best and worst jobs – the kind of thing you read at work

April 22, 2013

It’s unfortunate that it’s always stupid articles that provoke a post from me. But, per the previous post, I am thinking about social media and mobile technologies every day, and I’ll probably write extensively about it this week, now that I got a few deadlines out of the way. Today’s provocative post comes courtesy of the the Wall Street Journal blog, which reported on a survey by CareerCast.com that ranked 200 of the best and worst jobs. What’s interesting is that as a survey, this list really ranks self-perceptions, which means people on the lower end are really channeling their self-loathing. Keep that in mind as you go through the bottom 50. My immediate thought is, “Wow, there are so many kinds of journalists…and they all really hate themselves.”

http://blogs.wsj.com/atwork/2013/04/22/dust-off-your-math-skills-actuary-is-best-job-of-2013/

A couple of my responses/thoughts that I sent up on Facebook:

- Corporate Exec is 155, two spots behind Janitor. “No, Ma, I don’t want to zip around on corporate jets, I want to clean up urine-drenched toilet bowls in a public school.”

- What would be interesting is to (theoretically, like at a bar) compare jobs if you are successful in them, because I imagine (again, theoretically) that a successful newspaper reporter would have a pretty good thing going whereas no matter how a great a janitor you are, still, toilets. On the other end, a failed any kind of job is tough because it’s not the job that sucks, it’s you.

slow slow media

April 8, 2013

During a talk (I think at CIMA) in D.C. last week, I recalled hearing a startling observation that made me think, “Oh, that’s me.” It was about how social media forms, Facebook in particular, has caused people to stop posting on personal blogs as much because it’s quicker, easier and better connected, whereas a blog can be somewhat onerous to go through multiple pages for a new post with less reward (i.e., no friend network to translate into a guaranteed audience). I found the point compelling because when I thought about it that has been my exact behavior. I still prefer developing my points and engaging in discussions but now it’s done via Facebook, which is less ideal. There are problems of history, narrative and authorship with Facebook posts that still make me uncomfortable so I think I will try to shift back to blogging more. That said, blogs can be onerous and there is a process there but one aspect of it that both excites and discourages me is that I edit my blog posts before publishing. It takes work, but it also means it’s more worthwhile to read (I hope). And that’s a respectable quality. There’s too much sloppiness on social media even while it’s touted as a journalistic tool. Technology shouldn’t mean less discipline and craftsmanship – but, too often, it does.

Many more thoughts on social media use and journalism in upcoming posts this week.

So, for now, if Facebook is also cat memes and photos of dogs underwater, then my blog will be all pathos – captured in this portrait of my dog, Chauncey.

i not only waste time playing Scrabble, now i write about it, too

January 16, 2013

In between the non-profit jobs, the travels, the radio stuff, owning a dog, getting suits made, there’s a lot of waiting around. So naturally, I play Scrabble to pass the time. And over years, I’ve gotten better at it, because I play it competitively, even won some money along the way. At one point, I was the best player – in Burundi. And the only reason I’m not anymore is because I moved to New York.

So a couple friends forwarded me this article yesterday asking what I thought.

A researcher named Joshua Lewis suggested we modify the tile values in Scrabble. The argument goes that we use certain letters differently today than when Alfred Butts created Scrabble about 75 years ago. One cited example is that the Z is used more frequently and so should be worth fewer points, especially now that there is a two-letter word containing the Z (‘za’). Lewis is an American researcher but it’s interesting that British media picked up on this story in greater numbers and with more gusto – almost as if they had more at stake. Well, certainly the British use English differently these days – they sound more like Americans.

Blasphemy? I apologise – no wait, I apologiZe.

But this is a classic case of something being what it is and someone coming along, saying, “Well, ‘what is’ is different than ‘what was’ so we should make changes.” There’s a logical disconnect there. The former doesn’t really imply the latter. Let’s say we don’t change the tiles. The only consequence I can see is that scores will be slightly higher (maybe) compared to older scores. Serious players know you really score in Scrabble by playing all seven letters off a rack at once, which results in a 50-point bonus. I mean, come on, every real Scrabble player knows that. So it’s less important how much each individual tile is worth and more about how they function together to achieve a collective score, and it’s still darn hard to make a seven-letter word with a Q or a Z, no matter how much they’re worth.

The other big point why there is no need to change is because you are playing against an opponent, who is subject to the same scoring and same conditions. Scores in Scrabble are a bit like scores in basketball: you might know how to score points and can amass a lot but matched up against a solid defense and your score will obviously go down. It’s entirely possible that two masters of the game cancel each other out and both score below 400. Even when I score 400, that doesn’t mean I’m a better player than they are.

I know I’m shooting myself in the foot with these arguments. Potentially, I’m shooting many other people at the same time – these are the sorts of arguments that the gun lobby uses to justify owning M-whatever-heat-seeking-deathray-bubble-blasters instead of plain old muskets (hey, they were good enough for the Founding Fathers!). But this is Scrabble – the stakes are higher, the pressure more intense. It’s in every living room, every school. We can’t let the Brits’ funny language influence our quirky antiquated ways. Next would be the metric system, and before you know it, we’re a colony again.

(The simple solution: issue new editions with titles like ‘Original’, ‘2010 Edition’, etc., sort of like Trivia Pursuit.)

it’s not about you. it’s not even about me.

January 14, 2013

So. I am in New York now, after four years in East Africa. I have a dog that I brought back with me from Burundi. I am attending Columbia’s School of Journalism. I started a new photoblog. And the first thing I really want to write about after the long lay-off relates to a few threads that have criss-crossed in my last few years: identity, privacy, cultural appropriation and, of course, the media. And all of these themes sort of crashed together last night at the Golden Globes when, shockingly, a celebrity named Jodie Foster revealed herself to be a wildly independent and hyper-intelligent human being with a lot on her mind. We are all still reeling with this fact. Here goes. (And yes, I’ll get back to blogging about my life-events sooner than later but there’ll be more articles like this, too.)

The way the media has seized on Jodie Foster’s speech last night at the Golden Globes reveals a desperation to appropriate the world around us, as if a pageant of Olympian celebrities congratulating themselves was not enough of an artificial media ploy. Foster is probably gracious enough to answer follow-up questions to her speech but sharp enough to realize we have all missed the point.

This sample (http://jezebel.com/5975643/jodie-foster-comes-out-in-most-amazing-awards-speech-of-our-time) in particular jarred me into a frothy indignation. I haven’t seen an article so quickly and resoundingly get it all wrong. It begins, “OK, we need to walk through what just happened.”

Actually, no, we don’t. It’s her private life.  That’s the point. She will reveal as much or as little of it as she wants, in whatever way she wants.

The article’s suggestion of a “refusal” to come out is particularly baffling. It reminds me of the speculation with Anderson Cooper before he came out. One simply has to make a personal declaration in the way others have done – with the same words, looking straight into the camera. It is the tyranny of the collective with its Own Way. It might be important for a community to hear those exact words (“I am [fill with proper designation].), in that format, but that’s not how personal choices are made or communicated. As Foster suggested, we arrive at these choices in our own way and share them with the people around us: friends, family, colleagues. Funny enough, activists and fans aren’t on that list.

What is more important here is the tone, which hints at a larger cultural trait. The public, whether it’s one person or an audience, demands more and more to be addressed directly, with a clear pronouncement, squeezing out the words that we/they want to hear. The media happily feeds that obsession. The whole routine has the feel of a confession, in the way we push for an apology – from a child who refuses to say ‘sorry’ to a sibling to evasive politicians to governments demanding accountability over wartime atrocities. Except, of course, Foster has absolutely nothing to be sorry about.

So why is this speech so provocative? Is it because she has peeked out from behind the mask that we have placed on her? More than most she has had to live in a crystal-clear media-obsessed fishbowl since the 1970s (!), and – I’m confident in saying this – she is more intelligent than most in Hollywood (or anywhere). Maybe this speech grabs our attention because, for once, here is a real conflict without a script between vastly different adversaries: the personality-less celebrity we all want to possess and the unhappy and fiercely intelligent consciousness that refuses our labels. We are always shocked when someone disagrees so fundamentally with our desires.

Every time I have seen her on a screen – during an interview, in a film, at an awards show in France (presenting in flawless French, but with an American casualness), she has immensely impressed me. And I think that can easily translate into a desire to learn or know more about a person. If I step back and ask what is this chase really about, the answer would be simple: me. Us. But if we really want to appreciate a spirit like Foster’s, we might do better with the second person. You are out there. You have a (deeply) personal identity. You are in a world vastly different than mine. You speak faster than I can think. For the brief moments where you share your thoughts and presence, I’m glad for that. Let’s leave “us” out of this.

word storm

This blog’s front page as a word cloud:

Wordle cloud

“Security Level: Red Light”

June 26, 2012

I produced a short radio piece called “Security Level: Red Light” for the 2012 Third Coast International ShortDocs Challenge. Here it is:

http://www.prx.org/pieces/80550-security-level-red-light

Occupy Bujumbura

From 2008 to 2012, I resided in Bujumbura, Burundi, working as an aid worker for the first three years and then as a radio host and producer of Imagine Burundi (imagineburundi.com). Throughout that time, I became more and more dejected over the divisions that existed along cultural, economic, racial and ethnic lines. My presence as a relatively wealthy individual working in an industry that purported to accomplish humanitarian and charitable objectives made me question our collective motivations. How do we reconcile those competing objectives? Or are we digging deeper lines, between haves and have-nots, between citizens and civil servants, between aid workers and “beneficiaries”. Ultimately, the doubts and criticisms creeping around my consciousness coalesced into a form of protest. This short series of photos is meant to highlight these contradictions, in a place far away – in so many regards – from the a country like the U.S. It is meant as a critique of the international development framework and my presence within that model but ultimately, I hope to illustrate the massive impact that inequality, in any form, has on notions of community and democracy.

You could also say that this entire exercise was an excuse to get photos of my dog online without really blogging about my dog – but that would be kind of insane.

(Special thanks to Seth Chase, Leah Hazard, Dedo Baranshamaje and Chauncey Dog for taking some of the photos, running interference with the police and protesting in spirit.)

1. “In Burundi, in East Africa, I am in the 1%. “

2. “In Burundi, the other 99% face extreme inequalities, a paralyzed government, brutal competition, and total despair about any change.”

3. “Burundi has a democratic political system, but what is a democracy without democratic values?”

4. “I’ve occupied Bujumbura for almost four years. Little has improved in that time.”

5. “The status quo here is pessimism, distrust, and stagnation. When we only see inequalities rising, we feel this situation can happen anywhere.”

6. ‘Foreigners in Burundi like to say, “Life is good.” Yes, it is – for us.’

7. “Outside Burundi, I might be in the 99% but I believe in values like merit and opportunity.”

8. “There is a fight out there, to change the rules, to set things right.”

9. “That is why I am leaving Burundi; I want to join this fight.”

10. “My ultimate protest is to leave. I cannot support this framework anymore. It’s strange to be in the 1%.”

11. “It is time to Occupy somewhere else.”