Category: Current Affairs

It’s become unacceptable to not know it all. And in today’s world of information overload, that’s not ok. It’s not doable, so we are fooling ourselves.

I find myself silently thanking people who look confused when some famous person is named or some incident is mentioned or a meme is laughed at. Keeping track of all the current affairs is getting harder and harder and the looks when you don’t know what they are referencing are getting more and more incredulous.

I care. I really do. I care who leads our country. I care about all the issues facing us. I care about who (and what) is influential today. I care about all the people negatively (and positively) affected by daily events. I care about all the people affected by our changing political climate. But I can’t keep track of them. And I certainly can’t be educated on all of them and be a good advocate for the right thing all the time.

It used to be that you were well educated if you knew your political leaders, their competition, the capitals of every country, the name of their leaders and their basic political structure. In addition, you usually also knew about major conflicts and the top issues facing every region.

Now you are expected to know about hundreds of famous influencers, thousands of issues and millions of affected people.

I don’t know about you, but I can’t keep track of *all* current affairs and do my job and raise my kids and stay healthy. I can’t advocate for all the worthy causes out there. And that’s ok. However, I need it to also be ok for everyone to ask “dumb” questions. When someone doesn’t know what’s going on in Alabama, it should be ok for them to say “so what just happened in Alabama?” and not get incredulous stares that they haven’t been following their Facebook feed.

We seem to have decided that it’s not only important for everyone to know everything but it’s important for everyone to share their opinion about every major happening on social media or they aren’t supporting the cause. It’s like people feel as if they aren’t a good person if they don’t like or share every worthy announcement. Like they aren’t a good person if they aren’t informed about every trending topic. (I’ll ignore for now whether or not the trending topics are actually representative of current affairs.)

I make sure I make educated votes. I try to follow the high level news. I read the newspaper and my social media feed every day. I ask questions in conversations when I don’t understand all aspects of the issue. I speak out when people seem to be forming opinions based on missing information. And I try to be brave enough to ask questions when I have no idea what people are talking about.

Let’s focus again on the level of news that lets us all make a difference, not the level that makes us all feel like it’s a full time job to stay in touch with the world and so we tune out because we already have several full time jobs.

Originally published on Medium.

Amazon’s new bestseller list tracks what people are actually reading. A bestseller list based on how many times the book was read, not sold. There’s not easy way to compare the lists but they are different. The Power of Habit, which I highly recommend was on the most read list but not the most sold list.  The 5 Languages of Love, which I decided not to finish, was on the most sold list but not the most read list. (I checked mine out of the library though so I didn’t directly contribute to that number.)

When it comes to attractiveness, your smell and voice play a role. I’m glad they now have proof for something that seemed obvious. It is interesting that voices that were deemed more attractive correlated with different body size ratios.

Tesla workers are passing out on the factory floor, according to a report. I didn’t investigate any further but assume it’s more than 1 or 2 people since CNBC is reporting. I’m not sure that’s a safe assumption these days. I think it’s crazy and fascinating that they have such a dedicated work culture. But definitely awful that it’s so short term focused that they aren’t even taking care of employees.

A few posts on how to take care of trees during spring snows.

Several political news articles.

My family’s slave. A story about a family from Manila who brings along a person who belongs to them. And they keep her for 56 years. A family member without freedom. I feel like it’ll be a few days before I know what to say about this but the story is moving and worth reading.

3 Lessons in Open Communications. A Red Hatter writes about communication in open organizations. The key? It’s a discussion not a lecture.

A practical guide to fetch(), reduce() and formatting data from an external API. I have to admit I didn’t actually read the article. But I did discover that New York City has lots of open data to play with. I think that’s awesome.

Explore New Universes with Tor.com Publishing’s Summer of Space Opera Sampler. I hate excerpts. Especially if the book is not available to read right now. I did however enjoy Tor’s blog and added it to my rss list. I also follow a number of science fiction writers on Twitter. I find it exciting in the way others seem to be excited about following celebrities.

There Is a Fake IDGod, and He Lives in China. I suppose it should be no surprise that you can now buy fake ids over the internet from China, but it was a fascinating surprise to me. What other illegal things can you buy on the internet?

Benazir Bhutto was assassinated today and the world is a poorer place for it.  I had the opportunity to see her speak at a Simmons Leadership Conference a few years ago.  I wish I had my notes to share with you (but they were in my company notebook which I had to leave with the company.)  She was inspiring though.  She was doing what she thought was right for her country at great personal expense. 

I wish the best to her family and her country.

This guy spent a week in the Mall of Americas in Minneapolis – all open hours and one night.  It’s an interesting read just for the people he met and the things he tried.  He met one woman who claimed to be a stay-at-home mom who shopped at the mall six days a week and spent over $100,000 a year!

I got an email called "Quite an Analogy" forwarded on by somebody I respect and it made me so mad.  It said we should stop providing housing assistance, emergency medical care and free schools.  Because if we did that all the immigrants would go away and life would be better for us.  No crowding, no mess.  (It was comparing it to the fact that if you put on bird feeders, the birds come and make a mess and pester you for food.  Take down the bird feeders, the birds go away and the mess is solved.)

Let me see, if I stopped feeding my kids, they’d probably go away sooner or later and the house would sure be cleaner and quieter.  Or to make the analogy more accurate, that if the neighbor kids started coming over for food, I should stop feeding the neighbor kids and my kids, so that the neighbor kids (never mind what would happen to mine) would go away.  What kind of reasoning is that??  And it obviously resonates with people – someone forwarded it to me. 

If you want the problem to go away, you need to look at why you have the problem.  It’s not because you put out the bird feeder.  If the emergency rooms are crowded, it’s not because you offer emergency care to everyone, it’s because some people had no where else to go.  Figure out why they don’t have family doctors and help them get them.  It has to be easier and cheaper for them and the emergency rooms to provide care for them some other way.  Personally, I like that the courts have constantly up held our right to emergency care regardless of proof of insurance.

I think people that want to get rid of the bird feeder are just plain lazy.  They aren’t willing to really figure out why we have this problem.  This isn’t the immigrants’ problem.  It’s our problem.  We have to fix it.  Getting rid of the bird feeder will just change the problem, not solve it.   

I take that back.  Getting rid of the bird feeder, if it meant lowering our standard of living to that of Mexico, might solve the problem.  If life was as bad here as there, maybe they wouldn’t come.  If I stop feeding my kids, the neighbor kids will stop coming over for dinner.