There’s a guy in Lawrenceville who is gathering postcards from famous people, asking them to define freedom. The responses are posted on a website called The Freedom Project.

Reading through a bunch of the responses, I’m struck by how many of them are either too vague, or too narrow.

Many of the responses remind me of the documentary Why We Fight — the filmmaker, when he asked people why do we fight in wars like what we’re in now, typically got the answer “for our freedom.” But when he asked the respondents to define freedom, or how the war protects our freedom, most of the respondents were unable to offer a clear answer.

Similarly, trying to define freedom on a postcard is clearly no easy task — as demonstrated by the folks who have responded to this Define Freedom project.

What also strikes me is how some of the answers clearly originate more from a partisan ideological background than from a more unifying viewpoint.

Geraldo Rivera, and several others, respond by talking about choices — as though freedom is nothing more than a marketplace of material goods. Several would go no further than expressing freedom as freedom of speech — as though freedom is nothing more than a marketplace of ideas. Others went no further than freedom of religion — but in a creepy sort of way, as though freedom is nothing more than that person’s right to engage in religious or moral crusades.

Then, there were the responses that sounded like the inane musings of a PR executive. Rather than answering the question, they responded with some variant of saying that we are a free nation, or freedom is what we defend.

My favorite response, of the ones I read, was Edward Albee’s. His response is more vague than the ultra-specific answers, and more specific than the vague non-answer answers.

And my second favorite is Jon Stewart’s — which, in a way, is kind of sad.

And so went the first couple of weeks of Spring Semester, 2005. My graduation date is now slated to be May 14. Following that, the world’s biggest party ever is supposed to be in the works. For some, getting a college degree is about just going to classes and getting a remarkably expensive piece of paper that certifies that its reciepient has earned some particular credential. For me — now that I’m finally graduating from college, 11 years after I graduated from high school — it’s about a long, meandering education, coupled with more persistence than what I thought I had in me — not to mention, the many unexpected places I have now been.

Before I graduate, I, like all the other business school students, have to take a “capstone” class that is supposed to wrap up everything into one course: Strategic Management. Taking this class would be kind of like the first year of law school, except I still have time for at least a few of my “life outside of study” activities. But in any case, we do have to work in teams, and the more we get together, the better our grade for the class will turn out.

One of the assignments for the class is to go through a case study and analyze said company to the extent of producing a remarkably long report. Between myself and a partner, this will take over a month to do all the research and write the report. We’ll have to do a presentation on March 3. This is going to suck.

Our case is about McDonald’s. The actual case study in the textbook is about the beef fries controversy, which involved a class action lawsuit over the fact that McDonald’s used beef tallow in their formula for french fries and passed off those fries as “vegetarian friendly.”

Over the course of the 20th century, McDonald’s became quite the cultural institution for America. The “Mc” in the name has become a prefix to represent shallow materialism and business practices that pervert human dignity. “McMansion,” a word used to describe a big house built on the cheap, makes for a great example of the use of “Mc” as a prefix.

McDonald’s, while it built a remarkably efficient and profitable business model, has caught a lot of controvery over the past couple of decades. The ridiculous misinformation campaign over the spilled coffee case — whereupon a McDonald’s patron received third degree burns from spilling coffee in her lap — was remarkably effective at misleading the public over a very important legal issue. The lawsuit over McDonald’s nutrition standards (you know, the standards that make McDonald’s patrons fat) was rightfully dismissed, but also added fuel to a growing fire over whether this cultural institution is itself a slice of fat that should be trimmed from our society.

And here lies the dilemma for my generation. Of all the 20th century American cultural institutions, which are worth carrying over to the 21st century? We do have the power to vote with our dollars and even at the polls on election day, when important matters of public policy help steer this big ship on a new course. Businesses like McDonald’s, Wal-Mart, and Krispy Kreme have (in my mind) come to represent the baby boom generation in ways that are oddly nostalgic. The holiday sales; the big, fast meals; the people who love their cars; the movement to the suburbs, away from the realities of cities and farms; the television as an essential piece of living room furniture: all these things have, in the wake of last year’s election campaign, begun to feel alien to me. Yet, these topics seem to inspire that special twinkle in the mind of the nostalgic eye.

I’m not sure whether among those in my generation I am in the minority or the majority when I claim my stake in a future that will dissapoint Karl Rove in his quest for a 50-plus-year reign of neoconservative power. I only know where my own conscience stands on that matter. Whether the baby boom generation will be able to enforce its nostalgisms to my generation will depend on the foresight and persistence of my own generation.

In my previous entry, I mentioned that I’m going to Chattanooga. As it turns out, I’ve now been there and back, with a little to report about the town gone fish.

Chattanooga is in so many ways becoming a New Urbanist’s dream, but without rail transportation (no, the Incline doesn’t count). It’s pedestrian friendly. According to Sunday’s Chattanooga Times Free Press, the downtown area is going through a housing boom. However, much like Atlanta’s own Post Riverside complex, there’s very little sign of any boom going on. Perhaps we went at just the emptiest time of year, but there was hardly anyone on the streets (even the homeless were difficult to find), especially on the nights and weekends. Struggling to find a place to have a reasonably-priced breakfast, we wound up going to a Waffle house sitting a few miles from the downtown area.

One thing that surprised me was the storage room sitting in prime restaurant property. Across the street from the Aquarium, you can find a building that houses the Big River Grille and Thai Smile 3, plus some unoccupied restaurant spaces. We were able to see inside the unoccupied spaces quite clearly only to see that some of those spaces were utilized as storage space. My reaction to this: if the best use of prime real estate is storage space, downtown Chattanooga has some (no pun intended) real problems.

On our last day, we no longer had a parking pass for the hotel, so we parked in one of the downtown lots. Now, the lots there are so plentiful that it will take years before anyone ever has a parking problem in the area. Seriously, the folks who run the lots could certainly afford to charge much lower rates to help attract more folks to the area. We found a surface lot a little out of the way, but relatively cheap compared to the others: $4.00 for the whole day — as opposed to hourly rates, which generally eat wallets for breakfast. The lot we found, like many others, was run by Republic Parking. Given the rates and ubiquity of Repbulic Parking signs, it appears they have a monopoly on parking services in the city. As we found out, they seem to act like a monopoly, too. Upon returning to the car, I found a “Parking Violation” ticket. Thanks to cellular telephone technology, I was able to call the number listed on the ticket and request they void the ticket, which they did. To their credit, the folks from Republic Parking were very courteous and professional to me on the phone, but as I got in the car I had to wonder how many folks out there have gotten tickets and decided it wasn’t worth it to try to fight the ticket — and how much additional revenue Republic generates from their irresponsible ticketing practices.

Having said all that, our trip to Chattanooga was an overall good experience. The people there were very friendly. The food at all the restaurants we visited was very good. The attractions were … well … attractive. When we arrived at the hotel, there happened to be a Veterans for John Kerry rally featuring Max Cleland.

From the reports I saw while we were there, I have little doubt that Chattanooga’s downtown area will see more folks move in. The Tennessee Aquarium is expanding, and this single attraction is clearly at the center of much of downtown’s economic development initiatives. The quality of life there, at least superficially, appears to be enviable, and it will probably remain that way for some time to come.

During the Maymester I took a class called “Human Resource Selection” with Prof. Todd Maurer. It was for that class that I was getting some research together for a presentation on tacit knowledge.

When we went through a lesson on interviewing, Dr. Maurer took us through an effective method on preparing for a job interview. When getting interviewed, the one thing that would impress the interviewer is stories about situations you have gone through in the past. After all, past behavior is an indication of future behavior. So, Dr. Maurer has done some research on the subject of the effectiveness of what he calls the STAR Technique. That’s STAR for:

• Situation or Task: Explains the circumstance you were in.
• Action: Describes what you did.
• Result: Describes the outcome of what you did.

That’s how you tell the story. Talk about the situation you were in, what you did, and the result of your action. To prepare for an interview, take some time to write down the STAR answers to the following questions:

On Achievement:

• Tell me about a time when you were primarily responsible for completing an important task, project or assignment.
• Describe a time when you went “above and beyond the call of duty” in order to get something accomplished.

On Conscientiousness:

• Describe a project or task on which you had to work extra hard to deliver the work on time and with high quality or accuracy.
• Describe a time when you were working on something and you realized that there was an error in the work which had a potentially serious implication.

On Teamwork:

• Describe a time when you had to work closely with other people in order to complete a project or task. Describe the situation, your actions and the results of your actions.
• Tell me about a time when you needed to work with others in order to complete a project or task, and you did not get along with another person or people. Describe the situation, your actions and the results of your actions.

On Communication:

• Tell me about a time when you had to explain a complicated issue to another person or group of people. Describe the situation, your actions and the results of your actions.
• Describe a time when you had to formally present information to a group of people. Describe the situation, your actions and the results of your actions.

On Leadership:

• Tell me about a time when you had to persuade others to work together in pursuit of a common cause or objective. Describe the situation, your actions and the results of your actions.
• Tell me about a time when you guided others toward achieving a goal. Describe the situation, your actions and the results of your actions.

On Problem Solving:

• Describe a situation where there were several options for handling a particular situation or problem and describe how you went about choosing an alternative. Describe the situation, your actions and the results of your actions.
• Tell me about a time when you were faced with a difficult decision and describe how it turned out. Describe the situation, your actions and the results of your actions.

Hopefully these things will help. Of course, in order to have experiences to talk about, it’s important to obtain high-quality experiences. So Dr. Maurer also recommends getting involved in many activities.

Update (1/4/2006): Not quite as specific, but still useful, is this guide on developing a personal elevator pitch.

Once again it’s been a while since I’ve last written a blog entry. Most of it has to do with other things going on in my life that I’m just not going to blog about. After all, this ain’t no exhibitionist blog-journal.

There was a time when I kept a really big whiteboard in my room. I’d use the board to write down ideas and help me provide some kind of structure to whatever kind of project I was in the midst of planning. Anytime I used that whiteboard, writing and doing projects in general seemed to come along much more easily. Unfortunately I’ve been plagued with a bit of a writing block for quite some time. The latest thing I’ve been able to write, an article on Rampway about the Belt Line, is a bit shorter than I imagined it would be. Needless to say, I didn’t use the whiteboard or any other method of planning out my article.

This blog entry is, on a related note, unplanned and unstructured. So if the writing here seems a bit haphazard, then I guess that’s just too bad.

Recently I began researching the topic of tacit knowlege and came upon an article in the Journal of Higher Education. This particular article, Writing Blocks and Tacit Knowledge (link only accessible from an on-campus computer), more addressed the issue of writing blocks than tacit knowledge. Specifically, while the article speaks a great deal about the causes of writing blocks among academic researchers, the principles stated in the article are more widely applicable. (The author of the article, Robert Boice, seems to have quite a collection of published works.)

Boice concludes his article with the presentation of what he calls the IRSS model to approaching blocks. The model is based on the four components of the more general field of tacit knowledge:

• Involvement. In school, students who get involved in learning and in campus activities stay in school and excel. In writing, the more successful writers get involved in writing as an act of discovery. Boice also noted that faculty members known to be “quick starters” were more likely to make time for regular writing, no matter how busy their respective schedules; sought advice and collaboration for writing; and expressed curiosity about the process of writing and publishing.
• Regimen. This can also be referred to as task management. Put yourself on a schedule where you have some time away from distractions and interruptions. Also, make sure to make way for balance and moderation. Don’t put too much of yourself into any particular activity. The most productive writers limit writing to little more than a few hours a day. Teachers would do well to teach less about product and process (the finished product and the process of constructing good syntax) and teach more of the habit of the regular practice of writing.
• Self-Management. This involves getting rid of the sort of “negative self-talk and maladaptave expectations” that lead to blocking. Easier said than done, I know. If you feel convinced your writing won’t be accepted or is just bad in general, you’re probably less likely to write. If you can recognize when these feelings overcome you, you can replace those thoughts with something more positive, like elephants. That’s, of course, unless you’re afraid of elephants. But seriously, look back at maybe something you’ve written in the past where you got a good grade or good feedback.
• Social Networking. When you’re still in the formative stages of a major paper, try to elicit some useful feedback. Even better, try to develop or join some social network of writers and collaborate within that network. Blocking can result from keeping your writing as a private endeavor; criticisms and rejections come as a suprise once the finished product is released for public scrutiny.

As far as how I will take this advice for blogging, writing articles, papers, etc., I’m not sure. But at this point just in having read the article and taken from it what I have, I do feel a bit more motivation to write now. Maybe this bit of info can be helpful for others who read here, too. In any case, I’ll likely be dragging my whiteboard back out fairly soon.

I’m not sure why I got this score, but I’m 96% Dixie! Of course, the test is entirely based on dialect, not whether you are a Confederate-flag-toting pickup truck driver with a Pit Bull named Elvis.

Robert, this one goes out to you.

Here’s an interesting article recently published from the World Health Organization. According to the article, the leading cause of death from injuries in the world comes from “road traffic injuries.” That’s more than suicide, homicide, war, drowning, falls, fires, and poisoning. Here’s some perspective:

Every day around the world, almost 16,000 people die from injuries. For every person that dies, several thousands more are injured, many of them with permanent sequelae of injuries. Injuries occur in all regions and countries, and affect people in all age and income groups. The magnitude of the problem however varies considerably by age, sex, region and income group. For example, in the low- and middle-income countries in the Western Pacific the leading injury-related causes of death are road traffic injuries, drowning and suicide, while in Africa they are war, interpersonal violence and traffic injuries. In the high-income countries of the Americas, the leading injury-related cause of death among people aged 15 to 44 years is traffic injuries, while in the low- and middle-income countries of the Americas it is interpersonal violence.

Overall, road traffic injuries represent the tenth leading cause of death in the world. Most of these deaths are young adults who are at their prime. This means that there are real consequences to road traffic deaths, both economic and social.

Now just imagine if more of us walked, instead. Then, we could focus on the next leading cause of death due to injury: suicide! Then again, it might stand to reason that if more of us walked, more of us would be happy, which would hopefully cut down on suicide and homicide.

I-75 South got flooded today in the aftermath of a tornado. The pictures are pretty neat looking. This is from I-75 South around W Paces Ferry.