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25
Aug 10

Blame the Villains or Victims?

The NYTimes blames the victims:

It’s happening all over, in all sorts of families, not just young people moving back home but also young people taking longer to reach adulthood overall. It’s a development that predates the current economic doldrums, and no one knows yet what the impact will be — on the prospects of the young men and women; on the parents on whom so many of them depend; on society, built on the expectation of an orderly progression in which kids finish school, grow up, start careers, make a family and eventually retire to live on pensions supported by the next crop of kids who finish school, grow up, start careers, make a family and on and on. The traditional cycle seems to have gone off course, as young people remain un tethered to romantic partners or to permanent homes, going back to school for lack of better options, traveling, avoiding commitments, competing ferociously for unpaid internships or temporary (and often grueling) Teach for America jobs, forestalling the beginning of adult life.

The article goes on and on comparing now to then, and seems to not talk sufficiently about causes.  Who in their right mind would move home unless they had to?  If you are a recent college graduate, you are competing with 5 or 6 people for every job opening.  You’re going to grad school, hoping to ride out the storm.  You aren’t getting married because you can’t start a household and family from your mother’s basement.  Why are things not like they were for my/your/their parents?  What happened to those good jobs, lifetime employment, and other things the previous generations took for granted?  The impression that I took from the article was some sort of implied defect in today’s youth.

Meanwhile, in the People’s Republic of California, Berkley Campus, a different conversation takes place:

The bad news is that you have been the victims of a terrible swindle, denied an inheritance you deserve by contract and by your merits. And you aren’t the only ones; victims of this ripoff include the students who were on your left and on your right in high school but didn’t get into Cal, a whole generation stiffed by mine. This letter is an apology, and more usefully, perhaps a signal to start demanding what’s been taken from you so you can pass it on with interest.

Swindle – what happened? Well, before you were born, Californians now dead or in nursing homes made a remarkable deal with the future. (Not from California? Keep reading, lots of this applies to you, with variations.) They agreed to invest money they could have spent on bigger houses, vacations, clothes, and cars into the world’s greatest educational system, and into building and operating water systems, roads, parks, and other public facilities, an infrastructure that was the envy of the world. They didn’t get everything right: too much highway and not enough public transportation. But they did a pretty good job.

Young people who enjoyed these ‘loans’ grew up smarter, healthier, and richer than they otherwise would have, and understood that they were supposed to “pay it forward” to future generations, for example by keeping the educational system staffed with lots of dedicated, well-trained teachers, in good buildings and in small classes, with college counselors and up-to-date books. California schools had physical education, art for everyone, music and theater, buildings that looked as though people cared about them, modern languages and ancient languages, advanced science courses with labs where the equipment worked, and more. They were the envy of the world, and they paid off better than Microsoft stock. Same with our parks, coastal zone protection, and social services.

This deal held until about thirty years ago, when for a variety of reasons, California voters realized that while they had done very well from the existing contract, they could do even better by walking away from their obligations and spending what they had inherited on themselves. “My kids are finished with school; why should I pay taxes for someone else’s? Posterity never did anything for me!” An army of fake ‘leaders’ sprang up to pull the moral and fiscal wool over their eyes, and again and again, your parents and their parents lashed out at government (as though there were something else that could replace it) with tax limits, term limits, safe districts, throw-away-the-key imprisonment no matter the cost, smoke-and-mirrors budgeting, and a rule never to use the words taxes and services in the same paragraph.

Now, your infrastructure is falling to pieces under your feet, and as citizens you are responsible for crudities like closing parks, and inhumanities like closing battered women’s shelters. It’s outrageous, inexcusable, that you can’t get into the courses you need, but much worse that Oakland police have stopped taking 911 calls for burglaries and runaway children. If you read what your elected officials say about the state today, you’ll see things like “California can’t afford” this or that basic government function, and that “we need to make hard choices” to shut down one or another public service, or starve it even more (like your university). Can’t afford? The budget deficit that’s paralyzing Sacramento is about $500 per person; add another $500 to get back to a public sector we don’t have to be ashamed of, and our average income is almost forty times that. Of course we can afford a government that actually works: the fact is that your parents have simply chosen not to have it.

We should be attributing culpability, not just assigning blame.

Daily Links — Comments Off
11
Jan 10

Daily Links for January 8th through January 11th

All excerpts are quoted from the respective link(s).

  • Anderson Analytics — Social Networking Service User Typing Tool – The segmentation model above is based on several variables from our recent research study. However, we have selected just a couple of the variables from the model above which do a fairly good job at predicting someone's membership in one of the segments. If you would like to try the simpler typing model to see which of the segments you are closest to you may do so here.
  • Social Media Today | The Business of Social Media: B2B and B2C Engagement by the Numbers – Business.com recently conducted a study that evaluated Social Media activities of those in B2B and B2C. In its report, “2009 B2B Social Media Benchmarking Study,” Business.com found that North American companies focused on B2B were much more rigorous in the world of social media than those in B2C. As you’ll see, B2B leads the fray across the entire regiment of campaigns and programs.
  • sleeping alone and starting out early: smacking down Jaron Lanier & ‘World Wide Mush’ – Normally, I wouldn't take on such a revered, well credentialed authority as Jaron Lanier,* but his recent Wall Street Journal piece on why the movement toward collectivism, collaboration, and openness is doomed to failure leaves him cruising for a bruising.
  • A Peek Into Netflix Queues – NYTimes.com – Examine Netflix rental patterns, neighborhood by neighborhood, in a dozen cities. Some titles with distinct patterns are Mad Men, Obsessed and Last Chance Harvey.
  • The Decade in Management Ideas – Our Editors – Harvard Business Review – Tis the season for "year's best" lists — and even, this year, for "decade's best" lists — and who are we to resist the urge? A few of us HBR editors (Gardiner Morse and Steve Prokesch helped especially) took the opportunity to look back on the past ten years of management thinking and are ready to declare our choices for the — well, why not say it — most influential management ideas of the millennium (so far).
Daily Links — 1 Comment
07
Dec 09

Daily Links for December 7th

All excerpts are quoted from the respective link(s).

  • The Major Works of Counterintuitive Thought From the Past Decade- The 00′s Issue– New York Magazine – In the aughts, the shocking hidden side of everything became the only side of anything worthy of magazine covers and book deals. Social scientists applied their techniques to the problem of climate change; liberals who wanted to be taken seriously had to come up with arguments for conservative policies and vice versa. Everywhere in the media, the former creators of mass consensus devoted themselves to contradicting the conventional wisdom. Here, a selection of the most unlikely ideas in a decade that was always looking to blow your mind.
  • Winners and Losers as the Dollar Falls – Experts argue about the many effects of the dollar's fall and what it says about confidence in the American economy, with its decades-old trade deficit and mounting national debt. But there are also more predictable effects replayed in each decline.
  • How Will You Die? – While you may be worried of catching of an obscure disease you heard about on the news, the truth is that we are far more likely to die of a small range of illnesses, nearly all of which are tied in some way to your lifestyle choices, like the food you eat or how much exercise you get. But you can lessen—sometimes dramatically—the likelihood of succumbing to the most common causes of death by knowing your risk factors and making informed choices. This is a look at your most likely cause of death (excluding uncontrollable events like accidents and homicide), given your race, sex, and age. Use this information to make choices that will keep you healthy.
  • The Biggest Lie In Social Media – Weather we want to believe it or not, investing in social media takes time, money, and resources. Companies and people need to have a means for evaluating their investment in social against other areas of focus. When the bean counters and CMOs are weighing their options, I can guarantee you an argument of “the numbers don’t matter” won’t hold water and will have you laughed out of the room.
  • Why Social Media Purists Won’t Last | Social Media Explorer – No, I’m not turning my back on the social media community or mindset. But I am trying to make a point all the social media evangelists out there need to grow up and face: If you don’t stop selling the fluff and start driving the bottom line, you’re going to have to go back to whatever you were doing in 2005. It’s not about convincing the curmudgeon. It’s not about waiting it out until digital natives are calling the shots. It’s about making social media drive business for your clients or companies. If you don’t, you’ll soon hear, “You’re fired,” and it won’t be from Apprentice reruns.
  • Three Tweets for the Web – Many critics of contemporary life want our culture to remain like a long-distance relationship at a time when most of us are growing into something more mature. We assemble culture for ourselves, creating and committing ourselves to a fascinating brocade. Very often the paper-and-ink book is less central to this new endeavor; it’s just another cultural bit we consume along with many others. But we are better off for this change, a change that is filling our daily lives with beauty, suspense, and learning.
  • Business Week Social Media Article Misses The Point – They frame it as if social media (which in reality is just one part of the digital marketing mix) is this new scary thing, and that companies and professionals are gullible enough to be usurped by snake oil types. At this point, the opposite is true: any marketer worth their salt understands digital marketing by now. At least enough not to be sold snake oil.

    Executing on the correct digital strategy can accomplish the same business objectives as strong traditional marketing/PR strategy. The web and the real are no different in my eyes: this article might as well have been called “Beware The Consultant Snake Oil,” sans-social media. What does the web have to do with it?

    • Continue reading →

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10
Nov 09

Daily Links for November 8th through November 10th

All excerpts are quoted from the respective link(s).

  • Top 50 US Craft Brewers by Sales (MAP) | Sloshspot Blog – You may have seen the map we created earlier this year using the data from 2007 sales, and we now present the updated version with figures for 2008 sales. Once again, to be very clear, the rankings are determined by sales of those breweries that fit the criteria: small, independent and traditional (see the Brewers Association definition of Craft Brewers here). This is not a list of the best beers, so you won't see your local monastery that receives 101 bottles from Heaven each year. We also included some interesting information regarding recent brewery openings and closings.
  • Interactive: State-by-state numbers for the’cash for clunkers’ program | detnews.com | The Detroit News – Interactive: State-by-state numbers for the'cash for clunkers' program
  • The 10 Most Obscene Cities In America – It's always obscene in Philadelphia [#3]! Philly only placed in the top ten for four of the seven bad words, but it ranked high for all of them.
  • Do or Die: The Six Senators Who Will Decide the Fate of Health Care Reform | TPMDC – Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid faces a number of obstacles to passing health care reform but his main task is to keep his caucus united for not one, but two, supermajority votes, just to get the reform bill an up or down on the Senate floor. Failure to get 60 votes to push past either of those two procedural chokepoints could derail the reform bill. Here are the six key holdouts Reid must wrangle to reach the magic threshold.
  • House Democrats Who Voted Against the Health Care Bill – Interactive Graphic – NYTimes.com – Lawmakers in the House voted 220 to 215 on Saturday night to approve a sweeping overhaul of the nation’s health care system. Only one Republican voted for the bill, and 39 Democrats opposed it, including 24 members of the fiscally conservative Blue Dog Coalition. An overwhelming majority of the Democratic lawmakers who opposed the bill — 31 of the 39 — represent districts that were won by Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona, in the 2008 presidential election, and a third of them were freshmen. Nearly all of the fourteen freshmen Democrats who voted “no” represent districts that were previously Republican and are considered vulnerable in 2010. Geographically, 22 lawmakers from southern states formed the largest opposition bloc. Below are details on the Democrats that opposed the health care legislation in the House.
  • Cloud of Atlases by The Editors – The Morning News – Maps without legends – what can you infer from the patterns and your existing knowledge?
Daily Links — Comments Off
16
Oct 09

Daily Links for October 14th through October 16th

All excerpts are quoted from the respective link(s).

  • Edible Geometry – In the world of cooking there are around 350 different types of pasta, and probably approximately four times as many names for them. They can be divided into few groups: long shape, flat pasta strands, short shaped and tubular pasta, small pasta for soup, stuffed shape, Asian type. Certain shapes of pasta and sizes are used for specific purposes, while others can be used in several different manners. New shapes are also being designed and named every day. Only with the mouth is it possible to distinguish between all the types of pasta, without seeing them. And only with the mouth do they develop their various characteristics that on sight can often seem to be similar.
  • Science of Scams: Derren Brown and Kat the Scientist debunk the paranormal industry – Boing Boing – The Science of Scams is a new project from Channel 4 and mentalist/magician Derren Brown that aims to debunk the paranormal industry's lucrative claims about ghosts, fortune-telling, telekinesis and other assorted woo woo. Brown and C4 produced seven videos purporting to show the kind of "paranormal" activity held up as evidence of the supernatural and released them on YouTube for several weeks, allowing people to make what they will of them. Now, they're revealing the hoax videos once per week, with accompanying videos that explain how the scam works. The show is presented by Kat the Scientist, who did postgrad research in Biological Anthropology and Pharmacology at Oxford.
  • Gary’s Social Media Count | PERSONALIZE MEDIA – Many of us who have been following social media since the early 90s are very sensitive to today’s exponential growth in usage of the sharing web. Inspired by other cool real time counters, The Goddess of Social Media Laurel Papworth, my own Rise & Rise of Social Media presentations and various ‘cool’ videos (you know the ones) I decided to put together this little Flash app (which is in constant development) showing how active & dynamic the Social Web is. More after the embed.
  • The Most Influential Management Gurus – Forbes.com – Leadership consulting firm CrainerDearlove surveyed 3,500 people and a panel of experts to determine the 2009 edition of the Thinkers 50, a biennial list of the most influential living management thinkers.
  • The Referendum – Happy Days Blog – NYTimes.com – The problem is, we only get one chance at this, with no do-overs. Life is, in effect, a non-repeatable experiment with no control. In his novel about marriage, “Light Years,” James Salter writes: “For whatever we do, even whatever we do not do prevents us from doing its opposite. Acts demolish their alternatives, that is the paradox.” Watching our peers’ lives is the closest we can come to a glimpse of the parallel universes in which we didn’t ruin that relationship years ago, or got that job we applied for, or got on that plane after all. It’s tempting to read other people’s lives as cautionary fables or repudiations of our own.
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