Month: June 2007

Categories
life

Bedtime Dynamics

As Savannah and Alyssa share a room we have a near nightly ritual where one gets mad at the other for some infraction of the Sisters Code of Conduct™ (at least on the nights where they don’t both test how many excuses they can find to leave their bedroom after bedtime). The result sometimes is that they will keep Mariah awake in the next room.

On many Saturdays we allow the girls to choose alternate sleeping arrangements for the night. Last night they chose to sleep on the couches in the family room. Mariah saw what was happening and decided that she wanted to be part of the sleepover. I thought it was worth the experiment so we let her sleep down there as well. I fully expected that we would be going down before 10:00 pm to move her back up to her room.

We didn’t hear a sound from any of them. At one point we went down to peek in and see if they had fallen asleep. What we discovered was that they were all playing very quietly and very nicely with each other. The older girls were sharing toys with Mariah and being nice to each other.

Now Laura and I are wondering how we can promote that kind of peaceful coexistence every night between the kids.

Categories
culture

Buildingblocks of Community

As I think about the components of an effective community I thought it would be valuable to list what I think are the essential parts of an effective community. I will try to define them just enough here to make it clear what I am thinking. If anyone finds anything I have missed, or a definition that they think should change, please let me know.

Perhaps I should start be defining what I mean by “community.” I am specifically thinking about a city or town, in other words a physical community of people who live within some defined proximity. Despite that, I believe that the elements of a community that I am considering are applicable to other kinds of community such as a business, or a virtual community.

Government – a body responsible for defining the community and the rules that govern the community. The government of a community would be responsible for arbitration if community members have a dispute about what is acceptable within the community.

Communication – a way for community members to share information about the community, to voice their opinions, or to record events of significance.

Commerce – something to facilitate transactions between members of the community in an organized way so that those transactions are recognized by other members of the community when necessary.

Entertainment – a means of promoting informal interaction between community members which is not focused on commercial repercussions (although there may be commercial elements to the interactions).

Ritual – a celebration of community identity. The purpose of ritual is to solidify the community identity and help members remember the purpose and/or history of the community.

Categories
technology

Windows Genuine Safari

Apple ported their browser, Safari, to Windows and released a public beta this week. Having heard great things about Safari from a web-standards perspective I got it and had a look. Aside from the standards compliance it was just a browser – nice, but nothing compelling about it. Then this afternoon a window popped up on my screen:

Safari - Genuine Windows Software

Less than one week and Safari has its first security patch (it was cracked within hours) – I thought to myself “It’s genuine Windows software.”

Categories
culture politics

Building a Community

I have been thinking about my desire to serve in an elected capacity. I said before that I did not know where I would want to serve, but I am beginning to narrow the possibilities down. I realize that what I would like to accomplish by serving in an elected capacity is to help build a community. That means that I would want to stay close to a specific community. While I think that I have the capacity to serve as a public official at any level of government, I am realizing that my interests are more tailored to serving locally. That could be serving at a city or county level, or as a representative for a community at the state level.

I believe that there is more to “community” than just the political/government aspect. A community is defined by the way that people interact with each other and work together on those things where they have a common interest. Building a community therefore includes establishing the means of interaction between the members of the community.

I can see that it is going to take a while for me to capture and process all my thoughts on this subject. Suffice it to say that there will be more here on this theme as I develop this train of thought. Please feel free to jump in and correct my thinking or point out things that I should be considering about the nature of community.

Categories
politics

Bob Hargis

Every candidate should be able to sound at least as presidential as Bob Hargis. He states his positions confidently and none of his positions are too idealistic to be plausible. In spite of that, Bob Hargis is not prepared enough for my endorsement.

Categories
politics

Charles Maxham

Charles Maxham has requested the removal of my assessment of his candidacy.

Categories
politics

Jon Greenspon

I can’t figure out what is motivating Jon Greenspon to run for President. Nothing that I can find suggests that he has anything to offer the country except his willingness. If somehow he were to become President I have no doubt that he would not be the one running the country. That’s no way to get endorsed.

Categories
politics

Joe Schriner

There’s nothing average about 9 years of endlessly campaigning to become President, especially for a guy who has no monetary wealth. Joe started running for President in 1998 and has never really stopped since. He declared his candidacy for 2008 the day the 2004 elections were held.

I have no reason to doubt his sincerity in wanting to become president, but I see nothing about Joe Schriner that suggests that he is actually up for the job, except that he obviously has nothing else demanding his time. Though his campaign style is intriguing it certainly does not merit my endorsement.

Categories
culture politics

Subtle Biases

Among the many places I get political news and information is the new York Time Political blog, The Caucus. Unique among those sources, The Caucus displays a tag cloud which shows the tags they use on their posts with the tags displayed in a font size proportional to how often the tag is used.

The Caucus Tags

It is no surprise that 2008 is the largest tag (most common), but Hillary always seemed to be disproportionally large compared to other candidates. I always dismissed that as a result of the fact that her full name is spelled out and thus takes more space. After seeing the cloud so many times I finally got curious to see how much the various tags were really used. The result revealed an unspoken bias at the blog.

The top two presidential candidates for the Democrats have as many stories as the top 3 presidential candidates for the Republicans (548 in each case). John Edwards is tagged 146 times for the Democrats as well. Following to lower tier candidates the coverage of Democrats makes further gains despite the fact that there are more Republican candidates. Interestingly even President Bush receives fewer tags than either Hillary or Barak. The most telling statistic for me however was the fact that there were 62 posts carrying the tag “CONSERVATIVES” (yes, all caps) and not a single post with a tag for liberals (all caps or otherwise). I guess the reader can decide if that is because they don’t cover liberal stories, or if it is because they don’t consider anything to be liberal.

I am not complaining that there is a bias here. My feeling is that every information source is biased, even good, scientific data , but it is better once the bias is recognized publicly. If anyone wants to see the raw data I used they can download it – I have added some tags for sorting between candidates, parties, issues etc. – or they can go to The Caucus and view the page source to get up-to-date data.

Categories
politics

Wayne Root

Wayne Root is an idealist. If he were president he would try to remake the face of our nation and our government. many of his ideas have their place, but if he were to be elected his single term would be marked by radical inaction and broken promises as everything he talked about failed to materialize. Admittedly this would not likely be cause by a lack of effort on his part.

I can’t endorse a candidate who is doomed to disappoint even himself.