Tag: insights
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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…
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Information Processing
Thanks to Joshua for pointing to this quote from Douglas Adams (author of Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy). Of course you can’t ‘trust’ what people tell you on the web anymore than you can ‘trust’ what people tell you on megaphones, postcards or in restaurants. Working out the social politics of who you can trust…
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Our Constitutional Foundation
My preferred perspective about Memorial Day is that it is not simply a day to remember those who have given “the last full measure of devotion” but also a day to reflect on what it is they were protecting. To do that we must look to the foundation of our country. In that mindset I…
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Balanced Government
I have long believed that Utah needs balanced government. I have made most of the same arguments on this issue as were raised in that article. Having a single party in power does not generally provide the give-and-take, compromise-and-entertain-new-ideas environment that is the strength of a democratic society. One of the problems that encourages the…
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Heroes and Idols
Laura and I were having a fascinating conversation with good friends which rolled around to the topic of teaching children about their future roles as adults. We got to talking about the types of role models that children have and the messages that they are being fed from our society about those adult roles. Out…
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Mob Intelligence
I love reading Terry Pratchett, for the humor, but I just discovered an extremely useful mathematical equation in Maskerade to calculate the intelligence of any mob. “The IQ of a mob is the IQ of its most stupid member divided by the number of mobsters.” Now if only we had an accurate definition of what…
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Inherently Unequal
My whole family is getting over being sick (here’s a story about that) and as I reflected on the experience I was thinking how nice it would have been to have the kinds of beds they had 150 years ago (pre-industrial age) where you would clean a mattress after someone threw up on it by…
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Cell-Phone Culture
Over the course of the last year I have become very aware of what I call our cell-phone culture. Let me preface my commentary by saying that I have nothing against cell phones. I used to have one, and the day may come when I have one again, but currently I do not have one.…
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Good News for the G.O.P.
While I was just catching up on the news, I came across an article in the New York Times declaring that the rank and file memebers of the G.O.P. are not following the dictates of Karl Rove. I think that’s great news. I have thought many times that the Democratic Party seemed to have lost…