links for 2008-09-09

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He’s 16. Lewisville Drivers Beware

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Michael0708solo
Today our oldest, Michael, turns 16.  This birthday is a mind blower because in our society 16 is a big year, what with getting a drivers license and all that.  It’s also a mind blower because I think Michael has changed more in the past year than in any other year.  First off, he’s grown at least 6 inches.  Second, he’s really matured into a young man.  He does more without being asked, he takes responsibility for his own actions and he treats others with respect…well at least as much as any 16 year old I’ve seen.

Michaelbandwkidding
Michael started 10th grade a couple of weeks ago and since each passing year seems to go by faster than the last it is occurring to me and Celeste that in the blink of an eye we’re going to be getting ready for sending him to college.  I’ve joked for years that I’m looking forward to the day when the house will be quiet and Celeste and I will be left to our own devices.  Of course that’s horse crap.  I dread it and seeing what kind of young man Michael is becoming is causing me to dread it even more.

I’m truly enjoying our conversations, the stunning number of things he knows that I’ve never learned mixed with the sweet naivete that only the young can possess is truly a joy to behold.  Believe me, when your kid can explain DNA extraction in one breath and then express shock that people cheat on taxes in the next you’ve entered the realm of truly enjoyable co-habitation with your offspring.  Of course he’s not perfect, but neither are we so I think we’ve found a nice balance.

Thankfully for the drivers of Lewisville, NC the great state of North Carolina has a graduated license program so Michael won’t be unleashed on the roads without limitation for another year or so.  Until then rest assured that he will be closely monitored, but after that don’t say you haven’t been warned.

Happy birthday big guy.  Hope you enjoy the little somethin’-somethin’ we got you for the big day.

Deadspin on Wake’s Skinner and Swank

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Deadspin says the following about Wake Forest’s football heroes:

3. Riley Skinner and Sam Swank are Wake Forest football stars.
They also have the greatest gay porn names this side of Vince Young.
What’s the over/under on number of inappropriate posters that are
getting confiscated at rival ACC stadiums connected to Skinner’s naked photos?
Better question, name a BCS team that you would eliminate from
contention to win the ACC this year. There isn’t one. Vanderbilt would
have a chance to win the ACC this year. Seriously, they would.

I really have been surprised that the story of Skinner sending naked pics of himself to some girls and those pictures making it online never seemed to get any attention.  Honestly, I like the kid’s play at QB and I shudder to think of the stupid things I’d have done if the web was around when I was in school so I can’t say that he’s done anything dumber than I might have, but the fact of the matter is that Skinner is the starting QB of a top-20 football team and yet no one has said much about his, uh, image being spread all over the web.  Normally this kind of story would get some attention, especially in ACC markets, but I’ve seen next to nothing.  I posted about it in January when someone sent me the link to the original Deadspin story, and figured I’d eventually see something about it in the paper, but I didn’t.  I think one of the local TV stations did a bit on the story, but I’m not sure.

BTW, it’s not like the story is a state secret.  If you Google "Riley Skinner" the second result is a blog for NC State fans and the post about Skinner has 58 comments.  Me thinks that when Wake hits the road there’s gonna be some heckling from the stands. 

And the Hits Just Keep Coming

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Reynolds American is laying off 570 people and proving that its executives can mumbly-speak with the best of them:

“As we invest in growth to expand the business base of our operating
companies to innovative new tobacco products, we continually review our
plans to support that strategy and to strengthen performance in a
changing marketplace,” said Susan M. Ivey, RAI’s chairman, president
and chief executive officer."

and

“Continued success demands that we fully align our plans, programs and
people behind the things that matter most to our future performance,”
said Daniel M. Delen, chairman, president and chief executive officer
of R.J. Reynolds. “The steps we are taking support R.J. Reynolds’
ongoing evolution to a ‘total tobacco’ business model that includes
both cigarettes and innovative smokeless tobacco products."

I don’t know squat about what’s going on day-to-day in Reynolds, and maybe they absolutely have no choice but to cut jobs, but for once I’d like to hear an American executive say that they realize that 570 of their people, the people who helped put them in their big house and nice car, are now scrambling to find a way to pay the bills, and it is at least in some part due to the executives’ job performance that these people are being put on street.

What really disturbs me about this is that I don’t get the sense that this is a "survival" move by Reynolds, but more a "we need to keep our profits up to satisfy shareholders" move.  I mean this is a company that reported the following net income over the last four years:

  • 2004 – $688 million
  • 2005 – $1.04 billion
  • 2006 – $1.21 billion
  • 2007 – $1.31 billion

Reynolds is no different than almost every other public company out there.  The number one priority is doing whatever it takes to please the shareholders, and executives are compensated based on how well they do that.  Still, it would be nice to see at least one Fortune 500 company put its people first and take a short term financial hit in an effort to build long term health for the company and its people.  And if that’s not possible then it would be really refreshing to see an executive take a personal hit in acknowledgment of the fact that they are directly responsible for some of their people losing their livelihoods. 

When is the last time you heard of an executive of a public company taking a pay cut in order to help save jobs?  I sure hope someone can give me an example that I just haven’t heard of, but in my mind I’m thinking of the execs at Citi and Merrill Lynch who steered their companies from incredible profitability to massive losses and parachuted out with severance packages that Midas would envy.  I’m also thinking about Delphi’s executives feathering their nest while also saying that they could save the employees’ pension plan if the union members would agree to working for about a third of their old pay. I could go on, but then this post would be interminably long.

I love business and I love free markets, but I also think that just because markets are free doesn’t mean that businesses and the people who run them are relieved of a moral obligation to their people and communities.  The standard line from executives during layoffs is that their job is to look out for the best interest of the company, and by extension its stakeholders.  While layoffs might be bad news for some it is better news for everyone else because the company will prosper and take better care of the majority.  My response is that in cases where the company is about to go belly up and you have to drop 50 in order to save 100, then maybe so.  But when a company is profitable and the only gain in dumping the employees is becoming more profitable, well then that is simply immoral.  It shows a lack of leadership, a lack of ability to find a way to help employees adjust to the new strategic direction, an inclination to take the easy road.  In short it shows executives to be short-sighted, self interested yellow bellies.

I can only hope that when the executives who make these decisions sit down to dinner with their families,  they will think about those people whose sweat helped put that dinner in front of them and who now face a struggle to put their own dinner on the table.  And if they do think about that then maybe they’ll think about foregoing a raise or a performance bonus, or maybe they will redirect that money to a program that will help place those lost employees with another company.

I’m not holding my breath.

links for 2008-09-08

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  • The "Feedization" Of The Web (continued)
    Fred Wilson's blog traffic is increasingly coming from feeds (about 20%). He surmises that feeds might some day replace search as the primary driver of traffic and web info flow. I think he may be right, and I consider his work to be a "canary in the mine" for things related to developments in the web world.
    (tags: web2.0 business technology web rss search)

Mona Lisa by MythBusters

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NVIDIA invited the MythBusters guys to do a demonstration that would highlight the difference between a regular computer processor (CPU) and a parallel processor (GPU).  For the CPU they rigged up a little robot with a paint ball gun that painted a simple smiley face.  For the GPU they created a paint ball contraption that shot over 1,000 paint balls simultaneously to paint the Mona Lisa.  The video is in three parts on YouTube, and part one shows the single paint ball gun, part two is the lead up to the Mona Lisa trick, and part three has the grand finale which you can see below.  One of the reasons I love MythBusters is they’ve made being smart cool again.

Troubling Trend

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In 2006 more women under the age of 30 who had babies did so out of wedlock.  I won’t delve into the moral arguments here, rather I’ll focus on the practical.  First and foremost, I can’t imagine being a single parent at any age.  Being a parent is exhausting and when you don’t have someone to share the burden it is doubly so.  Second, as a single parent you’re fighting an uphill battle financially.  Even if you get child support you still have to find a way to make ends meet and that means either working, living on public support, living on family support or some combination of the three.  Third, you’re not going to have a lot of spare time to spend with your kids.  Where do they turn for the attention that you can’t give them?

This trend is troubling because in the end it will impact all of us.  As the person who conducted the study cited in the article said:

The inequality of incomes in these families is unbelievable,” said
Sum, who has written numerous books and articles about the job market,
young families and poverty. “Forty percent are poor, or near-poor. A
large fraction is dependent on public assistance. Unless the mother is
very well-educated and has a bachelor’s degree or above, there’s a huge
fiscal cost to the rest of us.

Hat tip to Ed Cone for the link to the article.

Foxx Hunt

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I’m no fan of my Congresswoman Virginia Foxx, but I’ve pretty much resigned myself to the fact that I live in a Congressional district that would probably throw a parade for Vladimir Putin before it would elect a Democrat.  Well, I might be wrong.  Here’s an interesting post at BlueNC by Frank Eaton in which he points to a poll that shows Foxx leading Democratic opponent Roy Carter by a mere 48-46 in a Public Policy Polling (PPP) poll. He writes the following:

The PPP’s own poll showed a ten point spread (51-41) back in July.
But now, at the start of the true fall campaign, with multiple daily
events across the district, introductory ads on TV and an increasingly
attentive media, people are beginning to understand that there’s
somebody running against Virginia Foxx in the 5th district. His name is
Roy Carter, a fiery mountain populist with a long record of service to
5th district families and their children. This guy could win!

Sometimes it takes the word a while to get to Washington, especially
when it’s coming from a largely rural, inaccurately studied district
like NC-05, which the party structure has habitually forsaken since
redistricting. But listen up: ROY CARTER IS WINNING THIS RACE DOWN
HERE. And he’ll continue to win this race until Virginia Foxx opens up
her war chest and starts running those crappy $150,000 TV ads in steady
rotation on Fox News here in the district.

SHE CAN BE STOPPED FOR VERY LITTLE MONEY. All that’s standing
between North Carolina and an easy Democratic pick-up in the Congress
is this continued reticence on the part of the Democratic
leadership–at both the state and national levels–to look at the true
dynamics of the race:

-Soft support for Virginia Foxx among republican and unaffiliated
voters indicated by low approval ratings for her and the current
administration.

-increased consciousness of the economic realities in the district and a desire for change.

-A compelling Democratic challenger who is overseeing an energized, creative, dynamic campaign.

Even though Eaton is not an objective source I think he makes some pretty good points.  Foxx is closely aligned with Bush and hence vulnerable to negative association.  I’m sure she has a stranglehold on the hard core Republicans in her district, but Carter presents a problem for her with centrists because he’s not perceived as some sort of "intellectual elite" or "tree hugger" Democrat.  He has a lot of qualities that residents of this meat and potatoes district are attracted to, and he won’t be easily dismissed with the usual "liberal elite" smear campaigns.

On the other hand Eaton’s also right that Foxx has a deep war chest and when she starts opening up the media campaigns Carter could be thumped if he doesn’t get similar air time, which means he needs a financial boost from somewhere. 

Hat tip to Ed Cone for the lead.

NCAA Clueless

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It seems the NCAA has a policy on journalists blogging from the body’s sanctioned events.  In some instances journalists have been booted from the press box for violating the policy:

This isn’t the first time the NCAA has cracked down on blogging. In
June 2007, Brian Bennett of the Louisville Courier-Journal was thrown
out of the press box for posting live updates on a Louisville-Oklahoma
State baseball game. The NCAA said in a memo to reporters that "no blog
entries are permitted between the first pitch and the final out of each
game." Scott Bearby, an associate general counsel for the NCAA, told the New York Times
that the governing body had a right to protect the contracts it
establishes with television networks and its own Internet providers.

According to the article the policy "allows for only five blog entries per half, one at halftime and two in an overtime period of football and basketball games."  This is incredibly stupid on so many levels, but to start with let’s state the obvious:

  • People are going to live blog an event, whether or not its from the press box.  The NCAA apparently missed the whole "citizen journalism" memo.
  • The way traditional media are bleeding jobs the NCAA should be grateful for any coverage they’re getting.
  • I don’t care how good the blogger is, reading about the action won’t hold a candle to actually watching the game or listening to it on the radio. We don’t watch the games merely to get the scores, we watch to see how the scores come about.
  • How is a blogger interfering with the official "internet providers"?  If a blogger can replicate what an "internet provider" is providing then the NCAA has some seriously crappy contracts.

The NCAA is exhibiting the same kind of behavior I’ve seen with some companies. They have this whole concept of image control and traditional media management that is being completely blown out of the water by the developments of the last 5-10 years.  They don’t seem to realize that in today’s media environment it is impossible to control the message and that rather than trying to micro-manage the messengers they should concentrate on creating an environment that prompts the messengers to speak positively of them in their own way.

To use the NCAA case as an example I’d say they’d be better served if they embraced the bloggers.  Some ideas:

  • Have a box on the official "internet providers" streaming video that shows RSS feeds of all the bloggers covering the event.  So if it’s a football game the viewer could see what the bloggers are writing next to the window that’s showing the streaming video feed (if that’s what it is).  This would allow the fans at home to see what others are saying and compare it to what they’re seeing with their own eyes.
  • Have the producers of the broadcasts monitor the feeds and react to interesting items on the air.  They already do that with emailed questions that the on air analysts answer, so why not use the feeds for on air fodder?  Think about it for a second and you realize that the "official" media would be getting extra content for nothing.  Why would they not want that?
  • Easy objection to the above: What if the bloggers are saying something negative about the commentators or the player?  Well, it’s going to be said/written anyway and you might as well give your official providers a chance to respond in their own defense.  And hey, nothing jacks ratings like a little controversy.

Hat tip to John Robinson for the link to the story.