Apr. 16th, 2010

elfs: (Default)
I play.

I was leading Larry Winget's It's Called Work for a Reason the other day, one of the many business books that I read from time-to-time, but it's the title that kinda stuck in my craw. Sure, it's work.

Henry Jenkins, on the other hand, points out that when the world is as complicated as it is now, it is not just the capacity to work that is critical: the capacity to play is vital. Jescribes "play" as "the capacity to experiment with one's surroundings as a form of problem-solving."

I was working with Omaha on fixing a printer problem, and she asked me, "Tell me what would you do?"

I told her, "I would just sorta play around with different settings, trying stuff out. I'd keep a backup so if I broke anything, I could just delete the configuration and start over. Then I'd mess with it until it worked, or something broke."

She didn't like that answer. The idea that I might "break" something in her precious Mac was too much to take.

But that's beside the point. It's being able to play with the stuff I have that makes the job worthwhile and succesful. I know what I want to do, I have a vague idea of how to do it and a clear idea of where to get more information. A couple of iterations and eventually I hit on a solution, and a couple more (some with breakage, some without) and I've got a streamlined solution.

It's this unwillingness to break stuff that makes people ineffective developers and designers (and writers, for that matter). You can't make the world suck less (as Jenkins puts it) until you learn to live with your own suck, embrace your suck, understand what sucks, and finally understand that if something sucks, maybe you need to get off the couch and deal with it.
elfs: (Default)
The other day I was telling Omaha that I wished I were still a sex blogger; there's so much bad advice out there I don't know where to start. I have kids who can use the Internet, and I hardly want to parade my adult vices where they can see them, but it's not as if I could suppress everything that's already archived by Google.

But I saw something other day that made me go "Eww." So... You are about to view content that may not be appropriate for minors. )
elfs: (Default)
So let me get this straight. An Australian and a Saudi Prince together have 52% shareholder control of FOX News.

(Yes, I know, Murdoch bought himself an American citizenship to qualify under certain FCC rules to own an American television network.)

You know, if I wanted to destroy the United States of America, as a short-term goal I couldn't think of a more insidious way of doing it than deliberately agitating the one group that believes, more fiercely than any other, that it is America, into an anger so powerful and irrational that it poisons any possibility of reasonable political discourse. As long-term insurance, I would also attempt to empower that group to undermine the essential education needed to compete in the 21st century, that in the biological sciences (and by extension, all sciences).

How should we spin this? Hmmm...

FOX News: Controlled From Overseas.

FOX News: The Treason Network

FOX News: Useful Idiots For Powerful Foreign Interests

Fox News: Undermining Democracy Since 1985.

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Elf Sternberg

May 2025

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