Author: Carl Setzer

Lonliness, originally uploaded by carl.setzer.

A playground full of gear and children…with the swings ignored.

Recently I’ve heard Chinese officials (and before that, Vietnamese, Indian, Mexican and others) complain about the US “preaching”, particularly about labor and environmental practices. A key piece of that, “why are you denying us the same benefit you had”. This one saddens me deeply. We saw the destructive nature of our actions and seek to purge that from our psyche. No, this isn’t an attempt to rob you of advantage, it’s an attempt to help you avoid our costly mistakes. The US is still healing from the environmental degradations of our history. Still coming to terms the destruction from the dishonest and ill-treatment of our indigenous people, or slavery. 

The goal, for me, at least, isn’t to maximize our grain. Really, it should be about avoiding the same costly mistakes we made in our development. The available mistakes to make are manifold, probably unknowable. Learn from us. If we’re wise, we’ll learn how to learn from the rest of the world. But that’s a blog post for a different day.

Re: “An Infection, Unnoticed, Turns Unstoppable“

Brief summation: boy gets infection via a superficial seeming injury. Multiple medical professionals fail to catch it as it escalates, eventually killing the boy. 

Reading this piece in the NYTimes is painful. As a parent, these stories rattle your paranoia. Parenthood seems to be that thing which shakes us from a “it can’t happen to me” attitude. Yet my parental paranoia wasn’t the only issue raised. I left wondering what could’ve been done differently, or, more specifically, how could technology help to prevent such tragedy.

A few shots to answer “what I did this weekend”.

Hope all of you had a great Father’s Day weekend.

Earlier this week I read an article lambasting the advertising revenue model. I can’t find it right now, but the basic critique was “it never worked and is even worse no”w.

Now, most newspaper revenues, in the recent past at least, came from advertising. Subscriptions didn’t cover a fraction of expenses. Advertising covered the rest and provided profit.

Clearly that model is now damaged, but is it dead? It once worked. Can a business either lower expenses enough, or engage enough advertising to be profitable?

Clearly, businesses still see value in advertising. They still heavily invest in ads. I think part of the challenge for tge advertiser lies in the expanding advertising market. They need to spread the same dollars further.

Then there’s the moral issue: everyone hates advertising. What do we do with that?

Anyway, my rambling early AM thoughts did a Friday. Cheers, everyone!

My photo explorations from Folklife in Seattle last weekend. Had lots of fun, but it was way too short.

Having spent a goodly amount of time the past few years unemployed, I’ve utilized all the major “career” sites a great deal.  One thing I’ve lamented for years: their focus on job search. Now, that’s a particularly important tool and need, but there’s so much more to managing one’s career. Guidance on ways to maximize your current role, how to navigate advancement/promotion, whether you’d do well as a manager, or should focus on being an individual contributor…all these things, and more, would be helpful. Another good thing that would be accomplished by such content: bringing in and audience greater than the job-seeker/recruiter crowd. Expanding the value of the site could well make for richer and more dynamic engagement. And, perhaps, more people would be encouraged to manage their careers better, outside of crisis mode.