May 14th, 2008 by Jon Stahl
Could it be? Did David Brooks just write something fairly perceptive and intelligent?
In their arguments with Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkins, the faithful have been defending the existence of God. That was the easy debate. The real challenge is going to come from people who feel the existence of the sacred, but who think that particular religions are just cultural artifacts built on top of universal human traits. It’s going to come from scientists whose beliefs overlap a bit with Buddhism.
In unexpected ways, science and mysticism are joining hands and reinforcing each other. That’s bound to lead to new movements that emphasize self-transcendence but put little stock in divine law or revelation. Orthodox believers are going to have to defend particular doctrines and particular biblical teachings. They’re going to have to defend the idea of a personal God, and explain why specific theologies are true guides for behavior day to day. I’m not qualified to take sides, believe me. I’m just trying to anticipate which way the debate is headed. We’re in the middle of a scientific revolution. It’s going to have big cultural effects.
Tags: culturalartifacts
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May 12th, 2008 by Jon Stahl
My amazing colleagues Drew Bernard and Shawn Kemp are burning up the internet tubes connecting Portland to Bellingham with some great thinking about how to apply “functional thinking” to environmental groups’ websites. I love to see this kind of high-powered big-picture thinking in public.
Tags: websites, nptech
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May 4th, 2008 by Jon Stahl
Thomas Friedman doesn’t write much that resonates with me, but this snippet from his column in today’s New York Times caught me:
Much nonsense has been written about how Hillary Clinton is “toughening up” Barack Obama so he’ll be tough enough to withstand Republican attacks. Sorry, we don’t need a president who is tough enough to withstand the lies of his opponents. We need a president who is tough enough to tell the truth to the American people. Any one of the candidates can answer the Red Phone at 3 a.m. in the White House bedroom. I’m voting for the one who can talk straight to the American people on national TV — at 8 p.m. — from the White House East Room.
Who will tell the people? We are not who we think we are. We are living on borrowed time and borrowed dimes. We still have all the potential for greatness, but only if we get back to work on our country.
Tags: politics
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May 3rd, 2008 by Jon Stahl
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May 2nd, 2008 by Jon Stahl
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May 1st, 2008 by Jon Stahl
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May 1st, 2008 by Jon Stahl
Zephyr Teachout waxes eloquent about May Day:
May Day is not about people in the streets. I like streets as much as the next person, but streets, like the internet, are only tools–in 1890 they were powerful tools, and the right tools to use, but if you confuse the image with the action, you can spend years in the streets (or on the internet) and never get anything done. May Day was an actual expression of power that was being wielded to allow people to control their own lives.
And May Day is not about an ideology, unless that ideology is democracy.
Hat tip to Michael Gilbert.
Tags: organizing, Politics
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Apr 30th, 2008 by Jon Stahl
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Apr 29th, 2008 by Jon Stahl
My dear friend Yoram Bauman, aka the world’s only stand-up economist, is doing two special shows here in Seattle in a couple of weeks (May 11 & 12) to benefit our downstairs neighbors at Sightline Institute. You can buy tickets here.
Yoram writes:
Your headliner for these shows is
Robert Dubac, an LA-based performer who is brilliant and thoughtful and everything one could ask for in a (non-economist) comedian. He’s volunteered to headline these shows on his way to Bellingham for shows May 13-18 at the
Mount Baker Theatre of his one-man show
The Male Intellect: An Oxymoron?
I will have just returned from my Supply Side World Tour (including a performance at Oxford!) and on the 11th I’ll do a 45-minute “stand-up economist” routine as an opening act, and if there’s demand for it I’ll do it on the 12th as well. So if you want to see what’s funny about economics, this is your chance—I may not be everything one could ask for in an economist comedian, but I’m all there is!
The shows are benefits for
Sightline Institute, a non-profit I’ve been affiliated with since 1997, when I started an internship there to help research a book on environmental taxes. Even better news is that the money we raise will go towards some carbon tax troublemaking that I’m working on with Sightline and a bunch of other groups and individuals. (Send me an email if you want more info.) Any additional donations you can make on those nights will be matched by yours truly, up to a total of $5000.
I’ll be out of town, but I heartily encourage you to go buy a ticket or two.
Tags: friends, protecting the environment
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Apr 28th, 2008 by Jon Stahl
My amazing colleague Veda Williams has been leading a team of Plone community members on an ongoing “sprint” to create more and better canned visual themes for Plone.
Along the way, they’ve generated a lot of ideas about best practices for themeing Plone, and some ideas to make the process even easier and more automated by our supporting toolchain.
Veda’s written up a great initial set of ideas for improving the themeing experience. Highly recommended.
Tags: plone
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Apr 28th, 2008 by Jon Stahl
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Results from eye-tracking studies confirm common sense.
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Apr 25th, 2008 by Jon Stahl
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Apr 23rd, 2008 by Jon Stahl
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Apr 22nd, 2008 by Jon Stahl
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Apr 21st, 2008 by Jon Stahl
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Apr 18th, 2008 by Jon Stahl
Thanks to PFGCaptchaField by 4Teamwork, it’s now easy to stick basic CAPTCHAs into Plone forms that you’re creating with PloneFormGen. It’s a nice bit of work that takes advantge of Jarn’s underlying collective.captcha product. What I especially like about it is that it makes it possible for non-technical end-users to quickly build forms that can’t be easily abused.
As my colleague David Glick, Alex Limi and I have recently PLIPed, I think it’s time for the Plone core to CAPTCHA-protect its key anonymously-accessible forms, such as the join_form and the contact form. If we get consensus on collective.captcha as the way to go, and Martijn Peters from Jarn is willing to continue to caretake collective.captcha, we’re willing to do the work to integrate it.
Tags: Plone
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Apr 17th, 2008 by Jon Stahl
It’s nice to be back online from our new house, even if it is with borrowed wifi until Qwest gets our DSL hooked up.
Needs a little TLC (and a massive kitchen remodel), but that’s why we’re here. Plenty of room for guests, though. Photos of the view will have to wait for a sunny day, which it appears may never arrive.
Tags: house
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Apr 17th, 2008 by Jon Stahl
Alan Runyan, Toby Roberts and the rest of the crew at Enfold are putting on what promises to be another fantastic Plone Sympoisum in New Orleans. They’ve just issued the call for presentations:
We are now ready for presentation submissions for the Plone Symposium.
The Plone Symposium is heavily focused on technical useful tidbits and best practices of Python/Zope/Plone development. The goal for the Symposium is for to cover relevant topics for consultants, systems administrators, and developers. It is the perfect venue for prospects to engage the Plone community because of its intimate setting and core developer to attendee ratio.
Some suggestions for talks for the Symposium:
- zope.interface / Adapters
- Eggs / VirtualEnv
- Buildout
- Lowering the bar for entry
- Integrating 3rd party applications
- Indexing / Events
- Content mirroring / Entransit
- RDBMS integration
- ZODB / RelStorage / zeoraid
- Consulting projects with Plone
- R&D and Consulting
- Plone in the Windows environment
- Making dynamic scalable sites with Plone
Each presentation should be 30-45 minutes. Speaker should be intimately familar with subject matter. We recommend 5-10 minutes of Q&A section of presentation so audience members are allowed to ask questions.
Speakers will have conference fees waived and will get a t-shirt.
Please send title, abstract of presentation to alan@enfoldsystems.com.
If you’re more interested in attending than speaking, then you can register now. Early bird pricing ends May 7th.
Tags: Plone
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Apr 16th, 2008 by Jon Stahl
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Apr 15th, 2008 by Jon Stahl
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