Categories
culture life politics

Non-Binding Resolutions

While listening to NPR today I heard a senator talking about many agreements we have made with the Iraqi government where the Iraqi’s failed to do what they promised. He attributed that failure to the fact that “the agreements [had] no teeth.” That got me thinking. We don’t have to look outside our country to see ineffective government posturing related to agreements without teeth. Just look at any non-binding resolution ever passed by a legislative body. For that matter we can look at any legislation that gets passed without funds to carry it out. In case anyone is wondering – legal teeth start like this “$” and end like this “.00” and each digit that comes between that beginning and that end constitutes a tooth. For private citizens three teeth is generally enough to encourage compliance, but once we start dealing with governments and corporations it takes a lot more teeth to be convincing.

I think that wherever government passes any measure to redistribute wealth there must be teeth to ensure compliance with the law, and great care that the law be written to discourage abuse of any such program. I believe that government should generally avoid such laws because bureaucratic programs tend to be magnets for abuse, especially where money can be gained, but when they do legislate those things they need to put teeth into the law.

That lead my train of though onto a new track – we have our share of non-binding resolutions at home with the kids. As I think about it there are times (at least times in the home) when laws without teeth are a good thing. The children should learn to obey because it is the right thing, or because they trust us, not merely because they will lose some privilege.

So my question is, when do you think teeth are necessary? When do you think that they are unnecessary? I ask this not just with regard to government, but also to home and community situations.

Categories
life

Too Helpful

I have been thinking a lot lately about one of the lessons that I have learned as a parent. Sometimes it is very easy to be too helpful to our children. We may want to tell them more than they can understand, or assist them in doing something when the real lesson they should be learning is to continue in the face of challenges. The beauty of this problem is that we make these mistakes with universally good intentions.

Categories
life

My 5K Today

I ran in a charity 5K today – An April Run for Olivia – and found that it was very good practice for my marathon. There were 1200 people running so I got to deal with a crowded start – unlike my runs in High School. Obviously the distance was not a practice (I ran 15 miles before the race because my training called for 18 miles today), but the bib and the getting there on time were good practice. The one thing I forgot to do was look at the clock at the finish line. I honestly don’t know my time. I was hoping to finish in under 29 minutes, and I think I did based on the results of other runners I knew, but unless the results get posted online I will never know for sure.

It was fun to let the kids see me race without having to wait around for four hours while I run the marathon. The 30 minute time-frame allowed them to have fun with it and to see Daddy race. So while Savannah thought I was running for the competition (“You’ll probably win Dad”) I got to run for the distance, the time (or not), and the basic joy of getting out to run.

UPDATE 5/6/07: The race results got posted this afternoon. I finished in 26:19 – well under my goal of 29:00.

Categories
politics

Bob Jackson

Well, I decided to tackle a second endorsement today because some endorsements are very easy to go and find a candidate who should not be endorsed. I expected that to be the case again today. After looking into Bob Jackson again (a commenter pointed me towards him some time ago) I was looking for reasons not to endorse him. I don’t think his chances of winning are even worth considering. As I thought about it I realized that I had no substantial reason to not endorse him. He understands the system and knows what he would like to do. I finally went back to review the criteria I had made for giving endorsements and found that Bob qualifies for my endorsement.

I think he could do a good job if he were President and I think he deserves votes.

Categories
politics

Donald Allen

Donald Allen is an idealist. He talks about the major issues of today (Energy Independence, Social Security, Healthcare, etc.) but his campaign is exactly what I would expect for a person running for city council in a city of 25,000. Some people may be nostalgic for a time when leading our country was a matter of leading the people and expecting them to live virtuous lives. That is not the day we live in. We live in a bureaucracy with so much momentum that it requires an understanding of the mechanisms in motion in order to safely make a change. Dr. Allen would not be prepared for such a job as President.

Categories
technology

Inherently Unequal

My whole family is getting over being sick (here’s a story about that) and as I reflected on the experience I was thinking how nice it would have been to have the kinds of beds they had 150 years ago (pre-industrial age) where you would clean a mattress after someone threw up on it by emptying it, washing the cover, and then filling it with fresh stuffing. The old, soiled filler could be discarded or burned. Now we have mattresses that are “permanent” so when my daughter wakes up from her nap throwing up we have to clean all the covers and try to clean the mattress and then live with the fact that it’s never going to be entirely clean.

When we moved from temporary mattress filling to permanent mattresses we did not keep all the beneficial traits of the old mattresses. Perhaps someone should market a disposable sick-bed. Hospital beds have vinyl coverings so they can be wiped, disinfected, and covered with new sheets. Crib mattresses (at least the ones we have) are the same, but regular mattresses have lost that trait from the mattresses that our great-great-grandparents used to have.

I’m not suggesting that we should go back to those mattresses – though I was tempted to when the thought first struck me. I think we have many products to help mitigate that difference. However, the thought struck me that there is no such thing as a flawless upgrade when we start using new technology like that. There is always some characteristic that we might overlook which has its benefits. It’s something to think about as we rush onward with new technologies and find that it is easy to see their strengths. Sometimes we have to take a step back and see if we might have missed some strengths from the old technology.

Categories
meta technology

Post by Email

I finally have the Post-by-Email working in WordPress. There is one catch – the body of the post only shows up if the message is sent in plain text. No “rich formatting” or other high-and-mighty “My email client is better than what was available 15 years ago” shenanigans.

Add this to the fact that I have to go edit the post later if I want it anywhere but the default category, or if I want to add tags or anything else besides text, and you can be sure that I will only use email as a place to compose posts that are still in the formative stages. I will also be looking at other plugins with more versatility in this department.

Enough griping, it’s still a new feature for me so this may be a small step, but it’s a forward step.

Update: There is another catch – extra line breaks show up when posting this way – definitely not for regular use.

Categories
pictures technology

Snooping Around

While reading through my feeds today I learned from Kim Cavanaugh’s Brain Frieze about the official Library of Congress blog. I went over to have a look and got curious about what software they had running the blog. Maybe it was something about the familiar format of the postmetadata section that got me looking. I looked at the bottom of the page to see if there was a footer stating that it was powered by WordPress. I was not surprised to find no such mention – it’s easy to take that out. I then looked at the page code and found that the meta tag named generator was also gone – another place that WordPress identifies itself unless you change it – but I did find that the code looked very familiar again. I quickly spotted a reference to the “wp-content” folder – it is a WordPress blog running the Library of Congress blog. Here’s proof:Library of Congress Blog code
Screenshot of the code to the Library of Congress blog

By way of comparison, here is a screenshot of the code from my WordPress blog:My WordPress blog code

For anyone who might still be skeptical (or who might care) I later found a more obvious reference to WordPress in their blog code:Library of Congress Blog code with WordPress comments

Categories
life

Welcome to Laura

Well, we have a new blogger in the family again. Last night Laura told me she wanted to start blogging again. I told here there were various options to make that happen. Today I was sick so I did very little, but I did manage to set up a sub-domain for her and install WordPress on that subdomain. She is now blogging at laura.davidjmiller.org.

Categories
politics

Mitt Romney

In search for a candidate who understands the need for smaller government? Mitt Romney fits that description. He is publicly committed to not raising taxes, and to finding ways to cut spending. He believes that we can solve some of the same issues that others have used to call for raising taxes, or rolling back tax cuts, without increasing spending. As governor of Massachusetts he used his veto power against excessive spending. The question is, if he were President would he be more effective with his vetoes than he was as Governor – where every spending issue he vetoed was overridden by the legislature.

That could be used to dampen my enthusiasm for Mitt, but I overlook that in the face of his track record of getting things done in business and government settings. He was successful in business before he was called upon to salvage the 2002 Olympic Games – which he did quite well. After the Olympics he served as Governor of Massachusetts where he was successful in implementing a statewide universal health care initiative, even if he was not able to make his veto stick to other spending items.

With core values that generally appeal to me and a record for getting things done in everything he has set his hand to, I find it easy to endorse Mitt Romney for President.