Web Theologian

Darrel Huff wrote a wonderful illustrated book by Irving Geis, titled, How to Lie with Statistics. I’m two chapters into it and I find it lovely. Now there are only two reasons someone would read this book:

To learn how to lie with statistics

To expose those lying with statistics

I’ll let those of you who know me decide why I’m reading it. Learning simple questions to ask can make all the difference in a deal or a discussion.

For instance last night I read the chapter titled, The Well-Chosen Average. This chapter demonstrates the games people play with averages: Arithmetical Average, Median, and Mode. All three of these data points are helpful in certain circumstances but they can also be used to manipulate. For instance when looking at the average salary at a company you are interested in working, this AVERAGE can be skewed if it is the Arithmetical Average when the CEO earns a salary of $10M+. The Media is helpful because then you see the salary that half the employees get paid more and half the employees get paid less. And the Mode will tell you what the most common salary is in the company. This is basic 101 Statistics from University but the refresher has been enlightening to me.

Now that I’m giving away my secrets I think I’ll have to find another book to give me an advantage:)

There are two kinds of statistics, the kind you look up and the kind you make up.          -Rex Stout

Every other week I get to drive to high schoolers to school. It is certainly easier to get in and out of the SUV we own but that is generally not the car I drive to work. On Sunday, we get a text from the high schooler that doesn’t live with me requesting the Uber Black version of the service so that he can fit his baseball bag.

He is right, it is much easier. Though I think after being squeezed in my Mini Cooper each morning in the front seat with his bag on his lap, he did not realize that putting the a back seat down makes plenty of room for a baseball bag. The car is surprisingly accommodating, you just have to be creative.

We rarely do, we order the larger dinner just in case we are that hungry, we live in that house because there is the storage. There is surprising room in our lives we just have to be creative in where it comes from.

Each morning there are two challenges facing me. One is the comfort challenge, that is my bed, spouse, and heated home are so comfortable that I don’t want to go for a run. The second is the darkness. The darkness can be managed a few ways. There is the gym which involves a level of abstraction to my working out but it is still fun to be a hamster on a wheel sometimes. Many mornings I’ll simply stick to streets that have lights. Also I running with a headlamp solves the problem an allows me to imagine I’m running from the government droids that are chasing me, often leading to an adventurous run. Then there are the mornings that I embrace the darkness.

Embracing the darkness changes the entire time running and serves as an analogy for life and work:

• The only option is to run slower
• Signals must be taken from the ground, your feet are the primary input
• Memory of the environment from pervious runs provides comfort
• Hearing is the primary way to prevent getting hit by cars
• After being in the dark even the littlest light is much brighter then before

This is a great way to mentally challenge yourself while running. Regarding work and life it is important to remember you will go through dark times, but managing them is possible.

Even a happy life cannot be without a measure of darkness, and the word happy would lose its meaning if it were not balanced by sadness. It is far better take things as they come along with patience and equanimity.

-Carl Jung

Whether two hours on a plane ride next to a prospect, or at the last two minutes of a board meeting it is important to be ready to pitch. There are a few keys to be successful:

• Know your goal
• Make sure you get attention and don’t let the listeners escape
• Once you achieve your goal shut it down, anything you say afterward could ruin it
• Make sure you know next steps

The last one I missed out on today as the goal was clear, the pitch was good, but we closed the meeting and I’m still not sure if it is approved. Never forget the last step as it is so much more work to deal with it afterward.

Sweat equity is the most valuable equity there is. Know your business and industry better than anyone else in the world. Love what you do or don’t do it.-Mark Cuban

Yesterday I bought a new email client for my Mac from the App Store. I went through my normal buying process of reading reviews and making sure it met my requirements, at least the best I could from product descriptions and reviews. Then after getting it installed I found out that it does not have a calendar feature ???? In my research  was interested in how it incorporated shared calendar data with Exchange (Office 365). I’m doing all of this while on the road with limited attention and I just acted under the assumption that this was a feature in the product from what I read. 

Now I’ve spent $10 for a product that isn’t anywhere close to what I had desired. I’ll commit some more time to see if perhaps I’m missing something, but I’m pretty sure I just made a ‘donation’ to Apple. Their walled garden (and crappy product releases) really have tarnished the brand for me that at one time I nearly worshipped.

If you look at great human civilizations, from the Roman Empire to the Soviet Union, you will see that most do not fail simply due to external threats but because of internal weakness, corruption, or a failure to manifest the values and ideals they espouse.

-Cory Booker

The Seattle “Man in a tree” has taken off, my ride to the airport at 5AM was with a live stream of the event. The craze started yesterday March 22 when a man climb a large evergreen tree outside the Macy’s department store two blocks from my office. Security was already tight downtown because Hillary Rodman Clinton was in Seattle for the caucus this weekend. The guy has not left the tree and the attention it has gathered is overwhelming.

Why?

• An act of defiance gets attention of authorities.
• Homelessness is a major issue in Seattle and this spotlights it.
• Nature lives in a hostile relationship with the city environment the engulfs it.
• The man in the tree has done no harm to himself or others and yet is seen as a threat.
• Thousands of Amazon employees in the area wish they could climb a tree and ignore the white collar sweatshop they work in.
• The tree is lit up yearly as the holiday tree so here is an additional example of the war on Christmas.
• Great wonder at how the man in the tree is going to the bathroom.
• Seattle was in need of a new hipster T-shirt, Ride the SLUT dates you.
• There were not enough traffic cones and emergency fence for the Man in the tree because they are all being used at the construction sites for Amazon or condos.
• Dealing with the reality of what happens to a city when so many people from Idaho move there.
• Car traffic is not as exciting to stop as train traffic.
• Man in the tree is now beating Trump for the Republican nomination really pissing off Jeb.

The identity of the man in the tree has been released.#ManInTree pic.twitter.com/X5tjoq0goO

#manintree

The generation that was taught by Ethan Hawke and Winona Ryder that reality bites, and that there is nothing worse then working for the man like Ben Stiller. Amazingly they (we) got lost between the bigger then life Baby Boomers and the just as big Generation Y. So what became of this group of under achievers?

They brought a reality of change to the Baby Boomers eternal optimism. The Baby Boomers upset the apple cart with the Summer of Love and sexual revolution, but fell short and eventually turned back to very similar foundational structures as their parents.

Gen X witness global change at a rate the world had never seen, and yet there is a focus on making it work. There was an acknowledgement that the system was broken, the Baby Boomers taught us this and they began to rework the system from inside. Many of the benefits that Gen Y currently have are likely because of the efforts of Gen X combined with the first Generation to grow up on the internet.

At the beep, please leave your name, number, and a brief justification for the ontological necessity of modern man’s existential dilemma, and we’ll get back to you -Troy Dyer on the answering machine, Reality Bites

The number of people in my life is a small sample but I find these characteristics of my follow Gen X:

• Most of them have remained married with stable families
• Most of them have found jobs they committed to and are earning a living
• Most of them are charitable givers
• Most of them are still searching for the big way that they can impact the world for good
• Most of them are working off debt.

If you know of any links to generational data please share, I’d be curious if my peer group reflects the overall group or not.  Interested in finding out if you identify with Generation X, read this🙂

Throughout most of history and even in most of the world today people have not had the luxury to pursue passion and meaning in work with the same means that we do in modern society. The “sticky wicket”, to use the British slang, is that theologians believe that work was pre-ordained as part of creation. There was a calling or charge to order the world and multiply both parts of this mean work.

Mike Rowe quote on Education, Jobs and Debt.

So can this calling or charge handle the weight we put into it for our own personal passions? Is it even the correct vessel for these dreams to be worked out. This is extremely complicated to answer. Work will leave you short if a your value is found in it because there will always be challenges, in the worst case you have no capacity for dreams as you are oppressed and marginalized and work is mere done for survival. Any situation like this should be spoken and acted against as it destroys the dignity of other people.

It is about a search, too, for daily meaning as well as daily bread, for recognition as well as cash, for astonishment rather than torpor; in short, for a sort of life rather than a Monday through Friday sort of dying. Perhaps immortality, too, is part of the quest. To be remembered was the wish, spoken and unspoken, of the heroes and heroines of this book.  – Studs Terkel

For most of us it is about the search, ideally coming to work with the knowledge of who we are and what we are created to be. Now that knowledge is evolving and through work we are given opportunity to fail and grow, all while working out a more clear image of who we are hopefully growing more fully human…though I know sometimes the opposite is sadly the case.

These thoughts are inspired by the great blog, brainpickings, if you are not reading it yet you should. I just reserved the book Working: People Talk About What They Do All Day and How They Feel About What They Do by Studs Terkel. There may be more from on this topic once I get my hands on the book.

Remember today that you and those around you are seeking, we are seeking for a lot in our work. There is the desire to provide financially but also a world just as significant in our development as people that has to do with desire, dreams, and a will for the heroic.

Just yesterday I heard comedian Neal Brennan. He was talking about white people, he said it is in our DNA to be tattle tales. We are born snitches and rule followers. He goes on to talk about it is the reason so many white people have trouble sleeping because they are worried that someone is breaking the rules. And then he has the best line, “We should love the rule, we made them.”

This is coming to an end. The recent fascist, hate filled, racist and in-humane comments of the prominent white male running for president only proves my point. For as a snake is being killed it flails the most. These are the last actions of the desperate few that will soon be the end of a very long chapter. The white guys that have been leading the way are no longer.

Inc. just had an article this week titled, Why This Founder Goes Out of Her Way to Hire Women, haven’t read the article but I know that one reason she does is because she has to. Things are changing, and as a white guy I’m grateful and still evolving into how I can be a part of this change. Having three daughters has launched me further into this pursuit then I have ever imagine.

At one conference I attended I engaged Sofia Amoruso #girlboss in a discussion on her book and the appropriateness of giving it to my twelve year old daughter. I’m grateful for women like Moorea Seal and Missy Trull, that spend time investing in my oldest encouraging her and providing her tools for the future. The work of listening and growing in my awareness of what women have been and are up against is a daily task.

And while I may not know where we are going to end up in all this upheaval. There is a choice that one way can lead to fear and the other can lead to mystery, I’ll continue to choose the second because I think it is going to be much more fun and interesting.

Generally running in the morning involves getting to the gym early with my earphones in listening to motivation talks, podcasts or inspirational music. In my dreams it looks like this:

In reality my brain kicks into passive learning mode and I’m somewhat on auto pilot, creative ideas will come but they have to really bubble up over what I’m filling myself with.

Then there are the runs with nothing in my ears and you would think there isn’t a sound track but the music comes out something like this:

Ideas and concepts flood my mind often leading me to send a series of texts at the end of the run. There is a proper place for the hamster wheel and the learning that can take place there, but the excitement of wide open spaces leads me into the infinite.