Monument To The Homeless

I really had to take a second look at this. 

From a distance, it looked like another homeless person sleeping on the bench in Washington., D.C. 

But as I got closer, I realized this was a statue of a homeless person.

And the only thing real about it was the empty cup of Dunkin’ Donuts coffee next to it. 

Honestly, I am not sure what the point of this statue is. 

There are enough REAL homeless people to remind us of their serious plight and the critical need to help them. 

The money that went into creating this monument would’ve been far better spent on helping these real people in need. 😉

(Source Photo: Andy Blumenthal)

That’s Some Pricey Garbage Art

So we stopped in this gallery in Palm Beach.

And there lay this piece of “art”.

Well, I’m not sure–is this really art?

The proprietor explained that this is made up of scrap pieces of metal from the garbage dump like from old discarded automobiles. 

The artist welded the garbage together, painted it, and voila there it is–some very pricey art. 

Who pricey you ask.

Take a guess.

No really. 

No, you’re too low. 

Try again. 

No, you’re still too low.

Not even in the ballpark. 

Okay, I’ll tell you, but only because you asked so nicely.

It starts with a 95.  

No, not $9,500.

No, not $95,000 either. 

That’s right $950,000!!!

All this “art” can be yours if the price is right. 

Can anyone say “irrational exuberance” again? 😉

(Source Photo: Andy Blumenthal)

DMAIC Reengineering

A colleague gave a wonderful talk the other day on process engineering.

The key steps to reduce waste (Lean) or variation/defects (Six Sigma) are as follows:

Define – Scope the project.

Measure – Benchmark current processes.

Analyze – Develop to-be processes (with a prioritized list of improvements) and plan for implementation.

Improve – Executive process improvements.

Control – Monitor/refine new processes.

It was amazing to me how similar to enterprise architecture this is in terms of: defining your “current” and “future” states and creating a transition plan and executing it.

Also, really liked the Project Scoping questions:

– What problem do you want to solve/what process do you want to improve?

– Why do you need this?

– What is the benefit?  And to whom?

– What are your objectives for this effort?

– Who are the key stakeholders?

– When is this needed and why?

I think process improvement/engineering methodologies like this can be a huge benefit to our organizations, especially where the tagline is “Why should we change–we’ve always done it this way!” 😉

(Source Photo: Andy Blumenthal)

Suicide Back To Go

So I spoke to someone who tried to commit suicide.

This is what they told me:

“When you try to commit suicide, there is no light; there is no Heaven; there is only darkness.”

Basically, even though they were desperate and tried to kill themselves, their experience was not one of finding relief, but rather of going to Hell!

So while I really don’t know anything, this is what I imagine happens when you try to commit suicide. 

Yes, there is no light–there is only darkness. 

Yes, there is no Heaven.

But I don’t believe you go to Hell for being desperate, depressed, alone, and feeling like you have no other way out. 

Instead, what I believe is that you “Go back to GO and you do not collect $200.”

In other words, you have to start the Game of Life all over again. 

Since you didn’t complete your tests, trials, challenges, and mission…you go back to the beginning. 

You have to relive your life and go through it all over again. 

Who is to say, whether it is a better life or not. 

Presumably, whatever lessons you were supposed to learn the first time around, you still have to complete those lessons. 

So I would think you have to relive a lot of the same. 

I don’t know about you, but one of the things I hate worst when things go wrong is to have to go back and redo what I’ve already done. 

It seems so fruitless, such a waste of time and effort. 

How is that for frustrating–working just to redo what you already did. 

Perhaps that is quite the measured “punishment” for those who end their life prematurely–before G-d says it’s time. 

While we frequently say things about wishing to be young again or do it all over again–I think rarely does someone mean having to go thru the same pain points again. 

I assume it’s nice to live again, but it’s got to be a value-add life–not just a do-over!

So in my mind, while someone on the edge may not have a real choice in what they are doing and in making a decision to take their life–it’s probably not a purely rational moment in time–I do think that in so taking their life, they are not doing themselves any favors in the end. 

Because, suicide isn’t game over, but rather the game begins all over–from the beginning again. 😉

(Note: I am not talking about assisted suicide here for someone who is at the end of life and in absolute pain and suffering and it is truly time to go–I am sure that is perfectly okay). 

(Source Photo: Andy Blumenthal)

To BE Corruption FREE

Amazing, they were advertising this in downtown Washington, D.C.:

“A Government Free of Corruption”

Wouldn’t this just be completely miraculous!

WE HAVE A DREAM:

– No lies and spin

– No deception and manipulation

– No public and private faces

– No collusion and cheating

– No hidden agendas and backroom dealings

– No hate, bias, and divisiveness

– No denigrating, name-calling, and character assassination

– No bribery and pay to play

– No intimidation, payback, and shadow government

– No self entitlement and self enrichment

– No fraud, waste, and abuse

Imagine instead, if integrity was the essence of good leadership.

Today, in synagogue, the weekly Torah portion was Genesis–where as we all know, G-d created the heavens and the earth. 

Genesis 1:2 “Now the earth was chaos and void” (in Hebrew “tohu va-bohu”).

The bar-mitzvah boy, in his speech, joked about how his first 13-years of life growing up was very much tohu va-bohu (chaos), but he was hopeful that with his wonderful parents guiding him, he would get on track and pay more attention to his schoolwork, all the details, and not rush through things. 

I thought to myself, there are probably a lot of people even in their 30s, 40, and 50’s whose life was still tohu va-bohu, but that doesn’t mean we can’t emulate G-d and still create something wonderful from all the chaos, right? 

Similarly in the tohu va-bohu chaos of Washington politics, where nearly 80% of the electorate believe that we are going in the wrong direction, it’s not too late to continue make something great that we can all be proud of.

In the Wall Street Journal today, Peggy Noonan described a recent focus group led by Democratic pollster, Peter Hart, where all 12 voters (Democrats, Republicans, and Independents) unanimously and sadly agreed that “America was off track.” 

In fact, one person wisely intimated that things seemed to go off track with 9/11 and “never quite recovered.”  Unfortunately, more than the World Trade Center came down in America that fateful day. 

But it’s not the first time in history that things have been tohu va-bohu, and perhaps it’s okay…that why G-d teaches us things can change for the better…order and sense and progress can be made to rise from all the chaos.

The good news is still out there, “And G-d said, ‘Let there be light,’ and there was light.” 😉

(Source Photo: Andy Blumenthal)

What Do You Think Of Toll Booths

The Total CIO speaks about the stupidity of toll booths.

Basically, it’s highway robbery. 😉

(Source Video: Dannielle Blumenthal)

DC Metro Is In Shambles

So the latest this week from the crumbling infrastructure of the DC Metro train system, not withstanding the mess of Operation SafeTrack. 

While riding this morning, a large panel inside the train abruptly and widely swings open and smashes against the fabricated white and plastic wall adjacent to the seats. 

It made a loud bang and initially everyone on the train looked up with the deer in the headlights stare apparently thinking it was a gunshot on the train or something. 

Luckily, no one was in the 2 seats where the panel swung open like that, because their would’ve been some physical damage done to somebody there. 

The age and decrepitness of the train obvious from the incident and also looking at what’s behind door #1!

What is amazing is that this is the Capital of the United States, one of the wealthiest and most powerful nations on Earth.

We spend lavishly abroad and domestically on wasteful pork barrel politics, broken programs, and even money that goes completely unaccounted for (can anyone say pass a financial audit). 

Yet, we cannot provide a modern, clean, safe, and functional metro transportation system servicing the capital of our country or for that matter educate our young people properly or feed the hungry and shelter the homeless within our own borders. 

There is a lot broken here and Metro is just the tip of the leadership iceberg unbecoming who we are and what our potential for this world is. 😉

(Source Photo: Andy Blumenthal)

Spending It All Down

So Parkinson’s Law states that “work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion.“

The more time you have on your hands, the longer it takes you to do something. 

I find this to be so true…like on a day off, I don’t find myself typically getting any more done than on a regular work day. 

But what is true for time, also seems to apply to money. 

The more money you make, the more you need. 

And while you may get more or better quality for your extra bucks, you still don’t have a lot in net savings. 

Thus in line with Conspicuous Consumption, we spend more on luxury goods when we have more money and we spend more of our leisure time on doing the same basic set of activities when we have more time to spend.

Either way, more time and money often means more wasting of each, with people finding it extraordinarily difficult to save when they have (too) much of either. 

Perhaps, that why the big time hip hop artist, Kanye West recently tweeted about being $53 million in debt.

Or why Benjamin Franklin said, “If you want something done, ask a busy person.”

Your personal decision is what you end up spending your extra time and money on. 

The only real difference with time and money is that money you can put in the bank, but time passes whether you are busy or not.

Perhaps the best investment for both is to spend on education, experiences, on loved ones, and on helping others. 

(Source Photo: here with attribution to Parg)

Even The Water

So I was in a meeting yesterday. 

And someone had a bottle of what looked like very dirty water. 

I said to the guy sad-jokingly, “Where’s that from–Flint, Michigan?”

He sadly smiles back and says, “No, I just filled the bottle with iced tea!”

But everyone around the table sighed at the tragic state of affairs with the filthy, contaminated water in Flint. 

The high levels of lead in the water has allegedly resulted in “skin lessons, hair loss, high levels of lead in the blood, vision loss, memory loss, depression and anxiety.”

It’s unbelievable that in an American city with a population around 100,000 that they cannot safely shower or drink their water. 

To make things even worse, now banks are hunkering down and don’t want to give mortgages to people in Flint until they can prove that their water is safe. 

What’s amazing is that this miserable situation in our cities is not the exception, but the rule. 

As of 2003 already, The American Society for Civil Engineering gives us a hideous grade of D on our infrastructure that is aged and in disrepair.

This includes our:

– Energy

– Transportation

– Ports

– Aviation

– Levees

– Dams

– Schools

– Roads

– Inland Waterways

– Wastewater

– Hazardous Waste

– Parks and Recreation

– Rail

– Bridges

– Solid Waste

– Drinking Water

They estimate we need at least $3.6 trillion of investment for infrastructure renewal just by 2020. 

Interestingly enough, the useless decade-long wars in Iraq and Afghanistan costs us over $4 trillion and the lives of almost 14,000 American military and contractor personnel.

What would you rather have a destabilized Middle East now swarming with ISIS, the Taliban, and a resurgent $100 billion richer and nuclear- and terror-determined Iran or a proper country here for us to live in with an actual strategy-driven national security and good schools and clean drinking water? 

(Source Photo: here with attribution to B1ue5sky)

Burning The Evidence

This is a brillant funny advertisement that was displayed on the Metro in Washington, D.C.

“If I burn the evidence, those donuts never happened.”

This as astute marketing for a fitness facility.  

Burn baby, burn (calories that is)!

But in Washington, D.C. (and at times for fiduicary duty bound Wall Street), where transparency is supposed to rule the day–but often doesn’t as we know–this resonates in a whole other way for a class of political and wealthy elites as well as for a host of criminals. 

Bad things (fraud, waste, abuse, and stupid mistakes)–uh, they never happened if there is no evidence to prove it.  

Like the tree that falls in the woods that no one hears…it’s as if it never fell. 

Also, is there a habit of perhaps punishing the innocent in order to protect those that are really guilty? — That never happens too, right? 

But G-d knows what really happened, and often somehow, someway the truth does get exposed (whether by savy investigative journalists, Congressional or court inquiry, brave innocents that come forward, or some bad people getting caught up in their own jumble of lies and deceit).  

As Judge Judy says, “If it doesn’t make sense, it’s usually not true.” 

Or more in line with the ad, “Where there’s smoke, there’s fire.” 😉

(Source Photo: Andy Blumenthal)