Author Archives: Jon Lowder

The Caray Diaries

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In my teenage years I would come home from school, flip on the TV and turn the channel to WGN so I could watch the Cubs play. That means I got to listen to Harry Caray get drunk and slur his way through the last few innings on more than one occasion, which might explain why I’m a Cubs fan to this day. (Is there any more tragic team to be a fan of in all of sports?)

I always thought Harry would have been an entertaining guy to hang out with, but after reading this article about his 1972 diary that details all of his stops at various watering holes I’m pretty sure I couldn’t have kept up with him:

A savvy businessman, Caray cut a deal pegged to ballpark attendance, which doubled, largely thanks to his flamboyant presence. It would make him very wealthy, though in 1972 he was still tallying each bar tab.

Saturday, Jan. 1, lists four bars: the Back Room, still on Rush Street, plus three long-ago joints: 20 E. Delaware, Sully’s and Peppy’s, with expenses for each $10.30, $9.97, $10, and $8.95. This in a year when a six-pack of Old Style set you back $1.29.

You needed to cite who you entertained to get the write-off, so on New Year’s Day he lists Dave Condon, the Tribune sports columnist; Billy Sullivan, who owned Sully’s; and Joe Pepitone, the former Yankees first baseman who had been traded to the Cubs.

And so it begins. A chain of old-time Chicago bars — Riccardo’s, Boul Mich, Mr. Kelly’s. A posse of early 1970s sports figures — Wilt Chamberlain, Don Drysdale, Gale Sayers. Plus a few unexpected blasts from the past: boxer Jack Dempsey, comedian Jack Benny…

Jan. 16 something unusual happens. Caray is in Miami, yet there are no expenses, just one enigmatic word, “Super.”

After that break, if indeed it was, comes 288 consecutive days in bars, not only in Chicago, but New York City, and of course on the road with the Sox, beginning with spring training in Sarasota.

The unbroken streak pauses Nov. 3, when all we get is “to K City @310.” The only completely blank day is Monday, Nov. 6 — what must THAT have been like? Then off to the races again.

He’d have lost me around February 1.

Health Care Offers Huge Investment Opportunity

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Venture investor Fred Wilson sees the digitization of the health care sector as one of the great investment opportunities we’re likely to see:

Mary Meeker’s slide deck addressed this is bit. Here are a few of the big points from it:

  • Healthcare is now $2.8 trillion in the US, which represents 17% of GDP
  • Healthcare is being consumerized
  • Healthcare is being digitized
  • Digital Health Venture Investment was $1.9bn in 2013 (out of a total of $24bn)

We are looking for networks of users, patients, doctors, and other stakeholders in our health care who can transform the way health care is delivered. We only have one game plan at USV and look to play it in every market opportunity we see.

I am pretty certain the intersection of the Internet and mobile, the digitization of the health care system, and a desire for people to take more control over their health is going to be one of the biggest investment opportunities we will see in my lifetime. And its game on.

As we’ve seen here in Winston-Salem the process of digitization won’t always be pretty. We’ve seen a lot of news regarding the problems our large health care networks, particularly Wake Forest Baptist, are experiencing as they try to (finally) catch up with almost every other industry in the use of information technology. While these are very large problems, and people have lost their jobs as a result, they almost certainly have more to do with terrible implementation strategy from executives than with the technology itself. In the long run those providers should realize huge gains in efficiency, and the data they’re accumulating will provide untold numbers of opportunities for entrepreneurial companies to create products and services that benefit providers and consumers alike.

It’s about damn time and it’s great to see that some smart money people are ready to put their money behind some of these initiatives.

Dad, Have You Heard of Bitcoin?

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My wife and I were driving our son to school on the way to work and in the middle of the trip he asked, “Dad, have you heard of Bitcoin?” I think he was surprised and maybe even a little impressed that I had. I know for a fact that I was VERY impressed that he had. What ensued for the remaining few minutes of the ride was a discussion of bitcoin and a fumbling attempt by both me and my son to describe to my wife what it was. That’s when I realized I only vaguely understood how it might work. How fortuitous, then, that I found this article in today’s Wall Street Journal about Dish Network accepting Bitcoins for payment:

Bitcoin took another step toward mainstream recognition as satellite-TV provider Dish Network Corp. DISH -1.38% will become the largest company yet known to accept payments in the digital currency.

The move shows the resilience of the currency after a string of scandals and regulatory actions raised doubts about bitcoin’s future. The collapse of a major trading exchange helped lead bitcoin to lose two-thirds of its value in four months, but its price has rallied 27% over the past week. Coindesk’s Bitcoin Price Index was quoted at $565.55 at late afternoon in New York…

Dish said it will use Coinbase, a San Francisco-based bitcoin-payment processor, to process the payments, using that firm’s Instant Exchange feature. That means that although its customers will transfer bitcoins through an online facility, Coinbase will absorb the digital currency and remit dollars to Dish.

Four Decades of College Degrees in One Graph

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When you look at the dynamic graph on the page linked below you’ll notice that business degrees have been consistently popular since 1970, the popularity of education has declined rapidly in the same time frame and my major, English, has been consistently unpopular.

http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2014/05/09/310114739/whats-your-major-four-decades-of-college-degrees-in-1-graph?ft=1&f=93559255

The Dark Side of the Trust Economy

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While we’re all celebrating the coolness of the “trust economy” – you know, those services like airbnb and Uber – someone asks a pretty good question:

“It all sounds great, at least according to the fawning sycophants who provide all of us out here in the provinces with such worshipful coverage of the amazing achievements of the Techno-Demigods. And it is great as long as you don’t bother to ask (or care) whypeople are suddenly employing themselves as improvised innkeepers and taxi drivers. After all, does anyone really want to let some strangers stay in their home for a few bucks? To drive some trust fund asshole to the airport on Saturday after a 45 hour week? I doubt it. People turn to the “Trust Economy” because they’re somewhere between financially stressed and desperate. They don’t make enough or they’re without any steady source of income at all. They do it for the same reason that people go to work at a temp agency or loiter in a Home Depot parking lot to do day labor: because they have no better options…

It’s remarkable how many of the recent Big Developments from the omniscient men of the Valley have managed to make the lives of the well-off easier without actually creating any jobs that pay a livable salary or have benefits. Oh, and they convince the media to cover these breakthroughs in a way that makes it sound like they’re doing you a favor. You’re free at last, free at last. Say goodbye to the chains of full time employment and hello to the boundless freedom of working piecemeal, making phone calls on Mechanical Turk for a quarter and driving Damon the Junior Content Developer to the airport so he can spend the weekend in Cozumel with his frat bros.”

How’s that for some cold water on yet another new-economy-shiny-thing?

Thanks to Lex for the pointer to what promises to be another time-sucker of a blog to follow.

On the Importance of Blogging

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John Robinson blogs about teaching his students the important of blogging which I, of course, found blog-worthy:

It was only natural that I would require the 36 students in my “Current Issues in Mass Media” class at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill blog for the class. Most of the students were in the journalism and mass communication school. Many majored in journalism or advertising or public relations. And most of them drew back with alarm when I told them I expected them to blog about mass comm issues three times a week. That was a minimum, which would get them a C.

I wanted them to learn to think and write in public. They need that skill. They could learn from each other’s  blogs because I curated their posts on this RebelMouse site. The idea was that they would read each other’s reflections on mass communication and engage with someone other than me. Best of all, by forcing them to search out topics worth writing about, they were keeping up with trends in mass communication.

I wanted them to find their voice.

My advice was simple: I told them the same thing Ed Cone told me when I started blogging 10 years ago – “Have a take and don’t suck.”

FYI, Ed’s advice is good beyond the blogging world too. John goes on to share some of his students’ thoughts on what they learned in the process and it’s definitely worth a read.

West Forsyth High School Receives Accolades

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The high school that all three of my kids attended (youngest is about to graduate) is one of the best in NC and in the top 400 in the nation according to US News & World Report:

West Forsyth High School ranks #2 and Lucy Ragsdale High ranks #6 in North Carolina, according to the publication.

In the 2014 rankings, 34 North Carolina schools received silver medals and 61 received bronze medals. The only two schools that earned gold medals were Green Hope High in Cary and West Forsyth High in Clemmons.

According to the publication, at West Forsyth High School “students have the opportunity to take Advanced Placement® course work and exams. The AP participation rate at West Forsyth High is 61 percent. The student body makeup is 51 percent male and 49 percent female, and the total minority enrollment is 32 percent. West Forsyth High is 1 of 15 high schools in the Forsyth County Schools.”

A Teacher Walks Away

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Man, this is some incredible writing:

I resigned from my middle school job last month. Looking back, the only thing more difficult than leaving my students was the job itself. On my first day of teaching – an exhilarating, uplifting nine-hour whirlwind of joy – I wondered where this job had been all my life. On my last day, I sat fell into my chair wondering how I lasted so long…

When people asked me what I did for a living I gave them what they wanted to hear: “I’m a teacher,” I’d say.

What I wanted to say is, “What do I do for a living? Every day I walk into a classroom and discover worlds I never knew existed.”

Like CJ’s world, in which his mother keeps him home whenever she’s feeling lonely and depressed. Like Remy’s world, in which he came to this country after watching a warlord shoot his father to death back in Africa. Like Tyra’s world, in which she writes letters every week in class to her father in jail. She’s still waiting on him to write back. Like Angel’s world, in which he has a perfect attendance and regularly stays after school for tutoring – if only to escape going home to Mom and Dad’s arguing. Like Justin’s world, in which he and his two brothers and cousin take turns sleeping on a single bed each night.

A teacher is more than just someone who fills your child with knowledge and makes them “globally competitive,” whatever in the hell that means. They make many of their students happy, well-adjusted human beings and instill in them the audacity to believe they can be more then what they ever dreamed they could be.

Maya Angelou, whose stories we read in class this year, once wrote “of all the needs a lonely child has … the one that must be satisfied, if there is going to be hope and a hope of wholeness, is the unshaking need for an unshakable God.”

I’ll count those 19 months in a classroom a success if just one of my students thought I was their Kingdom Come.

I’m Right to Distrust Cats

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From the wonderful newsletter Now I Know:

That raises a second question, though: if the cats living in our house see themselves as wild animals in their natural habitat, from the cats perspective, there shouldn’t be human. Feline brains, therefore, have to create an explanation as to who the Jon Arbuckles of the world are. We’re all cats. Bradshaw offered the following explanation, as described by CNET: “Cats think you’re just a a slightly big, dumb non-hostile cat. Quite specifically, he says that they treat humans as if they were their Mama Cat. All that rubbing up against you with their tails up is apparently no more than a hopeful check that you really are just another big, fat, slovenly cat who doesn’t intend to eat them with their Welsh Rarebit.”

To that end, Bradshaw doesn’t think that the cat you love has much appreciation for you. CBS described a kitten’s cuddles as a sign of hunger, not love; it was “how it used to get milk from its mother.” Or if you’re Garfield, lasagne from your adoptive dad.

And my wife wonders why I don’t like cats.

Meat-Like Coffee

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The Wall Street Journal had an article about a new coffee flavor wheel developed by a roaster in Durham, NC. Gotta say I like it;

Coffee Taster's Flavor Wheel

I’m gonna start using this around the office. Pretty soon people will hear me say things like, “At first it tastes leathery but there are definite tobacco undertones.”

https://counterculturecoffee.com/docs/CCC_Tasters_Wheel_85x11.pdf