Bruce Keener’s Lifestream

“Our job is not to tear down the things we hate. Our job is to build up the things we love.”

That quote, from an Irish revolutionary dating back to the 1920s, is the motto that Frank O’Reilly, a parishioner of St. John the Baptist Parish in Front Royal, says he has tried to live by since first reading the words as a student at Christendom College in Front Royal almost 30 years ago.

“Evil is not as real as good, even though it seems more present,” O’Reilly said. “Build up the things you love and that you agree with and the bad things will eventually go away.”

Good insights from Tim O'Reilly's brother

The referenced blog says that it explains the "science behind the science." It particularly seems to go into explaining the science discussed in episodes of the popular TV show "The Big Bang Theory," which at least one leading physicist has described as the most scientifically correct of the various science-related shows.

I thought you might enjoy scanning the blog.

Fear is ugly because it makes you irrational. Fear makes you jump to conclusions. Fear makes you reactionary. Spolsky’s reaction to the imaginary threat of extinction is all fear:

1) Build every feature any customer would ever want: Apparently, by having all the features anyone can ever imagine, Fog Bugz will “eliminate any possible reason that customers might buy our competitors’ junk”. That’s a faulty conclusion and a terrible idea. Software that tries to be everything to everyone generally sucks. It becomes bloated, hard to use, and in need of big up-front training. (Actually, that’s a pretty good definition of enterprise software right there).

If you know many software developers, then you know some who think they are going to change the world with software that is so robust that it does everything for you. They are always adding features, even while letting bugs languish. I don't know that it's fear that drives them to do that ... in fact, the guys that do this are often too cocky to really stop and think enough to be afraid.

Time and time again I am reminded of the lessons of the Paradox of Choice: people make better choices when they have fewer options (or when they are not overwhelmed with options). Something for us to all keep in mind.

My friend committed suicide. He was a brilliant programmer, and he had everything going for him. He was very successful.

I'm crushed because I know I could have helped if only he had given me a chance. He never did.

We in the programming world aren't always the most emotionally balanced. I know of three others who took their lives in the programming world. I've hinted at this before on my Bipolar Lisp Programmer post. To compound matters, our society has been moving away from personal interaction and responsibility for decades, leading to a culture that is toxic.

As if life weren't already too short, some of our friends end it even earlier because of despair with the negative elements of life. As the linked article points out, many suicides are by people who have a technical background. But, there are many suicides of people who have no interest in things technical.

A little after I graduated from high school, 42 years ago, I learned that a former girlfriend had committed suicide. I did not see it coming. She was fun-loving, attractive, smart, and I thought she had her head screwed on pretty good. Yet, she committed suicide.

And you know what? She is still dead. I know that seems like a calloused thing to say. But I am trying to drive a home a point that is suicide is permanent. One moment of foolish action translates into a permanent end.She should have children and grandchildren. She should be enjoying vacations in Europe and Jamaica. She should be alive, but all that she ever was is turning to dust, gone forever. Death is permanent.

Most of us get a little depressed at times. For those whose depression lingers on and on, please get help. Please talk with friends or family or professionals.

Although Thesis 1.6 is flush with new features, one in particular stands head and shoulders above the rest—the all-new dropdown navigation menu!

Good video from Chris Pearson on using the Nav Menu customization features (and more) in Thesis 1.6

Dean,

I don’t bother drilling down to next actions on my maps. Too much work to double-enter, and they move too fast anyway. I just do the map, figure next action, then go to my action lists (in Lotus Notes). I’ll sometimes put a shortcut in the notes section of a project on my list, to the mind-map.

I just use maps for capturing and developing projects and themes. Have lots of ActiveWord cues to pull them up fast to add things as required.

David

Good advice from David Allen on how to use Mind Maps

The Internet is becoming a vast petri dish for the group polarization phenomena. As Sunstein puts it “The most striking power provided by emerging technologies,” is the “growing power of consumers to ‘filter’ what they see.”

Not only are group dynamics at play, as discussed in the article, but we also _must_ filter information these days because there is so much ... the problem is, our filtering mechanisms are biased (partly by group dynamics, but also by individual factors).

Far too often, we don't. We tend to be poor judges of risk. We overact to rare risks, we ignore long-term risks, we magnify risks that are also morally offensive. We get risks wrong -- threats, probabilities, and costs -- all the time. When we're afraid, really afraid, we'll do almost anything to make that fear go away. Both politicians and marketers have learned to push that fear button to get us to do what they want.

I wonder how much better off we would be if we wrote down all of our fears in a list, and then worked through the list one-by-one to overcome each fear. I suspect that the key problems in doing this are (1) we probably are not even aware of what some of our deep fears really are, and (2) some of the fears probably work for us, instead of against us and are best left alone.

Another tip I got from my boss is to everyday do at least one thing I don’t want to do – that’s not so easy!

A really good interview of Steve Rubel, with lots of productivity tips