You can read the ramifications of that by reading the original story at The Inquirer site at this link HERE.

Product quality and I’d say product experience, whether it’s a service or a thing, matters. LG didn’t quite get that here for some reason, but each of us providing a service or product need to. Tom Peter’s, the WOW guru for business, has alot of valuable (and free) thoughts on this topic for your reading pleasure. You can get to Tom’s list of design blog articles by clicking to his site at this link HERE.  Business Week has an excellent article as well on Why Design Matters, you can click to Business Week’s article HERE.

(Picture courtesy of Olav.Mueller Photos, used under license of Creative Commons)

In the words of Thomas Jefferson, what makes Democracy possible?

It’s information.

“Information is the currency of democracy.” Thomas Jefferson

It’s free flow, it’s free access and, perhaps most importantly, the free debate about it without fear. That’s why public libraries, the internet, blogs, radio, short wave, the local coffee house, on-line forums, are all vitally necessary to be kept and to be preserved. And why censorship of that information by governments, groups, communities, individuals, and even corporations should be resisted.
(photo courtesy of ukanda’s photos, used under Creative Commons License)

And so let’s look at House Speak Nancy Pelosi. Ms. Pelosi is the first woman to be made Speaker of the House and as such that is an amazing achievement. What is so remarkable about the being the Speaker of the House, what power does she wield that should matter to us?

The Speaker of the House has the following roles and responsibilities:

• Presiding office of the U.S. House of Representatives
• Is second in line to replace the President after the Vice-President
• Is generally the highest ranking member of their respective party
• Insures that the House passes legislation supported by the majority party (though presumably they think about all our country’s interest first).
• Runs the debate on the House floor. Before any member of the House of Representatives may speak in the house, the Speaker of the House must acknowledge the person wanting to speak.
• The Speaker may call on people as she pleases, thus controlling the flow of debate
• The House Steering Committee is also chaired by the Speaker. The Steering Committee chooses the chairmen of standing committees.
• The Speaker determines which committees consider bills

All in all, the Speaker has direct impact on what bills get to be seen, voted on and debated. And that would include transgender protections and rights.

So what would make us in the trans community optimistic about her being there and wielding that power? Well, there is some evidence that’s positive and that should point to positive action for us or at least positive consideration. Check out this quote from Ms. Pelosi here:

“I am pleased to co-sponsor the Local Law Enforcement Hate Crimes Prevention Act of 2005, the first federal hate crimes legislation to explicitly protect transgender individuals and to add gender identity to the federal hate crimes statute. As with past versions, the new hate crimes prevention legislation covers crimes motivated by discrimination based on sexual orientation and disability. Hate crimes have no place in America, and I will fight hard to pass this legislation. (see source from her press release at her House of Representative’s web site by clicking here.

I was encouraged reading that, and then I did some more digging to see where Ms. Pelosi has stood historically. Sure enough, her history on transgender people’s rights looks encouraging supporting transgender rights over a 16 year period,including the support of $250,000 for the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender Community Center in San Francisco, CA (see source at U.S. House of Representative web site here). You can see more of her record over at the U.S. House of Representatives Web Site by clicking to that site at this link here.

So it’s early yet. While I am a Republican, there was little to vote for in my party frankly. But the Democrats have an opportunity now, and I’m pulling for them. For the transgender population, small as it is, there’s a good chance the equal protections we need will be put in place and maintained.

If you don’t know about this day, I think the words from the main web site tell it best:

The Transgender Day of Remembrance was set aside to memorialize those who were killed due to anti-transgender hatred or prejudice. The event is held in November to honor Rita Hester, whose murder on November 28th, 1998 kicked off the “Remembering Our Dead” web project and a San Francisco candlelight vigil in 1999. Rita Hester’s murder — like most anti-transgender murder cases — has yet to be solved.

Although not every person represented during the Day of Remembrance self-identified as transgendered — that is, as a transsexual, crossdresser, or otherwise gender-variant — each was a victim of violence based on bias against transgendered people.

The Boston area hosts a number of these events and the one that runs first is Tiffany Club of New England’s (TCNE) First Event. Sponsored by TCNE and worked on by a hive of volunteers, this year’s First Event is being held at the Burlington Boston Marriott, in Burlington MA, January 17th-21st, 2007. To check in on what is happening at this event go check out their official web site by clicking to it as this link HERE.

Generally the conversation starts well enough only to slowly climb the “Ladder of Conversational Intensity” as depicted in this hand graphic:

So what to do?

One suggestion is slip back to IM - yep, that’d be Instant Messaging.

The thought goes something like this. When your conversation is so intense, and escalates to such a degree that you can’t get past the emotions to have a very important conversation then you need to have some way to remove the friction points of emotion. You also want the conversation to occur in real time, not via email. Enter in IM. You could use Skype (my personal fav), Yahoo IM, GoogleTalk, MSN IM, whatever, but going to that medium can accomplish a few things:

• It removes the emotions. You can’t hear the frustration in real time so while you might still “hear” the other person’s voice, you don’t actually hear it so that may reduce the intensity.

• Typing makes you think. you have to slow down and think as you type. That makes you think twice about what your going to say.

• Typing via IM makes forces your tongue and brain to come back into synch. Ever had a situation whereby your tongue started to let flow communication seemingly on it’s own? That’s what we are trying to avoid here.

So give it a try next time your relational interaction is getting too hot, a little IM may cool you both off and allow you to talk about the issue once again.

(Angry smiley face and source material for graphic courtesy of WP Clipart, thoughts to get me thinking on this from Phil Wolff over at Skype Journal)

High Tech Indian Dude: “So we’ll get together at say 9AM right?”
Becki: “Yep that’s great 9AM”.

*silence*

Becki: “is that 9am India or 9AM my time?”
High Tech Indian Dude: “umm, 9am my time”
Becki: “isn’t that like 1AM my time?”
High Tech Indian Dude: “I have no idea, can you make 9AM India time?”
Becki: “Umm, I’m not sure, I mean I don’t know what time that is for me”
High Tech Indian Dude: “Perhaps you can have more coffee and just be ready for our call”
Becki: *stunned silence* “Yeah well I guess I could do that; wouldn’t it be better to like pick a time that works for us both?”

With business being more and more multi-national and all of us wage-slaves taking on more tasks, having meetings in different time zones (and dimensions) is not uncommon. The problem comes in coordinating those meetings with the right times so people are actually awake at some reasonable hour for everyone and can have an intelligent, collaborative meeting.

The question is how do you do that?

At the Frugal Techie we tackled this problem with the gusto of a St Pauli Girl beer maiden brandishing steins of rich ale to thirsty Oktoberfest patrons. The answer we found was effective and cheap - key measures of a Frugal Tech’s dream!

The key tool is called Time and Date, and it’s alot of things, it’s a calendaring system, a world clock, a calendar generator, world time search, and, most importantly in our caffeine induced view, an outstanding time meeting planner.

Using the tool is a snap,

1. Click to the main page at: http://www.timeanddate.com/
2. Then click on the meeting planner option: http://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/meeting.html
3. Then you choose your month, day and date
4. Then you can pick up to four cities to display
5. Then press the Show Timetable button and voila! A table of time zones by location. Each one lined up so you know when it’s 9AM Thursday in Boston, it’s 2PM Thursday in Casablanca.

One of the real joys in this tool is that it uses tables and color instead of graphics in it’s output. Because of this it’s easy to use and understand and it’s very fast.

So for your next conference, don’t be left scratching your head on what time to get everyone together, give Time and Date a try and make surprise everyone that you know what their time zone really is!

(Photo of clock courtesy of Elaron’s Photos, used under Creative Commons License)

• Funny, Funnier, Funniest
• Funny: Why did the clown eat the dollar bill? (It was her lunch money)
• Funnier: Why do clowns wear loud socks? (So their feet won’t all asleep)
• Funniest: Why did the clown go to the doctor? (He was feeling a little funny)

• A reason to breakup?
• “I had to stop seeing my girlfriend, the biologist,” a guy told his friend.
• “Why?” the friend replied
• “I couldn’t take it anymore” he said. “She kept trying to expose me to different cultures.”

• Be cafeful how you build ‘em!
• The company that makes LEGOs is shutting down its U.S. factory and moving it to Mexico. LEGO employees say it’s their fault becuase they made the factory too easy to take apart and rebuild somewhere else.

(photo of couple laughing courtesy of Bartimaeus Photos, used under Creative Commons license)

Femininity is men’s idea of what women should look like, not a description of how women actually are—that’s why it’s so much freakin’ work. Femininity has nothing to do with femaleness, which is why drag queens and transsexuals are able to adopt it. And women who are unable and/or unwilling to do femininity convincingly have a life experience of ridicule and ostracization from men, avoidance and fear from other women for being lesbians (whether we are or not), and serious difficulty getting and keeping professional jobs regardless of our qualifications–all of which give the absolute lie to the assertion that conforming to femininity is a “choice.” (source: Feminist Reprise)

There’s alot in that quote to digest and the article as a whole. The piece I’d like us to consider though is that part about conformance. Conforming to standard thoughts and roles on being feminine (or masculine for that matter) and if they matter in society. My thought is that they probably do, at least as a starting basis.

As kids grow they are finding themselves and trying to figure out the world for themselves. And they naturally choose what society projects to them is the norm or the standard for their gender and for what they are trying to do. I think it’s not just society at large (with the incredible influence from advertising) but also smaller peer groups too. The geeks look pretty similar, as do the jocks, the goths and the preppies. Why is that? Conformity, and conforming to how the group will accept you. Acceptance for who we are is a powerful thing in our lives as is acceptance by a peer group for who they think us to be.

I would submit that as trans-women and trans-men that same thing is happening to each of us - how the hell DO we look, act, or smile? The way to at least start is to look at the culture and those around us and learn, like anyone else does. And that generally means conforming to cultural norms. It seems to me that once we do that, as difficult and conformist as that is, then we can figure out own style or way of being if you will.

Back to conforming to femininity though. Is conforming to society standards for femininity what needs to be done or is it a matter of what you want to do? And what the hell is that list of standard femininity anyway?

Here’s another woman’s opinion. Her name is Jennifer Dziura and she’s got some interesting things to say on this topic:

There is also, however, privilege involved in conforming to norms of masculinity (and, as has often been observed, being a tomboy is usually more socially acceptable than being a sissy). And masculinity has, of course, changed greatly over the years (Louis XIV wore tights and, if he’d had a car, wouldn’t have fixed it himself all greasy-James-Dean-style).

And if you reject norms of femininity and masculinity but enjoy the companionship of other humans, you’ll probably find yourself in some kind of academic queer/feminist circle with privilege awarded to those who conform to much, much stricter standards of conformity (here one could digress about (some) lesbians-hating-on-bisexuals, or men being physically barred from campus women’s resource centers, or the disturbing trend of liberal academic institutions to perniciously censor conservative speakers or silence any speech that might be offensive to anyone, or feminist charges of “betrayal” to women who marry, have children, or, god forbid, stay home to raise them; incidentally, I was once bitched out by a co-chair of my university’s LGBT organization for using “LGBT” and “queer” as synonyms, because “LGBT” didn’t include asexual, intersexed, and possibly other groups of queer people).

There is, to continue on this track, a certain amount of privilege in conforming to anything, which is why people conform. Basically by definition. (source: On the Topic of Femininity)

Here’s a thought, maybe the answer to the riddle of what is femininity is something more like this:

It’s not about if you conform or don’t conform but it is about how are you true to yourself? Do you feel comfortable in your own skin enough to not hide in the dark but to be a light in the world? How are you adding value to other’s lives? How are you helping to turn over the dark, ugly places in the world to make them shiny, And how are you blessing the world around you? How are you making it a more beautiful place for you and others to live in? Maybe it’s not so much about what’s on the outside as it is about what’s on the inside of your heart. How’s that “conforming” to being someone others would like to be with, would be drawn to, despite your pink eye shadow, Martha Stewart looks or even “Give ‘em Hell” tattoo.

(photo courtesy of Semshine’s Photos, used under Creative Commons license)

(Lyrics from Sheryl Crow, “Soak Up The Sun. Photo courtesy of Maia C Photos, used under Creative Commons License)

(photo courtesty of Looper-312 Photos, used under Creative Commons license)