In today’s installment of Yet Another Paul Graham Essay, he’s talking about PR firms. The article begins like this:
“Suits make a corporate comeback,” says the New York Times. Why does this sound familiar? Maybe because the suit was also back in September 2004, June 2004, September 2003, November 2002, and February 2002.
The Long Emergency is a fascinating account of one author’s predications of shrinking oil capabilities and the results on American life. Sounds plausible to me; but even if you don’t agree, it’s still a fascinating read.
Hanna Wallach wrote recently about the article HOWTO encourage women in Linux. I had read that article some years back, maybe in 2002 when it was first written, but it is interesting to re-visit it. It is a good read, and a thought-provoking piece even if you disagree.
I find myself mostly agreeing. There are some truly appaling examples of sexism there, such as a conference inviting someone to speak on a “wives of hackers” panel instead of give a more technical talk that she was qualified for.
I also wonder how much has changed in the 2-3 years since the document was written. For instance, the “Computing perceived as non-social” section. I know this was the case not long ago, but is it still? With the proliferation of IM software, it seems that it is sometimes becoming the trendy social activity.
In general Linux or Debian lists, there are still people that act disrespectful towards women, just as there are in society at large. I have noticed that when this happens, the other people on the list — especially the men — are far more likely to take action today than they would have been a few years ago. Personally, sexism in either direction offends my sense of treating each human being as a person, and feel it reflects poorly on Debian/Linux/whatever context it’s in. I wonder if women feel that it’s getting better too, or am I just not reading the right lists? (Yes, there have been ugly incidents in Debian, but my point is that the instigators of these incidents were roundly criticized. Granted, this is not where things should be, but it’s an improvement.)
I would like to suggest expanding this howto to be “HOWTO encourage *people* in Linux”. A number of things mentioned there would apply equally well to most men.
I was particularly amused the authors thought that these tips applied specifically to women:
* The article complained about LUGs that have pizza all the time, or meet at 10PM in a warehouse downtown. I’d prefer fruit to pizza too, and would probably avoid the slimy warehouse at 10PM.
* “Try to schedule your meetings at family and school friendly times” — men can have families and kids, too, and we seem to be seeing more of that in the Linux community of late (though they are probably still a minority). Perhaps we also need to explore why there are so few older people in the community and why there are so few “family” types here. CS has been around longer than many people think and there are incredibly talented people in the (very broad) 50-80 range.
with apologies to Jeff Foxworthy…
You might not live in the country if…
And the #1 way to tell you might not live in the country:
The waitress at a restaurant explains they’re out of chicken, and you think that means something other than your fried chicken will arrive 20 minutes late, but extra juicy.
I think I’ve enjoyed every Paul Graham essay I’ve ever read. He’s got a new one: What You’ll Wish You’d Known, a speech he was going to give at a high school. He persuasively undercuts most graduation speeches and provides an interesting outlook on life. I found his comments on procrastination and curiosity interesting. I, and a number of people I know, have both those qualities. Graham argues that they’re almost innate once you’ve found something you’re interesting in.
In true American fashion, after the school learned that Graham was going to say something interesting, they withdrew their invitation.
Someone in #haskell pointed me to Lambda the Ultimate, a great programming languages blog. While there, I read an interesting critique of OOP in general.
And finally, IBM has a great article on HaXml, advocating its use instead of DOM or SAX for processing XML and HTML documents. They have some quite effective examples to boost their point, too. I tried HaXml and I like it.
There’s a nice article in the Philadelphia Inquirer about how time seems to stop sometimes when you travel by train. It’s a good read.
The site has an annoying registration system. bugmenot.com will help with that.
I heard an interesting interview on KMUW this morning while driving in to work. They were talking to Kansas Governer Kathleen Sibelius about her health care reform package.
One point she kept making is that providing basic coverage to the uninsured eventually reduces costs for everyone. They are no longer showing up at the expensive ER for everything, and a lot of costly illnesses get prevented by having good regular medical care. This translates into lower insurance premiums. That argument makes a lot of sense, and I wonder why it has taken people so long to realize it. And it also benefits the uninsured, who get better care.
She is also proposing ways to reduce overhead — “paper shuffling” in the system. Apparently 1/3 of the cost of health care is for administration.
On the more mundane side, she is combining several state agencies — including the one to run this new program — into a single health care office in the state government to reduce bureaucracy and expand negotiating power.
And part of the program is encouraging personal responsibility — expanding education programs targeted at both children and adults to encourage healthy lifestyles. She says that will give us healthier citizens down the road, which translates into reduced medical costs.
She plans to pay for it with a $0.50 increase in tobacco taxes. Fitting, somehow.
There’s also an article in the Wichita Eagle.
A new study has a lot of interesting tidbits about the habits of Americans — who does more work around the house, who works more, and what we do in our free time. Some of the statistics are a little scary — half of Americans’ leisure time is spent primarily watching TV, for instance.
There are two interesting stories about the Olympics over at Slashdot. First is a chilling story about the restrictions placed on athletes. They are not allowed to blog about the Olympics while it’s going on. They’re permanently prohibited from ever publishing photos taken at the games, even if those photos are of themselves or their teammates.
Then there’s the story about “advertising terrorism”. Apparently, if you have a soda, flag, unbrella, purse, shirt, whatever from a competitor to official Olympics sponsors, you can have that item confiscated. The comments in that story are interesting too. One poster wrote about the political control exerted there as well. Taiwanese flags were confiscated.
It seems that the Olympics is now less about the athletes than the advertising show. Serios reform is needed at the IOC for sure.
As always, John Gilmore is funny, witty, and thought-provoking. Check out his latest interview at GrepLaw: John Gilmore on inflight activism, spam and sarongs.