The SquizLogKeith Pitty takes a squiz at the world. |
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The SquizLogKeith Pitty takes a squiz at the world. |
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Are you doing your best?
That's the question Esther Derby poses in a thoughtful post about human performance variability. It certainly resonated with me. I know that the best I can do varies widely depending on a whole range of factors.
Worth reading, pondering and remembering before you jump to criticize somebody's work contribution. Maybe you'd be better off trying to understand their circumstances first.
Having been intrigued by the prospect of using Capistrano to deploy Rails applications, I recently went through the exercise of getting it up and running.
Last night I shared that experience with the Sydney Rails Group. My talk, Getting Started with Capistrano in Ten Easy Steps (PDF), seemed to be well received, as were the presentations by Max Muermann on Custom Date Handling and Tim Lucas on Adding RSpec to your project. Thanks to Jason Crane for coaxing the assembled rabble into some sort of order and to the people at Job Futures for providing the room.
At the end of formal proceedings lively discussion ensued at a nearby pub on a range of topics including the prospect of an Australian Rails podcast. If you're interested in Ruby on Rails, want to learn more and will be in Sydney on 14th March, why not come along to the next meeting?
Don't you just love it when you're assembling a piece of furniture and, having paid very careful attention to the instructions, you've reached Step Six out of seven? You're feeling really quite proud of yourself for making such excellent progress...
And then you realise that you made a small mistake back in Step One! Small but annoying enough that you decide you have to undo all your handywork and start all over again.
If you have the handyman skills of yours truly, it is at this point that you laugh at your ineptitude, decide that the furniture can wait and open a well-deserved beer!
I've just scheduled another week of cricket-related annual leave.
Why? Because yesterday I learnt that my son, together with three of his Central Coast rep teammates, has been selected to represent NSW in the Australian Schools Under 15 Cricket championships in the last week of March.
Naturally I'm a proud dad. I'm also appreciative that this time we don't have to go as far as Bundaberg. Canberra may be bland but it's much closer!
Australian of the Year, Tim Flannery, was clearly frustrated. He was being interviewed by Adam Spencer on ABC Radio this morning following last night's debate about Climate Change on the 7:30 Report between Malcolm Turnbull and Peter Garrett.
In Flannery's opinion, Kerry O'Brien had asked the crucial question of the Environment Minister and Labor's Environment Spokesman: "What is your core response to tackle the root causes of greenhouse emissions?"
To me Turnbull was advocating an inadequate revised view. Sure, the Howard Government now - finally - acknowledges that climate change is real. But I don't agree with their nuclear solution. It will take too long and the associated risks are too great. I felt that Garrett was very much curtailed by his party (I wonder if he still sings those provocative Midnight Oil lyrics in private). As Tim Flannery said this morning, he expressed an "aspirational vision" but there was no policy. It's all very well to set a target of reducing emissions by 50% but what should the government be doing to enable that to happen?
What has frustrated me about the public Climate Change debate in Australia in recent months is the almost complete absence of serious consideration of the potential of solar power. Turnbull continually writes it off as a limited, small-scale solution. So I was delighted to hear Tim Flannery this morning express the view that it is possible to develop technology that will enable us to transform the power provided by the sun into electricity to power a city.
I hope that Tim Flannery continues to use his time as Australian of the Year to advocate sensible solutions to this global problem. It's about time the Australian federal government got serious and invested substantially in developing solar power technology.
Is terrorism really the threat that it's often pumped up to be? Usually not in reality.
In his essay The Psychology of Security, security expert Bruce Schneier sheds more light on this question by distinguishing between the reality of security and the perception of security. Schneier asks:
"Why is it that, even if someone knows that automobiles kill 40,000 people each year in the U.S. alone and airplanes kill only hundreds world-wide, they are more afraid of airplanes than automobiles? Why is it that, when food poisoning kills 5,000 people per year and 9/11 terrorists killed 2,973 people in only one year, are we spending tens of billions per year on terrorism defense and almost never think about food poisoning?"He goes on to contend that psychology explains these irrational responses.
It is a fascinating exploration of how the human brain evaluates security trade-offs.
I can still picture myself, more than 30 years ago in early high school, working through the puzzles of matrices. It was during one of the periods where another boy and I would sit across from the headmaster's office, waiting to run errands. There weren't that many errands so the two of us had plenty of time to read and think. We could explore topics beyond those covered in class.
At the time the two of us were oddities in that we had been given permission by our parents not to attend the scripture classes that were part of the weekly school timetable. Looking back, I am very thankful that I was born with parents who encouraged me to think for myself rather than allowing me to be part of the cultural norm that involved being spoon-fed supposed "truths" from the Christian scriptures. As a result, I was able to form my own views about the existence of God. By the time I was about 14 I was convinced that the idea of God presented by Christianity didn't make much sense.
Later in my teens for a brief period I was involved in a local Christian fellowship. At first it was the social benefits that attracted me. Many friends seemed to have a good time there so I went along. However, holding atheist views whilst attending church didn't sit comfortably with me. For a while I tried hard to convince myself that I believed the stories being preached. I suppose I thought, perhaps subconsciously, that I would have more integrity if I actually believed the sermons being preached. And, being an impressionable teenager, I guess I wanted to fit in with my peer group. I even recall, somewhat embarrassingly now, attending bible study groups. Eventually, thankfully, I realised that I was pretending and recovered my senses. But not before suffering a significant degree of inner turmoil.
Which brings me to the point. Among the many important things that Richard Dawkins has to say in his book "The God Delusion" is what I consider to be his crucial chapter about religious indoctrination of children. Dawkins states his abhorrence of the widely accepted practices of ascribing religious labels to young children and subjecting children to religious instruction before they are old enough to make up their own minds about such matters. There are many different religious world views, none based on any shred of evidence but rather on scriptures. How is it fair or healthy to indoctrinate a child to believe in one religion before they are old enough to think through the issues themselves? Especially given that, as Dawkins so thoroughly exposes, religious beliefs in God are nothing more than nonsense.
In the light of my experience, I thoroughly agree. I also think it is important that any society dominated by even moderately religious views should encourage adolescents to study and compare different religious world views as well as provide them with an historical context of how the role of religion has changed as science has reduced gaps in human understanding of our world. "The God Delusion" should be a compulsory text. There's much more I could say about how Dawkins comprehensively exposes the bogus and, in some cases, dangerous nature of various aspects of religious belief. Instead, I'll leave it to you to read the book.
Meanwhile I remain glad that my parents have encouraged me to think for myself and pursue a broad, life-long education. After all, I think it makes sense for me to make the most of my relatively short existence!