Learning to bag the bags

I was surfing around at the Webby awards and found that our Peyton Manning video that we shot with CAA was nominated for best video piece in sports (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2nKMKW4X8RE&eurl=http%3A%2F%25).



Pretty cool. I looked around to see what else was nominated, what was popular, what was working. I happened upon a video of Edward Norton who was in a community service ad pitching for us to stop using plastic and paper bags (http://video.nationalgeographic.com/video/player/environment/going-green-environment/conservation-in-action/norton-bag-env.html) .



Although ours was better, it piqued my interest. Some interesting facts. There is a floating island the size of Texas in the ocean and it's made up entirely of plastic waste. Bags, bottles, and all the plastic that is around us. Texas! That's crazy. But even that piece didn't really hit home, it just sat there marinating.

A week ago I posted a video on the story of stuff, which was excellent and somehow with multiple pings the message started hitting home. My eyes creaked open. Our culture is built on unnecessary waste to support our lazy convenience. And now I see it everywhere, and my veil of ignorance has been lifted. It is astounding how blind I have been.

Here's my work day of unnecessary waste/convenience and what I have done about it:

1. Woke up, alarm blazing and on my way to the shower tripped over two boxes from clothing shipped from the Gilt group. Emailed them about order consolidation and benefits to them.

2. Noticed the toilet paper was out so I unwrapped a roll from the paper in the 8 pack plastic bag. Wrapping in a wrapping? Unneeded but I have no influence

3. Recycling was overflowing, so I took it out. Will not tell my dinner guests to drink less wine. It was too much fun. And no wine boxes. Alas.

4. Got on the bus with my copy of the NY Metro, which I threw out 5 minutes later. Now reading from the NY Times app for the iPhone. Won’t take another NY Metro.

5. Ordered my standard breakfast from Ruthy’s Deli, and refused the paper bag and the excessive napkins that came with it. Just hand over the egg white sandwich.

6. Drank 4 large green teas all out of my reusable OXO coffee cup using bulk tea leaves rather than packaged teabags.

7. Went to Chelsea Thai for lunch, told them it was to stay when it was to go and took the plate upstairs and returned it at the end of the day.

8. My boss asked me if I wanted a bottle of water and I responded by telling him the environmental impact of shipping water in plastic bottles. Switched the office to a Brita filter.

9. Got two bottles of wine for a dinner party, they gave me a bag, a plastic netting for one of the bottles and a cardboard separator. Told them to bag the bag and I would carry the bottles in my laptop bag.

10. Went to Whole Foods to pick up 2 (would be double) bags of ingredients for dinner, bought recycled bags for future use.

11. Got home and saw a ton of marketing mails. Ripped up 6 or 7 without even looking. Went online and removed myself and my mom from Direct Marketing Association Mail Preference List (https://www.dmachoice.org/dma/member/regist.action) and the Do Not Call List (https://www.donotcall.gov/) while I was at it. Here are some other tips (http://www.privacyrights.org/fs/fs4-junk.htm)

No real inconvenience (time loss 3 mins), yet I sound like a fluffy, tree hugging radical. But simple steps saved a newspaper, 2 sets of excessive napkins, 4 plastic cups, 4 tea bags, 1 styro foam food container, 10 bottles of water daily in the office, 1 plastic netty thing, a piece of cardboard, 6 pieces of mail and at least 7 bags.

Now that’s a lot for a single day. Multiply that by 250 million people and 365 days (91,250,000,000). No wonder we have a problem.

All I ask is that you just look around at all the waste in your day. You may start down the same path as I have. I like my luxuries as much as everyone else. But convenience isn’t all that it is cracked up to be if it comes with so much garbage.

Measuring from Baseline

I had an interesting conversation tonight with the esteemed Liz Topp and the lovely Miss Clemmer. We were talking about happiness in New York. New York is a special kind of place. The city that never sleeps. The city where anything can happen, or more to the point anything does happen all the time. Is this infinite carnival of culture, culinary adventure and continuous partying the perfect recipe for happiness?

Perhaps it depends on your metabolism for consumption. As a child of New York, raised and molded by it's frenetic hands, I have always loved the constant stimulation and unlimited potential. When I lived in Austin, I distinctly missed walking in traffic and seeing a couple thousand people each and every day. The endless possibilities of each and every night. Who might call with the 411 on some soiree? Where might the next turn lead?

But is this really the environment for happiness? Kristen realized it was her time to go one night when I called her with an invite to a intimate party with Liv Tyler, Leonardo DiCaprio, and even Keith Richards (who BTW looks many decades past dead). She was just 3 blocks away and just didn't care. She was too tired. At that moment she realized, NYC was just not the right pace. Mainlining adventure was not her thing.

Austin is more Kristen's pace. Where scarcity breeds appreciation. Where 1 great event a week is plenty, and well appreciated for all that it is. Where distinct amazing times are not lost in a blur of velocity. Where appreciation trumps frequency.

Happiness is relative to a baseline. Where's your natural baseline and are you living your life that way?

Chivalry and the Toilet Seat

I think I have spent more time than most thinking about the age old dilemna of the toilet seat. I never really bought the whole fall in the toilet argument. I mean really, who doesn't look down when putting your bare ass on a surface? I do every time, and it really is because of one time I didn't in a public bathroom. The details are too unnerving to describe. But I don't think it's just me.

So what is it then? A mathematical approach to the problem aiming to minimize the total effort of the system reveals that I should not put down the toilet seat to avoid the useless effort of putting down the seat only to lift it back up in the event the males of the household go twice in a row. So conveniently, minimization of effort leads us to believe that I shouldn't put it down.

Then again, if effort minimization is the absolute goal, I should just always go with the toilet seat down, and we wouldn't want that would we? Cleanliness is key.

So I am not such a big fan of public bathrooms. You never know what the last guy had on their hands when they pulled the flusher handle or even the faucet at the sink. So I try to avoid contact. Using your shoed feet is a big help here. This includes, probably more than anything else the toilet seat. Women may not be as privvy to the joy of lifting the seat to discover the untold splatter whether fresh or dried. Needless to say, it's never a positive moment in my day.

And that's what I think this is all about. If I put the toilet seat down, a woman doesn't have to encounter arguably - and hopefully - the least sanitary surface in the house. And that is a simple enough luxury to make demands.

But, I have never heard this sentiment expressed directly. Is this it? If so, I think I can put it down. But I am going to do it like I do it in the public bathroom, with my shoe. ;) See, we can all win.

It's not what you say, it's how you say it

I continue to be reminded in every day conversations both in business and socially that how you demonstrate the idea is almost as important as the idea itself. And with the struggles we have in healthcare, the economy and the environment, it's almost impossible to see the big picture.

Is 1 trillion dollars enough of a stimulus package? Does cutting 1.5% of health care cost growth save the system? How important is domestic recycling to the problem of waste management (Answer: domestic waste is 1/70th of industrial waste).

As annoying as the UPS commercials are, they do show the power of graphical teaching through video. Here's an even better example, one that predated UPS's chalkboard that brilliantly explains the environmental challenges we face.


http://storyofstuff.com/


Einstein once responded to a woman's questions about math, "Do not worry about your difficulties with math. I assure you mine are greater." The focus being on the untold complexity of Einstein's understanding. Instead, think about the relative simplicity of the woman's mathematical model.

With ideas as groundbreaking as we are throwing around, how do you let people build simple, comprehensible understandings of things that are complex beyond their reach?

Perot did it with chicken farming in Arkansas. Gore did it with global warming. And TED does it with everything. Shouldn't we be creating video presentations rather than press releases and press conferences?


PS Let me reiterate check out http://storyofstuff.com/

A Map of Wine and Food

Speaking of teaching ... have you ever wondered how to pair food with wine? This map breaks down the relationships and dimensions in flavor better than any I have seen. Thanks to old HS acquaintance Alex Rainert for showing me the way.

Image URL: http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3595/3320616722_9f66888b24.jpg

A couple things to note. Oregon Pinot Noir is in the center, meaning it is one of the most amenable wines to bring to a dinner party if you don't know what's being served. It also shows how Filet Mignon is to Ribeye as Turkey is to Duck as Parmesan is to Gruyere. Simply great!

To Love to Teach

Almost everything I have done professionally and in most of the other meaningful accomplishments, it's really been about teaching. Sales was teaching a client how we could help. Outbound marketing is teaching customers what you provide to them. Inbound marketing is about teaching your dev team what to build to meet market demand. Marrying Ira and Joanne was about teaching others about why this moment was indeed sacred. Raising your children is about teaching each and every moment.

One of my favorite moments last year was teaching my friend's Marisa's Kindergarten class about Antarctica. It was just so much fun to cultivate that wide eyed amazement of children and hopefully inspiring them to explore. It gave me the inspiration to go back to my own school and lecture.

Here is a little blurb about me in Scholastic. It reminds me to teach and consequently to learn every day.

http://blogs.scholastic.com/prek_k/2009/03/learning-about-habitats-polar.html

The Challenge: A Recess from Excess

These times wreak of the times of old. Neronian reforms while the infrastructure crumbles. Maybe. But it has been a time of excessive greed. And while it is easy to look at the greed and self-indulgence of Wall Street, it's quite harder to look inward.

I don't consider myself materially self indulgent. I have bought one electronic item of significance in the past 5 years. I like clothes, but I wouldn't say I am a shop-a-holic like many I know. I save 30% of my salary every month without fail (although that amount seems a lot smaller in my ETrade account as of late). No, my area of self indulgence is food.

After myriad cooking classes, dinners out, and just growing up on Il Mulino, my desire, appreciation and discerning palette is probably my greatest example of self indulgence. Every year I challenge myself to give up something self-indulgent for a month. Last year it was alcohol. This year it is all the beautiful cuts and preparations of red meat.

No lamb. No veal. No steak. No hamburgers at Royale. No all beef hot dogs at Grey's Papaya. Pastrami sandwiches at Katz's. No carnitas plate at Yuca bar. No tender filets or the swappable tender and marbled king of steak, the porterhouse. It has been to date, well, surprisingly easy.

And I would like to tell you how these abstinences make me feel healthy and alive, but they don't really. That's probably the most dissapointing, and perhaps the most encouraging. The body is incredibly adept at processing whatever you throw at it. Perhaps the greatest example of this is the recent evidence that a low fat diet has no effect on health (a low calorie diet does).

No this is a matter of testing will. Testing what you think you can do. And declaring independence from all the self-imposed constraints. To me it's not about pious sacrifice, it's about challenging the rules. Challenging what you think is out of your control.

What do you think is out of your control? Want to test that theory?

Human Feedback Feeds the Machine

Ahhh ... yes. I love it when someone I know comments on my blog and points me to some cool things based on my post. Big shout out to Brian Delassandro for following up on my post on networking the human mind to solve really hard problems, That's Using Your Noggin.

Brian points us to Amazon's Mechanical Turk, a way to request the services of a network of knowledge workers. What could you use it for?

• Market research on pricing of products
• Classify animal and plant specimens
• Solicit reviews for products to help populate your social network
• Transcribe something into another language

What could you do with a million simple tasks? A billion? A trillion?

Fighting Gravity

I think many of us spend a lot of time fighting gravity. I spent a weekend ago snowboarding and I know I spent a lot of time doing it. When I hit the occasional patch of ice that made me go fast (yes, east coast slopes), I would turn my board more to get a better edge to slow down. The problem is that you aren’t that effective anyway, and then when you hit a patch of snow again I would slow down way too fast, like getting hit by a car. And then I would go flying Superman style for a spectacular flop.

After a couple times of this, I decided to speed up during the patches of ice and go with the ice flow. I went a little faster than I wanted. Not fully in my control. But then when I was back on familiar terrain I was in a position I wanted to be and just cruised right through.

Such is gravity. 9.8 meters per second squared. Constant acceleration. Exponential velocity curve.

My Uncle Arthur tried to fight gravity in the army too. His gravity was the general perception that he was a Jew. And given this was during the Korea War, prejudices ran stronger than they do today. Arthur continued to flounder as he tried roles others assumed he was less fit for until he got reprimanded and was put in charge of acquisition of supplies.

Essentially, he was Red from Shawshank Redemption. The guy who could get you what you needed. In a more appropriate M.A.S.H. context, he was B.J. Honeycut or Hawkeye making trades with other units under the radar. What a perfect job for a “Jew” and so he excelled, accelerating with the natural gravity of the situation.

At the same time, some of the greatest leaders of our time have been able to resist and overcome gravity, creating revolutionary ideas that changed the gravities of their time. But how do you know when to do which?

I find myself coming to the same conclusions as astronauts. Sometimes when caught in the inevitable pull of gravity the best idea is to embrace it, speed towards in that direction and just before hitting the object and crashing, fire all thrusters in a lateral move and slingshot past it. Then you are free to navigate any direction you choose. It's about using gravity to reach escape velocity. In astrophysics it's called gravity assist.

What gravity are you fighting right now? Should you be fighting it or using it?

Just Downright Heartless

I was reading an interesting book on design driven development called The Inmates are Running the Asylum . One of the passages struck me in that development nerds, tech geeks, were the new bullying jocks of the tech world. It had some interesting analogies and examples I could relate to. Where physical prowess was power back then, knowledge is power now.

And there are the good jocks and the really nasty bullies impressed with their own strength. I was reading Wired this month and noticed a new word on the fringe: cloaker. Apparently, doctors use radio signals to adjust the setting of pacemakers. Better than a USB port. Makes sense. Apparently some tech-savvy predators have designed devices that can mimic these signals so they can prey upon sickly patients. What would submit to if someone literally had the key to your heart?

Cloakers are a new method that masks the signal and keeps us safe from the tech predators. But man is that cold ...