The Closer’s Story on Foreclosure

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When a property is foreclosed, the lender that owns the property sends a guy known as “The Closer” to do some digging (find out if the house is still standing, who is occupying the property, etc.). This is an excellent account in the New York Times:

Some people have been expecting me. Some claim they never knew they were foreclosed on or tell me that they have worked something out with their lender. Some won’t tell me a thing. If nobody is home, I have to determine where they are — at work, on vacation, in the Army, in jail, in a nursing home, dead or moved away. It isn’t easy.

And the honest, heartbreaking conclusion:

If they didn’t clean out the house, I have to ask them to sign a waiver stating that everything left inside can be disposed of. Hospital beds. Hundreds of boxes of shoes. A mannequin. A second grader’s homework portfolio. A wedding album filled with pictures with one person torn out. Get-rich-quick “business plans.” Sometimes I linger as I check the basement for mold and lead. I am the final period on so many significant chapters. I feign dispassion, but I’m not fooling anybody. There is no difference between myself and these people.

And you thought your job was rough?

The Importance of Coaches

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Have you ever wondered why sports stars and musicians have coaches, but they seem to be less common in professional settings? Atul Gawande ponders the same thing in his brilliant piece in The New Yorker, “Personal Best.” His perspective is that of a doctor operating on patients, but I think Gawande’s hypothesis can be expanded to numerous professions:

I watched Rafael Nadal play a tournament match on the Tennis Channel. The camera flashed to his coach, and the obvious struck me as interesting: even Rafael Nadal has a coach. Nearly every élite tennis player in the world does. Professional athletes use coaches to make sure they are as good as they can be.

But doctors don’t. I’d paid to have a kid just out of college look at my serve. So why did I find it inconceivable to pay someone to come into my operating room and coach me on my surgical technique?

I like the extension of coaching to sports and Gawande contacting Itzhak Perlman:

Coaching in pro sports proceeds from a starkly different premise: it considers the teaching model naïve about our human capacity for self-perfection. It holds that, no matter how well prepared people are in their formative years, few can achieve and maintain their best performance on their own. One of these views, it seemed to me, had to be wrong. So I called Itzhak Perlman to find out what he thought.

I asked him why concert violinists didn’t have coaches, the way top athletes did. He said that he didn’t know, but that it had always seemed a mistake to him. He had enjoyed the services of a coach all along.

And how did Gawande’s coach help Gawande? Tremendously:

I never noticed, for example, that at one point the patient had blood-pressure problems, which the anesthesiologist was monitoring. Nor did I realize that, for about half an hour, the operating light drifted out of the wound; I was operating with light from reflected surfaces. Osteen pointed out that the instruments I’d chosen for holding the incision open had got tangled up, wasting time. That one twenty-minute discussion gave me more to consider and work on than I’d had in the past five years.

Of course, the piece would be incomplete without this disclaimer:

Coaching has become a fad in recent years. There are leadership coaches, executive coaches, life coaches, and college-application coaches. Search the Internet, and you’ll find that there’s even Twitter coaching.

A key takeaway here:

For society, too, there are uncomfortable difficulties: we may not be ready to accept—or pay for—a cadre of people who identify the flaws in the professionals upon whom we rely, and yet hold in confidence what they see. Coaching done well may be the most effective intervention designed for human performance. Yet the allegiance of coaches is to the people they work with; their success depends on it. And the existence of a coach requires an acknowledgment that even expert practitioners have significant room for improvement. Are we ready to confront this fact when we’re in their care?

Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to find myself a tennis and life coach, not necessarily in that order.

Michael Lewis, Coach Fitz, and Moneyball

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Today, Moneyball hits the theaters nationwide. I read this Michael Lewis classic a few years ago, and I intend to see the film. If you’re a fan of the book like I am, you should not miss this classic Michael Lewis piece in the New York Times, “Coach Fitz’s Management Theory.” It’s an endearing read about Michael Lewis’s childhood years, in middle school and high school, and how much he learned from his beloved baseball coach.

A glimpse of Coach Fitz’s personality:

When we first laid eyes on him, we had no idea who he was, except that he played in the Oakland A’s farm system and was spending his off-season, for reasons we couldn’t fathom, coaching eighth-grade basketball. We were in the seventh grade, and so, theoretically, indifferent to his existence. But the outdoor court on which we seventh graders practiced was just an oak tree apart from the eighth grade’s court. And within days of this new coach’s arrival we found ourselves riveted by his performance. Our coach was a pleasant, mild-mannered fellow, and our practices were always pleasant, mild-mannered affairs. The eighth grade’s practices were something else: a 6-foot-4-inch, 220-pound minor-league catcher with the face of a street fighter hollering at the top of his lungs for three straight hours. Often as not, the eighth graders had done something to offend their new coach’s sensibilities, and he’d have them running wind sprints until they doubled over. When finally they collapsed, unable to run another step, he’d pull from his back pocket his personal collection of Bobby Knight sayings and begin reading aloud.

On not brandishing one’s accomplishments:

Fitz’s office wasn’t the office of a coach who wanted you to know of his success. There were no trophies or plaques, though he’d won enough of them to fill five offices. Other than a few old newspaper clips about his four children, now grown, there were few mementos. What he did keep was books — lots of them. He was always something of a closet intellectual, though I was barely aware of this other side of him.

This is my favourite passage in the piece:

We listened to the man because he had something to tell us, and us alone. Not how to play baseball, though he did that better than anyone. Not how to win, though winning was wonderful. Not even how to sacrifice. He was teaching us something far more important: how to cope with the two greatest enemies of a well-lived life, fear and failure. To make the lesson stick, he made sure we encountered enough of both. I never could have explained at the time what he had done for me, but I felt it in my bones all the same. When I came home one day during my senior year and found the letter saying that, somewhat improbably, I had been admitted to Princeton University, I ran right back to school to tell Coach Fitz. Then I grew up.

I highly, highly recommend reading the whole thing.

Oktoberfest in Helen, Georgia

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One of my favourite Georgia getaways is Helen, Georgia. Less than two hours away from Atlanta, the city sits close to the Chattahoochee River and is home to the annual Oktoberfest. Why? The city is modeled after a small Bavarian town.

And while I’ve never made it to Helen during Oktoberfest, I enjoyed this profile of the city (published about two years ago).

On the declining economy of Helen:

The one sound the hills have not been alive with lately, though, is the music of cash registers. As tourism and construction falter everywhere in this straitened economy, Helen grapples with a $200,000 deficit in its general fund; rows of shuttered gingerbread storefronts that look as haunted and darkling as something out of Grimm’s fairytales; changing blue laws on alcohol sales that have realigned the area’s tippling privileges; and a police force—patrolling in cruisers labeled “Polizei”—that has a reputation for rounding up hapless revelers with all of the sweeping efficiency implicit in that German spelling.

And what’s an Oktoberfest without beer (bier)? But believe it or not, Helen used to be a dry town:

By 1977, liquor sales by the glass and bottle were legalized. Helen became the only soaking “wet” spot for the hard stuff, as well as beer and wine, in the northeast Georgia mountains. The rest of surrounding White County, including Cleveland, the county seat, remained staunchly dry.

Fun paragraph describing the city:

 So the city serves as a sort of geographic id for intensely vital Scots-Irish characters who are governed by the countervailing forces of the church and that ancient Celtic impulse to go wild, to kick ass, to self-destruct. Among the sepia-toned, old-timey costume photos displayed in the window of a souvenir photography studio are shots of an adorable baby—snuggling with a bottle of Jack Daniels in front of a Confederate flag backdrop. Despite the cultural homogenization of recent years, that old Saturday night/Sunday morning dialectic of Southern life persists.

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(via @JustinHeckert, an Atlanta-based writer)

Waffle House and Hurricanes

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After Hurricane Irene last week, you might have become more familiar with the Saffir-Simpson scale that assigns a number, from 1 to 5, for hurricane strength based on wind speed. But in today’s Wall Street Journal, I learned of another measure. It has to do with Waffle House…

Turns out that Waffle House gains goodwill from being open when customers are most desperate, and so they try to either keep their establishments open during a hurricane, or recover as soon as possible.

Per the WSJ, after Hurricane Katrina, Waffle House decided to strengthen its crisis-management processes:

Senior executives developed a manual for opening after a disaster, bulked up on portable generators, bought a mobile command center and gave employees key fobs with emergency contacts. In a recent academic paper, Panos Kouvelis, a business-school professor at Washington University in St. Louis, pegged Waffle House as one of the top four companies for disaster response, with Wal-Mart Stores Inc., Home Depot Inc. and Lowe’s Cos.

So how can you glean the intensity of a hurricane? Cue the Waffle House Index:

Green means the restaurant is serving a full menu, a signal that damage in an area is limited and the lights are on. Yellow means a limited menu, indicating power from a generator, at best, and low food supplies. Red means the restaurant is closed, a sign of severe damage in the area or unsafe conditions.

The article is interesting throughout.

Optimal Way for Airplane Boarding

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A few years ago, Fermilab astrophysicist Jason Steffen observed while flying to a conference and got to thinking: is there a more efficient way for passengers to board an airplane?

Turns out, the answer is yes. If you’ve ever boarded an airplane where the people were asked to board by “zones” or by row numbers, you know how much of a logjam that ensues. It turns out that random boarding is better (faster) than zone boarding. But is there an even better way?

Jason Steffen with the answer. He set up a model using an algorithm based on the Monte Carlo optimization method used in statistics and mathematics. Turns out, the most efficient boarding method is to board alternate rows at a time, beginning with the window seats on one side, then the other, minimizing aisle interference.

You can see a video of this boarding process below:

Fascinating!

Now, all you have to do is petition your friendly airline to implement this method for boarding.

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(via CNET)

Steve Jobs Resigns as Apple’s CEO

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Wow. Steve Jobs just resigned as Apple’s CEO. Biggest news of the day, by far. That earthquake on the East Coast yesterday? This is an earthquake for the West Coast. Tim Cook becomes Apple’s new CEO while Jobs transitions his role as Chairman of Apple’s Board.

The WSJ has a nice list of the best Steve Jobs quotes over the years, such as this one:

These technologies can make life easier, can let us touch people we might not otherwise. You may have a child with a birth defect and be able to get in touch with other parents and support groups, get medical information, the latest experimental drugs. These things can profoundly influence life. I’m not downplaying that.

But it’s a disservice to constantly put things in this radical new light — that it’s going to change everything. Things don’t have to change the world to be important.

And oh, this is my favourite Steve Jobs video. A must-watch, if you’ve never seen it.

Apple at the core…Its core value is that we believe that people with passion can change the world for the better. That’s what we believe. 

Think Different.

The Mona Lisa: 100 Year Anniversary of Its Theft

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One hundred years ago today (August 21, 1911), it was a quiet Monday morning in Paris, France. The Louvre, arguably the world’s most famous art museum, was closed for the day. But three men were running away from the Louvre: Vincenzo Perugia and the brothers Vincenzo Lancelotti and Michele Lancelotti.

They had arrived to the Louvre on Sunday afternoon and managed to find a hiding space in a small storeroom near the Salon Carré, a gallery stuffed with Renaissance paintings. They spent the night. In the morning, wearing white workmen’s smocks, they had gone into the Salon Carré. They seized a small painting off the wall. Quickly, they ripped off its glass shadow box and frame and Perugia hid it under his clothes.

And so The Mona Lisa was stolen.

Remarkably, it took more than 24 hours for anyone to notice that the painting had been stolen. Granted, at the time, the Louvre had lax security and The Mona Lisa wasn’t even the most famous item in the museum.

My favourite piece of trivia about the theft: the artist Pablo Picasso was considered a suspect in the theft of the Mona Lisa; he was brought in for questioning but promptly released.

The Mona Lisa would not be found for 28 months. The best account I’ve read recounting the story of Mona Lisa’s theft is this brilliant, must-read piece in Vanity Fair.

On Medals, Prizes, and Honors

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In this weekend’s Wall Street Journal, in a piece titled “The Truth About Being a Hero,” Karl Marlantes writes about his time in the Vietnam War. The excerpt is from his upcoming book, What It Is Like To Go To War. I encourage you to read the whole thing. My biggest takeaway was Marlantes’s view on what it takes to get a medal (and how much luck is involved):

Medals are all mixed up with hierarchy, politics and even job descriptions. What is considered normal activity for an infantry grunt, and therefore not worthy of a medal, is likely to be viewed as extraordinary for someone who does the same thing but isn’t a grunt, so he gets a medal and maybe an article in Stars and Stripes.

I got my medals, in part, because I did brave acts, but also, in part, because the kids liked me and they spent time writing better eyewitness accounts than they would have written if they hadn’t liked me. Had I been an unpopular officer and done exactly the same things, few would have bothered, if any. The accounts would have been laconic, at best, and the medals probably of a lower order. The only people who will ever know the value of the ribbons on their chests are the people wearing them—and even they can fool themselves, in both directions.

He goes on to say: “I was eager for medals early on, but after a while I was no longer so anxious to get one of any kind. But the same phenomenon of being taken over by something, or someone, still seemed to operate.”

Now, compare Karl Marlantes’s words to those of Richard Feynman, my favourite scientist:

In the above video, Feynman explains how he doesn’t much (or at all) care for prizes. The true prize is the pleasure of finding things out, the observation other people are listening and using your discovery. As Feynman notes, those are the real things; the honors are unreal.

Warren Buffett on Taxing the Super-Rich

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I really like Warren Buffett. He’s got a no-nonsense approach to investing, he speaks with charisma, and in today’s edition of the New York Times, he makes his voice heard loud and clear: tax the super-rich. And heavily.

In an op-ed titled “Stop Coddling the Super-Rich,” Warren Buffett explains how he paid the least amount in taxes from his office of twenty people (even when he made the most money):

Last year my federal tax bill — the income tax I paid, as well as payroll taxes paid by me and on my behalf — was $6,938,744. That sounds like a lot of money. But what I paid was only 17.4 percent of my taxable income — and that’s actually a lower percentage than was paid by any of the other 20 people in our office. Their tax burdens ranged from 33 percent to 41 percent and averaged 36 percent.

Some important statistics to digest (about income disparity in America):

Since 1992, the I.R.S. has compiled data from the returns of the 400 Americans reporting the largest income. In 1992, the top 400 had aggregate taxable income of $16.9 billion and paid federal taxes of 29.2 percent on that sum. In 2008, the aggregate income of the highest 400 had soared to $90.9 billion — a staggering $227.4 million on average — but the rate paid had fallen to 21.5 percent.

And his resilient conclusion:

But for those making more than $1 million — there were 236,883 such households in 2009 — I would raise rates immediately on taxable income in excess of $1 million, including, of course, dividends and capital gains. And for those who make $10 million or more — there were 8,274 in 2009 — I would suggest an additional increase in rate.

My friends and I have been coddled long enough by a billionaire-friendly Congress. It’s time for our government to get serious about shared sacrifice.

Bravo. Now, let’s make it happen.