• About
  • Follow
  • Life: An Odd Analogy
  • Making Debates Suck a Wee Bit Less
  • To heck with the good ol’ days
  • Writing

Random Blather

~ Feverish ravings of a middle-aged mind

Random Blather

Monthly Archives: October 2014

When Being Correct Doesn’t Help

24 Friday Oct 2014

Posted by dougom in Opinion

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

economics, Ferguson, police, politics

right-wing-predictions-that-were-wrong-L-hnq1pU
Image courtesy of PaperBlog

Ever since they shuffled onto the scene in the guise of long-haired hippies in the 60s, the progressive left has been a) continually dismissed and even bashed by elected officials and the mainstream media, and b) been right about a ton of issues, over and over.  So, one item at a time.

“Hippie bashing” is a popular sport in the media and with politicians, especially politicians in Washington.  (Though it’s not limited to them; think Reagan in the 60s and how he treated any kind of left-wing protest on UC campuses.)  The first President I can remember is Richard Nixon, and though he made some nods towards youth, he mostly detested those “dirty hippies”.  And he was hardly alone; when asked in a Town Hall by a caller about drug or marijuana legalization, Obama simply laughed and moved on to the next question, as if it were such a silly notion it was beneath comment.

Now, of course, weed is legal in several states, “medicinal marijuana” in several others (despite heavy federal crackdowns by a nominally Democratic president), and even the most establishment of figures are saying the War on Drugs is a waste of money, time, resources, and causes people guilty of picayune crimes to be tossed into jail alongside murderers and rapists.  Not to mention that the busts are disproportionately minorities despite the fact that it’s caucasians who are most likely to be toking.

And this is my point:  When Reagan launched his huge escalation of the War on Drugs (alongside the phenomenally idiotic “Just Say No” campaign, the 80s answer to “abstinence-based sex education”, though more anodyne), many, many, many progressives said it was a waste of time and resources; that it would send people to prison for minor crimes to be jailed alongside murderers and rapists, and that it would disproportionately effect the poor and minorities.  And we were derided as dirty hippies, probably stoned, told to shut-up, and assured the government knew what it was doing.  And here we are, 30+ years along, and it’s clear we were dead right.

The same is true for a number of critical, key policies.  The dirty hippies were absolutely right in predicting a war in Iraq would be an endless quagmire that would do no good.  (And despite Bush&Cheney’s efforts to make it appear so, the vast majority of people on the left did not believe Saddam Hussein was better off alive than dead.  Although many Iraqis these days might disagree.)  The dirty hippies were correct in predicting that supply-side economics would cause huge budget deficits, increase the federal debt, and greatly increase income disparity.  (Look, righties:  Supply-side economics doesn’t work.  It doesn’t.  It got a more-than-fair trial at both the national and state levels, and it never works.  Get over it!)  Heck, the list of economic issues on which the progressives have been right and the right-wing wrong alone could fill a book–the effects of increasing the minimum wage (it doesn’t cost jobs); the effects of increasing taxes on the rich (it also doesn’t cost jobs and does increase tax revenue); the effects of regulation on business; and so on.

We hippies insisted that “abstinence-based sex education” would increase the incidences of teen pregnancy and STIs; it does.  We said making abortion outlawed or more difficult to attain would increase illegal abortion rates and the mortality rate among pregnant women; it does.  We said allowing marriage equality would have no negative effect on heterosexual marriage rates; it doesn’t.  Don’t even get me started on the negative impact of militarizing the police and greatly augmenting their numbers, which has led to things like Ferguson and the unbelievable increase in effort and money spent busting sex workers (which I personally believe is the “Drug War” equivalent for this and the next decade, i.e. pointless, expensive, and doomed to fail).  And on and on.  And this isn’t even taking on such Fox “News”-driven nonsense as “unskewing polls”, or their claims about the size of the federal workforce under Obama (it’s decreased dramatically), and all their other crazy nonsense.

(I hate to break it to you, folks on the right, but we progressives have been right a lot. A lot more often than y’all.  You want me to go on?  Injecting capitalism into everything doesn’t work–for-profit prisons, colleges, and health care have all been an expensive disaster.  Industries don’t self-regulate; where pollution restrictions are relaxed, the air, water, and soil becomes more polluted because it is economically better to just keep polluting and pay fines than to clean up your factories; it’s cheaper to just ignore safety violations and let people die in coal-mine explosions and pay the fines; etc.  Printing money in certain situations such as a liquidity trap does not cause inflation.  And on and on.)

And yet, we’re still not taken seriously, despite our track record of accuracy and correctness.  Politicians make fun of us; our questions, comments, and opinions are cast aside as coming from “the crazy left”, even when we’re to the right of Eisenhower; the news media delights in running us down.

It’s even worse, because the way for nominally left-wing politicians to appear “tough” and “manly” (even when they’re women) is to bash them dirty hippies, and the mainstream media absolutely loves it.  I am not entirely sure why; trying to overturn accusations that they’re “too liberal” themselves (which is a load of hooey); embarrassment at their own individual liberal leanings; having been on the outs in high school and wanting to be accepted by the Kool Kids; I have no idea.  But it’s disgusting.  Doubly-disgusting given how often we’re right.  Not to mention the fact that lots of us have short hair, aren’t dirty, own houses, have jobs, are in long-term relationships, etc.  Triply-denigrating, you might say.

And the point is this–and it’s a disheartening one: It’s not enough to be right.  My side of the political spectrum has been right over and over and over for almost as long as I can remember, and 34 years on from “the Reagan revolution”, we’re still not listened to.  The only way you get listened to, apparently, is to use exactly the right words (“inner-city youth” instead of “damn n*ggers”), play to people’s fears, and keep calling the opposition liars even when the opposition is actually, ya know, correct.  (Climate change; endless wars; the effects of Obamacare; etc.)  We’re learning to do it, a bit; calling gay marriage “marriage equality” was a good move.  Referring to global warming as “climate change” was also smart, not to mention more accurate.  But when it comes to fear and demagoguery, the GOP really runs us ragged.

I like to think it’s because folks on the left are, at heart, more honest and good-hearted.  I know that I personally don’t want to resort to those tactics because I keep thinking that if I just lay the facts out for people, they’ll realize that they’ve been hoodwinked, fooled, and lied to, and accept the left-wing policies that have been and continue to help them with open arms.  But alas, I don’t think it’s possible.  But I keep hoping so, because the alternative is a right-wing-led national car crash, and to be honest, I really like this country and want it to succeed.

And now if you’ll excuse me, I think I’ll do something to cheer myself up.  Watch “Singin’ in the Rain”, maybe, or some Chuck Jones cartoons.  Oy.

Lost Girl: A Guilty Pleasure You Shouldn’t Feel Guilty About

02 Thursday Oct 2014

Posted by dougom in Fiction, News, Opinion

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

GLBT, television

imagehandler
Images courtesy of Showcase Lost Girl site

We all have guilty pleasures. Maybe you’re a hardcore leftist intellectual whose partner publishes dense books on comparative religion and you read People Magazine on the sly; maybe you’re a professor of Music specializing in Medieval religious music and you follow Miley Cyrus on Twitter and have every one of her albums; maybe your an avowed fan and proponent of the detective novel as major literature, a member of the Baker Street Irregulars, and a regular speaker on the influence of Doyle on modern detective fiction, but you have every episode of Scooby Doo on your Tivo. I dunno what yours is; I just know that people have them.

For me it’s usually some TV show or other. I can rationalize it; for example, I can make a good case that my love of Kim Possible shows my feminist leanings, my support of girl empowerment, and come up with plenty of other pseudo-intellectual nonsense, but the truth is I watch it because it’s funny and Kim kicks ass.

But I want to mention one guilty pleasure that is in some ways truly remarkable: Lost Girl.

At first blush, this is your classic guilty pleasure. Vampires! Werewolves! Succubi! Conspiracy theories and lost civilizations and lots of fight scenes! Lots of hot women in tight leather outfits! Gratuitous ow-neckline cleavage shots!  Girl-on-girl make-out sessions!

bo and lauren
See?  Told ya.

And let’s just stop there and back up a minute. Because here’s the thing:

From a perspective of how women are treated and how GLB (no trans characters that I can remember) relationships are treated, it’s one of the most level-headed shows I’ve ever seen.

The most obvious thing is who this show is about:  A woman.  And her female live-in, non-sexual best friend.  And the main character’s girlfriend.  And her main protagonists:  The leader of the “dark” folks (that’s what they call themselves)–also a woman–and her long-lost mother (yes, a woman).   (And oh, yeah; her sort-of boyfriend the werewolf.)

Seeing a pattern here?

women-lauren-bo-ksenia-solo-lost-girl-anna-silk-zoie-palmer-kenzi-HD-Wallpaper
The three main characters; what’s unusual for TV lead characters about this picture?

I haven’t even mentioned the many, many characters who are on for longer or shorter periods, like Linda Hamilton in a multi-show guest-starring role, or Rachel Skarsten as real-life valkyrie, or . . . well, you get the point.  LOTS of women, and front and center.  This show passes the Bechdel test with ease (although I’m sure there must be an episode somewhere in its five-year run that doesn’t).

And as a middle-aged guy who has always been aggravated by the way women’s roles in film and TV seem divided into two classes (ingenue, and mom), I’m absolutely thrilled that the powerful, strong, independent, sexy (it has to be said; she playing a succubus, for Pete’s sake!), tough, absolutely kick-ass woman who plays the lead is over 40 and (in real life) a mom.  A middle-aged woman who plays an independent person not mooning after some guy or is a mom?  Wow; who’d’a thunk?  And despite the “common wisdom” among Hollywood movie and TV types, it’s run for five seasons.  So put that in your sexist pipes and smoke it, you jerks!

Anna-Silk-as-Bo-in-Lost-Girl-TV-Series-2
Lead character, Bo, preparing to kick ass

And finally, I’m incredibly pleased at how unremarked the treatment of gays, lesbians, and bisexuals this show presents.  The lead character is a bisexual woman who has had men, women, and sometimes both as partners and lovers.  Various other characters are straight, gay, or lesbian, and no one makes a big point of it; it’s just part of their character.  We don’t have situations like “Will and Grace” or “Ellen” or many other shows and movies where a big deal is made of the fact that this or that character is gay or lesbian or bi and oh my god shouldn’t we get a lot of credit for being so brave?  Nope; it’s just a natural part of how the characters are portrayed.  And in my opinion, that’s what we’re driving towards, right?  Where being GLBT is so normalized and unremarkable that we don’t, well, remark on it.  (And a lesbian actress plays a lesbian character; heaven forfend!)

Now yes, this show definitely falls into the “guilty pleasure” category in many ways.  Being Canadian, it can show more nudity than US programs, and it takes this as far as it can–lots of beautiful women and men in very revealing clothing.  (Oh yes; men too.  You should see the scene where Bo, the main character, visits her mother’s house and is served–and offered “services” by–her mother’s shirtless, tight-leather-pants-wearing, hunky Chippendale’s male “thralls”.)  Lots of cleavage and tight leather pants and sex scenes.  Not to mention plenty of fighting with swords and knives and fists, claws and cross-bows, you name it.  Our Heroine has a trunk filled with weapons.

thralls
Beefcake on the hoof

So yes, “Lost Girl” is a guilty pleasure on one level, but on another, it’s quite a remarkable show.  If you at all like science fiction, fantasy, or strong, powerful, interesting lead characters, gender equality, and positively-presented (without a lot of self-congratulation) GLB characters and relationships, you might enjoy it, too.

Meetings, Smartphones, and You

01 Wednesday Oct 2014

Posted by dougom in News, Opinion

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

business, high tech

meetings-with-laptop
Image courtesy of Mobility Digest

Recently I read an interesting post/piece of advice on LinkedIn about smartphone use during meetings in the corporate environment. The author, Travis Bradberry, provides a number of observations (mostly negative) and recommendations (ditto) regarding the use–or non-use, I really should say–of smartphones in meetings.  It’s a thoughtful article, but it misses a few points and, because I’m a blowhard, I thought I’d share.

I’ve been in high tech for a long time, and as you might expect from a bunch of nerds, we like to have the latest gear.  (I remember vividly a meeting in the late 90s, when the first PDAs came out; the meeting concluded, and then every nerd in the room gathered around the guy who had a new PDA, peppering him with questions, wanting to play with it.  We love our tech, we nerds.)  The point being that smartphones probably filtered into the meetings I attend in advance of, say, Wall St. banker meetings or Madison Avenue ad team meetings or whatnot.  By 2008, every nerd in high tech probably had an iPhone or a not-unreasonable facsimile.  So I’ve had plenty of real-world experience on how tech use and meetings collide.

Meetings are hard.  Not “hard” in the sense that working 14 hours in the heat of a tobacco field is hard, or down in a coal mine, or even driving a truck.  But the purpose of a meeting is to get agreement on the items this particular group of people has to decide on, or relay some critical information to a group.  And the hard part is getting those done without petty bickering; boring the majority of the people (all at once or in turn as topics come up that only one or two people care about); pedantic descent into arcane details (engineers do this a lot); not getting agreement; losing control of the meeting so the key information isn’t relayed; and on and on.

By far the biggest risk for a meeting attendee–particularly when you’re attending a meeting run by someone several levels above you in the hierarchy–is massive, profound, unbelievable boredom.  This isn’t anyone’s fault; if executives didn’t meet with the “individual contributors” (as we working stiffs are called), they would (rightly) be seen as “out of touch”, so they need to “address the troops” on some kind of regular basis.  The problem with this is your typical executive sees the world from such a rarefied level, where everything is corporate profit and loss, meetings with other executives at other companies, trips to give talks at various industry events, meeting with high-level politicians, etc., that to an IC they are speaking of stuff that has very little to do with an IC’s day-to-day (or even year-to-year) life.  Sure, it’s important that they’re out there doing that stuff, getting government contracts, and so on, but you’re writing code/error checking code/writing documentation/creating marketing collateral/selling to other companies/doing IT work/etc., and that stuff, well, in a very real way it simply doesn’t matter.

Even when an exec is meeting with a small group, it’s important to remember that he (it’s almost always a “he”) has very little idea of what the people in the room with him do day-to-day.  In my field, I’ve met with many executives who had no idea what a tech writer even was, let alone what I did every day.  So as you might imagine, there’s a pretty big disconnect between the executive and the ICs in that room.  The executive wants to make contact, but the people are bored.  And what to do is always a challenge.  And your typical IC is constantly aware that every minute he or she spends in that room is one minute less spent fixing code/writing content/doing IT work/etc.  What to do?

Back in the day, people took notes in notebooks, on memo pads, on graph paper, etc.  Some physical method of keeping track of things.  And in those boring meetings, you could simply doodle, or work on your novel, or write sarcastic notes to yourself, or maybe polish off that thank-you note to granny.

Laptops, tablets, and smartphones are an absolute boon to the boring meeting issue.  If you can get away with bringing a full laptop–and this has become more acceptable over the years–and the meeting is such that your participation is unneeded other than your physical presence in the room, you can get work done, check your email, and even discreetly web surf (if you have the nerve).  That meeting time is much less wasted.  Yes, there was a big push to get people to leave their laptops behind for meetings, but over time people have recognized that a) It didn’t do much good, and b) Plenty of people take their notes on their laptops.  (In my case, I used an elective at age 12 in order to take typing, writing was such a laborious chore for me.)

(The “Agile stand-up”, by the way, is one attempt to battle this from two directions. On the one hand, these meetings are limited to 15 minutes, guaranteeing to the participants that any boredom will be short-lived.  And since you’re literally supposed to be standing up, using a laptop is pretty much impossible.)

But smartphones (and Blackberry’s back in the day) allow you to do Internet stuff anywhere, with a tiny device.  And as we’ve reached the saturation point with smartphones in the population (and you can guess how saturated the high tech industry is!), people have come to use their smartphones instead.  And this is really honking off some people, as Mr. Bradberry points out.  Unfortunately, some of the suggestions he makes, and the assumptions behind them, bear a bit more examination.

For example, Bradberry points out “The more money people make the less they approve of smartphone use.” Alas, the more money people make, the higher up they usually are in the corporation, and those folks tend to use their smartphones more during meetings than anyone.  (Some of them seem to be using them as another way in which execs show their importance to the peons–“Your puny meeting is not nearly as important as my daughter’s Instagram pic that she just texted me, but please do carry on.”)  There are a couple of issues here, the most obvious of which is the blatant double-standard.

But to be blunt, one issue is that meetings are too frequent, too long, too boring, and include people that they don’t need to. Executives and directors live by meetings–it’s a major part of their job–but individual contributors don’t, and forcing them to attend a ton of meetings is not an efficient use of their time. Certainly some amount of attendance is necessary to coordinate work, but in my experience the amount of meetings and meeting length is excessive. People break out their laptops, tablets, and smartphones in self-defense.  If you want to continue to see “productivity increases”, Mr. or Ms. Executive, you shouldn’t squawk when your employees are trying to squeeze in work during boring meetings.

Should people be playing Tetris or Minecraft of checking their Twitter feed while the VP is lecturing?  No; it’s rude.  But on the other hand, if the room falls asleep because the exec is speaking so far above their heads they can’t even see his tail-lights, that’s even more rude.  If you see a lot of smartphones out, might want to reality-check your agenda, or engage with your folks more directly.

So the second part of this is: Executives need to recognize that individual contributors are not thrilled to be taking time out of their day to watch power-point presentations and listen to (as Peter put it in “Office Space”) “eight different bosses drone on about mission statements”. Keep your meetings to the point, concise, and as short as absolutely possible. If you can end a scheduled 1-hour meeting in 20 minutes, your people will love you, and smartphone, tablet, and laptop use will plummet.

Bradberry cites some stats that I think are important to keep in mind:

  • 86% think it’s inappropriate to answer phone calls during meetings
  • 84% think it’s inappropriate to write texts or emails during meetings
  • 66% think it’s inappropriate to write texts or emails even during lunches offsite

I have to agree that people answering calls during meetings seem rude.  But you know: I’ve done it.  Because my boy had injured himself and I needed to respond right away, or because my wife was in a dire situation because her car had broken down on the freeway.  I would like to see some stats, but I don’t get the sense that people answer their smartphones for any reason other than critical ones during meetings.  And (again in my experience) they leave the room so as to provide minimum disturbance.  In high tech, this doesn’t seem to bug people very much.  And honestly I think that’s because tech folks are more used to tech, and they have started to create etiquette to deal with the new smartphone reality.

Smartphone etiquette is still evolving. It was once verboten for folks to bring laptops to meetings; then we went through a period where it seemed that everyone was bringing their laptops but no one was paying attention; then a period where laptop use in many companies expressly forbidden during meetings (which was hell on me as I noted above). But now some people bring them for note taking, presenting information, etc., and some don’t, and those that do seem to better recognize that they need to practice active listening even when the lid on their device is open. Soon, it won’t be an issue. Smartphone use in meetings will evolve similarly, I predict. Smartphones are really only 7 years old; it will take a little time.

So in short, yes, ICs need to be aware that it honks people off to be seen taking out your smartphone, even if you’re using it for note-taking. But managers and execs need to also recognize that meetings are seen by ICs as (at best) a necessary evil, and do their part to keep them short, to the point, and infrequent.

That’s my worm’s-eye view, anyway.  (And I’m not the only one who feels this way.)

Subscribe

  • Entries (RSS)
  • Comments (RSS)

Archives

  • January 2023
  • October 2022
  • April 2022
  • February 2022
  • January 2022
  • December 2021
  • November 2021
  • September 2021
  • April 2021
  • January 2021
  • July 2020
  • May 2020
  • April 2020
  • March 2020
  • October 2019
  • November 2018
  • October 2018
  • May 2018
  • April 2017
  • September 2016
  • April 2016
  • March 2016
  • December 2015
  • November 2015
  • July 2015
  • May 2015
  • April 2015
  • March 2015
  • February 2015
  • January 2015
  • December 2014
  • November 2014
  • October 2014
  • September 2014
  • August 2014
  • June 2014
  • May 2014
  • April 2014
  • March 2014
  • February 2014
  • December 2013
  • November 2013
  • October 2013
  • September 2013
  • August 2013
  • July 2013
  • June 2013
  • May 2013
  • June 2008
  • April 2008
  • March 2008
  • February 2008
  • January 2008
  • December 2007
  • November 2007
  • October 2007
  • September 2007
  • August 2007
  • July 2007
  • June 2007

Categories

  • Fiction
  • News
  • Opinion
  • Uncategorized

Meta

  • Register
  • Log in

Blog at WordPress.com.

  • Follow Following
    • Random Blather
    • Join 85 other followers
    • Already have a WordPress.com account? Log in now.
    • Random Blather
    • Customize
    • Follow Following
    • Sign up
    • Log in
    • Report this content
    • View site in Reader
    • Manage subscriptions
    • Collapse this bar
 

Loading Comments...