Highways and By-the-ways

In the 1950’s, President Eisenhower championed a national interstate highway system, which was approved in 1956, with construction continuing into the 1980’s. This was obviously a grand ambition, leading to transportation infrastructure that positively affects most Americans on a daily basis. The Interstate system is the heart of our commercial operations. Plus, it’s the only place you can find a Cracker Barrel.

Curiously, Eisenhower conceived the system as a means of national defense, with the extremely wide roads and no intersections to allow the military to quickly transport men and armor in a time of war or crisis, patterned after the Autobahn that he had seen in Germany. In fact, the official name of the funding bill is “The Dwight D. Eisenhower National System of Interstate and Defense Highways.”

Since World War II we have never been invaded, and the defense benefits of the interstate system have been negligible, or at best a deterrent. And now the nature of war has changed and we no longer associate freeways with the military. Sure, Ike was off a bit in his reasoning. We almost always are when we project the future. But the positive impact of the Interstate system has been enormous. It was a big idea on a grand scale, taking 35 years and over $400 billion in today’s dollars to complete.

And the lesson is: It usually pays to be bold.

Which reminds me that a few months ago we had a full car and all starting talking about standards and conventions of the Interstate. Most of us knew some of the general rules listed below, but hardly anyone knew all of them:
• North-south freeways are odd numbers, while east-west are even numbers.
• Nationally, freeways are in numerical order, going west to east and south to north.
• Belt routes go around cities, using a three-digit number that generally includes an even single digit followed by the main interstate number (i.e. I-215 goes around I-15). There are no duplicate belt loop numbers in any state.
• Spurs do not reconnect to the Interstate, but are numbered like belt loops except with an odd first digit.
• Exits numbers are coordinated with mile markers almost everywhere. On the exit signs, an exit number on the right indicates the exit will be to the right, and vice versa on the left.

Maybe it’s just me, but sometimes I find even common things most interesting.

Pooh on Metaphysics

LINES WRITTEN BY A BEAR
OF VERY LITTLE BRAIN
by Winnie-the-Pooh

On Monday, when the sun is hot
I wonder to myself a lot:
"Now is it true, or is it not,
"That what is which and which is what?"

On Tuesday, when it hails and snows,
That feeling on me grows and grows
That hardly anybody knows
If those are these or these are those.

On Wednesday, when the sky is blue,
And I have nothing else to do,
I sometimes wonder if it's true
That who is what and what is who.

On Thursday, when it starts to freeze
And hoar-frost twinkles on the trees,
How very readily one sees
That these are whose - but whose are these?

On Friday --- when the moon glows bright,
The woods are filled with such a light,
My friends can see that I am near
Why, here I am! --- Why am I here?

Made to Stick

What do the following three statements have in common?
1. The Great Wall of China is the only man-made object visible from space.
2. Children must be careful what they eat on Halloween, to avoid poisoned or tampered foods.
3. You use only 10% of your brain.

Two things in common. First, they are all false. You can’t see the Great Wall from space. There are no known instances of Halloween candy tampering. And we use much more than 10% of our brain. And second, despite having no truth, the statements are all incredibly “sticky,” or memorable. I’ve heard each one dozens of times. They have endured for decades.

That’s the opening of Made to Stick, a book I read recently by brothers Chip and Dan Heath. They have studied this “sticky” phenomenon and derived certain principles that we might apply to many of our communications, be they marketing, leadership or interpersonal. Here's what "sticks": Simplicity, Unexpectedness, Concreteness, Credibility, Emotions and “Stories.” (Cheesy enough, these spell “SUCCESs,” well, sort of.) I know, they don’t sound very groundbreaking when listed professorially. But the Heaths spice up the concept with plenty of interesting examples and research. And while I’m not sure if I’m a “stickier” communicator having read the book, it’s at least caused me to think about the goal of stickiness.

Here’s an example. John F. Kennedy, in his famous 1961 address to Congress, laid out a bold and dramatic goal for the country: “I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to the earth.” Sticky? You bet. Why? Well, it’s simple, unexpected, credible and concrete. And then we did it, just to Stick It to the Russians.

Disastrous

I recently finished a two-week Community Emergency Response Training (CERT) class, training for local communities to quickly mobilize in times of disaster, such as floods, earthquakes or terrorist attacks. I wouldn’t ordinarily be very interested in this type of thing. I’ve never had that survivalist mentality, and have always equated being prepared with living a life of fear. Instead, I have chosen to ignore the risks in passive comfort and hope that it would never happen to me. Truth be known, even my presence at the class stemmed from a mistake—I thought it was about family preparedness. But once in, I stuck it out for the entire 16 hours, which proved to be interesting, valuable and impactful.

The CERT program is a child of 9-11. In the aftermath, the president asked citizens and communities to proactively prepare, and placed the general call to action under the aegis of FEMA, which developed the Citizen Corps program. CERT is a fledgling concept and operates very much as a starfish organization (see blog from 1.14.08). Anyone can get certified and establish the program in his/her community. There is no chain of command or centralized structure.

Our instructor was Ken Moravec, whose incredible disaster experiences include working for an unnamed government agency in foreign countries to help prevent nuclear and chemical attacks, time in Iraq during key gas attacks (he had haunting footage), being twice exposed to severe radiation (after one attack, still flying a helicopter 1000 miles), having been shot nine times, assisting the Red Cross in recovery and extraction after a Mexican earthquake, getting stuck on a collapsed freeway in Oakland during the famed 1989 earthquake, volunteering at Katrina, and more. If all this is to be believed, and coupled with his extensive knowledge, his credentials are extraordinary.

It was something of a revelation to me that in most major disasters, public service teams are spread very thin, and often take 3-5 days to reach many neighborhoods. So we were trained (including simulations) in search and rescue, triage, damage control and even creating temporary morgues, as well as disaster preparation and management. It was all quite fascinating. And while I’m not ready to build a bomb shelter in my backyard, I was motivated to take some steps to be more prepared. Further, I’ve been asked to head the efforts in our community, which I agreed to do, although not without reservations.

Final tidbit of more than passing interest: Our house is located a stone’s throw from the Wasatch Fault, which has erupted with a large earthquake every 300-400 years, and is overdue for the next, which could be devastating. Various experts cite the likelihood of a major (Richter 7.5 or higher) Wasatch quake at 25-57% over the next 50-100 years.

Maybe the Boy Scouts are right. It's good to be prepared.

Is That a Fact?

I’ve found that it’s virtually impossible to ferret out truth from rhetoric during a presidential campaign. Often the best you can do is seek out a variety of sources and try to determine who is lying. Unfortunately, when claims and counterclaims are volleyed back and forth, I find that I am a poor polygraph. I don't think the press is any better, neither the liberal New York Times and major networks or the conservative Fox News and Wall Street Journal. There must be conscientious editors and publishers that try hard to be unbiased, but I’m never sure who they are. Further, in their effort to be non-partisan, the best they can manage is bi-partisanship, so the unfortunate reader has to settle for factional distortions from both sides.

One site I really like is www.factcheck.org. Their sacred mission is to expose the dishonesty, hyperbole and shady tactics from both sides of the fence, and hold all candidates accountable for their campaign rhetoric. The result is a bright light on the dirty world of American politics, which suffers badly from the illumination.

For the next nine months (what a painful gestation period!) the FactCheck RSS feed is in at the top of my home page. One unfortunate side-effect is that on November 4th I'll have to vote for a candidate who I know has dealt in lies and treachery at worst, or distortion and sophistry at best. And sadly, that's a fact.

Treading Lightly

Two items in the latest issue of National Geographic Adventure caught my attention. First, in Learn the Ancient Way, author Charlie LeDuff spends time with Navajo rancher Tom Big John (Uncle Tom), who lives in Monument Valley in northern Arizona. The Ojibway (Chippewa) author describes his house like this: “Uncle Tom’s cabin was the simplest, most rural home I’ve ever visited in the United States: 200 square feet of plywood, a bed, a table, a wood-burning stove, a washbasin. No electricity, no plumbing… He had six dogs, four horses, a half-dozen cattle, and twice as many sheep.”

Uncle Tom spoke very little English, and living alone, was used to speaking hardly at all. But there was a surprising revelation: “Uncle Tom told me about his life and showed me a copy of a check made out to him from the United States Treasury--$100,000. ‘Two more,’ he said in English. Next year two more checks, he meant. A settlement, it turned out, for years spent in a mine. Uncle Tom was wealthy. And he lived like this not because he had to, but because he wanted to.”

The next article, The Vanishing Breed, was about the Nenets, an indigenous band of Russian reindeer herders—Komi people. This small band has no permanent residence, but move with their herd of 2500 reindeer, travelling on sleds and living together in a skinned chum (like a teepee). Their people have lived like this forever. They were ignored during the Russian revolution and again forgotten during Stalin’s purge. And curiously, some have experienced life in Russian towns, but choose to brave -30°F temperatures in the winter and +90°F in the summer and live in the chum. “We live better than in the village,” said one women. “It has always been that way and will always be.”

I’m continually amazed at how quickly we dismiss lifestyles that deviate from the American dream. Most of us have little idea what will truly make us happy, but scurry along with the rest of the lemmings over the cliffs of self-indulgence and mindless profligacy. But I am inspired to read about Uncle Tom, and the indigenous Nenets, who may not have all of life’s answers, but are willing to turn from the endless road of acquisition and consumerism and tread lightly on a different path.

Shaking All Over

After exchanging handshakes yesterday with a few dozen people that I hadn’t seen in three months, I was curiously compelled to wash my hands. I’ve never been germophobic before, never given it much thought, but for some reason I wondered what manner of microscopic bacteria I had accumulated in my quick round of social exchanges. Maybe it's because I got the flu this winter, which is rare for me. I've read that the increased frequency of cold and flu in the winter has little or nothing to do with the temperature directly, but likely results from more people being indoors exchanging disease-carrying microbes. I’m not convinced that's true, but it sure might be.

In the spirit of election-year campaigning, I think it’s time for a change. It's time to take action. It's time for the handshake to go. After all, this social institution pre-dates germ theory, which really didn’t go mainstream until the 20th century. But in our modern-day enlightened state it has become an anachronism. Hands are extraordinarily useful tools and thus routinely leave their bacterial tailings to form new colonies. Think of your TV remote control as a mingling place for one-celled fungi, a banister in your house as a microbe convention center, or the average doorknob a virtual singles bar of lusty germs just waiting for an opening to snuggle up to a warm-blooded body. This is not to mention public places, where billions of micro-organisms of unknown origin and with nary a background check quietly live from hand to mouth in our airports, theaters, stadiums and schools.

Now I know where my hands have been, but what about Jim’s, who gripped me firmly and greeted me with what I now think may have been a diabolical smile? Is Jim a nose-picker? Did he use his fingers to clean the wax out of his ears this morning, or worse yet, to attend to an itch in the most unpleasant of orifices? Did he scratch his head to check for dandruff? Does he leave a public bathroom by pushing on the door with his hand, heaven forbid? Did he even wash his hands after toileting, and if so, was he in too much of a hurry to use soap? The mind doesn’t have to wander far to find a lot of troubling places hands are likely to be. My goodness, they are still the appendage of choice for trapping the slimy discharge from a sudden sneeze—the Burning Man of all pathogenic social gatherings.

I don’t personally have a firm proposal for replacing the handshake ritual. The Japanese bow seems like a perfect solution, but our American culture is proud by nature and would abhor its symbolic subservience. I also like the way some Europeans kiss cheeks, but that has way too much baggage in our traditionally homophobic culture, and I refuse to import anything so fundamental from the haughty French. Hugs are too personal for a business setting, plus most people are not very good at them (although perhaps they could improve with practice and a few lessons). The notion of touching foreheads is also intriguing, right until I think about the time I met Shawn Bradley. We even might consider some of the gestures that have emerged from the sports world—like the fist bump, which is high in cool factor, or the forearm bump, which is less so. But definitely not the chest bump, which would be terribly awkward between the sexes and, in this silicone age, potentially fatal.

We’re an adaptive species by nature and I’m sure we could figure something out. We just need the motivation. I read about a town that outlawed handshakes during a flu epidemic, which probably couldn’t pass muster with our Supreme Court, but is a fanciful idea for congressional action. But I really think this more of a grass roots thing. So in the masculine spirit of the handshake I propose we make a gentlemen’s agreement to start by discontinuing the practice between ourselves? OK? Let’s shake on it.

Association Tests

I was looking for something in the book Blink last night, and ran across this test, which I took again. It's called an Implicit Association Test (IAT) and it very effectively measures your association between different concepts. Try the ones below, which are very simple. Just go down the list and as quickly as possible check the mental box on whether the names go left (MALE) or right (FEMALE). (Sorry for the dots as separation, but spaces didn't do the formatting I needed.)


MALE................FEMALE
_________ John _________
_________ Bob _________
_________ Amy _________
_________ Holly _________
_________ Joan _________
________ Derek _________
_________ Peggy _________
_________ Jason _________
_________ Lisa _________
_________ Matt _________
_________ Sarah _________

That was pretty easy, right? Now try one a little more complex. Mentally check the left box if the word or name is associated with either MALE or CAREER, and the right box if associated with either FEMALE or FAMILY. Remember, go as fast as you can.

MALE or............FEMALE or
CAREER.............FAMILY
_________ Lisa _________
_________ Matt _________
_________ Laundry_________
______ Entrepreneur ______
_________ John ___________
________ Merchant_________
__________ Bob _________
_______ Capitalist_______
______ Corporation ______
_________ Siblings________
_________ Peggy _________
_________ Jason ________
________ Kitchen ________
_______ Housework _______
________ Parents _________
_________ Sarah _________
_________ Derek _________

OK, still not bad. Now try this: MALE or FAMILY on the left and FEMALE or CAREER on the right. Go fast. Don't say "Male" etc., but rather go left or right.

MALE or..............FEMALE or
FAMILY................CAREER
_________ Babies _________
_________ Sarah _________
_________ Derek _________
________ Merchant _________
_______ Employment_________
_________ John __________
__________ Bob ___________
_________ Holly ___________
_______ Domestic _________
______ Entrepreneur _______
_________ Office __________
_________ Jason ___________
_________ Joan ___________
________ Peggy ___________
________ Cousins __________
______ Grandparents ________
__________Jason __________
_________ Home ___________
_________ Lisa _________
______ Corporation ________
_________ Matt ___________

Hmmmm. Not quite so easy, huh? Take more time? For me it did, because I'm stuck with associations of males/career and female/family. There's an even more difficult one in the book about our associations with blacks. Even the author, Malcolm Gladwell, couldn't escape standard stereotypes, even though he is African-American. There are more of these online at www.implicit.harvard.edu although I didn't like them as much as these simple ones.

Giants Upset Pats!

In perhaps the greatest Super Bowl in history, the New York Giants humbled the once-haughty and heavily-favored New England Patriots 17-14 last night. Led by the oft-maligned quarterback Eli Manning and the high-intensity defensive line, the Giants refused to be intimidated, playing with confidence and aggressiveness from the opening kick-off to the last and futile New England possession.

The Patriots have become the New York Yankees of football, a positioned they usurped from the Dallas Cowboys. Although there is an exception--they don't buy their championships. Still, they are so good, so methodical, so arrogant that the average Joe feels compelled to root against them. And certainly that was the sentiment at my house. Nobody was a Giant fan before this season, but there was plenty of enthusiasm for seeing the Patriots get their tails whipped, and also for Eli to get some love.

In what is starting to become a tradition, Angelica and Lanee laid out a devastating line-up of snack foods, and our small crowd ate and cheered until the combination made our bellies hurt. It doesn't get any better than that. (Well actually, that's not quite true. Ryan was at the game in Glendale, witnessing one of the most exciting and historic Super Bowls of all time. It doesn't get any better than THAT. We watched on TV, along with the other record-setting 148 million viewers worldwide, which was still good living.)

February Quotes

Every time I run across a quote I like I put it on my list. For the past year or so I've been putting a new quote in my email signature every day. Lately I've taken to memorizing one a day. I've been surprised at how useful they have become, when memorized. Here's a few more from my list. Some of these are my "classics," which I've had and used for many years.

It is easier to preach ten sermons than it is to live one.

"We can never get enough of what we don't need, because what we don't need won't satisfy us."
--Dallin Oaks

"Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work."
--Thomas Edison

"There are some people that if they don't know, you can't tell them."
--Louis Armstrong

"I learned the way a monkey learns, by watching its parents."
--Queen Elizabeth II

The heights of great men reached and kept
Were not attained by sudden flight,
But they, while their companions slept,
Were toiling upward in the night.
--Longfellow

"Put all your eggs in one basket and WATCH THAT BASKET!"
--Mark Twain

"The supreme paradox of all thought is the attempt to discover something that thought cannot think."
--Søren Kierkegaard

"You only live once, but if you work it right, once is enough."
-- Joe Louis

An optimist is a person who, instead of feeling sorry he cannot pay his bills, is glad he is not one of his creditors.

"Give me a lever and a place to stand, and I will move the world."
--Archimedes

“Money often costs too much."
-- Ralph Waldo Emerson

Talk is cheap because supply exceeds demand.

"Nothing you can't spell will ever work."
--Will Rogers

A wise man should have money in his head, but not in his heart.
--Jonathan Swift

Opportunity may knock once, but temptation bangs on your door forever.