Thought That Came Unbidden

The last three weeks at SmallAgency have been brutal. Not because the management style has changed, and not because we have a client who is being a righteous pain in the ass. The last three weeks have been brutal because I have a co-worker who doesn’t know when to ask for help.

I know I shouldn’t be one to judge for a lot of reasons the most major of which is I should probably have “please confront me if I don’t ask for help” tattooed on my forehead. The reason for that is muddled. Some of it is how I was raised, some of it is personality bent, and some of it is learned behavior for in the realm of geekdom there is very little more annoying than the user who just wants you to do it for them and hasn’t bothered to try any solutions himself before asking for help. That is a key distinction in the geek ethos: try to find the solution before you ask for help. It is the distinction that led to my co-worker’s downfall.

It takes a certain amount of self-confidence and maturity to admit you were wrong. Since we won the project, the one that turned all fruit shaped, this co-worker has been claiming it as her own. The organization does work in an issue space that matters to her, the client’s reps who came in to meet with us for the kick-off impressed her personally (I think there may even have been a little crush action going on.), and the implementation used a content management system (CMS), in this case WordPress, with which she has a high degree of comfort. Confidence, however, is not this co-worker’s strong suit. Combine that with her inability to think strategically, her other major weakness, and you have the perfect conditions that end up with all four developers working 10 hours a day for 12 work days and still missing the client’s soft launch deadline by a week and their hard launch deadline, which luckily turned out to be not all that hard, by two days.

Working a ten-hour day, full out, with a project lead who is flustered and who must distribute the tasks but hasn’t thought enough about what the tasks are to be able to parse them out turned me into a lump of oatmeal by the end of the day. I wasn’t capable of doing more than grunting and staring at the television when I got home from work every day. Because I was looking for the lowest pressure possible narcotic to soothe my overloaded nervous system I did that thing that everyone with hundreds, or even dozens, of available channels and a searchable interactive program guide does when she wants to zone out in front of the TV: I aimlessly flipped channels. This is how I found Cozi TV which having just read its Wikipedia entry to find that link makes complete and utter sense with respect to programming.

Cozi seems to run nothing but classic TV shows from about 1960s through the 1980s and on this particular evening they were running back-to-back episodes of the quintessential television narcotic Charlie’s Angels. This particular episode was vintage Angels, second season so we’re dealing with Kelly (Jaclyn Smith), Kris (Cheryl Ladd), and Sabrina (Kate Jackson). And as I’m watching the flickering images on a TV that’s in a form factor no one could have imagined when this show originally aired in 1977, as I”m being lulled into submission by the simplistic plot, the quaint lighting and camera techniques, the set dressing, the clothing, and that oh so familiar frission of sexual attraction that was so scary when I was eight and is less scary at 40-something I noticed something interesting. Sabrina was wearing a pinky ring…on her left hand no less. This may not seem significant at first but it is when you locate Charlie’s Angels in its cultural context. [Read more…] about One ring to rule them all

I had to redo the binding on my favorite dictionary today. It’s a Webster’s Seventh Collegiate. I stole it from my step-father when I was in 12th grade. The binding holding the covers onto the inner pages had disintegrated well before I graduated from college. No surprising since by then the actual book was 30 years old.

There are newer dictionaries out there, ones that incorporate words and phrases that have made their way into English since the Seventh’s publication and I own more of them than is probably reasonable for one person. But the Seventh holds a particular utility and sentimental value for me. It was the dictionary that made me feel smart in high school. Yes, I was one of those kids who actually read the dictionary. It was the first reference book I ever claimed as my own. It’s the book I turn to first when I want to make sure I’m using a word correctly. As such, yes, it is an old friend and it is beat up.

I spent July 4th weekend at the North American Discworld Convention in Baltimore. Discworld is the universe Terry Pratchett first unleashed on the world in 1983 with The Colour of Magic. Discworld is flat and carried through the universe on the back of four elephants who are standing on the back of the Great A’Tuin, a turtle, who slowly swims through space. Pratchett’s Discworld novels are literate and humane in the deepest sense of the word exploring what it means to exist and co-exist. Though there are currently 39 of them with the 40th, Raising Steam, to be published this October, it is as the organizers of one panel at NADWCON pointed out possible to run out of Discworld novels. Arguably, it’s only possible to run out of previously unread Discworld novels.

Because this was a Con there was a vendors’ room which included not one but two booksellers. To be expected at a convention focusing on a single author. Fewer ornamental swords than Comic Con (currently under frenzied way in San Diego) and more discussion about which edition and printing is the best one to own. While filling in my own collection to replace some early paperbacks with hardcover volumes I got into an interesting discussion with one of the booksellers. [Read more…] about The Sacred and the Functional

We do not think enough in the U.S. about the meaning behind our holidays. We also don’t think enough about the larger cultural implications of how we mark or celebrate those holidays.

Christmas, as a Christian holy day, is problematic for a country that has codified into its DNA the separation of church and state. We spend little time thinking about the fact that Columbus didn’t actually discover America, nor did he even reach what we think of as the U.S. on his first voyage. Our Independence from the British isn’t as simple as red, white, and blue bunting, hot dogs, and fourth of July parade would have us believe. These things worry me less than the disturbing trend, going on a decade old now, to make every holiday and every sporting event honor “our veterans and those currently serving in the military” as the announcer so intoned at a recent major league baseball game I attended.

The original marking of “Decoration Day” began sometime in the 1860s as towns, both Northern and Southern, needed a day to honor their dead in a time when dying in battle and so far from home wasn’t seen as honorable but as undignified and disrespectful to the life that came before it says historian and Harvard president Drew Gilpin Faust in her new book The Republic of Suffering. Read an excerpt as published in “Parade” on Sunday, May 26, 2013.

In that same issue of “Parade” Faust responds to questions about the origins of Memorial Day saying,

…so a day for memorial was meant to restore the dignity of those lives, underscore the contributions that had been made, and in some way ratify how important the courage and sacrifice had been. It was an important part of the nation’s mourning.

“How important the courage and sacrifice had been” becomes an interesting question when you’re talking not about a war that divided brother from brother, sister from cousin, and took the lives of three quarters of a million people, 2.5% of the entire country’s population at the time. It becomes a quandary when you’re talking about a war in which the stakes are esoteric foreign policy concepts or a war where the moral justification is built on lies, damn lies, and mendacity.

How do you honor the sacrifice of those if the choice had been yours would not have been asked to sacrifice at all? It’s a hard question for which I have no answer.

What I do know is that everything in my country’s culture can not be about that military orientation. Why are we thanking our veterans and active duty service members at every major sporting event? Why, twelve years along, are we still subjected to God Bless America every time we turn around? Why can we not grasp the idea that if we really thought about our war machine we might use it more sparingly and with better sense?

Argue all you like about how the military may be the only viable career for a poor kid, the one shot at gainful employment and maybe a college degree for so many, but you’ll be arguing systemic semantics in the face of the fact that the U.S. military has for the bulk of my lifetime been an all volunteer force. It is a job. It’s a nasty, dirty, ugly, sometimes soul crushing, and sometimes unfortunately necessary job, but it is a job freely chosen by those who do it.

Are we doing to start having a moment of silence at every sporting even for the garbage men, without whom modern cities would resemble a Victorian chamber pot in under 30 days? What about the nurses and nurses aides to deal every day with the sick and the dying, often providing comfort when none is otherwise available? Firemen, who in the face of all logic run toward the burning building instead of away from it? Teachers, who are asked to do so much more than teach reading, writing, and arithmetic?

Where does it end? Why can’t we value people for their actual contributions instead of undervaluing so many and over valuing some?

My friend Joe, who is a veteran and a very smart guy, likes to remind people on Memorial Day you should honor a veteran who can not appreciate your respect in return and on Veterans’ Day you should honor one who can.

Tomorrow is Memorial Day in the U.S. and I’m willing to bet 90% of the people who bother to mark the day as anything more than a long weekend or a Monday off work don’t have the faintest clue about the holiday’s origins. The sad and dangerous part is these are the same people who will stand for God Bless America, who will get teary eyed when asked to take a moment of silence to honor our veterans and active duty service members.

They will do it unthinkingly which is an even graver error than having to do it at all.

Imagine you are at a flea market with a friend. As you wander the aisles you come upon a stall selling what your friend tells you very quietly so as not to alert the other customers is a mint condition version of the 5.75 inch tall “Christmas Delivery” Hummel figurine.

Your friend isn’t as discreet as he thinks, though. Another customer wanders over to look and it’s clear that she also recognizes the potential find which is priced at $400. A bidding war with the stall owner begins and at the end of it your friend has agreed to pay $700 for this chunk of porcelain. Problem is, the merchant will only take cash and your friend only has $300 on him.

You agree to lend your friend the remaining $400 but being who you are you make him sign a basic IOU with a payment date on it. This contract reads simply “I [your friend’s name] agree to pay [your name] the sum of $400 by [some specified future date].” Being a friend, you aren’t even going to charge interest. Your friend happily signs and you fork over the cash.

Two weeks later that new reality show “Trash or Treasure” comes to your local convention center and your friend stands in line for hours with his flea market prize carefully packaged. He just knows that the show, which often offers to buy the rare collectibles it has just evaluated to create that reality TV drama, will be happy to snap up his mint-condition item for at least what he paid for it, if not more, as the full retail asking price is about $1,500. Your friend is one of the lucky ones who gets an appointment with a screener evaluator and after hearing the flea market bidding war story and looking over the figurine your friend gets recommended for an on-camera session with the host, a famous antiques expert.

The antiques expert evaluates the figurine and tells your friend, unfortunately, no, this isn’t the version of this particular design that retailed for $1,500. This is the smaller version that retailed for $600 and even in the excellent condition it’s in the fair market value for the piece is only about $200. Your friend declines the offer of $200 and you both quickly leave the convention center.

A couple of days later your friend comes over to your house. He says that even though he borrowed $400 from you at the flea market since it turns out the piece that he bought isn’t actually as valuable as he thought he only wants to pay you back $100, and he wants you to change the IOU he signed to reflect that he only owes you $100 even though he borrowed four times that amount.

Stop and think about this for a minute.

Your friend purchased something that he thought was worth the price, if not more, than he paid. He had to borrow money from you in order to make that purchase. Now that it turns out that item isn’t worth what he thought it was he doesn’t want to pay back the actual amount he borrowed he wants to pay back what he would have borrowed if the asking price on the item had been lower.

He borrowed $400, spent it on something he chose to buy, and now only wants to pay back a quarter of what he owes because he overpaid. Seems pretty ridiculous, doesn’t it?

There is no difference between this scenario and the scenario proposed by some politicians and “thought leaders” and the “principal write downs for underwater homeowners” discussed in this clip from the May 2nd edition of Chris Matthews’ show “All In.”

Matthews and his guests discuss a report from the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), which is a non-partisan entity , that says cutting the principal amount owed by underwater homeowners on their mortgages would benefit the homeowners, the economy, and the American taxpayers.

For reference: In mortgage parlance “principal” is the amount borrowed from the bank, the $400 in my flea market example, and “underwater” means that the borrower owes more than the house is worth on the fair market.

Also worth defining “moral hazard,” which gets thrown around a lot in the clip from the Matthews show. “Moral hazard” is the idea that the borrower needs to have some stake in the transaction, something at risk, otherwise he has no incentive to honor the agreement. A better example of “moral hazard” is a car insurance policy with no deductible. With nothing at risk in the case of an accident, someone who owes money on a car has no incentive not to total that car and simply be repaid by her insurance; the deductible, that “skin in the game” that business creeps are so fond of discussing, is what prevents that “moral hazard” behavior.

Setting aside the wonky complexity of how encouraging banks to take big write-offs on loans could be a benefit to taxpayers, I’d like to look at the legal and moral ramifications of writing down principal on underwater mortgages.

From a legal perspective it’s a horrible precedent to set in contract law. I admit I am not a lawyer, nor am I an expert in contract law, but I do know that one of the basic principles of contract law is if you sign a valid contract you are legally obligated to honor that contract. Buying something for more money than it’s worth doesn’t make your contract invalid. It makes you a not very smart buyer.

If writing down principal on mortgages that are underwater is allowed, what are the ramifications for every other contract written in America? Can I suddenly decide that I don’t like the color you painted my house so I’m only going to pay you 50% of the price I signed for in the work contract? Or how about my car? A new car begins to depreciate as soon as you drive it off the dealer’s lot. Since it’s now worth less, does this mean I am only obligated to pay what it’s worth and not what I borrowed to purchase it? I realize these are broad, simplistic questions but I think they highlight something no one who is eager, so eager, to “fix” the housing market crisis is even considering.

Allowing these kinds of contract alterations introduce an element of uncertainty into every other contract that follows them and the whole point of contracts is they eliminate uncertainty.

Lawyers and legal pundits who are in favor of this type of “principal write down” will argue that banks would be making these decisions of their own volition and when two parties agree to alter a contract all it takes is an addendum to that contract to make the alteration. They will likely denigrate any concerns about the broader impact on contracts and contract law. And that’s fine but it still doesn’t get to the moral objection to doing this.

Strip away the cases of lender malfeasance, because that’s not what we’re talking about at this moment. Strip away the fact that the homes are worth less than the buyers originally paid for them. Strip away the unfairness to people who are faithfully paying their mortgages and whose homes aren’t “underwater.” Strip away how you feel about “Wall Street” and banks in general and go back to the two friends at the flea market.

I have sympathy for people whose homes are “underwater.” When you’re tied to the damn house you can’t move to find work, go to school, or care for an aging family member who needs help without seriously damaging your credit rating and reputation. It’s horrible and it sucks, but it doesn’t negate the fact that at some point you signed your name and borrowed that money and agreed to pay back at the bare minimum that amount.

By allowing “principal write downs” the message that would be sent is you don’t have to be competent and there are no consequences for the judgements or decisions you make. Buy whatever you want at whatever price you want and someone will always be there to pay for your mistakes.

Is this a message we really want to be sending on a policy level?

It also means from a personal relations perspective that your word, your promise to do something, is inherently of no value, and that is even scarier to me.