In Defense of Joe Biden

Joe Biden recently said this about Barak Obama:
“I mean, you got the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy,” he said. “I mean, that’s a storybook, man.”

It would appear that his candidacy for president is once again over. I hope not. I'd like to step in to defend this man.

We live in a gotcha culture that makes politicians timid and teaches them to focus on avoiding mistakes rather than focusing on doing what is right. If we make such stupid statements the reason to cut off the candidacy of the one guy who has consistently been bold enough to criticize Bush's Iraq policy and informed and thoughtful enough to offer an alternative (usually staying at least one step ahead of his peers and the press) then we're in trouble. If a candidate has to avoid saying stupid things for two years, you can be sure that he’ll say meaningless things instead. Only people who avoid actually saying anything are guaranteed to say nothing offensive or stupid.

Compare what he has said with the list of things said by the man who has most recently been elected president. Then, more importantly, compare what he has thought and the way in which he has candidly shared his thoughts, with what has been thought by our chief explainer.
Put away your notions of getting a pure candidate. It's not going to happen. Focus instead on what a candidate will do in spite of the personal flaws.

You Can't Kill Chickens in Texas

Newsweek reports that the cops of Euless, Texas stopped Jose Merced from killing a chicken on his property.

Like most towns of 46,000, Euless has the usual array of eateries: Wendy's and Burger King, a couple of McDonald's, and, inexplicably, 29 Domino Pizza joints. One doubts that the people of this small Texan town are squeamish about eating meat and has to wonder whether the red meat eating contingent of Texas law enforcement aren't making plans to do away with chicken restaurants now that they've shut down all the diners featuring quiche.

But Jose Merced is not killing the chicken to barbeque it. He was going to kill the chicken as part of a ritual sacrifice he was performing as a Santeria priest. The officials of this small town won't grant him a permit to perform this act not because they are desperate to protect the lives of chickens but because they don't like the idea that such a strange religious ritual could be performed in their town. Hm.

Euless, TX. Odd name. Rhymes with Clueless, doesn't it?

You Will Be in Heaven - Mother Teresa We're Not So Sure About

About a decade ago, Mother Teresa was voted the world's most respected woman and around that time, 22 March 1997, Reuters ran a story that began as follows:

"Americans are quite confident that they will get to heaven. Mother Teresa they are not as sure about.
"A poll released yesterday found that 67 percent of Americans are certain that heaven exists. An even larger number - 87 percent - thought they were likely to go there, perhaps a sign that math literacy is not necessarily a prerequisite for entering the pearly gates.
"Mother Teresa was heaven-bound according to 79 percent of the 1000 adults surveyed in the poll commission by U.S. News and World Report magazine."

The article went on to say that in spite of 87 percent of Americans believing that they would get into heaven, only 18 percent thought that all their friends would join them. Mind you, these are not their neighbors - these are their friends. 18 percent. Just think how low Mother Teresa might have scored if she were actually friends with the folks who were polled.

Everywhere we go, we're the center of our own universe, I guess. In this case it's a moral universe, but a universe nevertheless. Poor Mother Teresa. She had no idea that entrance to heaven was based on a vote. The catch? Apparently we all get just one vote and we've already cast it for ourselves.

Mothers and Presidential Race 2008 Policy Proposal One

The civilized world rests on the fragile foundation of mothers. We digress about the influence of media, the quality of our schools, and the importance of good government. All those are important, but none is as influential on a child as his or her mother. Because we've forgotten this fundamental fact, we've ignored what mothers are going through. We all know that mothers are, in record numbers, raising children alone. Additionally, mothers are more likely to raise a child hundreds of miles away from a family network of their parents or siblings, resources that have historically been available for tasks as simple as baby sitting while she runs an errand or as profound as offering advice about how to deal with bad behavior or a child who wakes the household many times a night. Finally, jobs demand more and both mothers and fathers are forced to juggle parenting with excessive hours and stress from jobs they're required to work in order to pay the rent or mortgage. The traditional social supports of partner, extended family, or tolerant (or even unnecessary) employer have eroded. What we need is recognition of this fact. One little thing that we can begin doing to help - and it is just one little thing that will need so many other supporting tissues to work - is to offer education and support sessions for mothers. I'm proposing a series of pilot programs to introduce free sessions for mothers. Once these pilots have been revised to the point that they have proven successful, I would fund the rollout of a nationwide program. These sessions will meet at least three needs. One, mothers will be in classes with peers who have children roughly the same age, creating social networks that are helpful in ways that can scarcely be calculated. Two, these sessions will share the latest and best research on nutrition, learning, behavior, and child development. These courses will continue for years.

And three, these courses will do more than offer advice. They will be agents for problem solving, forming a central reference place for dealing with issues as varied as spousal or child abuse to homelessness or finding and funding a dentist. The leaders of these sessions will effectively be advocates for mothers, working with agencies as varied as urban housing and local schools to help these mothers to more effectively care for the children they love. There are a variety of questions and further issues raised by this proposal. For instance, I would propose as part of the legislation tax breaks for employers who allow mothers time off to attend these sessions. These and other kinds of supporting initiatives could be worked out at the various pilot program sites.

This initiative will help with education; it is time to stop admonishing teachers to do the job that we won't help mothers to do. Teachers can't be expected to raise children but we do need to do more to help mothers to do just that. Just as it is not enough to praise troops and then leave them to fight unarmed and unprotected, we have to do more than praise mothers and do more to ensure that they have what they need to do their jobs.
[I'm going to begin an intermittent series of proposals that I'd like to hear from a candidate - any candidate - for president in 2008. As I mentioned in an earlier post, I'm looking for a candidate who aligns with my values but just as importantly, I am looking for a candidate who shows signs of being a social inventor like FDR. Too many candidates can (and have) polled people to learn how to speak to their values; at this point I am less interested in a candidate who tells me that he'll sell me a Van Morrison record than a candidate who has invented an iPod that lets me listen to Van Morrison in a new way. This is the first in a series of sketches of policy innovations that I would support.]

Changing the Presidency Into a Two-Person Job

My daughter told me an amusing story. A group of medieval monks were arguing about the number of teeth in a horse's mouth, trying to remember what number Aristotle had claimed they had. A young monk said, "Well, we all rode here on horses. Why don't we just go out to the stable, open the mouth of a horse, and count the teeth?" His idea was dismissed as nonsensical.

In today's political world, we rarely go out to the stable to actually take inventory of what is needed. Instead, it is fashionable to debate about what the writers' of the constitution actually meant by this or that point. Readers of this blog will know that I frequently refer to the need for social invention as a partner to technological invention. I'd like to ask the reader to step away from the constitution and walk out to the stable with me as I make the case for a change to our current politics.

Intel is increasingly relying on "two-in-a-box" executive positions. Instead of putting a single person in charge of their communications division, they'll put two. The markets, the technology, and the direction of the business are so complex that it makes sense to share authority over it. Why not consider this model for the US Presidency. The complexity facing the holder of that position is certainly no less than that facing the two-person teams running an Intel division.

Imagine that we have, say, Joe Biden and John Edwards, sharing the presidency. Biden could couple his foreign policy smarts and experience with Edwards domestic agenda and youth. Or, depending on your brand of coffee, you might prefer to see McCain and Chuck Hagel, or for the really bold, Clinton and Huckabee (who may come from different parties but who both come from Arkansas). I, for one, quite like the idea of two people sharing duties, one able to largely focus on foreign policy affairs and the other focused on domestic issues.

I know, I know. Supposedly presidents have cabinets to help complement their expertise. But it is a very different thing to give advice and be responsible for implementing that advice. Partnership has a great tradition in this country. Think of Hewlett & Packard or Laurel & Hardy. Isn't it time that we stepped out into the stable and took stock of what we really expect of a president before concluding that it is a one-person job?

W. Edwards Deming on the Future of Capitalism

WARNING: This will probably challenge your notions about what constitutes good management AND what a prophet of the future should sound like.

Deming is one of my heroes. Here he explains how the current system of management destroys the individual. Think about how much within the corporation would have to change in order for what he advocates to become true.

Goals and the Meta-Goals

We all have two meta-goals: define a goal and then achieve that goal.

You are sitting around on a Friday night or thinking about a change in your career. Your first step, your first meta-goal, is to define a goal. What do you want to do with your evening? What do you want to do for a career or cash flow?Once you've defined that goal, your next meta-goal is to achieve this newly articulated goal. You call friends to see if they will join you for dinner or begin to call could-be employers to learn whether they have any openings.

My opinion is that we generally spend an inordinate amount of time on pursuing goals and very little time articulating them.

Many goals get abandoned either because they weren't practical or they weren't really an expression of who we were. We shy away from the existential angst that invariably comes with the search to define a goal.

It just feels so much better to have a goal - even if it is a petty thing - than to drift without a goal. So, many people short circuit the inevitably frustrating work of finding a goal and leap into pursuing one. Show a little courage: struggle through the darkness rather than avoid it.

“To collect one’s forces, even when they seem to be scattered, and when one’s aim is only dimly perceived -- this is a great action and will sooner or later bring forth fruits.”
- Maria Montessori

Be patient. Find a goal that is articulated by a conspiracy of your head, heart, and gut. You won't just find the pursuit of that goal more gratifying - you'll find yourself.

The Stem Cell Controversy: No Scripture, No Science, No Ethics, No Funding

At the point at which embryonic stem cells are useful to researchers, they have multiplied into only about 30 cells. By contrast, a fly has about 100,000 brain cells. Opposition to stem cell research seems to lack a basis in ethics, scripture, or science.

Consider the ethics. Imagine that you are a nurse working in a clinic, helping women to get pregnant. You are at a critical time step in getting semen to a woman who is ready. If you are delayed at all, the window of opportunity for conception closes. En route to her room, you are suddenly confronted with an adult who has stopped breathing. You are the only person able to revive him. Your choice is to let the sperm die or let the man die. I can hardly imagine a system of ethics that would suggest even a moment's hesitation.

We would never grant more rights to a tube full of semen than to a dying human being, and yet we are supposed to hesitate about choosing between the rights of millions suffering from injury and disease and microscopic amounts of stem cells? The only people who think that this is ethical are those who argue from a dubious religious position.

The political opposition to stem cell research rarely refutes claims that this research promises to cure diseases like Parkinson's or Alzheimer's, or problems like paralysis. Rather, they oppose it because of the sanctity of life. What kind of life? A cluster of 30 cells that is no more cognizant of their own existence than is a sperm or egg cell. Theirs is supposedly a religious opposition, but it is not clear what religious authority they cite.

The Old Testament has many laws, including warnings against mixing different types of material in one garment, prohibitions against eating shell fish and pork or working on the Sabbath. Not even in the midst of such detailed law does it take time to mention the sanctity of the life of stem cells – or even a fetus. Nor does Christ mention such issues anywhere in his teachings. What these supposedly religious opponents to science never mention when speaking out against stem cell research is that there is not a single Biblical verse supporting their stance.

And this is the odd thing: with neither scripture nor science nor ethics on their side, these people have still managed to block federal funding for this research. It is time for everyone - whether they are secularists, Jews or Christians - to ask who these people are and how they got to make life and death decisions for the rest of us.

Leadership and Social Innovation

Leadership suggests two things. One, you are going someplace new. Two, you have followers. By definition, leaders can't look to their followers for a destination and yet that seems to be just what politicians have been doing of late.

W. Edwards Deming said, "No customer ever asked for the telephone or bicycle or computer."

Reliance on focus groups and polling numbers will never substitute for real leadership, for the kind of innovation that offers solutions. Great leaders are invariably adept at one of two things: either they are social innovators or know how to popularize social innovations. FDR's New Deal, Gandhi's non-violent protests, and Teddy Roosevelt's conservation programs were all innovations and represented leadership at its best.

The 2008 presidential race has already begun. I'm looking for a leader who will champion or generate social innovations.

Where is the Draft of Bush's State of the Union?

I'm reading Politics Lost: How American Democracy Was Trivialized by People Who Think You're Stupid by Joe Klein. He makes it clear how much influence consultants armed with polling information and focus groups have over the message of candidates eager to win the approval of voters. I read a transcript of George's State of the Union address. It reads like a litany of issues that the American people have shown themselves concerned about: entitlement spending, climate change, the deficit, etc. (Once again close to half of this country's state of the union is about Iraq's state of disarray, but that is another matter.) Klein makes it clear how much care is put into the words and phrases that politicians use - each carefully tested for maximum approval. But this is the part that I would find fascinating. Where are those focus groups, those polled Americans, who were exposed to the words, phrases, priorities, and concepts that bombed? I would love to talk with them about how the draft concepts differed from what was finally delivered.

It could be that we'd better be able to predict Bush's actions if we could see the draft of his speeches. When campaigning against Gore, Bush spoke out against nation-building. One now wonders if he just stumbled into that occupation as an accident or whether he had always wanted to engage in nation-building but exorcised that from his campaign speeches when it polled poorly in focus groups. It may well be that only by reading the early, unpolled and unedited versions of his state of the union speech would we be able to predict what new surprises Bush may have in store for us in his these final two years of his presidency.

Employees Becoming Entrepreneurs

If anything has defined the great institutions of Western Civilization, it is their eventual adoption of a model that allows individuals greater freedom and autonomy. We’ve seen this in the church, in the state, and even in financial markets. I suspect that we’re about to see it in the corporation. Popularizing entrepreneurship within corporations will inevitably spill into other sectors as well. As we do, the impact will be a century in which social innovation will become as common as technological innovation has become in the last century. The consequences of this can hardly be imagined.

Entrepreneurs typically start businesses. More broadly, entrepreneurship refers to creating some kind of social construct, institutionalizing a solution to some need that was previously not met or not met as well. There are, in my mind, layers to this. The first guy to start a drive-through hamburger stand was a pioneering entrepreneur; the guys who imitated him were also entrepreneurs, but of a lesser kind; the guys who franchised from those imitators were entrepreneurs as well, but, once again, of an even lesser kind. All accept variability in their income – variability that is ultimately a function of how well they’ve put together an operation that meets market demand. This is in contrast to the employee who accepts little variability in income. Additionally, entrepreneurs almost invariably risk not just their income but their capital. But the lesson of the pioneer with the concept, the imitators who follow, and the franchisees who follow the imitators, points out that there is not simply one level of entrepreneurship.

So let’s look at a traditional company, using an example from 50 years ago. An entrepreneur starts it. One of his acts is to hire employees. If the company does well, those employees have “job security,” but it is only the entrepreneur who sees increase in his wealth because of increases in company equity.

Now, let’s take an example from 7 years ago. An entrepreneur not only starts a business, but he makes his employees a part of it through stock or stock options. Now, if the business increases in value, the employees see their net worth rise as well. They have capital in the game as well as their efforts.

Finally, let’s take an example 5 years from now. A traditional entrepreneur starts a business and in the course of the business has to establish legal, accounting, IT, finance (etc.) infrastructure. He has employees. Once the business is underway, a subset of the employees sees an opportunity to create a new market or to patent a new product.

At this point the company can handle it one of two ways. The traditional way would be for these employees to undertake the project and enjoy whatever rewards the company has – promotions, stock sharing, a bonus.

If the company were more entrepreneurial, the original entrepreneur would see this as an opportunity to become a venture capitalists of sorts. He would potentially finance this new venture and the employees who came up with the inner-business plan might even put some of their own money into the venture. They would now make the same or less than before, they would have invested their own money, they would be using the existing infrastructure for its expertise (the patent attorney, the accountants, the IT guys, etc.). They would be able to focus on developing the product and market (or perhaps only the product, using the existing marketing group).

If the product takes off, the original entrepreneur does really well – better than those venture capitalists who do so well. Why does he do so well? Because he’s not just got a piece of the venture, as a venture capitalist would, but his piece is bigger because he has basically provided these employee-entrepreneurs with an incubator, providing them with the core elements of the business that they might not have the capital, inclination, or expertise to provide.

The employee-entrepreneurs make more money as well. Whether the venture is actually spun off or merely valued by an outside agency, it will have some equity value. As the “entrepreneurs,” the guys who started this venture will have a chunk of this. That chunk they have may actually generate more money for them than what is paid to the CEO.

What this suggests is that the corporation slowly changes over. It started as a bureaucracy that employees you in a function and is beginning to transition into a project-centric company that puts more emphasis on regularly creating new products or services than in maintaining the bureaucracy. Finally, I predict that the evolution will continue until you have a created a place where innovation within the corporation has echoes of innovation within a country. This is possible in part because of the transformation of financial markets – corporations have access to capital and the capital investment tools that previously only banks had.

I see this transformation as a means to stimulate an enormous amount of innovation and equity creation. And, of course, provide more autonomy to the individual. In my mind, the employee would not be required to become an entrepreneur, but would have the opportunity to become one without risking everything to do it.

At last! A Practical Solution to Traffic Congestion

Beginning Tuesday, Americans traveling into the US from Mexico, Canada and the Caribbean must have passports. Congress passed this new rule in 2004 in an effort to make the country safer. The problem is, only one quarter of Americans have passports.

So, what will be the impact of this? The short term effect will be Americans lined up at our borders, waiting for their paperwork to get through already overloaded government agencies. The medium term effect will be Americans discovering how affordable and relaxed life is in our neighboring countries. The long-term effect is best of all.

About 20 million Americans travel internationally each year. If some portion of them can't get back into the country, think about how much that will lessen traffic congestion. Abandoned houses will go onto the market, helping to make housing more affordable. Key employees will be lost and the demand for replacement workers will drive up wages. I would go on, but the unintended benefits of making this a safer country are beyond my ability to calculate. And here all this time I thought that congress didn't really care about quality of life issues.

Capital Glut and the Popularization of Entrepreneurship

http://www.knowledgeconcierge.com/WEFPublic/kc_theme.asp?eventName=3EIKXLI8HNGK&theme=CK

This intriguing graph indicates that the capital globally raised is about $400 billion more than capital invested. In simple language, there is more money available to fund ventures than there are credible ventures to pursue. We can create those ventures by transforming corporations and what it means to be an employee.

One of the biggest sources of potential innovation is from within corporations. In 1900, very few of those working were knowledge workers. It was an elite role. By 2000, many in developed countries were knowledge workers and we'd popularized education and information technology that drove unprecedented inreases in productivity. In 2000, very few of those working play the role of entrepreneurs. In order to raise the percentage of entrepreneurs by 2050 in a growth path similar to that for knowledge workers, we'll have to do a variety of things. One huge factor in the growth of knowledge workers traced back to the transformation of financial markets. (Knowledge workers need big capital investments to be productive. Russia and Eastern Europe have delightful education rates but are unable to put graduates into labs and corporations where their knowledge can be translated into valuable products and services.) In order to popularize entrepreneurship, we will need a transformation of the corporation that has echoes of the transformation of financial markets.

Imagine a corporation where employees could choose to pursue roles as traditional employees, as old-fashioned entrepreneurs, or some hybrid of the two. Employees who don't want to gamble the ability to put their children through college but are willing to gamble their ability to retire early or to buy a second home may take a role that is some kind of a hybrid, employee-entrepreneur, with some mix of shared profits with their employer, some mix of salary and loan or deferred compensation. This is more possible than ever because there is more capital than ever. As a global community, we have more money to finance more ventures.

There are a variety of benefits that would flow from this. Imagine that funding for, and even the team members provided to, new ventures was a function of employees’ perception of the value of that venture, or project. Internal markets would naturally indicate where the employees felt highest future returns lie. Imagine how much companies would learn about where to invest if they simply let employees vote on where to put their time and even a portion of their 401(k) funds in anticipation of shared returns? Imagine that employees would not just have investment opportunities (as they do now through stock markets) but have the ability to influence the success of those ventures (as entrepreneurs who take on start ups do).

The technology and practice within financial markets has been transformed since the days of JP Morgan a century past. As a result we have trillions of dollars sloshing around the globe in search of higher returns. Imagine transforming our corporations in a way that realizes this potential, popularizing entrepreneurship as we have previously popularized knowledge work. Such a move could easily stimulate an increase in demand for investment capital - an increase that could increase returns, levels of innovation, and the potential for the average employee within corporations.

Because of the transformation in financial markets during the last century, the average employee has become the most influential capitalist. Through mutual and retirement funds, typical households now control more of the equity market than do large investors. This popularization of financial markets is unique in human history. Now, financial markets and corporations have to collude to create mechanisms that give these new capitalists greater control over their equity, allow them to more directly influence corporate innovation and policy in a way that will most benefit these workers, in a way that gives them the most autonomy.

Reading the Remains of the Guacamole Dip

In the tradition of reading tea leaves, I'm going to make yesterday's defeat of Patriots and Saints mean something. What can one predict about 2007 based on the NFL championship games? What does it mean that these idealized paragons of church and state were sent home? My Guacamole Oracle tells me that this year we'll finally get beyond the tiresome and at-times obsessive conversation about church and state and move on.

An Intelligent Conversation?

Indulge me in a moment of pleasure and optimism: The Atlantic and Andrew Sullivan are teaming up. Sullivan's blog will be folded into The Atlantic's website and he will become one of their senior editors.

Andrew Sullivan is a thinker I've inexplicably enjoyed since his time as editor at The New Republic 15 years ago. I say inexplicably not because his tone, erudition, and writing lack obvious appeal. I say inexplicably because I'm not conservative, Catholic, or gay - as he is. In spite of our differences in worldview, I find his ideas compelling.

The Atlantic is, for me, the epitome of good journalism. It is intelligent, thoughtful, and reluctant to rush to a conclusion when the data suggests no easy answer. I suppose no one source has had more influence on my political sensibilities; I began reading it in my late teens, more than a quarter of a century ago.

The Atlantic is more like a book than a magazine in that its articles have a shelf life rather like wine; a blog, by contrast, typically has a shelf life more like milk. Given it comes out only 10 times a year, The Atlantic is somewhat like a prepared speech to which one listens. A blog, by contrast, is more like a conversation in which one engages. (but is, sadly enough, too often like a conversation with someone suffering from ADD).

This merger of the magazine’s magazine with a pioneering blog suggests a tantalizing possibility: an intelligent conversation that occurs in real time but has, for its context, larger issues than the distraction of the day. If The Atlantic is able to merge the instantaneous, interactive nature of blogs with its mastery of showcasing ideas that deserve reprint 150 years later, they may well have a product that is able to transform the national conversation. If they succeed at this, I will become a real fan. That is, instead of merely admiring the magazine, I will wear a NFL style jersey in public that, in lieu of a name like “Tomlinson” or "Manning" has “Sullivan” or fellow Atlantic editor “Fallows” written across the back.

Guaranteed Super Bowl Prediction and the Design of Your Business

I've got a prediction for the Super Bowl. And it's guaranteed. Sadly, for, you, my prediction doesn’t name Saints or Patriots or Bears or Colts.

(Note that two of the teams take their names from totemic figures - drawing their strength from bears and colts as if they were ancient Celts or American Indians; the other two teams, by contrast, take their name from ideals of politics and religion. A battle between Saints and Patriots would somehow seem appropriate for the times.)

My prediction is that ONE team will win. This seems like the most obvious prediction I could make, but it is worth noting because this is by design. 32 teams started the season, a season designed to eliminate teams bit by bit until only one team is left standing.

So why mention this? Well, it is worth mentioning because this is a design issue with a predetermined outcome. Your business might have a similar design goal. It's worth noting that only in undeveloped, poorly designed countries the leader makes the most money. In nearly all Fortune 500 companies, the leader, or CEO, makes the most money. This is by design and everyone in the company knows that one person will win the "get rich working for the company" contest. This suggests a poor design. In developed, well designed countries plenty of people make more money than the leader, the president or prime minister.

What if, instead, winning within a business were more like winning in business. That is, what if your company were not designed to have the leader take home the most money? What if the top income in your company were not determined by position but by natural consequences that meant that any number of employees might make more than the leader, just as in more developed, or better designed, countries any number of citizens make more than the leader?

We don't question the fact that only one team will win the Super Bowl each year. We should question the fact that only CEOs (only one employee) will win the "make the most money" award. This is a design flaw.

Barack and Conspiracy Theory Time

News flash. Barack Obama attended a Muslim madrassa in Indonesia. This is a source of great excitement among the right-wingosphere. (I've decided that I may as well add -osphere to everything - it sounds so 21st century.)

Here's the prediction about how the Barack Obama conspiracy theory will finally be spun. I can just hear Rush Limbaugh passing this along.

"Folks, I don't know if this is true or not. I don't know if the rumors about Barack Obama basically being a Manchurian candidate, a sleeper cell candidate for Muslim extremists, are true or not. I do know that these kinds of rumors make me nervous. I mean, what do we know about this guy? He was a nobody two years ago!" And like that, Obama will lose 10% in the polls. If it were property Rush were defacing he could be charged with vandalism. As it is, it's just considered politics as normal.

There are at least two really wonderful things about a conspiracy theory. One is that the lack of evidence to support it simply reinforces just how insidious and powerful is this conspiracy. And two, even though a conspiracy theory makes it sounds like the bad guys are in charge, it at least reassures people that someone is in charge. Things aren't actually unpredictable and difficult to understand.

The model of media as something that discovers facts and then reports on them is so old school. As our right-wing talk show hosts are about to show us once again, it is so much more cost-effective to just create your own facts.

Leadership, Possibility and Us Critics

Life is full of possibilities, most which we don’t even consider.

It's Friday and tonight you could read a book and enjoy it thoroughly. You could read a book but if you do you'll miss out on hitting the clubs with your friends, attending a play, watching a live concert, rock wall climbing, dining at the new tapas restaurant you've been curious about, jogging in preparation for a half-marathon scheduled for this summer, trying out that new curried chicken recipe that looked so good, starting to write your own book, mustering up the courage to contact the Toastmaster's group, begin a weight-lifting program, drive out to Las Vegas for the weekend, wander around the mall with your friend, experiment with meditation, buy a DNA kit and send in a sample for analysis and family history, make sandwiches for 20 homeless people, volunteer at a youth club, visit a .... You get the idea. For every one thing you consciously choose to do you are consciously or unconsciously choosing not to do about a million other things.

Powerful leaders have the ability to tune us in to possibilities that we had not previously, or seriously, considered.

"By the end of this decade, we will put a man on the moon and return him safely," JFK said. We are going to make a personal computer that the average person will want to use. We will make our downtown areas so safe and so stimulating that families will feel delighted to have their children go downtown at any time. We will transform people's idea of fast food into meals that make people feel more vibrant, more alive, to feel healthy.

A leader works like a radio receiver, able to pull signals out of the air, signals that the rest of us perceive only as static, and broadcast that possibility as something compelling, into a tune we can dance to. After a leader speaks, static turns into a tune we hum.

So what is our job here in the blogosphere? It is to point out to the humming masses that there are alternatives to the tune they are humming. Opportunity costs suggests that we don't just judge the book you're reading but actually consider what else you could be doing. A social critic notes that we're about to spend $1.2 trillion on the occupation of Iraq and asks what else one could buy with that sum.

Your mission, should you accept it, is to sing songs of possibility that are so compelling that leaders and the humming masses have little choice but to tune in. It's hard work, but what else were you going to do with your blog?

Sounding the Alarm on Alarmism

Expectations have a huge influence over our resultant reality. If you expect that people will act rude towards you, the probability of that goes up. (You might perceive offense where others would see good-natured jesting. You may well bristle at the least provocation, triggering a series of responses that make rudeness of some form not just more probable but inevitable.) If you expect a region of the world to react like zealots, you may well get that reaction. And this scares me.

The current issue of Newsweek shows a small child in Iraq holding a weapon and states, The Next Jihadists. Right-wing talk show hosts have been blathering on about the threat of Islam with the glee that they once reserved only for Bill Clinton's libido. And now even the intelligentsia is sounding alarm bells; atheist Sam Harris, in part of his larger agenda against religion as a whole, warns that Muslims are bent on world conquest and death to non-believers.

And this is the problem with expectations: all of this is true. There are Jihadists, Islam does have recurring patterns of, or references to, violence in its scriptures, and there is plenty of evidence that some Muslims would gladly kill themselves in order to kill innocent civilians. Yet there is a difference between what is true and the whole truth, as is said in a court of law.

Our own society provides plenty of evidence of a violent streak. We are gun-toting extremists who believe that God has blessed us and our wars. Our God is the true God and we are willing to send in invading armies to make it possible for our ministers to teach non-believers in foreign land. Just as most of what the alarmists say about Islam is true, so is most of what critics of our culture and policy (people like Noam Chomsky) say is true.

Life is, at any moment, so full of possibility that our minds would be overwhelmed if we could truly perceive it all. So like a radio tuning in to a particular station, we focus on one set of possibilities and, very often, make those real. (You doubt this? Think about what you expect each day about how your day will unfold, from breakfast to commute, to work. Now think about how little difference you regularly get from that.) We see what is true but not the whole truth.
The Middle East is a place of moderates eager to modernize, temper religious extremism with tolerance, and raise their children in a peaceful place that encourages economic and scientific advances. This, too, is true and is at least as true as the alarmists’ notions that have by now hijacked the thoughts of the right and left, the reactionaries and the thoughtful. And what is so alarming about that is how often expectations steer us towards one set of possibilities.

If Hemingway Wrote a Blog

Bush spoke nonsense as he looked on, feeling oddly detached from what George was saying. “Is this what it means to be un-American?” he quietly wondered. Because of the nonsense George spoke, real people died. Now, to protect himself from a guilty conscience George chooses to continue believing nonsense. I have had my fill of nonsense, he thought. I am ready for something of substance, something that does not leave the taste of fear in my mouth.

The country is divided. Some care and some do not. Many are past anger and have, in disgust, begun to write. Their words change google search results and technorati ratings but do not change policy. This too divides them. Some are distracted by the stats and rankings. Some are made angry anew. Odd that economic abundance should ultimately produce so much anger, he thought. Very odd.

Blogging is a verb that makes it sound as if the writer’s soul is dribbling down his pant leg, to form a pool on the floor between the computer and the dog. Blog. That does not sound like a tool for social change. Blog. It sits in his mouth uneasily, like a drink from a foreign country. How could so many expect so much of such an oddly constructed word? Such a vague concept? What is the point of a public diary, he wondered. Is it simply a capitulation to the collusion of technology and government to rob us of our privacy? Bloggers become distracted by stats and rankings and adsense revenues. Adsense. Rhymes with nonsense. Adsense. Nonsense. It is no wonder that souls were so quick to flee the body in this time. The steady diet of fear, anger, and greed makes souls shrink so much that they could be lost in a single cough, like a particle dislodged from the back of the throat.

Bush spoke nonsense but then again, it was one of those days when everything sounded nonsensical. Humanity faces an unknown world, strangely convinced that words can change it. They desperately cling to the notion that their talk and typing can actually improve this world. It is a naïve and childish notion, one he finds oddly endearing. As he thought about this he gradually slumped forward. Later, much later, his wife found him lying face down on his computer keyboard, the screen filled with ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh for pages.