Purpose:  This website serves as the personal online presence of its author.

Primary Use:  Sporadic blog postings which allow the author a venue for his own musings on daily life.  The subject matter, though not limited, will generally focus on humor, philosophy, and politics.  (The author claims no mastery of any of these.)

Secondary Use:  A way to locate the author and/or find general information about his interests, projects, and affiliations.  In this way the site aligns with the author’s belief that his role in the world should be an active one which, in part, requires a willingness to occasionally express a reasoned position on an issue or event.  Agreement with his positions is not requested and never required.

Clarification:  The author’s one and only area of true expertise — that which he is hired to provide for his clients – shall not be covered in any capacity through this site, for reasons beyond the scope of this message.  Furthermore, no inference should be drawn from this site as to the nature or focus of the author’s professional work.  They are separate in form and in function.  For additional information on his professional services, you are encouraged to go HERE.  And thanks for reading.

Who says there hasn’t been any inflation in recent years?

The government recently increased social security payments, but only after a two year hiatus due to a low Consumer Price Index (CPI).  But best I can tell, inflation has been no lower than usual.

This became rather evident this morning when I went to go order a HON 4-drawer vertical filing cabinet (the kind with the ball bearings and security lock).  This would have been my third HON cabinet purchase.

I bought my first one from Staples.com on 09/07/2006 for $109.  Purchased my second from Staples.com on 11/05/2008 for $169.  What’s it cost today?  $249.

http://www.staples.com/HON-510-Series-Vertical-File-Cabinet-25-4-Drawer-Letter-Size-Black/product_794636

Maybe you’re thinking what I’m thinking — it’s not exactly the same product.  So I dug a little deeper, and it turns out that HON now has a “entry level” brand called “Basyx.”  So the HON cabinet for $249 might be of slightly higher quality now (but certainly not the top of the line; they’ve got similar units for $400 and $600), but surely if I’m willing to compromise a bit on quality, I can pick up this Basyx unit for even less than I paid for a HON in 2008, right?

Nope.  The Basyx version, if I choose to buy it, will run me $189, twenty dollars more than I paid three years ago, and we all know it’s not going to function as well as the two I have already.

Next time somebody says we’re in an era of low inflation, send them to me.  Or better yet, send them to Staples!

Wanted to broadcast information on two upcoming events I’m helping with.

(1) Wine & Cheese & Rotary, April 26, 2012 from 6pm to 7:30pm

The Rotary Club of River Edge, Oradell, and New Milford is sponsoring a free Wine & Cheese business networking event at Cool Beans in Oradell, NJ.  Details are here:

http://www.riveredgerotary.org/wine-cheese-rotary-2012.pdf

(2) “Rockland Chamber Mega Networking” on April 26 at 6:30pm

The same night as the Rotary event, but this one is in Rockland County, NY at the Bear Mountain Inn.  Several different networking groups are involved.  Details and RSVP information may be found here:

http://www.rocklandchamber.org/

(3) Business Social on May 1 at 5:30pm

The Northern New Jersey Business Networking Meetup Group and the Rockland Bergen Young Professionals will be having a combined event at Emerson Hotel & Restaurant.

Details are available on the Facebook Page, or you can email me.

SHOCKING NEWS:

It turns out that cavemen did not actually live in caves, but in wood huts. However, they were not well crafted wood huts like you’d buy at Home Depot, and so they would often crumble in harsh weather, forcing them INTO the caves until things improved. And so the more proper phraseology would be “mostly-hut-sometimes-cave-men.” Let’s try to be more accurate in the future.

“Man is timid and apologetic; he is no longer upright; he dares not say ‘I think,’ ‘I am,’ but quotes some saint or sage. He is ashamed before the blade of grass or the blowing rose. These roses under my window make no reference to former roses or to better ones; they are for what they are; they exist with God today. There is no time to them. There is simply the rose; it is perfect in every moment of its existence.”

- Emerson, Self-Reliance

Thanks FedEx!

Here’s why I’m getting my haircut by Saturday, and why you should too!

Don’t say I didn’t warn you… There’s simply nothing worse than an eternity with bad hair.

THE STORY:

A hungry and cheerful man eats breakfast, lunch, and dinner at a little old restaurant near his house. He’s their best customer for years. And then one day he retires and moves to Georgia. But instead of celebrating the man, acknowledging his dedicated patronage, and sending him off with fanfare and good wishes, they slander him and call him a thief.

As a result of losing their best customer, the restaurant nearly goes bankrupt. Can they blame the man who moved away? Yes, I suppose they could, but they’d be using the man as their scapegoat.

The REAL cause of their failure is, of course, the absence of a diversified customer base; they relied too heavily on their one top customer when they should have been working diligently to expand their base and create consistent revenue from this greater breadth and depth of customers. In this way, the restaurant would have managed the loss of their number one patron, along with any number of challenges that came their way.

Blaming the man who moved to Georgia is discourteous to the man and shows an absence of responsibility on behalf of the restaurant.

THE MORAL:

May this long-winded analogy serve to describe what is really happening when any organization, municipality, or school system comes to rely too heavily on its top revenue producers. When those revenue producers leave, regardless of the reason, it’s not the producers who ought to be blamed. Casualness, extravagance, and/or a lack of discipline and foresight are the likely culprits, and taking responsibility is the only solution.

I seem to have caused a bit of controversy over the weekend in response to an email regarding Indian Point and power generation alternatives in North Rockland, namely Stony Point.  It seems there are about as many opinions on the issue as there people to give them, and I’ve now received everything from, “You’re absolutely right,” and “You’re part right and part wrong,” to “Everyone is going to die because of people like you.”

I’ll include the text of my email below, and you can form your own judgment (that is what I was recommending, after all).  But first, let me state three things: (1) I appreciate the environment, and don’t want it harmed; (2) I appreciate the lives of other people even more, and don’t want anyone harmed; (3) I do not have the authority to close a power plant, nor do I have the capability or authority to start a new one… and no other single person does either.  A project of that magnitude requires the cooporation of both government and business, and so I realize that legislation, regulation, negotiation, and public discourse are all required.  But that doesn’t mean it needs to happen on the back of this nuclear crisis in Japan.  In fact, any efforts made while that scenario is still actively playing itself out will inevitably be charged with emotion.  That said, here’s what I wrote:

Rarely do I feel the need to respond to “noise” — and I consider the U.S. nuclear power scare to be nothing more than this week’s apocalypse du jour, and therefore nearly 100% noise — but it appears almost everyone is ‘off the mark’ on this issue (my opinion, of course), and so I’m responding.

 Supervisor Sherwood writes, “The urgency of the disaster in Japan, where systems and redundancies have apparently all been overcome by the forces of nature, proves we must eliminate Indian Point…”  Excuse me.  Japan’s current challenge at Fukushima is serious, but it proves nothing regarding Indian Point in particular, or regarding nuclear power facilities in the U.S. in general.  Current estimates indicate that a tragically high 15,000 people are likely to die in Japan as a result of the disaster; that is, the natural disaster, not the nuclear disaster.  As far as I’ve heard, nobody has died as yet from radiation exposure, and should that number go from zero to 300 over the coming months, that will still have meant that about fifty times as many will have died from the earthquake and tsunami.  Said differently, the earthquake and tsunami could kill five-thousand percent more people than the would-be worst nuclear disaster in 25 years.

With the proper perspective of the real disaster firmly in mind, it would be more accurate, and more rational, to suggest that the entire population of California be permanently relocated to other parts of the U.S., so as to reduce our country’s future risk of death from earthquake and tsunami, than to suggest that nuclear power be hastily abandoned.  To see it any other way is to ignore facts, ignore statistics, and ignore reason.  So if we’re not going to call for an abandonment of California (perhaps Florida too, what with the hurricanes), then we can’t rightly call for the hasty abandonment of nuclear power.  Supervisor Sherwood’s general desire to see the resources of Stony Point utilized for commerce, for power generation, and for municipal revenue, is both logical and commendable.  Attaching that endeavor to an anti-nuclear sentiment, however, reduces the overall credibility of the town’s efforts.

With rapidly advancing technology, should we maintain current-day nuclear technology forever?  Of course not.  That would be foolish.  But to abandon existing facilities while they remain more energy efficient, more cost efficient, and ultimately more environmentally friendly than many other power producing facilities here in the U.S. (such as coal and petroleum) is equally foolish.

Projects taken up in haste rarely turn out well.  Projects taken up through government mandate or subsidy rarely stay profitable.  It wasn’t so much the deregulation of power production which caused a failure in North Rockland and elsewhere, but the many years of arbitrary revenue- and cost-shifting from regulations which should never have been in place to begin with.  If we are to learn anything from that experience, it’s that the only solution to attaining, and then retaining, a strong commercial base in North Rockland is by offering an environment where, (a) taxes are reasonable and are expected to stay reasonable; (b) land, building, and operations regulations are reasonable and are expected to stay reasonable; and (c) the products or services proposed for production and delivery have a marketable value and demand in the region, and are expected to stay marketable in the region.

If power generation companies aren’t knocking at the door of Town Hall for an opportunity to set up shop, it can only be assumed that they do not believe the current or expected-future environment in Stony Point meets the above criteria.  Now, in absence of the town’s ability to selectively choose from among the “highest bidder,” it may, at its peril, proactively seek out such opportunities.  But we know from history that such efforts are always fraught with potential conflicts, and are almost always shortsighted — “How can we improve things right now?” rather than, “How can we improve things long term?”  Only the residents, therefore, can ultimately assess whether such efforts, if any, are directed toward long-term solutions and not temporary fixes, and that’s only provided they have the information, opportunity, and inclination to make such assessment.

Listen to your elected representatives, to community leaders, to industry specialists, to existing business owners, and to fellow residents.  But don’t let the noise, agenda, ideology, bias, fear, urgency, or ignorance of others cloud your judgment of the real challenges at hand.  Issues such as this are rarely black and white, nor are the solutions.

Upon further inspection, while I continue to stand by this statement, it’s worth acknowledging that it is far from being a complete synopsis of the issue — and was not intended to be.  I lack the time, resources, and expertise to cover this topic in full.  Hopefully some other worthy chap will take up the issue and give it the full attention that it deserves.  Until then, this will have to do.

While I still cannot recommend their schizophrenic “react or die” programming for everyday viewing, at least CNBC is getting its commercials right…

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/30/health/views/30mind.html

Narcissism: The Tomato of Mental Disorders

It has just been announced that narcissism, previously known as “narcissistic personality disorder,” has been declassified as a mental illness.  What’s so amusing about this news is that most people did not know it was classified as a mental disorder to begin with!  In this sense, it would be like announcing that the tomato is no longer to be considered a fruit — well heck, nobody considers it a fruit anyway!

But here’s the real problem, as I see it.  There are two basic levels of narcissism, with shades of gray in between.  The prevailing form of narcissism is the version that each of us is born with.  Ask a four-year-old what happened in the world this morning, and he will answer with which brand of cereal he ate.

Fortunately, about 70% of us simply outgrow this form of narcissism as we enter adulthood.  The remaining 30% may then be said to have “adult narcissism,” which can range from the mildest form, merely a permanent form of the childhood version, to the most serious form, which I call the “what do you mean there are people walking the earth besides me?” version.  Those with permanent childhood narcissism are to be avoided whenever possible, as they just can’t handle recyprical or interdependent relationships.  But they’re not dangerous, and sometimes it’s just fun listen to them talk.

The true Narcissist, with the capital “N,” is the guy (or gal) to really look out for.  In his mind, you probably don’t exist at all, and if you do exist, it is for his sole benefit and at his sole discretion.  Truly scary stuff.  These are the folks who need the medical attention, and yet with this new ruling, I suppose they shall now be lumped in with the rest of us!

But enough about that — I need to get back to running my planet.

“Great spirits have always found violent opposition from mediocrities. The latter cannot understand it when a man does not thoughtlessly submit to hereditary prejudices but honestly and courageously uses his intelligence.”

- Albert Einstein

“There’s nothing I like better than a man of average means and above-average intellect.”

- Overheard by me, this afternoon, from an unassuming middle-aged man, speaking on his cell phone – in the post office – with an unknown person… just before hanging up on him.

I was speaking with a wise individual this week about the ‘hot issue’ of teachers and tenure, and she voiced her anger at the teachers’ unions.  I suggested that her anger was misplaced.  The teachers’ unions are lobbyists.  They exist explicitly to lobby for and defend the teachers who are their members, and do not exist to improve the education system generally.  If tenure is bad for students and bad for the country, then it is the general public who is to blame for allowing its continuance.  There are 3 million teachers in the US, or 1% of the population.  If the other 99% of Americans don’t want tenure, and were willing to state it publicly, then it would be eliminated.  But most don’t bother to have an opinion on the topic, and even fewer are willing to state it publicly, and so tenure remains.  Suffice to say, if 99% of Americans spoke out against the tenure system, it would be gone the following afternoon.

More generally, I believe that ALL misguided policies—political, social, economic—and the selection of the politicians and legislators that create them, results primarily from the failure of the American public to invest the time to consider the issues, reach conclusions on those issues, and then defend their conclusions publicly.  The day it became ‘politically incorrect’ to state your opinion was the day we began to lose control.

Original Source:  http://www.cnbc.com//id/38326508

“How will cutting off unemployment benefits make a job miraculously appear?”

This odd quote is from a CNBC commentary, from Patricia Chadwick, a self-proclaimed provider of “advice on financial markets and global economics,” about the need for extending unemployment benefits.  It’s odd because its subject is misplaced.  It would be analogous to asking, ”How will cutting vitamins from my diet make nutritious food miraculously appear on my dinner table?”  It won’t — because that’s not its originating purpose!

It’s a shame that arguments are no longer made through principled reasoning.  Instead, she built her argument upon the sandy foundation of ‘economic recovery.’

Given that unemployment benefits has never been shown to spur economic recovery, nor job creation, any argument in favor of its use (or in our case, it’s extension, first from 26 weeks to 99 weeks, and now from 99 weeks to something beyond two years) should be based on some other criteria.  But since it is being positioned in this manner, here are a few items for consideration:

(1) Ignoring the philosophical and political arguments for or against this program, I expect most would agree that pre-established rules on benefits help assure more predictable and more equitable utilization than rules which may be changed at the whim of current administrative or legislative edict.  The reason social welfare programs such as unemployment insurance are agreed upon in advance of their enactment is precisely to avoid the type of subjective and vacillating decisions that occur in the ‘urgency of the moment.’  If a business chooses to demand more from existing full-time and temporary workers rather than hire new ones, it can be expected that unknown and inconsistent legislative mandates are a big part of the reason.

(2) When unemployment compensation is introduced into the employment system, workers engage in less pre-planning.  This includes both financial preparation (setting up a one-year cash reserve, for instance) and career or job skills preparation (use of continuing education and the development of alternative skill sets to improve long-term employ-ability).  This, in turn, leads to a workforce which is, as a whole, less stable and less skilled.  Workers also engage in less current-planning.  If I know, in advance, that I’ve got X-number of weeks (or in this case, months) to find a new employer, after which I will need to rely first on part-time non-career income, and thereafter on my personal savings, family or community support, or personal loans, I’ve got a tangible framework within which to plan.  If, on the other hand, I believe that I may receive a ‘bailout,’ or any such additional benefit which was not pre-determined, I am by my human nature more willing to chance unpreparedness.

(3) There are, ultimately, both direct and indirect costs to providing such a benefit, and when those costs materialize within the economic framework which influences the economy and job creation, the result is not a creation of jobs, but a shiftingof resources.  The resulting future employment opportunities are diminished proportionate to the cost of present benefits.  Private sector jobs are created for one reason only — demand.  A company’s products and services, if considered valuable to the market, are sought after in higher quantity.  That demand allows the company to grow.  In order to grow, the company must improve its production capacity, which almost always includes the addition of more employees.  The same holds for new companies, which arise from a demand for a product or service which either does not exist or does not exist in an optimal way.  In all cases, a job is created explicitly because the cost of the labor is less than earnings created from the product or service involved.  No temporary assistance will ever improve this process, but holds the certain possibility of harming the process and further hampering employment.  As one example, labor economist Lawrence Katz determined through a 1990 NBER study that, ”a one week increase in potential benefit duration increases the average duration of the unemployment spells of UI recipients by 0.16 to 0.20 weeks.”  It would be foolish to extrapolate relevant expectations from a coverage duration of 99 weeks, but the message is clear: unemployment compensation at best fails to move employment in a positive direction, and at worst, moves employment in the wrong direction.

Conclusion:  Go ahead, argue for extending unemployment insurance.  But don’t claim the economy as your beneficiary.  It isn’t, and never will be.

The stuff that comes out of Hollywood does NOT represent U.S. social values.  In fact, it never has, and God willing, it never will.

What it DOES represent, however, is U.S. popular culture, which is a fringe of short-attention, low-thought, early adopters*.  These are the people who spend every dime they have on whatever they deem popular this month, nay, this week.  It’s why marketers put so much effort into attracting them, and why it appears as though they are everywhere.  But they are not.

And because what is popular this week is rarely what is popular next year, the impact of this fringe is fleeting, and the impact on social values minimal (unless validated, concretized, and perpetuated by parents and educators — but that’s a topic for another day).

So next time you see an appalling movie trailer and wonder who would possibly spend $14 to see it, remember that you’re not alone.

* Not all early adopters, by the way, belong to the fringe of popular culture.  Those who seek high efficiency, high effectiveness, and high value — those who push our technology and innovation to ever-greater levels — belong not to the fringe, but to the group of thoughtful, disciplined, and energetic people who make up the core of this great nation.  And their values are quite enduring.

For you business owners out there, here’s some simple (though not always easy) advice from Strategic Coach’s Dan Sullivan on making you highly referable…

http://strategiccoach.com/go/referability

“Congress Has Inhibited Growth By Creating Uncertainty”

That anyone would find this headline surprising is indicative of the problem…

(Ignore Mark Haines’s opening remark – he can’t help himself but try to attach every issue to the ‘apocalypse du jour’.  The rest of the video is worth watching though.)

http://www.cnbc.com//id/38127935

“I’m not aware of any tax hikes.  I believe you’re referring to the Bush tax cuts which are expiring.”

- Allyson Schwartz (D), Congresswoman, Pennsylvania.  June 25, 2010, Fox News.

I once remarked, “You know it’s time to get organized when items in your Inbox start celebrating one-year anniversaries.”

Well, guess what I just found… several emails from March 2009… in by Inbox. Time to take my own advice (again).

“The health care bill, which is projected to cost $940 billion, could also potentially reduce
the federal budget deficit, according to the Congressional Budget Office, as new taxes on
health industries and families earning more than $250,000, along with spending cuts on
Medicare, are designed to be greater than the cost of the plan. As many of these
revenue-raising provisions will not go into effect for several years, there remains the
possibility of unforeseen obstacles.” 1

Let us pretend that I’m a car salesman.  You come into my dealership and you tell me you want to buy a new car.  The car you like has a sticker price of $40,000, and because the car is in such high demand, I cannot offer any dealer incentives.  Nevertheless, I tell you that your final price will be just $10,000, and you’re absolutely ecstatic.  You sign on the dotted line, you hand me a check for $10,000, and you drive home in your new car.

You pull into your driveway, only to find that your old car, which you were planning to pass down to your daughter, is missing… and your daughter didn’t take it.  Question is, who did?

Answer:  Me, the car salesman.  I took your car.  It had a trade-in value of $30,000, and it’s how I was able to offer you such a great deal!  What do you mean you didn’t sign up for a trade-in?  It was right there in the contract!

So now you think I lied to you — told you the new car costs $10,000, when it really costs $40,000, and I’ve taken something away from you without explicitly letting you know.  You got a new car out of the deal, and that’s not bad, but you’re still quite angry.  And the thing that bothers you most?  It’s that I’ve melded two separate issues (purchase of a new car, trade-in of another) into a single transaction and am insisting you got the deal of a lifetime.

If you haven’t figured it out, this is what recently happened in the passing of H.R. 4872.  We were told that the bill will reduce the deficit — and it probably will!  But only because of the increase in revenue which results from increased TAXES and the reduction of benefits from OTHER programs.  The two issues are separate, but they’ve been delivered to you as single package, and that’s deceptive.

The real question, and the issue at hand, is one of opportunity cost.  Will the cost of increased taxes and lost benefits (your ‘trade-in’) be worth the future benefit of the new social welfare program (your ‘new car’)?

Had the issue been presented to us in this way, we could have decided, from a fully informed and objective perspective, whether the program was worth the cost.  Instead, our government (the ‘car salesman’) chose to bury the real costs in the fine print, and is simply hoping that we never notice what’s missing from our driveway!

1. “U.S. Health Care Reform Bill Enacted,” Franklin Templeton Investments, March 23, 2010.

My feet are rarely topic for conversation, but I found something worth passing along…

In my efforts to train for a recent endurance event, I began experiencing all sorts of issues with my feet and legs; fallen arches, shin splints, acute foot pain, etc.  Having trained for other events in the past, this was my first encounter with this particular set of issues.  Seems I’m not in the shape I once was.

Besides recently purchasing “The Beast” running shoes from Brooks, which effectively reduced my overpronation and assisted my low arches, I also came accross a tiny company who manufactures insoles that I could use for my working shoes, thereby reducing pressure on my feet and legs between runs.  They are called Shock Blockers, and as the name implies, they buffer the force of your foot as it hits the ground rather than deflect the force like most other insoles.

While I’m not likely to use these while running (I need a bit of bounce to keep my feet moving), they’ve been wonderful in my dress shoes and work boots, and I now recommend them for your use if you ever have foot, shin, or knee pain from walking too much or standing too long.  Details below!

http://www.shockblockerinsoles.com/

The company only accepts PayPal for payment, so if you don’t use PayPal, you may need to send in a check.  They also have a quick video here: http://www.shockblockerinsoles.com/2009/10/shock-blockers-commercial/

Finally, I found an online coupon code for $10 off your purchase.  Not sure how long it’s effective for, but if you email me I’ll provide you with that code.

Happy walking.

Winner of the Facebook contest for best Wall Haiku:

Ah, sweet retirement
A heavenly dream come true
MC, dream maker!
                                                       – A.W.

Lesson learned? Always best to flatter the judge.

I own neither a Yamaha receiver or an iPhone, yet still find this fascinating.  Soon you’ll open your garage door, turn on the heat, and start the oven, all while sitting in your driveway with a phone.