Year: 2006

Categories
politics

Endorsements

I had not intended to suspend posting until I had done some research on the governor of Iowa, but that is how life played out so here, after four days, is some insight into the endorsement process. I freely admit that, even as an independent voter, I am not free from bias. The first time I hear about a candidate choosing to run for president I will probably have an idea, based on their position and what I have heard previously, of whether I expect they will receive an endorsement from me. For example, with Governor Vilsack I had heard very little about him which suggested a lack of showmanship. The fact that he was a two term governor of a state which was not known to be particularly liberal or conservative suggested an experienced public servant who was not a polarizing force. I would initially guess that I would endorse such a candidate.

On the other hand, I will openly admit that most third party candidates are likely to have a harder time getting an endorsement from me based partially on the wacky ideas I have heard from a variety of third party candidates over the years. My experience suggests that the majority of third party candidates have an agenda or a specific issue and lack the propensity to work with others. On top of that, most of them don’t honestly expect to have a shot at winning and it shows in the way they campaign to their niche supporters.

At these early stages of campaigning, my endorsements have the possibility of changing as a result of new information. That being said, I am not at all opposed to getting through the primaries with candidates in each party that I endorse. In fact, I hope that the candidates who win the primaries from each party are candidates whom I can endorse.

One final caveat, when I endorse someone it should not be construed as an endorsement of a party. I never vote for a presidential party, I vote for a president. If I endorse Governor Vilsack it says nothing about the Democratic Party. If I endorse Governor Bush it is an endorsement for Bush, not for the Republican Party. (Honestly I do not expect Jeb Bush to run. I used him as an example because I do not want to suggest an endorsement for a candidate who has not yet chosen to run. In the case of Governor Vilsack, I will be posting the results of my research presently.)

Categories
culture life meta politics

Looking Forward

I just passed 100 posts to this blog in just over 3 months since I started it. It was fun to see that. Despite that milestone I still feel like I am developing a feel for where this blog will go.

I have noticed that I enjoy writing politically oriented content when I find news of a political nature. Maybe that is because I am interested in a wide range of political topics and in political participation in general. With the official announcement today that Tom Vilsack would seek the Democratic presidential nomination for 2008, I have decided on one thing I will be doing with this blog in the future. I have decided that, for each person who announces their candidacy officially, I will research the candidate and make an endorsement for every candidate who I feel would make a good president. These endorsements will not indicate who I will be voting for (that has not been decided yet) but will indicate who I think deserves votes.

I will do this for any candidate who is running (not those who look like they will run) from any party so long as my research indicates that they could be a good president. In other words, don’t expect to hear anything about the likes of General Zod.

Look for my endorsement, or anti-endorsement if I think they would not be a good president, on any candidate I hear about within a week of when I learn of their official candidacy. If you hear about a candidate that I have not yet listed please let me know.

Categories
life

New Running Shoes

My birthday present netted me a free consultation with a famous triathlete of my acquaintance, the host of Tri-Talk, who gave me tips on equipment and preparation for my marathon. One of the suggestions he made was that I should visit Runners Corner to get myself some new shoes.

I knew it was time to get new shoes since the shoes I have been running in are older than my marriage. The fact that I have four children is proof that such shoes would not last through marathon training. The fact that I have glued the soles back on both shoes suggests that they might not last the week.

Tonight I took his advice and visited Runners Corner. They were great! I got a personal evaluation of my running prior to choosing which shoes to buy. I also got to go run in 6 different pairs of shoes before I settled on the two I liked the best I learned a lot about shoes, and running from the visit, and I also learned (from someone who has actually run the race) that I might want to choose a different marathon than Park City for my first marathon. My shoe guide ran Park City for his first marathon and he said it’s one of the toughest courses in Utah.

So I may be changing races, but I am definitely going to enjoy training more. I had forgotten what running shoes actually felt like.

Categories
life

Getting Stronger

The running and the biking are obviously making a difference. I have noticed within the last week that I can run a mile one minute faster than I could previously and maintain that pace for the duration of my 3 mile runs. If I could maintain that pace for the full marathon I would blow the 4 hour mark away – I don’t expect that, but it’s fun to imagine.

I also noticed this morning that riding to work is easier than it was last week. With Thanksgiving I did not go to work for nearly a week. When I rode in to work this morning I was able to put the bike in top gear and maintain a much faster pace the whole way than I had been able to. I learned something very important, when riding at that faster pace in these winter months I need to wear a hat (besides the helmet) and a heavier coat to mitigate the wind chill factor.

It’s nice to see improvement after only a couple of months.

Categories
culture life

Childhood Excitement

These last few days have been busy. The girls have had cousins to visit whom they have not seen since early June. As we have run from place to place, and activity to activity, I have begun to remember how children react to all the excitement that surrounds this time of year.

This is not a complaint, just an observation, but as the kids get all excited about one activity and then another event, and then a special visitor – not Santa specifically, but any special visitor who may come during the season, be it an grandparent, an old friend, a cousin, or an aunt who they have not seen in ages – they begin to forget some of the basic rules which they seemed to have learned. We find that they forget to listen to parents, they fail to do their chores, or they break some basic house rules. To make matters worse they start to get moody when the fun party does not come as fast as they wanted, or when it ends faster than they wished.

Having made this observation before, we will attempt to keep the activities at a reasonable level while still celebrating the season. So far we have not done very well. To the regular festivities of the year we have added a new brother (first boy makes it better than a new sister for the girls) and some of their close cousins are moving to New Zealand in a couple of weeks so there are extra parties and goodbyes to attend to.

Wish us luck as we try not to overload the kids while we indulge in the excitement of the season.

Categories
life

Lucky Me

As I have been spending the day with family I have had many questions about my new job. Everybody is just catching up with each other, and my job is new enough that those who are close still know very little about it. My mother-in-law asked if I had tomorrow off and I told her what my boss told me on Monday, “Thursday and Friday are mandatory holidays.” When I asked what he meant by mandatory holiday the response was, “If you value your job, don’t come to work on those days.”

In retelling the story to her, I realized again how lucky I am to be employed with this company. I could not think of an atmosphere more compatible with my personality. They treat their employees right.

When you are looking to change jobs, it is normal to find a situation better than the one you are in. When you are coming from being unemployed you don’t have that luxury most of the time. I am amazed that I could end up in a position that is so much better for me than the one I had before. My previous job was a good job with a good company, but it was not tailor-made for me like my current job seems to be. That’s one more reason to say, “Lucky me.”

Categories
meta

Generalizing

Start of Series

Now if I might generalize from my experience. . .

I had the opportunity, during the short time while I was working towards a PhD, to help teach a class, and more importantly to construct a blogging component for that class. In creating that component I faced the challenge of giving structure, for the purpose of making it possible to grade the assignment, to an activity which is best left unstructured. Perhaps it would be more accurate to say that, while blogging can benefit from structure – such as regular posting or a consistent topic or objective – it does not benefit from structure which is mandated by anyone other than the writer(s).

From what I have seen, the structure should be discovered during the early stages of creating the blog. The assignment I gave was first, one of three options for the students; second, required a minimum number of posts (20 if I remember correctly); third, had a minimum duration (8 weeks with at least two posts in each week out of a 12 week semester); and fourth, had to have an educational purpose in keeping with the course. I hoped this gave enough structure for the purposes of grading, was comparably rigorous to the other options, and was flexible enough to allow those who chose this option to find their own blogging rhythm.

As I observed the blogs of the students who opted for this assignment I noticed as they went through the growing pains of finding things to write about, discovered their voice, and explored their chosen educational purpose. I also saw that their thinking (as displayed in their posts) changed to be less inwardly focused and more focused on building on the thoughts expressed by others. That is one of the benefits of blogging. Over time the focus changes from a desire to create from the single source of the authors mind, to building on the work of other sources with similar topics.

Categories
meta

What is Blogging?

Start of Series

In order to substantiate my claim of what benefits blogging provides for me, I think it is important to define what I mean by when I talk about blogging.

I have already indicated that blogging is more than simply posting thoughts here. Part of blogging, for me, is reading other blogs and commenting on things that other people are posting. I read a wide range of blogs, ranging from personal journals, to political commentary across the political spectrum. My most important criteria for choosing blogs to follow is that they must be generally thoughtful. In other words, I don’t follow blogs which consist of nothing but rants on some subject. Nor do I follow blogs that have an extreme agenda. Some might have a purpose, or a focus, but they do not spout the “Doctrine of Open Source Software” (or any other cause) with their eyes shut to the limitations of their professed agenda.

Although I have less control over this aspect, I also find it very useful to receive comments on the things that I post. This helps to refine my thinking and sometimes to expose me to a new point of view. This was driven home to me recently as I received comments from a few people out of the blue. I have no idea how they found my blog, but they left comments which provoked my thinking.

Because I no longer make use of trackback in my blogging, I rarely make comments on my blog with thoughts I have had from things that other people have posted. This means that I have to get my material from other sources. Those other sources are my own experience and current events. A lack of current events (at least, current events I wanted to comment about) is what led me to start thinking about this current series. As I faced days where I felt there was little to say I began to consider – should I force myself to say something, or should I just let the day slide?

So that is how I define blogging, it is a process of ingesting information, processing that information, and then constraining my thoughts to the confines of written language where I invite others to critique what I have posted.

Categories
meta

Benefits of Blogging

Start of Series

When I started blogging, I noticed that there were a lot of people blogging about blogging, especially in the circle of educational bloggers. Very soon I began to dislike those types of postings. This leaves readers here to wonder – why am I doing the same thing now?

In the past few months of blogging, and especially the last two weeks, I have had times where I was not sure what I wanted to post, but I wanted to post. That left me asking what it was I was trying to accomplish by blogging.

The answer to that question was that I wanted the benefits of blogging which, according to my definition of blogging, are an increased capacity for thinking and communicating. That may sound like a very generous description of the benefits, but I believe it is true for the type of blogging that I try to do.

Categories
meta

Why Blog?

This is going to be short, and almost without substance, but my history of blogging comes from a background of education where the question has been asked, but never completely answered, what is the benefit of blogging?

I can only answer that question in regard to my personal experience. Even with that limited scope it will probably take more than one post to answer, so expect a series of posts trying to answer the question, “What is the benefit of blogging, from an educational perspective?” I expect to write about why I blog, how I blog, and what benefits I have seen. I might even throw in a post about how my experience might be generalized for other people. I might even take the time to define what I mean when I talk about blogging (hint: it’s more than just posting things here).