organizational consultant to numerous systems, I believe the findings that undercover bosses turn up are, for the most part, valid.  The problems are with the procedures the CEOs use.  Most critical is the rationale built on deception.  The show operates from the premise (shared with social scientists who conduct experiments using deception) that one can establish laws of human behavior by employing methods that include lying to the people who provide data.  In short, one lies to learn the truth.

In social psychology over the years, students to whom the experimenters lied later told other students, who then became what was termed “experiment-wise.”  Beyond that, lead investigators carried out studies demonstrating that experimenters (perhaps inadvertently) communicated experimental hypotheses to the people providing data, thus possibly invalidating the findings produced.   To compensate for these two problems, researchers introduced a second order of lying.  Investigators began to lie not just to their “subjects,” as respondents in these studies were called, but also to the experimenters who executed experimental treatments.  Among researchers who used deceptive practices, this later development ushered in a new order of experiments based on “double deception.”  Viewed in organizational terms, these practices emanated from temporary organizations in which top managers (professors) lied to middle managers (graduate students), who in turn lied to subordinates (undergraduates or innocent citizens).

Undercover Boss appears not yet to have reached the second stage of employing deceptive practices.  Shows currently close with an apparently happy gathering of employees smiling as their CEO reveals the deception after having returned to his actual role.  The implied explanation for the observed employee satisfaction is that the people feel pleased, because the top boss has taken the trouble to find out what organizational life is really like at the middle and bottom of the system.  One wonders, however, just how long the initial reactions will last.  Might there be resentment toward the employees who assisted (some wittingly, some unwittingly) the boss in his deception a

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