colemanjolley.com

I’ve been working on a food website for the past couple of months, in my spare time. It’s an outlet for my interest in, and experiments with, food. The website is called HotNaut.com and it’s available now if you would like to take a look at it.

I’m concentrating on what I call “smart dining”, which means taking on an awareness of the food you eat, where it comes from, and is it sustainable. It would be great if more people could think about how their food is made, whether it is fresh and if it comes from people who can make a living at it. Locavore is a word you will see frequently on HotNaut.

If you read my sites with any regularity, please go over and take a look. If you are on Facebook, become a fan of HotNaut. You can also Follow the HotNaut Twitter feed here.

A fantastic BBC documentary on the rise of Electronic Music and Synthpop, so closely identified with Britain’s music scene in the late 70’s and early 80’s. Lots of important synth figures like Vince Clarke, Gary Numan, Phil Oakey and OMD. Worth a watch!

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Former Ikea executive Johan Stenebo’s new book, Sanningen om Ikea (The Truth about Ikea), poses some interesting and disturbing claims about privacy violations against employees and other unpleasant acts on the part of Ikea owner Ingvar Kamprad and his two sons Mathias and Peter, who manage the company. Spying, an informant network, discrimination against “foreigners”.

However, the gossip is less interesting than claims about volume driving pricing requirements from suppliers. As with WalMart, Ikea is an enormous global retailer, with tremendous volume. Suppliers are virtually guaranteed profit, once chosen. They are usually forced to “bid” on supplying the retailer with a specified component, and lowest price usually wins. In turn, the suppliers are driven to lowball their own cost of labor either local or outsourced in order to make up the pricing per volume. Sometimes that means consuming larger mass for disposal (forestry product, petroleum based plastics) than they would have otherwise. This, in turn, expands the size of the carbon foot print maintained by the supplier, which costs the consumer ultimately in higher energy prices, or higher property prices. And of course, jobs sent overseas drives down the wage base locally

Consumers who search out the lowest price, above all else, reward with their purchase, thinking they have a deal. Often, they are convinced that they have no choice in making the purchase – that there is no other “game out there”, meaning a supplier of low cost consumer goods such as furniture, kitchen utensils and bedding. But is that really the case?

Often, when Ikea or Walmart (or Target or whatever other low cost brand supplier you care to name) enters a market, it is at the expense of lower volume, small business-owned providers. The proverbial “mom and pop” stores. As many of these providers churn or close, the job loss again reduces wage base, reducing even more the ability to purchase. It’s a vicious cycle that accelerates as there are fewer retailers in a marketplace. Its effects can be observed outside the retail space in the area of cable providers also.

At the end of day, consumers end up paying more through lost wages and lower standard of living than saving 10% off purchase price from a big box store.

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• Spies and Racism at Ikea? (abcnews.go.com)
• Habitat furniture chain for sale (news.bbc.co.uk)
• Wal-Mart: Urban Expansion In U.S. Planned (huffingtonpost.com)
• Wal-Mart Looks to Bolster Suppliers (online.wsj.com)
• Wal-Mart Sharpens Its Pricing Pincers (online.wsj.com)

Doing a little housekeeping and getting around to dealing with the comment-spam explosion. Also organized a better taxonomy for post categories, and I’m in the process of fine-tuning some details. Content will most likely shift to more of a focus on economics and politics, topics that  I tend to comment on in my FriendFeed. Also in the process of creating a new food site dedicated to my ideas on dining, smart dining, modern food and how-to techniques. My old blogspot address, colejolley.blogspot.com, will become more a running comment on technology. More to come and the vacation is over!

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• On blog comments (onemanblogs.co.uk)

There is plenty to write about, and I suppose I will get to some of it over the course of the summer, but the topic that has been in my mind of late has been the passing of Michael Jackson.

Perhaps a little more so than others in my generation, Michael Jackson was woven into different phases of my life because I felt a lot in common with him. First, in the Jackson 5 and my own initial attractions to playing music. I taught myself how to play drums while listening to and playing along with the early J5 records. I realized that Michael was close to my own age and it was easy for me to imagine being in a group like him.

Later, in the mid-70s, my father took me to see the Jackson 5 – by then, touring as The Jackson Family, with Janet and Randy and all the siblings on stage, in a vegas-like act that both featured and oppressed Michael. It was the “Dancing Machine” era, and Michael had graduated from James Brown moves to astonishing robot pop-locks, and it was clear that his aspirations were more “with it” than the rest of the family.

At the dawn of the 80s, after years of hanging out at Studio 54 and the golden years of disco, Michael released Off The Wall and it clicked for my little group of white boys looking for some funk. We got the fresh popiness, but the underlying core was R&B that he did so well. Quincy Jones put a sheen and a beat to it that had been lacking before, and we grooved all summer to it.

In 1982, Thriller came out. And all our punk pronouncements were swept under the rug while we taught ourselves dance moves and went to nightclubs, making ourselves and our friends giggle and laugh at the joy in dancing we discovered.

That same year, I was invited to join a great 10 piece funk-R&B band, the only white on stage. And it was pretty clear that everyone felt more comfortable with that because of Michael Jackson. He desegregated our tastes and opened our minds to playing across genre and race, and served as a soundtrack for our own explorations into dance, androgeny, and culture merging.

As with all super successes, his became overwhelming – for him, and for his audience. The military costumes alienated, and he withdrew as the audience turned to first alternative and then grunge. His music became displaced to a generation that saw him as a cartoon. Some prominence restored during the rise of the boy bands, who clearly owed much to his choreagraphy. HipHop, which grew out of early raps on top of his 80s hits, treated him as a visiting saint but he mostly stopped creating.

It was sad to see him become addicted and withdrawn and it wasn’t too surprising last week to hear the first reports of the ambulance, then cardiac arrest, and then death. I needed to consider how far reaching his impact as an artist had been on me over the years, and the background role he played in all music for the past several decades. I remembered a quote from Fred Astaire, who after seeing Jackson perform his famous moonwalk (a slighter version of what Jeffrey Daniels famously perfected), proclaimed him “the greatest dancer of the 20th century”, including even himself.

Through dance, and music, Michael Jackson gathered up a multitude of influences that had converged in post Martin Luther King America, and found a way to bring them all to the party and have a good time.  That one summer, we all danced to Beat It and Billie Jean: punks, rednecks, geeks, metal heads, jocks, whites, blacks, latinos, asians, gays, straights. Without thinking about it, we all got along. He did all of this with amazing artistry, incredible skill that only a lifetime professional can summon, and alluring taste that is the hallmark of genius.

It’s hard not to feel sad at this passing, though no doubt his life was very difficult and he deserved whatever rest this grants. Because there aren’t any candidates for artistry of such magnitude, even waiting in the wings. No one grasps the power to bring together such disparate elements. It may even be the death of popular culture as we know it, and the birth of the long tail culture.

For now though, it’s enough to enjoy a lifetime (for me anyways) of really solidly good memories and great fortune at having been alive to experience it firsthand. Inspirational.

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Bloomberg continuing its investigations into exactly what transpired when banks were forced to take what became known as the TARP funds, back in November, 2008.

The Wall Street Journal had already reported that the Sunday shootout in NY had been assertive. That Paulson and Geithner and Bernanke didn’t just ASK the banks to cooperate, but had insinuated that if they didn’t take the money up front, they might not get any later on when they needed it. That was enough for everyone except Wells Fargo.

However, in a FOIA filing in NY this week, it became known that Paulson had been even more assertive: take it now, or we will force you to later. This has many implications.

As I wrote at the time, whenever bankers convene on a Sunday, it is because only the most dire circumstances exist. The entire US banking system at the time really did sit on the edge of a steep precipice, and the only measure available was nationalization of assetts. However, they really couldn’t say that, because it would have upset the already downward trend in lending rates. So they behaved as secretively as they could. This was when Paulson’s famous “Don’t Ask Just Do As We Say” memo to Congress came forth.

Unfortunately, Geithner’s position within the Obama Adminstration hasn’t changed his approach. Still too close to investment firms he must be regulating, too little has been done to avoid the “too big to fail” approach. This may just end up becoming the albatross that weighs against Obama in the next election cycle.

Every so often the rear view mirror is pressed into service to give a triangulated view of what the backside is doing. The part that everyone behind you sees. This is what I tell myself anyways as I consider career strategy and how my work is performed with colleagues (the Lexus term for co-workers). How can I look backward as a way of looking forward?

I think about how my previous efforts impacted projects, and what the results were. Did others benefit from my efforts? Well, yes. Often. I look at the repeating circumstances and try to find the recognizable patterns that inevitably emerge.

Communication is always a factor. Recently, I linked into an article about Walter Ong and his research into literacy and orality. It brought timely perspective to me while I was considering how to break into management mindshare. Required reading for anyone looking to bridge the gap from geek to group vp.

Often in my career, I realize, I have focused on the details and execution. But knowing the end results of so many different experiments I’ve already conducted, I am finding a real desire to lead my own directions.

Just some top level thoughts about what is going on in my career right now.

BBC is publishing emails received from readers in Mexico City about the influenza outbreak there, including this email from a resident doctor in one of the hospitals:

I work as a resident doctor in one of the biggest hospitals in Mexico City and sadly, the situation is far from “under control”. As a doctor, I realise that the media does not report the truth. Authorities distributed vaccines among all the medical personnel with no results, because two of my partners who worked in this hospital (interns) were killed by this new virus in less than six days even though they were vaccinated as all of us were. The official number of deaths is 20, nevertheless, the true number of victims are more than 200. I understand that we must avoid to panic, but telling the truth it might be better now to prevent and avoid more deaths.

Yeny Gregorio Dávila, Mexico City

For those that read me, just a note that there is increasing incidence of the new swine flu virus spreading outside of Mexico into California and Texas. Reports surfaced earlier today of an event in New York City canceled last night due to 75 people reporting flu like illness.

Couple of good links:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/04/25/mexico-city-cancels-all-p_n_191373.html

http://urgent.internationalsos.com/Latest%20News/Forms/AllItems.aspx

Not wanting their ledgers to appear too heavily laden with toxic assets to the wrong people – namely investors, banks are holding significant quantities of repossessed homes off the market, feeling they would be unable to sell them and that prices would fall further. This is the claim of a fascinating article from the SF Examiner.

Discussions with my free market friends always turn to horror when I advocate a firm approach to the federal government regulating and acquiring insolvent banks, yet it appears obvious to me for just this reason. Assets should not be hidden, as private entities will do. Nationalized, the banks will be forced – and WE will be forced, as consumers – to deal with the excessive inventory. Prices can only equalize when the total availability is known.

By hiding the availability, banks are attempting to control prices in the marketplace, which is neither capitalistic or free. Better that the market truly find equalibrium through disclosure. And only regulation and transparency can achieve that.