On Wednesday, while waiting for my flight back to London, I had occasion once again to survey the selection of books on offer at San Francisco International Airport's news stand/bookstore. It was a powerful reminder that, awful as the WH Smith concessions at UK airports are, they usually have a wider selection than the thrillers and right-wing screeds infesting American airport bookshelves. I suppose that's why Tom Clancy's books are called "airport novels", eh? Because they satisfy both of these requirements.
Anyway, one of the books that caught my eye was by Ben Carson, entitled America the Beautiful: Rediscovering What Made This Nation Great. Not being in the current of American news, I had no idea who this guy was (although that's now remedied thanks to Wikipedia), so I had a quick look at the back cover, and the inside front blurbs, to see who was endorsing him. After all, you can generally get a good idea of where someone's politics lie by who likes them. And, appropriately enough, one of the endorsements was from Billy Graham's grandson.
Not that I really needed that - conservatives are usually the only ones writing books like that. I'm not sure why, because I don't really think liberals are particularly satisfied with the way America's going, and it might help us win the meme war if we co-opted some of that language for ourselves.
Anyway, Dr Carson had a chapter in his book entitled "Capitalism: Pros and Cons". I wanted to see what a conservative guy thought was negative about capitalism (maybe that there isn't enough of it?), so I flipped through and had a look. Instead of a nice, orderly list, or even sections entitled "pro" or "con", he just talked about growing up in poverty in Boston and how his mother pushed him to excel in school. So far, so uncontroversial - conservatives may not believe this, but liberals like to see people do well, too. That is, after all, why we advocate social programs and sharing wealth.
He then talked about a friend of his who worked at the FAA and came up with an invention to make plane landings more stable. This friend was offered $500 or so for his invention, so he (not unreasonably) decided to go into the private sector to see if he could get more money for it. He was promptly hired and told he'd get a certain percentage of the profits, but then just as promptly quit when his new boss reneged on that deal. So he then went into business for himself.
That's where I stopped reading, because I wanted to grab a sandwich ahead of my flight, and it wasn't that interesting anyway. But the implication seemed to be that this friend's experience could only have occurred in America. I'd like to posit the opposite: not only are European countries amply supplied with bureaucratic and inefficient agencies, but you can get cheated by your employer just about anywhere. So much for a shining city on a hill.
More to the point, and jokes aside, it is also possible to set up your own business in supposedly socialist countries like the UK, Germany, Sweden, etc. I'm always irritated by this idea that a lot of American conservatives have, that the US is the only productive place in the whole world, while the rest of Europe is sitting around eating bon bons on vacation. While the rankings change all the time, depending on who's crunching the numbers, the US consistently fails to hit the top spot - particularly considering that the European economies offer a lot more vacation time and still hit comparable productivity numbers. It also kind of suggests that the Asian economies could let their people ease off, since they're never anywhere near the top anyway.
The other thing that bothers me about Dr Carson's line of reasoning is the widely cherished idea among conservatives that they're completely self-made. Obviously Dr Carson's experience will be different from mine: he's black, he grew up in poverty and pulled himself out, and built himself a successful medical career, followed by time in the national spotlight thanks to his writing and speaking opportunities.
But what if one little thing had been different? What if, at any given point in his life, he hadn't had help from somebody else? For instance, if his mother hadn't pushed him to continue studying, would he have eventually become a neurosurgeon? I suspect not. Same with his college and medical school experience - people helped him along the way at various points, while others of his peers didn't receive the same help at the right time and didn't end up with the same level or type of success.
Or think of his friend at the FAA - without the "socialistic" idea of a federal agency to regulate aviation, this guy might not have had a job in the first place. He certainly wouldn't have had the experience to come up with his invention, or the credibility to pitch it convincingly to a company in the private sector. He might have come up with something else that would have made him rich - but it's not a given.
I guess all I'm saying is that the next time someone says they're completely self-made, and that nobody gave them anything to get them where they are today, they should take a closer look at their own experiences. They might find that they've received a lot more help from the people and institutions around them than they thought.
Sunday, 11 August 2013
Sunday, 28 July 2013
My Malign Influence Spreads
A friend asked me to post something to his social-network-type thing, so I've taken my blogging time for this week and applied it there. You can read it here.
Just a quick note: I wasn't going to write a blog this week. My grandma passed away back in California, and I wasn't sure if I wanted to write about that, while writing about all the other silly subjects I usually write about didn't seem appropriate.
But...
It was kind of therapeutic to talk about the thought process that impelled me to go buy a couple of fantasy novels as a way to cope. Hope you enjoy it, and that you leave me a comment, either at that blog or even here.
Just a quick note: I wasn't going to write a blog this week. My grandma passed away back in California, and I wasn't sure if I wanted to write about that, while writing about all the other silly subjects I usually write about didn't seem appropriate.
But...
It was kind of therapeutic to talk about the thought process that impelled me to go buy a couple of fantasy novels as a way to cope. Hope you enjoy it, and that you leave me a comment, either at that blog or even here.
Sunday, 21 July 2013
The Dark Side of the Long Tail
The other week I read this article on LinkedIn, by Anita Elberse at Harvard Business School, which cites figures saying the top 1% of performing artists account for 56% of concert revenues. It was interesting timing, as just a day or two after the article was published, Nigel Godrich and Thom Yorke from Atoms for Peace said they were pulling their music from Spotify, because they say the music-streaming service screws musicians, particularly up-and-coming ones.
I talked about Chris Anderson's second book, Free, a couple of months ago, but I still haven't gotten around to reading his first, The Long Tail (in which he coined the phrase). Nevertheless, the book's subtitle - Why the Future of Business is Selling Less of More - gives a good idea which side of this debate Anderson falls on. And in fact, Elberse's disagreed with him on this before, so this is all clearly a long-running argument that I'm getting ready to stick my oar into.
I wasn't entirely surprised when I read Elberse's article, or about Godrich and Yorke's Spotify protest. I've read elsewhere (can't remember where, unfortunately) that iTunes is actually the best-paying digital market for artists - they make something like a hundred times more in royalties and so forth on iTunes than they do on services like Spotify. And for all the talk of long tails, it makes sense to me that, per Elberse, artists like Madonna would still command a larger share of the market than all of the bands who, just a few years ago, wouldn't have had any sort of distribution at all.
This probably comes down to how consumers react to choice. If you're looking on Ticketmaster's website for a concert to go to, you'll be confronted with a page full of artists you've probably never even heard of, with the odd familiar name sprinkled in. Too many choices like that means your brain shuts down and you lose all desire to make a decision; or in other words, screw all these guys, I'm going to see Justin Bieber.
On Spotify, meanwhile, try as they might to improve recommendation engines and stuff like that, your best bet for finding something to listen to is to search by artist or album name, and you can only search for artists whose names you already know. Which means that you have to be the proverbial informed customer - but who has the time for that? Or, once again in other words: screw all these guys, I'm listening to Coldplay.
Maybe that's all glib. But my point is, while digital music is undeniably a big step forward in allowing unknown bands (or authors, if you want to talk about publishing) to get their work out without going through the traditional gatekeepers, just being allowed on the shelves isn't enough to move units. And even marketing campaigns can't fix everything - if you're only big in Minnesota, that's a step forward, but you're still competing with established artists who are big everywhere.
All of which is to say, the long tail is an extremely useful meme when talking about categorizing things (you have your top five sellers, and then your ten thousand others), but with apologies to Chris Anderson, I still don't see it as the future of business, unless somebody figures out how to control a large enough portion of the long tail. And then by definition you're no longer part of the long tail anyway.
I talked about Chris Anderson's second book, Free, a couple of months ago, but I still haven't gotten around to reading his first, The Long Tail (in which he coined the phrase). Nevertheless, the book's subtitle - Why the Future of Business is Selling Less of More - gives a good idea which side of this debate Anderson falls on. And in fact, Elberse's disagreed with him on this before, so this is all clearly a long-running argument that I'm getting ready to stick my oar into.
I wasn't entirely surprised when I read Elberse's article, or about Godrich and Yorke's Spotify protest. I've read elsewhere (can't remember where, unfortunately) that iTunes is actually the best-paying digital market for artists - they make something like a hundred times more in royalties and so forth on iTunes than they do on services like Spotify. And for all the talk of long tails, it makes sense to me that, per Elberse, artists like Madonna would still command a larger share of the market than all of the bands who, just a few years ago, wouldn't have had any sort of distribution at all.
This probably comes down to how consumers react to choice. If you're looking on Ticketmaster's website for a concert to go to, you'll be confronted with a page full of artists you've probably never even heard of, with the odd familiar name sprinkled in. Too many choices like that means your brain shuts down and you lose all desire to make a decision; or in other words, screw all these guys, I'm going to see Justin Bieber.
On Spotify, meanwhile, try as they might to improve recommendation engines and stuff like that, your best bet for finding something to listen to is to search by artist or album name, and you can only search for artists whose names you already know. Which means that you have to be the proverbial informed customer - but who has the time for that? Or, once again in other words: screw all these guys, I'm listening to Coldplay.
Maybe that's all glib. But my point is, while digital music is undeniably a big step forward in allowing unknown bands (or authors, if you want to talk about publishing) to get their work out without going through the traditional gatekeepers, just being allowed on the shelves isn't enough to move units. And even marketing campaigns can't fix everything - if you're only big in Minnesota, that's a step forward, but you're still competing with established artists who are big everywhere.
All of which is to say, the long tail is an extremely useful meme when talking about categorizing things (you have your top five sellers, and then your ten thousand others), but with apologies to Chris Anderson, I still don't see it as the future of business, unless somebody figures out how to control a large enough portion of the long tail. And then by definition you're no longer part of the long tail anyway.
Sunday, 14 July 2013
Trayvon Martin and Edward Snowden: Be the Change You Want to See in the World
So George Zimmerman walks for killing Trayvon Martin. Or to be more precise, pursuing, provoking a fight (that he quickly realizes he can't win) and subsequently shooting Trayvon Martin. Good job, America - how's that shining city on a hill thing working out?
I don't want to be too simplistic or snide with the above, but it's hard not to feel disgusted. Sure, I read the article in Slate where Justin Peters pointed out that the case against Zimmerman isn't clear beyond a reasonable doubt, and I agree that you can't convict a person based on the public sentiment against them. But if we look at Emily Bazelon's article this morning, following the verdict being handed down, she notes something even more chilling:
This comes at the same time that the extent of the government's spying program, PRISM, becomes gradually clearer. When the news broke, I remember being surprised at how little reaction there seemed to be - while we've got protests in Brazil that started over bus fares, protests in Turkey that started over land redevelopment, and in Egypt the populace has deposed the Muslim Brotherhood's Mohamed Morsi. I get a lot of "progressive" petitions (I use that word in quotation marks, because I'd like to reclaim the word "liberal"), and it was weeks before any of them addressed PRISM or Edward Snowden.
Not to get too nerdy, but the best assessment of the predicament we're in came from John Champion and Ken Ray's Star Trek podcast, Mission Log (bear with me). In the podcast from last November, while discussing an early episode, one of the hosts - I believe it was John, but can't confirm - pointed out how the Enterprise had disabled an alien ship that had threatened it, and then Captain Kirk offered to help the alien ship. While discussing that, he talked about how that tied into how we need to adhere to our ideals all the time, not just when it's convenient - and he tied that into the political climate at the time.
It struck me then (I was listening to it earlier this week), and it feels incredibly relevant now, with this judgement handed down. It's too easy to be cynical, to believe that our actions don't matter if we talk about the right ideals, but neither of those things is productive, frankly. Do we want to be a country where people can walk down the street without fearing for their lives? Do we want to be a country that doesn't treat its citizens as potential criminals or terrorists?
Then let's get off our asses and live those ideals. If you're scared of missing American Idol, DVR it.
I don't want to be too simplistic or snide with the above, but it's hard not to feel disgusted. Sure, I read the article in Slate where Justin Peters pointed out that the case against Zimmerman isn't clear beyond a reasonable doubt, and I agree that you can't convict a person based on the public sentiment against them. But if we look at Emily Bazelon's article this morning, following the verdict being handed down, she notes something even more chilling:
After all, as Adam Weinstein points out, the lesson right now for Floridians is this: "in any altercation, however minor, the easiest way to avoid criminal liability is to kill the counterparty."So does this mean that in Florida "stand your ground" is going to turn into "preemptive strike, shoot to kill"? A reasonable person would hope not - would hope, in fact, that this tragedy spurs Florida (and other states with "stand your ground" laws) to change the legislation. But it seems more and more apparent that there aren't any reasonable people writing legislation in America. You only have to look at what's been happening in Texas, with the abortion bills and Wendy Davis's filibuster, to see that.
This comes at the same time that the extent of the government's spying program, PRISM, becomes gradually clearer. When the news broke, I remember being surprised at how little reaction there seemed to be - while we've got protests in Brazil that started over bus fares, protests in Turkey that started over land redevelopment, and in Egypt the populace has deposed the Muslim Brotherhood's Mohamed Morsi. I get a lot of "progressive" petitions (I use that word in quotation marks, because I'd like to reclaim the word "liberal"), and it was weeks before any of them addressed PRISM or Edward Snowden.
Not to get too nerdy, but the best assessment of the predicament we're in came from John Champion and Ken Ray's Star Trek podcast, Mission Log (bear with me). In the podcast from last November, while discussing an early episode, one of the hosts - I believe it was John, but can't confirm - pointed out how the Enterprise had disabled an alien ship that had threatened it, and then Captain Kirk offered to help the alien ship. While discussing that, he talked about how that tied into how we need to adhere to our ideals all the time, not just when it's convenient - and he tied that into the political climate at the time.
It struck me then (I was listening to it earlier this week), and it feels incredibly relevant now, with this judgement handed down. It's too easy to be cynical, to believe that our actions don't matter if we talk about the right ideals, but neither of those things is productive, frankly. Do we want to be a country where people can walk down the street without fearing for their lives? Do we want to be a country that doesn't treat its citizens as potential criminals or terrorists?
Then let's get off our asses and live those ideals. If you're scared of missing American Idol, DVR it.
Sunday, 7 July 2013
Guy Gavriel Kay's Rich Tapestry
In the nine or so years since I started seriously reading fantasy, I've managed to turn my dad into a fan of a number of the authors I've discovered, including such luminaries as George RR Martin and Joe Abercrombie. In a few cases, this has turned to my advantage, as he went and picked up the authors' other books before I could. One of the authors for which this has happened is Guy Gavriel Kay - in fact, my dad ended up buying so many of Kay's books that I've been consistently borrowing them for the last couple of years, and ended up bingeing a little this year when I grabbed five books from my dad's shelves. And then promptly bought the Kindle versions of two more.
Having read so many books by a single author in such a short time, you can't help but notice certain patterns in his or her work, and Kay's work is no different, in that respect. But the patterns that he follows are themselves what sets him apart from other fantasy authors (I've read that he prefers not to be pigeonholed there, but it'll have to do for the moment).
The main idea running through almost all of his books is, of course, how his novels are based on historical events. His two most recent were inspired by key events in Chinese history, and previous ones have explored settings as diverse as the Byzantine Empire, Moorish Spain, and the Albigensian Crusade in southern France. The only ones that didn't hew to this historical fantasy mode were his opening trilogy, The Fionavar Tapestry, and a sort-of sequel called Ysabel.
Being kind of an obsessive completist, I started with the Fionavar books, several years ago, although I wouldn't say they're Kay's best. They felt a little too indebted to Tolkien - he helped edit some of Tolkien's papers while still at university - and ended up pulling in a few threads (no pun intended) that felt sort of out of place to me (think King Arthur and Lancelot). But for whatever reason, after finishing those books, Kay went off in a completely new direction, and I think it's served him well, allowing him to avoid the usual settings reminiscent of medieval northern Europe, and the usual plots of dark lords and sieges.
He's said himself that he's interested in the historical settings, but with fantasy trappings, because it frees him from having to write exactly what happened, or portray historical figures as they "really" were. That said, I've learned from hard experience to avoid reading the Wikipedia entries on those specific historical periods until finishing the book in question, otherwise I end up getting some brutal spoilers.
The other striking thing about his work is how he uses female characters. Some fantasy authors portray women really badly, alternately as scolds or sex toys; others arbitrarily make them badass soldiers, which is a neat idea in itself, but sometimes gets overused. Given that Kay's books are mostly based on historical events, his women rarely pick up swords, but even when their societies deny them power, they still have agency. A notable example is his 1992 book, A Song for Arbonne, based on the Albigensian Crusade, which took place in Provence; there he posits a society ruled by women, where the arts most appreciated at court are wit and poetry. Perhaps to contrast it with the prevailing themes of epic fantasy literature, the antagonists are from a heavily sexist, warlike country to the north, which despises Arbonne enough to eventually launch an invasion.
Arbonne was the first book of his that I read after the Fionavar books, and this struck me, in no small part because I'd found his treatment of one of his female characters in the first volume, The Summer Tree, to be pretty awful. Where most of the other main characters in the book - a group of Canadian students who travel to a magical fantasy world - gain powers of their own, one of the women sits around being pretty for the entire book, until she's captured by the evil god and raped. I remember almost putting the book down at the time, because it felt as if she'd been put in there exclusively for that (although, unlike, say, Paul Kearney, Kay doesn't lovingly describe it happening).
Now, what happens to the character in the next two books kind of refutes that, but not entirely. So I've always wondered if his amazing female characters since then - like the Empress Alixana or the physician Jehane - were intended to make up for that early mistake. Whatever his intentions, Kay's female characters set a standard that every fantasy author should aspire to.
Another notable thing about Kay's books is that, poetic and beautiful as they are, they also don't shy away from warfare and violence (or sex). Much like I said in my laudatory post about Joe Abercrombie's work, Kay allows you to see the violence that characterized these societies, and its effects as they ripple out from one act, seemingly insignificant, without flinching or even reveling in it. The description of what happens to a pair of characters toward the end of The Lions of Al-Rassan, set in an analogue to Moorish Spain, is brutal and heart-rending, but also rings true.
If I have any criticism of Kay's work, it's that his style has perhaps become more solidified - I won't say set in its ways: there were a few too many points in River of Stars, his latest, where the omniscient narrator talks about how a character's actions affect the rest of his or her life, or the history of their nation. It was also sometimes difficult to tell why certain characters did certain things; but for all that, the very end of the book was amazing, and like in all of his books, the prose does a fantastic job of conveying the surroundings to the reader.
And that, in the end, is why I believe that every would-be fantasy author should read Guy Gavriel Kay. His prose is amazing, probably the best in the business - the only one I think can come close (and that's because he's funny) is Joe Abercrombie. F Scott Fitzgerald said that a person who wants to write fiction should read six top-flight authors each year - Guy Gavriel Kay should comfortably sit in that rank of writers.
The man himself.
Having read so many books by a single author in such a short time, you can't help but notice certain patterns in his or her work, and Kay's work is no different, in that respect. But the patterns that he follows are themselves what sets him apart from other fantasy authors (I've read that he prefers not to be pigeonholed there, but it'll have to do for the moment).
The main idea running through almost all of his books is, of course, how his novels are based on historical events. His two most recent were inspired by key events in Chinese history, and previous ones have explored settings as diverse as the Byzantine Empire, Moorish Spain, and the Albigensian Crusade in southern France. The only ones that didn't hew to this historical fantasy mode were his opening trilogy, The Fionavar Tapestry, and a sort-of sequel called Ysabel.
Being kind of an obsessive completist, I started with the Fionavar books, several years ago, although I wouldn't say they're Kay's best. They felt a little too indebted to Tolkien - he helped edit some of Tolkien's papers while still at university - and ended up pulling in a few threads (no pun intended) that felt sort of out of place to me (think King Arthur and Lancelot). But for whatever reason, after finishing those books, Kay went off in a completely new direction, and I think it's served him well, allowing him to avoid the usual settings reminiscent of medieval northern Europe, and the usual plots of dark lords and sieges.
He's said himself that he's interested in the historical settings, but with fantasy trappings, because it frees him from having to write exactly what happened, or portray historical figures as they "really" were. That said, I've learned from hard experience to avoid reading the Wikipedia entries on those specific historical periods until finishing the book in question, otherwise I end up getting some brutal spoilers.
The other striking thing about his work is how he uses female characters. Some fantasy authors portray women really badly, alternately as scolds or sex toys; others arbitrarily make them badass soldiers, which is a neat idea in itself, but sometimes gets overused. Given that Kay's books are mostly based on historical events, his women rarely pick up swords, but even when their societies deny them power, they still have agency. A notable example is his 1992 book, A Song for Arbonne, based on the Albigensian Crusade, which took place in Provence; there he posits a society ruled by women, where the arts most appreciated at court are wit and poetry. Perhaps to contrast it with the prevailing themes of epic fantasy literature, the antagonists are from a heavily sexist, warlike country to the north, which despises Arbonne enough to eventually launch an invasion.
Arbonne was the first book of his that I read after the Fionavar books, and this struck me, in no small part because I'd found his treatment of one of his female characters in the first volume, The Summer Tree, to be pretty awful. Where most of the other main characters in the book - a group of Canadian students who travel to a magical fantasy world - gain powers of their own, one of the women sits around being pretty for the entire book, until she's captured by the evil god and raped. I remember almost putting the book down at the time, because it felt as if she'd been put in there exclusively for that (although, unlike, say, Paul Kearney, Kay doesn't lovingly describe it happening).
Now, what happens to the character in the next two books kind of refutes that, but not entirely. So I've always wondered if his amazing female characters since then - like the Empress Alixana or the physician Jehane - were intended to make up for that early mistake. Whatever his intentions, Kay's female characters set a standard that every fantasy author should aspire to.
Another notable thing about Kay's books is that, poetic and beautiful as they are, they also don't shy away from warfare and violence (or sex). Much like I said in my laudatory post about Joe Abercrombie's work, Kay allows you to see the violence that characterized these societies, and its effects as they ripple out from one act, seemingly insignificant, without flinching or even reveling in it. The description of what happens to a pair of characters toward the end of The Lions of Al-Rassan, set in an analogue to Moorish Spain, is brutal and heart-rending, but also rings true.
If I have any criticism of Kay's work, it's that his style has perhaps become more solidified - I won't say set in its ways: there were a few too many points in River of Stars, his latest, where the omniscient narrator talks about how a character's actions affect the rest of his or her life, or the history of their nation. It was also sometimes difficult to tell why certain characters did certain things; but for all that, the very end of the book was amazing, and like in all of his books, the prose does a fantastic job of conveying the surroundings to the reader.
And that, in the end, is why I believe that every would-be fantasy author should read Guy Gavriel Kay. His prose is amazing, probably the best in the business - the only one I think can come close (and that's because he's funny) is Joe Abercrombie. F Scott Fitzgerald said that a person who wants to write fiction should read six top-flight authors each year - Guy Gavriel Kay should comfortably sit in that rank of writers.
Sunday, 30 June 2013
SCOTUS, or I Grow Dissatisfied with the Tone
Last week was a pretty big one for the US Supreme Court, with a bunch of big rulings handed down. On the positive side, they effectively invalidated California's Proposition 8, which banned same-sex marriage, and pretty much killed the Defense of Marriage Act. My congratulations to all those couples whose marriages will now be recognized in California (including my friend Larrison, who literally got married a couple weeks before the ruling).
On the negative side, though, the Supreme Court also struck down a key part of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 - the part that was meant to prevent certain jurisdictions from using literacy tests or other means to keep certain groups (ie minorities, ie black people) from voting. Up until last week, any county or state or whatever that wanted to impose some test of some kind (like a citizenship test) had to get federal approval; now they can theoretically do what they want.
Obviously, I say "theoretically" because I don't actually believe every state in the South is going to start introducing diabolical literacy tests. It's been nearly 50 years, and in some ways all of America's come along since then - one good indicator is the current occupant of the White House (although he didn't actually win much of the South, did he?).
But it's hard to reconcile the two decisions, isn't it? This is a pretty conservative court, overall - the whole corporations as people and the super-PAC thing came out under this court (and also in the past week or so, they've kind of gutted our right to remain silent when we get arrested). So how does one fit the decision to enshrine gay people's right to marry with the decision to remove obstacles to taking away black people's right to vote?
Refocus: it's not straight vs gay or white vs black. It's rich vs poor.
I don't say this lightly, but I think it fits. Obviously not all gay people are rich, and not all black people are poor (nor are all poor people black). But taking the latter issue first, I don't believe the VRA decision was a conscious decision to screw black people, I just think it reflects Americans' attitude toward all poor people, regardless of race. Some places will target poor people of certain ethnicities, but a literacy test will be just as effective at barring some whites as it will be in barring some black voters.
As far as the gay marriage thing, I'm going to generalize a bit when I say that it's more likely to affect affluent urban and coastal gays and lesbians, rather than those who come from more modest socioeconomic backgrounds, or less tolerant corners of the country. Homosexuality is simply less accepted in certain groups, so the DOMA ruling doesn't really help the LGBTQ people who are part of those groups.
If I'm really cynical, I can even frame the DOMA ruling as what the Romans called "bread and circuses". Social media pretty much exploded (in a good way) when it was announced, way more than it did the day before for the VRA ruling. That's probably a selection bias, because of who I follow on Twitter, but I can't shake the feeling that Justices Roberts, Alito et al were less concerned with DOMA, because it's not about enfranchising or disenfranchising "undesirables"; the people who benefit are more affluent, so therefore the people who "should" be voting. Whereas the VRA thing makes it easier to stop the people who "shouldn't" be voting.
But I'm not that cynical, right?
On the negative side, though, the Supreme Court also struck down a key part of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 - the part that was meant to prevent certain jurisdictions from using literacy tests or other means to keep certain groups (ie minorities, ie black people) from voting. Up until last week, any county or state or whatever that wanted to impose some test of some kind (like a citizenship test) had to get federal approval; now they can theoretically do what they want.
Obviously, I say "theoretically" because I don't actually believe every state in the South is going to start introducing diabolical literacy tests. It's been nearly 50 years, and in some ways all of America's come along since then - one good indicator is the current occupant of the White House (although he didn't actually win much of the South, did he?).
But it's hard to reconcile the two decisions, isn't it? This is a pretty conservative court, overall - the whole corporations as people and the super-PAC thing came out under this court (and also in the past week or so, they've kind of gutted our right to remain silent when we get arrested). So how does one fit the decision to enshrine gay people's right to marry with the decision to remove obstacles to taking away black people's right to vote?
Refocus: it's not straight vs gay or white vs black. It's rich vs poor.
I don't say this lightly, but I think it fits. Obviously not all gay people are rich, and not all black people are poor (nor are all poor people black). But taking the latter issue first, I don't believe the VRA decision was a conscious decision to screw black people, I just think it reflects Americans' attitude toward all poor people, regardless of race. Some places will target poor people of certain ethnicities, but a literacy test will be just as effective at barring some whites as it will be in barring some black voters.
As far as the gay marriage thing, I'm going to generalize a bit when I say that it's more likely to affect affluent urban and coastal gays and lesbians, rather than those who come from more modest socioeconomic backgrounds, or less tolerant corners of the country. Homosexuality is simply less accepted in certain groups, so the DOMA ruling doesn't really help the LGBTQ people who are part of those groups.
If I'm really cynical, I can even frame the DOMA ruling as what the Romans called "bread and circuses". Social media pretty much exploded (in a good way) when it was announced, way more than it did the day before for the VRA ruling. That's probably a selection bias, because of who I follow on Twitter, but I can't shake the feeling that Justices Roberts, Alito et al were less concerned with DOMA, because it's not about enfranchising or disenfranchising "undesirables"; the people who benefit are more affluent, so therefore the people who "should" be voting. Whereas the VRA thing makes it easier to stop the people who "shouldn't" be voting.
But I'm not that cynical, right?
Saturday, 22 June 2013
Jeet Kune Do and the Art of Productivity
Kind of a quick one this week, since I'll be heading out to Amsterdam for work tomorrow (so no red light district and no coffee shops, presumably). But I thought it would be interesting to look at some of the productivity books and/or systems I've been reading about for the last 18 months or so, with some thoughts about the key things I've learned from them.
Productivity and time management are two things dear to my heart these days, as I feel they've helped me a lot, mainly at work but also in keeping myself broadly organized at home. I will admit, as well, to sometimes talking of nothing else, so I suppose it was a matter of time before I wrote this post.
Another quick point about the title: Jeet Kune Do was a system, or philosophy, or whatever you want to call it, coined by Bruce Lee to reflect his approach to martial arts. After having spent years studying wing chun kung fu with Yip Man in Hong Kong, Lee spent some time looking at the effective parts of other styles, and at last settled on a non-style, or jeet kune do, where he took the best things from each discipline and discarded the rest.
It's applicable here because I've tried to take the most useful points from each book or system, rather than slavishly sticking to only one thing. Credit for the idea has to go to Chris Hardwick in the first instance for connecting time management/productivity with jeet kune do in The Nerdist Way, and to Tim Ferriss in his books in the second instance. Anyway, without further ado:
The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, by Stephen Covey
This is kind of the grand-daddy, and also the latest of all the ones I've read. It's not entirely a productivity book, but the first three habits are crucial to managing your time effectively, and Covey spends a lot of time defining what he calls "Quadrant II" work, or tasks that are important but not urgent - as opposed to the perpetual firefighting that comes from doing urgent + important tasks, or the time wasting that comes from doing tasks that are neither.
In any case, the first three habits are as follows:
1. Be proactive
2. Begin with the end in mind
3. Put first things first
They're pretty straightforward: if you want to accomplish stuff, get off your ass and do it. Once you've decided to take action, think about what you actually want to achieve (Covey was fond of saying something to the effect of, when making your way up the ladder, make sure it's leaning against the right wall). And when you know what your goal is, focus on the first tasks, rather than trying to accomplish everything at once.
They've been particularly useful for me when I have a lot of stuff to accomplish in the course of a day; I stop and ask myself what the desired end-state is, and then ensure that I know what the first things to accomplish are. Just stopping and spending a moment thinking about these points is enough to set my mind at ease (what David Allen calls "mind like water") and allow me to get through my tasks without freaking out about them and potentially forgetting important ones.
It's also worth mentioning Covey's seventh habit, "sharpening the saw", which is essentially sharpening your skills, through learning, relaxing, and detaching yourself from your work. It's an important one, but oddly enough, not one that I feel I've completely mastered.
The Four-Hour Workweek, by Tim Ferriss
From the grand-daddy to the rebellious son. 4HWW is probably the most fun of all of the books I've read, simply for the manic ideas behind it (outsource everything to India! Check email twice a week! Drop everything and go!). Ferriss comes off as kind of a snake-oil salesman at times, but it's all part of his charm - and since I've bought his two subsequent books, it's clearly not that off-putting for me, right?
Ferriss's four principles are as follows: Defining, Eliminating, Automating and Liberating, or DEAL. In common with the Seven Habits, you start by defining, or figuring out what you want (eg, to quit your job and go travelling), then increase your personal productivity through eliminating time-wasting activities. Automating is a bit more advanced, as that's where the outsourcing stuff comes in, and liberating talks about the actual implications of jumping ship.
For my purposes, eliminating has been the most influential concept, specifically what Ferriss calls "batching"; he advocates taking certain repetitive tasks and performing them less often. For instance, I've found it useful to turn off the auto-alerts on my Outlook at work, so that I don't get distracted every time an email comes in, and to check my email only every 30 minutes or so (I couldn't get away with checking it only twice a week).
The other big concept he advocates is focusing on the most important task you have to accomplish each day, and getting that done first of all, even before checking your email. It's a concept we'll look at again below, but it's worth repeating (prepeating?) here: focus is a big part of getting things done. In my case, I spend my first 30 minutes of each day looking for and writing news items (on weekends I go for a run and/or throw my laundry in the washer before checking email).
Getting Things Done, by David Allen
This brings us nicely to David Allen's GTD, which is meant to be a full-blown productivity system. Allen talks a lot about defining "next actions" on specific "projects", instead of filling out a to-do list. The difference between the two is that a to-do list is what he calls amorphous - "get the car fixed", for example, is so vague that your brain immediately wants to ignore it whenever it sees it on a list. Instead he advocates breaking each to-do item into its constituent steps: check Yelp/the yellow pages for mechanics, set up an appointment, take the car in.
More to the point, he recommends taking stock of everything in your office and/or home, deciding what needs to be done with it (if anything) and building your list of projects, goals, areas of focus and so forth from there. This is as opposed to figuring out your goals first, and then determining what you need to do to achieve them; once you know what all your "open loops" are, you can decide whether or not they fit in with what you actually want to do in life. If not, dump or delegate them.
To be honest, I've found it a little too time-consuming (ironically) to keep an updated list of 50+ next actions, as he advocates. But it is worthwhile keeping an eye on my overall projects, and figuring out the next action attached to each. He also uses a good decision tree for actions - dump, delegate, defer or do now. If an action will take 2 minutes or less, Allen says, just do it and get it out of the way. This is very powerful.
On an even dorkier note, one of his best pieces of advice was emptying out my email inbox. It fits in with the dump/defer/do thing, because I've created folders for reference stuff, things that I still need to take action on or read (two separate folders) and thrown a lot of crap away once I don't have to do anything with it. I can attest to a warm glow of satisfaction when I open my email in the morning and see everything that needs to be addressed on one screen (but only after I've accomplished a task as per Tim Ferriss's instructions).
Goals, by Brian Tracy
Goals isn't so much of a time management book, but it has a couple of good insights that apply. One of the best, which is probably well in line with Tim Ferriss's principles, is to determine what your most valuable tasks are at work and focusing on those. More globally (and in keeping with Covey's book), Tracy says to figure out what your most important goal is - the one that would have the greatest effect on your life if you accomplished it - and focus on that.
Tracy's also worth mentioning for another book he wrote (which I haven't read) called "Eat That Frog!" That title is taken from a quote by Mark Twain suggesting that if you start each day by eating a live frog, everything else you have to accomplish for the rest of the day doesn't seem too bad. For Tracy, eating a frog is tackling your most unpleasant task of the day first (ideally, as Tim Ferriss would say, finishing it before lunch).
The Nerdist Way, by Chris Hardwick
So yeah, honorable mention goes to the Nerdist Way, for starting me off on using my time more productively. His own approach is similarly catholic (note the small C), taking ideas from each as long as they're useful. For a good example, have a look at his Wired article from a few years ago, "Diary of a Self-Help Dropout", which was kind of an inspiration for this post.
BTW, another honorable mention goes to Lifehacker, although I have to qualify this a little bit. You'll find a lot of time-saving advice (my favorite's the Ian Knot, for tying my shoes), but it's so full of good stuff you'll blow a lot of time reading it all. Which just drives forward the vicious circle of forcing you to manage your time ever better.
Productivity and time management are two things dear to my heart these days, as I feel they've helped me a lot, mainly at work but also in keeping myself broadly organized at home. I will admit, as well, to sometimes talking of nothing else, so I suppose it was a matter of time before I wrote this post.
Another quick point about the title: Jeet Kune Do was a system, or philosophy, or whatever you want to call it, coined by Bruce Lee to reflect his approach to martial arts. After having spent years studying wing chun kung fu with Yip Man in Hong Kong, Lee spent some time looking at the effective parts of other styles, and at last settled on a non-style, or jeet kune do, where he took the best things from each discipline and discarded the rest.
It's applicable here because I've tried to take the most useful points from each book or system, rather than slavishly sticking to only one thing. Credit for the idea has to go to Chris Hardwick in the first instance for connecting time management/productivity with jeet kune do in The Nerdist Way, and to Tim Ferriss in his books in the second instance. Anyway, without further ado:
The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, by Stephen Covey
This is kind of the grand-daddy, and also the latest of all the ones I've read. It's not entirely a productivity book, but the first three habits are crucial to managing your time effectively, and Covey spends a lot of time defining what he calls "Quadrant II" work, or tasks that are important but not urgent - as opposed to the perpetual firefighting that comes from doing urgent + important tasks, or the time wasting that comes from doing tasks that are neither.
In any case, the first three habits are as follows:
1. Be proactive
2. Begin with the end in mind
3. Put first things first
They're pretty straightforward: if you want to accomplish stuff, get off your ass and do it. Once you've decided to take action, think about what you actually want to achieve (Covey was fond of saying something to the effect of, when making your way up the ladder, make sure it's leaning against the right wall). And when you know what your goal is, focus on the first tasks, rather than trying to accomplish everything at once.
They've been particularly useful for me when I have a lot of stuff to accomplish in the course of a day; I stop and ask myself what the desired end-state is, and then ensure that I know what the first things to accomplish are. Just stopping and spending a moment thinking about these points is enough to set my mind at ease (what David Allen calls "mind like water") and allow me to get through my tasks without freaking out about them and potentially forgetting important ones.
It's also worth mentioning Covey's seventh habit, "sharpening the saw", which is essentially sharpening your skills, through learning, relaxing, and detaching yourself from your work. It's an important one, but oddly enough, not one that I feel I've completely mastered.
The Four-Hour Workweek, by Tim Ferriss
From the grand-daddy to the rebellious son. 4HWW is probably the most fun of all of the books I've read, simply for the manic ideas behind it (outsource everything to India! Check email twice a week! Drop everything and go!). Ferriss comes off as kind of a snake-oil salesman at times, but it's all part of his charm - and since I've bought his two subsequent books, it's clearly not that off-putting for me, right?
Ferriss's four principles are as follows: Defining, Eliminating, Automating and Liberating, or DEAL. In common with the Seven Habits, you start by defining, or figuring out what you want (eg, to quit your job and go travelling), then increase your personal productivity through eliminating time-wasting activities. Automating is a bit more advanced, as that's where the outsourcing stuff comes in, and liberating talks about the actual implications of jumping ship.
For my purposes, eliminating has been the most influential concept, specifically what Ferriss calls "batching"; he advocates taking certain repetitive tasks and performing them less often. For instance, I've found it useful to turn off the auto-alerts on my Outlook at work, so that I don't get distracted every time an email comes in, and to check my email only every 30 minutes or so (I couldn't get away with checking it only twice a week).
The other big concept he advocates is focusing on the most important task you have to accomplish each day, and getting that done first of all, even before checking your email. It's a concept we'll look at again below, but it's worth repeating (prepeating?) here: focus is a big part of getting things done. In my case, I spend my first 30 minutes of each day looking for and writing news items (on weekends I go for a run and/or throw my laundry in the washer before checking email).
Getting Things Done, by David Allen
This brings us nicely to David Allen's GTD, which is meant to be a full-blown productivity system. Allen talks a lot about defining "next actions" on specific "projects", instead of filling out a to-do list. The difference between the two is that a to-do list is what he calls amorphous - "get the car fixed", for example, is so vague that your brain immediately wants to ignore it whenever it sees it on a list. Instead he advocates breaking each to-do item into its constituent steps: check Yelp/the yellow pages for mechanics, set up an appointment, take the car in.
More to the point, he recommends taking stock of everything in your office and/or home, deciding what needs to be done with it (if anything) and building your list of projects, goals, areas of focus and so forth from there. This is as opposed to figuring out your goals first, and then determining what you need to do to achieve them; once you know what all your "open loops" are, you can decide whether or not they fit in with what you actually want to do in life. If not, dump or delegate them.
To be honest, I've found it a little too time-consuming (ironically) to keep an updated list of 50+ next actions, as he advocates. But it is worthwhile keeping an eye on my overall projects, and figuring out the next action attached to each. He also uses a good decision tree for actions - dump, delegate, defer or do now. If an action will take 2 minutes or less, Allen says, just do it and get it out of the way. This is very powerful.
On an even dorkier note, one of his best pieces of advice was emptying out my email inbox. It fits in with the dump/defer/do thing, because I've created folders for reference stuff, things that I still need to take action on or read (two separate folders) and thrown a lot of crap away once I don't have to do anything with it. I can attest to a warm glow of satisfaction when I open my email in the morning and see everything that needs to be addressed on one screen (but only after I've accomplished a task as per Tim Ferriss's instructions).
Goals, by Brian Tracy
Goals isn't so much of a time management book, but it has a couple of good insights that apply. One of the best, which is probably well in line with Tim Ferriss's principles, is to determine what your most valuable tasks are at work and focusing on those. More globally (and in keeping with Covey's book), Tracy says to figure out what your most important goal is - the one that would have the greatest effect on your life if you accomplished it - and focus on that.
Tracy's also worth mentioning for another book he wrote (which I haven't read) called "Eat That Frog!" That title is taken from a quote by Mark Twain suggesting that if you start each day by eating a live frog, everything else you have to accomplish for the rest of the day doesn't seem too bad. For Tracy, eating a frog is tackling your most unpleasant task of the day first (ideally, as Tim Ferriss would say, finishing it before lunch).
The Nerdist Way, by Chris Hardwick
So yeah, honorable mention goes to the Nerdist Way, for starting me off on using my time more productively. His own approach is similarly catholic (note the small C), taking ideas from each as long as they're useful. For a good example, have a look at his Wired article from a few years ago, "Diary of a Self-Help Dropout", which was kind of an inspiration for this post.
BTW, another honorable mention goes to Lifehacker, although I have to qualify this a little bit. You'll find a lot of time-saving advice (my favorite's the Ian Knot, for tying my shoes), but it's so full of good stuff you'll blow a lot of time reading it all. Which just drives forward the vicious circle of forcing you to manage your time ever better.
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