I Thought This Might Be Useful..

Well, it's still technically June, which means it's still kinda sorta the season for useless advice about roads less traveled, regretting the paths you didn't take more than the ones you did (would that one withstand a Logic 101 midterm?  Think about it..), and yearbook captions about futures SO bright that protective eyewear is required.

Never relenting from my quest to steer things back to the useful and practical, here is something I recommend: try buying your groceries online. 

Let me guess a few things about you:  You're busy.  You might even be so busy that you answer in duplicate or triplicate when asked how you're doing:  busy-busy, or perhaps busy-busy-busy.  As a variant on those, you may opt for the word smash-up of "crazybusy."  Because I would define someone as "busy" if their to-do wish list exceeds the time in the day available to check all the blocks, I'd say that's just about everyone, save for the very young and the very old.

But okay, back to the advice -- not only are you busy, but when you finally have time away from the things that are keeping you busy, you'd prefer it be your own.  Because you don't think of "going to the supermarket" as one of those activities that piques your interest, you avoid it.  If your spouse or partner also avoids it, and if you have young ones to complicate said efforts (or at least to provide the excuse), maybe you don't make it into the supermarket as much as you think you *should.*

Enter online grocery shopping.  I'm not shilling for any one website or brand, so I won't even mention any of them.  You can get all the basic stuff you need with a few mouse clicks, you can schedule a delivery window right to the house, and a pretty darn simple process can leave you with a homey fridge full o'delectables.

Yes, it's somewhat more expensive, but only sort of.  You're avoiding impulse buys on-line, you can scout the *store* out for sale items, and you can use manufacturer coupons from the Sunday paper, or even ones you find online.  Those are all major cost mitigators, but perhaps the biggest of all is the fact that you may be breaking a terrible habit of just saying "screw it" and ordering take-out night after night.  If you've done that enough times, always vowing that you would eventually find more time for Market Basket or Hannaford's, but didn't really do it, you'd be living up to Einstein's definition of insanity.

So yes, a straight-up cost comparison might point one way, but a holistic approach that considered the real alternative would give you totally new numbers.  On top of that, you haven't burned up any gas (let's say the tip to the driver more than negates that, though)...but the real savings comes from the fact that you haven't surrendered the opportunity cost of doing something you view as a chore.

If you think time really is money, and you value your personal weekend freedom, as well as not having to play parking lot bumper cars at Market Basket (note to all drivers everywhere: I just want to park, I don't care where, and I really don't give a rip about the spot that's 25 feet away from the store as opposed to 35 feet...it's all yours!), and then make that annoying left turn back onto Broadway, then online grocery delivery may be the biggest bargain there is going.  

Oh, and here's something else useful that I heard recently:  photocopy, or at least write down, the inventory of whatever you carry in your wallet.  If you lose it, or it gets stolen, you'll have a way easier time doing damage control that way -- you'll know precisely what's gone, you'll have the numbers handy, and you can nip the identity theft risk in the bud.

Oh, and don't smoke in bed, no forks in the toaster, and no funny faces if you're near a speed bump. 

Calendar as Subversive Tool? Sure...

So the City of Lowell recently rolled out an integrated, interactive calendar:  www.cityoflowellcalendar.org.  Its purpose is to integrate the various calendars which co-existed previously into ONE single, "go-to" site where anyone can learn about what's going on in the city.  Other than one major design flaw (it only lets you peek a week into the future), it's an awesome resource.

The reasons why it's great are mostly obvious -- transparency, visibility, inclusivity, etc.  Another reason that I like it is that it takes power away from self-important types who like to complain about "not being told" about events that take place.

Now, this isn't a Lowell thing, or a local politics thing, or anything specific to any certain place or environment.  Based on the way I spent my 20s, one thing I can very confidently say is that I've been a lot of places and seen a lot of things...and complaints about people not communicating well are universal.  Ironically, they often come from people who are themselves poor communicators -- 9 times out of 10, someone who complains about someone else "not communicating" has not made the effort himself or herself to reach out and find out about whatever it is they feel slighted over (the only time the complaint is valid is if someone made multiple attempts to reach another person and they were ignored...but simply not hearing from someone does not give you the right to call them a poor communicator).

But anyway, back to why I love this calendar...it takes power away from the hyper-local and hyper self-important who are quick to throw others under the bus about the way they communicate.  All the information is laid out in plain sight, for ALL to see.  When a principal misses an event, or gets confused about the time or date, the old "throwaway" lines they might use to cast blame stop working.

People who think that Sierra Leone is the District Attorney's sister, that the "Deep South" is the Billerica town line, or that heart donors deserve 30 days of paid leave have now lost one of the quivers in their arsenal.

Sometimes, where you stand depends on where you sit.  From my perch up in Room 50, that's how I see it, and yes, that's an unabashedly good thing -- the information-afflicted are now comfortable (they can see all the city's events, laid bare), and the self-important comfortable and now afflicted (they can't feign ignorance or the cite the incompetence of others when they're caught off-guard about why they missed something).  

Home Run Derbies

I read something in the Sun today that implied someone had really come out of his shell and taken a stand when he drafted a statement condemning the vandalism incident that took place early this year at Babylon Restaurant on Merrimack Street.  Apparently, he had vaulted forth from backbencher status within UML student government to a more serious role with the "Big Mo" that came from the statement.

Never mind that people who are professionally trained to figure these sorts of things out (and have years of experience doing so) have long since determined that the incident was the handiwork of a lone idiot/vandal from New Hampshire who had no idea what was actually in the storefront upon which he decided to leave his mark.

Back to the original issue -- although I obviously agree with the content of the condemnation statement, I can only give so much props to anyone who advocates for something that no one opposes.  In other words, if people were out celebrating that incident, and calling for repeat rock tosses, then yes, character would be at stake and it would be a marker of moral courage to get up and put those people in their place.  Absent that, however, it seems kind of like condemning the woman about to be charged for attempted murder on Branch Street -- but of course.

After a recent Council meeting in which there were a series of emotional speeches preceding what would clearly be a 9-0 vote, I was searching for a term for these sorts of things, and settled on "Home Run Derby."  Why?

Because everyone can get up, take their cuts for the fence in Barry Bonds-ahead-of-the-count-and-nothing-to-lose fashion, while the pitches are coming in straight to the wheelhouse and no one is playing defense.

Please please please don't get me wrong:  Vandalism is bad, and ethnically-targeted vandalism (or at least what was originally the appearance thereof) is even worse.  But while I'm at it, education is good, the environment is good, college costs should be contained, public servants should behave professionally, and the Constitution is a great document.

You can draft resolutions saying all those things, and yes, you're on record taking a stand, just like you would be if you were advocating for family-based daycare zoning in downtown Lowell (which passed unanimously, and was only an issue based on a zoning quirk which needed to be fixed, but not because anyone opposed it), an Immigration Assistance Commission (two hours of speeches to precede a 9-0 vote), or anything else of that nature.  Just as I would for someone whose resume said they managed the re-election campaign of an unopposed Statehouse incumbent, I recognize the feather in the cap for someone going 'on the record' to take a cut towards the bleachers, but only for about a second or so before moving on to something more interesting.

Posting 95 Theses to the door is what I'm talking about.  For a much more modern example, President Obama's recent statement about gay marriage is what I'm talking about -- by tacking to a stance that many people oppose (and taking a political risk that could hurt him in some states he carried in 2008), he put a stake in the ground and stood by it.  History shows that the people we call "visionaries" after the fact were saying or doing something that drew vehement criticism from at least some quarters as it was happening.

As Jim Rome said, if you want to be interesting: a) have a take; and b) don't suck.  If you stand up to say things like, "The environment is good," or that "racism is bad," or that "veterans are important," you haven't even made it to the second part of Rome's equation.  

Resourcefulness, Examined

Someone mentioned to me this week that a frequent Desh-ism (quote attributed to Desh Deshpande) is: "I'd rather invest in a B concept being run by A people than in an A concept being run by B people."  


The quote stuck with me so easily because it's something I firmly agree with.  As I've written many times here on the site, I'm fascinated by the way different types of people can affect the outcomes experienced by their organizations.  People who are resourceful, people who *produce*, and people who learn from mistakes and then improve (rather than cast all the blame outward and avoid all the difficult introspection) are the ones I'd want to hire for some hypothetical enterprise I'll start someday.

If you've ever read the story "Message to Garcia," you'll know what I'm talking about.  I want the people who can deliver that message, rather than make excuses, or, worse, NOT even start and then respond, when asked about it later "Well, I wasn't sure what you meant."

Later in the week, I was speaking to someone who now works in government but has significant private industry experience from a past life.  He was talking about the interview and hiring process he had seen at a particular firm when he said, "The first test is the interview."

Nodding along, I said something like, "Okay, sure, you wan to use the interview to assess a person's demeanor, mentality, etc.?"

"Yes," he said, "But before even getting to those things, we were testing to see whether the person could get to the interview.  You see, we started all our interviews at 7 p.m.  Our building's elevator stopped being publicly accessible at 6:00, and the front doors were locked to the outside at 6:30."

"I'm intrigued," I said.  "Please say more."

He went on to explain that there were several possible ways the applicants could have reacted.  One obvious way that someone could have gotten to the interview was to just wait for someone to leave the building, and then walk through the door (if challenged, they might have muttered something about having business inside, or needing to make the appointment for the interview).  They could also have reached out to the scheduler.

You would think those points to be obvious, but they're not.  A certain percentage of prospective interviewees just becomes discouraged/frustrated and walks away.  They may send a "WTF" e-mail or call later on, but regardless, once the person walks away the firm has already figured out that that's not who they're looking for.


The elevator is another, similar test.  Again, they can access the elevator if they just wait for someone to get out (but without a card that only someone who worked there would have, they would not be able to access it after 6:00 p.m.)  The stairs are of course another option for any person with even a smidgeon of resourcefulness.  They just had to be a) found, and then b) used.

AGAIN, though, this helped them winnow out certain applicants.  


I love stuff like this.  It's hard to set up controlled situations and experiments, but if I could ever *test* for stuff like this, I would.  ANYONE can talk about how resourceful they are, how they can keep themselves engaged without requiring constant tasking and monitoring, how they're a team player, and whatever else they think an interviewer wants to hear.  It is much, much harder to observe people as they are, and then use that to make the right decisions.

The building and elevator/stairs challenges seem like tiny challenges that would not flummox most people, but the fact that they can even eliminate some applicants that way shows that they have some use.  Hey, it's a start.  

When Academia Spoofs Itself

A friend posted a link on Facebook about a study that purported to show the way racial bias was a significant setback (3 to 5 percentage points) against President Obama in the 2008 election.

The research methodology was interesting, because he used the prevalence of certain types of Google searches to see where racial animus against the President might be strongest (the idea being that people will Google things that are really on their mind, as opposed to what they tell pollsters).  Sure enough, he found that in regions likely to harbor such hatred, Obama 'underperformed' what would have been expected in 2008.

I take no issue with that idea.  It's very clear to me that there are many fellow Americans who hold despicable, contemptible, racist views.  To try to deny that would be the ultimate act of head-in-sand burial.  But as I read on, I was really looking forward to see how the author treated the net effect of Obama's race:  What would he say about people who might have been excited to see an important 'first' in America, and were swayed from the other side, or from just staying home on election day.  Here's how he treated it:

"Yes, Mr. Obama also gained some votes because of his race. But in the general election this effect was comparatively minor. The vast majority of voters for whom Mr. Obama’s race was a positive were liberal, habitual voters who would have voted for any Democratic presidential candidate. Increased support and turnout from African-Americans added only about one percentage point to Mr. Obama’s totals."

Yikes.  I may not be a Hahhvid Ph.D. (the author is studying for one there, the article notes) but I can answer this riddle:  What do Colorado, Florida, Indiana, Iowa, Nevada, New Mexico, North Carolina, Ohio, and Virginia have in common?

Then-Sen. Obama WON those states, but in 2004 John Kerry LOST them.  Also, the author himself does some racial typecasting with that last sentence in the block quote.  What about Americans of ALL stripes who came out and were excited to see the first person of color elected President?

This was one of those great examples of someone setting out to prove something, gathering up a bunch of data, and then jamming everything into the pre-cut, pre-shaped hole to make it all fit nicely.

Just to sum up my point:  Is racism real?  Yes.  Do I dispute the author's idea that it may have cost Obama 3-5 percentage points?  No.  But does the author of this do something extremely sloppy in totally neglecting to factor in the "counter-ballast" positive effect against the original number to come out with a net figure?  Yes.  

Breaking Eggs, Making Omelettes

Sometimes the deft touch is a valued thing.  Sometimes, ironically perhaps, when a deft touch applied to something is truly deft, it isn't even noticed at all.

Other times, though, the bull-in-a-china-shop routine might have merits.

Yesterday at the Acre Festival on the North Common, Dr. Julio Carvalho was speaking to Mayor Murphy and brought up the need for executives to make difficult decisions, consequences be damned.  That led us to refer to Michael Bloomberg's decision several years ago to ban smoking indoors at public establishments in NYC.

People said he was on a power trip.  People said he would ruin the restaurant business.  People even said he was just plain nuts.

Years later, however, indoor smoking bans have become the norm across much of the country.  Besides the better air quality for patrons casually passing through, who knows how many medical problems bartenders and waitresses have been spared from?  The difficult of proving negatives means, of course, that we won't know...but it's safe here to assume better quality of life for several service industry types.

There may not have been an incremental way to do it.  And besides, the whole point of representative democracy is that we don't just do everything by an all-hands plebiscite.  We elect people, they make decisions, and then if enough people don't like those decisions, we can elect different people the next time around.  Sometimes, leaders can actually "lead" in the sense of driving public opinion to somewhere that it currently isn't.  Sometimes, as the old cliche goes, an egg needs breaking for an omelette to be made.

I thought about this yesterday when I got a "nastygram" e-mail from a Major at my unit.

I have been dealing with a painfully slow bureaucratic process of a unit transfer (from Reading to Devens) which should be relatively simple and not require much paperwork.  The problem is that the person who is the "linchpin" in the whole process is anything but proactive.  E-mails and phone calls aren't responded to, so I'm forced to either be totally passive (and just let NOTHING happen), or try to be a squeaky wheel.  The squeaky wheel strategy meant asking another full-timer at the unit to check up on the status of a certain memo, which led to the ruffling of some feathers, which led to the nastygram about respecting the chain of command, letting an NCO do her job, not trying to go rogue, etc.  Just so you know how the tone of that one went, the words "cease and desist" were actually contained therein.  Seriously.

Knowing better than to let e-mail skirmishes flare up into full battles, I sent a mea culpa sort of response, with some details about my understanding of the situation.

Somehow, that led to another dressing-down, to which I simply didn't respond.  However, the story took a turn for the better when the guy sending it decided to call, perhaps because he realized his second e-mail was over-the-top (usually you don't ratchet up the firepower to someone trying to make something better, right?)

The phone call went well, and as a result, he agreed to set up a conference call Monday morning with the key bureaucratic nodes in the process to identify what things need to happen, and to then see to it that they happen.

Predicted end result?  The impasse will break.

It won't be pretty, but who cares?  Ironically, by doing the *wrong* thing and bringing negative attention upon myself from that Major, I will have finally moved the chains ten yards down the field.  It's not like I wanted to break the chain of command, bend rules, or take matters into my own hands when they belonged in someone else's.  If that key person were more willing to do her job, none of this would have happened.  

But none of that is relevant to me.  I got someone riled up, and may have kinda sorta burned a bridge, but the only thing worse would have been the alternative of inaction.

So as great as it is to be diplomatic, and to have a deft touch, and keep everything smooth, some occasions really call for the ballistic option.

Whether that's a politician advancing an unpopular but wise idea on which he's really just ahead of his time, or a person frustrated with months of bureaucratic logjam trying anything he can to move something along, sometimes it's frankly worth it to piss people off.  

Michael Bloomberg can look back on his indoor smoking decision and bask in the glow of hindsight that he really was right when he stepped out and made that happen.  Hopefully, I'll be able to look back at that virtual "chewing-out" and say the same -- that the temporary pain associated with upsetting the apple cart is offset, and then completely overshadowed, by the end result.  

NEKWA's Message

At the Madaraka Day Celebration on the South Common yesterday, the President of NEKWA (the New England Kenyan Welfare Association) spoke.

One of her major themes was that the group needed to rely on its members to be great.  She told them, "We had an event in Worcester, and the Mayor of the City came.  Lieutenant Governor Murray was there, too.  Now, we're having an event in Lowell, and the Mayor is here to celebrate with us.  We are being taken seriously, so it's up to us to live up to it. We need to strive to become a great organization that reflects credit upon the Kenyan community here in New England."

I thought that was a fantastic message.  A lot of times, when interest groups of any sort get together, they talk about what they can get, and sometimes grumble about something they didn't (such as a group that recently complained about having to pay for a police detail from its own pocket, or another that didn't like the decor at an event and groused about it through back channels).

So it was refreshing to basically hear a group's leader talking to her people with the opposite sort of message.  She started with the idea that they were already getting recognition from people in positions of power, and then exhorted the members to live up to the billing.  One particular thing they're interested in -- and which dovetails quite nicely with one of the key initiatives coming from the Mayor's Office -- is breathing some more life into the relationship between Lowell and Nairobi.

But anyway, back to the message:  It was reminiscent of the famous JFK line about asking what you can do rather than finding out what you can get.  It's that type of thinking that helps foster strong civic organizations in strong communities.