Tag: society
-
Types of meetings
I have a lot of experience having my time wasted in meetings that don’t serve a purpose other than to “have a meeting”. They don’t make a decision, they don’t make the participants better or smarter or more valuable, and they don’t convey information very well. What they did do is show me how not…
-
A working definition of…
Ta-Nehisi Coates has many accomplishments, so I occasionally feel bad that what I most often think of in his body of work is his 2013 article in the Atlantic, How the quiet car explains the world. I think of it often because it contains this: “I think what we have here is a working definition…
-
freedom, control, and command
Ok, so I’ve been playing with this idea of tension between control and command as an paradigm of societies and it occurs to me, while reading Cass Sunstein’s republic.com that there is more depth to that than I recognized initially. Sunstein’s argument in the opening chapters is that the liberty to not encounter ideas, people,…
-
Categories of Educated Americans
It appears that a deep class division between Americans is emerging between those who are college educated and those who are not. Within those who have a college education there isn’t a lot of unanimity however, and it caused me to come up with a list of categories:
-
Group Decries Urban Outfitters T-Shirt
The Anti Defamation League is pissed off because Urban Outfitters is selling a t-shirt that says “New Mexico, Cleaner than Regular Mexico.” Here is an article: Group Decries Urban Outfitters T-Shirt Ok, you know what? They are right. Mexico, when viewed from the US border, is a dirty, third world country well-populated with shanty towns,…
-
Privacy isn’t anonymity
Over on Radar O’Reilly there is this entry about Schneier’s wholesale surveillance concept, with some excerpts focusing on the privacy issues/concerns of this increasingly common practice. I wrote some comments on the site, which I’ve reproduced here: “Isn’t this more about anonymity than privacy? Anonymity is the ability to interact with society without being recognized…
-
London, again
The Guardian is reporting more bombs in the London Tubes. This is interesting as it makes the local terror intensify in the pattern of the D.C. Sniper – dull, disruptive, numbing of the local inhabitant’s desire to travel. In Washington, this meant targeting people at gas pumps and mall parking lots, in London this means…
-
P.O.V. – The Brooklyn Connection | PBS
The Brooklyn Connection is a wonderful documentary by Dutch filmmaker Klaartje Quirijns about an Albanian living in America who equipped the Kosovo Liberation Army out of U. S. gun shops and surplus stores. It really drives home for me the madness of the ‘War on Terror’ namely that we don’t have any conception about what…
-
London
Three things about the bombs in the London transportation system:
-
O’Connor’s retirement inopportune for moderates
The LA Times is reporting that Justice O’Connor, Supreme Court’s First Woman, Is Retiring. At a time when most eyes were on the Chief Justice, this is a bit of a surprise. It is also a blow to moderates as O’Connor has been a swing vote on many divisive issues during her term. She was…