Toast

How do others do it? The always-positive, overcoming-the-obstacles attitude? I assume they overcome obstacles of course...maybe they just love what they do. Maybe they live in perfect worlds. Where does that come from?

It doesn;t seem to matter in the slightest to me...and yet somehow deep inside, it does. The 'it' being the emptiness. When other people disappoint in proprotion to the disappointment you hold in your self, what's a lad or a lady to do?

What you love, you shouldn't. What you should love, seems unable or unwilling to throw you a line. Even when you are surrounded by your best friends, there's an impatience. A desire for something else, something more perfect. Something new.

But the desire is drained of the energy for action. An architect without paper, a builder without a hammer...or worse, all the tools available, sitting unused. Saved up for the someday that was yesterday.

Mountains unclimbed, trails unpacked...the way they will stay.

If this is step one burn out, then I am toast.

Minimalist

Too much time, broken into fragments...too small to glue together. Too much desire, buried under shards of fragmented time. Too little focus, too late a' coming, I'm afraid. If only. But then. Do what's necessary to get buy. Repeat.

Soft self center

With the Congressional vote to establish a timeline for withdrawal from Iraq, I am struck by the narcissism of it all. The debate, as it is, seems never to focus on US responsibility to the Iraqis.

I hear superficial discussion about winning and losing, about mistakes, about arrogance...but I don't hear much discussion about the Iraqis. When I do hear mention, it is often tinged with the subtle racist/imperialist tones of blame: if only the Iraqis would step up, we'd be able to leave.

Like it or not (and I don;t), the US invaded anothe country and unleashed forces it is now unable to control. To walk away and, as some have said, let the Iraqis solve it seems irresponsible. To assume that diplomacy and negotiation can work without a credible threat of force to back it up s naive.

When the government of Iraq asks for us to leave, we should...immediately. It is the only Iraqi body that reflects anything resembling the Iraqi people's position.

To leave because we wish we had never gone simply demonstrates the soft, self-centered will of the American people.

Dead man watching

I watched a man die. His family, friends, and I have been watching him die for the last 5 years. I went to visit him in the hospital...in a hospice room...on Saturday. I walked into his room and greeted him with a smile, thinking I was there to provide support or comfort or I-don;t-know-what kind of positive presence to honor him or, at least, to not upset him . And what does he do? He offers me an orange!

He was diagnosed with intestinal cancer 5 years ago. It's the same disease that killed his father early. We watched as he fought it, on and off, through two courses of 'cure'. Only to watch as it came back, determined to beat him down. And it seems it has won. Or has it?

I sat next to him in the little chair pushed next to his bed. The morphine made it hard for him to keep his eyes open and slowed his speech into a soft whisper. I asked if he was in pain and he said no...I held his hand and he told me that the disease had won. "I tried to fight this, but it has taken over. I can;t eat anything. All I have is this cold, clear water...so clean and beautiful."

He told me he was so grateful for everyone who had helped them though this. "If it had been you, we'd have helped you out the way you have helped us out" he said. "Remember the little things...the littlest flower, it's beautiful petals." He squeezed my hand as my eyes welled up with tears. "I don;t have much to offer" he began as a tear slowly dribbled down his right cheek..."but I am thinking about an orange that is sitting on the dining room table. Please ask [his wife] to get that for you...I hope you like oranges...and when you peel into it and eat it, feel the cool tasty juice in your mouth, I hope you will take time and enjoy it".

He was beyond the cares of time and place that had occupied his regular life and that seem to occupy all of we temporary survivors...and sharing that state of grace, he freed me...perhaps he knowsand was understating just what he had to offer...poetic in a way that seemed natural...even supernatural.

I grasped his hand tighter and told him we would look after things for him...that I would look forward to seeing him again, in another place to come. And if it is true that we all see what we beleive, then I see him living, even in death, in the hearts and minds of everyone he has touched.

Goodbye...for now.

Seedy Tournament

We played our friendly scrimmage and, after having 3 goals scored against us in the first half, came back and scored 3 goals in the second to the opponents 1...progress...especially given that this was the first time we had 8v8. So we went into the tournament feeling good about our chances.

We came out of the tournament 3 and 3, the last game delayed for an hour by rain...and the boys looking sluggish and distracted. The league organizes teams into Platinum, Gold, Silver, Bronze, and Red divisions in an attempt to group by skill. By all rights, we figured bronze maybe and red maybe...so we went to the seeding meeting...what a farce!

Another team from our club, a new team with no record, was seeded 7 spots above us and they did not even play in the seeding tournament. Throughout the meeting the League President kept reminding everyone that these were 10 year olds and slotting wasn;t that important, that if the coaching salary really mattered he'd consider movement...of course the reality is that it DOES matter...to the boys, to the parents, and given the relative value of the metals involved in division descriptions, it would seem to matter to the league...I mean why not name the divisions Orange, Blue, Yellow or Grape!...and then, the League president proceeds to arbitrarily agree to move or to ignore requests from the coaches...like some self-appointed UN chief, for whom it is the appearance of process that matters...for whom the ability to lecture the coaches about how silly they are for worrying about seeding...why have the meeting then? Because this is about the appearance enabling a civilized patina for what is the most base exercise of personal power...and a quest for cash (yes, the league gets $400 per team for the tournament...82 teams...$33,000 for one weekend!).

And so we are now seeded at the top of the red division...a team we beat 5-1 in the tournament is seeded above us in the bronze division...and the team from our club that did not even play in the tournament is in the silver division. We will play this season to earn our way into bronze...and we coaches will have learned another valuable lesson about how adults operate in the world of youth soccer.

An unnatural act

Soccer...er, futbol, isn't natural. At least not for boys. The game is supposed to be played with disciplined energy...with patience punctuated by explosions of energy and motion. 9-year-old boys, though, well they aren't realy about patience at all...so I guess that's what us coaches are for. To get the kids to do something they wouldn;t otherwise be inclined to. That's the coaches theory anyway. The practicum demonstrates that what the kids really listen to is each other. There is an amazing amount of peer pressure that gets mvoed around the field as play begins. Not overtly critical, but someone calling for the ball and not getting it...then not delivering it when they do. Boys passing where they think they might get one back or where they think the recipient will be able to, well, receive it without error frankly. It's also interesting how even the players are picking out who the 'best' team mates are.

They think they will be playing for at least Silver division status in the seeding tournament. Me, I'm thinking bronze. We'll see Thursday what might be possible after our first friendly scrimmage!

Futbol

Travel soccer team started practice this week. We have the usual mix of coachable and more, um, 'spirited' 9 year old boys...all of whom are masters, stars and studs by their own ready admission. Of course that doesn;t stop them from making excuses for not being able to execute a rake or platini move!

Of course some of the boys are lazy. Can;t coach that, but maybe peer pressure can.

Apparently, we aren't even supposed to be practicing until Aug 1, but what sense does that make for a new team when the seeding tournament is Aug 4 and 5? We'll just keep our stealth pickup games under the radar...take a risk...the capitalist way!

The futures of Advertising

With much teeth gnashing and finger gnawing among the ad industry intelligentsia (an oxymoron for certain), the future of the business is being debated. You see of course that all manner of technology and social forces (maybe even genetic ones too!) are conspiring to place control of one's attentions in one's own hands, rather than the formerly homogenous and concentrated media outlets.

iPods, Satellite radio, the web and bloggers even let you see what you want to see, hear what you want to hear, say what you want to say...when you want. So what's a poor ad exec to do when the job search goes nowhere? Invent the futures of advertising of course!

WTF? Well, let's start with seemingly absurd futures ideas. Here's what the Chicago Mercantile Exchange has to say about weather futures:

http://www.cme.com/trading/prd/env/cmeweather14270.html

"It is estimated that nearly 20 percent of the U.S. economy is directly affected by the weather. As a result, the earnings of businesses can be adversely impacted by summers that are hotter than normal or winters that are much colder than anticipated. Conversely, revenues of power providers and utilities can suffer from either balmy summers with less need for air conditioning or mild winters with less heating demand from consumers.

CME created a weather derivative market which enables those businesses that could be adversely affected by unanticipated temperature swings, to transfer this risk. Just as professionals regularly use futures and options to hedge their risk in interest rates, equities and foreign exchange, now there are tools available for the management of risk from extreme movements of temperature. This sector of hedging and risk management products represents today’s fastest growing derivative market. "

So, using this as a model, one could replace certain of the precepts with the word 'attention'. What are people paying attention to? When? Where? And how much of it can be predicted? Each day every individual has 24 hours...that's fixed. So subtracting out all the statistical averages for time sleeping and other 'unattentive' moments, you get a market of potential attention. MOst of that attention will be given over to the routine daily habits of life: flipping on the radio, firing up the laptop, browsing your favorite chat room...all the usual suspected places to capture or engage someone's attention...the places where advertising (in it's most general sense) already tries to make headway. But what about the unanticipated events that capture collective attention...HurricaneKatrina, Acts of Terror, Alien Landings ?

The unanticipated presents risk to the advertisers who bank on the relative proportion of attention they can gather in the normal course of a mass audience's day via the accepted and emerging vehicles available to them. So why not a future's market for attention...to be used by advertisers? You could literally buy and sell the future value of blocks of attention through various vehicles...maybe the massive vehicles (e.g., cnn.com, FoxNews, the NYTimes) get priced at a premium for these futures...maybe they get priced down as people race to their favorite small-time chat room to discuss what's going on with those who are there...no intermediary necessary. That's not my call, let the future's market decide. The benefit to advertisers would be a more uniform pricing model for units of attention...no more of the BS impressions...they also get a way to hedge the risk of consumer attention being diverted by unforeseen events...again, putting a more consistent, long term view on the value of attention in the marketplace.

But that's just the beginning...at some point, it changes the mechanism of advertising from a need to get attention, to the need to sustain attention...and there is no way advertising will ever compete with real life for that...30 seconds out of my 24 hours doesn;t register, the awards winners notwithstanding.

Hero's end

Just finished reading a book by Neil Peart, "Ghost Rider, Travels on the Healing Road". The drummer for the rock group RUSH lost his daughter and wife in the span of 18 months and the book chronicles his journey around North America in search of a reason to live.

I've been a Rush fan since 8th grade when the odd-time-signatures of Cygnus X1, Bastille Day and the like made me stop and listen...and work to buy my first set of drums. So in no small way is my attraction to this book driven by Fanboi-ism. But if the start was getting to know one of my hero's a bit better, well, the outcome is, as he says in the book, getting the thing done. Part travelogue, NP has provided a nice image of landscapes in Quebec and along the Southwest and West coasts. Part self-indulgent autobiography, I also have a more complete image of Neil Peart as a man.

Peart at once seems to embody the contradiction of us all...he's a nice guy and an a-hole. He loves people and he despises them. He says one thing, and yet he does another. In the end, his story tells the tale of a man who fails to find meaning in the tragedy that enveloped him (or who, at least, fails to reveal it to the reader!). What befalls NP forces him to question his prior life's philosophy of "Give good, get good". And yet, his 'give good' seems described mostly as supporting various causes with donations of money. Missing in his descriptions are the giving of generosity of thought, of benefit of the doubt to those who don;t, in his system of beleifs, 'measure up'.

He seems completely at ease with his soul-mate friend Brutus, the subject of many letters in the book, who is incarcerated for possession. And yet, he has no tolerance for the flawed individuals he describes so generically as 'Fat Americans' and the 'Sheep' among the tourists who've chosen a different construct for their travels. One wonders how he might view the tragedy of someone whose own child succumbed to the tragedy of drug abuse and how that might change his acceptance of his best friends flaws? Or perhaps being "a citizen of the world", as one of his rock lyrics suggests, is more an ideal than a reality.

Tragedy befalls us all in time, in our own definition. What we learn about ourselves, our friends and of those 'others' that we tolerate during tragic times is that we are truly "strangers to each other, each one's life a novel noone else has read"..and yet, having read NPs novel, it seems to me that it's the generosity of strangers that makes our stories worth the read.

Blow...hard

As the various victim's stories make their way through the swirling storm of Katrina media editors, it appears to me we have poked the true soft underbelly of our modern life...we are bombarded by blame.

Only four days in from 'the worst natural disaster in our history' and you'd think there had been dereliction of duty from the red cross, FEMA and, of course, the White House. Why weren;t they 'ready'?

One commentator links the disaster's effects to the FDA's decisions regarding birth control (http://www.guardian.co.uk/katrina/story/0,16441,1561356,00.html).

The tragic aftermath of Katrina has been blamed on, among other things:

New Orleans gay parade [http://www.repentamerica.com/pr_hurricanekatrina.html] (though no evidence it was going to pass through MS or AL),

america's racism (though strange to contemplate that NO is overwhelmingly, um , African American),

abortionists (http://www.dailykos.com/story/2005/8/31/0836/62623) and

US involvement in Iraq (http://today.reuters.com/News/CrisesArticle.aspx?storyId=L02310631).

...(and of course, global warming) [http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20050902/ap_on_sc/katrina_warming].

This hot air proves of course that it would be too simple to blame it on the hurricane. In our modern lives, even a tragedy this massive is like some sort of video game or moive...why should a category 4 hurricane across low lying, ocean front ground prevent aid from appearing like magic...instantaneously...at the speed with which we've grown accustomed to news and information appearing in front of us?

Many of us seem prepared to politicize every trauma...from the slightest to the greatest, there are thousands of axes out there, just waiting for the next news-grabbing grindstone. Somewhere in the mess of sparks and smoke, the truth lies...will we like it when it confronts us? The tragedy of poor decisions...of natures unruliness...of victim on victim violence.

And the tragedy of the universally understood, if not universally expressed, sigh of disaster relief. That sigh of relief inherent in humans that, thank God, this disaster did not befall us (does God pick favorites?)...

While some catch our collective breathes, and others take action, I hope we will be able to ride out the storm of shrill voices casting blame...and I wonder how prepared we are for the aftermath of that storm?

GM and the collapse of social security

A story on NPR this morning did the usual superficial media story on the impact of GM's announcement that they would reduce the workforce by 25,000. The host and guest discussed the obvious and made the statement "GM cannot solve it's problem without increasing the unit volume against which it can distribute its health care and pension costs."

I'm not an auto industry analyst, but I think that means they need to sell more cars. These health care costs were described as adding $1500 to the cost of each GM vehicle.

Whether that is too much or not enough isn't so important...clearly GM isn;'t selling enough cars...What I found interesting is that GM's decade-long workforce reduction plans have resulted in a state where there are 3 pensioners for every 1 worker. Clearly, the welfare state is found in a microcosm at GM. Perhaps there are instructive lessons to be learned about how such a system functions...or doesn't...right there in good old detroit. And when politicos start dissin' the conversation on Social Security in good old DC, maybe there's a parallel they should study in the heartland.

It's quite simple I think. People like fiction. Leaders are, by definition, people who don;t let fiction drive their decisions. Most people are not leaders...Leaders bring honesty about the consequences of decisions. Leaders are found among every social and economic class. Honesty about social welfare systems goes like this:

If more people in an organization (a company...a social system) are net consumers of resources (financial, intellectual, natural) then over time, people in other organizations (companies...countries) who are net producers will have control over the net consumers' resources.

Producers have the power.

To whom shall we grant the power over of our social system's resources? The people of GM have, unintentionally, granted control of their destiny to everyone but themselves...arguing who is to blame is inconsequential...everyone who is to blame will feel the consequences.

When you are a hammer...

When you have a hammer, every problem begins to look like a nail.
--Someone famous

Science.com examines blogs!
http://www.sciencedaily.com/upi/index.php?feed=Science&article=UPI-1-20050504-07480500-bc-us-blogs.xml


An interesting perspective on yet another technology term…

The issue of blogging and the media, as I see it, is that entrenched media interests continue to suffer the delusion that blogging and journalism are the same thing…and that the news establishment’s declining revenues are the result of a never ending amateur hour that recycles black market content. Blogs are a vehicle…like a web page…like email…like a bulletin board…like a mobile phone.

Sure there are blogs run by journalists, but there are also many more blogs that are little more than personal diaries or literary experiments…In either case, the point of blogs is that individuals have control. Individuals can choose to spend their attention with the content they would, both as consumer and producer, as critic and advocate… passive acceptance of what others decide is important is now a matter of individual choice…this trend is not the sole domain of blogs or the youth movement….it’s been underway in force for the last decade online.

What I believe traditional media is learning is that the value of their product is not in line with its price…the blogoshpere’s marketplace of ideas (just another subset of the internet) is correcting this in a way that gets their attention though high profile outings of celebrity new readers. Like any market, there will be mistakes (charlatans, demagogues and professional axe grinders). In that sense, the internet and it’s blogchild are no different than what traditional media has been doing to its audiences for years.

What we can expect is that honest, personally relevant human communication will always have an audience, whatever transmission vehicle it takes. This will not happen with one-size fits all messaging from inhuman corporate entities. To the degree we are able to help our clients connect more intimately with their audience, they should be successful. But like every other product or service hitched to technology’s efficiency machine, professional communication service pricing power will be under pressure to conform to a vastly expanded number of providers.

Power to the people

Goodbye Dan! Today is Dan Rather's last day on the CBS Nightly News. Rather made his mark by being aggressive in his pursuit of his truth...talking 'truth' to power as he said. So on this inauspicious occassion, we witness again the inevitable cycle of the hunter becoming the hunted, the famous transformed to the infamous...the self confident youth transformed to dottering old fool.

It seems that, like so many people, time has passed Dan by. In the midst of a great technological revolution, he failed to see that his ego had placed himself in the awkward position of being in power by having questioned power. And so as he and his truth-creating staff attempted to play king maker in the 04 presidential elections, they found themselves confronted with the truth of their fiction...it wasn;t the establishment media that did him in, but rather the little people...the powerless masses for whom he proclaimed his life-s work...and the little people, creating a news network of individual blogs, emails and bulletin boards spoke the truth to Rather's self-important power and it swept him away.

Time will tell if Rather's career is remembered for its start, its end, or for little more than the dates it spanned...but one thing is certain...time brings us all full circle...those who use their time to pursue a greater truth subordinated to their personal beleifs, will always wonder what happened when others bring them face to face with the truth as it is...power to the people.

Responsibility for the eons

I see an article in Science (http://www.sciencemag.org) (http://www.cbc.ca/story/science/national/2005/01/21/extinction-050121.html) that challenges the prevailing concensus on Dinosaur extinction...not a meteorite to blame, but rather global warming! Challenging the prevailing doomsday-from-outer-space scenario points out two things to me:

1. The recorded history of the planet [climate or otherwise] has no meaningful relationship to the records [climate or otherwise] of humans...human records represent so little, that they are incapable of being used to reach longer term conclusions...like using 1 minute of a 2-year-olds life to try and determine whether that child will be admitted to Harvard (or even that they would want to go to such a place!). In other words, it requires quite a bit of data to draw conclusions about things that can only be imagined.

2. Having the freedom to think something doesn;t mean that the thinker is free of responsibility for the consequences of their thoughts...hypothesizing what it would be like to kill your neighbor, and then telling them what you thought about, does not mean you won't be held under a restraining order, for instance. In other words, sticks and stones may break my bones, but words CAN hurt you.

So here's a thought...

Say global warming is real.

Further, say the combution of fossil fuels is responsible for global warming.

Do, then, the people whose words and images in the 1970s created an unreasonable fear of nuclear catastrophe--a China Syndrome in every town--now bear some responsibility for the rise in CO2 levels since then?

Arguably, as the % of electrical demand supplied by nuclear energy in the US lags below 19%, it's replacement by fossil fuels (particularly coal) has contributed to the assumed impact on global warming. Where are they who stopped nuclear energy? Where is Greenpeace, Jane Fonda and the multitudes of others? And when will they step forward to admit--with the mercy that reflection provides--that they made a mistake or two?

Then again, maybe Global Warming is the mistake.

The politics of action

A book I read so long ago told me that one can pursue the path of knowledge or the path of life...but that the two seldom cross. As I've meandered along the dusty 4-lane of my own, I've noticed that there are those who seem to overthink and underthink...the overthinkers are slow to act (even when it may seem to be in their interest to do something quickly). The underthinkers, with little reflection, seem quick to do something...anything...even when it may seem to be in their interests to do nothing. The thinkers, nourishing themselves from the tree of knowledge, the underthinkers choosing the action of life. And so from these broad-based, bifurcated, media-friendly stereotypes, I set the context for something very individual and personal...6th-grade girls basketball.

You see, my own 6th grade daughter plays on a travelling basketball team. When we signed up for the team, we thought it would be a good way for her to develop some of her physical abilities around another sport. She'd get to do it with a slightly different mix of acquaintances and friends than her soccer team...and she'd be part of a program that emphasized competitiveness a tad more than the recreational league our park district runs. Oh how naive we were...the competition on the court it seems, is nothing like the competition in the stands.

I'm sure it occurs to every middle age person to question whether their life is exactly how they envisioned it would be when they were younger. Some people respond with a 'What me worry?' attitude that probably contributed to where they, in fact, find themselves at this moment. Others, perhaps, decide to do more...to work harder, to be more intense...to assert control over their world in ways that probably contributed to where they, in fact, find themselves. And when this question gets answered by thinking or doing something through your offspring, well, that's like lighting a match in an oxygen tent.

Some of the team parents can be vicious...spending their time at the games--and after--talking to the other parents about the coach...how little the coach knows, how ineffective he runs the team, that type of thing.

So as the season enters its last 6 weeks, some parents continue to whisper among themselves with smug superiority at how much better things would be if someone else were coaching these 11 and 12-year olds. Meanwhile, the girls continue to play basketball and improve. The coach continues to coach to the best of his ability...and the whisperers keep wishing that what they think ought to be will somehow come true if only someone...anyone...would step up and take action...