Another great quote along those same lines - and I wish I knew who said it - goes something like "You're not a writer until a writer tells you you're a writer." I had that experience when Dilbert was first accepted for syndication, and my editor told me I was a cartoonist. Until that moment, I wasn't. Literally the moment she told me I was a cartoonist, the quality of my drawing improved about 30%.
I think this is the same reason little kids continuously chirp "Mommy, look at me! Look at me!" They are struggling to get a witness, to know they exist.
It's nice to think that you can be your own person, true and accountable to no one but yourself, but I don't think life works that way. We are what other people allow us to be. We exist more in their perceptions than in our own, if you had some way to add it all up and compare.
I was thinking of this as I finished a first draft of my survey of economists. (Yes, you will see it. I need to get it right.) I sent it to my friend whose opinion I value, asking for some comments. As I sent it, I realized my writing doesn't fully exist until he comments. It lives in some sort of Schroedinger's cat half-state. If he likes it, then it becomes real. If not, it will quickly seem as though it never existed. I will rewrite from scratch.
The key to life is picking the right witnesses. Thanks for being mine.
You also know people who have never had a truly great year or a truly horrible one. They coast along at average.
There is no science to support my theory of luck distribution, but the anecdotal evidence is abundant. Take for example all the world leaders who spent some time in jail, either before or after hitting the big time. Or consider all the musicians who had lines of groupies and then died in a plane crash. Is it all a coincidence?
Yes. Or else our so-called reality really is a computer program.
1. Kennedy's race to the moon
2. The Manhattan Project to build a nuclear bomb
What do those two efforts have in common? Answer: no profit.
That's entirely different from the energy situation. Whoever figures out a way to cheaply turn seawater into fuel is going to be very rich. I would be surprised if there are any good ideas in the energy field going unfunded at the moment. My guess is that the energy investment environment has already become like the Dotcom era where venture capitalists were (figuratively) randomly knocking on dorm rooms and asking if anyone had any Internet ideas.
Someone said government can help remove red tape, or twist the arms of big companies where that needs to happen. But isn't that the reverse of how our system works? It seems to me that big companies are twisting the arms of government. So while we might wish it were the other way, reality is stubborn. And realistically, can we expect government to remove red tape?
Every now and then I have hunches about the future that feel both real and inevitable. My current hunch is that individual homes will become their own energy sources. This won't require any help from the government. All you need are three components that seem like they are creeping up on us:
1. More efficient solar cells (breakthroughs are coming daily)
2. Energy storage technology for the home, perhaps based on this:
http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2008/oxygen-0731.html
3. Financing for solar cell installations
If you finance your installation of solar cells with a loan that costs you $300 a month, and save $400 a month in energy costs, you are cash positive on day one. At that point it also makes sense to have an electric car. There won't be much red tape to worry about in this model because every house is an island, and private companies can manufacture all of the parts.
I don't see the government having much of a role in creating that new world.
The thing I wonder is whether the government has any useful role in fostering these advances, other than staying out of the way. You hear the candidates for president talking about encouraging this, or incenting that, or catalyzing whatever. But when billions of dollars of profit are on the line, does anyone need any extra incentive? I doubt it. The market should be taking care of that stuff, and seems to be moving in the right direction.
What can a president do to make any difference in the energy situation? Be specific. Discuss.
I once worked with a guy who referred to his older brother as the "white sheep of the family." The older brother was a CEO of a Fortune 500 company while his siblings had no ambitions that extended beyond lunch. That sort of thing makes me wonder about the whole nature versus nurture question. I assume all the kids in this fellow's family had a similar upbringing, but only one had ambition.
When I was a kid, adults often told me I would be rich and famous some day. Apparently I was giving off some sort of ambition vibe early on. I think ambition is a genetic defect. You can't have ambition unless you think there is something wrong with the way you are. Ambition is a state of feeling perpetually flawed.
By most objective standards, my career has gone well. By my internal standards, I am in a continuous state of not doing enough. A couple of years before he passed, Charles Schulz called me at home to see if I would be interested in a charitable activity he was passionate about. We chatted for awhile, and I don't remember how it came up, but he mentioned that Peanuts greeting cards had just passed the billion cards sold mark.
Pause to digest.
A billion greeting cards. I wonder if any other artist has ever sold a billion of anything. Unfortunately for me, that instantly became my new yardstick. So if you will excuse me now, I have a lot of work to do because apparently there is something wrong with me.
http://www.staceysatwaterford.com/
This is a particularly bad time to be in the restaurant business. So we're always looking for clever ways to compete against the big chain restaurants. Recently I came up with an idea to improve how our customers enjoyed our food at lunch, on average, without changing any of these things that were already excellent, such as...
- food
- presentation
- prices
- selection
- service
- ambiance
Can you figure out what I changed? What else is left?
I borrowed a trick from the Internet. I love sites such as Digg.com and Reddit.com where users rank their favorite web stories. I rearranged our lunch menu the same way, ranking our dishes by popularity and calling out the ranking with the menu format.
There are several ways this improves the experience of diners. Most people easily narrow down their choices to two or three on the menu. The ranking will nudge them toward the higher ranked items, which are indeed the tastiest, so more people will choose our best dishes, on average. Servers already perform this function, but only when asked.
There's often a discrepancy between how good something tastes and how well you can describe it in words. The dishes that look a bit scary in print are often the most delicious if you can get someone to try them. The ranking should help get past that.
Some people hate making decisions. The ranking will help there too. Just order whatever is on the top of the list, so long as it isn't objectionable for some specific reason.
I also started Game Night every Monday. That's the slowest night for most restaurants, so we have plenty of table space. On Monday you can bring a board game, or borrow one of ours, and play at your table. Stay as long as you want. It's especially good if you have kids with you and want to keep them amused. On the big screen TV at the bar we run a loop of trivia questions so the bar patrons can compete if they like. That concept has been working. Business is up on Mondays.
We also started a Networking Lunch concept. You can sign up on our web site to have lunch with five randomly selected strangers. The web site takes your available times and matches you when there are enough people for your table. You automatically get an e-mail with the invitation and an option to decline. It sounds crazy, but you'd be surprised how many people sign up to have lunch with strangers. Some people do it to increase business contacts. Some people just like meeting new folks in a relaxed way that has no expectations.
If you are a real estate broker, or interior designer, or own a spa, the more people you know personally, the better your odds of getting referrals. By the end of lunch, you know five new people.
http://www.staceyscafe.com/staceys-waterford/networking-lunch.php
We also have an iPod DJ system. For groups that want an instant party, we can provide food, a dance floor, and a sound system. All they need to bring is an iPod with their own dance music mix (or use ours) and it's an instant party in our private banquet room or on the main floor. We can even run an embarrassing loop of old photos on our big screen TV that has a laptop connected.
Those are a few of our new ideas. I thought you might like to know what happens when a cartoonist manages a restaurant.
Let's do a little experiment here. I asked economists to rank issues by how important they are to the economy. I'm asking you the same thing now. In the comments, tell us what you think is the number one issue for the United States from an ECONOMIC perspective.
I'm guessing your answers will be all over the place, and that says a lot about the challenge of democracy. If you don't know which issue is most important to the economy, it's hard to know which candidate would do the best job.
In your view, what is the most important issue for the economy?
Today in the news, the author of the book "100 Things to Do Before You Die" died at the age of 47 after hitting his head at home. That probably wasn't on the list.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080826/ap_on_en_ot/obit_freeman
Also in the news, a woman accused an actor of pulling down her top in a restaurant. The actor is infamous for his crude behavior, and his name is... wait for it... Andy Dick.
And of course everyone knows the story of fitness guru Jim Fixx who died of a heart attack at age 52. He wrote a book telling people how to, in essence, not die of a heart attack at the age of 52.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Fixx
With so many famous people doing so many things, some of those things are bound to be ironic. But that might not be the full story. According to studies, people named Dennis are more likely to become dentists.
http://www.stat.columbia.edu/~cook/movabletype/archives/2005/08/dennis_the_denv.html
Being the moist robots that we are, apparently we can accidentally get programmed by tiny cues in the environment. For example, another study showed that people who have overweight friends are more likely to be overweight themselves. The things you associate with, and think about, influence who you are.
This is tricky stuff because you might decide to name your child Richard, hoping the "rich" part would take hold, only to find out he prefers to be called Dick.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/14859827/
It is all very tragic, and yet I am amused by everything in this story, starting with the fact that the husband's first choice was to reconcile with his estranged wife. His second choice was to have her killed with a hammer. That is a man who does not recognize nuance. I wonder how many people in his life have escaped close calls.
Husband: "Hey, Fred, do you have another beer?"
Fred: "All I have is some light beers."
Husband (thinking): I should kill him with a hammer.
My other favorite part of the story is that the hit man carried his alleged client's phone number in his backpack while on the job. I never attended hit man school, but I have to think they teach you on the first day not to keep your client's phone number with you on the job. And on day two they probably cover the basics of not letting yourself get strangled by the lady you are sent to kill.
I can imagine myself in the place of the nurse who did the strangling. Once you subdue a hit man, you really don't want to take the chance of him getting up no matter how much he's promising he won't do it again. It blurs the line of self-defense, but you have no real option but to finish the job once you start. And I suppose if a guy has just hit you with a hammer, you'd probably enjoy making his eyes bug out like a cartoon character. But maybe that's just me.
The other great irony is that the strangler is a nurse. I'd hate to be a future patient who recognizes her face from the news. I'd hold my pee for a week before I'd ask that nurse for a bed pan.
Likewise, if an economist tries to tell you where the stock market will be in a year, you can safely ignore that. But if he tells you a gas tax holiday is an unambiguously bad idea, that's worth listening to, especially if economists on both sides of the aisle agree.
If you think it is okay to ignore economists because they are so often wrong, you're looking at the wrong questions. Economists are generally wrong with complicated models but right about concepts. For example, they know that additional domestic drilling won't make much of a dent in the energy problem. And they know that free trade is generally good for all economies. (You can argue with my examples, but the point is that some things are generally known by economists while not being understood by the general public.)
By analogy, a mechanic knows that changing your oil is good for your engine, but he can't tell you what problems you will have with your car next year. You shouldn't ignore the mechanic's advice on changing oil just because he doesn't know when your battery will die, or because he didn't personally perform any scientific studies on oil changes.
Doctors are often wrong, but you are still better off going to the doctor than diagnosing problems yourself. And when you get the opinions of several doctors, your odds improve, even if those several doctors aren't a scientific sample. The important thing is that following a doctor's advice, or the consensus of several doctors, increases your odds compared to the alternative. And the more doctors the better.
Some of you noted that the candidates have top economists on their payrolls, so voters can be assured any president is getting good advice. But realistically, an economist involved in a political process has to support the candidate's ideas or he's off the team. At best, one of the candidates obviously has bad economists advising him because they disagree with the other guy's economists.
Some of you noted that most economists are Democrats. Prior to doing the survey, I expected it would be the other way around. But indeed, most of the economists we surveyed are registered Democrats. But there are plenty of Republicans and independent voters in the survey so you can see how each group weighs in separately. Personally, I will be most interested in the independent voters and the economists who cross party lines.
After the results are announced I'll tell you how we cleverly found over 500 economists. There's a clear limit to how scientific you can get with your sample when it is a bunch of people who chose economics as a profession and were easily findable. But again, you have that same problem when you pick your doctor, or when you get second opinions. You're not dealing with scientific sampling.
You're going to wonder what my own political bias is. In the interest of full disclosure, I think I registered Independent the last time I voted, but frankly I don't remember. I'm not superstitious, which leads me to be socially liberal. Economically, I'm conservative. I'm closest in philosophy to an Arnold Schwarzenegger Republican. He seems to be interested in keeping the government out of people's private lives and managing things based on data as opposed to faith. Neither presidential candidate floats my boat. One wants to transfer my money to other people and the other is a lukewarm corpse. I think both candidates would be indistinguishable in foreign affairs because their options will be so constrained. Those are my biases.
