Perceptions of Reality: Larry Slobodzian

My Review of Roku 2 XS Streaming Player

2011-09-18T15:59:00.001-05:00

Originally submitted at Roku

Adds an enhanced remote for playing games, plus extra connectivity options.

Not worth it

By CCNA_USMC from Kansas City, MO on 9/18/2011

Pros: High quality picture, Built in Wi-Fi, Compact

Cons: Inconsistent performance, Difficult to set up, Want more video choices, Requires credit card

Best Uses: Secondary TV

Describe Yourself: Hulu plus user, Early adopter, Engineer, Netflix fan, Technophile

The unit occasionally locks up. Tech support was pretty good using chat. There are a lot of channels, but most of them offer subpar content. Great for Hulu and Netflix. Not useful for Youtube, Vevo, etc.

I think it is wrong to require a credit card just to start the Roku up, that should be optional. HUGE security risk for them to store my credit card info.

(legalese)

WikiLeaks and the Accused Leaker

2010-12-03T00:20:00.005-06:00

Bradley Manning is the U.S. Army private who is accused of leaking information to the website Wikileaks. I have been sorting out my feelings on the Wikileaks controversy, torn between a desire for openness and freedom versus a desire for America's Government to be able to operate securely and effectively. I have quickly begun to lean in favor of prosecuting the guilty and shutting down Wikileaks. Considering the story of Bradley Manning led me in this direction.

First of all, I will concede that I do not know Manning and can not make any judgements about him. With that assumption, I can still justify an angry sense of ethical indignation against anyone who would take classified information and release it to total strangers. What he did was steal, and he stole something that belongs to every American, despite the fact that few of us can access it. Whomever revealed this information, they did so as a selfish act. They had no right to make that decision on their own, when so many other Americans were laboring tirelessly to secure that information and add value to it. This is a democracy where we make decisions through group consensus; the leaker of this information acted like a dictator when he made this decision without consulting a larger group of stakeholders.

Now what if Manning is guilty as charged? Assuming that most of what is written about him is true, Manning had a frustrating childhood, is socially awkward, and is gay. That leads me to believe that he is less a martyr for the cause, and more of an unstable personality using this opportunity to lash out at a world that never met his desires to belong and be accepted. If the stories of Manning's personal life are true, then I sympathize with him and wish that humans put a higher value on treating each other with mutual respect. However, that does not justify his actions anymore than it justified Jeffery Dahmer or Timothy McVeigh.

Leaking these videos and documents puts lives at risk, damages the reputation of a great nation, and diminishes or even nullifies the efforts of hundreds of dedicated professionals working for the causes of freedom and American interests. If he had a document that exposed a blatant act such as those that occurred at My Lai or Abu Graib, then this would be a very different conversation. In the case of Wikileaks, we just have a dump of data, the contents of which are unknown and the ramifications unconsidered. That is more than just unethical. That is treasonous.

The Meaning of Wikileaks

2010-11-30T08:56:00.007-06:00

Wikileaks does it again, publishing material that was meant to be classified and protected. People have called it treasonous and recommended legal action. Others have suggested a cloak-and-dagger approach to punish the guilty. President Obama has called for agencies to review their procedures for handling sensitive material. The general consensus among those in Government and among those private citizens who oppose the action of Wikileaks is that we must stop the leaks somehow.

My opinion is that we can try sticking our finger in the cracked dike, but that will not stop all the leaks. What we need to realize is that it is a new world; it is an open world. In a flash, from anywhere in the world, I can publish a paragragh or a terabyte and make it instantly visible to the rest of the connected world. Iran and China have tried to block the more offensive addresses on the internet, but willful people longing to be free will find a way around the barriers.

Federal agencies should secure their secrets and protect the people mentioned within the secrets. However, I think the larger lesson is that we can no longer sustain large, secretive agencies. Overtime, the large federal agency will become irrelevant. The nature of the internet is to collaborate with total abandon. The rules of a nation-state are simply a hindrance to what will inevitably dominate the earth. We do not want more trade barriers or more wars; we want to be free to collaborate and compete globally.

As Thomas Friedman pointed out, there was a time when global collaboration and competition was driven only by nations. Eventually, the vehicle for global collaboration and competition was driven by the multinational corporation. Once the internet approached ubiquity, we found ourselves able to compete and collaborate globally as individuals. Some guy in a jungle on a remote continent can affect the thinking of a whole group of American suburbanites with one tweet. A talented wicker-weaver in the middle of nowhere can setup a global storefront and become a multinational corporation all by herself with little expertise or effort.

Unfortunately for some people, this is actually just controlled chaos. You can't herd cats, and you can't keep secrets easily. Now that we are all individuals playing by our own rules, we are are going to reject the rules around of others. Governments have an important role to play here to make sure that the wild west is kept on a level playing field--in other words, to protect us from the most selfish and greedy violators.

I am not defending or supporting Wikileaks here. They don't appear to be considering the ethical impact of their disclosures. As an individual, I wouldn't want my secrets revealed to the world. For instance, my SSN is a powerful number that needs to remain secret. My medical history may appear benign to my doctor, but in the hands of some people it may be enough to keep me from the job I deserve--therefore we keep it secret. I certainly don't want anyone to know what my spouse and I argue about, nor do I want to hear about your arguments. Some secrets are important.

What I am supporting is the inevitable. We can't stop the world from becoming more open. We don't want to. With more people working on a problem, the solutions become more creative and more efficient. Diseases like cancer may not be cured without openness, for example. We just need to realize that it is a different planet in 2010 than it was just 20 years ago. In 1990, if I knew a major secret I would have to go through the bureaucracy of a major publisher and it would takes weeks to get revealed if it ever was. Now I can expose it globally, for free, from the comfort of anywhere on the planet, all by myself or in collaboration with any one of the millions of individuals who would like to help me.

The war in Iraq has demonstrated that the old way of fighting wars will no longer work. The enemy will dress like a civilian, live with civilians, and not be seen when he detonates the IED. If you are dressed like a Marine and driving down the same road you always do in an unarmored Humvee, you will not have the chance to defend yourself when you are attacked. Fireteam formations and raw aggression are useless against an insurgency. The military is adapting to the new rules. Now our diplomatic and intelligence agencies will have adjust to their new rules too. One of those rules will be: support individualism and reduce or eliminate inefficient bureaucracies.

A New Favorite Blog

2010-11-15T18:24:00.003-06:00

I have a new favorite blog, thanks to the excesses of TSA. Johnny Edge's blog is a rambling list of Libertarian-leaning opinions focusing on the economic effects of idiocy. At least, that's my take on it. I never would have seen this blog if TSA hadn't demanded to touch Johnny's junk. I followed a link on twitter to his post, and have been fuming ever sense.

Here the gist of it: if TSA demands to touch your genitals and you refuse, then they can fine you $10,000 dollars and bring a civil suit against you. I am not a Constitutional scholar so excuse my ignorance, but doesn't that run against the idea of the Fourth Amendment? That is one step beyond illegal search and seizure, into the realm of tyranny.

Here's a funny TSA story: I was cleaning out my laptop bag and found a small bottle of alcohol-based (i.e. flammable) hand sanitizer. This is supposed to be taken out of your bag and put in the gray bucket, but I had it at the bottom of my laptop bag for two months now, and have flown almost every week during that time. San Francisco , Reagan International, Dulles, Midway, Tampa, and Kansas City airports all have failed to detect my concealed flammable item numerous times, and that's even with a few bag checks. I am sure you have heard similar stories of missed knives, liquids, and other crap.

This morning, as I boarded my flight in Kansas City I attempted to bring a scanner through. Right now, printer toner is being singled out because a terrorist allegedly tried to ship a bomb from Southwest Asia in a toner cartridge. That logically means that every American carrying a printer is part of the same profile (note: sarcasm). My scanner doesn't print, and there is no place to put a toner cartridge, but that didn't stop our crack TSA team from delibberating for several minutes over the offensive item.

Then the supervisor asks me what size toner cartridge is in this thing. I am an engineer and am certified to work on laser printers, but I confess I do not know my toner sizes. Unfortunately, they are not sold that way. I simply stated that it was a scanner, not a printer, and didn't have a toner cartridge. Here's where I get mad: They let me take the scanner at that point, never opening it to check for a toner cartridge and never using their fancy wipes on it. I hope no one tells the terrorists that TSA will just take your word for it when you say that it's not what they think it is.

National Opt-Out day is coming up on the heaviest travel day of the year. If just 10% of the travelers participate, I know for sure that there will be delays nationwide. I saw it with my own eyes just a few months ago. There is a group called Honor Flights that sends veterans on a trip to thank them for their service. A few months back, they booked a flight out of Kansas City heading to Washington DC, and were full of WWII and Korean War Vets. Whether they were wheelchair-bound due to combat or age, I don't know. What I do know is that they couldn't just roll through the metal detectors. Each one had to be hand-screened (groped and humiliated) before they could board their flight.

We're talking about 30 or 40 veterans, each one taking several minutes to fondle. The plane was delayed for an hour, and the next plane scheduled for that gate had to be diverted to another gate. The ramifications of one delayed flight can be pretty bad once it hits two or three other airports and is combined with weather and maintenance delays on other planes.

Besides that, if a man is willing to lay his life on the line for his country in combat, we can give him the benefit of the doubt and leave his junk un-fondled.

The War After Armageddon; Plus a Word: Obstreperous

2010-10-21T12:08:00.004-05:00

I just finished reading The War After Armageddon by Ralph Peters and have to recommend it. This is a book written by a retired Army officer who spent enough time researching the Marine Corps to make the language authentic. The title grabbed me first. Armageddon is supposed to be the last war ever, so I was instantly drawn to the question "What else is left to fight over after Armageddon?" I was in the mood for a fast, entertaining read and I usually do well with a war drama. This book fit the bill for me perfectly.

The author knew more than just military terminology and structures. It was apparent to me that he knew the secret languages of Army staff officers and Marine grunts. He understood the pride that motivates every Marine, the values that cause an NCO to maintain an inhuman discipline despite adversity.

Ralph Peters understands more than just how to talk like a professional soldier and Marine; he understands what motivates two sides of an extreme. While his book is a prophetic warning against religious extremism, Peters was able to authentically write the thoughts and speech of Fundamentalist Muslims and Christians. I don't know much about the Koran, but I know that he often made authentic references to scripture that even extreme Christians will appreciate.

This is a dystopian novel about a United States that has swung far to the Christian Right at war against an Islam united under one Caliph. In the same tradition of 1984, Farenheit 451 and Brave New World, Peters uses an unlikely scenario to demonstrate the dangers if we allowed certain ideas to grow out of control.

The book also demonstrates the very real threat of nuclear weapons held by people who are not deterred common rational ideas such as Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD). Growing up in the 1980's, we lived under the constant threat of nuclear annihilation from the Soviet Union but were pretty sure that neither our own military nor the Soviet military would ever launch their weapons because neither side could truly win. My kids are growing up under different assumptions: that there aren't ICBM rockets being trained on American targets anymore. What we try not to think about is that if a religious fanatic is willing to strap TNT to themself and detonate it in a public place, why wouldn't they be willing to detonate a thermo-nuclear weapon if they are given the chance. While the Soviet Union refrained from attacking us because they did not want to live in a post-Nuclear world, it is not apparent to us that the terrorists who threaten the United States understand or even care about their future on this Earth. They are willing to die for their ideas and firmly believe that the afterlife will be far greater than this current life.

Ralph Peters has an impressive resume as a military analyst and strategist, who understands the systems and issues at play globally. That not only contributed to the authenticity and texture of the story, it added another important issue to be considered as part of the dystopian thesis: a dependence on electronic systems at the expense of fundamental military skills may expose our military in a future battle. The battlefield Peters describes is heavily dependent on electronic systems for communication and navigation, but the enemy has several weapons and techniques available that render a fully armed unit with a full compliment of physically-fit men unable to move forward, seek out, and destroy their enemy. Today, electronic systems prevent "friendly fire" incidents, deliver real-time pictures of the battlefield, and many other functions that were unimaginable just a few years ago. However, this is a fragile toolset that could be taken away by a capable enemy in the future. If we depend on GPS and never learn how to triangulate our position, determine an azimuth, and navigate over terrain using a map and compass, we may find ourselves completely lost and hopelessly defenceless in a war. The technologies exist, all we need is a determined enemy.

I learned a new word while reading The War After Armageddon: Obstreperous. It was used to describe an old man being detained in a crowd, but I couldn't tell from the context exactly what the word meant. According to dictionary.com it means either to be unruly and resisting restraint or to be boisterous and clamorous. That's a good word to stick in your back pocket and pull out to make a sentence more interesting later.

Patriot or Progressive?

2010-06-08T09:38:00.004-05:00

Are you a Patriot or a Progressive? Can you be both?

All too often lately, I am seeing intellectual and political dissonance among my sphere of influence, but I seem to be the only one aware of it. I hear conservative friends complaining about welfare, people receiving money without being required to earn it and how it reduces competition while increasing reliance on Government. Uh-huh, the same people who gave us TARP, Airline bailouts, deregulation, subsidies, innumerable tax cuts and loopholes for corporations, etcetera.

I heard an Obama conspiracy-theorist rail on about ACORN and how it was a corrupt money machine. This was in defense of BP, whose Political Action Committee (PAC) is continuously fighting against the interest of Americans who enjoy tourist economies, clean and safe seafood, and beautiful shorelines.

My right-wing friends are consistently surprised that, as a veteran Marine I can be proud of my service and our history, but against the war in Iraq. Um, why would I support a war that is making my nation broke, making our former Vice-President and other war profiteers rich, killed thousands of Americans in unarmored vehicles, and has never found the smoking gun that we were assured was everywhere. (Well, the people closest to the situation including U.N. Chief Weapons Inspector Scott Witter were 90-95% sure that WMDs were eliminated, but what would he know. He only spent 7 years working on the problem.)

Some people hear me talk about holding corporations responsible and punishing those which threaten the greater good, and they assume that I am a Socialist or worst. They hear me praise companies that make environmental and social goals as important as profits, and they assume that I am a Communist. In fact, I am neither. I am an MBA, with a hard-won degree from Baker University. I spent several years and over $20,000 studying business, profitability, and the fundamentals of Capitalism-in-action. I love making money, I own stock and real estate, and do not intend to hand my assets over to anybody without a fight.

As an MBA with extensive experience in Corporate America, I am here to tell you that Corporations do not exist to improve people's lives. They exist to make money for a non-human legal entity. The legal entity (the corporation) must prosper at all costs. If that means that rivers are polluted, people are laid off, entire towns are destroyed, and innocent people are stripped of their possessions, then so be it. You know all those movies where machines become intelligent enough to enslave their human creators? That is exactly where we are at with the corporation.

The only incentive for a corporation to act responsibly is to avoid Government fines and avoid bad publicity. Legally, the only real incentive to a corporation is when they are profitable. If they take an action that is responsible to a stakeholder but unprofitable, they can be sued by their shareholders for a breach of fiduciary duty. That needs to change, and B Corporations go a long way towards that end. What is really needed is constituent demand for a change in Capitalism: we need to demand responsible Capitalism where people receive the priority, the environment is cared for and protected in the interest of sustainability, employees partner with employers for mutual gain, and the world is left in better shape than it was found by each corporation, each person, each generation.

Word of the Day: Obbligatists

2010-05-02T10:23:00.003-05:00

You know those boxes that appear on web pages during registration that ask you to type the work you see, and it is usually a non-sense word displayed with background noise and distorted letters? The one I filled out today asked me to type the word "obbligatists" which sounded like it might be a cool word to stick in my back pocket. Dictionary.com had never heard of it, and suggested "abblactate" instead, which means to wean. Not helpful.

A quick Google (the verb and the noun) helped me observe the word in context. Not as exciting or useful as I expected, obbligatists are apparently artists to play the oboe. If I ever find the oipportunioty to smoothly inject this word in conversation, it will probably be a depressing moment. Not that there is anything wrong with oboes or obbligatists, it just isn't a fit with my self-image. ;)

Word and Quote of the Day: Palliate

2009-12-27T19:14:00.008-06:00

Palliate means to excuse, alleviate, or otherwise diminish the severity of something. You may improve a person's life by palliating their suffering. On the other hand, if you palliate their shortcomings you may be enabling their poor behavior. I think Samuel Johnson's quote below is a great example:

“Friends are often chosen for similitude of manners, and therefore each palliate the other's failings because they are his own.” -Samuel Johnson (source: http://thinkexist.com/quotation/friends_are_often_chosen_for_similitude_of/149442.html)

Palliate comes from the latin word for cloak, which is pallium. This is interesting to me because it is a neuroanatomical term. In the brain, the pallium is the evolutionary precursor to the cerebrum. In all animals with a brain, the pallium clokes the brain and provides the superior, most complex functions. In humans, the pallium evolved in the cerebrum and provided us with a place for spatial memory, language, and other functions.

Check this out, a blog that uses cartoons to expand your vocabulary:

Guest Writing: 5 Productivity Tips

2009-03-02T09:46:00.003-06:00

I was just published again at ChangeForge.com, writing about my 5 tips for boosting your productivity. Leave a comment on their blog with your favorite tip! http://www.changeforge.com/2009/02/28/gitterdun/

Why I Use Twitter

2009-02-26T10:13:00.004-06:00

Twitter is the most important and popular trend on the internet right now. It is such a simple service that many people are skeptical of its usefulness. On the other hand, millions of people worldwide are finding new uses for Twitter everyday. I was once a skeptic, but I have found a use for twitter and would like to share it with you.

In a nutshell, Twitter is a service for broadcasting a message of 140 characters or less. This message can include text, emoticons, links, and Twitter commands. If you use Facebook or LinkedIn, then you have already been introduced to this concept. Twitter is similar to a status update on other social network websites. You can use Twitter as an alternative status update; I use an application that automatically transfers my Twitter status to my Facebook profile.

If you just yawned, give me a second. That is not the end of twitter, that is the beginning. The fact is, few people in the Twitter world care what your status is. What they want from you is useful information in 140 characters or less. Do you have something to say? Do you have an agenda? We want to hear it. We have chosen to follow you, now preach away.

What would you say? If you believe in a certain ideal or brand, you can send out brief messages about your cause. You can send out links to news and blog articles that you think should be read. You can send links to pictures that support your cause. This is your shot to write headlines, reach out, and be heard globally. Better yet, your message is broadcast in real-time at the speed of light. People will be reading your message as soon as you are done typing it.

Going Viral Have you heard the term "going viral" as it relates to the internet? Think of it this way: You have just discovered a fascinating piece of information that you know is of interest to many people. There are many ways to transmit this information, and Twitter may become the media of choice in the near future. All you have to do is capsulize your message in 140 characters and hit enter. Everyone following you will instantly receive the message. Some of them will like the message so much that they will "retweet" the message to their followers. Some of those followers will "retweet". The "Six Degrees of Separation" applies here: if the message is interesting, it will spread like wildfire.

Search My next post will drill deeper into how I use Twitter, but I want to mention here that Twitter is an important tool to add to your research toolbox. Searching Twitter will add an important new dimension to your research: The dimension of real-time. If you need timely information, I doubt you can beat Twitter for finding video, blogs, and news articles since they are sent out over Twitter immediately after they're posted. Additionally, the culture of Twitter ensures that you will find obscure and unique resources that a search in Lexis-Nexis or ABI Inform/Global would never turn up, and would be buried too deep in Google.

Look for my next post, where I explain exactly how I use Twitter.

I Found a Use for Twitter

2009-02-26T09:54:00.004-06:00

Over the last year, I have been seeing references to something called "Twitter" in discussions related to technology, internet trends, and other "geek topics" which I follow. Suddenly, I started hearing Twitter dropped in non-geek conversations. Twitter began making its way into the news, and onto the Blackberries of some unlikely people. (Lance Armstrong, Barack Obama, George Stephanopolis, etc)

I kept my distance at first and only glanceowd at Twitter references occasionally. I just didn't see any use for Twitter in my life, and I thought it was a lame fad. I expected it to burn itself out quickly, and I could get back to FaceBook and LinkedIn.

I can now see that Twitter is not going to burn itself out; it is snowballing itself into a YouTube-like freight train. Some of the most popular and intelligent people are using Twitter regularly. Innovative developers are building new applications for Twitter everyday. A group of venture capitalists recently threw $35 million at Twitter, even though it still lacks a profitable business plan. Read that again: $35 million invested in a service that currently is unable to make money.

Several weeks ago, I finally dangled a toe in Twitter. It still seemed like a blackhole, but I kept at it. I was looking for the hook, and the hook found me: Twitter is what you make it. The service is so simple and easy that if you just look for a way to make it useful, you will create the usefulness.

A religious figure once said, "Knock and the door shall be opened, seek and ye shall find." If you play with Twitter long enough, you will create the door that you want to knock on. You will answer your own prayers. Twitter has so many potential applications that you are guaranteed to find a use for it.

In my next post, I will explain how I use it. For now, just realize that for whatever question you may ask, Twitter is the answer. Twitter will eventually be a network service that we take for granted like GoogleMaps or YouTube. It will not, however, go away for lack of usefulness.

A Brave, New World

2009-02-17T19:14:00.005-06:00

I just got an email from the President of the United States. The most powerful man on the planet sent me an email to announce a new initiative, broaden my understanding, and encourage my commitment. It's not the first time he has contacted me. We're connected on LinkedIn, he emailed me throughout the campaign, and continues to send occasional emails about what he is doing. His wife and his staff have sent a few emails too. He even sent me a text message to reveal his choice of running mate, prior to making a public announcement.

I try not to get a big head about it. I mean, I know I am not the only American who receives emails from the President, and we still have not met face-to-face. But he does solicit my feedback. I think he is truly interested in my opinion, approval, and support.

Yeah, Obama has no idea who I am, I know. In fact, it would make me nervous if he did know who I was. What I am excited about is the fact that the President of the United States has embraced social media. He has provided an avenue for dialogue that is unprecedented. Government will never be the same, and neither will the governed.

Love him or not, Obama is giving you access. You can still link to him on Facebook, MySpace, and LinkedIn. He still carries a Blackberry. Obama is leveraging the cutting edge of the internet, and finding new uses everyday.

Love him or hate him, you should pay attention to Obama's use of social media. For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. What will be our reaction over time as Obama's administration finds new ways to communicate with us? This is even more important for the candidates in the future, for every office.

The president elected in 2012 may find that their real cost is in time spent online, rather than in dollars spent on TV and Radio commercials. In fact, the future candidates may need to demonstrate more savvy in social media than they do in fundraising. Campaign costs that cost less may dampen the voice of the interest groups who pay the most. A whole new paradigm of power may emerge.

The email I received today is for Recovery.gov which is a website dedicated to providing transparency and accountability with the money that congress approved for economic recovery. The intent is that any citizen may go to this website and be assured that our money is being invested in our future. Part of economic recovery is our own psychological perception. With Recovery.gov, we may have a quicker recovery due to the confidence of the American people.

Will this become the norm? Will we eventually take for granted having a government which communicates directly and immediately? Will we learn to demand the accountability and transparency that Recovery.gov is introducing? Will this change how our congress spends money?

The True Cost of Layoffs

2009-02-11T12:26:00.006-06:00

In the interest of full disclosure, I will admit now that I am unemployed due to a layoff, and have also been laid off in the past. Am I bitter? No, but I would have handled it differently. This post examines the benefits and pitfalls of a layoff from the perspective of symbiotic economics.

First, what do I mean by symbiotic economics? I mean that we are all connected economically and that our economic actions have effects on each other. When I spend a dollar at a retail outlet, you will likely receive a benefit as an employee of that company, a shareholder, a vendor, or a member of the community that receives the sales tax. Alternatively, if I destroy value in the economy through theft, dishonesty, tax increases, or otherwise, you will pay higher prices, higher taxes, or miss out on potential opportunities.

I laid out the tenets of my philosophy of symbiotic economics here.

Starting with the paradigm of symbiotic economics, let us examine the ramifications of layoffs. As a shareholder, you may view all layoffs as good for your bottom line, but I would argue that is not always the case. There will be times when layoffs are necessary to protect the value that your firm possesses. If your market does not allow for growth and there is no way to keep your employees engaged productively, then a layoff is probably the best option.

However, there are times when a layoff is used to cut costs and appease investors. On the balance sheet, a layoff is an attractive thing. It allows a company to reduce losses reported in a quarter by offsetting them with a cut in operating expenses. It all comes down to a ratio: the amount of money spent compared to the amount of money earned.

However, this ratio hides many important costs that are all being paid across the globe today. When one firm cuts payroll and another firm hires, then the result is basically a wash. Today, as in many times past, we see too many firms cutting and not enough hiring. Unemployed people do not spend money. Also, growing unemployment makes employed people nervous, curtailing their spending.

If you accept the fact that our economy is symbiotic, then you can predict that reducing spending in retail will reduce the revenue that the wholesalers and vendors receive. Transportation receives less revenue. More employees are laid off, salaries are frozen or reduced, stock prices and mutual funds fall short, and we find ourselves in a viscious circle. Basically, as we see in today's headlines, if everyone cuts headcount at the same time we actually ensure that our next quarter will suffer.

There is another cost that is overlooked. You layoff 10% today, and next year you find that you need some of those employees back. Now you have to spend the money to recruit, evaluate, hire, equip, and train the workforce that you already possessed one year ago. Did you really save money by eliminating their salary? Many HR professionals claim that it costs 150% of salary to replace an employee. It could be higher than that depending on the employee.

There is no way to know what an employee would have learned, created, or innovated during a year. There is also no way to know how much damage that employee can cause by taking your knowledge out the door. I know that elitist executives do not admit the value that their employees possess, and that is shameful. A lot of money is wasted on training and developing human capital, only to see that investment return value for someone else.

The intelligent executive is aware that the best asset that he can invest in with little risk of depreciation walks out the door every day. Investing in your employees can pay tremendous dividends. Plant and equipment alone cannot create wealth without the introduction of the right people. Cash, credit, energy, and brand are all powerless to create market value, but the right people can take advantage of such resources to create value, even in the face of economic adversity.

Recently, a contact of mine started a job on a Monday. On Friday of that first week, the company announced a 5% pay cut in response to economic forces. That person complained to me, the unemployed guy who would have accepted a 10% pay cut rather than a layoff. After scolding this person into a sense of gratitude, I pondered the situation from an executive perspective.

If I had been in my former CEO's shoes, what would have been the best decision to make? He runs an S Corporation, meaning that he has only a few private shareholders to answer to and wields greater power over his company than the CEO of a publicly traded company. He could have decided to accept a loss for the quarter without fear of lawsuits for fiscal irresponsibility. The CEO could have decided to cut costs and salary temporarily, with reasonable expectations that his company would grow again in the near future. The third choice was to cut a certain percentage of salary out of the operating expenses, which he did.

By ignoring the balance sheet and accepting the loss, the CEO would be acting irresponsibly. As a shareholder, I would be disappointed (to say the least) if my investment was not protected and money was wasted. Wasting cash in this quarter could have a detrimental effect on the firm's ability to pay expenses next quarter, putting the firm in grave danger. When the firm is in danger, then the employees, shareholders, vendors, customers, and community are also threatened. That is to say, there are many stakeholders who have an interest in the profitability of a firm besides the shareholders. As an employee, investor, client, or vendor, I want this company to maintain profitability for my own selfish and symbiotic reasons.

My former CEO chose to lay off 4 % of his workforce. Most of these people were good/great employees with unlimited potential. Many of us also possessed proprietary information about the firm's products, methods, and clients. We were 4% of the current workforce, but percentage of the firm's future growth did we represent? We'll never know.

The firm's market is in a current recession due to outside factors, and we all assume that once the global economy turns around, the firm's market will begin to grow again. At that point, they will need to staff up. I have already been told that I will be on a shortlist of employees called first. They already know my work ethic and abilities, and I have already worked through the period of training and connecting. I loved working for that employer and would return today if they called. However, I expect to be in another rewarding position when they finally call and will regrettably turn them down (unless they offer a lucrative salary increase.)

I know for a fact that my layoff represents an opportunity cost for the firm. I learn something new everyday, and will be far more valuable next year than I am this year. I am innovative, passionate, and entrepreneurial. My future includes great potential that they could have harnessed for their own benefit, but will now only read about or compete against. I am sure that the same can be said for most of the other 4%.

If they cannot rehire me and the other 4%, then they will incur the additional expense of recruiting, the cost of training them, and suffer through time it takes to bring someone onboard and get them productive (6 months or longer in the technical world.) They would have been better off if they could have kept us around somehow. That way, when the market rebounds they would simply need to plug us in and reap the benefits.

The company I left spends money on keeping their employees happy. They buy premium coffee, pay for free coke, offer fantastic benefits, and pay above average salary. What if they had cut salary and benefits/perks before cutting headcount? Could they have cut enough to save the quarter and offset future rehiring costs?

When you layoff a group, the people remaining realize suddenly that they are expendable. They realize that they may be next, despite valiant efforts to prove their value. They update their resumes, send out feelers, and surf job websites. They lose any altruistic ideas about helping the company, and begin to serve their own interests more.

Would the same effect take hold under a reduction of pay and perks? I think not. I know for a fact that in the culture I left, the CEO would have been lauded for his efforts to keep the team together. He is already respected by his employees as a generous man, and there is a lot of gratitude in the company for his efforts. The culture was similar to an extended family, and the layoffs are a very emotional topic. I think it is completely reasonable to assume that amidst any grumbling, there would be a lot of employees who felt grateful to remain employed.

Personally, I would have been grateful. We all knew that sales were down and cash was tight, so losing the free coke would have been expected. A 5 or 10% paycut would have been understandable. I could have contributed to another area of the company, and not only added value to the company but a gained valuable set of learning experiences.

My fear is that by laying off workers to save the share price, we ensure reduced revenue for our firm and our symbiotic neighbors for the next quarter. Only the forward-thinking, innovative, and opportunistic leaders will save us from this downward spiral.

When those leaders turn this situation around for us, it will take longer to recover due to the additional expense incurred of hiring and training. If we were innovative and forward-thinking, we would have discovered enough opportunities to keep these employees fulfilled and productive during bad times. We could then respond to economic growth with a strategic and natural hiring process, rather than a hurried and wasteful one.

We would respond to a growing market with employees who had endured a downturn with us and grown more valuable and more loyal. We could respond with a team who is already an expert on our product, procedures, resources, and client-base, and chomping at the bit to conquer the market.

There is a time for layoffs, to be sure. However, I am sure that it is an abused accounting trick which is destroying more value and preventing more revenue than is realized. It takes fear, backward-thinking, and herd-mentality to execute a layoff. It takes an innovative, resourceful, proactive, and visionary leader to avoid a layoff and strengthen his or her business.

We can't set sail until we raise anchor and embrace the potential adventure on the horizon.

Web 2.0 and the President of the United States

2009-02-08T10:30:00.003-06:00

Like him or hate him, you have to be at least mildly curious about the President posting on YouTube and other web 2.0 mediums. The idea that a message from the most powerful office on the planet could "go viral" and be seen by millions within minutes of recording, without the expense of live TV, is going to be huge. The President can post a video in forums that allow commenting, and generate discussion among billions of people about his video.

If you trust Obama, then you can be excited that he will be able to get his message out and counter any criticism far more effectively. If you do not trust Obama, then there may be something to fear. Someone who is good at manipulating the masses now has a method of doing so on a grander scale and perhaps more thoroughly.

The ultimate question: will this new method of communication allow a manipulator to dupe the masses, or will this lead to greater transparency and make it harder to "spin" the message? What would ahve happened if either of the Bushes used this medium, or Reagan, or Clinton? Consider how Iran/Contra, Monica Lewinsky, The Bay of Pigs/Cuban Missile Crisis, and the signing of the Declaration of Independence could have been managed with access to Web 2.0!

Looking forward to your thoughts!

ChangeForge: Control the Airwaves

2009-02-06T07:36:00.004-06:00

ChangeForge is a nationally recognized blog that normally has high standards for their content. Today, they have lowered those standards a little and posted a piece written by yours truly. Please give it a look and leave a comment on their blog for me! http://www.changeforge.com/2009/02/05/control-the-airwaves/

Innovative Thinking

2009-02-02T21:51:00.002-06:00

We had an interesting discussion in my class tonight for “Innovative Business Thinking.” The discussion turned to whether people can learn to be creative and innovative thinkers, or if some people just have “it” and some don’t. Our instructor’s point was that in his work as an executive consultant and coach, he had seen people who were normally stoic and “un-innovative” surprise people with a creative burst. .

One person who had no artistic experience suddenly took up a paint brush and created an impressive work of art. Another person was straight-laced all year round, but at Halloween became very expressive and regularly won awards for his Halloween costumes. .

The point our instructor made is that some people may have a larger measure of creativity, and some people may be naturally innovative, but much of it has to do with our comfort level. He said that we tend to fall on the creative or conformist side depending on where we find safety. .

If we could never feel safe as a conformist, and find that our weirdness leads to better poetry or music, then we will tend to feel safer as an innovative person. On the other hand, if our creative thinking never led to a feeling of safety, we would tend to flee to conformity. .

The implication is that the enemy of innovation is fear. If people are afraid of the consequences of innovative thinking, then they will avoid it. Many of us have seen figures of authority squash good ideas because the innovativeness threatened their empire. We have also seen people stick their neck out with a crazy idea and get laughed at, ensuring that they would never voice their thoughts again. .

Eventually, this kind of despotism will scare people into policing their own innovative thoughts. Out of fear, we will proactively prevent creative thinking and make sure that our thoughts conform to the perceived standard. .

If your team needs a new idea, then give them freedom. Allow failure, encourage crazy ideas, and forget about measuring productivity for a second. We fail to plan and fail to brainstorm because we fear it will waste valuable time. .

There are two possible perceptions. Perhaps your lose two hours that you could have spent making a few thousand dollars. On the other hand, you may invest two hours leading to the million dollar idea. .

Every time you “sacrifice” productivity for creative thinking and brainstorming sessions, you will be building up your team’s innovative abilities. You will raise their natural ability to think creatively, and you will raise the odds of hitting on the big ideas.

New Blog

2009-01-24T08:12:00.003-06:00

I am really interested in Social Entrepreneurship, and I have begun to develop that interest into expertise. I plan to track my progress, sound out ideas, attract mentors and partners, and edify curious readers with a new blog: http://charitystartup.blogspot.com/ Please stop by and say hi, make it a favorite on technorati, and add the link to your blog if you would like to help me. I will gladly return all favors with interest!

Letter to Kate DiCamillo

2008-12-28T18:44:00.005-06:00

Dear Ms. DiCamillo,

Thank you for your books. I have been reading them to my kids, and I couldn't have chosen a better author's work. We started with The Tale of Desperauex and followed it up with Because of Winn Dixie. Last night, we finished The Miraculous Adventure of Edward Tulane. We will soon be looking for your other works, and eagerly await a new book.

I loved Despereaux. It was a story that any age could appreciate, and I appreciated the way you introduced a few rare words and explained their meaning with both a definition and then an example in the story. You are not only making my kids smarter, you are making me smarter as well. Thank you.

A few days later, I was reading (alone) about Da Vinci, and the author described Da Vinci's dark/light contrasts as "Chiaroscuro". I found elsewhere that chiaroscuro can be used to produce depth and dimensions in light. To transpose those concepts from art to your story made so much more sense, and I have to tell you how impressed I am by the layers of your story. I am sure that if we reread the book again we will be pleasantly surprised with details and ideas that we missed before.

We went to the movies to see The Tale of Despereaux, and I was sorry to see how they changed your story. The kids were disappointed, too. I understand the need for small changes to translate a story from book to film, but I think they unnecessarily changed the most valuable aspects of your story to "dumb it down" for the movie-goer.

Winn Dixie was a great read, and the underlying values that can be learned are exactly what I want my kids to learn. Thank you!

It is rare for me to cry. Every once in a while, a movie can get to me. I can only think of one book that made me cry before reading about Edward Tulane. That other book was a biography of Carl Sagan, and I cried when he had to say good-bye to his kids before he died prematurely. Your book made me cry twice. I cried about Sarah Jean, and then I cried as Abilene and Edward meet again. Actually, I almost lost it while reading the Coda. My kids had never seen me cry, and they didn't quite understand it, but I think it was a good experience for them. Now they know I'm not as tough as I pretend to be.

More importantly, the lesson of Edward Tulane is of the most important lessons in life (top three lessons, for sure.) It is also the most difficult to put into words, and oftentimes our actions are not enough to teach this lesson. Unfortunately, many people must learn this lesson the hard, just like Edward.

The antique doll had a great many stories to tell, didn't she? With that much time on earth and that many cracks in her china, she must have a treasure trove to pull from when she needs to remind herself that she has been loved, that she has loved, and that life can be really good if your let it.

I can't help but wonder where Bryce went. I wonder what lesson Bryce can teach us? When he is forty years old, is a successful and generous man (a Jean Valjean) or a miserable and bitter drunk reliving his father's life?

Thank you again, Kate DiCamillo. They tell me that reading to my children will pay untold dividends. I am sure that those dividends are multiplied when I am reading your books to them. May your muse continue to inspire you with great tales, great values, and great wordsmithing.

Happiness

2008-12-28T17:50:00.005-06:00

Of course, I want to teach my kids everything I know: especially the knowledge I gained the hard way. But what if you could only teach them one thing? [Don't focus on why you can only teach them one thing, just humor the exercise and isolate the most important thing you know.

I found this aphorism from Michel de Montaigne that captures the one thing I think my offspring need to know:

The man who is happy is not he who is believed to be so but he who believes he is so. (Geary's Guide to the World's Greatest Aphorisms by James Geary, page 128.)

If I had known this principle as a younger man, I could have wasted less time and focused more on lasting happiness. The quick-fix happiness I sought in booze, girls, games, food, TV, and many other trivial pursuits did not return anything over time.

Imagine your happiness is measurable. Your happiness starts at zero, and you have a beer to push it up to a "1". After six beers, are you at a happiness level of "6"? Maybe, but there is a law of diminishing returns that applies here. At some point, you have one too many beers. The hangover itself will sap your happiness level, and that is in addition to any errors of judgement you may have committed while intoxicated. No matter what, you always lose the happiness that each beer brought. Beer/Food/Drugs/etc do not leave a residual happiness, they wear off.

Reset your happiness meter and lets try another exaple. Starting at "0" you turn on TV and find a new episode of your favorite TV show. Happiness level soars to a "10" while the show is on, drops to a "5" immediately after, and then registers a zero once it has left your short-term memory. If you were supposed to be doing something else instead of watching TV at that time, then the drop off will be steeper and deeper. TV does not produce a residual happiness.

Now a better way, in my opinion: Do something for a relationship that you don't feel like doing. Give a back rub, cook something that you don't like but that person does, listen to a boring story enthusiastically, or let them control the TV remote tonight. The happiness meter starts at zero, plunges into negative numbers for a brief time, and then slowly climbs to about a "2". Two years later, you recall a time when you did this selfless act and find that it still provides a residual level "2" happiness. If you can amass an impressive history of selfless acts, you will notice two things. First, they add up to a higher level of residual happiness (which means they cause your happiness to sit at a constant level "10" or higher, even in the darkest of times. Second, the object of your selfless acts will probably reciprocate, which both spikes your happiness and raises the residual happiness level.

My young kids can't really learn it yet. They have a lot of living to do before they know how true this aphorism is. Therefore, the best way for me to teach them now is by my example. I hope they see me working on my happiness, and actively choosing happiness. I hope that they intuitively choose happiness, regardless of what their friends say or what conventional wisdom has decided. I hope that they see the difference between short-term happiness and long-term happiness.

2009 may be a really hard year. If it is, I think I am ready to be happy anyway. I am hoping that everyone is surprised by how well 2009 treats us, and that happiness comes easily. If not, I plan to keep investing in those long-term happiness builders that I find with my kids, wife, extended family, charity, and self-improvement.

I hope your 2009 is filled happiness! Thanks for reading my blog.

The Missing Link

2008-07-16T06:52:00.001-05:00

Pardon my absence. I know it has been a long time. It has been an eventful time for me. I have been working like a dog, interviewing for a new employer (to include creating and delivering a presentation in front of my potential peers.) I have been working on my MBA, and both instructors had high demands and higher standards. All along, I have been unable to actually form opinions on the books I have read or ideas that I have processed. Something was missing. I thought of this blog often, but I did not want to write here while I still felt adrift.

Now I think I’ve got it. I have that missing link that will allow me to begin tieing together the loose ends of my thoughts.

First, the dilemma: how can we keep the best parts of capitalism (freedom, motivation, competition, market efficiency, etc) while correcting the worst parts (poverty, lay-offs, oppression, pollution, exploitation, unnecessary stress, etc…) Of course, Socialism, Communism, Isolationism, and various Theocracies address some of these points, but they always wipe out the most important and beautiful aspects of capitalism. I have yet to see a successfully implemented system that eliminates oppression.

The biggest problem I see with capitalism is that there is not a logical limit defined. Once you begin a capitalist venture, you can never arrive at a point and say “I have acquired enough, and now we can just coast.” The whole point of capitalism is to continue to grow indefinitely. A new company can grow their market share with innovative products and marketing. Once commercial can cause market share (and the holy grail of capitalism, profits) to jump in significant amounts. However, every market has a limited amount. Eventually, you can no longer make a large leap of profits by growing you market, because there isn’t enough undecided customers in the market to grab.

This would be a time to rest on your laurels and say, “We did it. We maximized our market share. We can just do what we do best and enjoy the ride.” However, the nature of Capitalism insists that you do something to continue to grow something, and ultimately increase your profits. If you do not, then you will either be sued by your investors or gobbled up by competitor. To stand still in Capitalism is to be run over.

Most companies punish people in order to grow profits, eventually. The easiest way to show growth in a stagnant market is to layoff employees. When you show a significant loss of salary and benefits on your financial statements, investors see growth. Unfortunately, you are laying off human being who have debts, families, and feelings. When someone gives a large portion of their life and immense effort to a company, and their reward is a pink slip, that experience can be dark and disgusting. I know from experience.

We like to demonize CEO’s during layoffs, and criticize them for making millions wile laying people off who make $40,000. It has been said that if a CEO would just forgo a few million for one year, he could save the jobs of hundreds, maybe thousands of employees. However, it is not completely a CEO’s fault. It is the nature of the system. If the CEO reaches the point where a layoff is necessary to fix the financial statement and he chooses to save those jobs out of kindness and a sense of responsibility, he is legally liable. He will immediately be sued, fired, and disgraced for not making the decision that capitalism demands: grow the profits and damn the labor.

If you cannot grow your current market and entering a new market is too expensive, then you must cut costs. Capitalism demands it. We must ship out factories overseas. We must layoff huge numbers, and then hire some of them back next quarter. We must force people to do the work of two employees, with less time and tools available. We must take away the free coffee and increase the health insurance premiums while cutting bonuses, overtime, and promotions. If you don’t like it, there’s the door.

There are two business authors who offer a new perspective on the problem and its solution. In both cases, the authors point out the folly of focusing on costs and instead demonstrate means of increasing productivity. In other words, work smarter rather than meaner.

The first author is Dr. Eliyahu Goldratt. His book The Goal is a parable for the business world, and lays out an argument for his Theory of Constraints. The parable describes a plant manager whose career is on the line. While his company wants to cut back, he slowly discovers a methodology to improve the productivity of his plant without cutting costs or adding expenses. The Theory of Constraints is the key: finding the parts of a business process that add expense, and then solving the problem using strategy, timing, or reordering.

The second author is Dr. Jac Fitz-Enz. His work The ROI of Human Capital: Measuring the Economic Value of Employee Performance points out that if we view our labor as having value just as our plant & equipment, cash and equivalents, and other assets have value, and if we look to appreciate those assets through investment and maintenance, then we will have more fulfilled employees. To paraphrase Dr. Fitz-Enz, no amount of compensation can restore the soul of a life spent in mindless toil…Fulfilling work is a reward for the individual and the enterprise…Providing fulfilling work will develop and retain the most productive workers and allow the firm to enjoy the most loyal customers.”

I don’t have it all figured out yet, I just have a piece of the puzzle that enables me to complete some nagging thoughts and take a new perspective on the problem. Capitalism can be saved and improved not by cutting costs, but my improving productivity and investing in people.

I will leave you with a final thought from Dr. Fitz-Enz that I found enlightening. He draws on work from Nobel-prize winning economist Theodore Schultz when he points out that in the industrial age, we moved materials through our business processes to create a marketable product. Now, in the information Age, we do not move materials. We move information which tells us when and how to move the materials. Perfect productivity can be viewed as a circle. When you gather the factors of productivity, you begin to close the circle by learning what data is needed, when, where, in what form, and to whom. The circle is completed when we transform data into information, and eventually into intelligence.

Fat, Forty, and Fired

2008-05-10T12:41:00.004-05:00

Another random encounter has turned out well for me. While entering the local library one day, I glanced at the “Friends of the Library” bookstore that is in the lobby. For some reason, a certain title leapt out at me: “Fat, Forty, and Fired” by Nigel Marsh.

I have purchased hundreds of books and checked out hundreds (maybe thousands) from the library over the years. I have been given books that were hand-selected by intelligent and well-meaning people. I have had books assigned to me by well-educated and researched professionals who were sure that the assigned book was exactly right. Google, Amazon, Borders, and InformIT.com have spent billions on the technology to suggest the perfect book for me. What a waste of time, effort, and money by all of us.

I cannot understand why, but the most memorable, impressionable, and important books in my life have almost all been discovered by a random chance encounter. The predictability of this occurring is slightly higher for me than the average person because I am a bibliophile and spend so much time perusing book shelves.

I do not pretend to have any statistical skills, but I would guess that the chances of finding an important and memorable book purely by accident would be pretty rare—almost as rare as lightning-strikes and lottery-wins. I guess I am just a lucky guy. I sure hope a publisher stumbles on this and realizes I am an untapped goldmine (publishers can email me at lslobodzian [at-sign] gmail [dot] com.

When I purchased “Fat, Forty, and Fired” I expected it to start by describing a situation similar to my own and end by leading me to some needed wisdom and perhaps a roadmap for my future. However, it sat on my bookshelf for months, untouched. Graduate school, work, family, and laziness all conspired to allow dust to collect on the book (and the many others in my “to-read” pile”.) Finally, the timing was right. I had time to read, and I was open to receive Marsh’s message.

I reference many books a month, in addition to the email, articles, white papers, and pages of technical manuals I read on a daily basis. However, I rarely read a book cover-to-cover. If I make the effort to stick with a book, it is the highest praise I can pay the author. For my own sake, and I hope some of you as well, I should take the time now to highlight why I think this book was worth sticking through.

First, I must point out how dissimilar I am to the author. Nigel Marsh is an ad executive and CEO. He is well-traveled, has many influential and wealthy friends, and has made more money in a single year than I have in a decade, I am sure. He was born in England and lives now in Australia. In many ways, he lives in a world that I cannot relate to and suspect that he doesn’t truly know anything about the world I live in. Also, I am not quite forty yet.

On the other hand, he is quite down-to-earth and as I read him I felt like we were not that far apart. He wasn’t born rich and he has to work hard to maintain his lifestyle-it could all be taken from him quickly if he is not vigilante and a little lucky. He is realistic about money, and has faced the possibility of poverty or something near it.

Nigel Marsh strives at being a family man, strives to progress in his professional field, and he strives to make his life meaningful. In the end, that is where Nigel and I meet. He has an interest in Corporate Social Responsibiltiy (CSR), making the world a better place, and raising his kids to be meaningful and productive, as well as happy and healthy.

Nigel opens the book as a guy who wants to be a good family man. He ends up working too much, missing time with the family, and then being either emotionally distant or short-tempered with everyone. I, too, find myself on such a merry-go-round of feeling guilty while working late and missing my family till it hurts, and then getting home to yell and scream and then sit silently in front of a TV. Later, I feel guilty about over-reacting and making children cry and beat myself up inside. Perhaps I make it up to them for a day or two. Eventually, the demands of work initiate the vicious cycle all over again.

We are better Fathers than some men because we at least live with our kids, we make an effort to control and improve ourselves, and we genuinely care whether we are helping or harming our kids. However, good-intentions are not enough with parenting and we both know that. Part of this book is a journey to becoming a better parent.

Nigel is overweight. Pudgy. Out-of-shape. Me too. He has a life-long love of running and generally being active, and wished he were doing more for his health and appearance. Me too. Nigel finds that the time-demands and stresses of work and family make exercise almost impossible. Me too. Nigel’s book is partially a story of inspiration and how-to for the overweight has-beens who aren’t ready to give up yet.

Nigel is a goal-junkie. Me too. We both love to set goals and achieve them, big and small. In fact, goal-setting is our modus-operandi. We both have difficulty understanding how people can continue on for entire lifetimes with few, if any, goals set or achieved. Working on our goals gets us out of bed, gets us through hour after hour, and in our darkest moments prevents us from doing rash and regrettable things. Goals gives us a steady supply of hope, and we are keeping a tight lock on Pandora’s box.

The biggest surprise in the book is that Nigel is an Alcoholic. Me too. He doesn’t reveal this until the middle of the book, and I didn’t see it coming. His alcoholism is probably the greatest contributing factor to my reading the book all the way through, though it is only occasionally mentioned. His experience and struggles with sobriety were reaffirming for me. I will use his example and wisdom to continue to build my sobriety.

At page one, we find Nigel in the darkest days of his life: he has continuing issues in his family that are caused by him, his employer is closing the doors, he is overweight, getting too old to start over at anything (in some people’s minds,) and has an un-addressed drinking problem.

Marsh is apparently well-read, as he has sprinkled his book with quotes and concepts from all over the literary map. History, philosophy, science, theology, and general culture are all represented as he makes a point or draws a big picture. As an example, he quotes an idea from Steven Biddulph’s book Manhood where the argument is made that every man should be required to take his fortieth year off. This would force some reappraisals, rediscoveries, new discoveries, and perhaps change life for the better.

I love this idea. I have always loved the notion of the sabbatical. While I was growing up, I would hear of Priests and Teachers I knew taking a year-long sabbatical after ten years of work, and I have often fantasized about doing the same thing in my own career “someday”. Like many teachers and clergy, I would use that time primarily to further my education. I would also take a trip of a lifetime with the words “adventure” and “exotic” being the key concepts. And I would spend time developing a skill such as playing a musical instrument, painting, writing, or learning a language. Best of all, I would find as many opportunities as possible to include my family and friends in these activities to enrich the experience and the relationship.

Nigel gets laid-off and instead of job-hunting, he decides to take a year off to fix his personal life. He sells his large home and moves to a smaller one. He trims his expenditures and simplifies his life. He takes on responsibilities around the house that he had avoided, such as bathing the kids and taking them to school. He writes and draws. He admits to his alcoholism, quits for good, and attends AA. He learns a lot along the way, and makes it laugh-out-loud funny.

Another major connection I have to Nigel is his goal of a long swim, the Bondi-to-Bronte beach swim (akin to a nautical marathon) in Sydney, Australia where he lives. Nigel is not a strong swimmer or very experienced in the open sea, and as I mentioned before, he is waaaay out of shape. But he sets this goal and starts chipping away at it. At first he can barely swim the length of the pool, but he takes us through an inspiring story of tenacity and ignorance that pays off, but with an unexpected twist that I won’t spoil.

The connection is that I have set the goal of running a marathon this year. October 2008, the Waddell and Reed Kansas City Marathon. I have set the smaller goal of finishing a few 5k’s this summer. I was well on my way last November when I severely-sprained my ankle and was unable to train at all for a few months. Of course, there is the laziness, the overworked, the family-life, and the pain factors that have been excuses for a lack of training. As it stands, I can barely run 3 miles without stopping. But Nigel’s book has fueled my motivation and helped me visualize the attainment of my goal.

The most important tidbit that Nigel provided was how he would set out a running course, and he would walk when he couldn’t jog. He urged himself on by setting small goals along the way, such as, “Run from here to that tree, then walk.” I took away from that the revolutionary concept that it is okay to walk part of the course. In the Marine Corps, it was drilled into me that if I was going to walk instead of run, then I might as well hand over my undeserved male-genetalia and then find someplace to curl up and die. When you are 20 years-old, in fighting shape, and training for combat, that is probably true. When you are 34 with two kids, a stalled career, in the midst of a demanding Graduate program, and 50 pounds heavier than you were at 20 (some of that is additional muscle, right?) then it is okay to walk a little. The point is getting off my gluteus maximus and putting it in motion. After a few months of walk-jogs, Nigel was up to full runs like he used to do, and his body began to show results. I expect the same results. Walk-jog may be embarrassing and humbling, but it is better than sit-and-click (which always leads me to crunch-and-munch.),

Fat, Forty, and Fired is a raucously funny book. There are many times that I laughed out loud, and I rarely do that when I read even if the material is humorous. Marsh has that British humor that I love so much, though I can’t describe it well. He reminds me of Mil Millington, author of the internet classic “Things My Girlfriend and I have Argued About”. The book is not only funny, it is inspiring on many levels—for fathers, for professionals, for men in general, for husbands, for fatso’s, for alcoholics, and for workaholics. To top it all off, there is a payoff for the business community as well.

If I was qualified to make such a remark, I would say that this is one of the most important business books ever written. Nigel has been the CEO of two different agencies. His insight on how to cope with work and life is an important issue to address.

Of course, work/life balance does show up on a 10K report, and it doesn’t result in the kinds of lawsuit and publicity that ethics and security garner lately. Therefore, it is rarely addressed. However, were it to be prioritized and more successfully approached, we could all predict the profits and cost-savings that we would reap from the higher morale and reductions in turnover, burnouts, and health-problems. For instance, any temporary losses in productivity from allowing an employee to coach a team or attend a kindergarten musical would be dwarfed by the cost-savings in health-insurance premiums over the long-term if we assume that family neglect leads to self neglect, resulting in cardio-vascular deterioration over a short career.

Marsh quotes Biddulph as saying: “Our marriages fail, our kids hate us, we die of stress, and on the way out we destroy the world.” At first glance that may seem over-exaggerated, but I don’t think it is far off the mark. Surely, there is a better way to conduct capitalism. I think that Nigel Marsh points us in the right direction.

Marsh quotes Daniel Petra, former CEO of Microsoft in Australia, as reported in the Sydney Morning Herald regarding the life of a CEO: “They have no friends other than work; they have no relationship with their spouse; their kids don’t care about them; they have no hobbies. They lead very insular, single-dimension lives and they don’t have the courage to admit it.” I’ll bet you could apply that on some level to many other professionals. It certainly helps to define the standard of a professional lifestyle to avoid.

Very little of the book offers insight in how to conduct business, but the few paragraphs that apply are absolutely timely and important. The most important lesson that Nigel Marsh teaches us, from his experience as a CEO, is that his position carries with it some responsibility to his employees. All too often, a CEO is overwhelmed by the responsibility to shareholders, analysts, regulators, and the press. Little thought is given to what their roles as senior employee and leader means to the people who make the company work. Marsh offers that a CEO’s primary role is “providing meaning.” He elaborates by saying, “I believe a CEO’s primary responsibility is providing meaningful employment. That doesn’t mean he or she doesn’t have to make the numbers or make difficult decisions. It means he or she has to provide a point for the employees.”

Early in the book, he made a similar point when he said, “I don’t care what they teach you at business school; I view the primary role of any CEO as providing meaningful employment, not taking it away. Any idiot can cut costs; it’s building something valuable (in all senses of the word) that’s the real challenge.” (Added emphasis is mine.) I have long held this belief, and I am glad to see a business leader say it. Finally, there is evidence of intelligent life at the top.

The business guru Jim Collins in Good to Great used the analogy of an organization as a bus. If someone is in the wrong seat on that bus and not contributing, you may consider having that person switch seats on the bus, rather than throwing them off the bus. Of course, discipline problems and ethical issues need to be thrown off the bus. However, if the issue is competency or motivation, you may discover that the employee was forced into that seat and would gladly perk up or contribute more meaningfully from a different seat.

To couple this concept with Nigel’s statement, I think that CEO’s are just playing a numbers game through quarterly lay-offs that is more expensive over the long-term (and more damaging to our economy, which the CEO and shareholders depend on to make a profit.) Rather than a lay-off, a corporation would be better served to redeploy the unproductive employees into a new endeavor (move their seat on the bus.)

The stock price takes a hit in this case, due to the continued expenditure of salaries and benefits. However, those layoffs usually result in a large severance payment to each employee that doesn’t return any value to the stock price, and if your business grows again in the future (as your shareholders expect it to) then you will incur the expense of hiring similar people whom you laid-off previously. In case of two local companies I know personally, the same employee is often hired twice or more over the years by the same company. Perhaps my math is off, but if we could avoid the expense of severance and rehiring, and simultaneously gain some profit or research by redeploying them, wouldn’t we beat our competition while boosting our image, satisfaction, and contribution to GDP/GNP?

Thank you, Nigel Marsh, for a funny, inspiring, and wise book. I discovered it by accident and purchased it second-hand for $6, but it has become one of the most valuable books I own and is added to the short list of great books to re-read.

Are you reaching, or just teaching?

2008-03-02T10:45:00.003-06:00

Are you reaching your students, or just teaching them? That begs the question: can you teach your students without reaching them? I mean, if you are simply lecturing, assigning homework, and handing out letter grades without analyzing your methods and strategically reaching your students, do they actually learn?

You are a teacher, even if that is not in your job description. For instance, I am the most important teacher my kids have (along with my beautiful and intelligent wife.) Therefore, I need to be cognizant of that as a parent and try to reach my kids in ways that are relevant to them in order to achieve the educational objectives that are important to me. I can talk all day long and say many wise and valuable things, but if if my kids are not listening, then all I have done is made noise and wasted oxygen. I have to think about how I can reach them.

I am a teacher at work, as well. My customers are often my students when I try to sell them a new product/service or if I try to increase they satisfaction with something they already have. I also am a teacher to my coworkers and managers who look to me for information or process improvement. Am I effective? That all depends on my delivery. How can I improve my delivery? That is a question that I must consistently ask.

What got me thinking about all of this is a video that my professor shared in his class. It is geared toward traditional classroom teachers, but it is relevant and applicable to so many different roles, especially parents. It basically describes how students in school today have a completely different paradigm on how they view the world and gather information, and traditional methods are barely reaching (barely teaching) them. It them describes how we can improve our teaching methods to really reach, and teach, our students in profound ways through unorthodox methods. It is definitely worth the next few minutes of your life:

The link at the end is worth visiting to: http://t4.jordandistrict.org/t4/

A Word and an Aphorism: Ubiquity

2008-02-24T10:46:00.005-06:00

While reading a white paper regarding the Microsoft operating system Windows, I ran accross a word I needed to look up. As it turns out, the word describes Windows well, and is a good word to use casually in conversation to make people scratch their heads:

Ubiquitous [adj.] existing everywhere; inescapable.
(The New American Webster Handy College Dictionary, 3rd ed.)

That got me wondering what I may find in my Geary's Guide to the World's Greatest Aphorists. Ubiquity, as luck would have it, was indexed to Seneca's thought:

"To be everywhere is to be nowhere." -Seneca (4 B.C. -65 A.D.) [via James Geary]

I am reading up on PC and server virtualization. I started by doing research for a case study due tomorrow night in an MBA class. However, PC virtualization is something I have been thinking about for several weeks as a means to branch out as an entreprenuer. Alternatively, it is a means by which my company could provide much more value to our clients. Unfortunately, it may be easier for me to start my own business and build it to profitability than it would be to convince my company to implement a good idea.

To put it in a nutshell, Virtualization in this case means that you do not have to buy a PC for every single person that needs one. You could buy a smaller, low-cost appliance, which would use the internet to act like a PC. Not only would you not lose anything in the process, you could gain so much in value, security, administration, application, and performance.

The white paper used the word ubiquitous to describe the current state of affairs in computing. If you wish to change anything about how people and businesses use computers, you have to deal with the fact that we expect Windows to be everywhere. If you want to make it cheaper through virtualization, you will have to virtualize the Windows environment because consumers will not adopt anything else.

I am glad I thought of looking up ubiquity in the Geary Aphorism Guide. Seneca's wisdom actually applies here in a big way: To be everywhere is to be nowhere. I think that could be a vision of the future: your computer today is a specific, tangible device that you can point to, open up, move with you , whether it is a desktop, a laptop, or a PDA. You may have two or three computers, each with their own data, purpose, look, software, etcetera. So, when you say your work PC is on your desk in your office, you are saying your PC is somewhere.

Through virtualization, there may be a day when you have an appliance at home, a laptop, a PDA-Cellphone, and an appliance at work. All three may access the exact same virtual PC that looks the same, has the same software and data, and can do the same things. In fact, it is the same, no matter what appliance you use to access it. The PC that you access exists on a server "somewhere", but you can access it from anywhere. In fact, you can access it from everywhere, thanks to wireless technologies. Therefore, as long as you have an appliance and internet access, you have your PC.

With PC virtualization, your PC is everywhere. However, you can never get your hands on where your PC's data physically resides. The server that holds your data would be a trusted source, of course, and great steps would be taken to ensure privacy and security. However, the server that you access to use the appliance may be anywhere in the world, or two places at once. Therefore, the server is somewhere, but you don't know where. Your PC is available everywhere, but if I asked you where it was, you could say it was nowhere.

Update, Blog, Book

2008-02-22T08:49:00.007-06:00

I am up to my eyeballs here. My job is maxing out my day, and school is maxing out my night. I am working on my MBA, and adding a concentration in Information Technology; hence, I am taking two accelerated graduate courses right now, both of which have to cram an entire semester into 6 weeks. I have to read several hundred pages a week and write upto to twenty pages or so, not to mention research, write presentations, and try to ponder the lessons. Amazingly, I think I am actually absorbing most of the material. Ask me again in six weeks though.

I am not complaining or bragging, I am just explaining why I can't write regularly on this blog. I am taking a small break from graduate studies through April and May, but that is only because I have projects at work scheduled that take me out of town or late into the night.

As I have stated in the past, I do not want this to be a "me too" blog that says nothing and simply wastes electrons. Even if I am not a profound or skilled writier, I want to make it apparent that I am striving for excellence and this blog can serve as an example of better blogging--eventually. Since I have not achieved that end yet and will not in the near future, I wish to point to someone else's blog that does.

Guy Kawasaki has a cool name. Anyone with a cool name can get my endorsement, unless they abuse children or are fans of the St. Louis Cardinals. Guy Kawasaki is more than a cool name, he is a great blogger. He is original, inspirational, and full of positive energy. I am reading his archive right now and loving every minute of it. The title says it all: How to Change the World.

Finally, the greatest book ever: I love to read and have an extensive library. I would be considered "well-read" by most people, I think. However, over the last few years I have had little choice about what I read due to school and work. Therefore, when I read for fun it has to be short and sweet, and either richly entertaining (belly-laughter) or deeply profound. While browsing for a book that I will need at work, I accidentally ran into the world's greatest book.

[sound of screeching tires...] Allow me to digress for a quick second. Why is it that all of my favorite books were stumbled onto accidentally? You will remember recently that I was floored by the philosophies of The Secret and Thank You Power, both of which I stumbled onto accidentally. One of my favorite novels is The Confessions of Max Tivoli which I stumbled onto by accident at the library while looking for something by Hemingway. "Max Tivoli" was written by Andrew Sean Greer, and "G" is near "H", and the word "Confessions" lept out at me.

Come to think of it, I have no idea how I stumbled on Guy Kawasaki's blog and it has become my favorite thing to read online. The lesson I take away is that despite my best efforts, the best things in my life are accidents. What do I do with this lesson? I have no idea, but perhaps my wife and I should review our birth control method.

[gravel flys, and this short-bus is back on the road...] Anyhow, I accidentally discovered a great book. Then, I accidentally carried it to the register, accidentally dropped my debit card on the counter with my Borders Reward card, and was forced to take it home with me. The book is Geary's Guide To The World's Greatest Aphorists by James Geary. It is educational, biographical, deeply profound, and occasionally so funny that my laughter endangers the book.

If all you have time for is 30 seconds to read and ponder, you can pick up this book, flip to any page, and be assured to find a sentence or two that speaks to you. You can re-read a page many times and, as your mood and experience changes, you will find a different sentence pops out. Conversely, the same pithy quote may take on a different meaning each time you return to it. This is the book that keeps on giving.

Perhaps I will share a little nugget occasionally when I need to blog and don't have time to really dig in. Here are two aphorisms from the book that I like:

"The course of every intellectual, if he pursue his journey long and unflinchingly enough, ends in the obvious, from which the non-intellectuals have never stirred." -Alduos Huxley

"Laziness is just the habit of resting before you get tired" -Jules Renard

Unharvested

2008-02-17T06:36:00.008-06:00

I am not a huge poetry fan, but there are a few poems and a few poets who I enjoy. Like most people, I have drawn inspiration from Robert Frost's poem "The Road Not Taken". However, few people know how much inspiration and wisdom, as well as enjoyment, can be drawn from a compilation of his life's work. While flipping through a compilation edited by Edward Connery Lathern, I found a poem that I had previously ignored. I'd like to share it with you:

UNHARVESTED

A scent of ripeness from over a wall.
And come to leave the routine road
And look for what has made me stall,
There sure enough was an apple tree
That had eased itself of its summer load,
And of all but its trivial foliage free,
Now breathed as light as a lady’s fan.
For there had been an apple fall
As complete as the apple had given man.
The ground was one circle of solid red.

May something go always unharvested!
May much stay out of our stated plan,
Apples or something forgotten and left,
So smelling their sweetness would be no theft.

I like this poem mostly because Frost leaves its interpretation so open. This makes its usefullness almost limitless. I had several applications occur to me at once.

First, I have always been intrigued with Hemingway's idea about writing. He said he tried to write for a specified time each day and leave a little left unwritten. That would be like taking some apples from your tree and leaving some unharvested. When I write, I feel like I have to empty myself. If I leave something unwritten, I either lose the thought or lose the motivation; therefore, I write until I am void of feeling and ideas. Obviously, Hemingway knew more about writing than I did so I have always been intrigued by that idea of leaving something left in the tank. Frost's poem reminded me of that idea, and helps me ponder the value.

This poem also makes me think of the Old Testament concept of gleaning. Basically, my understanding is that as a farmer, you are to only make one pass over your fields for the harvest. Whatever is left after that first pass either belongs to the poor for their sustenance or will become part of the soil again. It was considered greedy and cruel to go through your crops and harvest every single grain or fruit. We now know that it is also a good agricultural practice to return more of your crops to the soil.

I am reminded of a friend's front yard when I was a teen. There were three apple trees, but only two residents. After eating all the raw apples that they could, making apple pie and apple sauce, and giving away shopping bags full to everyone they could, the trees would still make a ring of red. As fall wore on, the rotting apples would give off a pleasant odor. A week later, that front yard would smell like feet--apple cider vinegar anyone? That is when we would pick up the apples and, being teenagers, throw them at eachother. Then we would stink like vinegar and laugh like idiots. Maybe I looked forward to that week every year? At this point in my life, I would break the arm of anyone chucking rotting apples at me, but back then I guess I was more tolerant of stupidity.

I wondered what other people had thought about this poem so I Googled it and found another interpretation that I agree with. On her blog, Loren Webster mentions the fact that we humans are terrible at controlling nature. I agree; we have much better results when we leave ecosystems alone rather than trying to control or improve them. Perhaps Loren's last sentence catches the essence of Frosts meaning best, "Still, left alone, nature can usually heal even man’s worst insults, given enough time."

Chicago Girls

2008-02-03T13:25:00.000-06:00

My maternal grandmother was a teenager during World War II, living in an Irish neighborhood in Chicago. Her brother was in the Army, stationed in England and made the D-day landing at Normandy. My grandma later married a former sailor who coincidentally drove one of the landing boats on D-day.

When my grandfather and uncle realized they were at the same place on the same day during the war, my uncle remarked, "You were one of the bastards who kept taking us to that damn beach!" I don't know if he knew then that my grandfather carried shrapnel in his leg from that day till the day he died.

My uncle was stationed with a geologically diverse group of men (this was, of course, before the racial integration of the armed forces.) Many of the guys around him thought that everyone in Chicago was a gangster, since Al Capone and the St. Valentine's Day Massacre was still fresh in everyone's memory. My uncle was at first baffled by such stereotype. He then decided to have a little fun.

Below is a photo that he wrote home and asked to have staged. My grandma is on the left with dark hair. I forgot where she said she got the revolvers from, but I assure you that it was rare for for my grandma to have a gun in the same house. The whiskey was her father's; she never was a drinker and didn't like to be around "hard liquor". It appears that they may be playing Stud Poker, but I know she was more of a Pinnocle player.

Once this photo arrived, my uncle was able to convince every gullible hick in his unit that girls in Chicago were not to be messed with. I wonder how many men were influenced by this photo and believed their whole life that Chicago women were heat-packing, whiskey-drinking, poker-playing thugs. Perhaps one of these guys met a woman later who admitted that she was from Chicago, and a hysterical (or sad) reaction occured.

President Bill Clinton: Lessons for 2008

2008-01-27T05:58:00.000-06:00

I hope that you did not see the title of this post and roll your eye's. I would have if this was on someone else's blog. I am already sick of the primaries, and they have barely begun to gather steam. However, I am a citizen of a Democracy; I am morally obligated to inform myself of the issues and vote with my intellect, heart, and conscience.

You are also morally obligated to do the same, by the way. If you are one of the majority of Americans who votes rarely and ignorantly, then shame on you. Americans who do not make an effort to analyze the issues and candidates, and vote on a regular basis, are more responsible for our society's problems than the corrupt and inept politicians we point our fingers at. Whether you hate G.W. Bush or Hillary and Teddy, you can place the blame of their re-elections solely on the fact that most Americans are not informed and/or do not vote regularly.

Okay, I'll promise to quit preaching if you promise to read and vote prior to the elections this year. Deal? I am off my soapbox.

Why I am already sick of the Presidential Primaries: I am sick of the mudslinging. I am sick of the lack of information and the overabundance of hot air. I am sick of real issues being ignored in favor of safer topics, dumbed-down for public consumption. I am really sick of sound-bites and long for one person to speak clearly, earnestly, and intelligently on a regular basis. I detest anything that appears fake or misleading, and that is the feel I get from every candidate in every election. Of course I am over-cynical; but I blame that on the system.

Even so, I have to pick through the B.S. and make some decisions. "None of the above" is not a ballot option, and would not improve our democracy. So I wince, I pinch my nose, and I make an effort to trudge into the mire of 2008 candidates to find one that can do the least damage at least. I hope I will be pleasantly surprised and find someone who I passionately believe will lead our nation to prosperity, freedom, and peace without compromising our strength, integrity, values, or history.

This morning, I was researching a topic for my MBA class and stumbled on an interesting concept called Baumol's Disease. This is not a medical term but an economic term. Dr. William Baumol (PhD) is an NYU economist who, in 1966, defined Baumol's Disease as the fact that labor-intensive industries do not benefit from technological advances. This is important to point out because we expect that as technology advances, we will become more productive and our costs will go down. We see this in manufacturing the most: robots, engineering, and statistical analysis allows up to build more widgets for less cost.

However, as Dr. Baumol pointed out, some industries and professions cannot benefit from technological advances. No matter what media you use, it will always take the same amount of time to play a piece of music. For my research, the author (Bobby Newbell, M.D.) was pointing out that regardless of technology, it still takes the same amount of time for a Family Physician to examine you. There are computers, tools, books, theories, and various devices to assist a doctor today that did not exist 50 years ago; however, the doctor is still limited by one pair of eyes and one pair of hands. In the same vein, as Dr. Newbell points out, it still takes a nurse the same amount of time to change a dressing as it did 50 years ago. The dressing material and chemicals used may be more advanced, but you still have the same nurse cutting, pealing, wiping, and tying.

Baumol's Disease should be kept in mind when we analyze any issue preceded by a dollar sign. Not all costs can be reduced by technology. Dr. Newbell touched on, and Dr. Baumol wrote at length on, the effects of Baumol's Disease on health care costs. They have to rise because we live in an inflationary economy. Doctors and Nurses require more money every year to treat you in order for them to afford the rising costs around them. Health Care can increase the quality of their care through technology, and may be able to reduce administrative costs by using more databases and less clerks. However, it is not possible to reduce the labor costs of health care professionals with our current technology.

Dr. Baumol's professional opinion based on his research (as I understand it from my limited reading) is that the increase of health care costs is inevitable. As long as we insist on humane and scientific treatment of our health, we will have to expect our health care costs to rise. Of course, how we pay for these rising costs is just as confounding as how we may decrease the costs.

This election cycle has brought up the issue of health care again. If you hear a politician promise to lower health-care costs, you can now automatically assume that they are lying based on your understanding of Baumol's Disease. More often, we are hearing talk from the candidates on how we may health care for those who are not provided insurance through their employer. Too many Americans are forced to suffer with ailments that are easily treated but cost too much to afford without insurance. This is especially true due to the fact that most people without insurance are too poor to afford anything, especially medical treatment and medicine.

Perhaps you are callous enough to write off working-age adults without health insurance, and say that if they want to be treated then they can get off their butt and get a job like everyone else. However, many of those without insurance also have children who are uninsured. Are you callous enough to say that such children should suffer without the same fundamental medical treatment that your own children receive? If you say yes, then be prepared for a future of defective Americans.

Children who did not get their broken arms set properly, their cavities treated, anti-biotic for common infections, and their cavities filled will become adults who are less-than 100%. Be prepared that they will tend to work less and be sick more. They may also be more prone to acts of passive-aggression, blatant aggression, crime, and other anti-social activities. Never mind the potential they may have have held given the chance to grow up healthy and educated.

I was looking deeper into Baumol's disease to ensure I understood it well, and perhaps gain an additional perspective of the issue. In doing so, I stumbled on an old article that introduced another interesting concept and provided a prophetic message to the candidates of 2008. The article was published in the 6/20/94 issue of U.S. News and World Report by Michael Barone, and addressed Bill Clinton's 1994 budget, in light of his budget in 1993.

Barone introduces the concept of Norquist's Law. Norquist's Law was developed by Milwaukee Mayor John Norquist and stipulates that a healthy government budget should hold not increase spending faster than the rate of inflation. In this manner, Norquist demonstrates that the government would reduce the amount of the economy that they take in taxes every year.

What? Less taxes? Less spending? Fiscal responsibility and an ear to the voter's desire? Reducing the burden that we pay to the government for them to waste on pork and ineffective programs? Enabling us to spend more of our own money on our own interests? That's crazy talk!

Seriously, the first politician to mention anything close to Norquist's law has my vote. This is the prophetic message that I mentioned. The political candidates are having difficulty distinguishing themselves or finding a hot-button topic that fires up the grass-roots support. Here it is. A proven method for politicians to follow that will improve our government and our economy simultaneously: reduced government spending will bolster corporate and consumer spending while it forces our politicians to seek more effective programs and less wasteful spending.

The only way this Law could be effective, however, is if we also balance our budget. Norquist's Law would automatically balance the budget in the future theoretically: Assuming that we increase our spending at a lower rate than inflation and that revenues rise at historical rates, those line would have to cross at some point in the future, resulting in revenues exceeding expenditures.

In other words, if both of those assumptions hold firm, we could guarantee a budget surplus in the future, reducing our national debt. Reducing our debt would reduce our national expenses, further increasing our surplus. Long-term, we could pay off our debt and either drop our tax burden to a minuscule level or free up budget money for all the crazy schemes that our current politicians cook up.

I haven't done the math and I am not a trained economist, so I may be off base here. Having said that, I believe that we cannot assume that our revenues will rise or that we can contain our government's costs enough to remain under the rate of inflation if we do not find a way to balance the budget first. If our deficit continues to grow, the cost of maintaining a government will continue to skyrocket. If the institutions and nations that loan us money every lose faith in our ability to repay, they are going to make it very expensive and miserable to be an American. That point was inconceivable twenty years ago, today it is a fact that is not to distant if we do not make changes drastically and soon.

Several years ago, it was speculated that Hillary may run for President and in so doing would amass a powerful force of supporters just based on her gender. Now that she is a candidate, we do find some people who are supporting her based on gender, but not enough to turn the tide.

Obama is the first Black candidate who is not considered an extremist like Alan Keyes, Jesse Jackson, or Al Sharpton (don't those names look out of place in the same sentence?) However, race has not been enough for Obama to separate himself from the pack. In fact, you would have thought that Oprah's support would have drawn enough of Hillary's voters over to make the difference, but such is not the case yet.

Here we are with a war that is not exactly as popular as World War II. We have a president who has alienated many conservatives with his decisions on budgets, staff, and ethics. We have China eating our lunch, Russia is light on debt while heavy on cash and marketable commodities, the Muslim world continues to be a dangerous tinderbox, and atrocities continue daily in places like Burma and Darfur. At home, we could use some good news, economically. How hard can it be to get people fired up in this kind of environment?

I have always voted Republican; I cannot think of a single Democrat on any ballot I have had an opportunity to hold that I supported. That is not to say that there have not been Democrat's in other districts or time periods that I supported, I just couldn't vote for them. I am willing to vote for a Democrat, but it is less likely that I would vote for a Democrat than I would for a third-party candidate.

People who know this about me have asked me who I like for the Republican primary. I honestly do not know. I am a registered Independent (I'll write about that some other time) so perhaps the point is moot. I cannot say that any Republican gets me fired up to open up my checkbook, or to place a yard sign, or to even acknowledge public support. I could live with any of them, I guess. I could live with any of the Democrats, frankly. As long as Theresa Heinz-Kerry is not involved in the decision, I am fine with whatever will be.

If you are a presidential candidate reading this (hey, it could happen), then let me tell you this: if you make your primary promise to me that you will fight to the death for a balanced budget and something like Norquist's Law, you have my vote. I have charitable contribution to make for 2008's tax deductions: you will receive the entire amount. I am looking to start volunteering on some weekends; I will spend as much time as possible at your local campaign headquarters doing whatever it takes to get you elected. I will place a sign in my yard, wear your buttons on my shirt, stick your bumper sticker on my cars, and mention you on a daily basis in my sphere of influence. I will dedicate the rest of the election season on this blog to daily posts about you. I will tattoo your name on my forehead if it would help.

Seriously, we have a lot of problems to face. If you are a liberal, you have one perspective on our nation's problems. If you are conservative, you have another. There are also the perspectives of libertarians and others. The fact of the matter is that regardless of your perspective, you will have to agree with me on one thing if you look at the matter sincerely and do the math: every act of our government is is useless without a sustainable financial policy.

What effect did the word "sustainable" have on you as you read it? That is how I can tell your current political affiliation. If if made you perk up and read a little closer, then you are leaning left and Democratic. If it made you roll your eyes and think of Al Gore in a sickening way, then you are a right-leaning Republican. If you had to look it up in a dictionary, then you are not paying attention.

"Sustainable" is a part of a global discussion taking place, mostly concerning environmentalism or Third World economics. It refers to the ability of a system to continue without outside intervention. Sustainable models can reduce dependence on foreign aid, reduce damaging practices, and and raise the quality of life and standard of living from everyone involved. In addition, sustainability can reduce political instability, terrorism, and crime. Sustainability is, unfortunately, a buzz-word used to drum-up political support, acquire grants, and shout down opposing ideas.

I wish to point out that, like so many other things, sustainability begins at home. To be succinct, it begins with out financial policy. We cannot sustain our current budgetary system indefinitely; eventually this system will implode under the weight of debt. Believe me, I have been there personally. If you have a mortgage, car, student loan, and a high standard of living, you will find it quickly becomes uncomfortable if you lose your source of income, even if temporarily. What is true at the micro-economic level is usually true at the macro-level.

Our nation has a lot of debt and expenses. We also have a trade deficit, a war, and a recession. What would it take to cut-off the flow of money into our country? Now much, apparently. When foreign investors began to perceive that Americans would be less likely to payoff their mortgages, they made less Foreign Direct Investments (FDI) to our mortgage industry. Suddenly, there was less cash to give. Couple that with other economic factors such as stalled-job growth and adjustable-rate mortgages coming due, and you have the making for a "Sub-prime loan fiasco."

That was just a warning shot. China has more cash in the bank than any other nation, and they have more money flowing into their country through exports than any other nation. They control their currency, keeping it artificially weak so that their exports are more affordable while imports to China are cost-prohibitive to the Chinese consumer. America's affluence is due in large part to FDI; foreigners expected that they would get a larger rate of return with less risk and volatility if they invested in various American industries.

Nowadays, that expectation is reduced. Russian commodities are proving highly lucrative and Chinese manufacturing is both stable and rewarding. With less money from outside, we will have to foot the bill for more of our luxuries from internal sources. Alternatively, we may consider doing without luxuries that we take for granted today, like interstates, parks, bridges, jobs, research, arts, and utilities.

What every American, and especially our policy makers, should do more of is to view our nation through the eyes of a Foreign Investor. This is a flat world, and we need to receive as much or more than we give in order to sustain our standard of living. Currently, we spend more on imports than we make off our exports. That means we pay more money to foreign nations than we make. If you added up the money possessed by every American citizen and every American corporation, that sum would be our economy. That sum is a smaller number every year; we send money out more money to buy stuff than we receive by selling our stuff to other nations.

Today, we can sustain this trade deficit. However, we cannot expect to do so indefinetly; eventually, we will not have enough money to spend on stuff because we did not replenish our resources. This is an implosion because we will not be able to afford to maintain the export business at that point, eliminating future revenue. You go from living in the lap of luxury to catastrophic depression almost overnight.

A similar principle applies to our federal net-worth. Currently, we owe over 9 trillion dollars. Trillion, with a "t". Yeah.

But we are fabulously wealthy, right? We can pay for that debt because we innovative, ingenuitive, well-invested, well-connected, and in control of so many resources...right? Sure, we have sustained a sick amount of debt for decades now. If that was our only problem, we would be okay. We can make the payment on $9 trillion.

The thing is, we are spending more money than we take in. Every year, we have to borrow money to remain in business as a nation. Therefore, next year we will owe more, not less. That raises the minimum payment on the national debt. We can afford a $9 trillion dollar debt load, but can we afford $10 trillion? How about $15 trillion?

The fact of the matter is that eventually the final bill arrives. If you, personally, continue to aquire new credit cards to pay for the existing credit cards, at some time your minumum monthly payment will be too large to borrow. At that point, you will find that you cannot even borrow money from the check-cashing place. Vinny the loan-shark would even touch you. Congratulations, you are no longer solvent. You can file for bankruptcy and start all over again.

Nations cannot file bankruptcy. When they scare off investors and lenders, they cause panic. Businesses shutdown, roads crumble, corruption spreads, crime runs rampant, self-abuse and neglect replace health-care. That can't happen to America? Tell that to the Roman Empire. Tell that to the Incan Empire. Tell that to any predator that has eaten its prey faster than it could multiply.

I agree, it seems unlikely that we couldn't prevent total insolvency as a nation. However, it is a possibility. The more likely occurrence is a generation-long recession. Or worse, a financial and cultural recession measured in centuries. Ask the Chinese about that, or just look it up on Wikipedia. Today, the Chinese are a fearsome economic power. In the 1930's, they were dominated by a tiny little island named Japan. You have to go pretty far back to locate the last time that China enjoyed this level of power and prosperity.

I would like to spend my retirement years in comfort and peace. I would like to know that my grandchildren can enjoy the same or greater nation that I have enjoyed. I would like to live longer than my ancestors, and get more out of my final years; by this, I mean that I want to enjoy cutting-edge health-care that keeps me alive and active as long as possible.

The labor costs of health care are only going to go up, according to Baumol's disease. At what point will those costs become prohibitive? Well, that depends on how much money Americans have available to them to spend on health care. Our available money is dependent on the national economy. If our taxes are at 50% in order to afford our national debt, which may be over twenty trillion dollars, and our local businesses are less prosperous, then influenza-exposure at 80 years old may not be a survivable experience.

That is why I am making a pledge of support to any politician who can convince me that they can and will do something about our financial sustainability. I am not looking for sound-bytes among your other "issues"; I am looking for someone who truly realizes that our national policy of financial irresponsiblity is our greatest threat to our future, and will make that their primary focus.

You can argue that Iraq has something to do with our future. Whether you think that we need to finish the fight to get out of Iraq, you would have have to agree that your reasons are moot in the future if we cannot pay our bills. Winning the Global War on Terrorism is meaningless if it contributes to our insolvency; withdrawing from Iraq will not do any good if the returning vets settle into a life that leads to higher taxes, less prosperity, and a national decline.

You can argue about the importance of health care, especially for children near or below the poverty line. I would say that whatever good intentions you have will cause bounced checks an unmet expectations in the near future if we do not fix our financial irresponsibility. In fact, the same can be said of any social program you mention: it all costs money that we did not have yesterday, do not have today, and surely will not be able to borrow in the future.

You can complain about China and India, and scream about tarrifs and the trade deficit all you want. The fact is, even if those jobs were being sent here and we enjoyed a trade surplus, we would still face a catastrophe in the future based on the current irresponsibility of the people who we have entrusted with spending our taxes. If we had more coming in, we would have more going out. In fact, it may be even worse.

Establish financial sustainability as a policy. Balance the budget. Reduce the national debt. Control government spending, and do not increase it faster than the rate of inflation. See what happens.

Spoiler alert! If you follow the simple steps outlined in the paragraph above, or at least operate the federal budget in a manner similiar to financially successful citizens and companies, the other problems will become more manageable. Many problems will take care of themselves.

Economics is all about psychology. Think about it: what makes that green piece of paper valuable to other people? You could write anything you want on that piece of paper in any color you want with watermarks and embedded technologies unheard of, but it will never have value until the other person is convinced of its value. We have all agreed that the dollar can be exchanged for goods; that is what makes the dollar valuable. Cultivating that thought is the fact that we know so many other people find it valuable. We know that we can use our dollar am millions of places all over the world to buiy whatever our heart desires. If we believed otherwise, that same piece of paper would become worthless, without changing form.

We need to cultivate a belief in the value of the dollar. We can do that by making our nation financially sustainable, like China and Russia and so many other nations who we once looked down on as economic-midgets. By righting our ship, we will be forced to pay a fee right now in the form of inconvenience. Believe me when I say this: that fee has to paid sometime, and it compunds over time. If you leave it for your children to pay, you have committed a fomr of child abuse that is beyond evil. It is horrible to abuse your own children, but to abuse all future generations with one policy is beyond evil.

Clinton and Greenspan demonstrated the effects of balanced budgets and solvency on American prosperity. If you look back on the 90's, you can see how balanced budgets and news of surpluses affected the markets. When we bailed out Mexico, it not only prevented a catastrophe and generated a trunaround in their nation, we too saw increases in market activity. When Clinton reduced spending and deficits in his budget, Greenspan at the Fed with statements and moves in the interest rates. Greenspan's actions make the financial markets turn backflips of joy. And when the financial markets are happy, almost everybody is happy. Even the poorest Americans can benefit during a bull market in most cases.

I didn't like Bill Clinton, personally. As a Marine, I was forced to salute him but I disagreed with many policies and philosophies that he held. However, I miss the days where someone challenged congress over their pork-barrell spending. I miss the days when a President earnestly sought for balanced-budgets and reduced debt. I wuoldn't say that Clinton had the right idea about how to trim the budget, but at least he tried. Most of all, though, I liked how cocky and secure our financial markets felt when Clinton and Greenspan were working together to lay the fundamentals for a healthy economy.

Wow, I didn't know I had that much to say on the subject of Baumol's Disease and Norquist's Law (which is what lead me to start this post.)

Every Presidential Candidate right now is spinning their tires. I don't see anyone really striking a chorus. Try this: focus on the root of the problem. Focus on the heart of the matter. Don't pull on my heart-strings, pull on wallet: at the end of the day, that's what will fire me up. Everthing else is just a subcategory; money is what makes the world go 'round.

Here are a few articles you can look up in EbscoHost or Proquest (head to your local library for assistance if you are unfamiliar with these databases--they are a fantastic way to find exactly what you need to know without leaving your desk):

-Baumol WJ. Do health care costs matter? New Republic. Nov. 22, 1993:16-18.

-Bobby J. Newbell, MD, November/December 2007, www.aafp.org/fpm, FAMILY PRACTICE MANAGEMENT, pg. 11.

-Jackson JR. Is technology displacing the art of medicine? Physician Exec. March/April 2004:46-50.

-Government gets a shrink. By: Barone, Michael, U.S. News & World Report, 00415537, 6/20/94, Vol. 116, Issue 24.

Corporal Jason L. Dunham, USMC

2008-01-23T09:33:00.000-06:00

Back in 2004, my dad clipped an article out of the Wall Street Journal that he thought I would find interesting. It was the story of a Marine who had a theory: there may be a way to jump on a grenade and not only save other Marine's lives but also perhaps retain your own life. That Marine was then presented with an opportunity to test his theory in combat with lives on the line.

Normally, a grenade explodes and sprays metal (shrapnel) in every direction, effectively killing everything within 15 meters. If you are inside of that 15-meter kill zone, you may have your life saved if you wear body armor made of Kevlar or can take cover behind something armored.

It is well established that if a human body lays on the grenade at detonation, that body will absorb most of the blast and contain, deflect, or retard the lethality of the shrapnel. This action is the ultimate sacrifice: knowing that you will die to save your fellow Marines (or sailors, soldiers, police officers, etc...) This action usually results in a post-humous award of the Medal of Honor (MOH) when engaged in battle.

There are many medals and ribbons you can earn in the military. None of them rank as high as the MOH. Normally, enlisted personnel with the rank of Private through Sergeant Major do not rate a sulte from anybody; that is an honor reserved for Officers who are warranted or commissioned. However, anyone who wears the MOH rates a salute according to tradition. According to this tradition, if the lowest ranking private wearing an MOH were to be approached by the highest ranking General, they would salute each other out of mutual respect.

Some medals and ribbons have a reputation of being given away easily, more for political reasons than heroism. The MOH has never been accused of such. Most people who are awarded the MOH had to die in the process; the act of sacrificing one's life to save many others is a hallmark of MOH awards. In addition, refusing medical treatment while continuing the fight, or performing superhuman acts that turn the tide of battle, are common on MOH citations.

Corporal Jason L. Dunham was a squad leader with Kilo Company, 3rd Battalion, 7th Marines in 2004. He extended his enlistment contract in order to make his second deployment to Iraq with his unit, demonstrating his devotion to his fellow Marines. On April 14, 2004, Cpl. Dunham's squad was engaged in operations in Iraq. While enroute to support his battalion commander's convoy, which had been ambushed, he came upon a group of Iraqi vehicles. He and his squad began to stop and search the vehicles. One of the insurgents rolled a grenade nonchalantly, to avoid it being noticed. Cpl. Dunham saw it and, thinking quickly, threw his helmet and himself on the grenade to shield the balst from two nearby Marines.

Cpl. Dunham was issued his helmet to protect him from shrapnel and other projectiles. I wore a similiar helmet and held similiar conversations regarding its usefulness when I served back in the early 1990's. Luckily, my peers and I never had to test any of our theories. We knew that it was not bullet-proof; we also knew that projectiles do funny things when they detonate and it is impossible to predict what trajectory a projectile may take.

There is a common story of a Marine who was shot while wearing a kevlar helmet: the bullet entered one side, followed the interior of the helmet for some reason, and exited on the other side. You can try to explain it with nano-physics or you can blame it on guardian angels. The fact is that any effort you can take to contain or deflect a projectile is worth the effort.

There was no reason to believe that his helmet would contain the blast and save his life--or anyone else's life. One tiny projectile could find an opening or soft-spot and prove to be fatal. When Cpl. Dunham threw his helmet and himself on the grenade, I am sure that the only thing important to him was to save his squad members. I did not know Cpl. Dunham, but I have known men like him. They may be rare to find in the civilian world but they are fairly common among Marines.

This act of bravery was simply the final and most heroic act in a short but accomplished life. He was respected and loved for many character traits and accomplishments. Therefore, though this act was his final one, it was not out of character. According to everyone who knew him, Jason Dunham was not the kind of guy who stepped up occasionally when people were watching; he lived a life of service, heroism, and accomplishment every day.

We lost more than a Marine when we lost Jason Dunham; we lost potential. America's future, bright though it may be, is a little poorer without Jason Dunham. Who knows what else Jason had to offer this world. On the other hand, his example and the spirit he left behind will inspire many in current and future generations.

Cpl. Dunham's family and friends have established a memorial in his honor, to include a Scholarship fund. I believe in this scholarship fund, which is awarded to Marines and FMF Corpsman who "...demonstrate the core values of leadership, service, sacrifice, and a sense of other(s) that were the characteristics of Corporal Jason L. Dunham." (Quoted from the scholarship website.) I believe that this scholarship will encourage other men and women in our armed forces to act with integrity and honor, courage and conviction. For those of us who are donors rather than applicants, it is a reminder to us of what makes a person rise above the common character and inspire others to give more than they receive. The scholarship promotes the traits that make our nation great, and it elevates the people who aspire to such greatness.

I am not really known for quoting the bible, but I believe that there is a verse that applies here and means more than words can fully describe: "Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends." (John 15:12-14 NIV) There is also a great quote that speaks volumes from one of Cpl. Dunham's leaders, on the Memorial website: "All that we have, has been given to us. What we do with what has been given is how we honor those who gave." (Kilo 3 Bravo Gunnery Sergeant Adam Walker)

It is difficult to argue with the importance of education, and how giving money to a scholarship fund is an investment in the future of our society. There are many worthy scholarships and other charities, but today I want to highlight The Jason L. Dunham Memorial Scholarship Foundation. They are still in the process of earning 501(c)3 status, so a donation is not yet eligible for IRS deductions. I am taking a chance that any money I donate this year will be eligible for deduction by the end of the year. Failing that, the cause outweighs my need for a deduction. What I really need is a nation full of Jason Dunham's, or at least more people who aspire to his example of leadership, service, sacrifice, and a sense of others.

If you can fit it into your giving budget, please consider sending a donation to establish The Corporal Jason L. Dunham Scholarship Foundation.

Checks payable to: CPL Jason L. Dunham Scholarship Mailing address: Corporal Jason L. Dunham Memorial Scholarship Foundation Inc. 187 Pinehurst Avenue Suite 1-B New York, New York 10033

Here are a few interesting links for more information:

Corporal Dunham's Memorial and information on his scholarship.

Corporal Jason L.Dunham's Medal Of Honor Citation.

A fantastic short film from MarineTV that describes who Jason Dunham was, in the words of the people who knew him:

A video of President Bush Awarding Cpl. Jason Dunham's family with the Medal Of Honor:

Watch D.O.G.S.

2008-01-19T13:58:00.000-06:00

I have been looking for an opportunity to donate some of my time, in addition to donating money like I talked about last time. Of course, finding a place to donate your time is easier than finding a job. However, I have found it twice as hard to find an opportunity that matches my skills, passion, and time.

Recently, I found an opportunity that was a perfect match. At my daughter's school, they have a program called Watch D.O.G.S., which stands for Dads Of Great Students. The idea is to have a dad, grandfather, uncle, or stepfather spend a day at the school, and their presence both adds to the educational experience and increases the security of the school. According to the official website:

WATCH D.O.G.S.® is the safe school initiative of the National Center for Fathering that was founded by Jim Moore, a concerned father who chose to take action in response to a 1998 middle-school shooting in Jonesboro, AR.

My day as a Watchdog Dad was fantastic, and I will be doing it again soon. Let me just say now that if you have any kind of fatherly influence on a middle school child, you should look into joining or starting a Watch D.O.G.S. group. Every man who participates will have more fun than they could imagine, the kids have a great time and receive a new perspective, and the teachers and administrators benefit from the extra eyes, ears, mouth, and hands to both educate the kids and keep them safe.

I began my day by receiving an official vest that identified my role. I was then asked to stand out in the parking lot to observe the kids arriving. I have been a parent dropping off and felt the frustration of having to queue and move slower than I'd like. I have also wished there were more adults, preferably police, present at the beginning and end of the day when kids are most likely to be shot, run-over, or kidnapped. It was gratifying to be a part of the safety net that keeps the kids safe.

After morning announcements, my daughter and I had our picture taken for the WatchD.O.G.S. board, and the girl got to wear a T-shirt all day to identify her as the kid of a Watchdog Dad. She then went about her day and I was given an itinerary to follow.

My first stop of the day was in a kindergarten classroom. The teacher was previously my daughter's teacher, so we knew each other. She sent the kids with me one at a time to the hall where they read a little book to me. It was interesting to me to see who had the book memorized, including the teacher's voice inflections and gestures. Some of the kids could sound out the words that they were unsure of. The best was one child who would recite the memorized sentence in the book and then offer her own commentary on the story. I was laughing, which only encouraged her embellishment. I can't wait to read her first novel.

Most of the kids were a little standoff-ish because I was a stranger, but they warmed up a little and read the book. However, there were two kids that were unwilling to read to me. They didn't look at me, and they either did not respond to my questions or they mumbled an answer. I wondered if they have more anxiety with strangers than most people do, or if they are used to dangerous and abusive men. It was difficult to see kids with so much to deal with at such a young age. I can't imagine how teachers who see that thing everyday are able to deal with the sadness and frustration that these kids made me feel.

And that reminds me of the kids I saw coming in after the first bell. A teacher was stationed at the front door to sternly announce to each tardy child that they were late and they needed to hurry to their classroom. The oldest kids coming in were in sixth grade and the youngest were kindergartners. I like the idea of teaching kids to be responsible and punctual, but I wonder how much responsibility a sixth-grader can take for their transportation to school, let alone a kindergartner.

More than one of the kids coming in were crying, and many of them looked unkempt or disheveled, indicating to me that the parents have issues of their own. I wondered if making these kids feel bad about their tardiness was productive, but I also see the value in making the tardiness an undesirable condition to be avoided. It is too bad the school can't do more to punish parents for tardy children, and hold parents responsible for more of their child's education.

Teaching my children to read, write, add, subtract, and act with morality and responsibility is a no-brainer for me and my better-half. Unfortunately, my wife and I find that many of our child's peers have been left without any training or worse, they have learned about sex and violence at a young age without learning how to spell their name, hold a pencil, or count to ten. A few of the children are left with not only a lack of fundamental skills but also a lack of English. They arrive in school with only as much English as they can learn from T.V., which makes the teacher's job that much harder.

My daughter was ready to read in kindergarten, but her teacher was prevented from spending time cultivating that skill because she was still teaching the alphabet to kids who apparently received more than enough calories at home, but not enough Sesame Street or parental tutoring. They could recite the lyrics to Snoop-Dogg compositions, but couldn't remember what came after t-u-v in the alphabet. I understand that there are all kinds of issues out there and I have experienced a few of them. However, I can't imagine how having kids wouldn't cause you to find a way to rise above your issues and give them a better future than you had.

After a long, hard day, I had an hour or two that I could spend with my daughter and a book. On the other hand, the teacher had my daughter for several hours (she also had the education and experience to more effectively teach reading skills.) I know that she would have loved to help the best students go farther, but she was limited by the weakest link in the chain. I certainly wouldn't want any child to be seperated as "slow" or "dumb" at such a young age, but I also can't help but wonder how much farther along my daughter would be if she had been challenged more, rather than waiting for the other kids to catch up.

Just to be clear, I don't want to paint my daughter as the star pupil. There were several students like her who had the skills and willingness to do more than was asked of them. A clear divide existed between the students who had been worked with, and those who had been left without instruction. Perhaps we need to increase access to quality pre-school, or just start slapping sense into some parents. I know, the former idea is more acceptable but the second option would be more satisfying.

Anyhow, back to the story: After kindergarten, I headed to fourth-grade where I was read to again. The kids were bigger and more skilled at reading, and the books were much more interesting. I could ask the kids about the books they were reading to test their comprehension, and I could explain concepts and definitions to help them comprehend more. It was very interesting to experience the contrast and see how much a kid learns in just a few years.

Throughout the day, I was greeted warmly and enthusiastically by many kids and adults, which is a great change from my usual day. In my career, I usually meet people who expect me to either fix sopmething or try to sell them something, and usually both. I work in an industry full of gruff, bitter, and burned-out people. Needless-to-say, it was a fantastic change to have everyone happy to greet me without any expectations.

After fourth-grade, I spent 30 minutes observing a kid use a computer to enhance his learning. This was a child who was obviously below his age-group's reading level and was working on phonics. I do not know if anyone is to blame for his difficulties, and it is none of my business. I am just glad that his condition was diagnosed and that he is receiving the extra attention he needs. In other school districts he may have slipped through the cracks, but here he is taken out of the class and brought up to speed with special attention by literacy specialists. Even better is the use of techonology; with a moderately-priced computer and internet access, these kids are getting opportunities that were previously unavailable. Using computers to take the place of instructors, you can get more attention and instruction to more kids who need it.

I got to go out for recess for the first time since I was in grade-school. It is still awesome to run free on a muddy field and play football with the boys, even when it is 30 degrees. I think more adults should experience recess again and be reminded of how exhilerating and liberating it can feel. If we could incorporate recess into our work day, like Spain incorporates the siesta, we would have more productivity and less heart-attacks I am sure. Rush-hour would be less tense everyday as well; we would be too tired and happy to honk or flip eachother off.

I got to eat lunch with my daughter and her friends, and that was waaaaaaay better than eating lunch with my friends. I was grossed-out just as often, but the topics of conversation were much more fun and uplifting. When you are in grade-school, everything is fun, funny, or new. Burps are great, trading carrots for a cookie is the bomb, and no one cares who Hillary Clinton is or whether gas prices will break $3. I wish I could eat at her school everyday; I am sure it would make my life more satisfying and I may squeeze a little more productivity into my afternoon.

When I drop-off or pick-up my kids from school, I will be more patient now that I have seen how hard it is to control the chaos. I have been critical of teachers in the past; now that I have seen a full day and all the issues that need to be addressed, I will be unable to criticize these heros. It is too bad that our society does not value our teachers more; we have no idea what we could get out of them if we spent more time encouraging and enabling our teachers, rather than criticizing and cost-cutting. Shame on us.

Originally, Watch D.O.G.S. was started to increase safety in our schools. As a Marine, I can confidently report that my presence made the school safer that day; luckily, that safety was not tested. Perhaps, just knowing that there is a dad at school everyday will prevent many unsafe thoughts from occurring to desperate minds. Failing that, it is good to know that there will be more eyes, ears, and muscle to prevent bad situations from being worse.

This is a program that everyone should be aware of. If you are a fatherly figure, you really should get involved. If you know a fatherly figure, please pass on this program. If the school does not already have a Watch D.O.G.S. program, it can be easily started-up by clicking here. This is a fantastic opportunity to give back to your community, spend more time with your kid, and have as much fun as a grade-schooler. If nothing else, it gets you out of work for a day, and that is always a good thing!

Selfish Charity

2008-01-13T06:10:00.000-06:00

How has your 2008 been so far? Mine has been busy. Not the good kind of busy, but the kind of busy that makes you wonder if 2008 is going to be worth the effort. The kind of busy that makes you wish it was 2009 already. Several other people I know have had the same complaint. Isn't the recession and the political primary season enough pain, do I really have to work hard on top of all that?

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Today I would like to discuss charity. This is something that I have been considering for a while, and I have found an interesting way to give that you should be aware of. Charity is our way of improving our community. It not only makes the world a little better, it makes you better as well. By giving money away, you help mold a generous spirit within you that others will find attractive. Charity also communicates to the universe that you can be trusted with money, and that you are ready for more.

I was once a stingy person. I felt that I was already giving enough through my taxes, and that I didn't need to be charitable when I was just a few paychecks away from poverty. If I was really creative, I would rationalize that instead of being charitable, I can invest in myself and ensure that I have more to give in the future. I was selfish; I was only looking to benefit myself. I still am, but I have found I can benefit myself through charity.

Many lessons and examples along the way have lead me away from stingy thinking. Of course, I have more money today than I did a few years ago. However, I am nowhere near any of my financial goals. Every penny I give away today is money that could have sent my kids to school, helped me get through retirement, or at least paid off my mortgage. It is also money that I have worked hard to earn and have every right to spend on a vacation or a new car.

I am happy to be charitable. By pooling my money with others, I am improving the world around me and raising the standard of living for people less fortunate than me. The key to my transformation from stingy to charity was the acceptance that I am fortunate. I may not be as fortunate as some people I run into, but I do not have to travel far to find people with less love, opportunity, and possessions than myself. Realizing my fortune has allowed me to share it with those around me.

Even though I am grateful for my good fortune, I am still a selfish person. I can't help. Maybe I am less selfish than I was, but I cannot stop looking our for number one. That's okay, though. There is such a thing as Selfish Charity.

Charity also allows me to share my passion, interests, and personality--like this blog. I think that most of us enjoy anything that strokes our ego. When someone asks you about your job, kids, or hobby and seem interested in your answer, that can be like a drug. Expressing your personal interests through bumper-stickers, t-shirts, email-signatures, and well-placed comments in conversation are as natural as breathing. With charity, you express your passion with your most valued object: your money. Giving to a cause that supports your passion feels great; it feels even better when it gives you an opportunity to talk to someone about why you give and why you feel passionate about the subject.

I am passionate about education. I can see that missing educational opportunities has affected me personally and financially. I can also see how my studies have both expanded the quality of my life and my earning potential. When I look around me, I see the same principal at work in the lives of those around me. Therefore, I think that any charity that raises the quality of education or increases educational opportunities for people is worthy of my money.

I am also passionate about children. If you want to prevent a societal ill, you start with children. If you want to improve the potential of a society, you start with children. If you want to laugh or feel energized, spend some time with kids. If you want a fresh perspective on an issue, ask a child. Therefore, almost any opportunity that will benefit children is a worthy cause.

This has led me to be charitable to my local library. The library has provided me with a collection of jazz CDs to import to my iTunes, it had provided me with a collection of audiobooks for my long drives throughout the midwest, and it has answered every question I ever posed there. Moreover, it is a constant source of education and entertainment for my kids through borrowed books and videos. Charitable giving to my library can be seen as a very selfish act since I get so much use from the library.

However, it is not entirely selfish. My local library branch is always full of people who I would not normally run into: people too poor to afford a computer so they go to the library to get online. There are also people taking classes ESL and GED classes to improve their earning potential--and their internal lives. There are programs for children in every age-group and demographic. The library doesn't just make people smarter, it makes them feel better and provides tangible benefits.

I get frustrated when I try to communicate with someone in Kansas who cannot speak English. The library not only improves that person's earning potential and quality-of-life, it lowers my potential for communication breakdown. The library raises the earning potential of those around me, which directly improves the economy, lowers crime, and makes for a more pleasant society. The library teaches people to use computers, which means I will have more computers, servers, and routers to sell, install, and support over time. The library also teaches people to help themselves, to seek information, and to indulge curiosity--those benefits may be intangible, but they improve society all the same.

I have also given to Hospice in memory of people who passed away. Some may think that Hospice is the least likely source of selfish-charity. I once thought that it was tacky to beg for Hospice donations during a funeral. "Don't give flowers, give money to Hospice." I wish I could remember who it was that changed my perspective, but it was so simple: they made me realize that I may need Hospice some day. Or, God forbid, someone I really love.

In that event, I will want Hospice to be well-funded and able to meet every need. When I thought about how I could benefit from Hospice, I realized how important it really is. Now, I feel good giving to Hospice knowing that it helps a family transition during the most painful time of their life. I also know that if I should ever need it, Hospice will be there for me, too.

Charitable giving to political campaigns and committees is more transparently selfish, but it is important nonetheless. It is not enough to vote nowadays, unfortunately. Campaigns are media-driven and very expensive. If you believe in a cause, you can improve its chances of being heard, presented intelligently, and being accepted if you provide funding. It doesn't matter how rational your cause is or how much evidence you have to support it; if your cause is underfunded it will be drowned out by ignorant causes run by evil people with more money. That is a fact, whether you are a Democrat or Republican. By the way, is there a charitable cause that brings the two parties closer together? I will pledge my vacation fund for that cause.

Ayn Rand tried to teach us that there is nothing wrong with being selfish; in fact, it is unavoidable. Perhaps her philosophy went too far and ignored many important factors, but the essence is true: Being selfish is not inherently evil and can make the world a better place.

There is an episode of the TV show "Friends" where the hippy-ish character Phoebe tries to prove that unselfish acts exist. She found that everytime she tried to be unselfish, she benefitted in some way--despite her best efforts to avoid personal benefits. It is hard to develop a character over 30 minutes once a week, with commercial breaks, but I inferred that she embraced her selfish charity and used her selfishness to improve the lives of others.

If you are already charitable, then I thank you. Moreover, I encourage you to pimp your favorite charitable cause in the comments below! If you are not already charitable, I hope that you begin to consider ways that you can benefit yourself through charity. If nothing else, do it to lower your taxes.

Art: More of it Please!

2007-12-31T15:36:00.000-06:00

What is art? Is it important?If not, why not? If so, why is it so?

I started thinking about art and realized that it may be one of the most effective means of achieving progress. As I considered, I came to the belief that increasing the expression and appreciation of art can improve a person, a business, a government, or a society. The neglect of art has been the kiss of death in every instance. Art is the secret ingredient to life.

These are philosophical questions that have been raised and pondered thousands of times over thousands of years. I think every culture should ask these questions. Every organization and grouping of people should ask these questions. Every individual should question the nature, quality, and value of art for themselves. The old answers and methods are useful guides, but they are not useful answers. Only your own answer is useful to you.

In some ways, it is impossible to avoid these questions. If you accept the fact that movies, books, and music are art (if not, what are they?), then you must know what you like. You can answer whether you appreciate rap music, romantic comedies, reality TV, and mystery fiction. You can look at a painting and tell me if you would hang it in your house, and if so, which room it would go in. Your answers to preferences are based on your own pnderings, even if they are shallow or subconscious.

A deeper, conscious, and perhaps even documented approach to your own answers about the philosophy of art will allow you to appreciate it on new levels. You will begin to learn more about yourself, you will refine your approach to life, and you will develop or expand your own artistic expression.

I think one of the biggest things that is lacking in our society is a deliberate attempt at expecting, appreciating, and expressing art in every facet of our life. To seek artistic expression in business would improve our society on many levels. To seek more ways to combine art with science would make science more beautiful and art more relevant. Religion was once the primary source of inspiration for artists; if more religious people sought to express themselves through high-quality and deeply-considered artistic expressions we would have more beautiful and relevant forms of art and religion.

I think art is characterized by creation. When you really aim for artistic expression and give it all of your thought, emotion, and effort, you create something new. New is not always good and it is not always bad, but it is always required in order to improve anything. To put it another way, you will never achieve any goal you set without some level of creativity. Individuals, groups, and societies are all dependent on some level of creativity to achieve, grow, or progress. That creativity is enabled and enhanced by art.

Humans are slow in comparison to other living things. In fact, there are few animals that couldn't catch us if we were limited to our own feet and muscles. We have very limited senses; most animals, bugs, birds, and fish have senses that we can only dream about. We are weak when it comes to most animals, especially if you compare our strength to our body size. Elephants are stronger than us in every way, ants are stronger based on a ratio of body size to carrying capacity.

Even so, we have one advantage over every living thing: we are creative. Even though we cannot see as well naturally, we have developed ways of seeing our world that no other living thing can see. Despite our limited mobility and lack of swimming or flying capacity, we have created vehicles that exceed the limits of every other living thing. Our creativity has allowed us to travel to places that cannot support life without our creativity. In many ways, our creativity has exceeded the capabilities of natural life. Our creativity has the potential to allow us to create life on our terms and perhaps achieve immortality or timelessness.

The creativity that allows us to rise to the top of the living world despite our shortcomings is based on scientific technology. However, science alone is simply a matter of explanation and experimentation. Science allows us to discover and explain the details of our world, but science does not create anything new without art.

In order for Einstein to create the equations that explain the speed of light and predict the effects of energy consumption in impossible-to-achieve conditions, he needed to think artistically. By attempting to think in ways that no one else had previously done, and expressing new ideas in a meaningful way, Einstein required qualities that are true of artists rather than scientists. A scientist understands fundamental theories and mathematical methods, but artists see the unseen and venture into the unknown.

Music and paintings were once devoted to religion. Huge Buddhas, ornate Mosques, and paintings of biblical scenes are studied thousands of years after they were created by atheists, skeptics, or adherents of other religions. Even though I am not a Muslim, I can appreciate the mosaics of the Arab world. On the other hand, the ugliest religious men ever--the Taliban--banned art in every form and destroyed one of the most important and awe-inspiring works of art in the world.

Art can make religion inspiring and beautiful. I think our current state of religion (in almost every form) is focused more on theology, armumentation, competition, and defense. The religious art that exists is rarely as inspired and fresh as it once was. I see many artists imitating or copying other artists and produciing art that is vanilla and predictable. Perhaps I am missing it, but I am not seeing religious art that breaks new ground and sees new perspectives like Michaelangelo and Bach.

In the history of western civilization, there are two key periods to understand: the dark ages and the renaissance. Both of those periods are defined by the value they placed on art. In both instances, the quality of the average person's life was relative to the value placed on artistic expression. Art is a key factor in raising or threatening the quality of a person's life. For example, compare the standard of living in Turkey and Afghanistan. There are so many similarities between their history, culture, religion, and geography. Even so, the standard of living and level of artistic expression are both high in Turkey while they are extremely low in Afghanistan. That is not a coincidence, nor is it an isolated example. It is a constant throughout history in every region and culture: Art is required for life to have substance, quality, and meaning.

Art can be an expression of beauty. In your house, if you have a wall, floor, or object that is boring, shabby, or even ugly, you can immediate change the feeling of the entire room with a simple and beautiful piece of art. Take a windowless, gray basement and add a woven rug and a mural--now it is a comfortable place to spend time. Take a plain, white refrigerator and add a 1st-grader's work of art, you immediately brighten the whole kitchen. Studies have shown that adding art to the workplace can measurably boost creativity and morale (if other factors are in place such as management, market, and salary.)

Sometimes art is required to express an emotion, and the result is not beautiful. Art can be used to inspire guilt, fear, outrage, patriotism, shame, motivation, focus, or humility/awe. The key is expression and communication. Our words can be spoken or written in any volume or size and still find themselves ineffective at communicating a message fully. However, art is always an effective method to communicate a message or emphasize our words. The next time you drive down a road, compare your own reaction to signs of only text (Street signs, etc...) to signs that include pictures (Cautionary road signs or advertisements.) McDonalds has found that a picture of a Big Mac has a greater effect on their sales than any slogan or logo.

In that same vein of communication, it is sometimes necessary to use art to provide perspective. I can explain the solar system's structure a million times to you, but you may never understand it until I show you a picture of it. The perspective of a bird's-eye view can be all it takes to understand complex concepts. Perhaps such a picture would have been useful to Galileo as he argued against the church in favor of heliocentrism.

As previously mentioned in one example, art improves business. Art is not automatically profitable, but neither are other business concentrations. Businesses have failed that were based on creating new art, such as record companies and graphic design firms. However, businesses have also failed because they were so focused on the bottom line or financial gimmicks that they forgot to be creative and attractive. In my mind, the best way to illustrate the value of art in business is to look at the auto industry: beautiful and creative cars will make money of they are also marketed and manufactured intelligently. Ugly cars without creative features, like the "Yugo", will have a rough time in the market no matter how carefully they are managed.

With the word "art" many people immediately think of paintings, music, or poetry. I think that definition is too narrow to define art, and it is counterproductive. In fact, any attempt to define art threatens to limit its impact on our world. The looser we allow art to be defined, the broader we are able to consider our artistic expression and make it relevant and beneficial.

The point I want to make here is that art should always be bigger than our imagination, which allows our imagination to grow. Art is a product of our imagination. It is also a source of fuel and fertilizer for imagination. Without art and imagination, we would not have cars, computers, or even peace and prosperity.

It takes an artistic and imaginative mind to find a way to end war or to expect a life that is devoid of violence. I expect to spend every day of my life without hearing a gun-shot, without having to kill another person, or having to bury a person I love who was killed by violence. It is easy for me to think in such a way because it is a life I have always known. It will require imagination for people in Darfur, Iraq, or Afghanistan to envision a life without violence; artistic expression will enable people to expect peace and seek its implementation.

A look at recent history will demonstrate the power of art for good or evil. In Nazi Germany, Soviet Russia, and China's Cultural Revolution, all expressions of art were hijacked by the government and used to control the populace. Expressions of art were used by the baby-boomer generation to change our perspectives of war, race, and gender. Art is heavily used in marketing to increase sales; some people watch the Super Bowl just to see how artistic the commercials will be.

The term "craftsman" is used less frequently today than it was in the past, and is often misused. A craftsman was once a person who no only performed a task but did so artfully. They didn't just make a table, they made an object that was as beautiful as it was useful. We tend not to buy tables from craftsman anymore; we expect our tables to be cheaper and settle for simple or common tables that are mass produced on machines. An artist may be used to design the table, but after the 10,000th copy rolls off the line is it really a work of art?

I like having affordable products available to me, but I do not like the fact that mass production is more valuable than craftsmanship. It is a real loss that in place of craftsman today, we have machines that are incapable of creation, or low-wage employees that are neither empowered nor inspired to be creative. We are beginning to imitate the futuristic visions of artists such as George Orwell, Alduous Huxley, and Roger Waters. Even though we can find items that are pleasing to the eye and fulfill the functions they were intended for, it is rare to find consumer goods that contain craftsmanship, creativity. originality, or true beauty. Mediocrity seems to be the expected and accepted standard.

We need to think more about art. The same old ways of looking at business, science, religion, and life should be refreshed, enhanced, or replaced by new perspectives and ideas. By infusing artistic expression into our daily lives, in everything we do from cooking to dressing to working, we add to our pleasure. Art can be fun. It can be healing and refreshing. It can wake us up from mediocrity and monotony.

Art allows us to experience more of life. If you watch a movie and only understand half of the jokes, then you only enjoyed half of the potential that the movie offered. How much more would you enjoy that same movie if you understood all the jokes, assuming all the jokes were funny? As Shrek might say, life is like an onion; it has layers. As you peel each layer back, you find another layer that was once concealed to you. Through art, we discover perspectives and sensations that were once concealed to us.

If you have read this blog for any length of time, you should expect a mention of my favorite subject, Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR). I think that it takes the same area of our brain that creates and appreciates art to appreciate and implement CSR. Like art, CSR can open up the perspective of a business and its people, increase morale, expose and enhance beauty, and stimulate creativity. By looking for ways to be profitable while acting responsibly with everyone affected by your operation, you consider more solutions to business problems, some of which may be better than the solutions you would have considered without CSR.

By using art to create beauty, inspire emotions, and provide perspective, an artist makes his and her world a better place to live. Like karma, by sending out their art they receive a better world to live in. If a business uses CSR and attempts to express the qualities and attributes of art, they too will improve their world. They will find that their market responds to them in new ways, that their competitors become more civil, that their vendors and communities partner with them and root for their success, and that their employees are more effective and less destructive. CSR is not just a method of limiting liability and negative press; CSR can be a method of artistic expression that increases profitability and effectiveness for a business. Moreover, it can make business enjoyable at every level.

Old Stuff Becomes New

2007-12-31T08:26:00.000-06:00

Have you ever found something of yours that you had forgotten about? Maybe it is a box of high-school memorabilia you left at your parents, and you discover it again thirty years later. Or, maybe it is a wad of cash you stashed in an underwear drawer and find much later. Perhaps you get to the back of the pantry and find a can of your favorite soup you bought months ago and forgot about, and today is the perfect day for it. Maybe you move the couch and find that ring you thought was lost forever.

How great is it to find something that you once valued, then forgot about, and finally rediscovered? It's like Christmas morning at ten years old, right? It's like you can see your net worth increase exponentially right before your eyes!

That is what gratitude can do for you if you are out of practice. It will make you instantly happier and wealthier without actually bringing anything new into your possession. Gratitude will simply help you find things that you already possess but have forgotten. Once you rediscover them and experience true gratitude for them, you can add them to your catalog of possessions that you are conscious of. In so doing, you feel richer.

Have you ever noticed that wealthy people get more freebies? Athletes get free shoes (not cheap shoes; top-of-the-line shoes), high-rollers get free stays in Las Vegas, businessman get lunch and golf paid for, etcetera. The people who can afford anything they want are given the best life has to offer for free. People who cannot afford many luxuries are given nothing and forced to pay full price. Wealth attracts wealth.

Therefore, if you start feeling richer, you will attract wealth. The more grateful you feel and the wealthier you feel, the more you will transmit such feelings like a superstar. People will not be able to help themselves; they will offer you jobs, contracts, and freebies. You will win contests and door prizes. You will attract more to be thankful for and if you feel that thankfulness, you will attract even more.

What is in your life that you have forgotten? Who is in your life that you have forgotten? What untold riches are waiting to be rediscovered, and how much richer will you be, when you spend the next few minutes trying to thing of someone or somthing to be grateful for all over again?

Why Be Significant?

2007-12-29T07:33:00.000-06:00

I find it funny that as I learn lessons that I can apply to my life to make be a better man, I find that the same principles can be applied to a company to make it better. The self-help strategies found in How to Win Frinds and Influence People, Think and Grow Rich, Thank You Power, and The Secret can be applied to either an individual or a company and achieve the end result of effectiveness. As I work my way now through The Purpose Driven Life I am finding a similiar result.

I will start with myself. Day three of The Purpose Driven Life teaches, among other things, that "Knowing your purpose gives meaning to your life" (page 30.) The author, Rick Warren, goes on to say that by providing meaning, your life gains hope and significance. The word significance stood out to me. That is the word I have been looking for on this "Journey of Spiritual Discovery" that I am on. The end result that I intend for my life can best be defined as significant.

I always ask "Why". If I am told to do something, if the recipe calls for something, at every step in the instruction manual, I have the habit of asking "Why". I think that asking "Why" raises my level of consciousness and allows me to learn lessons that would otherwise be missed. I think that if I ask "Why" as I learn, my learning is more effective and efficient.

The question of "Why" is what lead to my "Journey of Spiritual Discovery". It is the fuel that keeps the journey moving along. As soon as I am no longer curious about "Why", the journey will transform into another pursuit.

To have finally found a word to describe my intention is a big step. Now that I know I want to be significant, I can refine my quest and focus on the lessons and methods that provide the intended result. Further clarification is required, however.

Now I have a new "Why": Why do I want to be significant? As Warren points out, there are bad things that may be driving us: anger, resentment, guilt, etcetera. The best driver, according to Warren, is God. The question for me is: What is driving my desire for significance?

I spent a few minutes Googling "significance" to see if anyone had anything to say about why you should be significant. It seems to me like it it is assumed that if you want to be significant, you should already know why. Or, perhaps it is just assumed that is a fundamental value.

For me, there isn't a point to living an insignificant life. To spend an entire life and achieve nothing (or worse, to leave more damage than creation) is not a life to me. I have known people like that; as far as I know, the only thing they did was tranform oxygen into carbon dioxide. It is as if they never even lived.

Significance is not scalable in my mind. Mother Theresa was significant to millions. My third grade teacher, Mrs. McGlaughlin, was significant to me and perhaps a few hundred. It is the same achievement in my mind. I think that Einstein's mother is just as significant as he is, especially since you cannot have the latter without the former.

Now I can refine my thoughts to "What" and "How". What is significant for me? How can I achieve that significance? The Journey allows me to chart new ground and answer questions that will keep me going when times get tough.

As I think of this for me, I habitually try to apply it to CSR. Can a company be significant? What would make it so? Why should a company seek significance?

Under the tenets of Capitalism, a company's significance is defined by profits. However, what is significant about profits in the grand scheme of things? It seems to me that there is something more significant than profits. Assets and equity are significant too, but I am thinking about people.

When I think about significant companies, I immediately think of companies who have made an impact on the human race in a good way. They developed new technologies that everyone uses, like Microsoft, GE, 3M, and Intel. Significant companies changed how we do business, like IBM, Cisco, and Ford.

The most significant companies are the ones who have provided the most benefit for humanity, in my mind. Significance, for me, is defined by how you affected the quality of other lives, how you inspired and influenced people, what you created, and what you leave for posterity. Profits, assets, and equity are fleeting; they can be eaten up rapidly by poor management or global inflation. However, if you provide education, technology, and inspiration to a third world village, you leave something for posterity. If you start with a polluted wasteland and transform it into a thriving ecosystem, that would be significant.

In capitalism, it all comes down to getting people to spend their money on you, and convincing them to spend more money than the costs you incurred. The most important factor in a customer's buying decision is their perception of the company they are buying from. Therefore, a company that is perceived as significant will be more likely to attract potential customers and achieve profitable sales.

Of course a company needs to be profitable, just as a boat needs to displace rather than absorb water. A company's efforts at research and development are vital to not only maintaining long-term profitability, but also to achieving significance. However, the profitable and innovative company that makes a positive impact on humanity will achieve a level of significance that elevates their market share, propels their share price, motivates their employees, and embraces their community.

Significant companies can not only expect profitability, they can expect to enjoy doing business. So it is with significant people. Life is enjoyable on a whole other level when you know you are doing something significant. As every artist, parent, and craftsman can tell you, there is unexplainable joy from creation that does not fade quickly.

The Opposite of CSR

2007-12-28T15:26:00.000-06:00

I have tried to support Walmart in spirit, even though I prefer shopping at Target. I support Wal-Mart's right to grow as big as the market will allow, to force their vendors to offshore manufacturing in the interest of lowering costs, and to prevent their employees from unionizing. I think that most of the crap in Wal-Mart is low-quality and unnecessary, but if they can provide large quantities of goods at low prices then they are responding to market demand.

I really like the way Wal-Mart operates their business. They keep the business lean from the top down, they protect shareholder profits with vigilance and thriftiness, and they think very hard about how to satisfy the customer, lower costs, and grow revenue simultaneously. That is exactly the way a capitalist firm should operate.

Moreover, they are leveraging technology in ways that boggle the mind. For instance, when you make a purchase from your local store, it is automatically subtracted from the database of that store's inventory kept in Bentonville, Arkansas. They streamline their shipping, track customer buying trends, and adjust for any kind of event or trend. Before a tropical storm becomes a hurricane heading near a Wal-Mart, they are already trucking out the supplies that they know will sell out in a hurry. Technology is enabling them to meet their threefold objective of customers, costs and profits.

Should Wal-Mart pay their associates more and supply better benefits? I reluctantly refer to the market; if employees are willing and able to work at the price Wal-Mart pays, then who are we to say otherwise? Personally, I wouldn't take a job there unless I was committed to working my way up and didn't mind a little poverty along the way. There are worse places to work than Wal-Mart, if the truth is to be told. I can tell you some stories...

I kept giving Wal-Mart the benefit of the doubt, thinking that Sam Walton's spirit was still alive at their core. I thought that they were simply a thrifty company that paid market prices for labor and offered an opportunity to climb the ladder for those who were dissatisfied with entry-level wages. I thought that in the end, they may be cheap but they were still human.

If MSNBC is to be believed, then Wal-Mart is without a soul and Sam Walton's spirit is no longer welcome in Bentonville. According to their story which first appeared in the Wall Street Journal, Wal-Mart has sued a former employee to recover their costs in treating her injuries from a major car accident. The victim, Deborah Shank, was hit by a tractor-trailer and left brain-damaged. Her family received over $700,000 from the trucking company and placed $400,000 in a trust for Deborah's care. The other $300,000 was eaten up in legal fees and other costs. Wal-mart sued, cleaned out the trust, and won the appeal.

Wal-Mart's spin is that they are protecting the health-care costs of current employees. That is very responsible of them; I am sure that the 47% of their employees who are eligible for coverage are very grateful. However, I think it is a well-established and universally-accepted ethic that when tragedy strikes, you respond with charity and leniency. There is no way I could look that family in the eye and tell them that they should turnover their entire settlement to a multi-billion dollar organization and be left to support Deborah through medicare and social security.

Worse still, her husband was advised that Deborah would be eligible for more public assistance if she were single. He was forced to consider divorcing his brain-damaged wife in order to improve the quality of her care. Ugh. What country is this, again?

I am a grown-up, a conservative, and a capitalist. I am well-aware of the arithmetic involved, I realize that this is not an isolated case and that there are thousands of Deborah Shank cases every year totally hundreds of millions of dollars. I realize that there may be more to this story than WSJ and MSNBC decided to report.

Even so, I am not completely suprised with the story. This is a plausible story as it is written. I believe that there may be more to the story, but I also believce that this story may be accurate and complete. The fact that this is a believable story in America in the 21st Century is sickening.

There are so many things to be disgusted with when I think about this story. The costs of attorneys (the settlement was $700,000 but the family ended up with $400,000), the costs of healthcare (it cost over $500,000 to treat Ms. Shank so far and she will require 24-hour care for the rest of her life), the actions of Wal-Mart, and the decisions of the judges are all reprehensible. My conception of what America should be is the complete opposite of what the Shanks family experienced.

I do not know anything about the law, but it seems to me that there were other options in this case left unexercised. I would think that a judge would be able to find something here that benefitted everyone. If this were a perfect world, the judge would have thrown Wal-Mart out of court and decreed that their lawyers had to take turns caring for Deborah for the next 30 days.

I do know something about business. I know something about public relations and marketing. I know about ethics, morality, and societal mores. I am absolutely positive that if Wal-Mart had simply asked their insured employees if they would be willing to pay $1 more for one year to cover Deborah's costs, they would have unanimously said yes. Assuming that Wal-Mart has over 600,000 employees insured, that would have covered Deborah's health-care costs for life.

Alternatively, Wal-mart could have taken up a collection among its total workforce. Yahoo says that there are 1.9 million Wal-Mart associates in the U.S. which means that collecting a quarter ($0.25) from each of them would have covered the actual costs incurred. There you go, two quick and easy ways to solve the problem without anyone incurring a huge cost, especially not Wal-Mart.

If Wal-Mart were seriously interested in the tenets of CSR, they would have gladly eaten that cost. When you have 1.9 million employees, I guess you assume the attitude that you can spare a few. A business run by humans would have eaten the cost, sent flowers to the family, and used the incident to assure their employees that the company is grateful for their hard work and will stand by them in their time of need. Would anyone mind if they did that and then marketed it to you as a company that cares? I would be happy to watch that commercial, and it may cause me to think about returning to Wal-Mart soon.

Shame on you, Wal-Mart. You missed an opportunity here to pass on some good karma, help a family in need, build trust and respect with your current employees, and convince the world that there is a heart somewhere amidst all the ratios and spreadsheets.

I salute profitability, low-prices, high-efficiency, and leveraged technology. Even so, at the end of the day we are human. We have a heart, a soul, and we are symbiotically connected to the people around us. We need each other. We should reach out to people in need when given the chance, and we should expect that someone will reach us when we are in need. What is the point of high profits if you have to live in a world without compassion and empathy?

The Meaning of Life

2007-12-28T03:52:00.001-06:00

I continue on my journey of spiritual discovery. By the way, that is what I am calling it now. It started with book browsing, and two books attracting my attention: Thank You Power by Deborah Norville and The Secret by Rhonda Byrnes. As I considered those books, I revisisted the book Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill, which contains a similiar message to The Secret: that of using your mind to attract desirable things.

The result of these three books was twofold. First, I began to change my innner thought life by thinking less about the negative things that I experience or wish to avoid and thinking more about the positives I gratefully possess or that I desire. Secondly, I began to dig deeper into my heart to figure out what I really want and why I want it, as well as to find gratitude for the great life I have now. The side effect of these ideas were that I was happier, more peaceful, and more focused on my employer and family rather than on myself (which made me even happier, somehow.) I have pruned my life a little, which allows for new growth.

Somehow, in the midst of this "Journey of Spiritual Discovery" (when you read that title, it should have a dramatic echo to it) I stumbled on Rick Warren's name and his book The Purpose Driven Life. I am not sure where it popped up, but what stood out to me was the fact that he was talking about having a mission or purpose to your life, which would made my "Journey of Spiritual Discovery" a lot easier: journeys are easier if you know in which direction to set out. I was also intrigued by his ability to reach people like me who are not in church but also not opposed to church.

One of my Christmas gifts was a giftcard to my favorite store, Half Price Books. I used it to purchase two books, one of which was Rick Warren's The Purpose Driven Life. For the last two mornings, I have read a chapter and contemplated the author's points. Day one taught me that the purpose of my life is about God, not about me. Day two taught me that God had a specific purpose in mind when he created me.

I am not saying I am accepting these lessons and nodding my head in obedience to Rick Warren or to God. Actually, if I was convinced that the God of the universe had specifically commmanded me, I would nod in obedience and spring into action. Therefore, the real challenge for Warren's book is to convince me that God has provided the meaning and purpose. And only God can do that, really. Eloquence is lost on me at this point in my "Journey of Spiritual Discovery" (still hearing the echo?); what I need is action from God that guides me to a conclusion. I cannot be steered by warm-fuzzies or well-crafted C.S. Lewis-like logic. I want results, actions, evidence, and undeniable truth that is as bullet-proof as mathematics.

If anyone knew what all I had seen, heard, done, and had done to me through Christian churches (of many denominations from Catholic to Pentecostal and several points in-between) they would question why I was willing to read Rick Warren's book at all. It isn't a horror story, but it isn't pretty either. The essence is that churches have demonstrated themselves to me to be a place of destructive power at least as often as they help people.

The thing is, I cannot say for a fact that there is no God. From that starting point, I like to think that if there is a God who created everything, then he has communicated with his creation in some way throughout history. Otherwise, the belief in a silent creator is pointless: why have a God who is there but is uninterested in how we live. I would rather believe that there is a Creator, that He had a purpose in mind when He created us, and that He has communicated that purpose to us in ways that we can accurately perceive and interpret individually.

With that creator in mind, I am lead to religion. I figure that if God has spoken in a way that we can accurately perceive and interpret, then people throughout history must have recorded their experiences and can point us in the proper direction. That is where my disillusionment begins. Even if you accept the bible as the word of God, you read a depressing history of people being unable to perceive and interpet the message of God, even in the face of undeniable miracles.

By the way, at the risk of being blasphemous, I feel the need to criticize biblical miracles right now. The biblical mioracles are a major sticking point in my lack of faith. Here is the thing: between 2000 and 4000 years ago, a miracle was a simple matter. If I had a time machine, I could take everyday objects from 2007 A.D. and perform miracles before the crowds that were unimpressed by Moses, Elijah, and Jesus. A lighter, flashlight, aspirin, penicillin, ballpoint pen and notebook paper, or even a mosquito net would be considered items that would change a society. I think God wasted some tremendous miracles on a people who would have been really impressed by the effects of flint, friction, and butane.

Nowadays, it takes more to impress us. We fly, touch the moon, circumnavigate the globe from the comfort of a laptop in a coffee shop, and accurately predict the unstoppable whims of nature. We have methods, theories, equations, scales, and equipment to not only detect the physical laws but to measure them, predict them, and observe their results at the sub-atomic level. If you could do one biblical miracle today and allow it to be tested by scientific theory, you would have a greater effect on the majority of people. Sure, some sceptics would remain. But the vast majority of people who I know, read, or observe would at least start paying attention; the world is ready for a proven miracle, is able to communicate its message worldwide at the speed of thought, and are more than willing to do some good.

Because we lack the unifying morality and values that the miracle could provide, selfishness runs rampant on our planet. It is spreading like wildfire. Old, traditional notions of devotion to family, religion, race, and/or nationality are fading away. This new, flattened world is all about the individual. All around the world, people are throwing off the yoke of belonging to something bigger than themselves. They are embracing the idea that they can have everthing they want, whenever they want it. There are good things to say about this trend, but I think it is mostly bad. Eliminating discrimantion based on gender, race, or ethinicity is good. Abandoning family and neglecting the people who need us (chidren, handicapped, and the elderly) is bad.

Our forefathers (white black, arab, asian, christian, buddhist, muslim...all forefathers, I mean) needed to have unity in their community in order to provide them with a community that kept them safe and provided for their needs while giving them an outlet for their own talent. Now that we have created a global community of more security and free trade, our need for belonging (and conforming) to a larger group is lessened. We seem to seek less miracles and more scientific discovery. We seek less tradition and rules which provide morality and ethics, and we seek more freedom to enjoy life and find out the truth for ourselves.

Even so, we are left adrift. Science and technology has been tremendously effective at improving our existence. However, they have failed to answer our fundamental question of "Why?" Instead, they distract us from the question.

Materialism causes us to pursue wealth and commodities. That pursuit can so consume us that we never stop to ask "why?" Some people amass a houseful of trinkits, collectables, and commodites and at the end of their pursuit they realize that they missed out on so many good things because they were consumed by their pursuit of stuff. They realize, too late, that the stuff was meaningless in the end.

Television, video games, mass-market papaerbacks, and a myriad other forms of entertainment distract us from the "Why" question. In fact, we may be distracted by a movie or book that makes us think we are pursuing the "Why", but we are being led in circles or to dead ends. Other times, we never are aware that the "Why" question exists. The technology magician keeps waving a hand over here and a handkerchief over there, directing our attention away from anything meaningful and producing that shallow, uncomprehending smile from us that he loves so much.

This planet has seen it all before. We don't even see the planes and helicopters in the sky anymore unless they are particularly loud; the ancients from the bible would have had a cartoon-like reaction to such a sight where their jaw hits the ground and their eyes pop out of their heads while an old car horn exclaims "ah-ooo-gah!" We have already imagined it all. We have seen the earth destroyed on TV so many times it bores us. We have seen into the lives of every historical character, rewritten history, and glimpsed the future.

Somhow, we are still easily impressed by triviality. When Paris Hilton burps or Britney Spears runs to the store for eggs, we send an army to film it. We spend millions of dollars to watch people throw and catch a ball, and then bet millions more on the outcome. We bring a multi-billion dollar industry to a screaming halt (and thousands of paying travelers along with it) and forget our political prejudices for a while when airplanes are flown into buldings. We have the ability to be impressed, and it wouldn't really take much--just don't give us the same old-same old.

If some guy showed up today and could demonstrate his inexplicable ability to heal, transform water into wine, or feed thousands with a fish and a loaf, he would be on "You Tube" in a heartbeat. You can actually videotape him walking on water with your cell-phone, immediately upload it to the web, and then start spreading the word. It would clog email servers worldwide within an hour. Scientists would show up and test the density of the water, weigh him, take air-quality samples, and make everyone pee in a specimin jar. Unless there was a known reason why he stood on top of water, science would have to concede that they couldn't explain it. That would distract most people from their meaningless lives. They would start to listen to what the guy said and would be convinced to take action on his message. If his message was as relevant as Jesus', and rang as true on as many levels, then that guy would get a religion named after him.

I cannot get the "Why" question out of my head. I would love to. I have always been willing to just fit into the societal mindset and quit trying to find deeper meaning. I suspect that I would be happier and more peaceful if I could just accept that life is absurd and meaningless, and catch up on all the celebrity gossip and NBA drama.

What keeps me from giving up the quest to find out "Why" is the suspicion that if I could answer the question at least partially or superficially, I would be much happier and more peaceful. In fact, I do have some answers to "Why", though they beg more questions. I am not drifting completely without meaning.

For instance, there is value in being happy. Not "I just finished chocolate cake" happy, but "I just made my daughter smile" happy or "I just accomplished a major goal" happy. Therefore, part of why we are here is to discover the things that produce the most joy and do more of them. Why should we make ourselves happy and why do certain things provide more joy than others? I don't have that answered comepletely yet, but it feels right; I have the impression that it is a truth as fundamental as 1+1=2.

On a personal, individual level, I have a very distinct purpose defined for me by the universe: raise my kids. Not just physically, not just intellectually, but to raise kids with esteem, ethics, morality, confidence, power, grace, humility, and direction. That purpose is temporary; when they become adults I will have a very limited role; I will need another purpose to occupy the rest of my life. It would be best of I have a larger purpose that encompasses my career, my child-rearing, and any other purpose for me. That larger purpose is hazy on the best of days for me, hence my "Journey of Spiritual Discovery".

I was very frustrated and stressed out a few years ago because I could not figure out what I was "supposed" to do with my life. That was based on a notion that I had been created by a specific God who had a specific purpose for me. I was frustrated because I could not determine what that purpose was. If I had been born with a natural ability to play piano, sing, or paint, then my purpose would be clearer. When a man finds himself standing at 7 feet tall, he is forced to consider a basketball career, so if that was me I would have had something to consider. If I had been born into an environment that directed me into a specific purpose, that would have clarified the question. If an Angel in all his shining glory appeared before me and declared my purpose, I would at least have something to go on.

I have nothing like that. I have no talents that stick out and define me. I am average in almost every way. My above-average qualities are more like character traits. My desire to do well, my ability to persevere, think larger than the problem at hand, and connect with people are all geared to many occupations. Basically, I am equipped to do anything I want to do and expect results consistent with my efforts. At the time, I did not see that as an asset and did not enjoy the freedom it implied.

At some point, I read the book What Should I Do With My Life by Po Bronson. My conclusion from that book (and I think it was the author's as well) is that we are free to choose our own purpose. Some people have their purpose defined for them, but in the end they remain free to choose that purpose in the same way that I do. The implication is that without a purpose being handed to me, I had more freedom than those with a clearly defined purpose, who I resented.

Bronson's book helped me release the resentment I felt about not being handed a purpose, and that was a huge weight lifted off me. I embraced the concept that I had been granted freedom to choose my purpose by whatever Gods may or may not be. However, it didn't help me find that purpose. I was free to choose, but choose what?

I have asked myself if I need to have a purpose. I have concluded that yes, I do. If you start a company without a purpose, how can you expect to make a profit? If you start a non-profit NGO without a purpose, you will not receive any donations, be recognized by the IRS, or accomplish anything. In fact, the question is raised: does a non-profit exist without donations, recognition, and accomplishment? I say no, it is nothing without those things at least.

Does a person exist without a purpose? My answer is no. Sure, you occupy space and leave progeny, but did you exist? My concept of existence is based on the fact that we are conscious. Apes take up space and leave progeny, but that is their purpose. They cannot hope for anything better than that.

We can do more than reproduce. Even though our eyes, ears, muscles, lungs, and skeletal structure are far inferior to most animals, we conquer our world through our existence. Our consciousness creates new ideas in how to gather food, build shelter, transport ourselves, fight, communicate, and even reproduce.

The word "create" is what brings me closer to answering the "Why" question. According to the Muslim, Jewish, and Christian traditions, the first thing that God did in our world is create. He created everything we know, ending with Eve (he saved the best for last.) Then, he told us and all the animals to go out and procreate.

For all the animals, birds, fish, bugs, trees, flowers, and the rest of life, that is all they can do. They create new life. They do so with little or no consciousness; I doubt there is much thought involved when a tree drops an acorn or a fish sprays an egg cluster.

We create with our mind and our actions. I created my children in my mind before I was in the same room with my wife. I began creating my children while I was still a child dreaming about what my future may hold. Not only that, but I created this blog. I can create works of art (though only my mother would hang them up proudly), I can think up ways to redirect water or move mounds of earth on a scale that no animal has ever approached. The creativity of the human mind is what makes us exist. We create more than just progeny, we create legacies.

Therefore, I think the larger purpose of life for humans is to create. To say it another way, our purpose is to be creative. We could just make babies, watch TV, and burp Budweiser for 77 years; however, would that be meaningful?

The thing is, many people consider the meaning of life for only a brief moment. They realize it is a hard question to answer; they decide that they can either accept someone else's answer (religion, state, family, company,or other authority) or they can ignore the question. I think that many people realize the fundamental truth that life should include as much happiness as possible, so they seek an easy way to make themselves happy. They find someone to make babies with, buy a TV and a comfortable couch, crack open a Bud, and burp their way to ignorant bliss.

I think they quit too soon and would find that their beer tasted better and TV would be more satisfying if they had a larger view of the answer to the question "Why?" Why are we here and what is the purpose of our life? What provides meaning to our life? Obviously, happiness has something to do with it. However, what is the point of happiness? Moreover, why is happiness so fleating, and why do so few people find it? You probably know a lot of people who say they are happiest on their couch with a remote in one hand and a bag of Doritos in the other, but their expressions and actions tell you how unhappy they really are.

Happiness merely points the way forward. It is the first step in the process of finding meaning, and it is a step that you return to often. I think the deeper meaning of life is creativity. Create something and you will have begun to define your purpose and meaning.

I am left with the question: create what? Create something that makes you happy. Of course, first you need to know what makes you happy. You need to seek deeper levels of happiness. Doritos and Budwiser may provide happiness, but they are low on the scale of potential happiness.

What is your potential happiness? Finding out how deeply you can experience happiness is a great journey in itself; I have found that there is always another layer. What I considered happiness at 20 years old is nothing compared to the deeper levels I am discovering as a father.

Heck, just getting sober expanded my scale of happiness. I am not here to say that alcohol blocks everyone's ability to experience happiness. I will say that you don't know if it is or isn't until you have spent 3 months sober.

However, I will concede that many people are affected by alcohol in the same way that I am by coffee--in other words, some people can achieve total hapiness and enjoy alcohol in the process. In light of that, is it possible that there is something else standing in your way of happiness? I didn't know how happy I could be until I let go of alcohol, some resentments, and some other negativities. I am finding new levels of happiness as I embrace new levels of gratitude and positive thinking. I have no idea how deeply happy I can be, but I aim to find out and remove every obstacle I encounter.

Since this blog is about me, I am going to focus on my purpose. I post this in the sincere hope that someone can read it and take a step towards finding their own purpose in life. I am sure this world would be a better place if more people were seeking some meaning. I am equally sure that people would seek meaning more often if there were more mysteries to our everyday world. Alas, we don't know how our stuff works, but we know it has something to do with oil or electricity, it was conceived by by a human, and most of it was made in China. We know that if we had to explain it, we could Google it or ask our 13-year-old neighbor to explain it.

Back to me: I have a sense on a fundamental level that 1+1 will always equal 2. That sense of a priori knowledge also leads me to believe that I should be happy, that I should do my best to raise my kids, that I should make the world a better place, and that I am meant to create. That is the meaning of my life, at least as far as I have defined it.

I have made the assumption that I can possess a priori knowledge, and that I can sense it. I have assumed that my senses and logic can be trusted in this regard, even though science has consistently demonstrated that our senses can be easily fooled and that our capacity for logic is often flawed and easily influenced. I am betting my life, or at least the meanining of my life, on these assumptions.

Do you have a better idea? Rick Warren thinks he does. He believes that God created each of us for His purpose. Warren bases this assertion on biblical passages, and expects that we will find out what God's purpose is for us by understanding the bible.

I am unconvinced that the bible is the word of God. I am unconvinced that there is a church anywhere in the world that Jesus would be proud of. I am unconvinced that Rick Warren has all the answers, either in his head or in his book. Finally, I am unconvinced that I can find all the answers in one place, book, man, or method.

Conversely, I am unconvinced that Albert Camus and his dreary Existential brothers were right about the absurdity of life. I am unconvinced by Bertrand Russell and other brilliant Atheists who teach that belief in God is illogical. To be succinct, I am fairly sure that there is a God and he had something in mind when he created this universe.

In the first two chapters of The Purpose Driven Life, Rick Warren has already provided me with an exercise that is good to run through occasionally. I am now considering my place in the universe, the quality of my life, and whether there is an even higher purpose that I can achieve. Even if God and Rick Warren are fake, the act of examing your concept of the universe and your place in it is beneficial.

This examination allows me to see things I would normally overlook. You know, you drive to work everyday past thousands of stationary objects, but I'll bet that you have only seem half of them, or less. You could drive down the same road everyday for 60 years and not realize that there was a tree at a certain spot until that tree falls on your car. So it is with so many things in your life.

My search for the Meaning of Life may never be resolved. I may reach my death bed and conclude it was all meaningless and absurd. I may change my answer several times, or I may be stuck with the same vague answer I have today for the duration. What I think is important to know is that the quest for meaning is more important than the final answer. By seeking to be meaningful, we are able to live a life that is more effective. We will have well-defined and tested values. We will know how to make ourselves happy and maintain that happiness regardless of our condition. We will prune the dead branches and nurture the fruitful ones. We will be left with pride and satisfaction, rather than regret and depression.

I hope that God did create a specific purpose for me, and that Rick Warren can help me discover that purpose. If not, I can take comfort in the fact that the journey is a fun ride, and that the freedom is mine to choose.

Merry Christmas

2007-12-25T07:01:00.000-06:00

I am not usually a Christmas kind of guy. Actually, for the last decade or so I have been the Grinch meets Scrooge. Having kids softened me a little, but not much. I usually just cringe and wait for the holidays to be over with.

However, for the last several weeks I have had a change of heart. Since I have been applying the principles in The Secret and Thank You Power, I have focused less on things I dislike and more on things I am thankful for or that I desire. This has allowed me to view Christmas differently.

With these new eyes, I can view Christmas as an opportunity to be generous rather than stingy. It is an opportunity to thank the people who I am grateful for. It is an opportunity to provide my kids with some great memories. Christmas has meaning for me again.

Therefore, I want to tell anyone who stumbles on this message: "Merry Christmas!" I sincerely hope that this holiday season is one of fortune, safety, love, and friendship. I hope you get everything you hoped for, and that you can have the satisfaction of giving someone the things that they hoped for.

The Benefits of Gratitude

2007-12-23T19:51:00.000-06:00

I am thankful for Deborah Norville and her book "Thank You Power: Making the Science of Gratitude Work for You". No, I am not aiming to be funny when I say I am thankful for a book on gratitude. I am sincerely thankful that I knew who she was (I remembered her from the local news in Chicago as I was cutting my news-junkie teeth), that my eye is drawn to striking blondes (she gets prettier every year), that I was open to this message, and that the message is relevant to me right now. This book is elevating my level of happiness while it raises my potential prosperity and makes dramatic improvements in my family. For all of that, I am truly thankful.

This blog entry is not a book report. In fact, I don't really need to read the book; I know all I need to know about saying thank you. What Deb's book does for me is awaken forgotten knowledge, and guides my thoughts into channels that help me apply the knowledge I already possess.

My parents taught me gratitude. They forced it down my throat, as all parents do...and should. When I learned to talk, one of the first phrases I had to learn was "thank you". That came right after the word "please". I remember my parents handing me the object of my desire but not releasing it to me until I said "thank you". Soon, I learned to say "thank you" so easily that I could do so without sincerity, I could thank without thought.

Now I can say thanks 1000 times a day. I rarely mean it, but I often say it. When the fast-food employee who visually disgusts me and took too long to fill my order (and probably screwed up the "no onions' and "no ice") hands me a rumpled bag of greasy, overpriced artery-clogging "food", I always say thank you. Why? I am not truly thankful; in fact, if it was up to me that person would be on a diet and in college, the food would be more carefully prepared and lower in fat/sodium/volume, and the price would be lower. I am not thankful for eating fast-food, I do it out of necessity and reluctance. However, I habitually say thanks.

On the other hand, when my wife buys me something at the store, I complain that it is the wrong brand, size, or flavor. I am thankful that she thought of me, but I complain because she did not completely satisfy my desire. That is freakin' stupid. Why in the hell would she want to do anything nice for me if I complain rather than thank. Here I am, slightly thankful for the effort but all I express is ingratitude. I am an idiot.

What a jerk I have been, yet all along I compared myself to really scummy jerks and think that I am a prince in comparison. Truth: I am a pretty good guy. I have good manners and a reasonable temperament. However, the times that I am ungrateful are too often and they are a major drain on my relationships. They are a drain on my happiness. They are a drain on my energy. If I could cut my ungrateful moments by just 10%, I would be living a completely new life. If I continued to increase the margin, who knows what potential riches and happiness I may find.

Here's the thing: when I say "thank you" sincerely, I have sent a message to that person. If they are listening, they now know what I like, that they will be recognized for their efforts, and that I will likely return the favor one day. Therefore, they will be more likely to do me another favor.

On the other hand, if someone does something nice for me and hears either complaints or silence, then they realize that their efforts are wasted on me. Furthermore, they may believe that doing me a favor is unethical; it would simply enable me to believe that my ingratitude is okay and my egomania is justified. They will deny me favors to prevent the monster from growing.

I have this feeling that I am way below where I could be in my career, education, and status. Part of the reason is because I have been hindered more often than I have been helped along the way. I have yet to find a mentor that really helps me along and reveals what I need to know in order to succeed. More often, I find people who hate me for no reason and they prevent me from feeling good, earning accolades, or getting promoted.

I think that the greatest obstacle to my success has been my ingratitude and sense of entitlement. I have always felt like I deserved better. People picked up on that and either withheld favors to avoid my ingratitude or set out to humble me and teach me gratitude. I always felt like I wasn't getting what I deserved; now I know that I am, in fact, getting exactly what I deserved.

Nothing reveals my ingratitude like adversity. As soon as life takes a turn, I am blaming and throwing a tantrum, rather than being thankful for what I have. When life is not going well, all I can think about is what I think I should have, what I think other people have, and how I should have something better. I think that I am better than other people, so I should have more than them. Wrong. Wrong. Wrong.

Adversity should be an opportunity for me to count my blessings. I am a lucky man. If I never receive another thing in my life and live for another 100 years, that will be alright; I have received enough already for 200 years.

I hate my job. Not always, sometimes I "kinda" like my job but wish I was doing something else. I always have this sense that I should be higher up; a privileged decision-maker raking in the big bonuses. This is not only true of my current job, it is always true of every job I have ever had.

Focusing on the negative is a crappy way to live. it drags me down. I makes it harder to go in to work, and it prevents me from enjoying my day. From a self-centered, short-sited perspective alone, ingratitude is not beneficial.

Moreover, ingratitude sends a signal. To be more accurate, it puts out an odor. To desirable mentors or employers, I stink. They run away or conceal themselves when I approach; they do not want to waste their efforts on an ungrateful person who will trip over his own ungrateful feet.

If I can't be happy in my current job, what's to say that I will be happy in the next job? Or the next? The truth is that you are capable of creating your own happiness right where you are. People have been known to sing and laugh in concentration camps or on death beds. Happiness is inside of you, not outside. Therefore, if a hiring manager smells unhappiness, they will be repelled.

I believe that there are levels of communication that we transmit without knowing it. We pick up on communication subconsciously. We transmit and receive on levels we are not even aware of, such as through pheromones. There are probably channels of communication that we cannot detect with current instruments, we can only see their results.

Therefore, I firmly believe that your thoughts are more creative than you may realize. If you are always thinking along the lines of entitlement and ingratitude, you will communicate those thoughts on many different levels. You can try to cover up your rude and selfish nature, but it will be perceived by people all the same.

By thinking such thoughts, you repel good things from being offered to you. People who possess good things to give will avoid your ungrateful odor like the plague that it is. People who are unable to avoid you (family, etc.) will withhold their best gifts because they do not want to waste their effort and they do not want to encourage your piggish behavior.

I know this to be true. I can see the principle of ingratitude at work in my own life. I have also seen how my moments of gratitude have benefited me. I have seen truly grateful people get more than they asked for. I am sure that the principle of gratitude works even better than ingratitude.

Therefore, I am declaring myself a scientist, researching the principle of gratitude. I am the subject of my research. My life before now is the control, my life going forward is the experiement. I will begin to think thoughts of thanks. I will strive to find new things to be thankful for. I will strive to find more ways to express my gratitude.

This experiement will continue through December 20, 2008. After that day, if I do not notice a remarkable leap of happiness and prosperity, I will conclude that excessive gratitude is a waste of effort and a farce; I will return to my normal level of cynicism, depression, and frustration.

My hypothesis, however, is that I will be a completely different man on December 21, 2008. I will be happier. I will have more good things in my life. Even if I suffer tragedy and loss, through gratitude I will attract good things to compensate. Really, how can I go wrong with gratitude in all things?

Attraction, Gratitude, and CSR

2007-12-22T06:38:00.000-06:00

Yesterday I mentioned how I am discovering the power of my thoughts on a whole new level by using the principles of "The Law of Attraction" and the "Science of Gratitude". This is a growing movement right now. Because of the popularity and marketing of the books The Secret by Rhonda Byrnes and Thank You Power by Deborah Norville, thousands of people at once are discovering these powerful forces.

What I have not heard mentioned yet is how these exact same principles can transform a company on so many levels. Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) has proven to be an effective business strategy in many arenas. Lately, it is usually only spoken of in terms of environmentalism. Politics is the force driving CSR, so whatever force is driving politics will logically filter down to CSR. Global Warming is the hot topic now, so it hogs the spotlight.

While our environment is very important and should take a prominent place in our discussions, I think that we should realize that other issues deserve our attention as well. We should also realize that CSR has other facets that can benefit a corporation as well as its stakeholders. Just to name a few, there are issues of diversity of the workforce, giving back to the community in a tangible way, enforcing CSR standards on your vendors, and improving the customer experience.

I apply the law of attraction to my life by thinking positive thoughts about what I desire. I do so with a firm belief that I will attract those things into my life. The result is that the soundtrack to my thought life contains less negativity and focused, positive concentration on my goals and desires.

Once I accepted the validity of this concept and recognized the benefits of it, I realized that a corporation can make this work for them even more powerfully than an individual could. The funny thing is, they are often unaware of how they are using some of the principles of the law of attraction right now. If they deliberately set out to think as a group about a goal and attain it, I am sure that company would conquer their market and exceed expectations.

The people who are teaching The Secret call it the "Law of Attraction" but I don't think it is a law that always works. I believe that at all times there are other forces at work: gravity, thermodynamics, etc. In addition, you have other people manifesting their thoughts. In The Secret, they teach that if you are in a car accident it is because you attracted that to you with your thoughts, even if it was inadvertent. I think that there are times when you are simply in the wrong place at the wrong time while someone else is manifesting their thoughts in some way.

Not only can we be affected by other people's thoughts, but we can combine our thoughts together. I think that if several people concentrate at once, that their thoughts together can affect their world. That is why sporting events can be more exciting when you have friends beside you or you go to a stadium. I think that is why movies are always better in a theatre. And I think that is a major force in the success and failure of corporations.

When you see a corporation full of excited people who all have the same purpose in mind, like Google and Wal-Mart, you find that they are unstoppable and limitless in their power to conquer markets. When you have corporations like Ford where you have several groups competing against each other and various visions, you see struggle despite having all the ingredients for a successful corporation.

Wal-Mart has underpaid employees, from executives to associates. They have a tiny headquaters far from civilization. Even so, they grow, profit and innovate like no other corporation. They penetrate "unpenetrable" markets, they exceed revenue forecasts, and they keep finding new sources of revenue.

Ford has an illustrious history, international brand recognition, some of the brightest professionals from many different fields who are highly compensated, and a network of invested interests to support their every need. Even so, they have been surpassed in several markets, have had to close dealerships, and there is little hope for the near future.

Wal-Mart has a vision and purpose. They have a corporate cheer. They strive to keep all levels of employees in close contact with each other. There are voices of dissent in Wal-Mart, but they are few. The vast majority of Wal-Mart is solidly in step with the vision of low prices, everyday.

Ford is divided in so many ways, it would take all day to point them out. To name a few: They own various businesses that do not synergize. They have unions with one vision and executives with another. They have the Ford family vs. the other shareholders. Their international business is at war with their American masters. The franchise owners disagree with the corporation on the business model. The customers of Ford even seem to disagree with each other on whether Ford is a low-price product or a quality product.

The point I am making is what Abraham Lincoln was trying to say: a house divided against itself will fall. If a company can find a way to focus everyone's thoughts on one goal, they will achieve exactly what they set their mind on. The only challenge at that point is having a dream as big as the resources available to you. Remember September 12, 2001? It was a rare moment when all Americans were thinking and feeling the same thing and having the same desire; no one ever wants September 11th to happen again, but I think we all agree that our nation would be better off if we could agree like we did on September 12th.

From the "Science of Gratitude", we learn that being grateful at all times is a powerful force. Even if we are facing adversity, if we count our blessings we realize that we are at the starting point of a great future. This applies to companies as well.

Truly grateful companies that fail are rare. I can't think of one off the top of my head. I can think of thousands of companies who have found success while showing gratitude. I would argue that it is easy to prove that their gratitude is a major factor of their success.

Have you ever worked for a boss who seemed to be truly grateful for your work? I have had bosses who recognized my extra efforts; I was more likely to make an extra effort if I knew it would be recognized. I am not talking about cash, I am talking about a nod or a word of thanks. Cash is always welcome, and it is appropriate if my extra efforts resulted in additional revenue or cost-reduction. However, if all I did was add an extra column to a report or I reorganized the supply cabinet, all I need is thanks and I will find some other way to go above and beyond.

One boss looking for opportunities to thank his or her employees could transform a department. If you take it up to the corporate level, you can create a culture of gratitude. There are all sorts of examples where companies train their management, implement recognition programs, and provide employee appreciation days or Christmas bonuses to show their gratitude. A company's benefits program is often a strong indicator of their gratitude to their employees.

A corporation has other interests to be grateful for. First of all, there are the stockholders who risk their money on the company. To show them gratitude is easy: pay a dividend, grow the business, and stay out of trouble. Corporate officers who pay themselves rediculous bonuses and spend millions on perks are ungrateful. Companies like Wal-Mart who keep their executives in a thrifty mindset are expressing gratitude to the people who have risked their savings on company.

A corporation needs to appreciate their customers as well. The Bell Telephone companies did not do this while they held a mopnopoly on the market. In 1996, that market was opened to competition, and customers fled in droves. The same happened in cable TV markets when satellite TV became affordable.

On the other hand, market research has shown that people will knowingly pay higher prices out of loyalty or preference. For instance, I will always get my oil changed at Keystone Chrysler in Mission, KS. I started going their because they were a customer of mine. Because my company did not appreciate them enough, they are leaving us. However, I will not leave them because they have shown their appreciation to me every time I go in there. I don't know if they are the best bargain in own, but they treat me the best and that is worth it.

Look in your wallet and identify all the cards you use earn points at your favorite businesses. Not credit cards, I am talking about the rewards cards. I have cards for Borders, True Value, Price Chopper, and Holiday Inn, among others. When I travel, airlines and hotels show me appreciation by awarding points to me. They know that my company is paying the bill, but they also know that I likely influenced the decision and they appreciate that.

For me, the "Law of Attraction" and the "Science of Gratitude" define the fundamental principles of CSR and make its implementation easy. If a company wants to improve its situation, it has to get everyone focused on the same goal. One way to begin to focus people is to provide them with a goal they can all agree on: clean water, feeding hungry kids, or maybe improving education. A focused CSR intiative could be the first step in focusing the various stakeholders on unifying a corporate mission.

For instance, at Ford they could all choose the goal of wiping out malaria on the continent of Africa. I predict that it would not be hard to get the employees to agree to give up a little time and money to help out on that mission, no matter what color their collar is. Moreover, surely every Ford customer wouldn't mind financing an extra $20 on the purchase of their car to be donated to the cause? The communities around Ford plants would probably forgive many offences if they knew that Ford was making a difference in fighting Malaria.

Can you see the worldwide marketing campaign now: "At Ford, we not only build safe and efficient cars, we reduced deaths from malaria last year by 25%". After the one unifying mission is in full swing and everyone feels good about it, a discussion about Ford family interests or collective bargaining would have a channel and a meeting point. Everything else would just be details. There would be evidence in everyone's mind that they can all work together efective on malaria, so why not on other things as well?

If there was more gratitude at Ford, they would be a very different company. Even Wal-Mart could learn a lesson here. To be honest, if Wal-Mart showed more gratitude to their entry-level associates they would probably move from company to cult. Seriously, if an unskilled and unambitious person knew that they could go to Wal-Mart, work hard at the entry level for twenty years, and be rewarded with a livable wage and basic benefits, they would devoted to the end. They would jump on a grenade for a company like that.

This is the major failing of the Conservative Political mindset. We believe that the marketplace efficiently establishes rates of pay based on supply and demand. However, like the "law of attraction" there are other factors that can influence supply and demand. Many of my fellow Conservatives speak disparagingly of low-skilled and unambitious employees. They seem to believe that these people are by-and-large lazy and unethical. I cringe when I hear a person of my political philosophy saying that poor people need a kick in the pants, or that all they have to do is [enter activity here] and they would get ahead.

In real life, it is more complicated than it is in the mind of many Conservatives. I do not propose that we should pay janitors the same as engineers or CEO's. However, if the guy is happy as a janitor and doesn't want to be a manager or take college classes, why can't we just be grateful to have a good janitor and reward his hard work and attention to detail with a livable wage and decent benefits. If the janitor is good, he should be able to afford a decent car and a decent place to live, provide his family with a comfortable life and reliable health care, and set aside some money for retirement.

Are you so far unconvinced that we should pay a janitor more than the market requires right now? Okay, close your eyes and imagine your company without a janitor. Can you see the trash? Can you smell the bathroooms? Can you feel the insects and rodents crawling up your leg? Now do you appreciate your janitor? If so, pay him like you mean it. Only an idiot could make an arguement that janitors who do their job well shouldn't be paid better.

The alternative is what we have now: dirty bathrooms, unmotivated janitors, and janitor's kids growing up without every seeing a dentist or a regular doctor. You have things being stolen by the night cleaning crew to help them compensate for their status and treatment. You have high turnover because they can always make ten cents more per hour down the street.

Public school janitors are an example of how this can work well. Have you ever heard of a school janitor strike? I haven't; certainly it is rarer than a teacher's strike. The janitors who I knew growing up would help us with anything we asked. They were always seen doing something productive, rather than spending the whole day on a smoke break. They knew they had it good, and that their retirment would be taken care of. They enjoyed their work. Therefore, they did their job and a few extras along the way.

You will notice that I use the words "livable wage" rather than "living wage". This is where I define myself as a conservative. I think that if the government legislates minimum wages, they end up making the situation worse rather than better. When the minimum wage goes up, the law of supply and demand becomes the primary factor here: there are now less job opportunities available in the economy.

You see, there is a certain amount of money available for wages at any given time. Let's say that in Kansas City for 2008, there is $1 billion available for wages. In the current conditions, lets say there 1.5 million jobs, of which 500,000 are at the minimum wage. Now, add a city law requiring an additional "living wage" increase of $2.00 per hour on top of the federal minimum wage. What happens?

If Kansas City increases the minimum amount that you can pay an employee without also increasing the amount available to pay wages somehow (through a tax cut or other established means), then you have essentially ensured that job opportunities in Kansas City will decrease.

If you increase the amount a business has to pay in wages without increasing their revenue by that exact amount simultaneously, then the money will have to come from somewhere. Many leftists would say that the business owner should willingly give up some of their profits to their employee. I agree, but that cannot be legislated. If the business owner does not decide on their own to give up those profits and does not accept a reason to do so, then they will simply decrease the number of employees that they have on staff. Alternatively, they will take their business to another city or country. See China for a dramatic example of that. You will have some employees laid off and now receiving no wages rather than minimum wages (increasing the burden on public assistance). The employees who are left will have to work harder for the same pay.

What many leftists do not understand is that business owners who are most affected by minimum wage increases and living wage laws are not enjoying huge profit windfalls. There are many businesses who are just barely getting by or are working hard to grow into their market. The owners do not have equity or cash, they just have debt, bills, and an idea. By increasing their overhead without increasing their revenue, you have limited that business owner's effectiveness. Maybe they were competing against a Chinese company and gaining ground; now that you have increased the minimum wage they are unable to compete with the Chinese company. Surely you'd agree that is not best for the minimum wage employee, the city, or the country. Only the Chinese would root for that scenario.

When we express gratitude, we are rewarded. The quality of our own thoughts and emotions are improved. Our cummunications with, and relations to, other people are improved. We begin to receive back the karma we send out. People begin to send us more favor because they know we will appreciate it and think we deserve it.

When a company appreciates people, they gain power. They can negotiate with unions easier because they are already known as an appreciative employer. They can earn favor from their customers and communities. They earn loyalty and extra effort from their employees.

If corporations are grateful for what they receive, they receive more. In that case, unions become unnecessary...if other factors are taken care of as well. Minimum wage increases become unnecessary. In fact, in a perfect world of appreciative corporations we wouldn't need to worry as much about Social Security reform, insolvency and bankruptcies, health care and medicare, and elderly people living on dog food. Marketing costs would be lower because people would mention your good works and good products together in excited tones for free. Political backlash in foreign countries would be minimized because who wants to bite the hand that irrigates, educates, and feeds them? If oil companies in Venezuala had been more appreciative of their hosts, we never would have heard of Hugo Chavez.

Think about companies like Jet Blue. They have a vision for their employees: let them spend more time at home with their family. The employees are committed to this vision; they appreciate the policy and the policy makes them feel like they are appreciated by their employer. Therefore, their minds are now open for Jet Blu to add a vision. The employees of Jet Blue are more likely to hear the vision, accept it, focus on it, and work on it together because they are already in a position of gratitude. Now, Jet Blue can say, "Always try to upsell a flight to Salt Lake City with every call" or "Reduce call time by 1 minute without reducing revenue or customer satisfaction" and the employees will be more likely to accept the vision, focus on it, and achieve it.

I would like to point out that when a company expresses gratitude, it must be sincere. It will take thought, discussion, and soul-searching to reach a point of effective sincerity, and that path leads through profitable analysis and brainstorming. Only sincere gratitude will allow a company to maximize its effectiveness during implementation. Insincere gratitude will just be a cardboard cut-out of what they could be benefitting from.

To top it all off, people can smell the difference. If Pepsi implements a truly sincere gratitude program and Coke copies it without sincerity, the end result will be tremendous dividends for Pepsi and miniscule or negative dividends for Coke.

I have said before that CSR needs to be sincere. It is great if a company donates money to a homeless shelter, whether they are sincere in their effort or just doing it for publicity. However, an insincere comapny will end its efforts as soon as they feel they have milked that cow dry. A sincere company will continue its efforts even when the cameras shut off. That sincerity will generate a special kind of loyalty among its stakeholders. Employees, communities, NGO's, customers, vendors, suppliers, and even shareholders will recognize and reward sincere efforts at gratitude and responsibility.

People are less likely to sell off a stock at any price if they really like the company, while they will sell at the drop of a hat if they do not have any feeling for the company. The difference has saved some companies from the total wrath of bear markets; compare Cisco and Google to some of their fallen comrades over the last 10 years.

How does a company implement sincerity? That is a topic that has failed to show up in any business book I have read. However, in considering how to get the "Law of Attraction" and the Science of Gratitude" to word in a corporation, I realize that it all starts with gratitude.

If the leaders of a business sit down and discover the things that they are truly thankful for, they will have a great starting point for implementing CSR. No matter where a company is financially and strategically, they have something to be thankful for. Once they start listing those things and then reaching out to express gratitude, they will see the ship start to turn. Each time they do this, they will find that their gratitude attracts more things to be thankful for. By thanking a vendor for meeting a deadline, they will find that they not only get better service but they also get price breaks or extra service. By appreciating the employees they have, they will find that the quality of employee that they attract increases. As they reach out to their communities, they will find that they get attacked less and defended more. Appreciating customers attracts customers, and their marketshare doubles.

At some point of considering the things to be grateful for, you begin to appreciate democracy, capitalism, clean water, lack of war, an educated workforce, quality of American healthcare, and so many other basics that we usually take for granted. A company who sincerly appreciates what they have will naturally want to provide some essentials of civilized life to a people who do not have it available to them. That is when their attempts at CSR will turn the world upside down.

The difference between sincere and insincere attempts at CSR are obvious. Sincerity adds a level of passion, detail, and effectiveness that is unknown by insincere companies. Why should a company seek to sincerely implement an effective CSR initiative?

1. Because it increases your leverage amongst your stakeholders: employees, communitiues, giovernments, vendors, customers, shareholders.

2. It multiplies your marketing efforts.

3. Because you find that you are truly thankful for what you have and you want to express your gratitude--hoping that your karma comes back you.

Be Thankful and Attract your Thoughts

2007-12-21T09:13:00.000-06:00

Two books have seized my imagination and thought-life lately. One is "The Secret" by Rhonda Byrne and the other is "Thank You Power" by Deborah Norville. I do not know why either book caught my eye while I browsed but they did, on separate occasions. I did not buy either book when I first saw them. I went home, and found that I couldn't get them out of my mind. Something was telling me to buy these books. The funny thing is, I discovered them and purchased them separately, and had no idea that they went together so well.

Now let me add a disclaimer to this website. I am an engineer. I am a devoted proponent of science and a major skeptic. I do not believe in ghosts, Aliens, UFO's, Faith Healers, or any other subject that is commonly considered nonsense in our western, American culture. However, there are times when I cannot explain a process but believe in it anyhow. These two books (especially "The Secret") may come off as new-age, mythological, psychobabble. However, if you just seize on the fundamental principle that focusing your thoughts has a powerful impact on results you will see the logical basis. Sometimes science is unable to explain how this works, but the anecdotal evidence is overwhelming that a person's thoughts can often influence the outcome of a situation. It is an accepted scientific fact that prayer has a beneficial affect on medical results, even though God and Spirit of not accepted facts.

In a nutshell, here is why I believe that the law of Attraction and the Science of Gratitude are important: they change the way you think for the better if you embrace them. If you believe in the Law of Attraction and use the power of your mind to try to attract the person, money, job, or something that you desire, you may end up not receiving what you conceived. However, you never know until you try. We all know that we can sabotage ourselves with negative thinking. We have no idea what we can achieve by thinking positively and communicating that to others. We also have no idea how often we communicate subconsciously. Therefore, if nothing else, "The Secret" teaches us to efficiently focus our thoughts to achieve our goals and desires. It also teaches us to push out the negative thoughts that hog time in our brain focusing on what we don't want.

For me, that is the benefit. I have ADD; I am naturally unfocused and scattered. I also have a history of mild bi-polar depression. To top it all off, over the years I have developed cynicism and skepticism at levels above the recommended dosage. Therefore, if we could analyze my daily thoughts on a spreadsheet, you would see high percentages where I was focused on slow traffic, problems at work, and thinking about things that I do not want and how to avoid them. The percentage of time that I am thinking positively about my future would be about 1/4 the time that I spend thinking about what could go wrong and how to hedge my bets.

I wasn't aware of how negative my thinking truly is until I read "The Secret" and began to apply some of its principles. There is the other aspect to the book: that there is a natural force at work in the universe that responds to our thoughts and attracts to us the things we think about. That is where the book may veer off to the weird for some people. However, we can believe that the force is God, we can believe it is presently unexplainable (agnosticism), or we can believe that it is a heretofore undefined law of physics that helps explain gravity and quark movement. Ms. Byrne made the mistake of focusing on the Law of Attraction as if there aren't other forces at work. Therefore, this book is not a scientific text or a theological manifesto. It is great reading though, and provides a great method of visualizing the principle and applying it in various situations.

Both of these books mean the same thing to me: by changing my thoughts I will change my life. This is not new information for me. I have been through this many times on different levels. However, this time is more advanced learning. I am working on the finer details of thinking my way to happiness and prosperity.

You had mathematics in grade school. You had it again in High School, but it was more advanced: there was more information and a deeper understanding. Again, in college you were required to take some more math, and you ventured a little deeper into the subject. Then, your electives may have incorporated a finer understanding of some mathematical principles. With math, there is always a deeper level and a new application.

The same is true with your thoughts and thanks. I don't know if there is a limit to how deep you can go. I take that back, there is one limit I know of: yourself. If you decide that you have gone far enough, then that is all you're gonna get. However, if you remain open, there may never be a limit to how much you can achieve and receive from thankful thoughts and focusing on what you want.

"The Secret" has reminded me to "accentuate the positive and eliminate the negative." Deborah Norville's book on how science is proving the benefits of gratitude is the perfect compliment. I am finding the principles of both books jumbling in my mind. Seeking to think gratefully and communicate gratefully is profound. Sure, you've been doing it all your life. Or have you? That is an important aspect of your life to examine on a regular basis.

I think we all tend to reach moments of egotistical, ungrateful stagnation. Some people do not last long there, others build a homestead and refuse to budge. I know that as I examined my own life, I was shocked at how many opportunities I had missed to be grateful for and how rectifying that immediately and dramatically improved the quality of my life.

When I find my blood pressure rising and my fist clenching, I am now finding that switching my thoughts from frustration to gratitude for something feels good! I try to take a daily inventory now of what I have to be grateful for. I am trying to expand the list daily so that it isn't the same old stuff. From there, I try to focus on a few things that I want and communicate to the universe that I want them, I expect to receive them, and I am already thankful for receiving them. Now, all I have to do is get on with my life and look for opportunities to achieve my goals and express gratitude.

I sum up these two books by saying that the end result is: I feel good!

Explanation of Hiatus

2007-12-20T05:39:00.001-06:00

There were many reasons for me to take a hiatus from blogging. When I boiled it all down, I was left with one main reason: I didn't want to suck.

Now, I never set out to achieve blogging greatness. This blog was created for personal expression, for writing development, for ego validation, and to add my 2 cents to the internet. I never intended to spend the time and effort to make this blog world-famous; my family and career are more important and carry more potential for my self-actualization goals.

However, I always intended to be read. I wanted people to read my blog and usually come away with new thoughts or knowledge. I did not want to bore people. It is hard not to blog your opinions without a little self-indulgence and borderline arrogance, but I never wanted to come off as a know-it-all. Worse still, I never wanted to be that guy who is so impressed with his own brilliance that he can no longer critically read himself or receive honest feedback from others.

Also, I realize that I write too many words--especially for a blog entry. A reader wants only a few paragraphs from a blog so that they can get on with their life, but that is a real challenge for me.Even in school: when an instructor says 5-7 pages and everyone else is wondering how they can write that many pages, I have trouble cutting ten pages down to seven.

I had many brilliant things to say about life, CSR, politics, etc. Or, so I thought. The more I thought about it, the more I realized that I had a lot more learning and thinking to do before I would become as smart as I think I am. I needed to refine my thoughts in order to achieve brevity and insightfulness simultaneously. I found that I could only prevent bad-blogging through abstinence.

So I spent a few weeks thinking, evaluating, and trying to achieve a reasonable humility. Humility for me is arrogance for others; it is a relative term and I set my own standard for humility at a more-inflated level than others might. Therefore, if you think to yourself that my attempt at humility has a long way to go, realize I have come pretty far down and I am trying to stay grounded.

I feel bad about not blogging regularly. I hate having gaps in my blog archive. I don't know why I feel that way, though. A gap means that I had nothing pressing to say and chose to remain silent. That is rare in this culture. Every channel on the TV is jammed pack with nothing to say; the best shows are rarely broadcast to maximize their advertising revenue while the drivel fills in the gaps that should just be static.

To sum up, this is Phase II of my blogging. I am now seeking brevity and insightfulness. If my blog entry cannot edify the reader quickly, then it needs to be refined rather than posted. I write to develop my thoughts and skill; however, there is no sense in writing if it is not readable by others. I write for myself, and I write for you to read. This blog is my gift to you, whomever you are. Thank you for taking the time to read me.

A Financial Blog

2007-12-01T10:25:00.000-06:00

I found an interesting blog today that I will be keeping an eye on in the future. It is written by a financial planner/investment adviser who appears to have a conservative and down-to-earth outlook—we need more of these kinds of people in the financial arena. I am not recommending his advice at this point, I am just recommending his writing. He is an interesting writer who makes the reader think, stays to the point, and holds the reader’s interest. If nothing else, perhaps I could learn these writing secrets as I read his work.

Russell Bailyn says that “Buy, Hold and Forget” is the way to go in this volatile stock market of 4th quarter 2007 — good advice to avoid getting burned in market-timing as the market swings for little or no reason each day. More importantly, he makes a great point that gets overlooked by nay-saying negative-nancies: A weakened dollar is good for you if you are selling dollar-denominated products. For instance: if you are US Manufacturing, you are getting a boost now from a weaker dollar. If you are selling real-estate, you have more buyers from foreign markets (which is called FDI and is necessary for economic growth.) An increase in buyers helps to keep prices from dropping to unreasonable levels by rising the demand to meet supply.

I have more to say about supply, demand, naysayer’s, economic prognostication, and the like. Since my local college football team (KU), NFL Team (Chiefs), and fantasy football team are all letting me down, I am able to commit more brain cells to economics. Perhaps that is a good thing, but I sure like having bragging rights in football conversations.

I first found Russell’s article here: http://seekingalpha.com/article/55744-buy-and-hold-as-true-now-as-ever?source=yahoo

However, Russell’s blog is located here: http://www.russellbailyn.com/weblog/

Newton's Laws of Motion

2007-11-27T09:04:00.000-06:00

There are times when I have to write, like breathing. Have you ever taken a deep breath and tried to hold it in? You can't do it forever; eventually your body forces you to exhale. I often feel like that as I write. I have no choice; I have thoughts that need to be exhaled.

Even if I am not writing anything paticularly profound and know I will be throwing it away or deleting it, I write it down anyway. Even if I know I should be doing something else, I write when I feel I have to. Sometimes I neglect work or skip meals in order to write. Sometimes I get out of a warm, comfy bed late at night because I have to write something down before I burst.

Several months ago, I felt that way on a daily basis; today, not so much. The feeling comes and goes in unpredictable cycles. Right now, I am just trying to keep my blog updated. By posting something, I prove that this page is not abandoned. I have a lot going on, so it is probably a blessing that I do not feel the urge to write.

Therefore, while I am holding my breath a little longer, I will post someone else's thoughts. Isaac Newton, inventor of The Calculus and the first to define the Law of Gravity, also did the world a huge favor by defining the Laws of Motion. You have seen this, I am sure, many times in your life. I post this because I found it written on a 3x5 card in my stack of notes from years ago.

I love the simplicity of these laws. As I struggle with corporate politics and oppression, the complexities of love and life, and the short-circuited frsutrations of a career in electronics, it is nice to see that there is something in this world that can be proven; that there is something that sticks to the laws defining it without exception:

Newton's Laws of Motion:

1. An object at rest will remain at rest unless actred upon by a net force.

2. The acceleration of an object is directly proportional to the net force acting upon it, and inversely proportional to the mass of the object.

3. For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.

The Christmas Rant: What Happened to Honesty?

2007-11-21T06:42:00.000-06:00

Sorry, I will get to the Carnegie/CSR posts soon. First, I need to cleanse myself with a little rant.

Bah! Humbug!

Christmas music? Christmas decorations? Children's toy commercials during boring documentaries? Come on, you filthy marketing whores! It isn't even Thanksgiving!

I am not really big on faith. If I had a gun to my head and had to choose a religion, I would choose Christianity. I like the principles, the ethics, the philosophy, the stories, and the traditions. I just don't see a lot of evidence for answered prayer, healings, and other miracles. I have seen too much as an insider of the horrible things that go on in some churches. Even so, I am not anti-Christian and wish I could have more faith.

Therefore, my disgust of American Christmas is not due to a black stain on my soul. In fact, quite the opposite. I believe that as I continue to cleanse my soul without relying on human institutions and rules, I have a healthier and more objective soul. I try to avoid righteous indignation, but it is hard where Christmas is concerned; I believe that if Jesus were here today we would lose his temper on all things "Christmas" like he did on the money-changers in the temple.

Some people think my Christmas-disgust is rooted in my childhood. No, I have fantastic memories of Christmas from my childhood. The odors of pine and nutmeg immediately bring up warm feelings of childish anticipation. My parents made a tremendous effort to make Christmas a great experience. We have photos to match my memories; Christmas was a time to lighten up and enjoy the moment in my house. I would love to relive any Christmas from my childhood.

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The problem for me lies in honesty. First of all, why are we telling kids all the myths about Santa Claus? If I walked up to a young Santa believer and told them that Santa wasn't real and that his parents had been eating the cookies all these years, I would be banished from society. I would be scorned like a child molester. Even my own children: it has not been an issue yet but I am sure that if I ever tell my kids that Santa is not real, I will have two Grandmas on my case with a long line of "don't-ruin-it-for-others" enforcers behind them.

We also like to say that Christmas is Jesus' birthday. That is highly unlikely. Let's assume that the bible is accurate, word-for-word. Can someone quote the Book, Chapter, and Verse that points to December 25th as the day Jesus was born? December 25th was chosen by the Roman Empire based on its proximity to the winter solstice and the festivities that converted-pagans had always held at that time. The powers-that-be realized that it would be easier to convert people by assimilating some of their favorite religious practices into the state religion.

We lie about "The spirit of the season." We imply that Christmas is about giving and sharing, about generosity and good-will towards man. On the contrary, Christmas in America in the 21st century is about shopping and meeting expectations. You give in order to receive, or to avoid being on the list of people who didn't give. You chuckle at the Santa and return his "Merry Christmas!", then cuss out the guy who took your shopping-mall parking-place.

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At the end of August this year, I was in a Target store looking for something for my yard. I went to the seasonal section where they had been keeping the lawn and garden stuff. I knew it was late in the season, and was hoping to find some stuff marked down. No, it was gone. The seasonal section was now orange and black, full of Halloween costumes and decorations.

I was thinking to myself that August seemed a bit early for Halloween sales. I ventured deeper into the seasonal section, hoping my bargains were hiding back in the corner. Instead, I found the last aisle to be red-and-green themed. Christmas decorations. In August. Good Grief.

I think it was the first week of November when I stumbled on "How the Grinch Stole Christmas" on TV. I like that show. My son loves it; he made me read the book 500 times last year. It is a great story, and Boris Karloff delivered one of the best performances of anyone, anywhere, ever. Even so, we haven't had Thanksgiving Turkey yet. There is a lot more football to be played. Can we hold off on the Christmas Specials until the Catholics start lighting candles, please?

I like the principle in "The Grinch" of someone who, like me, hates Christmas but finds the spirit overwhelming. I wish that one day I could find myself losing my cynicism, join hands with all the who's in whoville, and carve the roast-beast with a sincere smile. I cannot do that, however, until we start being honest.

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Why do we need to decorate a tree? Sure, it looks nice. But why? Why do we need to risk our life on a ladder, staple our gloves to the awning, increase our carbon-footprint and electric bill, and light up the night? Why do we need to send a Christmas Card to a boss we don't like, or an Uncle who still calls you by an insulting nickname? Why do we have to buy knickknacks and useless crap that we can't afford and the receiver doesn't want or need? Why do we, as a nation, pin our economic health to one Friday in November? Why do you go shopping on that Friday; do you like crowded stores, rude salespeople, and dangerous parking lots?

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When I was a child, Christmas was special. It was short; my little mind found it too short, but that adds to its special feeling. Christmas did not come around till December, and it built up gradually. I wasn't expected to give as a child, but if I did it was a very meaningful experience. I didn't expect to get quantity, I just wanted one or two things and this was the time of year where I could dream bigger than usual. The rest of the year was about school, chores, and needs. This was a time for dreams, for pleasure, for family gatherings. Food during the year was about balance and nutrition; Christmas food was about presentation, flavor, and enjoyment. I didn't have to eat the vegetable, and there was always more cookies.

I want my children to enjoy Christmas, but society has changed. The foods are available all year round now. The emphasis in on marketing hype, not on tradition and spirit. You are not allowed to say Jesus in public places, and most people say, "Happy Holidays" to avoid another frivolous ACLU lawsuit. Santa is in every mall, all the time, from October through January. The commercials are brutal; my son already has a want list a mile long, and he only watches an hour or so of TV a day at the most. The average child in America watches at least4 hours of TV per day; what effect does that marketing have on them?

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We are now raising a generation where Christmas is not special; it is an event in slick marketing, over-hype, a season that drags on for months, and is all about what you did or did not give/receive. There is no room for, "It's the thought that counts". There is no thought given to financial limits because that is what your credit cards are for; Congress does it, the President does it, so why shouldn't you spend more than you earn? It's your duty as an American, even more so as a Christian. If I boycott Christmas this year, will that be a win for the terrorists?

I predict that on November 24th through 26th, the news will crammed full of stories about how Macy's, Wal-Mart, and Toy-R-Us are concerned because of lower than expected sales on Friday the 23rd. The implication is that if you don't get out there and waste your money on low-quality crap from China, your nation's economy will suffer.

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"What's my solution," you ask with a scoff? Keep it small. Think. Christmas becomes a lot of work if you allow it; sit back and enjoy it more. Just hang a wreath on your front door--maybe a tree and a few kid-created decorations in the living room. Get together with family, but set limits on gift-giving. In a perfect world, we would setup college-funds (and fund their health-insurance if necessary) for all the kids and put more money into them in December than we did into FisherPrice and BestBuy.

Go to work for a few hours in a soup kitchen, or visit a state-run nursing home, with the kids in-tow. Give them more opportunities to analyze the holiday, to feel good about giving, and to see that there are differences between needs and wants. After the volunteering, buy them one big present (with cash, not credit) and put the biggest smile you can on their face.

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Why is it that we are supposed to have faith in Santa and not in Jesus? Seriously, every movie for Christmas is about some guy (usually white and wealthy) who's life is made right the second he starts believing in Santa. However, when Christians claim the same thing happened to them when they first believed in Jesus, they are met with scorn, ridicule, condescension, and the threat of lawsuit or censure.

I don't really believe in either Santa or Jesus, but if I had a choice which side would I be on? Santa is all about being fat, unshaven, dressed like a clown, riding in an impossible sleigh, whipping exploited reindeer who have no talent for flying, and defying all laws of space, time, and physics to deliver presents to everyone on his "good list".

Allow me to take this side-track for a second: When is Santa going to post the rules for being on the "Good" list. My friend was allowed to stay up till midnight, but I had to be in bed by 9:00 PM or Santa was going to hear about it. Were we both on the same list despite our difference in bedtime standards? And even worse, if Santa has to track the moral performance of billions of kids, how do we know he is not making any errors? Does he publish the bad list somewhere to list your infractions? Is there an appeal process? Jesus gave us the bible to follow, and he claims to be omniscient and omnipotent, but Santa is only human. Who is keeping him honest? And, for my liberal readers, has anyone looked into the Elf-labor conditions? Do they have a pension, insurance, and profit sharing? Do they even have a choice of employment? Who is their representative?

My hang-up with Jesus is his inactivity. I simply do not see any evidence that he or any other spiritual force is at work in our world. However, assuming that Jesus is more of a classical Arminianist than most people think, isn't his character more desirable in our society? He sacrificed himself for people who neither asked for it, nor did many of them want him to. He helped the underdogs of his society. He defied authority when that authority was clearly wrong. He touched people who were often shunned. He fed hungry people, helped blind people to see (metaphorically and literally), and demonstrated a humble, peaceful approach to life. The worst that people can say about Jesus is that he might have been married with at least one child. Hardly likely based on the evidence presented, and hardly scandalous either. We need more leaders like Jesus who walk their talk even if they try to keep their family out of the limelight.

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Christmas past = short, special, sacred, unique, traditional, spiritual.

Christmas now = starts earlier every year, over-hyped, slick marketing, crowds, greed, competition, unrecognizable as a unique, spiritual holiday.

Santa = strange, magical, unbelievable, vague, totally unscientific and unspiritual.

Jesus = love, compassion, rebel for rightful causes, defender of the misfortunate, unscientific for spiritual reasons, a person to emulate.

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It seems to me we are heading in the wrong direction. Even worse, it seems that there is no way to return to "the good, old days". I fear we have allowed Christmas to be ruined, and that we are losing a great thing.

I wonder if that same thing was said when the winter holidays were changed from pagan to Roman Catholic. Perhaps our new gods will make the holidays something to fondly remember for future generations. Even if your heart is three sizes too small, like mine and the Grinch's, there is always hope that good will triumph over evil. In the meantime, I am going to find a way to make the best of this situation. Also, I am going to resist analyzing why Santa and Satan are spelled so similarly.

How to Win Customers and Influence Markets

2007-11-18T06:27:00.000-06:00

There is a fantastic book that I re-read almost annually: "How to Win Friends and Influence People" by Dale Carnegie. The principles in this book will allow you to enjoy your life regardless of your circumstances and it will allow people around you to enjoy you more.

The trick is this: be sincere as you focus on other people's interests and ego. If you are selfless in identifying and referencing other people's interests and you stroke rather than threaten another's ego, you then have an opportunity to selfishly pursue your own interests with that person. Of course, you cannot be malicious or greedy with a person while remaining sincerely interested and humble, so Carnegie is not teaching techniques for bad people to gain influence.

I find that he is re-teaching me to be good. I learned most of this stuff in church and from my parents when I was little. Maybe not the specific techniques, but the underlying principle of humility, suppression of self-interest, politeness, and sincere interest in other people's interests. I rejected it in my teen years and continued to ignore the lessons as an adult because I was surrounded by selfish, greedy, cynical people who would throw their own mother under any moving bus to achieve a perceived benefit or promotion.

What Carnegie adds to the lesson of manners and morality is the selfish benefit to me. I had no idea that being polite and humble could benefit me directly. I thought I was just doing it to please my parents, the "authorities", and a God who seemed not to like me. I thought that if I did not counter the meaness of life with more meanness, I would get taken advantage of. If I had known that there were tremendous benefits to being a nice guy, I would have stuck with it a long time ago. As it is, being cantankerous and cynical while feeding off of negative energy was simply leading me down a lonely road of alcoholism, depression, and future ulcers, cancers, heart-attacks, and black-eyes.

We do everything for selfish reasons. We give to charity because we feel warm and fuzzy, because we hope to benefit from that charity in the future (Hospice, Cancer Society, Red Cross, Blood Bank), or because it puts our name on a placard, list, brick, or building. We sacrifice for our kids so that they do not end up in jail, living with us, embarrassing us, or to make sure they beat the neighbor's kids at whatever they do. We give our spouse backrubs and cook their dinner in hopes that they will soon do something nice for us (or do something nice to us.)

To sum up, Carnegie has taught me that it is okay to let the other person think that they have the upper hand or think that they are more important than me; in the end, I will get what I really want from the relationship. Being nice, humble, and sincerely interested in the other person pays off in selfish ways, and does so more effectively than deception or force. There are more benefits and less consequences to convincing people to willingly give you their favor, money, support, or permission than in forcing it from them or tricking them out of it.

However, I am not writing a book report here. I want to synthesize the information I read and reapply it in a new way. Dale Carnegie has written a manual for the application of a corporation's CSR philosophy. As I listened and thought about how I could improve my game with Carnegie's principles I kept thinking of how these principles could help a company gain market share, improve vendor relations, lower costs, increase employee loyalty and productivity, enhance the public image, and so many other applications.

Therefore, the next few posts will talk about how Dale Carnegie and CSR can make a company more profitable, stable, recognizable, and resilient to negative events and forces.

A Word, a Quote

2007-11-15T07:26:00.000-06:00

Please allow me to provide some edification today by sharing a favorite, rarely used word and a favorite quote:

plen·i·po·ten·ti·ar·y [plen-uh-puh-ten-shee-er-ee, -shuh-ree]

–noun 1. a person, esp. a diplomatic agent, invested with full power or authority to transact business on behalf of another.

–adjective 2. invested with full power or authority, as a diplomatic agent.

3. conferring or bestowing full power, as a commission.

4. absolute or full, as power.
Thanks to: Dictionary.com

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"If I had my life to live over again, I'd dare to make more mistakes next time."

-Nadine Stair

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The Problem with Corporate Social Responsibility

2007-11-11T09:37:00.000-06:00

The real topic of this post is my cynicism. I have the genetics of Eastern Europe cynicism coursing through my veins. As a life-long resident of the midwest, usually within a few hours of the "Show-me" state, I have been conditioned by my environment to be cynical. With all that I have seen, done, and failed to do, I cannot help but harbor at least some cynicism.

Cynics are natural skeptics. Our weakness is that we tend not to limit our skeptisism, believing that there is always one more reason not to believe that we haven't thought of yet. And that is the greatest threat to Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR). How do we test a company's sincerity when it comes to CSR?

I think we need to have some litmus test to seperate the talkers from the believers, but that too is risky. If we set standards for CSR, it is no longer a dynamic, creative, initiative. It is just another cost, regulation, or marketing gimmick. On the other hand, we need to win over a number of skeptics and have an answer for the interminably-skeptical cynic.

This morning I saw a commercial for Chevron, the oil company. If it is 100% true, then this is a company we should get behind and give them every advantage to succeed. Their commercial shows images of people's faces up close and of vast open blue waters giving me the sense that they really care about nature, the environment, and people. The voice-over talked about commuting and other things that hit close to home, telling me that they can relate to and are interested in improving my daily, trivial existence. They also mention the diverse energy initiatives that they are eagerly pursuing, to include clean, abundant alternative energy.

If I did not have a cynic in me, I would buy every share of Chevron I could afford, tapping out my cash, savings, 401k, and home equity. I would then begin a calculated campaign to get hired on at Chevron, even if only as a Janitor. I would devote every penny and every minute to the mission of Chevron: to profitably supply the world's energy needs while planning for the future and attempting to limit our environmental impact.

You notice I am on blogger.com rather than polishing my resume and emailing Chevron's HR department? Yeah, I am cynical. I just don't see an Oil company's board room being filled with a young, diverse group of idealists trying to think up ways to improve the global community while remaining profitable. I don't know this for sure, but my imagination is stuck on the image of a bunch of old, privileged people who have rarely (or never) had to pump their own gas, drive their own car, or buy their own groceries. The people who run Chevron, I think, are completely incapable of imagining a life that is only a few paychecks away from destitution. I see the board room looking a lot like the White House cabinet, with a few tokens for the "Diversity Initiative".

Sidenote: That is not a dig on Condoleeza Rice. Here is a black woman from the deep south raised in the 1950's and 1960's, and she has risen to the top on her own merit more than by quota. She is an accomplished Russian linguist, competitive ice-skater, concert-pianist, scholar, organizational leader, and football intellectual. She is an overachieving (the good kind), extraordinarily talented, energetic American who has given us her best effort at making this a better country. I doubt that she is given as much of a voice as she should be, and that had she been more free to think and her opinion more highly regarded, we would perhaps have had a better outcome over the last eight years.

Anyhow, Chevron would have to commit stock-market suicide to try at this point to end our dependence on oil. That is a profitable horse that they need to ride until it is dead if they want to have an overachieving (the bad kind over the long-term) stock price. The 1st second that one of the division Presidents tried to push a product that makes a cut into the carbon-fuel based market, he would be fired, black-listed, tarred, feathered, and run out of town on a rail. If that didn't happen in the 1st second, the 2nd second would see a class-action lawsuit against the CEO and Board for not protecting the company's bread-and-butter.

I believe in the potential of CSR to make Capitalism even greater than it is today. However, two obstacles remain: the people who view CSR as a marketing opportunity to trick naive people out of more of their money, and the cynics who will not give any idea a chance to live and develop. Both of them could be overcome with a litmus test that, I am afraid, would require us to peer into the human heart and discern its true intentions.

If we took a closer look at Chevron and measured the amount that they donated to charity or spent on environmental protection and clean-up compared to the amount that their competitors spent, would we be viewing a measure of sincerity? Not necessarily; however, we would have a competition, and competition is what makes Capitalism great.

What factor has the greatest effect on performance, in any human scenario? Competition. We spend as much time and money as we do on sports because of the competition, not the pretty grass or snazzy uniforms. We bet on sports to make the compeition even more compatitive and interesting. Competition makes people run faster, think more broadly and deeply, and generally try harder.

In Capitalism, monopolies are bad. Why? Because monopolies do not feature competition. The lack of competition means that you do not have to focus on price, customer-service, innovation, etcetera. The customer is going to buy from you no matter what, so what is the point in trying harder?

In a monopoly, you can go decades without seeing much in the way of value, technological advancement, or customer-focused efforts. That was the case with AT&T and the baby-Bell spinoffs until the 1980's and 1990's. 1984 brought about the rise of Sprint, MCI, and other long-distance players. Suddenly, AT&T had to compete and, low-and-behold, it was suddenly affordable and technically feasible to call long-distance and understand the person's voice on the other end. (Anyone remember the pin drop?) With the 1996 telecommunications act, there were suddenly competitor's on the local phone market. Now, all the Bells and Whistles such as caller-id and call-waiting that were once expensive or not offered to homes were bundled up, offered for free by some companies, or deeply-discounted from their original prices.

If we say that all companies have to donate 10% of their profits to a recognized charity, and that they have to hold so many meetings with local community organizations and NGO's to address their concerns, then we have created bureaucracy and regulation. That always ends up badly.

We cannot test the sincerity of their heart, but we can create CSR competitiveness by publicizing data that ranks companies according to their responsibility. I know this is being done, but it is watered down right now, and hard to find. I welcome the day that we hear quarterly about a firm's CSR merits or failures alongside their earnings, employment data, market share, and product development. I welcome the day when, by going to a firm's site, you can expect to have their CSR initiatives in letters and images as large as their products and services. I especially welcome the day when, as an investor, you can easily measure price-to-earnings and operating profit alongside their success at third-world medicine or inner-city education initiatives.

I have already admitted to be mathematically challeneged, but I do not think that is a handicap in the following opinion: if I were considering investing in two companies in the same industry, where one of those companies had a slight financial advantage and the other had a slight CSR advantage, I would choose the company with the CSR advantage. Financial advantages are temporary; they can change over time. Look at the U.S. auto industry over the last 20 years. Financial advantage does not necessarily mean that the company is doing the right thing to be profitable in the future, it simply means that it has it ducks in a row today. One new discovery, disaster, or recession can change all of that in a quarter or two.

I think that if a company has done a diligent job implementing a comprehensive Responsibility strategy that can be communicated clearly and demonstrates itself to be successful, then that is a better indicator that the company has sound leadership, youthful energy, enthusiastic and free brainstorming-to-implementation processes, and a long-term outlook focused on doing things right, rather than doing things cheap, quick, and easy.

I would like to start collecting links to sites and publications that rate a firm's CSR activity. As I find them, I will post them here. Won't you do the same? Please send me any links or lists of publications you have that rank a firm's CSR performance.

So, What is Next?

2007-11-10T19:09:00.000-06:00

So, now I have checked off some huge "To-Do's"...What am I going to do with myself now? I am going to attend Graduate School. Why? Because it is there.

1. I am going to attend Graduate school because I believe that is who I am: I am that level of student. Some people coast by in school, hating every second and wanting to do the bare minimum. Over the last several years, I have beene the kind of student who absorbs as much of the material as possible, attempts to make connections and synergize information, create new ideas based on current understanding, and communicate my knowledge and opinions about the material in an organized, informative manner. Also, it usually means higher salary at some point in your career. Finally, it will expose me to people and ideas that I would not normally encounter, broadening my experience and deepening my understanding of the world around me.

2. I am continuing my study of the Russian language. This will help me later when I begin my International Graduate Studies. It will open new opportunities for me. It will broaden the experience of my kids because as I learn Russian, they learn some too. Most of all, there are many who say that bi-linguality increases a person's ability to consider ideas and find creative solutions due to the billions of additional circuits your brain has to wire for the additional languages. As an added bonus, aren't bi-lingual people more interesting? How cool would it be to sit on a crowded bus and converse with your son in a language that probably no one else around you understands?

3. I am going to be more charitable with my time and money. Especially with my time. I am looking for a great volunteer opportunity. I want to spend at least a few hours per month doing something that makes this world a better place. I have a lot of different skills and interests, and I want to make my time count, so I am moving slowly on this one. I want to find one charity that I believe so strongly in that I can not only focus extra cash and time on it, but I can tell oither people why they, too, should consider giving to the charity. Stay tuned, I will be announcing my choice soon.

My reason for charity is totally selfish. First of all, I am a karma junkie. I cannot send out enough good karma because I want as much good karma as possible coming back to me. Second, that warm, fuzzy feeling after doing something good is like crack. I plan on staying high as a kite on that warm, fuzzy feeling. (Queue the music: "Hooked on Feeling")Finally, aren't charitable people more interesting? If I meet someone new and tell them that I speak Russian and spend some Saturdays as a volunteer, I will be so interesting that I won't have to hear about their favorite TV show or their "gifted" grandson.

4. I will run a Marathon. I have wanted to for some time. I was signed up to run the Honolulu Marathon one year, but I was too hung over that morning to even get off the floor and put my shoes on. More on the Marathon later. Suffice it to say, I am heading off a mid-life crisis at the pass by establishing some accomplishments. Besides, aren't marathon runners more interesting? No, I guess their not, but they are respectable in a weird way. I want people to look at me like I'm crazy as I proudly trod past them in my black spandex pants and $200 shoes...in the snow...at 6 am.

I Did It

2007-11-10T05:45:00.000-06:00

My life is not going perfectly. Like everyone else, I have the daily struggles and challenges: sicknesses, time demands, financial demands, traffic, worthless local sports teams, etcetera. However, it is all just white noise against the background of my smile. I can't stop being happy. I am satisfied. I am motivated. I am elevated.

I finished my degree; I can now say I am a college graduate. I say that to myself often. Finishing my degree gives me a piece of paper that proves I am at the level where I belong. Without my degree, I felt like an impostor, a commoner who snuck his way into a royal event and everyone knew he didn't belong there. For ten years, I looked forward to the day where I could say I had a degree. I know, it doesn't actually mean a lot to anyone unless I am on a job interview. Even so, it is important to me, and it has bolstered my confidence and self-image.

Another problem I have had with my self-image is not having a certification. In the IT industry/telecommunications industry, numerous companies offer a test that, once passed, certifies your skills in a specific area. In 2000, I was first introduced to the Cisco Certified Network Associate exam. My team sat through a one week course and then took the exam. We all failed; I came within a few point of passing and should have stayed with it. Most of the guys shrugged and went on with their life. A few continued to study and later passed it. I wanted to complete it, but I had life to contend with.

If you want something bad enough, you go for it. I had a pregnant wife, and I was facing my first thoughts of fatherhood in 2000. I also was working on my degree, and wanted that more. Looming over all of this was my alcoholism, which would make a strong showing in 2000. So, I say I wanted my CCNA but I admit I didn't want it bad enough.

Even with life throwing curve balls and all the changes I have experienced since 2000, I never shook off the desire for the CCNA. I studied for it on and off over the years, but there was always something else going on to distract me. I even took it again in 2005--they had updated the exam for new technologies and made it more challenging. Again, I missed it by a few points.

In 2003 I accepted a position with my current employer. Soon after that, the company began to encourage all Field Engineers to earn their CCNA. Two of my bosses earned their certificate. Several co-workers earned theirs. I studied on and off, but there was always something else to throw me off.

In September of this year, I was a free man. I had the college degree I had always wanted. I was now able to focus on my CCNA. I chose to take an accelerated course at the local community college to help me along. When it ended in mid-October, I was free to focus daily on my existing weaknesses. I could taste the certification; I was finally to a point where I could accept nothing less.

Of course, being free of alcohol was a big boost this time. Now that I am a seasoned father and husband, I had a better conception of balancing work, family, and study. Treating my ADD has been a tremendous boost.

However, the difference maker was my attitude. I wanted my CCNA, I knew I could pass the test, I knew how to get there, and I would not accept anything less. I was going to spend every penny I could earn or borrow and I would spend every second I could until that certification was mine.

You can either take one 65 question test that covers all of the material or two smaller tests that break it up. At first, I thought that the two exam option was the way to go. As I mentioned in my previous post, I passed the first of the two. The following Monday, I failed the second one (by only a few points, as always.)

Cisco will not allow you to take the same exam more than once in a five day period. I came so close and felt so good when I failed on Monday that I told people I "smelled blood in the water." Therefore, I decided to take a chance on the one big exam, rather than wait five days to take the second-half exam again. So the night that I failed, I went home and signed up online for a Tuesday morning exam of the one-test CCNA exam option. I studied that night some more, brushed up a little in the morning, and headed on to the exam location.

The large exam was hard, hard, hard. I knew I screwed one or two questions early on. The exam was so hard, I could never get that dominant, confident feeling that I had when I passed the first-half exam.

The exam is all on a computer, and it scores your exam immediately after you finish. You click "next" through all the questions and when you get to the last question, there are two clicks to get to the pass/fail screen. Those two clicks take forever (in my mind) and are one of those dramatic moments that slow your heart and make your clicking finger heavy.

As it turned out, I passed. I did well, in fact. All my negative feelings were for naught. I walked out of the testing site without touching the ground.

It is amazing how it changed me on the inside. I am now untouchable. I have gained confidence about my future. I know that no matter what else goes on, my career is onward and upward from here.

Moreover, I unexpectedly lost a dependency on my job that I didn't know I had. I have held the title of Engineer for six years now and have ten years in the industry, I have a decent list of skills and experiences, and I have a network of friends and colleagues that has helped me out in the past. I have been laid off three times and always landed on my feet with another great job.

I now realize that I had this underlying dependency on my current job. I had a feeling that I needed it, that without this job I would have a chasm in my life. I have always known that this is just a temporary stop, and that my goal is much higher and broader than where I am now, but there was this unexplainable dependency in me that was lifted last week.

I attained my CCNA on October 30th. Since then, I have a new feeling. I feel free. I can study anything I am curious about without feeling like I am being distracted from something more important. I can set new goals, and set them higher than before. Most of all, I can leave this job. I don't have any immediate plans, and there is not a compelling reason for me to leave. I just have this new feeling that I can if I want to.

Janis Joplin sang that freedom is just another word for nothing left to lose. I wish she could have know the freedom that I feel now. It has nothing to do with losing. It is more like I have been climbing a mountain for a long time, and now I am at the summit, free to look around, rest, or set my sights on new mountains. Now that I know the feeling at the summit, I want to climb another mountain.

One Down, One To Go

2007-10-23T06:16:00.000-05:00

On Sunday night, I did not study as much as I wanted to and did not get in bed as early as I wanted to because some guests stopped by. Normally this is not a big deal; however, I had scheduled myself to sit for a Cisco Certification test on Monday morning. So I was already off to a bad start.

I woke up Monday morning early and began some last minute studying. I felt great. Unfortunately, I turned on the wrong stove burner and began to melt a plastic salt shaker. When I tried to take the salt shaker off the burner, the bottom melted off and salt went everywhere.

So here I am vacuuming my kitchen at 6:15 a.m. on a Monday morning, two hours away from taking a major test (which costs $150 whether I pass or fail). And while I vacuumed, I did my best not to let this event affect my mood. My brain wanted to say that this was a bad omen, but I wouldn't hear it. I had to pass.

When I let the dogs out, I realized that it would be cold, gray, and rainy all day. Of course it would; why wouldn't it be my least favorite type of weather on such an important day, right? I almost started to believe that there was a divine conspiracy against me, but I am too rational for that. Ahem.

It is 7:30 am: The test starts in 1 hour, but I need to leave in 20 minutes. I am shaved, showered, cologned, creamed--this test is turning me into a metro-sexual this morning. My strategy is to look good and feel good. Therefore, I add a tie to my ensemble for Monday. Ties are rare on me, but today I want to feel professional and intelligent. Man, do I feel good. Nothing can stop me now.

It is 7:45 am and I am ready to go. I am dressed and looking great. I have my coat, my paperwork, my laptop bag, my wallet...I cannot find my keys. Now, this is something that has happened many times in my house: me looking for my car keys. However, it hasn't happened in a long time. Since I began treating my ADD, I have tended to lose items less often; I am more organized and efficient now.

Now it is 7:55 am. I should be driving through rain and traffic to get to my $150 test, but I have the whole family crawling around the house trying to figure out what stupid place I chose to lose my keys on. I am trying not to panic. I am trying not to snap at the ones whom I love. I am close to cursing God. I am on the verge of an stroke. I finally find my keys on my workbench in the garage. I sorta remember putting them there, but I can not remember why.

No, I'm not making this up. This all happened yesterday.

So now I am driving through rain and traffic in a hurry for my test; you know, the one that costs $150 and affects my career. I almost rear-end someone. Someone else is driving at 20 mph in a 35 mph zone....grrrr!

I get to the testing center, find the restroom, find the sign-in desk, and get seated at the testing computer. I am ready. My head is screwed on straight and all systems are "go". The first question (out of 42) is the most complex question I have ever faced. In one question, I have to chose several network elements, select proper cabling, deduce an addressing scheme based on known parameters, and then configure several devices based on what I know of the rest of the network. I need to do math, order my steps, try not to miss anything, and save my work on each device. Holy shnikes!

I know how to do everything in this question, but the math does not come easy for me and I have this nagging feeling that I am going to forget something. The test is timed, and I take a long time to answer this one. I am concerned that the rest of the test is going to be like this: harder than I was prepared for.

I finish number one and click next. The second question is a softball. I knock it over the fence and click next. Most of the test is a softball. There are two more complex questions that eat up time and heat up my brain, but most of the test is exactly what I was prepared for.

After I answer question # 42, I find that there isn't a "Next" button. There is only a button to "End Exam". I am surprised to be finished; I thought I was taking too long and here I am with 30 minutes left on the clock and I am done.

Clicking the "End Exam" button is the moment of truth; you find out immediately if you passed or not. I have been here twice before; both times I clicked the button and found out I missed the passing score my only a few points. This time, I have a Pavlovian-learned fear about clicking the button. Even so, I did my best and I feel good about my performance. I can't go back, so I click "End Exam".

I passed. I beat the odds, subverted the conspiracy, kept my wits, checked my negativity, and I passed. Damn it felt good.

That is one of two exams I need to pass for the CCNA designation. I will probably schedule the second exam for next Monday, unless something comes up. It just feels great to be halfway there, now.

Great Quote

2007-10-21T11:34:00.000-05:00

I just ran across a great quote:

"My grandson recites the Gettysburg Address and he's only nine. Lincoln didn't say it until he was fifty."

-Al Okin

How about a word for the day?

Percipient: adj. An ability of, or knack for, keen perception; n. One who perceives readily.

The Post to End the Silence

2007-10-20T08:34:00.000-05:00

I have been busy. My life is evolving. I am re-evaluating what is important. I am finding more time with the kids and myself, less time for work, blog, and yardwork. I am very happy; I am proud if this change. I am satisfied with the direction I am taking.

The blog is not going away at this time. I still see its usefulness to me as a journal to develop my thoughts with, a tool to track my thought-life over time, and a method of sharing myself with the world--whether they like it or not. I am not as inspired as of late to write about anything. I actually have three drafts that I have not published because I started with something to say but couldn't complete the thought concisely.

I would like to find a way to shorten my posts more. That will be a great benefit from this blog if it teaches me to write more concisely. I will work here on my communication skills; getting my point accross before the other person passes out or clicks onto the "Next Blog" button.

I wrapped up an 8-week class at the Community College, which occupied some time. I am hot and heavy to achieve my CCNA certification, so that occupies a lot of time. My daughter is beginning to discover how enriching books can be, and we are spending a lot of time together reading--that is the best part of my life right now. I also have a lot going on at work to keep me out of trouble. Altogether, life is busy but not to a stressful level. It is a near-perfect level of accomplishment, activity, and stimulation.

In November, I will sell my soul to the corporate devil and begin my MBA program at Baker University. I have already applied and been accepted, it is just a matter of when classes begin. I have put the M.A. of International Studies from KU on hold; for several reasons I determined that this was not the best time to pursue that option. The Baker MBA should be more useful in my immediate future and it will develop my Graduate-level study and research skills for future use. In addition, I think it will affect my family and current job less, which is very important at this point.

I hope to finish my CCNA certification by November. If not, I really need to finish it this year; I am very close to achieving it and it will reap immediate benefits at work. That certification has been on my "to-do" list for seven years, though I have often considered it more of a dream than a goal. Right now, it is a "must-have". If I can check off both the degree and the certification in one year, then 2008 is gonna be unimaginable.

An update on my Organizational Challenge with myself. My office at home and work are improved. My garage is functional. My basement is useful for workouts (and yes, I am using it sometimes.) My van remains highly organized, and trash remains only in the trash-can.

In other words, I have achieved a new standard. I have plenty of room for improvement, but I cannot believe that I used to be such a filthy pig. I am now very careful about my van. My desk at work and home has a tendency to get cluttered still, but that is temporary and I am still much better off now than I was 3 months ago. It is amazing what a little medicine and understanding can do to transform a life.

I am still thinking about Corporate Social Responsibility on a regular basis, and I plan on using this blog to talk more about it. I hope that I can apply my growing understanding of CSR to my MBA studies and perhaps find a way carve my own niche in this field.

Again, I do not know how to conclude here. I am determined to post something on this blog, even if the conclusion is a clunky, sudden halt. Therefore, here it is: the final period at the end of the sentence that concludes my blogging silence.

Unknown White Male

2007-10-07T12:45:00.000-05:00

I just watched a fascinating documentary that I have to share. It is called "Unknown White Male". The story goes like this:

Early in the morning on July 2, 2003 some guy opened his eyes in a subway car and did not recognize the landscape passing him by. He had never seen this terrain before. That can be disturbing in any situation, but he had more to be disturbed about. He could not remember where he was going. Then he tried to think of where he was coming from, but couldn't retrieve that data either. Finally, he tried to figure out who he was, where he lived, and what he could do next. To his fear and bewilderment, he had no memory of his name, his life, his past, or anyone who could help him. All he had was his body, the clothes he was wearing, and a backpack.

If this was Hollywood, the contents of his backpack would have been a 9mm Beretta, a 3 carat diamond, and a stuffed animal. If it were my backpack, there would have been at least a wallet with IDs and a cell phone. His backpack had a set of keys, a vile of medicine, and a "Lonely Planet Latin America Spanish Phrasebook". This guy was a blank slate, and he had no idea how to proceed. He played it safe by finding a police station.

The police took him to a hospital. There was no explanation for his memory loss, and only one lead on his identity. Inside the book in his backpack was a name on a slip of paper. He called the person, but they weren't sure who he was and they could not come see him at the hospital because they were caring for an elderly parent.

At some point, he was asked by a nurse to sign a document. Without thinking, he scrawled out his signature. It was almost completely illegible, but it proved that there was still some piece of him left. It also told him that his first name started with a "D".

The person whom he called has a daughter. She told her daughter to check this out and see if it was someone she knew. The daughter called the hospital and after speaking with him for a minute told him his name was Doug, he lived a great life, and she would come get him in 30 minutes. And that is where Doug Bruce began a fascinating journey.

As it turns out, Doug lived in New York, in The Village in a large, nice apartment. He was in his thirties, apparently came from money, and had retired after making his own money as a stockbroker for several years in New York. Doug began to videotape his experience as he rediscovered his life all over again. As fortune would have it, he had a friend who made movies and wanted to make a project out of Doug's experience. The two of them together made a fantastic documentary.

The movie explores some basic existentialist, philosophical problems. When Sartre or Camus discuss Existentialism, they are speaking in theoretical or fictional terms. Doug Bruce examined existentialism, epistemology, and every other category of philosophy firsthand as he examined life itself and who the historical Doug Bruce was with a blank-slate mind. In the movie, they compare him to a newborn baby with a mature brain.

Doug re-experiences snow, fireworks, and the London "Changing of the Guard", all of which he had no recollection of. Early in his experience, as he began to question who he was and where he came from, he wondered about his family. He discovered he had a Father and two sisters who were very loving. Unfortunately, he also discovers that his mother passed on some time ago. He had already mourned his mother at the time, but with his memory loss he was forced to mourn his mother's passing again. Of course, now he was mourning someone he had not known. I guess he was mourning that inherent desire in all of us to have a loving mother.

He meets all of his old friends, a network that is large and spread across the globe. He sees old movies of himself. He examines his keepsakes and reads letters he wrote. Nothing jogs his memory, but it helps him develop a fascinating perspective on life.

Everyone who Doug meets expects him to act like the old Doug. Most of the people I know guide their lives by other people's expectations. Almost everyone I know has made major life decisions such as where they live, their occupation, their spouse, their religion, and their political affiliation based on the expectations of their parents, firends, co-workers, employers, and the prevailing zeitgeist.

However, he is approaching life with a blank state and treating it as an opportunity to discover the axiomatic truths of life. Over a year after his memory loss, Doug tells an old friend that he does not feel pressured to recover his old memories. It is apparent that he is comfortable knowing that the old Doug was successful and loved by many people; therefore, the new Doug can be successful and loved too. If anything, it seems that memory loss has propelled Doug closer to the pinnacle of Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs. Without the burdens and pressures built up over thirty years of life, he is free to take his possessions, wealth, friends, and inherent skills to a point of self-actualization.

Doug was lucky in some ways. He did not have to worry about a spouse and offspring, which freed him to take an adventure rather than desperately recover and fit back into the old mold. He also had wealth, so he did not need to worry about how he would eat and pay for electricity and retire--that was all taken care of. He also did not have to come to terms with being an asshole in his former life, as Hollywood loves to portray in Amnesiac movies. He simply had to take life in, let life happen, and draw his own conclusions.

Was he still Doug Bruce? Could he be held responsible for the bad things he had done (if any)? Was he obligated to like the people whom he had been close with in the past? Would he still have the same interests and preferences?

To boil it all down, Doug is an experiment in how much of our character is chemical/genetic and how much is shaped by environment. His friends and family did not get to hold a funeral for the old Doug, but since his molecules were still walking the earth with his voice and features, they never had to experience total loss. Two of his friends mentioned how they were quickly forgetting the old Doug and getting used to the new one.

One interesting thing that bridged his two lives: He had left Wall Street to learn photography. He had two years of school under his belt prior to the memory loss. Now after the loss, he wished to continue his studies. Legally, he was the same person and therefore was entitled to claim his transcripts. However, even though he paid for, attended, and completed the courses in his transcript, he no longer retained most of that knowledge. Therefore, his school required him to either prove he had the skills of a third-year photography student or begin his studies again. Within two months, he was able to re-learn two years of skills and enter the third year of photography studies.

One of his professors discussed how Doug demonstrated that much of his knowledge is contained under the surface, somewhere. He also talked about how Doug was now a more serious student and a more profound artist behind the camera. I suspect that they could have filled 90 interesting minutes just with Doug's re-introduction to photography and his transcendence of his former abilities and passions.

I can't say that this movie will change my life. I am not sure any movie has. However, this movie did something that is rare among movies: It excited by brain and made me consider new thoughts. For me, that is often the best way to spend a couple of hours. Just the process of thought can be invigorating. If that process leads to a new conclusion or idea, then all the better. Sometimes, it is nice to belly-laugh and suspend rationality. However, a movie that makes you think can make you feel like you accomplished something while being entertained.

Here is a trailer to the film:

Corporate Social Responsibility? Never Heard of It.

2007-10-06T17:30:00.001-05:00

I have been studying business in one form or another since I was a teenager. We received lessons on finance, economics, and market-based realities starting in junior high school from Junior Achivement. I also learned a lot from my business-minded father. I found business interesting and understandable.

That education never really ceased over the years, but it took on a new dimension in the summer of 1997 when I took my first college course, "Business Math". For the next ten years, I would be employed in the business world by successful companies, including two Fortune 500 companies. I would take required and voluntary training offered by those companies and read the emails sent out by managers. I would also attend four colleges that all cater to the business community. I would be exposed to an immeasurable amount of marketing messages through the TV, Radio, print, billboards, and Internet. I often read business headlines and news. I listen to books on tape, many of which are business-oriented. In other words, I am well-versed in popular business messages and ideas. Or, so I thought.

In the second to last class required to attain my Bachelor of Science in Business Management degree from Baker University, a well-respected school in the local business community, I had a paper to write. The class was "Multi-National Management" and the requirement of the paper was vague enough: almost anything having to do with managing a company with operations in several nations. I was interested in Russia at the time and knew that there would be many resources describing the sticky situation of doing business there amidst the infamous corruption, the remnant paradigms of communism, and the rampant xenophobia in Russia. Among other relevant articles, I found an article that argued for teaching the concepts of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) to Russian managers. The authors briefly explained what CSR was, why Russians would likely be responsive to the message, and where the biggest opportunities would be in their society and economy.

This was the first time I had heard of CSR. The concepts show up all over the place in religion, ethics, morale stories, common sense, and business practices. However, I had never heard of this singular business concept that provided a framework and philosophy for social concerns, with data to prove the financial benefits of socially-responsible actions. I was floored; I was interested; I was born again.

Where was I during all that education, corporate training, and real-world experience? Was I sleeping through the CSR modules? Why was it that with over 120 credit hours in American business schools, plus twelve years of grammar and high school, I had never seen the three words "corporate", "social, "and "responsibility" put together in that order and context? After thousands of dollars, hours, books, papers, test, lectures, emails, phone calls, and conversations, I am just hearing about CSR now, from individual research, with only a two months to go before I graduate with a Bachelor of Science in Business Management?

The last class that Baker required for my degree, it turns out, was a class that included the topic of CSR. However, the course did not use CSR as the religion, philosophy, framework, or guiding principle within which to define business ethics and community response; CSR was simply a topic in a chapter. It was downplayed as another definition to learn. For the students in that class who had not had a religious experience when they learned of CSR, it become another term to throw around in conversation and look smart.

I will never be the same. The article about CSR that was one of several sources for a paper that barely matter in the grand scheme of things has become my gospel. It is the good news I have been searching for. It helped me re-merge my splitting personalities, one which hated the monstrous and evil corporate ideal and the other that waved the banner of capitalism and saw no other way to live.

This is a link to the article that introduced me to CSR and got me excited about the future of business and America. If the link ever breaks, you can look on Ebsco-Host, Lexis-Nexis, or other periodical database for the following article:

Professors David S. Harrison and Patsy G. Lewellyn: "Russian Management Training Programs: Do Corporate Responsibility Topics have a Place?" Management Accounting Quarterly, Summer 2004: pages 25-36. I found it at: ABI/INFORM Global (PROQUEST) via Collins Library on 09 June 2007.

CSR? Why?

2007-10-06T17:20:00.000-05:00

There is no doubt that capitalism has an ugly side and corporations can do great harm to communities and individuals. That always gnawed at me. I was raised on Christian ideals of charity, generosity, and the benefits of providing for needy people. I was also raised in the cold war and knew the evils of socialism and restricted markets. That is the source of my split personality.

The article that introduced me to CSR explained how Russians who were raised with communist paradigms could come to terms with capitalist principles by learning about CSR. This would allow them to seek profits while keeping the community in mind. In fact, it can be shown that including your stakeholders (employees, vendors, communities, governments, and special interests as well as your customers and shareholders) in your decisions can often make you more profitable, reduce your costs, improve your marketing efforts, and prevent many costly liabilities. According to the authors, who are American professors with extensive experience among Russian companies, this is a message that many Russians are waiting for. It is a message I had been waiting for as well.

Is it possible to be a company that really cares about people and remains profitable? Is it possible to insist that your employees, vendors, and customers all embrace certain ethical and environmental standards without losing your competitive edge? Is it possible to gain a competitive edge by being a good employer, a community partner, and leaving a soft footprint on the planet? CSR says yes.

If more companies said yes to the principles of CSR, we would have cleaner air and water, we would have more people gainfully employed and less cut loose after years of loyalty, we would have more employees who loved and were loyal to their company, and we would have safer products. The benefits of CSR-embracing companies never end.

Best of all, we would have an answer to America-haters. People once looked up to America and spoke of us in respectful awe because our freedom and prosperity was so rare. As democracy and globalization spread, people began to see America as a greedy, oppressive profiteer. I don't think that the military actions of Truman, Kennedy, Reagan, Clinton, and the Bushes are to blame for most of the ill-will towards America. I do not think the CIA is to blame. I think that the actions of so many corporations headquartered in America, sending American managers to foreign cultures to produce at low-cost and high-productivity and then send all of the wealth back to America is the cause for 99% of the ill-will aimed at us today.

If my generation, known as X, were to begin exporting socially-responsible policies among the multi-national corporations that we are gaining control of from the baby-boomers, then Generation Y (my kids) would get to know America as the baby-boomers did: the prosperous and high-minded nation that makes the planet better for everyone.

The authors of this article, Professors David S. Harrison and Patsy G. Lewellyn, spoke of how Russians lost that sense of purpose and working for the good of the community that they had under communism, a void that could be filled by the principles of CSR. I think that we, the western half of the Cold War, lost something too when communism fell.

America stood for democracy; we were the beacon of freedom. Now that freedom and capitalism is almost commonplace around the world, what do we stand for? Are you satisfied to be the leader against Islamic-fundamentalist terrorism (the so-called Global War on Terrorism)? Somehow, that isn't as sexy as opposing communism. What will we stand for once we have evidence of bin Laden's demise and the terrorist networks are rendered ineffective? What if the whole Muslim world decided as one to liberalize tomorrow? What would America stand for if we didn't have Terrorism to oppose?

Do we need to stand for anything? I say yes. If we are the leader, then we have more control over our destiny. Do we want to be Mexico or Canada and have people snicker when we assert ourselves? If we do not lead, then we will lose ground in the global market and will attract much less Foreign Direct Investment--in other words, there will be less money in America to go around. Are you willing to make do with less? How much less?

My vision for America is that we stand for being socially responsible and profitable. As Generation X retires and Generation Y takes the helm, let America be looked up to for her prosperity and her benevolence. I hope that 30 years from today, as I may be retired or close to it, that America will not be known as a has-been but as a must-be.

Our schools are not preparing our kids to compete with Asia and Central Europe. Our companies are losing their dominance. America is losing its bragging right as the most benevolent, free, and prosperous nation. The environment has certainly been affected by the actions of humans and may jeopardize our future health and happiness.

Maintaining the status quo is not an option. We need a change. I vote for free markets dominated by socially-responsible corporations. Do you have a better idea?

$1 million sent to Iraq

2007-10-06T07:08:00.000-05:00

The federal fiscal year ended on September 30th, Fiscal year 2008 (FY2008)started on October 1st. As they tallied the books for FY2007, a unit in the Marine Corps ended their year with a $1 million surplus. That is news by itself; I am sure you have heard it said of organizational budgets, "Use it or lose it." The unit's bean-counters probably knew several months ago that they would end up with approximately $1 million unspent. Therefore, we can assume that this was a planned event and that the General in command here is a risk-taker.

Lieutenant General Richard Zilmer, Commanding General, Third Marine Expeditionary Force (III MEF)

To provide some context for you: The III MEF is a large unit. It is an infantry division, an Air Wing, and a logistical support group (supply, food, medical, communications, transportation, etcetera.) That equates to tens of thousands of people. When I was a fire team leader in a Marine rifle squad, responsible for four Marines, the Commanding General of III MEF was eight levels of bureaucracy above me.

When I read about how the III MEF is relinquishing $1 million of their budget to provide for the safety of Marines in Iraq, I got a warm, fuzzy feeling at first. Believe me, the III MEF could have spent that money in Okinawa at headquarters in the blink of an eye. There is never enough money to go around in a Marine Unit; many units have to trim their training schedule due to lack of funds. When you have thousands and thousands of Marines, aircraft, buildings, acres, vehicles, and assorted other military possessions, a $1 million can get spent in a heartbeat. Moreover, the budgetary powers that be may view this move as a signal that they can send III MEF $1 million dollars less in FY2008 since they didn't need it in FY2007.

The warm, fuzzy feeling did not last long. I got pissed, quickly. It is calendar year 2007. We entered Iraq on March 20, 2003. We still do not have enough protective equipment in Iraq? We are still begging for vehicles that are less susceptible to Improvised Explosive Devices (IED's)? Marines in Iraq have to rely on the charity of other Marine Units in order to be safe and effective?

I do not agree with the sentiment that BushCheneyPowellRumsfeldRice should have anticipated the insurgency. It should not have caught them by complete surprise, but I can understand if they did not send thousands of Mine Resistant Ambush Protected (MRAP) vehicles on the first wave to Iraq. Even so, it should not have taken long for them to realize the value these vehicles would provide.

When did the insurgency start? At what point should we have realized that IED's detonated during convoy would be the greatest threat our military would face in Iraq? I will bet both of those events occurred in FY2003, prior to October 2003. In FY2008, we should be wondering how we are going to get the hundreds of un-needed MRAP's out of Iraq because we sent too many.

I re-read the article again. I noticed a few more words, clarifying the situation. The $1 million is not going to purchase the MRAP's, it is going to fund the transportation of the vehicles from the manufacturer to Iraq. The way I interpret this sentence, the vehicles were not going to get to Iraq as quickly before the $1 million; the III MEF has simply sped up the delivery of the vehicle's.

According to the CIA's World Factbook, the United States spent $2.66 trillion in 2006. I am sure we spent more than that in 2007, if I know my President. God only knows how much we will spend in 2008, regardless of our revenue (we will spend hundreds of billions of dollars more than we receive--don't try this at home.) We have thousands of our finest men and women dying in vehicles unnecessarily, thousands more lose eyes, arms, legs, functions, and capacities; a better vehicle design will preserve lives, limbs, and potential.

WE ROUTINELY RUN BUDGET DEFICITS, WE WRITE BUDGETS IN THE TRILLIONS OF DOLLARS. WE CANNOT FIND $1 MILLION DOLLARS TO SPEED THE DELIVERY OF VEHICLES THAT SHOULD HAVE ARRIVED FOUR YEARS AGO? WHO IS RUNNING THIS CIRCUS?

I think that General Zilmer is sending a message. A unit giving up $1 million dollars is rare; I would venture to say it almost never happens. You don't make 3 stars by being a generous altruist. It takes a savvy political mind, ruthless strategy, and a warrior's spirit. Therefore, his decision is so far out of the ordinary that it will require people to take notice. The message I think he is sending is that if no one else will do the right thing, he will risk his budget and career to do the right thing. I hope that message received in the Pentagon shames them into spending more on safety and less whatever they are wasting our money on this week.

The U.S. Defense Budget was $439.3 billion for FY2007. That does not include money earmarked specifically for the Global War on Terrorism, which was $67.9 billion in FY2006. Therefore, III MEF's $1 million is just a drop in the bucket; that moeny could have come from anywhere with little effect on the big picture. The cost of the MRAP's, especially if you spread it out over four years, is just a few drops in the bucket.

Were the MRAP's too expensive when compared with a tin-foil Humvee. What does it cost when a Humvee is blown by an IED, versus the cost if an MRAP suffers a similar fate? Is it really cheaper to just operate unarmored or after-market modified Humvees?

Obviously, the Humvee contained people. Try to calculate, in dollars, what our nation lost when those people encountered an IED. For the ones who die, we lost the investment we made in their training and education. We also lost the tax revenue they would have generated over a lifetime. You need to factor in tranportation and burial costs, plus payment of benefits to survivors. We won't even try to calculate the potential loss of their talents, ideas, and what their offspring might have accomplished.

For the ones who survive, we need to calculate the cost of their rescue (medevacs are expensive), medical treatment over years, the cost of their VA entitlement, the cost of their lost productivity during recovery and after, and any lost tax revenue we may expect from their new handicap.

Why wouldn't we have Iraq over-run with MRAP's right now? I can only assume it has something to do with money. I guarantee that if you made any conservative estimate on the figures above, you could justify the cost of MRAP's easily. Many city budget have included various armored vehicles which will probably (hopefully) never receive a scratch and only see action in training and parades. Why can't we do the right thing in Iraq? Why do Marine units in Okinawa have to send money to expedite equipment for Iraq that should have been delivered four years ago?

One more set of questions, in case you still think that our military and political leaders are doing a great job. Are the Mine Resistant Ambush Protected vehicles a new technology? Were the IED's a new technology when we first encountered them in Iraq? No, this is a threat that America has been prepared to deal with since World War I, and the technology of protecting troops has not advanced all that much over the years. You have newer allows of steel, but they existed in 2003 when the first IED blew up. You have newer research to calculate the ratios of space, armor, and angle, but we could have done well with the data available in 2003.

Iraq is a safer piece of real-estate in 2007, just as the MRAP's get "expedited" there. These MRAP's will get someone promoted, and maybe the administration will convince some people that this late gesture was, in fact, a great step in securing Iraq's future. I think that is a slap in the face to every spouse, child, and parent of a military hero who lost limbs or lives to IED's in unprotected Humvee's. The arrival of MRAP's in Iraq in 2003 would have meant that we lost much less than the thousands of Americans who died in a vehicle from IEDs. MRAP's in 2003 would also have rendered IEDs almost ineffectual; the insurgents would have had to employ a different tactic. If we had MRAP's as the primary mode of transportation in Iraq in 2004, we would be talking about the war in Iraq in the past-tense. It would be all over now, and we would have Iran cowering at the thought that they were next.

The article that got me all riled up:

III MEF returns $1 million to fund Marines in Iraq

Oct. 5, 2007; Submitted on: 10/05/2007 12:30:34 AM ; Story ID#: 200710503034

By Lance Cpl. David Rogers, MCB Camp Butler

CAMP FOSTER, OKINAWA, Japan (Oct. 5, 2007) -- When III Marine Expeditionary Force ended up with an unexpected budget surplus at the end of fiscal 2007, MEF leaders quickly found a great way to spend it: invest it in the safety of Marines in Iraq.

III MEF returned $1 million in operations and maintenance funding to Headquarters Marine Corps recently to help fund transportation costs to expedite the shipment of new Mine Resistant Ambush Protected vehicles to Iraq.

The MRAP vehicles are built with a special V-shaped hull and raised chassis to provide improved protection from mines and improvised explosive devices, according to Marine Corps Systems Command.

“Getting armored vehicles to Iraq is an urgent requirement that’s got to happen,” said Col. Kevin King, the III MEF comptroller. “This is a bill the Marine Corps must pay, and that trumps plasma screens and other less-essential items. We also had our Regional Contracting Office operating essentially at capacity with existing contract requests without dropping another million dollars on them at the 11th hour.”

III MEF received $4.6 million in late fiscal year 2007 as reimbursement for money spent on Joint Chiefs of Staff and Pacific Command-directed exercises.

“We weighed several options, but it came down to executing against an identified Global War on Terrorism bill vs. identifying new requirements and quite possibly being unable to obligate those funds, certainly not on anything as important as the MRAPs. This issue was discussed with the MEF CG and Chief of Staff and the guidance was that it made sense to give up the funds for a higher priority,” King said.

U.S. Sen. Joseph Biden, Jr., spoke about the importance of getting the MRAP vehicles to Iraq during a congressional proceeding March 28 in Washington D.C.

“That statement that these MRAPs provide four to five times more protection than up-armored Humvees is not my estimate,” Biden said. “That is the judgment of our military leaders.”

Biden added that Gen. James Conway, Commandant of the Marine Corps, wrote a message March 1 to Gen. Peter Pace, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff at the time, discussing his requirements to have MRAP vehicles in Iraq.

“Multi-National Forces – West estimates that the use of the MRAP could reduce the casualties in vehicles due to (improvised explosive device) attacks by as much as 80 percent,” he said.

III MEF is scheduled to receive five of the MRAP vehicles for training purposes in the near future.
http://usmc.mil/marinelink/mcn2000.nsf/main5/377C5192A08EF2968525736B0018C591?opendocument

3/3 In Iraq: October 2007

2007-10-04T22:14:00.000-05:00

Below is the message from LtCol Nastase, the Commanding Officer of 3rd Battalion, 3rd Marines. Again, Nastase nails a great message that demonstrates progress, hope, and high morale among our nation's finest. These words need to be read by every American, to counter the negativity that we are bombarded with.

When I listen to Bush, I get the feeling that his perspective changes on a weekly basis, depending on who has been to his office the most often. When I listen to the news or read the headlines, I get the feeling that all is lost and America would be wise to tuck tail and run like hell out of Iraq. I feel like Nastase has given us a more balanced view. It is optimistic and upbeat by design, but I also think it is informative and realistic. The message below is not a PR job, it is a well-written message from a Commander to his extended family. I think his words provide a balanced message that admits to hard times and plenty of work to be done, but also describes progress, improvements, and a building momentum among the grass roots in Iraq to live peacefully.

3rd Battalion, 3rd Marines
From the Battalion Commander

1 October 2007

Hello to Friends and Families of “America’s Battalion”,

We’re approaching two months into the deployment and I want bring you up to speed on what's happening. I am well aware that a lot of Americans are now throwing "Al Anbar" around in casual conversation like it’s a new sitcom. We have certainly had our share of attention of late. I guess it’s because everyone is beginning to see the progress that is being made out here. I'll tell you (from someone who has more than a few trips to Al Anbar under his belt), that things are better than I could have ever imagined. Let me try to put what your Marines and Sailors are doing into perspective because a lot has changed over the years.

What's changed? Mostly Iraqi attitude. And the surge has helped.

Attitude. The people out here have simply decided "enough's enough". They've had it with Al Qaeda in Iraq’s (AQI’s) brutality on fellow Iraqis. I'm not exaggerating when I say AQI has literally been terrorizing Iraqis for too long. Most every Iraqi I talk to these days has had someone, sometimes many members of their families killed or kidnapped by AQI. So we are riding the wave of the "awakening" started by Sunni tribal leaders over the last year or so (with no small amount of work by the Marines). This more than anything has changed everything. "The enemy of my enemy is my friend" kind of thing. The realists among them, I think, foresaw the stark difference between a Taliban-like future dominated by AQI versus one of potential prosperity with the help of the Americans. And they’ve turned toward becoming part of the solution.

The manifestations of this in our area really just sprung up in the last 3-4 months and we have worked to expand it. But AQI wasn't giving up without a fight. The Area of Operations (AO) we assumed was only partly "pacified"--with the Sheikhs standing up and their men volunteering to secure their own neighborhoods and joining the police and army. We also inherited areas that remained AQI sanctuary, from where they continued to attack and tried to roll back the clock. What we have essentially done in this first month and a half was clear out those areas, hold them, and allow the fledgling (yet eager) volunteers and Iraqi Security Forces (ISF) to step up. Which brings me to the surge.

Surge. While Baghdad got all the early press, we had a Marine surge in Al Anbar as well. This has allowed us to finally stay in those areas we cleared, and in so doing, give confidence to the fence sitters that we would not leave them hanging as events in the past years forced us to do. Ironically, the "new" strategy is not new for us. What General Petreaus has advocated in Baghdad--get out and protect the populous--is exactly what the Marines did when we first came to Al Anbar in 2004 ("No Better Friend, No Worse Enemy" was and remains the motto). Unfortunately, what started out well back then, soon was overcome by events such as Fallujah I, Fallujah II, and the Samarra Mosque bombing which required us to move forces from cleared areas to address these hotspots. In those early years we didn't have the ISF to maintain security in great enough numbers. The areas we left became sanctuary and killing fields for AQI and eventually we had to go back in and clear again. The extra forces we've had over the last nine months, combined with the awakening of the Sunni tribes, has allowed us to clear, hold, and build. The build is truly key because with the improved security situation, we can now put resources (ie. Money) against the basic needs of the people so that they can actually see tangible results. This gives them incentive to keep standing up and remain a part of the security solution. It has also provided a security and economic umbrella under which the ISF have been able to further grow and mature. In addition, it has led to a resurgence of local governance to manage the daily processes of life here. Still strongly organized around the tribes, we are leveraging that historic organizational framework to forge government institutions you'd be more familiar with (mayors, city councils, etc).

While the enemy continues to try and test us, it has largely been ineffective. But I continually remind the Battalion not to get complacent—there is still some fight left in our foe, although thankfully, it is a fraction of what it was only months ago, and certainly nothing like what we experienced in the last three years. Even the youngest Marines in the Battalion walk this fine line between being ready for anything and treating the Iraqi people with respect everyday. I am very proud of their ability to grasp the fundamentals of counter-insurgency--no easy task despite how much we trained for it. We spend a lot of time patrolling the towns, villages, and farms--a lot of it on foot, up close and personal. The heat is oppressive still (we have yet to have a daytime temp below 100)! But we've had very little problem adapting due to good leadership and planning at the lowest levels. I am repeatedly impressed with the maturity and attitude of our Marines and Sailors. I've watched them enter countless Iraqi homes, collect information, ask about their needs, hand out sweets and school supplies, and treat people with respect. The response from the locals is overwhelmingly positive...they are so thankful that it is us knocking and not AQI. The true sign that we are winning is the kids. I have been all over this area in past tours and rarely saw a kid outside, and even more rarely had any adult male do so much as glare back at me. Now everyone waves, barefoot kids line every street and road when they see us approach--clapping, giving thumbs up and dancing. Even young girls in their flowered dresses are out. Boys (and men too) can often be seen swimming in the canals in the afternoon. I've been invited to more meals than I could ever accept...even from the poorest of the poor. Marine patrols are routinely served tea in Iraqi homes.

Despite the positive atmospherics, it remains sad to see how poor a lot of these families are. Open sewage, mud floors, and limited electricity are still common. It is a very basic existence for most. But life goes on...”In sh'allah”...it is God’s will...as they say.

But for the first time, many Iraqis have told me they finally have hope for a better future. No one expects even a fraction of what you and I enjoy in America. But they see some light at the end of the tunnel. And I guess that's what counts.

Our Marines and Sailors, and especially our leaders spend an inordinate amount of time doing "engagement". That is, meeting, greeting, and sometimes eating with our local tribal, government, and security counter parts. It is harder work than it sounds and there is always heavy security in support. There is much talk, plenty of drama, but always with the best Arab hospitality. It is time consuming but it is really the only way to build the kind of relationships with the people we need to build to be successful. Trying to figure out who's who and what their agendas are, while shaping things appropriately for the future, is the biggest challenge we face. Marines are still doing Marine things, but embedded in each infantry mission (to include the hundreds of squad level patrols) is economics, governance, human relations, city management, agriculture, essential services, census operations, police work, etc, etc. We’re relying some on the counter-insurgency training we've done, but mostly on the fundamental knack Marines and Sailors seem to have for seeing every challenge as a problem to be solved. They thrive on cracking the case, seeing behind the curtain, and winning. It's too early to say how this will all turn out in the end. But, for now, it is promising and we'll keep moving the ball down the field as best we can.

We’ve had to send a few folks home for some unfortunate non-battle injuries. Our thoughts and prayers are with those Marines and their families for speedy recoveries. We’ve also celebrated more than a few new baby arrivals—congratulations to all! And by all accounts, all of you back home continue with your unending support which is immensely appreciated. Take care of each other and we will do the same. Thanks for all that you do for us.

Semper Fidelis,

LtCol Nastase
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Last updated 2 October 2007

Another Funny Sign

2007-10-02T20:19:00.001-05:00

In Hanauma Bay, Hawaii there is a path that leads to a lesser known Hawaiian attraction known as "blow-hole". Here, the waves come in to the rocky shore and force water into a hole in the rock. When the tide is coming in, the rock resembles a whale's blow-hole.

Further down this path there is a depression in the rocks that is the size of a hot tub. You can sit in this spot as it fills and drains with water. This is cool for kids and old people. The stuff for 20 year-old Marines full of testosterone and addicted to adrenaline is just a few feet to the right.

I cannot remember what this spot was called, but I still shiver when I think about it. It is a tunnel through the rock about 3 feet wide and about 20 feet long. It leads to the hot tub. When the hot tub fills up, the hole fills up. If you timed it right, you could enter the tunnel head-first as it began to drain again; the power of the ocean would pull you through the tunnel and into the hot tub. It took a matter of seconds to travel the tunnel, but it really had an affect on your adrenal system.

Now if you are really brave, you can try to enter the tunnel from the hot tub. The timing is trickier, the angle is more difficult, and you have to do more steering, but the payoff is worth it. It felt like an accomplishment, especially since there were those of us who would swim it backwards and those who wouldn't. We, the initiated, were made of better stuff I guess.

There were several times that I got too anxious and didn't time my push with the tide. When this happened, I stalled in the tunnel for a second and then began to be pushed back the way I came. Luckily, I had the lung capacity to wait it out and the mental capacity not to panic.

When the tide was weak, you could swim either way through the tunnel without resistance or assistance from the ocean. One time, I traveled halfway down the tunnel from the hot tub and bumped into someone coming from the hole. I was able to back up and pull her out, and we both had a nervous laugh. I shudder to think about how that could have turned out.

Kansas is a good place to live and raise a family, but I often miss Hawaii. There were holes to swim through, cliffs to jump from, sunsets that invented new shades of red and purple, rainbows on a regular basis, mountains, sweet air, and Mother Ocean. In Hawaii, I felt alive on another level.

Anyhow, on that path to blow-hole, the hot-tub, the tunnel, and oblivion, there was a sign. I like signs that are unusual. This one made me laugh every time, so I finally snapped a picture:

The Kind of Work I Do

2007-09-27T06:59:00.001-05:00

It has already been established on this blog that I am messy by default. My desk, room, garage, workshop, and van were in a constant state of disorder. I have gone to great lengths to improve that, but without medicine and constant vigilance, I would resort back to my natural state.

However, I am neat when it counts. When I leave a customer site, I leave it better than when I arrived. I learned that in the Marine Corps: when we stopped in the field for a while, we always removed evidence that we had been there before we left. When we setup in a non-tactical area of operations, we would clean up litter that was there before us. In Iraq, the Marines make sure that they leave a town with more water, schools, and soccer balls than when they arrived.

I have a strong work ethic. I get it from my father. He taught me that a job worth doing is worth doing right. That has a lot of depth to it. There is existentialism written all over it. Would you and should you do a job that isn't worth doing? Why would you do a job that isn't worth doing? What makes it worth doing? And if it is worth doing, why would you not do it right? What is the point of having a job that is truly worth doing and then doing it wrong or only doing half the job?

I exist to work. I do not exist to earn a paycheck, or to make an employer rich, or to call myself by a title. I exist to do something. That something is defined by me and it transcends "jobs", employers, salaries, and titles. At the end of my life, no one will care what server I saved or which router I installed. If anyone cares at all, they will care how I did more than what I did. That includes how I treated people, whether I conformed to the big picture or not, and what effect my existence had on the my sphere of influence. Did I leave the world better off than when I found it or did I leave a mess for someone else to clean up?

In August of 1997, I had been out of the Marines for a year and was still trying to find myself. I was working for a Pepsi distributor at the time, which was a low paying job with no benefits but the best job I could find at the time. I traveled to grocery stores to fill their shelves and build displays.

I was the most junior guy on my team, which meant that for a long time I did not have my own regular stores; I filled in where I was needed. On August 13th, my boss called and offered me my own route. The guy who had the route was getting fired for performance issues. Getting my own stores was a proud moment for me. Mainly, it meant that you could always go to these stores to see how well I did my job.

The first store on my route was the Price Chopper in Stanley, KS. I arrived at 6am on August 14th, 1997 as proud as could be. As soon as I walked into the backroom, I was greeted by the manager of the backroom. He was an old man whose life did not turn out the way he had dreamed and he took it out on everyone around him. He chewed my ass for the condition of his store. I explained that the person responsible had been terminated and that I was the polar opposite. I agreed that his store was atrocious, and that it required my top priority.

I should have delivered by speech to the brick wall; this guy just wanted to be an a-hole. I will never forget how angry he made me by assuming I was another slacker. I considered telling my boss. I considered telling his boss. I considered breaking his fingers. I considered ripping his tiny little heart out of his chest and stomping on it. I was a little angry.

His biggest complaint was the pile of damaged Pepsi packages. We were supposed to repackage as much as we could and then make a safe and secure pallet of the unrecoverables to ship out. It was dirty work: the breakers were often covered with sticky spray from a punctured can, as well as the grime that accumulates quickly in a backroom.

Taking care of damage was also time consuming. You had to locate new packaging and box tape, then clean the product, then build a package one can at a time, etc... It could turn a ten hour day into a twelve hour day. It could also make you late getting to your next store, which would result in another ass-chewing by that manager who was angry about life, his two ex-wives, his daughter's tattoo, and the lack of Pepsi on his shelves.

The damage at Stanley Price Chopper had built up for a long time. The backroom manager was sick of it, and he was not going to give me a fair chance to correct the problem. He pulled out a Polaroid camera and took a picture of the pile to show my boss:

I love a challenge, and this guy had thrown down the gauntlet. I knew that I wouldn't be in trouble for this mess; it wasn't mine and my boss knew it. I knew it was a low-priority for my boss; my higher priorities were filling shelves and building displays for several stores. I also knew this backroom guy barely mattered: he did not make purchasing decisions and he would give himself a coronary any day. However, this was a chance to rise above average, to prove to myself and anyone else watching that I had something more inside of me than a $10 per hour manual labor job. I had a chance to make myself proud, and maybe someone else along the way.

On 8/14/97, I worked hard. I left the Stanley Price Chopper with full shelves of product (all facing forward), well constructed and attractive displays, and full vending machines-but the backroom still looked like a disaster. I had five more stores to worry about.

I arrived at other stores that had suffered similar neglect, but I was not met with the same ferocity that greeted me in Stanley. It was long day of heavy lifting, working my way down crowded aisles of oblivious shoppers, driving down crowded roads of oblivious drivers, and plenty of tedious labor. After I finished my route, I returned to Stanley. By now, I was all alone back there and could work in peace. I cleaned up the mess, made my rows of Pepsi neat, and left the store exactly the way I should as a conscientious and proud merchandiser. Then I went looking for a Polaroid.

I asked the young girl at the front counter about the camera, and she found it easily. I think I told her I needed a picture of a product display or something, but I doubt she really cared. I took two pictures of the scene below:

The backroom manager had pinned the photo of the Pepsi mess next to his desk to remind himself the next time my boss came by. I stole it; I am not proud of stealing, I believe it is always wrong, and I do not endorse situational ethics. Even though the backroom manager was wrong for holding me accountable for the damage, I was wrong for stealing the photo. I am sorry. In any case, I did it. I replaced his messy photo with a photo of the clean spot.

Nothing ever came of this. I never had a run-in with the backroom manager again; I think I avoided him for the sake of sanity and to not have to answer for the stolen photo. I wish I could have been there when he reached for the replaced photo. Was he bewildered? Did he expect me to do this? Did he care at all, or did he just shrug, mentally check Pepsi off his hit list, and move on to the Milk guy? Did the Coke guy suffer more because of me?

It is over ten years later, and I still remember the incident, I still have the photos. On 8-14-97 I wanted to kill a man. The Marine Corps was still fresh in my psyche then: the pride, the training, the instincts. I was really angry at the time. I was able to keep my wits and suppress my angriest reactions, but it wouldn't have taken much for me to snap and splatter that old crotchety never-has-been.

On 9-27-07, I want to thank that man. Shame on me for my anger and thoughts of how to extend his suffering. He did me a great favor; he brought out the best in me. I would have done a good job in Stanley's Price Chopper over time, and that damage pile would have shrunk slowly, but surely, over several weeks if he had left me alone. By attacking me, he forced me to find a way to do my job better.

Moreover, he gave me solid evidence of things inside of me that many people do not have in such quantity: a great work ethic, personal pride, capacity for work, and high standards. I already knew I had those things; I had proved them before. My Marine Corps service was a certificate in such things. However, this was one more bullet point to help me know who I really was: a proud man who goes above and beyond, who gets "it" done, and who holds himself to a higher standard than those around him.

I keep these photos to remind myself of the kind of work I do. I get tired. I get discouraged. I get my feelings hurt by employers and customers. I get sick of the crap that employees get dumped on them over time. There are times when I feel like a bad employee, or I feel like I am incapable for doing anything right. These photos remind me what I am feeling is a temporary reaction to a temporary situation. The static reality is that I am a great employee who makes the impossible happen and I exceed expectations any time I want to.

Thank you, grumpy old man. You made me better that day. You have made me better every day since with the photo you took. When I remember you, I work harder and do it better. I can only hope that I have that effect on someone else with my life too.

And I want to thank my dad even more. I have had many lessons in work ethics, but without solid fundamentals I never would have gotten "it". My dad did three great things in raising me that have made me a great employee: First, he made me work. I am used to hard work, I have a greater capacity for work, and I expect to work hard because my dad made me work while other kids were playing or sleeping. Second, he made me do the job right; he corrected me when it was wrong and showed me how to fix it. By setting the bar high and teaching me that, "A job worth doing is worth doing right," my dad gave me an advantage over the people around me.

Third, and most important, my dad worked hard himslef. He did well and got promoted at work. He worked hard at home on maintenance and improvement. He worked hard in the community on various projects such as the Jaycees and the zoning board. He worked hard on me, even when I was a hopeless lost-cause. That example makes the difference. Words are one thing, but actions make a lesson stick.

Symbiosis

2007-09-22T07:30:00.000-05:00

sym·bi·o·sis (sĭm'bē-ō'sĭs, -bī-)

n. pl. sym·bi·o·ses (-sēz)

1. Biology A close, prolonged association between two or more different organisms of different species that may, but does not necessarily, benefit each member.

2. A relationship of mutual benefit or dependence.

("symbiosis." The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition. Houghton Mifflin Company, 2004. 22 Sep. 2007. .)

Look at the person on your left. Look at the person on your right. Think of the person you love the most. Now think of the person you hate the most. Now try to think of someone you haven't thought of in years. Now think of me. Everyone one of those people have something in common with the others: we need each other.

Today's Word Of The Day is symbiosis. In the context of this blog, it means that every living human is affected in some way by every other living human being. There are many directions I could go with this, but I am trying to stick to the economic as I build an argument for Corporate Social Responsibility.

I first learned the word symbiosis in an Ecology class. We all first learned the basic principles in a 1st grade science class. Think of a pond. You have lilly pads, insects, big fish, little fish, and various micro-biotic life forms. If you affect one of these groups, the others are affected as well. For instance, if you kill off all the big fish, then the little fish that were once eaten by big fish begin to rapidly reproduce. They eat more insects, which hurts the lilly pads, which hurts the pond scum, which changes the PH balance of the pond, which starts to kill off the little fish. Therefore, even though the big fish may have nothing to do with the pond scum or lilly pads, each is still affected indirectly by the other.

The same principle applies to society. I need you, whomever you are. You also need me. There are many ways we can affect each other, but let's stick to business and economics. If I do not pay my taxes, then there is that much less money paid into the system that has to be made up somewhere else. Conversely, if I have a windfall this year and pay twice as much taxes as I did last year, then there is that much more money in the system that does not need to be collected elsewhere.

If you do not pay your debt and have it written off in bankruptcy, you should realize that money does not disappear. Just like energy cannot be destroyed, neither can money. Your written off debt will result in higher prices for me. Or, perhaps, my company will lay me off to cover their compounded losses. Or perhaps my 401k will take a hit because of written off debt diluting coroporate earnings.

It is popular in our culture to say "follow the money" when we expect it will lead to the source of a conspiracy or scandal. Money is the mascot of economics, so we can follow money to trace the symbiotic nature of our economy. We will start with $20 in your pocket.

You take your $20 and buy a widget. The retail chain from which you buy your widget is located in my city. A penny from your purchase is sent to my city in the form of a sales tax. This penny lessens the burden on my city to match revenue with expenditures; in other words, it lessens the likelihood that they have to raise my property taxes. If you spend enough money over time, it may mean that I get a street re-paved. Thank you.

My spouse may happen to work at that retail store. Part of your $20 paid her salary. It may have even influenced her bonus. Thank you.

That retail store has to purchase their product from somewhere, and they chose the Acme Manufacturing Company. My mutual fund owns shares in Acme, Acme's earnings drive up the stock price, which drives up the value of my mutual fund and overall 401k. Thank you.

Since my 401k is doing well, I take a loan out of it and buy a car. The salesperson whom I purchase from is your cousin, and he owes you $20. He was having a bad month and planned on avoiding you until I walked into the showroom. I hadn't planned on buying a car, but my wife got her bonus and the city repaved the road and my 401k was doing well, so I decided, "Why not?" Therefore, you got your $20 back from your cousin because you spent $20 on a widget.

No, that isn't ridiculous. Money travels all over the place, all the time, and does much more than we realize. Sometimes, what appears bad to me turns out to be good. Sometimes what is bad for me is what is good for you. At some point, we need to realize that we are all linked economically, for better or worse.

Economics is a system of many parts, including each individual, each company, and each governing institution. The tiniest action at the lowest level has an affect the whole, especially because it affects other tiny actions, which affect other tiny actions. This can be demonstrated mathematically in a principle called The Butterfly Effect, but is much more easily demonstrated in the movie of the same name, or in the movie It's a Wonderful Life.

Giving Money Away

A bleeding heart liberal, a serious Christian, or other charitably minded person would look at this principle and think of how we should try to affect the system to benefit the poor, weak, handicapped or incapacitated, unlucky, and other people who are not prospering in the system. I feel these feelings. I often wonder how we can help those who are currently not helping themselves effectively, for whatever reason. Some people concluded that personal involvement and donations are necessary. Others think that the government should take more money from wealthy people and corporations in the form of taxes and give it in various forms and social programs to the poor. Some people seem to think that talking load and writing angrily will solve the problem.

If we continue to consider symbiosis, then we will realize that we cannot just give poor people money from any source. We need to get something of value in return for that money, whether the source is charity or taxes. We need poor people to contribute to the system, not just take from it. In a motor, every part needs to contribute in the same direction at the same speed. If one part works slower (due to dirt or lack of oil) or if a part quits working completely, then the whole motor is slower and requires more energy to work.

Another way of looking at it: Imagine that you and I are on a bicycle built for two. If we both pedal in unison, we have an enjoyable ride. If I stop pedaling, you will have to pedal harder to keep us going. If you pedal backwards and I pedal forwards, we will crash the bike. We need to contribute as equally as possible to have an efficient bicycle ride.

Therefore, giving money to people who have little or none without receiving something from them in return makes for an inefficient system. It would be better if our charitable contribution or tax money resulted in a contribution to the system. This has been the case with many charities and faith-based programs. I benefited personally from Alcoholics Anonymous, and I think it has led me to become a stronger contributor to the system. This has most often not been the case with government programs due to bureaucracy, politics, and corruption; not just in America, but in other countries and the United Nations. That has led me to lean to the right, and distrust the use of government to combat charity.

Poor Help Themselves?

What if we went to the political extreme on the right and just ignore the poor--let them fend for themselves like the rest of us? Well, that would cause a few poor people to get off their ass, get a job, and quit whining. The other 99% would find that impossible for various reasons. Maybe they are too old, or they have a mental handicap, or a physical handicap, or just a long life of abuse and neglect. Whatever the situation, our charities today are not equipped, scoped, or funded to take all of the people who are a drain and turn them into contributors.

There are some who would just write them off. Social Darwinists, students of Nietzsche, and other cold-hearted bastards would say let nature run its course and we can prune the vine. There is a problem with this as well. The people who are unable or unwilling to help themselves as contributors to the economy may be willing and able to commit the crimes that will supply their needs. Why do you think crime rises as property value descends?

For those who did not turn to crime, they would grow sick and eventually die. Where should they die? That is an important consideration. Do we ship them off somewhere to die as a group, or do we step over them as they die on our sidewalk? Seriously, people do not just fade away like Yoda and Obi-Wan Kenobi. They take up space, they leave behind a decomposable structure, and they make a mark on their way out--it make take them months or years to finally die. We need to either prevent their passing or be prepared for an epic mess.

Also, there are spiritual dimensions to symbiosis. If we begin to allow people to starve and freeze, it affects our collective soul. Look at Germany in the 1930's. They started with persecuting wealthy Jews and nationalizing their property, but they ended up killing millions of people based on ethnicity, sexual orientation, and mental handicaps. What would have come next if we hadn't stopped them? Wiping out all left-handed people? Wiping out people who have trouble with math? What is the likelihood that you would end up on the list at some point?

What is more, when your respect for human life dwindles what else does that affect? Your love of art, beauty, the innocence of children, or what? There is an opportunity cost associated with every decision; if we decided to let go of our respect for human life and dignity, I shudder to think of what else we would be giving up.

Can we agree that we, as participants in the economic system and a human society, should make sure that we all benefit as much as possible, and that no one should be left behind? We need not agree on the means at this point, but we should agree on the principle. Now that we have the principle, it is all over but the shouting: We agree to help people economically, can we agree on the need to do so efficiently? Of course, let us do so efficiently; otherwise we will waste our effort, miss our mark, and eventually destroy the benefits of the system. So what is the most efficient method?

Some people liked the combination of Marx, Trotsky, and Lenin, with the end result being that the workers of the world rise up, take the wealth from the rich, and distribute it equally. We are still waiting for that to happen. The Russians rose up in October of 1917 and took from the Czar and nobility; they forgot to give equally to everyone. Apparently, as Orwell eloquently put it in Animal Farm, "Some are more equal than others." It is not likely that a government can avoid the corruption and bureaucracy that drains money and oppresses common people.

It has been attempted since, but we are still waiting for it to be properly implemented. One eyewitness to the October 1917 revolution, Ayn Rand, wrote a brilliant novel that demonstrates what happens when you take from the successful and give to "the people". Like I pointed out in my last post, without the incentives of Capitalism, you lose the benefits that we enjoy from the people seeking incentives.

For instance, there are people working feverishly to cure cancer right now because they know the result will be fortune and fame for them. Without the fortune and fame, how hard would they work? An answer to that can be found at your local fast-food "restaurant": without incentives, the employees do not work very hard--just enough to keep from getting fired. Do not expect that your food will taste good, that you will see a smile, or that the bathroom has been cleaned in this decade.

If we tax the rich and give to the poor, what is the result? Bunker mentality. If you attack the wealth of people, they will seek to protect it. This means they will spend less, take less risks, and be less generous. Therefore, there will be considerable less money in the system to trickle down to everyone else. Now, rather than the inefficiency existing at the bottom with charity, it exists at the top with preservation of wealth.

It is popular and acceptable to hate Bill Gates. However, without Mr. Gates our life would be very different. By developing and selling a version of the BASIC programming language for the 8080 Intel processor, he inspired and empowered many other people in their development of computers, including Steve Wozniak, the inventor of the Apple. Without Bill Gates, there may not have been a Wozniak. Without Wozniak, there would not have been a Steve Jobs. Without Woz and Jobs, what would you view this blog on? Linux? Not hardly; Linux is a direct response to Windows. And most people would never have been able to afford or learn to use Unix. Since then, Mr. Gates has inspired and empowered millions more ideas and people. There is no way to calculate the wealth and quality of life that Mr. Gates has helped us achieve, but we can be sure it is tremendous.

And Mr. Gates needed us. He needed someone to write software, someone to run the machines that packaged the software, and someone to sweep the floors. Each one of those employees was needed. He needed people to buy the software. He needed other programmers at other companies writing games, productivity packages, and other applications. He needed telecommunications companies to lay more fiber, which made computers more useful, which made his software more useful. He needed Intel and Western Digital to develop more resources and expand the capabilities of computer hardware so that his software could do more. He needed people to mine silicon, pump oil, and produce electricity. He needed instructors to learn and then teach others about his software. He needed people like me to fix computers when they break and customize systems for individuals and companies.

Economics is a tale of symbiosis, large and small. Companies need governments, and vice versa. People need corporations, and vice versa. small companies benefit form large companies, vendors and suppliers affect each other, and it all comes down to one person. Any person. Any little action will set off other actions, some which are imperceptible at first.

The basis of historical and current Capitalism does not make any provisions for individuals or organizations who are unable to compete. They are simply chewed up and spit out. Sometimes that is a good thing when it comes to companies. That is always a bad thing when it removes a human being from the game board. What we need to do is to adjust Capitalism somehow so that it encourages Econmic Synergy, an efficient state where everyone is contributing and benefiting in some way.

I argue that Economic Synergy is in every government's, corporation's, and individual's best interest. I also argue that Corporate Social Responsibility is the best and most efficient means to achieve Economic Synergy.

Capitalism is Good and It Saved My Life

2007-09-21T05:10:00.000-05:00

I have tried, unsuccessfully, to write a post about the greatness of Capitalism. There is waaaay too much ground to cover; Capitalism is great on so many fronts, and that makes it hard to write less than 10 pages on its introduction. It is hard, but not impossible.

I have deleted 1000 paragraphs in my attempt to talk about the greatness of Capitalism, and why we should embrace it as a future economic system rather than scrap it and try something else. Considering what I wrote in Capitalism Is Bad, there are many opportunities to improve Capitalism. However, the fundamental principles of Capitalism are time-tested. They are like the laws of physics; you may not like them, but that does not make them any less true.

Where I am going with this is to set up a series of posts about how I believe that the future of Capitalism, Democracy, and perhaps Western Civilization, lies in the success of Corporate Social Responsibility. It all starts with the assumptions that Freedom should be a fundamental right for all people, and that Capitalism provides that freedom economically to all who choose it.

If Capitalism is so bad, why not embrace Socialism, or some new -ism that we haven't defined yet? Because Capitalism gives us freedom. I started this series off at the beginning of this month by sharing my thoughts on freedom. Capitalism is equal to economic freedom for me. I cannot imagine a system that provides more freedom with my money. Therefore, in a nutshell, that is what makes Capitalism so great: its provision of freedom.

Look back on history and try to imagine where you would be given your current lineage, gender, race, and religion. If you go back to the eighteenth century or earlier (pre-Enlightenment) you would have lived a very dull, oppressed, and limited life unless you come from a family of nobility. 99% of us are not descended from nobility so we can imagine that at any point in history, we would have been restricted from owning property, borrowing, education, voting, moving to another town, whom you could marry, where you could travel, what occupation you worked at, etc... And I am talking about most white men here. If you were a woman or a man of another color back then, I shudder to think of your life.

So many things have contributed to our current freedoms and quality of life. None has contributed more than Capitalism, I would argue. When I take a week off of work and travel away from my home to a destination of my choice, I take it for granted. Had I been born in Ukraine in 1700, I would neither have the option to leave work nor to leave my town. Had I been born anywhere in 1600, I would not have had a choice of who I worked for or what my occupation was.

If I had been born in 1974 in South America or Africa, chances are I would still not have the options and liberties I enjoy today. Had I been born yesterday into an "untouchable" family in India, I would never have the hope of owning property, working a meaningful job, or marrying the hottie that I am currently married to.

The fundamental basis of Capitalism is market theory: Adam Smith's "Invisible Hand" that efficiently rights the wrongs without human intervention. I know, many people think that market theory is not as efficient as we would like to believe. Those are all people who have a stake in managing the economy and would be out of a job if we depended solely on an "Invisible Hand". Look at the Soviet Union if you want to see how managing an economy can bring you nothing but woe. The market contains too many unknown variable for any group of humans to regulate efficiently. When it is left alone, it regulates itself.

Market forces work better when there are more participants and less regulators. As we continue to add people to the world market, we continue to see prosperity grow. That is why it was in the best interests of the wealthy European families to allow more people to participate in the market economy once it began; those wealthy families that participated in the market continued to prosper as the market grew. The families that squandered their wealth and resources and depended on their "birthright" to get by rather than exercising their privileges in the market quickly lost their wealth, land, titles, and places in society.

Capitalism has a tendency to bring out the best in some people and the worst in others. We have laws to deal with the worst people. The best people would not be the best in any other economic system. By giving people the opportunity to own, control, and profit from their creations, we have provided an awesome incentive--one that can not be reproduced in any other system.

Let's say that the year is 1976. I have just graduated from an advanced Scientific University in Soviet Socialist Russia. I am a math wizard, a creative and energetic person, and I have the inkling of an idea for connecting computers and sharing information. It is going to take many hard years of my life to develop this idea, write the software, invent the non-existant hardware I envision, fight the political battles, scrounge up money, convince hordes of people to help...And it will all be owned and controlled by "the People"--the State.

I have the opportunity to invent something that is potentially life-changing and history making. I have the talent, I have the knowledge to get started, and I can probably pull the whole thing off. On the other hand, I could just be satisfied with a secure job for 8 hours and not endure the hard work, frustration, and heartbreak as "the People" take my invention and use it for something I am opposed to. I could just do what I am told for 8 hours a day, play around in my leisure, and live a stable, comfortable life with my family and friends.

Which would you do? Would you altruistically spend your blood, sweat, tears, and years on an invention and give it away for the good of humanity? Or would you just ignore the idea, letting it die quietly in the back of your mind as you enjoy the simple pleasures of life?

Let's look at the costs and benefits: if you develop the idea, you lose years of your life and in the end you get nothing back except (perhaps) a warm fuzzy feeling and a portrait of yourself hung in the hallway of the science institute. On the other hand, you can receive accolades, respect, and comfort from just doing your job well in a Socialist society, and you can spend more time with family and fun if you are not chasing down all the things you need for your machine.

Now assume that it is 1976 and you are Steve Wozniak, Steve Jobs, or Bill Gates. You are a college dropout with a good idea. You may not be the most talented programmer or engineer, but you are good enough to invent something that people want to buy. You could remain in your stable job at HP designing calculators or you could face the frustration, heart-break, and hustle of selling your idea.

Again, you are faced with a choice: do you live a life of obscurity and moderate means or do you put in the effort, make a $100 million overnight, gain widespread fame, have people offer you thousands to come and speak to them, have people name their kids after you, have powerful executives take notes when you share your opinion, and have the opportunity to sell your next idea for more money and less effort?

That is Capitalism. In China, you see people working furiously to copy products that already exist so that they can make a few bucks. No one is allowed to be rich and powerful if they are not a communist official, so no one actually invents anything. This is a people who are unbelievably well-educated, they have a looooong history, and there is money everywhere. However, they know that if they were ever to let out a great idea, it would no longer belong to them. Without an incentive for greatness, we will not see greatness come from China. We may see more lead-painted baby products and poisonous dog food, but not the cure for cancer or a new rocket engine that approaches light speed.

In Capitalist America, you have people throwing out every idea they can to see which one sticks. Everyday, people who were born into inopportune circumstances are finding that they can be rewarded for their hustle and creativity. Even if you are a minority, poor, illiterate, and illegitimate trouble-making slacker, if you can play sports or rhyme in a way that other people are willing to pay money for, you can be rich, famous, and relatively powerful. A self-imposed ignoramus like College Drop-out Kanye West can make money, scoop up the finest honeys, and insult the President of the United States on live TV in front of millions of people...and get talked about for years afterwards.

Therefore, despite the many ways that Capitalism is Bad, it has a fundamental underpinning that we must cling to: the freedom of the individual to profit from their efforts. First of all, it is only right that if "it" is yours, then you should enjoy the benefits and make the decisions regarding "it". Secondly, there is no stronger motivation we know of to inspire greatness in people than the allure of fame, fortune, and power.

Capitalism has allowed, and even encouraged, some bad things in our society. However, almost ever good thing that we enjoy is the result of Capitalism. The benefits of Capitalism inspires scientists, engineers, entertainers, and almost everyone else to new heights.

I know that for myself, I would never have educated myself if I didn't expect it to lead to future wealth, power, and status for me. Mainly, my education provides me with more options and control over future employment. In addition, I am a better employee due to my education. I am a better communicator. I understand more about business dynamics and I understand more about the world around me. Ultimately, I probably make better decisions due to my higher education. I am also in a better position to do something great, if all the other stars fall into place. In that case, my employer is better off because of my education. That means that my coworkers, managers, shareholders, and customers benefit from my education. My education not only improves me, it enables me to improve the society around me. And that is all the result of Capitalism.

Had this been a Socialist or other type of economy, I would not have read one book without naked pictures in it. Without the hope of reward, I would have just done what I had to do to stay out of trouble. Sure, I might have done a little to improve my position, but very little. If I had the brains and talent of Woz or Thomas Edison, I expect I would have been happy to hold a better job than most other people in my Socialist society, and I would have taken up fishing or Chess to wile away my freetime.

As an alcoholic, I can tell you right now what I would have done if I had come of age behind the iron curtain. There is no way I would have chosen industry over booze if that industry resulted in nothing more than callouses on my hand. Without the hope of owning assets, retiring in comfort, and building a better life for my progeny, I am sure that Vodka would have won out.

Therefore, Capitalism saved my life.