Friendship, it's complicated

I have a friend with a blog, (you can find it here...http://scott-williams.ca/, but wait don't go there yet, cause once you do and you experience his awesomeness, you won't be back) so he is a pretty good friend, the kind of friend who I would drop anything to help and I know would do the same for me (well if I am being honest, I know he would drop anything to help my wife, and I'm only pretty sure he would drop everything to help me), anyway...

Scott is a great writer, I mean really great. He makes me laugh, he makes me cry, he makes me embarassed and shameful, he challenges me...all with his writing. So what I want to say is "Screw you Scott". I don't want to read your blog and feel inadequate, I am pretty good at feeling inadequate all the time already, I don't need your help. I am supposed to be a professional communicator and I pale in comparison to your worst post. AAARRRGGHH! (okay the all caps were excessive).

I like Scott, I really do, I would just like him better if he was less good, more adequate like me. i wonder if he'll do that for me?

Is it all about habit?

I think a Friday near the end of January is the perfect day to reflect on all the New Year resolutions that I did not make this year. As I reflect it occurs to me that I have not been as successful in past years with my resolutions mainly because I do a poor job of making any new behavior become a habit. Instead I have the intended behavior remain as merely an intention. I intent to do more of this, or I intend to do more of that. Tomorrow I will make sure I do this and that and the other thing.

Actually doing those things is hard. Creating the routine where I give time and energy to remembering what it is I value and what it is I want to accomplish is hard to do. I imagine it is similar to the concept of some advertisements I have seen recently where there are snapshots of many different kids and they tell what they want to grow up to be. "I want to be a drug addict.", "I want to work for the man.", "I want to die an early death due to heart disease.". You've seen this one right?

We, meaning most of us, do a poor job of dreaming, of creating a vision of the future, of planning our own lives to become who we want to be. We instead react to the situations around us and through a combination of good and bad decisions we end up on a path. My path is not a bad path. Most of you are also on decent ones. Some of you are on poor ones at the moment. And we have all heard of the poor souls who are on really bad paths. The enlightening for me, as I sit here and reflect, is that the path, no matter how good or bad at the moment, is both behind us and in front of us. And we can choose to leave the path and trail-blaze at any moment. And perhaps the real solution to finding the good path is to get off the current path as quickly as possible. To do this I need an idea of the path I want. I need to be active and plan ahead to allow me to step off this path. This visioning will allow me motivation that I can use to channel time and energy into creating habits.

My future path:
I will become a steady writer who regularly puts time into reading, writing, editing, and submitting. I will take care of my physical health through regular exercise and conscientious eating. I will take care of my spiritual health through regular bible study and prayer.

My habits:
1. I will write every day. (A least one sentence towards a current project. Minimum.)
2. I will exercise five times a week. (And yes, Wii Fit counts...for now.)
3. I will read my bible every day and I will use that reading in at least a daily prayer.

The order may be wrong, but those are the habits I am choosing to focus on.

Tuesday disguised as a Monday - Shame

Tuesday after a long weekend...yes I am addressing you!

You should be ashamed of yourself, acting as if you are a Monday after a normal weekend. it is morally repugnant to deceive us in this way. You should step up and act like a Tuesday. By pretending to be a Monday you create a false pain on this day. We should come to work ready to celebrate not only the joy or the lengthened bonus weekend, but also the shortened and therefore less painful work week. Somehow, though, you steal this joy, we feel the agony as if you were a Monday. I say again, this is not right. Be ashamed, be very ashamed, and shape up, let us get back to enjoying this glorious and short work week, with ... oh bliss, another weekend ahead, and at this time, only 3 1/2 days to get through.

Consider yourself warned, oh spiteful Tuesday!

I have a Dragon in my garage

I recently read this...

The Dragon In My Garage

by Carl Sagan

"A fire-breathing dragon lives in my garage"

Suppose (I'm following a group therapy approach by the psychologist Richard Franklin) I seriously make such an assertion to you. Surely you'd want to check it out, see for yourself. There have been innumerable stories of dragons over the centuries, but no real evidence. What an opportunity!

"Show me," you say. I lead you to my garage. You look inside and see a ladder, empty paint cans, an old tricycle -- but no dragon.

"Where's the dragon?" you ask.

"Oh, she's right here," I reply, waving vaguely. "I neglected to mention that she's an invisible dragon."

You propose spreading flour on the floor of the garage to capture the dragon's footprints.

"Good idea," I say, "but this dragon floats in the air."

Then you'll use an infrared sensor to detect the invisible fire.

"Good idea, but the invisible fire is also heatless."

You'll spray-paint the dragon and make her visible.

"Good idea, but she's an incorporeal dragon and the paint won't stick." And so on. I counter every physical test you propose with a special explanation of why it won't work.

Now, what's the difference between an invisible, incorporeal, floating dragon who spits heatless fire and no dragon at all? If there's no way to disprove my contention, no conceivable experiment that would count against it, what does it mean to say that my dragon exists? Your inability to invalidate my hypothesis is not at all the same thing as proving it true. Claims that cannot be tested, assertions immune to disproof are veridically worthless, whatever value they may have in inspiring us or in exciting our sense of wonder. What I'm asking you to do comes down to believing, in the absence of evidence, on my say-so. The only thing you've really learned from my insistence that there's a dragon in my garage is that something funny is going on inside my head. You'd wonder, if no physical tests apply, what convinced me. The possibility that it was a dream or a hallucination would certainly enter your mind. But then, why am I taking it so seriously? Maybe I need help. At the least, maybe I've seriously underestimated human fallibility. Imagine that, despite none of the tests being successful, you wish to be scrupulously open-minded. So you don't outright reject the notion that there's a fire-breathing dragon in my garage. You merely put it on hold. Present evidence is strongly against it, but if a new body of data emerge you're prepared to examine it and see if it convinces you. Surely it's unfair of me to be offended at not being believed; or to criticize you for being stodgy and unimaginative -- merely because you rendered the Scottish verdict of "not proved."

Imagine that things had gone otherwise. The dragon is invisible, all right, but footprints are being made in the flour as you watch. Your infrared detector reads off-scale. The spray paint reveals a jagged crest bobbing in the air before you. No matter how skeptical you might have been about the existence of dragons -- to say nothing about invisible ones -- you must now acknowledge that there's something here, and that in a preliminary way it's consistent with an invisible, fire-breathing dragon.

Now another scenario: Suppose it's not just me. Suppose that several people of your acquaintance, including people who you're pretty sure don't know each other, all tell you that they have dragons in their garages -- but in every case the evidence is maddeningly elusive. All of us admit we're disturbed at being gripped by so odd a conviction so ill-supported by the physical evidence. None of us is a lunatic. We speculate about what it would mean if invisible dragons were really hiding out in garages all over the world, with us humans just catching on. I'd rather it not be true, I tell you. But maybe all those ancient European and Chinese myths about dragons weren't myths at all.

Gratifyingly, some dragon-size footprints in the flour are now reported. But they're never made when a skeptic is looking. An alternative explanation presents itself. On close examination it seems clear that the footprints could have been faked. Another dragon enthusiast shows up with a burnt finger and attributes it to a rare physical manifestation of the dragon's fiery breath. But again, other possibilities exist. We understand that there are other ways to burn fingers besides the breath of invisible dragons. Such "evidence" -- no matter how important the dragon advocates consider it -- is far from compelling. Once again, the only sensible approach is tentatively to reject the dragon hypothesis, to be open to future physical data, and to wonder what the cause might be that so many apparently sane and sober people share the same strange delusion.

I Actually agree here. Why, as Christians are we offended that someone chooses not to believe as we do. This is in some way a rejection of us and what we believe, but it is not personal. They simply need more than we can show. I used to be them. I used to not believe, and could not see the "Dragon" either. I do now, and perhaps because I used to be a non believer, I am not offended by those who don't believe. I am offended when they choose to attack me, but non belief, well that does not offend me at all.

Yes, I have a dragon in my garage, you cannot see it, cannot physically prove it, but it is there nonetheless. You do not have to believe it, lets just agree together thateither you know something I don't, or I know something you don't, and leave it at that. I will leave you alone, and you can leave me alone. I won't attack you, you won't attack me...if only.

Some comments stick with us

I was recently on a canoe trip with several friends. It was one of those guy trips where people make fun of each other and make rude comments and help each other out where necessary, a sort of male bonding ritual. I may or may not have expressed before that I am quite sarcastic and I used it to great extent on this trip.

Now I think that for the most part everyone had fun, and lots of verbal "shots" were taken by everyone. One night around the campfire one of the men commented to his brother about me, "everything he says is mean, haven't you noticed?"

The comment wasn't meant as anything big, it was in a way a put down of the brother, but it really hit me hard. I don't want to be mean and I definitely don't want people to think I am mean. The more I thought about it, the more I realized that I am kind of mean. I certainly am very good at it, if it is not a defining trait, it easily could be. Do I want it to be though? Is that how I want people to remember me?

Nope.

The challenge for me is that I don't know how to be a part of a group like that without being sarcastic and funny and well...mean. I need to learn though, I need to change this part of me. I really like those guys, a few of them are more important to me than I will ever be able to express. yet, I put them down, and perhaps, just perhaps, hurt someone when I meant to be funny.

I don't have a solution about how to change this part of me, and my relationships in these settings, but I do know that today is the only day I can begin to change, and so today I will begin. I will accept advice from anyone, because I am simply lost in this regard...suggestions anyone?


Dave

Emperor and the half wit

Today I read this quote...

It has always been the prerogative of children and half-wits to point out that the emperor has no clothes. But the half-wit remains a half-wit, and the emperor remains an emperor. - Neil Gaiman

I strongly suspect that I am the half wit that spends all his time pointing out that the Emperor has no clothes on. Perhaps if I spent less time seeking other's faults and working on my own, I would be a better, happier person...or not.

Lawyer steals Hot dog!

Each week I receive a news compilation email called This is True. I enjoy the stories and get a kick out of Randy's comments. This week one of the stories got my goat...

PROSECUTOR, CHARGE THYSELF: A hot dog vendor in Athens, Ga., called police after someone ate a hot dog, then refused to pay for it. When officers caught up with the suspect, he denied knowing anything about it -- but officers noted he had mustard and ketchup on his shirt. The officer gave William Michael Olson another chance to pay for the dog or face arrest. "You are going to lock me up for a f---ing hot dog?!" Olson demanded. Sure enough, he refused to pay and was arrested for theft and public intoxication. After he was booked, Olson, 36, who admitted he had been drinking, resigned from his job: until then, he was an assistant district attorney. (Athens Banner-Herald) ...Red wine for meat, white wine for fish, rose for hot dogs.


Here is what got me riled up, this guy was a lawyer! How does a guy like that get through law school, and pass the bar. How is it that we have decided that the knowledge alone is enough to do a job like that. It makes me quite upset to think that this guy represents us in court. We need to stop just taking "good" students and start taking good "people" into these programs. We live in a litigious world, and one of the reasons is that we have stopped caring about right and wrong, and seem to only care about win or lose. In that same vein, as i was watching College Basketball this weekend I was struck when Missouri (who were up by two points with little time on the clock) were fouled, the player who was fouled is not good at shooting free throws, so all of a sudden, his "injury" was too bad for him to shoot his free throws, instead the coach got to substitute someone form the bench. They hit both free throws and won the game. The coach followed the rules, but really is that what was right in this situation? maybe this player was really hurt, but I doubt it, I am sure he could have shot, but win at all costs seems to be the motto, not win honorably or lose honorably, just win.

It is an unfortunate thing that we have fallen to this lowly and miserable state. I find it embarassing to me as a human, that we are settiling for this lowly state.

The Lost Generation

Most likely anyone who spends any significant (read: owns a computer) time on the Internet has already seen this. Even more likely is that you could apply this to any generation - although it is targeted to (and made by a person in) the Millennial, Gen Y, Net Gen, Echo Boomers, iGeneration, etc.

At the time I am posting this the cumulative views are 4,385,187. It was originally posted November 30, 2007. Yup, a viral hit. But a fun view. Dave has told me that there is a church/Christianity-based version and they are all based on a commercial from Europe. Dave - please post/link to those if you are still able to find them.

Lost Generation



Here is the original video...


Here is the Christian version

Dave

The begining of the end...of the newspaper?

I have subscribed to a print version of a newspaper for a total of 2 years over my entire life. I subscribed to the Calgary Sun during the 2002-2003 basketball season as I was coaching, and I subscribed to the National Post in 2006. Both times I recycled and as I took boxes of papers to the big green bins I reflected on how many issues I did not even crack open and how many others I only scanned a section or two. I just do not have the time to read the paper.

I currently have a digital subscription to the Calgary Herald (for the past three years) and I do not even open the emails anymore. I do not have the time.

I have recently started using Google Reader to scan the blogs I am interested in and I have added several news feeds. I use the "Mark as Read" feature too often. I just do not have the time to read them all.

I do scan the headlines (sometimes) and I listen to news radio on my way to work. The radio, the old technology, is my largest source of news. Newspapers are dying.

This video is a great (20 min.) look at the closure of a paper - a complete closure, no digital edition will remain. I learned about this from Mitch Joel over at Six Pixels of Separation. You can read his blog post here.


Final Edition from Matthew Roberts on Vimeo.

Why am I a sports fan?

Considering there are more than 330 teams participating in Div. 1 basketball in the NCAA, and using this sport as a limited example, only 1 team will be crowned the National Champion at the end of the season, that leaves many, many fans disappointed. Considering also that in the 25 years I have been a college hoops fan the team I have chosen to follow, the North Carolina Tar Heels has won the championship twice (1993 and 2005). (They had previous to my following them also won championships in 1957 and 1982.) Looking only at the end-of-season result, I have been "disappointed" 23 times - a staggering 92% of the time. This is not a high rate of success. In those 25 years there have been 19 different teams who won those 25 championships (Kentucky(2), UNC(2), Duke (3), Uconn(2), and Florida(2) all had multiple championships), leaving somewhere near (the total number of teams has changed over the years) 300 schools who have not won the championship once in the past 25 years. And yet, I, and so many others, have continued to be loyal to "our" team, and to be a fan. What are we thinking?

Why am I a sports fan?

I could not help thinking this over the past week as I watched the Colts lose to the Chargers in the wild-card game (NFL playoffs), I read about the upset Boston College staged over the Heels @UNC and then watched my CBS Live Scoreboard as the #3 Heels lost on the road to the (now) 13-0 #4 Wake Forest Demon Deacon's. I am not a huge NFL fan, and I was surprised how disappointed I was watching the game. I am a huge college hoops fan, and I was very disappointed and even hurt to read about and watch the UNC losses. I find myself being confused as to why it is that important to me. Nothing in my life, not my family, not my job, not my income (I do not bet on sports), nothing is different because a team I am cheering for won or lost. Nothing.

Sure, when the team I am cheering for wins I feel good about it. I will celebrate, and brag to my firends (especially if they cheer for another team), but the positive benefits are really quite small and they do not last very long. I am infused with a small amount of "fan happyness" for a short period, a couple of hours to a few days, but that is always the extent of it. In fact, after those few days I am already getting caught up in the "what about next year" chatter.

But when the team loses (and, as I have said, every team loses more than they win - at least as far as the championship goes) it seems to hurt a lot more. And that hurt is so much more painful than the "joy" of the victory when they do win. Logically I should stop being a fan, as avoidance of the hurt should outweight the potential joy which is really not that much of a high.

But I don't. I keep cheering. I keep following. I keep rationalizing to myself, 'this is the year', 'the next game will be better', or 'if "we" could only do more of x, y, and z.'. I cling to a thread that my support of the team is actually making an important difference in the team being successful. This group of people, none of whom I have ever met, are needing me to remain positive and keep my faith in them so they can be successful. The illogical arguments are unlimited. But I must continue, for I am a fan. And this is what fans do.

Interesting. It seems I can not even understand myself. No wonder most women are driven crazy by their "sports fan" husbands. I should spend more time thinking about this but I can't. I've got articles to read and besides, we've got Virgina on Thursday and then 2 days later Miami(FL) at home. Heck, the way I see it, by the time we play @Duke on Feb. 11 we can go from being 0-2 in the ACC to 7-2. And, those Dookies are in trouble...they have to play Wake twice this season.

Choices

Life is full of choices.

Small meaningless ones, like what kind of coffee, or what to order in a restaurant, which route to take to the store, etc. We have gotten used to the huge number of choices, it is one of the things that happens in our society today. Most of these choices mean nothing, but what they do is suck up our time and energy. We no longer choose to do important things, we allow ourselves to be sucked along with whatever comes up.

We rarely choose what our lives are going to be about, or at least I don't. I simply go along with whatever course I have been on since my last major decision, which come about fairly rarely. I don't check and see if I am really doing what I should be, or want to be, I just keep going. I am an energizer bunny, but without the energy. I don't want to be that person, but can't seem to stop. I want my life to be focused, to be true, to be somehow "right". I just don't know how to get there. I feel like I am on the wrong path, but I have no idea whatsoever where the right path is. At some time in the past I did know, but now I am not so sure I am on it.

I feel like I am driving on this highway at 120 km/hour I can see in the distance the mountains that are my goal, but in between, I cannot see if my road connects to them, for all I know the next dip in the road hides a curve that will lead me away from them. I feel lost and I don't even know if I can make a better choice. It makes me disconsolate. I wish for better choices, wiser choices. I am tired of simply choosing a latte, when I could be making a life choice.

If I am at "A" and I want to be at "G", do I need to go through B,C,D,E,and F to get there, or is there another way, that I cannot see. I am lost, and so I just continue trudging towards "B"... I hope that is the next step, but I am no longer sure. My next choice could be huge, but probably will be whether or not to get to work, or get a cup of coffee...sigh.

Choices...

Propostition 8: The People have spoken - not hardly!

I just read an article about the Gay marriage vote on propostition 8 in California. Now as you may or may not know Proposition 8 was passed with 53% of the vote. This effetively (for now) ends gay marriage in California. This is not the part I was interested in though, what intrigued me, was the fact that the governor, and other proponents of gay marriage have said is that they will have this propostion thrown out by the courts as not valid.

Well isn't that interesting...they may even be right, proposition 8 may in fact be a constitutional revision (not subject to change by vote) rather than an ammendment (which is able to be enacted by popular vote). The problem for me is that 53% of the people who voted decided that they did not want gay marriage.

In North America today, we do not accept votes as being "what the people want", unless they go in our favour. What we like to say is that, the vote isn't right, or that's not the way it should be done. Those arguments were available prior to voting day, but they thought they would win, and so said nothing. Now that they lost, they can't accept that 53% of the people don't want this, it must be flawed somehow.

This is one of the things wrong in Canada and the U.S., we have no respect for differing points of view. If the election goes the wrong way, then people are stupid and misled, and worse the whole vote was flawed, and not legal. It does not matter that the majority decided, they must not have understood, or something. They can't be smart and disagree.

I am not above this, I understand, I just fight it in myself. I get that you and I might not agree on much, but that doesn't mean I am smart and you are not, it just means we disagree. What how can that be? In California 500,000 people was the difference. 5.4 million people voted to ban gay marriage. I assure you these are not 5.4 million dumb people, just as the 4.9 million people that voted for gay marriage are not dumb, but yet these people disagree.

I am concerned that we are quickly becoming a society that values nothing but our own opinion, we have little to no tolerance for dissent. I don't know the solution, but I do know, I need to put more value in listening to others, and less in talking about my own thoughts (except here, of course).

Round Bails and Carrot Cake are evil!

Okay so I know what you are thinking. He's crazy!

You are saying to yourself, I love Carrot cake, and probably, that is just a dumb thing to say. How can round bails and Carrot cake be evil. They are inanimate objects, oh and by the way carrot cake is delicious. I get it, I understand your sentiment, but bear with me. Here is what i mean...

Round Bails - You see the options are square bails (rectangle actually) or round bails. Round bails are better for the farmer, less work to produce, more profit. That is exactly the point I say, square bails are better for the end user, you can haul them by yourself, don't need a machine. So why do they make them round? Aren't you listening, they are easier for the farmer, they make more money. My problem is, the square bails are better, so the oround bails serve one purpose, make more money, and make it easier (okay 2 purposes). Well why is more profit bad? It is not if more profit is good for all, but you see it is not, it is only better for one party. They chase more profits at the expense of the better product. This is exactly where society is going, we don't care about better, we only care about more (McDonalds is a good example). Guess who wants us to focus away from better, Satan, that's right Satan. He wants us to focus on more money, not on better lives, or better products. So he created round bails. Get it? They are evil!

Carrot Cake - Well, this one is actually easy. No one really likes Carrot cake, they only really like the cream cheese icing. Thye cake is just the delivery method. That is not why carrot cake is evil though, it is evil because it is a trick. Dessert's purpose is not to give us nutrients, it is to give us joy, a little piece of heaven on a plate. Carrot cake is deceitful, it combines vegetables and cake, then covers them with a delicious icing to fool us. Where I ask does deceit come from? Satan! That is whay Carrot cake is evil.

Take that to the bakery!

Interesting

http://www.joethepeacock.com/2008/03/how-to-actually-talk-to-atheists-if.php

Housing Crisis

Read this interesting article. Quick note, before I post it here, I think it becomes far too unfair towards Barack Obama. He did not cause this crisis, and though he did not prevent it either, he was no in a position to do so in my opinion. Nevertheless the article does raise some interesting and salient points about what happened...

By Orson Scott Card

October 5, 2008

Would the Last Honest Reporter Please Turn On the Lights?

An open letter to the local daily paper -- almost every local daily paper in America:

I remember reading All the President's Men and thinking: That's journalism. You do what it takes to get the truth and you lay it before the public, because the public has a right to know.

This housing crisis didn't come out of nowhere. It was not a vague emanation of the evil Bush administration.

It was a direct result of the political decision, back in the late 1990s, to loosen the rules of lending so that home loans would be more accessible to poor people. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were authorized to approve risky loans.

What is a risky loan? It's a loan that the recipient is likely not to be able to repay.

The goal of this rule change was to help the poor -- which especially would help members of minority groups. But how does it help these people to give them a loan that they can't repay? They get into a house, yes, but when they can't make the payments, they lose the house -- along with their credit rating.

They end up worse off than before.

This was completely foreseeable and in fact many people did foresee it. One political party, in Congress and in the executive branch, tried repeatedly to tighten up the rules. The other party blocked every such attempt and tried to loosen them.

Furthermore, Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae were making political contributions to the very members of Congress who were allowing them to make irresponsible loans. (Though why quasi-federal agencies were allowed to do so baffles me. It's as if the Pentagon were allowed to contribute to the political campaigns of Congressmen who support increasing their budget.)

Isn't there a story here? Doesn't journalism require that you who produce our daily paper tell the truth about who brought us to a position where the only way to keep confidence in our economy was a $700 billion bailout? Aren't you supposed to follow the money and see which politicians were benefitting personally from the deregulation of mortgage lending?

I have no doubt that if these facts had pointed to the Republican Party or to John McCain as the guilty parties, you would be treating it as a vast scandal. "Housing-gate," no doubt. Or "Fannie-gate."

Instead, it was Senator Christopher Dodd and Congressman Barney Frank, both Democrats, who denied that there were any problems, who refused Bush administration requests to set up a regulatory agency to watch over Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and who were still pushing for these agencies to go even further in promoting subprime mortgage loans almost up to the minute they failed.

As Thomas Sowell points out in a TownHall.com essay entitled Do Facts Matter? "Alan Greenspan warned them four years ago. So did the Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers to the President. So did Bush's Secretary of the Treasury."

These are facts. This financial crisis was completely preventable. The party that blocked any attempt to prevent it was ... the Democratic Party. The party that tried to prevent it was ... the Republican Party.

Yet when Nancy Pelosi accused the Bush administration and Republican deregulation of causing the crisis, you in the press did not hold her to account for her lie. Instead, you criticized Republicans who took offense at this lie and refused to vote for the bailout!

What? It's not the liar, but the victims of the lie who are to blame?

Now let's follow the money ... right to the presidential candidate who is the number-two recipient of campaign contributions from Fannie Mae.

And after Freddie Raines, the CEO of Fannie Mae who made $90 million while running it into the ground, was fired for his incompetence, one presidential candidate's campaign actually consulted him for advice on housing.

If that presidential candidate had been John McCain, you would have called it a major scandal and we would be getting stories in your paper every day about how incompetent and corrupt he was.

But instead, that candidate was Barack Obama, and so you have buried this story, and when the McCain campaign dared to call Raines an "adviser" to the Obama campaign -- because that campaign had sought his advice -- you actually let Obama's people get away with accusing McCain of lying, merely because Raines wasn't listed as an official adviser to the Obama campaign.

You would never tolerate such weasely nit-picking from a Republican.

If you who produce our local daily paper actually had any principles, you would be pounding this story, because the prosperity of all Americans was put at risk by the foolish, short-sighted, politically selfish, and possibly corrupt actions of leading Democrats, including Obama.

If you who produce our local daily paper had any personal honor, you would find it unbearable to let the American people believe that somehow Republicans were to blame for this crisis.

There are precedents. Even though President Bush and his administration never said that Iraq sponsored or was linked to 9/11, you could not stand the fact that Americans had that misapprehension -- so you pounded us with the fact that there was no such link. (Along the way, you created the false impression that Bush had lied to them and said that there was a connection.)

If you had any principles, then surely right now, when the American people are set to blame President Bush and John McCain for a crisis they tried to prevent, and are actually shifting to approve of Barack Obama because of a crisis he helped cause, you would be laboring at least as hard to correct that false impression.

Your job, as journalists, is to tell the truth. That's what you claim you do, when you accept people's money to buy or subscribe to your paper.

But right now, you are consenting to or actively promoting a big fat lie -- that the housing crisis should somehow be blamed on Bush, McCain, and the Republicans. You have trained the American people to blame everything bad -- even bad weather -- on Bush, and they are responding as you have taught them to.

If you had any personal honor, each reporter and editor would be insisting on telling the truth -- even if it hurts the election chances of your favorite candidate.

Because that's what honorable people do. Honest people tell the truth even when they don't like the probable consequences. That's what honesty means. That's how trust is earned.

Barack Obama is just another politician, and not a very wise one. He has revealed his ignorance and naivete time after time -- and you have swept it under the rug, treated it as nothing.

Meanwhile, you have participated in the borking of Sarah Palin, reporting savage attacks on her for the pregnancy of her unmarried daughter -- while you ignored the story of John Edwards's own adultery for many months.

So I ask you now: Do you have any standards at all? Do you even know what honesty means?

Is getting people to vote for Barack Obama so important that you will throw away everything that journalism is supposed to stand for?

You might want to remember the way the National Organization of Women threw away their integrity by supporting Bill Clinton despite his well-known pattern of sexual exploitation of powerless women. Who listens to NOW anymore? We know they stand for nothing; they have no principles.

That's where you are right now.

It's not too late. You know that if the situation were reversed, and the truth would damage McCain and help Obama, you would be moving heaven and earth to get the true story out there.

If you want to redeem your honor, you will swallow hard and make a list of all the stories you would print if it were McCain who had been getting money from Fannie Mae, McCain whose campaign had consulted with its discredited former CEO, McCain who had voted against tightening its lending practices.

Then you will print them, even though every one of those true stories will point the finger of blame at the reckless Democratic Party, which put our nation's prosperity at risk so they could feel good about helping the poor, and lay a fair share of the blame at Obama's door.

You will also tell the truth about John McCain: that he tried, as a Senator, to do what it took to prevent this crisis. You will tell the truth about President Bush: that his administration tried more than once to get Congress to regulate lending in a responsible way.

This was a Congress-caused crisis, beginning during the Clinton administration, with Democrats leading the way into the crisis and blocking every effort to get out of it in a timely fashion.

If you at our local daily newspaper continue to let Americans believe --and vote as if -- President Bush and the Republicans caused the crisis, then you are joining in that lie.

If you do not tell the truth about the Democrats -- including Barack Obama -- and do so with the same energy you would use if the miscreants were Republicans -- then you are not journalists by any standard.

You're just the public relations machine of the Democratic Party, and it's time you were all fired and real journalists brought in, so that we can actually have a daily newspaper in our city.

Woolly Mammoth

This is a woolly mammoth. I am a Christian.

My belief in Christ does nothing to deny my belief in the woolly mammoth. I am tired of people assuming that because of one, I must be denying the other. The creationists (and Me) claim that God created the universe.Some also claim a bunch of other stuff like the earth is only 6000 years old. I think it is important to actually think. I am not just talking to Christians here, but the atheists and agnostics who can't seem to discern between the two things, or perhaps choose not to. I actually don't mind what you believe, but maybe, just maybe how about this...Just because i believe something different than you does not make me stupid or evil or even wrong. You don't believe what I do, I don't assume that you are stupid or evil or even necessarily wrong. I believe you are wrong, but I am also aware that my belief is based on faith, just as yours is. Oh I know you say, no it is science, but come on, lets be honest. you don't know how the universe was created any more than I do. We have different explanations that's all. Mammoths were on the earth 36000 years ago, okay fine. Wow, see how easy that was. I believe God created them. Oh wait that bothers you too. I bet in a discussion about evolution you don't even know the difference between micro and macro evolution. Until you do, lets not talk about your theory, lets just agree to disagree.

300 mph

I was talking with a friend of mine last night. He flies a jet for the Canadian military. He is in instructor training school and as a part of that he has to learn to do formation flying from the back seat of the airplane. The other day he was working on this, with his Commander sitting in the front seat. The commander is "old school" and thus swears quite a lot. Now he doesn't mean this to be rude or derogatory, it is just how he instructs.

My friend says to me, "the next time I feel like something is particularly troubling or difiicult, I am going to think back to me going 300 mph in a formation 6 feet from three other planes, while my boss swears at me and realize, my daughter's temper tantrum is really not so bad."

Made me think about my own "tough" days at work. I had nothing, I mean what could I say? He was right, I am exceedingly fortunate in my life, my work, my family, my Church. I am going to try to remember this when I am feeling stressed...am I going 300 mph 6 ft from three jets, while my boss swears at me, no? Then maybe I should chill out a little, it's not really that bad.

Food for Thought!

http://www.wreckedfortheordinary.com/index.asp?filename=im-done-with-playing-church

A "projection" coincidence

After entering my post (see: Perceptual Glasses) I headed over to Google Reader and wouldn't you know it, the first entry waiting for me has a connection to my post. Here it is, from Guy Kawasaki no less.

Are You Limiting Yourself?
GuyKawasaki Sep 14, 2008 1:55 PM - Show original item
Psychologists dub the tendency to presume that others react to the world in the exact same way we do as "projection." For example, an entrepreneur is reluctant to schmooze and unwilling to discuss his company in social settings for fear of annoying potential customers and investors.

According to Christopher R. Edgar, projecting can hold you back. Check out his article called "Are Your 'Projections' Limiting Your Success?" to learn more. The next time you find yourself doubting or fearing a nerve-racking situation, don't assume everyone else feels the same way. Bikshu Sangharakshita, author of Essence of Zen, offers advice on how to transcend potentially limiting projections:

“Try to discover what it is you most dislike in others, what you most often criticize and condemn them for. A little elementary self-analysis may reveal that those qualities are hidden in the depths of your own mind and that in criticizing others in this way you are, in fact, unconsciously criticizing yourself.”

Assuming that other people will react negatively to some behavior because that's the way you feel can limit you. What's trickier is the assumption that if you like the behavior, others will like it too. This isn't true either.

Perceptual Glasses

Two things have really moved me intellectually this past week. First, my research methods course presented three articles (one an original commentary on what needs to come of educational research - the other two responses to the first; one supporting the other attacking) that brought me to a new place of understanding - a flat earth moment. Second, the pre-class assignment that I have been working on tonight for my grad school seminar presented the concept that identity and reality are reflexive - that is the perceptual frame through which my identity is formed is the same frame through which I see the world. The perceptual glasses I wear cloud both my vision and my projection. Not in itself a flat earth moment - but as you will read - it lead to one.

The research methods course presented an original article where Robert Slavin (http://www.jstor.org/pss/3594400 - login required) or look it up (Evidence-Based Education Policies: Transforming Educational Practice and Research, by Robert E. Slavin © 2002 American Educational Research Association.) speaks to the US government funding available due to the "No Child Left Behind" (NCLB) legislation and how this is really a great opportunity for "Education" to make the jump to real research. You see, unlike hard sciences, Education has lapsed behind with very little quantitative research guiding the improvement of the profession. The majority of changes to teaching and schooling occur as the passing of anecdotal successes and the use of techniques and methods that have not been tested in true random and rigorously matched trials. Bottom line (and an examples he uses is) should a turn of the 20th century (1900) person be brought forward in time to today -- if they were a doctor in 1899, they would not be able to work as a doctor today -- but if they were a teacher then, they could easily step in as a teacher today. (This is arguable - but changes in classroom culture and content not withstanding - but much closer than in medicine, agriculture, chemistry, physics, biology, etc.) With the funding now available the opportunity exists to move education research into the quantity and quality required to really advance the field.

Reading the article, and the two responses, really helped move me to a place that I had perhaps known, but not every articulated. Education is starving for quality research. And lots of it. What a "flat-earth" moment for me. And I am surprised that it was. I have been an educator for sixteen years and a student for much longer. This I should know.

Or maybe not. You see, the pre-amble to the pre-class assignment (how is that for pre- pre-?) speaks to the perceptual glasses that we all wear. And how these glasses tint both our projection of ourselves, but also our view of the world. Both my vision and the projection of myself is tinted.

The perceptual glasses metaphor is a helpful way of illustrating this. Suppose the lens of our world is coloured blue. If we shine a light through the lens, this projects an image to the world. We could call this our self-image or identity. The light coming back to us is what we perceive to be the exterior reality. However in this situation both the projection and the perception of the exterior reality are coloured blue....The observer and the observed are inextricably tied together in a reflection. Like an image in a mirror, they are looking at one another. How does one then escape a particular reflection? (source: Course document which referenced it from: http://www.neoscience.org/reflexiv.htm)

The pre-amble goes on to say that the escape of a reflection occurs when an individual is able to "let go of how what they thought they knew and move into another place." The examples of Galileo, Columbus and Einstein are strong. And courage and honesty are key components of letting go. The flat earth experience is what I seek. It is why I study. It is why I live. It is me.

It is also my lens.

This may be harder than I thought.