You are looking at posts that were written in the month of October in the year 2008.
Posted on October 18th, 2008 by Chris.
Categories: Chris, General/Misc., Philosophy.
Are you someone who “does the right thing?”
You may think you’re a person who does the right thing if you don’t cheat on your taxes, are never mean to your friends and try to help them, and try to spend some time donating or volunteering for a good cause.
To be morally good (or good at anything really) this is a very low standard. (more…)
Posted on October 9th, 2008 by Tim.
Categories: General/Misc..
Facebook has blocked me from writing new notes. WTF?
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Something tells me their spam detectors have gone awry. Frankly, not only is this block completely ridiculous (I post once a week perhaps) I find the wording of this error message to be threatening and aggressive… not the sort of tone you should adopt with your customers, the people that are the source of your daily bread.
Posted on October 6th, 2008 by Chris.
Categories: Chris.
Nowadays, politicians like to argue about climate change, also known as global warming. One of the more controversial proposals being floated around is that we should engineer the climate ourselves–pump sulphur into the atmosphere, bury CO2 under the ground, or launch huge shades to block out the sun.
These proposals are vehemently opposed by some, who would rather we remove the root cause (carbon emissions). But they are completely inevitable in the long run, at least if we want to avoid the next Ice Age. Scientific consensus agrees that humans are causing most of the climate change this time around. But the world experiences significant shifts in temperature over thousands of years.
So, yes, in the short term, we might be able to avoid learning how to engineer the planet’s climate (though it might be at great cost). But we won’t be able to keep our hands clean permanently.
Posted on October 3rd, 2008 by Chris.
Categories: Chris, Politics, Product Design.
There are several types of policy making:
I know some people who are working on a constitution. If you let everyone go all over phase 1, the process will never end. But if you let the minority control the whole process, well, then, you have an oligarchy. And we’ve learned that lesson already.
However, what if you compromise? If you let everyone in on phase 3, but not the others, then you get at least some approval, but you moderate the populism and the paralysis.
Parliamentary procedure is underrated. When we hear about direct democracy, the pundits don’t usually separate out these parts. But there’s good reason to dissect the procedure when talking about democracy. It’s common sense not to be all or nothing.