2011-07-19

#Announcing: The Glean

So I read a pretty large amount of material daily. Too much, probably. But it’s been an integral part of my attempt to expand how I see things, to understand other perspectives and intentionally challenge the way I was raised to think.

I share a lot of it on Google Reader, which is nice, and a lot of fun when it starts a discussion. However, I feel as if I need to do something more with it. I’m serving as an aggregator, but only to a very limited audience. Now, do not think I am ignorant to the status of this blog; I’ve seen the traffic stats. But by placing more stories I run across on here, maybe, just maybe, a wider audience will discover it.

I follow several blogs that serve as aggregators, giving a rundown of links for the day with the authors thoughts on them. I think that’s where I’m going with this: a daily rundown of stories I ran across. A gleaning” of the noise” around the web, if you will, with the events and commentaries of the day posted every morning. Stick around and we’ll see where it goes.

2011-06-06

#Ayn Rand & the GOP vs. Jesus

This is a smart ad. Some may see it as manipulative, I guess, but it’s true. This is where the inconsistencies of a lot of conservatives and Christian voters come to light, and they are smart to point it out. Many politicians are campaigning on family” or Christian values” while believing deeply in an economic philosophy that is directly opposed.

I don’t think it’s necessarily intentional, though. Like that article I posted yesterday about bad Christian art, it’s not always a directed or willful tendency. It’s ignorance about what they say they believe. It’s superficially attaching yourself to a belief system without working out what it means fully in your life.

If you say you follow Jesus, then you believe in the Sermon on the Mount. If you don’t believe the Sermon on the Mount, you don’t believe Jesus. If you believe in Ayn Rand, you don’t believe in the Sermon on the Mount. It’s very simple, but it shifts the foundations of what many people have grown up believing in. I know it did for me, and I’ve been unlearning it over the past year or so.

2011-05-20

#Jo Ann Emerson Needs a Thinking Cap

So most of today, I have been fascinated by the Mississippi River and the efforts of the Corps of Engineers to control it. I’ve been reading everything I can find on it, and that will probably make it into a post soon enough. However, I ran across this article on USA Today’s website that addressed the long-standing, and in the context of these floods much-needed, argument on how to best manage the Mississippi. Some advocate de-shackling the river, potentially disrupting a good deal of development and farmland around it. A representative from Missouri, Jo Ann Emerson, wrote in an earlier column for USA Today that removing flood protection is a high ideal for environmentalists who live in safer places’ and an unthinkable violation of property rights and liberty for Americans who have lived beside the river for more than a century.’

I would really love for Ms. Emerson to explain to me how you derive individual property rights and liberties from property that only exists through federally mandated and subsidized flood control systems. These people only have their property because the rest of America subsidized the construction of structures that allow that land to be available for development and farming. They did nothing individually to free that land from the river. It is functionally not theirs alone because its functionality is not derived from their effort alone. For them to then stand up and say that the Corps cannot decide to adopt smarter management practices because it would be an unthinkable violation of property rights and liberty” is audacious, to say the least.

2011-05-18

#TED Talk | Mushrooms Can Save The World

I ran across this TED talk today, and I am blown away.

I’ve always been intrigued by mushrooms, but never enough to really get into them. And I think that’s the atitude of most people. We have some sort of visceral repulsion to them; maybe it’s because we always see them on rotting plants, or in wet, dank forests, and so we associate some sort of uneasiness with them. Maybe it’s because they are a strange other,” not really a plant but not an animal either. Maybe it’s because they’re not green. Maybe it’s because they look so weird. Whatever it is, watch this talk and get over it.

Stamets goes through several projects he is working on that could have huge implications in the real world. From fungal remediation of petrochemically-contaminated soils to natural pesticides that inoculate your house, these are really impressive and practical potential uses. He also goes into water purification with fungal mats and using fungal extracts to protect against diseases. He’s not the best public speaker, but he gets enough across for you to realize how important this could be.

It’s very, very interesting, and it will change your mind about mushrooms. I want to grow some now!

Links:

2011-05-17

#Wisdom of the Ancients

Well, maybe not THAT ancient, but this is sage advice nonetheless. Back in 1907, John Nolen, who is considered a father of American urban planning, wrote down four guiding principles for urban planning. Unfortunately, Nolen’s list has not been all that influential. Here it is:

  1. Conform to topography.
  2. Use places for what they are naturally most fit.
  3. Conserve, develop, and utilize all natural resources, aesthetic as well as commercial.
  4. Aim to secure beauty by organic arrangements rather than by mere embellishment or adornment.

Wouldn’t it be nice if planners and urban designers listened to this advice? This is a perfect example of how so many of the new green” ideas are merely reintroductions to ideas that have been presented in the past. This was written over 100 years ago, yet a planner with these guiding principles who came into a town in Mississippi would be laughed out of the room.

2011-05-11

#TED Talk | Eli Pariser: Beware online filter bubbles”

This is a really, really good talk about something that we all need to keep in mind. If you pay attention, you can already see this happening, big time. Social bubbles like Pariser speaks of have existed for a long time (I know I was raised in one, and if I had gone to a Christian high school and college it would have been even worse), and if this doesn’t change, or people don’t become more mindful of it, this issue could really start to matter.

Think about politics, and the whole birther thing…it would not have had nearly the amount of force without a birther bubble” going on, where people could comment back and forth and only read WorldNetDaily every day, until what they at might have at first only been dabbling in became reinforced daily in their web travels. This is, I think, hampering the ability of the country to come to an agreement on how certain major changes need to get done. Not in the legislature necessarily (though there are certainly belief bubbles existent in Washington), but in the greater public discourse.

Or religion and the Rob Bell dustup, where circles of blogs and their readers fed circles of blogs and their readers, until there were firmly entrenched camps hurling fairly un-Christ-like accusations at each other and missing the entire point of the book.

(Which, unless you wanted it to be, was not about how everyone gets to heaven. Sorry if I popped your bubble.)

I’ve been aware of this for myself when using Google Reader, but I didn’t realize the extent Google and the like went to filter tailor the web. It’s a bit unnerving, and I’m not sure what you do to stop it. Just be aware, and watch yourself: does everything you see on the web agree with your viewpoint? Are you actively seeking out other points of view? If you’re not, you should, because you can’t convince anyone you’re right about anything until you can understand where they’re coming from.