chuckles the car

For about a month the image below is part of what I have seen from my office.

What has stuck out to me is that white vehicle in the middle of the photo.While the driver of that vehicle has not been parked facing my office like this in the last few weeks, for several weeks he or she parked backed into the space so that the car constantly caught my eye due to a similarity my mind cannot ignore.

As I mentioned a while back, I have seen Toy Story 3 many times in the last two years, as it is one of our kids' favorites.  One of the characters is a clown toy named Chuckles.  All I can think about when I see this car from a distance is how much it reminds me of Chuckles.

Are there similar things that show up in your everyday life that constantly reminds you of something or someone else?

rolling in the deep

In what appears to be an embarrassingly growing trend in me liking songs about women standing up to or wishing revenge on their exes (What's that about?), I'm finding that I'm somewhat drawn to Adele's ridiculously popular Rolling in the Deep.  The lyrics are not written for me at all, but for whatever reason I enjoy the song.



I have every reason to not like the song.  I think it's the anthem of a woman who does not understand the role she had in someone leaving her, so she wants to stew in revenge mode.  One line from the song, emphasized below, gives away the singer's mistaken perspective.

The scars of your love remind me of us,
They keep me thinking that we almost had it all.
The scars of your love, they leave me breathless,
I can't help feeling,

We could have had it all,
Rolling in the deep,
You had my heart inside your hand,
And you played it to the beat.

This hearkens back to something that I noted that I have learned in the time since being married.  Many phrases mean something completely different to a typical woman than a typical man.  In my opinion the "it all" that they "could have had" has almost no connection with whatever the guy who left her wanted in the relationship in the first place, and that is why he left her.  He didn't understand her and she didn't understand him.  She had some fantasy about the relationship that she assumed had meaning to him, but that he probably did not even know existed, and so things played out the way they do when two people don't understand each other because they're only concerned about fulfilling their own irrational fantasies.

I am torn on enjoying this song for this reason.  Vengeance fantasies feed off self-righteousness, and this song is definitely a revenge fantasy, but in this case it seems screamingly obvious that the self-righteousness is unfounded.  The woman isn't without the man because she is too good for him.  She is without him, can't figure out why, and feels self-superior because she is stuck in the mindset that her fantasies should have been their fantasies.

I think that a lot of the popularity for this song comes from the fact that a lot of people—while it would be women in this case men are just as guilty—see relationships as ways to meet their own fantasies without concern for the other person's needs.  When the other person either takes advantage of the him or her using the fantasy or breaks up recognizing how much effort the relationship is going to be, a song like this speaks to the person whose heart and fantasies have been broken.

This is probably too much thought to give to a pop song, isn't it?

political drug season over

We just went through an election, and while I am as politically fascinated and informed as anyone you will meet, I hate election time more than most anything else.  Politics is a drug that sucks people in then causes them to exhibit the worst of themselves, myself unfortunately included. I prefer not to make a fool of myself, and I prefer not to have my opinions of others I respect damaged as well.

The one thing that I have been thinking of lately is the assertion that I often hear that it is a citizen's, and more so a Christian's, duty to vote.  I have also heard this couched in terms like thinking about who Jesus would have voted for.

Almost every conversation Jesus had was striking, but one that especially sticks out to me is his interaction with Pilate when the Jewish leadership was angling to get him crucified.  The charge they brought was that Jesus threatened the political structure that was in place.  He was to be the king of the Jews!  However, if Jesus' threat to Roman rule was even a remote possibility Pilate had every reason to want to punish, destroy, and make an example of Jesus.  After Pilate's personal interaction with Jesus, however, he took every opportunity available to a cowardly ruler such as himself to avoid sending Jesus to the cross.  Pilate had a reputation for brutality, but he was the one trying to save Jesus.

That speaks to me more than any other interaction Jesus had regarding what his political bent was.  More than Jesus paying the temple tax or explaining that we give to God and Caesar what they are owed, this points to how unimportant in the scheme of things politics was to him.  The one person who should have been the most concerned about a politically-motivated leader rallied to save him.  Based on what I have read from Scripture like this, not only do I not believe that it is our civic duty to vote, I do not believe that Christ would have voted either.

I will do a bit of an about face, though.  I am not Christ.  While getting involved with politics may have interfered with Jesus' ministry, that does not mean that I should not vote or be involved in politics.  There are worthy issues that Christians have addressed through the ballot box.  I say that with trepidation, however.  Political involvement and self-righteousness go hand-in-hand and both are addictive drugs that can very easily interfere with a Christian's purpose of being on this earth.  I have such a hard time avoiding both every election cycle.

hiring alex smith

I play fantasy football, and as a part of that I am aware of a specific player that in my opinion illustrates a major factor impacting the national employment situation today.

The San Francisco 49ers had the first pick in the 2005 NFL draft, and they used the opportunity to draft Alex Smith.  While I don't watch college football, I do know that he had a strong couple of years with the University of Utah and received some votes for the Heisman trophy.  The 49ers certainly felt he had something with him to pick him first overall.

In the next five or six years Smith would be considered something of a bust.  He almost always played just well enough to stay the starter, but no one would think that his play ever justified a place in the first round or two of the draft, let alone first overall selection.  In fantasy, people would chuckle if someone dared to draft him as anything more than a low-level backup for their imaginary team.  No one really took him seriously as anything other than a game manager for a team that relied on its defense for wins.

While most people figured the issue was with Smith, part of the problem was that Smith had five or six offensive coordinators and offensive systems in the same number of years.  This meant that he had to essentially relearn how to do everything every year, and readjust to a system that may or may not be a good fit for him.

Before the start of the season last year the team hired Jim Harbaugh as the head coach, who just happened to be a former quarterback.  I do not know what specifically happened in the coaching process, but the evidence indicates that Harbaugh was able to help develop Smith's potential like other coaches and coordinators were unable to in the past.  In that year Smith's play improved dramatically, and his performance showed more intelligent decision-making.  This is to the point where Smith started a streak of passes without an interception toward the end of the season that surpassed any similar streak any other quarterbacks on the team have ever had.  Those other quarterbacks include Joe Montana and Steve Young.  That streak has continued this season, and he has not thrown an interception yet.  The team is widely considered one of the likeliest to reach the Super Bowl this year.

I think this points well to something that doesn't get enough attention today.  Potential workers need to be developed, and businesses need to bite the bullet and accept that.

The narrative that has taken hold in the last few years in relation to the job market is that jobs are available and there are job shortages in places, but there is a serious mismatch between the jobs that are available and the skillsets of job seekers.  This, I have read, is the a major factor for the high unemployment rate.  As a fake example that mimics what I have read, a business that makes airplane parts might state that they'd be happy to hire welders, but they just cannot find any who are qualified to weld aluminum parts.  I don't completely agree with this assessment, though.

A few months ago I read an article, and I unfortunately cannot find it now, that disputed this narrative.  It stated that there is always a bit of a jobs/skills mismatch in the economy, and there is no real statistical evidence that the mismatch is larger now than at more prosperous times.  The notion is popular because both liberals and conservatives can use it to push their particular agendas.  Those who are more liberal can use this narrative to push for more education funding, and those who are more conservative can use this narrative to shift the responsibility for the jobs situation from business to the incompetence or laziness of the those who are out of work.  At the risk of beating up a couple of strawmen I would like to look at these scenarios.

The education argument has a little bit of merit, but most of it falls apart when you really think about what the narrative implies.  It essentially states that the education system itself fails to get people into a gainfully employable state.  If this is the case, the idea that simply pouring more money into that system will solve anything is naive.  A lot more could be said about this education argument, but that's not where I want to focus.

The other argument that the potential employee pool is simply inferior interests me more, though.  Businesses have always had to expect new hires to go through some learning curve.  Perfect candidates rarely exist, and when they do they typically command top dollar.  The expectation that, even in a weak jobs market, you can be picky enough to demand a laundry list of areas of expertise and experiences with different scenarios and technologies so that you don't have to develop the new hire, then offer a low-ball wage is ridiculous.

What a business is really saying when they say there aren't any qualified candidates is that they are not capable of developing the candidates that are available.  Either that, or they're simply unwilling.  That may be true, but it is also a red flag that those businesses might not acknowledge their role in creating and nurturing star workers, and might be shirking the responsibility to develop them at all.

This is a problem because in the new economy the jobs that require little training are also the ones that will be the easiest to automate, and these jobs will therefore cease to exist.  It's possible that the remaining important roles will go unfilled, or there will be a lot of people playing the role of an undeveloped 2005 Alex Smith who can sort of but not really do their job rather than being a 2012 Alex Smith who is a borderline rock star.

I think a lot of businesses have noticed that some employees get training then leave once they have been fully developed, and that is why those businesses are hesitant to hire someone who needs some development.  I have seen the same thing happen several times myself where someone worked just long enough to get past the learning curve only to leverage that new knowledge to find a role somewhere else.  I do believe, though, that if a business gains a reputation for one that is constantly developing its employees, and also gains a reputation of not downsizing half the company when hard times hit, that this will ultimately lead to retention and recruitment of long-term employees who will give the business a return on those resources spent in development.

In conclusion I believe that workers and businesses share the responsibility that the worker be up to the task of doing their job.  If there is a skills mismatch and a business cannot find people who have the requisite skillset, that is not the fault of the pool of workers that they do not have those qualifications.  It is a failure of expectations that developed people would be ready and waiting.  In that scenario, it is the business' responsibility to find people who can be properly developed to have the needed skillsets.  The companies that know how to identify diamonds in the rough and develop them will find that there are a lot of 2012 Alex Smiths available to be discovered.  Those companies will outperform the ones who decide not to bother with hiring their own Alex Smiths in the first place.

office people watching

This is about people watching from my office rather than other people in my office.

The office I had for a year-and-a-half overlooked a major road with a sidewalk that hosted a few pedestrians.  Most were normal and boring, but on occasion I'd see someone abnormal or entertaining.  A lot of what was entertaining was trying to figure out the back story for what was going on.  There is a residential area across the street, and some businesses along there too, but for various reasons it's not really a place where it makes sense to walk from one place to another.

While there were quite a few joggers, there was once a woman who, instead of jogging, did some sort of stretch-as-far-as-you-can-every-step walk for about a city block down the sidewalk.  Once, I saw a woman jogging with a man right behind her who was not subtle about the fact that he was checking her out the entire time.  Another time someone walked down the sidewalk in a full business suit pulling a small suitcase on wheels for the entire distance of the road that I could see from my office, which made little sense to me because he was on the residential side of the street rather than the office park.  One group of people that always piqued my interest was gaggle of four people (two men and two women) who I frequently saw walking one direction or the other in full business wear in mid-afternoon in no particular hurry.

My office has moved to a different side of the building as of the last month or two, so the people watching has had a different flavor.  I now overlook a parking lot facing the main entrance to the building, so I get some entertainment noticing the different expressions, gaits, and other nuances that people have going into the office versus leaving the office.  Most people have a more serious and determined (and often hurried) presence about them coming in compared to going out.

Probably the most entertaining thing I have seen so far happened on a morning a couple of weeks ago.  I noticed one specific middle-aged woman furiously spraying something on her clothes and in her vehicle before what I assume was her coming into work.  I wrote it off as her trying to get rid of cigarette smoke odor, and I was probably right.  However, as she got out of her vehicle she lit up a[nother] cigarette.  Why light up after spraying yourself with perfume or air freshener (or whatever it was) rather than before?  So perplexing!  I'll have to see if she does it again in the future.

bush v gore

While everyone has a political slant, I am trying very hard to come across as objectively as possible here because the observation this is built on is objective in nature.  I'm very interested when I see similarities between people who others see as diametric opposites.  I've reworded several portions already to try to avoid sounding like I'm taking one perspective or the other, but word choice is almost never completely apolitical.

For a very long while, and definitely before Obama was elected in 2008, I have viewed George W. Bush and Barack Obama as very similar candidates.  Sure, they are very different in many respects to the point where Obama essentially ran against Bush's record in 2008, but I do think their similarities actually outnumber their differences.  I even believe this when looking at points of policy rather than personality.  Both men have campaigned at the opposite extremes of the political spectrum at one time or another, but aside from issues that almost every nationally-elected Republican and Democrat are obligated to disagree on, they ultimately ruled similarly.  This is especially the case when Bush's second term is the object of comparison rather than his first (a fact I'd attribute to Bush to asserting himself more in contrast to certain specific advisers).

For example, monetary policy under at least the second half of Bush's term and throughout Obama's term has been nearly identical. Some may point to the Fed and Ben Bernanke as the reason for that, but I think it has more to do with Treasury Secretary Geithner and his similarity to the multiple treasury secretaries that served under Bush.

Since I think Obama sort of fills a "Bush" role, I was interested to see Mitt Romney nominated on the GOP side.  If there has ever been a Republican that reminded me of Al Gore, Romney is it.  So, without being too political, the following are the similarities I see between Bush and Obama, and also Gore and Romney.

Bush and Obama

Both saw enormous spikes in popularity in their first year in office

This is sort of a fluke for both of them.  Bush was popular because he was the central stabilizing figure in the wake of 9/11.  Obama was popular because he literally and figuratively represented change from a system that a lot of people had become cynical about.  Neither of them saw their incredible levels of popularity last, but that's the way these things go.

Both more well liked personally than politically

This ties in to the last one.  Each presents himself as the type of person the average person would enjoy shooting the breeze with.  Both are very likable on a personal level.  Once they start making their policy positions known, however, they become more polarizing.

Both were lauded in their home state for being unifiers but were eventually seen on the national stage as being polarizing

I don't know if anyone else remembers this, but Bush sold himself in the first election as a "unifier, not a divider."  Obama, likewise, was supposed to usher in a new way of doing things in Washington.  Statements could be made defending or accusing either or both in this regard, but the point remains that this was a major selling point for both men at one point, and it was a way they attempted to contrast themselves with their political opponents.

Both initially ran on specific significant tax cut proposals, but were largely vague about other policy stance details

Enough said.

Both started their terms inheriting an economy headed south

Where a president's responsibility starts and stops regarding the economy is beyond the scope of this comment.  However, the seeds for the dot com bust were sown in the nineties and the seeds for the Great Recession were sown in the preceding decade.  Again, arguments can be made about who was responsible for how the economic situations progressed, but not here right now.

Both selected VP candidates with extensive resumes who could not realistically be elected president

Most VP choices in the last few elections have baffled me.  While Dick Cheney and Joe Biden may have been among the best choices made in the last twelve years, (depending on your opinions of Lieberman, Edwards, and Palin), they both confused me.  Cheney is smart and very good in debates, but he did not have apparent political aspirations, did not excite many people, and proved easy to cast as the villain.  Biden did, and probably still does, have political aspirations, and has a history of working through complicated foreign policy issues.  He also has a long history of saying very dumb things.  If nominated as a presidential candidate his odds of winning would be extremely long and would nearly rely on the GOP candidate being indicted for a felony.

Both, for good or for bad, increased access to and the size of the healthcare system by expanding the government's role in it

I'm not saying more on this right now.  There are positives and negatives that could be stated here, but my role at the moment is not to make value judgments.

Both were bailed out of a bind by General Petraus

Without General Petraus and his 2007 military surge, the odds are that the Middle East would look dramatically different now.  The geopolitical problems there that the surge addressed in this reality may have impacted the global economy by this point in a different reality due to the constraints on getting oil if the surge had not happened.  If Bush ever proves to have a legacy, the person who single-handedly saved it would be General Petraus.

Likewise, when President Obama had to replace General McChrystal in Afghanistan more or less overnight, the only person qualified in that short of notice to fill in the gap was Petraus.  Obama's opinion of Petraus' job must be good since he was nominated to be director of the CIA roughly a year ago.  Quite a change for someone Moveon.org targeted as a military stooge just a few years prior.

Gore and Romney

Both have boring personalities to a fault

In contrast to Bush and Obama, few people would want to chew the fat with Gore or Romney.  They are both monotone speakers who like to shift topics to things people in general are not interested in.  It blows me away that either have had any success in a field like politics, where personality matters more than most anything else.

That is me understating how uncharismatic both men are.

Both were originally elected to office in states that leaned the opposite political way

This may seem random, but I think that both of them being politicians from states that lean the opposite direction made them both more calculating.

Both selected VP candidates that separated them from the previous president of the same party

Joe Lieberman was on record severely criticizing President Clinton and was seen as the most morally aware option available to Gore.  Paul Ryan is to many conservatives the anti-Bush, someone who will deliver on a small-government promise that Bush did not.

Both had wives who were involved with awkward attempts to make their husbands seem more human

Here for Gore, and here for Romney.

Both had fathers who preceded them in political office

Okay, so did Bush.  The difference I see is that George W. Bush was not very similar to his dad in leadership style, and differed on policy as well.  Think about it this way: the younger Bush made a decision on a question only his father had faced to that point in whether to invade Iraq, and his dad chose very differently for the reason that Iraq might turn into a quagmire.

Romney's father was a moderate GOP governor from the north and Gore's father was a Tennessee senator.  I would argue that both lived in their fathers' shadows more than George W.

Both have made a lot of money in hedge fund management

Not merely investing in hedge funds, mind you, but taking leadership and founder roles.

More than in most election years, my main hope this election period is simply that whoever wins actually wins it on the night of the election rather than how the Bush/Gore election ultimately played out.  I am unequivocally ready for this to be over.

102 years

Today, I attended the funeral for my great-grandmother who was 102 years old.  As I only knew her in the later decades of her life I only knew her as a somewhat rough-edged individual.  From the stories I have heard she had always been blunt and capable of getting her hands dirty to the point of killing whatever needed to be killed with her hands or a shotgun on the farm, so I think elements of that personality were probably there when she was younger as well.

What has always struck me, and what I gave a lot of thought to this weekend, was how she essentially lived two lifetimes.

Her husband, and my great-grandfather, lost his first wife during childbirth.  So, she married him as his second wife as a teenager, and was eleven years his younger.  She had seven kids of her own plus his daughter from the previous marriage, and so she lived the life of a farm wife until her husband's death in 1962 when he was 63 and she was 52.  Their youngest son at the time was two days short of his thirteenth birthday.

I don't know too much about her life from the years immediately after her husband's death, but I do know that in the seventies she moved from the Midwest to Arizona with my grandparents to assist in missions work on the Navajo reservation in Arizona.  She was there over twenty years before coming back with them to Missouri where she lived another sixteen years.  Those years had to have been strikingly different from what she had lived up to that point in her life.

I can see how some of the segments of my own life are very different from others, but I have not even reached one third of the life that she has led.  When I think of life being short I think in terms of living seventy or eighty years.  At this stage of my life, one hundred years feels like more time than I would even want.  As she was married into her fifties then lived another fifty unattached, that had to feel like she was two different people.  That's how I believe I would feel in that same situation.

Coming full circle back to my grandmother's personality, it was very strong.  She had zero qualms telling anyone what she thought of whatever and whoever.  As a result, she was incredibly blunt.  She also did what needed to be done, at least when she was physically capable of it.  As she has a strong personality, it makes complete sense that she would establish her own way for the fifty years that she outlived my great-grandfather.

In any case, they are meeting up again now for the first time in literally decades.  That has to be joyous.