Links for the Week: Saturday November 8, 2008

This is the Big Show. This: Colleen Wainwright realizes why she’s been blogging, and what she’s meant to do — “Externalizing my process. And, with a little continued good fortune in the right direction, helping other people to discover and disseminate their own fabulosity.” This is what writers and facilitators do (as William said, I do...this.) The sweet spot. Find what it is for you, and you’ll know what to do for the rest of your life.

Forty Excuses for Not Doing What’s Important: Jen Lemen has a wonderful list of how not to get things done. If you’re a procrastinator, you’ll be familiar with these.

If You Can’t Get a Goat, Get a Scythe: Kevin Cameron reminds us there were effective ways to mow before the age of oil.

Rushkoff Calls Us to Action: “The opportunity is not to create the next great website for modeling bottom-up community activity, but to go and actually do the stuff. It is to participate the public school, work towards alternative energy possibilities, design and install bicycle lanes, argue at work for equal pay for women, assist local agriculture projects, develop complementary currencies and non-profit credit unions.” Obama can’t do any of these things for us. It’s up to us to roll up our sleeves and get to work. This is not to negate what Colleen says above — for some of us, the work is facilitating and inspiring (but not planning, directing or leading) the work of others. Thanks to David Parkinson for the link.

Where McCain-Palin Won, and What It Means: Several months ago, after reading Deer Hunting With Jesus, I predicted a McCain win. I was wrong, fortunately, but my logic (and that of Joe Bageant) was exactly right. The Scots-Irish core of America went even more for the Republicans this election than they did under Bush, as this NYT map discussed by Paul Rosenberg shows. The rest of the country did not follow suit, or we would all be in big trouble today. Thanks to Dave Smith for the link. Meanwhile Joe’s anonymous political pundit “Joe Brown” presents a very troubling picture of the future: “Centrist” Obama capitulating to the powerful corporatists while Palin forges a new, radical, fearful and desperate (non-neo) conservatism.

A Crisis of Management not Economics: The always-entertaining Henry Mintzberg explains why the financial crisis is a result of incompetent management throughout the US and global economy. We should have known, and done, better. Thanks to David Creelman for the link.

All He Could Manage Was a Fly-By: Simon Schama deconstructs the record and legacy of the worst president in American history.

Second Life Isn’t the Future of Education, It’s the Future of the Web: Chris Lott documents a debate on the role of virtual worlds in education, and like me, comes up in the middle — the technology is still amateur and unreliable, and mostly education in the future will be as it always has been — learning by watching and doing, in real life, not the time-waste that goes on in classrooms, virtual and media, but as the technology improves it is inevitable that we will interact on the web through avatars, and assume a virtual ‘presence’ that mimics much more closely our real-life’presence’. Virtual worlds are the ultimate social networking tool, nothing more.

But Oh My Desert Yours Is the Only Death I Cannot Bear: Cheryl’s tour around the outside of Australia by caravan recently took her through the desolate Nallabor Plain, and her story, as always, is insightful and riveting. This is what blogs were meant for.

November 28-29 is Buy Nothing Day: This year it makes sense for all kinds of reasons. Mark it on your calendar. Thanks to Graham Clark for the reminder.

Just for Fun: Visualization of the tastes of different wines. Thanks to my colleague Greg Turko for the link.

Thought For the Week: Five poets write about the US election.