Portland's Ambitions

When I left Portland 8 years ago, I told everyone I knew and everyone I met that I would be back. In that time, I've lived in the Midwest, the South, in the Rockies and in Tahoe; each place with a different culture and pace of life. Having finally made it back home, I've been thinking a lot about what Portland was when I left, what it is today, and where it's likely to be in 5 or 10 years. As I made new acquaintances during freshman year of college and told them I was from Portland, the typical response was "Oh, I've heard Portland is a nice city." Now when I tell people, the response is almost always "Oh my God, I love Portlandia." Well, yes, Portland is a nice city, and yes, as much as I hate to admit it sometimes, Portlandia nails a lot of Portland's quirks on the head. For now, Portland is a place many aspire to live- but what does my city stand for, and thus where is it headed?

A characteristically fantastic article by Paul Graham helped frame this question for me. He says that great cities attract great people, and they all send a palpable message, a message you can hear and feel as you walk around. For New York, that message is "You should make more money." For Silicon Valley it is "You should be more powerful." For Cambridge: "You should be smarter," for Los Angeles: "You should be more famous," and for DC: "You should be more connected." His characterizations are pretty spot-on; so what is Portland's message?

Some of the first messages that jump to mind, probably skewed too much by Portlandia, are "You should be cooler" or "You should be hipper," but I know Portland is more than this caricature. We have a famous sign in town that reads- "Keep Portland Weird"- maybe the message is, "You should be weirder." Or maybe just "You should be more interesting."
 

More interesting almost gets at what I feel, but still not quite. Graham says that San Francisco and Berkeley send the message "You should live better" which I think applies for a lot of the West Coast from Santa Barbara north. But I refuse to believe that this one hedonistic slogan stands for everything Portland is about. It does fit with the sense that Portland is saying "take a breath" or "slow down and relax" though. Portland has a history of cultivating activists, and with high rates of homelessness contrasted with the natural beauty and bounty that surrounds us, I think a message you hear quite often here is "You should care." As in, "You should care about fellow humans. You should care about the Earth." This has been a message that Portland has been sending for a long time, and one which will undoubtedly outlive the current hype and trendiness.

I think the reason I had a hard time coming up with anything fitting, is that I don't think Portland is sending a message that you SHOULD be or do anything in particular. I think what Portland says is "You should do that." As in, "That crazy idea you just had? You should totally do that." You want to open up a shop that only sells varieties of salt? You want to raise goats in your urban backyard? In Portland, the response is "Yeah! You should do that."

So Portland is booming. People are moving out here not to prematurely retire, but to try interesting and weird stuff, just because they can, and because the community will support them. I fear the low-hanging fruit, though, is becoming scarce. The food and beer scene is amazing, along with the music and art. The Portland lifestyle is unbelievably rich and varied, but what is going to sustain the city in the long-term, when the buzziness of it all wears off? Over at the tech blog Silicon Florist, the question is asked: How do we make Portland the next Portland? I don't pretend to know, but a lot can be learned by looking at how we got here in the first place; coming together to encourage the pursuit of interesting and crazy ideas for their own sake, because they get people excited, and because screw it- why not?

Why We Don't Accomplish Our Goals

A whole industry exists to help you accomplish your goals. Thousands of books, websites, and seminars offer you strategies and tactics to define smart goals and knock them out of the park. Yet days and years go by and you keep kicking the can down the road.

What is often overlooked by these resources is that there is some fundamental disconnect between  our long-term goals and our short-term desires:

I want to lose weight.
I want to eat this box of Girl Scout cookies.

I want to be a high performer at my job.
I don't feel like doing this task right now.

I want to learn to program.
I'm too tired to do this code tutorial.

I want to work for myself someday.
I'd rather relax and browse the internet than identify business opportunities.

I want to take up backcountry skiing.
My legs are tired, I'll just ride the lifts today.

Custom Ski/Snowboard Topsheet



Custom ski topsheets, featuring Starry Night

Going into last winter, I bought a set of skis and bindings off craigslist at the advice of my brother. It would be my first set of skis, and despite being fat powder skis when we've had two consecutive winters here in Tahoe with no good powder, they have proven to be a really good and versatile set of skis.

The one problems was that, as part of K2's "Iron Maiden" series, the topsheet graphic was covered in skulls and a giant demon skeleton clutching a helicopter. I'm not much into heavy metal, so I wanted to make a change. I did some searching for companies that did custom ski wraps, and what I found was that they were using the same vinyl used for car graphics. I put out some request for quotes to various speciality printing sites but, in the end, the local sign shop had the cheapest price for a full-color, 12x72", UV-stable and scratch-resistant vinyl adhesive graphic using some pretty cool material from 3M.

On Leading with Authority

Aristotle called it Ethos, but we're more likely to call it credibility or authority. I've had some trouble in trying to articulate my thoughts on the issue, so I thought I'd let a few quotes do some of the heavy lifting:

"When Jesus had finished saying these things, the crowds were amazed at his teaching, because he taught as one who had authority, and not as their teachers of the law"
                                                          -Matthew 7:28-29

"If your actions inspire others to dream more, learn more, do more and become more, you are a leader."
                                                          -John Quincy Adams

"Example is not the main thing in influencing others, it is the only thing."
                                                           -Albert Schweitzer

"The older I get the less I listen to what people say and the more I look at what they do."                                                                                   -Andrew Carnegie

The Future of 3D Printing

The MakerBot Replicator- Arguably the most well-known consumer-grade 3D printer on the market

 

There has been a lot of talk in the past year about 3D printing, and a lot of hype. Recently, even President Obama weighed in on the topic. While 3D printers are fantastic tools with great potential, I think people are stretching a bit when they imagine a world where everyone has a 3D printer in their home.

Science in Food Production: Done Right and Wrong

Cows grazing in the shadow of the Alps of the Jungfrau region of Switzerland

I've had this photo sitting on my desk at work since my wife and I visited Switzerland in 2010. In part, it was to keep my spirits up while sitting in a beige cubicle in decidedly non-mountainous South Carolina (the Blue Ridge just makes it into the corner of the state, and they are pretty, but those ain't mountains.) It also just resonates with my Alpine German/Swiss heritage and sense of pastoral aesthetic.

Today I read an article from NPR (thanks to my wife for sending it over) that is both interesting from a scientific standpoint, and a little disheartening from a social one. For a cheese-lover, its got some positives and negatives. On the one hand, it seems that alpine cow herders are a dying breed as young people move from the mountains to cities for more gainful employment. On the other, it seems that science is finally starting to explain what the rest of us who care already know: dairy products from pastured cows tastes better than those from feedlot or grain-fed cows, and that goes double if the pasture is on the side of the mountain.

Blog Right For Your Type

I was reading up a little bit on personality types today when I decided that it had been too long (5+ years) since taking a personality test. Some googling brought me here for a free adapted Myers-Briggs test.

I was fairly certain how I'd shake out in two of the four categories; its no secret that I fit the Introverted and Thinking types over the Extroverted and Feeling types. I figured going in that I would have some mix of the Intuitive/Sensing and Judging/Perceiving types. In answering the questions, I tried to think of an honest example and then pull the trigger without too much second guessing. My suspicions were (partially) confirmed when I was categorized as an INTJ. I was surprised at the significant margin in the Intuitive type over Sensing, and the low margin in the Thinking over Feeling type. I was close to 50/50 in the Judging/Perceiving category and very strongly Introverted so I was correct there. This personality is sometimes called "The Scientist", which is not too far off.

This post isn't an analysis of the Myers-Briggs methodology or my results in particular, but I was struck by the flaws outlined in a couple passages as they relate to my new blogging endeavour while researching the INTJ type here (the webpage is old-school html which these days lowers credibility, but at least the analysis seemed congruent with other sources I read):