From The Desk Of Thomas Ott

These are my links for June 26th through June 30th:

• Florida High Speed Rail – The Florida High Speed Rail Authority website.
• California High-Speed Rail – The California High Speed Rail main website
• Manhood for Amateurs: The Wilderness of Childhood – The New York Review of Books – People read stories of adventure—and write them—because they have themselves been adventurers. Childhood is, or has been, or ought to be, the great original adventure, a tale of privation, courage, constant vigilance, danger, and sometimes calamity. – AMEN! Kids needs to be outside exploring their world, its wonderful out there Hobbes!
• L.A. Firm Wins Design Contract for $2B Underground High-Speed Rail Terminus in Hong Kong – Real Estate Channel Global News Center – Hong Kong-based Mass Transit Railway Corp. Ltd. has selected AECOM Technology Corp. (NYSE: ACM) of Los Angeles, CA and its joint venture partner to design the project.
  The design contract is for $82 million. AECOM's revenue from this project is expected to be about US $38 million, the company says in a prepared statement.
  The multi-level terminus will have a footprint of more than 25 acres with a topside commercial development north of the proposed West Kowloon Cultural District – between the existing Airport Railway Kowloon Station and the West Rail Austin Station. – THIS IS GOING TO ROCK!
• Streetsblog New York City » U.S. DOT Clocks High-Speed Rail at 110 MPH, Give or Take – The definition of high-speed rail can vary depending on the source. The original White House outline cited a top speed of 150 mph, while European and Asian networks can go as high as 200 mph.

These are my links for June 24th through June 25th:

• Political Research Associates – Right Web – President Obama: A Realist Interventionist? – But after eight years of foreign policy fantasies, the notion of an Obama administration muddling through foreign policy choices should be welcomed, even by those who will be disappointed if the new president’s choices fall short of our high expectations.
• Behind the Protests, Social Upheaval in Iran – Room for Debate Blog – NYTimes.com – The government crackdown in Iran is continuing, as hundreds of people, including moderates associated with the presidential candidate Mir Hossein Moussavi, have been detained. It was unclear how the millions of Iranians who had filled the streets to protest the election outcome would respond in the coming days, but the outpouring over the death of Neda Agha-Soltan has heightened the sense of social upheaval.
• Chart: America’s Streetcar Renaissance » INFRASTRUCTURIST – n 2001, Portland reversed the trend, opening a downtown streetcar line with brand new rolling stock, intent on using this mode of transportation to encourage transit-oriented development. The results have been impressive: $3.5 billion in new construction, 10,000 residential units, more than 5,000,000 square feet of office and hotel space.
• Fresh Clashes in Tehran as Cleric Says Iran Will Not Yield – NYTimes.com – It was impossible to confirm the extent of the new violence in the capital because of draconian new press restrictions on coverage of the post-election mayhem. But the witnesses reached by telephone said the confrontation, in the streets near the national Parliament building, was bloody, with police using live ammunition.
• Shadow Government | FOREIGN POLICY – It’s worth noting what many Iranians themselves are saying. Yes, high-profile dissidents like Shirin Ebadi and Akbar Ganji, as well as other Iranians, have urged Obama not to do or say anything that would unwittingly strengthen Iran’s ruling elites. But for much the same reason, I imagine, they and other Iranians have also been equally outspoken in urging Obama not to deal with Ahmadinejad and his government — or at least not to do anything that undercuts the desires of Iran’s people for democracy and human rights.

These are my links for June 20th through June 21st:

• Op-Ed Contributor – Father Meets Son – NYTimes.com – There must be so many absent fathers, burdened with guilt, regret, defiance and defensiveness, who like me wonder who their sons are now that they are grown men. And if they consider making that first move, they surely speculate about that first meeting: could it be anything but confrontation, his anger, his sorrow, his pain? These things do not always turn out well.
• Op-Ed Columnist – Lettuce From the Garden, With Worms – NYTimes.com – American agribusiness truly is wondrous. When I moved back to the United States after years of living in China, I remember visiting a supermarket and feeling a near-religious awe. Yet one consequence of this wondrous system is that unhealthy calories are cheaper than nutritious ones: think of the relative prices of Twinkies and broccoli. We even inflict unhealthy food on children in the school lunch program, and one in three Americans born after 2000 is expected to develop diabetes. – THAT'S WHY THE PALEO DIET IS THE ONLY GOOD DIET OUT THERE, TOUGH TO FOLLOW THOUGH.
• Why Iran’s Twitter revolution is unique | csmonitor.com – As the government has cracked down on everything from cellphone service to Facebook, Twitter has emerged as the most powerful way to disseminate photos, organize protests, and describe street scenes in the aftermath of the contested June 12 election. Iranians' reliance on the social-networking tool has elevated it from a banal way to update one's friends in 140-character bursts to an agent for historic changes in the Islamic Republic.
• Op-Ed Columnist – A Supreme Leader Loses His Aura as Iranians Flock to the Streets – NYTimes.com – Khamenei has taken a radical risk. He has factionalized himself, so losing the arbiter’s lofty garb, by aligning himself with President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad against both Mir Hussein Moussavi, the opposition leader, and Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, a founding father of the revolution.
• Learning, and Profiting, from Online Friendships – BusinessWeek – A question: If you have 347 followers on the Twitter microblogging service, what are the chances that they'll click on the same online ad you clicked on last night?
• Commodities – How Natural Resources Affect a Country’s Economics | Mint.com Blog | Personal Finance News & Advice – This map shows the top producing countries of each resource, or the proved reserves in the case of oil and natural gas.

These are my links for June 19th through June 20th:

• The Associated Press: Top cleric may be playing role in Iran unrest – But Iranian TV has shown pictures of Rafsanjani’s daughter, Faezeh Hashemi, speaking to hundreds of opposition supporters. And Rafsanjani, who has made no secret of his distaste for Ahmadinejad, was conspicuously absent from an address by the country’s supreme leader calling for national unity and siding with the president. – THIS SHOULD BE INTERESTING ON HOW IT ALL PLAYS OUT!
• YouTube – Basij shots to death a young woman June 20th – Very graphic video of a young, unarmed woman shot to death by the Basij in Iran. Blood erupts from her mouth and nose.
• The Saturday Profile – Corruption Crusader Aims for Afghan Presidency – Biography – NYTimes.com – When asked how he would defeat the Taliban, he said the militants are not fighting the Americans but a domestic war from the 1990s. The Americans, he said, should fret less about security and more over their billions of tax dollars that have landed in the pockets of Afghan politicians.
• Tension Rises in Tehran Amid Threats of Crackdown – NYTimes.com – With the police threatening to arrest and prosecute organizers of unauthorized protests, and opposition leaders facing an excruciating choice between conciliation and an ever-greater risk of reprisals and possible bloodshed, the fate of the opposition movement seemed to have reached a pivotal phase after a week of protests.
• An Insider Turned Agitator Is the Face of Iran’s Opposition – NYTimes.com – Mr. Moussavi, 67, is an insider who has moved toward opposition, and his motives for doing so remain murky. He was close to the founder of Iran’s Islamic Revolution but is at odds with the current supreme leader. Some prominent figures have rallied to his cause, including a former president, Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani. So it is not clear how much this battle reflects a popular resistance to Mr. Ahmadinejad’s hard-line policies, and how much is about a struggle for power.

Just like millions of Americans over the past week, I to have been following the unfolding events in Iran since their Presidential election.  Millions of Iranians are disputing the results and President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s reelection, claiming voter fraud and rigging. Largely, supporters of favored Mir Hussein Moussavi have been rallying behind him and protesting for a nullification of the election.  Pro-Ahmadinejad supporters have been rallying too but their numbers are relatively small by comparison.

Thankfully though, violence has been low during these protests but this is about to change.  On Friday, Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, drew a line in the sand in this potentially dangerous situation:

“Flexing muscles on the streets after the election is not right,” he said, before tens of thousands of angry supporters at TehranUniversity. “It means challenging the elections and democracy. If they don’t stop, the consequences of the chaos would be their responsibility.” [via NY Times]

Essentially the Ayatollah put the ball back into Moussavi’s court and told him that he has to back down and accept defeat or else there will be big consequences.  Moussavi must now decide on a few things himself that will have huge ramifications for the future of Iran. If he pursues his current strategy of election nullification, he risks a bloody crackdown and potentially arrest and even death.  If he accepts defeat, millions of supporters could riot or back down and let their anger fester for another time.

Perhaps unbeknownst by him, Moussavi has unwittingly tapped into a pit of undirected seething anger shared by millions of Iranians.  What if Moussavi, who seems a bit overwhelmed by all this, directs this anger toward the guardian council and the Ayatollah?  What if he crafted a grand strategy, beyond the election nullification, to something bigger for Iran? Could he force a regime change? 

While this may be a tantalizing outcome for the United States, it’s too early to tell because the success or failure of a regime change will ultimately depend on what side the Iranian military chooses.  With the Ayatollah’s line in the sand, he and the guardian council put themselves in a bind that if they cracked down harshly on the protesters (mostly young people), they risk the alienation of the general Iranian population and potentially create questions of loyalty inside the military leadership.  A similar dynamic happened with the British led Indian army right after the Jallianwala Bagh massacre in 1919 (the catalyst for the Indian independence movement).   

The bottom line is that the guardian council and Khamenei must talk tough and hope that Moussavi backs down.  If not, they must crackdown on the protestors and risk a potentially dangerous backlash by millions.  If Moussavi doesn’t organize and come up with a grand strategy for the protestors to latch onto, he will blink. If he does, then the Khamenei and the guardian council better blink, and fast. Update: It looks like the crackdown has begun.

These are my links for June 19th:

• New Glimpses of Life’s Puzzling Origins – NYTimes.com – Scientists as eminent as Francis Crick, the chief theorist of molecular biology, have quietly suggested that life may have formed elsewhere before seeding the planet, so hard does it seem to find a plausible explanation for its emergence on Earth. – SEEMS POSSIBLE TO ME.
• The Physiology of Willpower: Linking Blood Glucose to Self-Control — Gailliot and Baumeister 11 (4): 303 — Personality and Social Psychology Review – Self-control failures are more likely when glucose is low or cannot be mobilized effectively to the brain (i.e., when insulin is low or insensitive). Restoring glucose to a sufficient level typically improves self-control.
• Germany’s East Declines 20 Years After Berlin Wall Fell – NYTimes.com – And the population decline is about to get much worse, as a result of a demographic time bomb known by the innocuous-sounding name “the kink,” which followed the end of Communism. The birth rate collapsed in the former East Germany in those early, uncertain years so completely that the drop is comparable only to times of war, according to Reiner Klingholz, director of the Berlin Institute for Population and Development. “For a number of years East Germans just stopped having children,” Dr. Klingholz said.
• Iran’s Disputed Election – The Big Picture – Boston.com – Intense
• May you live in interesting times – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia – May you live in interesting times, often referred to euphemistically as the Chinese curse, is reputed to be the English translation of an ancient Chinese proverb and curse, although it may have originated among the English themselves (or Americans).
• Iran Leader’s Warning Puts More Pressure on Obama – NYTimes.com – The sermon also raised pressures on the Obama administration to abandon its carefully calibrated expressions of concern about violence and the repression of democratic processes while stressing that “meddling” was not productive.

As a young engineer, I was often encouraged by my bosses to take part in a professional society as a way to build my professional career. They suggested I get active in organizations such as the American Society of Civil Engineering (ASCE) or the Society of American Military Engineers (SAME). At first I thought they were crazy, why should I “waste” my personal time hanging out with a bunch of old boring white haired guys? It wasn’t until I went to a few these meetings that I saw the error of my ways. 

After being a very active participant in ASCE for over 9 years, I must confess that my initial assessment of “hanging out with a bunch of old boring white haired guys” was completely wrong. Over the years I’ve met countless men and women that are the movers and shakers in my industry. I got to attend some great presentations and learned many new things in my industry. I grew my leadership and managerial skills by serving as Technical Group Chairman and Branch President for my society and forged some strong relationships.  

Mind you, it wasn’t always easy and I invested a lot of my free time into these organizations but I knew the time would come when I would reap greater benefits. I paid the price of time but I didn’t count the cost. 

So why join? What’s in it for you? Plenty. 

Why Join Them?

Joining a professional organization has lots of advantages but only if you get active! Engineers who take the time to get involved in a professional society are the ones that will rise above their peers and will get to meet the players in their industry. They’ll be the ones that attend functions that these players are invited too. You’ll get to meet them and probably be privy to the latest “happenings” in your industry. This puts you in the “know” and differentiates yourself from your peers almost instantly. 

Leverage Them

Once you join a society, take the time to volunteer on a committee or on a board of governance. You’ll learn valuable leadership and managerial skills volunteering as a board secretary or treasurer. You’ll learn how the voting process works, how budgets get allocated, and how to get up and make a presentation at a moments notice. The experiences you gain from being active on a board or committee will only help you one day when you become a project manager or an office manager.  

Build a Professional Life

Take advantage of all the resources your professional society has to offer. Many societies have a wealth of industry knowledge contained in online libraries or publications that could aid you in a research paper or project. Sometimes these societies can even help you get published through “call for papers” solicitations. While others offer you discount rates for car insurance, credit cards, and many other complimentary benefits.  

Whatever your professional society can offer you, you must take advantage of it if you are serious about your career and professional life. Put the time and energy into your society for at least 2 years and you’ll be rewarded in ways that you can only imagine.

A few weeks ago I gave an impromptu talk to a small group of recently “laid off” workers close to where I live. This group was more of a support group for laid off workers where they would gather monthly and swap tips, ideas, and thoughts about how to get back to work. It was a small room of about 15 people, each with a different career background. I’m heavily focused in the civil engineering field and thought about what basic information I could share with this group. In the end I had to tailor my talk to 5 main points that I believe are critical to surviving and thriving in any economy, good or bad.

You are expendable, take precautions: This is pretty much self-explanatory and everybody I talk to seems to understand this concept but why is it that most people caught off-guard when they’re laid off? I attribute this paradox to the “I’m too valuable/good/ integrated to be let go” syndrome. The sad truth is that you are expendable, everyone is. Even valuable employees are laid off because of reasons that don’t seem fair, logical, or sane. For this very reason you should always be aware of current market conditions, build up a small cash savings, and streamline your life for a fast response in case something happens.

Love what you do, be passionate: You’ll likely rise to the top of your industry if you are passionate about what you do. Workers who go the extra mile for their clients are not only recognized by them but also by their peers. Everybody knows the guy or gal who eats “IT for breakfast” and who isn’t afraid to tackle that impossible project.. It’s these workers who are the first ones to get interviews when their peers or clients hear that they were laid off (see below).

Network! Take an interest in others: Not only must you be passionate about what you do, you must network with your peers, your direct reports, your clients, and your client’s clients before your job is ever in jeopardy. If you are networking after you lost your job, people will smell your desperation and will likely flee. The moral to remember is that if you are wanted by a company, the other company will want you more. A strong network can only be built in times when you are working and don’t need to find a job. To build a strong network you must first take an interest in other people’s problems or their lives, and then build a relationship first before you ask for any favors.

Be entrepreneurial: As I wrote above, everyone is expendable in this world and you must always be aware of current market conditions and how they might be shifting. This also means that you should always keep your eyes open for that next lunch or next big opportunity. You must become aware that you are in business for yourself, you are the CEO of your life. The corporations understand this concept and so should you.

Focus your time and energy: The reality is that you only have so many hours in the day and you must focus your time and energy accordingly. You should ask yourself, what is the rate of return if I spend 1 hour on this task, event, or volunteer activity? Once you rise to the top of your peer group, many people will want to monopolize your time for this volunteer activity or that event. Expend your energy on tasks and events that will yield more that what you give.