Infinite Web Design

Preaching to the choir is easy, they are already on your side and ready to sing your praises. Preaching to people who disagree with you is much harder. Sometimes you need to take a different approach than the one that convinced you. You need to look at how the person you are talking to approaches decisions and the framework they have for passing judgment on the world around them (that judge not stuff is overblown and frequently misinterpreted, a person sans judgment is a helpless, mindless waste, unable to choose what to eat for breakfast). Each of us uses a framework of heuristics and a moral and ethical code to pass judgment on the ideas we encounter all day long. By understanding the framework another person is using we can frame our arguments in such a way that they may exploit that framework to help that person reach the desired conclusion. This is not about manipulation, but about finding a common ground to aid communication and the exchange of ideas.
Continue reading Preaching Outside the Choir

In my last post I linked to Lawrence Lessig talking about Obama. Now there is a special election in Lessig’s California Congressional district and he is considering running. He discusses this in the following video:

I’d love to see him run and if you look at his body of work and think he could make a difference too please consider visiting www.lessig08.org and encouraging him to run. I may not agree with him on every issue, and you may not either, but he is a bright, ethical, and rational individual who will fight effectively to end corruption and secrecy in government and to apply science and reason to governance. He would be a refreshing change on Capitol Hill.

Disclaimer: This post reflects my personal opinions of the day (Brad may disagree) and they are subject to change as more information becomes available. We do what we can with what we have. I hope that you’ll agree that honest people can differ on who to support and why and still respect each other in the morning.

Lawrence Lessig has created a 20 minute video about his support for Barack Obama. I’m impressed with Lessig in general - he has spent years working to improve the state of intellectual property rights and recently has decided to tackle transparency and corruption in government. I respect and listen critically to anything he takes the time to say.

Continue reading Lawrence Lessig on Obama

Jesus was a carpenter. He built things out of wood before he got into the whole Son of God / Prophet / Messiah thing. He was known for being relaxed and groovy and exceptionally forgiving and fault tolerant. If the Church is to believed he befriended Mary Magdalene despite her being a whore, if the Da Vinci Code is to be believed he married her. I imagine that when he built a staircase he built it to work even when someone jumped up and down on it, slid down it on a rug, stacked scrolls on it, or used it in some way other than walking up and down the middle of it. He built it to be resilient. I bet that staircase wouldn’t completely collapse even if one of the steps cracked a little. Of course, that’s how it should be.

Tim Berners-Lee and his contemporaries took some lessons from Jesus when they designed the system for the Internet. Like Jesus’ staircase the Internet is forgiving and fault tolerant. It doesn’t shut down when used in new or unexpected ways. Bits of data are regularly lost when sent somewhere yet your email to Grandma arrives complete because the system is designed to be fault tolerant and survive errors. The Internet and World Wide Web are one of the coolest, most world changing technologies ever. Web technologies work and have spread and grown in popularity because they are forgiving and fault tolerant.
Continue reading What Would Jesus Build?

The Sydney Morning Herald reported on an Australian Federal Court Ruling against mp3s4free.net on appeal. The reporting indicated that this could hurt search engines, YouTube, bloggers, and anyone who might link to copyrighted material. However, I think that this may be overreacting to what is in essence a pretty reasonable ruling by the court. Anyone who has read this blog knows that I am not a fan of the RIAA or draconian copyright enforcement. I am a staunch supporter of fair use and balancing the very real interests of the people who collectively grant copyrights via the government and the content creators who are trying to profit from their work. In this case the site was trying to skirt the law by only linking to MP3’s rather than hosting them. However, the intent was clearly to help people download music they had not paid for for use in ways that has little if anything to to do with fair use and an awful lot to do not paying for the music.
Continue reading Australian Court Rules Against mp3s4free.net

At some point in time it happens to everyone, you make a mistake. Sometimes they are big, sometimes small and sometimes they are perceived by others to bigger or smaller than they are. How you handle your mistakes can make a big difference in your relationship with a client. There are no hard and fast rules for handling these things. You have to apply some judgment based on the people you are working with. Are they fixated on blaming someone or on fixing the the problem? If their focus is blame, then you are dealing with a dysfunctional, paranoid culture, the type of environment where CYA (Covering Your Ass) is the most important activity you can participate in. If their focus is on fixing the problem then you’re in luck, assuming you are willing to work quickly to correct your mistake and move forward.

Web sites change quickly and are made by people. This leads to bugs and typos and other problems slipping through. Sometimes the pace of development and changing technologies means that you miss an update to a standard or the new best practice. Well, the bad news is you screwed up. The good news is that you don’t need to ship anything to fix it, you just have to update the site and FTP the changes to the server. Sometimes the error was a simple oversight and sometimes you didn’t know something you should have; either way you fix it, learn from it, and move on.

Handling the Blamers

Some people aren’t happy unless they have someone to blame. If they can’t move on without a scapegoat then own up to the mistake, point out your fast response once the mistake was pointed out, and assure them that you will do everything you can to prevent it from recurring. It takes a lot of the wind out of their sails when you cut off their finger pointing with a blunt assessment of your mistake. Just don’t dwell on the screw up, focus on the fix and your plan to move forward. If they continue to focus on blaming you for the mistake instead of the positive changes you just made they come out looking bad to everyone else.

(via Donklephant)

A poignant monologue regarding the danger of the desire for absolute knowledge and power and the beauty of the scientific endeavor.

(via Donklephant)

The Washington Post reported on Rush Limbaugh’s outrageous attack on Michael J. Fox for political ads backing candidates who support stem cell research. Mr. Fox suffers from Parkinson’s Disease, one of many terrible ailments that stem cell research may help cure. Mr. Limbaugh accused him of faking his symptoms and not taking his medication to increase the impact of the ads. This is an appalling lack of sensitivity for a person dealing with a serious illness. I’ve listened to Mr. Limbaugh’s show since I was a child, though I generally disagree with his views on social policy I find it interesting to hear the conservative side of political issues. I’m curious if he would similarly attack Nancy Reagan for her pro-stem cell research stance.
Continue reading Michael J. Fox, Rush Limbaugh, and Stem Cells

Pass a law that says if 75% of eligible voters don’t go to the polls, the election is invalid and will have to be held again in one month. This will mean another 30 days of condescending, mind-eroding, profoundly annoying campaign ads.

(from The Outfit)

Ah, the joy of the political season, when we listen to politicians spout nonsense and vitriol and get to choose between candidates that are jerks, morons, crooks, or worse. I’ve been enjoying the political ads here in Michigan where we have spirited Gubernatorial and Senate races. We have such inspiring candidates as our incumbent Governor Granholm, Dick DeVos (”intelligent design”, seriously?), Debbie Stabenow (obsessed with Canadian trash), and Mike Bouchard.
Continue reading Tis the Season

(via Boing Boing)

That’s my Dad’s favorite saying, oft repeated after seeing a particular appalling example of human stupidity. Today I’d like to highlight a prime example of stupidity and weak minds at work that rears its head again and again - book banning. This time it came up in Houston, Texas when Alton Verm, of Conroe tried to get the school board to ban Farenheight 451, a novel by Ray Bradbury (story on the Courier website).

The great irony is that Mr. Verm proposed banning a book about book burning during the National Library Association’s Banned Books Week. Banning books is the act of intellectual cowardice. Those who fear the spread of knowledge are relying on a state of ignorance to hold their world together. Sometimes this comes in the form of government officials attempting to hold onto power by keeping the citizenry uninformed. This time it comes in the form of a parent, who has admittedly not even read the book in question, trying to keep a book with content that he is told he would object out of the hands of students. He wants ban the school from providing this book to its students. Apparently, his 15 year old daughter reading this book would undermine her fragile belief system.

No belief is sacred or should be safe from challenges in a free, open society. While respect for the beliefs of others is important, it is only through the free and open exchange of ideas and through exposure to many viewpoints that children can form a functional, reasonable world view. Trying to ban books is not the path to becoming a better person or society. It is simply a path to willful ignorance and dysfunction.

The school district in question should be applauded for the way they have handled Mr. Verm and his daughter. They have refused to remove the book from the curriculum, but they provided a book with similar themes but less “offensive” language for the young Ms. Verm to read instead. This respects her and her father’s right to refuse to learn or be exposed to new ideas without caving to their unreasonable demands that their self imposed ignorance be imposed on all students.