The price of oil is killing the airlines. Analysts tell us the business models of the industry are predicated upon oil priced at $90 a barrel or below. The airlines earn, on average, $160 per one-way ticket and pay over $120 per passenger for fuel alone. The remainder must cover wages and benefits, landing fees, pensions, and improvements or upgrades to infrastructure. With the exception of Southwest, whose foray into the futures market allowed it to "lock down" a rate of just over $50-a-barrel, the industry is dying on the vine.
No one knows for sure just what a $140-a-barrel airline industry will look like, but the major carriers will have to sustain some fundamental and seismic changes to weather the storm. Though no one likes to talk about it, ticket prices will have to rise. Until 1978, the US government regulated the prices airlines could charge, maintaining a price floor and allowing the carriers to compete on service. Ticket prices in the '70s, adjusted for inflation, were substantially higher than they are today. Deregulation allowed a drop in airfares but its effect was marginal until 2001, when 9/11 and the subsequent rise of discount carriers Southwest and Jet Blue--whose business models were predicated on low fares--sparked a price war. "Legacy" carriers, fearing permanent loss of business, quickly followed suit, dragging ticket prices to levels unsustainable even with oil below $90 a barrel.
As long as oil remained cheap the agile low-fare lines enjoyed a competitive advantage above and beyond their business models: the young age of their fleets and their employees. While the legacy carriers shouldered the burdens of decades-old pension agreements and withstood increasingly hostile confrontations with the pilots' union, Jet Blue and Southwest enjoyed extremely high ratios of active workers to retirees and virtually no union entanglements. (For a dissertation on the often understated effects of an aging workforce, see Malcolm Gladwell's excellent article here.)
But even low cost carriers based their business models on cheap oil. That their albatross effect on fares opened up air travel to millions of Americans, including the author, who might otherwise have driven cars or taken the bus may end up being more detrimental to low-costers than to their rivals. Despite their ungainly workforces and aging fleets, the legacy carriers have at least one advantage: they never expected to make much money from the "cheap seats" in the first place, garnering the vast majority of their profits from first-class cabins and overseas flights. Their relative neglect of "break even at best" coach cabins while emerging from bankruptcies after 9/11 provided the low-fare carriers with their golden opportunity to capture market share. Ironically, if ticket prices rise to sustainable levels low-fare customers will likely be the first to drop out of the market.
But while soaring fuel costs are likely to prove most detrimental to low-cost models the legacy carriers, caught between the need to reduce costs and raise fares and the ever-decreasing ratio of active workers to retirees, are in no position to capitalize on higher ticket prices. In the end the companies with the most visionary leadership and the most flexibility to adapt will probably prove most resilient. Southwest has its superior vision to thank for its temporary supply of cheap oil. And a company with the moxie to think outside the box and invest in the futures market may yet have something else up its sleeve to deal with the fallout of the low-end market. (For now, at least, it can enjoy a windfall of frustrated customers startled by rising fares and the "nickel-and-dime" pricing structures of its rivals.) Others, like Richard Branson's Virgin, are making moves to exculpate themselves from the fossil-fuels market altogether. (Virgin's first "all bio fuel" flight enjoyed great press, but we've yet to see if bio fuel is any more viable in the long term than petroleum.)
For those carriers whose destinies are still tied to the price of a barrel (Jet Blue this means you), the survival of the low-fare market will likely depend on revenue sources other than fares, which means we may soon be seeing more partnerships with advertisers. One oft-overlooked source of potential advertising dollars is on company websites. Carriers looking for advertising revenue but understandably wary about filling their cabins with corporate logos need look no further than the "new media". Sites like Salon.com offer their visitors a choice: see the content free and agree to sit through a few advertisements and to put up with animated sponsor logos on the page, or pony-up a nominal monthly fee to read without ads. Imagine visiting an airline website and having the opportunity to save 20% on your ticket if you agree to watch a 30-second ad or to take a consumer survey (or to pay the regular price and skip the ads). Internet-based low-costs like Jet Blue already enjoy the advantage of a "hip" market segment accustomed to web-business. Just as Ikea does, the company could be very overt in explaining "how we keep your fares low", and let customers decide. (I'd sure watch a land rover commercial for a discount ticket.) If Jet Blue is not willing to go there, the right start up soon will.
Tuesday, July 22, 2008
Wednesday, July 16, 2008
Animal Magnetism
You don't have to hang around music clubs for too long these days to overhear a conversation about finance or marketing. For today's musician, fluency with business concepts has become the new "chops". Many view the recording industry, turned inside-out by the internet, as a sort of Wild West-a power vacuum ripe for the next big idea: Recording Industry 2.0.
One of the more popular small ideas I've come across is the obsolescence of records as finished product. Many artists now see them as either a means to an end (building fans, marketing themselves to clubs or promoters) or as fringe benefits to fans. Many also see the importance of physical CDs as diminishing. To be marketable CDs require professional cover art and design and the all-important bar code, both of which in turn require either a substantial investment of money or willingness to partner with a label (and often to relinquish some proprietary rights); hardly worth it unless they can net substantial revenue. If you view a CD as nothing more than a delivery system for your sound to a fan's ear, the MP3 rendered it obsolete 10 years ago.
Some go still further, viewing the music itself as fringe to the business. The most important activity of your enterprise, they say, is to sell. Time spent perfecting the "product" that doesn't translate directly into return on investment is time wasted. I'll call it the "membership model": instead of buying CDs, fans pay a "membership fee" for exclusive access to the artist-unreleased bootlegs, video diaries, first crack at concert tickets, "private" events. Certain artists, like ‘Lil Wayne, have used the membership model with remarkable success. Artists with small record sales to begin with are, the thinking goes, in a better position to capture market share than signed artists dependent on high-volume sales. You recruit a corps of devotees, all paying a menial monthly fee (or maybe a one-time membership fee), in exchange for which they get exclusive access to...you. Those membership fees, in turn, finance everything else.
All of which begs the question, does it work?
Let me digress. This week I curated a bill of four bands at a Brooklyn music club. Since jazz has a smaller audience than rock, folk, klezmer, and apparently traditional Irish music (one such band, playing next door, was a hit with patrons), it often makes sense to pool your audience: 50 combined fans who stay for the whole night look just as good to owners as 4 different groups of 50 who rotate in and out throughout the evening. As curator, I sat through all four sets. You can learn a lot about the business of music by observing how various groups sound, how they're managed, and what sort of crowds they draw.
The bands differed markedly in their presentation. Some had used online promotion, others word-of-mouth. Some had CDs out, others not. But one band brought the lion’s share of the fans and enticed the greatest number of “regulars” to stick around. The combination that triumphed had little to do with the media used for the group's promotion and nothing whatsoever to do with their time slot. The factors that counted ended up being the quality of the music and the charisma of the band leader. Hardly rocket science. You're friends with somebody who hangs out frequently, then you check out his band and the music makes you excited. In one fell swoop he's ignited the rare alchemy of endorphins that causes fans to swoon.
What does this have to do with online fan clubs and the decline of the recording industry? That depends why you think Lil Wayne fans or Radiohead fans are so fanatically devoted to their bands. Do millions of people go to the websites, download and forward the bootlegs, read the tour diaries and wait in line for days for concert tickets for the privilege of being a fan? Sure: It's "cool" to be a Radiohead follower! But that’s not enough.
Something attracted you to the band in the first place.
Bottom line-website or physical CD, we're still selling a product. People will flock to Jamba Juice because of a nuanced combination of the taste of the drink and the way being a customer of the company makes them feel, but they won't go simply to be there. And jazz musicians are in the unique position of depending on our products more than average companies for two reasons: Number one, we're often starting from virtual "unknown" status with every potential customer (unlike, say, J. Crew, we can't create buzz about an offshoot product by dropping unspecific "hints"-people have no context by which to judge our credibility). Number two, our fans are far more discerning than average-quickly deciding whether a group has "got it" or not.
Buzz percolates from the bottom up in the jazz world. The groups I've seen succeed, small or large, are powerful evidence that the most potent marketing tools are still a great product and word-of-mouth. But jazz musicians-and local musicians in general-can and do benefit from online marketing and music sales. For us, the internet is most effective as a tool for broadening the impact of the product. It can also help to retain new fans your music attracted in the first-an announcement from stage after a particularly killing set generates sales of Myspace MP3s like little else. (Conversely, the frustration when I hear a great group and can’t download their music anywhere is palpable.) In the end, many musicians have either one half or the other: There are clever marketers with inferior products and great artists no one will ever hear. In the proverbial Wild West, those with ability to produce memorable performances and the savvy to spread the impact enough to sell songs and swell the ranks of fans, are a precious commodity.
One of the more popular small ideas I've come across is the obsolescence of records as finished product. Many artists now see them as either a means to an end (building fans, marketing themselves to clubs or promoters) or as fringe benefits to fans. Many also see the importance of physical CDs as diminishing. To be marketable CDs require professional cover art and design and the all-important bar code, both of which in turn require either a substantial investment of money or willingness to partner with a label (and often to relinquish some proprietary rights); hardly worth it unless they can net substantial revenue. If you view a CD as nothing more than a delivery system for your sound to a fan's ear, the MP3 rendered it obsolete 10 years ago.
Some go still further, viewing the music itself as fringe to the business. The most important activity of your enterprise, they say, is to sell. Time spent perfecting the "product" that doesn't translate directly into return on investment is time wasted. I'll call it the "membership model": instead of buying CDs, fans pay a "membership fee" for exclusive access to the artist-unreleased bootlegs, video diaries, first crack at concert tickets, "private" events. Certain artists, like ‘Lil Wayne, have used the membership model with remarkable success. Artists with small record sales to begin with are, the thinking goes, in a better position to capture market share than signed artists dependent on high-volume sales. You recruit a corps of devotees, all paying a menial monthly fee (or maybe a one-time membership fee), in exchange for which they get exclusive access to...you. Those membership fees, in turn, finance everything else.
All of which begs the question, does it work?
Let me digress. This week I curated a bill of four bands at a Brooklyn music club. Since jazz has a smaller audience than rock, folk, klezmer, and apparently traditional Irish music (one such band, playing next door, was a hit with patrons), it often makes sense to pool your audience: 50 combined fans who stay for the whole night look just as good to owners as 4 different groups of 50 who rotate in and out throughout the evening. As curator, I sat through all four sets. You can learn a lot about the business of music by observing how various groups sound, how they're managed, and what sort of crowds they draw.
The bands differed markedly in their presentation. Some had used online promotion, others word-of-mouth. Some had CDs out, others not. But one band brought the lion’s share of the fans and enticed the greatest number of “regulars” to stick around. The combination that triumphed had little to do with the media used for the group's promotion and nothing whatsoever to do with their time slot. The factors that counted ended up being the quality of the music and the charisma of the band leader. Hardly rocket science. You're friends with somebody who hangs out frequently, then you check out his band and the music makes you excited. In one fell swoop he's ignited the rare alchemy of endorphins that causes fans to swoon.
What does this have to do with online fan clubs and the decline of the recording industry? That depends why you think Lil Wayne fans or Radiohead fans are so fanatically devoted to their bands. Do millions of people go to the websites, download and forward the bootlegs, read the tour diaries and wait in line for days for concert tickets for the privilege of being a fan? Sure: It's "cool" to be a Radiohead follower! But that’s not enough.
Something attracted you to the band in the first place.
Bottom line-website or physical CD, we're still selling a product. People will flock to Jamba Juice because of a nuanced combination of the taste of the drink and the way being a customer of the company makes them feel, but they won't go simply to be there. And jazz musicians are in the unique position of depending on our products more than average companies for two reasons: Number one, we're often starting from virtual "unknown" status with every potential customer (unlike, say, J. Crew, we can't create buzz about an offshoot product by dropping unspecific "hints"-people have no context by which to judge our credibility). Number two, our fans are far more discerning than average-quickly deciding whether a group has "got it" or not.
Buzz percolates from the bottom up in the jazz world. The groups I've seen succeed, small or large, are powerful evidence that the most potent marketing tools are still a great product and word-of-mouth. But jazz musicians-and local musicians in general-can and do benefit from online marketing and music sales. For us, the internet is most effective as a tool for broadening the impact of the product. It can also help to retain new fans your music attracted in the first-an announcement from stage after a particularly killing set generates sales of Myspace MP3s like little else. (Conversely, the frustration when I hear a great group and can’t download their music anywhere is palpable.) In the end, many musicians have either one half or the other: There are clever marketers with inferior products and great artists no one will ever hear. In the proverbial Wild West, those with ability to produce memorable performances and the savvy to spread the impact enough to sell songs and swell the ranks of fans, are a precious commodity.
Friday, July 11, 2008
Elitism
Early this week Barack Obama gave a town hall speech to a mostly black audience in Georgia. After telling the kids they probably weren't as good at basketball or rap as they thought, he went on to profess his desire that Americans become more proficient in foreign languages.
New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman has been calling for a price floor for oil since early 2004, but the current "crisis" has spurred investment in alternative energies in quantities unheard of in the 1990s. Amid the cries for more offshore drilling, leasing more Alaskan lands and crackdowns on speculation, a steady chorus in favor of the opposite idea-that prices need to be kept as high as possible-has emerged. A price floor means that the national government establishes a minimum price-per-barrel-say $100-and implements a tax that makes up the difference should the market price fall below that floor. In 2001 some economists and green energy enthusiasts were calling for a $50 price floor-laughable by today's standards. The conventional wisdom goes that large-scale investment in a new technology won't occur until it can be offered at prices competitive with existing technologies.
If Friedman has had his eye on long-term investment in global infrastructure, New York mayor Michael Bloomberg made two famous failed attempts to initiate fundamental change at the local level with his now infamous congestion pricing. Bloomberg's idea was a simple one: make it so expensive to drive a car into Manhattan that public transportation or carpooling becomes a more realistic option. Like peak train fares, congestion pricing-in its conception-was designed to encourage people to think twice before driving their cars.
60 Minutes aired a broadcast last fall featuring a compelling debate: to keep or to divest of the U.S.'s lowest monetary common denominator, the penny. On the side of axing the penny were an economist who argued its uselessness and inconvenience, and...well an economics student at MIT pointing out the economic catch-22 of minting pennies: they cost far more to create than they're worth.
So what is elitism? By and large it's a catch-phrase we hear tossed around during political seasons, usually on Lou Dobbs or Fox News. (Though David Brooks, I suspect out of guilt more than anything else, has been know to use it on occasion.) Colloquially "elitism" is understood to mean values held by a segment of the population more educated, liberal, and light-in-the-loafers than-say-the followers of NASCAR. Dobbs, for his part, went to work on Obama after the "foreign languages" speech, calling it elitist and asking citizens to demand of their congressman that English be made the official language of the U.S.
Who are elitists? One imagines a littany akin to "you might be a redneck if..."-an elitist acid test, and indeed the genesis and popularity of websites like "stuff white people like" indicates the label might not be totally undeserved. (Do you brag about not owning a television? Does your dream home include at least one piece of modernist furniture?) Complicating things somewhat is the fact that most modern purveyors of the term, almost to a one, seem to fit the definition (see: Brooks, David or Coulter, Ann). David Brooks may well be a special case, devoting some columns to assailing elitism (Obama's bowling, that salad bar at the Applebees) and just as many participating in it (the rise of the educated class/education as the new cultural wedge, rich people's kids are better at interacting in the world, modern rich work harder than modern poor). By simultaneously participating in and criticizing a culture, he's engaging in "post modernism" and as such likely deserves accolades from the elitists.
So we can go to work on the term with a pickaxe, as Thomas Frank, Paul Krugman and many others have done-dissecting the real makeup of our culture: The fact that the upper class is more likely to vote according to its religious views than the working class. The cars/houses/dress/salary of the people making money by selling us "red America." (And in so doing we'd be engaging in "posthumous cultural meta-analysis", which doubtless would bump us a couple of notches in the elitist book.) But just have a look at Stuff White People Like and tell me some of this stuff isn't a dead-ringer.
But I'd like to propose a more street-level concept of elitism, and an argument about why it may be important in some cases. As somebody with enough education to get a job that allows him to sit indoors at a computer all day and recieve a paycheck by direct deposit I'm isolated from a certain segment of the population. I can afford to live in New York, where I don't have to drive a car to work and where I'm already buying "high end" foods at the grocery store (so I'm less afflicted than some by the rise in food prices). I own a computer, take for-granted a passing familiarity with its applications, and make enough money to pay for high-speed internet. I've got a health plan through my employer and access to credit that all but ensures my liquidity will stay shy of desperate, even in tight months. I've got an entertainment budget liberal enough that there's room to pare things down if I have to pay off the IRS or something. I've got in laws wealthy enough and generous enough to fund occasional international travel.
And yet here I sit, decreeing that Americans should learn foreign languages, that the high price of oil is a good thing because it will wean us off foreign oil-and hopefully reduce our dependence on fossil fuels in general, that congestion pricing was a good thing, and that maybe we should get rid of the penny. My point is, what standing have I to say? Or, less delicately, where do I get off?
Indeed, anyone who purports to know what's best for someone whose hardships he's never had to share ought to think twice, and at the very least ought not to object to a degree of resentment. "Obama wants me to learn foreign languages? What's next-I have to learn the languages of every immigrant group moving into my town? Has he ever had to support a family of four by working at Wallmart?" "You want to keep gas expensive? Half my monthly paycheck's going to gas so I can get my kids to school and get to my job." You get the picture.
Sheldon Silver, the stodgy state assembly Democratic leader who eventually defeated congestion pricing in committee, summed up his opposition in two sentences. Bloomberg's not going to charge limos. People who ride in limos will be exempt from a "tax" my working-class constituents will have to pay. Opponents of losing the penny point to studies of other countries that experienced price adjustments to the next-largest currency upon eliminating their smallest. Those adjustments were always up. So what if it's just a few cents to you? The poor and working-class will get hit in the wallets. (Penny proponents: fear not. There is little chance of eliminating the penny in the near future.)
So it's elitist. Now the crux: does that make it wrong?
For issues like price floors on oil and congestion pricing, I leave it up to debate. Climate scientists will tell you we have to reduce our CO2 output
substantially and fast, otherwise the consequences will be far more dire for the planet than a higher pricetag at the pump. And global warming will-of course-affect the poor disproportionately, as natural phenomena usually do. Perhaps people like Friedman and Bloomberg would have done better to engage their opponents and display an understanding of the fears-legitimate or not-lower income citizens have about sweeping environmental regulations. A compromise-any compromise-is better than nothing, which is precisely what we've got.
What about requiring Americans to learn foreign languages? I would go one step further and ask, "by our new definition, is that really 'elitist'?" Was Obama deigning to proclaim, to people whose shoes he'd never walked in, that they should follow a course of action for which he would reap the benefits but incur none of the risks? I say no. On the contrary, most of the manufacturing base that used to be America's bread and butter has been gutted by globalization. And the loss of manufacturing jobs has turned vast numbers of former members of the middle class into the poor. Whether you favor free-trade or tarrifs-whether you favor outsourcing or not (or hell, whether you think it's reversible), there is but one approach universally agreed to improve our prospects accross the economic spectrum and that is education. We've all read the statistics about American students falling behind in test scores (they've since made up some ground, but progress is uneven). We've all seen the surveys of appallingly small numbers of Americans able to idenfity well-known foreign countries on a map. Yet we persist in harboring attitudes toward education that border on hostile. Indeed, the most successful politician in the last decade is one who learned to speak "beneath his IQ"-with a Texas stutter belying his Ivy League education.
So let's practice a little less elitism in the way we talk about elitism, and a little more in evaluating our competitiveness in the world.
New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman has been calling for a price floor for oil since early 2004, but the current "crisis" has spurred investment in alternative energies in quantities unheard of in the 1990s. Amid the cries for more offshore drilling, leasing more Alaskan lands and crackdowns on speculation, a steady chorus in favor of the opposite idea-that prices need to be kept as high as possible-has emerged. A price floor means that the national government establishes a minimum price-per-barrel-say $100-and implements a tax that makes up the difference should the market price fall below that floor. In 2001 some economists and green energy enthusiasts were calling for a $50 price floor-laughable by today's standards. The conventional wisdom goes that large-scale investment in a new technology won't occur until it can be offered at prices competitive with existing technologies.
If Friedman has had his eye on long-term investment in global infrastructure, New York mayor Michael Bloomberg made two famous failed attempts to initiate fundamental change at the local level with his now infamous congestion pricing. Bloomberg's idea was a simple one: make it so expensive to drive a car into Manhattan that public transportation or carpooling becomes a more realistic option. Like peak train fares, congestion pricing-in its conception-was designed to encourage people to think twice before driving their cars.
60 Minutes aired a broadcast last fall featuring a compelling debate: to keep or to divest of the U.S.'s lowest monetary common denominator, the penny. On the side of axing the penny were an economist who argued its uselessness and inconvenience, and...well an economics student at MIT pointing out the economic catch-22 of minting pennies: they cost far more to create than they're worth.
So what is elitism? By and large it's a catch-phrase we hear tossed around during political seasons, usually on Lou Dobbs or Fox News. (Though David Brooks, I suspect out of guilt more than anything else, has been know to use it on occasion.) Colloquially "elitism" is understood to mean values held by a segment of the population more educated, liberal, and light-in-the-loafers than-say-the followers of NASCAR. Dobbs, for his part, went to work on Obama after the "foreign languages" speech, calling it elitist and asking citizens to demand of their congressman that English be made the official language of the U.S.
Who are elitists? One imagines a littany akin to "you might be a redneck if..."-an elitist acid test, and indeed the genesis and popularity of websites like "stuff white people like" indicates the label might not be totally undeserved. (Do you brag about not owning a television? Does your dream home include at least one piece of modernist furniture?) Complicating things somewhat is the fact that most modern purveyors of the term, almost to a one, seem to fit the definition (see: Brooks, David or Coulter, Ann). David Brooks may well be a special case, devoting some columns to assailing elitism (Obama's bowling, that salad bar at the Applebees) and just as many participating in it (the rise of the educated class/education as the new cultural wedge, rich people's kids are better at interacting in the world, modern rich work harder than modern poor). By simultaneously participating in and criticizing a culture, he's engaging in "post modernism" and as such likely deserves accolades from the elitists.
So we can go to work on the term with a pickaxe, as Thomas Frank, Paul Krugman and many others have done-dissecting the real makeup of our culture: The fact that the upper class is more likely to vote according to its religious views than the working class. The cars/houses/dress/salary of the people making money by selling us "red America." (And in so doing we'd be engaging in "posthumous cultural meta-analysis", which doubtless would bump us a couple of notches in the elitist book.) But just have a look at Stuff White People Like and tell me some of this stuff isn't a dead-ringer.
But I'd like to propose a more street-level concept of elitism, and an argument about why it may be important in some cases. As somebody with enough education to get a job that allows him to sit indoors at a computer all day and recieve a paycheck by direct deposit I'm isolated from a certain segment of the population. I can afford to live in New York, where I don't have to drive a car to work and where I'm already buying "high end" foods at the grocery store (so I'm less afflicted than some by the rise in food prices). I own a computer, take for-granted a passing familiarity with its applications, and make enough money to pay for high-speed internet. I've got a health plan through my employer and access to credit that all but ensures my liquidity will stay shy of desperate, even in tight months. I've got an entertainment budget liberal enough that there's room to pare things down if I have to pay off the IRS or something. I've got in laws wealthy enough and generous enough to fund occasional international travel.
And yet here I sit, decreeing that Americans should learn foreign languages, that the high price of oil is a good thing because it will wean us off foreign oil-and hopefully reduce our dependence on fossil fuels in general, that congestion pricing was a good thing, and that maybe we should get rid of the penny. My point is, what standing have I to say? Or, less delicately, where do I get off?
Indeed, anyone who purports to know what's best for someone whose hardships he's never had to share ought to think twice, and at the very least ought not to object to a degree of resentment. "Obama wants me to learn foreign languages? What's next-I have to learn the languages of every immigrant group moving into my town? Has he ever had to support a family of four by working at Wallmart?" "You want to keep gas expensive? Half my monthly paycheck's going to gas so I can get my kids to school and get to my job." You get the picture.
Sheldon Silver, the stodgy state assembly Democratic leader who eventually defeated congestion pricing in committee, summed up his opposition in two sentences. Bloomberg's not going to charge limos. People who ride in limos will be exempt from a "tax" my working-class constituents will have to pay. Opponents of losing the penny point to studies of other countries that experienced price adjustments to the next-largest currency upon eliminating their smallest. Those adjustments were always up. So what if it's just a few cents to you? The poor and working-class will get hit in the wallets. (Penny proponents: fear not. There is little chance of eliminating the penny in the near future.)
So it's elitist. Now the crux: does that make it wrong?
For issues like price floors on oil and congestion pricing, I leave it up to debate. Climate scientists will tell you we have to reduce our CO2 output
substantially and fast, otherwise the consequences will be far more dire for the planet than a higher pricetag at the pump. And global warming will-of course-affect the poor disproportionately, as natural phenomena usually do. Perhaps people like Friedman and Bloomberg would have done better to engage their opponents and display an understanding of the fears-legitimate or not-lower income citizens have about sweeping environmental regulations. A compromise-any compromise-is better than nothing, which is precisely what we've got.
What about requiring Americans to learn foreign languages? I would go one step further and ask, "by our new definition, is that really 'elitist'?" Was Obama deigning to proclaim, to people whose shoes he'd never walked in, that they should follow a course of action for which he would reap the benefits but incur none of the risks? I say no. On the contrary, most of the manufacturing base that used to be America's bread and butter has been gutted by globalization. And the loss of manufacturing jobs has turned vast numbers of former members of the middle class into the poor. Whether you favor free-trade or tarrifs-whether you favor outsourcing or not (or hell, whether you think it's reversible), there is but one approach universally agreed to improve our prospects accross the economic spectrum and that is education. We've all read the statistics about American students falling behind in test scores (they've since made up some ground, but progress is uneven). We've all seen the surveys of appallingly small numbers of Americans able to idenfity well-known foreign countries on a map. Yet we persist in harboring attitudes toward education that border on hostile. Indeed, the most successful politician in the last decade is one who learned to speak "beneath his IQ"-with a Texas stutter belying his Ivy League education.
So let's practice a little less elitism in the way we talk about elitism, and a little more in evaluating our competitiveness in the world.
Saturday, July 5, 2008
Prolifism or Proliferation
I'm challenging myself to write something new every day, even if it's inconsequential. I think that's the only way to eliminate the last throes of writer's block.
Such a paradox, this artist's continuum between stagefright and vanity. Fellow performance artists will know what I'm talking about. Others might be like, "huh?" In the same way effective writing requires first that you abandon all inhibition about what you write, then later narrow the scope with "taste", so performance requires you to shed your fear of looking bad, but later to look good anyway. Actually socializing's a little like that, too. At first you choose your words carefully out of fear of embarrassment. Later, often mid-college-career and fueled by a couple of drinks you say anything that comes to mind, which can be liberating. You think you're being cool because you're being "straight." Finally, you again choose your words carefully, not because you're afraid of what people will think but because you're sensitive to the needs of people around you.
Hah. Ideally at least. In my case it depends heavily on context, how much sleep I've had the previous night, how much I've had to drink, etc.
But the idea of the "overshare" in blogs is compelling. People who want to put every detail of themselves out there because it's somehow liberating. To me that smacks of the "undergrad college" thing - you're reacting against having to hold your tongue for the first quarter of your life. But oversharing is different than compelling writing, for one key reason: oversharing is by definition about the author. Just like that girl you dared yourself to ask for her number the summer between freshman and sophomore year it's really not about the recipient of your writings-it's about YOU. And a great many blog readers might be willing to humor us while we work out our angst via diary pages open to anyone with a computer, and good for them. What good writing seems to have is ubiquity. A focus turned outward-something that touches a chord in the reader where he/she can say "that's me." When I read great writing it can be self referential, but the author is viewing him/herself in a larger context.
Performance, for me, seems to follow a very similar arc. (And once again it's not like a 12-step program.) From straight up stage fright one progresses to a general ease "being him/herself" in front of the audience. In my case early on that meant a comfort level with showcasing myself-a pretty selfish way of being. Finally, one hopes to achieve a more selfless stage presence where the wall between the performer and audience disappears (or so we pretend) and the entire thing becomes more interactive. That's the goal.
Recognizing that to get to that Shangri-La the artist has to have built up a comfort level being essentially naked in front of the audience goes a long way to explaining the psychology though. It requires a little-not too much-narcicism-a greater than usual willingness to allow people to see aspects of yourself you think are flaws, and finally a willingness to laugh at oneself. So you'll find me weekly onstage at the Needle, practicing the performance end, and-depending on how long I keep it up-daily here on the old blog.
Such a paradox, this artist's continuum between stagefright and vanity. Fellow performance artists will know what I'm talking about. Others might be like, "huh?" In the same way effective writing requires first that you abandon all inhibition about what you write, then later narrow the scope with "taste", so performance requires you to shed your fear of looking bad, but later to look good anyway. Actually socializing's a little like that, too. At first you choose your words carefully out of fear of embarrassment. Later, often mid-college-career and fueled by a couple of drinks you say anything that comes to mind, which can be liberating. You think you're being cool because you're being "straight." Finally, you again choose your words carefully, not because you're afraid of what people will think but because you're sensitive to the needs of people around you.
Hah. Ideally at least. In my case it depends heavily on context, how much sleep I've had the previous night, how much I've had to drink, etc.
But the idea of the "overshare" in blogs is compelling. People who want to put every detail of themselves out there because it's somehow liberating. To me that smacks of the "undergrad college" thing - you're reacting against having to hold your tongue for the first quarter of your life. But oversharing is different than compelling writing, for one key reason: oversharing is by definition about the author. Just like that girl you dared yourself to ask for her number the summer between freshman and sophomore year it's really not about the recipient of your writings-it's about YOU. And a great many blog readers might be willing to humor us while we work out our angst via diary pages open to anyone with a computer, and good for them. What good writing seems to have is ubiquity. A focus turned outward-something that touches a chord in the reader where he/she can say "that's me." When I read great writing it can be self referential, but the author is viewing him/herself in a larger context.
Performance, for me, seems to follow a very similar arc. (And once again it's not like a 12-step program.) From straight up stage fright one progresses to a general ease "being him/herself" in front of the audience. In my case early on that meant a comfort level with showcasing myself-a pretty selfish way of being. Finally, one hopes to achieve a more selfless stage presence where the wall between the performer and audience disappears (or so we pretend) and the entire thing becomes more interactive. That's the goal.
Recognizing that to get to that Shangri-La the artist has to have built up a comfort level being essentially naked in front of the audience goes a long way to explaining the psychology though. It requires a little-not too much-narcicism-a greater than usual willingness to allow people to see aspects of yourself you think are flaws, and finally a willingness to laugh at oneself. So you'll find me weekly onstage at the Needle, practicing the performance end, and-depending on how long I keep it up-daily here on the old blog.
Thursday, July 3, 2008
Tierd as What? My Homage to Sleep Deprivation
I decided to leave that truly unintentional misspelling of "tired" up there as a testament to its own self-evidence. God that sentence was exhausting to write.
Expecting a treatise on insomnia? Here it is: try to get enough sleep. Consistently. People will tell you you can acclimate to six or seven hours a night but studies tell a different story. (Though it may be true a consistent six hours for five days and the inevitable deficit reduction over the weekend is more healthy than a 72 hour bender followed by three consecutive nights of twelve hours.)
To me nothing reveals the fragility of the human sleep cycle as vividly as jet lag. Think you can adapt your patterns on a whim? Try traveling halfway around the world. You'll lose weight because you've got no appetite at the times your body thinks it's supposed to be asleep. For the first few days 3 or 4 in the afternoon will roll around and you'll feel a fatigue comparable to completing a 16-hour shift at the coalmine and half a bottle of Robitussin. You adjust after a week or so, but only partly. Your body's need to rejuvenate has joined forces with the hormone-generating effects of sunlight to give you something resembling a sleep cycle. But you'll still feel inexplicably groggy mid-afternoon and have zero appetite between 9am and 6 all the while visibly losing weight.
Those are the effects to those of us with the luxury to sit back and observe them-that is those of us on leisure travel. To business people and diplomats such physical phenomena are par for the course. Studies have shown that people deprived of deep sleep (but otherwise sleeping a healthy amount of time per night) for a week can end up in a pre-diabetic state. But those guys are doing it for a living.
Today I have no such excuses. Last night I got to bed at a reasonable hour. Our bedroom was a comfortable temperature. Sheets changed recently, giving off the comforting detergent scent I remember from childhood. Dark. There was no caffeine buzz working its way through my system giving rise to racing heartbeat even as eyes grew heavy. There was just utter indifference to sleep.
Lately I feel like I'm navigating the workaday world in a half-conscious haze. One of the most interesting things about sleep deprivation is that anything requiring more rumination than a yes/no decision becomes a daunting mental puzzle. And any physical task more demanding than walking down the street without falling over may as well be jumping hurdles in roller skates. Deft ascension of the escalators in the 53rd St E train station wearing a bag and carrying a paper and your lunch? Throw in a corps of other commuters whose desire to get in front of you by any means necessary apparently exceeds by orders of magnitude their need to continue their quick pace once they do. The funniest part is they're all giving you about the same look you're giving them. Something like, "I just made it up 13 steps in this sticky heat before colliding with you and now I'm supposed to summon the energy to say 'sorry?'"
To make matters still more entertaining sleep dep apparently affects my warm-weather practice of street jogging in much the way it affects wary drivers. I collided this morning with a bald man in a black polo shirt who had been taking a tight tack around a blind corner. He managed to push me away and glare-I managed a mumbled "sorry." I sometimes wonder about the cost/benefit of urban jogging-It probably exercises your heart but with the fight-or-flight stress responses flaring up every time a baby carriage gets in your way at a bottleneck its effect on stress reduction is debatable. The only reason I started street running again in the first place was that I was falling asleep on the treadmill and needed motivation-like changing scenery and the compelling need to avoid being hit by a bus-to stay awake and finish the run.
Finally, two truisms about sleep dep that are always helpful to remember the next time you're getting zombie eyes waiting for your computer to retrieve a file or...finish...booting up (hee hee). One--those mind-bending effects of the four hours you got Thursday night--the fatigue that had you drifting off in the boardroom--seems to melt precipitously away with the arrival of happy hour. Which may suggest the mind's ability to subvert the body is greater than we realise. Second...I can't remember second.
Expecting a treatise on insomnia? Here it is: try to get enough sleep. Consistently. People will tell you you can acclimate to six or seven hours a night but studies tell a different story. (Though it may be true a consistent six hours for five days and the inevitable deficit reduction over the weekend is more healthy than a 72 hour bender followed by three consecutive nights of twelve hours.)
To me nothing reveals the fragility of the human sleep cycle as vividly as jet lag. Think you can adapt your patterns on a whim? Try traveling halfway around the world. You'll lose weight because you've got no appetite at the times your body thinks it's supposed to be asleep. For the first few days 3 or 4 in the afternoon will roll around and you'll feel a fatigue comparable to completing a 16-hour shift at the coalmine and half a bottle of Robitussin. You adjust after a week or so, but only partly. Your body's need to rejuvenate has joined forces with the hormone-generating effects of sunlight to give you something resembling a sleep cycle. But you'll still feel inexplicably groggy mid-afternoon and have zero appetite between 9am and 6 all the while visibly losing weight.
Those are the effects to those of us with the luxury to sit back and observe them-that is those of us on leisure travel. To business people and diplomats such physical phenomena are par for the course. Studies have shown that people deprived of deep sleep (but otherwise sleeping a healthy amount of time per night) for a week can end up in a pre-diabetic state. But those guys are doing it for a living.
Today I have no such excuses. Last night I got to bed at a reasonable hour. Our bedroom was a comfortable temperature. Sheets changed recently, giving off the comforting detergent scent I remember from childhood. Dark. There was no caffeine buzz working its way through my system giving rise to racing heartbeat even as eyes grew heavy. There was just utter indifference to sleep.
Lately I feel like I'm navigating the workaday world in a half-conscious haze. One of the most interesting things about sleep deprivation is that anything requiring more rumination than a yes/no decision becomes a daunting mental puzzle. And any physical task more demanding than walking down the street without falling over may as well be jumping hurdles in roller skates. Deft ascension of the escalators in the 53rd St E train station wearing a bag and carrying a paper and your lunch? Throw in a corps of other commuters whose desire to get in front of you by any means necessary apparently exceeds by orders of magnitude their need to continue their quick pace once they do. The funniest part is they're all giving you about the same look you're giving them. Something like, "I just made it up 13 steps in this sticky heat before colliding with you and now I'm supposed to summon the energy to say 'sorry?'"
To make matters still more entertaining sleep dep apparently affects my warm-weather practice of street jogging in much the way it affects wary drivers. I collided this morning with a bald man in a black polo shirt who had been taking a tight tack around a blind corner. He managed to push me away and glare-I managed a mumbled "sorry." I sometimes wonder about the cost/benefit of urban jogging-It probably exercises your heart but with the fight-or-flight stress responses flaring up every time a baby carriage gets in your way at a bottleneck its effect on stress reduction is debatable. The only reason I started street running again in the first place was that I was falling asleep on the treadmill and needed motivation-like changing scenery and the compelling need to avoid being hit by a bus-to stay awake and finish the run.
Finally, two truisms about sleep dep that are always helpful to remember the next time you're getting zombie eyes waiting for your computer to retrieve a file or...finish...booting up (hee hee). One--those mind-bending effects of the four hours you got Thursday night--the fatigue that had you drifting off in the boardroom--seems to melt precipitously away with the arrival of happy hour. Which may suggest the mind's ability to subvert the body is greater than we realise. Second...I can't remember second.
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