Views of a Modern World

Everything else Rick writes

Blue Horseshoe Loves Bloomberg

by Leave a Comment

I’m impressed by the restraint over at Bloomberg. Justin Bachman wrote this entire article about tracking private jets to unearth pending deals, and no one mentioned Bud Fox.

If you can’t place the title of this post, here’s your hint. And shame on you; I’m going to re-watch it tonight.

Little-known bonus fact: the incomparable lobby of 195 Broadway, the old AT&T building and former home of Haight, Gardner, Poor & Havens (my first law firm), makes an appearance in the opening sequence. Extra fact: I never saw 1/10th that many people in the lobby at once.

Leading from the front

by Leave a Comment

Saw a law school friend’s post on why trans soldiers should be serving, and some idiot friend of his was complaining about it.

I was tempted:

Okay, as likely one of the few straight male [disclosure of potential bias] former Army officers [appeal to authority and experience] commenting on this, let me mansplain to the folks who don’t understand: everyone who thinks that less freedom and fewer rights is the right path gives the impression of having not read and understood the Declaration and the Constitution. Would gay soldiers have seemed out of place in the early 90s of DADT? Yes. Did that make it right? No. Will we eventually get over these worries of trans solders? Yes. But not soon enough. Continue your petty squabbling, especially those of you who want to reduce the rights of others who are, irony of ironies, willing to fight and die to protect your rights. [Evidently, I’m having a bad day. Prejudice does that to me.] /rant

But then I deleted it. What’s the point?:
(1) Is that guy ever going to change his mind?
(2) Do I need my former classmates to know how I feel and pat me on the back?
The second is a “no,” and I’m afraid the first is too.

One of my best friends recently attended an academic conference and shared a thought from a colleague, to the effect that “Has anyone ever been convinced by someone else’s regression?” The idea is that maybe we’re all just stuck with our beliefs and even those who claim to be empirical or data-driven really just rationalize our way to maintaining our beliefs – no cognitive dissonance allowed. I realized this morning that that comment may have just broken my life.

The only reason I went back on FB was to sign in to dating apps. That part has gone well. The rest? “Same as it ever was.”

What, then, do we do to change the world? Is leading by example – the Army way, one by one the way that works?

Does this mean I have to change what I do and how I do it and everything else?

Respect is earned

by Leave a Comment

The first rule of leadership is lead by example. I heard it in so many forms during my 5 year in the Army, I can’t possibly footnote it.

Recently, Kellyanne Conway said she was suprised at the disrespect for the president and the office.

And yet here’s this example of how then-candidate Trump showing respect for a certain reporter.

I learned, when the Army gave me a little gold bar to wear on my uniform, that you may be entitled to the trappings of respect- a salute, “Sir,” and all that – but you have to earn respect no matter what your rank.

Supreme Court nominee

by Leave a Comment

Yep, this is an old post. The world has moved on.

Supreme Court nominee

President Trump has nominated Neil Gorsuch for the Supreme Court.

I’d like to read some of his opinions before I decide. Does he write his own opinions?

Frankly, I’m comforted by the fact that he’s not a crazy Trump pick. Low standards these days!

and yet:
http://www.nytimes.com/video/us/politics/100000004905557/trump-selects-gorsuch-for-supreme-court.html

Based on the picture in that article, nope. He looks too happy about hanging there with Trump. I think everyone should look like Chris Christie when they meet President Drumpf McTinyFingers.

The road less traveled

by Leave a Comment

ca. 2010:

In his “Four Roads” post, Seth Godin outlines four possible models of thinking about your career/job progression and experiences. Unstated, but this leitmotif of experience, value, and art is tied in tightly with his linchpin model.

  1. stuck in a loop – doing the same thing, better & faster, but not getting anywhere
  2. always getting on a new road – rarely getting better
  3. wrong road – getting better at the wrong things
  4. right road

This sounds like a description of my career path(s). Need a big reset button, or at least a path to one that takes better care of my family in the meantime.

One friend commented that he saw his last years as a sort of treadmill. My [lightly edited] response:

That’s funny because I think of 9 years of experience as generally better than 1 year 9 times, which is my situation. I know that half or more of the reason I’m in the mess I’m in is that I haven’t focused on anything for a substantial length of time, not really.
5 year Army
3 years law school
4 years lawyer
8 years quasi-banker/consultant
2 years lawyer

Other than this past two years or so, I feel like everything sort of fit together if I could just put it all in the right perspective, like that scene in Sneakers where they are jumbling some scrabble tiles around because the they think the company name is an anagram for something important. I’m at the middle step where they have something pretty non-sensical and silly. “Setec Astronomy” turns into COOTYS RAT SEMEN and then into “too many secrets.”

I guess I just compared my last 21 years to rat semen. Hmmm. Take that as a sign you’re not doing so bad!

Perhaps it’s not quite so bad as that, but there’s more to this discussion (as always). My personal challenges [as of this writing in late 2010] have been affected in large part by my choices from 2001-09. It’s added stress, more than I knew or understood or would have wanted, to someone important to me. And the outcome has not been good.

Here is another reply:

Well, you’re not on road #1. The problem with roads #2-4 is that you only know after the fact which one you were on.

My lengthy response:

I’m not on 1 or 4. [___] thinks I’m on 2, either fickle or vaguely dissatisfied. I feel like I’m on 3 because the problems I’m solving don’t seem to match up well with what I’d like to be doing.

I’m reminded of the profile on Freeman Dyson, at Princeton’s Institute for Advanced Study: [___] and I both read it and said “This sounds like Rick’s dream job.”

But I’m not sure that’s really accurate in the details. In any case, it’s not in my immediate future to go get a Ph.D. and become an expert in something. Plus, I think that the thing I’m an expert in is already developed and I’m just not quite there yet at describing it to other people. I think it has something to do with learning quickly, grasping complexities rapidly, readily thinking in terms of systems and big picture connections/ecosystems, and making decisions about all of that analysis pretty rapidly.

I guess that makes me sound like a VC or perhaps a politician or cabinet member of some kind. I also think of myself with labels like “board member” or “judge” (but arbitrator/mediator are good stepping stones to that road that I am starting on in any case).

 

And now it’s 2016, and I’m going through and liberating draft posts from the queue.

What do I think about when I look back at this one? First, that things have turned out better than I feared. It took me a little bit longer to figure out what path I’ve been on. Now I’m working to strengthen the trunk of this tree while pruning some branches and grafting others.

I am a startup lawyer. I work on their legal issues, on side projects to improve startup legal documents, on investing and advising, on board governance, consulting and interim management outside the purely legal realm, and on startups with a mission to improve outcomes for startups.

The things I tell people I like about what I do:

  • I like hearing peoples’ individual stories about their path from the past to the future they’re trying to create
  • I like helping specific individuals through my efforts – I see founders with better work and lives as a result
  • Startups need more than purely legal advice, meaning my leadership, management,  finance, and technical skills get exercised

So this is my path. I expect I’ll get to the point where I live out my years focusing on board-level interactions. It seems like the role that will Mass my skills for greatest impact.

Singing songs and carrying signs

by Leave a Comment

Evidently some dude’s protesting the national anthem.

Don’t know who he is, don’t care, and doesn’t matter whether he’s protesting poverty, race-based policing, gay marriage, immigration, or the lack of vegetarian options at McDonald’s. Protesting the national anthem, the pledge, and burning the flag are the exact kind of speech the first amendment was designed to protect – we force ourselves to be open to seemingly outrageous speech so that we can get past the “outrage” and figure out why the speaker feels the need to push so hard to be heard. Sometime’s it’s because the rest of us just aren’t terribly concerned about the speech – whether it’s the illuminati or HRC’s lizard-person insides – but sometimes it’s because we, terribly, just aren’t concerned.

Go 1st Amendment! Let my people speak.

A happy moment

by Leave a Comment

A happy moment

My happy place looks like Waimea Bay, on the north shore of Oahu, running around the bay in the middle of the evening, with a full moon over the water and just the sound of the waves crashing in the otherwise silent evening.

For me, it was in the middle of one of my legs of the Perimeter Relay, a 7-person relay race around the island, about 133 miles. It was my first year at my unit in Hawaii, the 4/27th Infantry Battalion in the 25th ID(L). It’s a feeling, a sound, a sight I will never forget.