Competing Messages: Market for Destruction

David Brooks' column in the NY Times on the 27th of this month was something I enjoyed reading. I intend to offer some comments about it later, but I was also interested in some letters to the Times in response to it. In particular, one that said, in part:

David Brooks’s lament for the erosion of institutions in personal and social life is welcome. But he doesn’t mention its most important source: the values generated by unconstrained markets relentlessly driven to destroy the old in favor of the new.

By all means, read the entire letter. It's very brief.

Again and again, each and every day, we see the price of excess in our economic system. I'm not sure you can exactly call it "free market capitalism," because the market exploited government in its efforts to secure a competitive advantage. So government was involved, just not always in ways that were aligned with the interests of the governed.

Again and again we are reminded that markets, most emphatically, are not "conversations."

I believe, though I am by no means certain, that the root cause of the problem is excessive reliance on competition as an organizing principle. There are many other contributing problems, not the least of which is human nature. But competition compels all players to exploit every weakness in favor of achieving a competitive advantage. And to respect no boundaries, to observe no restraint, in the effort to achieve a competitive advantage.

As always, we have it exactly backwards. We are not consumers, we are the consumed.

Vendor Relationship Management, is not going to solve that problem. It doesn't begin to address the root causes. It's merely going to be a more comfortable way of killing ourselves. Just as the fallacious assertion, the pernicious lie, that "markets are conversations," has made commercial messages appear more palatable by giving them permission to intrude even more deeply into our social interactions.

When you want a better life, someone will sell it to you.

Cheese Omelet: Sunday Run Day

Did nine miles this morning with my running partner. Again, I did not feel terribly well prepared, though not as bad as last week. Between being unable to walk at lunchtime, and my evenings taken up with a school program with my daughter, I felt like a slug. I did get the walk in Friday, and three miles on the treadmill on Wednesday, along with yoga on Monday and Saturday, so it wasn't as though I had done nothing all week, just not what I'm accustomed to doing.

Still, it wasn't bad. Our pace this morning was 10:54, our two previous nine mile efforts came in at 11:07 and 11:26 (but that was with her dog). Average heart rate was up a couple of beats per minute on each mile, but that seems mostly consistent with the level of effort. I didn't have any of that energy gel to snack on, not sure what effect that might have had.

Now I've got to get back to work.

Cheese Omelet: Running out of titles...

Do this long enough, and you can't think of something to call a post that you haven't called it before. Well, and at least have it even obliquely relevant to whatever you think you're going to write.

Once again, I'm behind the eight-ball and probably shouldn't even be writing this, and don't really know why I am, other than I enjoy watching the words appear on the screen. There's probably a treatment or therapy for that.

I've got to get this disaster area I call a home cleaned up this weekend for my third annual Groundhog Day Party, which takes place a week from yesterday. That's going to take most of the weekend. Frankly, I think I have the party because it compels me to clean at least once a year. Of course, cleaning before you have a party seems a bit perverse, because after the party...

Karma, one of my two cats, has recently overcome her fear or anxiety about Bodhi to venture out into the remainder of the house. She'll now climb into my lap when I'm on the couch or the recliner, which makes Bodhi a little nuts. To say nothing of the fact that for the last two years I haven't had to worry about cat hair or Karma or Squeaky destroying one of my knit shirts. Well, those days are over, or back, or something...

Bodhi tries to play with Karma, but she mostly just hisses and swats at him, but she seldom runs. Occasionally he gets a little carried away and she'll bolt, but I think they're kind of working it out.

Match.com is a bit disappointing. Either that, or my expectations are way out of whack. It's a bit like high school all over again. The women you're interested in aren't interested in you, and you aren't interested in the women who are interested in you. Weird. But, that's fine. I'm not in this thing to have a relationship for the sake of having a relationship. I'm just getting tired of sending those, "Thanks, I'm flattered, but I don't think we're a match," e-mails. I gather that sort of thing isn't the norm, as I frequently get thank-you e-mails for having the courtesy to write back and say I'm not interested! In any event, I've edited my profile significantly, recently. Given my proclivity for verbosity, I previously used every available character in that text box. I've cut about two thirds of that so you don't need a cup of coffee to read the damn thing. I think I need to go back and edit the content and perhaps be a bit more mysterious about what I'm seeking. Blech. Not much fun.

Work has been very busy the past few weeks. I've got to fly out to Hawaii the second week in February for another conference. I tried to get out of it, but alas, no. Everyone seems to think it's a great deal! Why would I not want to go to Hawaii? Try eleven hours in an airplane! Plus, I'll be sitting on my butt in a windowless room, with no contact to the outside world for more than 10 hours a day listening to extremely boring and poorly presented PowerPoint presentations! Gah! I'd rather have a root canal! Shouldn't say that, because I'll probably need one soon.

Had a visit from the folks I support up in Virginia Beach, which was actually kind of nice. I seldom get visitors, so it's nice to see someone show interest! That was two weeks ago, and this past week I've been chained to my desk enduring WebEx meetings in preparation for the conference. As a result, I haven't been able to do as much walking as I normally do. So I feel all doughy and cranky. We wrapped the last WebEx early yesterday, and it was still low tide, so one of my co-workers and I put in a late 4.16 mile walk, about half of which was on the beach. Plus it finally warmed up enough to go shirtless on the beach. That was a wonderful antidote to being cooped up in an office all week. And did I mention I'm in a new office now, where there are no windows and I occupy a cubicle where I get to hear everyone else's conversations? Yeah, it's a blast.

Ran eight miles on Sunday with my running partner. Pace was way off, but that was partly because we ran about four miles on the beach. But also because I didn't run the week before, and I hadn't walked at all that week. We're supposed to do nine this Sunday, but I did run about 3.5 miles on the treadmill on Wednesday, and got the walk in yesterday. I did the treadmill at a much faster pace than I normally run, which is why I only ran a short distance. I'm sure the pace will still be off, but I think it'll be better than last week. It'll be high tide, but we have a good nine mile loop that's all paved.

Anyway, I should get back from Hawaii on the 13th of February, have Saturday to recover, then I'm going to run a half-marathon on the 15th.

Time's up. Gotta go...

We've had a spate of ridiculously cold weather here last week. Two hard freezes in a row. Should help delay the onset of the fleas this spring.

BSG: The Beginning of the End (Again)

Tinderbox informs me that I've used my intended title before, so the parenthetical "again" is there to circumvent the ever vigilant code that weaves this tiny portion of the Web.

Anyway...

Watched the first of the final ten episodes tonight. Not bad, but if there's a criticism to make it's that there was so much there to explore, one feels a bit short-changed by a mere 50 minutes or so.

Another long-term character is dead. Presumably, the identity of the final, "fifth" Cylon has been revealed, to no effect. But Starbuck's mystery remains unsolved. So perhaps the reveal of the "fifth" Clyon is merely a head fake?

I will be sad when the BSG saga concludes. But I will be glad too. While I have reservations, I'm fairly confident Ron Moore and company will have made the entire tortuous journey worthwhile. And it will have raised the bar for television science fiction significantly and forever.

But mostly I'll be sad because I don't know when I'll get to see Mary McDonnell again! Well, apart from the DVDs.

Competing Messages: Conversations About Compassion

Before it was turned into a marketing slogan, and an emotion that sellers could instill in buyers, ("creating passionate users") passion was an intense emotion that conveyed that one was willing to suffer for something. Compassion meant to suffer with someone.

Seems you can buy that too these days. Or, some would have it that way.

Dr. Pauline Chen wrote an interesting piece in the NY Times a couple of days ago, in which she offered, among other things, this: In order to restore medicine’s compassion, doctors and patients need to reestablish the balance between cost containment and compassionate care, profit-and-loss tabulations and patient-centered partnerships. We need to give money its proper due but remember that our work, and our worth, is and can be more than the monetary sum of parts.

She was inspired by the "conversation" going on between two other "doctors" who happened to be husband and wife, kidney donor and recipient, husband and wife, soon to be "ex" spouses. One wonders what another "doc" might have made of it?

But then, one needn't wonder.

Competing Messages: Conversations about Privacy

So Steve Jobs' health issues are more complex than he believed. He's taking a leave of absence as Apple's CEO for about five months to focus on his health.

We don't know exactly what ails Mr. Jobs, apart from the possibility that it may be related to his bout with a treatable form of pancreatic cancer.

You can hardly swing a dead RSS feed without hitting someone opining somewhere that Apple has "lost all credibility," because of Mr. Jobs' tenacious insistence that the specific nature of his health issues is none of anyone else's business; and reading carefully crafted arguments that spell out exactly why Mr. Jobs' health is everyone else's business.

Because it's about business.

I'm rather tired of making the case that the assertion that "markets are conversations" is a pernicious, corrosive lie. I'm reading some interesting books about the mind and why it is so difficult to actually "change" someone's mind. It's basically impossible, in fact. People change their minds occasionally, but it's seldom the result of persuasion. Usually it's some significant life event that has altered their perspective. You'd think The Great Depression 2.0 would do the trick! It's early and it still might.

But it's clear to me that it is utterly delusional to believe that one might actually persuade any True Believer™ in The Cluetrain Manifesto that the fundamental premise it is based on is completely false and entirely orthogonal to its stated objectives. Nevertheless, from time to time, as a purely selfish indulgence, it pleases me to point out the bald contradictions.

Here's the thing, as a social matter, where we treat one another as human beings, usually with some modicum of dignity and respect, whether or not one shares one's health history or physical condition is a matter of personal discretion. Said discretion is normally afforded the respect it deserves, as how we are, physically, is a private matter. That's the social custom. Conversation is a fundamentally social act. Markets and commerce are not social activities.

Otherwise reasonable people are behaving like perfect boors and ghouls because they subscribe to a set of beliefs, a set of customs and behaviors, that govern commerce, that govern the activity of the marketplace. Within that particular abstract contingency, it makes perfect sense to demand to know what the state of Steve Jobs' health is, given the belief, true or not, that he is essential to Apple's success. And the marketplace is fundamentally a zero-sum game, at least in the short term, which is where we place most, or nearly all, of our attention. If Jobs is essential to Apple's success, and Jobs is out of the picture, then Apple will not succeed! The financial interests of investors, and the demands of the pundits and parasitic "information" brokers that exist to "serve" those interests, trump any social expectation of privacy. So, on behalf of all those poor, ignorant, vulnerable investors, the pundits and poseurs jump up and down to draw attention to themselves and make their demands. "We must know how ill Steve is!"

Yeah, "markets are conversations." Right.

As if the Madoff debacle didn't put the lie to that.

As if all those realtors and mortgage brokers that put people into houses and mortgages they couldn't affod didn't put the lie to that. I guess they were "just talking."

As if all those "credit default swaps" and "mortgage backed securities," didn't put the lie to that.

Denial is not a river in Egypt.

Commerce exploits our social lives, even as it competes with them for our attention and our authority. It also exploits our every weakness, as it seeks a competitive advantage, including an advantage over the attractions social activities have for our attention.

Commerce is an essential activity. So is sewage treatment. We closely regulate sewage treatment, because if we don't, we can make ourselves sick. Our consumer culture is a manifestation of the sickness unchecked commerce has inflicted on our society. We separate and regulate essential activities that pose a risk to larger society. We have health codes and standards of hygiene to keep people from getting sick at commercial enterprises that serve social needs by serving food and drink.

We need a new set of hygiene standards for how we choose to think about our economy. We need to start thinking about commerce the way we think about sewage.

I can't think of a better way to start than to wash our hands of the disgusting notion that "markets are conversations."

Sailor Jack is 82 today!

A "Happy birthday!" shout-out to my old man, who is 82 years old today. Lots of sons think their dad is the best. I'm one too. I'm damn glad he's still with us, and hope he will continue to be so for many years to come.

Dad recently received the sad news that DeeDee Bonin, the first love of his life and sister of his brother-in-law, Ray, passed away recently from leukemia. If you're fortunate to live a long life, you also have to endure the loss of so many friends and loved ones. I'm sure it never gets easier. But one should be so fortunate as my father, who has a wonderful wife, and so many children, grandchildren and friends, all living, who love him so.

Happy birthday, Dad.

Groundhog Day III

It's that time of the year again! Well, I just checked and I didn't blog about Groundhog Day II last year, so the "again" thing is probably lost on everyone. But two years ago, I did blog about it. I wrote:

I was hanging an old picture I got from one of the staffs I served on. Everybody signs it with some sentiment when you depart. Someone made a reference to the "NFL Club." NFL stood for "no fucking life," and it was a reference to the amount of time we put into the job. Me, not so much, as I left before the staff deployed. But still, the NFL idea kind of fit me back then, and still does. The thing is, if you want to have a life, you kind of have to make it, it doesn't just fall in your lap.

Well, I don't know if I'm just about to figure anything out, but I figure having a party isn't a bad way to begin. And if I fall out of bed and bump my head some day, maybe it won't be a matter of days before anyone notices I'm missing. The anniversary date of my wedding happens to be February 1st; so, to me, February 2nd seems like a damn fine date to remind myself each year that I do have a life. And I better get busy living it.

As it turned out, that party probably did mark the beginning of the current phase of my life. Certainly, it has been far more social! Though I didn't know it at that moment, I set in motion the events that were to break my heart at that party. (Not that I did anything wrong, it was just an "unintended consequences" sort of thing.) But I came out of the party with two new friends who grew into a small circle of friends, who have gone on to expand into a large circle of friends. Some very close, some not so much, but all valued.

Groundhog Day II was more successful than the first, in terms of attendance. I think I invited 50 to the first, 25 said they'd come and 15 showed up. For II, I invited 40, 20 said they'd attend and 30 showed up. I'm guessing III may approach 50 people. Maybe. As these things go, they likely won't all be here at the same time. People come and go. But it'll be a good time. I've ordered the groundhogs, though there are only three this year. (One is out of stock.) And I've ordered a couple of copies of the movie. I drew names out of a hat last year, I may have to think of something else this year. I'm probably going to go with a quarter keg of beer rather than an assortment of bottled beer. It's a recession year, you know. The first year I had food from Carrabba's Italian Grill, Sticky Fingers BBQ, and Dick's Wings. Last year I skipped the Carrabba's, but the BBQ and wings go over really well.

The most challenging part of this year's party is the date. February 2nd falls on a Monday, and worse, it's the Monday after the Super Bowl. So I'm going to have the party on the 30th of January, and I'll have to have to come up with some clever excuse to put in the invitation. Creating the invitation is half the fun. Anyway, last year's party was on the Saturday night before the Super Bowl, which made the Super Bowl parties a bit much. A Saturday to recover is better. I think we'll be a Friday event for the next several years, looking at the calendar.

Anyway, I think III will make it a tradition or a habit or something. Maybe it'll be "the charm." Who knows?

2008 Fitness Stats

Dr. James Vornov (I know that sounds too formal, but I've been writing it that way for nine years. Foolish consistencies and little minds, I know.) recaps his fitness efforts as recorded by the Garmin Forerunner 305 fitness watch. I have one of those too, based on Dr. Vornov's reports.

My stats are less impressive than his, but I don't wear the watch when I'm doing yoga or strength training or working the heavy bag. Not that that would add more than 35 hours to my yearly total. Plus, I walk the dog a lot. A lot.

But, that being said, Ascent dutifully recorded my annual totals, which I share with you here for no particular reason other than perhaps an inflated ego:

Duration: 205:17:20 (that is - 205 hours, 17 minutes and 20 seconds)

Max HR (heart rate): 190 (achieved three different months)

Avg HR: 128 (most of my training is walking)

Distance: 763.87 miles (includes about 26 miles of one bike ride where I wore the watch. The rest is walking and running.)

Avg Pace: 16:07

Moving Pace: 15:15

Calories: 139276 (not at all sure how accurate that is - likely too high)

HR Zone 1: 27:41:31 (H:M:S)

HR Zone 2: 13:06:05

HR Zone 3: 19:07:53

HR Zone 4: 15:28:11

HR Zone 5: 3:08:32

What all that HR Zone stuff really means, I have little idea. I have a general understanding, but whether my numbers are good, bad or indifferent is unknown to me. I mostly walk, but I also run. Sometimes I run fast enough to feel uncomfortable, but I usually slow down. On a couple of occasions I got uncomfortable enough to stop running and just walk home. But mostly it's all quite comfortable.

In general, I think my heart rate for all my activities has been trending downward modestly. Naturally, where our pace has increased, so has my heart rate, but only modestly. I've been looking at the trends, and I wish I could copy and paste explicit data from Ascent, but that doesn't seem to work. It always seems to copy the entire data table. In any event, I try to watch the trends, and they seem good. I think what I'm going to have to do is really dig into Ascent and see if I can't get the data in a format I want. I want all the four mile walks together. All the runs sorted by distance and date. Then it should be clearer what's going on. In general though, it seems good.

Here's a screen cap from the preferences for heart rate in Ascent with the zone breakdown:

Okay, I'm rambling now and I really don't have much more to offer than I love this little device. I think I really need to spend more time organizing the data to draw any clearer inferences.

First Cheese Omelet of a New Year

Well, happy New Year!

Guess what? Jonathon Delacour's back! It's a happy new year already! How cool is that? Welcome back, Jonathon. Another weblog worth reading.

Had a nice time last night. Got all dressed up, or as much as I ever do these days. (I need a new wardrobe. Skinny Dave's "got no clothes," to quote a limo driver from a certain movie about a guy named Joe and a volcano.) Anyway, went down to the Museum of Science and history to ring in the new year and enjoy the fireworks. I was the designated driver, so I'm remarkably clear-headed this morning.

Later on today I'll be going to the Gator Bowl with some friends, courtesy of my friend, Mike, the radio DJ. Very cool.

This morning's ham and cheese omelet included a filling of pico de gallo, warmed in the microwave before folding it into the omelet. Very tasty.

So far, we're off to a great start. I'm sure there'll be rough sledding ahead, and the knowledge that far too many of my fellow travelers are already coping with adversity somewhat tempers my happiness. Nevertheless, I think it's important that we engage with the capacity to experience joy and happiness whenever the opportunity affords itself. We only have moments to live. All of us.

So happy new year!