Month: July 2013

What Would Kirk Do?

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Friend and DR commenter WalkerW posted a great article on the management lessons of one James Tiberius Kirk, Captain. Now, personally I’m a greater fan of Jean Luc than James T., but since WalkerW says it is “the first of (hopefully) many leadership tips from the sci-fi/fantasy world,” I have hope for the future. This first installment was largely based on a Forbes article, but the additional commentary and videos from WalkerW are a definite improvement.

I’ve got WalkerW started on the Dresden Files now, so maybe after Picard and Gandalf we’ll get Harry Blackstone Copperfield Dresden. Except, of course, that I just don’t think there’s any way to write an article about management lessons from that particular wizard without turning the premise around and writing from a “What Not To Do” perspective!

2013-07-17 Harry Dresden

 

19th Century Photography, 21st Century War

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2013-07-17 Tintype

The Daily Mail has an article about U.S. Air Force aerial gunner Ed Drew’s tintype photography from Afghanistan. Tintype is a historical relic; a kind of photography dating to the middle of the 19th century that was invented just in time to document the Civil War. Drew is using this finicky, difficult technique to take stunning photos (like the one above) of his fellow servicemen and women in Afghanistan. He says that the painstaking process helps him handle the stress of deployment, and I hope that’s true. In any case, the results are arresting. See more of the photos here.

Mahonri Stewart: Subcreation and True Myths

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2013-07-17 PandoraI’ve read about Tokien’s idea of “sub-creation” before, which is basically the idea that when we as artists create worlds for our art (the way Tolkien did with Middle Earth) we are in a sense imitating the creative act of God in creating our world. I’m fascinated by this idea that artistic world-building is a kind  of godly act, and this idea of imitation or replication also has ramifications for mythology: where the same archetypes and stories surface time and time again in different cultures and contexts.

If these ideas interest you, too, then check out playwright Mahonri Stewart’s piece at Dawning of a Brighter Day.

Cool Tech and the Privacy Trap: Tile Edition

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Tile is a really cool new device that has been getting some massive early funding and advertising.

Awesome, right? Attach one of these to your keys, to your remote, to your bike, to your laptop, to your child, to anything you’re worried about  misplacing, losing, or having stolen.

In fact, one of the very coolest features is that when you can’t find something (they use the example of  a stolen bike in the video) you can register the Tile corresponding to that item as lost and every other user of the application will immediately ping your phone with GPS coordinates of your lost Tile should they happen to venture within range. That’s really pretty amazingly awesome, if you’ve got an ecosystem of users dense enough for it to be practically useful, and the crucial network effects clearly demonstrate why they are pushing so hard with the advertising campaign.

But then there’s that funny bit about attaching one of these to a person, like your child. Or, you know, like your ex-girlfriend. Stick one on the bottom of her car, register the Tile as lost and Presto! you’ve turned the entire Tile ecosystem into your stalker allies. Thus we see, once more, the double-edged sword that is information technology. It lets you know a lot of stuff and the meaning of that phrase, it turns out, is highly ambiguous and context-dependent.

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Martin and Zimmerman: Complications to the Racial Narrative

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2013-07-16 Zimmerman

From TheGatewayPundit:

The media has tried to serve up an image of Zimmerman as a racist and wannabe cop who had some sort of close relationship with the police department. Now flashback to 2010, the video posted below shows an incident in which a drunk adolescent son of a Sanford police official attacked a homeless black man named Sherman Ware without provocation.

The Sanford police were sweeping the crime under the rug and very little was done about the incident. Ironically, the NAACP did nothing as well, but it was Zimmerman and his wife who started a “Justice for Sherman Ware” campaign. It was Zimmerman who succeeded in organizing the black community to get results and justice for Sherman Ware. 

You can watch the video of the incident below. It’s 5 minutes long, but the assault on the homeless man takes place in the first few seconds. 

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My Thoughts on Martin, Zimmerman, and Racism

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I wasn’t going to post this because I’m so fed up with the persistence of the narrative that all conservatives are racist that it seems pointless. What had me so frustrated? This article, which a friend I tend to highly respect despite our different political views, posted on Facebook with the admonition “read all the links”.  I don’t want to spend too much time going through all the things that article got wrong, but there are a lot. Starting with the image it uses at the top:

2013-07-15 Martin Zimmerman Reversed

The point is to reverse the races and ask: would people have reacted the same way? But here’s the problem, they never questioned that the image they are parodying is itself highly biased.

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Compassion vs. Codependency

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2013-07-08 Faith on the Couch

The adversarial tone religion vs. atheism comparison is a detriment in this Patheos blog post, and I’m not convinced that “co-dependency” is the right term, but there’s still an insight here worth sharing:

Compassion is intentional and, sometimes, it is hard.  Co-dependency is simply an unsophisticated, primal urge that employs pity as a means of self-preservation.

At a minimum, it’s another perspective on an argument that often separates heartless conservatives from bleeding-heart liberals.

Letting Sikhs Serve Their Country

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2013-07-08 Sikhs in Military

That’s Maj. Kamaljeet Singh Kalsi, who had to convince the US military to create an individual exception to be allowed to serve while maintaining his Sikh religious practices, which include never cutting or shaving his hair or beard. Something I didn’t realize is the US military’s rules that ban observant Sikhs are only a few decades old.

I’m biased, I suppose, because I find Sikhism absolutely fascinating. I love their proud heritage, egalitarian views, and military history. I think the US would be a better place if Sikhs were allowed to serve openly in our armed forces, and I also agree with Kalsi’s observation in the New York Times:

The more Sikhs wear military, police or firefighter uniforms, Major Kalsi reasoned, the less often Americans will see them as threatening outsiders. “When you see a Sikh firefighter save your daughter, you’ll think, ‘That’s a member of my community,’ ” said Major Kalsi, a 36-year-old father of two.

So it’s good for everyone. I hope the military creates a blanket exception for all observant Sikhs, so that they don’t have to fight the lonely, uphill battle for individual exceptions–exceptions that are often not granted.

Zimmerman Likely Guilty, Likely to Go Free

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George Zimmerman pre-trial hearing

I don’t think there’s really any way that a jury can find George Zimmerman guilty of murder or even of manslaughter. This analysis for ABC by Dan Abrams explains why, but the short version is that Zimmerman’s story (that he only got out of the car to get an address and was attacked by Martin) is bolstered by enough of the evidence (e.g. physical injuries and eye-witness testimony that he was on the ground and Martin was on top) that I just don’t think a jury can dismiss his tale beyond a reasonable doubt.