A More Perfect Market

Extroverted Consumption and White Plastic Balls

2009-07-19T22:00:00.003-04:00

Tough to keep up with the blogging during Wiffle season.

And tough to play with plastic bats and balls that show no signs of recyclability.

There's no clear Contact Us channel on the Wiffle site, but I just sent this to Hank at The Connecticut Store, the Wiffle distributor through which I order cases of balls when summers begin...

Hey Hank,

I'm sending this to you because Wiffle itself doesn't seem to want to be in email contact with anyone. And because I've corresponded with you in the past about cases of balls that I've ordered. And because you've been exceptionally nice and helpful...

I play Wiffle whenever I can. My cousins and I play hard. We think we play well. We love it. We learned from our uncles. And we'll teach another generation someday for sure.

We're hard on our gear, however. We dent, bend, and crack bats often, and it's rare that a ball lasts more than a week before we've disfigured it and dropped it in the retired balls bucket.

Looking at that bucket today, I thought about plastic and petrochemicals and pollution, and I decided I'd figure out how to keep those old balls (and their bat cousins) from evre being sent to a landfill.

Step one in that process is finding out if there's a regular old recycling option available.

I've looked on all the Wiffle packaging I can find (minimal, mostly cardboard packaging, which I like), and I haven't been able to find any info on recyclability there. But I'm not giving up that easy. So I'm asking you what you know.

Might Wiffle balls and bats be recyclable after all? Do you know what kind of plastic are they made of? Possible that they're made of recycled plastic already? Possible to make them of recycled plastic? Or compostable bio-plastics? But I'm digressing.

First things first. Any suggestions on recycling Wiffle gear?

Let me know.

Thanks!

Jake

Maybe one way to consume responsibly is to initiate with the producers.

Maybe they'll talk back. Maybe we'll listen to each other. And maybe we'll all learn.

We'll see.

I'm definitely swinging with my eyes closed a little bit here. But you never know. And I say better to swing and hope than let a fastball down the middle fly by. Or at least that's what I say when I really badly want to end a blog post with a baseball metaphor...

What the People Want

2009-07-16T01:07:00.005-04:00

Crazy that a big, fancy newspaper would let Sarah Palin write an op-ed about greenhouse gas legislation.

I bet the article was really good for business. For one day.

And I wonder what that'll mean for tomorrow. I wonder what the paper will have learned. I mean they've got to be tempted, right?

I request a follow-up op-ed about the ethical implications of giving a celebrity politician a soapbox for which she's clearly not qualified.

Comedy, Education, and Corn

2009-07-12T21:38:00.002-04:00

Steven Soderbergh, Matt Damon - welcome to the the industrial ag discussion...

Exciting.

And, as usual, I can't resist...

If we can't do it with a smile on our face, if we can't do it with love in our heart, then, children, we ain't got no right to do it at all.

Two Years Later

2009-07-11T23:23:00.003-04:00

In June 2007, Wiley and I started reading Marc Andreessen's blog.

I don't remember how we found it (though my guess is that Wiley did the initial finding and I instigated the daily ranting and raving about it at the dirty little Beijing noodle shop where we ate most of our lunches that summer).

I do remember that it felt overwhelming relevant. Instantly. We were a year deep in what we already fully acknowledged (most of the time, anyway) to be a tragic comedy of a dot com startup experience.

The founders were clearly in over their heads. We had way too much money, way too many employees, and were making way too little progress toward the kickass language tutoring service we thought we were building. And we were not only surrounded by idiots, but we were at least as incompetent as everyone with whom we were working.

And we fell in love with Pmarca. He made us feel like everything was ok, like, yeah, this shit's hard, but, if you like it, you might as well keep giving it all the effort you have. Eventually, you'll figure something out, and you'll do something useful, do it well, and feel great about it.

Or at least that's how my fallible memory tells me he made me feel. I'll let Wiley amend or dispute that with a comment if he wants to.

Anyway, we dug the blog. And I like to imagine that we learned from it. And we we gave it to the founders for whom we were working, hoping they'd learn from it too (which they probably did). And we left the company.

And now we're doing other things, all improbable and entrepreneurial and involving the internets.

And I post this because Pmarca blinked online for a moment last week, announcing that he was starting a new venture capital fund, and raising hopes that he'll start blogging again.

So I went back and read some of my old favorites. And they're still scary and inspiring and honest and totally entertaining. The Pmarca Guide to Startups, part 1: Why not to do a startup is a great jumping in point.

The Guide tells me that I probably should not be doing a startup. At the same time, I think Pmarca would agree that I should.

Teach Me To Recycle, Please

2009-07-10T12:11:00.004-04:00

Been thinking a lot about shoes lately. Shoes and materials and compostability and what to do with things when we're finished using them.

And I've been curious for a long time about customer service and sustainability. To what extent will a business engage with a customer that's concerned about energy use or pollution or human rights? And what might come of that?

So, feeling outgoing yesterday, I sent this to Merrell:

I've worn Jungle Mocs almost every day for the past 10 years.

I love the shoes. I think they're versatile and comfortable and extremely easy to put on and take off.

I've worn through many pairs, and I now have something of a Jungle Moc graveyard.

I don't want to just throw them away. I hate throwing things away, especially things that have been good to me (less uncomfortable for me to get annoyed at the company that wrapped my dental floss in an extra layer of unrecyclable packaging than you guys, who have given so much love to my feet in the past).

Will you help me recycle them? Maybe you take them back? Maybe can point me in the direction of a recycler nearby that takes shoes?

I know I could send the shoes to Nike. Or talk to professional recyclers. Or see if Brent would help me with a little fungal decomposition project.

But I want to give Merrell a chance to impress me. I want them to talk, like real people.

I know they can. I know every company can. And I'm convinced that a little discussion would do a lot of good.

The Energy Technology Olympics

2009-07-06T19:36:00.000-04:00

One thing that consistently made me uncomfortable when I lived in China was everyday nationalism. And one thing that consistently makes me uncomfortable now that I live in the USA again is everyday nationalism.

Community-level cultural solidarity I feel. Planet-scale compassion I feel. Drawing boundaries between Americans and Chinese and Italians and Tanzanians, however, doesn't make as much sense to me. I get that it's useful in lots of ways, but I don't like that it closes minds to exchange and evolution.

That said, I think Thomas Friedman made a compelling argument for nationalism over the weekend.

He thinks everyone in the world should be competing to create the energy technologies that'll lead us to a sustainable future.

He thinks Chinese nationalism has led to aggressive lawmaking, which has already become a positive force in creating that competition.

And he hopes American nationalism follows suit.

Makes me squirm a little. But you gotta love competition when the race is to the top.

Simple Accumulation

2009-07-05T19:21:00.003-04:00

A few days after Giuls and I last went to prison, she told me to watch Chris Abani's second TED Talk. She watches it all the time. More, she says, than I watch his first.

We had talked to the prisoners about big dreams and little actions, but I'm not sure she even meant to make the connection. As I remember, she and I were thinking about stories when she recommended that I go back and listen again. Stories connect to everything, though, I guess. Big dreams and little actions included...

The world is never saved in grand, messanaic gestures but in the simple accumulation of gentle, soft, almost invisible acts of compassion...everyday acts of compassion.

I dig the mispronunciation.

And I think Chris would agree that there's nothing wrong with a big dream if it motivates everyday acts or helps organize their accumulation.

Lunch Tables, Dogooders, and Metaphorical Music

2009-06-30T16:08:00.002-04:00

Day before yesterday, Stacey Monk, founder of Epic Change, a nonprofit that "helps hopeful people in need share their stories," wrote about dogooder communities. While she enjoys the company and appreciates the support, she thinks it's time to branch out...

There’s these kids sitting at the other lunch tables in our global cafeteria. They’re jocks, geeks, artists, musicians and cheerleaders…and we need their help. Doing good isn’t our job, it’s everyone’s. And as long as changing the world is relegated to a sector, it will never happen.

I agree. And, to Stacey's metaphorical problem, I offer a partial (but metaphorical) solution.

Bridge songs.

The songs you use to convince rookies and skeptics that the musicians you love are worthy. Maybe not the best songs. Probably not even your favorites. But the ones that can make disproportionately good first impressions. The ones that are least intimidating. The ones that get people humming along immediately. The ones that broaden the fanbase.

So, maybe, before Stacey takes her tray over to the punk rockers' table, she should have a quick listen through the tape in her boombox and make sure it's rewinded strategically.

Just exactly which songs bridge best when played for punk rockers, I don't know. As I said, this is a partial solution (and solution probably isn't the right word). But maybe ask the punk rocker that sits behind you in Algebra II. Or, maybe better, ask the dogooder that used to eat lunch with the punk rockers...

Well, Stacey, that's what I got for you right now, at 4pm on a rainy Tuesday. You recognize something important, and you're calling for a good thing. I'll do my best to do my part.

Leading By Letting Go

2009-06-29T00:35:00.001-04:00

While Danny was visiting, he got an email.

He works with artists. He gives them assignments. They draw. He gives feedback. They draw some more. And then he prints tee shirts.

The email made him smile big.

He called me over to have a look.

It was a gorgeously colorful drawing of Andy Warhol as an auto mechanic.

He said it was by far the best thing he'd ever seen that artist do.

And he thought he knew why it was so good:

The thing she did was do something I didn't ask her to do.

Expediency Vs. Efficiency

2009-06-28T00:06:00.006-04:00

A few days ago, Lauren ordered three books on Amazon.

None were immediately available, so Amazon gave her the group my items into as few shipments as possible option. She chose it, figuring it'd save fuel and packaging. And she felt both good and grateful to Amazon for letting her choose patience and efficiency.

Then, today, she got an email:

We thought you'd like to know that we shipped this portion of your order separately to give you quicker service. You won't be charged any extra shipping fees, and the remainder of your order will follow as soon as those items become available.

Sigh.

I guess the next step is to tell Amazon's magician logicians that their automated customer service system needs to get a little more discerning when evaluating opportunities to impress...

Two Peas in the Soup

2009-06-23T22:04:00.003-04:00

Danny's here.

He's a rookie entrepreneur too. And a writer. And a teacher. And an aspiring but unimpressive competitive eater.

I love getting advice from people that know what they're talking about, but there's something extra special amazing about talking business with someone that knows as little as I do, admits and understands that, and thinks the thing to do is to go for it anyway.

More Than Abundant

2009-06-22T23:28:00.004-04:00

I wrote the word corn yesterday. It made me think of syrup and advertising. Which sent me on a search for an ad. Which reminded me of an interview with Earl Butz.

In King Corn, a documentary about a couple of kids that want to see what it's like to farm with the big boys, filmmakers Curt Ellis and Ian Cheney ask Butz, Secretary of Agriculture in the Nixon administration, why he created corn subsidies.

Butz, a quiet old man in the interview, said his goal was abundant, inexpensive food. He didn't want Americans to worry about going hungry. He wanted food to be a given, something everyone could always afford, something that didn't get in the way of the rest of people's lives.

I don't doubt his sincerity. I don't disagree with his goals. And I think he was on to something. But he created a monster.

And one reason that happened, it seems to me, is that he didn't dream big enough. Abundant and inexpensive was enough for him. He lacked the imagination - or the courage - or the energy - to strive for inexpensive, abundant, and healthy - for people and for the planet.

The good news is that imagination and courage and energy do exist, and there's at least one city of 2.5 million, in one big developing country, that's learning to feed itself well.

Smells Like Money to Me

2009-06-21T22:17:00.006-04:00

I'm a little worried that the first half of this preview is going to chase people away. But wait for the music to change; it gets good...

People have gotta start demanding good, wholesome food of us, and we'll deliver, I promise you.

Crazy that something that simple - that fundamental - that obvious - is so hard to do.

Big world, I guess. Lotta corn. Lotta junk food. Lotta money invested in both.

But you never know. The right story told the right way could change everything. Good luck, Food, Inc.

The Tail And The Chute

2009-06-18T23:50:00.003-04:00

I've been living with my now 88 year-old grandfather for about 18 months, and hardly a day's gone by without him hassling me about one aspect of The Carrot Project or another.

He knows just about everything about everything at this point: plans, dreams, challenges, lessons learned, sleep lost. And there's no subject on which he doesn't have advice.

Less than three months from now, however, I'll be living in LA, and not having him around will be a bit of an adjustment.

Or, if you ask him, a bit of a worry.

This, from tonight, at my mother's house, where Hal and I were having dinner...

I'm gonna miss this one.

He's deserting me, you know?

Which means I won't be around to grab his tail as he goes up the chute and pull him back to reality.

No question it's the unrelentingly improbable bigness of the vision that sparks the highest intensity commentary.

But, grumbly as that commentary often sounds, I know it's improbable bigness that he loves most.

Is Partially Ever Enough?

2009-06-17T00:34:00.004-04:00

About a month ago, Coke announced that they were going to start integrating plant materials into their plastic bottles.

They got some cautiously optimistic love on the internets for it. And, when they actually launch the PlantBottle, they'll get some more.

But my humble prediction is that 30% plant materials, regardless of the positive impact that'll have environmentally, won't earn them significant trust or loyalty or increased market share.

30% isn't big enough. It's not a good enough story. It's not a revolution.

It betrays, to use a word I learned from Gary Vaynerchuk, half-pregnancy.

And that's a bummer, because Coke's doing a good thing.

But the feeling that 30% isn't enough is a good thing too, because while Coke recognizes and admits that it's a bad idea to use petroleum-based plastics to package their liquids, they still feel ok about using bottles that are made of 70% petroleum-based plastics, and that is a bummer.

Weird The Things That Frustrate Me

2009-06-14T23:35:00.003-04:00

A year ago, 16 year-old Daniel Burd won a big Canadian science fair by befriending plastic-eating bacteria and making a grocery bag disappear in three months.

And that's it. No news since.

Shouldn't someone have taken Daniel's research and run with it? Shouldn't biodegradation of plastic be a massively sexy opportunity and attract armies of the world's most brilliant and innovative minds? Shouldn't everything be different by now?

I guess I might be unreasonably impatient with science and engineering. Or maybe I'm just a sucker for bacteria...

Measuring Global Innovation

2009-06-12T12:19:00.004-04:00

From Stephen Johnson's Time Magazine cover story about Twitter, The Open Conversation, The Super-Fresh Web, and End-User Innovation:

When we talk about innovation and global competitiveness, we tend to fall back on the easy metric of patents and Ph.D.s. It turns out the U.S. share of both has been in steady decline since peaking in the early '70s. (In 1970, more than 50% of the world's graduate degrees in science and engineering were issued by U.S. universities.) Since the mid-'80s, a long progression of doomsayers have warned that our declining market share in the patents-and-Ph.D.s business augurs dark times for American innovation. The specific threats have changed. It was the Japanese who would destroy us in the '80s; now it's China and India.

But what actually happened to American innovation during that period? We came up with America Online, Netscape, Amazon, Google, Blogger, Wikipedia, Craigslist, TiVo, Netflix, eBay, the iPod and iPhone, Xbox, Facebook and Twitter itself. Sure, we didn't build the Prius or the Wii, but if you measure global innovation in terms of actual lifestyle-changing hit products and not just grad students, the U.S. has been lapping the field for the past 20 years.

I realize that it might be a bit problematic that I've let my thoughts drift so far from the hit consumer technology products context here, but I have, and I think it's worth noting (and a bummer) that there are no innovations on that list that relate directly to food, water, health, materials, or (except for the Prius) energy.

Information exchange is valuable, long-term, for everyone and everything. So no question about the fact that Wikipedia and Google (and probably Facebook and Twitter) are important. But I don't think it's a good idea to "measure global innovation in terms of actual lifestyle-changing hit products" if you consider video game systems and software that lets you rewind your TV to be fundamentally lifestyle-changing.

Innovations, if we're going to celebrate them - if we're going to define our country's economic and education systems by them - should change a whole lot more than the ways in which we in the developed world entertain ourselves.

The Work

2009-06-09T10:58:00.004-04:00

The first time I read Bird By Bird, it strengthened my love for baseball. It reminded me that I'm not a total lunatic for (or at least not alone in) loving the Phillies so much that I want to jump and scream and hug every other Phils' fan every time Jimmy Rollins gets a hit.

I'm reading it again.

And this time it's strengthening my love for the imperfectly organized pursuit of big, improbable dreams...

The problem that comes up over and over again is that these people want to be published. They kind of want to write, but they really want to be published. You'll never get to where you want to be that way, I tell them. There is a door we all want to walk through, and writing can help you find it and open it. Writing can give you what having a baby can give you: it can get you to start paying attention, can help you soften, can wake you up. But publishing won't do any of those things; you'll never get in that way.

Now replace writing with working on a project the goal of which is to make meaningful change. And replace being published with making money or getting recognized or exploding into household name hugeness.

Making that meaningful change might require money or hugeness or recognition, of course, and that's an important crack in the analogy.

And an important reality for us dreamers to keep in mind.

But not as important to keep in mind, I don't think, as the fact that good things don't happen because of commitment to The Result (the high five, the payoff, the name in lights); they happen because of commitment to The Work.

Spontaneous Wisdom of the Day

2009-06-02T11:44:00.002-04:00

Running a business is one of the hardest things you can do. And if you're gonna do it, you'd better be ready to use your fucking imagination.

That's Hal, my grandfather, frustrated at General Motors for investing in luxury and power instead of fundamental, truly transportation-related, potentially game-changing technology (aerodynamics, advanced materials, hybrid engines, etc.).

I think it's a fun quote with or without the context.

Bury Them with Their Cars

2009-05-28T23:48:00.003-04:00

According to Wall Street Journal columnist Daniel Henninger, the hum purr screech vroom culture that built America is in danger. Liberals and godless tax-raisers have captured Washington, and they and their emissions standards think the only way they can save the planet is by sacrificing the country's heart.

Made me think of this song...

Strange country, this one. Strange and stubborn and, hopefully, evolving.

In Henninger's words...

This tension over how we live arrived before the world began standing on its head over global warming. The guys in the hemi-powered drones used to mock the granola and Birkenstock crowd. Look who's on top now.

I hope he's right.

For the Record

2009-05-28T01:03:00.002-04:00

When you're doing something important, like launching a big project, or a new company, or running some sort of campaign designed to change things, keep a scrapbook. Not a note book, a tool for writing down facts. A scrapbook. Include photos and quotes and clippings and events. Two reasons. First, you'll be glad later (I still have scrapbooks from some of my previous projects) and more important, because it will remind you that you're doing something important and that time is precious.

That's Seth Godin, in a sidenote to a post about nostalgia.

I started this blog thinking it'd become something like a scrapbook, a catalog of thoughts and questions and stories connected to my first shot at starting something serious.

I wanted a scrapbook so I could look back at yesterday's mind and analyze.

I wanted it so friends and colleagues and advisors could see me starting to fly off the rails and yank me back.

I wanted it for my grandchildren, so they can meet the 26, 27, etc. year old me someday.

I wanted it because I thought I might spill out some words worth saving.

I wanted it because I wished I had everyone else's scrapbooks. For guidance. For ideas. For inspiration. For laughs.

And I wanted it because maybe I'm on the road to something huge, because it might be useful to the world someday to see the instant replay of someone that knows very little about doing anything gets his hands on a good idea and somehow takes it big.

Seventeen months in, I don't think More Perfect Market, in isolation, is a scrapbook. It's a pile of scraps, some for the book, some for somewhere else.

Selections from More Perfect Market plus The Carrot Project Blog plus a little Radical Transparency plus videos like today's that go on too long or for whatever other reason never make it out of Viddler, and I think there do exist the components of the beginnings of a scrapbook.

And it is good to know it's all safe on the internets. Reminds me, in moments of doubt and sleepiness, of how badly I want to give this project all I can, how much I'd love to make this little change in the world.

A Film From The Farm

2009-05-27T01:12:00.003-04:00

This is how McDonald's hamburgers are made.

That video is on the McDonald's site, which makes it marketing.

It feels far more transparent than I would have expected a video in its situation to be, which is great.

And it involves multi-staged industrial meat grinding and giant robotic arms lifting boxes and boxes of perfectly trimmed and frozen uniform patties, lifting boxes and packing them neatly for massive scale delivery to megamall food courts and highway service areas and school cafeterias, which, of course, is terrifying. And fascinating. And awe-inspiring. And then, when the fear mixes with the awe and fascination, even scarier.

And, when you click that link and watch the video, note the URL. Films from the farms. I'll definitely be checking back to see what else they post. I'm putting it on my calendar right now, in fact. Wednesday morning at 9am. Check films from the farms. Repeating weekly.

Certainty and Trust

2009-05-26T10:13:00.003-04:00

Certainty is a worry.

It's pretty much best friends with Closed-Mindedness.

But it's also really tight with Trust.

And hard to keep Passion around if Trust is getting antsy to leave the party.

...

The Certainty my sister and I started talking about last night was certainty about knowledge and certainty in discussion. And we didn't like it at all. "So much pleasure and excitement in constantly pursuing things," said Giuls.

But then we thought about the word in other contexts. Aren't we certain about our love for each other? Doesn't it take certainty about the rightness and potential positive impact of our work for us to commit to it?

We decided that Trust might be a better word for us.

But, still, this is tricky. Because I think I am and should be certain about some fundamental things. And I think I should also be scared of closing the mind.

So maybe what we want is Certainty in the moment? Given the information we have about the present situation, and given what that information and other information tells us about the likely future, we are certain, in this moment. Maybe?

Language. Not afraid to make the mind spin around and trip over itself.

The Touch Test

2009-05-23T12:06:00.003-04:00

A. By posting this video, I feel like I'm doing my part in keeping the crunchy toilet paper meme alive.

2. Gotta love Rolf Skar. I would never have expected a Greenpeace spokesman to have stayed so cool in a Fox News interview.

d. In Megyn's mind, she made Rolf's best point for him: far more important than protecting ancient forests is keeping scary-sounding chemicals off our bodies.

It always makes me feel a little sad to hear things like that, for I'm pretty sure Megyn is speaking for more than just her Fox News audience when she says it, and I wonder just how slippery the health-consciousness to envronmentalism slope really is.

My suspicion is not slippery enough. And I think those of us that have already been rolling down the mountain a while need to do a better job with our ice and banana peels.

Should

2009-05-21T11:29:00.003-04:00

Should is a strange word. Someone told me recently never to use it, that speaking it was a form of settling, of giving up, of accepting an unnecessarily not-ideal situation. And I haven't been using it. Not much anyway.

But now I hear Umair Haque say this:

One of the big problems in the economy today is that we talk about what we can do, not what we should do, not what we ought to do. What we should do and what we ought to do very often are very different from what we can do. And when we think in terms of only what we can do, we limit ourselves from achieving what we should do in the first place.

[From in a video in response to the comments on his post on How to Save Newspapers (Or, Why the NYT Should Acquire Twitter).]

It makes me think of acts of futility, jobs that are way too big, and Ray Anderson, the recovering plunderer.

It makes me think we should acknowledge what we should do. Acknowledge it, and then try.