a. fish

Ask for the Return of Favors

From Guy Kawasaki's blogpost The Art of Schmoozing:

9. Ask for the return of favors. Good schmoozers give favors. Good schmoozers also return favors. However, great schmoozers ask for the return of favors. You may find this puzzling: Isn't it better to keep someone indebted to you? The answer is no, and this is because keeping someone indebted to you puts undue pressure on your relationship. Any decent person feels guilty and indebted. By asking for, and receiving, a return favor, you clear the decks, relieve the pressure, and set up for a whole new round of give and take. After a few rounds of give and take, you're best friends, and you have mastered the art of schmoozing.

Psychology of Geography

It occured to me, after a lifetime in the Bay Area but only the last decade and a half in San Francisco, that culturally, interactively, and geographically, that this city is an island. Surrounded by water on three sides.

I once talked with an FBI guy who'd worked with PDs around the country; he likened the SFPD to Boston cops - "they want to do things their way, the way they've always done them, because they did them first." San Francisco has the oldest police department in the state, as does Boston, another water-surrounded city, in Massachussets.

I think there may be a direct correlation between the ratio of your area's isolation by water and the residents' pride in said area. This city dweller recalls dating an Irish-American in High School who "read books on Irish history and followed current events there. To hear him talk, you`d think his family ties to the old country were fresh and strong, but the truth was that his ancestors had come over many generations ago."

Could be a factor of love/hate - sometimes I'm so sick of this place I think of moving to I dunno, Oakland. Or Mexico City. But then you're stuck here, getting out you deal with traffic, or transit, which isn't super-reliable, so you make do. And staying put, and digging in, gives you more invested reasons for liking a place. And making it to your liking.

New York City (Manhattan Island), San Francisco, Boston, Ireland, ...? Ok four places does not a pattern prove, but it's possible. They really need to teach more geography in schools again.

Just shut up and code

Years back came the conclusion that I wanted needed to break out of the programmer's pigeonhole. The pivot was long and bumpy, but a few writing classes and several paycuts later, here I am. Cruising the Craigslist classifieds today evoked an epiphany: "create innovative deliverables (info portals, cue cards, viewlets, dynamic links, developer guides)" - you mean you want to hear my suggestions? Gone are the days of the manager gritting her teeth while I quickly mention a marketing angle, or arbitrary innovation, she could pass onto her boss, or whomever, only to respond with a directive to basically keep my ideas to myself, shut up, and get back to coding.

How do other engineers break out of that pigeonhole role? Maybe the career trajectory is coder->manager/team leader->[entrepreneurial position/marketing contributor]. For me, freelance writing was the only escape hatch I could find. With my newly found freedom, now a coding gig, and coding itself, looks viable again, even fun.

Big Labor partners with Immigrants, Day Laborers

From the NYTimes Opinion section (subscription required) Street Corner Solidarity:

The A.F.L.-C.I.O. announced yesterday that it was forging a partnership with the National Day Laborer Organizing Network, an association of worker centers for the men and women who have become, for many, the public face of illegal immigration.

Related posts: Cesar Chavez on Immigration

Travel Trends

An indy bookseller friend of mine, who departed the recently shuttered A Clean Well-Lighted Place for Books, crossed the Golden Gate Monday to start his new gig at Corte Madera's Book Passage. One of his duties? Buying for the Travel section. "Travel books are selling like crazy," he tells me.

Travel reading, travelling, or both could be on the rise. Travel writing sure is.

After WWII my father, who was 10 at the time, and his middle class family hired a driver to take them through Mexico. They were itching to get out, stretch their legs, and see the world, he said.

Direct correlation between the end of military conflict and a rise in tourism? Implications of longer, guerilla-type conflicts?

Hyperlocal

Who would've predicted - but it's coming I tell ya - globalization begets an age of place. Hyperlocal H20Town blogger Lisa Williams has made a 1000 place blog bet with PressThink's Jay Rosen. Said some naysayer: "Lisa Williams is special.  There are so few of her that hyperlocal will never take off.”

To that comment may I just say: BWAHAHAHAA! I can only guess the doubter a Tom Sawyer protege attempting to kickstart a hyperlocal media movement with an old fasioned double-dog "I betchya can't do it" schoolyard dare.
(See also: Slate's Jack Shafer on How the New York Times Makes Local Papers Dumber. Uh huh.)

Here in San Fran we've seen a quiet rise in the microdailies. First the new Examiner, reduced to "compact" (tabloid) layout, distributed sans charge in subway stop-dotting newsracks; cluttering up the driveways of the tony addresses admired by advertisers everywhere.

Next we see a neighborhood newswire, published by public power activist Steve Moss. Inspired by a study showing a direct correlation between the trust readers had in a publication and the proximity of its focus, Moss created the wire service to be used by niche neighborhood publishers. Place begets trust, he concluded, and the neighborhood newswire was born.

Then the publishers of the East Bay Daily News set up shop here at www.sfdaily.net. Noticing an untapped lower-tier advertising market, they wisely seized what they saw as an opportunity. And this 16-page Monday thru Friday paper did something really evil that kept me coming back for more: they introduced that bloody timesucker of a puzzle, the Sadoku. They publish two - one sinfully easy, the other deceptively difficult - per day. (Bastards.)

But wait - just yesterday, The Marina Times tossed their August issue, expanded to 16 pages (from 10), to my doorstep. The publishers must be catching onto a reader loyalty hook: they premiered the Godzilla Sadoku  - that's right, fill in digits 1 through 9 and letters A through F in every square, row and column. Oh and there's some good local stories to boot.

Time-vaccuum puzzles aside, local media rags represent just about every neighborhood (the Potrero View, Sunset Beacon, Richmond Dispatch, Noe Valley Voice) and niche demographic (El Tecolote, The Haight Beat, Bay Area Business Woman) you could encounter in this city. And unless my eyes are deceiving me, the smaller papers are getting fatter, and their coverage is getting better. Now why is that?

Licensing blog posts to MSM editors

Yet another gem culled from the blog of Robb (the last for a while, I promise.) First he rants on the terribly dated, elitest financing model of too many social sites in Web 2.0 powered by Financing 0.1 (aka: you'll get nothing, and like it!)  Said Robb, "Hoarding like this is so bubble."

But don't miss this from a commenter calling himself Tom Griffin:

There's an interesting little site in Britain called Scoopt that started out last year as a photo agency to enable the public to sell their pictures to the media. It has just branched out into licensing blog posts to editors. Could be worth keeping an eye on if the model takes off. They're advising bloggers to post to an 'open source newspaper' called Nightcap Syndication so I suppose there's a Web 2.0 aspect to it.

Did Jay Rosen or Dan Gillmore ever try this? If not why not?

Shouldn't taxes pay for this?

At the very least? But no, as tpmmuckraker reports, Trapped in Beirut? Uncle Sam Can Get You Out -- For a Price:

You want to get out of the war zone that Lebanon is fast becoming? Reach for your wallet.

In a message to American citizens trapped in Lebanon, the U.S. Embassy's website reads: "The Department of State reminds American citizens that the U.S. government does not provide no-cost transportation." For those unfortunate enough to be weathering the bombing and also have empty pockets, the government offers a "repatriation loan" - citizens will get a bill once they land safely in the States.

This is in stark contrast to Canada, which advises its citizens that "All costs related to the evacuation of Canadians citizens from Lebanon will be borne by the Government of Canada."

People trapped there, of course, have little other recourse for evacuation, since the airport and major roads have been bombed.

When I called the State Department about the policy, I was promised a call back and told "You're not the first one to ask." So we expect an answer soon.

And in a followup, State Dept.: No Free Evacuations for Dead Americans, Either. John Robb theories of nation-state decline sound more plausible every day.

And how could anyone possibly defeat the world's strongest military? One guy's take:

Winning a 4GW conflict
Victory in 4GW warfare is won in the moral sphere. The aim of 4GW is to destroy the moral bonds that allows the organic whole to exist -- cohesion. This is done by reinforcing the following (according to Boyd):

• Menace. Attacks that undermine or threaten basic human survival instincts.
• Mistrust. Increases divisions between groups (ie. conservatives and liberals in the US).
• Uncertainty. Undermine economic activity by decreasing confidence in the future.

What would T.R. say? Stealth Estate Tax vote this week.

(cross-posted to the daily kos)

When Democrats like Blanche Lincoln of Arkansas, Bill Nelson of Florida, Ben Nelson of Nebraska and Max Baucus of Montana join Republicans (such as T.R. fan John McCain) by voting to repeal the Estate Tax in a time of war, as they are poised to do this week, I wonder what Teddy Roosevelt would say.

It was Republican President Teddy Roosevelt, after all, who introduced the idea of an inheritance tax in his speech The Man with the Muck-Rake, given exactly 100 years, one month, and eleven days ago today.

As TR told the people on April 14, 1906, "In Bunyan's 'Pilgrim's Progress' you may recall the description of the Man with the Muck-rake" who only looks down and rakes the vile and base that is beneath him, never looking up. "The men with the muck-rakes are often indispensable to the well-being of society; but only if they know when to stop raking the muck, and to look upward to the celestial crown above them, to the crown of worthy endeavor," TR said.

It was a time of sensationalist journalism, and polarized wealth. An "hourglass" economy, as it were. As TR denounced those in the press who raked nothing but muck, he also recognized the economic realities, and their political implications, of his day:

Echo Boomers growing up?

Someone calling themselves a student comments on the closing of Cody's Books on Berkeley's Telegraph Avenue:

First of all, this is very sad.  Cody's is a wonderful store, and I'll miss it greatly.

Time to put on my hater hat. 

"Older readers" don't like going to Telegraph Avenue for the same reason we younger readers mostly avoid it: it sucks. Hippie nostalgia just doesn't cut it anymore--the original hippies have turned into self-righteous, self-absorbed reactionaries, and their contemporary Telegraph imitators seem to have forgotten the activism and idealism and kept only the addictions, the aggressive panhandling, and the funky smell.

We the students of UC Berkeley do not need any more Bob Marley tee shirts, hemp necklaces, or novelty bumper stickers. We need bars. Clubs. Performance space. Nightlife of any sort. But the selfish Boomer neighbors don't want the noise, and Blake's doesn't want the competition.

We the residents of Southside need better bus service, but god forbid Joe's Head Shop lose its curbside parking spot. We need affordable housing, but save us from infill development lest it make Berkeley less suburban or block someone's precious view. We need our cars to stop getting broken into, but let's not distract our cops from doing heroin.

All is not lost--Telegraph still has Amoeba, Moe's, Shakespeare & Co., and some decent cheap restaurants. But Telegraph needs new life, and that means ditching the nostalgia act and getting with the program.

I can't...find anything here to disagree with (aside from the cops-doing-heroin reference - what's that about?) And we thought children of annoying Boomer copter-parents were soft.