America’s boys are in trouble. They are the most violent in the industrialized world.

Surprised? I didn’t think so. It shouldn’t come as a shock to anyone that American boys are in crisis. For years now we’ve seen the statistic; lower grades, lower graduation rates, higher crime rates – than girls.

So when I caught this two-hour documentary on PBS tonight I was glued to the TV (didn’t even switch off for E.R.). It’s called Raisin Cain: Boys in Focus. If you get a chance, I suggest you watch it.

It covers the problems boys face – from attention deficit to bullying to drugs and academics – and at every turn attemps to put the issues in new light. Should we stop violent pre-school boys, or let them sort it out on their own. Does an an aggressive imagination lead to aggressive actions? There’s an established way of thinking about these things in our culture, and this documentary suggests our way of thinking may be wrong.

This is important not only for parents, but for teachers who must decide how to address the behavior of boys in the context of our culture and their own development.

Learn more about the narrator, Michael Thomson, and how the documentary got its start here.

Photos from my recent trip to Argentina are up in all their unedited glory. My belly is full of 15 days of steak and vino tinto. Next time you go to the liquor store, pick up a good Argentine Malbec and see what you think.

Go read Doc Searl’s essay in the Linux journal, called “Getting Flat, Part 2″. Seriously, go read it.

Commenting on Microsoft’s (and others’) practice of screening job applicants by IQ scores:

I can save Microsoft a pile of time and money by reporting a fact no school wants to admit, one that will flatten the world far more than any other factor: pretty much everybody is smart.

And, quoting an article by education guru John Gatto:

After a long life, and thirty years in the public school trenches, I’ve concluded that genius is as common as dirt. We suppress our genius only because we haven’t yet figured out how to manage a population of educated men and women. The solution, I think, is simple and glorious. Let them manage themselves.

The whole article is in response to Tom Friedman’s new book (and the accompanying article in the NYT) “The World Is Flat”. I think Searls’ essay is just as valuable as the writing that inspired it.

That’s right, even with their weird bloated-shut eyes and fuzzy lint-ball bodies, baby cardinals are still cute. We noticed the nest last Friday during a particularly ribald round of Yahtzee! on the porch (sorry, no details). It’s tucked behind a grape-vine trellis just outside one of the screened windows.

The mama came out and squeaked for a while but I squawked back and she left us alone. When I went over to inspect (it is, after all, my house, not theirs), I found a little mound of speckled eggs. Looked more like pebbles, actually.

This morning on my way out the door I glanced over and saw one lone orange beak, no bigger than your pinky fingernail, pointing straight up. Wide open. In my head I could just hear it saying ‘Mommy…throw up some more food into my mouth.’ And then I kind of felt disgusted but in a warm, sunshiny way.

As I got closer two more beaks popped up, and then I saw the dad glaring at me from beneath the rubharb patch. Man, he was a good looking dude. With that pompadour and his feathers red as embers. If he were a few feet taller, I’d have been a little intimidated.

I’ll post some pictures if I get a chance this evening. Maybe I can even catch them feeding the babies. Now who wouldn’t want to see that?

Yahtzeee!!

BusinessWeek starts a blog by writing a news article that looks like a blog post about blogging. Well, at least they got the self-referencial part.

Fortunately, they got the tone right, too:

Go ahead and bellyache about blogs. But you cannot afford to close your eyes to them, because they’re simply the most explosive outbreak in the information world since the Internet itself. And they’re going to shake up just about every business — including yours. It doesn’t matter whether you’re shipping paper clips, pork bellies, or videos of Britney in a bikini, blogs are a phenomenon that you cannot ignore, postpone, or delegate. Given the changes barreling down upon us, blogs are not a business elective. They’re a prerequisite.

Note the first person.

A related (although much more in depth) read is Tom Coates’ essay on the mass amateurization of everything:

…flexibility of publishing creates a fluid and living form of self-representation, the ‘homepage (as a place)’ has become the ‘weblog (as a person)’ that can articulate a voice. And when there are a multiplicity of voices in space, then the possibility arises of conversations. And where there is conversation there is the sharing of information. And conversation about what? Well everything from music and movies and animation and medical information. Weblogs are becoming the bridge between the individual and the community in cyberspace …

For PR, that means a serious shift in voice is coming, because PR should be the bridge between the business and the community. And the community is starting to filter out messages that don’t sound how people talk:

Translation From PR-Speak to English of Selected Portions of Adobe’s ‘FAQ’ Regarding Their Acquisition of Macromedia

[QUESTION] Do you anticipate a reduction in force as a result of this transaction?

[ADOBE] When two successful growing companies join together, the result is a combined organization that creates new and exciting opportunities. The combination will lead to powerful new areas of innovation, new products and solutions, and an acceleration of our respective growth agendas. At the same time, there will be some duplication of employee functions between the two companies, and upon the close of the transaction, we anticipate some level of reduction in force. While we anticipate the integration team will identify opportunities for cost savings, the primary motivation for this acquisition is to continue to expand and grow our businesses into new markets.

[TRANSLATION] Yes.

via John Gruber at Daring Fireball

Obviously, a large merger presents some challenges for the PR professional, especially when it comes to talking about job losses. But what if you have an audience that doesn’t want to hear you obfuscate? And what if they react somewhat sarcastically (like John did, or worse) when you do?

It places a much higher burden on the communicator – you have to speak clearly, personally, and honestly or risk offending an audience that has the power to make itself heard (look at who’s linking to John’s PR send-up.)

Ugh. I wish I could write something enjoyable about this. My hosting company, Bloghosts, which has served me well for almost a year, is shutting down in January.

That means I have to move lots of files and databases to a new server. So posting may be light for a few days while I get everything sorted out.

I’m sorry to see them go.

Remember that middle-school geography question about how many colors it takes to fill in a map of the United States so that no state borders another of the same color?

My question is, how many colors does it take to fill in the map so that each state borders only others of the same color?

One would seem to be the obvious answer. But it looks like we’re getting pretty close using two.

I love when headlines aren’t quite sure of themselves:

via Newsdesigner

Sadly, I can’t muster the concentration required for a cogent post this evening. I could set the alarm an hour earlier for tomorrow, but unless I stumble upon some really interesting election coverage, let’s face it, you’re not going to be interested.

Besides the election (which happily seems to be floating along quite non-violently), nothing I could write would have a chance of getting much attention this post-election day. There is something about a new puppy; soggy piles of leaves in the back yard; The Lion King. Any of these would make a perfect sacrifice to the election news cycle. But so would a blank page. Even better would be a post about not writing a post, which is what this thing appears to be turning into.

So I leave you to ponder Dan Rather’s incoherencies. My favorite was when he said something about how Missouri would “swing count Bassie.” Just try to imagine what it’s like inside his head. Must be like standing on the half-line of a dodge ball game that’s being played with wet kittens.

See you tomorrow.

Today’s the big day. The presidential election. It warms my heart to think of the millions of other people writing about it at this very moment. People from all across the country; all across the globe. Maybe in the distant future we will be neighbors on the pages of a history book.

My real-life neighbors have stopped giving me free bread, soup and pastries – as they used to do – because their grandson no longer works at the bakery from where the goods came. But they brought me a lawn sign of their preferred political persuasion. They are old-school democrats, by which I mean they are old people who are democrats. He flew combat missions over Berlin in the Second World War. Got hit in the eye with shrapnel.

Once, when I asked him if he thinks about the war much, he said, “I’m pretty much over thinking about it. Got too many other things to think about.”

Doesn’t everybody. Like me, I have squirrels living above the porch. The squirrels are not political, though, so at least there’s that.

But I’m sure they, like everybody else, will feel a great sense of relief when this thing is over. In March I joked about the “grueling race” that was coming between Bush and Kerry. I should have joked more. It was worse than we thought it’d be.

And yet, it wasn’t all that bad. People are still speaking to each other. Some lawn signs have been defaced, true, but the things that hold us together are still holding. The tabloids are still more interested in Mary-Kate’s emotional state than the state of the union. And I’m guessing no matter who wins today (or sometime this month), they will continue to be.

So it’s not our democracy I’m worried about. It’s our children. They’re always the biggest losers on election day. Why? Because we let them vote. Or at least, we let them pretend to vote. Schools everywhere today will be holding mock elections, letting 7 and 8-year-olds fake-choose our next commander-in-chief. This is not a new thing. I did it when I was in grade school; in 1988, Brimhall Elementary was a landslide, a crushing and decisive win for Dukakis.

When I went home that day I thought, “OK, that was nice, what’s next?” We’d elected the president, we’d made the tough choices and picked our man. Let’s move on. Bigger things.

So I was a little surprised that night when the evening news came on. It seemed word of the Massachusetts governor’s victory had not spread rapidly. By the next day, it was clear the rest of the country had vetoed our vote. Or invalidated it. Perhaps we had mispunched?

The mood at school was glum. The whole experience was meant to help us learn about democracy, but the only thing we were learning was that it didn’t work. We picked Dukakis, not Bush. Period. What kind of democracy is this?

Which is not to say that we shouldn’t allow kids to vote. It’s a good introduction to the democratic process. It’s just that we shouldn’t let them vote for the losers.

On the other hand, picking the losing side is a good way of proving to yourself that the world doesn’t end if your man (woman?) doesn’t win. It happened to me in ’88, and then again in 2000 and 2002. In my entire voting history I’ve never been on the winning side. Or maybe it’s that the winner has never been on my side. But that builds character.

And it’s never diminished my enthusiasm for voting. Today after work my girlfriend and I are going to walk down there hand-in-hand, like two school-kids, hoping the vote tally comes down on our side. And after that exercise of civic duty we’re going to go exercise it a little more.

At The Gap. It’s the first Tuesday of the month; 10% off.