Results tagged “politics”

There's a pretty decent article over
at A List Apart on relationship management by Keith LaFerriere from a couple weeks ago (catching up on some of my reading). I enjoyed the "Hat Head" versus "Bed Head" comparison, particularly since I'd definitely qualify myself as a "Bed Head" in my attempt to live a creative lifestyle. Though, as a developer, my idea of a creative lifestyle is probably a little different from the conception of a typical designer (less coffee and black turtlenecks and more Dr. Pepper and not-shaving).

Anyway, he makes several very important points that I think everyone in development and design need to adhere to more.

• Don't take things personally. Yes, you are being creative and it is important to you, but if you're making money doing it, you need to have a professional attitude and be willing to compromise.
• Be an example, particularly if you're the team leader. It's really amazing how much the behavior of a person is determined by the people around him. If you get ticked off every time someone does something you don't like, people around you will probably start having at least a kernel of similar behavior. This goes doubly so for managers and leaders. Your behavior sets the tone the rest of the group will judge itself by. Be good.
• Watch your language. By this I'm referring to trying to be what I would call "open-minded language." If you indicate by the adjectives you use that you're not listening or don't intend to, you will convince no one of anything. Avoid strong adjectives and try to talk as if all the options are still open even if you're already on a specific path. You can make it clear that a bad idea isn't going to fly without insulting your audience.

Anyway, I just wanted to post that link and give an infinitesimal boost to what I consider to be a good overall article on getting along with coworkers and getting the job done as a team.

Cheers.

I was scrolling through my morning feeds and came across this gem on Slashdot, "Should Schools Block Sites Like Wikipedia?
" The story goes on to describe someone's question regarding the fact that the local school board decided to block access to Wikipedia "because students may be exposed to misinformation". This simply describes an opportunity lost and a new form of book banning.

I grew up learning about how books like the Wizard of Oz were banned from schools because some people didn't like the fact that it had a witch. Other books were banned because they praised opposing political ideals. Now, apparently, it's vogue to ban something because it might not be accurate. However, this is still just as bad an idea as all the original book bans.

Where do you stop? The New York Times has in the past few years had at least one reporter fired because he fabricated information published in the Times. Should we block the New York Times because it might expose students to misinformation? Should we also block cable television because certain news anchors published stories in that medium without verifying the facts? Should we start blocking the text books because they sometimes contain errors or misrepresent facts?

Should we stop allowing teachers in the class room because sometimes teachers share incorrect informatino? I once had a teacher tell me that NASA was experimenting with mounting monkeys heads on robots and that the monkeys were controlling the robots successfully, but only for a few hours until the head died. Should we throw all the teachers out because there are some that are crackpots?

No! Of course not. This is an opportunity to explain that all sources are suspect until they are corroborated. If you read something in Wikipedia, you take a note to check any fact you can't verify from your own experience. You then verify that fact in the quoted source (for articles that properly quote sources), you can check your local library and do a database search, check another encyclopedia, look in a journal or magazine, find related books, etc. I find that Wikipedia is a great place to get started, but I certainly don't think of it as authoritative.

On the other hand, you should always do the same thing, insofar as you are able, for any source of information. If a source of information makes a claim, you should check it's sources and possibly verify the claim in other places. It's easy to make an unverified claim. It's hard to make a claim that is cited and backed up with facts and also backed up by other unrelated sources.

The lesson is that some sources are more trustworthy than others, but none are beyond suspicion. The lesson should be that you should always check your sources and verify that what you're reading is factual and reliable. Banning a source only means that you take this object lesson away and you raise students that are actually less able to think for themselves and more ignorant. Great, that's just what we need. Good job Anonymous School Board.

Cheers.

The survival of the human race depends on its ability to find new homes elsewhere in the universe because there's an increasing risk that a disaster will destroy the Earth, world-renowned astrophysicist Stephen Hawking said Tuesday. — Quoted from AP

I'm not quite sure I understand this remark. Especially since the dangers he quotes are, according to the article, all human in origin, "sudden global warming, nuclear war, a genetically engineered virus or other dangers we have not yet thought of." If humans are so dangerous to ourselves how is getting to another planet really going to help? We'll just risk the same dangers there, it'll just take a little longer. If we add in the natural dangers of the Universe, though, we're doomed. Period.

The problem is a simple matter of time. As the Oracle says in The Matrix Revolutions, "Everything that has a beginning has an end." There's no way around this problem. Sooner or later time is going to catch up with the human race, it's unavoidable. The death rate for humanity is, was, and will always be 100%. The death rate for the species will be no different.

Does this mean I'm ready to roll over now and welcome the end of humanity? Of course not, I'm not even opposed to human expansion into space and colonization. I'm just not willing to engage in false hope that humanity will find the key to immortality sooner or later. This statement is not only myopic but based on blindness.

The fact that time has a beginning and an end should tell us something about the nature of the universe. No, the blessing of having a Christian worldview is that that worldview grants an eternal perspective. Before the universe began, there existed a timeless eternity past. After the universe ends, a timeless eternity future awaits. A materialistic, scientific world-view, however, denies the existance of such a time because it cannot be observed or tested. Belief that a loving God is also planning things provides additional reassurance.

Am I naive about what the human race is capable of, absolutely not. However, niether am I staying up a night fretting over the destruction of the race. It won't happen until it happens and when it happens, it will happen for a reason.

In my morning scan of the news I bumped into this article over at NewsBusters.org. The article is a commentary (or really, mostly a quotation with a few parentheticals) of a New York Times editorial on the nationwide decline of newspapers.

I was thinking about this and a quote from I, Robot came to mind, "I don't know, maybe you would have simply banned the Internet to keep the libraries open." The quote implies that the Internet killed the world's libraries. However, I think the opposite might be true. I think the Internet could actually work toward revitalizing libraries over time. With reading becoming increasingly important, I think we may find motion media declining and a renewed interest in novels. Electronic books have really not caught on very well. Though, I think there will be changes to come in the print industry. I also think that in another dozen years or so the Internet will be a major source for independent motion media that will start to stomp on traditional television too.

On the other hand, with the blogosphere and other Internet news sources gaining credibility and as the opinion of traditional news sources are increasingly scorned as biased and out of touch, I can see newspapers suffering greatly. I even just proved it, I get all my news from the web. Why bother flipping pages of a paper allowing me one point of view, when I can read hundreds of different sources each with their own unique bias by flipping open my laptop?

Anyway, I make no predictions, but I think the problems are interesting. The social issues faced by my parents' generation were interesting and I think this generation is going to face some interesting upheavals of its own and this is just one of them.

I was reading a Slashdot article today about the online music licensing system the EU is considering. My mind followed a bunny trail onto a completely different subject about independent artists and how the Internet presents a very different opportunity for dissemination of music and such. This is nothing new, but as I thought about it, I had a thought that I had never really addressed in my mind full on.

What can this mean for the world of fame? For my parents, most information about the world at large was delivered through newspapers, magazines, radio, and television. Their sources were limited to (at most) 3 channels of television and then whatever local radio stations there were and probably only a single newspaper. (Though, for my dad, living in Kansas City, I imagine there were some other minor presses to get information from.) Because of this, if ABC, CBS, or NBC wanted to make someone famous, they just put them on TV and viola, instant celebrity. This has been changing over many years, though. As television got to be cheaper to produce, more stations arose and with the advent of cable, most folks suddenly had 10 to 13 channels to choose from. As the techno-geeks graduated from BBSes to the Internet, we started gathering information from more and more sources.

Now, most newspapers have to publish online just to compete. I can gather news from any number of news sources now. ABC, CBS, and NBC still have quite a bit of leverage to create celebrity, but not anything like they used to. Now, if I don't like any of my local radio stations, I can generally find online ones for free or to pay for. By satellite I can now get hundreds of channels of video or radio. Not only this but the Internet is starting to become a more personal, cozy place. I can now find out much about my friends and organizations I follow through the web and email in a much more direct route than waiting for USPS mailed letters and newsletters. Anyone can publish video, music, and information at almost no cost.

Since the web is organized by connectivity driven through links allows the world to flow around the webs of people around you. If someone comes to my web site, they can find a post by one of my friends, which leads them to another of my friends web site, and, perhaps, my friends friend can become my friend because we share interests that we might not have realized before.

Anyway, again, none of this is new stuff, but this led me to realize that as the power of the big central sources of news ended, we could see the end of an era very interested in fame and celebrity. We'll never be rid of the famous or celebrities, but I think we've already seen a waning. In their place, I think a better environment is rising where we don't care so much about the latest celeb and their pathetic lives, but we can become more interested in the lives of our friends and friends' friends. Thus, in a way, this has the effect of making our little worlds larger with respect to the former world which made it seem smaller.

Anyway, it was an interesting thought to me...