A More Perfect Market

Whoops

2009-09-28T19:14:00.002-04:00

Accidentally posted a song here last night.

Didn't mean for it to cross post, so I took it down.

It lives on on Radical Transparency, however, if you want to listen.

And I do love rock operas.

Eggplants and Hazelnuts

2009-09-24T07:39:00.000-04:00

Justin Finnegan and I never lived in the same Chinese city at the same time. Our paths did some crossing, however, both in this country and that. Always enjoyably.

As far as I know, he's still affectionately known, to his Chinese friends, as The Big Eggplant.

And, after a couple of years back in the States, he's taken his show on the road. To Bhutan. To plant hazelnut trees.

Entrepreneurially. Microfinancially. Adventurously.

Says Justin:

The world is in need of—and ready for—a lot more nontraditional careers.

Yes it is. Lots of problems. Lots of paths that haven't led to real solutions. Lots of feelings of helplessness. Lots of giving up. Lots of lowered standards. Lots of half-assed comfort. Lots of conservatism. Not enough crazy decisions to move to Bhutan to set up sustainable nut economies.

What The People Want

2009-09-23T19:25:00.003-04:00

Hacked transportation.

Recycling.

Tata Motors with Chinese characteristics.

The Future...

Pretty sure I'll always feel a special love for the Chinese street entrepreneurs with the sootiest, greasiest hands.

Note: That video came into my life through the TIME Video feed, something to which I subscribed after finding out that Ze Frank is doing his (how do you work this) thing (?) at TIME Video, and I couldn't figure out how to subscribe only to Ze. The inescapable pre-vid ads are a bit of a bummer, but, all in all, it's a pretty fun stream of videos to follow.

Predictions, Surveilance, and The Terminator Seed

2009-09-16T13:31:00.004-04:00

Jon watched Food Inc. on Monday.

And, as an aspiring metaphorical physicist, he's worried about Monsanto's trajectory...

...Then, when they stop supplying air, and people can only live in renegade underwater bubble cities supplied by soot spurting volcanic faults on the ocean floor, and everyone is constantly covered in volcanic ash and chronically coughing from the stubborn volcano air, a grandfather will tell his granddaughter about lost days of sunshine and free fresh air and soybeans that you could pick and plant without a lawyer handing you a paper and taking away your farm... But his granddaughter will be asleep dreaming of being allowed to marry a dolphin and raise a dolphin family.

I want to meet the people that make the big decisions at Monsanto. And I want to read their journals, bug their phones, talk to their brothers and sisters, and find out what motivates them. And I want to bring Jon. And see if he adjusts his prophecies.

Sadness, Sanity, Cynicism, and Van Jones

2009-09-10T22:25:00.002-04:00

Still sad about the Van Jones resignation.

Sad that Glenn Beck has so much influence.

Sad that one of very few environmental leaders that appeals across races and socioeconomic backgrounds didn't get a chance to spend more time on one of the world's biggest stages.

Sad that the world's most powerful government lost someone that simultaneously champions justice and sustainability.

Sad that the unnamed government official that talked to the Washington Post was nonchalant about that loss. Instead of admonishing Beck for calling Jones a communist revolutionary, he pleaded carelessness....

He was not as thoroughly vetted as other administration officials. It's fair to say there were unknowns.

Yuck.

But maybe it's a good thing that Jones is back on the outside, back in a world that operates with a little more sanity than Washington DC.

And yuck again.

For now I'm being cynical.

Well. Hmmm. Is it ok to be cynical when you're cynical about cynicism?

Probably not.

But still.

I'm excited to see what Van Jones does next.

On Camera

2009-09-04T00:57:00.002-04:00

Stopped in Chicago on my way from Philadelphia to Los Angeles.

Hungry.

Hoping I might be able to eat something without creating heaps of garbage.

So I stepped up to a pizza counter, ordered, and told the woman with the hairnet and rollerknife that I didn't need a bag: she could hand me the food, and I could wash my hands after I ate.

She shook her head...

I'd rather give you a bag, dear. I'm on camera here, and I don't want to lose my job for putting something hot in your hand.

Something about rules and airports, I guess.

At least she didn't give me a styrofoam plate.

Hyper-Conservative

2009-08-30T23:53:00.003-04:00

Nassim Nicholas Taleb, author of The Black Swan, felt misrepresented by the press, so he wrote a letter.

Here's the portion of that latter in which he responds to a reporter from The Guardian possibly insinuating that he could maybe possibly be a "climate-change denier:"

I am hyper-conservative ecologically (meaning super-Green). My position on the climate is to avoid releasing pollutants in the atmosphere, on the basis of ignorance, regardless of current expert opinion (climate experts, like banking risk managers, have failed us in the past in foreseeing long term damages and I cannot accept certainty in a certain class of nonlinear models). This is an extension of my general idea that one does not need rationalization with the use of complicated models (by fallible experts) to the edict: "do not disturb a complex system" since we do not know the consequences of our actions owing to complicated causal webs. (Incidentally, this ideas also makes me anti-war). I explicitly explained the need to "leave the planet the way we got it" .

Instead, I was presented as a "climate-change denier" (Lucy Mangan), and my environmental views summarized by "Climate change is not man-made" (Nicholas Watts).

A minimum of homework on the part of your staff would have revealed that I am one of the authors of the recent King of Sweden's Bonham declaration on attitude to climate change.

Hyper-conservative ecologically. Never heard that before. And I kinda like it. A fancy way of saying careful.

One Pig

2009-08-30T00:29:00.003-04:00

What happens when you ask the right questions...

Next for Ms. Meindertsma?

A chicken?

A cow?

A truckload of "100% recyclable" plastic on its way to the waste management facility?

An acre's-worth of feed corn?

The King Corn project started with just that question: If we grow some corn and drop it into the system, where will it end up? They decided it wasn't possible, gave up, and made an awesome movie anyway. I wonder if the barrier they hit was corn-specific. And I wonder if Ms. Meindertsma could have helped them get around it.

Big thanks to Lauren for the introduction. Even The Mighty LA can't keep her from sharing the goodness.

Genius, Power, and Magic

2009-08-27T00:50:00.001-04:00

The conversation this afternoon went from compostable shoes to storytelling on the internets to oh shit moments to a metaphor about marathons to this...

Until one is committed, there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back, always ineffectiveness concerning all acts of initiative and creation. There is one elementary truth, the ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans; that the moment one definitely commits oneself, then providence moves too. All sorts of things occur to help one that would never otherwise have occurred. A whole stream of events issues from the decision raising in one's favor all manner of unforeseen events, meetings and material assistance which no one could have dreamed would have come their way. I have learned a deep respect for one of Goethe's couplets: “Whatever you can do or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it.”

A Scottish mountain climber named WH Murray said that.

I hadn't heard it until today.

But I think it goes in the relevant to everything category.

On the Record

2009-08-23T00:49:00.002-04:00

Some bands record every idea they have, every first draft, every half-song. And set the recordings aside. And listen again in a few days. And then again in five years. So they can learn from mistakes and build new music from pieces of the old.

Some hitters watch all their at-bats. And save the gametape. And use it to help them break out of slumps. To note foot placement and hand movement. To analyze approaches against particular pitchers or in particular ball-strike-count situations.

I think that means we should blog.

If even about nothing but blogging.

More Fun

2009-08-20T01:59:00.001-04:00

Bob Thurman says compassion is more fun.

And, sometimes, I think, the same goes for turning the lights off when you leave a room.

And eating cookies that don't have corn syrup in them.

And walking a block out of your way to give your broken bike business to a mechanic that makes you smile.

And yet the fun is still a secret. Even, sometimes, to those of us that think we know about it.

People still say the reason they recycle is peer pressure. And I still drive a car and use a dryer and buy things from big companies that I'm not excited to support.

So.

How do we share the fun, or the Kool-Aid, or whatever it is that makes it easy to turn around and walk back into that room and hitting that lightswitch? With the peer pressure people? With the people immune to the peer pressure? With the people without pressuring peers? And with ourselves, always?

The Nature, The Power, and The Vision

2009-08-15T00:43:00.004-04:00

This makes me wonder if every big fancy corporate executive should go spend a week alone in the deep mountains.

It makes me wonder how we might go about convincing every big fancy corporate executive to go spend a week alone in the deep mountains.

And it makes me wonder how powerful the dirt and wind and mountain goats really are. What, for example, would Don Blankenship and his mustache see on his fifth hungry day in the quiet? Dollar signs? Boogeymen and their rabid wolfsteeds? Winking ants flashing peace signs? Reasons to be happy to be alive? New possibilities?

A Long Time

2009-08-12T18:04:00.001-04:00

Here's Jared Diamond, quoted in a Financial Times column, on sustainability and collapse...

If we continue to operate non-sustainably, then in 50 or 60 years, the US and Japan and Europe will be in bad shape. But my friends in the highlands of New Guinea will be fine. Some of my friends made stone tools when they were children and they could just go back to what their ancestors were doing for 46,000 years. New Guinea highlanders are not doomed. The first world lifestyle will be doomed if we don’t learn to operate sustainably.

Hard for me to imagine a first world collapse not spilling its messes into every last habitat, industrialized or otherwise.

But, that's not the point...

46,000 years is the point. A long time. Almost 100 times the history of the non-indigenous occupation of the Americas. Without catastrophic water crises or soil blowouts or population explosions.

46,000 years of human ingenuity directed at non-industrial technologies and non-industrial wisdoms.

Incredible how far that lies from our cultural mindset (mindsets). And, cruel and oppressive as stone age societies were - and, in the remote tropical valleys where they still exist, continue to be - they must have something for us.

Like proof that humans can do this sustainability thing?

Makes me want to read Diamond's books again. And whatever he gives us next.

Cowboy Math and Economic Reality

2009-08-10T22:49:00.004-04:00

Excited to see a little love for natural capital in the New York Times today.

Guest columnist Eric Zencey thinks GDP, as a measure of economic well-being, is a worry. It's a measure of transactional activity, not a measure of how things are going. For example...

Consider the 50 miles of sponge-like wetlands between New Orleans and the Gulf Coast that once protected the city from storm surges. When those bayous were lost to development — sliced to death by channels to move oil rigs, mostly — gross domestic product went up, even as these “improvements” destroyed the city’s natural defenses and wiped out crucial spawning ground for the Gulf Coast shrimp fishery. The bayous were a form of natural capital, and their loss was a cost that never entered into any account — not G.D.P. or anything else.

Or, if you prefer metaphorical explanations...

When you’re feeling a little chilly in your living room, you don’t hold a match to a thermometer and then claim that the room has gotten warmer. But that’s what we do when we seek to improve economic well-being by prodding G.D.P.

I'd never thought much about G.D.P. before tonight. But I think Eric makes a good point. And now I want to see a counterpoint. Gotta be at least a couple of G.D.P. fans out there, right?

That Does Not Mean They Are Not Recyclable

2009-08-04T03:17:00.003-04:00

As I mentioned before, I want to find a home for some well-loved but no longer playable Wiffle gear.

In addition to emailing Hank the ball dealer, I asked the internets what they knew, and, among other things, found a story about mascots in Cincinnati.

I wrote to Rumpke Recycling, and Rumpke wrote back...

Wiffle balls and bats are not acceptable materials for our traditional residential recycling programs, but that does not mean they are not recyclable. With any commodity, we have to find a buyer/manufacturer to take the material for re-use. For example, we send plastic milk jugs to a manufacturer of industrial drainage pipe. We know we will consistently receive milk jugs from people on a weekly basis, and we have an agreement established with the manufacturer.

They say they'll take my bats and balls if I have enough to interest one of their clients.

I bet enough's a lot.

But I'm tempted to try anyway. Patiently, of course. But not passively.

Dear Cat:

2009-07-31T03:10:00.003-04:00

Apparently blogging's a good idea....

The fact that I can make a five sentence post about the bummer of the 24 hour limit and get a huge, stream of wisdom email from my sis about the beauty of the 24 hour limit is reason enough for me. But good to listen to Seth too.

Beware the Opt

2009-07-28T12:57:00.002-04:00

I'm reading On Writing by Stephen King.

As the title suggests, it's about words, stories, books, and how a very serious pop horror novelist makes them happen. Parenthetically, however, anything goes.

I don't want to speak too disparagingly of my generation (actually I do, we had a chance to change the world and opted for the Home Shopping Network), but there was a view among the student writers I knew at that time that good writing came spontaneously, in an uprush of feeling that had to be caught at once; when you were building that all-important stairway to heaven, you couldn't just stand around with your hammer in your hand.

Probably smart to keep that opting history in mind. It happens for good reason. Not fearlessly virtuous reason, of course. But understandable reason. Real reason. Reason the roots of which are in everyone probably.

Hopefully knowing that will help us choose the different path.

And, stepping back outside the parentheses, I'd be curious to hear a conversation between King and Elizabeth Gilbert on the subject of spontaneity. Just sayin.

Receiving Like We Give

2009-07-27T10:30:00.002-04:00

Another thing about being a rookie...

Or maybe about trying to make a business out of a cause...

Or maybe just about something I don't do well...

I've had a hard time accepting help on The Carrot Project.

People tell me they'd be happy to take on a little piece of work. I feel guilty that I might ask for too much. And, instead of explaining my concerns for overburdening a volunteer or taking advantage of generosity, describing exactly what I'd love to have someone do, and seeing if the offerer feels ready to commit, I choose something based on its smallness.

I remember (but can't seem to dig up) a passage from The Art of Loving about giving and receiving love. Fromm's point was that to receive gracefully is much more difficult than to give.

Maybe the same goes for help.

Does for me, anyway.

And I'm writing this blog post to tell myself to get better at it.

Shoes, Money, Research, and Mystery

2009-07-22T14:50:00.004-04:00

I've been doing some work for a shoe company.

They're getting serious about the materials aspect of sustainability, and they've hired me to help them launch a new brand.

Carl has decided that the hourly wage they've been paying me counts as The Carrot Project's first revenue. He reckons they hired me because they can tell from The Carrot Project and everything I've written in connection with The Carrot Project that I'm committed and maybe even a little knowledgeable about consumer education and sustainable business. I reckon they hired me because my mom went to high school with one of the founders, and I've known her since I was little.

We're probably both right.

Anyway, I've left the company's name out of this post because I'd much appreciate it if you'd take a few minutes to fill out a little market research survey that connects to the shoe project.

It's anonymous for suspense, and we'll open the curtain and show you the wizard as soon as you finish filling it out.

And, then, if you want to know more (about the company, the project, the materials, whether I'm worried about being both a consultant to the creators of consumer products and a provider of unbiased brand comparison information), get in touch. I'm happy to discuss.

Posted via email from Radical Transparency

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.