Category: Culture

Categories
Culture

Demographics

I agree with Karl Martino in his disgust with both Pat Robertson and that pathetic minister from Kansas, Fred Phelps. Don’t need atheists to say anything bad about Christianity when you have men like this out witnessing for the faithful–usually by recommending that someone be killed.

I winced, though, when reading his condemnation of Ann Coulter. Oh, not because he condemned her. It was his reference to her audience:

And speaking of Ann Coulter […] did you know she actually suggested New Yorkers are cowards? I know many New Yorkers. They are the ONLY folks I know that compare to Philadelphians in terms of being tough.
…
She’s one of a growing chorus of opportunists that seek to divide the country for their own gain. She knows her fan base – Southerners – and plays to it very well.

Missouri is considered on the border between north and south, east and west in this country, but culturally, the St. Louis area aligns more southern than midwestern. And this is reflected in some of the votes that have happened the last few years, including those for President, Governor, and the overwhelming vote against gay marriage.

At the same time, though, even in the hot of summer a good crowd showed up at the Gay Pride parade in St. Louis, and most of the people were not gay. It made me feel pretty good.

During the trip this last week, I talked with a lot of people, and heard stories about mills, and whisky running, and the great flood of 1993, and I found the people to be both charming and friendly–especially in the Branson area, where everyone had a smile. But then, these people saw a straight, older, white woman. A straight, older, white, woman who they assumed was Christian. It was lucky that religion was never mentioned, because I was right at the buckle of the bible belt: the heart of the fundamentalist faith in this country.

No we didn’t talk about religion or politics so I was able to pass and had a delightful time. I’d like to assume, because I like to believe the best of folk, that if they knew I wasn’t Christian, or Republican, they would still have been as friendly.

I wonder, though. A couple of months or so ago I had a lovely email from a lady who volunteered at one of the local historical societies. She’d really liked my Tyson Elk story–you know the one with the atom bomb?– and asked how I had conducted my research. I love history, and it was wonderful to talk with someone about it, because I swear “history bloggers” are the rarest of the rare breeds. Anyway, we had a great exchange of emails, and were even talking about getting together for lunch to talk about Tyson, when I mentioned that she could see some of my photos of the area at Flickr. What I had forgotten is that it was fairly soon after the Pride parade and my Flickr queue was full of pictures from the event. I never heard from her again.

Still, most of the webloggers from the south I read are tolerant, intelligent, and open minded and I’d like to think they’re representative of most of the folks in the area rather than online freaks who have been perverted by all you folks out there. As for the north, well, I grew up in a town in Washington State that wasn’t far from the spiritual center of the neo-nazi movement, only forty miles away in Idaho. Heck, I’ll take a southern redneck from the Ozarks over one of those guys in the back hills of Idaho.

Perhaps tolerance is a myth made up by big city folk in the north to descibe what doesn’t exist in the south. Still, as Mark Twain said, All the talk about tolerance, in anything or anywhere, is plainly a gentle lie. It does not exist. It is in no man’s heart; but it unconsciously, and by moss-grown inherited habit, drivels and slobbers from all men’s lips.. Mark Twain was from Missouri.

I think there’s just one kind of folks. Folks. Harper Lee, author of “To Kill a Mockingbird”, and born in Alabama.

All I was doing was trying to get home from work. Alabama born Rosa Parks said.

Never drive a car that can handle more road than you can. Sorry, that one was me.

Bad, stupid, fearful people live everywhere. It’s just that most of the folk in the south are quiet and believe their ministers and not all of the “men of God” here are good people. Or at a minimum, tolerant. Nor do they have a whole lot of exposure to people who are different, and didn’t grow up in these parts; probably because people in the north don’t visit the south, and when they do, they treat the folks here like they’re inbred and stupid. Or they act like they’re inbred and stupid, themselves, and the southerners want no part of them.

Familiarity doesn’t breed contempt–distance does that.

Oh, and as an example of a typical southern person, Bush doesn’t count–he went to Yale.

Categories
Diversity

Too good to miss

One last gem for Friday, Slashdot writes on a soon to be released report from Richard Lynn, Professor Emeritus of Psychology at Ulster University that, well, read for yourself. From the Independent:

Men are more likely to win Nobel prizes and achieve excellence simply because they are more intelligent than women, an outspoken male academic has claimed.

Richard Lynn, the emeritus professor of psychology at Ulster University, argues that men have larger brains and higher IQs than women, to such an extent that they are better suited to “tasks of high complexity”.

By the way, he’s referring to white men. Previous studies of his show that whites are also more intelligent than blacks.

We’ll see what the study shows, but if it’s based on many of the current methods of testing, when I was studying Psychology, my professors disdained these for the fact that most are biased toward the test developers…who just happen to be western, white, males.

Fancy.

Best comment, from the BBC coverage:

I scored relatively high in an IQ test when I was a child. Since then I have done many many many very very very stupid things in my life. I still wonder what that test has to do with intelligence or understanding at all.

Second best comment, from Slashdot:

Of course men are smarter. We as women have been taught all our lives that this: |———| is 7 inches.

As an FYI, I have never taken an intelligence test. I have refused to take them since I was a child. For all I know, my IQ may be that of a frog, and anything positive I have accomplished has been the result of the energy released from frustration I’ve experienced with not being able to catch a plane in the sky with my tongue.

*thwapt!*

Categories
Connecting Critters

Seeking our inner anger

I was in a conversation recently about reading sites we know are guaranteed to make us angry. I was reminded of this tonight, when for the second time in a row, I went to this weblog of a woman who could probably find a way to say “Good Morning” and be infuriating. At least to me.

We have nothing we agree on. We could never agree–the differences between us go to the very core of us. More than that, though, there is no open avenue to have any form of effective communication. The most I could ever get from reading her site is frustrated outrage and anger.

So why did I go back a second time?

Why do we continue to read people’s weblog if they make us angry? More, why do we read people we have no respect for? If you have no respect for me, why do you continue to read me? I always assume that the one thing those who read my site have in common is that you respect me, in some small way. You may not agree with me. You may disagree often. You may not like me. But there’s something besides loathing and anger. Or why read me?

Reminds me: We had a black cat that lived in the apartment a couple of doors down from us. It’s owners would let it out to walk around, and it would immediately head for our window. We would call out “Cat, Zoë!” and she would run to the window as fast as she could. She would start hissing and growling and puffing our her fur, and the black cat would hiss and growl and puff out his fur and then they would swat at each other in the window. Not many times, just a couple. Then the black cat would go away, Zoë straining as hard as she could to watch him go.

When his family moved away, she was depressed for weeks.

Categories
Connecting

A difficult conversation

I’ve been involved with a rather intriguing conversation over at Phil Ringnalda’s. I hesitated to point to it, as when you read the comments, some of you may be disappointed in me. But for all my faults, I’ve not been one to hide my decisions, though I think it would have made it easier to get a job if I had.

The conversation is good, especially as it involves the question: if it’s wrong for an organization to do something, is it right when a friend does the same? This is a key element in many of the writings in weblogging, and was a real motivator for my little ABCs of frank, online discussions.

Do I have an answer to this? Not likely.

Anyway, I decided to point to the post after giving my friend Phil a heads up, because I didn’t want to sucker punch him emotionally twice in one day. And when I return, I’ll have more to write on it.

Categories
Connecting

Foobar

This is a real red letter day. It’s a day when I come out in defense of a Tim O’Reilly event, rather than the opposite. I’m sure it will be appreciated about as much as my criticism, which is to say not. Regardless, it is the fair thing to do.

The event is Foo Camp, and there’s some folk unhappy because they weren’t invited. Among these are Russell Beattie, Marc Canter, and Om Malik. Surprises me a bit because these guys are already part of the ‘insiders’, the people who are connected, those at the top. Is it that they want to be more in, more connected, and even higher?

In the past I’ve been concerned about invite-only events such as these, because women, strangely enough, usually don’t get invited. And though the numbers at this year’s camp are pretty weak, there are women attending. Could do better on the representation, but if O’Reilly is really only concerned about marketing to men, that’s the company’s decision. Besides, looking at the women invited, quality more than makes up for quantity.

I didn’t get an invite, but wasn’t expecting one. Was invited once, and had to decline–didn’t have the money to make my way over to the coast. Even if I did have an invite and did have the money to go, I wouldn’t. Something like this has no appeal to me, and if the only power of the event is for it to be known that you were at the event, then this doesn’t have much appeal for me either.

Two hundred and fifty people roughing it in tents, sharing showers, involved in a saturation campaign of connecting with as many movers and shakers in the tech community as possible? Not my thing. A quiet dinner meeting up with folks and having a chance to talk, now that sounds fine. Time to meet with folks and talk over an idea sounds good; a frenetic run from event to event, tossing frisbees along the way does not.

Oh, it does concern me that I’m out here in St. Louis, cut off from ‘action’ so to speak, and adrift without the networking that seems so necessary to my biz. However, being cut-off also means that I have a clear perspective on much of the noise coming from the coast and much of it is noise, make no mistake. In the last five years most of the jumping up and down that’s occurred has been about concepts with no technical feasibility; technologies that are five years old but new again; and concepts that seem really great, but which we soon tire of like a kid with a Christmas toy.

There are the winners that slip in, and it would be nice to meet up with those who create the works that are solid, and you know will last. But I don’t really have to travel to California, and sleep on the ground with 250 people who are virtually strangers, while standing in line at the toilet in order to experience their creativity. I’d rather get to know the people through their work, when I can go to the bathroom anytime I want. As for the boosts to career and being part of the insiders, well, if my words and ideas and code here and elsewhere can’t sell me then nothing I’ll say in person will really make a difference.

But enough about me and my less than geeky attitude: I was particularly impressed with Tim O’Reilly’s discussion in Om Malik’s comments about how the choices of who to invite are made, especially the reasons for the 4th cut:

Fourth cut: Key people from important O’Reilly business partners, with whom we’re trying to build a deeper relationship, and for whom an invite to the “it” event will help seal the deal. (Sorry, but we are a business, and the event does have a business purpose, to increase our connections with people who will benefit our business.)

Foo Camp is to benefit O’Reilly the business, and as such, O’Reilly the business should have a right to invite the people it wants. Upfront, and honest, and I can respect that.

The real issue, though, and the main reason for much of the hurt feelings, is that Foo Camp is seen as the ‘it’ event, to use Tim’s rather eloquent words. Why is Foo Camp the ‘it’ event? Because Tim O’Reilly is a damn good marketer, that’s why. Want to have a session with the movers and shakers in the industry? Don’t have a meeting and let people invite themselves — no one will show up. No, you invite the folks, imbue the event with an ever so delicate scent of exclusivity, and the best will beat at your door begging to be allowed in. Brilliant. Mark Twain would approve.

Bottom line, though, and pushing aside much of the myth, FooCamp is nothing more than a fun and active party with some pretty smart people, not unlike many others that happen over the year. We make it exclusive by wanting to go. Stop wanting to go, and it’s no longer exclusive; it’s no longer the ‘it’ event, it’s just ‘an’ event.

There’s a lot of good people going to FooCamp who I would love to have a long chat with sometime, and maybe I will in the future. But I’d like to meet them one or two at a time, not cramed in amidst all that good old American summer camp goodness.

(I will miss the beer, though. Haven’t been to a good kegger in the longest time. )

Most importantly, if the purpose to go is to network, then you have to ask what the value of our online connectivity is if we feel we have to meet people in person in order to be successful. I mean, the people who are selling the whole “online experience” thing are the same ones who are running around from conference to conference, meeting to meeting. Either this is all new, in which case the old style of networking doesn’t matter; or the people who are networking about how this is all new are propagating a lie.

I’d like to think this is new, and it doesn’t matter how many ‘it’ conferences you go to, as long as you got the goods. So, to Tim and friends, have a lot of fun, take pictures, and write lots of reports. And to those who are doing the BarCamp thing, I hope you have fun, too. As for me, well, I’m thinking of creating Atom 2.0 and seeing if I can get on Slashdot.

Better yet: Eve 1.0, the syndication feed developed exclusively for women. Cool. And I didn’t even have to stand in line for the bathroom to think of it.