I’ve been reading Triumphs of Experience and really coming to appreciate the value of prospective longitudinal studies. I’ll write a review of the book after I finish it (and I might finish as early as tonight). The limitations of this study are well known to researchers but despite those limitations the study has incredible value. Imagine the value of a study that didn’t have those limitations.
Tag: thoughts
We just had an election. Once it was over some people began talking about seceding. This is not the first time the United States has faced such a situation. I was reminded of that after seeing Lincoln. As we talked after the movie Laura asked why we fought rather than just letting the southern states leave. We talked about some of the implications of secession – it is certainly not a simple topic – but as I have been thinking about it I came to the conclusion that the fact that there is no provision for secession in the Constitution might need to be changed at some point. With that in mind I decided to draft such a provision to further explore the nuances of the concept of secession.
I would like to make it clear that I am not in favor of seceding at this time nor do I foresee a time when I would favor it but I think that creating a clear path for secession might be useful in making the possibility more understandable for those who might wish to consider it. In fact, if crafted correctly it might even serve as a deterrent to some who might pursue the idea without due consideration.
I based my draft on the concepts embodied in the provisions for the admission of new states (Article IV Section 3). Specifically I wanted to promote self determination, a deliberate process, and continued order. Here it is:
States may petition the Congress to secede from the Union. The Congress must vote on a treaty of secession within two years of the petition or else the petitioning state may offer its own treaty of secession which the Congress must vote on within 10 days. The President may not veto a treaty of secession unless he is a resident of the petitioning state or the treaty was drafted by Congress within the two years allowed. Secession shall not be completed until after a one year waiting period which begins after the Congress and the Legislature of the petitioning state have ratified a treaty of secession and after the Legislature and the people of the petitioning state have each voted in favor of secession in separate votes conducted at least 350 and no more than 400 days apart. If the treaty of secession is ratified more than four years after the vote of the residents of the seceding state, the residents of the seceding state must approve the treaty of secession in a popular vote during the one year waiting period.
During the one year waiting period the seceding state shall have all the rights and obligations of all other states in the Union. If the President is a resident of a seceding state the vice president shall assume the office of president at the beginning of the waiting period for the duration of the term.
Seceding states may be readmitted to the Union in the same manner as new states at any time but must remain independent from other political unions for a period of five years following their formal secession.
Parts of states may secede from the Union by first following the procedures to become a new state. In cases of a partial state secession a treaty of secession must be ratified by the Congress and the Legislature of the newly approved state and the one year waiting period must be observed but the people of the new state may vote in favor of secession prior to the creation of the new state and the legislature of the new state may vote in favor of secession anytime within the first 400 days after the creation of the new state regardless of when the people of the newly created state voted in favor of secession.
It was interesting to see what details came to my mind as I tried crafting this provision. I would love to hear from others if there are issues I have failed to address or if there are things you would change about this draft.
I’d also be interested in hearing any other thoughts about secession that anyone would care to share.
I’m probably a decade late in actually reading the Cluetrain Manifesto for all I had heard about it for most of that decade that I have been not reading it. In the process I certainly picked up on the message that markets and business are driven by conversation and that those institutions who strive to manage or manipulate the conversation would find themselves on the losing end of the internet revolution.
In some ways I’m glad that I read it 13 years after it was written because I have the opportunity to look at how things have changed over the last 13 years in the way of internet, business, and technology and compare that to what Cluetrain was saying about the changes being wrought by the spread of the internet. The first impression I had was that the increasing levels of communication discussed by Cluetrain have continued to grow and show no signs of decreasing. On the other hand, the prediction that organizations would have to open up their communication to outsiders or be left behind has yet to take hold. Certainly many organizations are getting better at opening up channels and communicating in a more human way but there is still no lack of examples of the Fort Business mindset.
The real idea that I took away from the book was that in the age of hyper-communication all aspects of business are at least partly a matter of selling yourself by building relationships. This is true for products as well as individuals.
When it comes to products we have moved into an age where traditional advertising is less and less trusted in comparison to personal opinion – especially when it is the opinions of people known to the person making the choice in question. I think it’s always been true that the opinions and experience of acquaintances tend to have more weight in influencing a person’s purchasing decisions than professional advertising. The difference today is that personal opinions are so much easier to share and find than they used to be.
As for people, the adage that it’s who you know, not what you know that counts holds true. If you are looking for a job either as an employee or a contractor you have to do more than list your skills, you increasingly need to demonstrate that you have the personality to positively represent those you would work for or with. With the increasingly open lines of communication everyone associated with an organization is part of the public relations team to one degree or another.
My conclusion is that to get ahead professionally it is necessary to get better at communicating with others consistently and across more channels both so that I can be better practiced at communicating my ideas and also so that I will be more well known by others so that they can be comfortable working with me when I can help them or when they can help me.
It’s time to set the record straight on the difference between the best BCS football programs and the best non-BCS football programs in response to the ill-advised and self-serving comments of Ohio State President E. Gordon Gee. TCU did their part responding on the field by beating 11-1 Big Ten co-champion Wisconsin (from Mr. Gee’s own BCS conference) and people have noticed.
Mr. Gee’s claim was that the schedule in a non-BCS conference could not compare to the schedule in a BCS conference. The fact is that conference schedules account for only 2/3 of the season and that strong BCS programs rarely play a decent opponent outside of their conference. They’re too busy playing the “Little Sisters of the Poor”—either weak teams from weak conferences or teams that do not even play at the FBS level. (Of course there are some rivalry exceptions but they are a minority of non-conference contests among BCS programs.) Non-BCS programs spend most of their non-conference games playing the toughest teams that are willing to agree to play from BCS conferences.
Categories
Receiving the Holy Ghost
It has been very amazing and gratifying in the last few days to watch Savannah since her baptism. On Sunday afternoon Savannah came to me and said that she had not felt anything change when she was confirmed and given the gift of the Holy Ghost. I reminded her that when the gift of the Holy Ghost is given we are invited to “receive the Holy Ghost.” I told her that we must work at doing those things which will invite the spirit of God to remain with us.
She told me that Ethan Miller, a boy in our ward who was also baptized last week, had said that he felt a change when he was given the gift of the Holy Ghost and I answered that some people do notice a change while others do not. Savannah’s response was insightful. She said, “Yes, our house hasn’t been suited to having the Spirit these last few days, people have been grumpy and not very nice.”
I can’t think of a more accurate summary of what things were like in the days leading up to her baptism. We were busy with all the regular tasks of life plus we had the excitement and stress of preparing for a big event plus Laura was helping out the kids swimming teacher get ready for the start of swim lessons this week. A spiritual atmosphere had definitely taken a back seat to a hectic and frazzled one last week.
Later Sunday evening Savannah got upset over how we were handling dinner with the result that she screamed at Laura and I and then stomped off to her room. Later I was pleasantly surprised as she came down the hall and very meekly said, “Dad, will you forgive me for screaming at you?”
I told her that I forgave her and then she said, “that’s hard, I’ve never had to ask someone to forgive me before.”
A minute later I heard her asking Laura for forgiveness as well. Laura later explained that she and Savannah had discussed forgiveness and repentance that morning. Apparently the discussion had an impact on Savannah and it’s clear that she is doing the work to receive the Holy Ghost.
I’ve been feeling the need to reorient my online (and offline) activity for a while now. It has been interesting to work through the process of identifying what needed to change and how. There may be some person out there who noticed yet another title change. I never was particularly comfortable with the previous title, but as I identified the kind of purpose and image I would like to pursue I am very excited about “The Zion Chronicle” as it captures what I am working toward and seems fitting. I expect to be doing a lot more here writing about life and society in a quest to identify and promote the development of Zion in my own life. Hopefully others will find some gems that can bring them to Zion (or Utopia, Shangri La, Eden, or whatever other name you might assign to your ideal for human society).
As part of this change I started using Stats Counter to have some idea of what is actually happening besides me writing and people commenting. Interestingly one of the first three searches that landed someone here at my site after I signed up for stats counter was a search for “sister beck conference talk.” I don’t know if my Canadian friend was looking for Sister Beck’s most recent conference talk or something else but they landed on a post I wrote in the aftermath of Sister Becks incredible talk “Mothers Who Know” from the October Conference of 2007.
As it had been so long since I wrote it I took the time to go read what I had written about the talk. When I read the post I was, quite frankly, disappointed that someone might see that as indicative of who I am. At the time I was so busy trying to keep my site from being overly religious in an attempt to foster an open political dialog that I said almost nothing of consequence and I completely failed to convey what an inspiring and inspired talk it was. That talk is a beacon to those wishing to establish a Zion rooted in a strong family culture and I managed to water down my reaction to the point that it sounded like little more than a breath of fresh air.
Since that time I broke my political writing off into another site and actually found that I was not comfortable maintaining the kind of political neutrality that lead me to give so little praise to such a wonderful talk. I have been pleased with the outcome of abandoning that neutrality in my political writings and now I am looking at refocusing on some spiritually significant topics here (some political others apolitical). I hope that others will never have any excuse to wonder at the depth of my feeling for the topics I address here like they might well have done when reading what I wrote in October of 2007.
Categories
Repentance and Forgiveness
Last night Laura commented on how amazingly forgiving Heavenly Father is toward His children. I’ve been thinking about that ever since then. It is true that He is incredibly forgiving (because He loves His children so much) and yet He cannot look upon sin with the least degree of allowance. Hence if we are to emulate Him in our actions we must learn how to love sinners while abhoring sin.
As I was thinking about this I realized that one of the reasons that He can forgive so freely and love so unconditionally (to forgive all but the single sin which can only be committed with the full knowledge and unassisted choice of the sinner) is that due to the nature of Eternal law His forgiveness does the sinner absolutely no good unless they choose to repent. Regardless of how merciful He is, the sinner cannot receive any glory that is governed by a law which they do not choose to obey.
Those who focus on the need for grace can rightly point out that without forgiveness from our Savior our repentence would be worthless because even with repentance “all have sinned and come short of the glory of God.” (Romans 3:23) While that doctrine is accurate it has no saving value because of how infinite our Father’s love is.
If we recognize that He already and unconditionally loves us enough to forgive anything except a conscious and fully informed rejection of Him and all that He offers us, we should find motivation in that knowledge to desire to repent. If we desire to repent we find, with that combination of faith and desire, the strength necessary to repent in order to receive the healing benefits of the atonement of Christ and the infinite love of our Father in Heaven.
With Cincinnati falling hard to Florida we can rest assured that there will be two and only two undefeated FBS football teams this year. Last year Utah failed to convince the AP voters that as the only undefeated team in the FBS they deserved at least a split of the title, despite the fact that they beat Alabama more convincingly than Florida had in the SEC Championship game. Of course that turned out to be a great excuse for Barack Obama, Orrin Hatch, and Mark Shurtleff (among others) to complain to Congress and the media about the BCS.
This year I have already heard some people who argue out of spite that the winner of the Alabama – Texas game should not be considered the National Champion. Personally I think that’s foolish. Whatever team wins that game will have gone undefeated having played against an undefeated team in their bowl game. What more could we ask of them? The same criteria will apply to the winner of the TCU – Boise State game and thus I argue that while the coaches are obligated to vote for the winner of Alabama-Texas the AP voters should create a split championship by voting for the winner of the TCU-Boise State game (unless Texas-Alabama is compelling while TCU-Boise State turns out to be a really sloppy game on both sides). In fact, Obama should follow his sportsman’s heart by inviting both teams to the White House and honoring them as is traditional for the National Champion. (If he really wants a playoff the President could invite them on the same day and watch them play a friendly scrimmage. 😉 )
I just had to get this out before the Fiesta Bowl began today so that I could be fair to both teams – especially considering I have a favorite in this contest. While I like both TCU and Boise State better than either Texas or Alabama I would definitely prefer to see TCU win.
Categories
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?
It’s amazing how many rules we have to govern everything we do. We took the family to the swimming pool today and were surprised at how few people there were there – until we learned that the pool had run out of plastic diaper covers, which are now required in addition to swim diapers after the rounds of sickness last year. Later in the day we had to return an ink cartridge that was bad and we learned about how strict the store policy is on returning ink.
In both cases the rules make sense when you understand why they were made, but it got me wondering if we would need all these rules if people would just be honest, reasonable, and responsible for their own actions. Sometimes it seems that many and strict rules or policies tend to encourage us to turn off our brains (especially for those who are low in the rule enforcement hierarchy) and abandon common sense or even simple decency (neither of those things happened today).