Author: Shelley Powers

Categories
Political Weblogging

The debate falters, lying broken in the dust

Yesterday I accepted the challenge issued by the so-called warbloggers to engage in an ongoing debate about war in Iraq; to put forth arguments without recourse to personal attacks. I believe that I accomplished this, writing up both legal and strategic reasons against war in Iraq and not once engaging in character assassination.

My regular readers are probably wondering why I bother, as these debates rarely go anywhere. (Especially since I’m under such a tight book deadline. Yeah, yeah, and ThreadNeedle is overdue, too.)

Past experience has shown that when those in my virtual neighborhood engage in said debates, we’re usually ignored by the warbloggers, or personally impugned. Rarely are our arguments directly referenced, with the point by point rebuttal or dispassionate cross-examination that marks good debating technique. Why tilt at the warblogger windmills?

What can I say, my lance was dull and needed sharpening, and my horse is fat and needs exercise.

Joking aside, debate is a remarkably effective method of finding which of our arguments are sound, and which are so full of holes they’d sink if floated on water. And there are many decisions being made in the US (and most likely other countries) based on some very leaky arguments. Good debate is a quality assurance process.

Since the first rule of debate is to define the subject, from this point on for this particular debate I’m going to label the sides pro-invasion for those in favor of invasion of Iraq; and anti-invasion for those against. The whole warblogger, anti-warblogger, peaceblogger labeling is getting tiring–time to start addressing specific issues rather than dump each other into dismissive categories.

On to the debate:

Eric did respond to Alan’s posting on the analogy of post-war Japan and humiliation, though as you’ll read from my comments, I felt that he didn’t adress Allan’s writing specifically. He also didn’t address Jonathon’s excellent posting, though has said he is writing more on this issue later. As for my own posting, he responded here and here. However, he also wrote:

Burningbird senses a weariness on my part to engage in a point by point debate. This is so because I sense we have no common ground whatsoever. That is why I have presented detailed overviews on the various issues: they indicate where I am coming from.

Eric, if we agreed, there’d be nothing to debate.

Den Beste wrote:

 

I favored the war in Afghanistan. I favor war in Iraq. I hate the prospect, but I consider all the alternatives to be even worse, and I believe that the longer we wait, the worse the cost of the war (to us) will be, and since I consider such a war unavoidable then the sooner the better. But entering a war is a major political decision and it unquestionably should happen only with emergence of public consensus, based on reasoned understanding of the issues by the public, which I believe can best be fostered by public debate. After Pearl Harbor, no such public debate was needed to create a consensus for war against Japan, but since I’m advocating a preemptive attack against another nation instead of a direct response to a direct attack by that nation, then we have the luxury of time for a debate, and an obligation to engage in one.

 

And I have been trying, off and on, to engage those who strongly disagree with me in such debate for months now, largely fruitlessly. Perhaps I chose the wrong forum to issue my challenge, given that those on the other side of the political fence who participated there at the time also tended to subscribe to a whole mishmash of post-modern multicultural dogma, to the extent that we couldn’t even come to an agreement about the fundamentals of epistemology, let along tackle the actual political issues. At the time I dismissed those epistemological concepts as “Berkeley Rules”, and in reaction I was myself dismissed as a bully and an insensitive boor who didn’t understand what a social gaffe it was for me to actually tell someone that they were wrong about something and to try to prove it to them and everyone else.

While Den Beste is a pro-invasion and I’m anti-invasion, I do agree with him about the importance of debate of this issue.

I haven’t seen any polls in regards to invading Iraq, but if any has been conducted, I wouldn’t be surprised that at least 50% of the people in my country believe we should invade Iraq. Their reasons vary, but chances are they’re reflected in what we read within the weblogs. Time to start talking. Time to start the debate.

Update: Eric did respond to Jonathon’s post with an extensive post of his own. However, me thinks the debate on the Iraq invasion between us has run its course.

Probably for the best.

 

 

Categories
People Weblogging

The debate continues?

Recovered from the Wayback Machine. 

Continuing the discussion I started in yesterday’s posts (here, here, and here) in response to postings by Eric Olsen, Martin Devon, and indirectly by Glenn Reynolds, Jonathon Delacour answered my plea for clarification about Eric’s statements regarding Japan in what promises to be an excellent multi-part posting. In addition, Alan Cooke also responded with a succinct take of the assertions presented by Eric.

(Not to mention this at Salon, link sent to me by a friend.)

I am especially pleased that all participants in this debate have not resorted to name-calling, addressing each other’s comments rather than resorting to personal attacks. I won’t speak for my own arguments, but I do believe that Jonathon’s and Alan’s are quite well formed. Don’t you agree?

Now I am sitting, quietly, but filled with eager anticipation for additional entries in this debate by Eric, Martin, or Glenn (or new participants who may be interested in joining). Gentlemen (and ladies if any join), the ball is now in your court.

Categories
Weblogging

Intensity

I had asked Jonathon to respond on a warblogger quote about Japan before I read his posting today, I am very intense.

In the posting, an extraordinary exposition of self, Jonathon writes about an online relationship he once had:

We drove each other crazy. Minor issues of emphasis or tone in an e-mail led to massive misunderstandings and flurries of conciliatory messages. I longed for the unspoken understanding and emotional restraint that I’d shared with my Japanese girlfriends.

 

…

 

Eventually it blew up in our faces. A virtual relationship was—paradoxically—simply too intense. People told me this wasn’t a real relationship but that’s not how it felt. At the time, it seemed absolutely real. As real as the lilting tone of her voice, as real as the lingerie on her bed.

I had once asked, long ago in this weblog, can true relationships develop with people we meet online. I was answered by many that, yes, they can. Jonathon’s experience was not so fortunate.

It would seem that online relationships work well for some, and quite badly for others. And when the relationship doesn’t go well, one is then left with the question: if the connection is so virtual, why then is the pain of the loss of the relationship so real?

Jonathon, my sympathies for Pudding.

Categories
Political Weblogging

The argument in defense

Recovered from the Wayback Machine.

Oddly enough, two separate threads related to two totally different subjects and both leading to this posting.

As stated earlier, B!x posted a reference to the Weblogging Consortium idea to Blogroots. At this time, I rather wish this hadn’t happened because the idea was just something I was throwing out to see what kind of discussion it would generate in my own comments; to see if interest was strong enough to take the idea further.

Well, it generated discussion at Blogroots. Lots of discussion. It also generated a great deal of dismissiveness, from me, and from others. Anil says I proposed the idea because I’m promoting my return to weblogging; Matt says that the idea is far too idealisitic; Melody states the proposal is ill-formed; and someone going by the name of ‘watermelonpunch’ sure doesn’t like the reference to ‘weblogging community’.

I’m feeling trapped behind bars that allow me little room for movement. Result: Oh, Yeah?

Conversations shut down before they even started, for what was nothing more than a simple idea. Slam! Hear that door shut! And not just on the ‘proposal’, but also on the criticism. Playing the game “What animal are you”, I could have been a hedgehog. Bristle! Defensive manuever! Lick them tennis shoes and foam at the mouth!

Or: How Not to Keep a Conversation Going 101.

And as I was trying to smooth the quills down on my back, I stepped over to Glenn Reynold’s and read:

 

this

The problem, essentially, is that Dave came into this debate late, and he’s not up to speed. He’s a smart guy, God knows, and as entitled to an opinion as anyone, but a lot of people have been wrestling with these things in somewhat more depth. Vague, general statements about playgrounds and bullies are merely inapt analogies, not arguments. You can make an intelligent argument against invading Iraq. And — here’s the other post I don’t have to make — Jim Henley has done so. I think he’s wrong, but it’s a question of the weight you assign to various factors, which is something about which reasonable people can differ.

And this

MARTIN DEVON is echoing a question of my own: why are the arguments offered by those opposing the war of such generally poor quality? I can make up better, more coherent arguments against the war than those who seem to have made it their mission to oppose it.

And this

MEETING THE CHALLENGE: HappyFunPundit is proving that warbloggers are better than anti-warbloggers even when it comes to thinking up arguments against the war.

 

You can hear the door slamming in each of the quotes that I pulled from Reynold’s site. The condescension as he dismisses other opinions, the refutation of other arguments as being poor according to his standards, the very fact that he doesn’t even reference most of the other arguments — only those of like mind — are all discussion killing tactics. He is using his position of influence to control the flow of the discourse.

Rather than refute the arguments, he’s disparaging the player; surprising behavior for someone who should be skilled in debate as one would assume a law professor would be.

If I taught “How Not to Keep a Conversation Going, 101” this morning, Reynolds has been teaching the advanced course all day long.

But then, he is a professor.

Categories
Technology

The Line-of-Sight Developer

I heard the term “Line-of-Sight” in reference to certain breeds of dogs, such as the Afghan.

It seems that these dogs have this instinctive urge to run towards the horizon, and if they get loose, they’ll keep running towards the horizon at full speed until their owners catch them (fat chance) or until they run out of steam.

My brother and his family have a Greyhound/Great Dane mix dog named Hillary that’s a line-of-sight dog. The problem is that she has the speed of a Greyhound and the size of a Great Dane — not a dog one takes for a walk without a great deal of trepidation.

These pooches just can’t help themselves: they see, they do.

Odd thing, though, is that I know of developers that are like line-of-sight dogs: they see, they do. The problem is that you can’t leash these folks up, at least not without breaking several laws of the land.

The Characteristics of a Line-of-Sight Developer

How do you recognize if you work with a Line-Of-Sight (LOS) developer, or are one yourself? Well, there are several warning signs to look for.

You receive an email from another team member that they have “improved” the performance of a key element in the application your team is working on, have checked in the change and is ready to move it into production. Unfortunately, none of the rest of your team knew that the developer was working on this key piece of code, much less what the change was, and how it will impact on the rest of the application. Congratulations, you’ve just identified a LOS developer.

During a team meeting, you discuss the possibility of making a change to the user interface of an application, but decide to wait and get additional information. The next thing you know, the change has been made. You track the change down to a specific developer who states “Well, I had some time so I thought I would go ahead and implement the change”. Yup, one of the classic characters of the LOS breed is the words “Well, I had some time …”.

In an environment where clients have direct access to the developers, they always approach the LOS developer with requests for changes. You see, it’s an established fact that Clients instinctively know which developer will make the requested change without question. This ability is part of the client’s built-in survival instinct.

The LOS developer can program better than anyone else — at least, that’s their own opinion. So, they’ll fix other team members code whether the code was broken or not, inefficient or not, up to specs or not. After all, it’s a tough job, but someone has to do it.

The LOS developer: they saw, they did.

Two Different LOS Breeds

There are actually two different breeds of LOS developers.

There is the “I’m inexperienced and very eager” LOS developer. I call this type of LOS developer the “WOWIC” (Watch Out World I’m Coming) developer.

The WOWIC LOS developer brings the unanticipated changes they make to you for praise and at that point, all you can do is tell them they’ve done a good job, and give them a stock option to chew on. After all, to beat them about the head with a project plan will only break their spirit — you have to approach their training more cautiously than that.

The second type of LOS developer is harder to work with but thankfully less common than the WOWIC LOS developer. The chief signs of this type of developer is their arrogance, so I call this breed the AAH (Arrogant A**H***) LOS Developer.

You can easily recognize the AAH LOS Developer — one of their chief hobbies is to go through their teammates’ code and change it to what they believe is better code. If the teammate disagrees with the change, the AAH LOS developer looks at them as if they were an amoeba that just started to sing the “Star-Spangled Banner”. No one disagrees with The Programmer.

Dangers of LOS

Anyone who has worked on a larger application knows how dangerous a LOS developer can be. What may seem to be a simple change in the code for one application module can have disastrous effects on the application as a whole. If the change is in shared code, the developer has a responsibility to inform others before making the change. Better yet, the change should be incorporated into a staged development rollout, to ensure appropriate testing.

Another danger of the LOS developer is to the morale of the team. If you have a developer, particularly an AAH LOS Developer, grabbing other people’s code and changing it without legitimate cause you’re going to have dissension in the group. This type of behavior is discourteous. This type of behavior is costly to the development effort. Really, this type of behavior is just plain rude.

To make changes daily or even weekly and just plunk the code in without a plan only disrupts the work of other developers. I’ve found that any language that supports class inheritance, such as Java or C++ is particularly susceptible to this type of “ad hoc” code changing.

Is there a cure for LOS?

As stated there are two breeds of LOS developers, so there are two cures.

Having a well-established change control system and good software development procedures in place are about all you need to train the WOWIC LOS developer. They’re eager to please so showing them that good programming practices and teamwork support are just as valuable as lines of code will get the point across, quickly.

How about the AAH LOS Developer? Well, sometimes all you have to do is tell the AAH LOS Developer that they’ve tromped all over the team’s code and to please not do so in the future. If they’re more arrogant than A**H*** this could work.

However, the best approach with the AAH LOS Developer is to again set procedures in practice that curb the more I, PROGRAMMER urges of the AAH LOS Developer. In other words, track what the person is working on, and keep them busy enough with their own assignments to leave other people’s work alone.

Oh, did I mention that you need to have good programming practices, change control, and well understand project plans in place? I did? Just wanted to make sure.