It’s always nice to encounter scientific backing for advice you’ve been dispensing to your friends for years, whether or not they ever actually asked for it – so I was pleased to learn of a new study lending support to the notion that if you check email less frequently, you’ll be less stressed.

As Jesse Singal explains at Science of Us, researchers at the University of British Columbia instructed two groups of people to treat their email in radically different ways. One was told to keep their email program closed, with notifications off, checking messages only three times a day. The other did what too many of us do instead: kept their notifications switched on, and checked email ceaselessly through the day. The occasional checkers felt less stressed – while the frequent checkers didn’t even have the compensation of feeling any more productive.

This might seem obvious: do a stressful thing less frequently, and you’ll be less stressed. (“Doctor, it hurts when I do that!” “Well don’t do that, then.”) But as the study’s co-author Kostatin Kushlev points out, it’s a bit more intriguing than that: resisting temptations, like checking email, is itself generally an unpleasant and effortful experience. So why did engaging in that activity made people feel better than just checking messages when they came in?

One likely answer is that it reduced the high cognitive costs of task-switching: jumping between different kinds of tasks consumes energy and time, so “batching” is just a more efficient use of your limited capacities. Another is that feelings of autonomy make us happier. When you check email at fixed times, you’re taking control of when it enters your mental world; check it whenever a new message comes in, and essentially email’s controlling you.

Oliver Burkeman writing in Sit back, relax and ignore your email inbox. Nobody expects you to read it all for The Guardian.

My email checks come at 0400, 1200 and 1800…

Jess Zimmerman: Hi, Rebecca! First of all, thanks for talking this out with me, and I hope I don’t come off like a jackass. The internet exerts a powerful jackass ray, and lord knows so does talking about race, and we are essentially crossing the streams here. Anyway, after the Ferguson grand jury verdict came down, I tried to spend the night just RTing black folks on Twitter. I felt pretty OK about this approach—borderline smug, to be honest, especially when I saw other white people being like “I’m just going to amplify black voices and not tweet” and I got to pat myself on the back for not announcing it. But I also saw people saying that white privilege means you have an obligation to speak up. I’m not sure how to figure out which is a better approach.

Rebecca Carroll: Whatever your actions as a white person in the current racial climate—a climate that is quickly escalating to a place of irreparable disrepair in terms of productive communication—there still exists a level of comfort, of self-satisfaction, of: I can afford to be smug because my life doesn’t depend on it. It leaves me with the same reaction I have when grown white people tell me they’re taking “baby steps” towards racial awareness.

That’s cool, you go ahead and take your baby steps—take your time. I’ll just keep hoping I don’t get dead. Great then! If you’re a baby, take those steps. If you’re a grown, adult white human living in America right now and you’re not there yet, take bigger steps.

Dear white people: your discomfort is progress. Keep talking about Ferguson—and beyond

Oliver Burkeman adds…

The solution to the problem of police is that it will require a total change in their culture of operation.

It is clear – has been for the last 45 years going back to the cops and their refusal to accept Carl Stokes as their commander—that it isn’t going to change.

That was made clear also by Mayor Frank Jackson’s response in front of Attorney General Eric Holder when he was asked about the issue of “systemic failures” of his police department. He refuses to take responsibility.

Jackson revealed that he does not intend to come down hard on the police and in particular its leadership. Leadership he has promoted despite the dismal record offered by the U. S. Department of Justice report on the Cleveland Police Department.

“There were officers who did the right thing and there were officers who did the wrong thing. We disciplined those who did the wrong thing.” That was Jackson’s failure to take responsibility.

He once again dodged responsibility for what Ohio attorney general Mike DeWine rightly and clearly found as systemic failure in the 137-bullet Continue Reading »

It’s the wrong fight at the wrong time for the wrong reasons.

It’s the wrong fight because we should be offering more and better public services as the trend is to cut wages and reduce services.

It’s the wrong time because we shouldn’t be giving into right wing government, which essentially wants to eliminate public services and have everyone pay top prices to capitalist entrepreneurs.

It’s the wrong reason because we should be looking to raise taxes from the wealth rather than substituting private interests that depend upon profits instead of services for the good of the commonwealth.

Privatizing everything is a way of saying that the common good no longer prevails, no longer has value. We pay individually for everything rather than collectively for the good of all.

I’m talking about Brook Park Mayor Tom Coyne’s desire to privatize a public service. Brett Larkin (former director of The Plain Dealer’s editorial pages and currently a columnist the Northeast Ohio Media Group [the PD’s uber masters, JH]) wants to help his buddy Coyne with this ass backward policy.

Coyne wants to do away the present city’s ambulance service. It seems a small move. But it is a beginning not an ending to this kind of bad policy.

Larkin rightly calls it “the municipal version of Senate Bill 5.” He’s right there.

This is a mini-version of Gov. Kasich’s Republican thrust Continue Reading »

Lynn Johnston wrote:

Having gone on several Medical Missions to Honduras and Peru, I am well aware of how little some people have and how much we in North America take for granted. When my kids said they were “starving,” I was grateful that they had no idea what “starving” meant.

How can I obsess so over gaining weight when so many are starving? How did I grow up to be a Jeremy Duncan…?

Grand juries have a way of telling the history desired by those who hold power. Same as history is most often told.

The Ferguson grand jury of Prosecutor Robert McCulloch—who was described by the New York Times as “widely viewed in the minority community as being in the pockets of the police”—seemed to fit the majority’s need to avoid a real exam of the shooting of Michael Brown by police officer Darren Wilson.

And Justice denied breeds Justice decried.

Those who control keep control. Unfortunately, the reaction often doesn’t really touch those who most deserve the triggered anger. Thus the burning in Ferguson.

When Cleveland’s Hough area erupted in violence in July, 1966, it should have taken no great mind as to why it exploded. It was obvious.

The city and its leaders had already heard a litany of ills. Any incident would have set in motion violence. I had written in 1967 in The Nation magazine with Murray Gruber, then a faculty member at Case Western Reserve, “Cleveland is a recipe for violence.” It was no one’s secret.

“In April 1966, the Civil Rights Commission ripped away Cleveland’s carefully nurtured facade of social progress. Hearings gave the ghetto a chance Continue Reading »

2004 me and 2014 me…

I’ve invested a great deal of time in recent weeks considering the questions about the next part of my journey as a novelist and journalist, and where I want to take my blogs Have Coffee Will Write and The Writing On The Wal.

Back in 2005, Cleveland alternate news weekly The Scene had this to say about me and Have Coffee Will Write:

CoolCleveland.com may get more press, but Jeff Hess’ Havecoffeewillwrite.com is terabytes above the local competition. His daily posts remind the public of Cleveland controversies long after the local media gets bored and moves on. His continuing series on grassroots efforts to keep Wal-Mart from swallowing every Ohio town is fascinating and more in-depth than anything in the dailies. While this East Side educator’s left-wing philosophy comes off as heavy-handed at times, he does his best not to take himself too seriously – he’ll often post haiku or bumper stickers for a quick laugh, or links to weird news from around the world. If you’re wondering what’s happening behind the scenes in Cleveland or how our town is connected to national news stories, this site is a must-surf.

Similarly, I have always been proud of Angela Gunn’s comment for USA Today about my Walmart blog:

The Writing On The Wal should be on your radar for at least an occasional visit. Think of it as slightly more relevant than keeping abreast of political campaigns. If you have as much political and economic power as most Americans, it likely is.”

Over the past 10 years I have written much on a dazzlingly wide range of topics. When I created Have Coffee Will write, the blog, I didn’t know where I wanted to take this new toy, but the answer came to me at my first Cleveland Bloggers Meetup when blogdaddy creator of Brewed Fresh Daily George Nemeth asked everyone in attendance to introduce themselves and briefly describe what their blog was about.

Put on the spot—deadlines are marvelously clarifying—I decided that HCWW would be about “Dinner Conversation With a Few Good Friends,” and my model became the family dinner table I grew up around where we turned off the television and talked. About anything and everything.

Occasionally I have become obsessed with particular topic such as Walmart and Myanmar.

Of the latter, Eric Vessels had this to say on Plunderbund:

Jeff Hess is publishing a series called “Good Morning Myanmar.” This Burma bit broke me out of a self imposed blog slumber, but Jeff is doing a consistently good job of following up. He is a valuable resource on this—and we all should care about it. And these are just what he couldn’t get to. Nice work Jeff!

As an educator, I learned from one Mona Senkfor, one of my mentors and a dear friend, that too often we pedagogically hop from iceberg to iceberg, pausing only a moment on the very tip and completely missing the huge mass insight and knowledge that lies beneath the water. This was, in part, the rational several years ago for my choosing to read a single book over and over. (This year I’ve read Victor Hugo’s Les Miserable.)

Clearly, what I do well, and what I can continue to do that is of use, is to drill deep on a few topics and hammer away at those topics so that they do not disappear into the news-cycle cesspit. My model here is Cleveland’s protoblogger Roldo Bartimole. Who, for nearly 50 years, has never stopped shining light into Cleveland’s darkest corners.

With the ironically named Black Friday fast approaching, I will first return and descend into the pit that is Walmart. Much has happened, and continues to happen, that I have left unexamined. As for Have Coffee Will Write, expect a few changes, the most noticeable being more focused attention to topics of Social Justice and Advocacy.

I don’t, however, have any wish to deliver monologues—although I can easily listen to myself yammer on. Both blogs will continue to be primarily about conversation, but I need you to make that happen.

Here’s to a second ten years.

I have been attacked! Whacked by a flack no less.

I can’t tell you what a pleasure it is to be attacked by a paid flack who was a big Pooh-Bah publisher and editor.

My critic is Brian Tucker the former publisher for Crain’s Business Review, a pro-business weekly. His ad notes,

After 25 years as publisher and editor of Crain’s Cleveland Business, Brian Tucker became vice president and director of corporate affairs at Dollar Bank. The opinions in this commentary are solely his and do not reflect the position of either Dollar Bank FSB or its management.

Even they won’t back him up! But apparently they pay for his comments in Crain’s.

Crain’s doesn’t want to take responsibility either.

Here’s what Elizabeth McIntyre of Crain’s wrote me after I sent a response to the publication about Tucker’s remarks about me in Crain’s:

Roldo,

Thanks for your submission. Brian Tucker’s column is paid advertising and not an editorial product, therefore I will not be publishing your piece as a letter to the editor. I have, however, forward it to publisher John Campanelli, who said he will share it with Brian Tucker.

Again, thank you,
Elizabeth

Thanks for sharing Elizabeth.

Before I get into Tucker’s gripe let me say that really what we need here in Cleveland is a federal investigation of the collusion of lawyers, bond counsels, investment bankers, politicians, stadium builders & architects, institutions as the Greater Cleveland Partnership and others who helped put together the financial schemes that keep tapping public resources for private use. You’d think for example accused corrupter Jimmy Haslam’s picture would be all over page one in the probing media. But, oh no, not this Jimmy.

The need for justice and the appearance of vast corruption in the leases and operation of these heavily publicly subsidized facilities to the neglect Continue Reading »

The latest episode in the Plain Dealer history of shortchanging its readers by the removal of the taping of the single meeting of the Ohio gubernatorial candidates is hardly the first instance of corruption of a free press. It won’t be the last either.

Do we expect that newspapers or other media outlets would be any better or more open than the steady stream of misdeeds by cigarette, automobile, food companies or Jimmy Haslam’s Pilot Flying J, or the countless other corporate or politically corrupt individuals that often grace the pages of newspapers? Or be more open than the NFL hierarchy on the dangers of concussions or the behavior of its people on sexual or other assaults?

Why would the news business be expected to be so much higher-minded than the rest of the society? Because often it isn’t.

Do you trust members of the media have some special divining ability to see corruption and expose it? Do they even see our culture’s defects? Or want to?

Do you think that the top editors of the Plain Dealer rub shoulders, go to lunch, parties and other social events with the citizens of name your low income neighborhood, or do they dine, rub shoulders with some business leader, foundation official, or other “respected” citizen? You know who they talk to most Continue Reading »

On 17 July 2002, there was Have Coffee Will Write, the website…

Some 27 months later came Have Coffee Will Write, the blog.

Gone thinking if I want to do this for another 10 years or no…

The fact that human beings have created, and daily create, this self-directed system through which they divest themselves of their innermost identity is not therefore the result of some incomprehensible misunderstanding of history, nor is it history somehow gone off its rails. Neither is it the product of some diabolical higher will which has decided, for reasons unknown, to torment a portion of humanity in this way. It can happen and did happen only because there is obviously in modern humanity a certain tendency toward the creation, or at least the toleration, of such a system. There is obviously something in human beings which responds to this system, something they reflect and accommodate, something within them which paralyzes every effort of their better selves to revolt. Human beings are compelled to live within a lie, but they can be compelled to do so only because they are in fact capable of living in this way. Therefore not only does the system alienate humanity, but at the same time alienated humanity supports this system as its own involuntary master plan, as a degenerate image of its own degeneration, as a record of people’s own failure as individuals.

From The Power of the Powerless by Vaclav Havel, 1978

Previously…

Today’s headlines include:

Local News

After the military
Early gift shoppers stroll city
Marietta man accused of rape for contact with girl, 7
Devola man accused of kidnap, assault
Museum fundraisers

Top Headlines Poll: How would you assess job opportunities for today’s graduates?

Great pictures of Marietta…

What’s going on here…

Previously…

To get a full scope of American violence in the world, it is worth asking a broader question: how many countries in the Islamic world has the U.S. bombed or occupied since 1980? That answer was provided in a recent Washington Post op-ed by the military historian and former U.S. Army Col. Andrew Bacevich:

As America’s efforts to “degrade and ultimately destroy” Islamic State militants extent into Syria, Iraq War III has seamlessly morphed into Greater Middle East Battlefield XIV. That is, Syria has become at least the 14th country in the Islamic world that U.S. forces have invaded or occupied or bombed, and in which American soldiers have killed or been killed. And that’s just since 1980.

Let’s tick them off: Iran (1980, 1987-1988), Libya (1981, 1986, 1989, 2011), Lebanon (1983), Kuwait (1991), Iraq (1991-2011, 2014-), Somalia (1992-1993, 2007-), Bosnia (1995), Saudi Arabia (1991, 1996), Afghanistan (1998, 2001-), Sudan (1998), Kosovo (1999), Yemen (2000, 2002-), Pakistan (2004-) and now Syria. Whew.

Bacevich’s count excludes the bombing and occupation of still other predominantly Muslim countries by key U.S. allies such as Israel and Saudi Arabia, carried out with crucial American support. It excludes coups against democratically elected governments, torture, and imprisonment of people with no charges. It also, of course, excludes all the other bombing and invading and occupying that the U.S. has carried out during this time period in other parts of the world, including in Central America and the Caribbean, as well as various proxy wars in Africa.

Glenn Greenwald writing in How Many Muslim Countries Has the U.S. Bombed Or Occupied Since 1980? for The//Intercept.

1. Step away from the email
2. Just say no
4. Leave work at work
5. Forget about perfection
6. Don’t be a martyr
7. Ease off the adrenaline
8. Think about retirement
9. Make ’em wait
10. Set your own rules

Stuart Jeffries writing in Ten tips for a better work-life balance for The Guardian.

The march toward gay marriage across the U.S. hit a roadblock Thursday when a federal appeals court upheld laws against the practice in four states, creating a split in the legal system that increases the chances the Supreme Court will step in to decide the issue once and for all.

The cases decided were from Ohio, Michigan, Kentucky and Tennessee.

Breaking ranks with other federal courts around the country, the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled 2-1 that states have the right to set rules for marriage and that changing a definition that dates to “the earliest days of human history” is better done through the political process, not the courts.

“Surely the people should receive some deference in deciding when the time is ripe to move from one picture of marriage to another,” said Circuit Judge Jeffrey Sutton, writing for himself and a fellow George W. Bush appointee, while a Bill Clinton appointee dissented.

The ruling ran counter to a remarkably rapid string of victories for the gay rights movement over the past few months that have now made same-sex marriage legal in at least 30 states.

From The Associated Press: Gay marriage ruling means high court review likely.

For sometime I have had my personal aphorism on the subject of genius—Genius is doing the work… Now!—taped to the top of my laptop screen. I’ve even gone so far as to have the copyrighted phrase printed on pencils that I both use and distribute to my students.

This morning I was reminded of another man’s position on genius, that of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle speaking in the voice of the character who was both his greatest creation and nemesis: Sherlock Holmes. In one of the modern versions permutations of Doyle’s own genius, the actor Jonny Lee Miller, in the character of Elementary’s Sherlock Holmes (at time mark 38:20) says: Genius is an infinite capacity for taking pains.

Those words come from the first Sherlock Holmes story, A Study In Scarlet published in 1867, where Doyle wrote:

As he spoke, he whipped a tape measure and a large round magnifying glass from his pocket. With these two implements he trotted noiselessly about the room, sometimes stopping, occasionally kneeling, and once lying flat upon his face. So engrossed was he with his occupation that he appeared to have forgotten our presence, for he chattered away to himself under his breath the whole time, keeping up a running fire of exclamations, groans, whistles, and little cries suggestive of encouragement and of hope. As I watched him I was irresistibly reminded of a pure-blooded well-trained foxhound as it dashes backwards and forwards through the covert, whining in its eagerness, until it comes across the lost scent. For twenty minutes or more he continued his researches, measuring with the most exact care the distance between marks which were entirely invisible to me, and occasionally applying his tape to the walls in an equally incomprehensible manner. In one place he gathered up very carefully a little pile of grey dust from the floor, and packed it away in an envelope. Finally, he examined with his glass the word upon the wall, going over every letter of it with the most minute exactness. This done, he appeared to be satisfied, for he replaced his tape and his glass in his pocket.

“They say that genius is an infinite capacity for taking pains,” he remarked with a smile. “It’s a very bad definition, but it does apply to detective work.”

Gregson and Lestrade had watched the manoeuvres of their amateur companion with considerable curiosity and some contempt. They evidently failed to appreciate the fact, which I had begun to realize, that Sherlock Holmes’ smallest actions were all directed towards some definite and practical end.

What will you take pains to do today?

Position in the power hierarchy determines the degree of responsibility and guilt, but it gives no one unlimited responsibility and guilt, nor does it completely absolve anyone. Thus the conflict between the aims of life and the aims of the system is not a conflict between two socially defined and separate communities; and only a very generalized view (and even that only approximative) permits us to divide society into the rulers and the ruled. Here, by the way, is one of the most important differences between the post-totalitarian system and classical dictatorships, in which this line of conflict can still be drawn according to social class. In the post-totalitarian system, this line runs de facto through each person, for everyone in his own way is both a victim and a supporter of the system. What we understand by the system is not, therefore, a social order imposed by one group upon another, but rather something which permeates the entire society and is a factor in shaping it, something which may seem impossible to grasp or define (for it is in the nature of a mere principle), but which is expressed by the entire society as an important feature of its life.

From The Power of the Powerless by Vaclav Havel, 1978

Previously…