THE GESTURE: Communication, commerce, community

Capacity issues

2010-05-19T20:24:00.003-06:00

Wish I had a buck for everybody who tried to pass the buck by claiming to "lack capacity."

It may seem foolish to portray oneself as a can't-do person, but like any buzzphrase, I think this one has spread because it captures a complex truth. We all understand and have incorporated into our lives the notion that scarcity boosts value. Unfortunately many of us seem to have gone a bit overboard and concluded that if we, ourselves, are scarce, then our value will rise.

The truth in this is reflected in the way one feels one has won a lottery prize after managing to "get some time" with an overbooked executive or politician. The frequent observation that chief executives are godlike is apt: they spend a lot of time in the sky, walk among us only rarely, and use their power to reward or punish in unpredictable ways. Every organization is entitled to a small pantheon of these creatures.

It's fine to dress like the boss, but acting like the boss before actually becoming the boss might not be the sharpest thing to do. To say yes to everything is to invite abuse, but to say no to everything is to become reviled. Regardless of the business you're in, there has to be service involved.

Besides, to claim lack of capacity isn't the same as claiming lack of intelligence or ability; it's to cleverly suggest that one is a bit of a victim, that if only circumstances were a little different, one would be thriving and would be able to help with whatever the request was. As it is, well -- wish I could help, but it's just not possible. In this way it's possible to both claim and reject accountability at the same moment.

I would rather hear "I'll do my best" or even "hell, no" than "I lack capacity."

Bike-scaring

2010-05-09T21:20:00.004-06:00

For years I've wished -- prayed might even be the right word -- for Denver to join the family of civilized cities and offer bike-sharing. Now that it's here, I've come down with a big ol' case of be-careful-what-you-wish-for-itis.

The problem isn't that people aren't using the shiny new B-cycle kiosks scattered around downtown, but that they are. The reality of widespread bicycle usage is shattering the myth of cycling as a force for good. Cyclists, it turns out, are only human, which is to say, selfish and dangerous.

Something about the design and placement of the kiosks -- perhaps that they're located on sidewalks -- seems to suggest to users that they are more akin to slow-moving personal mobility devices such as wheelchairs and Segways than to road machines. The breezy, retro, beach-combing styling of the bikes themselves may contribute to the feeling that they're being offered as an alternative not to driving, but to waking. As a result, great numbers of B-cycle customers are now cruising the sidewalks of Denver, quite illegally. If bicycles are supposed to make our streets safer, they have instead made our sidewalks chaotic.

And what's with renting bikes without helmets? Someone must have got a knock on the head before coming up with this genius plan.

Even if B-cycle gets an A, whether the project succeeds or fails is entirely up to riders.

Dear NPR

2010-05-04T22:53:00.003-06:00

Dear Mr. Siegel,

Please stop pausing so long between saying "Welcome" and "to the program" that the guest starts to say "Thank you" and then you talk over him, causing confusion and embarrassment for all. Thank you.

Dear Ms. Aubrey,

Please force air through your throat even at the end of a sentence. Thank you.

Dear Ms. Joffe-Walt,

Your ancestors will still love you if you pronounce your name as if you are conversant in English. Thank you.

Dear Ms. Lim,

Weally? Weally twuly? Thank you.

Dear Ms. Beardsley,

Do a Southern accent or a French accent, but please God, not both at the same time. Thank you.

Dear Ms. Silberner,

You know you pronounce your name as if it were Joannsil Burner or perhaps Joe Ansilberner, right? Could you pronounce it properly? It's your name, for chrissake. Thank you.

Dear Mr. Goodwin,

Texas doesn't deserve you. Westervelt will get caught hiring Hamas hookers or something, and then you can write your ticket to Jerusalem. Thank you.

Dear Mr. Inskeep,

Whom do you think you're helping by making the guest repeat herself with such cheap verbal tricks as "So you're saying..." and "Let me be sure I understand this..."? You're smarter than that, and more importantly, I'm smarter than that. Thank you.

Creeping social-ish-ism

2010-04-25T07:35:00.003-06:00

I attended a social-media forum the other day that answered a few questions but raised more. The guest speaker had forgotten her airline ticket in Chicago, and without enough time to retrieve it from home, returned to her house and took questions by Skype from her kitchen. Much of the event was dedicated to praising the committee members in Denver who made the linkup possible.

They did do an excellent job, and interviewing a social-media consultant via Skype is of course perfectly apt. I also admired the guest for responding to a question about the downsides of always-on connectedness by conceding that it was fatigue that led her to forget her ticket.

But the entire time I was wondering: she forgot her what at home? How is it even possible to forget an airline ticket at home anymore? It's years since I've even seen an airline ticket, let alone held one. When you get to the airport these days you swipe this or scan that or print the other thing, and off you go. The only way to be denied boarding is to be a suspected terrorist or fat, and unless Skype is incredibly flattering, this lady wasn't fat. If my parents can navigate an airline Web site or kiosk, so can a social-media guru.

I learned a lot about tactics (for example, how to begin using social media even in a heavily regulated industry like securities or health care, which is of interest to me in my current job) but came away with the same feeling I get after receiving an unintelligibly mis-punctuated message from a Blackberry: that there is no point using social media to "connect" and "engage" if we're simultaneously allowing them to make us dumb.

Washington needs a tune-up

2010-04-20T06:23:00.002-06:00

Turns out politicians are perfectly believable about one thing: what a bad job they're doing.

More and more Americans believe the federal government is irreparably dysfunctional if not downright evil (Hitler had toll booths... is that what you're proposing?) and I think the main reason is not that the federal government is irreparably dysfunctional if not downright evil -- after all, when did Americans ever base their opinions upon the facts? -- but that politicians have, collectively, launched a massive media campaign to convince us so.

Claiming something's broken may seem like an obvious line of argument: just hire me, and it'll get fixed! But imagine taking that tone in a job interview or annual review:

"Eric, thanks for coming in. So tell me, why are you interested in Acme and what do you bring to the table that other candidates don't?"

"Thanks for bringing me in, Ms. McGillocutty. The truth is, your company is broken. Through years of fraud, mismanagement and waste, you've managed to cheat shareholders, workers and customers while making a terrible, terrible product. I'm shocked you've done as poorly as you have, but by God, you've managed. This place is broken and it can't be fixed. We need to start again."

"Thank you for sharing your perspective. Please show yourself out."

When will we break free of the "outsider" mentality in politics and start valuing experience and competence again? "Government is broken" is a self-defeating line of reasoning that truly needs fixing.

Smokin' break

2010-04-10T06:41:00.003-06:00

I joined the gym at work. While I used to have access to the gym when I worked at a rec center, this is the first time I've done anything other than eat or check personal email at a place of business that wasn't directly related to the business of the place. It's a great little facility (not so little, really -- several cardio machines, full weight room and studio) on the ground floor of the Gates Building in LoDo. I enjoyed my workout and very much enjoyed the level of attention that the manager, Dave, gives to the place. By dint of comparison, I now know why people complain about the cleanliness and enthusiasm levels at the JCC.

I was amused by what I saw out the plate-glass windows. Yesterday, of course, being Opening Day, what we mainly saw was streams of people heading to Coors Field. But also, the gym happens to be separated only by those windows from where the building's smokers congregate. I guess using the gym is my smoke break, except instead of smoking cigarettes, I'm smokin' hot!

Getting over the sense that I'm shirking work while exercising is something I'll probably never quite get the hang of. But my employer didn't just let us know the gym existed and drop the subject; they solicited our membership over and over, signaling that participation is not just tolerated but encouraged. I think four of us have joined. I wonder if we'll bond like the smokers do. One thing is sure: we'll have access to fluffier towels.

Thank you for your e-mail

2010-03-31T06:30:00.003-06:00

Thank you for your e-mail. Due to recent budget cuts, I am not fully staffed. Therefore it may take up to 20 business days for me to reply. Working harder in response to the budget cuts so that I may continue to fulfill my pledge of serving the public to the best of my ability is not an option. You actually thought I took such a pledge? Ha. Ha ha. Ha.

Due to self-mandated furloughs, I will not be able to answer your e-mail on odd-numbered days beginning with a T or ending with a y. Also our systems will be down for required maintenance on all Greek Orthodox holidays that in any way involve a lay or religious figure whose name ends in "opolous."

I value your loyalty, and demand your patience and understanding.

401 que?

2010-03-27T08:31:00.003-06:00

My two years and change at a long-dead company back East did provide me with an enduring (one can hope) legacy: participation in 401(k)s. I find it odd, though, that despite being so deeply embedded in the national economy and psyche, these plans remain so little understood and, in some regards, so darn weird.

First of all, even at companies that claim to be committed to employee participation, get-out-the-participation drives rarely seem to go beyond a terse introduction upon hiring. I keep hearing that opt-out enrollment is becoming common, but I've never encountered it or encountered anyone who has encountered it.

Then there are the inexplicable (literally -- just try and find anyone to explain these things; you can't) variations among plans. My most-recent employer and my current employer both use Fidelity as a plan administrator, yet the plans couldn't be more different. My former employer offered a gargantuan range of funds, perhaps too many; the current one offers a peculiarly small list, and it is dominated by high-cost funds that aren't even managed by Fidelity. Each employer, I believe, gets to tell the plan administrator what funds to include. I can't imagine the conversation that led to either of these lists.

The fund that I embraced at my last job and hoped to continue contributing to at the new one, Fidelity Four-in-One Index Fund, is not on the current list. The next-closest thing in terms of diversification is one of those retirement target-date funds, which is fine, except that its administrative fee is eight hundred percent that of the index fund. (Eight-tenths of a percent as opposed to one-tenth of a percent.) What do I get for those extra seven-tenths of a percent? Absolutely nothing, if history is any judge: the side-by-side performance charts that Fidelity provides are, for the purposes of a retail investor, identical.

And yet there is one feature of the new plan that I adore, and that more than makes up for any of its faults: funds appear in my account mere hours after the market close on payday. My previous employer, by contrast, held onto money in accounts payable for up to several months, until the last possible day before breaking the law. I was evidently the only person to notice this, let alone point out to payroll that it didn't seem like a healthy practice.

Finally there is the peculiar influence that dollar-cost averaging has on my mental state: while participating in a 401 I can't decide whom to root for, Team Bull or Team Bear. I know that my wishing for things doesn't make them happen. Still, I ought to have my priorities straight!

A pro-BRANDING demonstration?

2010-03-25T19:10:00.005-06:00

I saw something new today, at least for me: a march down Main Street (well in this case it was Broadway) in support of a brand.

Of all the things to march for or against -- a brand? The marchers carried balloons and signs demanding that the Frontier Airlines brand and cutesy-critters advertising campaign be retained. I wish I'd gotten a picture, but I swear, the signs actually used the word "brand."

If these were workers, what real (that is, financial) stake could they possibly have had in retaining the brand following Frontier's merger into Republic? Brands don't pay the bills. The whole point of a merger is to be able to save money by letting people go. It's not that I'm completely unmoved by the Frontier brand myself. Frontier is actually a small part of the reason we moved to Denver. When we boarded at LaGuardia, it was like entering a different world, one where common courtesy was, well, common. Frontier represented a flying slice of Colorado. Their coffee was good too.

Over the years, I admit, we didn't always fly Frontier; their pricing was sometimes so completely out of sync with the competition that it looked like a spreadsheet error. Then Southwest arrived, and their staff managed to out-nice Frontier's. But hey, every time we headed for a Southwest flight at DIA, we took a moment to comment on how cute the Frontier tails were.

Whether Republic maintains the Frontier brand or not couldn't matter less. Whatever was good about Frontier management will be gone; whatever was bad about Frontier management will be gone. Because Frontier management will be gone, and with it, much of Frontier's workforce. Maintaining the brand won't reverse the reality that a once-hopeful local company failed.

Frontier workers, don't let the bulkhead hit you on the tail on the way out. And don't be so sentimental. It's time to say buh-bye now.

Inging

2010-03-16T21:36:00.004-06:00

Several months ago in this space I predicted the coming dominance of verbals and gerunds in branding. Well, lookee what arrived in the mail:

You hearinged it here first.

Excuse me but I couldn't help noticing...

2010-03-14T11:54:00.006-06:00

Every time I go to the gym there's a guy there getting absolutely no benefit out of his exercises because, instead of isolating the muscles he wants to work on, he throws his whole body into every action, spreading the force around and thus strengthening nothing. I always want to say, "Hey, guy, you're getting absolutely no benefit out of your exercises because, instead of isolating the muscles you want to work on, you're throwing your whole body into every action, spreading the force around and thus strengthening nothing!"

I don't go to the gym that much so it's entirely possible that this guy is looking at me and thinking, "Hey, guy, etc. etc." but I do feel confident enough in my knowledge of exercise theory to know that I'm doing it better than he is. He gets too little benefit in exchange for too much cost. He's inefficient, and inefficiency is always the enemy.

Of course I say nothing. Am I being polite, or complicit in the fellow's early death from obesity and his family's grief? Or both? Deciding when to speak up and when to stifle is, of course, a major (if not THE major) skill each of us needs to learn in conducting our personal and professional lives. As a journalist I figured it was always my job to speak up, but now that I'm a corporate manager expressing myself carries unprecedented consequences.

The great risk, of course, is failing to cover my tooshy when commenting on a process or product that just may be the pet process or product of someone who participates in deciding whether I get to keep my job. Not a single boss in the world says s/he wants to be surrounded by yes wo/men, but they all do. (We all do, I should say, for I'm a boss now. An extremely middle-ranking boss, to be sure -- the NCO of the corporate world -- but a boss nonetheless.)

On the bright side, I'm enjoying having people in my life who have a tangible interest in taking my opinion seriously. As I told one of my reports, "I'm jealous of you because I've always wanted a boss like me!" After observing worker-manager relations up close in a large variety of settings these past 23 years, and paying decent money for a management degree, I do feel better qualified to manage people than many of the managers who have managed me. Since management's only genuine task is to facilitate production, I'll concentrate on the work, divide tasks according to my understanding of the team members' capabilities, and judge us all by what we produce. If anybody, report or superior, shows me I'm doing something that impedes production, I'll change it.

I probably won't tell the guy at the gym that he's wasting his time and his dues, but I definitely will tell my reports when I see a way for them to improve what they do, and thus improve what we do. Twenty-three years from now, I hope, they'll look back and remember having learned something together.

The dukes of moral hazard

2010-03-09T05:51:00.004-07:00

I agree, to a degree, with the Republicans who say unemployment benefits keep people unemployed by removing an incentive to work (namely, money). Of course, the amount you get is so low nobody would choose to live that way on purpose. (And, in a bizarre effort to reduce the risk of this sort of moral hazard, unemployment gives even less to people who were making less -- who, of course, need money even more.)

From a recipient's perspective rather than the perspective of an out-of-touch Beltway insider in a baby-blue tie, unemployment insurance doesn't prevent us from taking work, but from taking the wrong work. Everybody has his/her personal threshold for how long s/he can last, financially and emotionally, before taking the first crappy job that comes along. I had several job opportunities before landing THE opportunity, but receiving UI helped give me the confidence to turn them down so I could keep looking.

Macro-economically, this makes no sense at all: I should have taken the first thing that came along because the really good job, the one that I hoped was out there somewhere, would still be out there somewhere, and someone else would get it. A machine doesn't care where its cogs come from. This is precisely how they used to do it in planned economies like Red China. (Take that, Representative Boenhaed.)

As a human being with aspirations other than taking the first paycheck that comes along, however, one wants to get what the HR folks call "the right fit." And that takes time.

Time, then -- more than groceries -- is what UI buys us. Like any other social benefit, it also buys us a level of counter-revolutionary stability. Think of UI as an alternative to hiring the Pinkertons. Not having an army of unemployed throwing rocks at your limousine seems like a decent return on investment.

Assert ownership over the podium

2010-02-23T06:27:00.006-07:00

As an American of Canadian descent, I was amused by the Canadian Olympic team's "Own the Podium" campaign because it reminded me of a onetime editor of mine who used to state a subject area and then say, "We own it," and then state another subject area and say, "We own it," again and again. It occurred to me then and it recurs to me now that simply claiming mastery of a subject does not make one a master of that subject. Anyone who has watched "The Karate Kid" knows this. Work (and, for dramatic purposes, sublimation of competing priorities and character flaws) is involved.

Credit where it's due: the U.S. actually does own the podium, and I'm tired of watching other countries get credit for our medals simply because the athlete likes his grandmother's old-world cooking. I propose a change in the medal-awarding rules. From now on the medal goes to the U.S. if:

The athlete trains in the U.S.
The athlete went to college in the U.S.
The athlete presently goes to college in the U.S.
The athlete has applied to college in the U.S.
The athlete's coach is American.
The athlete has ever been approved for a multiple-entry visa to the U.S.
The athlete comes from a country whose cuisine is served at at least two restaurants in the United States (exclusive of New York City and Washington, D.C.).
The athlete comes from a country that adopted our way of life after we beat them in a war.
The athlete can speak English with any accent other than British.

Better yet, let's do away with nationalities at the Olympics. We'll have to find some other taxonomic tactic (milk chocolate lovers vs dark chocolate? magic sorting hat, a la Hogwarts? great taste/less filling?) and we'll miss all those pretty flags, but at last the Games will be about human versus human, not country versus country, which is probably what they should have been about from the beginning.

Free to fail

2010-01-29T11:04:00.001-07:00

It looks like offering free coffee helped Detours Coffee Shop avail itself of one of the fundamental freedoms of the free market: the freedom to fail.

I checked out Detours last fall because I'm always up for a non-corporate cuppa, and because the over-the-top enthusiasm of its young owners made it nearly impossible to stay away. I found the place sparsely, even uncomfortably furnished, but they had great comfort food such as breakfast burritos and burgers.

On my second visit, the coffee was free. The new business plan: having become profitable on the food, Detours would give coffee away in exchange for a promise to "pay it forward" and do something nice for somebody else. The owners were fond of saying that somebody tiled somebody else's bathroom after receiving a cup of their coffee.

My third visit was my last. Even if I fully intended to do something nice later, I felt too uncomfortable taking the freeby. They staunchly refused to accept money for the coffee. Actually paying, it turns out, is not an acceptable means of paying forward.

More disturbingly to my sense of liberalism, I was turned off by the clientele the free-coffee offer had, perhaps predictably, attracted: homeless men. H1N1 panic was in full force, and one of the consequences of living in a country that rations health care is having to keep oneself in a constant state of semi-quarantine. The men looked sick, and I didn't want to be in a room with them.

Detours clearly had fans -- here they are on Facebook -- but with fans like these, who needs enemies? Today the place is shuttered (actually not even shuttered -- trash bags line the picture windows), the shop's own Web site has gone dormant, and the phone is disconnected. The beaming owners have been beamed away. Confusing values with value seems to have doomed a hopeful Colfax Avenue business.

Toyoduh

2010-01-27T15:33:00.003-07:00

Toyota's public-perception problem isn't what you think it is. It may not even be what Toyota thinks it is.

My heart leapt when I heard about the recall and production shutdown involving eight potentially fatally flawed models. Like the owners of runaway Toyotas, I, too, have yelled into the abyss trying to get Toyota to own up to a faulty gas pedal. (In our case the car would stop uncontrollably rather than go uncontrollably, a less scary but also dangerous phenomenon.) So the company's dramatic actions struck me as a blow for accountability over indecision.

My heart sank, however, when I saw that all the factories being shuttered are in North America. In other words, heads already have rolled, and they belong not to home-office executives but to host-country laborers.

I'm not quite cynical enough to suggest this is the point of the shutdown, but I think I know how it will be interpreted in Japan: Despite decades of tutelage, Americans still can't make a car; company leadership has been forced into this painful decision to prevent Americans from killing each other with their sloppiness.

In 1994 Tom Clancy published Debt of Honor, the plot of which involved a Japanese-American war sparked by popular outrage over exploding gas tanks in Japanese-made cars. Now that Japanese cars are American-made, laying blame across borders is harder to do -- which was precisely the p.r. brilliance of opening plants here.

But prejudices die hard, and I expect Toyota to come under fire not only here for making mistakes, but at home for allowing foreigners to make them.

All's swell that ends swell

2010-01-22T18:24:00.008-07:00

Some things, you want them to be long and hard. Not a job hunt. After nearly eight months, mine came to a successful conclusion this evening when I received an offer to write and edit at DaVita, a provider of dialysis and, in my newly formed opinion, the world's best company. If I can pee in a cup, and if the pee meets quality control standards, I start Feb. 1.

I wouldn't go so far as to recommend unemployment as a character-building exercise, but I did find a few positives to temper the obvious negatives. The tagline of this blog -- communication, commerce, community -- betrays what I was longing for when I launched it, and I found all of them among the generous people who helped me with my search. Here's a roll call of some of them:

Beth, for introducing me to Kathryn.
Kathryn, for telling me about Brian.
Brian, for interviewing me.
Jason and Paula, for hiring me.
Sandi, for unwavering encouragement.
Mark, Danielle, my mom, and sometimes even a few people I don't personally know, for reading my blog.
Becca, Shawna, Evan and Steve, for finding something positive to say about my time in their employ (say, there's a movie you might enjoy, "The Invention of Lying"...)
Steve (other Steve), Evan (other Evan), Phoenix (only Phoenix) and Nikki for part-time gigs.
The Public Relations Society of America, the Colorado Healthcare Communicators, and Andrew Hudson for world-class networking.
Diane, for introducing me to Jacque.
Jacque, for introducing me to Catherine.
Catherine, for offering me the job I would have taken if I hadn't taken the job I've taken.
Patricia, for the HR viewpoint.
Ernie and Pat for trying their hardest to initiate me into guvmint work.
Jewish Family Services, National Jewish Health, and Saving Antiquities for Everyone, for keeping me occupied with volunteer work.
Carrie, for the eye-catching cards and Web site.
Whoever at the Colorado Department of Labor and Employment had the idea to have the "hold" guy say, "We know you're frustrated."
Noah and Maddie, for agreeing to drink water instead of soda when we go to Noodles & Co.
And most of all Karen, for not losing her job -- or her cool!

Road worrier

2010-01-22T08:05:00.002-07:00

The other day I met a fellow whose office went "virtual" to save money. My first thought was: What a blessing to have an employer that downsizes by shedding real estate instead of people! Upon reflection, though, I'm not sure I'd like to be one of those people.

The same technology that makes it possible for us to be mobile also happens to suck. I wish I had a euro for every time I had to listen to someone walk me through a painstakingly detailed account of why they weren't getting their e-mail and where they think the e-mail might be and when they think the e-mail might start arriving again and the succession of workarounds they've tried and abandoned. Talking on a cell phone requires yelling and repeating oneself. WiFi is just going to be replaced with something else, so why make the commitment?

Conducting business in coffee shops, which my acquaintance is now going to have to do, carries risks greater than having your laptop or your seat nicked when you get up to pee. Without an office door to close, you've got to assume that everything you say and everything you write will shortly be known to competitors -- yours and your client's.

"As long as the checks clear" is a perfectly valid rejoinder to any complaint about work short of harassment or violence. Maybe the office is an artifact of the 19th century that overstayed its welcome in the 20th, and good riddance. If Zappos can be productive letting call-takers take calls at home, jolly good for Zappos. But I predict the office is going to make a comeback, not merely as a status symbol but after some business review publishes an article showing a link between privacy and productivity. (Face it, business reviews will publish articles showing a link between anything and anything else.) Commercial real estate may prove to be a good investment yet.

Public elations

2010-01-19T07:58:00.009-07:00

One of the happier aspects of my job hunt has been learning that public relations professionals aren't ogres, but -- a thought that would not have occurred to me while I was a reporter -- my kind of folk.

Networking my way from one informational interview to the next, many of them set up by impressively collegial competitors, I have been heartened to hear words like "writing" and "thought" uttered in all seriousness. As a reporter I had the impression that p.r. people spend all day, every day, phoning reporters and saying, "Did you get my fax?" Some do, but for most, the bulk of the work consists of arranging ideas. This actually is what I went to college for.

Gina Seamans of JohnstonWells, for one, told me that most of her day is dedicated to writing -- a task that, for me, is equivalent to thinking. Larry Holdren of Pure Brand Communications commented that publicity tactics should come easily after the real work -- deciding what the client wants to be famous for -- is done. Karen Morales of Communication Infrastructure Group told me about some of the nuances among subspecialties that would escape the uninitiated, such as the distinction between public relations and public affairs. Brad Bawmann of The Bawmann Group told me not to fret about being "midcareer" because I have abilities that new grads can't and don't have. Steven Shapiro of CSG recognized my interest in education and gave me some work with his education practice!

And I'm not done yet... people have been so generous with sharing contacts, I have meetings scheduled two weeks out.

Some firms have sleek offices meant to communicate a sense of style; others have no office at all, and instead "co-locate" staff at clients' locations or work out of home offices. Either way, I'm learning, it's what's upstairs that counts. And that is a place where I feel perfectly at home.

Lamentable

2010-01-13T12:47:00.002-07:00

I've spent the morning mired in shame (or is it guilt? -- I never could keep those two straight). Now that Facebook is in my life, sometimes, when I think of something I consider clever, instead of annoying my family with it I'll annoy my Facebook friends with it. It happened this morning, and as usual I got a couple of replies showing that folks got the joke and basically supported my right to crack wise on the 'net.

This morning, however, is the morning we found out how awful the earthquake in Haiti was. My wisecrack sits on my home page surrounded by expressions of sorrow and support. Even to myself, I look like an insensitive fool.

I got to wondering about the etiquette of being jolly online while sad things happen around us. There's no time when sad things aren't happening, of course. If it isn't a soldier getting blown up it's a Sri Lankan journalist getting locked up or scam victims getting hit up or the atmosphere getting heated up. It's a sad, sad world. Should we feel obligated to comment upon each and every bad thing that comes to our attention? Should we refrain from silliness for a time? If so, how long? Does it depend on the scale of the disaster, or how close we are to somebody directly affected?

Serious organizations are using Facebook to build support for serious causes, as well they should, but I think it's appropriate to ask whether a medium originally meant for friends to share light moments together can also be the right place to get heavy.

Tight!

2010-01-07T16:45:00.005-07:00

I've just been told I have one of the tightest houses in America.

GB3 Energy Solutions has been here for two days installing insulation and correcting random gaps left by our "green" (but evidently not totally observant) homebuilder seven years ago. While our house already was tighter than the vast majority of homes, it now has an air exchange of about 16%, according to GB3 -- better than 99% of our compatriots' residences.

Toward the end of the work day co-founder Bill Lucas, a former teacher, took a few moments to explain why our project, which cost less than $3,000, was a smarter idea than the $30,000 solar panels some of our neighbors have. All the energy produced by a roof-full of panels could instead be saved by replacing 10 lightbulbs, he said. But producing something will always be politically and psychologically more satisfying than saving.

By coincidence, my son is working on his science fair project, which involves finding out if solar panels could be used to power small household objects instead of AAA batteries. So far, the answer is no.

Remediation work will never have the sex appeal or curb appeal of panels, but with the temp forecast to be below zero tonight, I'll sleep better!

What I learned on my recently concluded trip to South America

2010-01-03T07:23:00.007-07:00

It was very clever to tilt the Earth's axis in relation to its orbit, ensuring a fair distribution of summer. Not all planets have this feature.
Doesn't the fact that some countries have better ice cream than others, and that these discrepancies can endure for decades, disprove the efficient market theory?
It's frustrating trying to find the bathroom light switch when you're someplace where they put the switches outside the bathroom instead of inside, but kind of funny to watch someone else go through it.
Hot-bloodedness is a lifestyle choice and I think I could do it with enough practice.
Breakfast is about the right time for a party to end.
I wonder how many ball-point pens are in my house. (This has nothing to do with the trip, but it is something I wonder about.)
While I'm not a convert to the Eagle Creek packing system, I respect the right of others to practice their packing faith.
Yes, there are the Starbucks; the clean, quiet and efficient Metro; and the plentiful examples of forward-looking graphic design by public, private, and public-private entities. But what really distinguishes Santiago from other Latin cities is that it has sidewalks that can be walked on.
Horseback riding in the Andes is very cool.
Sometimes service is included, sometimes it isn't. It depends, but on what, I couldn't say.
All buses should be first-class sleeper buses.
Just because a person is from someplace doesn't mean they know what they are talking about. The laundress from Viña del Mar who told us that Valparaíso and Santiago are dumps to be avoided at all costs is really good at laundry and should stick to that.
Dulce de leche: the condiment of now.
My Spanish has improved to the point where I can discern when my wife, instead of saying "Excuse me, where is the bus station?" says, "Excuse me, I have a small question, would it be all right if I ask it? We're tourists from the United States, me, my husband, and the two children, who go to a special school for the arts in the state of Colorado, where we're generally pleased with the schools though we do wish there could be more funding for them, and we're visiting this place for the first time. Oh, how we love it! It's beautiful, my goodness, just beautiful, you must love living here. Did you grow up here? My parents were from Buenos Aires -- well, from Lomas de Zamorra -- well, my father was born in what was then the Free City of Danzig and is now the Polish city of -- yes, that's right, Gdansk! Do you have family from there too? They escaped when he was seven, first to Paraguay and Uruguay and finally Argentina after his grandmother, my great-grandmother, I was named for her, bribed the Nazis with a life insurance policy backed in gold. She rapped on the floor with her cane and said, 'In my day, when a lady was present, an officer offered her a chair!' and the Nazi got all embarrassed and got up for her. I guess that's where my daughter and I get our nerve from, huh? My parents spoke Spanish to my brother and sister and me, except when they didn't want us to understand, when they spoke German or Yiddish, which explains why I only know curses like 'Go crap in a lake' in those languages. We visited Argentina several times as kids but this is my first time back in, what is it? Goodness, 12 years. And as I mentioned it's our first time in this particular place, where the people are just so very nice. If you don't mind my asking, where is the bus station?" but not to the point where I can ask for the bus station myself.

Is litter legal?

2009-12-15T15:22:00.008-07:00

Littering appears to be legal in Denver. I'd like to know why, and more importantly, I'd like to know how to convince the City Council to give a rip.

One idea I'm toying with is to collect all the debris I find on a given block or in a particular park and push it together, creating a pile. Piles command attention.

I wouldn't have created any trash in the process, but, by virtue of having picked stuff up and put it down again, would I have littered? Could I be ticketed? Is it worse for one person to drop 100 pieces of trash than for 100 people each to drop one piece?

I'm seeking answers from Solid Waste Management (whose Web site says much about collecting large quantities of trash but nothing about garden-variety litter) and my councilwoman. Meanwhile I asked my Facebook friends if picking up a piece of trash only to drop it again (or nudging a piece of trash with my foot so that it moves but never leaves the ground) would constitute littering. The answers thus far:

Yes
Yes
I don't think either one is littering because you didn't generate the trash, but it's still really EVIL.
I think law enforcement would be justified in fining you for littering... like THAT ever happens.

My Facebook friends aren't public defenders but they're smart and it seems like we've all got the same impression: moving a mess is illegal while creating one, or walking past one without touching it, is not.

If I go ahead with this project, the one thing I will for sure be guilty of is succumbing to the impulse to dive into a tactic -- the mark of a social-marketing amateur. But this is something that's concerned me for years, and might even form the basis for (drumroll please) a new nonprofit. First step: determine how the community has expressed its view of litter via the law.

The problem is obviously not unique to Denver, but this is where I live so this is where I'm starting.

Nativity

2009-12-09T06:39:00.007-07:00

The bullying tone of some of the help-wanted ads on the boards comes as a bit of a surprise. Posted evidently by small companies that lack any HR expertise, they're written in the second person rather than the first, and attempt to describe the traits to be exhibited by the new hire -- down to what types of jokes s/he should find funny -- rather than the work to be accomplished.

One such ad stated that the successful candidate will be "a native English speaker." To emphasize the point the writer added, "No kidding." I replied asking why this is not illegal discrimination on the basis of national origin, and was not surprised not to receive a reply. I can't find the ad any longer, however, leading me to wonder if enough people complained that the company realized it had broken a taboo and perhaps a law.

What is a native English speaker, anyway? Someone born in an English-speaking country? (Which raises the question of what an English-speaking country is.) Someone born to English-speaking parents? (Which raises the question of what English-speaking parents are.) Someone who has never spoken a language other than English? (Which raises the question of why an employer would choose ignorance over knowledge.) Someone who speaks many languages, but learned English first? (Which raises the question of why on earth this would matter.)

If it were possible to discriminate on the basis of native English-speaking status -- and I just can't imagine that it is -- that would have disqualified such excellent English-speakers as my father and wife from the workplace, not to mention Arnold Schwarzenegger and George Soros. It would even call my English credentials into question, Ivy degree and AP awards notwithstanding, as I lived my first year-and-a-half in French-speaking countries, an experience that, alas, had no impact whatsoever on my ability to speak French.

While using the word "native" is fraught with issues, I see no problem with giving an English language test to applicants for jobs that require fluency in the English language. There should be some wiggle room on such questions as whether collective nouns are singular or plural, or whether "that" is an acceptable personal pronoun (though misusing an apostrophe should be grounds for immediate dismissal if not public whipping!) and there would be costs and effort involved in administering and scoring the tests. But none of this should pose any challenge to those with native management skills.

Digital divisors

2009-12-02T21:57:00.004-07:00

It occurred to me not long ago that my relationship with my computer resembles that of a cargo cultist to a steamer: without really knowing how it works, I expect it to bring me stuff. Ordering from Zappos is the closest thing I've seen to magic since watching my kids get born. But it goes beyond material items: I now expect such intangibles as companionship, self-worth and, dare one say it, happiness all to reach me via the sleek, inscrutable box on my desk.

I viewed my first computer, a 20-pound laptop (apparently I had quite a manly lap in those days) as a time-saver and nothing more: no longer would I have to write a draft by hand or typewriter, mark it up, and start all over. Of course, the time I wasted setting up the machine (I was at one point dangerously close to being able to claim fluency in MS-DOS) sucked up a considerable portion of the time saved on editing.

The computer began to really consume time rather than produce it when I joined CompuServe... and then Prodigy and then AOL and then, with the advent of the Web, the entire computer-using world. Suddenly, the skills required to hold a job or maintain a relationship were the skills required to operate a computer. Trouble is, computers almost immediately began to evolve faster than the learning curve of all but a few human beings. With the multiplicity of programming languages now in use, not to mention the mind-numbing proliferation of features even in programs meant specifically to appeal to the technologically uneducated (i.e., consumers) I think it can now be said there is not a single person on earth who truly "knows" computers -- least of all programmers, who seem to be forced to unlearn the skills of adaptability that once seemed like the keys to white-collar success.

Work now, it seems to me, consists largely of learning computer features that one did not think one needed at the last job -- or even yesterday -- but that the person in the next cubicle considers essential. I was once ordered, for example, to create the script for a three-day conference in a spreadsheet. This is a completely inappropriate use of a spreadsheet, which is meant for crunching numbers, not massaging text. I learned a lot about spreadsheets that week, including the precise number of characters that can fit into a cell, but nothing that improved the quality of the product I'd been hired to produce: words meant to be spoken and heard. Ultimately the words went back into Word, whence they came, and from there out of the intended mouths and into the intended ears.

Any talk of curing the "digital divide" by providing children with computers is misguided. There is no "digital divide" -- there is, instead, an infinite number of digital divisors; opportunities for idiosyncratic usage habits to create misunderstandings. The personalization that the personal computer enables happens to make it uniquely unsuited for organizational life. It no longer matters what "platform" an organization adopts: we are all now on different wavelengths.

What a welcome

2009-12-01T14:55:00.006-07:00

I've been treated so well as a volunteer at National Jewish Health, I'm almost beginning to worry whether good feelings need to be reported to the IRS.

I first approached NJH for a selfish reason: a job. But the job I wanted was de-posted for lack of budget, so, as a form of self-marketing, I asked if they could use me for a few hours a week as a volunteer; then presumably when the job reappeared I'd be top-of-mind. They put me to work rewriting the development department's Web site.

All I'd asked for was an opportunity to prove I could be useful; what I got was a sackful of gratitude. They gave me a parking pass; an official hospital ID on a retractable lanyard that I like to play with; credits to use in the cafeteria; and a free TB test and H1N1 shot. (These last two benefits arguably are more enlightened self-interest than sheer generosity, but heck, free is free!)

Now they've invited me to the staff holiday party, a truly gracious gesture of welcome.

Because of the amount of training they (I mean we) require, volunteers are not necessarily a way to save money, and certainly not a way to increase efficiency. But you can't run a genuine community organization without them. Us.

So, to National Jewish, you're welcome, but more than that, thank you.

If I could...

2009-11-21T16:36:00.005-07:00

The lady who wrote to Amazon that “if I could, I would seriously make out with you right now” got a lot of attention for her blog, so I’m going to try it with the service providers that play a big role in my life:

THP Contractors, if I could, I would seriously rub your feet with warm oil while you luxuriate in rose-scented silk sheets as soothing music and soft lighting complete the ambiance right now.

Overhead Garage Door, if I could, I would seriously go down on one knee, beg you to complete me, and burst into whoops of jubilant laughter mixed with tears of joy when you say “yes” right now.

Vanguard Discount Brokerage, if I could, I would seriously gaze into your eyes for what seems like a lifetime together, then seize you around the waist and kiss you on the mouth, hard, so you feel my passion for ETF’s right now.

Southwest Airlines, if I could, I would seriously plant my seed in you and promise to give our half-Jewish, half-Airbus child all the opportunities we never had when we were small right now.

Earthlink customer support, if I could, I would seriously rip out your intestines, force you to eat them in front of your wife and family, and charge them a thousand gold coins to obtain the smallish portions of your corpse that haven’t yet been eaten by the crows for burial right now.

Constant Contact, if I could, I would seriously get us a couple of tickets to watch what's going to happen to Earthlink, then take you out to dinner in hopes of ending the evening with more than a peck on the cheek right now.

How I learned to stop worrying and love the boot

2009-11-19T06:22:00.016-07:00

I told a hiring manager yesterday that I'm enjoying my job search so much, I don't want it to end. Steven, if you're reading this, IT WAS A JOKE. But the truth behind it is that sometime in the last two weeks a mental switch flipped and I went from considering networking a bore and a chore, to finding it pleasant and even exciting.

One reason for the change is stumbling across the single most useful (from a job seeker's perspective) feature of LinkedIn. I'm not sure whether it's a new feature or I simply never thought to try it before, because it is a little counter-intuitive: Select "Search People," not "Search Companies," but then enter the name of a company, not a person. What you get back is a list of your contacts and their contacts in order of closeness to the company you're interested in. Now I see why so many reporters are on LinkedIn: in one second you can save yourself half a day of calling around to see who knows whom. (Whether they're on LinkedIn to help them continue reporting or be able to stop is another question.)

Using this feature in combination with the human beings I've met at such events as Andrew Hudson's annual pre-Thanksgiving networking party and a breakfast meeting of the Colorado Healthcare Communicators, suddenly I'm landing the introductions to hiring managers that previously eluded me. My best connection is somebody I didn't even know two weeks ago. At Andrew's party I commented to another guest that the two of us were wearing identical jackets. It soon emerged Luke Clarke and I were living nearly identical lives: ex-journalists (me at the Post, he at the Rocky, which is why we didn't recognize each other) now interested in using our message-making skills to serve organizations. We exchanged cards and, the next day, LinkedIn invitations.

"Even though we're direct competitors, I like the way you're thinking about your career because it's validation of the way I'm thinking about mine," I told him.

Soon after I found a posting I liked, applied for it, then hopped on LinkedIn to see if I knew anybody at that company. I didn't, but there was Luke: one of his former reporters was the hiring manager. He introduced us; she and I yakked for 45 minutes about old times and why she's happy with her career change; I have a formal interview set for next week.

Imagine that: in this day and age it was a tweed, not a tweet, that led to a networking success. I told my Facebook friends that if ex-Rocky can help ex-Post land an interview, maybe every single Israeli and every single Palestinian should get on LinkedIn and offer to walk each others' resumes down to HR.

As I write I still don't have an offer in hand, but I have something more valuable: confidence in my and my contacts' willingness to help one another.

Goin' medieval on your brand

2009-11-17T07:54:00.016-07:00

I've been talking to lots of communicators in postsecondary education lately and have discovered that a medieval oversight still bedevils modern branding and messaging efforts: what, exactly, is a university?

Even if they don't use these precise terms, all universities face the "branded house" vs. "house of brands" conundrum and many seem to be in a perpetual state of rebranding as a result. Far more than a semantic nicety, the distinction has serious implications for relationship-building -- and the budgets to support it.

At the University of Colorado I learned the hard way (by being told never to make this mistake again!) that while the Boulder campus may be referred to as CU, the Denver campus is UC. Come on, it says CU on the football helmets, and the football helmets are on TV!

But this is the point: the University of Colorado does not present itself as a single institution. UC does not have a football team; CU does. Google "University of Colorado" and three separate home pages appear, in this order: University of Colorado at Boulder; University of Colorado Denver ("at," inexplicably, is out); and UCCS/University of Colorado at Colorado Springs ("at" is in again). Each site has a different look and independent searching and navigation. They are distinct Web sites for distinct physical sites.

A fourth Web site, which appears lower in the same Google search, largely explains what's going on:

Founded in Boulder in 1876, the University of Colorado has evolved into a network of four unique campuses, each set against the dramatic backdrop of the Rocky Mountains: the University of Colorado at Boulder, the University of Colorado Denver, the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus and the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs.

This site leans most heavily upon the Boulder campus's branding, including the CU logo and the textual use of "CU" to refer to the entire system, suggesting Boulder's predominance within the system. (The relationship of the two Denver campuses requires further explanation.)

The Denver campus's former Associate Vice Chancellor for Integrated University Communications provided his views on how the system's identity ought to be reflected in its Web presence. I participated in a similar branding tango at my two most recent jobs, so I can imagine the nature (if not quite the scale) of the challenge. The mere creation of such a job title says a lot about how universities perceive themselves.

When I first heard the terms "branded house" and "house of brands" I immediately gravitated toward the former, reflecting my desire to bring order to a chaotic universe and my on-the-job experiences. But if a student's or alum's loyalty lies with a residential college, a center, an eating house, a major or a team, surely that loyalty should be encouraged.

The answers are out there, but they'll never be easy to find, nor should they. Oxford, Cambridge and Harvard have been dealing with these questions for centuries; let's keep dealing with them, knowing that whether we win or lose on specific details of brand identity, we're all on the same side: education.

Single-subject misrule

2009-11-13T12:43:00.004-07:00

Colorado and many other states have a "single-subject rule" stating that a bill or ballot proposal can only deal with one subject. It's a good effort to focus the mind, even if it does make it hard to write a law that attempts to prescribe both a cause and an effect (e.g., when a new tax is proposed to fund a specific expenditure).

Lately I've detected the existence of a new, unwritten single-subject rule: An e-mail may only deal with one subject. This has probably always been a good idea in a business setting; a rambling memo gives the recipient too many opportunities to shirk the areas s/he doesn't wish to deal with.

Even in personal messages, however, there now seems to be an increasing unwillingness or inability to follow along as the writer moves from one topic to another. For example, if you send somebody an e-mail asking, "How are you? Want to have lunch?" you will find out how the person is but not whether s/he wants to have lunch. If you were to write "Want to have lunch? How are you?" the reply will be about lunch and only lunch.

It's ironic that in an environment that practically mandates multitasking, taking two sentences (or, heaven forbid, two paragraphs) to express two thoughts is a vanishing skill.

Relationship management

2009-11-12T17:27:00.004-07:00

Much like expectations or bosses, relationships, it seems, must be managed. That's the implication I see of using so-called relationship management software when dealing with large numbers of donors. When a relationship consists principally of hitting "send" every now and then, however, is it really a relationship?

Our household is facing a similar issue with Infinite Campus (IC), the Web site that serves as an electronic grade book for teachers -- and allows parents to peek in 24/7. Report cards as a feedback mechanism were always imperfect because they reported on the past; by the time you got them it was too late to intervene and correct any problems. IC is a huge leap forward in that parents and teachers can be literally on the same page, watching day by day as assignments get turned in (or not) and how grades are stacking up.

But in an apparent effort to keep teachers as well as students honest, IC can be quite unforgiving as an accountability mechanism. Once a due date is input, it is set in metaphorical stone. If a teacher is late inputting grades, everyone fails until the grade appears. As parents, what do we make of that F? Is it truly an F, or a clerical error? Those are very different problems, with very different solutions, but IC leaves us clueless as to which is which.

Which brings us to the relationship part. If IC is working (and being worked) correctly, it can enhance the parent-teacher relationship by allowing us to keep the heck away and let the teachers do their work. When IC sows confusion, on the other hand, we need to call or e-mail the teacher. We all know teachers are overworked, but think of it this way: Having 150 students is like having 150 direct reports. Add in parents, and you're talking about 450-ish direct reports (a few less if you've got lots of single parents, a few more if you've got lots of step-families). Can you imagine being an effective manager with 450 direct reports? Can you imagine filling in their semiannual evaluations, let alone maintaining truly healthy relationships with them? No way.

Yet that's what we force teachers to do. It's no wonder, then, that, like development officers, they'd love to outsource part of the hard work of maintaining relationships to technology.

Human frailty plus technological rigidity makes for a bad combo, alas. Precisely because relationship management software makes it possible to create separate messages for, say, major donors and lapsed donors, it's more-or-less inevitable that eventually someone's going to make a whoops and the major donors get an e-mail intended for the lapsed donors while the lapsed donors get one intended for the major donors. Similarly IC, which is supposed to provide clarity, does the opposite when the humans can't be as efficient as the software demands. In an instant, mistrust takes over, and relationship repair must begin.

Dear Lorem, I write to ipsum dolor sit amet

2009-11-11T06:53:00.010-07:00

A networking event sponsored last night by Andrew Hudson's Jobs List was fascinating for the contrasts and contradictions it exposed. The mere sight of hundreds of people with sky-high socioeconomic status but without work was jarring enough. We were further shaken by much of what the corporate recruiters on the panel had to say.

My outplacement firm, Right Management -- and many other guests said they'd received the same advice from their career counselors -- has job-seekers remove the "personal interests" section from their résumés, and has everybody reformat their résumé using Times New Roman and an extremely strict template, so that from a distance, all résumés coming out of Right Management are identical. The recruiters, on the other hand, expected to see personal sections and attractive, creative résumés.

Mary Kate Houk of Crocs tried heroically to convince the audience that, when rejection happens, "It's not about you." She even had us repeat it aloud, in unison, in the first person, like a prayer meeting. Much of the panelists' time was dedicated to expounding upon another aphorism: "It's not what you know, it's who you know." Personal connections, we were told again and again, will get us looked at; skills and experience won't.

While it's impossible to argue with the importance of connections, if "it" isn't about me and "it" isn't about what I know, then it's hard to imagine how recruiters know "it" when they see "it."

For a roomful of communicators, the most shocking news was that many recruiters will not read cover letters under any circumstances -- not before, not while, not after filling a position. Career counselors are adamant that a well-crafted cover letter is our best, first, and in most cases last opportunity to impress a recruiter with our thoughtfulness and suitability to the position. Many online application systems require them. If they're not being read, one might as well submit a screenful of Lorem ipsum, which I think I might try just to see if anybody notices.

The importance of having a robust online presence was also established -- but not a revealing one. All must link in, all must tweet, all must blog -- but merely to prove that they can. I thought of an entrepreneur I met early in my job hunt who started blogging to prove to potential clients that he's a "thought leader" in his field.

Poor fellow. Doesn't he know that it's not what he knows?

Will I get this job? No. Do I feel better? A little, actually, yeah.

2009-11-07T12:55:00.001-07:00

Human Resources

Department of Veterans Affairs

Friends,

I wanted to point out that the following sentence appears repeatedly in job announcement PG-10-DGo-298155 (Editor):

I have supervised performance of this task or is normally the person who is consulted by other workers to assist them in doing this task because of my expertise.

This should be corrected to:

I have supervised performance of this task or am normally the person who is consulted by other workers to assist them in doing this task because of my expertise.

Sincerely,

Eric Hübler

Denver, CO

How murderous are we really?

2009-11-07T06:19:00.005-07:00

Just after our two most recent mass shootings, I've read this New Yorker article exploring the history of murder in America. The article reviews various authors' differences of opinion on why America is more dangerous than other, roughly comparable places, but never questions the hypothesis that America is more dangerous. Weirdly, despite myself having twice been threatened with guns in America, the article made me think America may actually be safer than Europe for this reason: we have been more successful than Europe in recent decades in avoiding full-blown civil wars and politically organized massacres.

Because the law distinguishes between killings during war and killings during peacetime, so does the article. This made me wonder: what were the murder rates in, say, Germany during the 30s and 40s, Northern Ireland in the 70s and Yugoslavia in the 90s? Perhaps quite low, but this didn't make them great places to raise a family. If killings inspired or mandated by political movements were added to the deaths officially classified as homicides, creating an intentional killings rate instead of a murder rate, how would we compare then?

I remain, at best, dubious that widespread private ownership of guns is a net positive for public safety. All the evidence I've ever seen is that it's a net negative. But I do think we should ask whether the interpersonal violence that leads to a high murder rate might also somehow be protective against (or at least negatively correlated with) civil unrest.

More ballot initiatives I'd like to see

2009-11-02T07:23:00.003-07:00

All deli containers shall henceforth use interoperable lids.

Professional broadcasters delivering weather forecasts on public radio stations whose call signs begin with K and end with R and also have a C and an F in there somewhere shall henceforth be prohibited from saying "uh" or "um" or otherwise stammering, repeating or forgetting themselves more than once per sentence, because they're professional broadcasters for cripe's sake and there are plenty of talented people out there who would love to have a job like that.

Headline writers shall henceforth be prohibited from modifying the noun "ride" with the adjective "wild" or the adjectival phrase "roller coaster" in describing stock-market volatility. Likewise shall they be prohibited from using the phrase "a yen for" when describing anything that is popular in Japan. These provisions shall apply in all media, print or electronic, known or as yet uninvented, in this or any other universe.

Apostrophe catastrophe

2009-11-01T09:21:00.003-07:00

Dear Mr. Walker,

Ours is a difficult language, but it's your obligation to learn its rules before publishing ads like this in magazines like The New Yorker.

Sincerely,

The English-Speaking World

Citizen initiatives

2009-10-24T00:24:00.007-06:00

Now that I'm a citizen, I can vote on citizen initiatives. (Ironic side note: you don't have to be a citizen to initiate an initiative, do you?) Whether the stated subject is property taxes, medical marijuana, UFOlogy, gay marriage or impounding the cars of illegal aliens, the real subject is always the same: those yuckleheads in the legislature have forgotten what common sense is all about, so I'm gonna show 'em!

Here, then, are the propositions on which I'd like to see balloting. All of them aim to bring sanity and stability to a crazy, mixed-up world. That's all.

Supermarkets shall be required to all have the same layout, so you can find what you want.
Audiences at student performances shall be required to give a standing ovation.
Audiences at professional performances shall be prohibited from giving a standing ovation just because they're not sure what to do and they have to stand up to get to the parking lot anyway.
At any public forum or meeting, asking the question that has just been answered is grounds for ejection.
Feigning spontaneity in your voice when recording a robo-call during election season (as in, "Oh! Uh... ha ha! Um, hi! John Hickenlooper here") shall be grounds for recall.
Everyone shall start driving a hybrid, starting this very second.
Any statute barring the launching of a projectile at a cyclist is hereby amended to permit the launching of a projectile if said projectile is a wad of money.
The sale of a wireless router with an install disk that messes up your system and doesn't install a damn thing, causing you to waste half a day on the phone with tech support, shall henceforth be the highest law-enforcement priority of the Denver Police Department.
All postseason baseball games shall be shown on free, over-the-air broadcast TV.
Boston Red Sox paraphernalia shall be considered pornography under local statutes and thus subject to prosecution at the discretion of the district attorney.

I'm sure I'll think of more. Meantime, here's a tip for anyone who opposes a ballot initiative: don't bother running a "no" campaign. Next election cycle, just run another initiative that says the exact opposite, then watch the judicial system convulse like an Isaac Asimov robot given contradictory instructions.

My next interview

2009-10-22T08:12:00.004-06:00

At my most recent job interview they asked me what my weaknesses are and LIKE AN IDIOT, I told them. Everything the outplacement firm tried to teach me about rehearsing for these softball questions flew out of my head and was replaced with the last thing anybody wants to hear in an interview: sincerity.

Here's how I intend things to go next time I am hit with the scripted questions we have all heard and should all be able to answer in our sleep:

Them: Tell us about yourself.

Me: I'm extremely good at what I do. I'm communicative, collaborative and efficient.

Them: What are your strengths?

Me: I'm extremely good at what I do. I'm communicative, collaborative and efficient.

Them: We have half an hour. Would you like to add something?

Me: I could, but I'd merely be restating what I've already said. I respect my colleagues' and clients' time too much to waste it, which is why I mentioned that efficiency is one of my strengths.

Them: What are your weaknesses?

Me: I regret that I never mastered the French language.

Them: There must be something else.

Me: Well... if you must know... sometimes I have trouble deciding when to use "that" and when to use "which" as a pronoun.

Them: Thank you for coming in. Do you have any questions for us?

Me: Yes. Would you all please tell me your weaknesses now? We have nearly half an hour.

One lesson to take away, please

2009-10-20T07:01:00.008-06:00

I've been in this situation before: Questioning a Web site that makes investment claims that can't be true, then being blamed for disrupting a test. The purported investment company in that case actually named me by name as the villain in their consent decree with the Securities and Exchange Commission. By the time the SEC got done shutting them down, a principle that most of us now take for granted had been established: publication of an investment offer on the Web is publication, and you can't claim the right to a do-over merely because current technology makes it possible to do so.

The take-away from the exchange below? Language matters, and organizations assume immense risk going live without adequate forethought.

For those of us in the communications field, the recession isn't ending; it seems merely to be beginning. Anecdotal evidence I'm collecting from colleagues, and certainly from my own job-hunting experience, is that us word guys are still being cut. "They seem to assume the public will just figure out what they're talking about," a colleague who has lost several clients in recent weeks told me yesterday.

The effort it takes to thoroughly edit a Web site doesn't seem steep considering the verbal discovery process that happens in editing could keep someone in the public's esteem, and maybe even out of jail.

An ungood idea

2009-10-18T20:50:00.001-06:00

Mandatory service projects at high schools bend the meaning of voluntarism (aka volunteerism) as far or farther than it should ever have to go. Now an Arvada company is advertising on Craigslist what it calls -- apparently with no satiric intent -- "a paid volunteer program."

Unraffle.com first got my guard up because it's littered with so many typos it resembles a Nigerian scam letter. The company is described, for example, as being a "social-entrepranurial" venture. I can't imagine any actual entrepreneur, no matter how bad a typist, allowing a mistake like that to go live.

Bad spelling is no crime, of course. Soliciting funds on behalf of charities and neglecting to mention it to the charities, on the other hand -- well, that depends whether the money gets where it's supposed to go. Several charities are listed on Unraffle.com as being recipients of funds generated through the purchase of electronic "unraffle" tickets. Two of them are associated with Denver public schools, which particularly caught my interest: the DCIS Foundation, which supports the Denver Center for International Studies, a secondary school, and Art for Edison, which supports Edison Elementary School. Randy Thomae of Art for Edison told me by e-mail Saturday:

I had never heard of Unraffle. I just googled them, and was quite surprised to see our name listed there. We have no affiliation whatsoever. Thank you for bringing this to my attention.

Jonathan Sandberg, Unraffle's founder, replied to an e-mail inquiry late Saturday that Unraffle is merely in beta test and has not yet collected any funds. If and when it ever does, he pointed out, charities don't need to give prior permission to receive support. (True enough, though using logos without permission seems, at the very least, unbusinesslike, as charities need to control their intellectual property just like for-profits do.) As for the charities that appear currently on the site as grantees, he wrote, "we featured a few local and non-local charities that we love and respect and would like to support/raise money for, in order to ascertain the depth of interest in our project."

If Unraffle is a beta, it's an extraordinarily slow one, since the site says "copyright 2001-2009." Perhaps a distinction needs to be made between the "paid volunteer" program and Unraffle itself. In the Craigslist ad, it's the "paid volunteer" program that is said to be in beta; Unraffle is portrayed as a going concern. My conclusion was that Unraffle has been selling unraffle tickets on behalf of charities since 2001, and that the October 2009 innovation is the "paid volunteer" program, though Sandberg tells me I'm mistaken. How, then, to explain language on the site that uses tenses other than the future, e.g., "Part one and two of the Unraffle.com mission has always been to be effective in raising money for our causes while uncompromisingly nurturing and supporting our paid volunteers"? Indeed, Sandberg tells me he already has "personally made" around $238,000 this way.

The application for the "paid volunteer" program describes an online, multilevel marketing arrangement in which "associates" earn 16.5% commission on the sale of unraffle tickets (it's actually now 30%, Sandberg said) and "directors" also earn 16.5% of their associates' sales. Here, in about the middle of the fine print, is the key to the whole thing:

In order to be accepted into the program, directors are required to pay a $250 set up fee and a $150 monthly membership fee.

In our e-mail exchange, Sandberg asserted that "Unraffle.com is a social venture project that donates 100% of its revenues to charitable causes." When I pointed out that it's not possible to subtract anything from something and be left with everything, he offered this correction:

In my haste to respond to your email I neglected to say "net" revenues in my reply. As stated on the site, "Unraffle.com donates 100% of it's earnings to charitable causes." I'll let you look up the definition of earnings and "Social Venture" but because we are a for-profit business we can really distribute profits as we see fit. It is just our decision to donate 100% of earnings to charitable causes.

Profits, earnings, revenues... if the company's founder can't keep them straight, what is the likelihood that Unraffle's associates and directors will relay accurate information to purchasers of unraffle tickets? Once you start throwing around a figure like "100%" in the context of charitable fundraising, you're almost automatically being dishonest with donors. As someone who has made a decent living as overhead, and hopes to again, I am certainly in favor of a professional model, which holds that fairly compensating fundraisers and administrators makes it possible to deliver charitable services more efficiently and effectively than would be possible with volunteers alone.

If Unraffle can do well by doing good, or even do a little good by doing well -- well, that's well and good! Perhaps Unraffle is no more a scam than those police and firefighters' benevolent associations that have been targeted by journalists for having outrageously high fundraising costs. Being bad at what you do isn't against the law.

Bear in mind, however, that there is no such thing as paid voluntarism. Paying for the privilege of raising charitable donations in hopes of a big personal payoff strikes me as an awfully ungood idea.

Look for the union label. You're getting colder. Colder. Frosty. Frigid. Downright Kelvinian...

2009-10-07T10:50:00.011-06:00

See anything wrong with this shirt? I'm not referring to the fact that I got an Ainsley collar when I'm quite sure I asked for forward points, but to the fact that a Malaysian-made shirt was put in a bag claiming U.S., union-made provenance. (It's hard to see with the quality of camera available to me but the label says MADE IN MALAYSIA while the bag says MADE IN USA/UNION OF NEEDLETRADES, INDUSTRIAL AND TEXTILE EMPLOYEES, AFL-CIO-CLC.)

UNITE HERE -- the successor to the Union of Needletrades, Industrial, and Textile Employees, or UNITE -- claims on its Web site that Brooks Brothers offers union-made shirts, but that doesn't seem to be the case.

Whether we unite here, unite there, unite now or unite some other time, can we at least get our labeling straight?

Pay! Play!

2009-10-06T09:53:00.011-06:00

The Wall Street Journal reports today that the Federal Trade Commission is getting serious about forcing bloggers who receive gifts in exchange for coverage of products and services to disclose such relationships.

About time, say we at THE GESTURE! In keeping with the FTC's laudable spirit of openness, we now reveal our policies on trading gifts for coverage:

1) At no time has any manufacturer, retailer or service provider ever approached THE GESTURE about exchanging gifts for coverage.

2) At no time has THE GESTURE ever approached anybody about initiating such a relationship.

3) We feel really, really stupid for not coming up with this clever idea on our own, as we would like very much to receive gifts.

4) To facilitate such relationships going forward, we have created an Amazon Wish List. Click here to view it. We will update it frequently, so check back often for something in your price range! Include a gift note saying what you would like THE GESTURE to say about the product, or giving us permission to write our own review. Rest assured, our relationship will be fully disclosed, in extraordinarily laudatory terms.

5) E-mail us if your proposed gift is a service that can't be handled by Amazon. Ideas include but are by no means limited to massages, meals, pet grooming, and graphic design.

Thanks for playing!

An article about articles

2009-10-02T16:36:00.003-06:00

A flyer arrived at the house today for "a new Jewish resource" (sorry to poke holes, and fun, so quickly, but should we not give the old Jewish resources a try first?) that is described as "an initiative of Rose Community Foundation." I was reminded of the time I had my head handed to me by a representative of said Foundation for referring to the Rose Community Foundation.

Because it's not the Rose Community Foundation. It's Rose Community Foundation. Rose Community Foundation. Not the Rose Community Foundation. Rose Community Foundation.

See the difference? Or should I say: see difference?

Just as people named Andrea are free to insist they actually are named Ahhhhhnnn-DRAAAAY-aaaaaah if they choose, organizations are free to call themselves whatever they wish. (Within reason; Peaberry's may not call itself Starbucks even though it seems to wish it could.) This may be a slightly subversive suggestion coming from someone who takes words and identities as seriously as I do, BUT can it be possible for branding to go just a smidge too far? As long as the checks clear, should any of the charities that the Foundation supports really care whether the word Rose is preceded by the word the?

A similar battle brews at one of my former workplaces. I participated, as marketing director, in a long, lively, and extremely thoughtful rebranding process that resulted in the Mizel Center for Arts and Culture metamorphosing into the Mizel Arts and Culture Center. That's right, it took a year of sweat and tears (and very nearly blood) to turn MCAC into MACC.

My successor doesn't want to stop there: she wants to banish "the" from the name, written or spoken, so that one can refer to, for example, "kids' art classes here at MACC" but not "kids' art classes here at the MACC."

Part of the appeal of "MACC" is that it's pronouncable, like a name. MACC can thus be said to do lots and lots of things, even to have a personality, and this could be a useful characteristic to exploit in future campaigns. But is it really a marketer's proper role to go around being the the police?

In multilingual lands, where a lowly "de" can cause a mighty "el" or "le" to quiver and fall like a leaf at Thanksgiving, learning when articles can be lived without is one of the many small accommodations people -- even marketers -- make to reach one another. Could we not do same?

Migration

2009-09-29T14:46:00.007-06:00

Just in time to treat my annual bout of back-to-school/High Holy Days nostalgia, my Staples confetti-cut shredder and I have been attacking some of the paper files I dragged from Old Tappan to Park Slope to Boerum Hill to Park Hill to Highland to Lowry. Today I unearthed some treasures from the 1996-97 range: Book Court receipts for "Pat the Bunny" and "Landlording," the instructions for the pager Karen made me get when she was pregnant, estimates for repairs that made our house livable, the reminder card for the OB-GYN appointment that led to our son's inducement.

But mostly -- ah yes, it comes back to me now -- life back East seems to have been a ferocious, ceaseless series of fights. Each medical bill gives birth to a denial and three appeals; parking tickets beget warrants and failure to appear notices in envelopes with huge red letters; faulty products return whence they came but working ones fail to replace them. It is a wonder that we lasted as long as we did there, and none that we fled.

Now comes word that an old friend who endured the Eastern Seaboard far longer because he was under the impression it was the only place in America to get decent Asian food has packed up and moved to Oregon. It's a brave thing to do at our stage in life and with the job market as crummy as it is. One thing I've learned about relocating is that while a change of scenery can't make you happy, failing to move can certainly prevent happiness. So -- good move, and good luck!

Regularity

2009-09-27T08:57:00.002-06:00

My lifelong transition from my parents' child to regular person advanced rapidly yesterday when I attended a dinner theater to see Phantom of the Opera. The food resembled coach-class airplane food from the 70s. One person in the cast was really good; everyone else was serviceable. My son was disappointed there was no chandelier. Is the main character supposed to have been injured by a chandelier? In this version he had a birth defect.

There are several dinner theaters around Denver, and this one was pretty packed. Has the theater industry found a recession-proof format?

Heck yeah, the camera lies

2009-09-22T14:12:00.003-06:00

Unless I'm watching a different ACORN-sting video than everyone else, what this episode mainly reveals is how hopelessly meaningless meaning has become. There are so many edits in the video, hardly any full sentences survive uncut. If I had to guess from watching the footage itself without the titles and voice-overs, I suppose I'd think I was watching someone get advice on hiding herself, her children and her assets from an abusive boyfriend. Maybe the people in the video are talking about what the filmmakers say they're talking about; it's simply impossible to tell from the available footage.

If mainstream media outlets, which actually try to fully represent what people say, are liars, how are these filmmakers, with their cuts and voice-overs and supertitles and dramatic music, not liars? After being told for years that accuracy itself is a liberal weakness, perhaps it makes sense that only a film that deliberately shuns the techniques of accuracy is to be believed.

On another level, as a onetime (and perhaps future) nonprofit manager, the ACORN fiasco has got me thinking about the wisdom of being a "volunteer-driven" organization. That always sounds good, but what you get when you have amateurs (which I mean in the dictionary-definition sense) do the work, is an amateurish (which I now mean in a slightly more pejorative sense) work product. With their emphasis on training and safety, volunteer fire and ambulance services perhaps should be the role models for the rest of the sector.

Anybody see the problem with this job description?

2009-09-20T15:43:00.009-06:00

Came across this while looking through The Forward's jobs board for kicks:

"The rabbi of Beth Sholom, who reports directly to the board of trustees through the president...."

That's like putting food directly into your mouth through your elbow. Somebody needs to take a serious look at lines of report at this organization!

Letter to the editor

2009-09-13T06:33:00.004-06:00

I must officially be an angry old man because I've written a letter to the editor. Here it is:

Editor, The Atlantic:

The upside of America's horrendous health care is that it has inspired some marvelous writing about how horrendous it is. David Goldhill's "How American Health Care Killed My Father" will become a classic of the genre. A Democrat with a profound understanding of the power of markets to influence lives (and cause deaths) is someone who should be taken seriously by all political persuasions. While the rest of us waste energy debating how much care should be provided, Goldhill observes that we must first focus on how much information should be provided. The answer to that one is so easy it barely lends itself to debate: More!

Sincerely,

Eric Hübler

Denver, Colo.

And here's the article I'm talking about.

You use active verbs!

2009-09-11T09:46:00.002-06:00

After getting over my initial shock, I'm now oddly attracted to the simple directness of "You lie!" It's certainly superior to its passive equivalent, "I am (or we are) lied to!" This is what I tell clients all the time: active voice shows you accomplish things, whereas passive voice shows you are content to let the world do what it will, with or without you.

It's too bad there is no verb in English that means the opposite of "to lie." "I speak truth" is, I suppose, the closest we can get. I think we need one. How about a contest?

Blogospherism

2009-09-07T20:32:00.007-06:00

After seeing "Julie/Julia" I decided to turn my blog into a best-selling book and movie too. But I think I need a sharper theme than the theme of this blog, which is, basically, that stuff occurs to me and sometimes I write it down. I'm still searching for the perfect idea, but I've successfully narrowed the field by considering and rejecting the following:

Good for the Heart: A Healthy American Male Eats Nothing but Canned Baked Beans, Three Meals a Day for an Entire Year, and Chronicles the Effects on Him and the People Around Him
Oh, Mom: The Funny-Weird and Occasionally Funny-Ha-Ha Things My Mother Says
Eyes Are Gonna Roll: A Year-Long Exploration of the Phenomenon of Eye Rolling and How It Impacts My Relationships
Unalloyed Venom: I Pick a Person -- It Almost Doesn't Matter Who -- and Criticize One Feature of Their Personality Each Day for 365 Days
The Year of Living Platonically: For 365 Consecutive Nights, My Wife and I Are Perfectly Sociable and Sometimes Even Borderline Flirtatious, but That's It
Thirty-Wonderful: The Incredible True Tale of How I Went to Baskin Robbins and Had Ice Cream Every Night for a Year
My Prius, Oh, My Prius: A Daily Affirmation About My Prius
The Year of Living Atheistically: The Incredible True Tale of How I Gradually Stopped Participating in Any Religious Rituals Whatsoever

I'll keep thinking about it. Oy, I've got it!

Blogospherism: A Writer Takes 365 Wild, Wonderful Days to Decide What to Write About

Experience optional

2009-09-04T08:10:00.004-06:00

Since posting my résumé on Monster, I have received inquiries from two recruiters that genuinely interested me; a few wildly poetic, almost free-associative letters from wealthy African widows; and about 10 messages from insurance companies. The latest (this just in... the next-to-latest; another arrived as I was typing the previous sentence) says in part, "No experience is needed as we offer an extensive training program, benefits and transition pay to help you get started in your career. I believe you may have some of the needed skills to be successful with our firm."

I, too, believe I may, but I would rather take my chances with my tantalizing new Ghanaian friend Naomie. All I have to do is adopt her 8-year-old, and she'll send me 15% of her late husband's $13.8 million fortune. If my math is correct, that's $2,010,000 more than I'm supposed to be able to make in my first, wildly successful year as a Financial Planner. (Or is the job title, as the second paragraph of the same e-mail has it, Financial Advisor? HR -- if this company had HR -- would be most displeased with the discrepancy.)

I can forgive Naomie's absurd writing ("All I need now is for you to Investor this Fund for my only son"); indeed, I relish it. Our world would be a poorer place, though Lagos might be a richer city, if the Nigerian scammers finally hired a copy editor. (Question for further research: can a copy editor be held civilly or criminally liable if the message s/he cleans up is used in the execution of a financial fraud?)

From insurers in Denver, I expect slightly better writing. Friends, can we come together as a society and agree once and for all that interest can be piqued, not peaked? More importantly, I'm concerned by the constant emphasis on experience not being required. I worked hard for my experience, and while I may sometimes question its marketability, I'm nowhere near being ready to abandon it. For the most part, my experience has been -- well, a good experience.

I'm not against insurance. I'm the satisfied owner of several insurance policies (which reminds me, I must dig out those policy numbers for Naomie...). I just question the wisdom of positioning an industry as a human dumping ground.

You got your liberals. You got your conservatives. And then you got me.

2009-09-02T13:54:00.002-06:00

The liberal and conservative positions on health care have found a meeting point that could solve the whole thing. Trouble is, nobody seems to realize it but me.

As detailed this morning on NPR and in The New Yorker some months ago, the reformist position is that letting doctors do as many procedures as they wish, and agreeing to pay for them whether they were necessary or not, is financially wasteful and can even hurt outcomes by violating the old if-it-ain't-broke-don't-fix-it rule. The conservative position is that limiting civil damages in malpractice lawsuits is the way to bring down costs.

Suppose the reformists snapped their fingers and fewer avoidable procedures were performed. Hey presto, there would then be fewer bad results over which to sue. The average award wouldn't fall, but there would be fewer awards.

Health care reform and tort reform are not incompatible. Here's hoping our leaders are sharp enough to see this, and make it the basis of ongoing deal-making.

Young parenthood's end

2009-08-31T07:19:00.003-06:00

The brief, restful period between toddlerhood and teenagerhood -- when the kids can dress and entertain themselves well enough to let you use the toilet or get a couple hours' work done without posing any significant risk of creating physical destruction or psychological mayhem -- has abruptly ended in our house. It's in part because of what goes on in young minds and bodies, and in part because of what goes on in an erratic world. Not only do I find myself using absurd phrases like "urges" and "perfectly natural" in the same sentence, but today I'm experiencing a sense of fear unlike anything I've felt since 9/11.

Both kids grew suddenly sick over the weekend. Is it THE flu? We'll probably never know, since the health care system is making every effort not to find out. (Since doctors tell you to stay the freak away if you suspect flu, where are all these H1N1 statistics coming from anyway?) For the first time in my 13 years, four weeks and five days of parenthood, there is a bug on the loose that prefers youngsters to oldsters. For the first time, being alive is riskier for them than it is for me. It shouldn't be that way.

Right now my wife's out for a walk, I'm in my natural habitat in front of the Mac, and the kids are konked out in bed. We must hope that the week ends with them once again being the spunky ones and us, in comparison, lame.

The public relations option

2009-08-20T05:46:00.005-06:00

The story has become so familiar: the brave, upbeat single mom/loving dad/innocent child is diagnosed with a scary illness; will certainly die without expensive treatment; loses or has never had insurance, or has the claim denied; faces a life of misery even if s/he does survive because of the debt the treatment will create. A friend or clergyman appeals to the community for donations and they pour in, but they are never enough. Perhaps acknowledging privately that it isn't fair for more-appealing patients to get on TV while the vast majority of people in the same situation suffer privately, everybody involved proceeds to package the patient into a medical version of those up-close-and-personal profiles at the Olympics. The medical case becomes an element of the narrative, but only one among many.

I will go to my Guvmint Death Bed not understanding why the so-called public option is as distasteful as it is to so many people; I suppose if public libraries were being proposed now they would be characterized as the place where Adolf Hitler and the Devil go to check their e-mail between job interviews. But I do know that if this country continues to choose misery over health, these exceptional cases are going to become the norm. I foresee the rise -- and for all I know it may already be happening -- of a new breed of public relations practice that specializes in preparing hard-luck medical cases for public viewing. And fundraising.

It'll start small, when a local p.r. practitioner like me hears about a local case that's going south because of uninsurance or underinsurance and makes a few suggestions. (Indeed this has happened to me.) But it could grow. The demand is certainly there. I foresee a national 501(c)3 (perhaps called The Public Option) that lets donors "adopt" a medical patient in the way that overseas aid agencies have long used the faces and narratives of adorable foreign children to provoke sympathy. The Public Option's tagline will be "Just send us the bill" and that's what we'll do: we'll try to negotiate prices down so as not to waste donors' money, but after dickering as long and hard as humanly possible, we'll pay. When the claim is settled we'll send the patient a little certificate with a picture of a smiling fish on it that says, "You're off the hook!"

Hang on... hasn't the fish already been used as the symbol of a rapidly growing charitable movement? One that took the most generous impulses of the ancient world and packaged them into a humanistic philosophy? Didn't they have some really good copywriters who drafted brand language around treating our neighbors as we wish to be treated? Whatever happened to those guys? I'll have to have a trademark attorney look into it.

Attention, please!

2009-08-14T07:17:00.008-06:00

When I was taking private pilot lessons at New Jersey's Teterboro Airport 10 years ago, my instructor told me the hardest thing about flying was talking on the radio. It was amazing but true: the moment I picked up the handset my situational awareness shattered; instead of focusing on the airspace and my position in it, a huge proportion of my brainpower suddenly shifted to the seemingly simple acts of speaking and listening.

Never was this more evident than one gorgeous weekend day when I was soloing over New York City. Usually I preferred to head west, over the hills and lakes of New Jersey and Pennsylvania, or even better, north over the Hudson. I enjoyed looking at the greenery and steepled villages on the riverbanks, and I liked the fact that, aside from avoiding West Point, the airspace was uncomplicated.

Recognizing that I needed more navigation practice, on this day I chose instead to go south and east, around the Statue of Liberty and over Brooklyn and Queens. Or... was it the Bronx? Yonkers? With the world's most famous landmarks to guide me, how on earth could I get lost? But I did.

I initiated a procedure known as the Four C's: Climb, Confess, Communicate, Comply. Climbing almost certainly put me in the airspace controlled by JFK or LaGuardia, subjecting me to huge penalties. But working a checklist is about the only thing you can do to prevent disorientation from evolving into panic so that's what I did. Then I swallowed my pride and made the hardest radio call ever:

"Teterboro, student pilot. Would you give me a vector back to the field?"

It isn't required to identify oneself as a student pilot, and I usually avoided doing so, but in this case I thought it might be wise to subtly convey to the controller -- and the dozens of other pilots on the same frequency -- that there was someone potentially dangerous in the sky.

The controller's response? "Return to the field."

I vomited my pride in order to swallow it again and replied: "Student pilot. I'm lost. Please give me a vector back to the field."

Again: "Return to the field." What the hell was going on? My transponder was working so the controller knew my location; why not just tell me, Turn left 20 degrees, descend to 5,000 feet, report when field is in sight -- or whatever the case may have been?

Instead the exchange merely distracted me further from my objective. I flew around, quite aimlessly, until I recognized something and joined the landing pattern. There was no FAA officer waiting to issue me a ticket when I returned my rented plane. No summons came in the mail. Nobody said a thing. I had just discovered a dirty secret of aviation: that the typical suburban street is better controlled than our airspace.

The episode flashed back to me with yesterday's news that a Teterboro controller has been suspended for having an "apparently inappropriate" conversation with his girlfriend during last week's fatal midair collision over the Hudson. I absolutely believe the recent research studies, cited by proponents of banning phone use while driving, showing that attempting to converse with somebody who is not present is so taxing to the brain that it leaves little energy for anything else. It isn't hard to imagine that the controller had no idea he was being negligent when he decided to have a little chit-chat. Neither do the SUV drivers who think everything's going fine until they hear a thump and find a little girl under their tires.

The habit of being constantly in touch is now so deeply ingrained in our culture that making personal calls at work -- even hazardous work -- has come to seem like normal behavior. In states where personal liberties are considered more consequential than accidental deaths, no bans will ever be forthcoming. They wouldn't work anyway. It's up to each of us to find some time each day to push that red button, push it hard, and make sure the phone is truly and deeply off.

Very compressive!

2009-08-11T08:00:00.000-06:00

TV's are square. These flat rectangles we're all watching these days -- I don't know what they are. Viewscreens? Windscreens? They definitely ain't TV's.

Whether I rot my brain watching a square screen or a rectangular screen or a sesquicentennihemisemidemihexagonal screen isn't important. What is important, I think, is that the image bear some resemblance to the image the content creator wants us to see. Since flatscreens took over, about half of us seem to be watching compressed images, usually horizontally but also sometimes vertically. On my own set, whenever I get the commercial stations set right, PBS looks wrong. I can't keep going into setup to fix this! I haven't got the strength!

Nor have I got the strength to keep telling people that they're seeing things incorrectly. Perception is subjective so I can't prove it anyway. The whole phenomenon raises troubling questions, I think, about reality. If a representation of reality can't be trusted to be perceived consistently from one person to the next, what about reality itself? No chance.

"Outer Limits" used to threaten to take control of the vertical and the horizontal, but what's actually happened is, nobody's in control of them. Just fix your sets, people!

"Purchased for self"

2009-08-09T10:04:00.011-06:00

Of all the kinds of content that the Internet has helped to generate, product reviews may be the most fascinating. I long ago ditched my Consumer Reports subscription in favor of reading reviews on Amazon.com, and I carefully consider what I see there before making a major purchase (the one caveat being that sometimes people give a product a negative review when they're really dissatisfied with the shipping speed or what they had for breakfast that day).

I've watched with interest as other sites have adopted the Amazon model. Sometimes they paint a sad picture; while shopping for a grill recently I was struck by the small number of reviews at HomeDepot.com and the lack of enthusiasm in them, indicating that the ultimate bricks-and-mortar retailer has made an underwhelming transition to cyberspace. Most recently I spent some time with the reviews at AmericanGirl.com while looking for a birthday present for my daughter, and there discovered evidence of a community that interests the amateur anthropologist in me.

In addition to five-star ratings in five categories (quality, product appearance, age appropriateness, educational value and play value) the American Girl site asks reviewers, "What is your relationship to the child that you purchased for?" The seven possible answers are:

Mother
Father
Grandparent
Aunt
Uncle
Friend
Purchased for self

The surprise for me was how many reviewers who are clearly adults chose "purchased for self,"calling into question what the phrases "age appropriateness" and "the child that you purchased for" really mean. A reviewer nicknamed edina wrote:

American Girl clothes for dolls are very well made, so detailed that they are delightful to adults too. I like the outfits that are more classic and the historical ones from the 20th century. Nice work, designers and seamstresses!

One called LuluT wrote, about Rebecca, the company's new Jewish character:

This is a beautiful doll and I'm glad I've added her to my collection. Her best feature is her hair because it is curly and full. However, her worst feature is also her hair because it is rather "crunchy," difficult to work with, and can easily look unruly. Even with the hair pick, it is still hard to keep her hair looking as nice as it does in the catalog and in online photos. I would highly recommend this doll to a collector who will use it primarily for display but I would not give it to a young girl because of the hair.

Lulu, firstly, that's how Jewish hair can be, so you may simply be suffering from a touch of verisimilitude; and secondly, if your motivation in buying Rebecca was to display her, Toy Story style, why are you actually playing with her? And why keep her away from an actual child?

Perhaps even odder than the large number of "Purchased for self" reviews on AmericanGirl.com is the fact that I could not find a single review from a father. Get ready, American Girl community, because after my daughter unwraps her present, this daddy is crashing your world.

NOW he's a man (ish)

2009-08-07T07:39:00.001-06:00

To a 13-year-old, the thought of being treated as an adult is intoxicating -- so much so that new bar mitzvahs like my son cling to it despite being told repeatedly that maturity and the ability to read from an old book are not the same thing.

A few days after his ceremony, however, I received more-definitive evidence that my baby is growing up. Attempting to check his online medical chart, I got only as far as a screen telling me to mind my own damn business (or words to that effect). While I can still control my 10-year-old daughter's medical fate, now that my son is 13, his chart is off limits to me. If I want to regain access, I need to print a form and get his signature.

That's right: I need to get a permission slip. I'm not sure I can do it. Every parent-child relationship undergoes role reversals over time, but I thought it would take longer and would involve either money or personal hygiene. Having to asking my kid's permission -- for anything -- is truly a new stage in my life, and in his.

Contentious content

2009-08-05T17:43:00.010-06:00

My commie lit-crit professors used to be all like, "The proletariat's seizure of the means of cultural production will inevitably lead to a rupture in the bourgeoisie's despotic control and manipulation of the gaze," and I used to be all like, "Huh? What? Is that guy talking about the gays again? Is this going to be on the final?"

Now it seems their dystopian vision has come true: culture workers are busily turning themselves into a sub-proletariat, driving down wages and living standards so precipitously that revolutionary conditions seem like a real possibility. Thanks, Internet.

Whether writing is, for a given writer, a passion or a career or both is beside the point. How to explain the new and (at least in my experience) unprecedented impulse to commoditize writing? My recent pokings and proddings of various job-hunting sites have revealed a category of work that is unlike anything we've encountered before: a need to string words together just barely well enough to be able to call them writing. The word-strings need not mean much of anything.

Consider Textbroker, where "our deep database of knowledgeable authors is exactly the right resource to solve your content solutions fast."

(Mockery break: how do you solve a solution? Now back to the blog.)

For writers, Textbroker promises, "the better you write, the more you can earn." That certainly sounds like an appealing alternative to the traditional method of determining writers' compensation, tushy-smooching. But Textbroker's five-tier payment plan tops out at five cents per word, or $25 for a 500-word article. Textboker calls this level "professional quality." Things go down from there to "excellent quality" (1.4 cents/word), "good quality" (1 cent per word) and "legible" (seven-tenths of a cent per word).

I don't know which is more ridiculous and distressing: that somewhere out there is a writer willing to work for seven-tenths of a cent per word, or that somewhere out there is a client whose project plan calls for a merely "legible" product. What's that company's vision statement: "To be more-or-less adequate in our industry"?

Content wants to be free, it once was said. So let it. At least then you don't have to file a W-2.

Mall together now

2009-08-01T07:21:00.000-06:00

My 7-year-old, non-updatable GPS is always trying to send me around my own neighborhood, the reason being that 7 years ago my neighborhood did not exist; it was an Air Force base in the process of closing and there was a security gate very close to where I now live. A lot of agencies did a lot of work transferring the massive property to civilian use (though arguably not quite enough; they forgot about a hospital building, leading to a panicky asbestos-ceiling-tile excavation after we'd all moved in) so that now, looking at my GPS's images of the area makes me feel like the hapless hero of one of the alternative-reality stories I'm fond of reading in Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine. ("Something was not quite right... hadn't Grandma's beloved rose of sharon always been to the right of the back door?")

Anyway I think bailout money should be used to do something similar with shopping centers. A mall with an empty storefront is a cancer to a community. Just as some cities hit particularly hard by the credit crunch have begun buying and repurposing residential real estate, I think the real estate community (guided by the not-invisible hand of government if need be) should consolidate malls by finding new homes for surviving tenants and demolishing the ghost malls. The properties should be turned into a new breed of park: one where public amenities like playgrounds and skateparks share space with small-scale commercial enterprises like ice cream sellers and sunglass kiosks. Permits to run these enterprises should be issued liberally, not restrictively. Indeed, they should be given away, not treated as a tax as is usually the case.

Under this plan, desperate investors get bailed out but instead of the money disappearing up Wall Street's a-hole, society receives tangible benefits to society: new parks and opportunities for entrepreneurs to start a life in business with very low startup costs. Public-private partnerships have already accomplished much bigger, more complicated deals, like my neighborhood and nearby Stapleton, the former civilian airport. If we think just a tad smaller, we could all benefit in a big way.

Thank goodness it's just a horrifically painful injury with a slow recovery

2009-07-30T07:03:00.005-06:00

It's funny how prejudices can embed themselves into seemingly innocuous phrases that survive from generation to generation. I discovered one such phrase the hard way this weekend: "Thank goodness it's just a sprain."

As the urgent-care doctor explained to me a few hours after I missed a step and sprained my foot -- an injury that announced itself with the sickening pop of tearing tissue -- a fracture would have been a "better" injury because it would have made for an easier recovery. Despite the commonness of sprains, somehow the term has come to signify a slight twisting of the ankle, the sort of thing you get over by hopping on the unaffected foot a couple of times, looking around to make sure nobody's making Gerald Ford references, and then getting on with your day.

Nuh-uh. A sprain is a rip. If the same thing happened to the outside of your body, blood and perhaps the police would be involved.

Falling in such a silly way was hard enough on the ego; I wasn't about to let anyone minimize my suffering by describing it as "just" anything. Now I have a new mission in life: Sprain awareness. I suppose I'll have to start a new nonprofit, appoint myself executive director, and recruit a board of rich people who have suffered sprains, have loved ones who have suffered sprains, or who are in some way members of the sprain community. We'll have a 5k Fun Limp to raise money, a publicity campaign called SprainAware, and after a few years in business we'll hire a rebranding firm who will donate hundreds of thousands of dollars' worth of time coming up with our new slogan: "Sprain!"

So, sprain sufferers, rise up! No, actually, don't. Sit down, put some ice on that thing, and invite your friends over to watch the bruises heal.

Account(ing)ability

2009-07-24T07:20:00.003-06:00

I'm unemployed and I vote.

Doesn't have much of a ring to it, does it? Even though millions have been thrown out of work as a result of the actions and inactions of a handful of jerks relating to mortgages, a stigma remains. The unemployed, at least in America, are unlikely to coalesce into a political force.

That's a shame, because accountability is in order. Because of poor writing skills (yes, it actually is a question of elementary writing skills) it is not possible for me to determine when the Colorado Department of Labor and Employment intends to release the insurance payments I'm entitled to. (Notice I don't call them benefits; these are merely insurance payments, and even if I receive everything I could possibly be entitled to, I'll still have paid far more into the system than I'll ever get out of it.)

Nor can one call, write, or e-mail the department to get an answer. It's the worst sort of bureaucracy, not something that makes me proud to be a Coloradan. Then there are the upfront mistakes the department made, like buying software that doesn't work, a genius move that seems to be obligatory for government agencies.

Department chief Don Mares has been complaining publicly about lack of resources, but knowing something about how workplaces work, I think I see an additional explanation for the department's poor performance:

Poor performance.

Charity aggravator

2009-07-20T22:02:00.002-06:00

We all know bad things happen to good people. Now, according to one consultant, an extremely bad thing is happening to good charities.

Former Oracle executive Kevin Boulas is firmly in the nonprofits-are-businesses-and-need-to-be-treated-like-businesses-in-all-respects camp, so in a broad sense he favors the trend to apply the tools of financial analysis and transparency to charities. But he says the most prominent operation to do so -- Charity Navigator -- is bringing the worst of Wall Street to the nonprofit sector by inadvertently forcing the donors and executives who should be creating a better future, to focus instead on short-term results.

Charity Navigator, which is itself a 501(c)(3), assigns charities a rating of 0 to 4 stars, and this rating is based primarily on the proportion of revenue that the organization spends on its mission rather than on itself. Charity Navigator slices and dices the data in lots of fun ways, but it all comes from publicly available IRS forms. Anyone who has a calculator with a divide key can do the same thing.

The ratio of programmatic to administrative expenses was an important way of judging nonprofits long before Charity Navigator came along in 2001; indeed, many foundations restrict grants so that none of their money can go toward general operating expenses like salaries and utility bills. This has long irked nonprofit CEOs, who, when they are feeling particularly gutsy, point out that people (and the phone company) need to be paid if the mission has any hope of being fulfilled. To stigmatize general operating expenses is to imply that all charity work should be done by volunteers rather than professionals. Taken to its logical end, this means the only people permitted to execute the mission should be the independently wealthy on the one hand, and destitute monks and nuns on the other. The middle class need not apply.

“I’ve got a foundation willing to give me a million dollars, but only after I get a pilot program up and running,” the founder of a new organization that aims to bring more arts education into high-poverty schools told me. “How do I get the pilot up without funding?”

By blindly following this tradition of programs-and-services-good, general-operating-expenses-bad -- and amplifying it by throwing around judgmental words like “best” and “worst” and “overpaid” -- Charity Navigator may indeed steer donors away from crooked operators who blow money meant for crippled orphans on Jaguars and hookers for themselves. But it also steers them away from nonprofits that dare to invest in their own future capacity, Boulas charges. Giving to a charity that earns Charity Navigator’s highest marks is no different from investing in a company that spends 100% of revenue on production, with nothing left over to do research, pay employees or repay investors. Nice idea, but no company can afford to operate like…

Well, like a charity. Boulas’s point is that actual charities can’t afford to operate “like a charity” either. “Charity Navigator merely reinforces opacity. It forces nonprofits to game the numbers instead of opening the books,” he told me. “Companies build themselves to last for a very long time, but they seem to begrudge nonprofits the same privilege.”

By propagating an erroneous view of how nonprofits are supposed to spend their money, Boulas contends, Charity Navigator has perpetuated Wall Street’s most dangerous myth: that because only today matters, accountability can be put off forever.

Fidelity likes the ladies

2009-07-15T07:32:00.004-06:00

For fundraisers, Fidelity Charitable Gift Fund’s recent study of gender differences in giving habits may seem like a throwback to the future. Like the vacuum salesmen of yore or Zero Mostel courting Broadway benefactors in “The Producers,” we’re advised to ask if we may kindly speak with the lady of the house.

Fidelity didn’t put it quite that baldly. Without actually using the words “wymyn” or “grrrls,” Fidelity dressed the study in the language of feminism: “Women are more likely than men to report they assumed the role of primary or sole decision-maker with regard to how much was donated to charity and which charities received donations over the past two years.”

What that comes down to, of course, is a restatement of the wisdom of the ancients (the ones who created soap operas): that women typically control a household’s discretionary income.

The study further confirmed stereotypes by finding that rich women are the best givers of all. (Do you go to a theater? Any theater? In the playbill, dollars to donuts, there will be a report on a fundraising gala that will consist largely of photos of ruddy-cheeked matrons beaming at one another. Them’s the ones.) Aside from being likely to give more dollars, such women have several attributes that may make them particularly good prospects for long-term relationship-building: they are likeliest to use giving vehicles that require forethought, such as donor-advised funds; likeliest to donate securities; likeliest to work with a financial adviser; and least likely to request anonymity.

Perhaps most important, high-income women were most likely to agree with the statement “In challenging economic times I typically give more because the need is greater.” Thirty-five percent of high-income women said this sounds like them, versus 25% of high-income men.

The study defined high-income as $150,000 or more in “household income” and made no distinction between women who clawed their way to success and those who married it. From charities’ perspective, it may not matter. Whether you’ve come a long way, baby, or not, we’re glad to know you.

Block that shot

2009-07-13T10:48:00.000-06:00

I'm not sure if it's a Denver thing, a small-market thing or a postmodern thing, but I surely do despise a species of camera shot that infests the local TV news.

Not since a drunken sailor operated the cameras at "NYPD Blue" has my attention been so urgently drawn to the camera rather than the subject. Denver's "photojournalists," as one station calls them, frequently capture the reflection of a person being interviewed in a shiny object such as a window or a glossy-painted car, rather than the person himself or herself. So we'll hear, for example, a sheriff's deputy saying, "The suspect fled at a high rate of speed," and what we see is the deputy's distorted face reflected in the fender of his squad car.

I can't imagine what this technique adds to any story. The print equivalent would be something like writing, "If anybody could have heard the deputy speak, this is what they would have heard: 'The suspect fled at a high rate of speed,'" rather than simply, "'The suspect fled at a high rate of speed,' the deputy said."

Stop being fancy-pants, "photojournalists," and just get the story.

The MonkeySwing War (1950-2009)

2009-07-09T07:13:00.006-06:00

Freedom isn't free but MonkeySwing is, and I want very much to download it onto my iPod. However I keep getting an error message, something about network this or that. It could be argued that I should be working on my proposal-writing and interviewing skills, but my ancestors suffered and strived so that I could live in liberty and I intend to honor their sacrifice by grabbing me some MonkeySwing before the price goes up.

We all know the net has been under-performing lately, and I think it has to do with traffic being rerouted around those big denial-of-service attacks. I believe we're going to wake up one morning and President Obama is going to be on TV saying the first wave of bombers have returned from their sorties over North Korea and God bless America. Unless the North Koreans manage to sneak out a nuke or two -- in which case those of us who are left will be talking about that -- I believe the free world will immediately start talking about what to call whatever it is that just started. The Second Korean War? Or, because the first one never really ended, a new battle in the Korean War (1950-2009)?

I believe that in an unguarded moment with Michelle or some of the pastors he's been test-driving, the President has already confessed that Bush was right about the Axis of Evil after all. In the early-morning speech I envision, he is going to seek our and God's forgiveness for getting us into a third war when we elected him to do something about the first two, but then remind us that he pledged never to hesitate to use force to protect American interests. He will conclude by saying:

"The Second Korean War has begun"

"After all these years, the Korean War is finally about to end."

If I have grandchildren, I will tell them that American fighters and the Korean people, cheated of proper lives by their dictators, suffered and strived so that they, too, could download in liberty. The history e-books may disagree, but to me it will be the MonkeySwing War.

1.5% for what?

2009-07-03T08:20:00.000-06:00

A recent inheritance gave me the opportunity to do something I've wanted to do forever: fire my investment adviser.

Truth be told, the parting was mutual. After being split four ways, the remains of my late father-in-law's IRA were too small for this firm to want to keep under management. Meantime, from my perspective, paying their annual fee of 1.5% -- while modest compared with, say, the 100% that Bernie Madoff commanded -- would be like buying a small motorcycle every year and immediately destroying it, only less fun. So it was a case of you-can't-quit-you're-fired-you-can't-fire-me-I-quit.

Before getting to that point, the firm made a halfhearted attempt to explain to my wife the value they add, and she made a halfhearted attempt to explain it to me. There wasn't much to say. To justify the 1.5% fee they would need to prove they earned clients 1.5-plus-n% more than clients could earn themselves, and they couldn't.

Because this was a retirement account we did view the firm's four-page, single-spaced analysis of projected income and expenses in retirement. This proposal established beyond doubt that whoever wrote it had passed Algebra 1 and been legitimately promoted to Algebra 2. But it relied on two variables that were pure, laughable guesswork: how long you intended to live and how much you intended your investments to earn.

To gullible widows and orphans (and this money was now literally widow and orphan money) it may seem possible to balance the levers of longevity and return to produce a desired result. But it's an absurd notion. If we could have instructed someone to select lower-yielding stocks and thereby extend my father-in-law's life, don't you think we would have?

Volunteer mush

2009-06-29T13:26:00.002-06:00

When I found myself (through no fault of mine, the gentlemen who released me and two dozen others assured me) with time and talent to spare, I turned to a newish organization called Volunteer Match to help me dispose of said time and talent. Having made a commitment to the nonprofit industry by obtaining a master's in nonprofit management and finding paid work in the field, first at an arts center and then at a health charity, I can't very well turn up my nose at volunteering. This is my chance to "give back," as the saying goes, "to the community."

I found half a dozen opportunities that seemed interesting and wrote to each organization via the Volunteer Match contact form. Some never responded. One responded so quickly and enthusiastically, expressing such confidence in me based on my online portfolio, that I began working for them literally within minutes.

The oddest reply came from a group that I just don't know how to assess: Daily Source. There's no doubt I can help them: they need news judgment and editing skills to put together a daily feed of articles from various online sources, and these are skills I have been using my entire career. In a series of follow-up questions, however, I got the sense they were more interested in the degree to which I agreed with their philosophy than in my availability and expertise.

After a few days of back-and-forth I called a timeout and wrote to the volunteer recruiter:

I've been trying to figure out what makes Daily Source different/better than any of the very many other aggregators out there, and I'm not seeing it. Since you do no original reporting, I am having an especially hard time understanding what makes Daily Source a charity worth supporting with money or donated labor. What am I missing?

Certainly Daily Source's mission statement -- "Bringing high quality news and information from across the Internet to the public 24 hours a day, 365 days a year in order to educate the public and improve our world" -- offers no hint of different-ness or better-ness. But the recruiter didn't answer my questions, so I instead posed them to Daily Source founder and executive director Peter Dunn, who, three days later, has yet to reply.

I was particularly intrigued by a page called How We Choose Articles, which offers a critique of the mainstream media that verges on paranoia (and which is therefore mainstream for the Internet) but goes a step beyond, by asserting that articles on DailySource.org are more fair, more accurate and more compelling than what the mainstream media produces. Since Daily Source plays no role in assigning, reporting or editing the material it publishes, I just don't see how that figures.

The page says in part, "We seek articles that have accurate information and are closest to the known truth." I can't get the phrase "closest to the known truth" out of my head. Daily Source is staffed by people with impressive journalism résumés -- these days, finding people who used to have great media jobs isn't that hard -- but this simply is not something I can imagine coming out of the mouth of any journalist I have ever met. It strikes me as a form of orthodoxy that disallows the possibility of dissent or even novelty.

What really really concerns me is the possibility that Daily Source is merely a clever way of generating salaries for the site's paid staff by exploiting donors and under-employed editors who think they're helping create the future of journalism. If Daily Source is a scam, I suppose it's a modest one: Dunn told the IRS he received $54,103 in salary and benefits from The Daily Source Limited in 2007; and he has loaned the organization almost as much as he has earned, in effect funding much of his own salary without charging any interest in return.

Which seems downright charitable.

Even if I'm wrong to doubt the way Daily Source spends donations, I still don't get it: Why does this organization exist? I am a huge believer in the potential of nonprofit journalism; if any segment of society is going to assign itself the mission of fact-seeking and truth-telling, it's the likes of NPR and ProPublica. A nonprofit aggregator, on the other hand, merely hastens the already hasty demise of the for-profit news sources that have served us more or less competently for more or less a century.

A summer flick to give thanks for

2009-06-26T08:30:00.000-06:00

Like its progenitor Monty Python's Life of Brian, the summer flick Year One is good for a few yucks -- and a timely reminder of the fragility of freedom.

All right, all right, nothing's so tiresome as a too-serious reading of a funny work, but I don't want Year One to be dismissed as vacuous. Like all of Judd Apatow's films, all the farts and boobs can't disguise the deeply moral nature of the tale. The source of the humor is, of course, the anachronisms, and not just the Biblical/historical nuttiness like making Cain and Abel contemporaries of Abraham and Isaac. Jack Black's Zed and Michael Cera's Oh are men out of time because their modern idiosyncratic expressions -- even the way they raise their eyebrows and roll their eyes -- are infused with an individuality that must have been unthinkable for most of human existence (and still is, in many places). Imagine the self-confidence one has to possess to be able to tell a superior: "Whatever."

Yes, Year One is a disgusting romp, but a disgusting romp with a noble purpose: to remind us that, having eaten the forbidden fruit, we had better, as a race, use our knowledge wisely.

Wal-Mart's new math

2009-06-24T08:00:00.000-06:00

Aside from the endlessly repeated word "relationships," the only important thing I remember from marketing class is that, whether you're a consumer products company or a charity, you never, ever want to be perceived as the bargain brand. What you want is to be perceived as offering value, so that customers (read "donors" if you're a nonprofit) feel that the more they spend, the more value they obtain.

Taking this advice too literally could lead one into a dumb mistake like shorting Wal-Mart. If it's a marketing axiom that there's no future in cheap, how did Wal-Mart build such success offering nothing but cheap?

I see two possible answers: 1) Marketing gurus are stupid and wrong; 2) Wal-Mart's brand is actually more complex than its longtime slogan "Always Low Prices" allowed, and you need a marketing guru to explain why. Let's explore option 2.

I would argue that decades after its founding and many years after being universally acknowledged as one of history's most important (for ill or good is merely a matter of opinion) economic entities, Wal-Mart is only now revealing its true branding.

(An aside: the stores, you may have noticed, have migrated from "Wall*Mart" to "Walmart." But the company remains "Wal-Mart Stores Inc.")

Sure the new ads mention low prices, but now in the form of a call to action: "Save money." More importantly, the new slogan continues, "Live better." Thus low prices are repositioned: Once they were an end; now they are a means. We don't go to Wal-Mart for low prices after all -- we go for happiness, security and prosperity. Low prices are the way we get what we really want.

So far, so truistic. But there is a risk to Wal-Mart's strategy, and you'll see it when you recall the grade-school arithmetic concept, the transitive property of equality. Expressed as an equation, Wal-Mart's old branding is:

Low prices = low prices

N equals itself -- end of discussion. The new branding is:

Low prices = a better life

The transitive property reminds us that any number of things that at first seem very different can equal one another. 2+2 is the same as 100-96 which is the same as 4 quaqdrillion/1 quadrillion and so on. So the Wal-Mart shopper may now find herself wondering: What else equals a happy life? What if tariffs made imported goods just expensive enough to cause the re-introduction of manufacturing to America, causing more of us to be employed, causing more of us to live happily? High prices can equal a better life just as easily as low ones can.

(Granted, if Karl Marx were alive today, he would be the only person alive today who seriously thinks Wal-Mart customers may be asking themselves this. What if, is all I'm saying.)

I'm certainly not advising shorting Wal-Mart on grounds they've suddenly decided low prices are a bad idea after all. Monkeys will sooner fly out of my ass. I am saying that if you want a crash course on the psychology of spending -- including the psychology of donating -- listen carefully to Professor Wal-Mart.

Wounds

2009-06-23T06:55:00.001-06:00

As a gunshot victim, I feel justified in committing to the screen the magic words that might actually get this blog some attention:

NATIONAL RIFLE ASSOCIATION

I'm not taking a position on the NRA, mind you -- I don't want to get shot at again or anything! -- I'm just simply saying: National Rifle Association.

Let me hasten to add that I'm a "gunshot victim" in a rather loose sense. Sometime Sunday night or Monday morning a bullet penetrated a decorative window shutter and the north wall of my home, and came to rest on the carpet of the guest room about four feet from the window. The bullet's apparent lack of velocity suggested to the responding officer that the gun was fired several hundred feet, and as much as half a mile, away. This in turn suggested that we were not targeted.

This came as a great relief to my wife, who thought the incident may have had something to do with the Obama-Biden sign that remains in our window more than half a year after the election -- a clear violation of our homeowners association's rules. In a way, though, I feel worse about bullets falling as unpredictably as meteorites than I would if we had been targeted. If we had been targeted, I could put my energy into learning who our tormenter was and dealing with him. (We live within walking distance of many gun shops.) This is the same logic that leads my Israeli friend Gigi to assert that her children are safer in Israel than they would be in the States.

There's nothing at all one can do about random violence, on the other hand. My children, who were sleeping feet away from where the bullet entered, may never feel safe again in their own home, and they'd be right.

Why is it, though, that there's nothing at all one can do to correct a social problem when the evidence is all around us that social problems are susceptible to intervention?

National Rifle Association. That's all I'm saying.

Why can't school be more like camp?

2009-06-22T18:44:00.000-06:00

My son can drift away in school so far, DPS should hire the guys who hold down the Macy's Parade balloons to tether him. He is completely present on stage, however, so once again this summer I find myself wondering: Why can't school be more like camp?

Dog House Music rock and roll camp in Lafayette, Colo., to be specific. We were skeptical that this was a worthy way to spend a week (and $425) but he begged and we caved. He's having fun, but more than that, I'm witnessing an educational model that schools would do well to study. Despite the staff's laid-back attitude, they work with startling efficiency and a level of attention to the kids that I have never seen.

Monday morning, campers are divided into bands based on the instruments they can play (or want to try), level of experience, and gut instinct for who'll get along with whom. The beauty part: each band gets its own "producer" for the entire week. That's one staff member totally dedicated, full time, to each group of 3-5 campers.

During the week each band writes and rehearses several original songs -- only one cover is allowed -- and at the end of the week there's a concert at the Boulder Outlook Hotel. Check out these ripped-from-life lyrics by Noah, which he wrote for his band The Undicided (cq):

No computers or TV

Why is this being done to me

Can't sleep over at a friend's

When will all this torture end

These are the things that make me mad

The worst of the worst I've ever had

Make me so mad I might explode

Just leave me be in chill mode

The audience laughed with him -- a great moment for any performer.

On the way home Noah vocalized what I'd been thinking: that it was amazing to accomplish so much in a week, whereas after a typical week at school it's hard to say what you've got to show for it. The key clearly is the staffing. A ratio of one-to-four? It's almost like having your own Greek slave for a tutor. Later I did some arithmetic to see what would happen if a school were organized similarly.

Say there are 38 weeks of school and four kids per class, each paying $425 per week. That's $16,150 per student per year, or $64,600 in revenue for the class. Give the teacher $30,000 and benes and let's say there's $15,000 left over for administration. For economy of scale multiply the whole arrangement by, for the sake of argument, 50 classes. That means the school needs to scrape by on a not-at-all shabby $750,000 per year.

$16,150 is neither cheap nor expensive in private education. But remember, this scenario assumes one teacher for every four students. Can it be done?

I'm beginning to think so. Dog House Music is doing it.

John Bunzli

2009-06-18T02:50:00.008-06:00

For as long as I've known him, I've known that John Bunzli is a great talent. As a storyteller, songwriter, singer and guitarist, he can transfix a room or cause it to get up and party. His skill is on brilliant display in his new album, The Well.

On first listen -- which is happening as I write -- I can't be sufficiently analytical to provide an explication de texte. Perhaps the title stems from John's habit of beginning songs with the phrase, "Well, I..." But it wouldn't surprise me if it refers to the well of perseverance he has had to draw from to reach this point. I have had the privilege of hearing him perform live several times over the years and have seen him connect with the audience -- but fail to persuade the house to give him a second beer for his troubles. Whoever the hardest-working man in show business is, isn't. John is.

Sometimes you'll think you're listening to Harry Chapin, sometimes the Dead, sometimes Clapton. John Bunzli now lives in my iTunes library between Joe Cocker and Johnsmith, and he's right at home there. If you're in the mood for a little political commentary, a healthy dose of humor and a great beat, peer into The Well.

Gerunding

2009-06-16T14:50:00.009-06:00

Hearing it here first: I believe we're about to enter the Age of the Gerund.

Depending how you were raised, a gerund is a) stupid, b) the amazing hybrid part of speech that blends the best features of the noun and the verb, or c) a small furry mammal often mistaken for a hamster. It's this flexibility that leads me to predict we will all soon be gerunding.

Imagine a single word that signifies both a thing and an action. The cost savings alone are staggering! What a powerful tagline any of the following would make:

Being
Hearing
Eating
Tasting
Feeling
Loving
Playing
Thinking
Going
Coming (this one could get a little sticky...)

See? I mean -- Seeing?

Nike and the lamented Kinko's got us halfway to the Age of the Gerund by giving prominent play to verbs. The next step:

Officing
Doing

English has already turned lots of nouns into verbs for us so adding "ing" won't cause a lot of fuss in many cases (shipping, batting, phoning, scouting, planning, penning, etc. etc.). But, taking a cue from Kinko's "to office," I think we're going to see brands concoct new verbs out of nouns, only to turn them into nouns again:

Computering
Devicing
Televisioning
Couturing
Leathering
Improvementing
Timepiecing

Grab your gerunds, folks, before someone else does.

Just say no to druggists

2009-06-13T14:23:00.007-06:00

As someone who believes patronizing local businesses is the most virtuous form of economic development, it grieved me to find a note taped to the door of Urban Harvest, formerly the locally owned coffee shop at the Lowry Town Center in Denver, saying they'd closed due to rising food costs and general economic suckiness (my word). An Einstein's Bagels is taking its place.

My grief was moderated by the realization that I would now have decent bagels and coffee within walking distance. Try as I did to love Urban Harvest, I found their baked goods uninspired, their coffee expensive, and the atmosphere dull. Thus I forced myself to confront the reality that no business is worth supporting merely because it's small. Anyone who wants my money had better actually be good. And sometimes -- often, it must be admitted -- quality depends upon efficiency, which in turn depends upon size.

I have for about 8 years benefited from this truth when it comes to health care, and I think (hope, anyway) the nation as a whole is starting to clamor for efficiency. Coming from a family of doctors in independent practice, my wife had a visceral if vestigial hatred of Kaiser Permanente, and refused to allow me to sign up with Kaiser when it was presented to me as one of several choices by my first employer in Denver, 10 years ago. Instead we went with a more expensive plan that allowed us to choose our own doctors -- but also allowed those doctors to prescribe any drug on earth with no regard to whether it was on the formulary, sometimes forcing us to make two midnight trips to the pharmacy to treat an ailing child. What was covered and what wasn't, was pure guesswork.

After enough of these disappointments we finally did sign on with Kaiser, and have liked it so much that for a time we actually paid more to keep it (indirectly, through a series of flex-plan choices that summed out to having fewer dollars for other benefits; Kaiser itself was always the cheapest option). To translate the decision to coffee shop terms: we chose Einstein's over Urban Harvest.

"Kaiser horror stories" are legion, and they effectively scared us away from the plan for a time. They almost always involve somebody who died (or worse!) because Kaiser denied them some experimental treatment. That the person probably would have died (or worse!) anyway never, of course, figures into these cautionary tales. Plans built on the independent contractor model pay doctors more for doing more procedures, while a genuine health maintenance organization -- the way the HMO was originally conceived of in the 1970s -- conserves resources by sharing information and overtly discouraging over-use. How odd that the communal model is, at heart, the more conservative.

It seems that the health care debate is shifting from private-versus-public to integrated-versus... well, disintegrated. Kaiser is a private plan, yet it functions much the same way as the public plan I used when I lived in famously healthy Japan. I can't let nostalgia for small businesses stop me from recognizing the savings generated when I can take care of an exam, a lab test and a prescription (heck, even new glasses if I plan ahead) on a single visit, in a single building, with my electronic chart preceding me to each stop.

For years the guy at our local pharmacy called my mother "Mrs. H." and for years she resented it. How fortunate it now seems to have been able to buy baby aspirin from a merchant who bothered to learn and remember a customer's name, even if only one-sixth of it. Perhaps nobody at Kaiser will ever honor me with over-familiarity by calling me "Mr. H," and for this loss, like the loss of Urban Harvest, we may suffer a pang of regret. But Kaiser's efficiency is keeping me healthy, and the entire country deserves to know the same sense of security.

Sorry about destroying the American newspaper industry

2009-06-12T05:02:00.008-06:00

Now that Warren Buffett has said it, it must be true: American newspapers are dead, at least as a money-making proposition. If anybody’s wondering about the killer — you got me.

In the early 90s I was part of a small band of editors working at Prodigy, then the world’s largest consumer online service with a whopping one million members. Imagine that: Nearly one-half of one percent of Americans could get news, stock quotes and even lumpy, stick-figure-like illustrations from the comfort of home. The service was available a solid 18, sometimes even 20 hours a day, for a reasonable monthly fee, and all you needed to get started was a few K for a computer, a dial-up modem capable of transmitting several words a second, and the willingness to go without phone service.

We were a motley gang: Emmy-winning TV producers, experienced magazine editors, young freelancers like me unable to land reporting jobs — for even then the traditional media were doing a fine job destroying themselves. We refugees shared none of our bosses’ evangelic zeal for what were coming to be known as new media. We’d have been perfectly happy if the fad had passed, and newspapers, magazines and TV stations started hiring again.

One of our jobs was helping newspapers “repurpose” their “content” for reading on a computer screen. Editors from the LA Times, Newsday, the Baltimore Sun and more trouped through our little newsroom in White Plains, N.Y., puzzled and awed that home users could access literally five or six articles in a matter of minutes. Pretty soon we had dozens of newspapers online. I was present at the revolution, and I’m here to tell you, it was executed by a handful of people, all of whom had a vague sense of destiny but a willful inability to think through the consequences of their actions.

One day an executive went to a conference and came back screaming about something called the Web. Nobody else in the building had seen this Web, and for a few months we tried ignoring it: what do you mean, content would be free? That doesn’t make any sense! With Prodigy’s closed-network model — also in use at our small upstart rival, America Online — at least there was subscription revenue to be shared.

But the rock, having been pushed from its ledge, couldn’t stop rolling downhill. The newspapers that went online just kept going.

The results were perfectly predictable, yet nobody wanted to predict them. Being a lowly journalist I always assumed that the suits upstairs knew how to run a business. Boy, was I was wrong. It turns out, just like Mr. Buffett tries to tell people, the fundamentals of business are simple. You cannot give stuff away for less than it cost to make it.

Did I mean to kill the American newspaper? Honest, officer — I had my finger on the mouse and it just went off. I didn’t want anyone to get hurt. But like everybody who loves words, I sure am sorry.

What IS in my wallet?

2009-06-11T04:52:00.005-06:00

After swearing vertically, horizontally and laterally that I would never apply for a Capital One card in revolt against the Amazonian volume of direct mail they were sending me during the credit boom, I finally got one because they were the only card issuer I could find that didn't charge a foreign transaction fee. This feature alone was enough to win my loyalty, for now that travelers' cheques have vanished from the face of the earth, cards are the only way to safely carry a significant amount of value while traveling (or even when doing any intercontinental cyber-shopping). Though I have recognized the futility of forming attachments to objects since reading Siddhartha 25 years ago, I quickly found myself falling in like with this card and using it whenever I could, even when I had enough cash for the purchase.

Aside from nifty accounting features that a solid back office operation makes possible -- like choosing how frequently to receive your cash-back bonuses -- the cleverest aspect of my new card is the ability to upload my own photo. We happened to have just had a delightful holiday card photo taken, so I uploaded that. Now my card elicits delighted coos from clerks all over Denver (though they still sometimes ask to see ID). When I take it on upcoming trips to Quebec and Argentina, I'm sure clerks there will coo in their native Romance tongues.

The emotional reaction the card has provoked in me and others got me thinking about the co-branding experiment Capital One has launched. That credit cards are brands at all is something of a miracle in its own right, for Visa and MasterCard aren't products at all; they're payment transfer mechanisms. Can you imagine anything less marketable? Yet it's common to speak of having "a Visa card" or "a MasterCard" (or, more correctly I suppose, "a MasterCard card") rather than "a credit card issued by Such and Such Bank whose transactions are facilitated by the MasterCard payment transfer protocol." That's branding.

Then comes CapitalOne going to great effort to put more air between itself and the brand by allowing me to insert my image into the equation. If Volkswagen allowed customers to customize cars with, say, square roofs, would they still be Beetles? When we're told that consistency is the key to brand equity, offering inconsistency as a product feature defies logic.

So is it a Capital One card? A MasterCard card? Or my card? Can one thing really be, by the business relationships and personal desires it evokes, three things? The question is more apt than I at first realized: What IS in my wallet?