Ruminate

I haven’t experienced that many presidential elections in my lifetime, but this one has to be the most polarizing (and vexing) so far. I freely confess a deep and visceral dislike for George Bush, unlike any I have felt before for a politician. As I see it, he’s a charlatan. And the fact that so many fail to see him for the simpering idiot that he is remains almost as frustrating to me as the insult to our collective intelligence that his presence in the White House hurls at us every day. I’m reminded of the support for Ross Perot, who might as well have been an alien in his complete unsuitability for office except that George Bush’s legionds of supporters have never woken up to the reality of what their candidate actually is.

That being said, I’m predicting that he will win again, and by a surprisingly signficant margin that will in no way reflect the polls that currently put he and Kerry neck-and-neck in a horse race. This is going to happen because of a fundamental kind of dishonesty in a certain kind of voter. Most people who feel any sympathy with one social agenda or another and most people who have feelings about the way the “war” on terrorism is being waged are not at all undecided. But in my experience, it is Republicans and those sympathetic with their cause who are most likely to mask themselves as “undecided” voters. Liberals of all stripes, from the bleeding heart to the pragmatists, almost never pretend otherwise, finding it abhorrent to send even the slightest signal otherwise. So this great mass of undecided voters will, in the end, go to the polls for Bush out of sheer inertia.

America is a country inhabited by a self-satisfied, arrogant people who go to greath lengths to avoid complexity; a people imbued with an outdated frontier ethic of cowboy justice and black and white answers to those who don’t think like them and situations that they don’t (and don’t want) to understand. There is no room for subtlety, which is labelled as being “soft.” There is no room for conditional logic or evolution of thought according to the real– rather than their imagined– world, which is labelled as “waffling.”

It’s a travesty that John Kerry has to distance himself from a nuanced– and reasonable– approach to the war in Iraq. It’s outrageous that Geroge Bush is waging a campaign that takes blatant advantage of a fear that he continually works so hard to instill in the very people he purports to lead.

Not that things are any better in Alaska, where a shameless recipient of nepotism who has broken every promise she has made to the people will remain in her Senatorial seat because of a populace that is unwilling to face the economic realities inherent in a lack of economic diversification and with the support of an aging Senator who will not be able to keep the gravy train flowing forever while playing on the dreams of a new pipeline era that will never arrive… at least not in the way people here seem to think.

It’s hard to retain even the slightest hope that instead of getting what we ask for– and what we probably deserve– we instead get what we need.

Early this morning I finally used the last Q-Tip Cotton Swab in the 1000 unit box I bought back in– I believe– about 1995. I just thought my dedicated readers ought to know. Between this and the year-long odometer rolling over again it’s been an exciting week…

Alan Levine and Brian Lamb collaborated on an Educause 2004 presentation that included Bloglines, feed2js, and del.icio.us. This is one of the (few) sessions that is really making me wish I had gone to Educause this year…

I’m probably going to blatantly steal some of the ideas for the hands-on session for some future sessions with CRA faculty and staff.

Danah’s excited about Webnote. It looks kind of interesting. I’m sure I had a student a few semesters ago who was working on something that looked just like this. Without the ability to create connections when you want them or otherwise link notes, I’m not sure how much I would use it in comparison to some of the other brainstorming tools I’ve seen. I personally like to make internal sequences and various associations even when notetaking on the fly.

Clay Shirky has a great post on the term ’social software’ with some deeper links that are must-reads if you have an interest in this area of technology, particularly:

• Christopher Allen’s tracing of the evolution of the term starting in the 40’s

• An astounding sequence of posts from Shelley Powers and associated comments (see here and here if you can overlook my horrible linking style) that involves the history of the term, an ominous pancake gathering, a fairly heated controversy, and ultimately an untangling that gets at an important social issue surrounding technology… all happening within an environ provided by social computing itself. Whoa– I think I just blew a circuit.

I discovered all of this, incidentally, through a marvelously intricate– and drop-dead-easy to traverse– network of social software tools including delicious, bloglines, multiple blogs, a blog aggregating other blogs, and a wiki. If that’s not fodder for a moment of contemplation about social software, then you need some sleep.

I’m generally not a big fan of self-help books. Even when I agree with the concepts and principles they are based on, the books themselves are often smarmy, self-indulgent, and an open invitation to avoid the task of actually doing things in favor of reading about doing things. I am particularly prone to this problem because it effectively combines two of my great passions: reading and procrastinating (if you can find a way to eat and listen to music at the same time, you have basically achieved the Quadruple Crown in the sport of being Chris).

So you can imagine how I might be driven to distraction by books about time management, organization, and productivity. Reading about how to get organized and whistling softly under my breath at the intricate charts, quadrants, schemas, mantras, and filing systems is way more fun than actually getting organized.

And then I found, through sheer happenstance (it was the only plausible-looking title in the stunted, crooked stacks to be found in the pathetic excuses Fairbanks boasts for bookstores), the book Getting Things Done by David Allen. One quick reading and I realized that this was it. This was the practical advice I’ve been looking for.

Getting Things Done eschews complicated systems and mercilessly sub-divided Daytimers. I don’t have to apply vaseline to my teeth and practice self-actualization in front of a mirror. There are no “strongly suggested” $1800 seminars. Except for a few earnest aphorisms from old martial arts movies (”mind like water” says David Allen — master approves says grasshopper) there’s no elaborate Zen tie-in. I have yet to learn of any secret handshakes, signet rings or encrypted symbols. It’s really just about a simple method for getting stuff done by capturing thoughts, organizing them simply with projects, and avoiding the tyranny of never ending to-do lists.

Unfortunately, I’m now discovering that this is old news. Not because the book is old (I knew it was a few years old) but because it’s already become a meme in the real world and, just a month or so ago, in cyberspace. I’m like the poor kid who shows up to the 1988 prom in his Miami Vice white suit and pastel t-shirt, just a short few months late, when dressing like Crockett is so over.

The system’s not only been featured in The Atlantic Monthly, but it’s been noted by Anil Dash who notices a lot of other people noticing, including 43 Folders which I’d never heard of, but which apparently has become so popular that it apparently “belies the assumption that the weblog medium is too established or too crowded to launch a popular new blog.”

There are activce forums, hacks, multiple independent discussion boards, a portal site aggregating blogs about the book (nicknamed GTD, natch), support in the Emacs planner.el mode, even an Outlook plugin if you are one of those users.

It’s amazing– and humiliating– to discover that even within a group I’m relatively connected to there can be so much activity that I’m completely clueless about. I recently heard a guy in the coffee shop talking in amazement about instant messaging and how it was possible to talk in real time with anyone anywhere, right over the internet. A few weeks of being too busy to surf and now I’m that guy!

That being said, I am feeling pretty good about this way of doing things, even if the cult-like following in whose midst I have been walking totally unawares scares me just a bit. I’m sure I’ll post more here about how I’m implementing the system (hint: it’s almost completely paper based except for necessary email techniques).