Archive for April, 2008
Clinton, McCain share dillusion; Obama chooses reality
I saw this in the news :
(my commentary below)
Clinton Joins McCain in Criticizing Obama on Gas Tax | The Trail | washingtonpost.com via kwout
What planet are these people on? Are gas prices going to magically fall come fall? What about the winter heating oil? Or next summer?
Will India and China politely decline from growing their economies so we can enjoy $2.00 gas?
Is OPEC sitting on a giant oil field that they’re waiting to tap until oil gets really expensive?
These gas-tax-relief plans are built on pure fantasy–the fantasy that we can all keep driving our cars a few hundred miles a week and not change a thing. Those days are over. Gone. Not coming back. We have exactly two choices at this point : either embrace this change and start rapidly planning for a low-energy lifestyle, or invest our remaining national wealth in a vestigial enterprise that should have gone out with the 1970s.
For Clinton & McCain, it’s cheap gas or bust. For the sake of our country, I hope they don’t win.
Filed under economics, energy, politics : Comments (4) : Apr 28th, 2008
Brady Street Skate Vid
I did a little video project with my friend this weekend :
Filed under Milwaukee : Comments (4) : Apr 27th, 2008
It’s happening
Over the past few years, esteemed blogs (such as tadfad.com) have espoused at great lengths why suburbs are not a wise investment for our nation in general. Now, as gas prices are on the way to $4/gallon and the credit markets are tightening up, home buyers seem to agree.
Home Prices Drop Most in Areas with Long Commute : NPR via kwout
The part that’s sad about this is that almost everyone is going to lose in the end. We’ve spent trillions of dollars building not only the suburban homes themselves, but all the infrastructure to support them. As these areas become less and less desirable (and hence, less valuable), much of this investment will simply go to zero. The negative effect to the U.S. economy will be significant.
Fortunately, there’s hope. In cities all across the U.S., there’s plenty of space to expand. After decades of suburban flight, many neighborhoods are living with low population density and ample opportunities for improvement. We’ll need to act wisely as we re-urbanize and ensure that low income families aren’t forced out to the fringes. Again, history is a wise tutor as most cities dealt with mixed income housing quite well prior to WWII.
The key to this equation will be wise investment. There will be enormous pressures on state and federal governments to prop up the suburbs with cheap loans and road building. We need the forethought to gradually close the book on the great suburban experiment and rediscover what city life can be.
[Side note : Anyone looking for an investment opportunity? Check out the Riverwest neighborhood in Milwaukee. ]
Filed under Milwaukee, culture, economics, energy, environment, suburbs : Comments (3) : Apr 23rd, 2008
Happy Earth Day
Filed under climate change, energy, environment : Comments (1) : Apr 22nd, 2008
Roundy’s does organic
Roundy’s is a supermarket megapology in the Midwest area (they own Pick N’ Save, Copps, and Rainbow Foods). They also sell store brand foods under the Roundy’s brand.
Imagine my surprise when I was cruising the organic dairy case (looking for my favorite Silk soymilk) and discovered that Roundy’s now offers organic milk. Huzzah!
This tells me a few things :
- Organic is officially mainstream (+)
- Organic appeals to people outside the lefty tree hugging crowd (+)
- Organic is done on the industrial scale just like conventional (-)
So with two (+)’s and one (-), this is a good thing. I’m walking the organic line; some things I like to buy organic (like my Silk) while others I go conventional. Let’s hope that we all continue to realize that energy intensive farming is not a winning strategy and keep moving the needle.
Filed under Milwaukee, economics, energy, environment : Comments (5) : Apr 20th, 2008
5 tips for building a collaborative community
I wrote the article below for an internal blog at work. Once I wrote it, I realized that it was pretty much applicable anywhere so I thought I’d try to get a little more press. I’m also posting it over at thevicenarian.com.
Collaboration is all the rage in Corporate America this year. With a globally dispersed workforce, much of this collaboration is taking place online. Web sites, wikis, blogs, forums, and even full collaboration suites are emerging on the scene.
Are you looking to tap into this collaborative energy? Want to form an online presence for your global team? Here are 5 tips that will help grow your collaborative community.
1. Get Personal. The web is often criticized for being too impersonal–but it need not be so. Most (all?) online collaboration tools have the ability to include small photos (sometimes called avatars) for users. Encourage everyone on the tool to add their own photo. We’re visual, personal creatures by nature so let’s make it personal! For example, there’s my photo. Doesn’t that feel more personal?
2. Respond. If you are trying to start a collaboration community online, you have the burden to check for updates frequently and respond as much as possible. This is especially critical during the first days/weeks as users are testing it out. If a colleague is going to take the time to pose a question or comment, you need to respond in kind. Yes, this is a time investment. Yes, it will pay off.
3. Reward/Recognize. Participating in collaboration communities is not a mandatory task. It’s not critical to our day-to-day jobs. Yet it has the potential to yield great results in improved efficiency and outcomes for businesses. The early adopters who are willing to stick their necks out and participate should be recognized and rewarded. It doesn’t need to be elaborate, and it can be done entirely within the online community, but some sort of recognition is key. As an example of free, easy recognition, Flickr.com (a photo sharing site) allows users to give each other virtual awards for outstanding photos.
4. Set some goals. Users will be encouraged to participate if they know why they’re participating. Set some goals for your collaborative community, making sure they’re time based, measurable, and significant. As an easy example, you could set the goal to reduce team emails by 20% through the use of an online collaboration community.
5. Show progress. Once you’ve set some goals above, track them and communicate progress. We all love trackers and metrics, so this should be second nature. Give your collaboration partners a sense of accomplishment by charting the groups successes (and/or failures).
Don’t be discouraged if your first attempt at collaboration is not wildly successful. As we all become more comfortable and aware of the opportunities of online communities we will work our way up the capability ladder. These tips will help you start that climb.
Filed under culture, technology, work : Comments (1) : Apr 17th, 2008
Is Twitter useful?
When Twitter first came on the scene, I was skeptical. How useful is it really to answer the question “what am I doing?” in 140 characters or less? I threw down a few tweets, didn’t get much return, and abandoned it after a few weeks.
Well let me tell you, my friends : Twitter is the real deal.
It’s incredibly simple. The interface has only a handful of links. And yet in spite of this, it’s incredibly powerful. Rather, because of this it’s incredibly powerful.
More so than other social networks, you’re encouraged to provide actionable information that’s locally relevant. (Some people use it to spam out links, but that’s lame.) Last week I found some friends through Twitter who were looking for coffee, so I joined them. I’ve found Milwaukee folks who share some of my interests. I’ve learned a bit more about the peculiar habits of my colleagues.
Twitter is not for everybody. (In fact, it’s probably not for most people.) But if you’re at all interested, I would strongly encourage you to give it a shot and try to find some new contacts through it. Here’s a start: twitter.com/tadfad
Filed under Milwaukee, culture, technology : Comments (5) : Apr 16th, 2008
Fidelity : This is broken
I had a laugh today when I checked my Fidelity account. I’d just made a trade and Fidelity was happy to report that I’d earned $0.01 since (aka rounding error). What’s better, they carried that out to 16 significant digits in the % column. Now that’s precise banking!
What’s funny about this is that I’ve made this sort of mistake at least a hundred times during my undergrad Computer Science studies. Glad to see that I’m not the only one.
Filed under technology : Comments (0) : Apr 15th, 2008
Suburbs : the next slum
After spending 40+ years (and countless trillions of dollars) building ever-larger McMansions, the subprime crises is beginning to unravel this misguided dream. Today’s suburbs are tomorrow’s slums.
The Next Slum? via kwout
Filed under culture, suburbs : Comments (2) : Apr 9th, 2008
