Tag: questions

Categories
culture life meta pictures technology

Speed Affects Lifestyle

Preface

I was laying in my bed at 5:00 AM (when most people should be in bed) and my brain started reviewing the images of the roads I commute on. I began to think of how such a complex road system would be entirely unnecessary if we were not able to travel at the average speed of today’s normal commute. Consider this a stream of semi-consciousness about the impact that our speed of movement has on the kind of life that each of us lives.

Then

Let’s place the year 1889 as the baseline of a slower lifestyle. I choose that year because it predates the advent of the car, it is late enough that we had the ability to move faster than horse and wagon with the use of railroads, and it’s 120 years ago – a nice round number.

In 1889 most travel was done by horse or on foot. As I recall traveling 30 miles in a day was generally about as far as a person could expect to go. In the late 1870’s the Transcontinental Express was able to average about 35 miles per hour traveling across the country. That would appear to be the functional limit of traveling speed for that time.

Now

Today people regularly travel 70 miles per hour on their daily commute (outside of rush hour) only because we have created an artificial speed limit of 65 mph on our roads – without that speed limit most vehicles could easily travel at 90 mph.

For the sake of simplification let’s consider the differences that we would see if we were to limit our physical traveling of people to 5 mph (a fast walk) with a limit of 30 miles per day, as compared to today when I can comfortably make a trip of 600 miles in a long day and regularly commute 20 miles each way to work.

Comparison

In our modern situation the only real limitation on where I work (physically) is how much time I am willing to commute – I can choose to live 50 miles or more from my place of employment so long as I am willing to take the time to commute. In the slower lifestyle if we assume that I am willing and able to spend 6 hours of my day commuting in addition to the 8 hours I need to work then I could work as much as 15 miles from home.

From a community standpoint I could not reasonably interact with anyone outside a 7 mile radius on a reagular basis in the slower community whereas in the modern-speed community I could with no more effort interact with people anywhere in a 100 mile radius. If we had an even population density over that whole area that would mean that I have access to 204 times as many people on a daily basis. If we assume that there really is a limit on how many people I can know well then there I can really only know ½ of 1% of the available information about those I can interact with on a daily basis compared to the slower society

Conclusion

I am really not trying to suggest that our society has gone all downhill since some utopian point in our past, but I do like to think about the real results of what we think of as progress. As I was looking around (on the internet – there’s a new kind of speed there) I discovered an entry in Wikipedia on car culture that focuses on cars and addresses this same mindset of “what has really changed with this progress.”

What are your thoughts on the effect of rushing about in our society?

Categories
technology

Official vs Unofficial

Ever since I became aware of Mormons Made Simple I have been considering whether I should share the site with others. It is intended to be a resource for those who are not familiar with the LDS church to understand the church as an organization and as a culture. My conflict was not that it is a poor or misleading site – it isn’t as far as I can see – but rather that it is not an official site from the church and I prefer to point people to the official sources of things – especially since the church has an official site specifically for those who are not members of the church.

In and of itself my initial question does not seem widely important, but it led me to another more general question which I thought about for some time. Is it a good thing for members of the church to create their own resources when the church has already provided resources for the same specific purpose? My conclusion was that we have been commanded to “do many things of their own free will, and bring to pass much righteousness.” (Doctrine and Covenants 58:27) I could not predict how much righteousness might come to pass from Mormons Made Simple, but it seems a good thing for people to be doing of their own free will.

My question for other people is, would you be more likely to recommend the official site, or the unofficial site to people? Are there times when one might be better than the other?

Categories
thoughts

Questions for an Apostle

I have often thought that it would be exciting to have the opportunity to sit down with an apostle and have a conversation. In other words, more than simply shaking a hand, but really having a back and forth discussion. Today the thought struck me that I have no idea what I would ask or talk about if I ever got such an opportunity.

I imagine a biographer or a reporter getting those opportunities and realize that those situations have built in questions. The biographer knows what he has already studied and what more he wants to learn from the interview. The reporter knows the topic of the article he plans to write and asks questions accordingly. So I began to wonder – what would other people ask if they had a chance to speak to an apostle?

If you know what you would ask in such a situation please share – I’d really like to know.

Categories
culture politics

Funding Fire Departments

As we drove through heavy smoke that seemed to be blowing north from the fire in Draper last night, our girls started asking about firefighters and how we (as a society) support them. It got me thinking about firefighters as a service of government. Although they are every bit as legitimate and important a service as police, I rarely think about the Fire Department in relation to government.

Since my brain was chewing on the subject it apparently decided to throw me a what-if to consider. I wanted to share here to see what others thought.

Virtually every structure is insuread against fire – this means that insurance companies are highly interested in the work of firefighters. Would it make sense to privatize the fire department by having insurance companies be in charge of funding them? If so, what kinds of changes in service would you expect to see?

I’m not trying to suggest that our fire departments need to be privatized or that they should be. I just wanted to get some feedback on that random idea.

Categories
meta State

Regions for BNN/Utah

It’s been a busy month for me personally since I asked about implementing regional classifications for Utah blogs listed on BlogNetNews. I am finally ready to implement regional categories. The options are going to be:

The classifications will be self-selection – if you want to be identified in a particular region you just email me or leave a comment with the region(s) you want to be listed in. Please only request to be listed in regions where you have an interest (that would generally be living or working in that region). Please do not choose Salt Lake if your only interest is that you follow the legislative session.

If you are going to be listed in a region with two names, please vote on which name you prefer to use. (We’ll use straight democracy – I’ll break any ties.)

As an example, I could be listed in the Davis (live) and Salt Lake (work) regions – in the past I could have been listed in Utah Valley (before I moved).

Update 8/28/08: The names of the geographic categories have been settled. Only Utah Valley has more than the basic name attached to it (valley) because “Utah” might appear to be general for the whole state (even though that would have been redundant).

Categories
culture National politics

Who Are You Voting Against?

I really wish I could find the article I glanced at yesterday postulating that the presidential race is not looking like a blowout for Obama because the contest has been framed as a referendum on Obama rather than a referendum on Bush and the Republican party.

The thought that struck me is that when an election gets framed as a referendum on a candidate that candidate or party usually loses. I think that the reason that Gore did not receive enough support in 2000 to overcome the Nader voters is that the voters were fatigued by the emotionally charged Clinton presidency. In 2004 the vote got framed as a question of whather Kerry was really presidential or if he was just another politician. I think that 1996 was 2004 with Dole in the place of Kerry.

The exception seems to be 1988 which was a referendum on Reagan in which Bush I won.

What do you think? Is this how the outcome of our elections is decided – by voting against whoever the debate is centered on? (If so I would predict that 2010 will be a bad year to be a Democrat seeking election – regardless of the outcome this year.)

Categories
meta State

Editing for BNN/Utah

I have been given the opportunity to function at the editor for BlogNetNews/Utah. That is not likely to produce visible changes to the site because the purpose of BNN is to remain neutral while providing an image of what’s happening in the various corners of the blogosphere. Functionally, it means that when people want to have their blog added to BNN/Utah I will be the one who receives and processes the request. On the other hand, I have been invited (if I choose) to categorize the Utah blogs geographically.

There is currently some categorization between liberal and conservative leaning blogs and a category to identify blogs connected to MSM organizations but there has been no geography-based categorization thus far. You can see how the categorization works by clicking on the arrow next to “Sort By” in the header. If you visit BNN/Virginia you can see an example of geographic categories in use.

Having been given that invitation, my first action as editor is to ask my fellow Utah bloggers whether they would be interested in geographic categorization – which would allow people to sort blogs based on those categories – and if so, do you have any recommendations on what categories would make sense for Utah?

Categories
National politics

Imagine This

I know I’m this will sound crazy but imagine for a minute that Mexico (or some of the 31 states of Mexico) were to petition to become states as part of the United States. (There is nothing in the constitution to stop them so long as they have, or choose to adopt, a republican form of government.) How would you react? How would you expect your fellow citizens to react?

After imagining the unimaginable, does this thought affect the way you think about immigration (illegal or otherwise)?

Categories
culture politics

Candidate Questions vs President Questions

Thanks to Scott’s post on Presidential Qualifications I really got thinking about the difference between what we should look for in a president and what we often do look for in a candidate. Scott quoted three questions that Dr. Lawrence Lindsey suggested we should be asking to choose a good president:

    • “Has the candidate faced a crisis or overcome a major setback in his or her life?”
    • “Has has the candidate had a variety of life experiences?”
    • “Can the candidate tell the difference between a foreign enemy and a political opponent?”

To those questions, Scott then listed the three questions that we seem to ask about the candidates that we choose to support:

    • Is this candidate most likely to win?
    • How closely do I agree with this candidate?
    • Do I like this candidate’s personality?

Now Scott leaves me asking myself, are these two sets of questions complimentary to each other, contradictory to each other, or independent of each other?

I tend to think that the two sets of questions are complimentary. The first set (for selecting a president) should be asked first because there is nothing to gain by choosing a candidate who can win if they can’t pass the test of whether they are likely to be a good president. I think that set of questions is what I was crudely trying to answer through my candidate endorsement series earlier last year. If we could ask those questions generally we might be better at retaining the good candidates who sometimes drop out early when they can’t capture our attention with the second set of questions. On the other hand, there is a lot of value to be had by applying the second set of questions to the available candidates after they have been passed through the sieve of the first question set.

Once the primaries are over, if your favored candidates are no longer in the race it can be useful to return to the first set of questions and see which of the remaining candidates (if any) qualify. (The only time the second set of questions should apply is when there are multiple candidates available that pass that first critical standard.)

Now I ask myself if my positions on the candidates would have been any different if I had followed this process more exactly for the 2008 field.

Categories
politics State

Term Limits

I asked what people were interested in and the interest seemed to be term limits. I decided to do some initial research and found a good resource on term limits. The states that currently have term limits are:

  • ARIZONA
  • ARKANSAS
  • CALIFORNIA
  • COLORADO
  • FLORIDA
  • LOUISIANA
  • MAINE
  • MICHIGAN
  • MISSOURI
  • MONTANA
  • NEBRASKA
  • NEVADA
  • OHIO
  • OKLAHOMA
  • SOUTH DAKOTA

In addition I was surprised to find that Utah was on a short list of states where term limits had been enacted and later repealed.

  • IDAHO
  • MASSACHUSETTS
  • OREGON
  • UTAH
  • WASHINGTON
  • WYOMING

A little more digging and I learned that Utah enacted term limits by statute in 1994 (just before I was paying close attention to politics) and repealed them in 2003 before they ever affected any legislators (the limit was 12 years and the statute only lasted for 9). So now we know that our Utah legislature is not anxious to limit themselves.

Now I would love to hear from anyone who has experience in the states with term limits. Jason has voiced his unqualified support of the limits in his state. Does anyone else want to share? Are there any opinions on lifetime bans versus limits of consecutive years of service? I am not ready to choose sides on that yet.

I would also be interested to know more about the decision to end limits before they began in Utah. Perhaps Steve Urqhart might have some insights there that he would share (hint – information from 2003, or hints on where to get some would be nice because my short search led to a bunch of dead links).