Dave Pollard's environmental philosophy, creative works, business papers and essays.
In search of a better way to live and make a living, and a better understanding of how the world really works.


August 31, 2003

THE EDUCATION SYSTEM: BREEDING A NATION OF DRONES

Filed under: How the World Really Works — Dave Pollard @ 19:57
libraryIn my recent post on rebuilding the American civic state I argued that one of the five key requirements to do so is re-educating the public — about the issues facing the world, about history, geography, civics, economics, and the workings of government. It’s not the first time I’ve suggested that education reform, if not a panacea, is at least a necessary condition for meaningful social change.

Recently however several bloggers have suggested that, far from being part of the solution, our education system is part of the problem. Most recently, Emma at Late Night Thoughts wrote:

There is something monstruously evil in children going hungry in the world’s wealthiest nation…We know that well-nourished children do better in school, but the first thing to go during budget cuts are school meal programs. We know that healthy children are more likely to grow up to be productive adults, but we skimp on pre-natal and children’s care. We know that children who have access to interesting activities are less likely to become delinquents, yet art, music, and after-school clubs are now rare as dodo’s eggs in the American educational system…

We are told that in this global post-industrial economy, the most important assets for a nation are its workers. We are told that an educated, creative workforce is the key to maintaining national economic growth. But actions indicate that we want exactly the opposite, and that makes no sense. Unless, of course, we accept my friend’s theory. I don’t want to. But it’s beginning to make a sick kind of sense: It doesn’t matter if children can’t learn, if most of them are not meant to do much with their lives.

What set Emma off were two articles that suggest that’s exactly what the education system is designed to do: To separate and elevate the elite, and sedate and restrain the majority. This article from Russ Kick citing the work of John Taylor Gatto describes the history of the American education system and those that had responsibility for its design and administration. Some excerpts:

In his 1905 dissertation for Columbia Teachers College, Elwood Cubberlyóthe future Dean of Education at Stanfordówrote that schools should be factories “in which raw products, children, are to be shaped and formed into finished products…manufactured like nails, and the specifications for manufacturing will come from government and industry.”

Several years later, President Woodrow Wilson would echo these sentiments in a speech to businessmen: “We want one class to have a liberal education. We want another class, a very much larger class of necessity, to forego the privilege of a liberal education and fit themselves to perform specific difficult manual tasks.”

[This philosophy continues to direct the American educational system to this day]. In other words, the captains of industry and government explicitly wanted an educational system that would maintain social order by teaching us just enough to get by but not enough so that we could think for ourselves, question the sociopolitical order, or communicate articulately. We were to become good worker-drones, with a razor-thin slice of the populationómainly the children of the captains of industry and governmentóto rise to the level where they could continue running things.

Although Gatto may be a little too quick to see conspiracy theories everywhere, the sheer mediocrity of the education system, and its effectiveness at dumbing down young people and making them mindless consumers and conformists, despite the efforts of mostly well-meaning educators, are sobering.

Emma also cites a new 60 Minutes report on the explosion of poverty in America, and how it especially affects children:

Almost half the people fed by these lines are kids. The Agriculture Department figures that one in six children in America face hunger. Thatís more than 12 million kids. Nationwide, children have the highest poverty rate.

Looking at the [long Ohio food bank lineups, that start every day at dawn and often run out of food before the line is exhausted], Bob Garbo says, “This is it, and youíll see this pretty well all over the country…Weíve gone backwards. This is what I heard from my mom and dad. This is what it was [like] during the Depression era. That people stood in line to get government commodities. We havenít come very far, have we?î

In Ohio, the lines continue to grow. In the first three months of this year. The lines jumped by nearly 20 percent with over 200,000 more families standing in line for food.

It’s an effective combination for sedating and subjugating a nation: ‘Educate’ people when they’re young — to be uninformed, to feel inferior, and to value themselves by what they consume — and then, when they get into the workplace, fill them with fear of unemployment, hunger, and deprivation, so they willingly work for next to nothing, and expect and demand nothing of their employer. Then add the final clincher: make them feel as if their failure, their poverty, their unemployment and underemployment, is their own fault, so they feel guilty and blame themselves for not thriving when “any American can rise to become President or a captain of industry”.

Perhaps it’s not an accident that the people at the Dean MeetUps, at the anti-globalization rallies and the anti-war protests, are generally well-to-do, highly educated people. They’re the only ones that have so far escaped the noose of suppression and despair, the only ones who have had the opportunity to learn what a great nation can be, and still have the hope that one day theirs could be one again.

August 30, 2003

WANTED: INNOVATION IN THE BOOK PUBLISHING INDUSTRY

Filed under: Working Smarter — Dave Pollard @ 11:04
pressIf anyone can publish their own blog, their own CD,their own art portfolio, and their own film, why can’t everyone publish their own book?

Yes, I know there are so-called ‘vanity’ publishers who will print small runs of your book for an outrageous price. What I’m talking about is the analogue of the independent online music seller — a company that will catalogue and promote your book, and will print and send it out to buyers on demand, just-in-time, with no up front money from you, and with author royalties rising with volume sold, as economies of scale begin to kick in.

This process would then allow professional editors and volume publishers to browse independently produced books to find works that they could add value to, produce in significant volume profitably, and distribute through national book chains and major online distributors.

The manuscript would be available free in soft copy online. That poses no threat to author revenues. No one in their right mind would read a complete book online, or print one out on a laser printer. The reason why people need their books professionally printed and bound is simply for readibility. I’ve been sent complete book manuscripts by e-mail, and in every case if I’m inclined to read the whole thing after browsing the first few pages, I’ll buy the book rather than read my ‘free’ copy online.

The next stage in evolution would be the emergence of specialty publishers. There are some specialty publishers for writers of progressive non-fiction — Canada’s New Society Publishers, for example. But take a look at the most successful recent progressive works and you’ll find they all have different publishers: Conason’s book was published by Thomas Dunne, Tom Tomorrow’s by St. Martin’s, Alterman’s by Basic Books, Franken’s by EP Dutton, Krugman’s by Norton and Moore’s by Regan. Why isn’t there a single progressive book publisher that writers of such works would automatically turn to first? Then progressive organizations — like Salon.com — would have a preferred book publisher for their writers, and readers of such books would be able to preview that publisher’s works. This kind of specialization has touched every other business, so why not book publishing?

And this kind of innovation has transformed the independent, non-mass-circulation sector of every other entertainment and media industry except book publishing? Why? How has the agonizing (for both writers and publishers) cattle call book idea submission process stayed unchanged when the economics that required it no longer apply?  It’s not as if books still need to be typeset by hand — today small runs and even copy-by-copy customization are almost as cheap as mass production.

And today books, like music and other artistic creations, can be virally marketed and promoted by word of mouth (including blogs), using the Internet’s ubiquitous communication, reproduction and filtering tools. Rather than the publisher having to ‘create’ a market for a book, they can simply recognize, from the grassroots popularity a book receives by word of mouth, when a book is a sure-fire blockbuster, and simply buy the rights for mass production at that time.

Of course, I have a vested interest in development of such innovation, since I’m writing a book. But there are millions of bloggers out there, and we’re all writers, including many damn fine writers, not a few of whom have aspirations to make a living writing, or to produce major works that don’t lend themselves to online reading.

If you are, or know, an independent book publisher or retailer, tell me what you think of this idea. Instead of having to read hundreds of unsolicited, mostly bad, manuscripts, wouldn’t you rather have access to an online market that would take the drudgery out of filtering good writing from bad, and take the guesswork out of picking popular books from those destined for eternal obscurity?

August 29, 2003

FRIDAY ROUND-UP

Filed under: Using Weblogs and Technology — Dave Pollard @ 13:54
stone gateBush the Environmentalist? – In his blog debitage, Stentor Danielson attempts to explain how Bush can reconcile his contempt for environmental regulation with the eco-friendliness of his ranch. Read it — it makes sense, and it’s important to understand the enemy.

Better Than the Book You’re Reading Now – If you haven’t yet discovered Salon blogger Claire Smith’s Life in LA, allow yourself a couple of hours, start way back here where it started in June, and read it, from the beginning. Yes I know I mentioned this already in last week’s round-up. It’s that good.

Blogging in 3-D: Just for fun, see what you think of Jim Gasperini’s technique of using animated gifs as a means of creating the illusion of three-dimensionality.

Mid-Life Crisis: Washington State newspaper columnist and new Salon blogger Chuck has a wonderful shaggy dog story.

Proportional Representation for BC? – Those wacky British Columbians have another interesting experiment in participatory democracy, a Citizens’ Assembly whose members will be drawn by lot, and who are charged with developing a binding referendum question for proportional representation for the province.

It’s Not Me…It’s Her: Leslie Talbot of the Salon blog It’s Not Me…It’s You comes out and tells us who she really is and what she really thinks. I still think she’s a professional writer for the Boston Globe. Otherwise she wouldn’t have this wild illusion that writing an excellent blog (which she does) is going to attract the interest and attention of publishers and literary agents.

As most of my readers know, this is normally a thinker blog not a linker blog. Advance apologies for not acknowledging who put me on to the above links. I forget, and if you remind me I will correct the oversight.

August 28, 2003

CAUTION: CONTROVERSIAL IDEAS AHEAD

Filed under: Our Culture / Ourselves, Using Weblogs and Technology — Dave Pollard @ 07:22
raised eyebrow Regular readers of How to Save the World have noticed — and expressed some dismay — that I’ve proffered some fairly controversial opinions here in recent weeks, and also that I’ve blogged more about environmental philosophy and less about business innovation, technology and metablogging (the subjects that attract the most hits to this site).

bookThe honeymoon for this blog is clearly over, and the number of blogs inbound to How to Save the World has dropped this month for the first time.

With a great sigh, I remain unrepentant. The controversial opinions were deliberate trial balloons to see whether some of the ideas in my work-in-process novel The World That Could Be are going to turn off readers and defeat the second objective of the book (presenting a prescription for creating a new, utopian world). And time does not permit me to write more than what I’m producing now on this blog without seriously diluting its quality and originality.

The three (somewhat interrelated) premises that have upset my readers the most are:

  1. That significant improvement to our planet’s health, and human quality of life, is only possible with a significant reduction in human population;
  2. That humans are not meant to live in cities or other crowded habitats, and that any utopian society must allow and encourage people to spread out and live in close contact with the rest of nature;
  3. That part of the problem with this world is that we are producing too much human food (there’s enough today, if distributed efficiently, to generously feed 10 billion humans, and Worldwatch reports there are now more overweight humans on Earth than underweight ones, a consequence of which is that millions of acres are being converted to agriculture, and overharvested, needlessly).

These are not arguments, alas, that can be made effectively in a simple 300-500 word blog post. So I need to know, dear reader: (a) do you find these three premises as intuitively obvious as I do, or not? and (b) if not, if you picked my book up in a bookstore, would you suspend disbelief in these premises long enough to read the book, or drop the book like a hot potato?

August 27, 2003

HOW TO CHANGE ANYTHING

Filed under: Preparing for Civilization's End, Working Smarter — Dave Pollard @ 13:13
food prod chartSystems thinking is an interesting and disciplined way to look at how things work, and how to bring about change. Peter Senge may be the guru of systems thinking, but Dana Meadows was its master. The late Ms. Meadows, author of The Limits to Growth, founder of the Sustainability Institute and writer of The Global Citizen column until her death two years ago, wrote a remarkable paper for Whole Earth magazine in 1997 that described how to change anything by using one of ten system leverage points, which she listed in increasing order of power (and also increasing order of difficulty). Here is a summary of these points in layman’s terms, with some examples of how they could be used to bring about remarkable change.
  • Change the Measurements & Formulas: What gets measured gets done, and formulas powerfully affect human behaviour. Examples: Ecological taxation, which would measure and tax resource consumption and waste, replacing taxes on employment and clean production, would radically alter our economy. Higher prices for energy would produce cleaner cars and less commuter-dependent communities. Metrics like a Well-being Index instead of GDP would change how we assess government performance and hence what governments do.
  • Change the Inventories and Flow Rates of Resources: When you increase inventories, you create surpluses and buffers against future loss; when you decrease them, you increase agility and openness to innovation. When you speed up the flow, the impact, for better or worse, increases accordingly. Examples: Greater inventory of perpetually-protected lands would halt biodiversity decline. Faster flow of weapons exports would increase capacity for terrorism.
  • Regulate Negative Impacts and Vicious Cycles: You can slow down, or even reverse, a vicious cycle by regulating what feeds it. Slowdown in approval for GM foods would, in the system chart above, slow the vicious cycle of food production, population, and land use degradation. In Story of B, Daniel Quinn makes a compelling argument that curtailing human food production would quickly and humanely solve the problems of human overpopulation, poverty and famine. And regulating maximum work hours would reduce unemployment, family alienation and stress-related work problems.
  • Sustain Virtous Cycles: A virtuous cycle, like a vicious cycle, is two or more forces that reinforce and perpetuate each other, except that the results of a virtuous cycle are desirable. For example, a falling birth rate will produce fewer women of child-bearing age and hence lead to a further reduction in birth rate, in a self-perpetuating manner. Providing further incentives to have smaller families, instead of larger families as many governments now do, could sustain this virtuous cycle instead of undermining it.
  • Provide New Information: Many problems are due to lack of awareness of problems or their causes rather than lack of will to change them. Despite the loony Lomborgians and the Bush head-in-the-sand denyers, the scientific information showing how human activity has caused global warming, and showing the future impact of its continuance, has been essential to achieving consensus like the Kyoto Accord, the first small step to solving the problem. If every community was required to send a list of its top polluters to every resident, and publish it in the local paper, much more action would be taken against them.
  • Change the Rules, or Who Makes and Enforces Them: Laws and regulation, incentives, and moral codes powerfully affect behaviour. If so-called ‘free trade’ rules were set in open-door sessions by representative citizen groups instead of closeted business pressure groups and the governments they fund, and if these rules specified that ‘free trade’ was only allowed in products and services that cannot reasonably be produced locally, then WTO and NAFTA would be forces for the public good instead of creators of massive inequity, insane economic policy, environmental destruction, unemployment, misery and social unrest.
  • Create a New System That Makes the Old One Obsolete: What Ms. Meadows called self-organization entails walking away, opting out of an old dysfunctional system and building something completely new. This is the essence of human ingenuity and innovation, and is consistent with the model I have suggested for New Collaborative Enterprises. When the entertainment industry attempted to price-gouge consumers and sell them less, lower quality product, many consumers, especially the young who were most able to see the dysfunction, simply opted out and traded among themselves, employing new technology and vastly increasing the quantity of content available to them by including independent artists and even home made product in their self-organized production and distribution system.
  • Change the Goals: If the objective of the system is changed, and provided the new objective is clearly articulated, understood, accepted and achievable, massive buy-in can be achieved quickly and everything mobilized in new ways. Hitler’s restatement of the objective of the German state is an example. Walmart’s restatement of the objective of a retailer from selling products to leasing shelf-space is a more positive one. The Reagan-Bush I restatement of the role of government from providing service to doing only what is absolutely necessary is arguably the cultural underpinning that hads allowed the Bush II damage that now threatens irreparable damage to America’s institutions and its very social fabric. If corporate charters were changed to make their objective the well-being of their employees and communities, instead of the maximization of profits for their shareholders, our whole economy would be transformed.
  • Change the Mindset: All of the other elements of systems listed above are driven by what is perceived by the system’s stakeholders as ‘fair’, ‘good’, ‘reasonable’, or ‘right’. If you can change that mindset, everything else changes as a result. If people equated taxes with services (something that provides a ‘good’) rather than something inherently bad, or if people were to begin to see ‘growth’ as dangerous, unsustainable, instead of good and necessary, if people changed their mindset and saw land as a shared resource for all life on the planet, instead of something that belongs to humans, if people began to recognize that animals are living, feeling, sentient creatures and not ‘property’ to be enslaved by man, then that would change the goals, the rules, the whole system by which we live. It would change everything.

How do you change the mindset? In the words of Ms. Meadows, citing Thomas Kuhn for her inspiration:

You keep pointing at the anomalies and failures in the old paradigm, you come yourself, loudly, with assurance, from the new one, you insert people with the new paradigm in places of public visibility and power. You don’t waste time with reactionaries; rather you work with active change agents and with the vast middle ground of people who are open-minded.

The tenth and final leverage point requires a bit of a leap of faith (at least it did for me). It says: Be open, yourself, to new ideas and ways of thinking. Be able to change. Acquire an ability to let go of things that no longer work, no longer make sense. Perhaps she’s paraphrasing Ghandi when he said, simply, Be the Change.

(Thanks to Professor Jim McGee — who I cited earlier this week for his excellent article on KM — for bringing this to my attention)

August 26, 2003

CONTEMPT FOR THE WORD

Filed under: How the World Really Works — Dave Pollard @ 04:02
silencePlease read the following disquieting passage, see if you can guess its source, and then go to languagehat’s perpetually enlightening site, where he’ll tell you more about it:

“An extraordinary contempt for the word, or what might even be called a loathing for the word has seized humanity. Confidence in the notion that human beings are capable of persuading one another with words and language has vanished in the most radical sense. Everything associated with parlare has taken on negative connotations. Parliaments are corrupted by their own disgust with parliamentary activities in general, and when conferences are convened somewhere the participants gather in an atmosphere of scorn and skepticism. Knowledge of the impossibility of communication has become too pronounced. Everyone knows that everyone else speaks a different language and lives in entirely different value systems, and that every people is trapped in its own system of values.

Indeed, this is true not just for every person, but for every profession as well. The businessman can’t persuade the military man, nor the military man the businessman. The engineer doesn’t understand the worker; or rather, they understand each other only in so far as each of them concedes to the other the right to bring all means within their power to bear, to ruthlessly use their system of values to their own advantage, to break any contract necessary in order to crush and overrun their opponent. Never before…has the world admitted with such honesty and openness… that the word is of absolutely no use, and further, that it is no longer even worth the effort to pursue understanding…. Silence weighs heavily on the world…. A mute silence reigns between people and between groups of people, and it is the silence of murder.

But in spite of this muteness the world is full of voices. They aren’t the voices of assertion and rejoinder, however. Rather, they are simply voices, screaming chaotically… over each other, drowning each other out, a simultaneous cacophony of language and opinions being spoken past each other, interrupted only by the rather mechanical and unceremonious sounds of dull church services, rendered banal and destroyed by the earthly noise. It is the terrifying noise of a silence that accompanies murder… a muteness that is audible, but is no longer language. Rather, these disjointed cries make up components of language…. And in this silence they are merely eruptionsóeruptions of anxiety, eruptions of desperation, eruptions of courage.”

August 25, 2003

STILL NO SAFE PLACE FOR CANADA’S ANIMALS

Filed under: Preparing for Civilization's End — Dave Pollard @ 15:23

no safe placeI think this letter speaks for itself. I wrote earlier about the issues underlying the act to amend the Criminal Code of Canada to protect animals from cruelty — the first such act in over a century. Our worst fears have been realized. As we successfully lobbied our elected MPs to pass the bill, the pressure groups — the hunting lobby, gun rights groups, religious groups that consider it their ‘god-given’ right to abuse and to kill animals cruelly, and factory farmers and research laboratories who don’t want any public scrutiny of, or liability for, their practices — were busy lobbying the unelected Senate to block the bill entirely.

If you want to know more about the issues, you can find it here. If you’re a Canadian, I’d urge you to write, phone or fax the Prime Minister (Rt. Honourable Jean ChrÈtien, Prime Minister of Canada, Parliament Buildings Ottawa, ON, K1A 0A4, Phone: 613-992-4211, Fax: 613-941-6900) before the house resumes business in two weeks, to urge him to intervene with the Senate (the overwhelming majority of which are members of his party) to break the deadlock and get the bill passed.

August 25, 2003

Dear Prime Minister,

Only you can break the Bill C-10(b) deadlock!

I am writing with an urgent request for your assistance with Bill C-10(b). The fate of the Bill – the animal cruelty amendments to the Criminal Code – hangs in the balance.
As of June 19th, the House of Commons and the Senate are deadlocked on the Bill. Under the constitution, if the Senate does not agree to the Commons’ version, Bill C-10(b) will die and the animals will be denied legal protection from cruelty.

Prime Minister, your government has worked hard to make sure the Bill becomes law. Only you can break the deadlock by persuading the Liberal Senators, who are in the majority, to pass Bill C-10(b).

I am asking you to personally intervene and to make sure that the proposed amendments and increased penalties are reaffirmed by Parliament and passed by the Senate.

Parliament acted with compassion by passing Bill C-10(b) in June. Everyone, except the Senate, now wants Bill C-10(b) passed, including the Members of Parliament who once opposed it.

By talking to Liberal Senators and encouraging them to support the Bill as approved by the House of Commons, you will make a real difference for all those animals who are subjected to cruelty.

Sincerely,
Dave Pollard

August 24, 2003

COMMUNITY

Filed under: Preparing for Civilization's End — Dave Pollard @ 16:05
goofy golfYesterday we hosted our annual neighbourhood adults-only barbecue, a delightful but boisterous group of 80 people. We welcomed our two new neighbourhood couples. One of the neighbours catered the event for cost. Another neighbour laid out a 9-hole Goofy Golf course (see map) that stretched across the hundred-acre neighbourhood (we’re virtually fence-free, and neighbours actually vie to ‘host’ one of the holes, putting out coolers of beer and inviting players to stop for a dip in their pools). Goofy golf is played with a sand wedge and a tennis ball and the ‘holes’ are a foot in diameter. We play it before the barbecue and it’s open to kids as well. Another neighbour hosted an afternoon children’s picnic and amusement fair. We also held a raffle for donated prizes, and raised $750 for a local children’s charity, and then played Euchre and 8-ball into the wee hours. The last straggler left at 3 am, and of course no one had to drive home, which was just as well.

This is what every neighbourhood should and could be like. It works because:

  • Since we’re relatively isolated here out in the exurbs, sharing our community with wolves, coyotes and other wildlife, events like blizzards and power failures (two in the past two weeks, including the Big One) force you to get along with, and stay in touch with, your neighbours. In the city, it’s just too easy to be anonymous.
  • Despite the young average age (forty) of the residents, and the long (45-minute) commute to Toronto, the neighbourhood is so physically attractive that no one ever wants to leave, so turnover is almost zero.
  • We’ve all escaped from other residential models (urban, rural, suburban) that we didn’t like, so we’re determined to make our community work.
  • We’re spread out enough and separated by protected conservation corridors (not shown on map above) that we’re not visible or audible to our neighbours, so disputes are very rare.

My purpose for describing this is to make a couple of points about neighborhoods and to describe a few concepts about community that I think are very important. My points are these:

  • I believe overpopulation and overcrowding underlie many of the problems of our world. Our neighbourhood shows that when people have room to be themselves, they tend to be peaceful, cooperative, and environmentally sensitive. They can afford to be. We need to make this luxury available to everyone. To do so we need way fewer people on the planet.
  • I believe political, legal and business problems grow and proliferate exponentially when the size of the physical area, the number of people affected, and the degree of concentration of power increases. Functional communities, like our neighbourhood, where everyone participates and everyone knows everyone else, have almost no problems. But once you get up to national, state and local governments and large, centralized corporations, there are too many players, too many people uninformed, uninvolved, unaffected, and this is where all the problems start. Small is beautiful, and the smaller the more beautiful, and the more effective and self-managing.

We each live and work in three distinctive types of communities, each of which has a different makeup and function:

  1. Neighbourhoods – those people with whom we physically share space, where we live, at various levels of aggregation from our immediate neighbours to whole nations and even the planet we share with others.
  2. Collaborators – those people with whom we make a living. As I’ve pointed out in my essays on New Collaborative Enterprises, I believe a new model is needed to replace the bankrupt and dysfunctional corporate model we developed a few centuries ago.
  3. Networks – those people with whom we share a common interest. We all belong to many networks.

Only since the advent of modern transportation and communication technologies have these three types of communities become distinct. Until a century or two ago, most people married and worked with their neighbours, and played and prayed with them. But for most of us we still have no real choices about the communities we live, work and play in. Most of us still live in unsafe, crowded neighbourhoods, surrounded by strangers. These neighbourhoods in turn comprise cities, states and nations run by despots and criminals, by the self-serving and power-hungry, unaffected by the consequences of their actions and indifferent to the suffering of those they supposedly represent.

Most of us still work in jobs where we have unequal say, or no say at all, where name and wealth always trump talent, and where those at the top neither know or care about the plight of those ‘under’ them. And most of us cannot afford, access or understand the technologies that allow people to find like minds in communities of interest: potential soulmates, playmates and workmates.

At one time, before the three types of communities became distinct, people used terms like nation (literally, those of common birth, referring to a cooperative group of tribes), and company (literally, friends and intimates together for common cause). These words have now been debased beyond recognition, but their original meanings tell us what we must strive again to build — communities of small numbers of people who for whatever reason (desire to make a living together, desire to live in the same physical setting, or desire to share a common interest) want to commune — to do things in common. Communities, in other words, that work.

(The author is writing a book about a peaceful, utopian world, with a prescription for making it a reality. This is the second of a series of articles designed to develop the precepts for the book).

August 22, 2003

QUICK PICKS

Filed under: Our Culture / Ourselves — Dave Pollard @ 20:46
nejm
Five things worth a read:
  • Health Care Bloat: A new study in the New England Journal of Medicine shows the administrative overhead costs of the US health system are twice what they would be under a Canadian-style public health system. The argument that the private sector is more efficient than the public sector is, more often than not, bumpkus. The extra overhead due purely to excess bureaucracy is $750 for every man, woman and child in America every year.
  • Afghanistan’s Dying: Our Mothership Salon.com features a well-researched John Sifton story that shows the situation in Afghanistan is quickly deteriorating back to levels under the Taliban. In short, the country is run by US-backed gangsters.
  • The KM Revolt Grows: Professor Jim McGee adds his eloquent voice to those calling for a shift in the focus of Knowledge Management away from content management and towards productivity and connectivity of people.
  • Writing Good Poetry: A book called The Poet’s Companion by two excellent poets, Kim Addonizio and Dorianne Laux, provides exercises to improve your creative writing skills without being preachy or academic. Dorianne provides an overview in this compelling interview. Thanks to Kara at SpaceTramp for the link.
  • Remarkable Memoir: Claire Smith’s personal story in her Salon blog, Life in LA, dates back only to June but already describes a lifetime of tragedy and courage. It’s a must read, very powerfully written.

SATIRISTS WANTED

Filed under: Using Weblogs and Technology — Dave Pollard @ 13:43
uncle samVirtual Occoquan is looking for you. All you have to do is take any piece of spam you’ve received, poke it, tart it up a bit until it’s funny, or ironic, and submit it to Mark Hoback within the next few days for the Virtual Occoquan Spam Deconstruction Contest. Win great prizes! Get published! Free Viagra-like-product* for life! Make $60 million a week** in your own home without lifting a finger! Start Your Own Church And Never Pay Taxes Again! Meet exotic friends! Hurry! Rates are going up!

Oh, and mark it ‘Contest Entry’ in the Subject Line so it’s distinguishable from real spam.
* Offer expires August 21   ** Not every week, mind you. But maybe some week.

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