tales of two cities – special pothole edition

I’ve covered a couple of ideas separately over the course of this series that I want to briefly bring together today.

First, potholes. A pothole is often the only thing preventing me from having a safe and easy trip home on a bike. These things are hard to see from a bike but can represent a major risk for anyone who goes wheel-first into the pit. If the hole is deep enough, it can cause the front wheel to catch and send the rider over the top of the handlebars.

The bizarre thing about potholes is that the local municipal authorities do not seem to care much for this risk. I read an article about a year ago on the topic that drove this point home. This article reported that Boston’s current pothole ‘response rate’ – some metric that tracks how well the city responds to a report that a pothole must be filled in – is something close to 68%. Apparently, this figure falls far short of the target rate of 88%.

This article’s findings indicate a lot of work is left to do. Although the investments made in safe cycling lanes have been significant, a far more prudent course of action would be to make sure no part of the city’s roads have a life-threatening HOLE in the middle of it. This way, at least a biker who rides safely and follows the laws of the road has a good chance of navigating the streets safely. The current ‘pothole response rate’ implies that there are plenty of holes all around for me to kill myself in no matter my skill level, vigilance, or law-abiding instincts.

This brings me to the second idea – the difference between the auto industry and the bike industry or, perhaps more precisely, the difference between car culture and bike culture. In car culture, the accepted national death toll is just north of thirty thousand road fatalities a year. In bike culture, the accepted death rate is slightly lower – around zero fatalities a year.

This cultural difference helps me understand the city’s priorities as it relates to bike safety. When I think about it, the more revealing figure above is not 68% but rather 88%. This tells us that the city thinks the best it can do is fill in eight out of every nine potholes. It is the logic of car culture that enables 88%. Would we settle for 88% if we considered thirty thousand road fatalities a year unacceptable?

When the city decides mediocrity is no longer enough, it will follow the lead of the local bike culture and set the pothole response target at 100%. This is the only acceptable goal for anyone who agrees with bike culture’s controversial position that the acceptable fatality rate on our city’s streets is zero deaths per year.

leftover #3: how to predict when the patriot’s dynasty will end – for real, this time

Hi folks,

I’ve posted a few thoughts lately about the New England Patriots, their ‘Big Three’, and the possible decline of their helmet football ‘dynasty’ sometime in the near future. Most of these posts were written late last season and I therefore had to keep some of my analysis (‘anaylsis’) as general as possible to guard against the possibility of real-life events rendering my posts out of date. Today, though, I’ll chime in with some specific thoughts about what the various people involved might do to bring about the end many are suspecting is right around the corner.

First, it seems like right now we can safely rule out scenarios where Belichick will get sacked. There just isn’t evidence right now that Belichick’s view of Brady has soured. There is also no hint of frustration on the part of Kraft toward the coach. It’s possible that Brady harbors some ill-sentiment toward Belichick but this would only get Belichick sacked if Brady was correct about Belichick being a bad fit for the team (which he wouldn’t be).

The resignation scenario is the only plausible way Belichick would ever coach elsewhere. The man is notorious for keeping his cards pressed right against his chest. If he thought Kraft was causing the infrastructure to slip, he might leave. The counter-argument that he might stay and try to repair or rebuild the infrastructure is a fair point but at this moment Belichick wields almost all the decision making authority on the football side – so what lever is left for him to pull in New England? My bet is that once things slip in New England, Belichick resigns right away (or just retires).

There is a small chance that Brady gets the wrong idea at some point and decides to leave. This makes sense at one level but given his age ‘leaving’ and ‘retiring’ are almost the same decision. Brady is perhaps among the best ten players in the league but he is also the oldest elite player, possibly ever. I doubt he’ll get traded or demand the opportunity to sign elsewhere at this point, leaving retirement as the likely next move. What happens after that is anybody’s guess. By definition, this is exactly the type of thing that cannot be predicted.

The wild card here is Jonathan Kraft. I haven’t put much thought into his role thus far beyond merely mentioning his name but he is an important character. Jonathan is essentially next in line after his father leaves the ownership position. His ascent into the role will alter the dynamics of these relationships and makes something like scenario #2 or #4 that I outlined in my prior post suddenly more plausible during the transition period. It is unclear to me when this change will happen, however, so I don’t have much more to add to the thought at the moment.

For those reading my ramblings and wondering what would happen in more complex scenarios – Brady blames both Kraft and Belichick, for example – just keep in mind that with a little work the ‘complex’ scenario probably simplifies down to one of the eight I outlined last time. That's the beauty of game theory.

And if you aren't the sort to simply accept game theory, then just assume Kraft will do something egocentric. He is, after all, a billionaire owner, and no one becomes a billionaire owner without having a massive ego. If it comes down to it, he'll find a way to remind Brady and Belichick of a truth reminiscent of Chris Rock's bit of age-old wisdom: in a world where some people get huge checks while other people sign them, every dispute is resolved by the guy holding the pen doing whatever it is that he wants.

reading review - under the lights and in the dark

Under the Lights and in the Dark by Gwendolyn Oxenham (June 2018)

Gwendolyn Oxenham collects a number of stories about women’s soccer from around the world in this 2017 work. The book goes full circle in a way as the first and last chapters are about American players with a connection to Portland, Oregon. Along the journey, Oxenham makes stops in many places around the world, gathering stories about women who have devoted their lives to the game simply because they love to play.

As I read the first story, I got the sense that this was going to be a special book. It did not quite work out that way in hindsight and I don’t think I can really recommend it for a non-soccer fan. However, I still enjoyed the collection overall. Each story was about an athlete overcoming some form of adversity – injuries, lack of playing opportunity, not making the team, and so on – and I think those  themes always makes for the kind of stories I enjoy reading.

A common theme that emerged among many of the stories was how great things are built when those who lead one generation inspire the leaders of the next generation. This could mean simple measures like an experienced player being approachable (or even just learning the names of younger players). It also could be reinvestment in the sport manifesting through ex-players returning to coach or mentor. The important thing is for the successful to give others chances because whenever someone a level up in a hierarchy feels ‘too good’ to participate in grassroots efforts, the slow and steady rhythm of growth and progress is inevitably slowed or halted.

One up: Oxenaham notes in one passage how lifelong athletes can sometimes struggle to perform in environments lacking an authority figure who barks out exact orders. I thought this was a fascinating insight that mirrored my own professional observations. Though there is a truism that former college athletes make for good professionals, I think these ex-athletes succeed when the work environment mirrors the collegiate athletic environment. In professional life, this isn’t always the case and over the years I’ve noted many instances when former athletes have struggled under less direct leadership or in more ambiguous work environments.

One down: I generally try to avoid making specific comments about an author’s content decisions in these reviews. However, I feel compelled to share my disappointment that Japan’s 2011 World Cup winning team did not make it into the book. I think this is one of the sport’s best stories – an underdog team overcame challenges including poor funding, inconsistent training, and a general lack of opportunity for its players to topple the sport’s traditional powers and lift the trophy after defeating the USA in the final. As if that wasn’t enough, this all happened just months after the tragedy of 2011’s massive tsunami had left Japan reeling (1). It’s too bad that readers did not get the chance to learn more about ‘Nadeshiko Japan’ and learn the inspiring story about this team that sacrificed and endured so much just for the opportunity of representing their country at the sport’s showpiece tournament.

Just saying: I wasn’t expecting lessons about religion but I was pleasantly surprised about what I learned. In one section, Oxenham suggests that The Bible is clear on exactly nothing and that those with questions must bring them up with God.

In another, she mentions that although bringing things into the light can help bring healing and progress, most broken things must be handled gently. People who feel blindsided are rarely going to agree that others are being helpful. As Scripture suggests, go to them privately.

Footnotes / the movie would probably be called Miracle On Grass

1. It’s bizarre that the USA ever considers itself the underdog in anything, really, except men’s soccer…

In fact, if the roles were reversed and it was the USA that won the tournament as the underdog, with players whose financial situations were described in the run-up to the tournament as 'borderline poverty', there would probably still be movies coming out about the team.

leftovers #2: how to predict when the patriot’s dynasty will end – game theory edition

Over a few recent posts, I noted how Bill Belichick was the key man to consider when mulling the ways relationships might break down within the New England Patriots organization. Today, I’ll go through the possible relationship breakdowns, step-by-step, and see what the most likely outcome will be in each case.

To think through what the outcomes of the breakdowns might be, I dug a little bit into my knowledge of game theory. The simple explanation for this branch of economics is that it uses ‘if, then…’ thinking to analyze possible outcomes of certain events.

For these breakdowns, I thought a logical starting point was ‘blame’ – one party ‘blames’ another for starting or contributing to the team’s decline. It matters whether the blame is correct, of course, but not as much as you might think.

Let’s have a look…

Owner-coach relationship breakdowns

1) Kraft correctly blames Belichick

No sense keeping a bad coach around, right?

Outcome: Belichick sacked, Patriots possibly OK since they can hire a better coach

2) Kraft incorrectly blames Belichick

The key here is that Kraft owns the team. This absolves him of the responsibility to be correct in making this (or any) assessment. In a sense, this scenario doesn’t exist because it doesn’t matter whether the owner is right or not, it just matters what the owner thinks. So if Kraft thinks Belichick is the problem, well, that’s the end of it.

Outcome: Belichick sacked, Patriots in decline because they won’t find a better coach

3) Belichick correctly blames Kraft

This means that the owner is hurting the team’s infrastructure with corrosive decisions. It could be as simple as the wage structure and as complex as meddling in helmet football decisions. When the chair starts to buckle, a good manager stands up before he earns a reputation for falling on his rear.

Outcome: Belichick resigns, Patriots in decline because they’ve lost a good coach AND their owner isn't good (which also makes it less likely they’ll find a good replacement coach as well)

4) Belichick incorrectly blames Kraft

This is the subtlest scenario (but also the one I thought the ESPN piece was hinting at when they referenced ownership meddling with trade decisions). As long as the reaction isn’t knee-jerk, there is enough time for Belichick to reassess his evaluation and see that perhaps things are not changing for the worse.

Outcome: No changes (if the initial discomfort does not lead to an impulsive resignation)

Player-coach relationship breakdowns

5) Brady correctly blames Belichick

The player differs from the owner in his lack of direct decision-making power. However, if the player has the right on-field performance metrics to back up an opinion (Brady wins MVPs, so he does) then the owner will almost always side with the player.

Outcome: Belichick sacked, Patriots possibly OK if they hire a better coach

6) Brady incorrectly blames Belichick

This case is the most elementary of the possibilities – it just means the guys don’t get along. Sometimes, this small crack erupts into the fissure that divides the organization. However, I think the Patriots are past this point – no matter how many avocados Brady rubs on his throwing arm, he’s too much of an injury risk to maintain a power struggle against the greatest coach of all time.

Outcome: No changes (unless Brady chooses to demand a trade, refuses to sign, etc)

7) Belichick correctly blames Brady

This one is straightforward – it basically happened in 2001 with Bledsoe. It was possibly happening again a year ago but Belichick tipped his hand and traded Garropolo.

Outcome: No changes (until Brady is moved on for a replacement – Patriots could possibly improve if they find a better player)

8) Belichick incorrectly blames Brady

This one looks like #6 but it would play out just like #7 - to make it fun, let's say Brady then goes on to win another MVP, possibly for the Buffalo Bills. At that point, it would suddenly become clear that Belichick didn’t quite know what he was doing and Kraft might be moved to invoke situation #1 (or #2) from above. It might not be the sole grounds for his dismissal but coaches who make such major misevaluations rarely last very long in the role.

Outcome: Belichick sacked (probably) after Brady proves him wrong, Patriots go into decline

Let’s summarize this admittedly simplified way of looking at the situation:

-In four of the eight cases, Belichick is sacked
-In another case, Belichick resigns
-In the remaining three cases, there are no obvious changes (unless a party gets impatient, Brady decides to move himself on, or a better replacement is identified)

Again, I think the approach above is simplified but I might prefer it over any other that makes too much effort to dig out all the nuance (by separating Kraft from the idea of infrastructure, by adding other parties such as Jonathan Kraft, agents, coordinators, and so on). If it isn’t clear by now – and I’ve written thousands of words on the topic, so it probably is clear – as far as I’m concerned, when Belichick goes, we’ll all know it’s over. But until he does go, any other bit of ‘news’ about the Patriots and their decline can be safely ignored.

Footnotes / meteorology!

0. Breaking news – temperatures falling overnight…

The very broad point of the ESPN piece is that the Patriots’s dynasty will end once the key relationships fall apart – but how is that different from any organization? From my point of view, it really isn’t. I think this explains why the piece was so poorly received by Patriots fans – the story is essentially reporting a truth that is always there with a few well-known details sprinkled in that distract the reader from the fact that the story isn’t really reporting anything at all.

It would be like a meteorologist breathlessly reporting that temperature will drop overnight due to some specific reason like ‘low pressure’. Sure, that’s great, but the temperature almost always drops overnight, right? So does it really matter why?

does boston really understand global warming?

One of the common Boston tropes is about the wildly variable local weather. One day, it might be seventy degrees and lovely – the next week, everyone is bundled up in the face of a sudden snowstorm. And all in the first week of April! Through it all, folks around town put on a brave face and make a variation on the same old remark – New England weather, always unpredictable, you just never know in New England…

I’m of two minds on this one. I think there is definitely a lot of value in saying or doing what is needed to get on with the day. But on the other hand, I worry that the attitude around town will prove an obstacle in understanding the difference between changing weather and changing climate. If everyone expects wild variation in the weather, how bad does the variation need to be before we realize things are beyond the usual scope of traditional New England weather?

This is the fundamental problem with variation. At some point, if variation becomes the norm, people accept it and stop responding to it. When the ‘T’ is late, no one really worries because we are all used to it. But if we order a pizza and two hours later the delivery driver hasn’t pulled up, well, we start to wonder a little bit if someone’s forgotten the order.

I’m actually surprised so many people accept climate change as a reality. Most people I know are completely incapable of dressing properly for today’s weather – how often I’ve had to scurry along because some companion wore a light jacket on a freezing night! How these folks are able to even fathom the implications of a rising degree or two over a decade is beyond me. But no matter, I suppose, in the end – I guess in this case it’s the conclusion, not the method, that really matters.

the allergy analogy

Let’s revisit one of my more commonly cited ideas today.

My basic premise is that sometimes we consider all the factors that influence a situation yet overlook how there might be just one factor so important to make all other considerations irrelevant. I’ve called this phenomenon various things – worrying about weaknesses, the harm of the pro-con list, and perhaps most notably, the debate club mentality – but I don’t think I’ve always been very clear.

So, as is the requirement around these parts, when things aren’t clear I whip up an analogy. Imagine ordering a meal in a busy restaurant on a Saturday night. Actually, it’s not just busy, it’s hectic, it’s wild, it’s borderline chaos, and you are a little nervous because you have a diet restriction – no peanuts. NO PEANUTS. Got it? Reader, in this hypothetical, you are so allergic to peanuts that if you go to a baseball game and a vendor walks by yelling – ‘peanuts, peanuts, get yer peanuts here!’ – you start to sneeze and sniffle a little.

Keeping this in mind, you place your order and remind the server – NO PEANUTS. It’s a little busy, you add with a forced smile, and you’d prefer not to make life more difficult by, say, dying at your table during dinner.

No problem, we’ll make sure to keep your dish safe. Can I get you an appetizer to start?

Eventually, the meal arrives. You notice a problem right away – there are peanuts. Truth be told, there are peanuts everywhere, it’s a proper peanut convention on the plate. In fact, for the purposes of making this analogy just outrageous enough to protect innocent identities everywhere, let’s suppose your entrée is actually just a bowl of peanuts, a fact you notice moments before your quickly-shriveling eyes fall out of their sockets (editor’s note: Tim’s grasp on how peanut allergies work is a little shaky).

A few days later, you get an automated email from the restaurant (which you can read, even though your eyes fell out):

Dear valued customer,

Thank you for dining with us on Saturday night. We hope you enjoyed your experience.

We would appreciate it if you took two minutes to fill out a quick survey about your night.

Sincerely,

The Business Bro

You open the survey and have a look. It’s pretty basic stuff – was the staff attentive, did you enjoy the environment, were the restrooms clean, and so on. As you look over the criteria, you suddenly realize – everything was perfect. The people were the nicest you’ve ever met, the lighting and décor in the restaurant was spot on, and the restroom was clean enough to serve as a backup dining room. Every single detail, in fact, was perfect and worthy of full marks – ten for ten in each category.

So, what’s been my point all this time when I talk about things like debate clubs? Really, my point is that the survey score you would give the restaurant is a zero. If you understand that, you understand my point (and probably better than I do, actually). If you don’t understand that, you’ll probably want to debate – but Tim, what about the bathroom, you said it was spotless?

I guess the point is – sure, the bathroom was sparkling clean, but there wasn’t anything about the bathroom's cleanliness that mattered once I was served an entire bowl of peanuts.

leftovers: how to predict when the patriot’s dynasty will end

In my Tuesday post, I mentioned how the different ways the owner, the head coach, and the best player are tied down to a helmet football team are an important factor in analyzing the state of the Patriots dynasty. When I was writing that post, I initially tried to explain the concept in more detail to hammer home the main point of all these recent posts - when an organization is in trouble, the managers leave first. However, my attempt ended up becoming the longest footnote in TOA history so I cut it out of the post to use for today. It's long, so good luck, but it's also thorough and might be interesting for anyone who understands my point yet cannot find a good way to explain it.

*********

First, let’s look at the owner, Kraft. He might have convictions about the team but only works with the coaches. If the organization is declining, his options are to remove himself or deal with the coaches. If he senses the coaches are causing a decline, he can make a direct move. However, if he senses the players are causing a decline, he has no direct option.

Since Kraft answers to no one, he is able to make an incorrect assessment of his own performance yet remain in his position. That is, if he wants to sell, he can, and if he doesn’t, he won’t, but decisions to sell the team are not directly connected to how he views his own performance. Further, there is no natural mechanism in place for him to sell ‘for the good of the team’. There is no performance metric to drive him out of the organization or reduce his power – thus, his power as an owner remains unrelated to his performance as an owner.

The opposite goes for the players yet this makes them strangely similar to the owner. (Let's use Brady, the best player on the team by far, as the representative for ‘the players’ in the rest of this example.) If the organization is declining, Brady’s options are to remove himself or work with the coaches. If he senses the owner is causing a decline, he has no direct option. If he senses the coaches are causing a decline, he can make an indirect move like hiring his own trainer or screaming obscenities at assistant coaches during the annual rout of the Buffalo Bills.

Brady answers to the coaches and will not survive their negative assessment of his performance. If Brady’s assessment of his own performance is incorrect (and players tend to overestimate their own performance) then it will be difficult for him to remain in his position without feeling underpaid or underappreciated. This usually will cause him to want to leave but he is constrained by the sport’s governing rules that make it difficult for him to simply go. There are reliable performance metrics Brady can use to defend himself against anyone who wishes to drive him out of the organization. Brady’s performance as a player is strongly linked to his power to act on his own assessments about the organization’s performance.

The coaches are neither opposite to nor equivalent of the owner or the players. (Let's use Belichick, the head coach, as the representative for 'the coaches' in the rest of this example.) Belichick might have convictions about the owner or the players and he is responsible for working with each party. However, as he must maintain dual relationships, his influence over one or the other is lessened because being tied too strongly to one party will threaten the other. There is only so much direct action he can take with the players if he is aware of the owner’s assessments and there is only so much direct influence he can exert over the owner if he is aware of how organizational changes will threaten the job security of the most influential players. If the organization is declining, he has the option to remove himself, work with the owner, or work with the players. If he senses the owner is causing a decline, he can propose changes to the decision making structure to increase his own influence. If he senses the players are causing a decline, he can make changes to the players using a variety of tools including the exchange of future resources for current players – these resources including draft choices, salary cap space, or the inclusion of promising young quarterbacks in trades with the San Francisco 49ers.

Belichick answers directly to the owner and must not lose his owner’s confidence that he is making decisions benefiting the long-term health of the organization. Belichick answers indirectly to the players and must not lose his players’ confidence that he is making decisions benefiting the short-term prospects for the team. If Belichick’s own assessment of his performance is incorrect, it will result in losing the confidence of either his owner or his players as it relates to his ability to balance the short-term with the long-term. If he wants to leave, he is not bound by the same restrictive rules governing the players – he is more or less free to go. He is more accountable for performance than the owner but does not control final say about his destiny (despite being the best coach of all time, at least in Belichick’s case). He is less directly affected by bad performances than a struggling player but suffers from a lack of exact performance measurement that the elite player enjoys. The head coach is the easiest to fire of the three but also has the easiest time walking out the door if he so chooses.

*********

All of the above (and thanks for sticking through it, if you've made it this far, reader) is an extended way of repeating a recent point - when the organization starts to decline, the departure of the head coach is always going to be the first signal of trouble. This is mostly because the head coach is by definition knee-deep in every aspect of the organization's operation yet he lacks the owner’s absolute power to make changes and cannot prove his own competence through directly measurable performance metrics in the same way as the players. This means that if the head coach goes, it usually points to one of three things:

1) The head coach isn’t any good

2) The head coach is being unfairly blamed for bad performance

3) The head coach isn’t getting enough credit for good performance

All three of those factors (though at varying degrees) are signals of bad news for the future health of an organization:

#1 is a big problem because this hints that the head coach’s tenure eroded away the foundation for the organization’s future success

#2 suggests the organization is unable to correctly evaluate its players

#3 suggests the organization is unable to correctly evaluate its coaches

If any of these three factors is present in an organization, how can an outsider confidently expect the organization to identify, develop, and retain high performers? And if it can't do those things, why would there be any high performers in the organization at the present? In short, it there won't be, which means the organization is surely headed for a period of decline.

moya never brings the business bro a problem without a solution

One of the stupidest managerial truisms is “don’t bring me a problem without a solution”. The only thing this will lead to is problems being swept under the rug. If your organization has ten problems and your team can only come up with five solutions, would you prefer to hear about all ten problems or just the five that the team can solve?

I’d rather solve some problems and know there is work to do rather than live in blissful ignorance and suddenly get blindsided by an ‘unknown’ problem but, hey, some have called me crazy before so who knows, maybe I’m wrong about this one, too. (And this doesn't even get to the possibility that you might be able to solve one or two of those unsolvable issues yourself, hotshot manager...)

Of course, there are some areas where this idea should probably be the standard. I think my computer’s spelling and grammar check is one example. Sometimes, I write a word or phrase and that stupid squiggly line appears underneath it. I click on it and get…

Nothing!

No suggestions, no improvements, no help of any kind, just a big red or green mess underlining My Best Effort, a taunt, thumbing its nose at me, pointing out that it’s so incorrect, an example of such blatantly and hopelessly butchered English, that there is no way to fix it, no way this computer, this powerful machine, which has enough processing power to play the entire Joshua Tree album at 2x speed, over and over again, shuffling the order each time, until my neighbor knocks on my door at 3AM and tells me to shut up, he hates U2, no way this computer is able to come up with one suggestion for how to fix my spelling or grammar error, one little idea to add an ‘e’ or a silent ‘c’, to maybe reverse the fragment, possibly, did Moya go through this, did his entire work get underlined, as he went on and on, writing his life sentence, serving his life sentence, trying to cram his entire thought into one expression, without breaking the rules of grammar, the rules that must be known to identify a broken example, for how can spell check know it is wrong just because it isn’t right, what if it is a new idea, a new construction, to rise up in the next dictionary like the newest skyscraper, like the high-rise that blocks the sun, who does this computer think it is, to tell a creator that he is wrong, to draw a line on the horizon and say stop, there should be no line on the horizon, no lines, for there are so many lines under my words, under my letters, as if the natural condition of letters is not to be misspelled, that arranging letters into a word is the work of the writer, how dare this red line tell me I’m unfit for the task, the red tape of creativity, there should be a line under every correct word, so unnatural it is for words to be correct, unnatural like great wealth, like we explain poverty instead of wealth, like we have lines for poverty and poverty lines, why explain poverty, it requires no explanation, does food fall fully prepared from trees, does spell check point at the raw meat any say cook this, it is wealth that needs explaining, how can money grow on some trees, on some Joshua trees, these should have the red lines underneath, like the subways that takes us where we must go, oh Moya, how can so much function correctly when the natural state is chaos and misspellings and red line delays…

how to predict when the patriots’s dynasty will end

In my recent review of Jonathan Wilson’s Anatomy of Liverpool, I noted how his description of Liverpool’s various managerial changes over the years reinforced a critical truth about organizations – when there is a sense of imminent decline within the organization, the manager usually leaves first. As I mentioned in another recent post, I thought about this after I read the January ESPN piece about the Patriots that predicted the imminent end of their helmet football dynasty.

The article in question jumped from point to point and created a whirlwind of intrigue and speculation in its aftermath. Fans dialed into sports radio and speculated about the true intentions of the big names involved in the piece. Would owner Robert Kraft step aside to allow son Jonathan into the lead role? Would quarterback Tom Brady retire and bring his incredible career to an end? But the key question for me always comes back to the main lesson from Wilson’s book – always look at the manager. In the context of the Patriots, this means the key question is – would coach Bill Belichick leave?

I am most interested in what Belichick does because his departure would be the only reliable signal of the organization’s imminent decline. If Belichick left, it would mean that the New England Patriots were no longer an organization with the infrastructure required to retain the best helmet football coach of his generation. This is an easy fact to lose sight of, especially if Belichick offers the usual list of reasons any manager gives for departing (right time for his family, old age, better opportunity elsewhere, etc). Although the reasons given for a departure might ring 100% true, losing Belichick would also mean a departure from the last two decades (when the infrastructure was sufficient to keep the best coach around from quitting) so if Belichick did indeed coach elsewhere in the future (instead of retiring) it would at least be evidence of something having changed in the organization that made it a less appealing place for him to work than it was in the past.

The question of whether Belichick would leave addresses the single truth of all organizations – when the organization declines, the managers leave first. It doesn't matter if the manager steps down or is sacked – one way or the other, when a negative outlook causes trust and confidence disappear, the managers should start preemptively packing up.

This truth makes an article like the ESPN one – which essentially claimed to pinpoint the exact moment the decline of the New England franchise began – a far more difficult concept to execute than on first glance. The challenge of making such a prediction is that most organizations will already be in decline long before the outside world becomes aware of it. It’s similar to how a person is already sick when summoning a doctor for a diagnosis – the flight of middle management is merely the telling cough of a long-sick organization. Writing a piece about the Patriots and saying – hey, here comes the end – is really difficult while Belichick is still around.

It would be a lot like a primary care doctor determining a patient was in perfect health at Thanksgiving yet still predicting an imminent onset of illness sometime before Christmas. The rare occasions where an illness is caught before it manifests with debilitating symptoms requires a doctor with a detailed knowledge of the underlying disease process, a sharp eye for recognizing the right warning signals, and an intimate knowledge of how these might manifest in the specific patient. The combination of these three factors is exceedingly rare.

In helmet football, the equivalent of these factors is a little simpler but that doesn't make it any more likely that a journalist will sniff out the impending decline. If it does happen, it usually means the journalist understands the two key relationships within any team's structure – the owner with the coaches and the coaches with the players. If someone understands these relationship dynamics at an expert level, it may be possible to predict the organization’s decline before the head coach leaves. The ESPN piece touched on this idea briefly but I didn’t think it demonstrated enough understanding of these dynamics for me to take its prediction seriously (1).

However, the attempt did get me thinking about what it might look like if these relationships were turning sour and, in the process, signaling the beginning of the end for the Patriots. The most important factor here is, again, the head coach. As the main representative of the coaching staff, he must work with both the owner and the players (while the owner and the players do not really need to interact at all, at least in a direct professional context) (2). If life within the organization becomes stressful, the two key relationships come under intense pressure and the trust among the parties is put to the test. And if either relationship starts to erode, the head coach is by definition involved because he is the only party invested in both key relationships.

Further, in professional sports, the organizational dynamic causing managerial departure is accelerated because the head coach isn’t tied down to the team (like the owner) and he cannot defend himself through directly measurable on-field metrics (like the player). To put it another way, if a negative relationship dynamic started to influence on-field results, the head coach will almost always end up directly at odds with either the owner or the players.

Next time, I’ll take a closer look at those dynamics, how they might influence decisions about personnel, and what it might mean for the future of the team.

Footnotes / but doesn’t it matter that these guys are friends?

1. It doesn't count if you have inside info, of course...

The obvious point to add here is that Belichick holds his cards so closely to his chest that it is hard for me to imagine some ESPN reporter learning anything important about his relationships with Kraft or Brady.

2. But aren’t Brady and Kraft buddies?

This is not to dismiss the value, importance, or even existence of a relationship between Brady and Kraft. As far as I know, it is a strong friendship based on mutual respect and admiration. What I’m saying is that in terms of winning helmet football games, this relationship is completely irrelevant. If Brady is upset with Kraft (or vice-versa) they work through Belichick, the head coach, to deal with these concerns.

the political diamond

It didn’t quite make my ‘links’ recommendation in my monthly newsletters but I really enjoyed this podcast Tim Ferriss did with Cory Booker. Booker is, in addition to just being an interesting guy, currently representing New Jersey in the US Senate and is getting a lot of mentions as a possible 2020 Presidential candidate.

At one point in the episode, Booker comments that someone who can piss off both sides of the political aisle is probably doing something right. This reminded me of the joking way I sometimes criticize the left-right model of politics. The problem I have is how the continuum implied by the setup leaves a flat ‘middle ground’ – unfortunately, not all of us who sit in the middle are created equal and this model doesn’t account for those subtle differences in the center.

I think a better representation would be a diamond shape. This leaves the left and right as is while creating two possibilities in the middle. The first possibility (top or bottom, doesn't matter to me) is the centrist who can work both sides. The second is the opposite – the person in the middle who alternates pissing off the left and right. Based on my experiences over the past decade – being mocked as a crazy liberal by Republicans while also being asked with incredulity by Democrats if I’m a Trump supporter – I have to conclude I’m the latter kind of centrist. Although I’m not sure exactly what I’m doing right, I’m glad to at least have Cory Booker’s support.

I guess while I’m rambling on about politics I might as well repeat my joke about my political views (I think I originally wrote this in a ‘Tales of Two Cities’ post). My political views are a lot like my city cycling philosophy – in theory, I’d like to spend more time on the right than I do now, but in practice the reality of the world forces me to the left.

reading review - the anatomy of liverpool

The Anatomy of Liverpool by Jonathan Wilson (January 2018)

Hi,

The Anatomy of Liverpool is Wilson’s search for the soul of Liverpool Football Club. Through the unusual approach of using the context, tactics, and aftermath of ten defining matches, he constantly asks the question – what is LFC? The unique lens he uses to examine this question made for a compelling read that I, a Liverpool fan for over a decade, thought resulted in a phenomenal look into every aspect of the club’s decorated history.

A couple of days ago, I touched on one of the basic ideas from Wilson’s in-depth study in the context of the New England Patriots – when the organization is in a period of decline, the manager is usually the first to leave. We’ll look at that thought in much more detail over a few upcoming posts.

Today, I want to take a closer look at some of Wilson’s other ideas.

Thanks for reading.

Tim

*********

It is hard to validate any process strictly by results.

You can’t score a goal every time you get the ball.

Most teams should try to extend their philosophy before taking steps to overhaul it.

The flower begins to wither at the height of full bloom.

Despues del visto, todo el mundo es listo (everyone’s a genius after the event).

These thoughts all speak to the inherent challenges of the manager’s role. They caution against relying strictly on results to measure performance and remind the manager to always retain a process-oriented approach. Good managers do not count goals as a measure of the offense – instead, they understand that the goal-scoring process consists of many inputs such as movement, passing, or positioning. They study these inputs to understand why something happened instead of merely relying on the final goal tally to tell the whole story.

A good way to understand someone’s injuries is to watch the way they walk. An even better way is to track how someone’s walk changes.

This extends the above idea. A manager who looks at the players and only notices their current speed will lose to a manager who can pick out the player that is speeding up within a pack. A manager must always remember to know not just the present condition but also the underlying trend.

A top manager might not always be able to identify the next great talent. However, a top manager will never sign a bad player. Perhaps the fairest way to assess managerial ability is by how few bad players the manager signs.

A great manager improves every player in the team. If a bad signing comes in, the manager must still improve the player until the transfer is considered a good signing. Otherwise, why have the manager work with the players at all?

The manager’s colleagues – scouting, assistant coaches, sporting directors, and so on – must help assess available players and offer input into prioritizing new signings. If a team chooses not to sign a player who goes on to succeed with a rival, the entire organization must take the blame for the failure. But if a player arrives at the club and stagnates, the only person at fault is the manager.

A good team will improve on one or two players a year (or perhaps three players every two years).

I believe this thought references the starting XI. Using the above math, every position on a stable team will go through a cycle of improvement once every four to five years. From my experience, this feels about right in terms of what I’ve observed in the top teams. Most top players have a peak of three to four years. Thus, the best managers sign players as they approach their peak, offload players as they begin their decline, and always have the replacement ready to go at the exact time the change must be made.

Teams in any industry must apply this lesson. If too many of the same faces stick around for too long, the thinking becomes stale and opportunities are increasingly missed. If too many new faces keep coming into the team, however, inexperience and unfamiliarity lead to simple miscues. The right balance preserves a core of talent and experience while allowing room for growth through the process of integrating new team members or reorganizing existing responsibilities.

Shankley thought courage encompassed both mental and physical attributes. It meant having principles and sticking by them, staying up when being pulled down, and doing the right thing regardless of its popularity.

In the way a horse responds to its jockey, players will take on the mood of their manager.

I’m reminded here of Rafa Benitez’s quote in Champions League Dreams – explain decisions to the team whenever possible so that they would have faith when an explanation was not possible.

This ethos shapes part of Shankley’s thought. Managers should know their principles, communicate them regularly, and abide by them at all times. If a player cannot understand a decision and there is no time to explain, the managers who have stuck by their principles will get commitment because players trust managers who keep their word and commit to principles.

On the other hand, a manager who makes decisions that account for factors unrelated to what is best for the team will lose the trust of the team. Once the horse grows suspicious of the jockey’s motives, it will no longer respond to the whip.

three equals two

I recently bought a few new pairs of socks. These are almost identical to the socks I already have with one exception – instead of being black, they’re dark blue.

This presents a problem in the morning because the socks are similar enough to be indistinguishable when grouped together in my ‘sock box’ yet are a clear enough mismatch to the outside world that I remain interested in getting the correct pairing (1). For a few days after my purchase, I was reaching in, grabbing a pair of socks, and hoping to strike gold (or black, or dark blue). If the pair didn’t match, I would just keep grabbing extra ones until I had the right pair. What a waste of time!

One day, I realized it would be a lot easier if I took three socks at a time instead of two. With three socks, I would be guaranteed a match (and an extra sock). I started doing this for a few days – I’d pull a trio, find the matching pair, and return the extra sock to the box.

I reached peak efficiency when I understood that if I left the extra sock on top of the box, I would actually only have to pull two new socks per morning to get a match. The math is simple – I was guaranteed to either match one of the new socks with the sock from the day before or I would pull a new matching pair.

To put it another way, these days I’m doing exactly what I used to do in the past – pulling two socks out of the sock box each morning.

Footnotes (!) / and other bad puns

1. What is a ‘sock box’?

I keep my socks in an old shoebox. The way I see it, it’s like a sock drawer for cheap-ass people.

it ends with belichick

The Anatomy of Liverpool is Jonathan Wilson’s compelling account of the long and decorated history of Liverpool Football Club. It is framed in the context of ten of the club’s most important matches. I’ll return shortly with a closer look at what I learned from Wilson’s book.

However, today I want to address my comment from the February newsletter about how I borrowed a key idea from this book to comment on helmet football. The basic point was this – when there is a feeling that an organization is about to enter a period of decline, the manager usually leaves. The lesson plays out over and over again in the pages of this book as Wilson recounts the various circumstances surrounding the departures of Liverpool’s many decorated managers – Shankley, Paisley, Fagan, Dalglish, Houllier, and Benitez. Though the circumstances were unique for each manager, the underlying lesson was the same – when the outlook was turning negative, the manager would need to move on in order for the club to be able to do well again (1).

As Wilson demonstrates time and again in his book, a manager tends to leave because of a structural reason. One common reason is when ownership loses confidence in the manager. Another reason is when ownership suspects the players no longer believe in the manager. Sometimes, a manager will resign before the negative effect of bad ownership or unskilled players becomes conflated with the manager’s ability (which would harm the manager's reputation in the open market). In any event, when the manager goes, it is a sign that a unified team with a common goal is fragmenting into an unstable alliance of independent contractors.

The subtle aspects of the lesson came from Liverpool’s highest profile resignations – those of Bill Shankley and Kenny Dalglish. On the outside, everything appeared to be going great. But for different reasons, each manager was burnt out by the demands of the role. When they resigned, they felt they no longer had anything to offer the club. The structural problem underlying the success at the club was Liverpool’s inability to support a manager at the peak of the profession. A team that cannot support a top manager is second-rate in a similar way to a team that cannot afford to pay a top player – eventually, the top talent finds a club that can support him and his demands (2).

I thought about these many lessons when I read January’s infamous ESPN piece prophesying the imminent end of the New England Patriots’s helmet football dynasty. Each sign described by the article was compelling as a stand-alone thought. Is Brady... too old? Is Kraft meddling... too much? However, the article didn’t really get to the underlying truth about organizational decline – if the Patriots indeed were falling apart, the man to watch was the head coach, Bill Belichick (the equivalent of a soccer team’s manager). The only relevant sign of decline would manifest through him and only him, not because of the specific details or dynamics as it pertained to the New England Patriots in October or December or February, but because managerial flight is the universal symptom of a crumbling organization.

Good managers succeed if they are supported with resources and allowed to do their jobs in the way they see fit. If this doesn’t happen, they either leave preemptively or are forced out when the inevitable disagreements and conflicts are no longer tolerated by ownership. There is no reason why the Patriots are some special exception to this rule. Therefore, I am not going to entertain any thought about their decline until I start to hear real whispers that Belichick is possibly on the way out.

Footnotes / actually, now that you say so…

1. This actually oversimplifies it, but still…

In these circumstances, what is the club supposed to do, fire itself? Or perhaps sell all twenty-five or so first team players? An oversimplified analysis to this problem simply acknowledges that since the manager is the easiest to sack, the manager always gets sacked first.

2. Oh, the what-ifs…

To be clear, these demands can be anything - wages, emotional support, etc. The difference between a top club and a club just off the top can be the ability to support unusual versions of these demands without causing those demands to upset the balance of the team.

Going back to the two Liverpool departures mentioned here, after the fact each man acknowledged how quickly he would have jumped at the chance to return to the position he had just vacated. It’s a nice thought and creates some great what-if hypothetical scenarios. But my guess is that the club’s poor underlying infrastructure would have led once more to burnout. If this didn’t turn out to be the case, another possibility is that the managers would have seen a drop in performance as they reigned in their effort in order to prevent burnout from returning.

hot or not?

One of the more exasperating sports 'debates' is about whether basketball players are capable of getting 'the hot hand'. To summarize, some (usually current or former players) believe athletes 'get hot' and briefly perform at a level higher than usual. Others (usually non-athletes) counter by pointing out that long 'hot streaks' are a natural result of any probability-based set of outcomes. Sometimes, they support the argument by citing how any tossed coin can land on heads ten times in a row (1).

Nassim Nicholas Taleb addresses a similar idea in The Black Swan. He uses an example of a gambler at a roulette wheel. Let's say the last ten spins have hit RED. What to bet on next?

An academic knows the wheel is perfectly balanced and the RED streak is only variation. Thus, the academic says to ignore the results because the next spin is equally likely to be RED or BLACK.

The savvy gambler, though, will suggest RED. Why?

In this case, the key is to consider the assumption. Is the board actually balanced? If the board is NOT balanced, the streak is evidence of a tendency toward RED. Perhaps the wheel is slightly tilted or the casino is running a scam of sorts. The wise move here is to bet on RED and reap the rewards until the casino corrects the wheel.

If the board is balanced, the streak is indeed variation. Betting RED or BLACK is irrelevant since the odds are equal in this case. Since the gambler truly does not know if the board is broken or not, the best move is to bet RED. If the board is broken, it pays off. But if the board is straight, well, it's fifty-fifty, so it doesn't matter either way, right?

This is (sort of) my stance on the 'hot or not' question. In basketball, I need to question the assumption, not the result. If players do indeed 'get hot', I damn well better start playing defense! But if players do not, well, it is probably still a good idea to play defense!

One way or the other, a player who has just scored must be defended better. If he's hot, he's hot, and defense is the equivalent of a fire hose pointed at the blaze. If not? Well, the player scored and maybe this is due to a non-shooting factor such as not contesting the entry pass, not communicating about the offense's movement, or simply moving too lazily to get into defensive position. But hot or not, the strategy does not change one bit: just play better defense, all the time.

Footnotes / imagined complaints

1. A classic 'two sides arguing different things' situation?

I see problems with the way both sides present their argument. First, when most athletes talk of 'getting hot', they are usually describing elevated performance in general, not necessarily describing a streak of ten straight successes. In the NBA, for example, a 36% three-point success rate is considered the minimum standard. The top shooter in the league, Stephen Curry, shot 44% and 45% during his two MVP winning seasons. So if the 'baseline' shooter suddenly 'got hot' in a game, he might hit at a rate close to Curry's 45% as opposed to hitting every shot he takes. Perhaps a more rigorous definition of 'getting hot' might bring this debate to an unsatisfying but much needed close.

leftovers – the quarterback whisperer

Actually, reader, perhaps the better reference here is my end of January ‘Tales of Two Cities’ blog, a piece where I compared tactics useful for city cycling with the various techniques used by helmet football players. In that post, I noted how wide receivers must (a) run a route and (b) catch the ball.

In The Quarterback Whisperer, former Arizona Cardinals head coach Bruce Arians does a similar task by writing out a list of ingredients for a top quarterback. For Arians, the top qualities are grit, heart, smarts, leadership ability, and throwing accuracy. The player should also have just enough athleticism to evade oncoming defenders.

The connection between these two thoughts is how it describes my strategy for drafting young players in my fantasy football league. I came to this strategy years ago when I realized I needed to come up with a way to assess players who had yet to play a significant number of games in the league. For these players, the usual statistical history I relied on for longer-tenured players did not exist. In order to figure out who had the most potential for future success, I needed to think of a way to break the position down into its simplest components and analyze potential selections using those non-statistical criteria.

The savvy helmet football fans among my readers are probably wondering at this point – well, hotshot, what about running backs? What’s the key ingredient? For me, the key is the ability to break tackles. After all, a running back’s statistical output is based on how long he keeps running. If he breaks more tackles, he’ll run for a longer time.

Footnotes / endnote / a deeper look at the running back

0. A note about being just enough…

One thing I really liked in The Quarterback Whisperer was the way Arians described the amount of athleticism a quarterback needed – just enough. I feel the concept is important to understand in order to best make sense of the thoughts I included in this post.

A short and slow wide receiver with small hands, no matter how well he runs routes or catches the ball, will probably have less value than a wide receiver who is tall, fast, and has big hands. The key with these attributes like size and speed is to have just enough. Once the minimum is reached, the ingredients I list above become more important.

0a. Other ingredients for a running back…

A tricky aspect in assessing running backs comes with the variety of styles these players have. So, in addition to tackle-breaking ability, I think an argument can be made for skills such as open-field agility, forward lean, and vision. However, not everyone with those skills succeeds in the way most running backs with tackle-breaking ability succeed. Therefore, since tackle-breaking tends to best predict who will do well as a professional, I almost always opt to pick players who can break tackles. In the context I care about – predicting the performance of unproven players for my fantasy football team – being right with the choices I make is important enough that I can stomach incorrectly dismissing a few standout players along the way.

leftovers #2: the raqqa diaries

I want to point out that although the official title of this post included the idea that “I read it so you don’t have to”, I suggest my dedicated reading audience not take the thought seriously. This is a book I think is well worth reading. It’s the least we can all do, I think, to acknowledge the huge personal risk Samer took to get The Raqqa Diaries out of his home and onto our various bookshelves.

Plus… it’s a short book. I know we are all busy and such and this makes it difficult to find time for reading, but... we can make time to read a short book, right? I’m talking about a hundred or so pages, folks. So, pour yourself a lemonade or whatever, and enjoy…

However, I do warn the reader that it is not an easy read. There is something different about reading a book about wars, atrocities or human rights violation in the present tense because as readers we lose the comfortable barrier of the past that exists anytime we read about similar topics in a history book. In a present tense account, it isn’t possible to close the book and say well, that happened in the past, and things are different now. Unfortunately, for those readers who feel a sense of interconnection with the wider world, I think closing this book will be accompanied with a tinge of guilt about the tiny role we all have in allowing these crises to continue.

The solution is immensely complex and not one likely to come about overnight. It certainly isn’t going to come about from a TOA blog post (or even three)! I do have a hunch, however, about a good place to start. It ties back to a favorite thought from Will Durant’s Fallen Leaves that I’ve highlighted here in the past – the solution to massive problems is education, education, and education.

For those of us in privileged countries whose biggest annoyance is a daily spam from TOA, the most important task toward this goal is to learn where others are coming from when you don’t understand them or you don’t agree with them. It means learning the difference between someone who practices a religion from someone who distorts it. It means learning why someone in power would prefer to call an organization ‘The Islamic State’ instead of ‘Daesh’ and understanding why this is related to building up walls instead of knocking them down.

If getting into those topics feels too ‘big-idea’ to be relevant, that’s OK. In fact, I apologize – TOA should really be a grassroots type of thing. But I think the task is the same even if we focus on details closer to home. It shouldn’t matter whether the task involves big world issues or trivial local concerns because the task of calling things by the names they deserve is a universal mission. It means being precise with words, being consistent with actions, and leaving assumptions at home. It means fitting others into categories only as a last resort. If something happens and it’s wrong, say so, just say it’s wrong, and maybe next time you’ll have learned a little more so that you can do more than just speak up.

And reader, the next time you start thinking about what ‘those people’ or ‘these people’ do, stop, just stop, because each time you describe people in the context of some group they belong to, you’ve also incorrectly described other people who fit into the same group to whom that description has never applied. It isn’t easy now, it isn’t easy in the present when we nod in agreement about who fits into categories defined by skin tones or cartographers, but in the future this will change and maybe there will be a little less of the warmongering and chaos these categories help bring about today. This future, it isn’t quite just around the corner, but I think it’s in sight if you look for it, and I bet the fastest way to get there is to just go for it when you see it. It won’t be easy to get there, it won’t be easy in the present to think and speak in the way we expect to in the future, it won’t be easy to leave behind our past patterns of thinking and speaking because they once served us so well, but just keep in mind that no great thing like the future is ever built by doing merely what is easy.

leftovers - i was wrong about turning thirty

Sometimes I write an entire post just so I can have an excuse for putting a particular sentence I like into print. A good example was my mini-rant about college admissions – the entire post was a vehicle for writing the following:

There is a word to describe a school full of Harvard-caliber students: Harvard.

At other times, though, I start with a good line yet fail to build anything coherent out of it. The post about turning thirty is a good example. I started the post with the following thought:

Turning thirty means I’m so old, my age is uninteresting.

It felt like a start but it soon became apparent that a post starting from there had no real future – like turning thirty, the post was destined to be uninteresting.

I got a second wind a few days later when I stumbled into this sentence while playing around with a phrase:

What are you gonna do – you’re twenty… becomes… what are you doing – you’re thirty?

I did a little better with that one but, again, found myself in the familiar dead-end territory of trying to turn a sound bite into a coherent essay.

Eventually, I realized I might be wrong about the whole idea of starting from a single sentence. From there, the rest of the post fell into place.

reading review - emergency contact

Emergency Contact by Mary HK Choi (May 2018)

Emergency Contact does not fit very well into my usual reading pattern. Choi’s debut novel is a romance (or pseudo-romance) novel, it’s almost entirely description and observation (as opposed to introspection and reflection), and it’s about people younger than me in a present-day setting (making it technically ‘YA’, or even a ‘YA romance’). I enjoyed reading the book anyway but, as it was so far off my beaten path, I think it is highly unlikely I’ll seek out another book like it in the near future.

The important plot element to note about Emergency Contact is that the relationship between the two protagonists develops almost entirely through text messaging (1). This novel idea (!) perhaps explains why I decided to read the book in the first place – unlike in a traditional version of this story, for me the drama of Emergency Contact was not about whether the characters I was rooting for would get the outcome they (or I) wanted but whether they could overcome the destiny implied by their medium of communication (2). On balance, I think Mary HK Choi did very well to leave the interpretation open to the reader as to how the text messaging influenced the final outcome of the book.

The central idea I took away from Emergency Contact is that no matter how people communicate with each other, the same basic anxieties and insecurities will always apply. The mediums of communication from yesteryear might bear little resemblance to today’s technologies but I don’t think the underlying emotions people experience as they send and receive communications has changed very much. It’s always difficult to reach out, whether in person, by letter, or by text, and we’re always going to read way too much into the way another person responds to us.

That conclusion doesn’t mean social media and text messaging are the solutions we’ve all been waiting for in terms of perfecting communication. I think the best way forward is simple – communicate in person first, use all other methods of communication second. There is nothing inherently superior about a letter or a phone call when compared to the text message because both are technologies that solve for the problem of not always being able to share space with someone else. The issues start when the solution is applied even though the problem doesn’t exist – emails in a small office, for example, or text messages about difficult topics with the people we see regularly.

Outside of the larger commentary about how today’s technologies are changing the way young people communicate, I found a couple of other interesting nuggets from Emergency Contact. First, I liked the thought that a character that forms quickly in the mind must be reconsidered. In Emergency Contact, this came in the context of writing – the writer must think about where the inspiration is coming from, consider whether it is based on a bias or a stereotype, etc. I think the idea applies broadly – we would all do a little better in life if we considered the sources of our first impressions.

I also felt it was a good observation that most people show gratitude in far more complicated ways than merely saying ‘thank you’ (3). As I noted above, this thought underscores the point that although the forms of communication we use today are vastly different from the norms of a decade or a century ago, the challenge of self-exposure and its inherent vulnerability still remain significant motivators of human behavior.

Footnotes / endnote, really / this ‘origins’ endnote seems like a good fit for these short reviews, no?

0. Origins…

I came across the book almost by accident – for some reason, a host of one of my favorite podcasts felt compelled to recommend it. Since this guy – Michael Davies of Men In Blazers – never recommends any reading, I thought it would be a good idea to jump on the book when I had the chance (it’s usually his partner, Roger Bennett, that recommends books, though these books are mostly about fun topics like misery, destruction, and World War I poetry).

Interested readers can check out their useless recommendations here (the recommendation for this book came on 3/14/18).

1. Imagine if Romeo and Juliet had unlimited texting plans?

This, perhaps, explains why I wanted to read the book – though the story is a debut from a young writer, the topic dives so far into a widespread but entirely modern idea that I thought there was a small chance Emergency Contact could be the defining book of its genre. After reading, I might not be so sure about that, but I do want to stress that there is probably very little else out there (in novel form) that poses the question of how modern technology is going to change the way young people build relationships.

Choi’s expertise on the topic draws from this article she wrote for Wired. This is a decent enough read but I think I was expecting a little more (and thus, why I include the link here instead of in my usual ‘recommended links’ monthly newsletter feature).

2. I suppose this is what the literary types call tension?

It’s funny how situations like this can happen – the relationship wouldn’t exist without text messaging yet the relationship might also be doomed from the start thanks to the reliance on text messaging.

3. And in accordance with my New Year’s Resolution…

…this should then be followed immediately with “you’re welcome”!

but who knows? i’m just me…

I walked out of the library one afternoon and noticed a small demonstration taking place across the street next to Copley Square. A group was on the sidewalk holding up a sign that read “I’m me, not meat”. The whole idea was to protest meat consumption and promote the benefits of a vegetarian diet.

Now, I’m not here to talk about the equation. I think the equation is solid. At some point in the future, this planet will be done consuming meat. It might be several generations from now, but it’ll happen. There is a lot of work to do and I admire the groups like this one that go out on the streets and try to make room for the future. Kudos to you all and the best of luck in your efforts.

No, reader, the equation works. I’m here to talk about the numbers, specifically, the slogan “I’m me, not meat”. My apologies for butting in but I’d like a second opinion. Are we not sure it should be the reverse?

My thoughts on the future of our eating habits is based on an assumption that, as our science develops and our collective capacity to work with other animals improves, we will increasingly look at our animal neighbors as equals. We will give emotional intelligence greater weight than we do today and, in the process, elevate our perceptions of animal intelligence. We will take in more and more species as pets and, as history shows, societies do not eat the animals commonly taken in as pets.

Doing these kinds of small things in the progression toward a fully vegetarian planet means equalizing humans and animals. And to my untrained, under-informed, and pompous eye, it seems an expression stating “I’m meat…” accomplishes this collective mentality better than “I’m me…”

leftovers #1: the raqqa diaries - let’s rename isis

Hi,

Earlier this week, I covered some general ideas about Samer's Raqqa Diaries. Today, I want to investigate a couple of details I thought were important from the book.

First, the most important point this book made was how the regime oppressed people by taking away their religion during a time when people needed it most. As Samer describes it, Daesh has no connection to Islam. The way Daesh represents itself as some kind of ‘Islamic’ ideal is a falsehood.

This relates to a larger idea I ended my prior post with – by associating itself with the same religion observed by the people they are trying to oppress, Daesh makes it more difficult for an outside observer to separate the oppressor from the refugee. This is a common tactic of any war-making regime because if the outside world looks at a war zone and can’t tell the difference between who is causing the damage and who is being damaged, it becomes so much more difficult for the international community to bring together the support needed to bring these conflicts to an end.

I thought The Raqqa Diaries did well to separate refugee and oppressor despite the ‘shared’ religious connection an outsider might notice. Samer’s observation that Daesh has no connection to Islam is vital. It points the way to how someone in the international community can help make the world a better place by simply understanding the difference between those devoted to a religion and those who use religion as a means to obtain power through violence and oppression.

Samer’s thought echoes an idea I’ve been thinking about for a few months – why do we in the USA call it ‘ISIS’ or ‘The Islamic State’? The expression sounds like something straight out of Fox’s torture-glorifying 24 (and therefore something not worth emulating) and yet here we are in the English-speaking world going on about ‘ISIS this’ and ‘ISIS that’. A lot of people around the world refer to what we call ISIS as Daesh. It brings to mind a basic question anytime something has multiple names – what is there to gain by having two names for the same thing?

An obvious explanation is that it makes sense to translate Daesh into a more easily pronounced phrase or expression because Daesh isn’t quite an English language word. That’s cute but the explanation really falls flat when you consider all the foreign words we’ve adopted instead of translating (if you disagree, reader, we can discuss over sushi).

I think the explanation is far simpler – somebody wanted to link this crazy regime that represents nothing about any religion to Islam. I don’t know if this was a sinister thing or just seemed ‘obvious’ to whoever carelessly said ‘ISIS’ first – it doesn’t really matter. The end result is a world where a lot of people who don’t know better will now associate Islam with the terror, chaos, and destruction anytime they see the mainstream media ‘cover’ what is going on in Syria.

The way we label things plays a much larger role than acknowledged in how we come to understand and interpret the world around us. The distinction of ISIS and Daesh is a simple yet important example. As long as we casually accept the careless assumptions imbedded in words or phrases like ‘ISIS’, the longer we’ll all waste living with the consequences of stereotypes, prejudices, and assumed differences.

no, it’s this way!

I’ve noticed a strange behavior lately. It happens sometimes when I’m asked for directions. I’ll start listing the steps to get somewhere – go to the light, take a left, drive two blocks to the CVS, that sort of thing, reader – but before I’m finished, the other person has already taken off!

What’s the use of knowing how to get halfway? Beats me. The most popular navigation and GPS tools link the user from starting point to destination. Whenever I create a set of directions for myself on Googlemaps, I make sure I can get all the way to where I’m going. Each time someone walks away from me when I'm only halfway through my directions, I'm left wondering if there is any hope for the future of the world.

There is no set routine for these people but there are occasional warning signs. One thing that happens is The Slow Nod. The person I’m giving the directions to will first start nodding slightly, then with more force. By the time my directions are wrapping up, the person is long gone, head bobbing away as if the force of the nodding movement was what was propelling the legs forward.

Another trick is The Drive-By. Here’s how to do it: ask someone where to go without breaking stride. The most recent time someone asked for directions, they used this move on me. Perhaps influenced by suggestion, I initially pointed in the same direction he was walking. But I quickly realized this was wrong – Chinatown was in the opposite direction. By the time I’d opened my mouth again to revise my directions, he was gone, never to reach the promised land of milk tea and fried dumplings.

One of these days, I’ll follow someone after I give out directions. Nothing creepy here, reader, I just want to see what happens next. I’m expecting to see the logical thing: the person will ask someone else for the half-set of directions that I was in the process of delivering! At this point, I might confront the person about this haphazard way to travel.

Who knows what might happen? I suppose the most likely outcome is that I'll be told to get lost. That would make sense - it's the only thing these people know anything about.

reading review - the accusation

The Accusation by Bandi (April 2018)

The Accusation is a recently published book of short stories from (and about) North Korea. The entire story about how the author, Bandi, managed to get this collection out of the country is described in the last section of the book and is well worth a read.

Of the seven or so stories in The Accusation, I reread ‘City of Specters’ and ‘On Stage’. The latter in particular has stayed with me since I finished the book. The story features many of the anti-totalitarian themes present throughout the collection but emphasizes them a step further by framing them in the context of acting. Bandi’s insight that a totalitarian regime will never allow its best actors to fully express their gifts can be easily interpreted as a metaphor for how such regimes demand complete acceptance of party ideology at the expense of self-expression, improvisation, and spontaneity.

In a larger sense, The Accusation is about how a totalitarian regime punishes deviation. The fear of suffering the consequences for sticking out serves as an essential survival skill for the average citizen. Whether the deviating event is a suddenly ill parent, a baby who cries at the wrong time, or an isolated moment from acting school, the consistent tension in these stories centers around how Bandi’s characters suffer from the everyday deviations we in free societies think little about.

One up: I liked the observation that people sometimes punish themselves by striking out at what is most important to them. These moments hint at lives where emotions are suppressed or actions are closely monitored. A sincere and genuine life is not possible in such circumstances because people will always opt for conformity ahead of self-expression.

I also liked the thought that domesticated creatures can only free themselves by breaking their restraints. A wild animal is tamed by being taught to return to the cage. The first step for helping these animals return to their natural state is to break the cage so that their reference point is lost forever.

One down: Although we in the USA live in essentially the exact opposite society of North Korea, there are some uncomfortable similarities in our democratic ways with life under totalitarian rule. The fear of sticking out is very much alive and well here (especially for those who spend large portions of their time in closed worlds) and our loyalty to maintaining order results in the highly conforming public behavior Bandi outlines in many passages in The Accusation (1).

Perhaps a good rule of thumb for determining how likely something is to resemble a scene from life in a totalitarian state is to consider the amount of tradition involved. In almost all cases, a tradition requires strict conformity to maintaining established order and anyone who deviates is penalized for sticking out.

Just saying: ‘On Stage’ makes a point about how all North Koreans are actors – they must portray a certain public character at all times to survive in the regime. The best ‘actors’ are those who draw not just on their few years of schooling but rather from their entire lifetime of maintaining a certain persona.

I think this is an important lesson that I’ve seen for myself. At work, for example, I’ve always felt that those with distinct professional and personal selves were far less effective than colleagues who simply carried themselves in the same way whether they were on the job or not. I do not think there is any special explanation for this outside of simple math – the pure professional can only draw on so many years of professional experience whereas the full person has an entire lifetime of experience to draw from.

leftovers: my ten year hiroshima anniversary

I’ll briefly clear out some leftover thoughts I have related to my posts over the past few months about my trip to Hiroshima in 2008.

First, I still remember the bookstore I referenced in the Hiroshima post. I can’t say for sure if this bookstore was any good. I just know that I’d essentially run out of books at some point on my six-week trip and the lack of reading material was threatening to become a major airplane emergency. Imagine, a trans-Pacific flight without a book! I reloaded in Hiroshima, picking up notable titles such as Tuesdays With Morrie, I Robot, and The Art of War.

A skeptical reader may have wondered at some point – how could I know for sure the exact day I went to Hiroshima? Well, reader, I actually have the one-day metro ticket I used that day still tucked into my wallet. I suppose this souvenir serves as a testament to Hiroshima’s impact on me. I used this ticket as a bookmark for a couple of years and I think I saw it often enough that the date punched into the ticket eventually became forever burned into my memory.

The Hiroshima ticket is not the only such memento I carry around – I have two others that share the same space in the front flap of my wallet. One is the Zone 2 train pass I used for a couple of weeks to visit my mom when she was living in a Needham hospice. The other is the ticket stub for the Slow Club ‘half-concert’ that really let me down at the end of 2016. I once thought keeping the Hiroshima ticket was evidence of how important the trip was in my personal history – however, when I consider now what else I keep in the same wallet space, I think the only thing these mementos say anything about is... Slow Club.

The posts about the Hiroshima trip were inspired partly by my reading Letters To Memory early in 2018. There were two thoughts I pulled into the original sketches for these posts that did not quite make it into the final drafts. First, a democracy dies as soon as one person has enough power to take direct action against a single race. And second, words used with positive intent such as refugee, outcast, or dispossessed often serve to reinforce the same shame invoked by racial slurs. I’d wanted to include these thoughts because my intent at the start of the posts was to link my trip to some of our current events – however, as the post drifted away from the here and now, I realized I needed to forge ahead without incorporating those two ideas into the writing.

Finally, I wrote briefly about what it felt like to be in the atomic bomb museum. The closest I’ve felt to that since came a few years later when I visited the 9/11 memorial in New York. In both buildings, the air was heavy with the sadness of lives needlessly and horrifically lost. And as it relates to the idea of a historical museum being able to transport visitors back to a specific point in time, there is very little that compares to the wall covered with posted notices from New Yorkers desperately looking for missing friends or family – outside of the content of the messages, it looked pretty much like any bulletin board you might find at the local coffee shop.

i read the raqqa diaries so you don’t have to

The Raqqa Diaries by Samer (February 2018)

This extraordinary book went through a journey like few others to make it into print. First, the author, Samer, maintained a detailed account of daily life in the Syrian war zone. Then, he managed to smuggle this book out of the country despite the difficulty of getting anything in or out of the area. Finally, when the book reached sympathetic hands in the UK (I can’t recall if they were aid workers or journalists) the story was finally put into print. Each step in the journey came with significant risk to the author – if his book had been intercepted, Samer would surely have suffered dire consequences at the hands of the oppressive regime he denounces in his Raqqa Diaries.

The book is written in the style of a journal but entries are understandably sporadic. It mostly details the deterioration of daily life in his war-torn home city. This simple idea results in a book that fills an important gap in how the media presents a place like Syria to the outside world – usually, since the focus of news coverage is on the political or military aspects of the area, the accounts about daily life are lost or ignored. This style of media coverage separates the international community from the reality of the human rights violations that happen everyday in war zones.

Most people who follow present-day wars via media outlets are unable to relate to what is going on in a place like Syria. Such viewers are used to being granted rights by their own governments and cannot fathom what it is like to live in the midst of a war that puts those very rights into question. A book like this helps by framing the situation in the context of daily problems we can all relate to – separation from friends or family, uncertainty about work, or just a constant sense of unease. When Samer describes the way the war makes these concerns the consistent reality of his experience, we readers get a better sense of how today’s war impacts people’s lives and understand the importance of bringing these conflicts to an end.

This book also demonstrates how badly a country can fail its own people. A country embroiled in war is almost always putting its own self-interest ahead of concerns about innocent citizens. The case of present-day Syria is no exception. The challenge posed by excessively self-interested governments asks a huge question to the international community – how do we communicate across compromised borders in order to separate the refugee from the oppressor? If we cannot come up with a good answer for this question, we run the risk of supporting failing or oppressive foreign regimes at the expense of solving less important problems closer to home.

leftovers #3: the end of lombardi - categorical violence

I’ve posted a few thoughts lately about categories. My broad point has been that categories often do more harm than good. I think my examples have done well to make this point clear to you, skeptical reader.

But what is really so bad about putting things into categories? If the category is wrong, you just change it, right? A category is a convenient shortcut – with categories, we know a movie is a comedy without having to watch it, for example, or we know that a restaurant will serve pizzas without having to read the menu. Without categories, we all would waste a lot more time figuring out what we already know. Maybe people like me who waste time writing about the dangers of categories should be lumped into one of the most helpful categories of all – the ‘spam email’ section (1)!

Still, I can’t help but harp on about it. The problem I have with categories has been on my mind quite a bit lately. I think categorization is OK if it doesn’t directly involve people. But the benefits of categorizing objects do not apply to the process of categorizing other people. When people are categorized, it always seems unnecessary to me. Surely, there is more to another than their outfit, their background, or their job? And as it always is the case when a process involves violence, the end is never really justified because of the means.

This position grows out of my personal experience. Whenever I am being categorized, I always feel like I am under attack. Being categorized almost always feels violent – it’s like I’m being forced into a space I was never interested in occupying. I bet if I was hooked up to the right medical equipment while being categorized, a doctor would quickly make note of alarming vital signs – a quickened heartbeat, for sure, and maybe a change in breathing as well, surefire signs that my body was responding once more to the familiar pressure of being forced into a box that will never be the right size for me.

These experiences of feeling under attack while being categorized have come up in all kinds of ways over the years. In some cases, the categorization I used to enjoy in my innocent youth has given way to an experienced understanding of how a positive stereotype is the mirror image of the unstated caricature. The margins between someone who thinks I look like a math whiz and someone who sees a slant-eyed sneak are very slim. As I warily noted when I read Min Jin Lee’s Pachinko, being noted as a ‘good’ representative of any group merely confirms the underlying prejudice always present against the group. After all, how can anyone within a group be ‘good’ unless the group is otherwise comprised of ‘bad’?

In other experiences, the categorization I’ve been subjected has never been a source of pleasure. It’s bad enough to be described as a Japanese-American by strangers who are merely trying their best – what’s astonishing is how often I hear this from those who know my full background. I’ve always thought the hyphen being a minus sign was symbolically appropriate – it certainly doesn't add anything to my experience and I don’t see it as an improvement on being fully accepted as an American or a Japanese. All the hyphen has done for me is erase basic facts about my ancestry and citizenship; all I expect the hyphen to do for me in the future is point me toward groups where nobody really belongs.

At its harmless everyday worst, categorization buries a person’s uniqueness under a frenzied layer of loose associations and reduces the complexity of personal history until it fits easily into a category everyone is accustomed to. In other words, categorization denies individuality and alters history. These run counter to the rights and freedoms so many have died to earn and protect and yet here we are, every single day, undermining our own liberty and democracy because we so casually accept categorization as a normal way of being for a free thinking and open-minded society.

The longer we all go on categorizing each other, the longer we’ll remain divided by our self-righteous suspicions. The longer we all accept categorization as a way to understand those different from us, the longer we’ll all go on categorizing instead of understanding. Recognizing categorization as an inherently violent process is a step forward into a different future where misplaced assumptions have given way to understanding and the false barriers that once separated misplaced groups remain only as historical relics of a time when we all failed to get the very best out of each other.

Footnotes / Google might also be appropriate here

1. TOA, is it really spam? I think it is...

Honestly, if this isn’t already going straight to your spam folder each morning, I recommend contacting your internet service provider and reporting the issue.

leftovers #2: the end of lombardi - what’s breakfast food?

Hi all,

Over the past week, I’ve made a couple references to the problem of categorization. I feel pretty strongly about the problematic nature of categorization. In general, I think categorization is dangerous. In some cases, it’s violent. Some of the world’s biggest problems – like racism – are direct results of our lazy acceptance of categorization. Those are ideas I might get into at another time.

The benign manifestation of the problem comes when people lean on categories to help navigate the challenges of daily living. Those who rely too much on categorization become less able to work with the reality in front of them. A person who likes buying things on sale, for example, might worry more about the percentage discount than whether the item is affordable at the new price. And if a person becomes too accustomed to seeing the world in categories, it becomes very difficult to apply the principles of one domain to the very different context of a separate area. In short, categories build walls and barriers between people and ideas that rob us of our ability to make connections and limit the applications of our creativity and ingenuity.

Now, the library book example I used recently is not the best representative of this idea. What is dangerous or violent about how I choose the books I read? The Business Bro’s insight into organizational dynamics was a little more relevant but it wasn’t exactly the blueprint to building the next great corporation, either – as it always seems to go with him, some of the advice was insightful while some of it sounded a lot like “if you do well, you’ll do well”.

But I did think of another example this week that might be a better way to express the way categorization causes problems. This example takes me back a full decade to when I visited Japan for six weeks. At the time, I was about a half-year into what I now expect will be a lifelong commitment to health and nutrition. When I arrived in my homeland, one of the things I was excited for was the chance to try some new cuisine and continue building up my knowledge about healthy eating.

At this point, one area my diet suffered from was a lack of transferred knowledge. I was aware, more or less, of what the good foods were but I wasn’t eating them all the time. Instead, I was eating them as part of pre-defined meals and food groupings. For example, bell peppers were often spotted in my breakfast omelet but rarely considered as a sandwich topping. And the slice of cucumber that topped my lunch sandwich was always skipped over when assembling my dinner.

This all ended after my first morning in Japan. I sat down for breakfast and found half of my plate occupied by uninvited guests – scallions, tomatoes, lettuce, an entire farm’s sampling of vegetables, really. I turned to my rusty Japanese and enquired about the meal.

The resulting conversation permanently changed the way I thought about my diet.

-Salad for breakfast?

-What, you don’t eat vegetables?

-No, this isn’t really breakfast food in America.

-What’s breakfast food?

Yes, indeed… what is breakfast food?

Good food is good food. At that breakfast, I learned the lesson. What helps the body at lunch is probably helpful at breakfast or dinner as well. It doesn’t really make a lick of difference if the local diner stops cooking certain items at 11 AM. If the idea is to eat well, we should aim to eat well, and ignore the irrelevant categories like ‘breakfast food’ that stand as obstacles preventing us from reaching this goal.

Footnotes / endnotes / casual breakfast?

0. A nod to the longtime reader…

Now, the longtime reader might recall the basic lesson from my ‘Casual Friday’ post – why is a good idea for Friday not considered any good on the other days of the week?

(Spoiler alert: because you work for a shitty organization…)

I suppose this post repeats the same concept in the context of the first meal of the day.

leftovers: when does the past become the past?

In this post, I wrote about how a history museum can sometimes bring a false sense of closure to an ongoing problem. The feeling grew out of my trip to Hiroshima in 2008.

I think I walked into the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum a decade ago very well prepared to feel the drawback and understand what it was telling me. This is because I studied Hiroshima in school. Studying World War II was an experience that was completely different for me than it was for any of my classmates. As a result, I’d always thought I took away different lessons from class than was intended in the local curriculum.

I realized at a young age, for example, that no matter what I did with my life, there would always be the possibility that some unstoppable force like the US government could step in and take anything away from me at any time – my home, my health, my life. This kind of loss, I knew, could happen without warning, and perhaps it was this kind of understanding I took away from my high school days that prepared me to walk among the many exhibits at Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum and feel something I suspect was not originally intended when the museum was put together.