UKISIS

Ever the speartip. Brittain, please report to the stage. You must devolve power to local governments, stem the exodus of corporates and financial services, close structural deficits, achieve a cheaper nimbler military, avoid prickles with neighbors, and beat ISIS on home soil. All others, remain in the green room until the UK has written your script. That's global relevance.

Should NFL Players be Role Models?

The NFL's sponsors are rattling their sabers because of the flood of negative headlines and stupid apish behavior of the players.

Their response has demonstrated bunker mentality. They're working their backchannels with the sponsors, throwing money/perks at them, and hoping it goes away.

Meanwhile, the talking heads debate ad nauseum about whether athletes should be role models.

They're on to something. The NFL should launch a "Role Models" program.

Players who DON'T qualify (see criteria below*):

• Cannot sign sponsorship deals
• Cannot appear in NFL promotional media (ads, spots, visuals, interviews) or any off-field activities/media related to the NFL
• Cannot play in the Pro Bowl or other off-season promotional events
• Cannot be admitted to the Hall of Fame

Conversely, if they do qualify they get:

• A significant annual bonus directly from the NFL, payable in installments over the subsequent 2 years unless they are removed from the program

* Eligibility criteria would be the following with a zero tolerance, one-strike-you're-out policy:

• 2+ years with the league
• No criminal activity for the past 5 years
• No suspensions or fines from the team or NFL 
• No violations of NFL or NCAA policies on drugs, conduct, etc.

They'd have to be careful about due process and presumed innocence, but they should not allow any wiggle room within their rules. 

Follow Up: Taking Care of Our Heroes

A couple of years ago, dumbass Dunta Robinson lowered his head and changed the game of football. Watching his hit on DeSean Jackson was nauseating, but what really made me lose my appetite was the voice over "I don't know how you take this out of the game of football." And thus the tone was set. The rest of the season was a parade of whiny soundbites like "if you take those hits out of the game, you have to rename it 'coz it's not football anymore."

At the time, I blogged:

We can't stop talking about players who achieve super-human heroic feats, or coaches who execute strategies to snatch victory from the clutches of defeat...Football is nothing without it's heroes. We have to let them show off ... but not at the expense of knocking other heroes out of the game...menacing hits call attention to the embarrassing base nature of the hitters. These are not heroes. Their lack of humanity exposes that

Dunta got penalized 15 yards and $50k. In response, he did it again. And again. And again. Fast forward 2 years. Alex Smith will not be leading his team to a Superbowl victory after yet another helmet-on-helmet hit, this one by Jo-Lonn "Dumbass" Dunbar. One could lament that nothing has changed.

Things are about to. The conversation has changed. Football as an industry has come to realize they are in the midst of an existential crisis. Two thousand former NFL players have sued the league over head injuries. An NFL survey of players found that only 3% trust the medical staff. Goddell is clamoring to get on the right side of history. So should Dunta. After all, the players are both the creators and victims of this MMA-style turn the game has taken over the past few years. Football was football before helmets gave players the (false?) sense of security to launch themselves headfirst into human brick walls. It will be football after MMA stuff is gone. It might even be better.

Football is not getting ruined any more than a rebellious teen gets ruined by turning into a responsible adult.

All I want for Christmas is ...

Shamelessly borrowed from Monica Trasandes ... but I couldn't have said it better myself.

The ability to unitask | by Monica Trasandes

"Recently I found myself walking toward the kitchen with a load of laundry in my arms, two empty coffee cups dangling from my fingers, and car keys tucked between my chin and the clothes.
Oh, and I stopped to clean up a spill, using a fallen sock, which I then kicked into the kitchen. Forty minutes later, as I pulled my fresh-smelling, shiny keys from the wash, I realized I had reached unhealthy levels of multitasking.
This problem has dogged me for years. For example, I never just make pasta for dinner: I put on the spaghetti sauce while cleaning the bathroom, opening and shredding mail and watering the plants. This means I end up with a very clean apartment that smells like scorched tomatoes. I never seem to just drive, either: I simultaneously peel and eat a banana and listen to the news while returning calls for my media-director job (on my hands-free phone, of course).
A man I admire has called multitasking "the enemy of intimacy"—and for me that's certainly true. Often I do dishes or clear my desk while chatting on the phone with friends. I can't seem to help myself.
The problem: I've always felt guilty about doing one thing at a time. On those occasions when I have, say, carried laundry and dirty dishes on separate trips, my evil inner critic has sneered at me: "Hmm, taking it slow today, aren't we, unitasker? I guess some of us don't want to succeed." To which I should reply: "I want to succeed, evil inner critic! I just don't want to have to achieve all my goals at the same time." But I rarely succeed. Usually I give in, reluctantly, to that bullying voice.
So, for Christmas this year, I want to make a change. At long last, I would like to embrace a slower way of life: I'll read and only read. Drive and only drive. I'll be fully present when talking to my friends. Because with all the multitasking, I know that I'm missing so much."

Woah, China!

Forget The Vest ... fear THIS:

On Monday, China's premier Wen Jiabao lowered the economy's growth target to 7.5 percent from 8 percent, where it has stood for years.  - AP

Early, of course, to sing a dirge but China's "golden era" of ridiculous growth at all costs seems to be getting a bit more expensive these days. Expect to SLOWLY see:

• Reduction in expenditures for extravagant infrastructure projects
• Asset management shift from their current stance (overweight US Treasuries) to something more akin to Singapore's Temasek
• A review of the commercial tax and licensing structure (hopefully not a Chinese Raj)
• A harder line on international trade, both in terms of limitations and in terms of tariffs
• An attempt to diversify labor-intensive businesses across labor pools (inner-China manufacturing zones, African investment zones) 
• Industrialization deeper into inner-China
• All of which will help pay for increased, but highly-targeted social support funding including medical care and pensions, as well as their continued military build-up
• Targeted efforts to increase enforcement, probably with a focus on IP law, financial regulation, governance (as the Economist said a few weeks back, the Chinese government is the only group that has actually read the entire Dodd-Frank act)
• Maybe even some efforts to address environmental sustainability issues

Getting the Most out of Youth

This week, on TED Conversations, (look it up and thank me later) the question was posed:

Roughly 52% of the world's population is under 30. What is best way to harness the energy and ideas of youth?

 To me, step one would be to make sure that energy and creativity are informed. Some background:

I certainly recall formulating incredibly strong opinions in my teens and 20's which later, based on a broader understanding, were dead wrong. I suspect I'm not the only one.

Furthermore, nothing helps me really "gel" or solidify my opinion on something like trying to explain it to someone. Kinda like posting here on Ted Conversations!

Many curricula, especially in the US, rely too heavily on reading- and lecture-based pedagogy. Similarly, our adulthood self-education relies far too heavily on reading- and talking-head-debate based TV and print media. We sit and stare quietly, deciding to agree or disagree with the point being made. Later, over dinner when we try to explain it to our kids, we are disturbed to discover all the holes in our understanding or logic.

Innovation, dynamism, and human caprice are forcing many of us to continually reinvent ourselves professionally. Yet we still instill in our youth in a concept of "profession" tied to a specific set of skills. ("What do you want to be when you grow up?). As TED speaker Sarah Kay challenged: "How many lives can you live?" In prior centuries, the answer was one, but today's youth will be REQUIRED to reinvent themselves over and over again.

Therefore, I would advocate a two-pronged approach:

1/ further a culture of continual education. Make it socially desirable to question your opinions, to seek to further your understanding. Continued lifelong education is the best way to optimize our chances of continually contributing to (or maybe even disruptively improving) our world and thus achieving our life goals.

2/ make that education participatory and practical. University is great, but it so often misses the important applied education. We thus force our young and educated to take a leap of faith into the market across a chasm of lack of experience in applying their knowledge.

Yeah! What HE Said: Buying Stuff that Ain't Yours

As Karl says, the following should be self-evident but isn't.

 In economics, leverage is the use of debt to pretend to have more economic surplus (that is, purchasing power) than you really have. - Karl Denninger, market-ticker.org

Yeah, What HE Said: The Blasphemy of Expressing Opinions

“I mean, look, Bill, I’m not a bigot, but when I get on the plane, I got to tell you, if I see people who are in Muslim garb and I think, you know, they are identifying themselves first and foremost as Muslims, I get worried. I get nervous.”

ALARM! ALARM! BIGOT ALERT! PSYCHO ALERT! INSANE RADICAL CONSERVATIVE RIGHT-WINGER ALERT! CRUCIFY WHOEVER SAID THIS! SEVER ALL TIES TO AVOID GUILT BY ASSOCIATION! ABANDON SHIIIIIIP!

OK, OK, probably ... maybe ... peut-être I'm over-reacting a bit. I mean, it WAS an opinion show, so ... maybe ... but eek - what will people think? That's it. Out he goes!

Apparently that's NPR's idea of a defensible argument for firing one of their most renowned, long-standing employees. That's exactly what they did to Juan Williams for his O'Reilly Factor quote ... or for something ambiguously "larger" as several have suggested.

And therein lies the rub. Juan Williams has long been a bridge across many political worlds. He worked for NPR (for many years) but was happy to participate in political discussions live, in print, on air, and on TV with just about anyone, on just about anything. He has always been willing to try and expand mutual understanding. Problem: Conservative nuts don't understand the real world? Juan's Solution: Go on Conservative shows and explain the opposing viewpoint in refreshingly clear, even-keeled, non-inflammatory terms.

Was his line culturally-insensitive? Yes. Did it reflect a true bias that he ... and many others have? Yes. Did he specifically preface it with the caveat that he's not bigoted? Yes. Did he mis-represent opinion as fact? No. He clearly stated a fact: he gets nervous. In doing so, did he betray his insensitive opinion? Yes.

Even journalists are allowed to have opinions ... even insensitive ones.

In his own words (on Good Morning America this week)

"This is one of the things in my life that's shocking. I grew up on the left. I grew up here in New York City and I've always thought the right wing was the ones who were inflexible and intolerant. Now, I'm coming to realize that the orthodoxy at NPR, as it's representing the left, is just unbelievable," he said. "And especially for me as a black man, to somehow, you know, say something that's out of the box. They find it very difficult... I think they were looking for a reason to get rid of me. They were uncomfortable with the idea that I was talking to the likes of Bill O'Reilly or Sean Hannity."

NPR's differentiating advantage is that they're like Juan: Clear, non-inflammatory, diverse, and comprehensive, if a bit left-leaning, in their reporting. When I want to get a (much) deeper understanding of an issue than I can get from the talking heads on TV ... and a (much) clearer understanding than I can get from the cacophony of the internet ... I turn to NPR.

And I want to hear Juan.

Insensitive Cultural Observations: The Chinese Quirky Quant

In the interest of equal opportunity, I'll focus my next cultural-insensitivity at India's top "strategic competitor" ... and ours.

You'd never believe it by the example of Victim Two: The Chinese Quirky Quant.

To stereotype, scientists the world over have quirky tendencies. And Chinese people, to stereotype, are particularly good at choosing a group and flawlessly conforming to its norms.

The Quirky Quant is no exception in that regard. At all hours of the day and night, he will be hunched over a massive PC in an undesirable cubicle of a large tech slash financial company. The famous-er the better. The cube will have reams of paper strewn about among books on fancy maths. Well-worn books. It will be decorated with something red, something growing, and/or something proclaiming what Chinese zodiac animal-year we find ourselves in. The PC will have multiple monitors upon which will be a plethora of windows of code and diagrams suggesting an incredibly active powerful multi-tasking brain. WARNING: DO NOT try to understand what's on these screens. Your head will explode.

The specimen, himself, will have large and squarish glasses. The distance between his belt buckle and the open throat of his light blue button-down will be no more than 6 inches. Yes, his socks will be showing. They will be athletic socks. Preferably white.

You may think to yourself "how does he get away with wearing white socks to work like that?" The answer is that he wore the same white socks to his interview. At which he flubbed the behavioral part of the questioning, sat through the case study, and made generally unintelligible comments which were one part macerated grammar, two parts technical jargon, and three parts baffling accent. At which point the interviewers, from peers to execs, said to themselves ... wow - he must be smarter than me ... I should frown and nod a lot ... and then hire this dude.

Insensitive Cultural Observations: The Indian's Hot Beverage

Let's lighten things up a bit. This blog is smothered in heavy technocratic suggestions to the world's dirge-grimmest ills.

And I'm not a fan of the make-believe of political correctness.

And the world is, according to at least one walrus, flattening and overcrowding.

So since all flavors of humans are gonna be literally rubbing shoulders in the near future, let's get to know each other's idiosyncrasies. These are not criticisms. Just first-person observations and experiences extrapolated, generalized, and mixed with some assumptions.

Stereotype at your own risk.

Victim One: The Indian's Hot Beverage

Go to your local friendly chain of coffee purveyors in a large city's business district. While you order your eight bucks of triple-hot-hafcaf-mocha-latte-atte and scone, look around for the ever-present recent immigrant of India. He'll be the one with the sharp bouffant hairdo, the excessively shiny leather loafers, and the perfectly white button-down shirt. He'll bear the slight scent of the cigarette he inevitably smoked on the stroll from his office. If he has successfully procreated, he'll have a mustache.

He will curtly yet courteously order a "hot coffee" (if he's trying to identify with his adopted land) or a "hot tea" (if he's feeling particularly Indian). He will pay nonchalantly as though simple muscle memory guides his lax hand his wallet to dole out meaningless bits of money.

He will escort his beverage to the milk-and-sugar counter where he will begin the process.

Step 1: remove lid and insert stir stick
Step 2: blow on drink; stir
Step 3: attempt to slurp-sip; determine it too hot; stir
Step 4: blow on drink; stir
Step 5: lose self momentarily in a steamy Bombay Dream as the aroma enters nostrils; stir
Step 6: ponder milks and sugars; stir
Step 7: select a milk (pronounced with no "i" by the way) and pour a spot into beverage; stir
Step 8: blow on drink; stir
Step 9: attempt to slurp-sip; determine it too hot; stir
Step 10: blow on drink; stir
Step 11: attempt to slurp-sip; determine it too hot; stir
Step 12: blow on drink; stir
Step 13: slurp-sip; burn mouth; stir
Step 14: select a sugar and pour into beverage; stir
Step 15: blow on drink; stir
Step 16: lose self momentarily in a zen moment of abstract yet vivid color and movement as the aroma enters nostrils; stir
Step 17: slurp-sip; burn mouth; stir
Step 18: pour another spot of milk into beverage
Step 19: slurp-sip successfully; stir
Step 20: slurp-sip more deeply; stir; regain consciousness of the outside world

And just like that, he'll be gone. Back to his cubicle-mates upstairs.