Interrelativity

Category: Politics

  • A Compelling, Compassionate, Critique of Conservative Extremism by David Frum

    the [Republican] party is getting the big questions disastrously wrong [David Frum on the GOP’s Lost Sense of Reality (New York Magazine, 20 November 2011)] David Frum, former economics speechwriter for former U.S. President George W. Bush, offers a sharp critique of the Republican Party in an interview with NPR's Steve Innskeep yesterday, David Frum…

  • Nothing brings people together like ignoring each other to stare at their phones

    Last night, on the Colbert Report, near the beginning of the segment on Fear for All, Part I, host Stephen Colbert announced the new Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear app for the iPhone (also available in the Android store). The app was developed by MTV Networks for the upcoming combined Rally to Restore Sanity…

  • Coffee and conversation with congressional candidate Suzan DelBene

    Two local Coffee Party groups – from Redmond and Renton / SE Lake Washington – organized a meeting with Suzan DelBene, the Democratic candidate for Washington's 8th Congressional District, at Vovito Caffe & Gelato in Bellevue last week. A dozen or so people participated in a civil and engaging conversation with the candidate about a…

  • The facts and opinions surrounding the Proposition 8 ruling

    I was elated by U.S. District Court Judge Vaughan Walker's ruling agaist California's Propostion 8 last week. The 136-page ruling, overturning the state's ban on same-sex marriage, renews my hope for full civil rights for all of us's, including lesbian, gay, bi-sexual and transgender (LGBT) people. Over the weekend, I have read some interesting facts…

  • Platform Thinking, De-Bureaucratization and the Redistribution of Agency

    Tim O'Reilly wrote the definitive guide to the concept and term Web 2.0 back in 2005. The central theme from the outset was to view the web as a platform, and that view has evolved over time to encompass a collection of platforms with varying degrees of interoperability … and varying degrees of openness to…

  • There’s no data like more open data

    When I was working on natural language processing and speech recognition systems in the 90s, one of our mantras was "there's no data like more data", i.e., all things being equal, the accuracy of recognition tends to increase with the addition of more labeled data. The Linguistic Data Consortium at the University of Pennsylvania was…

  • Violent communication, emotional contagion, genocide and eliminationism

    Last night, I watched a disturbing show on PBS, Worse than War, "the first major documentary to explore the phenomenon of genocide and how we can stop it". Daniel Jonah Goldhagen, narrator of the film and author of the book upon which it is based, argues that contrary to common conceptions of irrational and spontaneous…

  • Be Impeccable With Your Word: Confrontation vs. Condescension and Intimidation

    I’ve had a number of opportunities recently to reflect on don Miguel Ruiz‘ first agreement: be impeccable with your word. Amid public conversations at the recent Coffee Party kickoff meeting, private discussions about reviews of academic papers and proposals, and listening to an interview about the science of wisdom, I’ve gained a greater appreciation for…

  • The Coffee Party: Political Conversation vs. Confrontation

    I attended a Coffee Party kickoff meeting at SoulFood Books, Music and Organic Coffee House on Saturday. Approximately 40 people subdivided into smaller groups to discuss their hopes and fears about the state of the union. Amid the largely liberal perspectives voiced by several participants, I was delighted to discover an unanticipated diversity of opinions…

  • Applying the One Percent Doctrine to Climate Change

    I remember hearing an NPR Fresh Air interview with Ron Suskind, author of The One Percent Doctrine: Deep Inside America's Pursuit of It's Enemies Since 9/11, shortly after the book came out in 2006, in which he explained that the title came from a statement made by [then] Vice President Dick Cheney about the Bush…