Stephen Covey died this past week. If you haven't heard of him you've surely heard of his '7 Habits' book. I own a copy of this book, many people do because it's sold millions, but I'd never read it, not really. Scanned it, never absorbed it. But after he died I pulled it from my shelf and... well... scanned it again. I'm just not a self-help kind of guy, it all seems too facile to really be applicable. I did, however, realize that most of the terrible people in the world violate one or more of his 7 Habits.
So I decided to write my own version.
These are Stephen Covey's 7 Habits of Highly Effective People re-written with the douchebag in mind. With the career politician in mind. With the overprivileged American aristocrat in mind. With the aspirational CEO in mind. You get the idea. Assholes.
7 Habits of Terribly Awful People
1. Be reactive
Don't think anything through, just say the first thing that comes to mind. Especially if it's demonstrably wrong, or prejudiced, or misogynist, or evil. And whatever you do, don't ever, ever admit you were wrong. You could never be wrong. You're perfect.
2. Have no goal other than to preserve your own position.
Why work towards a greater goal than your own bank account? Thinking in a larger context is just stupid. Besides, thinking is hard, and cuts down on the time you could spend being reactionary.
3. Avoid the difficult stuff.
Do all the easy work first. Even better, make other people do the easy work, and then hold them at fault when the hard stuff never happens.
4. Think win/ lose.
Every situation is zero-sum. That's a fancy college term for 'for me to win you must lose.' Compromise is for suckers. It's also hard to spell, and you never want to do anything that's hard to spell.
5. You don't need to understand anyone else.
Compassion is for suckers. It's hard to spell too, I mean, are there three s's or only two? When you try to understand someone else's view then you're on the short track to violating Habit 2 and possibly Habit 1. You don't ever want to re-evaluate your position, because to do so would be to admit that you were wrong. And you're never wrong. You're perfect.
6. Divide.
Don't bring people together to accomplish a common goal, because if you do you'll never get the credit for anything that comes out of it. You're the one in charge, so you have to keep Habit 4 in mind always. When people work together they get a sense that they might not need you around. That, in fact, your presence might be a hindrance to progress. However true that might be, you can't ever allow others to realize it.
7. Dull your tools.
Don't take care of your body, your mind, your soul, or your relationships. It's all about you, after all. You can do everything alone. You have to, otherwise someone else is going to get credit, and you can't have that.
Saturday, July 21, 2012
Sunday, July 15, 2012
The Most Dangerous Game
I had a conversation with a friend recently about the information various companies and government entities have about our activities, and whether that's a good or bad thing. We weren't even talking about sales data or behavioral data or medical data, which are all tracked closely and often, we were talking about our cell phones.
If you don't already know about your phone's GPS capabilities you should, but even if you have one of those bare-bones pay-by-minute phones, the phone companies - and by extension law enforcement agencies - can track your position simply by triangulating your phone's ID by cell towers. It's not even particularly complicated math, it's how TV traffic reporters know how fast traffic is moving in the morning. If your phone is on, it's a beacon.
My friend was not bothered by this invasion of privacy. As we discussed it, his position boiled down to three points:
1. Scientists track animals all the time and that's okay, why not track people for the same reasons?
2. Nothing is secret or private anyway, so what's the big deal?
3. He doesn't do anything wrong, so if I object to being tracked I must be the bad guy.
I must admit I was astonished. There's just so much wrong with taking these kinds of positions. Let's examine them one by one.
1. People are not animals, and vice versa, no matter what PETA says. Tracking animals is useful precisely because people are screwing up their nesting habits and migrations and their feeding grounds; tracking animals helps people fix what they've screwed up for the animals. When animals are tracked it's science, when people are tracked it's surveillance. You wouldn't want some middle-aged, wheezing IT guy following you on the street in a panel van, why would you think it's okay when that same middle-aged, wheezing IT guy works for the FBI and sits in an office all day following you by your cell phone records?
2. This question gets to the heart of the data ownership debate. Who owns the record of your coming and going? You do. And that information is yours to do with as you please, not someone else's to take without asking. Saying that no one has an expectation of privacy is not only dead fucking wrong, it automatically gives ownership of your personal data to someone or something else. It's no one's business what time I walk down the street to check my mail. But if I carry my cell phone along the way my location is logged. The only reason the phone company needs to know the location of my phone is so they can provide me a service I've paid for, they're not entitled to use that data for any other reason, because it's MY DATA. The record is not about the phone company equipment, it's about where I am at a certain point in time. It's about me.
This is so important I'm going to repeat it: you own your data. You own your name, your SSN, your address, your age, your bank account information, your marital status, even your hair color or the fact that you've got a scar over your left eye. You also own any positional data collected by the phone company, because it's information about you, not information about the phone company.
3. This is the age-old argument along the lines of: if you don't have anything to hide from the cops, then why won't you let them search your car? To which I answer: because the cops don't get to do whatever they want just because they're cops. Same with the FBI or CIA or anyone else who wants to look at your phone records, including GPS data. Law enforcement agencies can request access to your personal information - everything I listed above - but they have to have a very good reason to do so. That's why courts issue warrants, as a check on the authority of law enforcement. Claiming to be okay with violations of civil rights simply because you yourself 'don't do anything wrong' is abdicating your responsibilities as a citizen. You're part of the same system I am, like it or not, and if you don't exercise your rights to hold the system accountable you're dismantling the check-and-balance structure brick by metaphorical brick.
Also, nut up and be a man, you great-big pansy. Tell the cops no. Tell The Man no. Stand up and be counted for once, stick to your principles, don't fold like a cheap hotel sheet when someone flashes a badge.
People will tell you that technology is moving too fast, that there are all sorts of questions about what is allowable and what is not, because we now carry computers in our pockets instead of resting them on office desks. But those people are full of crap.
There are guiding principles to all behavior, and those principles don't change just because you've got a new gadget. Just remember what those simple principles are - e.g. you own any data about you - and you can answer any questions very easily.
If you don't already know about your phone's GPS capabilities you should, but even if you have one of those bare-bones pay-by-minute phones, the phone companies - and by extension law enforcement agencies - can track your position simply by triangulating your phone's ID by cell towers. It's not even particularly complicated math, it's how TV traffic reporters know how fast traffic is moving in the morning. If your phone is on, it's a beacon.
My friend was not bothered by this invasion of privacy. As we discussed it, his position boiled down to three points:
1. Scientists track animals all the time and that's okay, why not track people for the same reasons?
2. Nothing is secret or private anyway, so what's the big deal?
3. He doesn't do anything wrong, so if I object to being tracked I must be the bad guy.
I must admit I was astonished. There's just so much wrong with taking these kinds of positions. Let's examine them one by one.
1. People are not animals, and vice versa, no matter what PETA says. Tracking animals is useful precisely because people are screwing up their nesting habits and migrations and their feeding grounds; tracking animals helps people fix what they've screwed up for the animals. When animals are tracked it's science, when people are tracked it's surveillance. You wouldn't want some middle-aged, wheezing IT guy following you on the street in a panel van, why would you think it's okay when that same middle-aged, wheezing IT guy works for the FBI and sits in an office all day following you by your cell phone records?
2. This question gets to the heart of the data ownership debate. Who owns the record of your coming and going? You do. And that information is yours to do with as you please, not someone else's to take without asking. Saying that no one has an expectation of privacy is not only dead fucking wrong, it automatically gives ownership of your personal data to someone or something else. It's no one's business what time I walk down the street to check my mail. But if I carry my cell phone along the way my location is logged. The only reason the phone company needs to know the location of my phone is so they can provide me a service I've paid for, they're not entitled to use that data for any other reason, because it's MY DATA. The record is not about the phone company equipment, it's about where I am at a certain point in time. It's about me.
This is so important I'm going to repeat it: you own your data. You own your name, your SSN, your address, your age, your bank account information, your marital status, even your hair color or the fact that you've got a scar over your left eye. You also own any positional data collected by the phone company, because it's information about you, not information about the phone company.
3. This is the age-old argument along the lines of: if you don't have anything to hide from the cops, then why won't you let them search your car? To which I answer: because the cops don't get to do whatever they want just because they're cops. Same with the FBI or CIA or anyone else who wants to look at your phone records, including GPS data. Law enforcement agencies can request access to your personal information - everything I listed above - but they have to have a very good reason to do so. That's why courts issue warrants, as a check on the authority of law enforcement. Claiming to be okay with violations of civil rights simply because you yourself 'don't do anything wrong' is abdicating your responsibilities as a citizen. You're part of the same system I am, like it or not, and if you don't exercise your rights to hold the system accountable you're dismantling the check-and-balance structure brick by metaphorical brick.
Also, nut up and be a man, you great-big pansy. Tell the cops no. Tell The Man no. Stand up and be counted for once, stick to your principles, don't fold like a cheap hotel sheet when someone flashes a badge.
People will tell you that technology is moving too fast, that there are all sorts of questions about what is allowable and what is not, because we now carry computers in our pockets instead of resting them on office desks. But those people are full of crap.
There are guiding principles to all behavior, and those principles don't change just because you've got a new gadget. Just remember what those simple principles are - e.g. you own any data about you - and you can answer any questions very easily.
Thursday, July 12, 2012
Connected
Did you know that my first semester in college, my roommate and I did not have a telephone?
Unless you were me or Bob, or our parents, you probably did not know that. But it’s true. For 16 weeks we lived in a… rustic* apartment at 30th and Guadalupe in Austin, TX, blocks from the University, and our telephone was the pay phone across the street by the front door of the co-op. Seriously. We were not connected in any way, and the Internet as we know it now was then a decade from springing full-formed from Al Gore’s skull. Bob and I were both eighteen, college freshmen, with less money than the Dragworms** we chatted with on the way home from school, and we managed to make it more or less successfully for four months without a telephone.
Imagine that now.
You can’t, can you? I almost can’t, and I lived it. Right now I’m sitting at my desk, my computer connected to the Internet, with my smart phone about a foot from my hand. I am ready, at a moment’s notice, to be interrupted by anyone else’s whim. You want to text me? Do it. You want to send me an e-mail on any one of the seven or so accounts that I monitor regularly? Make my day. IM? I’m waiting for the flashing light to distract me from what I could be accomplishing. There’s even a desk phone a foot in the other direction, so people from work can call me looking for the person who had that number last.
Connected? I’m the spider at the center of the web, baby. Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Dropbox, Blogspot, Hotmail… I got it all. Except Pinterest, because I’m not a chick. If news breaks, I’m on it. If there’s a celebrity nip-slip, I’m right there. Up-to-the-second political theater? I got a front-row seat.
But what does all that effort get me?
Sure, I’m connected, but to what? I read two news sites several times a day, and I notice that more often than not the top stories are exactly the same. They’re wire feeds, from real journalists at the AP and Reuters. Two large web sites, providing this service to me for free, don’t even create the content they pipe to my brain. Yes, my family can text me and I can text right back, but is that any better than a phone call? Or a visit in-person? I read what my former colleagues in LA have said they like to have for dinner, but I don’t know my neighbor’s name. And while I appreciate being able to stay connected with friends all across the globe, when have Facebook and Twitter been anything but an excuse to avoid doing something you’d rather not do?
I think back to that time when I was a brand-new freshman at a great-big University. I was a blank slate. I didn’t know what to expect, I didn’t know what was expected of me. I talked to my family infrequently, on a pay phone 75 yards from my front door and across a major thoroughfare. I was forced to rely on myself, to decide what was important to me and to make it happen because there was no one else around to look after me but me. I made new friends, I figured out how to succeed at school, and I encountered Austin’s seamy underbelly and emerged unscathed. I did a lot of living those 16 weeks and lot of growing up. All without obsessively consulting other people about it, without a device tethering me to the firehose of largely-pointless information that makes up the Net today. I had to internalize the experience, I had to mull it over, make my own sense of it and incorporate it in my life. I had to think about stuff instead of blindly reacting to it.
I should start doing that again. You probably should too.
* the polite term for ‘roach infested moldy cracker box with a backed-up toilet that used to be the HQ for the local pot dealer.’ But all that’s another story.
** homeless mental patients released from the State Hospital about 12 blocks North of the University and pushed out the gates with a change of clothes, a pair of shoes, fifteen dollars and a hearty handshake. Really.
Unless you were me or Bob, or our parents, you probably did not know that. But it’s true. For 16 weeks we lived in a… rustic* apartment at 30th and Guadalupe in Austin, TX, blocks from the University, and our telephone was the pay phone across the street by the front door of the co-op. Seriously. We were not connected in any way, and the Internet as we know it now was then a decade from springing full-formed from Al Gore’s skull. Bob and I were both eighteen, college freshmen, with less money than the Dragworms** we chatted with on the way home from school, and we managed to make it more or less successfully for four months without a telephone.
Imagine that now.
You can’t, can you? I almost can’t, and I lived it. Right now I’m sitting at my desk, my computer connected to the Internet, with my smart phone about a foot from my hand. I am ready, at a moment’s notice, to be interrupted by anyone else’s whim. You want to text me? Do it. You want to send me an e-mail on any one of the seven or so accounts that I monitor regularly? Make my day. IM? I’m waiting for the flashing light to distract me from what I could be accomplishing. There’s even a desk phone a foot in the other direction, so people from work can call me looking for the person who had that number last.
Connected? I’m the spider at the center of the web, baby. Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Dropbox, Blogspot, Hotmail… I got it all. Except Pinterest, because I’m not a chick. If news breaks, I’m on it. If there’s a celebrity nip-slip, I’m right there. Up-to-the-second political theater? I got a front-row seat.
But what does all that effort get me?
Sure, I’m connected, but to what? I read two news sites several times a day, and I notice that more often than not the top stories are exactly the same. They’re wire feeds, from real journalists at the AP and Reuters. Two large web sites, providing this service to me for free, don’t even create the content they pipe to my brain. Yes, my family can text me and I can text right back, but is that any better than a phone call? Or a visit in-person? I read what my former colleagues in LA have said they like to have for dinner, but I don’t know my neighbor’s name. And while I appreciate being able to stay connected with friends all across the globe, when have Facebook and Twitter been anything but an excuse to avoid doing something you’d rather not do?
I think back to that time when I was a brand-new freshman at a great-big University. I was a blank slate. I didn’t know what to expect, I didn’t know what was expected of me. I talked to my family infrequently, on a pay phone 75 yards from my front door and across a major thoroughfare. I was forced to rely on myself, to decide what was important to me and to make it happen because there was no one else around to look after me but me. I made new friends, I figured out how to succeed at school, and I encountered Austin’s seamy underbelly and emerged unscathed. I did a lot of living those 16 weeks and lot of growing up. All without obsessively consulting other people about it, without a device tethering me to the firehose of largely-pointless information that makes up the Net today. I had to internalize the experience, I had to mull it over, make my own sense of it and incorporate it in my life. I had to think about stuff instead of blindly reacting to it.
I should start doing that again. You probably should too.
* the polite term for ‘roach infested moldy cracker box with a backed-up toilet that used to be the HQ for the local pot dealer.’ But all that’s another story.
** homeless mental patients released from the State Hospital about 12 blocks North of the University and pushed out the gates with a change of clothes, a pair of shoes, fifteen dollars and a hearty handshake. Really.
Sunday, July 8, 2012
In Or Out
I grew up in Texas, and summers are hot here. Hotter recently than I remember they used to be, but that's for Al Gore and climate change deniers to argue out. When I was young I would stand in the doorway, cool air from the inside hitting my back and hot air from the outside washing over my front. And my mother would say 'in or out, make up your mind.'
I'm sure my experience is practically universal. In or out, but not stuck in between. You can say that about a lot of things, crossing the threshold is more than a motor skill it's a metaphor. Going from being a child to being an adult,* or from being single to being married, or from a non-parent to a parent. Thing is, this metaphor doesn't just apply to people, it applies to societies too.
I was doing some research for a new novel, one where the idea of boundary space and thresholds plays a very large role, and I came across some research by anthropologists regarding exactly that topic as it relates to cultures. It's called liminality, from the Latin word for boundary or threshold or space in between spaces. It's fascinating, if decades old research, about how societies shocked by crisis - usually wars - are forced to move beyond what they were before and become something new. They cross the threshold and give up what they had been in favor of what they could be.** These researchers were writing in the 60's and were fervently anti-Communist, and their argument was that for the Soviet Union the Second World War never ended, their society was stuck in permanent liminality. After 1945 the Communist leadership kept their people in a state of perpetual crisis and held their entire society in the doorway - neither in nor out, not the old Tsarist regime or a new non-Communist state - to the detriment of every citizen.
Now, a moment of reflection will let anyone realize that the exact same thing can be said of the United States, that the Second World War never really ended, the battlefield just changed. The Cold War was just a decades-long perpetuation of the circumstances of the Second World War. We were neither in nor out ourselves, we'd never really fixed the economic or social problems brought about by the Depression, we just spent our way into consumerism designed to distract us from the underlying decay.
And when the Cold War ended in 1989, what happened? Almost immediately a new war, Desert Storm, 1991. And new fake prosperity with the Dot Com bubble. And when that bubble burst, as they all eventually must, what happened? Yup... another war. Another two wars, actually. And another bubble, this time with real estate, all three at the same time.
American society in the 20th Century has been in a constant state of crisis, the societal equivalent of the teen acne years, neither the old, pre-technical boom-and-bust society of the late 19th Century nor a society or economy much farther along than we were in 1938. Neither in nor out, but standing paralyzed in between.
This, I think, is the new challenge. We need to step through the doorway, we need to cross the threshold. We absolutely cannot step backwards, that's what Russia and the old Soviet states are doing right now and it's not working at all. If we don't move forward we'll keep fighting the same old fights and running the same old repetitive treadmill as we have the past 60 years. I don't know about you, but I'm tired of things the way they are, it's not really working for anybody, even for those who seemingly benefit the most. We need to get to the next thing. Soon.
* or being tried as one, anyway
** kind of the the Hegelian dialectic model, but 150 years more modern
I'm sure my experience is practically universal. In or out, but not stuck in between. You can say that about a lot of things, crossing the threshold is more than a motor skill it's a metaphor. Going from being a child to being an adult,* or from being single to being married, or from a non-parent to a parent. Thing is, this metaphor doesn't just apply to people, it applies to societies too.
I was doing some research for a new novel, one where the idea of boundary space and thresholds plays a very large role, and I came across some research by anthropologists regarding exactly that topic as it relates to cultures. It's called liminality, from the Latin word for boundary or threshold or space in between spaces. It's fascinating, if decades old research, about how societies shocked by crisis - usually wars - are forced to move beyond what they were before and become something new. They cross the threshold and give up what they had been in favor of what they could be.** These researchers were writing in the 60's and were fervently anti-Communist, and their argument was that for the Soviet Union the Second World War never ended, their society was stuck in permanent liminality. After 1945 the Communist leadership kept their people in a state of perpetual crisis and held their entire society in the doorway - neither in nor out, not the old Tsarist regime or a new non-Communist state - to the detriment of every citizen.
Now, a moment of reflection will let anyone realize that the exact same thing can be said of the United States, that the Second World War never really ended, the battlefield just changed. The Cold War was just a decades-long perpetuation of the circumstances of the Second World War. We were neither in nor out ourselves, we'd never really fixed the economic or social problems brought about by the Depression, we just spent our way into consumerism designed to distract us from the underlying decay.
And when the Cold War ended in 1989, what happened? Almost immediately a new war, Desert Storm, 1991. And new fake prosperity with the Dot Com bubble. And when that bubble burst, as they all eventually must, what happened? Yup... another war. Another two wars, actually. And another bubble, this time with real estate, all three at the same time.
American society in the 20th Century has been in a constant state of crisis, the societal equivalent of the teen acne years, neither the old, pre-technical boom-and-bust society of the late 19th Century nor a society or economy much farther along than we were in 1938. Neither in nor out, but standing paralyzed in between.
This, I think, is the new challenge. We need to step through the doorway, we need to cross the threshold. We absolutely cannot step backwards, that's what Russia and the old Soviet states are doing right now and it's not working at all. If we don't move forward we'll keep fighting the same old fights and running the same old repetitive treadmill as we have the past 60 years. I don't know about you, but I'm tired of things the way they are, it's not really working for anybody, even for those who seemingly benefit the most. We need to get to the next thing. Soon.
* or being tried as one, anyway
** kind of the the Hegelian dialectic model, but 150 years more modern
Thursday, June 28, 2012
Legacy
I actually feel sorry for George Bush. I know, he stole the election in 2000, got away with it again in 2004, started two wars based on lies, allowed the financial inmates to run the asylum and generally neglected everything a real President should pay attention to. Make no mistake, we can’t forgive him for that, and we can’t ever forget or it’ll happen again.
But, seriously, didn’t you feel just the slightest bit sorry for him during the last three months of 2008?
I did. As the economy grew worse, and as the truth about just how bad off we had it became clear, you could see his transformation. He went from a smirking, proud, vain peacock to a troubled man carrying the weight of the world on his shoulders. No more smiles, no more aggressively ignorant ramblings. And this was in the prime of his lame duck period, when he should have been strutting like Tony Manero at the beginning of Saturday Night Fever.
But he wasn’t strutting. Because he knew that the debacle the American economy had become would be his legacy, he knew he’d be remembered for the impotence and mismanagement of the last six months of his office, not for the self-aggrandizement and hubris of the prior seven years. He’d tried so hard to make a name for himself, to cement his place in history as a do-er – as a decider – but it just wasn’t meant to be. George Bush’s legacy is to be remembered as the most corrupt, most incompetent President ever, a man who squandered the economic and military might of the United States. He stood revealed as what he was, the frat-boy President, unequal to the task of governing and unable to do anything but watch as his crony appointees rode the economy down the toilet like the stinking turd it was. You could see it in his face that October, November, and December, the realization that he’d been revealed as the fraud everyone suspected he was, an emperor with no clothes, a credulous marionette to corrupt puppet masters.
As much as I despised his policies and everything his administration stood for, no man should have to endure that kind of soul-wrenching realization in full view of the entire world. Of course, no man had failed so spectacularly or in such a public fashion either. But still…
It makes me wonder what my legacy will be. Right now I’m pretty sure there isn’t one, except for all these ramblings on this blog, which, I’ll admit, does not have a wide readership.* What is any man’s legacy, really? How long past his death will the average person be remembered? Ten years? Thirty? Who do we remember from the past? Why do we remember them?
Or are those perhaps the wrong questions? Being remembered by your descendants is kind of the first form of reality TV, after all. We only remember the bad ones. Wouldn’t it be better to create something good, something that makes the lives of others just the smallest measure more bearable? Shouldn’t your legacy be a contribution to society, whether your name is ever attached to it or not?
I don't know... maybe I'll build Stonehenge in the backyard, or maybe I'll write an epic poem that will be passed down for thousands of years. Maybe I'll try to make my corner of the world a little bit better, and not worry about anything else. We'll see.
* Except in Russia, oddly enough. Привет, друзья!
But, seriously, didn’t you feel just the slightest bit sorry for him during the last three months of 2008?
I did. As the economy grew worse, and as the truth about just how bad off we had it became clear, you could see his transformation. He went from a smirking, proud, vain peacock to a troubled man carrying the weight of the world on his shoulders. No more smiles, no more aggressively ignorant ramblings. And this was in the prime of his lame duck period, when he should have been strutting like Tony Manero at the beginning of Saturday Night Fever.
But he wasn’t strutting. Because he knew that the debacle the American economy had become would be his legacy, he knew he’d be remembered for the impotence and mismanagement of the last six months of his office, not for the self-aggrandizement and hubris of the prior seven years. He’d tried so hard to make a name for himself, to cement his place in history as a do-er – as a decider – but it just wasn’t meant to be. George Bush’s legacy is to be remembered as the most corrupt, most incompetent President ever, a man who squandered the economic and military might of the United States. He stood revealed as what he was, the frat-boy President, unequal to the task of governing and unable to do anything but watch as his crony appointees rode the economy down the toilet like the stinking turd it was. You could see it in his face that October, November, and December, the realization that he’d been revealed as the fraud everyone suspected he was, an emperor with no clothes, a credulous marionette to corrupt puppet masters.
As much as I despised his policies and everything his administration stood for, no man should have to endure that kind of soul-wrenching realization in full view of the entire world. Of course, no man had failed so spectacularly or in such a public fashion either. But still…
It makes me wonder what my legacy will be. Right now I’m pretty sure there isn’t one, except for all these ramblings on this blog, which, I’ll admit, does not have a wide readership.* What is any man’s legacy, really? How long past his death will the average person be remembered? Ten years? Thirty? Who do we remember from the past? Why do we remember them?
Or are those perhaps the wrong questions? Being remembered by your descendants is kind of the first form of reality TV, after all. We only remember the bad ones. Wouldn’t it be better to create something good, something that makes the lives of others just the smallest measure more bearable? Shouldn’t your legacy be a contribution to society, whether your name is ever attached to it or not?
I don't know... maybe I'll build Stonehenge in the backyard, or maybe I'll write an epic poem that will be passed down for thousands of years. Maybe I'll try to make my corner of the world a little bit better, and not worry about anything else. We'll see.
* Except in Russia, oddly enough. Привет, друзья!
Saturday, June 23, 2012
So Long, Puddin'
It's been eight years. I couldn't throw you out, but I also couldn't keep you in my house where I would see you and remember. So I put you into a box and took that box to my storage unit. Out of sight means out of mind, I hope. Sorry, but it's long past time to move on.
Good-bye.
Good-bye.
Sunday, June 10, 2012
Come On, Weirdos...
While cleaning my house and trying to stem the tide of a spider invasion, I had the TV on. NASCAR at first, but that doesn't last forever, so I tuned to the History channel. Which is, increasingly, less about history and more about the same dreck that drags down all the other crap cable channels.
Today the topic was 'ancient astronauts.' Not much history there, but tons and tons of uninformed speculation. It's one of those shows that assumes its own premise - that aliens did visit ancient cultures - and then spins every sentence to try to support that. For the pure science parts they have real scientists,* and these guys do not speculate. They just say, for instance, that the Maya lived in what is now Mexico. Fact. Provable. For the other stuff, the wacky 'ancient astronauts' stuff, the producers get other guys, you know the kind, crazy eyebrows, insanely-coiffed hair, oddly-accented English that you just can't pin to a real country, enthusiastic assertions of pure hokum.
Weirdos.
The kind of people who, if they weren't on TV, would be ranting on a street corner or begging for today's dose of lithium at the psychiatric hospital. They look tetched, like they might start babbling incoherently at any moment. The mad-scientist hair and wriggling eyebrows and wide-eyed, fanatical earnestness do nothing to help their cause. At least not with me.
You ever hold a conversation with a crazy person? I have. Many times. I may have told you of my experience with homeless people of all stripes, most of whom were a few nuts short of a fruitcake. There's a distance between you and crazy people, an emotional distance, even if you're standing side-by-side. You get the feeling they're not really seeing you, maybe they're seeing a talking dog or a shopping bag caught in an updraft, or a burning bush. You get the idea.
These UFO weirdos are the same way. They can't not be, because what they're asserting is crazy. They're starting out at a deficit. So why, why why why why why why why do they all insist on presenting an appearance that is so off-putting? I know if I were trying to convince someone that, say, an alien from another galaxy hid ghosts of dead aliens in Earth's volcanoes, I'd want to present as friendly and well-groomed a front as possible. Maybe I'd recruit A-list actors to my scam. But for sure I'd cut any wiry eyebrows I might have. I'd shampoo my hair. Repeatedly. I'd wash my face. I'd practice not squinting, or not screaming, or not giggling like a serial killer, or whatever tic I had that made regular people call the cops. And I'd learn how to present my batshit crazy ideas as if they were as well-reasoned and widely-accepted as trickle-down economics.
Come on, weirdos, if you're going to be on TV you might as well learn how to play the game properly.
* The scientists have initials behind their names like PhD or MD. The Weirdos just have labels like 'UFO Researcher' or 'Speculative Anthropologist.'
Today the topic was 'ancient astronauts.' Not much history there, but tons and tons of uninformed speculation. It's one of those shows that assumes its own premise - that aliens did visit ancient cultures - and then spins every sentence to try to support that. For the pure science parts they have real scientists,* and these guys do not speculate. They just say, for instance, that the Maya lived in what is now Mexico. Fact. Provable. For the other stuff, the wacky 'ancient astronauts' stuff, the producers get other guys, you know the kind, crazy eyebrows, insanely-coiffed hair, oddly-accented English that you just can't pin to a real country, enthusiastic assertions of pure hokum.
Weirdos.
The kind of people who, if they weren't on TV, would be ranting on a street corner or begging for today's dose of lithium at the psychiatric hospital. They look tetched, like they might start babbling incoherently at any moment. The mad-scientist hair and wriggling eyebrows and wide-eyed, fanatical earnestness do nothing to help their cause. At least not with me.
You ever hold a conversation with a crazy person? I have. Many times. I may have told you of my experience with homeless people of all stripes, most of whom were a few nuts short of a fruitcake. There's a distance between you and crazy people, an emotional distance, even if you're standing side-by-side. You get the feeling they're not really seeing you, maybe they're seeing a talking dog or a shopping bag caught in an updraft, or a burning bush. You get the idea.
These UFO weirdos are the same way. They can't not be, because what they're asserting is crazy. They're starting out at a deficit. So why, why why why why why why why do they all insist on presenting an appearance that is so off-putting? I know if I were trying to convince someone that, say, an alien from another galaxy hid ghosts of dead aliens in Earth's volcanoes, I'd want to present as friendly and well-groomed a front as possible. Maybe I'd recruit A-list actors to my scam. But for sure I'd cut any wiry eyebrows I might have. I'd shampoo my hair. Repeatedly. I'd wash my face. I'd practice not squinting, or not screaming, or not giggling like a serial killer, or whatever tic I had that made regular people call the cops. And I'd learn how to present my batshit crazy ideas as if they were as well-reasoned and widely-accepted as trickle-down economics.
Come on, weirdos, if you're going to be on TV you might as well learn how to play the game properly.
* The scientists have initials behind their names like PhD or MD. The Weirdos just have labels like 'UFO Researcher' or 'Speculative Anthropologist.'
Wednesday, June 6, 2012
How 'Bout A Job That Doesn't Suck?
I was in the corporate world for almost exactly ten years. Ten very long years. Very, very, very long years. And one thing struck me almost immediately when I took that first gig with a large insurance company.
Most of the jobs were pointless.
There were a few people who did real work: programmers, underwriters, phone service people, janitors, cooks (they had five cafeterias in the building), actuaries and... that's about it. Then there were an army of other people, project managers, supervisors, quality assurance people, and other mid-management types whose function I never really knew and whose performance I couldn't begin to measure because I don't know what they did during a day, let alone what they were supposed to do. I'd say it was an easy 1:1 ratio of people who actually did something during a day to people whose job it was to watch other people do something during a day. I suspect the ratio was really more like 1:2 real workers to parasites once you count in the execs and serious fuck-ups who inexplicably never lost their jobs. And this was in a business that didn't really produce any tangible product; insurance companies reside firmly in the 'financial services' sector, and we all know what a crock of crap that is.
No wonder that was such a miserable place, people were doing jobs with no purpose. I know it's a little much to ask that all people follow their passion - we can't have everyone on the planet trying to be a reality TV star - but I don't think it's too much to ask that when a company hires someone to do a job they make sure that job doesn't suck.
You can only do a job 'for the money' for so long, and admittedly for some people that's a very long time, but working for a paycheck is stultifying. Soul-crushing. And when you're working for a supervisor who's been there longer and has had all vitality drained from him by the mind-numbing tedium of his own job you're forced to carry some of his baggage on your journey. No wonder workplace satisfaction is way down.
So how do you do it? How do you create a job that doesn't suck? In my own experience a not-suck job comes down to three simple things:
1. Set expectations. People do good work when they know what they're supposed to do. Setting solid expectations lets your employees know their limits, and lets them realize their potential. It also makes it very easy to tell when someone isn't doing their jobs and needs a little 'coaching.'
2. Let your employees do their jobs. No micro-managing. You hired them to do a job, let them do it. Chances are good they're going to do it better than you could. People tend to rise or fall according to an employer's expectations. If you think you have a bunch of monkeys in the office, your employees will absolutely prove you right. If you think you have a bunch of professionals, guess what? you will.
3. Don't sweat the small stuff. And it's mostly small stuff. All those pointless jobs I was talking about? Those are positions designed to monitor the small stuff. Was your employee supposed to take a sick day instead of a vacation day? Who gives a flying fuck? It's their time off, let them use it as they want to.
Most of all, people want to do a job that they know matters. One that makes a difference. Why do you think nurses and doctors work in inner city hospitals for a fraction of the pay they could get somewhere nicer? Because they know what they do makes an immediate difference. Same with teachers anywhere, they could get a better-paying job, but for them it's really not about the money.
The dear, departed Ray Bradbury has a great quote: 'If you don't like what you're doing, then don't do it.' Sounds simple, yes? But almost nobody follows that advice. If more people did, then employers might stop creating jobs that suck.
Most of the jobs were pointless.
There were a few people who did real work: programmers, underwriters, phone service people, janitors, cooks (they had five cafeterias in the building), actuaries and... that's about it. Then there were an army of other people, project managers, supervisors, quality assurance people, and other mid-management types whose function I never really knew and whose performance I couldn't begin to measure because I don't know what they did during a day, let alone what they were supposed to do. I'd say it was an easy 1:1 ratio of people who actually did something during a day to people whose job it was to watch other people do something during a day. I suspect the ratio was really more like 1:2 real workers to parasites once you count in the execs and serious fuck-ups who inexplicably never lost their jobs. And this was in a business that didn't really produce any tangible product; insurance companies reside firmly in the 'financial services' sector, and we all know what a crock of crap that is.
No wonder that was such a miserable place, people were doing jobs with no purpose. I know it's a little much to ask that all people follow their passion - we can't have everyone on the planet trying to be a reality TV star - but I don't think it's too much to ask that when a company hires someone to do a job they make sure that job doesn't suck.
You can only do a job 'for the money' for so long, and admittedly for some people that's a very long time, but working for a paycheck is stultifying. Soul-crushing. And when you're working for a supervisor who's been there longer and has had all vitality drained from him by the mind-numbing tedium of his own job you're forced to carry some of his baggage on your journey. No wonder workplace satisfaction is way down.
So how do you do it? How do you create a job that doesn't suck? In my own experience a not-suck job comes down to three simple things:
1. Set expectations. People do good work when they know what they're supposed to do. Setting solid expectations lets your employees know their limits, and lets them realize their potential. It also makes it very easy to tell when someone isn't doing their jobs and needs a little 'coaching.'
2. Let your employees do their jobs. No micro-managing. You hired them to do a job, let them do it. Chances are good they're going to do it better than you could. People tend to rise or fall according to an employer's expectations. If you think you have a bunch of monkeys in the office, your employees will absolutely prove you right. If you think you have a bunch of professionals, guess what? you will.
3. Don't sweat the small stuff. And it's mostly small stuff. All those pointless jobs I was talking about? Those are positions designed to monitor the small stuff. Was your employee supposed to take a sick day instead of a vacation day? Who gives a flying fuck? It's their time off, let them use it as they want to.
Most of all, people want to do a job that they know matters. One that makes a difference. Why do you think nurses and doctors work in inner city hospitals for a fraction of the pay they could get somewhere nicer? Because they know what they do makes an immediate difference. Same with teachers anywhere, they could get a better-paying job, but for them it's really not about the money.
The dear, departed Ray Bradbury has a great quote: 'If you don't like what you're doing, then don't do it.' Sounds simple, yes? But almost nobody follows that advice. If more people did, then employers might stop creating jobs that suck.
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