Author: Joseph Thibault

Franklin's 13

From Benjamin Franklin’s autobiography, freely available at your local library or from Dailylit.com.  These were the main tenets that he lived his life by, adapted from the Presbyterian church (though he claims not to have been a serious, church going man).

I propos’d to myself, for the sake of clearness, to use rather more names, with fewer ideas annex’d to each, than a few names with more ideas; and I included under thirteen names of virtues all that at that time occurr’d to me as necessary or desirable, and annexed to each a short precept, which fully express’d the extent I gave to its meaning.

These names of virtues, with their precepts, were:

1. TEMPERANCE. Eat not to dullness; drink not to elevation.

2. SILENCE. Speak not but what may benefit others or yourself; avoid trifling conversation.

3. ORDER. Let all your things have their places; let each part of your business have its time.

4. RESOLUTION. Resolve to perform what you ought; perform without fail what you resolve.

5. FRUGALITY. Make no expense but to do good to others or yourself; i.e., waste nothing.

6. INDUSTRY. Lose no time; be always employ’d in something useful; cut off all unnecessary actions.

7. SINCERITY. Use no hurtful deceit; think innocently and justly, and, if you speak, speak accordingly.

8. JUSTICE. Wrong none by doing injuries, or omitting the benefits that are your duty.

9. MODERATION. Avoid extreams; forbear resenting injuries so much as you think they deserve.

10. CLEANLINESS. Tolerate no uncleanliness in body, cloaths, or habitation.

11. TRANQUILLITY. Be not disturbed at trifles, or at accidents common or unavoidable.

12. CHASTITY. Rarely use venery but for health or offspring, never to dulness, weakness, or the injury of your own or another’s peace or reputation.

13. HUMILITY. Imitate Jesus and Socrates.

Think outside of the Mailbox

Ok, so the USPS is failing with a deficit of about 7 billion dollars according to the Times.  That’s on a total budget of around 70-80 billion (estimating based on a Heritage.org article with data from 2002).  It could be way more but the data isn’t easy to track down/root out.

GO POSTAL!

That being said, the recession is kicking the Post Office’s ass, and it has been beaten to a pulp over the last decades with the advent and ubiquitous use of email as an alternative to sending letters.  So less stamps are being sold, but the routes and delivery methods and post office numbers remain the same.

In an effort to alleviate their troubles the Post Office was asked to suggest some reforms to their programs in order to save money.  The results were: close branches and cut back on Saturday delivery/pickup of mail.  And even though that would not even meet the 7 billion, it was flatly denied by the congressional leader overseeing the reforms because it “affected his constituents” (this is paraphrased by the Morning Edition report on NPR which included an update on the USPS situation).

So the problem is declining revenue (already projected deficit), lots of liabilities (payroll and benefits) and even with the cuts proposed,

It takes a lot of people, equipment and trucks to move 20 billion pieces. If the mail volume doesn’t recover, and the trends don’t look promising for that to happen, there’ll be a lot of excess capacity at the postal service. (NPR)

The Times continues,

“We have too many people, too many buildings, less revenue and less mail,” said Darleen Reid-DeMeo, a Postal Service spokeswoman for New York City. “We’ve got to become more efficient.”

The problem, as I see it, is that no one is really looking at the problem with a fresh outlook.  If we view the USPS in terms of current economics, most entrepreneurs would see the issue right away: their freemium model is backwards.  Literally, as in they are giving away and charging for the wrong services.

Sure they needed to offer free mail delivery a long time ago in order to create their market, who doesn’t try to give something away these days?  But nowadays there’s no way to justify ANY free delivery on ANY day.  They want to cut Saturday.  I say cut free mail delivery and pickup every day unless the end user opts to pay a monthly subscription fee for the service.

And instead of charging for PO Boxes, offer them for free.  This way people are attracted to the Post Office as a destination and can still receive mail at no cost (besides stamps).  My suggestion would have several effects:

  • drastically decrease the number of staff needed for mail delivery
  • cut transportation costs (gas, fleet upkeep)
  • create a new revenue stream from those that opt to receive home delivery and pickup
  • prepare the USPS for continued reduction in pieces of mail

Now, any congressperson would say that their constituents would balk at this.  Obviously, the USPS affects all districts, states, residents and therefore every constituent and interest.  Mail is a serious business even if no one is bothering with it anymore.

This isn’t my last post on the USPS situation.  It really grinds my gears that they aren’t taking a more serious look at totally revamping the system.  GRRR!!!

Browser In/Efficiency

I love Google Chrome.  It’s probably the biggest boost to my at home/at work productivity since I added more RAM to my laptop (before I did, my IBM could only handle 1 window of Firefox open at a time: this isn’t a good thing for someone who is currently blogging with no less than 10 tabs, two separate windows for gmail and gdocs and a music player open).

Now you might be wondering how it increased my efficiency.  There are a couple of ways, mostly more noticeable to me when I’m not using my regular computer and Chrome.  They are: 1 click access to the most important sites to me (which I have listed across the bookmark bar, just as icons…when you create a bookmark in Chrome, just delete the title if the site has a nice favicon and voila: instant mini shortcuts.  I bet you could fit 50 or more along the bookmark toolbar) and 2 click access to my most frequently visited sites (whenever you open Chrome or a new tab all of your most recently and frequently visited sites are listed).  It’s telling that my top three sites are all work related, followed by blogger (1/2 work, 1/2 play), Flickr, whatever Fantasy sports league I’m in at the time, Apple Movie trailers (I love movie trailers) and a couple other that change like the seasonal aisle at your local pharmacy or grocery store.

Chrome is also great cause I can have 10+ tabs open in multiple windows and they all show as much of the webpage as possible.  I am really sold on Google’s design and am a huge Chrome-fanboy.

That being said, never before have I ever not used a website because of browser incompatibility–until now.  I often switch back and forth between FF and IE to test sites and visuals when designing a new site, blogging or building courses, but if I think something is going to be a highly frequented site then I want it compatible with Chrome (because that is more and more my desktop).  To manage my side-business finances I really want to use Quickbooks Simple Start as opposed to just a spreadsheet.  But they don’t support Chrome.  They also don’t support FF on linux/Ubuntu.  That has been a big enough obstacle to prevent me from using their product so far, even though it’s free and I could easily open FF instead.  I might make the leap but only after a lot of searching for an alternative.

It’s not that I’m super picky, it’s that I hate inefficiency (even if it decreases over time) no matter how minuscule.  I think it’s telling too that as a consumer of online information and applications that I would be so turned off from adopting a product that doesn’t work at all/as well when paired with another technology (this is a derivation of incompatibility of OS and programs as well, however the barriers are smaller when we’re talking about browsers–but no less significant to the end user).

So, I guess the conclusion is that even if your product is the bee’s knees, it better work on whatever I’m using.  And if it doesn’t (cough, Quickbooks, cough) then you might not get me as a customer as easily.  And as a provider of such products in work and personal, the sites better work the first time someone comes to them or there’s probably a good chance that you’ll lose that person forever.

Now, if only I can find a better online program than Google Docs to manage our small business finances that would be sweet (suggestions welcome).

Education costs trending towards zero

There’s a lot of talk about how the cost of education is decreasing year over year because of the advances in technology. Free courses, free text

image from freebeer.org
image from freebeer.org

books, free content available from the most prestigious universities in the world, all online, accessible all the time to anyone anywhere.

Josh Catone of Mashable wrote a quick article about how those three forces (free text books, free courses, free course ware) are trending the cost of “education” in the traditional sense towards zero. It makes some sense.  But I don’t fully buy it.

There are major advantages to the University structure that contribute to many areas of society other than the preparation of individuals for jobs or civic involvement: economic development, organization of dissenting views/opinions, creation of new technology, centers for investment in research, maintaining thriving university-centered communities, etc. etc.

But mostly I don’t buy it because education has been “free” (as in free speech, not free beer) forever.  Honestly, probably the best invention to make learning free was the book (because you didn’t need a storyteller to educate you anymore); then the library made the books freely available to those who wanted them (not that the industrious didn’t find ways to borrow them prior to that).  The Mashable article was basically saying that the internet was bring the cost to zero.  Um, no.  The internet is changing education, but only in efficiency and reach (not necessarily in accessibility).

The fact of the matter is that for advanced nations, the content is reaching new people, while not-as-advanced countries are struggling to get internet (accessibility is still hampered).  Not only that but near 100% of the content is in English (another barrier for the least “educated”).  It’d be nice to have totally free education and even free college degrees for those that want to pursue them.  In some sense that’s already happening and has been happening for 100s of years.  Before there were standards and accreditation, men were self-made and educated for free.

Ben Franklin did it as an indentured servant to his brother, reading in his spare moments and writing and practicing using borrowed books.  He didn’t go to college but turned out pretty highly regarded.  And if you’re thinking, “but that’s just Benjamin Franklin…” then I say this, other less well known men have done the same for generations and made their mark in history with FREE educations (and many more because we so often enforce a price on traditional educational systems, barring them from entry to their own benefit).

Now, I do believe education is much too expensive and increasing unjustly in price year after year.  But if you truly want to learn, the options and content are, and always have been, available to you.

Related: if you’re interested in Benjamin Franklin and his life, check out the free ebook from Dailylit.com.

OMGROBOTS

From Geekologie.com
From Geekologie.com
NYTimes published a recent article that all but predicts the end of days, as brought by the metal/plastic hands of robots.  Nice.

The researchers…generally discounted the possibility of highly centralized superintelligences and the idea that intelligence might spring spontaneously from the Internet. But they agreed that robots that can kill autonomously are either already here or will be soon. [NYTimes.com]

The article isn’t all that scary, though the fact that this type of conversation is now necessary is telling about the types of technology already available worldwide.  The conversation (which actually happened about 6 months ago in Feb ’09) was focused on setting research limits (no doubt to stop researchers from truly making a man-eating self powered robot that Fox News is so scared of.  I’ll be scared of it too when it’s coming after me for it’s next pit stop.

It continues though and ends ironically that Artificial Intelligence could actually make up for human short comings,

Dr. Horvitz said he was hopeful that artificial intelligence research would benefit humans, and perhaps even compensate for human failings. He recently demonstrated a voice-based system that he designed to ask patients about their symptoms and to respond with empathy. When a mother said her child was having diarrhea, the face on the screen said, “Oh no, sorry to hear that.”

A physician told him afterward that it was wonderful that the system responded to human emotion. “That’s a great idea,” Dr. Horvitz said he was told. “I have no time for that.” [same article]

And by “failings” he apparently meant ability to interact and emphasize with other people.  Er…maybe that Dr. was a robot already.

New guards for their future security

But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.

-The Declaration of Independence (America’s Greatest Hits – DailyLit.com)

Sometimes you gotta do what you gotta do.  Reading this document of documents really shows how our forefathers were the original punks.  They also probably would have quit jobs they didn’t like pretty fast.

Eatertainment and Cravability (possibly the end of being healthy)

Eatertainment (noun): the art of cramming as much hedonistic pleasure–flavor, oil, saltiness and overall satisfaction–into a food without regard for the absurd amount of calories, fat or even carcinogens contained in the “food”.

You’ve seen the new Doritos commercial with the attractive girl eating a bag of “Late Night: Tacos at Midnight” which show her cruising through some unnamed metropolis in a taxi, eating these magical, triangular bits of manufactured corn crisps with neon cheese powder.

devil chips
devil chips

It’s fancy marketing.  But it’s a problem.  I’ve struggled with my own weight since I was a kid.  I’m not obese by any means, but apparently the proverbial chips (no pun intended) are stacked against me.  I run a lot (more than any of my friends) but I still have a dozen or so pounds that just won’t come off.  So I’m stuck in stalemate between where I want to be and where nature does.

According to a recent article in the New Yorker (and decades of research on the topic of American obesity) I’m not alone.  Somewhere over 1/3 of Americans are now considered overweight.  An many are extremely overweight to the point of physical endangerment.  I do my best to eat healthy (no Doritos for me, mayo is a no-no, and I haven’t had a candy bar or non-diet soda in about 10 years).  But the struggle is hard.

Some research suspects that our natural inclination is to pack away the pounds because our instincts are worried about being broadsided by a period of famine or scarce resources (like a 10-day meditation retreat or Ramadan…).  Makes sense since it must have been really friggen hard to take down a woolly mammoth back in 10,000 BC (don’t go see the movie).  I’ll believe that research, considering it’s damn hard to drop the pounds or forgo that next piece of Costc0 Pizza (come on, it’s seriously only $1.50!).

Anywho, in the New Yorker they go back and forth on what really the cause is.  They also give some cool new terms to the US overeating issue like “craveability” and “eatertainment” and “conditioned hypereating”.

“conditioned hypereating”…describe[s] how people respond to these laboratory-designed concoctions. Foods like Cinnabons and Starbucks’ Strawberries & Crème Frappuccinos are…like drugs: “Conditioned hypereating works the same way as other ‘stimulus response’ disorders in which reward is involved, such as compulsive gambling and substance abuse.” – Elizabeth Kolbert, XXXL in the New Yorker (pg 2 online)

The sum is that it’s a huge problem.  Like cripple our national health care plan huge.  My take away is that there’s a strange convergence of factors that are making this issue balloon like a stomach after a chinese buffet.  Human instinct, fancy marketing, low cost of processed foods (especially those that are corn-based) are making a crazy, delicious, edible layer cake of medical emergency.

Which brings me back to what was supposed to be the point of this post:

Dear Doritos,

We’re on to you.  Stop making those ridiculously named snacks that entice our taste buds and enlarge our backsides.

Munch love,

Joe