Lazy Linking, 115th in an Occasional Series

Stuff I liked lately on the Internets:

115.1 Vote for your favorite unwritten Monopoly rule here nyti.ms/1dVRDKw @nytimes

 

115.2 Strangers stage intervention for anorexic woman @ TN Y usat.ly/1f2Dz5K @usatoday

115.3 Sex, booze, partying, & socio-economic inequality on college campuses bit.ly/1lsMuBt @crookedtimber

115.4 The story behind Philly’s motto has it all – history, language, Scripture bit.ly/1plrSKG @hiddencityphila

115.5 In honor of @deseanjackson10 here’s when he visited the View to support a victim of bullying bit.ly/1i2s6Si @youtube

Sweet Story

Last week I had the pleasure of traveling to Hershey, Pennsylvania, for a business meeting.  The place, as you can imagine, is steeped in the legacy of Milton Hershey, whose name is synonymous not only with chocolate but also with a school, a medical center, and a whole complex of family attractions.  It's an almost universally recognized name, and yet it took actually being in the town to really understand just how incredibly far-reaching his achievements were from 100+ years ago:

* Bringing milk chocolate to the masses

* Creating one of the world's most valuable and most well-known brands

* Birthing the rare company town that was benevolent to its workers

* Casting a vision for a true live/work/play community way before it was cool

* Laying the foundation for numerous charitable efforts that continue to make a difference today

Entrepreneur, town builder, philanthropist, and advocate.  I'd say that's a life well lived! 

Nice Bumping Into You

I'm just now getting to this TechCrunch article about Amazon vs. Zappos as workplaces.  I'd hoped the story would cover the angle I want to explore, which is this notion of wanting to pamper employees within self-contained communities vs. letting them roam free in the real world.  The perks available at places like Google are now legendary - five-star chefs, sleep pods, shuttle buses - and are designed to maximize the amount of time and energy people can spend on doing awesome work by minimizing time they need to worry about eating and errands and commuting. 

But they have the effect of cloistering employees with other employees.  Apple and Amazon are both planning new headquarters locations that encourage this. Tony Hsieh of Zappos wants the opposite to happen, investing heavily in his part of Las Vegas to encourage mingling with strangers and serendipitous encounters out on the street. 

Growing up in Silicon Valley, I still know lots of people who work there, and the suburban nature of the area lends itself to sticking with your co-workers: you eat in the corporate cafeteria or carpool with your office mates to the nearby noodle place, you get in your car at the end of the day and drive home without (hopefully) running into anyone on your drive home.  Living and working in Philly, chance encounters are literally around every corner: I can't tell you how many times I've bumped into friends and colleagues while riding the bus, walking down the street, or running a quick errand. 

Different strokes for different folks, I understand.  But while mind-blowing perks may get all the press, there's something to be said for being able to randomly bump into people while you're out and about.  Even as an introvert, I like it.  And, as someone who's trying to network his way to more business for my business, and as someone who's trying to be as positive an influence on as many people as possible, it's a good way to live and work and play.

Lazy Linking, 114th in an Occasional Series

Stuff I liked lately on the Internets:

114.1 In Philly, are houses too unaffordable or are incomes too low? bit.ly/1mlc8s7 @nextcityorg

114.2 In E. Baltimore: new public schl as community hub & economic driver nyti.ms/1gjXPS4 @nytimes

114.3 Problems only immigrant kids understand (yes yes oh gosh yes on 13, 14, & 19) bzfd.it/1euxnDj @buzzfeed

114.4 Natural disasters cost more now, not b/c of climate change, but b/c the world is wealthier 53eig.ht/1fH5YKs @fivethirtyeight

114.5 Hey, parents: give your kids room to fail bit.ly/18Aq0UQ don’t help w/homewk bit.ly/1oz14Gq let ‘em play bit.ly/1dt6Cvo @theatlantic

SustainaBall in Three Weeks

I am on the board of Sustainable Business Network (SBN) and we are having an event in April called SustainaBall, which will be a celebration of our local economy and of the principles of SBN. 

The event will be at the German Society of Pennsylvania (611 Spring Garden) on Saturday, April 12.  If you’re interested in buying a ticket (early-bird before end of this week is $65 for SBN members and $90 for non-members) or your organization being a sponsor ($500 and up), let me know and/or go here or here for more info.

I’m looking forward to the event and the networking and celebratory opportunities it will provide.  I hope you will be able to join me and I appreciate any way you can support this great event and this great organization. 

Faith to Move Mountains

It has been a painfully drawn-out winter season for many of us in the US.  Feeling the sun's warmth on our skin seems impossibly long ago, and we are weary of the constant stress of wearing layers and weather-related cancellations.  Many of us have despaired, not only from lack of daylight but also from the gnawing sense that we would never see spring.

Metaphorically, all of us will go through interminably long winter seasons in our spiritual journeys.  Our faith feels dry and dead, long removed from times of abundance and bloom.  We feel distant from God and cloistered in a cold and dark place.

I've written about how "winter is a season, too," before, but wanted to add something even more eloquent, which is not more of my words but words from Jesus (from the 17th chapter of the gospel according to Matthew):

When they came to the crowd, a man came up to Jesus, falling on his knees before Him and saying, “Lord, have mercy on my son, for he is a lunatic and is very ill; for he often falls into the fire and often into the water. “I brought him to Your disciples, and they could not cure him.” And Jesus answered and said, “You unbelieving and perverted generation, how long shall I be with you? How long shall I put up with you? Bring him here to Me.” And Jesus rebuked him, and the demon came out of him, and the boy was cured at once.  Then the disciples came to Jesus privately and said, “Why could we not drive it out?” And He said to them, “Because of the littleness of your faith; for truly I say to you, if you have faith the size of a mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it will move; and nothing will be impossible to you. But this kind does not go out except by prayer and fasting.”

God has His reasons for winter seasons, and we may not ever know why nor may we find much comfort in our struggles even if we did know the reasons.  Nevertheless, it is helpful to remember that, even if our enemies are as big as mountains and our faith feels as small as mustard seeds, awesome stuff can still happen. 

Lazy Linking, 113th in an Occasional Series

Stuff I liked lately on the Internets:


113.1 All it takes to organize unruly bus-boarders is...masking tape bit.ly/1cNRqOm @nextcityorg


113.2 Asking good questions is a criminally underrated leadership skill bit.ly/1doORwO @inc

113.3 Is AOD the next planning fad? Organizing new development around ag space bit.ly/1iiWsSZ @amercitycounty

113.4 For Detroit to really thrive it has to work for its long-time black residents huff.to/1kPNCiu @huffpo

113.5 Gambling is good...for statistically determining which were the most exciting games bit.ly/1ihpgLI  #Gambletron2000

Easy Eats

On consecutive mornings last week, work meetings brought me to Chinatown and then to Reading Terminal Market.  What luck - those just happen to be two of my favorite places to shop for food.

So the first morning I hit a grocery store in Chinatown, and the second morning I hit a produce vendor at Reading Terminal Market.  Here was my total take from the two shopping trips:

2 pounds of strawberries
2 big bunches of asparagus
1 huge bag of radishes
1 Asian pear
2 big bags of frozen dumplings
1 big package of red bean buns
1 thing of cauliflower
1 big thing of bean sprouts
2 packages of tofu

Total bill between the two trips: $21.  Even better, total detour out of my schedule, between going to these places, picking out stuff, and paying for it: less than 5 minutes each.  That works for me on so many levels.

Fail Safe

I've blogged before about the importance of failure - in parenting and in life - but I wanted to go down this route yet again because I think it's just such an important concept.  Plus there's been a lot of positive buzz lately on Megan McArdle's new book, "The Up Side of Down,"which covers this very topic.

In a recent blog post, McArdle laments that even high-schoolers from upper-middle-class families feel they have to play it safe in order to secure a coveted place at an elite Ivy League university.  "If you can't afford to try something new in 10th grade, when can you?"  

This fear of failure is very, very problematic.  Kids who don't learn how to fail become adults who are either afraid of failing (and therefore afraid of everything), constantly getting their self-esteem hammered (since failure must mean worthlessness), or insufferable jerks (never stretching = never failing = I must be awesome = big head), or all three at the same time.  We stretch ourselves the most in good ways when we try something new, gaining new perspectives, new relationships, and new empathy in the process.  Economies are healthiest when people swing for the fences and have ample opportunity to recover from mistakes, unforeseen disasters, and bad luck.  And, from a Christian perspective, falling on your face is a good thing to do every once in a while, to remind us that our success in ministry and our very intrinsic value at the core comes from an unshakeable external source rather than our own flighty and flawed performance. 

However you define success, failure must be part of it.  Not failing for failure's sake.  Rather, accepting that, apart from maybe Mozart, no one can get to brilliance without stumbling along the way.  And, once that realization sets in, it matters less than we can do something good and more that we can figure out how to make the best of when we do something not so good.  It matters for being a successful parent, person, and professional.  And it matters for having a right relationship with your God and Creator.

Lazy Linking, 112th in an Occasional Series

Stuff I liked lately on the Internets:

112.1 Megan McArdle on why you must fail in order to succeed bit.ly/1eexOOv @aei

112.2 Does an ascendant China necessarily mean the eventual death of Taiwan? bit.ly/1h2iWVv @thenatlinterest

112.3 This visual tells you just how uniquely dysfunctional CA state government is wapo.st/1fNIrxe @washingtonpost

112.4 So, how do we feel about remote-controlled drones equipped w/tasers? dailym.ai/Pe96s6 @mailonline

112.5 China "exported" $80B more in tourism spending to other countries than it "imported" from visitors to China econ.st/1ilUD5G @economist

112.6 “Economics: The Biggest Fraud Ever Perpetuated on the World”? Them’s fightin’ words! bit.ly/1jP8C5I @pieriaview

112.7 “The Massive Liberal Failure on Race,” in 3 parts (1) slate.me/1fY5C4k (2) slate.me/LSb7HW (3) slate.me/1kvVXEE  @slate

112.8 There’s way more fish a layer down (just like natural gas!) bit.ly/1cr0oBl @physorg_com

112.9 Turning a chain into a charmed snake astounds me and apparently physicists too nyti.ms/1kES1EH @nytimes

 

112.10 Ho hum, an entire outdoor movie theater in the middle of the Sinai Desert…wait wha? bit.ly/1ilXr2J @thisiscolossal

Car, Trouble

I believe that God sends tests our way to grow us.  Last week I flunked a test badly, but in my defense it was a really hard one that played to all of my weak spots.

First, the situation.  Amy came home from work one night and informed me one of the tail lights in our car had stopped working, and the dashboard wasn't lighting up.  Assuming an electrical problem, I took the car to the mechanic on the way to work and picked it up on the way home.  A minor hiccup of an errand, and an annoyance to have to shell out some bucks I wasn't planning on having to spend, but in the grand scheme of things no big deal: the mechanic is on the way to work and hardly a deviation from my usual commute.

Except that when I picked up the car at the end of the work day, the mechanic told me he wasn't able to fix the problem and that I'd have to take the car to the dealer.  I told him very sharply that I would've appreciated knowing this ahead of time, so I could've made arrangements, and he replied that he thought someone from his shop had called me.  So that was a waste of a visit, I had to pay for the diagnostics, and the problem still wasn't fixed.  Even worse, I'd have to try this all over again the next day, except at the dealer instead of the local mechanic.

So, the dealer.  Yeah, they're out in the suburbs.  So dropping the car off on the way into work was a major detour.  Plus I had to drive into the teeth of rush hour.  Luckily, there's a Regional Rail station near the dealer, so getting back to the office from there wasn't too hard.  Still, it was a two-hour errand in the morning, with another two hours in the afternoon to pick up the car, for a grand total of four hours I didn't really have, given all I had to do that day at work.  I alternated between seething and despairing.

It gets better.  When I called in the afternoon to get a status on the car, I was told they hadn't even started checking it!  They weren't sure when they would be able to see what the problem was, and they certainly wouldn't yet know if any parts needed to be ordered.  I had a quick touch-base with Amy to make sure she was OK taking the subway to work instead of driving, even though she works in a really bad part of North Philly, and then told the mechanic to go ahead and hang onto the car overnight.

I braced myself for yet another two-hour excursion to pick up the car, followed by another four hours the week after to bring it back after the part had arrived and then to pick it up again.  I got short of breath thinking about how I would possibly fit that into a work week that was already starting to fill up, wondering if Amy would be OK walking to and from work, and just generally in a tizzy now that my carefully manicured schedule was shot to shreds.

Thankfully, mercifully, the dealer called later the next day to say they had the part in stock and the car was good to go.  But there was one last harrowing experience, which was driving the car home in rush hour and just barely making it back to the kids' after-school program before I would be fined for being late.  I think I must've yelled every expletive in the book as I crawled through traffic on a Friday evening, and I'm pretty sure I scared every little old lady and parent pushing a stroller as I feverishly sped the last few blocks to my kids. 

In short, this extended three-day experience hit all of my hot buttons.  Having to make multiple car trips, check.  Getting trapped in rush hour traffic multiple times, check.  Unexpected errands that take up uncomfortably long periods of time and have no defined end point, check.  People failing to communicate with me where if they did I could have adjusted my plans, check.  Thinking a task was done only to find out it was still very much undone, check.  Falling behind, running late, not knowing if it was going to be humanly possible to fit everything in in the time allotted, check and mate. 

Like I said, I failed with flying colors.  To use a baseball analogy, I thought I was ready for the bigs, and God put me up against 1999 Pedro Martinez, against whom I proceeded to go oh-fer-4 with 4 K's, flailing badly against the fastball AND the curveball AND the change-up AND the slider.  It was ugly but it was informative.  I am still a work in progress.

The City of Brotherly Love

Last weekend, in the midst of a dreary season, the Philadelphia 76ers packed the house for a meaningless game against the mediocre Washington Wizards - why?  Two letters: A.I.

At halftime, Allen Iverson's jersey was retired, and it was an out-and-out lovefest between him and his adoring fans.  Tears were shed and platitudes said in this recounting of the little dynamo who willed a suspect 76ers team to the precipice of NBA greatness.

I am failing to think of another athlete so embraced by and representative of his city.  Jordan in Chicago, Big Papi in Boston, Jeter in New York, and Kobe in LA come to mind, and all four share A.I.'s success, clutchness, and charisma. 

What separates Iverson from them all is his underdog, anti-establishment, and flawed hero creds.  In the land of giants, A.I. was a short 6'0" - and, truth be told, I met him once and he's not taller than I, and I'm 5'10".  He brought corn rows and baggy shorts to a league previously defined by the corporate polish of Jordan the Brand.  And he famously questioned the necessity of practice, had very public domestic disputes with his wife, and suffered greatly with alcoholism. 

What mattered most to Philadelphians was not just that he won - the Sixers never did win a championship with A.I., and some years they were quite bad - but that he fought with all his heart.  Through injuries, against defenders bigger and badder, and under the reproach of legions of naysayers, he kept on. 

I do think, though, that it mattered to Philadelphians that A.I. was an imperfect icon.  Picture-perfect stars like Peyton Manning, Russell Wilson, and Albert Pujols suit cities like Indianapolis, Seattle, and St. Louis.  Could you imagine A.I. getting love in any of these places, gold chains, tats, and all?  But in Philly, A.I. was the man.  Back in A.I.'s prime, a native Philadelphian once told me the people in his neighborhood called the man "Sweet Baby Jesus," because he was all three things to them. 

But this post isn't mainly about Allen Iverson - although I did love the guy so am happy to give him some love on the heels of his big lovefest at the Wells Fargo Center - but rather about the city he has become permanently associated with.  Other cities may seek heroes and saviors in tall, chiseled Supermen who do good deeds and say all the right things.  Here in Philly, for better or for worse, we worshiped a more complex idol.  We loved him not just in spite of but, tellingly, because of his flaws.  For those of us who love Philadelphia and who seek to love Philadelphians, may A.I.'s beloved status in this town instruct us about what truly matters to this city and its residents.

Lazy Linking, 111th in an Occasional Series

Stuff I liked lately on the Internets:

111.1 Movie billing blocks explained, line by line nyti.ms/1dMT1yW @nytimes


111.2 Ship to home or ship to work? Neither…ship to my unattended car (brilliant!) bit.ly/1eLX4uS @aei

111.3 Tyler Cowen on whether Netflix-Comcast deal is good or bad for consumers bit.ly/1fRbzC5 @margrev

111.4 The downside of “no drama” in White House: no public intellectuals want to work there wapo.st/1fRbFd7 @washingtonpost

111.5 Uh oh, eye doctors, a big part of your work just got automated tcrn.ch/1bKR4HG @ techcrunch

111.6 Lamenting the slow death of the uniquely distinctive South Philly accent nyti.ms/1lsDGve @nytimes

111.7 The bigger the pizza, the better the deal (∏r²!) n.pr/1mByq6z @npr

111.8 Caught this post on “Big God Theology” at the very end of Black History Month bit.ly/1lsEDUl @desiringgod

111.9 Jordan Davis’ mom  to Ta-Nehisi Coates’ son: "You matter…You have every right to be you.." http://bit.ly/Mruw2E @tncposts

111.10 The solution to soaring higher ed tuition bills for some may be “home college” bit.ly/1i3X4hC @chronicle