Tag: connections

A New Generation?

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I had not planned to write anything particularly focused on the anniversary of 9/11. Certainly I am not surprised by the number of people who are writing about that. When I read The September 11 Generation Doesn’t Forget it got me wondering how much of the attitudes in that article were real and how much they were based on perceptions from a partisan standpoint. I also wondered if we had really gained a new distinct generation. If anyone has read The Fourth Turning they would recognize the significance of that.

I was disappointed to see that the inappropriate attitudes among liberals that were portrayed in the article were not merely the fancy of a conservative writer. I saw some clearly inappropriate posts on a “progressive” blog here in Utah. I won’t link to the post because any coverage that post gets is more than it deserves. In fairness, that same blog later posted a much more appropriate dissenting opinion. (I won’t link to that either because it leads so easily to the other post.) I’m not ignorant that there is plenty to criticize in our current administration, but some kinds of dissent are more destructive and less acceptable than others.

For an example of what I consider to be the best kind of commemoration for this date see SLCSpin. Like others have said – get out and vote today. Exercising that American privilege is the best commemoration of any important event in American history. For anyone in Lehi, you can learn about the candidates (if you have not already) from Utah-Candidates.com.

Tags citizenship, connections, discourse, generations, Lehi, media

culture

Quality Argument

Here is why I love to read The Utah Hornet’s Nest – he writes about “Why I Oppose Vouchers” rather than resorting to writing about “Why voucher supporters are trying to sacrifice your children for money.” We can always use more solid examples of “what I believe and why” on both sides of any argument to replace some of the “what can I say to bully people into believing me (or voting for me or the issue I am promoting).”

Tags connections, discourse, Education, State

General

Good Advice

Political columnists don’t generally offer advice that is generally applicable to life. One exception to that comes from Doug Giles (writing about Larry Craig):

To heck with public opinion and what people will think. Focus rather on the inevitable mano-a-mano that you will one day have with God (and He can’t be buffaloed). Let that pending appointment guide thee to get real with yourself, your family, and the public.

Imagine what life would be like if everyone took that attitude when making decisions.

Rather surprisingly this ties into something I thought of in Sunday School today. The lesson was on obedience:

An angel of the Lord appeared unto Adam, saying: Why dost thou offer sacrifices unto the Lord? And Adam said unto him: I know not, save the Lord commanded me. (Moses 5:6)

My thought on that was that Adam remembered what had happened the last time he disobeyed. He did not intend to be coerced into disobedience, as Eve had been, just because he did not know the reason for the commandment.

Tags connections, current events, religion

culture

Heights of Public Discourse

Post author By David
Post date July 23, 2007
No Comments on Heights of Public Discourse

I posted in June about the voucher debate exemplifying the worst of political discourse. Apparently Frank had similar thoughts about the voucher debate while reading The Audacity of Hope. I really liked Frank’s post because it illustrates one of the root causes of our unhealthy levels of partisanship that we currently have in Washington (and around the country). It also serves as a good illustration of why I consider Obama to be a top tier candidate even though I disagree with him on a range of issues. He understands the root cause of our political problems.

Frank has also written a second post about where he, as a conservative, agrees with Barak Obama.

Tags connections, discourse, government, national candidates

General

Political Excitement

I noticed last week that I had not found much commentary worth marking in my daily reading of the news and the many blogs I follow. I went on vacation for a couple of days so that I read nothing for nearly 4 days. When I got back I was surprised at the number of things I found worth reading. If I didn’t know better I would think that I had lowered my standards on what was worth reading during my break. The fact is that for some reason there was just an unusual amount of very good commentary over the weekend.

There were two major topics, plus some good commentary that I will cover in my upcoming Fourth of July post.

One topic that I saw a lot of commentary about was immigration reform. This makes sense because it was being debated (and eventually killed) in the Senate. There were two angles of discussion there. One was about what bad legislation it would have been. The second was what we can learn about the changing face of politics in our connected world.

One particularly good post came from Steve Urquhart, who is both blogger and politician. He takes this "victory of the people" and reminds those who have worked so hard to defeat the bill that there is still work to be done, and that part of that work is to actively help legislators navigate in the new, and increasingly connected world by "embracing Senators who engage directly with the people." The second thing that the victors need to do is foster "a productive, result-oriented dialogue on immigration."

The second common topic surprised me. It was government provided health insurance . The surprise was not the topic, which is only going to get more air time as the 2008 elections heat up (only 16 months to go). What surprised me was that up until now everything I have read on the topic has amounted to varying degrees of "let’s make it happen." Suddenly I have multiple independent sources taking the time to argue why it’s not such a good idea.

Tags connections, technology

culture

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 and why is, quite literally, what a very large part of our brain has evolved to do. For some batty reason we turn off this natural skepticism when we see things in any medium which require a lot of work or resources to work in, or in which we can’t easily answer back â€“ like newspapers, television or granite. Hence ‘carved in stone.’ What should concern us is not that we can’t take what we read on the internet on trust â€“ of course you can’t, it’s just people talking â€“ but that we ever got into the dangerous habit of believing what we read in the newspapers or saw on the TV â€“ a mistake that no one who has met an actual journalist would ever make.

This goes hand in hand with an argument that some people have heard me make about our “information society” as we call it. In a society so full of information sources the great challenge and skill is to be able to identify which sources are accurate or trustworthy. That is the skill that we need to have and that we need to pass on to our children. If Adams was right about humans being naturally hard-wired for this then we should do just fine.

The whole piece was published in 1999 which has given us 8 years to prove that he was right on target. Go read it.

Tags connections, insights, technology

National

The Electoral College

I have found Oval Office 2008 to be a great place to go for commentary on the 2008 Presidential elections. Normally they don’t get into politics outside of the presidential candidates, but today they made an exception. They reported that Maryland had enacted a law which would assign their electoral college votes to the winner of the national popular vote regardless of who wins in Maryland. The only catch is that the law will only go into effect if states representing at least 270 electoral votes enact similar laws. There are a number of states that have considered doing something like this. Who knows what will happen.

There is an interesting discussion in the comments of that post about the constitutionality of this move. My own feeling on the subject is that I would always oppose this type of move. I think that the founding fathers did not create the electoral college on a whim and I don’t buy the argument that it was because they could not count the popular vote without a computer. Then again, I think that each state should award their electoral votes proportional to the results of the popular vote in their state rather than block voting. That would make it so that candidates would find some value in appealing to states with small electoral vote constituencies. It would also mean that they could not afford to ignore a large state where they have no chance of winning outright.

I have argued before that under the current system it does not matter if you are from Utah or New York, your vote does not count in national elections because the electors in your state are predetermined. The current system has its flaws, but I’m not sure the system of just going with the winner of the popular vote is better. We are a republic after all and not a democracy. This was by design so lets be careful before we redesign the system.

Tags connections, Constitution

life meta

Reach Upward

I have been wanting to post some thoughts on Scott Hinrichs post Gross Incompetence? As I have come back to it, I realize that I could quote much of the same material he is quoting or I could thoroughly botch an attempt to add something to what he said. Instead I have decided to share this as an example of the thoughtful posts that I have come to enjoy from Scott. He comes up with some good sources and always leaves you thinking.

I agree with him about 95% of the time. The other 5% I consider that I have not yet formed an opinion on the subject. Never can I reject his arguments outright, and never do I finish reading a post from Scott and feel I’ve wasted my time.

Tags connections, reactions

General

Candidate Announcements

This 2008 election is already shaping up to be a different animal from previous presidential elections as far as how campaigns are run and how the media is involved. Over at Oval Office 2008 comes the suggestion that a candidate could make “an announcement previewing his pre-announcement of his intent to announce that he will announce.” I’d say that pretty well covers our news coverage of presidential candidates. That caused me to chuckle because those who follow politics pretty well know who is (or will be) running and those who don’t follow politics almost certainly don’t care this far in advance. The only reason I care about the announcements is that I use that (or rather, the formal FEC filing that goes with it) as the line of demarcation between those I study for endorsement and those I don’t.

Tags 2008, candidates, connections, funny

culture

Interesting Idea

So, this idea of a Redesigned alphabet is apparently not new. I was intrigued by the alphabet shown on Northtemple but I but I was less impressed by the font I found from the comments under the original post. The idea is interesting, and there could certainly be some interesting alphabets generated which have identical upper and lower case, but as proven by my links, smallcaps can simulate the effect with any font available so it’s not that hard to do. I’m almost tempted to make this post in small caps to prove the point.

Tags connections, random, thoughts