Elsewhere

Yes, I do read other blogs, possibly yours. And I’ll have you linked here soon, somewhere, probably on the left sidebar. I’m just trying to figure out a cool, automated way to do it, like parsing the RSS feed of my Google Reader subscriptions. XML is involved. Beyond that I don’t know yet.

From The Institute for Humanist Studies:

What is humanism?
Humanism is a philosophy of life inspired by humanity and guided by reason.
• Humanists think that science and reason provide the best basis for understanding the world around us.
• Humanists believe that moral values are properly founded on human empathy and scientific understanding.
• Humanists see no convincing evidence for gods, the supernatural, or life after death.
• Humanists believe we must live this life on the basis that it is the only life we’ll have — that, therefore, we must make the most of it for ourselves, each other, and our world.

OK, so far so good, mostly. It continues:

Are you a humanist?
• Do you think of yourself as non-religious?
• Are you skeptical of the existence of a supernatural realm?
• Do you think science and reason lead to more reliable knowledge than faith, revelation, authority, or tradition?
• Do you believe that a person can be ethical without religious belief?
• Is your concept of “the meaning of life” derived from human responsibility and opportunity rather than divine revelation?
• Do you expect human progress to result from human accomplishment rather than divine intervention, grace, or redemption?

(Did you answer yes to these questions?) If so, you might be one of the millions of humanists on earth — people who live meaningful, fulfilling lives based on reason and compassion.

I’m mostly cool with this, too, except the second point, “skeptical of a supernatural realm”. Or rather, I believe there are significant portions of our natural reality of which we have little or no knowledge, which would be considered “supernatural” in the context of our current understanding.

Is atheism required for humanism? Rather, is there room in humanism for agnostic spiritualism?

I’ve been messing around a little bit in Second Life over the past few weeks. It’s a 3D virtual world where people can socialize, create things, and whatever else one cares to do in a 99% user-customizable 3D virtual world. Some refer to it as a game, but it’s not really because there are no rules or goals.

It’s interesting to me on a few levels:
• Creative and artistic freedom, using built-in content creation tools. It’s a fun place to explore and see what people come up with, and mess around with my own creations (3D modeling and scripting).
• Sociology. Questions of identity, mental vs. physical existence, the added nuance of virtual reality to online communication, groups and subcultures, et cetera.
• A patch to help wean me off my PC gaming addiction of twenty years with something more constructive than fragging 16-year-olds with rocket launchers.
• Re-inventing reality. Second Life has real estate, government, intellectual property, community, and an in-world economy that translates into real world profits for some people. If we could do it all again, how would we do it?

Something about this smells of profit to me, but I’m not sure what. I’m still trying to figure that out. Something to do with getting in at the ground level… however it’s still a closed-source project, controlled by a private company (Linden Labs), which, I believe, limits the potential scope of SL at this time. But I’ll be snooping around… anyway, it’s fun for an evening of creative absurdity, alternating between beautiful and obscene at times, kinda like real life.

Eric Rice might have a better idea of how Second Life fits in with the rest of Web 2.0, or whatever you want to call the current rise in technological optimism (of which I am a consciously fervent advocate). I met him in-world and he seems pretty cool. In fact there are a lot of cool people dabbling in SL lately, and doubtless there will be more to come.

Selected quotes stolen from Wikiquote:

Clarence Darrow
“I do not consider it an insult, but rather a compliment to be called an agnostic. I do not pretend to know where many ignorant men are sure - that is all that agnosticism means.”

Thomas Jefferson
“Fix reason firmly in her seat, and call to her tribunal every fact, every opinion. Question with boldness even the existence of a God; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason, than that of blind-folded fear.”

Thomas Henry Huxley
“It is wrong for a man to say that he is certain of the objective truth of any proposition unless he can produce evidence which logically justifies that certainty. This is what agnosticism asserts.”

Bertrand Russell
“Not to be absolutely certain is, I think, one of the essential things in rationality.”

David E. Trueblood
“The person who admits that he does not know, and is consequently open to learning.”

Wikipedia’s definition of Agnostic Spiritualism, a flavor of Agnosticism:
“The view that there may or may not be a god (or gods,) while maintaining a general personal belief in a spiritual aspect of reality, particularly without distinct religious basis, or adherence to any established doctrine or dogma.”

Chris (me)
I’m not sure whether or not there are supernatural entities within or without our reality, and while I don’t think anyone can really know, I personally prefer to believe there are, because it makes me feel better and empowers me to be more whole-heartedly ethical, and helps alleviate my fear of death. (Death, or life for that matter, in a nihilistic reality is an abhorrent thought to me.)

I’ve mentioned respect twice in recent posts. Respect, to me, is a principle value. Respect everyone, everywhere, all the time. Assume that everyone is doing they best they can given their circumstances, until repeatedly proven otherwise. Respect is necessary for trust, and trust is necessary for any kind of meaningful and productive relationship. Respect inspires and motivates and can be infectious, like laughing. It’s why, for example, I generally won’t make ribbing jokes until I get to know someone pretty well, in case they take it the wrong way. It’s why I always say “please” and “thank you”, even if the service is grumpy.

Some people are so used to feeling disrespected that they stop respecting themselves, and in turn, have trouble respecting anybody else. Some people are so used to feeling disrespected that they cynically interpret signs of respect as being a smartass. In this case, there is nothing to be done except to calmly explain that you really do respect them, and listen to their needs, and extricate yourself from the situation if they don’t turn around. Such people have their reasons for behaving the way they do–cultural attitudes, economic conditions, emotional environment, whatever. But, however, if you haven’t *always* show them respect in the past, from the very beginning, then you must accept some amount of fault yourself and make sure you’re doing your due diligence to earn their respect back.

This is the fundamental problem I had with the Bush administration’s response to Al Qaeda. There was lots of talk of revenge and good and evil, and not much effort into understanding *why* they did what they did, and working to resolve those issues.

Some people see a show of respect as a show of weakness, which is not true. There is a difference between respect and fear: fear is submission, while respect includes boundaries. Certainly there are some actions which are unacceptable, such as violence or other unconstructive damage. Actions must be taken, as a coworker once said, to “first take the knife away from the baby, and then stop the bleeding”–interrupt the actions however possible (through interception, restraint, or controlled retaliation), but then you must *continue* to respect the person enough to figure out how to rehabilitate them.

This is where I think Bush might have it right, in spirit, by attempting to take power away from tyrants and return it to the people, but he’s struggling in execution–the post-war plan doesn’t seem to have been very well thought out.

And this is where I think our criminal justice system has it really wrong. I have recently hopped off the fence and decided that I am opposed to the death penalty. Which might make for an interesting conversation given that I am also pro-choice. I can hear it already, “How could you spare a murderer and yet murder an innocent?” Oh yes, I’ll be preparing a respectful response to that.

I really like the idea of categories on my blog. It seems a great way to organize my posts and make the content more accessible and relevant. Trouble is, my thoughts don’t usually come out of my brain in nice, neat categories. I want the content to define the blog, rather than the other way around.

So why can’t we have tags in MoveableType? Yeah, I could create more categories, but that’s on a different page than posting an entry, which is a pain. For that matter, why isn’t the control interface all AJAXed up yet like everything else on the web now? Should I be using a different blog software? I wonder what Drupal is like to use?

After my annual review earlier this week, my boss mentioned that he was concerned about people jumping ship after the yearly bonuses arrive in March. I replied, “Well, there’s not much you can do about that. You can’t control other people or what’s going on in their lives or the in rest of the world. The best you can do is create a good culture where people want to work, compensate people well, and keep the work interesting [ i.e. support career goals]. Beyond that you don’t have any control, so you can’t beat yourself up about it.”

In retrospect he was probably fishing for an idea of my own plans, but that didn’t immediately occur to me. I really believe in what I said, and I think it’s an important concept, not only to improve working conditions for everyone, but to relieve some stress on the part of the manager.

Do what you can do. The rest is out of your hands.

Respecting each individual’s personal choices is crucial to earning loyalty and creating a culture of openness, freedom, and growth wherein knowledge workers thrive. There have been a couple star players who left my team for other opportunities, and while I didn’t hide my disappointment, I was nothing but supportive of them. As a result, we’ve maintained good relationships which mutually benefit our respective networks, and the rest of the team gets the message that they will always be treated respectfully, even if they leave. It’s just good business.

(It certainly helped that I had made a point to have everyone cross-trained and designated backups for each functional role. Of course this isn’t always possible on smaller, more aggressive teams, which is why there’s more pressure to retain in those situations.)

I inserted two quarters into the slot and pressed the Aquafina button. “50LD 0UT” reported the small red LED display. Fine. Push coin return, retrieve quarters.

I went down to the next floor. This time, I pressed the button first. “.50″. OK, cool. I inserted the quarters and pressed the button again. “50LD 0UT”. Uh, what? You just told me it was 50 cents! Why would it tell me the price if there is no product to sell? It could just as easily have told me that initially; in fact, I expected it to do so.

Well, if it did that, then it wouldn’t have my quarters. Right now, it has my quarters. It’s like those sleazy car dealers who block in your car hoping that it will make you stay longer. I can get the quarters back with the push of a button, but I’m that much closer to actually purchasing a product, maybe even a product I didn’t really want, out of frustration or laziness or thirst or whatever.

This was a design decision on the part of the vending machine manufacturer. A little extra burden is placed on the user to gain an increased chance of sale, however small. They’re betting that nobody will think to notice, but even if someone does, it doesn’t matter because the whole point of a vending machine is convenience, and people don’t usually have the option of shopping around for other machines with better features.

It makes business sense, yet somehow, as a customer, I feel disrespected, and as a human being, a little disappointed. I love good (i.e. user-centric) design and it bothers me when it’s surreptitiously sacrificed for some small increased chance of profit. I realize that budgets often dictate design but somehow I doubt that this particular “feature” really impacts their bottom line in any significant way. It’s just selfish, sleazy salesmanship.

Just because it seems to make “good business sense” doesn’t always mean it’s the right thing to do.

Many of life’s failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up.
– Thomas Edison

Upgraded to MovableType. Please bear with me as I learn it, and also brush up on my CSS skills. And I have to figure out what it did to my embedded Flickr photos. But I’m excited about the new features it brings (excited enough to put an effort into posting more).

Coincidentally, this is also the 100th post. Yay me!

In reviewing my previous posts to assign categories, it seems I am much more interested in politics and marketing than I had realized. I’m still trying to find a focus and/or direction for this blog but it seems to revolve around a post-Gen-Xer trying to make sense of this world through whatever means available: technology, music, culture, tangential cognition, randomness.