It begins as a profile of a state senator working to make Kansas a zero income tax state, and then chronicles the legislative session in which he and his colleagues attempt to balance the budget without destroying K-12 education in the face of much lower than expected tax revenue.

The author, a Kansas native by the name of Chris Suellentrop, does an admirable job of making the details of tax package debate palatable and easy to understand.

But even better, he attempts to give the readers of a liberal newspaper a deeper understanding of why these conservative politicians are attempting to eliminate income tax.

Namely, in the face of mass exodus from the state, they hope lower taxes will spur new business and bring companies looking to relocate to Kansas.

What allows the author intimate access, and makes the anecdotes he peppers into policy talk so interesting, is that the state senator he profiles is his uncle.

It’s a wonderful piece of journalism because it didn’t just entertain or inform me, it gave me a new understanding of how people that I don’t agree with think.

I also got a thrill from realizing that not only do I know and collect the photographer who took the photos for the piece, Portland artist Holly Andres, but I also have corresponded with and bought a piece of art from Paul Windle, half of the design team that illustrated the magazine cover.

It reminded me why I love getting the New York Times delivered on Sunday.

And it got me thinking about where I get the rest of my news.

Besides once a week delivery of the Times, I get a magazine called The Week which sums up the past week’s news very much like a website aggregator, but comes printed and in the mail.

Other than it, it’s Facebook.

I get whatever my friends share. Or whatever Facebook thinks I want to see of what my friends share.

Which tends to be the same story or stories on the same subject for about a day or two straight.

Sometimes real journalism fights it’s way into the top of my feeds. But too often I see a link to a piece about what someone who has no business running for president said in an effort to remind us he has no business running for president.

I miss balance and breadth in my news cycle.

When I was growing up we got the paper every day. We also got Time and Newsweek and lots of other magazine. Often we also watched a television program called The News.

Even just five years ago my wife and I got the Oregonian every morning, and the New York Times on Sunday, and had as a dozen magazine subscriptions.

Now we’re down to once a week newspaper and a magazine.

Our monthly news bill is about $20.

That is the sum total we pay for journalism and reporting.

You know, reporting, where someone actually leaves their computer and travels outside their comfort zone and talks to people and covers things and relies on first hand experience and observation and testimony.

Don’t get me wrong; I like opinion pieces, so much so that I’m writing one in the form of this blog post. But in order for people to properly form opinions they need real reporting to inform them.

A good piece of journalism might take weeks or even months to research and write. I’m sure The Kansas Experiment did.

And because so few of us are paying much for our news, there’s a lot less money going to fund this kind of work.

Now I realize journalism is mostly supported by advertising, not subscriptions. But what newspapers and magazines can charge for advertising is directly linked to subscriptions. Or more recently page views.

And I know, because I work in advertising, that advertisers pay a lot more for ads that go to subscribers than ads that are viewed on free websites.

So I’ve decided to pay more for my news.

We’re going to get the New York Times every day, and the New Yorker, and Portland Monthly, and maybe the Economist and maybe a few more.

And at my wife’s urging I’m going to like the New York Times, LA Times, and Washington Post on Facebook.

That way they’ll get more subscriptions and page views, which will help their advertising, and hopefully I’ll get more of what they want me to see.

And hopefully less of that guy Facebook keeps reminding me is running for president.

Let me know if you have any other suggestions.

Dear Mayor Hales and City Council,

I’ve met a few of you before.

Mayor Hales, we met at the opening reception for the “We Build Green Cities” video a few years back. Soon after that, I showed you around Wieden+Kennedy, so you could learn about the agency’s unconventional school, WK12, and the Portland Incubator Experiment. Your curiosity and interest in what the tech community needed in order to grow impressed me.

Mr. Fish, we have spoken at numerous Harper’s Playground events and I always appreciated how eager you were to hear my thoughts on the city.

For the rest of you, I appreciate the hard work you do on behalf on Portland. And I’ll quickly introduce myself.

I’ve lived here in Portland for most of the last 20 years. I’ve been involved in the art community, the film community, and most recently the advertising community, where I’ve been lucky enough to work with Travel Oregon and Travel Portland. In fact I came up with the idea for, and wrote, the 7 Wonders of Oregon campaign.

I have also taught at PSU, I host most of the Moth storytelling events here in town and do some auctioneering for non-profits I believe in, as well as my daughter’s elementary school, Abernethy.

Which is to say I’ve been lucky enough to come in contact with a wide spectrum of Portlanders and while I can’t speak for anyone but myself, I think there are lot of people who are feeling the way I am. So here goes.

I love Portland.

I love that we’re an epicenter for zines and the performing arts, and food and drink and urban planning. I love how as a city we figure out how reuse and recycle not just cans and bottles but cruiser bikes and old buildings. I love how many unique local businesses we have and support. I love how we’re a city that feels like a big town and I love how nice and friendly the people are who live here, how open-minded and unafraid to be themselves.

That said I’m loving it a little less than I used to.

I’ve always been a supporter of build up, not out. But it feels like we’re building up and filling in so fast that our city is changing very quickly.

I can stand in my front yard and see three massive houses being built where modest, affordable middle class houses once stood.

I live near Division and 32nd, so I’m in the heart of it.

But it’s happening all over Portland. Heck, it’s happening all over America.

I know this transformation has positives for the city.

The construction industry is booming and new businesses with good jobs are being created and moving here, which means a higher tax base, so more road improvement and public transportation and better schools.

But I also fear we are losing some of what makes this city so amazing.

Our famously livable city is becoming less livable. Traffic is worsening which is annoying, but also dangerous.

Just this past weekend there were two pedestrians hit in our neighborhood, one at 31st and Division Friday night, another at 32nd and Division on Saturday minutes after the Division/Clinton Street parade ended and with dozens of kids right there, including my own.

(And let me remind the bike and transit advocates that traffic affects bikes and bus schedules as well.)

Portland is also becoming a lot more expensive.

So much of the new housing being built is high-end and it’s often being built where more affordable housing once stood.

Artist studios and small businesses are making way for new developments.

As a result, many of the people who have made this city so interesting and distinct are becoming disenfranchised and are being pushed out. It’s affecting artists, service workers, teachers.

I hear many of them ask can I afford to stay? Do I want to?

But I also hear concerns from my older Richmond neighbors, the ones who were born into and grew up in the houses they still live in.

What happening to my neighborhood? Why are the builders of these big new houses so disrespectful of everyone who lives nearby?

It’s difficult for folks to have to consider moving from somewhere they love and helped shape.

But I also fear it could spell trouble for the city.

If Portland becomes less livable and we lose too much of our unique culture and diversity, we’ll stop being a destination for tourism and businesses looking to relocate.

I’m not opposed to change. It’s inevitable and it can be good.

Personally, I like all the new restaurants and shops on Division, but I also like the old businesses that have managed to hold on.

And I’m pro-growth.

In fact we’re turning our garage into an ADU for my mother-in-law, doing our best to work with neighbors, recycle as much wood as possible and match our house, working with BDS to meet every requirement and code.

I just hope we can change and grow in ways that work for all Portlanders and don’t change our city so radically we lose what makes it’s special.

So

I have a few things I’d like to ask.

Very specially I’d ask that you consider ensuring that “lots of record” and “lot remnants” be removed from the section of the Zoning Code that covers single dwellings (Title 33.110)

My understanding is this will slow down the lot splitting that incentivizes single family residential demolitions.

More generally I’d ask that you to do anything in your power to promote the building and saving of affordable housing.

I think this is so important to Portland’s future.

And I’d ask that you continue to find ways to make cross streets like Division and 32nd safer. We got a notice that work is going to be done to make the area around 26th and Powell safer, which we’re thankful of.

Finally, what can I do?

How can I, and others like me, help Portland grow and change in a way that is more inclusive and enjoyable?

I really do love this city. I can’t imagine a better place to raise my kids and grow old.

But I also find myself asking my wife where the next Portland is.

And I really want to stop asking her that.

Thanks for listening, and I’m eager to hear any thoughts.

Best,

Andrew Dickson

Yes, of course there is. You have to live in Oregon.

Here in Oregon we have something called the Oregon Cultural Trust. It’s basically a legal money-laundering scheme that helps you help the arts.

Here’s how it works.

Donate up to $500 to any Oregon arts and heritage non-profits organizations you love.

Anything from PICA to Disjecta to the IPRC to Friends of the Gorge to the Oregon Zoo, or better yet spread your donation to some combination of. The full list of 1300 plus eligible groups is on the Oregon Cultural Trust website here.

Then you give a matching $500 donation to the Oregon Cultural Trust.

They’ll distribute the $500 you give them to the entire group of organizations they support around the state.

So you’ve given $1000 to a host of wonderful organizations. Good on you.

Then come tax time, you can take the $500 Oregon Cultural Trust donation as a full tax credit. You get the entire $500 back, every last cent of it.

And then, assuming you itemize your deductions on your schedule A (as opposed to taking the standard deduction), you get a tax deduction on the entire $1000 you gave on your federal taxes.

If you’re like most folks you pay 25% in federal taxes. So that’s another $250 back!

And you can take a tax deduction on the $500 you gave to arts organizations on your state taxes.

So in addition to getting the $500 you gave to the Cultural Trust back you’ll get another $45 back assuming you pay 9% to Oregon.

So all told you’ll get the $500 plus the $250 plus the $45.

Giving you a $795 tax refund in April. Even more if you make the big bucks and are in a higher tax bracket.

So for only $205 you’ve given $1000 to help make this place a place worth living in.

That’s insane!

Show you me any other way to quadruple your money in a few months and I’ll show you a Ponzi scheme.

Which I know this sounds like. Or one of those crazy tax loopholes that corporations use to get out of paying taxes. Which it is.

But this one is for us. For ordinary Oregonians to make a difference and support film and dance and kid’s painting classes and the symphony and history and so and so forth instead of subsidizing factories or sports arenas.

And check this out. If you’re a couple filling jointly, you can double up.

You can contribute up to $1000 to arts and heritage non-profits, and another $1000 to the Oregon Cultural Trust.

So you outlay $2000 now. But get the $1000 to the Cultural Trust back in April on your state taxes. Plus get $500 back on your federal taxes, and then another $90 on the arts donations on your state taxes.

So for only $410 you’ve given $2000.

Now keep in mind $500 for individuals and $1000 for couples are just the maximum amounts you can donate to get the full tax advantage. You can give lower matching amounts and still get the same tax advantage. Anything helps.

And it gets better.

You can donate to a lot of wonderful arts groups as well as the Oregon Cultural Trust through Willamette Week’s Give Guide.

Not only is it super easy, you’ll also get awesome free stuff donated to you from their partners. Stuff like Stumptown coffee and Widmer beer and the Chinook Book and so on. They’ll even drop them off at your door if you like.

So go! Get giving.

You’ll feel good and you’ll never know just how much it means to these organizations to get a donation.

Extra credit: Find out if your employer has a matching donation program. If they do, you might just be able to help your favorite non-profits out with an additional $500 or even $1000.

If you’re a dad, or you like dads, and want to spend an evening with dads and non-dads alike, thinking about dads, and eating some awesome food cooked by Olympic Provisions, I recommend coming to the Association tonight.

It’s a new dinner series at Union/Pine here in Portland that pairs a different chef or restaurant with a different speaker every month.

Tonight, I’ll talk for about 15 minutes about fatherly advice between the salad and main course.

Having attended last month’s dinner, I can tell you it’s a pretty awesome evening. Cocktail hour lasts for an hour, with drinks courtesy of Merit Badge, then dinner is a leisurely hour and a half to two hour affair with multiple courses and dessert.

It’s also a great mix of three or four dozen folks. Last month I was alone so I waited for a table of six to fill up to five and grabbed an empty seat, and I ended up sitting next to this guy, who is an absolute charmer.

What with the food, and the conversation and the wine and cocktails, it more than justifies the price. Last I heard there were still a few tickets left here.

If you miss out, or have other plans, keep it in mind for next month or the months after that.

And I’ll follow up and post the essay I’m going to base my remarks on tonight in the next few days.

I turn 39 this week, so I’m in deep meditation on the 39th thing. I’ll let you know when I have it. Although technically I have the whole year, right?

38 Things from Team Video on Vimeo.

In other news, I’m blogging but less here and more on my new advice blog, co-hosted by Yours Truly. Get in touch with us if you need some.

He nodded his head. “So, you got the next 10 years to make your mark.”

It made sense at the time. After all, this idea that you need to fully realize your career potential and arrive in your given field before you get too old is everywhere. Hollywood, we were often told, is a young person’s game. So too is advertising. The earlier you go to medical or law school, the sooner you’ll make enough to pay back all your debt.

But it’s important to remember that careers are made at all kinds of different ages.

Joseph Conrad didn’t speak a word of English until his 20s and didn’t write in English until his 30s.

Clint Eastwood didn’t start directing until his 40s.

Vaclav Havel didn’t become a politician until his 50s.

Colonel Sanders didn’t start his chicken franchise until his 60s.

Grandma Moses didn’t start painting until her 70s.

I’ve got a reminder that age doesn’t have much to do success in my own family.

My Dad has been a writer since he graduated from college. He spent his 20s and most of his 30s writing for magazines and business journals. He published his first book, the Electronic Battlefield, in his late 30s. It talked about things like the Internet way back in 1976. It was a critical success, but didn’t sell so well.

So he spent the next few decades writing a few books a year. He wrote joke books, books about language, dictionaries, baseball books, a book about libraries, a book of toasts and books on just about anything else that interested him and he could sell.

Years later, after my brother and I were out of the house and out on our own, he started writing books that took years instead of months to write. He started writing history. He wrote a book about Sputnik that put Eisenhower’s role in the space race in new, nobler light. He wrote a book about the bonus army of WWI veterans who train-hopped to Washington DC to lobby Congress for their wartime bonus in the midst of the Great Depression. Incidentally, the movement started here in Portland, Oregon, before growing to include thousands of veterans from across the country.

The Sputnik book was turned into two documentaries. One that ran on PBS, the other that had a theatrical release. The Bonus Army had Hollywood production companies lining up to option the book.

After a very prolific, successful career, my Dad was hitting new heights in his 60s.

This spring, now into his 70s, he published arguably the best book of his career. It’s an biography, his first, of the maverick sports owner Bill Veeck.

It’s an absolute pleasure to read. It’s about the man himself, a marvelous character sports seems to breed too infrequently. And it’s about baseball, of course. The game itself played on the field, but also the games and politics played at owners’ meetings and in clubhouses behind closed doors. It covers the integration of baseball, the beginning of free agency, the expansion to the West Coast, and the balance between sport and entertainment, all of which Veeck played a starring role in.

Ultimately it’s a revealing and thoroughly entertaining slice of history of America in the middle of the 20th century.

Okay, sure, I’m his son. So don’t take my word for it. Take the Oregonian’s, the Wall Street Journal’s, or the Philadelphia Inquirer’s.

And if you’re reading this, live in Portland and are free tomorrow, Thursday night, come on down to Powell’s and hear my Dad’s words yourself. He’ll be reading, telling stories, answering questions and signing books on the top floor of the downtown store at 7:30.

The current class, whom I teach, recently added an extra “er” as part of an abecedarium project they created to introduce themselves to the agency. We no longer just fail harder, now we fail harderer.

Recently I’ve been hearing about a lot of other businesses and corporate cultures that are preaching the virtues of failure. I’ve heard it discussed on NPR’s Marketplace, and have read business leaders talk about it in the New York Times.

Failure is in. Or maybe it always has been and I’ve only recently started paying attention.

Either way, embracing failure makes sense. You learn more from failure than from success. Some success can be replicated, but usually once an idea has been done right, that particular road to success is closed. Although the producers of Friday the 13th may beg to differ.

Failure, on the other hand, shows us where things went wrong and why something didn’t work. We tend not to fail the same way twice.

And yet I’ve had a hard time embracing failure in my own work.

Having advertising campaigns killed is one thing. I joke that advertising is a lot like baseball. If your average getting ideas sold and produced is over .300 you’re doing pretty well. If it dips down to .200 start worrying about a trip to the minors. Even if you’re hitting a Hall of Fame worthy .400, that still means more ideas die than ever see the light of day.

And that’s okay. Advertising campaigns are collaborations with a multitude of factors going into whether they get made or not.

But a bad personal or art project is a different matter altogether. There is no one else to blame. Any project I take on is only as good or as bad as I make it. Even if I have collaborators, I have chosen them and we are starting with my vision.

I have made some nice films, had created a few very good performances, and done some writing I’m quite proud of.

But a few years ago I made a film that is simply mediocre. I’ve only just now gotten around to sharing it. Here’s part one.

The Shandy Man, part 1 from Andrew Dickson on Vimeo.

As you might have noted if you just watched it, the idea was good. A forty year-old guy sets up a lemonade stand on the grass between the sidewalk and street outside my house. I attempt to get him to leave. Hilarity, I reasoned, would ensue.

The cast and crew I enlisted were great. I cast my friend Bill Bailey as the lemonade salesman and a very good cameraman donated his time to film it.

I got a great editor too, a NYU student interning at Wieden+Kennedy over the summer, who did the best with what he had.

The problem was the script. Or the complete lack of one. I had a good enough idea that I figured we’d just wing it. You’d think I’d know better. I don’t tend to wing things. And I’ve written half a dozen feature screenplays, each which took the better part of a year to write.

But years earlier Bill and I had made a series of short films with another friend, Steve MacDougall, in which we winged it. We had a loose idea, we went out and filmed it, and amazing things happened. I figured we might catch lighting in a bottle again. We didn’t.

See how that works? What did I learn from my early, easy success? Not much. If anything it taught me I could do something I couldn’t, at least not again. It made me cocky.

What did I learn from the more recent failure? Something I already know but will never make the mistake of actually doing again. Movies are only as good as their story. The old adage goes that a good story can survive bad acting but good acting can’t save a bad story. And without a script there’s not much of a story to save.

Are there some chuckles? I think so. Am I proud of enough to share them? You already know that I am. In fact, here’s part 2.

The Shandy Man, part 2 from Andrew Dickson on Vimeo.

But what could have been great or really good, was simply good, or as I said before mediocre.

Nonetheless, I’m finally sharing them.

Partly it’s a way of owning and acknowledging my failure. Partly I’m curious if I’m not being just a tad hard on myself and these get some views and passed around a bit. I also think it’s only fair to share the fruits of others’ labor when you do a project and ask people to donate their time and talents.

But mostly, I just want to own up to failing, share what I’ve learned, and move onto new and hopefully better things.

In the meantime, here’s the 3rd and final part.

The Shandy Man, part 3 from Andrew Dickson on Vimeo.

I’ve been writing long format essays that start with a personal story and spin it into a business insight. In an effort to concentrate on the ideas, I haven’t included images or hyperlinks. Just words.

I was hoping to get an exchange going and maybe some feedback. I’ve gotten a grand total of a comment and an email.

I’m thinking the no images or hyperlinks part might be part of the problem. This is the Internet after all, the perfect marriage of words, sounds, images, moving pictures. And interaction. And to that point I haven’t done much to promote the blog either.

That changes today with this.

38 things I’ve learned over the past 38 years from Andrew Dickson on Vimeo.

Kate Bingaman Burt asked me to come talk to the Portland State Friends of Graphic Design Show and Tell lecture series. The prompt was broad, do whatever you want.

As you’ll see, I’m not a designer, so I thought about what I could offer the students that would be of most value to them. My gut said advice. Not big idea advice like “what’s the big idea” but practical advice like use coupons and you’ll live a richer life than you’re non-coupon using friends. And I came up with 38 pieces of it, one for every year I’ve been alive.

I gave the lecture to my own students in W+K 12 first a week beforehand, along with the assignment to each present their story in a unique way. Then made a few tweaks and gave it again at PSU.

And before you accuse me of speech recycling let me ask if you expect a stand-up comedian to tell different jokes every night or a rock band to write new songs for every show. I actually find that the second time I give a lecture or deliver a performance I tend to deliver it better than the first. So sorry, 12, but you did get the assignment too.

The lecture is about 40 minutes, as I give an explanation for each slide. But you’ll get the gist if you watch the minute long video I made from my PowerPoint slides.

The problem is my young children do as well. And in an effort to allow our records to endure their childhood relatively scratch-free we’ve become a digital music household.

Currently that means we move an iPod touch from room to room plugging it into various docks and speakers as we move throughout our day.

It turns out the iPod touch doesn’t hold much music, so by default we’ve become Pandora listeners. At this point we listen to Pandora a few hours a night and a good half the time on cold weekends like this one. And we like it.

Pandora works particularly well for new music and classic rock. But it’s not perfect. After an epic battle we finally got our Arcade Fire Suburbs station to play songs from years other than the one the Suburbs came out. Literally, it took weeks of giving the thumbs up and down to get the occasional Smiths song to play.

Our current frustration, and one that is making us question continuing to use the service, is our foray into jazz. We’re not huge jazz listeners, but it has it’s time and it’s place. And this dreary three-day weekend, one that celebrates the life of Martin Luther King, is one of them.

So yesterday morning I created a new channel. John Coltrane. More specifically the search bar suggested John Coltrane A Few of My Favorite Things. Perfect.

The first song was a wonderfully melancholy vibraphone track we’d never heard. And then? Power pop. Huh? Thumbs down. Next we heard a punk song. Thumbs down. And then finally some jazz. Thumbs up. And then a song from 90’s indie band Superchunk.

For the last 24 hours the pattern has held. We get a pair of pop, punk or alternative songs for every jazz song. Without fail we give the jazz the thumbs up, the non-jazz the thumbs down, but to no avail.

As I started writing this post it started playing an atrocious song off the soundtrack of the atrocious movie Empire Records. I furiously pounded the thumbs down button but nothing happened. I tried fast forwarding. But it turns out we’ve run up against the Pandora licensing threshold.

So I turned it off. I’m now writing this in silence.

I’m not sure if Pandora is overthinking it, computing that since my other channels are rock of one kind or another that I couldn’t possibly want actual jazz, but instead crave pop songs with some kind of improvisation or rhythm that shares traits with John Coltrane.

I realize, after all, that John Coltrane is the first and sometimes only Jazz musician most hipsters will ever mention.

Or perhaps there just isn’t enough jazz in the Pandora project to fill out a whole jazz section?

A cursory web search tells me that Pandora is not genre specific. So that it doesn’t know jazz from pop punk, it only recognizes the 400 musical attributes of a given song. But given how many slow, irregular time signature jazz songs I thumped up, and how many up tempo 4-4 punk songs I thumbed down, I’m not so sure it’s working.

It also doesn’t explain how during the holidays the various Christmas music channels we created played Christmas music exclusively.

Nor, why when I start a new channel titled simply Miles Davis, which I just did, I get nothing but jazz. Did it learn that I actually want? And if so why didn’t it course correct what I now refer to as the Empire Records channel.

Or maybe this is all an effort to get me to upgrade to a paid premium subscription.

Whatever the cause, it’s a problem that could use some fixing.

But I’ve also got a new idea. One for Pandora, or one of their competitors, but one I could use right away. Maybe some other service already has it. If so, do tell.

One of my responsibilities at work is writing the ads for Travel Oregon. It’s the account I was born to work on. I love Oregon and have spent the better part of the last 15 years exploring it. Convincing people to explore Oregon, out-of-state people as well as Oregonians themselves, is an honor and a privilege. It’s also a hell of a lot of fun.

For the last year and a half, part of our biannual campaign to increase tourism has involved making a series of 15-second commercials, highlighting different aspects of what makes Oregon great. The idea is rather then do one big epic commercial about Oregon we do lots of little ones. You’re likely to see two in the same commercial break, hopefully eliciting an “I didn’t realize you can do that and that in Oregon” reaction.

For obvious reasons, we’ve only wanted to use songs from Oregon bands as soundtrack. Culture, along with our food and epic outdoors, is among our best selling points. We’re not making bands rich, it’s Oregon Travel after all, but it’s a nice chunk of change, and it’s a mission musicians have been eager to support.

The problem is I don’t get out like I used to, and music isn’t as central to my life as it once was, so it’s harder and harder for me to stay on top of what’s going as far as local music goes. (Please, send any suggestions my way).

I would love to be able to create a Pandora station that played only Oregon music. It would make my job easier. And help me discover bands that I might not otherwise discover.

And I bet other people would appreciate that kind of feature too, perhaps someone moving to Portland, or Austin, or getting ready for a trip to Japan. What better way to get in the mood than to hear the music of the region?

Why stop at geography? How about a channel for songs with epic drum solos? Or songs the feature the theremin, or the sitar.

Or a channel featuring songs Led Zeppelin bassist John Paul Jones played on or arranged, which would include everything from the Rollings Stones to Cat Stevens to Tom Jones. What about a channel that features songs with the word “candy” in them? Or a channel of songs that are exactly 3 minutes and 33 seconds?

Pandora should already have all this information, why not use it, or more accurately let it’s users use it.  Either by expanding the search options, or curating and creating these kind of channels. Or even letting users tinker with the genome itself. Maybe some of those 400 musical attributes are more important to me than others.

I get the genius behind the music genome project. It’s smart, but it’s also cerebral. What I’m proposing would make it more useful, but also more fun.

For whatever reason, the Microsoft parts are the parts I remember. He had a funny story about getting cast in an internal Microsoft video and realizing upon showing up that he was acting against Bill Gates. Sure enough Mr. Gates was a horrible actor, but no one felt empowered to let him know how stiff and wooden he was or offer up any kind of direction that would have made him less so.

But the story I remember most vividly and find myself sharing every few months was about a friend of Daisy’s who was hired by Microsoft and was asked to research what was wrong with Microsoft Word. The problem, he not so surprisingly discovered, was that new features and functions kept being added, but they never replaced or were combined with the old ones. So with every update the program became more confusing and unwieldy.

Daisy explained how his friend gave the presentation of his findings to rave reviews, all the way up to Bill Gates himself, who was so impressed he asked the guy to deliver the presentation to everyone who worked on Word. So he spent the next year and a half travelling the globe giving the presentation over and over again.

Finally, a manager of group in charge of one little function tucked inside one of the drop down menus took him aside afterwards and told him, we all know what’s wrong with Word. But I have 15 employees in my group. And if we don’t keep adding new functions and features every update, then what purpose does my group serve? If I followed your advice, and made my tiny slice of the pie simpler, the next thing I’d have to do is fire 14 people.

It seems to me the National Basketball Association has the rare chance to do what Microsoft Word can’t. Change their program in a fundamental way for the better.

Thanks to the strike, this year’s NBA season started Christmas day, rather then late October, and teams will play a dizzying 66 games in 124 days instead of 82 over the course of 170.

The result? So, far a much more exciting season. Granted, the Blazers marvelous start has something to do with it. But beyond that, each game means more this season, each win and loss that much more relevant to making or not making the playoffs. And the frequency of the games means that players are rewarded for being in shape. Sure there will be the occasional sloppy game, a few more injuries, and older players taking the last night of a back to back to back off. But that also means more opportunities for new stars to shine. I think this year will see the emergence of a half dozen of new superstars, and a slew of new household names.

Best of all, this season is going to actually keep fans attention. A normal NBA season is a bloated October to June. That means there are only 3 months out of the year without an NBA game. Christmas to June feels infinitely more manageable.

So why not keep it this way moving forward? Tighten it up?

I know, the business interests probably wouldn’t allow it. Too much money is at stake. And I’m not unaware that a 66 game season means 8 less home games for ushers, parking lot attendants, trainers, security guards, food vendors and the thousands of other people who don’t make millions but depend on the NBA to make their living.

But I can’t help wonder what Microsoft would do if Word somehow went on strike and they had the opportunity to remake the program with half as many features.