Blunt Financial Instruments Used for the Crime (cont'd)

More memorable quotes on the last three weeks of high drama:

"The riverboat-gambling scheme of investment banking"

"As long as people are compensated hugely for taking risks with other people’s money, and do not suffer equally on the downside, then those risks will inevitably become outrageous. Whether markets are efficient or not I don’t know for sure, but I do know that if there’s a way for someone to make money at another’s expense, he will. In spades. I want out."

"These companies need to tie compensation to long- rather than short-term performance. This won’t be popular on Wall Street, but if we want to turn investment banking back to performing something useful and positive rather than some sort of riverboat-gambling scheme on which we are all unwitting participants, then there’s not much choice."

- "For Wall Street, Greed Wasn’t Good Enough"
by Paul Wilmott, founder of Wilmott, a journal of quantitative finance
NYT Op-Ed section (9/17)

Lehman's reward for failure
(9/23)

">> 'But things are looking up for the long-suffering employees of investment bank Lehman Brothers.'

"But wait. Wasn’t it Lehman that filed for bankruptcy just last week?

"Yes, it was.

"But as luck would have it, that sorry, sorry turn of events apparently had no effect on the $2.5 billion the bank set aside for staff bonuses. So, according to The Independent, Barclays, which is buying Lehman Brothers for $1.75 billion, plans to make good on those bonuses, though it has no obligation to do so.

"Two-and-a-half billion. Plus whatever portion of that $39 billion they were given last year. And then there are the pay and severance packages. Lehman Brothers Chairman and CEO Richard Fuld Jr. made $34 million in 2007. He also banked $490 million from selling Lehman stock.

"Such is the price of failure."

- "Lehman Brothers: $2.5 Billion for a Bankruptcy Well Done"
from Digital Daily by John Paczkowski
on All Things Digital

From 1999 to 2007, Paczkowski wrote the award-winning tech news Web log Good Morning Silicon Valley for the San Jose Mercury News

===

With all this about the brokers and bankers, let's not forget how this is playing out with The Rest Of Us; for example,

Tent Cities Spread In U.S. As Economy Sags
Foreclosure Crisis Blamed For Rise Of Homeless Camps In Cities

RENO, Nev., Sept. 19, 2008
"From Seattle to Athens, Ga., homeless advocacy groups and city agencies are reporting the most visible rise in homeless encampments in a generation."

"Nearly 61 percent of local and state homeless coalitions say they've experienced a rise in homelessness since the foreclosure crisis began in 2007, according to a report by the National Coalition for the Homeless. The group says the problem has worsened since the report's release in April, with foreclosures mounting, gas and food prices rising and the job market tightening."

" 'It's clear that poverty and homelessness have increased,' said Michael Stoops, acting executive director of the coalition. 'The economy is in chaos, we're in an unofficial recession and Americans are worried, from the homeless to the middle class, about their future.' "

"The phenomenon of encampments has caught advocacy groups somewhat by surprise, largely because of how quickly they have sprung up."

- CBSNews.com

Just Plain Beautiful

"Raine Island Reef, Australia"

Just some relief for your weary eyes and mind, a peaceful image by photographer Paul Sutherland, from the National Geographic (where they're celebrating the 120th Anniversary of the National Geographic Society). 

This is from their "Underwater Landscapes" photo gallery, free-downloadable for wallpaper.

Twittering on about Facebook, etc.

Continuing on my (ir)regular, implied theme of What's Not Hot among topics currently considered high-temperature in the media, two items:

There's lots of twaddle about Twitter in the tech press and online communities. Most of it is just the old demonstration that the writers are Fully Buzzword Compliant, well versed in the latest thing, whatever the heck that thing is and may or may not be useful for.

This Web service appears to be providing the much-needed function of adding yet another layer of distraction to our ADD World. ("Thanks a lot! - what was your name again? Oh, gotta run, see you --") I loved the quote from the last post here, down below, noting that a "friend" had just left a note to everyone that they were brushing their teeth. I'm hoping the writer was kidding, but either way, this is a layer of "content" so thin as to defy measurement.

So I was glad to see this statement in one of the blogs on CNet, the venerable (in Web terms,) tech news site:

"Twitter's not going to change the world"

CNet's Charles Cooper, quoting a video blogger named Loren Feldman:

"Loren's main point (is), anyone who has followed the incessant bleating about Twitter's supposedly existential meaning to our lives--let alone the silly debate over Twitter versus FriendFeed--has to wonder whether tech's chattering class has lost its sense of perspective.

"Are we guilty of navel gazing to the point of silliness?"

Breaking taboos in the tech fishbowlJuly 20, 2008
=== === ===

This tied in nicely with a piece I saw in the Old Grey Lady Online, a few caveats about Facebook -

.. .from a business perspective, it creates some complications.
...I neither want to be strategic in my postings nor selective in my friending, but I should probably be doing one or the other. I am also not religious in maintaining my profile, in part because I have no personal assistant to update my page, as one executive I know told me he does.

Once you jack in, Facebook creates its own imperatives. Why am I uploading pictures of my last family trip to the lake in the Adirondacks at 11:45 p.m.? Because I want someone, anyone, to see them.

When a new media winner like Facebook comes over the horizon, who loses? In my case, it’s probably my real actual friends. As a reporter, I learn to hate the telephone during the day, but at night I feel somewhat social again and step out onto the porch to call buddies for a little nocturnal quality time. Now I am too busy checking their status updates to actually speak to them.

The Media Equation: Hey, Friend, Do I Know You?
By David Carr, July 21, 2008
=== === ===

Exactly as e-mail now reflects the pounds of junk mail in our "street" mailboxes, all new media will eventually return to earth, mirroring the net level of quality-of-life that most people are functioning at. (Not that there aren't people who reach for something more, a higher level of practice in whatever they do, of course -- imagine what it would be like if there weren't enough of them quietly anchoring things).

Postscript:
As you'll see from the date of the following post, I dropped out of blogging for awhile there, to take a break after two+ years at it -- even if admittedly doing it at a fairly relaxed pace for the medium, as it's currently understood. Once I saw that a few big bloggers had heart attacks over the last year, then that my favorite blogger, Maura Welch (who I began reading in the Boston Globe), just renounced regular blogging, and some other bigtime blogger just said goodbye, too... well, now I feel like I'm on the leading edge of the next hot trend, the post-blog Web!

But it's just another wave in the natural progression of new modes...

"Top 10 Social Networking Annoyances"

Thank you Scott Spanbauer of PC World for putting words on my own aversion to a lot of aspects of the social networking craze. From the "friends" game to visually godawful Myspace pages to just how much time it takes to be a player in this arena, his article yesterday nailed it, and in a fairly witty way.

His #1 reason? What he's termed "Multiple Social Network Syndrome (MSNS)" --

"With the advent of social networking, my e-mail traffic has gotten worse, not better. Here's an e-mail telling me that my brother has sent an e-mail within Facebook. Another message informs me that Susie has updated her profile at Friendster. Another announces that Bob over at FriendNet has just brushed his teeth... And on and on and on. To reply or act on any of these events, I'll have to bring up one of the 12 social networks I've been sucked into joining, log in, and then view the ads there.

"All of that, of course, necessitates a lot of extra clicks and keystrokes, and after a while, I find that I don't really like my friends anymore."

"The Top 10 Social Networking Annoyances"
- Scott Spanbauer, PC World - May 14, 2008

Since we're on the subject of MySpace, (do I really need to link to them? It's "-.com", okay?) I think the more accurate name would be "HisSpace," in honor of owner Rupert Murdoch, who just coincidentally also owns and micro-manages the absurdly unfair and unreasonable Fox News. (Again, "-.com").

Why should I entrust this guy in particular with all the personal information that inevitably accumulates on such a site? I'm pretty damn sure he considers himself the owner of whatever resides on his various company's servers, should there ever be any disagreement over its use.

Related, here:
Half of all media will be created by consumers?
(Maybe, but will anyone else want to consume it?)
Quoted again on Boston Globe's site, on 'Web 2.0' & American Idol
Posts tagged Web 2.0

Rewarding "Appropriate Tech" Innovation

One of my favorite recurring topics has turned out to be when technology is being used for the right reasons, namely, to fundamentally improve the circumstances of life, especially where it's needed most, instead of only to produce more self-indulgent gadgetry. I didn't plan for appropriate technology to be one of my most frequent tags over a year and a half, that's just the way it happened. (Not that this came as any surprise.)

So naturally I wanted to pitch in this piece that appeared on CNet's news.com today --
The Tech Museum of Innovation in San Jose, Calif., gave out its annual awards on Wednesday night to companies and organizations that have created breakthrough devices for helping the environment and emerging nations. (Slide show of the winners.)

The first photo is of a clever stove invented for families in Guatemala, which cuts down the amount of firewood needed for a family by 70 percent. "That's hugely important in a country trying to deal with a growing population and deforestation," CNet's Michael Kanellos writes. It directly helps the families, too, not only cutting their cost for firewood, but also it's weight -- since they "often have to transport it on their backs."

Significantly, at a cost of $120, "It pays for itself in six months." (This contrasts dramatically with a personal wind power generator I'd written about last year that was predicted to pay off in 24 years!)

"Take Me To Your Leader!"

Other related posts here:
WSJ Tech Innovation Awards (9/13/06)
(Tag:) Green Tech

(Treetops photo by meire, flickr.com)

"Drumming Up Teamwork"

It's not very often that I can find some reason to write about musicmaking in here, in keeping with the (rather wide-angled yet) business-y focus of this blog. But it's Spring here at our latitude, and here's one.

Over the years, I've conducted a number of drumming-based teambuilding sessions for Idea Champions (mostly for GE at their famed Crotonville, NY, training campus,) a program begun by my colleague Nathan Brenowitz. I figured we could be doing a lot more with this and suggested we expand and spiff up the offering, so we developed a new program, and gave its page on the site a makeover.

"Hands on, energizing, and fun, Drumming Up Teamwork is the perfect way to help groups and teams see and hear what it takes for real teamwork to manifest in the workplace."

It's really all about Rhythm, because, from one perspective, everything is really all about rhythm: in business, and any interaction between people. We talk about how "timing is everything," about how people working together have to be "in step," and perhaps forget how very literal these expressions are.

But with a drum or bell or shaker in your hands, it becomes quite clear that for something to work, you have to tune in to the people you're working/playing with, you have to really listen, you have to get in sync. Then, in a musical setting, enjoyable, synchronized sounds happen -- and in a business situation, you get a team whose energies are flowing both strongly and focused.

Nathan tells stories of sessions he's run where longtime adversaries have experienced working in concert for the first time, and the letters he got from their relieved and grateful managers. It can be that powerful.

But hey, people express their appreciations even just for its time-honored value of stress relief. My favorite part, I'll admit, is when we drag all the drums and percussion into the middle of the circle, and tell the people to pick the one they want. Just for a moment, everyone becomes a kid again as they race to grab the shiny instrument they had their eyes on, and the room is filled with laughter and gleeful noise. And by the end, you always get at least a couple people who've experienced the transformation that connecting with Rhythm never fails to bring.

Which reminds me...

As long as we're already this far out on the limb (of having proposed that music be taken seriously, I guess), this must be my chance to relate another project I've been hot on this past month, while I obviously haven't been blogging.

That would be putting together "the World Fusion Open," a hybrid open mic and/or relatively open jam for the many people here in New York's Hudson Valley region who play instruments from around the world, or have been influenced by those musics. The first one will be at the Arts Society of Kingston (ASK) in their double gallery in the historic Rondout riverfront neighborhood, on Thursday, May 8th, and will run monthly through the summer.

Slo-mo "lifestreaming"- on being creative, & listening

Never one to be shy to "repurpose" a little "content," here are a couple comments left on blogs around town that I follow, on the tightly interrelated subjects of being creative and of looking for the simplest approach to fulfilling a need.

This might be my very manual, carefully edited slo-mo version of "lifestreaming" -- because I personally have no interest in inviting the world and all the people in it to look over my shoulder all day and night. (Don't they have anything better to do?)

Oh, yes, that's right, the other connectivity bit here is that it turns out the authors of these two blogs know each other, although I "stumbled upon" their work separately.

- To Nettie Hartsock on her "Five Ways to Be Creative Today" (next)
- To Lois Kelly on her "A true story about a chair"

Do We Act, or just React?

To "Five Ways to Be Creative Today," posted by book publicist Nettie Hartsock on her blog (3/7/2008).

Among her five were, "Turn off your computer, TV, radio, PDA and anything electronic and revel in the silence," and, "Spend time contemplating your navel and the deeper meaning of the world and how we’re all connected to one another."

(Yes, that's Nettie with
the great Willie Nelson.)

(In the Comments, I wrote,)

Nettie, this is very good to hear, and very practical advice. (Except maybe for the "navel" part -- ewww -- although I do understand what you're trying to get at. ; - )

I figured out at some point -- and yet I have to keep reminding myself, or be reminded, as you have here -- that if I start my day by checking my e-mail or reading news on the web, that I'm allowing other people to set the tone of the day for me. Ideally, first I need to hear the voice of my own thoughts before I start to consider everyone else's.

In other words, I need to Act instead of just React. The only way to do that is to find and start from some mental/emotional place of your own, like in the ways you've suggested here.
- BR
===

Nettie Says: (March 18th, 2008 at 5:47 pm)

"Bill,
"What a great insight in terms of starting the day with yourself instead of the email or news on the Web. I’m going to try to spend a few minutes every morning in my office just listening to music and writing before i hit the email and Web.
"I love the Act instead of just React."

Nettie

"A true story about a chair"

Lois Kelly is very big on the value of genuine conversation as a marketing tool. Her book, "Beyond Buzz," has been named as various types of "best" of 2007. (Gold prize winner in the 2008 Axiom Business Book Awards in the Ads/Marketing/PR category, and called one of the best business books of 2007 by Library Journal, one of editors’ two top picks for marketing and branding books. Just FYI, because the natural question here is what was the other one, it was "Made To Stick" by Dan and Chip Heath.)

In her blog, she posted this intriguing bit:

>> "Patrick Schaber over at The Lonely Marketer
has a beautiful post about his friend Jill, who put two chairs in the middle of a busy corporate campus and sat down to listen to anyone who had something to say.
Needless to say there was a line of people waiting to talk and be heard. This is one of the more innovative employee communications strategies I’ve heard in a long time." (3/3/08)

===
(I wrote,)
Hi, Lois,

This story about the lady and her two chairs really strikes to the heart of a great principle we all need to routinely remember to return to: looking for the Simplest approach to fulfilling a need.

The key to being able to see simple solutions? It almost invariably starts with being willing to
s l o w... d o w n...

- BR

===
Related, here:
“Serious Fun Dept.: The Playpump”
Simplicity (tag)

More from Lois Kelly in -
“Can trends be predicted, much less created?”

A Shift in Perspective

(A Saturday afternoon post...)

"Everything is familiar, Daniel M. Tani said, but 'it feels a little alien.' He did not have some of the problems adjusting to gravity that other astronauts have had — absent-mindedly leaving an object in mid-air and being startled to see it crash to the ground. 'You’re very conscious of that,' he said.

"But he still marveled at the mundane. 'You take the lid off the bottle, and you put it on the table,' he said, 'and it’s just amazing that it stays on the sink.' In space, it would have flown away unless it was secured. 'You don’t have to find a piece of velcro to stick it to,' he recalled. 'that seemed like it was magic to me.'"

"Adapting to Earth After 120 Days in Space"
By John Schwartz, NY Times "The Lede" blog, 3/11/08

(Photo uploaded to Flickr by kEnObAnDo)

"Google: Huge Idea, Simple Insight"

(Extract of a recent post written for Idea Champions' "Heart of Innovation")

"Discovery's Science Channel Has Good New Series On (the) Internet." (Search Engine Watch)

Download: The True Story of the Internet, by former editor and writer for Wired, John Heileman, "is no softball show.. . the series gives it to you 'warts and all' and does not hold back the punches on how things have developed so far. The last show I watched discussed the development of search..."

"We hear amazing stories," The Discovery Channel tells us, "of how, in ten short years, the Internet took over our lives. The style of the story-telling is up close and personal... with first-hand testimony from the people that matter."

I also was watching that episode on search, one of four. To me, the most arresting observation was that while the original, breakthrough idea at the root of Google's effectiveness and success came from a programmer, cofounder Larry Page, it was a very simple thought. Page was not crouched over a keyboard or remembering any computer code in order to come up with this construct.

The billion-dollar insight was just this: that a link to a site from another is like a vote for that destination. The more sites link to yours (and the more linked-to their sites are), the better yours must be... (one of) the ones which the most visitors have "voted for with their feet," or in this case, their eyeballs.

[ more ] on The Heart of Innovation

That's most of the Google logo as of the Spring equinox,
which is coming up within the hour.

"The Sweat That Eureka Demands"

(Extract of a recent, very up-to-the-minute post of mine in Idea Champions' "The Heart of Innovation"... a couple weeks back:)

Serious about doing something innovative? Be prepared to spend many long, focused hours working on it (and working and working and reworking...)

Thomas Edison  (Wikipedia)

"We want to believe that creativity and innovation come in flashes of pure brilliance," Janet Rae-Dupree writes in the New York Times. But, "Innovation is a slow process of accretion, building small insight upon interesting fact upon tried-and-true process. Just as an oyster wraps layer upon layer of nacre atop an offending piece of sand, ultimately yielding a pearl, innovation percolates within hard work over time."
...
(As one of the greatest inventors in memory, Thomas Edison, knew so well:)

In an interview in Harpers magazine, February 1890, (stay tuned here at Heart Of Innovation as we present the latest, greatest breakthroughs! ; ) Edison explained his method:

"I would construct a theory and work on its lines until I found it was untenable. ... I speak without exaggeration when I say that I have constructed 3,000 different theories in connection with the electric light, each one of them reasonable and apparently likely to be true. Yet only in two cases did my experiments prove the truth of my theory."

(More of "The Sweat That Eureka Demands" here...)

Related, here in Rosswriting: 
inventors (tag)

Front Seat TV Found "Distracting"

A situation sorely in need of a firm grasp of the obvious:
I was astonished by a recent story in the NY Times on the problems being caused by television and other screens in cars' front seats. The caption of a photo of one such cockpit display read, "Safety experts say electronic devices can be distracting."

Well, DUUHH! Excuse me, but how could the people in positions of responsibility for launching products with such obvious critical flaws not see the problem here?

Even if you're fine with an utterly distracted state from a philosophical point of view, didn’t anyone bring up the issue of the potential liability? (Or if someone did, and you figure that's the likelihood, why didn't the decision makers get it?)

The best part of the article was a quick mention of how legislation came to be introduced in New York to ban all “display generating devices” in the driver’s view. To it's credit, the state already has a law against TV sets in the front seat.

State Senator Carl L. Marcellino, who sponsored the bill, "learned this firsthand while riding in a cab in Miami — the driver was watching a boxing match on a television mounted on the dashboard." I can testify that having lived in Miami for many years, I have no problem at all imagining this. (It can be quite a surreeaalistic place.)

"High-Tech Invitations Take Your Mind Off Road" By Bill Vlasic

Related, here:
(Tag:) Focus

(Image uploaded to Flickr by wiseacre photo)

Just Keep Swinging

In the process of backing up my machine here (since I'm taking it in for a repair before the service contract is up,) I came across one of those inspirational quotes that you save to get you through discouraging interludes.

This, from one of baseball's greatest hitters, is one that I found printed across the top of the local paper's sports page a few years back, right over the scores from the various high school teams. At the time, I really needed not just to hear this, but to keep it in the forefront of my thoughts. So I taped it at the top of my monitor, where it always fed me a little encouragement and direction every time I looked up.

"My motto was always to keep swinging. Whether I was in a slump or just feeling badly, the only thing to do was keep swinging."

- Henry Aaron

Now, here's a guy who, I think we can say, probably had a lot more reason to feel downhearted at times than most. As I'm sure most people realize, when he was on his way to breaking Babe Ruth's career home run record, he was receiving death threats and hate mail on a regular basis.

After the last game of the 1973 season, having reached 713, one short of the record, Aaron stated that his only fear was that he might not live to see the next season. So when he said, I just keep swinging, that was quite a statement.

(I suppose it was stressful to be receiving threats of indictment while going after Aaron's record, but I don't think they quite compare.)

1974 baseball card uploaded to Flickr by brettbigb

On "Blog Coaching"

Just received this very kind letter today from Mitch Ditkoff, the President of Idea Champions, the "culture of innovation" trainers/consultancy, about my ongoing blog coaching services for them. He explains so well what we do in that space that I don't need to add a further word of explanation.
I figure he won't mind me excerpting the longer letter here:

"Thank you very much for all the fine work you’ve done to help Idea Champions create and launch it’s very successful Heart of Innovation blog...

"Your efforts, insights and support were the missing piece. You helped me sort through the choices, consider my options, and made some very insightful recommendations. I appreciate all your flexibility, responsiveness, and commitment to see this project through to the end.

"I see your blog consulting service as a kind of 'chiropractic adjustment.' You have a light touch, know what you’re doing, and are all about the 'health' of your clients.. . I needed the human touch – the Walk Me Through It school of education. So thanks again for hanging in there with me and helping manifest a 'good idea' into a bottom-line reality."

(For my part, I've just got to say that we should all be so lucky to have such enlightened and light-hearted clients.)

Can trends be predicted, much less created?

I came across a provocative, realistic thought in Lois Kelly's "Bloghound" today, in a discussion of whether it's possible to jump-start a trend by trying to influence the influencers. She quotes a "Columbia University network theory scientist" named Duncan Watts who argues otherwise, saying, "the complex network effects on society mean that trends occur randomly."

In an article in Fast Company, he says, "If society is ready to embrace a trend, almost anyone can start one — and if it isn't then almost no one can." In other words, Nothing Is As Powerful As An Idea Whose Time Has Come. Find one of those and then you've got something to work with.

That concept and this post produced a range of pings for me: I've been quoting a related idea for a long time, said to be one of the Laws Of Hollywood: "All Hits Are Flukes." (Just anecdotally, I remember this was reported as seen on the office wall of Trip Hawkins, back when he headed Electronic Arts.)

Yes, you've got to do your due diligence, put out as much intelligent, engaging signal to the right audiences as you can. But then there's always that point where you can only See What Happens. Farmers can plant the best seed at the right time and apply all their Best Practices; but then, it's largely up to the weather.

Companies are understandably nervous about investing money in marketing -- because the more time and money you've spent on marketing that came up empty, the more antsy you get -- so marketers can feel understandably pressured into issuing guarantees. But aren't those almost invariably fiction? What a marketer can do is stay on top of what's going on out there as much as possible, and give a company the best chance to succeed in getting their message out to fruitful effect.

~ ~ ~
Lois Kelly's angle on getting the message out is based on what she calls "conversational marketing." In the sample chapter of her book, "Beyond Buzz," she explains, "The big idea is simply this: marketing is about having conversations, engaging with people in interesting discussions, through new and traditional channels. Technology may be becoming the heart of marketing and communications, but conversations are the soul."

(I find it a parallel, complementary idea to the ongoing focus here on pursuing business by dealing with people face to face. I'll toss in here that while in-person contacts are still ideal, advances in videoconferencing are now making that medium the next best thing. Especially when it means you wouldn't have to undress at a trot in a cold airport.)

Photo of the Hollywood sign, chosen because it symbolizes
the empty facade that area is, posted to Flickr by Kiran Ambre.)

Related, here:
Interface or Face To Face?

Serious Fun Dept.: The Playpump

A fully-formed idea is a beauty to behold. Find the kind that works in full strength on a number of levels, simultaneously fulfilling a range of needs, and you've got an effort worthy of putting full energy into.

Such is the Playpump -- as Maura Welch explains (in the Boston Globe Business Filter, from a post in PSFK), "This genius invention delivers clean drinking water to African villages -- and it's powered by a merry-go-round."

PSFK writes, "While children are playing on a merry-go-round, up to 1,400 liters of clean water can be pumped into a tank that stands seven meters above the ground. The tank’s walls are used to place ad billboards while two sides are reserved for educational messages. The revenue from ad-sales is put into the maintenance of each pump."

Here's a device which supplies a vital necessity, and is powered by children doing what they're supposed to do, and do best: play. Talk about "Serious Fun"! As Welch writes, "Simple things are powerful."

National Geographic's "Wild Chronicles" feature on the PlayPump Water System:

"Clean water equals less disease. It's low-cost solution to a whole host of complicated, expensive problems."

Of course, now that the kids don't need to carry water from dirty streams every day, the adults are glad they can spend more time in school. From the children's point of view, this might seem like a mixed blessing. But hey, they get a merry-go-round!

The 5 C's for a Team, from Nate McMillan (and 1)

Yes, another one of those lists... (one of the many ways that enumerate how relentlessly numbers-oriented our society is. Seems like everywhere you look, lists are being published of the Five This and the Ten That -- excuse me, that's the Top Five and the Top Ten.)

Still, this concise list of "the Five C's," five qualities for players on a winning team to focus on, rang all the right bells for me. I noticed this particular story, though, because these conceptual-vitamin C's come from a basketball coach I'm familiar with, whose team is overachievingly hot. And that mostly matters because all through his 12 years as a point guard on the Seattle Sonics, Nate McMillan really played the game "the right way."

McMillan has now been coaching the regional rival Portland Trailblazers (22-13) for two years, and his motto was voiced in a Portland Tribune story last month about their upstart success.

"Coach Nate McMillan cited an adherence to the 'five C’s' – calmness, clarity, consistency, connectedness and communication – as an example of the team’s progress. 'We started communicating better, and the result was, we raised our level of play and had a nice comeback,' McMillan said."


Calmness,

_Clarity,

__Consistency,

___Connectedness,

____Communication.

Beautiful. Touches all the bases -- excuse me, that should be, "moves the ball around to find the open man."

It's interesting to note that the first three really begin with the effort of the individual. Once those basic qualities are put in action by each of the team members, that's the point from where connection can start to come into play.

To that list, I'd only suggest adding Caring.

How do I justify that? Folks, I only need point to the other conference and historic Boston, where Exbibit A now reigns: Mr. Kevin Garnett is unquestionably the driving force behind the Celtics' current 29-4 record, not only league-leading but putting them as a team in some pretty rarified historical company. And it doesn't look like anybody could care more than he does.

The guy is so passionately motivated, and equally on each end of the floor, that his teammates just can't help getting inspired and energized by it, and, to put a technical hoops term on it, just play their butts off out there.

Yes, there are a couple other All-Stars on there, Pierce and Allen, and [blah blah team talk], but it is Garnett's evident passion and drive that's the difference between a good team and the great one they're playing as right now.

~ ~ ~
Putting up a few more shots:

Nate McMillan was always one of those quiet "hustle guys" for the Sonics, the kind that the casual fan might not notice, but who would always seem to be coming up with key defensive plays, rebounds, loose balls -- the effort plays -- getting the ball to the stars for dramatic scores, while dropping in a few three pointers at crucial moments.

The consummate team player, he was a repeat on the all-NBA Defensive 2nd team (i.e., one of the top ten defenders -- dammit, there it is again!), and the Sonics' franchise leader in assists and steals when he retired in 1998, having spent his entire pro playing career in Seattle. By then he was known as Mr. Sonic, and the next year they retired his number, only the team's fourth up to then.
~ ~ ~

There's nothing like a winning streak to support whatever philosophies the winners work by: as of today the Blazers just won nine of their last ten games; and this with a young, "rebuilding" team that no one expected to hear from this season. Especially when they got the #1 pick in the draft last year, but then the poor guy went down with an injury -- for the year).
~ ~ ~

Let me ask an important question that's been on my mind with this:
why isn't there ever a Top Eight or Eleven or Seventeen of anything?
If it's always Ten, don't you suspect that they either add or drop one or two to make it fit? And then where do those missing elements wind up?
(Omigod, it might be that one left-behind Reason #11 that's been the missing link all this time!)
~ ~ ~

Sports Illustrated article: "In his own words: Blazers coach Nate McMillan"

Related, here:
Dance vs. Hoops
(...for which I 've taken a lot of heat from dancers who, like, didn't get it. It's satire, people!)

"View from a Creative Mind"

(Brief of a post of mine in The Heart Of Innovation, 1/3/08, starting with news of,)

"... a nearby exhibition, titled 'Illuminations,' of the work of Saul Steinberg, the artist most famously known for his frequent appearances over six decades in The New Yorker magazine. He was the clever fellow who gave us the much-imitated 1976 cover illustration of how New Yorkers see the world, 'The View from 9th Avenue,' where a couple of blocks of the city dominate, and the rest of the country occupies a small square of land in the distance.

"So much of his work displayed such a fresh, wonderfully creative mind that, for me, it 'illustrates' an essential attitude that successful innovators have. This is the habit of looking to see things newly, as opposed to how we usually see, which is through a haze of existing thought patterns; and, freely associating, to find useful connections between things that were hidden until then.

"In the words of the Saul Steinberg Foundation's page on his life and work, 'fingerprints become mug shots or landscapes; graph or ledger paper doubles as the facade of an office building; words, numbers, and punctuation marks come to life as messengers of doubt, fear, or exuberance.. ."

"Saul Steinberg: Illuminations" on view through February 24 '08 at the Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center at Vassar College, 124 Raymond Avenue, Poughkeepsie NY. (845) 437-5632.

(First spotted in Chronogram magazine, by Beth Wilson, 12/07.)

(Image courtesy of the Saul Steinberg Foundation's Gallery)

"Christmas Time Is Here" - the sweetly sad blues version

'Tis the season…

Every year at this time I make sure to dig out my all-time favorite Christmas album (okay, I'll admit it, along with Bing's), and it's mostly because of this one irreplaceable song.

If there's such a thing as a plaintive, yearning Christmas blues, this would be it: one that, while fully acknowledging the joyful, sweet, soulful nature of the real Christmas, and not what it's become (you retailers will have to excuse the rest of us for wishing it could be another way), sadly asks, why isn't it that way all year?

It's the late pianist Vince Guaraldi's soundtrack for "A Charlie Brown Christmas," performed by him and his trio for the original animated special from 1965. Here are the lyrics; and even better, the entire album (including the equally poignant instrumental version of the song,) can be heard as free streams on Download.com Music, courtesy of the publisher, Concord Music Group.

"Christmas Time Is Here"
(Written by Vince Guaraldi and Lee Mendelson)

Christmas time is here, happiness and cheer
Fun for all that children call, their favorite time of year

Snowflakes in the air, carols everywhere
Olden times and ancient rhymes, of love and dreams to share

Sleigh bells in the air, beauty everywhere
Yuletide by the fireside, and joyful memories there

Christmas time is here, we'll be drawing near
Oh, that we could always see, such spirit through the year
Oh, that we could always see, such spirit through the year...

(The story behind "A Charlie Brown Christmas," on Wikipedia.)

~ ~ ~

As a musician friend recently pointed out, there was so much more to Vince Guaraldi than just his inspired Peanuts soundtracks. He had a touch for the almost painfully beautiful, as with his instrumental, "Cast Your Fate to the Wind," the 1963 Grammy winner of Best Instrumental Jazz Composition. That was from the album "Jazz Impression of Black Orpheus," Guaraldi's version of Antonio Carlos Jobim's haunting soundtrack score.

~ ~ ~

On a lighter note, and speaking of Bing's classic (sort of), an old friend just sent this tune along...