Author: smartpeopleiknow

Punk art (or) In search of Banksy

A fascinating documentary by a fascinating documentarian on the art of the street and the search for the elusive Banksy. Watch:

YouTube – Banksy’s Exit Through The Gift Shop (Exclusive 5 min Extended Sneak Peek)

P.S. Love the title.

On three steps to deal with an upsetting or overwhelming event in your life

I find when I am dealing with an upsetting or overwhelming events I need to do three things.

1) Acknowledge that the normal rules are put to the side for the time being. Day to day things which are not immediately relevant to whatever is overwhelming or upsetting you need to be minimized or put aside until you can deal with the situation at hand. I try to write down what is slipping so that I can deal with them in step 3. Writing them down helps you focus on the event but also helps you stop thinking about them. You need to shelve them in a way you can retrieve them later if need be.
2) Once the event has settled down somewhat, the first thing I do is rest. You need to recover somewhat, regain your energy and your strength so that you can go on to step 3. Overwhelming and upsetting events take more out of you than may sometimes acknowledge, but the need for rest will eventually catch up with you.
3a) If the event is subsiding but will start up again, you need to get help or change your life. Look at the things you put aside in step 1. Look at what you learned from dealing with what happened during the event. Take action before it occurs again.
3b) If the event is subsiding and will not start up again, you should still look at the things you put aside in step 1. Look at what you learned from dealing with what happened during the event. But now you should take action to better your life, or at least regain the parts that were good before the event occurred.

Posted via email from Bernie Michalik’s posterous site

Kevin Kelly on principles: The Peter Principle and the Shirky Principle

Kevin Kelly coins a new term, The Shirky Principle: “complex solutions (like a company, or an industry) can become so dedicated to the problem they are the solution to, that often they inadvertently perpetuate the problem.” Sadly, though, he refers to the Peter Principle in devising the term.

The Peter Principle “says that a person in an organization will be promoted to the level of their incompetence. At which point their past achievements will prevent them from being fired, but their incompetence at this new level will prevent them from being promoted again, so they stagnate in their incompetence.” It was developed by Dr. Lawrence Peter in the 1960’s. I think it may have had alot of revelance in the 1960s and the 1970s, but when I started working in the 1980s, a new phenomena was occurring. In the 1980s, you had the notion of plateauing. With plateauing, no one was being promoted, competent or incompetent. The Peter Principle was, if not void, was severely limited. People at higher stations in the company who started work in the 1950s and 1960s may have experienced the Peter Principle, but people who started work after the baby boomers had been promoted did not. Indeed, may people who suffered from plateauing had a different outlook on work than the baby boomers, an outlook that was resigned to not getting promoted, and looked at work differently.  The same was even more true for new employees that came after that.

That leads me back to The Shirky Principle.  I wonder at what point it will no longer be true. It may be that it has no sooner been stated that it is already becoming obsolete.

What’s wrong with Clay Shirky’s post on The Collapse of Complex Business Models

This post by Clay Shirky, The Collapse of Complex Business Models, has been getting alot of attention, as it should. Let me cut to the chase and by slightly paraphrasing Shirky, highlight the main idea:

“Complex societies collapse because, when some stress comes, those societies have become too inflexible to respond….When societies fail to respond to reduced circumstances through orderly downsizing, it isn’t because they don’t want to, it’s because they can’t.

In such systems, there is no way to make things a little bit simpler – the whole edifice becomes a huge, interlocking system not readily amenable to change. … Furthermore, even when moderate adjustments could be made, they tend to be resisted, because any simplification discomfits elites.

When the value of complexity turns negative, a society plagued by an inability to react remains as complex as ever, right up to the moment where it becomes suddenly and dramatically simpler, which is to say right up to the moment of collapse. Collapse is simply the last remaining method of simplification.”

I think this is a valuable analysis of a complex system, and for complex systems where all the inputs and outputs are tightly linked together, I think that this collapsing behavoir is one you would expect to see.

I also think his examples of media companies and AT&T are good ones, because you have companies where all the input (the lines of business and associated revenue streams) are tightly coupled to the output (profitability). Furthermore, the dominant lines of business (e.g. print) constrict the subservient but more profitable lines of business (new media).

I think there are a few things wrong with this idea, however, and they center around the ideas of complexity and collapse. Some of the organizations with complex business models that are due for a collapse aren’t just in trouble because of complexity; they are also in trouble because they are singularly focused. There is little if any diversification. They are not just inflexible: they’re like one big tower of playing cards. Smart investors and businesses diversify their portfolio. Not only that, but smart businesses should have parts of their businesses in different phases of development, so that if a new line of business collapses, other new lines of business or mature lines of business will continue to support the growth of the company. Indeed, in most organizations, the mature lines of business may be complex, but the new lines should be less so. If not, then this is an organization behavioral problem more than a complex business model problem.

There is also the notion of how you manage collapse. For example, smart businesses recognize mature lines of business and know how to milk them while preparing for their eventual demise. There is not so much a collapse as there is an orderly winding down of the business. It takes discipline and an acknowledgement of the circumstances, but the collapse is orderly, not catastrophic (walking down stairs versus tumbling down them). Companies that don’t have discipline and don’t acknowledge the circumstances will fail catastrophically.

A number of years ago CityTV in Toronto took on a new, cheaper approach to gathering the news. It was simpler and cheaper than the way other media companies did it. But it was effective, and it forced the other companies to do that. The other media companies did not collapse, however. They adjusted, however painfully.

I think Rupert Murdoch is trying to make the adjustment as well. He is experimenting with different forms of media (MySpace) and different ways of generating revenue. He is failing to some degree, which makes it easy for people to say he is a failure. He may fail completely, unable and incapable of generating new business models to support his company. But if he succeeds, he will have found a way to be profitable with new media and likely generating new, simpler business models that will support them. Other companies will follow his lead. (Or someone else’s lead.)

I think media/communications companies may have to abandon some of their business models, but I think such companies will remain and they will eventually develop new mature and complex business models.

Anyway, some thoughts on Shirky’s post. It’s a great post, and a great extention of the idea of collapsing complex societies to collapsing complex business models.

Is Pope Benedict XVI the next Nixon?

It seems absurd at first thought. But read this article in The Atlantic, on Papalgate: The Pope’s Nixon Problem, which starts this way:

The ever-widening scandal over Pope Benedict XVI’s handling of Church sex abuse cases has an eerily familiar ring: it’s unfolding in much the same way that Watergate played out for Richard Nixon. Each day brings new revelations, to which the Pope and his supporters respond with carefully crafted explanations and pointed counterattacks.

Is this Watergate with holy water? Here’s a look at some of the ways in which Pope Benedict XVI has found himself caught up in a scandal of Nixonian proportions…

As author Tom McNichol explains, there are four ways this is similar:

  1. The nagging question: What Did He Know and When Did He Know It?

  2. It’s Not the Crime, It’s the Cover-up

  3. Shooting the Messenger

  4. The Dangers of Infallibility

I see alot of #3 happening right now. Obvious the Pope has risk #4 in a big way. As more and more investigation happens in various countries, #2 is becoming a bigger and bigger concern. Which leads more and more to #1.

Difficult times for the Pope and the Church lie ahead.

Google And Facebook’s Privacy Illusion

Bruce Schneier, Chief Security Technology Officer for BT, has a good article in Forbes on Google And Facebook’s Privacy Illusion.

The commentary is good and something I strongly agree with. If I can effectively sum up some of his points:

  • Young people care about privacy.
  • To them privacy is about control.
  • Big companies like Google and Facebook have a vested interest in you surrendering some of that control, and so they take steps to make it easier for you to give up that control.

Before you read another “privacy is dead” article, read Bruce’s first/instead.

On the need for a better word than “schadenfreude”

I was reading a blog post tonight that I came across serendipitously by an
author with many of the same traits I have, yet who also suffers from
serious illness and has other major difficulties. I thought a number of
things reading it, but one of them was an idea similar to but better than
schadenfreude, the taking of delight in the misfortunes of others. I
thought that there should be a word for gaining a better perspective or a
new appreciation of your life due to the misfortunes of others. For that’s
what I gained from reading this man’s story.

It’s difficult to share our misfortunes. Often times we don’t want people’s
help or sympathy: we just would like someone to listen and empathize. If
others go off an better appreciate life as a result, that is a positive
thing in itself.

It is best to inspire people by what we achieve. Other times we can help
people by showing what can be endured. With luck we can always help people
appreciate what they have.

(Hacked on my Blackberry)
—————–
Sent from my BlackBerry Handheld.

Posted via email from Bernie Michalik’s posterous site

How to make an animated feature film like “How to Train Your Dragon”? Copy it from another animated film!

What do Chicken Little, Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs and How to Slay your Dragon have in common? Well, you could apply this paragraph which I tweaked very slightly from the Movie Review in the NYTimes.com by A.O. Scott on How to Train Your Dragon and use it for all three movies:

The hero is a misfit adolescent who proves his mettle, pleases his hard-to-please father and saves the world while learning important lessons and rattling off some wisecracks. Supporting characters include a spitfire love interest, a gaggle of goofy friends and a cute nonhuman sidekick.

(Ok, everyone is non-human in Chicken Little, but there is still the sidekick.)

There’s other similarities: there is no mother, the father is big and gruff and has a hard time with emotions and is ashamed of his son, and the son has a secret. The films are so similar I looked them up on imdb.com to see if they came from the same studio or same writers, but they don’t.

I liked all three films, as did my son. But I think there are better ways to show father-son relationships, and I hope they show them in upcoming animated films. At least these fathers aren’t the hopeless inept fathers I see so often on TV shows. Still.

Men’s hats in Western society – a look back to a century ago

In this article Historicist: Greeting Easter 1910 – Torontoist there is an ad featuring men’s hats from a century ago:

…with Silk Hats (think:deluxe top hat), derby hats (think: English banker) and alpine hat (think: German hat geat in Oktoberfest). Clearly if women had to have their Easter bonnet, then men had to have their corresponding new hat to make the social circuit at this time of year. Eventually silk hats faded away sometime after 1919, and by the time the 1960s arrived, hats in general for men disappeared. (Unless you count baseball hats, which I don’t.)

Back in 1910 I am sure people would have found it difficult to believe that men would go out in public without a good hat. I wonder what people a century from now will think about our attire. I am sure that they will find it odd we still wear two piece suits and neckties. Perhaps even dress shoes as they are now will see odd.

The myth of style and money

If you have alot of money, you can get clothing that is constructed impeccably of the finest materials. But there’s more to having style than that. Indeed, as this Joe Fresh show at Toronto Fashion Week illustrates, you can look very stylish indeed with low cost clothing. H&M have been proving this for years by having big name designers like Lagerfeld and McCartney creating lines for them. Now Joe Fresh does it too.

It’s all about how you wear your clothes and carry yourself that determines your style. Not how much it all costs.

Putting the iPad in perspective – April 2010 edition

I’ve been reading alot of pro and con articles about the iPad. David Pogue at the NYtimes.com had both in his review. And now there’s this:
Cost and Redundancy Issues Confront iPad – NYTimes.com. I partially agree with this: the early adopters are going the snap up the iPad, just like they did with the iPhone. And if the iPad was a design dead end, then I would worry if I were Apple. But of course it’s not a design dead end; if anything, it is designed as just the start of a new platform for people. There are lots of things that can be done to improve the iPad, and I am willing to bet Apple will include those overtime. Overtime the people with netbooks and laptops and other portable devices will be looking to upgrade and then they will buy an iPad or some other tablet device. (I wouldn’t assume that Microsoft is going to be left out of this, or RIM for that matter, or Acer, or HP or Dell.)

I would be hard pressed to imagine some future other than one where Apple sells alot of these. Then other devices like the Touch will die off. Costs will come down as competition ramps up, too. But by that time, Apple will have some new device. It’s a pattern we have seen before, and I can’t see it being broken.

As for me, eventually I will get one, I think. I love my Touch, I have a few iPods, and I like my netbook and my laptop. I think it will be a good thing to have, but it is just a computing device, and not even a terribly innovative one at that.

How people hack your password

If you get nothing else from this frightening article, How I’d Hack Your Weak Passwords on Lifehacker, get this: make you password is long (at least 8 characters) and make sure it has upper and lower case letters with some numbers and other characters (e.g. “curse” symbols like #$%@) mixed in.

I knew alot of this stuff, but something I should have guessed was this: if you can’t use a different password for every site you log into, make sure the really important passwords (e.g. for banking) is very good and very different than those sites (e.g. newspaper sites) which may have weaker security.

Hey, it’s your money and your identity. Protect it.

What do you want to be when you are 80?

Well, if you are Bill Cunningham (who is 81), you want to continue to be a great photographer. The Lens Blog has a story about Cunningham and a documentary about him. What I love about him, though, is that he is “old” only in the sense of having lived many years. Otherwise, there is little that is old about Bill Cunningham. He is a hard working fashion photographer, a role that needs you to think “new”, not “old”.

So what do you want to be when you are 80? And if you are 80 already, then you should be planning your 100 birthday. Please invite me.

Bistros (or, a new one, Cape Leopold, opens in Toronto)

There’s a good review of the new Toronto bistro, Cafe Leopold, in blogTO. I am a big fan of bistros and their well prepared, tasty, unpretentious, (and great value) food. Seeing new bistros open cheers me up, which makes me happy and looking forward to checking out Cafe Leopold. If you are out on St. Clair, just west of Bathurst, and you are feeling hungry, look for this place….

Steve Jobs and Eric Schmidt do coffee

I loved this photo from…well you guess…

Gizmodo has a post on the body language of the two men which is interesting, even if I am skeptical of it, here. What I thought was interesting is that Steve Jobs dresses in a black shirt, jeans and running shoes ALL THE TIME! I thought he just did that for big presentations. I guess he finds it simplifies his life. I also thought it interesting that they are just hanging out in a coffee shop (Starbucks?) just like the rest of us. No big fancy schmantzy board room meeting somewhere. Maybe they accidentally ran into each other! (“Steve?” “Eric!” “Steve! Let’s have a coffee and talk shop!” :))

After HCR, it’s time for FinReg

WTH? In the United States at least, after HCR (Health Care Reform) we are going to see alot of people in the media and politicians talking about FinReg (Financial Regulation Reform). And just like with HCR, Ezra Klein at his Think Tank blog at the Washington Post has alot more good things to say about Finreg, including this. Well worth a read.

In trying to explain the value of abstract expressionism to my teenage daughter…

…I had a difficult time conveying what makes a Mark Rothko or a Barnett Newman painting great. 

However, seeing these three painting from the wonderful blog 2 or 3 things I know might do a better job of explaining it visually than my words did.

Here we have “green”:

and “black”

and “white”

Each image has a different feel to it, and the relationships of the colours to each other affects the way we perceive the works, as well as how the viewer relates to these colours generally. But having an image of a house on a horizon makes that somewhat easier to comprehend somehow than if we remove the house. The house gives us a bridge to appreciating the expressionistic nature of the paintings. Indeed, the paintings are practically abstract, though the iconic nature of a house makes us think otherwise.

 At least it seems that way to me. What do you think?

A brilliant use of paint, graphics and design lead to inspiration in education

How is this done? Well, Pentagram has done work at the Achievement First Endeavor Middle School in Brooklyn to inspire children and teachers there to work hard and succeed. The work was part of a “refurbishment and expansion of an existing building” and its a powerful example of how something smart and low cost be very effective.

I love this in particular. For kids in middle school at some point must think: why must I continue to go to school and learn all this stuff? And there are lots of reasons. But I think these five, painted here, are essential reasons, and a great thing to constantly remind people of:

I also thought this was a great thing for anyone going up the stairs to see:

Go to Pentagram’s site for more info.

(Thanks to the great blog Sunshine and Design for pointing this out.)

Sinead O’Connor, once an inmate in a Magdalene laundry, pens a seering editorial on the Pope

Sinead O’Connor has written a searing editorial in the washingtonpost.com criticizing the Pope for what has happened and what is being done with regards to the sex abuse scandal in the Catholic church. Regardless how you feel about this issue, it is a remarkably well written piece and deserves a reading for many reasons.

One of those reasons is an aside, but a worthwhile one. O’Connor was sent to a Magdalene laundry for 18 months when she was younger. I only had a vague idea what this was. Not only did I learn more about them in this wikipedia article, but that article itself was well worthwhile reading, especially in light of everything.

(Photo of Magdalene Laundry in England, early 20th century, from wikipedia)

Rod Dreher’s (American) Advice for the Pope

On the sex abuse scandal and what can the Pope do? Rod Dreher at beliefnet offers this advice:

I think the best thing he can do now — indeed, possibly the only sensible thing — is to admit any role he had in transferring priests and failing to do the right thing by sex abuse victims. Explain these decisions in context of the times and the culture, but overall don’t be defensive, but rather be humble. Confess all, and be publicly penitent. Many people will scream condemnation at the pope and the Church, and much of that will have been deserved. But I think men and women of goodwill will appreciate a genuine attempt to come to terms with this evil situation, not by denying and stonewalling, but by admitting and asking forgiveness. The pope already has uttered some extraordinary words of regret, but I think people are looking for something more.

I think this advice makes sense for American public officials. The American people are more expectant and accepting of leaders who go this route.

But the Pope is not an American official. And what might be acceptible for Americans may not be acceptible for European, South American, African or Asian Catholics. I would say that such a confession might wreck more damage to the Catholic church as an institution than stonewalling will. That doesn’t make stonewalling right, but it is something to consider in watching the behavior of the Pope and the Church.

I also believe that people who think the Pope is going to resign are looking at the Pope as a politician — which he is — and not as a Pope in a long line of Popes. Switching Popes is a big deal. Plus I think Benedict has wanted to be Pope for a very long time. Given that, there will be lots of steps that will be taken before resignation occurs.

The timing of Obama’s Agenda – why he wins even if the Democrats lose seats

I am surprised with how little people comment on the timing of Obama’s agenda. It’s not haphazard. The first thing up was financial stabilization. That was a given. But what could have been done, but wasn’t, was the reining in of the financial sector. Instead, what he went after next was health care. That was the toughest item on his agenda, which meant he needed as much time and as much support in Congress as he could get, and that mean he had to do it before elections in Congress come up, because it is almost a given that the Democrats are going to lose seats and it is going to be even tougher to get progressive bills through like health care. I think that’s one of the reasons financial regulation was put on hold. But now, financial regulation is coming up. Given that the banks are stable, it is easier to try and rein them in. Even if the Democrats can’t due to Republican opposition, they can take that opposition and run against the Republicans on that and health care, whose benefits Americans should be seeing in the next year.

Other big items will come after that, including climate change and immigration reform. On immigration reform, opposition from the Republicans may not be as uniform as it was on health care. Running against immigration reform will only help Obama when we runs again for reelection. Likewise with climate control.

Finally, given how depressed the American economy is now, it can only get better, and likely in a dramatic way, before the time Obama has to run again. That will help him most of all.

His biggest challenge will be what major initiatives he wants to tackle in his second term.

Who is better: Public Mobile or Wind Mobile

Good question. There’s plenty of things to consider when choosing a new wireless carrier, and it helps to get an objective opinion. If you go here:
Wind Mobile vs. Public Mobile – choosing the carrier that’s best for you,  IT Business can help you decide. Of course, there are other carriers too. Not only that, but I suspect Wind and Public will be continually upgrading their service. Still, if you are in the market now, consider this IT Business review: it’s good.

The fluidity of left-right politics and whether or not “left” and “right” still make sense

Reading this post, A Post-Health Care Realignment? | Cato @ Liberty, and the shifting in priorities as well as the odd alignments of so called left and right wing political groups in the U.S., had me thinking again of the notion of left and right in politics. In the U.S. in particular, there seems to be a shift to the notions of progressives and conservatives, which would be a shift away from the notion of liberals and conservatives. To make it confusing, in Canada we had Liberals (left) and Progressive Conservatives (right) who are now just Conservatives. And of course, from time to time, in any given country, what policies and politics make up left and right shift around.

Given that, it’s worthwhile to go back and look at the origins of the idea of left and right in politics. According to Wikipedia on Left–right politics:

The terms Left and Right have been used to refer to political affiliation since the early part of the French Revolutionary era. They originally referred to the seating arrangements in the various legislative bodies of France, specifically in the French Legislative Assembly of 1791, when the king was still the formal head of state, and the moderate royalist Feuillants sat on the right side of the chamber, while the radical Montagnards sat on the left.[8] This traditional seating arrangement continues to be observed by the Senate and National Assembly of the French Fifth Republic.

Originally, the defining point on the ideological spectrum were the attitudes towards the ancien régime (“old order”). “The Right” thus implied support for aristocratic, royal and clerical interests, while “The Left” implied support for republicanism, secularism and civil liberties.[1] At that time, support for socialism and liberalism were regarded as being on the left. The earlier “left-wing” politicians were advocates of laissez faire capitalism[citation needed] and the “right-wing” politicians opposed it, until the early nineteenth century when anti-capitalism gained favour among the leftists due to the rise of socialism.

However, among the left-wing were not only liberals but also Robespierre, who was a protosocialist, a disciple of Rousseau. When his section of the Jacobin party got the power, left-controlled French National Convention moved to decree numerous economic interventions during the Revolution, including price controls (enforced under penalty of death), forced loans on those with incomes exceeding 1000 livres, and the abolishment of the Paris Stock Exchange and all joint-stock companies.

During the French Revolution, the definition of who was on the left and who on the right shifted greatly within only a few years. Initially, leaders of the Constituent Assembly like Antoine Barnave and Alexandre de Lameth, who supported a very limited monarchy and a unicameral legislature, were seen as being on the left, in opposition to more conservative leaders who hoped for a more British-style constitutional monarchy (the British monarch was a very powerful figure in 18th century British politics, unlike today), and to those who opposed the revolution outright. By the time of the convening of the Legislative Assembly in 1791, their party, now called the Feuillants, had come to be seen as on the right due to its support for any form of monarchy, and for the limited franchise of the 1791 Constitution. By the time of the National Convention only a year later, the semi-liberal Girondins, who had been on the left in the Legislative Assembly due to their support for external war to spread the revolution, and strong dislike for the king, had themselves come to be seen as being on the right due to their ambivalence about the overthrow of the monarchy, their opposition to Louis’s execution, and their dislike for the city of Paris, which had come to see itself as the heart of the Revolution.

Part of the confusion of left-right wing politics in much of the West had to do with the problem with the old order (normally right wing) being associated with progressive politics (left wing), given the amount of change that had been established, especially the New Deal policies of F.D. D.R. Hence, I think this is a reason why people have moved away from those terms. But in a deeper sense, they still hold, for progressive politics are still associated with the masses while conservative politics are still associated with the estates of our current societies. And because of that, I still think the idea of left and right in politics is still worthwhile.