Year: 2013

When They Can’t Lay You Off, Employers in Japan Send You to Boredom Rooms

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What happens if you’re working in Japan and a company wants to lay you off, and offers you a lucrative early retirement or severance deal? Well, if you choose not to accept the terms, the company has no right to fire you. So what they’ll do instead is send you to work in a so-called “Boredom Room.”

In Japan, lifetime employment has long been the norm and where large-scale layoffs remain a social taboo, at least at Japan’s largest corporations like Sony. The New York Times profiles one man who’s chosen to go into the Boredom Room and spend his workday there: reading college textbooks, surfing the Internet, and who knows what else.

Sony said it was not doing anything wrong in placing employees in what it calls Career Design Rooms. Employees are given counseling to find new jobs in the Sony group, or at another company, it said. Sony also said that it offered workers early retirement packages that are generous by American standards: in 2010, it promised severance payments equivalent to as much as 54 months of pay. But the real point of the rooms is to make employees feel forgotten and worthless — and eventually so bored and shamed that they just quit, critics say.

Labor practices in Japan contrast sharply with those in the United States, where companies are quick to lay off workers when demand slows or a product becomes obsolete. It is cruel to the worker, but it usually gives the overall economy agility. 

However, and this is a point worth emphasizing: critics say the real point of the boredoom rooms is to make employees feel forgotten and worthless — and eventually get so bored and shamed that they just quit.

Read the entire story here.

Can an Alligator Run the Hundred Meter Hurdles?

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Gary Marcus, writing in The New Yorker, offers a summary of why artificial intelligence isn’t so intelligent (and has a long way to go to catch up with the human brain). He focuses on the research of Hector Levesque, who is a critic of the modern A.I.:

In a terrific paper just presented at the premier international conference on artificial intelligence, Levesque, a University of Toronto computer scientist who studies these questions, has taken just about everyone in the field of A.I. to task. He argues that his colleagues have forgotten about the “intelligence” part of artificial intelligence.

Levesque starts with a critique of Alan Turing’s famous “Turing test,” in which a human, through a question-and-answer session, tries to distinguish machines from people. You’d think that if a machine could pass the test, we could safely conclude that the machine was intelligent. But Levesque argues that the Turing test is almost meaningless, because it is far too easy to game. Every year, a number of machines compete in the challenge for real, seeking something called the Loebner Prize. But the winners aren’t genuinely intelligent; instead, they tend to be more like parlor tricks, and they’re almost inherently deceitful. If a person asks a machine “How tall are you?” and the machine wants to win the Turing test, it has no choice but to confabulate. It has turned out, in fact, that the winners tend to use bluster and misdirection far more than anything approximating true intelligence. One program worked by pretending to be paranoid; others have done well by tossing off one-liners that distract interlocutors. The fakery involved in most efforts at beating the Turing test is emblematic: the real mission of A.I. ought to be building intelligence, not building software that is specifically tuned toward fixing some sort of arbitrary test.

The crux, it seems to me, is how machines interpret the subtleties of human communication and how we talk. Marcus offers the following example in which a substitute of one word yields disparate answers:

The large ball crashed right through the table because it was made of Styrofoam. What was made of Styrofoam? (The alternative formulation replaces Stryrofoam with steel.)

a) The large ball
b) The table

Continuing, he explains:

These examples, which hinge on the linguistic phenomenon known as anaphora, are hard both because they require common sense—which still eludes machines—and because they get at things people don’t bother to mention on Web pages, and that don’t end up in giant data sets.

More broadly, they are instances of what I like to call the Long-Tail Problem: common questions can often be answered simply by trawling the Web, but rare questions can still stymie all the resources of a whole Web full of Big Data. Most A.I. programs are in trouble if what they’re looking for is not spelled out explicitly on a Web page. This is part of the reason for Watson’s most famous gaffe—mistaking Toronto for a city in the United States.

Levesque’s paper is short and easily accessible for the layman.

How New York City Has Changed During the Bloomberg Administration

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The New York Times has a fascinating interactive this weekend showing how the city of New York has transformed in ten years during the Michael Bloomberg administration as mayor.

Since Bloomberg took office, New York City has added 40,000 new buildings.

Below is a comparison of the NYC downtown skyline from 2002 and 2013:

NYC in 2002

 

NYC in 2013

In addition to a major initiative to rezone the city, Bloomberg helped establish more than 450 miles of bike lanes around the city.

Bike Lanes in NYC

I highly encourage you to check out the entire interactive.

Charles Bukowski on “Slavery was never abolished, it was only extended to include all the colors.”

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In 1969, publisher John Martin offered to pay Charles Bukowski $100 each and every month for the rest of his life, on a single condition: that Bukowski quit his job working at the post office and commit to becoming a writer. The then 49-year-old Bukowski did just that, and in 1971 his first novel, Post Office, was published by Martin’s Black Sparrow Press.

Fifteen years later, Bukowski wrote the following letter to Martin and spoke of his joy at having escaped full time employment:

8-12-86

Hello John:

Thanks for the good letter. I don’t think it hurts, sometimes, to remember where you came from. You know the places where I came from. Even the people who try to write about that or make films about it, they don’t get it right. They call it “9 to 5.” It’s never 9 to 5, there’s no free lunch break at those places, in fact, at many of them in order to keep your job you don’t take lunch. Then there’s OVERTIME and the books never seem to get the overtime right and if you complain about that, there’s another sucker to take your place.

You know my old saying, “Slavery was never abolished, it was only extended to include all the colors.”

And what hurts is the steadily diminishing humanity of those fighting to hold jobs they don’t want but fear the alternative worse. People simply empty out. They are bodies with fearful and obedient minds. The color leaves the eye. The voice becomes ugly. And the body. The hair. The fingernails. The shoes. Everything does.

As a young man I could not believe that people could give their lives over to those conditions. As an old man, I still can’t believe it. What do they do it for? Sex? TV? An automobile on monthly payments? Or children? Children who are just going to do the same things that they did?

Early on, when I was quite young and going from job to job I was foolish enough to sometimes speak to my fellow workers: “Hey, the boss can come in here at any moment and lay all of us off, just like that, don’t you realize that?”

They would just look at me. I was posing something that they didn’t want to enter their minds.

Now in industry, there are vast layoffs (steel mills dead, technical changes in other factors of the work place). They are layed off by the hundreds of thousands and their faces are stunned:

“I put in 35 years…”

“It ain’t right…”

“I don’t know what to do…”

They never pay the slaves enough so they can get free, just enough so they can stay alive and come back to work. I could see all this. Why couldn’t they? I figured the park bench was just as good or being a barfly was just as good. Why not get there first before they put me there? Why wait?

I just wrote in disgust against it all, it was a relief to get the shit out of my system. And now that I’m here, a so-called professional writer, after giving the first 50 years away, I’ve found out that there are other disgusts beyond the system.

I remember once, working as a packer in this lighting fixture company, one of the packers suddenly said: “I’ll never be free!”

One of the bosses was walking by (his name was Morrie) and he let out this delicious cackle of a laugh, enjoying the fact that this fellow was trapped for life.

So, the luck I finally had in getting out of those places, no matter how long it took, has given me a kind of joy, the jolly joy of the miracle. I now write from an old mind and an old body, long beyond the time when most men would ever think of continuing such a thing, but since I started so late I owe it to myself to continue, and when the words begin to falter and I must be helped up stairways and I can no longer tell a bluebird from a paperclip, I still feel that something in me is going to remember (no matter how far I’m gone) how I’ve come through the murder and the mess and the moil, to at least a generous way to die.

To not to have entirely wasted one’s life seems to be a worthy accomplishment, if only for myself.

yr boy,

Hank

In Factotum, he was even more direct:

It was true that I didn’t have much ambition, but there ought to be a place for people without ambition, I mean a better place than the one usually reserved. How in the hell could a man enjoy being awakened at 6:30 a.m. by an alarm clock, leap out of bed, dress, force-feed, shit, piss, brush teeth and hair, and fight traffic to get to a place where essentially you made lots of money for somebody else and were asked to be grateful for the opportunity to do so

Fascinating. It’s incredible I haven’t read Bukowkski before. I am remedying this situation by having ordered the Kindle versions of his books: You Get So Alone at Times That It Just Makes Sense (only $2 on Amazon), Love is a Dog From Hell (also $2), and Women ($3).

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(via Letters of Note)

Jesse Eisenberg Should Stick to Acting

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Your mileage may vary, but Jesse Eisenberg’s short story titled “A SHORT STORY WRITTEN WITH THOUGHT-TO-TEXT TECHNOLOGY” published in The New Yorker is a clunker. I think he should stick to acting, thank you very much.

Jesus, I’ve written another loser.

…

That barista keeps looking at me. She’ll probably ask me to leave if I don’t buy something. She’s kind of attractive. Not her hair—her hair seems stringy—but her face is nice. I should really buy something.

Their divorce was remarkably amicable. In fact, John would often tell his parents, “Rebecca and I are better friends now than when we were married!” In fact, John looked forward to the days when he and Rebecca, with their new partners, would reminisce about their marriage, seeing it in a positive light, like two mature adults.

Maybe I’ll just get a pumpkin-spice loaf. That way I can still sit here without going through a whole production of buying a coffee and giving my name and feeling like an asshole while it gets made.

…

I’ll say something cool, like “The coffee’s not the only thing hot in here.” And she’ll probably be like, “I get off at seven.” And I’ll probably say something like “I don’t have a real job, so any time’s good for me.” Jesus, who am I kidding? I’m a loser. She would never like me. Even a stringy-haired barista with a slutty back tattoo would never like me.

Can you convince me the merit of the piece in the comments? Because I didn’t find it interesting or funny!

On Growing Up Feeling Unattractive

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In a post titled “I Was Not a Pretty Child,” Hannah Dale Thompson reflects on what it was like growing up feeling unattractive and being made fun of by peers:

Being unattractive in your youth forces you to develop positive personality traits. That’s why comedians are not sexy. Relying on something other than appearance for attention breeds a larger-than-life personality. It breeds a confidence that is more than superficial. It breeds humor, and a social awareness and empathy that, I think, can only be developed from the outside. I am more charismatic, confident, interesting, and funny because I was an ugly sixteen-year-old. I am slightly less superficial and marginally more open-minded. I can stand up for myself. Three days after the best first date I have ever been on, my half-drunk suitor called to tell me I have more moxie than anyone else he’s ever met. I am proud of all of these things; people should take pride in overcoming obstacles and developing better personality traits. Even if the obstacles involve bushy eyebrows and the personality bonus leads to self-diagnosed histrionic personality disorder.

…

Being unattractive in your youth separates you from even the other awkward, unattractive kids. I never had a real date to a high school dance. The entire concept of “Sadie Hawkins” terrified me. I never made anyone’s “top five girls” list. I never made anybody’s “girls” list. By the age of eighteen, I had approximately zero experience with games or manipulation or difficult social interaction. 

It’s interesting to read about how she developed as a person as she grew more attractive in her twenties:

Sometime around my twentieth birthday, I became reasonably good-looking. I started dating lawyers and financiers in their late twenties and early thirties. I became the kind of girl other women approach. I live with a model. All of my friends are beautiful and interesting. If I’m being very honest, I’m always a little angry when I have to purchase my own drink. At the grocery store last November, a boy who was mercilessly cruel to me in high school approached my mom and told her that he was “sorry for being so mean to HD in high school” because he “saw on Facebook” that I was “pretty hot now.” My mother, God bless her, pointed out to him the ridiculousness of that apology.

But what of friendship?

Women my age, particularly the bright-young-thing-in-a-big-city set that I am lucky to be a part of, are inundated with advice. About sex, careers, feminism, children, boyfriends, hook-ups, grad school. Lean in, but not too far. You can do anything a man can do, as long as you’re well put-together and relatively inoffensive. Ask for more, but don’t get cocky. No one tells women my age about the importance of friendship.

In the end, these two sentences dig deep:

This wound is new, but feels familiar. It’s something I remember being used to.

I’ve gotten used to being ignored as well…

E-Books vs. Lattes vs. Cigarettes

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A premise in this thoughtful essay by Kaya Genç on the trade-offs between buying coffee or books: What would George Orwell choose: e-books or lattes?

Kaya lives in Istanbul, Turkey where international editions of books and magazine subscriptions are more expensive than the digital counterparts. Upgrading to an e-book reader last year, there are lamentations of this sort:

In the good, old, and expensive days of literary shopping I would choose books from the shelves, walk to the counter, pay in cash, and head to a coffee shop with my purchases — the favorite ritual of my teenage years. I would open the first book’s cover, accompanied by a cigarette and a cup of strong Turkish coffee. These would always be very physical experiences: I remember the crinkling pages, the waft of the smoke, the oils of the coffee. Afterward my hands smelled of nicotine; my mind hungered for more books.

Lately, however, this ritual has all but disappeared from my life. My reading materials have been thoroughly digitized. I have lost touch with both the printed book and the banknote. In the long chronicle of my reading habits I am currently living through the age of the .EPUB file and the plastic card. It is a chilly period, I must admit, a dark age, and at times it makes me yearn for the good old days of my undergraduate life. 

Citing Orwell’s Books v. Cigarettes essay, who pinpointed his spending habits on books vs. cigarettes:

To fully estimate his reading expenses he added to the sum the cost of newspapers and periodicals. Orwell typically read two daily papers, an evening paper, two Sunday papers, a weekly magazine, and “one or two” monthly magazines. He added these and the cost of his library subscriptions. In the end he concluded that his “total reading expenses over the past fifteen years have been in the neighbourhood of £25 a year.”

In contrast, he had spent £40 a year on cigarettes. His reading habit was cheaper than his smoking one. The workers had had little reason to complain about the cost of books, he decided. If they were not reading literature it was probably because they found books boring — not because they couldn’t afford them.

In the similar vein, Kaya calculates how much money he spends on coffee vs. e-books:

My e-reading expenditures, then, cost me around $385 — less than my coffee expenditures for the same period, which were in the neighborhood of $1,800. My e-reading habit thus costs only a fifth of my drinking one (maybe a little more when I’m not working on a novel). For every dollar I spent on the likes of Tolstoy I spent four on coffee beans.   

An exercise for the reader: do you spend more on coffee or books/e-books? I will update this post when I finish my own calculations for the year 2013…

How Climate Change is Changing the Taste of Fuji Apples

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Fuji apples were, once upon a time, perhaps the most delicious apples you could sink your teeth into. However, these days the Fuji apples just aren’t quite hitting the spot like they used to, and we might never see them reach their former glory again.

By comparing samples of modern-day Fujis to similar studies from the 70s, a team of researchers has discovered that the formerly glorious Fuji has recently grown substantially mealier and has a lower flavor concentration. The likely culprit? Climate change. Per the abstract:

The effects of climate change on the taste and textural attributes of foods remain largely unknown, despite much public interest. On the basis of 30–40 years of records, we provide evidence that the taste and textural attributes of apples have changed as a result of recent global warming. Decreases in both acid concentration, fruit firmness and watercore development were observed regardless of the maturity index used for harvest date (e.g., calendar date, number of days after full bloom, peel colour and starch concentration), whereas in some cases the soluble-solids concentration increased; all such changes may have resulted from earlier blooming and higher temperatures during the maturation period. These results suggest that the qualities of apples in the market are undergoing long-term changes.

Interesting.

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(via Smithsonian Magazine)

Confessions of a Long-Time Fantasy Football Player

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Fantasy Football season is upon us once again. I have my live draft scheduled for next week, but I’ve yet to do any preparation.

Tony Gervino, in an essay titled “Eternal Bragging Rights,” reminisces how he’s been playing Fantasy Football since 1991. Since then, his friends have married, divorced, re-married, lost jobs. Only the enthusiasm for Fantasy Football, it seems, has remained static. He confesses further:

A few years ago, I offered to host the draft on my Greenwich Village terrace, but apparently I failed the most important criterion. “Do you have a pool?” a league member asked. “Because the hotel has a pool.” I confessed that while I could have almost anything their hearts desired delivered to my apartment, day or night, I did not, in fact, have a pool.

It has been widely assumed for some time now that I would eventually quit our league. No one has said as much, but I’m not an idiot. I’m the only one who lives in New York City. I don’t play golf or smoke cigarettes. I’m childless and devour The Paris Review. And my team moniker, The Fifty-Pound Head, is derived from the dark British comedy “Withnail & I.” I’m closer in species to a unicorn than I am to some of my friends. Yet I am also resolutely unwilling to surrender one of the few uncomplicated pleasures in what has become an increasingly complicated life — and the tether it provides to friends I might otherwise fall out of touch with.

Is your FF league a lifetime commitment?

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For a humorous take on Fantasy Football, I highly recommend the TV Series The League. It’s pretty hilarious. Shivakamini Somakandarkram!

Is LinkedIn Cheating Employers and Job Seekers Alike?

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Nick Corcodilos started headhunting in Silicon Valley in 1979, and has answered over 30,000 questions from the Ask The Headhunter community over the past decade. In this post for PBS, he is skeptical of the new way LinkedIn is aggressively targeting job seekers and employers:

I couldn’t believe that LinkedIn was going to sucker an employer — who was paying thousands to find the best job applicants — by putting me at the top of the applicant list just because I paid for it.

(Tomkins got the exact same pop-up ad six months ago, listing the same #2 and #3 profiles beneath his own. He notes they are in the “San Francisco Bay Area,” thousands of miles from his own location. You’d think LinkedIn would gin up a pitch that at least delivers “results” that include “candidates” from the same geographic area!)

Could LinkedIn be taking money from job seekers and misleading employers with fake applicant rankings? Thinking that Tomkins and I had somehow gotten this wrong, I did what any LinkedIn user might do: I contacted customer service.

A LinkedIn representative, LaToya (no last name given), explained via e-mail that, if I pay the $29.95, the advantage “is that your at the top of the list rather than listed toward the bottom as a Basic applicant. [sic]”

But what about those other poor suckers, the Basic applicants, who ride free — and whose qualifications might be better than mine?

And what about employers — don’t they get upset when they see someone paid to get bumped to the top of the list of applicants? Another customer service representative, Monica, told me that, “Unfortunately, there isn’t a way for the employer to turn this off.”

So job seekers pay for top billing, and the employer knows the top applicants paid for their positions because their names are highlighted and have a little badge beside them. (Wink, wink! You paid, but employers know you’re not really the top applicant!)

This is today’s leading website for recruiting and job hunting?

My inbox has about a half-dozen emails from LinkedIn, encourage me to pay up to $29/month to sign up for this premium service. I say, no thank you.

Nick Corcodilos goes on to say that LinkedIn has become a cheesy job board:

The changes came quickly. In summer of 2011, we were treated to “LinkedIn’s New Button: Instantly dumber job hunting & hiring.” A user merely clicked an on-screen button which made it ultra-easy to apply to lots of jobs, making it clear that quality of fit was certainly not a top concern. This was truly silly job-board-class “innovation,” to be outdone only by the more recent, meaningless “endorsements” that accomplish little but generate enormous numbers of profitable clicks and traffic for LinkedIn.

Lots more to consider in the post.