Tom's watching the Super Bowl commercials, and I'm sitting on the
couch next to him scanning my RSS feeds in NetNewsWire, and Tom says
he likes the custom style sheet I use in NNW — so why don't I
use...
Summary Stylesheet03/13/2003 10:22 AM At times, I don't have too much time for browsing, and just want a
quick overview on what's on a...
Transforming XML: Using Stylesheet Schemas
Transforming XML: Using Stylesheet Schemas04/06/2005 09:21 PM In this month's Transforming XML column, Bob DuCharme asks what a DTD
or schema for XSLT stylesheets can add to your XSLT development and
deployment.
Sheetselector - a stylesheet switcher in PHP
Sheetselector - a stylesheet switcher in PHP07/20/2004 05:46 PM This tutorial will show you how to build your own stylesheet switcher,
you will only need to have a basic understanding of PHP
The Return of Alt. Stylesheet and Work Offline09/13/2004 04:20 PM The excellent mozilla blog redemption in a blog reports that Alternate
stylesheet UI and Work Offline are now back in for Firefox 1.0. There
was an furor when these features where uncerimoniously removed a few
weeks ago.
The added "No Style" feature in the Stylsheet UI is useful for if you
want to print a more readable version of sites that don't offer
printer-friendly pages. The keyboard shortcut for it is CTRL-SHIFT-D.
Try it on this page to see it with no styles!
Also, Firefox 1.0 Preview Release Candidates are available for
testing. There should be another one tomorrow as well.
New stylesheet for automated testing of XML e-government schemas
Working Draft: Extensible Stylesheet Language (XSL) Version 1.1
Working Draft: Extensible Stylesheet Language (XSL) Version 1.112/19/2004 03:26 PM 2004-12-16: The XSL Working Group has released an updated Working
Draft of the Extensible Stylesheet Language (XSL) Version 1.1. Version
1.1 updates the XSL 1.0 Recommendation for change marks, indexes,
multiple flows, and bookmarks, and extends support for graphics
scaling, markers, and page numbers. Comments are invited. Read about
the XML Activity. (News archive)
Working Drafts: Extensible Stylesheet Language (XSL) Version 1.1
Working Drafts: Extensible Stylesheet Language (XSL) Version 1.112/17/2003 01:09 PM 2003-12-17: The XSL Working Group has released the first public
Working Drafts of the Extensible Stylesheet Language (XSL) Version 1.1
and its Requirements. Version 1.1 updates the XSL 1.0 Recommendation
for change marks, indexes, multiple flows, and bookmarks, and extends
support for graphics scaling, markers, and page numbers. Comments are
invited. Read about the XML Activity. (News archive)
Dividend change doesn't change Microsoft's lofty status
Bloggers are special. A jumble of
slanted, shouting voices have overcome our airwaves, infiltrated our
newspapers, filled every corner of our waking lives, and they aren't
going to stop. It's affecting all of us. You may have noticed that
every argument seems just a little more heated than the last--is it
any surprise, when each one of has been listening just a little bit
less? It's a sign of more to come. But now, people are listening to
bloggers instead. Blogging is the populist response to the media
hegemony: a sea of independent voices. ChangeThis is aiming to disrupt
the media pattern with powerful, rational arguments from leading
thinkers. We know that we deserve better than what we've got. We know
there's a thoughtful, caring, rational human inside every one of us.
We're working with the brightest minds we can find. And we believe
that bloggers are crucial to changing the tone of our collective
dialogue.
FC Now: Plus Ca Change...
FC Now: Plus Ca Change...04/07/2005 05:55 AM Last Friday, i met with a fascinating guy named Luc de Brabandere. His
book, The Forgotten Half of Change, was a FC Readers' Choice selection
in April. A witty Belgian who ran the Belgian stock exchange until he
had a...
How should the EU change?
How should the EU change?06/24/2005 07:06 PM Prime Minister Tony Blair has told MEPs that the EU is facing a
"crisis in political leadership" and must change to win back public
support. What do you think?
name change pt 2
name change pt 207/14/2004 04:56 AM I've narrowed it down technotechgirl.com bubblegumgoodness.com
mwah.com (hondo you rock!) cottoncandydreams.com candipants.com I have
no idea if these are available...
Sea Change?
Sea Change?04/18/2005 07:33 AM A report from the past.
Hey folks, if any of your are subscribed to the RSS feed under the
old deanebarker.net domain name, you need to get that changed to
gadgetopia.com right quick. DNS on deanebarker.net is changing as we
speak, as that site is going to become my personal blog sometime in
the future.
If you don't change the domain name, this may be the last post your
aggregator can find. Whether that's a blessing or curse, I leave to
you to decide.
Itching for a change05/17/2004 07:25 AM I've been in a relationship for eight years but I fear commitment and
crave experience. What should I do?
Change Management
Change Management12/02/2003 07:38 AM marcus evans Dec 2 2003 6:55AM ET
FC Now: Change from the Bottom Up
FC Now: Change from the Bottom Up08/30/2004 12:07 PM You are frustrated with the progress of your project. You want more
attention from your manager, hoping he can help your team, but he
is...
Server change
Server change12/02/2003 01:18 AM The Loosely Coupled site just moved to a new server and so for a few
hours you may have experienced problems accessing ...
In Finnish, for a change.09/01/2004 03:46 PM Sain tänään ihanan sähköpostin, joka sanoi kaiken oleellisen:
Sinä puuhaat keittiössä. Laitat paikkoja kuntoon.
Minä kuuntelen sitä, rakastan sinua
ja kaikki on sitä myöten selvää.
- Pentti Saarikoski -
(<idlewonder>Lieneekö yhden runon lainaaminen
tekijänoikeusrikkomus? Sehän on itsenäinen teos, ja pikkaisesta
runosta on aika vaikea lainata pelkkää osaa tekijänoikeuslain
22§:n tarkoittamalla tavalla. Hum.</idlewonder>)
Change has come to macosxhints.com...
Change has come to macosxhints.com...09/09/2004 11:49 PM Don't worry, yes, you've come to the right site, and yes, those are
advertisements on macosxhints.com.
For nearly four years, I've run macosxhints.com ad-free, relying on
the contributions of visitors to help fund the costs ...
MS to Change XP to Allow Other Browsers
MS to Change XP to Allow Other Browsers01/23/2004 02:26 PM "Microsoft agreed to a government demand that it eliminate a feature
of its Windows XP operating system that overrides competitors' Web
browsers, the Justice Department said."
A terabyte for $500 and change
A terabyte for $500 and change05/18/2004 10:25 AM TigerDirect is advertising Seagate 120GB drives for $59.99 after the
rebate. Applying my unique math skills (i.e., I've never done a
calculation correctly), I think that works out to $511.91 for a
terabyte of storage. Why, that'd be enough to store an entire blog,
with room left over to download Tetris!...
License To Change
License To Change06/26/2004 09:31 AM Microsoft is hard at work on more flexible and simplified licensing
for enterprises and SMBs, executives told CRN last week.
The other regime change07/16/2004 08:21 AM Did the Bush administration allow a network of right-wing Republicans
to foment a violent coup in Haiti?
Time For A Change?
Time For A Change?06/09/2004 05:16 PM A new Probe Droid has just been launched; this week we're asking if
fans/collectors think it's time for a new company to take over the
Star Wars 12" action figure line. Considering the fantastic work
companies like Sideshow
Collectibles have done on other properties, would you like to see
the 12" line find a new home, or do you think Hasbro is doing just
fine? Look for the new Probe Droid ballot now and cast your vote
today!
How did it change the world?
How did it change the world?06/05/2004 05:51 AM 6 June marks the 60th anniversary of the D-Day landings, a day that
changed the course of a war - and also a century. What are your
memories of D-Day?
"I remember when everyone shouted into their cell phones and
thought that their batteries drained faster when they made long
distance phones. I remember when people (who now have cell phones)
swore to me that they'd never have a cell phone. I remember when cell
phones looked more like military radios. I think it's fine to
gripe about technology, but I would warn those people who swear
they'll never use a technology. Technology evolves and so do social
norms.
We've been having a dialog recently about the relationship
between social norms and technology. I think this is part of the
same dialog. New technologies disrupt our habits and our norms and
what we feel comfortable with. I am an early adopter type who uses
every technology possible and I try to wrap my life around it all.
Some people try the technology and point out the tensions. Some people
ignore the technology. Technology evolves along with the social norms.
When it works well, we end up with a technology that contributes to
society in some way and becomes a seamless part of our social norms.
When it doesn't work well it either damages society or does not
integrate and is discarded." [Joi Ito's
Web, emphasis above is mine]
Joi could have been talking about libraries and librarians. Think
you'll never use IM for reference? Think ebooks will never go
mainstream? Think you'll never need a wireless network at home or
work?
Do you have a cellphone?
Why Microsoft Won't Change
Why Microsoft Won't Change07/21/2004 09:27 AM Swallowing companies works well. By John C. Dvorak, CBS MarketWatch
(via MyAppleMenu)
BetaPlace URL Change01/08/2004 07:38 PM Small Update: For those of you who haven't noticed, Microsoft has
changed the URL for Betaplace from betaplace.com to
http://beta.microsoft.com
Winds of change05/25/2004 07:10 PM USA Today May 25 2004 10:41PM GMT Grok Description matches for Stylesheet change GrokA matches for Stylesheet change
WSUS Name Change
WSUS Name Change03/22/2005 03:33 PM Starting from RC1 the new name for the free updating product is
Windows Server Update Services, abbreviated as WSUS.
If you see the old name on the WSUS Wiki kindly correct the problem,
but be careful not to do a blanket change. Some pages may discuss WUS
Beta 2, and that name won't change.
iowahawk: The Big Snooze03/14/2005 04:50 PM Detective Dan Rather stories from David Burge .. “The Big
Snooze.” .. really behind his demise, .. I'm a
dick
iowahawk.typepad.com/iowahawk/2005/03/the_big_snooze.html track
this site | 2 links
Three Years of Snooze Digital Snapshots05/01/2004 03:57 PM Dean Baldwin rigged up a digital camera to his alarm clock and for
three years took a photograph of himself waking up every morning to
hit the snooze button. CBC Radio has a selection of the pictures in a
Flash interface, where you can zoom in and check out the...
Yesterday I was checking my
referrer log and came across a weblog called PTypes, which rates famous people,
and bloggers, by personality type, and also draws linkages between
three well-known personality typing schemas. I have commented
before that the majority of bloggers seem to be INTPs or INFPs on
the Myers-Briggs personality test, but the PTypes blogger list
contains
more 'Counselors' (INFJ) than either 'Architect' (INTP) or 'Healer'
(INFP) personalities.
More surprisingly, How to Save the
World is identified as an 'Inspector's' (ISTJ) blog, which
surprised me. I had always been a strong NT, and right on the line
between E-I (to quote Neil Young, who seems to have a similar
personality to mine, "I need a crowd of people, but I can't face them
day-to-day"), and right on the line between J-P (I'm a compulsive
list-maker, but I hate inflexibility). So I couldn't understand how
the
author of PTypes assessed me as ISTJ.
Rather than argue, I decided to re-take the Myers-Briggs test. I
Googled 'Myers-Briggs' and took the first four tests that came up,
including this
quite detailed one, which all produced the same answer: my personality has changed markedly since
I started blogging. I've plotted the shift on the charts above.
Using a small letter instead of a capital for close-to-the-border
(less
than 55-45%) scores, I've gone in one year from iNTj (a Thinker) to
eNfP (a Change Agent), after not moving on the test for a decade. I
suspect my blogging is more a reflection of changes in my
'personality'
rather than a cause of them. But it's interesting -- is anyone else's
personality changing, and why? Are personality changes fundamental and
enduring, or situational and transient?
Oh, and there is a 'disorder' associated with each of the 16
personality types
when that personality becomes extreme or pathological. For INTPs it's
schizoid (disengagement) behaviour, for INFPs it's histrionics, for
INFJs it's avoidant, for ISTJs it's depression (maybe that's why the
author of PTypes pegged me as ISTJ), for INTJs like I was last year
it's schizotypal (social anxiety), and for ENFPs like I've apparently
become this year it's paranoia.
Not sure I buy this last stretch, since if I were borderline paranoic
I
would have self-censored some of my recent blog posts.
Did an Energy
Audit on our house, and have reduced energy by 20% (target is an
additional 30% by Dec./05).
C
Become a vegan
I'm about 80% of the way to
vegetarian (target is vegan by Dec./05)
D
Become active in organizations
advocating 'Maybe One' family size reduction encouragement
programs.
No progress, other than
continuing to write about it. On my 'Getting Things Done' to do
list.
F
Reduce our Ecological
Footprint by 80% by Dec./05
Housing
component of EF down 20% due to energy conservation & elimination
of lawn chemicals; other components down 50% (buying less, buying
local, buying more durable, recycling & reusing, less
garbage)
B
Produce Boycott List and stop
buying from socially and environmentally irresponsible companies.
Boycott
List done. Not buying from any companies on the list.
A
Lobby
Canadian government for a shift in tax laws from income and employment
to resource consumption, pollution, waste, and excessive wealth
Written letters. Activism
through professional institutions I belong to not started, on my
'Getting Things Done' to do list.
C
Quit job with multinational
organization that facilitates corporatism, and set up my own Natural
Enterprise.
Quit my job. New business
Meeting of Minds set up but
not yet financially viable. Wrote the book on Natural Enterprise.
A
Not a perfect scorecard, but not too bad either. The problem is, even
if everyone in North America did these things it wouldn't be enough.
As
the acceleration of global warming and other interminable bad news on
the environment, the endless victories of corporatists over citizens
and consumers, our continued theft of our children's and
grandchildren's heritage, the prevalence of suicidal economic
policies,
the endless global thirst for blood and imperialist adventure, and
last
month's US elections all showed, we're losing ground fast. We need to
be doing much more.
So while I'm still working on completing the actions I committed to
last year, reading Bill Moyers' stirring and depressing speech
has convinced me to add some more radical, and controversial, actions
to my 'to do' list, to publicly commit to do more.
Earlier this year I set out the political and ecological philosophy
behind what I called 'Plan
B',
a set of radical solutions to use once it becomes clear that social
and
political activism, networking, education, and the plodding pace of
new
technological innovation simply aren't going to be enough to save the
world from inevitable social, political and ecological catastrophe
and collapse in this century. The principles of this philosophy
are:
We need to end the 'growth' economy quickly, putting a
stop to the
increased destruction of our environment and increased consumption of
scarce resources. To reach a sustainable level and stave off
collapse,
we must achieve an 80-85% reduction in resource
consumption, through
a combination of conservation and population reduction. Today this
consumption is doubling every forty years. The longer we wait, the
greater the challenge to achieve sustainability.
<>We
need to drastically cut the disparity of wealth and power
between rich
and poor, so that the means of control of our future would return to
all of us. Globally the Gini index (the difference between the percent
of income or wealth of the richest and poorest 20% of the population)
stands at an astronomical 80 (81% owned and earned by the richest 20%,
<1% owned and earned by the poorest 20%, with a sizeable proportion
of that 81% owned by the world's richest 0.1%); it should be close to
that of civilized nations like Denmark and Japan, which have Gini
indices of 25 (35% of wealth owned by the richest 20%, 10% by the
poorest 20%). Economic power and wealth often trumps (or buys) votes,
making democratic political and economic change impossible.
<>We need to
increase our self-sufficiency, resiliency and
readiness to make the rapid transition to a new and radically
different
human culture. Individuals and communities are currently helpless in
the face of centrally controlled infrastructure and total dependence
on government and foreign markets. Communities and individuals
are
currently enslaved and imprisoned by political, social and
economic
systems they simply can't walk away from without dying.
I believe it is now time for Plan B. Like the rest of nature, humans
only change their behaviour (adapt) when they must
-- there is a little minority serendipitous experimentation with
changes occurring all the time as an inherent part of evolution, but
for the most part that is merely fine-tuning and diversification to
protect the gene pool. The vast majority of the world's people support
the Kyoto Accord and even more radical action to protect the
environment, and appreciate that the world is overpopulated, but in
the
face of opposition by the rich and wealthy elite and of religious
leaders, they're not about to rise up and overthrow the intransigent
governments, stop having children, disband the churches and revoke the
charters of polluters. They would only do that when they know beyond
reasonable doubt that they must do it -- when there is no other
choice.
By the time we reach that point it will be too late. Persuasion has
almost never brought about radical change in human culture. There must
be a 'burning platform' -- either you jump or you perish. Radical
change occurs when there is no choice: Change or die.
Plan B is designed to give people no choice but to change. Let's take
fossil fuels as an example. We could have started developing
alternatives to fossil fuels a century ago. There was no burning
platform. In the 1970s, prices spiked modestly. The reaction of the
vast majority was to demand that the government increase the supply
and
reduce the price. Governments complied, even though that meant first
getting into bed with and becoming dependent on ideological enemies,
and later launching imperialist adventures to take over the major
sources of supply economically and politically. As long as there was
any choice, no matter how socially, politically, economically and
environmentally high the cost, people would not change. As we near the
end of oil, we will see a resurgence of nuclear power plants, more
strip-mining and burning of coal, the destruction of arctic
wilderness,
the ruin of coastal waterways, massive, and bloody and incessant
imperialist wars with oil-rich countries -- anything to forestall the
need to change. The cost will be horrendous. That's human nature.
That's nature, period. Do not change until you absolutely must.
For oil, the answer is to not give people a choice. That means
rationing supply, and imprisoning those that buy in the black market.
That means huge oil tax increases to make it unaffordable for most
people to buy oil beyond the bare minimum, tax-free ration, with the
taxes used to finance fast-track research on alternative renewable
energy. That means prohibiting bringing on-board new sources of supply
that merely delay the inevitable crisis, prolong the bad habits of
reckless consumption, and ruin the environment for the sake of a few
month's supply. That means higher income taxes to pay for the
development of a completely new infrastructure based on alternative
energy (corporations won't pay for it). All of these options are
anathema to North American governments, which understand human nature
and won't dare impose these draconian solutions on people after
seventy
years of preaching that government and taxes are bad and the market
will fix everything automatically.
So we need to make sure there is no choice. Since we can't do this by
changing human nature, persuading people to voluntary reduce
consumption, we have three options: Precipitate a crisis by
interfering
with supply (socially and environmentally conscious sabotage),
precipitate a crisis by interfering with price and
supply (persuade OPEC to quadruple prices and curtail production), or
avert the crisis by coming up with innovations that reduce demand. The
third of these options is not available because those with wealth and
power would have to invest massively in these innovations, innovations
that would reduce demand for their products, so it would be both
politically insane for them to do so, and a violation of the modern
'maximize short-term profit at all costs' corporate mantra, and hence
would subject these courageous corporate idealists to legal action and
dismissal from their posts.
We can and should encourage OPEC to drastically cut production and to
quadruple prices (that's what many OPEC members believe is a fair
price
for their product now, but they're unwilling to risk an invasion by
the
West if they raised the price). Production cuts aren't in their
short-term interest either, though steep price increases are (I'm sure
awareness of this is what's behind the recent crude price volatility).
Why would OPEC nations sell for $40/barrel when they could sell for
$160/barrel with little drop in demand? The only conceivable reason is
military threats from the West.
If OPEC doesn't have the courage to confront Bush & Co and charge
fair market rates for their increasingly scarce products (which seems
to be the case), the only solution left is sabotage of the energy and
transportation systems, done in a way that doesn't cause human or
environmental injury -- preventing the supply from getting to the
market. We need a lot of
individuals to sabotage the system at its most vulnerable (probably
pipelines, dams, power transformers, tankers, refineries, drilling
platforms, border crossings and major hubs in transportation routes).
At the same time, we need to take the opportunity to block traffic in
the despicable goods that finance the flow of oil -- arms flowing out
to oil countries, and the IMF-mandated flow
of other underpriced locally-needed raw materials and
slave-labour-produced manufactured goods from poor
countries
to rich.
This monkey-wrenching needs to be done in a coordinated but
non-hierarchical way by a large number of caring, ingenious,
enterprising, self-disciplined individuals. But before we can do it,
we
need to research how best to do it, what and where the vulnerabilities
are, hand ow to achieve maximum disruption of supply with minimum
effort and no serious injury to people or the environment. I am
confident that most of this knowledge is online, and the rest can be
put online by those in the know so that the rest of us can share it.
The result would be a constant and debilitating disruption of supply
to
the point where both consumers and producers say 'uncle' and start to
change their behaviour because they
have no other choice.
I think it can be done. It will take great courage (I expect this blog
is already under government surveillance and will probably eventually
be attacked or taken down). And it will take great intelligence, to
avoid it backfiring on us, and to ensure that, once the media get
addicted to this story, they are getting our message loud and clear:
We
are selectively sabotaging the most serious excesses of the modern
economy to bring about conservation of resources and the environment
the only way we know will work. If we're going to save the planet, we
all need to consume less, and we're doing our part to make that
happen.
So here are my additional commitments for actions for 2005.
Establish a loose network of individuals who are
committed to
researching, sharing knowledge, and then acting upon ways to
selectively sabotage the most socially and environmentally destructive
elements of the modern economy without causing physical harm or
suffering to people or the environment, and in a coordinated way. A
million cells of one caring individual each. No formal organization,
no
hierarchy, no command and control. No name.
Develop and share
significant research on the
vulnerabilities of the energy, mineral, forestry, water, food, and
other natural resource production and distribution industries, and
means of exploiting those vulnerabilities to disrupt supply, to dampen
demand by undermining public trust in and reliability of their
products, and to begin to force communities to look at ways of
increasing their resource self-sufficiency.
Develop and share significant research on the
vulnerability
of the major media, and means of exploiting those vulnerabilities to
jam, hack and occupy broadcast facilities in order to educate the
public about the threats to our planet and how they can help solve
them, to communicate clearly our network's purpose and carefully
selected actions, and to recruit new individuals.
Develop and
share significant research on the vulnerability
of the world's financial systems, and means of exploiting those
vulnerabilities (such as short-selling currencies) to undermine
confidence in the fiscal and monetary systems through which the rich
and irresponsible wield power, and to disrupt the flow of money that
supports socially and environmentally damaging activities.
Educate the public about how to reduce consumption and
debt without causing hardship, since excessive consumption and debt
are
the fuel that enables massive disparity of wealth and power to
accumulate, and the continued enslavement of the people to a
corporatist economy and agenda.
Develop and share significant
research on ways in which
human fertility can be reduced and population growth rate reversed,
including both voluntary (innovative new birth control, abortion and
suicide technologies) and involuntary (airborne, waterborne or food
supply-borne agents, provided they have no effect on other creatures,
cause no human suffering, and take effect across the entire human
population without discrimination and therefore cannot be used in any
eugenic way).
Create one or more spaces where like-minded
activists can
share knowledge and ideas, coordinate activities, and collaborate, to
find less disruptive, more positive ways to save the world.
Not your average set of New Year's resolutions, I'll admit.
It is absolutely critical that these million individuals take great
care to avoid causing harm or suffering, other than economic harm.
Otherwise, extremists on either side of the political spectrum, and
government agents, could
exploit or defeat this movement. We need the media to understand that
this principle is inviolate, so that they immediately rule
us out as the source when an act occurs that causes harm or suffering.
We are not terrorists, we
are anti-terrorists.
Corporatism is economic and political terrorism, and it is threatening
all life on Earth. Our goal
is simply to disrupt this economic and political system before it
destroys our planet,
so that there is no choice but to find a better way to live.
Energy-saving features allow PC snooze, but you won't lose
Seth Godin
of Fast Company and
Purple Numbers fame has a new BHAP (big hairy audacious project)
called ChangeThis.
The idea is that we need to be more open to well-articulated opposing
(or at least different) points of view on important issues. The 'This'
in ChangeThis is Your Mind,
and by changing it, you will become part of a broader, urgent change
movement. The vehicle that gets the ball rolling is something called a
Manifesto. Seth has plans for some online Manifestos penned by some
very big
names.
It's a very intriguing idea, but I don't think it will work, not because of the Internet's
limited reach or because of anything inherently wrong with Manifestos,
but because it's out of sync with human nature. Here's why, IMHO:
What I've observed is that people want to make up their
own
minds. They will only read a Manifesto if they already deeply trust
its
author. A Manifesto by Krugman or Gladwell will go far, but the same
ideas by the same source in a NYT editorial or New Yorker
article
will go just as far. We each have our own (usually small, or
very
small) audience of people who trust what we write, what we say. A
Manifesto will not enlarge one's audience. It is preaching to the
choir.
When people write to thank me, it's not for changing
their
mind.
It's because they trust me enough to allow me to inform them
about something they're not already informed about -- Tax shifting, or
entrepreneurship, or innovation, or whatever. They know me well enough
to know my spin, and my blog articles help them learn about something
much more quickly than reading books or doing exhaustive research.
So if it's from a trusted source, a Manifesto or blog
post
or
editorial or book review or whatever will help people Make Up Their
Own
Mind. On any important issue it will not change
anyone's mind. People make up their own minds by reading sources they
trust. They don't want to change their minds. Only
ex-British private school students enjoy real debates, and that's only
because they're better at them than anyone else. Most people want
reassurance that they're right, and will be more inclined to read
things that reinforce what they've decided than things intended to
make
them change their thinking. That's not lazy thinking, it's good time
management. I want to be informed and make up my mind so that
IF
I need to make a decision (who to vote for, what to buy) I can do so
quickly. Making up one's mind is a means to an end.
How and
when do people Change Their Minds? Very rarely, and
not
by reading or debate, but by direct experience. If Bill Cosby
goes on the talk circuit and tells me welfare recipients are mostly
lazy black women with too many babies, and I'm a conservative or a
fan,
I'll probably believe him (see today's NYT
editorial by Barbara Ehrenreich on this). But if I volunteer at an
inner city soup kitchen I learn from direct experience that Bill is
full of shit -- he has his facts wrong to start with, and what he says
doesn't jibe with direct observation -- the mostly-white women
I
meet are dying to work, if they could afford day care for their
two children. I change my mind. And I no longer trust
Bill
Cosby -- he let me down, and the next time I hear him I'm going to be
inclined to Make Up My Mind that the truth is the opposite of
what he's saying.
You want to change people's minds,
get them the
hell away
from the TV, and the newspaper, and the Internet, and let them find
out
the truth face to face, in the streets, from direct
experience.
To every rule there is an exception, and the
exception to
this
rule is that sometimes you can change people's minds by telling
them a story. The reason stories are powerful
and subversive is that they can be (especially if from a trusted
source, or accompanied by remarkable pictures) a surrogate for
direct experience. That's why the story can't be too detailed -- the
listener/reader needs to internalize the story and make it their own.
Then it's as if they were at the soup kitchen, and all of a
sudden they don't trust Bill Cosby anymore either. And they
loved
Bill Cosby. But they suddenly know from 'personal experience'
that Bill's facts don't add up. They've changed their
minds.
So my suggestion to Seth is to change the word
Manifesto to
Story before he launches ChangeThis. Ot at least whisper in writers'
ears that their
Manifesto should be a Story in disguise.
This is not unique to humans. I could tell you a
story...
What do you think? Am I just old and curmudgeonly and cynical, or is
this really how people make up their minds, and why they change them
so
rarely?
We have many myths about
nature.
Most of them are about 'wildness' -- savagery, hardship, suffering.
Most of our stories about nature are of the 'Man vs. Nature' variety,
about 'survival in the wild', as if that were some extraordinary
thing.
We build these myths to keep people from running away from our
well-meaning but damaged, terrible, unsustainable culture. Richard
Manning in Against the Grain
has just exploded another of the myths about our culture: He provides
a
compelling argument that the Great Wall of China, a work of staggering
and gruelling human labour visible with a telescope from the moon, was
not built, as we were told,
to keep the Northern hunter-gatherer cultures (the 'Mongol Hordes')
out, but rather to keep the
stooped, slave labour in the 'new' civilization culture's peasants
in. If you really believe
nature is savage, turn off the hysterical nature documentaries and
read Bernd Heinrich's Winter World,
about how, even in Northern winters, even the tiniest 'wild' animals
live joyful, carefree, comfortable lives. And then read David Abram's
Spell of the Sensuous to find
out how you, too, can reconnect with lovely, peaceful, easy, sustainable nature.
The myths we teach our impressionable children about nature, from
dragon fables to Old Yeller, are usually about nature's terror and the
need to defend and return back 'home' to our 'safe' civilization.
There
is an astonishing amount of animal cruelty in children's stories, and
it is an extremely predatory and desensitizing indoctrination
technique. We reinforce these dreadful lies about nature's savagery by
sending our children to under-supervised day-care operations called
Summer Camps, which, despite their locations and stated objectives,
are
not at all about nature, but rather deplorable and usually incompetent
immersion courses in social skills. At least the British are honest
enough to do this without pretext of it being a 'natural' experience:
Their social indoctrination is called Boarding School and occurs
principally indoors. Whatever its intention, the principal effect of
Summer Camp is to untether children from their parents' protection and
their need for privacy, and force them to 'get along' with others,
find
their place in the social pecking order of their 'peers'. For the shy,
the weak, the uncoordinated, the physically and emotionally scarred
(and that's most children) it
can be living hell. For psychopathic children and predatory adults,
its
lack of supervision provides the ideal environment for honing their
manipulation skills on unprotected and vulnerable victims. Whatever
this may be, it is certainly no way to introduce a child to
nature.
Even psychopathic adults use the 'natural experience' cover to prey
upon weaker adults. This activity was most famously depicted in the
film White Mile, where the
aggressive company CEO (played by Alan Alda) bullies younger staff who
want to 'get ahead' to go on a 'character-building' white-water
rafting
trip where they are absolutely at his mercy, and where nature is set
up
as the straw-man enemy. This psychological brutality is also evident
in
many cults which use social isolation and deprivation in a
pseudo-'natural' setting to break down resistance to the cult leader's
propaganda. I recently witnessed a plane-load of teenagers returning
from a six-month 'working field trip' billeted in peasants' homes in
Paraguay -- these kids were raw with emotion and filled with horror and loathing
at the thought of returning 'home' and 'abandoning' the poor
Paraguayan
families who had opened their homes and hearts to them. Absolute
gut-wrenching culture shock. We humans are so easy to socially
recondition, so vulnerable to programming and re-programming! Our
psyches are so fragile that, especially with the young, we must take
great care not to tear them even by the simple act of exposing them to
new ideas. This is very dangerous stuff. Damn our adaptability.
Not surprising, then, that most people view nature with great fear, as
something to be conquered or survived. Most of us have no alternative
experience of it. And not surprising that so many of the well-intended
'communing with nature' alternative living experiments have collapsed
or been hijacked by psychopaths or megalomaniacs.
If we were to start with young
people, how could we expose them 'naturally' to nature:
Teaching them gently the Spell of
the Sensuous
without so unhinging their psyches that they would be incapable of
returning to civilized life and working within it, and without
exploiting their ideological vulnerability? (I know, I'm a hopeless
liberal -- I refuse to use propaganda to advance the cause).
Because if we don't show them nature, what possible hope is there for
our world when we can only romanticize (or demonize), idealize, try to imagine a natural way to
live and love and be? We learn
(especially as children) what we're shown, not what we're told.
There are almost no remaining models of natural life to show them, to
correct the entrenched, neolithic misperception of nature as something
brutal, savage, dangerous, frightening, threatening, hard, and apart. As James Taylor puts it in his song Gaia, we are taught, and left with
no alternative but to:
Turn away from your animal kind, Try to leave your body just to
live in your mind, Leave cold cruel Mother Earth behind --
GAIA, As if you were your own creation, As if you were the
chosen nation, And the world around you just a rude and dangerous
invasion.
I was at a conference a week ago with some of the most creative and
intelligent people on the face of the Earth, but when I talked to them
of the importance of wilderness, these mostly urban geniuses had no
idea what I was getting at -- they could not imagine what I meant.
I think we need to abandon the route of in-class nature documentaries
and the one-day (or six-month) field trips (and 'summer camps'), and
instead invent and design something completely new: Model Intentional Communities
that will give children and adults the opportunity to rediscover
nature, and our true nature, first hand. Just as we save endangered
species and try to build their populations back up in 'natural'
settings, we should try to recreate, and show, alternative human
cultures, so that people brought up in our monolithic and troubled
culture can be exposed to people living in balance with wilderness.
Not
in order to learn how to 'survive' it, but to learn how to be part of
and at peace with it. Glenn Parton talks about this in his essay Humans
-In-The-Wilderness.
I advocate the development of a
human lifestyle in which people live in small villages sparsely
scattered through a wilderness environment. Although this framework or
groundplan is borrowed from aboriginal peoples, it is far more
flexible
than has been thought. We can devolve or scale-down modern
civilization
to closely fit ancient land use patterns without returning to the
Stone
Age.
So we're not talking about a back-to-the-land commune that refuses to
use technology and shuns the 'civilized' world, but rather a series of
communities of, say, 100-150 people each, plus perhaps another 20
guests at any one time who would stay no longer than a month, and
bring
in new ideas and take away their learning of another way to live.
These
model communities would meld the best of do-more-with-less innovation
and technology (the Internet, solar energy, hydroponics etc.) with the
best of natural community (zero growth, 100% sustainability,
everything
recycled, no pollution, no hierarchy, LETS money, no private property
or separate 'family' dwellings etc.) These communities would 'use'
only
a tiny proportion of 'their' land for human purposes, leaving the rest
as wilderness for other creatures, for learning and exploration and
discovery and reflection and connection but not
exploitation. Their population density would vary depending on the
carrying capacity of the area, but on average would probably not
exceed
one person per four acres (a globally sustainable level). Everyone
would live as part of a self-sufficient, self-managed and
self-selected
community, and everyone would also live on the doorstep of wilderness.
The people would work only as hard as they needed to, to be
comfortable
-- perhaps an hour per day each (as primitive man did according to
revisionist history, and certainly enough in a modern egalitarian
society with the benefits of today's technology). The rest of the day
could be spent in leisure, in learning, in discovery, in making love
(possibly, as Glenn suggests, with more than one partner, at the
collective discretion of each community), in art, in writing or other
expression -- whatever each individual wanted to do. Members would be
free to travel, and through the Internet and communications media and
visitors there would be lots of interaction with other Model
Intentional Communities and with the 'outside world', but if they
stayed away too long they would be asked to give up their membership
in
the community.
What would be needed to make this work would be someone to donate the
land, without recourse or obligation, and some self-selection
mechanism
for determining who the members of the communities would be. Building
on a small standard set of inviolable principles to ensure
egalitarianism, no-growth, and wilderness protection, each community
could develop its own rules and code of conduct (or operate without
rules, if it so chose). It would probably take some time, and learning
from failure, before these model communities would stabilize and be
ready to accept visitors -- their only obligation to the civilized
world.
Now imagine a young person exposed to such a community for a month in
adolescence or high school. She would probably find it fun (certainly
more than classwork, anyway), charming, stimulating, but not appealing
enough to want to stay. But when she graduated and realized the
devil's
bargain of civilization -- the trade-off of ecocide and wage slavery
and emotional suffocation in return for 'financial security', she
might
well decide then to join an existing Model Intentional Community, or
start her own, spreading out and refusing to buy the crappy consumer
products and over-priced postage stamp building lots that drive the
current economy. In short, she, and many or most or all of her
similarly-exposed classmates, might walk away -- millions each year,
until diverse Model Intentional Communities flourish across the globe,
and the old economy, with no 'consumers' left to sustain it, crumbles
away, and with it the old politics and the old social rules and the
old
hierarchies and the old education systems, and a new culture that
values wilderness and well-being rises in its place.
That's my dream. It
cannot work, of course, in a world of six billion people, let alone
the
12-14 billion we are likely to see by the end of the century. But if
we
show people another
model now,
a better way to live, maybe it's not impossible to believe that people
will willingly, eagerly reduce their family sizes to no more than one
child per female adult, so that, within a couple of centuries, our
population is down below one billion and we can all
live this way. We could therefore do what early 'civilizing' cultures
like the Anasazi and Incans perhaps did, when, after experimenting
with
urban civilized culture, they suddenly and inexplicably walked away
from their cities and returned to a non-hierarchical and natural
life.
What a valuable education that could turn out to be.
Alternate
Alternate11/22/2002 10:30 AM If you're using Mozilla you can choose a ?low-tech? style sheet.
Low-tech in the sense that it removes all calls to colors or font
families.
one of kinja's alternate designs04/16/2004 02:17 PM some interesting ideas in the alternate design, though perhaps not
right for basic users
Today In Alternate History
Today In Alternate History06/11/2004 03:35 AM Today In Alternate
History, blogging the what if: "In 1984, John Lennon, an
obscure musician who had once been in a band with international
sensation Pete Best, writes a tell-all book about Best, detailing
their crazy life in Hamburg, Germany, and their rough-and-tumble
beginnings in Liverpool, England. The book, I Want To Tell You, is an
international best-seller."
Here are some alternative news reader UI ideas to consider.
First two are usuable
as is, but the rest require quite a bit of polishing and crafting
before they can
be useful. I came up with them while I was sitting at a
recent workshop after
hearing the speaker complain about how boring existing news readers
are.
Flashcard UI
News item are displayed on flashcards. Background color,
font size, and
number of items per card (1-7), and transition
effect should be configurable.
User can navigate forward or backward to next or previous set of
headline. Up
or escape to wider view (list of news or sources) should be
available. Fullscreen-mode
is essential.
Movie Credit Screen UI
Similar to Flashcard-style UI but visual presentation effects seen
commonly in movie
opening or closing credit screens are used. UI should not
emphasize more
than one news item at one time. For example, if news items
fade or blur in and
out then current candidate for further reading should be most
noticeable.
Background music and entertaining audio ads can be be used
simultaneously. Again
fullscreen-mode is essential. Screensaver-mode is optional.
Video Game UI
Wild array of UIs are possible here including using news items as
prizes, gates, or
monsters.
Multiplayer UI
You can see what others are interested in using various UI schemes
such as footprints,
ranking, etc.
A refined version of these UI might fade in a transparent headline
over the screen
or in some assigned space for a 'while' when user hasn't moved the
mouse or typed
anything for certain amount of time. Since most news one
might read using a
news reader aren't urgent, you can spread hundreds of headlines
over the entire day
instead of flooding the reader with large number of
popups simultaneously like
SharpReader does.
These ideas are just branches off a single idea: news readers as
boob tubes for couch
potatos. Instead of overwelming the user with long list
of articles and
folders, turn it into a linear experience like the TV.
Press the power
button to turn it on and just sit back until you see something you
like and then press
another button to dive in. Add another button for
fast-forward or switch the
channel.
Print to a Samsung CLP-500 via alternate drivers03/28/2005 10:01 AM I couldn't get this printer to print using the Samsung drivers. So I
then used the Xerox Phaser 6100 drivers, which is the same printer,
and they worked fine.
Print to alternate output trays01/23/2004 02:19 PM I have a LaserWriter 12/640. In Classic printing, there was an option
to print to the Face-Up output tray, which provides a straight through
paper path. (Important for printing labels.) When I switched to Mac
OS X, I found...
The following phrases have been identified by the grok system as matching this entry: xsl stylsheet rss firefox change permanently style alternate stylsheet wsus snooze reboot
Seth Godin
of Fast Company and
Purple Numbers fame has a new BHAP (big hairy audacious project)
called ChangeThis.
The idea is that we need to be more open to well-articulated opposing
(or at least different) points of view on important issues. The 'This'
in ChangeThis is Your Mind,
and by changing it, you will become part of a broader, urgent change
movement. The vehicle that gets the ball rolling is something called a
Manifesto. Seth has plans for some online Manifestos penned by some
very big
names.
This tubemap with station-names translated into German is really
disorienting and, as Teresa points
out, evokes an alternate history of WWII.
337k GIF Link
(via Making
Light)
