I Gotta Fever, and the Only Prescription is More Post

I've been absent of late due to the fulmination of various forces in my life, but I gotta post. I worked for sixteen hours today, I have a meeting tomorrow, classes Tuesday, work Wednesday, and I have a problem set and midterm Thursday; so it's not looking like this week will see my triumphant return to blogging, although I can promise that my next substantial post will be very good.

It all goes to show, I think, that blogging is a luxury for the rich. I've tried to blog unemployment over at LoOG, but I've felt wraithlike doing it, overextended, drawn out, like being pulled in all directions with no end in sight. I can't devote the amount of time I want to to really examining phenomena like the Occupy movement, because doing so cuts way from time I could be spending working, now that after so many long months of searching, work - even work undesireable in normal circumstances - is available. So, it's official: I've progressed from the ranks of the unemployed to the employed. I'll have more details on this; but for now let's just say that I'm too tired to feel anything about it, and I'm deathly afraid of hubris.

Things are starting to settle down and become a little more regular, but I still have reservations, and there is of course a huge lag between starting a job and feeling the comforts of regular employment (I have trust issues, which I'll expand on in a later post.), and I'm super risk-averse now, and my experience in Japan has put a fire inside me that will drive me until my own death.

The Solutions to Poverty and Unemployment Will Look Something Like This: An Interview with Rachel Cook

Rachel Cook is a friend of mine from college who let me interview her about her upcoming film, currently titled the Microlending Film Project. Rachel shot footage for Kiva - an awesome organization that has stoked the fires of entrepreneurship in Africa, Southeast Asia, and around the world, and is now stoking the fires of entrepreneurship here in America:

    

The Microlending Film Project (film title TBD) was conceived as a passion project by Futures Trader turned Director/Producer Rachel Cook after she read a Nicholas Kristof op-ed in The New York Times late one night at a Chicago trading desk.  The article was about how empowering women in the developing world with tools like microfinance can bring about positive, sustainable change (Saving the World's Women).

The project has been undertaken with the best interests of poor women at heart, as the film seeks to show a balanced, comprehensive picture of microfinance through the lens of the personal stories of the women it impacts. The issue of transparency and its paramount importance to the industry is a key focus, as is showcasing best-practices and suggesting how microfinance can most effectively be used as one development tool in a larger box both domestically and abroad, specifically in terms of the opportunities mobile banking and crowdsourcing promise.

The Microlending Film Project is holding a DVD pre-sale and offering other perks to raise funding for post-production.  To view a trailer and/or purchase a DVD, please follow this link: http://www.indiegogo.com/Finishing-The-Microlending-Film-Project?a=238586&i=addr

       

The filmmaking crew is also actively seeking out investors at multiple levels. If you have an interest in learning more about investment opportunities in the film, please contact Rachel Cook at rachel at microlendingfilm dot com.

   

Anyways, here comes the interview:

    

Christopher Carr: How did you come to where you are now? Describe your life after graduating from college. How did you choose your current path? Where do you see yourself going after this?

     

Rachel Cook: I knew I wanted to do something involving writing and film, and after studying for a semester in Los Angeles junior year at Duke I knew I hated that "city". I'd heard about Second City/iO and all of the comedy writers and performers it had produced, people like Bill Murray, Chris Farley and Tina Fey, and studying there seemed like it provided more of a sort of clear path than would toiling in obscurity somewhere else, so I moved to Chicago. While there, I picked up an equities trading position to pay the bills, and I took a ton of improv classes and put on a few shows.

   

While it was gratifying to put on a show and have 30 people come, or even say, 5, obviously film can reach a much larger audience, so I think that notion was percolating in the back of my mind through the Second City period. Meanwhile, a few years in to my Chicago tenure, I started trading Futures on the European shift, which was in the middle of the night of course, Chicago time.

  

The trading environment was so surprisingly sexist that it really affected me. I worked at four firms total - three in Chicago and one in Manhattan - and I was always the only girl trader, or one of a few. It was definitely one of the last bastions of old school sexism and it was infuriating and upsetting. So I guess that's why, one night in September 2009 when I came across a Kristof op-ed in the NYT about the positive impact of microfinance globally, particularly on poor women, that I immediately felt compelled to text my sister and tell her that I was going to make a film on just this topic. Microfinance appealed to both my feminist sensibilities, and to the interest in good investment I'd cultivated while on the trading desk.

   

From there, it was just a matter of figuring out how the hell to make a global feature film, because I definitely didn't know how to do that, and we ended up shooting on four continents. In hindsight, I'm glad that I was arrogant and ignorant enough about the process to take all of this on; and it's grown from here. I quit the trading job I was working in Manhattan in November of 2010 and started working on the film full time, and we just wrapped principal photography this past week in Detroit, so we'll be heavily editing from here on out.

  

Going forward, I plan to collaborate with Duke and the iHub, a shared start-up space in Nairobi that we discovered when filming, to launch a social gaming application that facilitates mobile-to-mobile microlending across continents. It's in its very early stages, but we have high hopes.

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My Latest at the League of Ordinary Gentlemen

I've decided to stop cross-posting altogether. Cross-posting cheapens posts and reeks of empty self-promotion. Go read and comment at LoOG. Here is a link and an excerpt:

In order to pretend to have a meritocracy, there must be some semblance of fairness. Since there are only limited resources available to devote to finding the person most deserving of a particular station, some element of abstraction is necessary. Hence, the cover letter-resume one-two punch. (Japan maintains its meritocracy – more successfully I’d argue - via an elaborate public examination system.) The errors wrought of abstraction are enough of a problem to begin with that when (1) gatekeepers and applicants alike forget the reason why cover letters and resumes exist in the first place and start seeing them as ends in themselves; and (2) the number of people tasked to evaluate resumes and cover letters decreases significantly while at the same time the number of resumes and cover letters thrown at a particular job increases significantly, the entire meritocratic job procurement system begins to hemorrhage à la BNET. LinkedIn, a guerrilla wielding a double-machete, jumps out of the jungle to cut through the staggering and blood-gushing meritocracy. Investors applaud. LinkedIn is pro-NMJP, in contrast to BNET’s cargo-cult pro-meritocratic posture. LinkedIn is also favored by companies and well-organized. Before joining LinkedIn, it took me several days to find one job I was interested in, write a cover letter, tweak my resume, and not get any kind of human response; in the same amount of time using LinkedIn, I can fire off ten or fifteen applications and get immediate and cordial rejections to them all. This represents a major increase in productivity; plus, constructive negative feedback is priceless.

Dueling Conundrums: Existential, Institutional

“An ‘unemployed’ existence is a worse negation of life than death itself.” – Jose Ortega y Gasset, The Revolt of the Masses, 1930 ¹

The unemployment rate is 9.2 percent and flat. A few jobs are changing hands, but a paltry number of new jobs is emerging. In the quiet and forgotten arenas of the unemployed there are all kinds of people: n00bz like me, specialists, generalists, the indefatigably loyal, the tirelessly disloyal, careerists, altruists, micromanagers, macromanagers, the fastidiously ethical, petty Eichmanns, the imaginative, the uptight, rule-breakers, innovators, former or future members of the creative class, the incessantly polite, the well-bred and good-mannered, the sociable, the neurotic, rugs that hold the whole room together, natural accounts men, women of substance, the sharply dressed, the sloppy, level-182 wizards, level-6 thieves, bookworms, adrenaline junkies, snooty hipsters, supplicants, heroic entrepreneurs, pot-bellied boomers, the idiosyncratically tattooed, those who are so unobtrusive they might as well not exist from an employer’s perspective, peacemakers and gladiators. Some of these people are waiting to be shuffled into the right job by the invisible Sorting Hat of the market. They believe in the Great American Meritocracy even though this belief strikes against their self-worth.

Belief in meritocracy is part of our culture: it is fundamentally American – that fair, can-do antithesis to the ancien régime we tell ourselves exists in the rest of the world. Belief in meritocracy fosters the hope that we’ll get our just deserts: soon enough we’ll interview and be hired for that perfect job, and finally we’ll have something worthy towards which to direct our worldly efforts. But we think about it a bit, and soon we realize that we’re the ones who lost our jobs to begin with. If the meritocracy exists, we were rejected by it: the bottom 9.2 percent. And so the plight of the unemployed person collapses to either self-loathing or cynicism.

It would have been easy for me to choose cynicism. The self-loathing conundrum passed me over: it was an act of God that rendered me unemployed. Here in America, I am a pilgrim in purgatory, materializing in the middle of things and forced to conclude that luck is often the dominant factor in the success or failure of an individual.  From what I’ve seen, there is little evidence to support the existence of a meritocracy. If the Great American Meritocracy ever existed, it’s long since collapsed under the weight of more than 14,000,000 unemployed Americans.

Contrary to their promise, globalization and information technologies have made coordinating qualified people and suitable jobs even more challenging: as soon as a job anywhere is posted, 1000 resumes from the U.S., 1000 resumes from the Philippines, and 1000 resumes from India are sent in electronically. Much of this is spam or its effective equivalent: generalized kluges of keywords that have little to do with the actual position they’re carpet bombing. These resumes come from the uber-cynics: people who have given up on or spurned the meritocratic procedures of judiciously writing cover letters and diligently customizing resumes to specific positions. They have no idea where the Predator is, so they’re just firing blindly into the jungle.

And so these two conundrums – existential and institutional –  feed off each other: the existential foments the institutional, and the institutional in turn catalyzes the existential. It’s easy to get caught in the current of it all.

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Punctuated Equilibrium

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4/11/2011 - Christopher Carr to William, Robert, Becca, Kevin, Kevin, Adam, Caitlin, Joseph, Julie, Dmitri

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Hey guys,

Wondering what you thought about this cover letter:

Here’s the job description:

Title: Junior Digital Video Production Assistant II
Location(s): Cambridge MA
PT/FT: Full Time
Pos. Number: S7658763b37bh-S7
Dept.: Center for Biomedical Science Journalism
Payroll Category: T
Work Shift Code: S09-0401

JUNIOR DIGITAL VIDEO PRODUCTION ASSISTANT II, Center for Biomedical Science Journalism, to assist director, multimedia leader, and web architect with a wide range of tasks related to CBSJ’s web presence and overall goals.  Responsibilities include designing content; creating content; maintaining content; directing content; managing video content; overseeing user databases and internal documentation protocols; assisting web and video production managers in marketing web materials using P2P and web 2.0 technology, social media, and other outreach methodologies to gather more professional and lay public users; assisting with special projects such as live video conferencing or implementation of online training content and facilitation of transference of deliverables; uploading video, audio, and print content to website and other venues; liaisoning with end-user content manager and user experience designers/architects; and monitor server connections, data backup, etc.  Film CBSJ seminars and other press conferences and then download, edit, and upload video using Final Cut Pro or Premier; maintain digital media archives; handle other administrative duties such as equipment inventories, camera maintenance, assisting with administrative data entry; assisting with CBSJ social media presence; placement of audio wave reception devices during production phase; duplication and distribution of internal documents; facilitation of delivery of caffeinated potables; and perform other duties as needed.

REQUIREMENTS: three(3)+ years of professional experience; proven track record of broad technical proficiency and aptitude; technical orientation towards work environment; experience with one or more post-production tool; i.e., Apple Final Cut Pro, Adobe Premier or Audition, or Avid Pro Tools; and a “can-do” attitude.  Experience maintaining content on websites or (web) databases strongly desired; Joomla experience; experience with Adobe Photoshop or Bridge or WordPress.  Social media, search engine optimization (SEO), SEM, and online marketing experience a plus.  Proficiency with PowerPoint, Mastery of Word, Excel, and Notepad (html); and an interest in science, biology, medicine, and/or journalism are also strongly desired.  S7658763b37bh-S7

Occasional early morning, evening, or weekend work may be required.  Travel 15% of the time.  Remote work possible 13.5% of the time.

Two-year appointment with the possibility of renewal.  This is a full-time position.

And here’s my cover letter:

Dear :

I am very interested in the Junior Digital Video Production Assistant II position at the Center for Biomedical Science Journalism.  The CBSJ is an institution for which I hold the utmost respect and which must play an increasingly important role in the future of our technological civilization.  I would like to participate in the efforts undertaken by the Center for Biomedical Science Journalism to more effectively communicate the immensely important discoveries of modern science to the public.  The position of Junior Digital Video Production Assistant II is an uncanny match for my experience, acquired skills, and personal interests.

The Center for Biomedical Science Journalism is at the forefront of a necessary sea change in how the public perceives science and technology.  I am particularly interested in continuing some of the work the center has done on the neurodiversity movement and punctuated equilibrium.  Compared to other kinds of journalism, science journalism is often lazy, reductionist, off-putting, poorly written, and even dangerous.  The other edge of this sword is the fact that at no other time in human history has the effective communication of scientific concepts to the general public been more important, as crucial technologies – thanks largely to technological evangelism originating at the Center for Biomedical Science Journalism – assume bottom-up and decentralized (as opposed to top-down and corporate-controlled) structures.

I have extensive experience that makes me the ideal candidate for your position.  First, as a refuge from the confusing and panic-inducing nuclear meltdown in Fukushima Japan, I know how lay scientific knowledge and science journalism must be improved in kind if humanity is to progress.  I am currently working on a book about my experience with my wife and children fleeing the leaking Fukushima Daiichi reactor with only iPhone Internet access to inform my decisions.  In addition to this formative experience, I am unusually qualified to work at the intersection of education, science, technology, digital video production, and journalism.  The wide range of tasks under the Junior Digital Video Production Assistant II job description suits the broad knowledge I have acquired as a self-employed provider of a wide range of services in English and technical writer in Japan over the last four years.  I have extensive experience explaining difficult technical concepts to a lay or linguistically-challenged audience.  I also have extensive experience with both Adobe Premier and Final Cut Pro (hundreds of hours as a film/video/digital/documentary studies student) in addition to web design and marketing in a variety of media.

Attached is a copy of my resume, which more fully details my qualifications for the position.  I look forward to talking with you regarding the Junior Digital Video Production Assistant II position at the Center for Biomedical Science Journalism.  Thank you very kindly for your consideration.

Sincerely,

Christopher Carr

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Slipping a Slurpee While the Economy is in a Ditch

No need to help me out the ditch, doing just fine on my own - by Michael PereckasThe U.S. economic recovery seems likely to stall yet again as it attempts to finally get out of the ditch.  In an economy at full employment 18,000 jobs added would be a bad jobs report (over 100,000 new jobs a month are necessary just to keep up with population growth), with 9%+ unemployment 18,000 new jobs is a disaster. 

Our best hope for a new recovery is in just how bad things are.  The U.S. housing market has been terrible for so long that very little new construction has taken place, and we don't have enough housing.  Eventually people will get tired of living with their parents and construction will have to pick up.  Right?

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Agreeing to Agree

Not a New Idea, But a Good One. From FlckrMatthew Cameron, at Matt Yglesias's blog, criticizes, sight unseen, President Obama's plan for increased job training:

Although we don’t yet know the specifics of Obama’s speech, its billing as a discussion about “the importance of job training to improving the economy” suggests that the administration remains attached to the idea that the nation’s unemployment crisis is structural rather than cyclical in nature. That unemployment spiked for all education levels following the 2008 financial crisis, however, indicates the economy is plagued by more than just structural unemployment caused by a dearth of human capital. Rather, it is coping with severely depressed aggregate demand. 

Of course, Obama has little say in whether Congress or the Fed acts appropriately. And it is true that job training is a good policy objective for the long-term strengthening of the U.S. economy. But if Obama hopes to convince voters that he cares about the immediate employment situation, he should address the real issue and not settle for nice-sounding speeches that essentially are irrelevant to the average American’s ongoing plight.

The need for monetary stimulus is one of Matt Yglesias's favorite subjects, and while I generally agree with that Matt, I think this Matt is off base.  

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Why Youth Leads the Recovery

source: Justice DepartmentThis week's Featured Find, an excellent Atlantic article by Dan Peck examining the long-run social costs of persistent unemployment, contains an embedded series of glourified vlogs blasting the youth of the nation for being "Followers, Not Leaders" and entitled basterds.  Au contraire, stuffy old people, WE, the youth, will lead the economic recovery, for several reasons:

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Book Review: Bruce Bartlett - The New American Economy

Bruce Bartlett's conservative economic bona fides are apparent in his resume: he started as a member of Ron Paul and Jack Kemp's Congressional staff, then became Executive Director of the Joint Economic Committee during the Reagan administration and later served as Deputy Assistant Secretary of Economic Policy at the Treasury Department under H. W. Bush.  He literally wrote the book on supply-side economics, with Reaganomics: Supply-Side Economics in Action in 1981.  With such unimpeachable conservative economic credentials, Bartlett feels free to slaughter some of the right's sacred cows in his recent book, The New American Economy: The Failure of Reaganomics and the New Way Forward.  He rehabilitates John Maynard Keynes as a misunderstood conservative, calls for the victory celebration and subsequent retirement of supply-side economics and defends President Obama's stimulus plan as the only thing to do.

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Signs of a Jobless Recovery

The news of the Dow closing over 10,000 points yesterday was hailed as proof that the economy is back on track, the index is now up from a low of 6,470 in mid-March- a gain of over 54% in 6 months.  That is startling growth, though probably much of that is due to unnecessarily painful losses in the first place, after all the Dow is still down over 28% from its high.  However, as Michael Roston points out, all of that progress in the stock markets hasn't trickled down into employment as evidenced by record military enlistments:

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