Blurt Daily

I was walking yesterday and overheard a single sentence of a conversation between three guys.  The first guy said, “They don’t understand that the only way to restore freedom is to temporarily take away all their rights.” The other two guys agreed.  I have no idea of the context of this sentence, but I would guess they were discussing the issue of freedom vs security (i.e. Do you give up rights for the purpose of being kept safe?).  Well, it got me thinking about whether or not this was true in any context.

I look at laws as restrictions of freedom, some necessary and some are not.  In deciding which of them are most useful and needed, I always end up thinking of a hose analogy:  If you turn on the water, it comes rushing out of the hose and onto the ground.  If you put a nozzle on it, the water becomes focused and sprays 10 to 20 times farther.  The nozzle can also be tightened to a point where the water is cut off.

If the water is society’s potential, laws are like the nozzle that can be used to restrict certain behaviors of society and focus the efforts of the rest toward prosperity.  An example is a law against fraud which, when enforced, promote investment.    On the other hand, if there are too many laws, or they are designed/enforced improperly, this cuts off the potential.  An example would be the “one-time bonus taxes” proposed on employees of companies that received TARP funds.

So back to the question… are there situations where either an individual or society should give up their rights in order to have freedom restored at a later time?  Here are a couple of my quick thoughts:

1. A does not always equal B.  The guy’s comment assumes two things: the only way to get freedom is to give up rights, and that once the rights are given up that they will be restored.  I don’t think either of those are true.
2. I’ve always liked a quote attributed to Benjamin Franklin, “They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.” Maybe its a little disingenuous to apply a quote from the days of war and where people dueled for honor, to circumstances today, but I think the principle is the same.
3. I don’t agree with the comment even in an financial sense.  The comparison would be someone, who in exchange for financial security, temporarily gives up their ability to produce.  The guy’s comment might be true if this led to greater production in the future, but I think that it has the opposite affect as seen by our welfare system.  People are compelled to give up their ability to produce, in exchange for financial security (a set financial payment).  This payment does not encourage one to step out and take risks, but breeds dependence.

This has probably been well-covered in Dilbert, but there are some phrases I am so sick of:

• Quickly touch base
• Reach out to
• Connect
• It is what it is
• Shoot me an email
• Give me a buzz
• Get on the horn
• Any business motivation phrase like, “Attitude determines altitude”
• In the loop
• Fill you in
• At the end of the day…
• Outside the box
• Take ownership of
• Call it a day
• The big picture
• Anything that brings up “synergy”
• Team player
• It’s a no-brainer
• Give 110%
• Hit the ground running
• Proactive

Now I’m “drawing a blank” and can’t think of the myriad business phrases that make me cringe when I hear them.  So this list is just a start.

Read an interesting article about a “turn-around expert” named George Cloutier who just released a book called Profits Aren’t Everything, They’re the Only Thing. Naturally, a title like this is going to stir criticism from the same people who will attack the “Greed is Good” theme. But after reading about him more, I like what he had to say.

“Teamwork and trust are overrated.” My time at E&Y was invaluable, but I learned that if a client asks a question from their auditor, they will rarely get an immediate response. This is because the senior/manager/whoever feels compelled to consult with their superior and so on up the chain before responding. This is promoted as “teamwork” and a “consultation culture” which I recognize has some benefits, but taken too far (as it has been) results in employees who never build confidence in their own mastery of a subject. They don’t need to because they can rely on the team. What is not overrated, is individual leadership.

“Micromanagement and enforced accountability are undervalued.” A good friend and successful entrepreneur gave me a book called “The Art of Execution” which explores the skill of getting things done. While I have not finished the book (ironic or hypocritic of me?) even the first few pages made me want to rev into action personally and professionally. The book discusses how executive level positions are often sought after because at that level one deals with making decisions that affect the big picture – its strategic stuff now. And the best part, at that level you no longer need to look at journal entries, and scrutinize sales report, and ask how specific vendors are doing, cause that would be micromanaging… right? It’s only when you know the details that you can execute the big stuff.

Lastly, I really enjoyed his 10 New Years Resolutions. I hope you enjoy them too.

1. Stop lying to myself about my profits and run my company by the numbers.
2. Fire underperforming employees, even if they’re related to me.
3. Pay myself a real salary. Volunteering is for soup kitchens.
4. Squeeze better terms out of vendors.
5. Proudly wear my control-freak badge.
6. Roll up my sleeves and shill.
7. Stop discussing my options and decisions too extensively with employees.
8. Give up golf, retreats, off-site meetings and trade shows. No one ever makes money at those things.
9. Make my team work much harder.
10. Stop using the recession as an excuse.

A while back California politicians had the brilliant idea to outlaw talking on your cell phone while driving unless you used a hands free device.  In anticipation of this new law, millions of drivers purchased a bluetooth hands free device for their cell phone.  I remember the first weekend seeing all kinds of dorky old people walking around in the mall or Costco with their bluetooth still on.  It was like the law gave them the license to look like nerds.  Anyway, since then, the use has steadily declined.  I think I see 10x more people on their cell phones while driving than I see people with bluetooths.  I could probably give out at least 5 tickets a day to offenders. 

Im guessing there were some political contributions by all the manufacturers of those devices.  Talk about a windfall!

I hope this isn’t turning into an entertainment blog, but I think Conan O’Brien is worth writing about, no matter the forum.  Suffice it to say that I think Conan is the greatest person on TV.  In response to all of the recent shuffling of late night television shows on NBC, Conan issued this public statement (it’s kind of long, but worth reading in order to see why Conan is so good): 

People of Earth:

In the last few days, I’ve been getting a lot of sympathy calls, and I want to start by making it clear that no one should waste a second feeling sorry for me. For 17 years, I’ve been getting paid to do what I love most and, in a world with real problems, I’ve been absurdly lucky. That said, I’ve been suddenly put in a very public predicament and my bosses are demanding an immediate decision.

Six years ago, I signed a contract with NBC to take over The Tonight Show in June of 2009. Like a lot of us, I grew up watching Johnny Carson every night and the chance to one day sit in that chair has meant everything to me. I worked long and hard to get that opportunity, passed up far more lucrative offers, and since 2004 I have spent literally hundreds of hours thinking of ways to extend the franchise long into the future. It was my mistaken belief that, like my predecessor, I would have the benefit of some time and, just as important, some degree of ratings support from the prime-time schedule. Building a lasting audience at 11:30 is impossible without both.

But sadly, we were never given that chance. After only seven months, with my Tonight Show in its infancy, NBC has decided to react to their terrible difficulties in prime-time by making a change in their long-established late night schedule.

Last Thursday, NBC executives told me they intended to move the Tonight Show to 12:05 to accommodate the Jay Leno Show at 11:35. For 60 years the Tonight Show has aired immediately following the late local news. I sincerely believe that delaying the Tonight Show into the next day to accommodate another comedy program will seriously damage what I consider to be the greatest franchise in the history of broadcasting. The Tonight Show at 12:05 simply isn’t the Tonight Show. Also, if I accept this move I will be knocking the Late Night show, which I inherited from David Letterman and passed on to Jimmy Fallon, out of its long-held time slot. That would hurt the other NBC franchise that I love, and it would be unfair to Jimmy.

So it has come to this: I cannot express in words how much I enjoy hosting this program and what an enormous personal disappointment it is for me to consider losing it. My staff and I have worked unbelievably hard and we are very proud of our contribution to the legacy of The Tonight Show. But I cannot participate in what I honestly believe is its destruction. Some people will make the argument that with DVRs and the Internet a time slot doesn’t matter. But with the Tonight Show, I believe nothing could matter more.

There has been speculation about my going to another network but, to set the record straight, I currently have no other offer and honestly have no idea what happens next. My hope is that NBC and I can resolve this quickly so that my staff, crew, and I can do a show we can be proud of, for a company that values our work.

Have a great day and, for the record, I am truly sorry about my hair; it’s always been that way.

Yours,

Conan

I think it’s great how he isn’t complaining and getting angry with NBC.  He’s honest and says he’s not sure what he’s doing next.  He recognizes that staying would just push the burden back onto Jimmy Fallon.  He has integrity.  Conan’s comedy has always been refreshing and new.  His reaction to all of this, where he is obviously getting majorly you-know-what, is also refreshing in a time of entitlement.

It’s 2010.  I have nothing really to contribute to all the writings/summaries/best of’s on the past year and decade.  I’ll just say that it was an amazing decade of growth for me personally in many ways.  Blurt Daily was one of the ways which helped me mature.  We originally set up Blurt as a spontaneous way to “clear our heads”, to articulate ideas, frustrations, ruminations, praises, and rantings about politics, economics, and culture in general.  There was so much pent up that we decided to have each author post once a week and it worked well.  The posts were long and thoughtful.  But around September, I felt like I had let out all the pent up information in my brain and so did the others.  So the posts started becoming forced and short, with a genuine posting here and there.

We have decided, going forward, we’re just going to post something when we feel like it.  Yeah, I know that sounds smug, but that was the original intent of the blog anyways.  I think there is enough turmoil in the news that something, somewhere will incite something in someone at a fairly regular pace.  Or maybe this will be the last post ever on this blog.  Haha, we’ll see.  So, keep Blurt on your Google Readers and check in periodically.

So, happy new year and new decade.  And to throw in one best-of: Animal Collective’s album, Merriweather Post Pavillion, was hands-down the best album of the year, no contest.  I don’t care what anyone else says, especially Andy (Their above album artwork is especially trippy if you click the image and enlarge it.  Try to move your eyes around the image without it moving).  Merriweather Post Pavillion and their 2005 album, Feels, are easily two of top 10 albums of the decade.  They’re finally getting a sliver of the amount of the recognition they’ve deserved for so long.  OK, that’s it for opinion in this post.

Happy new decade!!

Beginning January 1, California will restrict private restaurants from selling food cooked with trans fats to willing buyers.  Concurrently, there is a grass roots movement to legalize marijuana in the state.  Can you have a more crazy state?  Are trans fats really more dangerous to the public than weed?

I’m on vacation = I’m in a really good mood.  Further, as has been discussed in emails between site authors, I have not been following the news that much = in a really good mood.  Strange??

But to keep with the theme of blurtdaily, I’d like to do some complaining…

1. I hate it when my laziness beats out my hunger.

2. Cell phones ruined pushing people in the pool.

3. Every phone should have the same charger.

4. Can we all just agree to ignore whatever comes after DVDs?

5. I think everyone has a movie that they love so much, it actually becomes stressful to watch it with other people. I’ll end up wasting 90 minutes shiftily glancing around to confirm that everyone’s laughing at the right parts, then making sure I laugh just a little bit harder (and a millisecond earlier) to prove that I’m still the only one who really, really gets it.

6. I would rather try to carry 10 plastic grocery bags in each hand than take 2 trips to bring my groceries in

7. I hate when I plan out a conversation with someone in my head and they don’t follow the script.

8. Why did it take you so long to answer the door? No, I didn’t knock, I texted that I was here.

9. I hate when I think of something really great to say during a conversation but by the time I get a chance to speak, we’re on a different topic. Do I let it pass and keep the good thought to myself, or do I awkwardly bring up the old topic again?

These come from a great site called www.ruminations.com which is filled with other gems such as:

1. Answering the same letter three times or more in a row on a Scantron test is absolutely petrifying.

2. I think my other three stove burners are becoming jealous of front-right.

3. Whenever someone says “I’m not book smart, but I’m street smart”, all I hear is “I’m not real smart, but I’m imaginary smart”.

4. What would happen if I hired two private investigators to follow each other?

Hope you enjoy and my “complaining” hasn’t ruined your day.

There are so many crises in our world right now.  Most likely, many of them are only a crisis because the media has told us they are a crisis.  In any case, people are talking about a water crisis.  The theory goes that with population growth and climate change, water is becoming more and more scarce and conservation is becoming a bigger and bigger issue.

I was at a client the other day and I had to use the restroom in their office commons area.  When I entered the toilet stall, the automatic toilet flushed.  When I was in the middle of doing my business, the toilet flushed again.  When I left the stall, the toilet flushed a 3rd time.  The toilet flushed 2 more times than necessary.  That’s pretty wasteful.  And that isn’t the only place where I’ve experienced that; I’m sure many others have noticed that too.  Let’s assume that 4 people use that toilet per hour in that office, 9 hours a day.  That’s 36 uses.  Let’s assume that it uses 2 gallons of water per flush, that’s 72 gallons of wasted water per toilet per day.  Further, let’s assume the 2 toilets in the restroom are used roughly 250 days a year at that rate.  That’s 36,000 gallons of wasted water every year. 

And that is just one office in one city.  I have no idea how many offices have malfunctioning automatic toilets or exactly how many cities there are in the U.S.  I read somewhere that, according to a census, there are about 19,000 “cities”.  Let’s go with that number.  And let’s assume that each city has just 1 office with 2 malfunctioning toilets.  That would amount to 684 million gallons of water wasted each year.  I think that’s a pretty conservative estimate  There are definitely more than 2 flush-happy automatic toilets in each city.

Let’s just do away with automatic toilets.  Maybe this is a very Libertarian idea, but let’s allow people to flush their own toilets.  Whoa, what a concept.  Everyone manages to flush their own toilet at home every day, so why not at work?  684 million gallons of water would be worth it every year.

On a related note, while I was in college, I was always fascinated by how busy the men’s restrooms were and the constant flushing of urinals.  30 people could realistically use a single urinal in an hour.  A normal urinal uses about 1 gallon of water per flush.  That’s 30 gallons of water/hour for a very busy urinal.  Much more likely though is that it’s less than that.  But I always thought, why don’t all these guys just stop flushing the toilet?  And every 15 minutes, or after every 10 uses, the toilet automatically flushes.  Some people would think this is super gross and that it lends itself to bacteria-spreading.  But urine that has been sitting for 10 minutes isn’t very different than urine that has been sitting for 10 seconds.  This obviously really only works for men’s urinals and not for women’s restrooms in any way.  I won’t even attempt to calculate how much water would be saved, but it would have to be a very, very large number.

So maybe this is a good conclusion: For all toilets, make them manual.  Flush when you’re done.  For busy men’s urinals, make them automatically flush every 15 minutes or 10 uses during peak use times.  During down times, enable manual flushing capabilities.

I think this would be a huge, easy first step in taking care of any water crisis that the media is talking about.  Obviously, it would require a small capital investment by the various businesses, governments, and schools to implement such a plan.  But the monthly savings would quickly offset the initial investment and would then begin providing a substantial ROI.