Mike Burns had a neat idea. We brainstormed it a bit and he said I could write it up here. Hopefully we will find a way to do this. Mike calls it "Father's Workshop", but I'm not sure that name will stick long-term. :-)
The idea is that we would establish a wiki-like site for each church. Each church would have an administrator, probably in the congregation care ministry. That administrator would be responsible for creating user accounts for members who wanted to participate. That would be the only way to get into the system--so it would be limited to believers.
People could get onto the site and post their ministry project ideas/needs. These could be anything from plumbing to web work. Whatever a minister/ministry needs.
People could "bid" on doing the work, or volunteer to do the work for free. But even for pro bono work there would often be supply costs, either initial costs or on-going costs. But people who are interested in a project could post notes describing how they think it could be done and stuff like that.
People could also fund the ideas. That would include the whole gamut of micro-donations to fully funding. Maybe the donors would have the option to give anonymously.
The site would allow interested parties to discuss and plan the project, set dates, assign tasks, etc. As the work was done there would be status updates. When the work was completed the project would get marked "done".
Each church would have a local site that included only people and projects for their local church. Churches that chose to might connect their local sites in order to broaden their resource pool--I'm thinking especially of churches that start other churches. And there would be a system-wide site where churches could reach out to any/all other churches for big projects.
Think about Haiti. This would have made it much easier for many churches to connect up quickly and coordinate their work.
This might also be a perfect way to get my 'Praying with Friends' Facebook application built.
So, what are the next steps?
* Look around and make sure that someone isn't already doing something like this.
* Look at some bid-work sites like Amazon Turk, Odesk, and Scriptlance to develop an appropriate feature set.
* Talk to some ministers to see if they would be willing to participate, and get their feedback on the design.
* Work up a budget for v1 and look around for someone to fund getting it built.
I don't think of this as a money-making endeavor. Some people would need to get paid something for doing the work of building this. There would probably be some ongoing expenses for hosting and technical support. That might be covered by donations or advertisements. I don't see charging a membership fee to either a church or to individuals.
Tuesday, February 16, 2010
Youth ministry idea: Position Book
My BA is in Christian Ministry from ETBU, and I did a year and a semester towards my M.Div. at New Orleans Seminary before family happened and I ended up getting a real job. I had started school expecting to go pastor and church-plant on the mission field. When I went to seminary that plan had morphed into teaching Bible Interpretation, maybe in the US but probably on the mission field.
I was never a youth ministry guy. I fumbled my way through a summer missions stint as a youth pastor at a little church in Idaho. But kids were never my calling.
Now I have a kid in youth group. I was talking to some friends today about their kids in youth group. I got a fresh perspective on the struggles and issues of running a youth ministry. I have a new understanding of one of the big mostly-hidden problems of youth ministry. And I have an idea how the problem might be solved.
Youth ministry involves teaching people's kids. Those kids' parents come from a diverse background. They have very different opinions on things like music, clothes, dating, movies, food, etc. These are not really Bible issues. The Bible only speaks to these issues indirectly. I think that the topics I'm concerned about here are really "social" issues--how should a godly person live in an ungodly society?
These are topics that the kids are desperate to talk about. They need guidance on these topics. And they probably are not getting that guidance at home--or they are not listening to their parents. So it is entirely appropriate for the youth ministry folks to talk about these topics. But what should they say?
In about sixth grade my Sunday school class had a revolving door of substitute teachers. At one point we had three different teachers on three consecutive weeks. And all three teachers took it upon themselves to talk about sex. I don't remember the sequence, but one preached abstinence, another preached safe sex, and another tried to tell us that homosexuality wasn't all that bad. I'm pretty sure that none of the parents had any idea that was happening. Actually, I'm pretty sure that these substitute teachers didn't clear that topic with anyone.
That's an extreme example, but I'm sure that stuff happens all the time. The other thing that I'm sure happens all the time is that parents hear (or overhear) some snippet of what was discussed and then jump to conclusions and get all bent out of shape. One of my friends today was upset that the youth group had talked about one of these social topics with his kids. It happened to be a social topic that he and his wife had just spent several weeks arguing with their child over. My friend was pretty upset.
We talked for a while and figured out that the real issue wasn't that the youth ministry folks talked about that particular topic--although some warning would be nice. The real issue is that he doesn't know what kind of advice his child was given.
Christy and I recently went through a parenting seminar and class, and we have a vision of what this period of parenting should entail. And every kid is going to grow up at their own pace. What might be appropriate for one child at one time will not likely be appropriate for another child at the same time. So some parent or another is always going to be scandalized that their child isn't ready to discuss this or that. How can a youth ministry move forward?
Now I understand what most of them do. They talk a good game to parents about how they want the parents involved and informed, and then they don't really tell the parents what the parents want to know. Parents seem to be willing to let the sleeping dog lie, and so there is this mutual deception going on. You pretend to tell us what is going on and we'll pretend that we approve. But when the inevitable happens and a parent actually finds out what is being taught they get all upset.
I have an idea of how it might be done differently.
A youth ministry could generate (over time, with parent input) a "Position Book". This book would contain the official stated teaching positions of the ministry team on all social issues. Clothing, music, movies, dating, non-Christian friends, etc. What will we teach your kids? When will we start teaching each topic? How much will we encourage the children to form their own opinions and experiment for themselves? Will we give parents warning before we cover a topic?
The parents should get a copy of the position book, and have the opportunity to input on it.
The Position Book should also be accompanied by a vision training session for the parents and youth. This seminar session should lay out the vision that the youth are really "adults in training" and that they have to start getting exposed to more and more options so they can start learning to make up their own minds. I would use Ken Wilgus's map and the concept of strategic withdrawal in this vision session. And the teaching times for these social topics would be organized along a time table slightly ahead of where "average" kids should start gaining some independence in an area.
When these teaching times came up the teachers should be well familiar with the position statements on the topic. The topic should be introduced with references to the strategic withdrawal and the idea that the youths will all vary a little on exactly when their parents decide give each youth increased freedom and responsibility in that area.
I think that this would get parents and youth staff onto the same page better than any system/process that I have ever heard of. This would make communication so much easier, and could really facilitate better parenting--by keeping parents on a program of strategic withdrawal. Since attending Wilgus's seminar I have thought that this concept should be taught to the youth so they could gain the language and a safe location to discuss it. The youth could start talking about how they were gaining freedom and accepting responsibility, which I suspect would greatly help most of them.
Update 2/17/2010 @ 11pm: I sent an email to Dr. Wilgus about this idea (through Frank Childers--thanks, Frank!) Dr. Wilgus replied and said that he liked the idea and that his home church youth ministry was starting to use his stuff as a communication tool between students, parents, and the youth ministry staff. He expressed some doubts about whether or not it is possible to write position statements that would not scare off some parents. That's a great point. So I think that has to be the first to-do on the whole position statement idea. I'm going to have to write one on a controversial topic and shop it around. I'll just add that to my to-do list. :-)
I was never a youth ministry guy. I fumbled my way through a summer missions stint as a youth pastor at a little church in Idaho. But kids were never my calling.
Now I have a kid in youth group. I was talking to some friends today about their kids in youth group. I got a fresh perspective on the struggles and issues of running a youth ministry. I have a new understanding of one of the big mostly-hidden problems of youth ministry. And I have an idea how the problem might be solved.
Youth ministry involves teaching people's kids. Those kids' parents come from a diverse background. They have very different opinions on things like music, clothes, dating, movies, food, etc. These are not really Bible issues. The Bible only speaks to these issues indirectly. I think that the topics I'm concerned about here are really "social" issues--how should a godly person live in an ungodly society?
These are topics that the kids are desperate to talk about. They need guidance on these topics. And they probably are not getting that guidance at home--or they are not listening to their parents. So it is entirely appropriate for the youth ministry folks to talk about these topics. But what should they say?
In about sixth grade my Sunday school class had a revolving door of substitute teachers. At one point we had three different teachers on three consecutive weeks. And all three teachers took it upon themselves to talk about sex. I don't remember the sequence, but one preached abstinence, another preached safe sex, and another tried to tell us that homosexuality wasn't all that bad. I'm pretty sure that none of the parents had any idea that was happening. Actually, I'm pretty sure that these substitute teachers didn't clear that topic with anyone.
That's an extreme example, but I'm sure that stuff happens all the time. The other thing that I'm sure happens all the time is that parents hear (or overhear) some snippet of what was discussed and then jump to conclusions and get all bent out of shape. One of my friends today was upset that the youth group had talked about one of these social topics with his kids. It happened to be a social topic that he and his wife had just spent several weeks arguing with their child over. My friend was pretty upset.
We talked for a while and figured out that the real issue wasn't that the youth ministry folks talked about that particular topic--although some warning would be nice. The real issue is that he doesn't know what kind of advice his child was given.
Christy and I recently went through a parenting seminar and class, and we have a vision of what this period of parenting should entail. And every kid is going to grow up at their own pace. What might be appropriate for one child at one time will not likely be appropriate for another child at the same time. So some parent or another is always going to be scandalized that their child isn't ready to discuss this or that. How can a youth ministry move forward?
Now I understand what most of them do. They talk a good game to parents about how they want the parents involved and informed, and then they don't really tell the parents what the parents want to know. Parents seem to be willing to let the sleeping dog lie, and so there is this mutual deception going on. You pretend to tell us what is going on and we'll pretend that we approve. But when the inevitable happens and a parent actually finds out what is being taught they get all upset.
I have an idea of how it might be done differently.
A youth ministry could generate (over time, with parent input) a "Position Book". This book would contain the official stated teaching positions of the ministry team on all social issues. Clothing, music, movies, dating, non-Christian friends, etc. What will we teach your kids? When will we start teaching each topic? How much will we encourage the children to form their own opinions and experiment for themselves? Will we give parents warning before we cover a topic?
The parents should get a copy of the position book, and have the opportunity to input on it.
The Position Book should also be accompanied by a vision training session for the parents and youth. This seminar session should lay out the vision that the youth are really "adults in training" and that they have to start getting exposed to more and more options so they can start learning to make up their own minds. I would use Ken Wilgus's map and the concept of strategic withdrawal in this vision session. And the teaching times for these social topics would be organized along a time table slightly ahead of where "average" kids should start gaining some independence in an area.
When these teaching times came up the teachers should be well familiar with the position statements on the topic. The topic should be introduced with references to the strategic withdrawal and the idea that the youths will all vary a little on exactly when their parents decide give each youth increased freedom and responsibility in that area.
I think that this would get parents and youth staff onto the same page better than any system/process that I have ever heard of. This would make communication so much easier, and could really facilitate better parenting--by keeping parents on a program of strategic withdrawal. Since attending Wilgus's seminar I have thought that this concept should be taught to the youth so they could gain the language and a safe location to discuss it. The youth could start talking about how they were gaining freedom and accepting responsibility, which I suspect would greatly help most of them.
Update 2/17/2010 @ 11pm: I sent an email to Dr. Wilgus about this idea (through Frank Childers--thanks, Frank!) Dr. Wilgus replied and said that he liked the idea and that his home church youth ministry was starting to use his stuff as a communication tool between students, parents, and the youth ministry staff. He expressed some doubts about whether or not it is possible to write position statements that would not scare off some parents. That's a great point. So I think that has to be the first to-do on the whole position statement idea. I'm going to have to write one on a controversial topic and shop it around. I'll just add that to my to-do list. :-)
Monday, February 15, 2010
How to be an economic genius
Step 1: Learn to read the data.
There is no step 2.
Barry Ritholtz, over at The Big Picture, found and posted this chart.
Click, read, learn. The researcher here found clear correlation between Retail Sales, GDP, and unemployment. If these locked trends continue then the only number you need to know anymore is the Retail Sales number. That's one of the first numbers you will hear each season, so that's convenient.
But the really important data element here is the level of Retail Sales increase necessary to achieve increases in employment. The chart is not indicating causation--increased Retail Sales does not cause employment. In fact the inverse relationship seems more likely. But the Retail Sales number is reported early and rarely adjusted, where the Unemployment Rate is reported late and often revised significantly several times.
This does not suggest that a sales tax holiday (or longer-term reduction) will lead to increased employment. It only suggests that we won't see the unemployment rate start falling until after we see the Retail Sales sector of the economy post some improvements over 3.2%.
According to the US Economics & Statistics Administration, January 2010 saw a 4.7% increase in Retail Sales versus January 2009. Some people are quite skeptical of these numbers, and the methodology employed to scrub the data.
If the chart is to be believed and the 4.7% increase number is accurate, then we should be looking at the unemployment rate dropping by about 3%.
The skeptics at Seeking Alpha say that the seasonal adjustment of the January 2010 data is inflating the number by 1.5%. That would indicate that the real Retail Sales increase for January 2010 was 3.2%. That would equate to an unemployment rate decrease of 0.1%. My gut says that is a more accurate number.
There is no step 2.
Barry Ritholtz, over at The Big Picture, found and posted this chart.
Click, read, learn. The researcher here found clear correlation between Retail Sales, GDP, and unemployment. If these locked trends continue then the only number you need to know anymore is the Retail Sales number. That's one of the first numbers you will hear each season, so that's convenient.
But the really important data element here is the level of Retail Sales increase necessary to achieve increases in employment. The chart is not indicating causation--increased Retail Sales does not cause employment. In fact the inverse relationship seems more likely. But the Retail Sales number is reported early and rarely adjusted, where the Unemployment Rate is reported late and often revised significantly several times.
This does not suggest that a sales tax holiday (or longer-term reduction) will lead to increased employment. It only suggests that we won't see the unemployment rate start falling until after we see the Retail Sales sector of the economy post some improvements over 3.2%.
According to the US Economics & Statistics Administration, January 2010 saw a 4.7% increase in Retail Sales versus January 2009. Some people are quite skeptical of these numbers, and the methodology employed to scrub the data.
If the chart is to be believed and the 4.7% increase number is accurate, then we should be looking at the unemployment rate dropping by about 3%.
The skeptics at Seeking Alpha say that the seasonal adjustment of the January 2010 data is inflating the number by 1.5%. That would indicate that the real Retail Sales increase for January 2010 was 3.2%. That would equate to an unemployment rate decrease of 0.1%. My gut says that is a more accurate number.
The unknown unknowns
I like to think. I enjoy the process of thinking. I enjoy the eureka moments of insight. I enjoy the tactical improvements that come from well thought-out strategy.
If you enjoy thinking then you should read this article about the three types of knowledge. (Warning: the author uses a few mild expletives.) Even if you read my thoughts, below, the article is worth your time.
I learned something from the article. I already understood the 3 types of knowledge (the "known", the "known unknowns", and the "unknown unknowns".) But the author made a great argument for focusing on shrinking your unknown unknowns by turning them in to known unknowns. Prior to this I had assumed that I needed to turn the unknown unknowns into knowns, because I had never thought it out.
But he's right. Fully knowing the unknown unknowns is too much work with too little return. First expend just enough effort to convert your unknown unknowns into known unknowns. Then triage those known unknowns before deciding which ones are worth the effort to convert the remainder of the way to knowns.
I'm an INTJ. This is something that INTJs should do naturally. More than any other personality type we keep thorough lists of our knowns and our known unknowns.
If you enjoy thinking then you should read this article about the three types of knowledge. (Warning: the author uses a few mild expletives.) Even if you read my thoughts, below, the article is worth your time.
I learned something from the article. I already understood the 3 types of knowledge (the "known", the "known unknowns", and the "unknown unknowns".) But the author made a great argument for focusing on shrinking your unknown unknowns by turning them in to known unknowns. Prior to this I had assumed that I needed to turn the unknown unknowns into knowns, because I had never thought it out.
But he's right. Fully knowing the unknown unknowns is too much work with too little return. First expend just enough effort to convert your unknown unknowns into known unknowns. Then triage those known unknowns before deciding which ones are worth the effort to convert the remainder of the way to knowns.
I'm an INTJ. This is something that INTJs should do naturally. More than any other personality type we keep thorough lists of our knowns and our known unknowns.
The pendulum continues to swing
The warm-mongers' strangle hold on publishing seems to have been broken. Climate change skeptics are finding their voices again. Suddenly we are finding out that the data we have is grossly unreliable because of the placement of weather stations near heat-generating objects like waste incinerators. And even that data is indicating that the latest warming period ended in 1995--that's right, the planet has not been warming for the last 15 years.
I predict that the pendulum will swing even further, and that the major spokespeople of global warming will be fully discredited and shamed out of the field before cooler heads prevail and we begin actually studying the climate. That's too bad, but the swinging pendulum of public opinion is hard to stop.
Those of us who understand that the climate is indeed changing, just not necessarily due to man-made causes, need to use this time to get ready for the next round of debates. We need to focus on getting better weather recording stations and methods in place. We need to focus on discussing the existing known climate change patterns, and where we are in them. We have to use more moderate tones of alarm. And we have to keep the information open for serious peer review.
I predict that the pendulum will swing even further, and that the major spokespeople of global warming will be fully discredited and shamed out of the field before cooler heads prevail and we begin actually studying the climate. That's too bad, but the swinging pendulum of public opinion is hard to stop.
Those of us who understand that the climate is indeed changing, just not necessarily due to man-made causes, need to use this time to get ready for the next round of debates. We need to focus on getting better weather recording stations and methods in place. We need to focus on discussing the existing known climate change patterns, and where we are in them. We have to use more moderate tones of alarm. And we have to keep the information open for serious peer review.
Thursday, February 11, 2010
Little software idea: Paste-then-Copy
I'm a Windows user. I often have several apps open at once, and copy-paste data from one app to another all the time. I had this little idea that would save me lots of clicks each day.
I want to copy and paste in the opposite order. As I'm typing, I want to mark a location where I want to paste. Then I want to go find some data and copy it. As soon as I have copied the data, I want it to get pasted to the location I previously marked--without my having to go back to that location to paste it in.
It would be nice if I could paste-mark multiple locations, and then have the copied data get pasted into each location automatically.
It would also be nice if the pasting of the data triggered a save of the document, so long as the save did not clear the undo buffer.
So, for instance, let's say I'm editing a blog post. I want to link to an article, but I don't have the URL for the article in my clipboard right now. I type the frame for the link, the "a href=....." in the angle brackets. I leave the URL blank. I mark the location of the URL in that hyperlink as my paste-mark. Then I finish writing my blog post. When I'm done I open up a new browser window and go look for the article I was going to link to. When I find it I highlight the URL in the address bar and copy it. The URL gets pasted into the location I marked in my blog post.
The big time savings here is that I don't have to go back and find the exact location where I wanted to paste that information. I spend lots of time having to go back and find those locations, and they are not often clearly marked, like an empty hyperlink.
Somebody call Microsoft and make that happen. Thanks.
I want to copy and paste in the opposite order. As I'm typing, I want to mark a location where I want to paste. Then I want to go find some data and copy it. As soon as I have copied the data, I want it to get pasted to the location I previously marked--without my having to go back to that location to paste it in.
It would be nice if I could paste-mark multiple locations, and then have the copied data get pasted into each location automatically.
It would also be nice if the pasting of the data triggered a save of the document, so long as the save did not clear the undo buffer.
So, for instance, let's say I'm editing a blog post. I want to link to an article, but I don't have the URL for the article in my clipboard right now. I type the frame for the link, the "a href=....." in the angle brackets. I leave the URL blank. I mark the location of the URL in that hyperlink as my paste-mark. Then I finish writing my blog post. When I'm done I open up a new browser window and go look for the article I was going to link to. When I find it I highlight the URL in the address bar and copy it. The URL gets pasted into the location I marked in my blog post.
The big time savings here is that I don't have to go back and find the exact location where I wanted to paste that information. I spend lots of time having to go back and find those locations, and they are not often clearly marked, like an empty hyperlink.
Somebody call Microsoft and make that happen. Thanks.
Tuesday, February 9, 2010
Scariest thing I have read all day
We recently sold some weapons to Taiwan. China is not happy about that. Actually the Chinese military is nearly livid about it--they know that it is only a matter of time before they have to face Taiwan, and they don't want to face any more American weapons than they must.
The thinkers in the Chinese army have suggested that the Chinese government should dump some of the US treasury bills that they own, in retaliation.
Our economy is on very shaky legs right now. Moody's recently warned that the US government is in danger of losing it's AAA rating because of the tremendous amount of debt that we are carrying. China owns enough Treasury bills to break the dollar if they sell a large chunk. And they know it--they just told us they know it.
China is unlikely to do this because we are still their biggest export market. They can't strike us without hitting themselves, and they won't do that until they are ready to move to a full-scale shooting war posture. It's a sad commentary that I trust the Chinese government's economists and strategists to understand this dynamic and not violate it, but I don't trust the US government's economists and strategists.
Iran is probably going to go nuclear on Thursday. My guess is a small underground n-bomb test. We desperately need China's help to make any sanctions stick, and since we've just pee'd in their soup that is unlikely to happen. I am afraid that team Obama has been chasing too many donors (the military complex that was lobbying for this sale to Taiwan) and fighting too many fires without a coherent understanding of the chess board. But we are about to face a harrowing decision: we will have to sell out Taiwan and Tibet in order to get China's help with Iran. This is a sickening and horrible decision.
The thinkers in the Chinese army have suggested that the Chinese government should dump some of the US treasury bills that they own, in retaliation.
Our economy is on very shaky legs right now. Moody's recently warned that the US government is in danger of losing it's AAA rating because of the tremendous amount of debt that we are carrying. China owns enough Treasury bills to break the dollar if they sell a large chunk. And they know it--they just told us they know it.
China is unlikely to do this because we are still their biggest export market. They can't strike us without hitting themselves, and they won't do that until they are ready to move to a full-scale shooting war posture. It's a sad commentary that I trust the Chinese government's economists and strategists to understand this dynamic and not violate it, but I don't trust the US government's economists and strategists.
Iran is probably going to go nuclear on Thursday. My guess is a small underground n-bomb test. We desperately need China's help to make any sanctions stick, and since we've just pee'd in their soup that is unlikely to happen. I am afraid that team Obama has been chasing too many donors (the military complex that was lobbying for this sale to Taiwan) and fighting too many fires without a coherent understanding of the chess board. But we are about to face a harrowing decision: we will have to sell out Taiwan and Tibet in order to get China's help with Iran. This is a sickening and horrible decision.
theHiringSurvey test site
I'm getting really close to launching this thing. I have a test version of the production site up here:
http://www.thehiringsurvey.com/test/
Please click over and give it a quick read. If you have a few minutes then you can click through and test one of the surveys. Those are just dummy place-holders for now. But I have coded some behavior on the main page for after you take the survey, so I would love to hear your feedback on that.
Also, I'm still undecided between SurveyMonkey and Zoomerang. Some of the samples are on each. What do you think?
If you are unable to comment here, please send me an email or give me a call, or something.
Update 2/17/2010 @ 1:40pm: The test site is down because the production site is up. So the link above is now broken.
http://www.thehiringsurvey.com/test/
Please click over and give it a quick read. If you have a few minutes then you can click through and test one of the surveys. Those are just dummy place-holders for now. But I have coded some behavior on the main page for after you take the survey, so I would love to hear your feedback on that.
Also, I'm still undecided between SurveyMonkey and Zoomerang. Some of the samples are on each. What do you think?
If you are unable to comment here, please send me an email or give me a call, or something.
Update 2/17/2010 @ 1:40pm: The test site is down because the production site is up. So the link above is now broken.
Wednesday, February 3, 2010
The greatest sports quote of all time
If you enjoy sports at all, then read this short blog post. It contains the greatest sports quote of all time--I kid you not. I won't spoil it, because some of the beauty comes from the context of the story.
You'll laugh or cry, or both.
You'll laugh or cry, or both.
Tuesday, February 2, 2010
And the plot thickens
I blogged earlier about the hackers who exposed internal emails and documents from the East Anglia Climate Research Center. Now that some time has passed and people are starting to really sift through the data they are finding the genuine data gaps that many had predicted.
Here's the latest one. It seems that some of the temperature readings used in their studies was from China. That data was sent from China to someone in the US who forwarded it to East Anglia. The raw source data was deleted, and apparently no longer exists. And the numbers they used in their studies don't jive with any numbers that anyone can now recreate from China. The data they used in their study is significantly warmer than any data at any existing Chinese weather station.
In a separate row, an entirely different climate change study has been entirely discredited recently. The UN's official climate change study has been shown to have been hacked together from anecdotal data gathered in a hiking magazine.
Global warming science is acting more and more cultish every day. They have stopped acting like real scientists. They are hiding their data and producing garbage reports. They attack everyone who questions them. And they rake in big bucks from their donors.
Here's the latest one. It seems that some of the temperature readings used in their studies was from China. That data was sent from China to someone in the US who forwarded it to East Anglia. The raw source data was deleted, and apparently no longer exists. And the numbers they used in their studies don't jive with any numbers that anyone can now recreate from China. The data they used in their study is significantly warmer than any data at any existing Chinese weather station.
In a separate row, an entirely different climate change study has been entirely discredited recently. The UN's official climate change study has been shown to have been hacked together from anecdotal data gathered in a hiking magazine.
Global warming science is acting more and more cultish every day. They have stopped acting like real scientists. They are hiding their data and producing garbage reports. They attack everyone who questions them. And they rake in big bucks from their donors.
Monday, February 1, 2010
How to become an idea-shipping person?
James sent me this. I feel like he knows me well, and he says it reminded him of me.
This one really speaks to me:
I can't find anyone explaining that concept anywhere. Seth? Can you explain it to me? (I emailed him to ask. We'll see what he says.)
Update: Seth wrote back. He says that his latest book, Linchpin, is all about how to become an idea-shipping person. The book is available on Amazon. I don't want to dispute with the author about the contents of a book I haven't read, but that isn't at all what I get out of the reviews for the book. I don't see how "indispensable" and "idea-shipping" are related. The term "idea-shipping" does not come up in the reviews at all. We'll see, I guess.
This one really speaks to me:
- Are you a serial idea-starting person? If so, what can you change to end that cycle? The goal is to be an idea-shipping person.
I can't find anyone explaining that concept anywhere. Seth? Can you explain it to me? (I emailed him to ask. We'll see what he says.)
Update: Seth wrote back. He says that his latest book, Linchpin, is all about how to become an idea-shipping person. The book is available on Amazon. I don't want to dispute with the author about the contents of a book I haven't read, but that isn't at all what I get out of the reviews for the book. I don't see how "indispensable" and "idea-shipping" are related. The term "idea-shipping" does not come up in the reviews at all. We'll see, I guess.
The next financial crisis
Read this article three times. Then read it again.
I've never heard of this guy before today. Several of the books he quotes I have never heard of before today. Those books are now on my list. This guy is now on my list.
I'm not sure he is right. But I can't find any bears out there with more compelling arguments.
I've never heard of this guy before today. Several of the books he quotes I have never heard of before today. Those books are now on my list. This guy is now on my list.
I'm not sure he is right. But I can't find any bears out there with more compelling arguments.
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