karma schmarma

What the world is thinking

I found an article today at www.gallup.com that talks about a world poll. What is the world thinking. What does the world want. Well they want a "good job". For me that begins to describe victory in Iraq. When the vast majority of Iraqi people can provide a good life for themselves and their family, we will have won the war in Iraq.

Excerpt from article

What the whole world wants is a good job.

That is one of the single biggest discoveries Gallup has ever made. It is as simple and as straightforward an explanation of the data as we can give. If you and I were walking down the street in Khartoum, Tehran, Berlin, Lima, Los Angeles, Baghdad, Kolkata, or Istanbul, we would discover that on most days, the single most dominant thought carried around in the heads of most people you and I see is "I want a good job." It is the new current state of mind, and it establishes our relationship with our city, our country, and the whole world around us.

Humans used to desire love, money, food, shelter, safety, and/or peace more than anything else. The last 25 years have changed us. Now we want to have a good job. This changes everything for world leaders. Everything they do -- from waging war to building societies -- will need to be done within the new context of the human need for a "good job."

How does this change everything?

• The leaders of countries and cities must make creating good jobs their No. 1 mission and primary purpose because securing good jobs is becoming the new currency for leadership. Everything leaders do must consider this new global state of mind, lest they put their cities and countries at risk.
• Leaders in education will be forced to think beyond core curricula and graduation rates. If you are a school superintendent or a university president, you'll need to recognize that students don't want to merely graduate -- their education will need to result in a "good job."
• Lawmakers need to contemplate whether and how new laws attract or repel a wide range of individual value systems. If enough people are sufficiently repelled, then the new laws will effectively strangle job creation.
• Military leaders must consider it when waging war and planning for peace. They must ask themselves whether military strikes, occupations, or community policing will effectively build a growing economy with good jobs. The opportunity to have a good job is essential to changing a population's desperate, and violent, state of mind.
• The mayors and city fathers of every city, town, and village on Earth must realize that every decision they make should consider the impact, first and foremost, on good jobs.

How to know you are on the wrong side of an issue.

When they write a Country and Western Song about the issue. Today Newt Gingrich is promoting a country and western song about the fact that Congress is still blocking domestic drilling. The song sung by Aaron Tippin has the following phrase in it:

Drill Here, Drill now

Hello…..Is anybody out there listenin’ in Washington D.C.

This is the suffering voice of America crying out for relief

Now I don’t know what a gallon of gas costs up on Capitol Hill

But we sure know what it costs down here in Realityville

And the damage already done has been a mighty heavy toll

And if we’re gonna fix it we gotta start right here at home

CHORUS:

Drill here, drill now

How ‘bout some oil from our own soil that belongs to us anyhow

No more debatin’ we’re tired of waitin’ everybody shout out loud

Drill here, drill now

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This is funny on so many levels!!!

The Meaning of Life

To me Life is a bootcamp for the next one to come. I found this quote on line and liked it a lot.

We are enrolled in a full time, informal school called, "Life." Each day of this school, we have the opportunity to learn lessons. We may like the lessons or hate them, but they are part of the curriculum. The greatest lessons we learn are about love and fear, that every action is either an expression of love, or a call for love. And the great blessing is that every lesson repeats itself until we learn it. ~Mary Manin Morrissey

big bounce

The RNC is looking at a big bounce in the daily tracking polls. Rasmussen has McCain up by 1 point and the Gallup poll has him up by 5. The interesting thing we see in the daily polls is the number of undecided begin to get smaller and so far they are breaking of McCain. In Rasmussen we see Obama staying at 46% while McCain steadily climbs to 47%. The Gallup polls shows Obama losing votes. So I'm not sure what is going on.

Rasmussen Synopsis

In the first national polling results based entirely on interviews conducted after the Republican National Convention, McCain attracts 47% of the vote while Obama earns 46%. When "leaners" are included, it’s McCain 48% and Obama 47%. Tracking Poll results are released at 9:30 a.m. Eastern Time each day and a FREE daily e-mail update is available.

The big question is: "can McCain win?". According to the electoral map Karl Rove puts out, I don't think so. However, this map is before the convention. Did the convention change the map? Before the RNC Obama looked like he had 260 electoral votes and you need 270 to win. So one or two of the swing stats goes his way and he has won it. How many has moved in McCains way????

Stop the Bird Porn

Finally someone fighting the good fight and trying to end all this elicit bird watching. Most people who report on this believe it is probably a joke but the protesters seem to take it seriously.

Dave Barry on Bird Porn Protesters at the DNC

Practice makes perfect

Ever try to do something very well and failed? Well here is the recipe for success. Do it over and over again until you get it right. Plan to throw away what you did at first. They do this in movies and TV with scene after scene. They do this in the Olympics with athletes practicing and practicing hours and hours.

Initial Article

Although I am not at all ready to call software development "art" -- perhaps "craft" would be more appropriate, or "engineering" if you're feeling generous -- the parallels between some of the advice offered here and my experience writing software are profound.


The ceramics teacher announced on opening day that he was dividing the class into two groups. All those on the left side of the studio, he said, would be graded solely on the quantity of work they produced, all those on the right solely on its quality. His procedure was simple: on the final day of class he would bring in his bathroom scales and weigh the work of the "quantity" group: fifty pound of pots rated an "A", forty pounds a "B", and so on. Those being graded on "quality", however, needed to produce only one pot - albeit a perfect one - to get an "A".
Well, came grading time and a curious fact emerged: the works of highest quality were all produced by the group being graded for quantity. It seems that while the "quantity" group was busily churning out piles of work - and learning from their mistakes - the "quality" group had sat theorizing about perfection, and in the end had little more to show for their efforts than grandiose theories and a pile of dead clay.

Where have I heard this before?

• Stop theorizing.
• Write lots of software.
• Learn from your mistakes.

Quantity always trumps quality. That's why the one bit of advice I always give aspiring bloggers is to pick a schedule and stick with it. It's the only advice that matters, because until you've mentally committed to doing it over and over, you will not improve. You can't.

When it comes to software, the same rule applies. If you aren't building, you aren't learning. Rather than agonizing over whether you're building the right thing, just build it. And if that one doesn't work, keep building until you get one that does.