AS LEGEND GOES, Catalan writer and philosopher Eugeni D'Ors was at a nice restaurant when he ordered an expensive bottle of fine champagne. The waiter who brought it was inexperienced, didn't know how to open a bottle of sparky, and as he stuggled with it he was shaking the bottle it in a manner that when the cork finally was out, he ended up spilling most of its precious content.

D'Ors said to him: "Thanks, young man. Next time, though, please do your learning with a bottle of lemonade."

I was reminded of this anecdote when I read about the new GM chairman, Ed Whitacre:

“I don’t know anything about cars,” Whitacre, 67, said yesterday in an interview after his appointment. “A business is a business, and I think I can learn about cars. I’m not that old, and I think the business principles are the same.”