Tag: thoughts

Categories
culture

Formalism and Details

I have been thinking about the merits of formalism in our laid-back society. I wonder how many people even have a basic understanding of parliamentary procedure or know what Robert’s rules of order are. I suspect that more people are familiar with the details of table manners than are familiar with the details of how to run an organized meeting.

I studied Robert’s rules of order when I was starting as the president of a graduate student organization. Before that I was aware of the general structure of parliamentary procedure but not with the details. Now, as I question if these are dying arts, I start to wonder what we might gain by making people more knowledgeable about these kinds of formalisms. In the world of text messaging is there something to be gained by putting more emphasis on the rules of spelling, grammar and punctuation.

I really would like to know what other people think about this. What is the value of the details? Are we losing those skills in our society?

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
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
culture life

Neighborly – Like Leonard Goss

I was having a rough day today so I was pleased that Laura showed up at the office with the kids to give me a ride home. Not two blocks from work we turned a corner, hit the gutter, and one of our tires blew out. Little did we know that we were right in front of the home of Leonard Goss and family. Mrs. Goss saw us emptying the trunk to start changing the tire and volunteered her husband to help me out.

Leonard came over and cheerfully offered his energy, experience, and tools (which were nicer than the little jack and lug wrench that were in the back of my van). He didn’t just help me put on the spare tire, he looked at his watch and suggested that we take his car to the tire store before they closed in 15 minutes to get the tire fixed. While Leonard was helping me, his family was playing host to my family in their yard, letting my girls play on their trampoline and helping Laura make a bottle for Isaac.

What could have been an added strain on an already wearisome day turned out to be a very pleasant hour. As we thanked Leonard and his family for their help he responded with, “that’s what we’re supposed to do right, help each other out?”

Of course he’s right, that’s what neighbors are for (even the ones who live over a mile away whom you’ve never met before), but he went beyond helping and completely turned our predicament around. I hope I can be as helpful when I see someone in need.

Categories
life

Look to the Foundation

I’m not sure what started this train of thought in my mind, but I have been thinking about how things get misrepresented in public understanding. I’m sure that makes no sense to lots of people, but perhaps some examples may illustrate what I mean.

I have often heard someone excuse something they wanted to do by exclaiming that we live in a free country. What does it mean to live in a free country? Examine the foundation – in this case that would be the Constitution.

Currently we are hearing more about the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (LDS church) in the news largely because we have a church member running for President. Once that discussion gets started there are many people inside and outside the LDS church who are eager to elaborate on the beliefs and practices of the church. It is easy to bring up the practice of polygamy in early church history. Unfortunately, we always talk about this past practice in the light of current social values and circumstances rather than in the context of the times when it was practiced.

Another topic for discussion is the history of blacks holding the priesthood. Once again there is no mention that at the time that practice began, in the 1830’s, the belief that blacks were not equal to whites in the eyes of God was quite widespread. Those who argue that other churches gave their priesthood to blacks never consider that they also had segregated congregations which would almost require that they give pastoral authority to blacks for the black congregations. The LDS church has never had segregated congregations. The only segregation of congregations is segregation of geography. In other words we have all white congregations in all white areas and all black congregations in all black areas. So long as there is a mixture of races within the geographic boundaries of the congregation there is a mixture of races in the congregation – possible exceptions would be if there was a language rather than a geographic segregation.

The other thing that is never considered is that other churches give their priesthood based on education. Those colleges who receive federal money and provide theological degrees would have been required to give degrees to black students even if they didn’t like the idea. Maybe we need to be careful to look at those different foundations to realize that we are comparing apples to oranges.

If you desire to know about the beliefs of the LDS church you have to look to the foundation which is the Articles of Faith. Whatever other information you might receive, whether from members of the LDS church or not, should be tested against that foundation.

UPDATE 5/30/2007: I just found this column on candidate religions as a political consideration (yes, it was focused on Mitt Romney and the LDS church). I think that my recommendation to look to the foundation is more valuable when investigating the religion from a theological perspective, but the guidelines in that column seem just right for evaluating a religion from a social or political perspective.

Categories
life Local politics State

Moving Language

I attended another rally sponsored by C.O.S.T. to talk about the Mountain View Corridor (MVC). Any regular reader here will know that I am very much in favor of the positions advocated by C.O.S.T. and that I have very defined positions about the correct course of action where the MVC project is concerned.

As a known sympathizer with C.O.S.T., I am sorry to report that the rally tonight was probably not helpful to what they are trying to accomplish. The problem was that the tone and language of the rally were too negative. I could see the reactions of many of the people in attendance who went from interested to apathetic.

Interestingly, I had read earlier about how words can spin an argument one way or another. C.O.S.T. stands for Citizens Organized for Smarter Transportation. This sends a positive, issue oriented message. The rally was billed as a “protest rally” which has a negative spin. Unfortunately the rally had a negative orientation as well and the positive message about better alternatives was lost.

The positive side of their argument, which has attracted me, is that there are better alternatives to fix the traffic problem than what UDOT is proposing. These alternatives can alleviate traffic more effectively than the UDOT proposals. They are in favor of a transit system and commercial development that would reduce the need for commuting by providing good jobs closer to home.

The attitude that should be taken is, “let’s work with UDOT to help them see the error of their plans.” Unfortunately the tone of the meeting was, “fight UDOT – they’re trying to destroy our city.”

There are real problems to be addressed with the current UDOT proposals, but instead os spending time showing pictures of dead animals while talking about trash and roadkill, the meeting should have spent more time talking about more substantive concerns such as the possibility that the 2100 North freeway would further impede North/South traffic through Lehi when the city is already divided by I-15 cutting through it. Instead of talking about the height of the proposed freeway there should have been more emphasis on the traffic mess that will result where the Mountain View Corridor reconnects with I-15 just like the connection between I-215 and I-15. During the heavy traffic periods those interchanges come to a standstill – so much for the benefit of another freeway.

I want to see more talking about changing our city to reduce the need to commute. We should be talking about improving the city for the future so that we don’t have to spend our time sounding like poor, picked-on little citizens in this forgotten hamlet being ignored by the big, bad, bureaucratic government agency.

Categories
life technology

Protect Your Credit

I got a “please pass it on” email that actually looked useful. Being generally unwilling to pass emails on, and considering that most of my email contacts would already have a copy from the person who sent it to me, I thought I would post a condensed version of the information here. I have verified the numbers at the bottom of the post. These are suggestions to protect yourself from fraud and identity theft in case your wallet or credit cards are lost or stolen.

  1. Do not sign the back of your credit cards. Instead, put “PHOTO ID REQUIRED.” VISA requirements state that merchants should ask cardholders to sign their cards even if they have written “see ID” on their cards. My brother also tells me that stores where he lives won’t take unsigned cards even with Photo ID.
  2. When you are writing checks to pay on your credit card Accounts, DO NOT put the complete account number on the “For” line. Instead, just put the last four numbers.
  3. Put your work phone # on your checks instead of your home phone. If you have a PO Box use that instead of your home address. Never have your SS# printed on your checks.
  4. Make a photocopy of both sides of any ID you carry in your wallet and keep the copy in a safe place. This preserves any information you might need to report fraud or place a hold.

If your wallet is ever stolen:

  1. Cancel your credit cards immediately – the key is having the toll free numbers and your card numbers handy.
  2. File a police report immediately in the jurisdiction where your credit cards, etc., were stolen.
  3. Call the 3 national credit reporting organizations immediately to place a fraud alert on your name and also call the Social Security fraud line number. From the email:

I had never heard of doing that until advised by a bank that called to tell me an application for credit was made over the internet in my name. The alert means any company that checks your credit knows your information was stolen, and they have to contact you by phone to authorize new credit.

By the time I was advised to do this, almost two weeks after the theft, all the damage had been done. There are records of all the credit checks initiated by the thieves’ purchases, none of which I knew about before placing the alert. Since then, no additional damage has been done, and the thieves threw my wallet away this weekend (someone turned it in). It seems to have stopped them dead in their tracks.

Now, here are the numbers you always need to contact if your wallet, etc., has been stolen:

One thing that I thought about was that having a photocopy of all your credit cards (front and back) would be a little bit like keeping post-it notes with all your passwords. I think that credit card companies should send a fraud card that you could keep and even copy which would look like your regular card, except that it would be changed.

They could include a bogus name on the card (since you know your real name) which would have the same structure as your real name – John Doe or John B Doe. If they wanted to include a magnetic strip on the back it could be encoded to indicate that the card was fraudulent. They could include exactly as much of your real card number and expiration date as they would want if you are reporting a stolen card – the rest of the numbers would be bogus. Even if that was the full card number, the card would not have the correct name so thieves would not be able to use it. The back of the card could include the phone number to report fraud rather than the phone number for account maintenance (assuming they are different). They could also include a falsified CVV2 number – that would be on the front of American Express cards and the back of other cards. I imagine it would look similar to the card below.

Visa Card

UPDATE: As suggested in the comments – make sure to call your bank right away if you have checks or a debit card stolen.

Categories
life

Rules for Life

We have reduced the number of rules for our children to four. We think that the kids should be able to remember four rules and we are confident that anytime they break a rule we can identify which one they are having problems with. The four rules are:

  1. Obey Mom and Dad
  2. Love Other People
  3. Play and Have Fun
  4. Learn

As we have been trying to focus on those four rules I have been thinking that the rules to live a happy life are probably simpler than we often expect. I would not be surprised to learn that the Lord really has a very few (meaning less than 10) basic rules for us which should govern our actions. Christ suggested only two – love God and love our neighbors – which correspond very nicely with the first two rules that we are teaching our girls. . .

Categories
politics

What Makes a Good Candidate

I have begun to think about what attributes a good candidate should have. It started with the thought which has long prevented me from seriously considering running for public office, which is that I am not flashy. People do not pick me out of a crowd for any reason unless they know me. That made me wonder how I would try to appeal to people if I were running for office. The answer seems blindingly obvious now, I would let people get to know me, and try to get to know them. That would mean meeting with people in small groups where we could interact personally.

At first I thought this would rule out a large campaign. While those campaigns are known for the advertisements and flyers and speeches to crowds of thousands, I think that a candidate with a good organization could focus his time on meeting individuals while his organization took care of the advertisements and arranging the speeches to large audiences. In fact I think that the candidate would be better able to inspire the kind of grassroots campaign that everyone talks about if they focus their energy on inspiring individuals by letting people get to know them and feel connected and committed to them.

The more I think about it, I realize that the people that make the worst officials (in my experience) are those who lose touch with the people they are supposed to represent. In some cases they never really knew and understood their constituencies in the first place.

Does anyone want to add their thoughts on the subject?

Categories
life

Every Day Should Be Mother’s Day

I don’t really care about Mother’s Day as an excuse to celebrate. I think of all the comments I heard today about fathers and/or children making breakfast-in-bed for Mom and then I find myself standing at the sink doing the dishes thinking, “this would look like something I do on Mother’s Day as a treat for Laura.” The thing that bugs me is, it’s not. I’m doing the dishes on Mother’s Day because they need to be done, just like I do the dishes on a rather regular basis because it’s a courteous thing to do. I watch the kids on Mother’s Day so that Laura can have some time alone just like I do on other days because it’s nice for her to be relieved of the endless strain of taking care of the kids every second of the day.

So I begin to wonder why we have Mother’s Day, is it just a cheap excuse to fail to honor and appreciate mothers on the other 364 days they are working for us? I would be surprised if there was a mother anywhere who would honestly prefer to sleep in and have breakfast in bed twice a year to pamper her (Mother’s Day and her birthday) rather than have someone step in and help with the dishes, the kids, the laundry, and the cooking multiple times a week just because that’s what it means to be partners in family life.

The best purpose that Mother’s Day should serve is to have an outward celebration of motherhood that our children can recognize while they are too young to notice that Dad is always finding ways to help relieve the burden that Mom carries every day.