Bring Yer Food to Room 50...See the Pats Squish the Fish

Starting on Monday December 3, every pound of non-perishable food you bring to the Mayor’s Office (Room 50 on the 2^nd Floor of City Hall) will earn you a raffle ticket entering you into a drawing for two tickets to the New England Patriots/Miami Dolphins game on Sunday December 30 at 1 p.m.

All food collected will be donated to the Merrimack Valley Food Bank. Items needed include: Peanut butter and jelly, canned tuna and chicken, pasta, rice, soups and stews, macaroni and cheese and canned ravioli, bottled juice and juice boxes, canned veggies and canned fruit.

When you do your grocery shopping pick up a few extra items to fill someone else’s belly this holiday season and you may just find yourself at Gillette Stadium on Dec. 30.

Food will be collected until 4 p.m. on Thursday December 13. The winner will be announced at the Mayor’s Holiday Reception that evening from 5 p.m. to 7 p.m. in the Mayor’s Reception Room.

Agreeableness? Sure, I'll Have Some of That...

Imagine, if you will, that you're setting up a room for an event that will be catered.  Your answers are in italics.

A co-worker says, "Let's put the drinks on the left side of the room, and the food right nearby there, over towards the window." 

"Sure, sounds good."  

The co-worker: "On second thought, the drinks should probably go closer to the window, but the food would be better off tucked over on the table to the left."  

"Okay, that works."  

Again, co-worker: "You know, I think it would be easier if people could access the food and drinks together.  Let's put them both on the table in the far corner on the right."

"Yeah, we could do that."  

By this point, the co-worker might say, "Well, what is it that you REALLY think?  You were fine with all of the options, but I can't tell which one you think is best.  You're just agreeing with whatever I say!"  [The implication is that you're just 'going along to get along' or being passive-aggressive.  How, otherwise, could you be okay with the drinks being on the left side or the right side?].  

If I had to listen to a transcript of the conversation above, here is how I would interpret the italicized responses: The person doesn't really have a dog in the fight, and is trying to be cooperative and help move the chains ten yards down the field.  Period.  

Sometimes when someone is being "agreeable," even though that might have a bad connotation to some, it's really just that simple:  when the matter at hand is deemed to be inconsequential, it's not that the person responding doesn't care or isn't listening.  It's that he or she doesn't see any real difference between the alternatives.  What's the best way forward in those situations?  In my opinion, it's whatever it takes to help get that proverbial first down.  If someone says paint the wall white, then YES! Let's whitewash it.  But now they're leaning green?  Let's break out the Forest primer!  If it's just arbitrary to me, then yes, I am going to be *with* whatever is going to get it done. Especially if the alternative is a lot of truly worthless dithering...think back to the example of the story about the donkey who was hungry and thirsty, came upon food and water, couldn't decide which one he wanted more, pondered for days, and then died from starvation and thirst...don't be that ass!  

And that is what I REALLY think about being agreeable!  But if you disagree, I suppose I could see it from your perspective...

Very Quick LDNA Summary

Tonight's LDNA meeting had no formal agenda, but the LPD report and some related issues took us well past eight.  In the interests of time (my own, that is...I have to study non-linear optimization models and then wake up in a few hours without turning into a zombie), I will keep this short.

Sergeant Michael Giuffrida (LPD) led off with a crime summary for events downtown this month.  They included:

• An unprovoked robbery/beating by 4-5 assailants against a single victim at Middle and Shattuck;
• Disorderly conduct and vandalism incidents in the John/Paige/Lee areas;
• An armed robbery of a female UML student near the ATM at Warren/Central;
• A shoplifting incident at Kenner Shoe (189 Market);
• Vehicle break-ins.  We were told that city-wide, the overwhelming majority (70 percent or so) of thefts from vehicles take place when the vehicle is left unlocked;
• Recently, a man who was "not of sound mind" made quite a scene at Palmer and Middle.  LPD handled the situation and a drunken punching of a Centro patron simultaneously.  The LPD Captain present at the meeting credited the Thurs-Fri-Sat overtime force authorization, which is allowing LPD to quickly respond to incidents downtown.  He also emphasized that although petty crime incidents may appear higher in some categories, the activity itself is unchanged...but the response is swifter.  The Centro incident had a two-minute response time;
• Incidents in the Kerouac Park/Mass Mills area have come down a bit because of the stronger LPD presence and because of the colder temperatures, which make youth less likely to congregate in the area;
• An incident in which vandals were jumping on the roofs of cars (and causing serious damage to at least two cars) on Market Street.  Building residents were able to shoo the vandals away and get the license plate of the "getaway" car (details pending on this);

Henri Marchand, Asst. to the City Manager, was present on behalf of the city. Issues that came up included: scaffolding and poor lighting in the area between Canal Place I and Canal Place III; the status of the Victorian Gardens/Bacigalupo Park; downtown voting location alternatives (handicap accessibility to Masonic Center and proximity of political sign holders to building were mentioned by Craig Himmelberger); the Enel status update on the E. Merrimack Bridge (recently updated to LDNA site by Corey Sciuto); flood insurance policies being forced onto downtown condo owners; and some issues surrounding the crosswalk on Market Street near the Natty Park Visitors' Center.  

Military Budget: Keep the Circumstance, But Let's Go Easy on the Pomp

We will hear quite a bit in the coming days about the defense budget.

Yes!  It is not comparable to those of other nations because of our unusually high personnel costs.

Yes!  It is not comparable to those of other nations because of the amount of government research and general programs that fall under DoD.

Yes!  It is not comparable to those of other nations because of our unique worldwide training engagement requirements and our role in sea lane protection.

So when someone starts off with, "Our DoD budget exceeds our nearest competitor by..." or plays sound bite bingo with "combined total" "other nations" and "surpasses" you can rein them in a bit.

But...that doesn't change the fact that we're tremendously bloated and ripe for cuts.  Every time someone stands up and proposes specific cuts, the supporters of [insert name of program or department] will inevitably cry "But what about the troops?"  The people yelling that will likely be thinking about anything but the "troops" on whose behalf they cry.

Well, here's an area ripe for fixing:  General Officer Creep.  By using the term "Creep," I'm not referring to any particular General's behavior, but am instead adapting the way we say "Mission Creep" to refer to gradual expansions in a mission's scope that eventually lead it to grow to an unwieldy size.

We have more Flag Officers today (that's Generals and Admirals...rank O-7 and above) than we had in World War II.  That statistic is really all you need to know.  The ratio of Admirals to Ships in the Navy is the highest it has ever been (it's not quite 1:1, but it could conceivably get there if we contract the ship fleet further without pulling back on the # of Admirals).  If you look back at our last huge RIF (Reduction in Force), back in the early 1990s after Desert Storm, you can see that the combined number of soldiers, sailors, airmen, and marines is much lower...but the number of Flag Officers has GROWN.

Why is this such a big deal?  Because it's not *just* about those Officers themselves.  Anytime an Officer with two or more stars on his collar breathes, there is a phalanx of OTHER servicemembers complimenting him on the magical way he converts oxygen to carbon dioxide...and how he makes it look so natural and easy.  One General's salary isn't going to make your eyes pop out (base pay could be in the range of 10k to 12k per month) but when you start adding up all the accoutrements and then you add up the pay and benefits of the dedicated staff, you can start to see the size of the problem.  If we can get rid of that Flag billet, we can repurpose those enlisted folks and mid-grade officers in another direction.

Don't be deceived by the people who say that any cuts to our military budget will weaken our national defense posture or hurt the troops.

Any honest assessment of our defense spending has to begin with this statement:  For all its wonderful attributes and capabilities (and they are legion), the force is way too top-heavy.

Gates had the guts to say it, but he already had an eye on the exit door when he did.

Can Leon Panetta (or whoever might be about to replace him) muster up that same courage?  

Name Changes and the Future

Several years ago, Google's then-CEO Eric Schmidt said that in the future, name changes would become much more common.  

Why?

Because of the Internet's long memory, that's why.  Changing your name is never going to let you *really* escape from things like the law, the Social Security Administration, and the IRS, but it will offer you the opportunity to escape from amateur-level Google searches by people who might want to learn about you.  The reasons for a name change could range anywhere from someone's desire for greater *uniqueness* in search results, to embarrassment over youthful high jinks, to actual attempts to mask previous criminal behavior.

Thankfully, Jeffrey Curley's killers, including the one featured as the protagonist in this article, received life sentences (though this guy does have parole eligibility fairly soon).  The article caught my eye because this convicted murderer is attempting to change his name, and Curley's father is working to stop it from happening.

The ostensible reason for the name change is because of his affiliation with Wiccanism, but part of me wonders whether it might have anything to do with whether he thinks he'll someday be paroled, and how his current name carries the stigma of the truly heinous act he committed in the late 1990s (and of course the now-public connection between his desired name and his real name means that any future searches for the new name will tie right back to the slaying).   

Regardless, expect to see more stories like this in the years to come.  As Eric Schmidt predicted, expect more interest in name changes; in turn, expect a backlash from those with reasons to oppose the desired changes.  

Game Theory as Laughing Matter?

I met up with a buddy named Justin on Saturday who has been pursuing a career in stand-up comedy for the past ten years.  He truly started from the bottom -- amateur nights with homeless comedians in San Francisco, and performances everywhere from laundromats to frat houses to hole-in-the-wall coffee shops.  Now, he "gives them a stand-up routine in LA" (h/t to Billy Joel) but also spends much of the year on the road, traveling around the nation's college campuses to tell jokes, and earning a comfortable living in the process.

I asked him a few general questions about "the industry," and he shared a few observations.  One that he hit on right away is that many young, upwardly-ambitious comedians maintain an obsession with creating "something that will go viral."  They might not be sure what it is, whether it would fit their style, or whether it would even be funny, but they know they want to become a big name -- quickly -- and see some kind of viral video as the way to do it.  Oftentimes, that comes with an obsession of knocking some other comedian off of his or her perch in order to snag more popularity, or perceived zero-sum market share.

Instead of holding a single-minded focus on instant popularity, or on going after the competition, he has carved out a niche that lets him pay all his bills while doing something he loves.  And as to that last combination, how many people in ANY job can say that?

In Microeconomics, we've started to hit on Game Theory in the last couple weeks.  Throughout the Game Theory classes, our Professor has emphasized and re-emphasized a central point:  It's a junior varsity-level error in game theory, or in business, to obsessively focus on the competition.  When companies build pricing decisions solely on *getting one over* on the other guy, they get into self-destructive pricing wars that may bring about their own downfall.

What people forget is that the central purpose of a business is to make a profit.  If your business makes $5 million in annual profits, and another firm in your industry makes $10 million in annual profits, you're still making a profit.  By most people's definitions, you're still successful.

The parallel between pricing strategies and publicity strategies isn't really perfect, but I would say my buddy is a major success with a sound overall strategy.  As a one-man "business," he turns a tidy profit, even if he's not someone you've ever heard of [that could change, though...he's pitching a special on a major network].

I'm not saying competition doesn't matter.  It does.  It really matters when you consider over-saturated markets (i.e. freelance photography).  But it's a JV move to focus more on undercutting or destroying someone else than on building the basic fundamentals that will make you profitable.  Going off on a slight tangent, I would also posit that it's a JV move to respond to an entrepreneurial pitch with "But doesn't somebody already do this?"  Ceteris paribus, I'd be more worried about a start-up in a totally unpopulated industry than one in an existing field with a real live customer base [insert cliche about mousetrap quality].

In other words, if a beauty salon or Irish bar opened in downtown Lowell next to an underwater juggling studio, the latter concept would certainly be more original.  However, I would never bet on it against the salon or the bar, no matter what odds you gave me.  

Thinking Globe-ly, Living Lowell-y (Globe North Feature)

I picked up a Sunday Globe this morning at Brew'd, and my eyes got twice as big when I saw a picture taken on Market Street gracing the cover of Globe North.

This article about veterans and business features Glenn Morales of L & I (the military store that moved to Market from its old spot at Bridge & French).