That money in politics you’re always complaining about, it’s yours. Take it back!

Our government is way broken. As citizens, we need to fix it fundamentally. And until then, the Internet industry needs to get better at playing by today’s broken rules. But in the case of SOPA/PIPA (also see this great infographic), there isn’t time to fight lobbying fire with lobbying fire, and the notion that emailing and Tweeting at Congress is our best shot of battling entrenched special interests is naive IMHO.

Yesterday we saw a great example of how grassroots online organization can focus our collective economic leverage into influence and results. But before we all go patting ourselves on our collective backs, let’s be honest: this was a gimme — an Internet business dumb enough to thumb their nose at their core customers, and who could ultimately be swayed by a chorus of angry digerati. I applaud the spirit of the GoDaddy boycott, and even participated, but I want us to parlay this small win into something much more meaningful. Let’s not stop at the pawns, let’s strike at the root of support for SOPA/PIPA: the entertainment industry.

More specifically, we need to kneecap the MPAA. Once you understand the motivations of the players involved, the logic of how we can put an end to this nonsense is relatively straightforward. The MPAA is a trade group that represents and is funded by the 6 major film studios (Disney, Warner Brothers, Universal, Fox, Sony, and Paramount). It has an annual budget, determined by its members, that has been shrinking since 2009. The recently appointed new head of the MPAA, former Senator Chris Dodd, is pulling down more than $2 million a year to turn the organization around, which means convincing the studios that they should increase its funding. Not to be overly-cynical here, but it doesn’t seem like too much of a stretch that a former Senator being paid a ton of money in the private sector might seize on Congressional legislation highly favorable to the industry he now represents as the quickest way to prove his (and his organization’s) worth.

I am convinced that the management of the studios don’t really care that much about SOPA/PIPA. If they thought anti-piracy legislation was important, they wouldn’t have been slashing the budget of their lobbying organization over the last several years: in 2007 the MPAA’s overall annual budget was $93 million, in 2009 it was down to $64 million; and within the MPAA itself, the money spent on lobbying went from $2.7 million in 2008 to $1.7 million in 2010. This legislation is even worse than what everyone thinks — it’s not being driven by the needs of a single industry, it’s being driven by the needs of a single industry *trade group*. The studios support it because they’ve been told it will be good for them (even though anyone who knows anything about technology knows it will do little to actually stop piracy) and because there’s no additional cost to them other than what they’ve already sunk into the MPAA’s annual budget. Let’s change that!

If we can show the studios that this ineffective legislation that only succeeds in being hostile to their customers is going to cost them money, I believe they’ll rein in Dodd and the MPAA right quick and that would be the end for SOPA/PIPA. The good news is we have a clear path for demonstrating that cost because, even though these guys may not read the bills they’re paying to have written, they watch their weekend box office receipts like hawks. The bad news is I don’t think the usual online activist base will be enough — in order for this to work, we need to get real people to take real action by changing their offline behavior (i.e. it only works if people who normally go to theaters don’t go when we ask them).

So, here’s what I propose:

1. We pick a weekend far enough from now that we have time to adequately mobilize mass support
2. We educate our non-geek family and friends (aka muggles ) about how SOPA/PIPA will impact the Internet in ways they care about (e.g. censoring YouTube and Facebook)
3. *Then* we start making noise online to get as many people as possible to join the boycott on the appointed weekend and to make clear to the studios that the dip in revenue they’re going to see that weekend is a direct result of their support of SOPA/PIPA

That’s my idea. I think it can work, but only if enough other people think it makes sense and want to help. I’m open to suggestions on how to move forward and happy to help however I can in making this a reality. You can reach me at jonathan [at] jonathanhstrauss.com and @jhstrauss on Twitter.

And in the meantime, I’ll be that guy annoying his girlfriend’s family about the evils of Internet censorship at Christmas dinner .

I’ve been quite absorbed with my startup the last couple months, but it’s been hard to escape the derailment of the Obama administration’s political agenda — in the form of the current healthcare “debate” — less than a year after sweeping to office with a seemingly overwhelming mandate. As much as I’ve pushed these concerns to the back of my mind, I can’t help but at least subconsciously find the reemergence of the politics of fear depressing.

The right-wing extremists we united to vanquish only 10 months ago haven’t disappeared; they just went underground long enough for us to lose focus and for them to prepare their insurgency. This political battle is Afghanistan, not Iraq (or more accurately, what Iraq was supposed to be) — it’s not quick or sexy and the minute we let up, the enemy will take advantage with sneak attacks.

With enough stability regained that the everyone no longer feels we’re in crisis mode and Obama in office long enough for people to realize he’s not some kind of miracle worker and that the solutions to the problems we face are going to take meaningful time and effort, the right-wing has turned up the intensity of their guerilla war by reengaging in the politics of fear. Healthcare is obviously the most conspicuous theater (‘death panels’, really?!), but Glenn Beck’s unabashed claims that Obama is a racist, the “outrage” over Obama’s back-to-school speech, and now the forced resignation of Van Jones are all part of a pattern we cannot afford to ignore.

This post was prompted by one from Carl Pope, Executive Director of the Sierra Club, on the Van Jones debacle entitled “We All Blew It“. I couldn’t agree more, and it made me realize this is a problem that is only going to escalate if we don’t do something to stop it. We progressive Americans, who were only finally galvanized by our reaction to 8 years of Bush/Cheney coupled with the bright promise of the change Obama could bring, have reverted back not just to complacency, but worse to underestimation.

Just because *we* are immune to the politics of fear, does not mean they have lost their power — no matter how absurd the claims in question (whether it be ‘death panels’, Obama’s racism, or Van Jones’s “extremist views and coarse rhetoric”). Remember how much we underestimated George W. Bush in the 2000 election (regardless of whether he legitimately won, none of us thought it would ever even be close)? We have to stop assuming people fact check outrageous claims and recognize that inflammatory propaganda must be stopped in it’s tracks and those who perpetuate it must have their credibility undermined so they can’t continue to do so much damage. Say something enough times (especially on tv) and too many people will start to think it’s true. The more unsubstantiated and/or downright false claims we allow the Glenn Becks of the world to shout from the rooftops, the further they will push the boundaries. We cannot afford to let these extremists define the terms of engagement — if you have to answer questions on ‘death panels’, you’ve already lost.

The politics of hope are a challenge of patience and understanding, while politics of fear pander to our desire for quick fixes and to blame others. Getting people to think beyond sound-bites and seek substance is no easy task, but we have proven it can be done. Let’s not let all that hard work be squandered by neglecting to follow through.

I won’t lie, I’ve found the continued emails from the White House and Equality California (the No on Prop 8 folks) annoying. But I realize now that’s because they remind me I can and *should* be doing more. I’m going to start by phone banking for Equality California this week, because if I don’t participate then I don’t have a right to complain.

What are you going to do?

Like many investors right now, I’m spending a lot of time trying to figure out whether the stock market has actually hit a stable ‘bottom’ or whether it still has further to fall. My dad and I had a long discussion last night about different methodologies for calculating what  equity prices *should* be based on historical market behavior and the dynamics of the current situation. The two main factors that have driven the slide from the heights of October 2007 (DJIA @ 14,279.96 and S&P 500 @ 1,576.09) are the sudden de-leveraging of the financial markets (i.e. some major investors being forced to liquidate >75% of their positions) and the macroeconomic effects of a recessionary cycle (i.e. higher unemployment, lower consumer spending, deflation).

While theoretically possible, I believe modeling the impact of these two factors is a practical impossibility because they are so intertwined — de-leveraging sparked the recession and the recession is driving further de-leveraging. You could also do a technical analysis where you try to match current market behavior to past patterns and extrapolate what happens next based on what happened before. But that method requires making a bet on which past patterns to match against, i.e. is our current situation more similar to the Great Depression or all the recessions since. And that’s a big bet.

So, I propose a different (and much simpler) approach: assume a realistically sustainable growth rate over a long enough period and figure out where we would be if the market had grown at that pace. I picked 20 years as the period and charted the monthly percent change of the Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA) from 2,342.32 at the end of January 1989 to 8,131.33 at Friday’s close. The actual percent change is the blue line, and I plotted 3 other lines against it: 10% annualized growth in green; 6% annualized growth in orange; and 2% annualized growth in red.

 Here’s what that period looks like in annual percent change for the DJIA and S&P 500:

And here’s the annualized rate of return for both the S&P 500 and the DJIA since 1989:

Over the course of this 20 year period, there were only 6 years in which the market declined *at all* (one of which, 2005, was basically break-even) and there were 10 years in which the market gained *more than 10%* and in 7 of those it gained *more than 20%*. Even after the tech bubble “burst” taking the market from 11,497.12 at the end of 1999 to 8,341.63 at the end of 2002 (a 27.4% decline in 3 years), the market would still have delivered a *10.1%* annualized rate of return over the prior 12 years. From where we sit today, it’s no wonder the DJIA declined 33.85% in 2008 (taking us to a still very respectable annualized rate of return since 1989 of 7.24%). But that doesn’t answer the question of how much further down it needs to go before we can consider the value of the equity markets stable. 

That’s where the annual growth rate analysis comes in. It is still highly subjective — depending on what one believes to be a representative sample period and sustainable annualized growth over that period. But I like it because it helps me think about the broader market in terms I feel more comfortable making assumptions about, like what do I think is a reasonable rate of value creation for the economy as a whole over a given period. In the case of the 20 years since 1989, do I believe there’s a reason that the equity markets should have averaged ~10% annual growth while our Real GNP achieved only 2.76% annual growth over the same period? No, and obviously neither does the market at this point.

So, what is a reasonable expectation for a bottom? Your guess on the underlying assumptions is as good as mine. But if one believes technical advancements over the last 20 year period enabled us to double efficiency (i.e. extract twice as much profit from the same revenues), then the markets *should* have grown at around twice the rate of Real GNP. In that case, we would be expecting 5.51% annualized growth in the markets since 1989 as of the end of 2008. Starting from 1989 closing prices of 2,753 on the DJIA and 353.4 on the S&P 500, 19 years of organic equity growth pegged at 2x GNP growth should have closed 2008 at 7,634.38 and 979.95, respectively (actuals were 8,766.39 and 903.25).

Update: Dad accurately points out that GNP is a trailing indicator and equity prices are leading indicators. So, this analysis shouldn’t be considered anything other than directional. I find it helpful as one factor in my overall assessment of the current situation, but as Howard reminds us no one really has all the answers.

This final chart shows the actual level of the DJIA (blue) compared to what it would be if it was pegged at 1x GNP Growth (red), 2x GNP Growth (orange), and 3x GNP Growth (green). It is essentially the same as the chart at the top but now instead of arbitrarily picking annual growth rates, we have pegged them as multiples of Real GNP (i.e. ratios of business efficiency). As you can see, for most of the last 20 years the markets were assuming >300% improvements in business efficiency.

All the above charts and underlying analysis can be found in this spreadsheet.

I first heard the idea for (un)classes a little under 13 days ago when Rahmin pitched it to Todd, John, and me at the Lair on Presidents’ Day. So, what’s an (un)class? It’s exactly what it sounds like: a way to explore your interests without the formal structures of an educational organization; or what we have come to call casual learning. From the brand new (un)classes blog:

(Un)classes are to continuing education what BarCamps are to conferences — a lightweight, low-pressure, and most of all fun way to explore topics that interest you without having to make a big up-front commitment. 

Rahmin is one of those guys with a million ideas, and there’s something to almost all of them, but this one struck a chord with me. It was a product *I* really wanted, which is always a good sign. So, I started to think about why I wanted it and I came up with two fundamental themes that I think are resonant with a growing number of people.

Diversified Living

When I left Yahoo! a little over a year ago, I had spent nearly 4 years as close to singularly focused on work as humanly possible. Over those four years, I invested all of my life capital (i.e. time) in my career, which I thought was a sure-fire investment that would have a much higher rate of return than conventional instruments like hobbies and relationships — those only paid incremental quotidian returns, this could pay exponential life-changing ones. But then I was hit by a Black Swan in the form of Yahoo!’s well-documented struggles. And all of a sudden, a good portion of the capital I had accrued from my investment was in the form of influence within a company at which I was no longer interested in working.

So when I left, I vowed not to make that mistake again. I was not going to put all my capital into one life investment vehicle that could unexpectedly lose its value, I was going to diversify. I realized that life experience (i.e. travel, hobbies, etc) may not have a sexy upside, but it’s safe and pays a solid dividend. Whatever was to come next career-wise would never be a singular focus at the absolute expense of life experience.

However, I’m more than a little OCD (in the annoying perfectionist way, not the need to lock the door 7 times and spin around way) and I throw myself fully into what I do because I don’t know any other way. So, this new goal of life diversification would have to take forms that didn’t require an abundance of free time. But, there aren’t too many meaningful things you can do with a relatively small amount of sporadic spare time beyond read a novel or paint. You definitely can’t learn a new skill or study a subject that interests you, at least not through any conventional educational offerings of which I’m aware. And that’s where (un)classes fills a market void for me, it’s micro-education (Rahmin’s term) — a learning format with smaller basic units that fit my crazy lifestyle.

Weaponization of Hobbies

(First of all, credit to Raza for the term.) If micro-education is a format, then casual learning is a category within that format. What sets casual learning apart from other potential categories of micro-education is the inherent lack of competition, which appeals to my desire for my extra-curricular activities to be enjoyable and stress-free.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m a competitive guy. But, I think it’s somewhat ridiculous that you can go pro and/or compete in pretty much anything nowadays. Stuff that was meant to be fun has now been turned competitive at the highest levels, and I would argue that has trickled down to permeate every level of a given hobby to some degree. There is a certain expectation that by taking classes you are (at least in theory) fully committed to one day becoming an expert in that subject. And by not pursuing the next level once you get there, you are quitting. This implicit expectation can be very daunting for novices or dabblers and serves to keep people from even trying. What if I just care enough to only ever be a beginner?

And then there are the other students. Haven’t we all been there in the beginners’ sailing class with the guy who brought his own life-vest and keeps trying to complete the instructor’s sentences or in the introductory rock-climbing class with the guy who keeps volunteering how he’s only trying to get back in the swing of things after taking a few years off? I don’t want to spend my precious free time dealing with these people! Like I said, I’m competitive. So even if I’m not there to compete, I’ll end up taking it seriously just to shut that douchebag up.

Casual Learning FTW!

I believe both these themes, diversified living and a rebellion against the weaponization of hobbies, appeal to a lot of people who may not even know it yet or are just beginning to realize it.

The current recession has made diversified living not just something the growing ranks of the white-collar unemployed may see as a silver-lining until they find their next job, but a core value that will stay with them for the rest of their lives. The macro-economic Black Swan of the credit crisis is trickling down to become millions of personal Black Swans just like mine. Our generation that was trained to sacrifice everything short-term for our careers and the long-term benefits of professional success is seeing the foundational assumptions of that philosophy spectacularly undermined before our eyes. If all of a sudden I don’t reasonably believe that I’ll be able to make $10M by the age of 40, is the way I’ve been living my life worth the opportunity costs?

As for the weaponization of hobbies, everyone hates douchebags. ‘Nuff said.

Casual learning is unique in that it is purely learning for fun. By its very nature it can’t help you with professional training or becoming an expert at anything. And so, you end up with a self-selecting group of participants who are all there for the same reasons. What makes casual learning special is the community of intellectually curious individuals who want to pursue the joy of learning without having to make a substantive commitment to do so. (Un)classes fill the gap between nothing and full commitment to a subject matter and do so within a supportive and non-competitive group of like-minded individuals. 

(un)classes.com

We’re trying to launch the first version of (un)classes.com in time for LaidOffCamp this Tuesday. Rahmin and I are working on product and marketing, Marcus is helping out with design, the fantastic guys at Cloudspace – Corey, Michael, and Tim (who also happen to be the guys behind awe.sm) — are doing the development heavy lifting, and Todd has even offered to chip in on some CSS work. It’s a side-project for everyone involved that basically kicked off Thursday night, and it will be nothing short of a miracle if we pull it off (and I promise to write about the process if we do). But we’re all really passionate about the possibilities of the idea and the community it can create, and we want to start using this product ourselves.

If you made it this far, there’s a high likelihood you’re digging on the idea of (un)classes as much as we are, and you’re wishing there was a way to get involved right now. Well, today is your lucky day! Even though the site isn’t up yet, Rahmin setup a way for you to submit ideas for things you wanna learn and things you wanna teach. When the site goes live, your submissions will be the first classes in there and you will get an email with your account info. Of course, you can also follow (un)classes on Twitter and/or subscribe to the (un)classes blog.

I’m writing this on a lunch break from campaigning for Barack Obama in Henderson, NV. My friends Robi, Jenni, and I flew out from San Francisco (*early*) Saturday morning, and have been knocking on doors pretty much non-stop since.

It’s finally Election Day, and we’re each coping with the anxiety/excitement in our own ways.
When we got up at 5am, I was pretty freaked out about all the things that could go wrong today. But, getting out there knocking on doors has been a great (and productive) distraction.  

Now as we sit here with MSNBC on 3 tvs at the bar, it’s impossible to avoid the significance of the historical moment soon at hand. Obviously, I have a tremendously vested interest in the outcome of the presidential election. And, I strongly urge everyone to act still today – if you haven’t voted, do it; if you’ve voted, phone bank or just call or text your friends and remind them to vote.

However, I feel we’ve already won a great victory for democracy in this country just by getting to this point:

• First of all, Obama’s candidacy and his campaign’s focus on the youth vote has succeeded in engaging a generation of voters who have spent their entire lives aliented by the political process. This is a momentous shift that’s impact will resonate for many election cycles to come. 
• Secondly, the nature of Obama’s (largely) issue-oriented and positive campaign (and for that matter, the early part of McCain’s campaign as well) has pulled us back from the antagonistic campaigning armageddon brought about by the disciples of Karl Rove. Though we still have a long way to go in raising campaign discourse back to the level such an important process deserves, I see this election as the first step in the electorate repudiating the political conventional wisdom that negative campaigning is an effective tactic. 
• And finally, I am relieved that a candidate like Obama, who talks *up* to his audience (as does his wife), has overcome both the anti-intellectual attacks of the W. era and defied the sound bite-centric campaigning that has been on the rise since Reagan (and greatly accelerated by Bill Clinton). Not dumbing down the message and talking to voters like adults is the first step to restoring constructive political discourse in this country. <update>Nicholas Kristof of the New York Times echoes this sentiment in a much deeper analysis of anti-intellectualism in America.</update>

I’m extremely happy all of this has already been achieved. And to be honest, I’m not sure I would have believed that even these things were possible just a few years ago. But I’m greedy, and as great as these achievements are, they’re not nearly enough!

Now, let’s get out there and use the rest of this day to do what we can to elect Barack Obama and defeat CA Prop 8!!!

I just returned from doing some volunteer work for No on Prop 8 at their SF office. Other than the presidential election, this is the most important issue for me this election day. For those who aren’t aware, Proposition 8 is a California statewide ballot initiative that would amend the state constitution to ban gay marriage.

While this wouldn’t affect me personally, I have many friends who it would. And, I have a serious problem with denying a certain group of citizens the same rights as everyone else. If you don’t have a position on this issue, you should. To stand silently by while someone else is deprived of their rights is to be complicit in that act.

Here is a poem that pretty well captures my motivations:

When the Nazis came for the communists,
I remained silent;
I was not a communist.

When they locked up the social democrats,
I remained silent;
I was not a social democrat.

When they came for the trade unionists,
I did not speak out;
I was not a trade unionist.

When they came for the Jews,
I remained silent;
I was not a Jew.

When they came for me,
there was no one left to speak out.

- “First the came…” by Martin Niemöller

There is plenty of time left to help, and this is going to be a very contentious race. So, please do what you can to help stop the codification of discrimination. The campaign can use your money, your time, or just your voice.

DON’T REMAIN SILENT!

I received an email forward from my mom this morning with the Subject: Surprising Facts, which claimed the hard to believe conclusion that there were more deaths of military personnel under the Clinton administration than that of George W. Bush. The conclusion was backed up with convincing looking “facts” in the email, but it still violated common sense. So, I decided to go to the source and see for myself. Unfortunately, what I found wasn’t much of a surprise — the supposed “facts” were lies and the conclusion they supported was simply not true.

Instead of 14,107 deaths under Clinton and 7,932 deaths under George W. Bush as claimed in the email, the actual totals from the Department of Defense are 7,500 for Clinton and 10,946 for W. More on the actual numbers in a minute, but first I’d like to talk about one of the worst (and most potent) forms of disinformation — the email chain-letter.

Chain emails are totally unaccountable, and thus a favorite tool of slimy political operatives to spread disinformation (deliberately false or misleading information) they can’t be caught spreading. It is a horribly underhanded tactic, and a special place in Hell should be reserved for those who make use of it.

But, they continue to do it because it works. And it works because people are too lazy to check the facts. If you know how to use email, you know how to use Google (or Yahoo! Search). But, even smart people, like my mom and her friends, blindly forward this crap on — thereby personally endorsing the lies and becoming complicit in their creators’ attempts to deceive the American public. In this case, a quick web search for “military fatalities” returns two pages debunking this specific email as well as the real data from the Department of Defense, all above the fold. Sites like the non-partisan http://www.factcheck.org exist for just this purpose, and it really only takes a minute to check these things out before forwarding them on and spreading lies to your friends.

So next time before you hit that Forward button in your email, please do yourself, your friends, and this country a favor by taking two minutes to check the facts you’re about to put your name on.

I found this email particularly repugnant because it appeals to our appreciation for the ultimate sacrifice made by brave American servicemen and women and then dishonors their memories by distorting the truth about their lives lost. So, I wanted to dig deeper than someone else’s response to the email and do my own analysis.

All the official data I accumulated is direct from the Department of Defense, and here is the full spreadsheet I put together to come up with the below conclusions. (DataVis geeks, knock yourselves out!)

Ronald Reagan (1981-1988):
Total Military Deaths – 17,201
Deaths as % of Total Military – 0.09%
Deaths from Hostile Action or Terrorist Attack – 353 

George H. W. Bush (1989-1992):
Total Military Deaths – 6,223
Deaths as % of Total Military – 0.07%
Deaths from Hostile Action or Terrorist Attack – 172

Bill Clinton (1993-2000):
Total Military Deaths – 7,500
Deaths as % of Total Military – 0.06%
Deaths from Hostile Action or Terrorist Attack – 76 

George W. Bush (2001-2007):
Total Military Deaths – 10,946
Deaths as % of Total Military – 0.10%
Deaths from Hostile Action or Terrorist Attack – 3,513 

However, the absolute total numbers aren’t particularly illustrative of policy differences. Over the 28 year period for which there is data, only 9.30% of the military fatalities were classified as resulting from Hostile Action or Terrorist Attack. Since the vast majority of deaths in this period are classified as Accidents (53.22% ) followed by Illness (17.54%) and Self Inflicted (13.61%), the total number of deaths in a given year is more an indication of the total size of the military at that time than anything else. What is most likely the best metric for understanding the effect of policy differences is deaths as a percentage of the total military, which was an average of 0.08% over the entire period. By this metric, George W. Bush’s policies have been the most costly (0.10%), followed by Ronald Reagan (0.09%), then George H. W. Bush (0.07%), and finally Bill Clinton (0.06%).

But, I think the best measure is to look at the total human cost of each individual conflict, which the Department of Defense also provides. 

Iranian Hostage Rescue Mission (April 25, 1980):
President: Jimmy Carter
Total Casualties: 8*

Lebanon Peacekeeping (1982-1984):
President: Ronald Reagan
Total Casualties: 265*

Urgent Fury, Grenada (1983)*:
President: Ronald Reagan
Total Casualties: 19*

Just Cause, Panama (1989)*:
President: George H. W. Bush
Total Casualties: 23*

Persian Gulf War (1990-1991)*:
President: George H. W. Bush
Total Casualties: 383*
Total Wounded: 467**

Restore Hope, Somalia (1992-1994):
President: Bill Clinton
Total Casualties: 43*

Uphold Democracy, Haiti (1994-1996):
President: Bill Clinton
Total Casualties: 4*

Enduring Freedom, Afghanistan (2001-2008):
President: George W. Bush
Total Casualties: 606***
Total Seriously Wounded****: 8,601***

Iraqi Freedom, Iraq (2003-2008):
President: George W. Bush
Total Casualties: 4,169*****
Total Seriously Wounded****: 43,787*****

Afghanistan and Iraq have cost 4,775 lives and 52,388 serious injuries from 2001-2008, while all other major military engagements since 1980 (including the Persian Gulf War) had a combined total of 745 casualties. In comparison, the Vietnam Conflict resulted in 58,220 American military personnel dead and 153,303 seriously injured from 1964-1973 (** above). So, the Global War on Terror thus far has resulted 8.2% as many deaths and 33.7% as many serious injuries as Vietnam.

Regardless of how you feel about any or all of these military operations, it is important that we all recognize and value the very real costs paid by the men and women of our armed forces. So if you received or forwarded this erroneous email, I sincerely hope you will take the time to follow up with the correct information and make sure we properly honor the sacrifices of these brave soldiers.

Rock on Colin Powell!

I think the most important aspect of the General’s much talked about endorsement of Barack Obama on Meet the Press today was his head-on repudiation of the despicable whisper campaign to spread the misconception that Obama is a Muslim (ironically — or not — enough, similar to another presidential disinformation campaign in recent memory):

I’m also troubled by, not what Senator McCain says, but what members of the party say and it is permitted to be said. Such things as: “Well, you know that Mr. Obama is a Muslim.”

Well, the correct answer is he is not a Muslim, he’s a Christian. He has always been a Christian.

But, the really right answer is, what if he is? Is there something wrong with being Muslim in this country?

The answer is no, that’s not America.

Amen! If you haven’t watched the whole thing, you really should — it’ll make you want to write in Colin Powell in November. 

In the immortal words of Sarah Silverman: “Yes, Barack Hussein Obama, it’s a super-fucking-shitty name. But, you’d think that somebody named Manischewitz Guberman might understand that.” Otherwise put, we are a nation of immigrants, a conglomeration of people who represent ethnicities, cultures, and religions from all over the world. This country began as a safe-haven from religious persecution, and made history by being the first to enshrine measures against intolerance (i.e. separation of church and state) in its founding documents. The sad irony of the long and violent history of xenophobia in America is that it is generally the last people to be shit on who are first in line to shit on the new arrivals. It’s like the frat boys (full disclosure: I was in a fraternity ) who haze the pledges because they had themselves been hazed.

But in this case, this latent anti-Muslim sentiment being exploited isn’t just un-American, it is a threat to our national security. Not just our nation, but our entire way of life, is under siege by Islamic Fundamentalism. However, the operative word here is the second, fundamentalism, *not* the first. We are not being attacked by Muslims, we are being attacked by fundamentalists, who happen to be hiding behind the banner of Islam. They are painting the western world, led by the US, as modern day Crusaders intent on wiping Islamic culture from the earth. We, they argue, are the ones who have made this an all-or-nothing battle for the very survival of Islam — it is *our* intolerance and need for Judeo-Christian culture to dominate that dictates the inability for our two worlds to peacefully coexist. So, for Americans to let the heinous acts of extremists foment mainstream intolerance of Muslims in our country is truly to let the terrorists win.

I believe the true front-line in the “War on Terror” is not on the ground in Iraq or Tora Bora, it is ideological. There is no doubt that we must find and bring to justice the leaders of these terrorist organizations. That is absolutely necessary, but it is also far from sufficient. Because without winning the ideological battle, new leaders will spring up to replace them. The only way to truly win the war for the possibility of peaceful coexistence is to starve these organizations of their oxygen — to take away the support of the people. It is not Osama Bin Laden who is blowing himself up at US checkpoints in Iraq, and it is not true believers who are providing food and supplies to the Al Qaida leadership hiding in the mountains of Pakistan. The Fundamentalists have successfully convinced an ever growing portion of the Muslim world — the individual people, not the governments — that it is us or them, and the support of those people is the true source of their strength.

More than 20% of the world’s population is Muslim, including over 150M Muslims in each Pakistan and India, both with nuclear weapons, and 70M in Turkey, which is likely to become a member of the EU in the next 15 years. And in France, the Muslim population is estimated to be as high as 10% (the French census doesn’t ask religion). Our way of life cannot survive if we continue to let the Fundamentalists’ campaign of disinformation persist, or even worse, if we contribute to it. We must demonstrate to the people of the Muslim world, with our words and our deeds, that ours is a culture of tolerance and that there is another choice beyond having their culture destroyed or supporting terrorists. And, the responsibility to spread this message of coexistence does not just lie with our governments, it is ours as citizens as well.

Some links of note:

• More information on the Muslim US soldier, Kareem Khan, Powell mentions
• The photo of Kareem Khan’s mother that inspired Powell
• Full transcript of Powell on Meet the Press

<update>
Credit where credit’s due. As much as I like to malign cable news, props to CNN’s Campbell Brown for tackling this issue (with an almost identical title) before Colin Powell (and even before The Daily Show!). Thanks Sean for the find.
</update>

[Originally posted on my 360 Blog]

I found out on Friday night that my best friend from grade school had committed suicide. His funeral is in a couple of hours and I’m trying to write a eulogy right now. I’ve got a bit of experience dealing with death — too much for my tastes. When I was a junior in high-school, my paternal grandmother passed away followed by my father’s sister and his uncle all in the same year. And then the next year, one of my best friends had a skiing accident right in front of me that required 14 hours of brain surgery and put him in a coma for 3 days. Mercifully, he survived and is largely ok now. But, the confrontation with mortality was as jarring I have ever experienced. Subsequently, I’ve lost a fraternity brother to a car accident, a friend to a shooting, and more family, including three uncles with whom I was close and my maternal grandfather.

Everyone has their own ways of dealing with death. But, I think there are some consistent things we all feel when our own mortality pulls back the curtain and stares us in the face. Life is fragile and fleeting, and if we truly grasped that fact on a daily basis, we wouldn’t be able to function. And so most of the time, we live in a state of willing delusion — we refuse to confront ourselves with the reality of the human situation, that the life that is the center of our being can and will terminate. And that’s why death is always such a shock to us. It’s the finality of it all; the reality that sometimes there are no more tomorrows invading our necessary fantasy that the sun will still rise no matter what (or, more accurately, that we will be around to see it when it does).

I remember what I felt when my paternal grandmother died. I was 16 and it was the first time I really had to deal with death. There were two main sources of sadness, and I realized later that they were both rather selfish. It was the shock of the absolute finality that made me cry. I cried about the fact that *I* would never see my Grandma Lu again and that she wouldn’t be there to chide me and impart her pointed wisdom. I cried from the realization that there were no more fond memories to make and that the existing ones would inevitably dull and fade with time. And I cried from regret, and the fact that there was no longer any way for *me* to right those wrongs. I regretted every time I had been a brat to her (and there were a lot), and I most regretted not going to visit her (she lived in Chicago) the last time my parents went before she died. Of course they didn’t tell me quite how sick she was, but it was football season and if I missed a game I might lose my starting position. The fact that I chose high-school sports over my family was not as much a statement of selfishness as it was of obliviousness — it never entered into my mind that she wouldn’t be around when football season ended. The only unselfish reason I cried during that time was for my father. For knowing that he must be feeling those same things I was feeling only stronger. 

I never actually cried for my grandmother. She was a dignified woman, who lived a long and full life, and she wouldn’t have been happy living on in a state that required constant care. When my Grandpa Wolfi passed away several years later after a long hospitalization, I was actually happy for him. I cried a little for myself, but mostly for my mom and grandma. Of course, it is quite different when someone passes away as young in life as the friend whose grave I will be standing over later today. The prospect of a life cut short and opportunities not lived is a tragedy. But it is a tragedy with no possible remediation. That is the finality of death that we struggle not to grasp. There is nothing we can do to change things now, and so there is nothing gained in crying for what will not be.

If you want to truly mourn, don’t do it for yourself. Don’t cry over memories that won’t be made, put that energy into cherishing the memories that you already have and making them last as long as possible. Don’t cry over regrets you won’t be able to make right, put that energy into righting the wrongs against others with whom you still have that chance, and do it in the memory of your friend who reminded you that you might not be able to fix things tomorrow. And don’t cry for the life not lead and the opportunities not realized, put that energy into honoring your friend’s loss by living your own life to the fullest. But do miss your friend. Miss him every day, because that is the highest honor you can show someone who is gone. But do it with happiness and laughter and with friends, because that’s what he would want.

I am trying to be productive by sorting through all the miscellaneous crap (like expenses, taxes, bills, etc) that you manage to justify ignoring when you are super-busy. I should have taken a before picture of the coffee table in my room that was piled high with the paper detritus of a modern life unattended.

As part of the process, I finally bought a bunch of things I had been meaning to get from Amazon. And as lip-service to the notion that I’m going to improve my record of bi-polar behavior in dealing with personal matters, I threw in a copy of David Allen‘s Getting Things Done. I hope I have better luck with it than Russ has had. For those of you not in the know, David Allen is like the Malcolm Gladwell of personal organization — they have both become famous putting common sense into book form. That alone has been enough to keep me from joining the GTD cult thus far; then there’s the small matter of the GTD cult itself, which I was exposed to in its full glory at BarCampLA.

But despite my self-righteousness, I can admit that I have an issue dealing with the mundane but mandatory administrative tasks of our age. Plus, as one of David Allen’s minions astutely paraphrased, getting things done just feels better than procrastinating. The scary thing is that I can’t really remember a time when I didn’t feel like there was something else I was supposed to be doing (I always *HATED* homework, and rarely did it).  And if that isn’t enough, Ian recommends this book and he is astonishingly productive. So, we’ll see how it goes.

As part of my productivity spree, I am also catching up on the charitable donations I’ve been meaning to make. The Yahoo! Employee Foundation will match any employee donations up to $1,000 per year if they are made through the GivingStation (internal link). So, I have spent a few minutes navigating through the clunky GivingStation UI adding my charities. And even though I already knew to which charities I wanted to donate, I spent some time surfing around Charity Navigator, which does financial analysis of non-profits’ public filings (check out the CEO pay numbers!).

The charities I am giving to are:

• The Fellowship of Christian Athletes, Washington DC Chapter (Charity Navigator Profile) – My fraternity brother Dave is the minister and he rocks! 
• The Silver Lining Ranch (Charity Navigator Profile) – These are some really cool people in Aspen, of all places, who are giving long-term care to kids with cancer. They hosted a dinner for the Yahoo! Board of Directors offsite, and the stories we heard were really awesome.
• Oxfam (Charity Navigator Profile) – This is one of the biggest and best known organizations solving the hard problems of sustainable development. Even though they spend a little bit much on recruitment and fundraising (17% of their budget), $0.76 of every dollar gets to the people that matter.

And finally, there’s a little newspaper clipping that I have been carrying around for months. It’s from a NY Times review of a book called The Big Why by Michael Winter. The review was lukewarm, but it excerpted the title passage from the book, which I vowed to blog:

How do we know if we are really being ourselves? That’s definitely one to ponder.