Categories
Uncategorized

Meddlesome Busybodies

Our society is hyper-alert to some kinds of danger (while being virtually asleep to some greater dangers), a fact we were reminded of today along with a reminder that such hyper-vigilance can have negative effects.

Our family went out running various errands in two separate vehicles and met at a store to pick a few things up before going home. At the end of our shopping trip I went to get the kids in the cars while Laura finished checking out. Because we had come from different places the cars were parked almost 50 feet apart. I got half the kids in one car and then helped the other half get in the other van. I then walked back to the car to drive it to a parking stall closer to the van. In the 20 seconds that it took me to do that there was a middle aged man in street clothes and a retirement aged woman who was associated with the store (as evidenced by her clothing) hovering around the van. They had already been there long enough for the man to identify himself to my 10-year old in the second car as a police officer. When they saw me approach they asked if it was my van and then told me that they were making sure that the vehicle was not unattended. Laura arrived just as they walked away.

If I had been gone for a minute or two their actions would have made perfect sense to me but as I was gone for less than half a minute and never further than 50 feet from the vehicle it seemed very presumptuous of them to alarm my daughter by knocking on her window and asking her to open the door. I don’t see how they could have had that interaction with her in 20 seconds without seeing me putting the kids in the car in the first place. Not only did they alarm my daughter but when Laura saw two strangers hovering around the van and learned that one was a police officer that left her concerned that the officer might take it upon himself to look up our address and pass it along to DCFS (he appeared to have taken down our license plate number) to alert them to these potentially negligent parents. Laura informed me afterward that she had heard that same store associate in the store making judgmental comments about another patron so even with little interaction she has shown a pattern of looking down on people.

I understand the dangers of having kids locked inside a car on a hot day (not that it was hot at that time of evening) but it seems to me that if you spot a situation like that the first thing you should do before frightening a young girl would be to observe whether there is any apparent distress in the kids (there wasn’t) and, absent any distress, observe the situation for a minute or two to see if the vehicle is actually unattended before butting in and causing distress where none had existed.

Categories
Uncategorized

Group Identity

An incident that took place yesterday got me thinking about a topic that is probably very appropriate at election season (in some ways more applicable after an election than before). That is, how and why we identify and associate within groups.

The reason I say this seems appropriate around elections is that part of the political process, at least for those who wish to make things happen rather than being content to simply express their views, is for groups to form from previously unconnected people in support or opposition of a candidate or proposed law or policy.

What happened yesterday reminded me of the psychological effect of identifying ourselves with a group.

I was driving to work when someone ahead of me began driving uncertainly as if the driver was trying to choose a route while driving. The driver was hovering near the lane line deciding whether to get in the turn lane or whether to go straight through the light ahead. As I was entering the turn lane the driver made the decision to do the same – right in front of me. That wasn’t a huge problem but it was mildly frustrating until I looked in the top right corner of the back window of their SUV where I spotted a sticker like the one pictured at the top of the post.

That picture was taken from the bottom left corner of my rear window and it identified the vehicle ahead of me as belonging to someone who lives somewhere near me. As soon as I saw the sticker all feeling of annoyance vanished with the thought that we were both on the same team (metaphorically speaking).

Categories
Uncategorized

Mountain West Perfection

I noticed after publishing my Split Championship post that the Mountain West Conference managed to get the perfect football season that they fell short of last year with perfect order top to bottom in the conference.

The only blemish being their 4-1 record in bowl games this year and the glitch that Colorado State appears to have played an easier non-conference schedule than UNLV, San Diego State, and New Mexico.

Categories
life pictures Uncategorized

Best Calendar for 2010

On Christmas day there was one gift under the tree that neither Laura nor I knew about. Savannah had made a wonderful calendar for our family for 2010. I just had to share each of the months – it really warmed our hearts to see the work that she had put into this.

January

February

March

April
In case you can’t tell, that shell of the egg opens and closes to reveal the picture.

May

June

July

August

September

October

Things she is thankful for: Mom and Dad, Alyssa, Mariah, Isaac, and Bell (not sure of the reference there)
Things she is thankful for: Mom and Dad, Alyssa, Mariah, Isaac, and Bell (not sure of the reference there)

December

Categories
Uncategorized

OpEd on Iran for America’s Next Great Pundit contest

Nobody (except  Ahmadinejad or Khamenei) is very thrilled about the possibility of Iran as a nuclear power.  That is one of the few foreign policy positions on which Americans of all political persuasions can agree. Like every other policy position (foreign or domestic) the agreement ends very quickly. Many on the right are convinced that saber rattling should be our first course of action (Bush was doing that long before the revelation of this new nuclear facility) and that threats of sanctions should be no more than a formality before we start planning for war. The majority on the left seem content to exercise the options of public condemnation, international sanctions, and diplomatic pressure with endless patience for anything short of a physical attack against our nation.

What neither side seems willing to discuss is what history tells us about the value of military intervention, when it is and isn’t desirable, and the appropriate interaction between military power and diplomacy. Although we should be supportive of having a robust military let us review why the approach by the left is closer to correct on this issue.

Anyone with a healthy respect for the ugliness of war would hope that all the saber rattling would very rarely escalate to military action. Unfortunately the more we use the tactic of threatening a military response to the actions of other nations the greater the probability that those nations will choose to test our resolve leaving us with two possibilities. First, we can decide that military action is unwarranted which soon makes us look like the boy who cried wolf and our rhetoric becomes useless until we have backed up our bluster a few times by engaging in military action. Second, we can put our money where our mouth is and send in the military. If we use our military too often we will make enemies out of otherwise neutral countries and even our allies will become wary of us.

The proper course is to be very careful about when we make threats of military intervention – never rattling the saber unless we are willing to draw the sword. We must also be careful not to waste our strength in fighting so many distant threats that we leave ourselves unprepared if we should ever face a truly imminent threat.

Iran is a distant threat at best and we should take our hand off our sword hilt.

Categories
Uncategorized

Predictions

Today has been a day for predictions. Competing predictions, in fact. I have read that Google will be gone in five years (thanks to Slashdot for the reference) and that the New York Times will go offline in 10 years because of Google. (thanks to Scott Adams for the reference)

While all of this is speculation and fancy, it is not entirely unrelated to what is actualy happening in the world today. It has been an interesting romp through the web today.

Categories
Uncategorized

Intellectual P______

Matt has really gotten me thinking on this issue. He writes about intellectual property and suggests that the term obscures everything it is attached to and that it encourages us to think about information as a thing which is owned. Somehow we have to recognize the fact that very little information is actually worth “owning.” Generally information is valuable only for sharing because when it is shared it tends to grow. Where that is the case there is no reason to retain more rights than mere attribution.

There are a few things that are worth patenting, but don’t use the patent list as a way of chosing what should be patented since it includes things like this. Try reading the comments here to learn more about some of the misuse of patent law.

I also think that there is a place for copyrights and trademarks, but just because there is a trademark should not mean that I cannot use the words Microsoft and Windows, even together (Microsoft Windows) without fear of being penalized.

I guess what this all adds up to is the inevitable, and worn-out conclusion that these areas of law are basicaly broken. Perhaps it is because of the introduction of such a vague term as “intellecutal property.”

Categories
Uncategorized

Mixing Old and New Models

I like what I am hearing from Nate about what a Next Generation Journal should look like. Nate is right that “because we can” is not a good reason to make changes. We have good reason to streamline the peer-review process. We also have good reason to streamline the publication by eliminating the bundling in favor of publishing articles as they are cleared for publication and there is something to be said for publishing post-publication comments. I see no reason to publish pre-publication comments because if the comments are still relevant after publication they may be added to the post-publication comment list.

The only other change that I think would be important would be in changing the model for the distribution of rights to the intellectual property. This would most likely be based on the work of Creative Commons with the author(s) retaining rights to the material while granting specific publication rights to the journal which would have to be defined, but which would probably not be hard to nail down.

Categories
Uncategorized

Classifications

Get comfortable. This is going to be along one. I have been thinking about this subject for a while, but suddenly in the last 24 hours I have changed my position.

I was fully behind Will when he posted Blogging vs Journaling again as he argued:

Xanga is not a blog site. It’s an online journal site. There is nothing inherently wrong with journaling online (provided it’s done with the proper precautions.) But there is something wrong with calling that blogging. And that’s what’s happening more and more. And the problem comes when parents and principals equate Xanga and other such sites with blogging, which in turn predisposes them negatively toward efforts to use blogs the way we know they can be used.

Not so anymore. After reading The Horseless Carriage by Tom Coates I have changed my stance on the subject.

Categories
Uncategorized

Well Said

Will hit the nail right on the head with his post: Curriculum is for Kids. Every quote and every thought was exactly right clear down to his conclusion – blogging is exploration. We can ask ourselves why the education system has become a series of canned curriculum objectives – which are often not met anyway despite the best efforts of many good teachers – when we recognize as adults that learning comes from personal exploration. Anyone who has watched their children closely will easily see that children learn in exactly the same way. The only difference is that they do not always understand what they are doing or how to go about the process of discovery in meaningful ways. I hope we can get that little flaw fixed.