stuckinstuff

Consume Responsibly

Came across Kaibar's Anti-Consumerism blog today. What a great idea. Looking forward to monitoring the effort.

Amidst Frenzy Accountability Is Needed

The New York Times has a good article today, F.T.C. Asks if Carbon-Offset Money Is Well Spent.  That very topic just come up in a conversation I had with a friend last Sunday night.  It's a tricky subject.  There are a lot of people who want to do something to reduce their impact on the environment.  And there are people who feel like, now educated about how their lifestyle has negatively affected the environment, the something they want to do is make amends.  But where there is opportunity to take advantage of well-intentioned people, there surely will be greedy, unaccountable corporations.

Paying for charity is good and necessary.  In the case of environmental concern, however, I personally think a better place to start is lifestyle change.

TWWGBL... oh and while you're at it, LOL

In the past I used to joke with friends that my favorite company would be created by a M&A of Microsoft, Nordstrom, and Starbucks.  These days I feel more like Saint Anthony, having sold all my PCs and for years having not set foot inside a Nordstrom.  Well, but I've not had the wherewithal to give away my Starbucks cards.  And I've now two Apple computers.  No ascetic am I.

I have no plans to clean my teeth of yellow and rid breath of coffee stench.  Nor do I intend to abandon my Apple computers, an old iMac and older still PowerBook Pro.  But the news that Apple and Starbucks are working on a means of wireless in-store ordering has me shaking my head.  In the past I've been critical of Apple for its fall from higher ground.  This latest news is only more of the same.

Can convenience and efficiency get any less human?  First our baristas start wearing headsets so that they can talk to drive-through customers while pushing the button that makes our lattes and still have a finger left to ring us up.  Now we don't even have to talk to them.  Instead we'll text them with our iPhone.

Is there no end to the madness of technology?

Convenience Usually Doesn’t Help

Many circumstances have gotten me thinking about convenience.  I’m not a big fan of convenience.  Let me tell you why.

Convenience is not good for our souls.  That’s why.  Please - honestly - let me know if you can think of a way in which convenience is helpful for our souls.

I can think of some instances when convenience is good.  A clean, close, and convenient bathroom, for example, is good when you’ve got a sudden urge to go that cannot wait.  A nearby mother who is willing to babysit your two year old while you go shopping is a good convenience.  There are many more examples.  And I would not recommend avoiding such conveniences.  I’m only saying that convenience is not a path to a healthier soul.

My church recently implemented automated tithing as a convenience.  It’s quite the convenience-trend for churches, some are even installing tithing kiosks on the church grounds.  Allegedly it makes it easier and more convenient for people to tithe.  That seems questionable.  But even if it did, I wonder (actually, I doubt) if it makes it easier for a person’s soul.  Thoughtful questioning of the link between convenience - especially technological convenience - and the well-being of a person is a topic largely off the table in our culture and our churches.  Too bad.

This weekend I had to use a hand plane to flatten some glued up boards.  (I had been planning to use a planing jig for my router created with some poplar a friend claimed he would let me have, eh hem.)  Restless to keep my project going, I looked around my ill-stocked shop this weekend and discovered the old hand plane I’d gotten when my grandfather died nearly a decade ago.  It was rusty and unusable when I got it.  And so at that time I got into fettling, or restoring old tools.  (Who can resist claiming that they “fettle” for a hobby?)  This was the only old tool I had to restore.  But it came along nicely and then I tucked it away.  This weekend I took it out.  What do you know?  It sort of worked!  It was my first time flattening a board with a hand plane.  The kids loved watching.  The shavings are cool to play with.  I felt like Pa from Little House.  And my project is now back on track.  No convenience needed.

Stuck In Email Stuff

Email.  Email.  Email!  I get a lot of email.  I know, so do you.  Maybe more than me.  And you might think that not getting email would be refreshing once in a while.  Interesting.  Actually, not getting email is often frustrating.  Case in point, Microsoft’s Hotmail email service.

I’ve not used Hotmail for years.  Frankly, Hotmail sucks.  It always has and never will not.  And so I was content ignoring it and occasionally pitying friends who use it.  Also I’m a Mac user.  I have nearly completely moved away from all Microsoft products, except that I still export Apple Pages documents as Microsoft Word documents to send to people who I pity.  I really don’t have a personal grudge against Microsoft.  What the Gates Foundation is doing is great.  And it’s not like Steve Jobs is an angel.  But even if I did really really not like Microsoft, Microsoft does not go away quietly.

Honestly it’s my fault.  I’ve helped start several businesses.  I could have chosen to start just about anything.  But me and my entrepreneurial friends at 81 Miles chose to start LetterPop.com an email newsletter service.  Email!  Yes, email.  You guessed it, I let down my defenses - let Microsoft have at me again.

Microsoft chooses not to deliver emails to Hotmail sometimes.  Why?  I don’t know.  Why is my over-tired two year old not napping right now?  It’s just the way it is.  Should I go in her room right now and ask her to explain?

Right.  So let me address a more mature audience, you.  Please, for the love of email delivery, get rid of your Hotmail account!  Use Gmail.  It filters spam like a champ.  Nothing ever gets lost in a Microsoft Cloud of Unknowing.  It’s got way better features.  And on an on.  And if you switch then you’ll have one less thing to be frustrated with in life, Microsoft.  Well, that is if you are a Mac user.

"List Maintenance Specialist" = "Scrambling Corporations"

So my wonderful wife found this really cool web service Green Dimes.  Basically you give them a little bit of money and then they help get you off of catalog and junk mail lists.  Generally this is a good thing, except when my wife starts meddling with my camping gear catalogs.  (Just kidding.  I'm glad she took me off of them, even if I didn't have the will.)  Well, one of the catalogs we chose not to get is Land's End.

So the other day we got a letter from a "List Maintenance Specialist" at Land's End.  It is really interesting.  The letter tells us that Land's End has removed us from their mailing list according to our request.  But then it goes on to say,

"Due to concerned customers like yourself, we now offer an alternative.  We have developed a program that allows you a choice of receiving our catalog on a Bi-monthly, Quarterly, Semi-annual or  Annual basis."

The way I read that is 1) companies are frightened, 2) the power of customer backlash is scaring companies, and 3) with a little effort people who have been treated as soulless buying zombies by companies for generations can frighten companies into treating them more human.

I'm afraid I'll remain a corporate cynic.  For the most part companies respond to the concerns for people for one reason only, so that they can attempt to convince those people to still buy stuff the mostly don't need.  Sure there are companies out there that truly attempt to not do this.  Like, uh, where?

Why I'll Try To Resist Ever Getting An IPhone

I'll never forget the week my former employer purchased Blackberries for the Management Team and within a day the COO emailed me while he was taking a dump.  And Luddites bemoan technology is a barrier to intimacy.  Barrier to hygiene maybe.  Who would have thought back in 1999 that email might cause you to pause the next time you go to shake your boss's hand?

If you believe there will be a common-sense correction away from mobile email addition, checkout the post at GigaOM on the subject.

Chocolate and Child Slavery - Bittersweet

Our food purchasing habits are formed by numerous factors.  Price.  Ability to buy bulk.  Store proximity.  Quality.  For chocolate lovers (as am I), only the last consideration matters.  Chocolate must be delicious.  It is the very essence of chocolate that it ought to possess a transportive quality, showing those who eat it new joys with each lovely bite.

Regarding eating, enjoyment is the next best reason to do it after survival.  Strangely the enjoyment we often receive from eating is at the expense of others survival.  And chocolate is a bittersweet example of the horrible consequences of our food purchasing habits.  It turns out that an enormous amount of the world’s chocolate comes from Cote D’Ivoire in Africa.  And most of that chocolate is harvested by trafficked children working as forced slaves on coca farms.

When our food purchasing habits include more than our own concerns, suddenly a lot of chocolate (and other food) loses its taste.  Thanks to Trader Joe’s, Target, Whole Foods, Wild Oats, and Ten Thousand Villages for selling chocolate that with the “TRAFFIK FREE GUARANTEE” label, and for helping us consider others when purchasing our food.

Showing Up - Performance Enhancing Drugs

Steve House has a provocative article on The Cleanest Line discussing performance enhancing drugs.  Steve is one of the world’s most accomplished alpinists and an ambassador for living large in a simple way.  And he is a staunch critic of performance enhancing drugs in sport, including his sport, climbing.

Climbing as a sport is not known for scandals involving performance enhancing drugs.  Steve suggests that is because the financial incentive for climbers to cheat by using drugs is minimal.  Unlike Jan Ullrich and Barry Bonds (both accused and likely guilty of cheating) who stand to make millions if they are the best in their sport, few of the best alpinists have made even enough money to live let alone to live rich.

That riches motivate athletes no one denies.  Yet I’m not so sure money is the driving force behind performance enhancing drugs.  It may seem silly to point this out, but cheating drugs are not called “financial enhancement drugs.”  There seems to be some causality between taking cheating drugs and making more money, but I suspect that if Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner were to dig into the cost-benefit of cheating drugs they would show that few cheaters ever make a good financial return.  Superstars who get caught skew our perspective.

Performance enhancing drugs are really about, well, performance.  For all but a few alpinists climbing is not about performance.  There are thousands of peakbaggers trudging up class 2 routes the world over.  There are hundreds of semipro and professional climbers making their way up the most difficult routes on every continent.  Bless their hearts, hardly anyone is watching.  Sure there are some sport climbing competitions and Discovery Channel documentaries.  But on the whole climbing is not a spectacle where athletes compete for the limelight.  There’s no performance.  There’s no show.  And for the best, there’s no showing up.

Credit to Foolishness

For the last five years I've liked to think of myself as a practicing entrepreneur.  And I like to think my financial situation reflects the pre-made-it state of my entrepreneurial risk taking.  Circumstances, generosity, blessings, and some amount of thrift have kept the risk somewhat manageable.  Necessity, anxiety, and the occasional splurge have seen to one credit card with an uncomfortable balance.

If you are at all familiar with carrying a balance on a credit card, then you are accustomed to receiving notes from your credit card company kindly offering a means to accumulate more debt.  Today the note I received from my creditor included a check I can write now and "pay off later."  The note included a kind list of suggested uses for my check like, "Take a tropical vacation" and "Get a new computer" and "Make a down payment on a car."

Perhaps I am a fool.  After all, I do consider myself an entrepreneur.  But of course I would never write such a check.  I am not that foolish.  And I am not so foolish to think that creditors do not understand the apparent profile of those in their debt.  It is a credit to the foolish consumptive behavior of our culture that creditors can so brazenly solicit more spending from their most vulnerable customers.