Mortality

The first time I thought I was going to die, I was 19. I was in the hospital, and spent an entire night awake, fearing that if I closed my eyes, I would die of an air embolism due to the IV in my arm. Well, it didn't kill me (unless I'm in the world's most boring afterlife), but it did do a lot to remove my fear of dying.

Now I'm in my mid-40s, and while I'm still okay with the fact that I'm eventually going to die, I find myself worrying about just how it's going to come about. The Grim Reaper has been picking off family members in ways that are slow, horrific or both. Of course, I understand that the things that happen to my uncles, great-aunts, et cetera don't really have an impact on me directly, but it all brings home the difference between understanding that one day, I'm going to die, and understanding that there are specific ways of dying, and I'm going to have to go through one of them. And some of them are better then others.

Who's the Parasite?

There just may be a parasite at the root of people's problems. But it's not the guy named on this flyer.

(Note that this post contains a bit of crude language.)

One Kevin Rose has become the target of a round of protests over the escalating cost of housing in San Fransisco, and the displacements and hardships that are rippling out through the lower-income workers who are increasingly finding themselves priced out of homes in and around the areas they work in.

Economics works, and when it works against you, it's a bitch.

Technology workers don't "on average earn four times more than a normal service worker," because the people who run start-ups are selectively generous. It's that there are, comparatively, a relatively small number of them. Conversely, there are a lot of people who are ready, willing and able to "serve [technology workers] coffee, deliver them food, suck their cocks, watch their kids and mop their floors." It's that fundamental disparity, which springs from a number of factors, not all of them "fair," that leads to the huge difference in pay. And because teaching the skills required to be a techie is also not something that just anyone can do (or has the resources for), learning them costs, too, creating a barrier to people abandoning the "normal" service sector for technology, which would put downward pressure on technology wages and upward pressure on service wages.

Which sucks. It's crappy to be in a job market where the skills you have aren't in high enough demand to allow you keep up with the Joneses or to go somewhere that the Joneses aren't. But that's not the Joneses' fault. They're not "parasites," they're people who are workin' for the Man, just like everyone else. When a town ain't big enough for all million-some-odd of us, the people who command the highest salaries get first pick, because that housing scarcity allows people who own housing to demand higher prices - not because it's automagically more expensive to sell or rent a home to someone with more money, but because techies are ready, willing and able (if not exactly happy about it) to give up a significant portion of that "four times more" to someone who's making out like a bandit simply because someone else is paying higher salaries.

Because how many San Fransisco homes, in the condition that they are in right now, would have commanded the prices (either to purchase or to rent) they currently do (adjusted for inflation) before the influx of technology workers came to the area? Now, I don't live in San Fransisco, so I don't have a viable frame of reference, but I'm willing to bet that a significant portion of the cost of housing increases that have come along since "the tech startup bubble" occurred for no other reason than the demand for housing has outstripped the available supply. This extra cost (appropriately known as "rent") goes straight into the pockets of the sellers and landlords for no other reason than housing scarcity - it's money that is being paid for no more value than having something that someone else cannot.

There may be parasites involved - but I suspect that there are better candidates for that label than Mr. Rose and his ilk.

People with the required education and skills to be "techies" are in higher demand than "normal service workers." And so is desirable housing And so techies can demand the lion's share of money from businesses, and people who own housing can, in turn, demand a lion's share from the techies. This leaves the service workers in a pinch - especially given the high level of competition for the relatively low-skill jobs that they currently hold. They've been trapped in a race to the bottom that is not of their own making. But it's not of Mr. Rose's making, either.

I think that they should leave out the threats. It hurts their cause in the eyes of the public.

H/T: Mike Elgan (Though I feel that perhaps Mr. Elgan is being more dismissive of the protestors' position than is perhaps warranted.)

SME

If you haven't seen "The Expert," you should take a few minutes when you have time, and watch it. It's pretty funny.

But it also offers some really biting insight into one of the most common corporate dysfunctions that I've encountered in my working life - people making promises or setting expectations without the input of the people who actually have to do the work or understand things well enough to know what's realistic and what isn't. It also illustrates the slide into cynicism that many subject matter experts grapple with, as they come to understand that despite the fact that people think they have a handle on things, they don't know what they don't know, and therefore, they can't evaluate the final deliverable in any event.

In this regard, casting the project as being about lines is brilliant, as it really allows the viewer to inhabit Anderson's mindspace and realize one of the central problems with attempting to explain things to non-experts in the subject - prior knowledge constrains explanation. (There is, of course, a snarky name for this, that I don't recall right now.) Once Anderson realizes that, regardless of what they think, Sandra and Justine don't have the requisite understanding to competently evaluate the final deliverable, he comes to understand that he could deliver virtually anything he wants, and as long as they have faith in his expertise, they will accept it as being what they asked for. Walter and Mr. Pule(?) don't know any better, either, but they have committed to the client that the project is really simple and can be easily carried out. Walter as the project manager falls into a trap that I have looked to avoid in my own career - agreeing with the higher-ups in the company, and subsequently becoming an agent for their wishes and desires, rather than being a neutral facilitator.

One of the most difficult things for many people to understand is that the role of a subject matter expert is to be the person who helps determine what's reasonable for the scope and parameters of a given project, not to rubber-stamp the desires (and often unrealistically optimistic assumptions that flow from them) that people have for it.

No Reason To Care

"God hates soft men. God hates effeminate men. If I was in a drugstore and some guy opened the door for me, I'd rip his arm off and beat him with the wet end."
Ken Hutcherson, pastor of Antioch Bible Church in Kirkland, Washington.

With California's former Proposition 8 being in the news again, with the flap over former Mozilla CEO Brendan Eich having donated money to the yes campaign, I am reminded of this quote, which I first encountered in a newspaper column some years ago. It's not directly concerned with homosexuality, but Pastor Hutcherson had made a name for himself with his opposition to homosexuality - among other things.

A young person growing up in Pastor Hutcherson's congregation is going to learn that it's acceptable to use violence to convince people that they're neither soft, nor effeminate. If they're really unfortunate, they're going to learn that it's necessary. American society has not completely advanced to the point of indifference about sexual orientation. And that has left pockets where being understood as anything other than unambiguously straight has costs. In this case, that cost is the understanding that not being "manly" enough is going to earn you a place in Hell. Forever.

I, for my part, have cultivated an indifference which allows me to treat the gay people that I know exactly like anyone else. I don't do this because it's what's best for them. I do it because it's what's best for me. I don't care who people love or who they sleep with because it's none of my business, it makes no difference in my life and the energy that would be spent on it is required (and better spent) elsewhere. And likewise, if someone thinks that who they think I love or who they think I sleep with is a problem for them and theirs, that's none of my concern, because I can't do anything about it.

I am a happier person than Pastor Hutcherson because I don't have to live in fear or what man or deity thinks of me. I can walk through a door with both hands full and not be concerned that a wrathful deity will condemn me or that someone I know will suddenly doubt my sexual bona-fides because someone was kind enough to open it for me. Not because these things can't happen (although, as a non-believer in deities, I consider their wrath - even if it somehow made sense - to be figments of the imagination), but because I refuse to be drawn into thinking that, in the grand scheme of things, they actually matter.

Seeing Pink

In Seo Woo and her Pink Things, photographer JeongMee Yoon set out to illustrate how she "felt her daughter's life was being overtaken by pink."

I think the poor child is suffering from Post Traumatic Pink Syndrome.

When I was reading the NPR story about how pink has come to dominate the color choices of many young girls, it occurred to me that I has seen two recent pictures from movies about high-school girls. And I remembered that they had two very different levels of pink in them.

Mean Girls (2004) All four of these girls are wearing pink shirts.

In the decade and a half that separates Heathers from Mean Girls, fashion has changed considerably. Gone are the big hair, and jackets with shoulder pads. But the trendy girls are also wearing a lot more pink.

Heathers (1988) 80s fashion sense aside, there is almost no pink in any of the girls' clothes.

Of course, this isn't to say that no girls wore pink in the 1980s or that they all wore it in the 2000s, but the change here, from a pop-culture standpoint, is rather striking.