I learned some new HTML and CSS tricks yesterday while studying Mark Pilgrim's site. In addition to offering a really good example to study, he also pointed to Hixie's markup challenge. I bloghopped around some related sites from there. It only makes me more alarmed about the markup in my resume which has worried me for a while now. I've felt too busy with other job hunting tasks. My resume is in XML and I'm using Ant and DVSL to transform it into HTML. I'm halfway through the process of moving that to a more current version of XML resume which uses XSL for the transformation. Anyway, someday soon I'll fix my resume to have good symantic markup and CSS for the presentation.
That didn't take long. Only yesterday I mentioned some fermenting memes and wondered what might escape. Tonight I'm feeling light headed with the aroma.
As I also mentioned yesterday, I've been chewing on thoughts about the role of a local militia in post-9/11 national defense. My original idea was somewhat fanciful: to rally efforts among local martial arts schools to prepare to defend the local community. But realistically, a terrorist attack would be difficult to defend even by the community under immediate attack. The meme needed some metamorphosis.
Several items give me little confidence in the federal government's ability to prevent future attacks. The US campaign in Afghanistan has failed to bring Bin Laden to justice. Our leadership's attention is divided between military pressure on Iraq and diplomatic pressure on North Korea. The herculean re-organization for the Department of Homeland Security will take a very long time. And Israel's example demonstrates the limits of the use of force and intelligence to weaken the cells which support suicide bombers. (Apologies to the Palestinians who surely see themselves as revolutionaries, not terrorists.)
But what can I do about it?
Terrorist attacks are like computer failures. You don't know when or where they'll happen, but they will happen. Technical experience offers some wisdom for dealing with unpredictable but nearly certain failures: disaster recovery.
That was the recombination the meme needed.
Jefferson believed that citizens guarantee their rights by their civic virtue. Gary Hart observes that "no public service more immediately and vividly demonstrates civic virtue than the citizen's defense of the homeland .... Nothing more immediately engages the citizen's attention and energies than a threat to the well-being of family, community, and nation."
(Restoration of the Republic p. 210)
In a November Washington Post article Warren B. Rudman and Gary Hart , the co-chairs of the U.S. Commission on National Security/21st Century, conclude thusly:
As there is no absolute freedom in a democracy of laws, so there will be no absolute security in the age of terrorism. But all of us, citizens and leaders alike, owe it to ourselves, to our families and to our nation to undertake the kinds of precautions required to prevent us from being hostages to terrorism and to enable us to walk freely in our own land.
With that, I would like to begin to take those lifesaving precautions in my own community. I invite you to join me in an extended conversation about what precautions we citizens can take independently and how we can coordinate with our local police, hostpitals, firefighters, and the National Guard. Please post your comments or a trackback ping at the topicexchange channel so we can take advantage of the RSS feed.
I've been reading a book by Gary Hart entitled Restoration of the Republic . I got it as a Christmas present from his daughter, who is also my step-sister's life partner (my step-sister-in-law?). This book has caught me off guard and is forcing me to re-think some of my beliefs. That probably qualifies as the strongest recommendation I could give for a book.
Bringing to light a long-neglected aspect of Thomas Jefferson's political philosophy--the "ward republic"--Gary Hart here offers a wholly original blueprint for republican restoration in which every citizen can participate democratically in the governing of his or her own life. Of crucial relevance for contemporary society, including its startlingly prescient plan for homeland security, Restoration of the Republic provides original insights into issues of national urgency as well as the timeless questions that bedevil the American democratic experiment.This book and the article by my mother-in-law I mentioned earlier have given me a new appreciation for Jefferson's political philosophy and its continuing relevance.
It seems that some of Jefferson's worst fears have come true. We (in the US) live in a representative democracy where the leaders are very distant from the citizens and policy is largely determined by "interests". We citizens have lost a sense of civic responsibility. We may complain to friends about foreign policy, the economy, corporate scandals, or campaign finance abuses, but vanishingly few of us bring our concerns to the direct attention of our representatives. Instead, we surrender our influence to pollsters and lobbyists. Many even refuse to vote as an act of protest. How can silence be an effective form of protest?
A few points resonate.
A fundamental disagreement between the Founders centered on the nature of human kind. Where Jefferson feared tyranny under a centralized authority, Hamilton feared tyranny of mob rule. That fundamental disagreement seems to be imbedded in the American psyche. We distrust our government in equal measure to our distrust of the masses.
Civil rights are guaranteed by civic duty . It is not enough to know your rights. You must take action to ensure their protection. This is a fundamental failure of my public education. Not until now have I appreciated how important it is to communicate with federal, state, and local government representatives. Nor until now have I appreciated how important it is to the common good that I form opinions and defend them openly.
Silence is not a form of participation.
The question of scale was critical to the structure of the American government. Even at its founding the nation was too large for individual citizens to be involved in every decision. Elected representation was a brilliant solution to the problem of participating in a large scale republic. But perhaps because Jefferson was in Paris at the time, the question of direct participation by citizens in their local government was not addressed by the Constitution.
In the back of my mind as I've read this book, I've given some thought to the governance of Apache projects. It is those who commit their code, those who vote, those who submit patches who determine the direction of the community and its tools. Those who take action are in charge. There is a manifest sense of responsibility to the community. It isn't exactly Jefferson's ideal. But there are strong similarities in the connection between responsibilities and rights. Online communities are faced with the same questions about scale, representation, participation, duty, and education.
One last note. Looks like Gary Hart now has a web site. In this post I've neglected to mention much about national security. I suspect that topic will find its own coverage. Also, I haven't finished chewing on my thoughts about a renewed emphasis on a local militia.
I've pulled out all of these tasty memes from the cupboard thinking I'd make a nice sandwich. Then another one catches my eye. After a week or so I've assembled a buffet. But now there are things growing. I hope some new personal memes escape this great breeding ground.
More wise words to remember from Jon Udell
If you're creating a Web service that you hope will have a disruptive impact, the lessons are clear. Support HTTP GET-style URLs. Design them carefully, matching de facto standards where they exist. Keep the URLs short, so people can easily understand, modify, and trade them. Establish a blog reputation. Use the blog network to promote the service and enable users of the service to self-organize. It all adds up to a recipe for recombinant growth.
At the Boulder Java User Group meeting this evening Martin Fowler noted the word Architecture is just a puffed-up way to talk about design. It isn't just design, it's architecture.
A short note to add a to a tangent in Chris Winter's Perfection and organic growth.
I also have a suspicion that lots of other types of designers -- architects, urban planners, automobiles -- have these same sort of overdesign tendencies. But because their constructs are real and have a substantial cost associated with tearing them down they have to confront the unlimited possibilities demon earlier.
The art of constructing buildings has been going on for more than three thousand years. That's a lot of time to refine the art.
Les Orchard and Chris Winters have recently blogged a few comments about design. Both have commented that there is no perfect design. But they haven't stated that strongly enough.
I've done a lot of design. Lots of my undergrad work was in design methods and computer applications in architecture. I've done architecturall design, graphic design, network design, interface design, software design, and systems design.
Design inherently involves compromises and trade-offs between drastically opposing concerns. Elegant design is tasty and satisfying precisely because it is impossible to find a perfect balance in a collection of opposing concerns.
Les Orchard: There is no perfect software design
Chris Winters: Perfection and organic growth
Bob, you did describe it as massochism, but if you were billing a customer for the amount of time you spent on Linux, Laptop, Masochism, would the amount cover the extra cost of a PowerBook?
This will be a fun experiment. By blogging my resolutions now, next year I will be able to look back and see how I did.
More quick blog entries, less worrying about whether my blog is Important and Interesting. I've been missing the point of blogging. Too much focus on what I think Someone Else will think is interesting. Instead I want to focus on what interests me and let Someone Else decide for herself if she agrees.
Miscellaneous blog chores. Upgrade Movable Type, publish my blogroll, make RSS feeds validate, make a full-content RSS feed for aggregators. Some template and CSS improvements. 'Nuff said.
Update: RSS feeds validate and also include full contents.
Be kinder to myself. In several conversations with Sarah over the holidays, it has become clear that I have totally unrealistic expectations of myself. I like that I haven't lost my youthful enthusiasm and the belief that I can change the world, but self-doubt (also known as fear) has twisted that belief into an expectation. There's no evidence I can provide The Angry Management that I am "meeting or exceeding expectations." Self-doubt twists into self-abuse for failure to change the world. That particular twist is incredibly self-destructive and incredibly arrogant. Sarah said something like this: "Honey, I love you. But you need to get over yourself." It was much more compassionate than it reads. To be kinder to myself, I will release the arrogant expectations and judgmental self-abuse and re-emphasize the belief in self.
Spend more time with people. Dance regularly. Go to the dojo more consistently. Attend the local user groups: COMUG, XP-Denver, BJUG. Ski with friends. Participate in some of the Boulder Food Co-op community activities.
Take a more active role in my communities. Do a presentation for one of the user groups. More work on Turbine. Help with Aikido Summer Camp in the Rockies. I subscribed to community@apache.org on Saturday. More quick blog entries.
I also got a head start on some of this year's resolutions. I bought another ski pass and have had more early season skiing than in any previous ski season I can remember. Sarah and I joined the food coop yesterday. I've been going to the user groups for several months.
Time will tell how well I adhere to these resolutions. :-)