Subscribe to Posts
Subscribe to CommentsMonthy Archive: August 2005
« July 2005 |
Main
| September 2005 »
If you read this blog, PLEASE sign in to my guest book on frappr.
No personally identifying information is needed, so this is risk-free. Just provide a name (even a nickname), your zip code, and any statement you want to make ("hi" is sufficient).If you want to know more about me, click here.
August 01, 2005
Life : Finding brevity
I typically compose my blog entries in Microsoft Word (tm) before posting them, and my rule of thumb is that I try to keep them to under a page given my default Word settings. If the last paragraph crosses into a second page, that's OK; but I try to avoid postings longer than that (I realize for many people even that is too long).
The problem is, there are a number of topics I think about which I have not posted on because every time I start to write a posting I end up with two or three pages in word, and I don't want to start asking for that much of people's time. I've thought about starting a second blog for long essays, for which I would post short introductions here; but if I really believed that was of value I might as well just post them here.
No, what I need to do is find shorter ways of expressing what I want to say.
Looking at why many of these essays end up so long, I realized that while there are topics on which I am comfortable simply stating my opinion and letting stand or fall on its own; there are other subjects where I have felt compelled to provide a justification for my opinion. It is with these topics I have ended up with pages of supporting data to go along with the simple statement of what I am thinking.
As an example, when I have attempted to write about my faith, my tendency is to not just say what I have been thinking about; but also provide either long stories to explain how I came to that conclusion or references to the Bible verses which have led me there. The resulting essays rarely conform to my self-imposed one page limit. This also applies to some political and scientific topics I have pondered in the last 4 months.
I think I am just going to have to focus on stating my observations and trust my audience to ask if they want to know how I got there.
Posted by Steven at 01:45 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)
August 03, 2005
Thoughts : Linguistics
Long before Anne got her masters degree in linguistics, I loved the science of words. To put it into the standard formula for "thing Steve loves" – I am fascinated by the process of how sequences of symbols and sounds become translated into meaning.
One question I keep investigating – catching up on current thinking in the field as I am able – is: "what are the universals of language?" What concepts are common to all languages, and (conversely) what concepts are particular to specific languages. I'm currently reading a book ("The Atoms of Language" by Mark C. Baker) which tries to define all of the variations in the structures of human language into a small number of parameters. Individual "words" (or equivalent) vary greatly between languages; but how those linguistic elements are assembled to express thoughts have more limited variations (modifiers either come immediately before or immediately after the words they modify, etc.).
Even as a dilettante in linguistics, I quickly came up with some counter-examples to the theory presented by the book; but as a means to get me thinking on this topic again, the book was wonderful. In particularly the book gives some excellent examples of extremely "non English like" languages, which I always enjoy.
This fascination of mine is an old one. While in high school tried to design my own "artificial" language. The results were far too English-like for my tastes now – at the time I assumed far too many things were "universal" and were unaware of the alternatives. It is however somewhat embarrassing that, for the length and depth of my interest in linguistics, I have never actually learned a foreign language. I have always skimmed new languages, looking for interesting structures; but never diving in deep enough to be able to actually use another language.
I am also working to correct that omission. Anne and I bought the "Rosetta Stone" program for French-1, and I am slowly working my way through. This is a back-burner task, and I'm not sure if I will be able to give it the time it needs; but so far I have been making steady process through the lessons.
I also find myself linking about artificial languages again – perhaps I'll take another pass at my own language.
Posted by Steven at 09:36 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)
August 04, 2005
Faith : Ephesians
If you really want to learn something, try to teach it.
Nothing brings a subject into clarity as the preparation needed to explain it to someone else (which is why, at work, I am a big fan of writing design documents before development).
Over the summer I have been leading a Bible Study on Tuesday nights on the book of Ephesians in the Bible. I have probably read the whole Bible through, perhaps, eight times; and the New Testament (including Ephesians) at least twenty times; but I have never gotten as much out of that book as I have been getting this summer.
It is common to hear in modern Christian circles how "Christianity is not about religion, it is about relationship." – that "true Christianity" is not about rules and rituals; but about getting to know God – the omnipotent, omnipresent, omniscient, perfect creator of the universe - in a personal, even intimate, way. I have always believed that is an accurate description; but I think I am reaching a new level of understanding of that principle over this summer.
It's not that Ephesians is about that as a subject; but in looking at the book in depth (including doing some research on the original Greek text), it contains some key principles that are helping me fit a whole lot of other pieces together.
God wants us to trust him, completely, implicitly. That's the whole idea of faith. Christianity talks a lot about what things we are not supposed to worry about because they are God's responsibility (as an example, look at Matthew 6:25-34). God wants us in a relationship with him where we have come to know him well enough that we trust him that much.
But this isn't just a one-way street. God has also put himself in a position of trusting Christians as well. The Bible says The Church is the "body of Christ". When Jesus came to earth he came as a single man in a single place – God present as a human body. Now the church as a whole is Jesus incarnate in the world, not as a single person in a single place; but as multitudes around the world, with his spirit living inside of each us.
I am not saying that God is not all-powerful and somehow "needs" us poor humans; but I do believe God has deliberately chosen to limit the use of his power in the world based on the actions of the Church – how we act, how we pray. What's more he did that knowing how badly we would mess it up (and we have). Why? I am growing to believe that it was because he wanted to establish an intimate relationship with us, and that he knew he couldn't do that if the relationship was completely one-sided.
Finally, even within the church, he gave gifts and abilities to each of us that were unique; and more important, individually incomplete. No one Christians has been gifted equally in all ways. The result is each of us is dependant on other people in the Church to use their gifts we can grow and be effective. Why? So we would be forced to come into relationship with each other as well. It's all about relationship, which means it's all about love (so we can get along) and trust (faith) so each of us can do our part knowing the other parts will be done as well.
The Tuesday night meetings are getting interesting now as everyone is starting to come into relationship and starting to love and trust each other and love and trust God. I'm having to teach less and less as everyone else is exercising in their own gifts, and that's how it is supposed to be. It's cool to see even a small piece of the church starting to act like The Church.
Posted by Steven at 07:59 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
August 06, 2005
TV : Over There
I've watched the first two episodes of Bochco's "Over There" – a war series set in the current conflict in Iraq, and have still not made up my mind.
On the one hand, the characters are largely stereotypes and paper thin. I'm willing to accept that they might flesh out over time; but it would be nice if they had not been defined along such obvious lines to begin with.
On the other hand, it is one of the more realistic depictions of war that has ever been shown on a TV series. Things happen the way they really happen in war (I base that observation on my long interest in military history and on reading blogs by current soldiers in Iraq). It is brutal, it is senseless, it is chaotic; but it is not without honor and purpose.
My thumb is still wavering on this one; but I'll keep watching for now.
Posted by Steven at 08:15 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
TV : Battlestar Galactica, Season 2
Most television is junk – pointless entertainment without wither philosophical or artistic virtue. Occasionally a show slips by the network executives that is actually intelligent and meaningful. Other times a show may slip by that is actually artfully conducted and a joy to watch. It is exceedingly rare that a show manages to get produced with is both meaningful and artistic, and virtually unheard of that such a show manages to last a season much less get renewed.
The new version of Battlestar Galactica on the SciFi channel is a show that has beaten those odds.
This is what good Science Fiction, no… good television is all about.
The show manages to dissect the human psyche and leave all of our virtues and vices splayed on the screen like some horrid vivisection demonstration. It is not pretty; but is truth. The characters are complex, with varying numbers of faults; but none without virtue either (Even Baltar – the closet traitor – has some vestige of humanity the shows on occasion). The questions raised about faith, government, the military, are all questions worth asking.
On top of that, the show is produced with a nearly cinematic quality, using techniques rarely seen on episodic television. The use of camera angles, motifs (such as the blood dripping on the floor that bracketed this past week's episodes), music, silence, all make the program a work of art that would be worth seeing even if the story was of lesser quality.
Finally, the show does not go for the simple answers, the neat endings. There are always multiple plot lines, and most are left hanging from episode to episode. Major characters are killed. Others are taken out of the action for several episodes. None of the "safe" assumptions that normally apply to American TV seem to apply here.
Oh, and they have not entirely forgotten the original series. While the story has diverged, key background elements keep showing up to tie the series together. This week, the man-on-man basketball-like game they used to play (and wager on) in the old series made an appearance. I'll be very interested to see what, if anything, they end up doing with "Count Iblis" in the new show.
Posted by Steven at 08:35 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
August 07, 2005
Observations : The Spiders of Silicon Valley
Life in Silicon Valley is a series of trade-offs. You get beautiful weather most of the year; but occasionally the ground moves out from under you. You get to live with diverse people from around the world; but the local symphony shuts down due to lack of funding. It's all trade-offs.
When I lived back East, I remember having to constantly fend off flies and other flying pests; and I was only in Silicon Valley a couple of months when their stark absence became apparent to me. We do have some mosquitoes (the San Francisco Bay is ringed with tidal marshes that provide an excellent breeding ground); but they rarely make it far away from the Bay.
The reason for there being so few flying insects is the counter-weight to that virtue – spiders rule the bay area. They are everywhere. Look in any bush, and you find the interior festooned like cotton candy with hundred of webs. Flying insects just don't have a chance. There were spiders back east; but they were a minor problem – one you could control within your house if you were vigilant; but in Silicon Valley it is like holding back the tide.
Of course, there is irony here. The place where so much "web" technology has been developed was ruled by webs long before the sleepy orchards that were the original industry here became office towers.
Posted by Steven at 05:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)
August 09, 2005
Thoughts : Of Myths, Memes, and the Modern
Back in the days of oral tradition, a young man or woman might here a multitude of stories told as they were growing up, and were likely to even here the same story told many times. When such a child grew up to become a storyteller themselves (as parent, shaman, bard, whatever), they would tend to repeat the stories which most impressed them in their youth. The version they would tell would tend to be some amalgamation of the best parts of the various versions they had previously heard; together, perhaps, with a few embellishments of their own. Their embellishments to the story would be repeated if they impressed other story tellers, and would be forgotten if not. The result is good stories were repeated more often and tended to improve with age, becoming more suited to their audience with each cycle.
One could view this process as evolution – it has all of the elements: selection, mutation, even combination to speed the process. Thus you can view myths and folktales as highly evolved stories – ones well suited to the society (the "ecological niche") in which they grew. Just as you can look at an animal and discern some thing about the environment in which it lived (webbed feet might indicate that it spent significant time in water); you can also look at the stories that are successful in a society and ask question like: why were they successful? What does the fact of their success tell us about the society in which they grew?
By the way - this concept of "idea as evolving organism" has been given the term "meme" (a combination of memory and gene). Of course, the idea of a "meme" is itself a meme which I have now spread to you all, so it clearly is a successful one as it has managed to propagate itself to me and now to you.
Back to stories – if you accept the idea that myths and folktales are highly evolved stories for the culture in which they thrived, then you might ask – what stories are evolving for our present society? And therein lay the rub. The problem is that starting with Gutenberg, the nature of technology has tended to slow down the evolution of stories by freezing them in place. A story, once captured in a book, does not lend itself to modification. Consider urban legends. Once they were repeated verbally and therefore were subject to selection, modification, etc. and thereby tended to evolve. However with the internet, passing on such a story is merely a matter of a few clicks. Few people would even think to modify the story before forwarding it on; and because the process of forwarding it is so easy, much less selection occurs as to what is worthwhile.
And despite this, I claim that that certain myths have begun to evolve in the modern age. Each story may itself be frozen; but the idea of the story – the core meme – is available to be retold in a new story in a new way. So one can ask, what story ideas are often repeated in our society? And what do they tell us about our society.
As an example, consider the plot line: a scientist in search of knowledge to benefit people creates some new thing which the scientist then loses control of and instead of helping people is does them harm, usually killing the scientist in the end. This is the "Frankenstein myth"; but one which has been told many times in many ways (Michael Crichton has built a career of writing variation of this myth – Prey, Jurassic Park, The Andromeda Strain, The Terminal Man, etc). An interesting side note is to consider – if you could only present one version of the Frankenstein myth to someone, which version do you think best captures the essence of the myth?
Another I have identified is the reluctant hero – someone is given extraordinary abilities; but all they want is to live a normal life. Yet "with great power come great responsibility", and the story is about that struggle between responsibility and normalcy. Obviously I put Spider Man into this camp (along with a few other comic book heroes), as well as Buffy and "The Greatest American Hero" on TV. I find this particular one interesting because it is so clearly modern. No story with such reluctant heroes would have ever been deemed fit enough to survive in ancient cultures – individuals with power did not shirk from using them (counterexamples are welcome). So why do stories with reluctant heroes resonate enough now that they have been told many times?
Posted by Steven at 08:34 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)
August 10, 2005
Life : The end of an Era
I purchased my first Macintosh computer – one of the original 128K models - in March of 1984, only a couple of months after they came out. I had played with a Xerox Alto and had used an Apple Lisa at work, so I had some sense of how revolutionary the Mac was going to be. Shortly thereafter I was programming the Mac professionally, a career that continued for many years until I was hired by Apple itself. I worked at Apple for 7 years, eventually serving as one of the architects for the Mac operating system.
Around the time I left Apple, I purchased my first Windows PC. My reason was simple: I was an avid game player, and while there were a few companies developing interesting games for the Mac first, too many games I wanted to play were only available for Windows. I those days I would accurately (if a bit smugly) tell people that I did "all of my serious work on the Mac" and that my Windows PC was "only to play games".
After I left Apple I started to do different kinds of software engineering professionally – not Windows; but also not Mac – but at home I continued to do all of my personal programming projects (assorted simulations, parts of games, etc.) on the Mac.
Things however started changing around the time Mac OS X came out. For myself, I was faced with the prospect of learning how to program a whole new system if I wanted to continue to do my personal development on the Mac (for as different as OS X was from OS 9 for the end user, they were completely different beasts for the programmer). So the question became: If I was going to learn to program a new OS, which OS should I learn? The choice was clear – knowing Windows would open far more doors for me professionally than knowing OS X. So I took a few courses at a local university extension, bought a copy of Microsoft Visual Studio, and started doing my personal projects on Windows.
I was not the only person faces with this decision. While most of the "big" developers made the switch from OS 9 to OS X, a lot of the small companies – those who created the cool little programs that made using my Mac so comfortable for me personally – didn't. I knew a few of the developers personally and was able to confirm their decision was the same as mine – they switched to making cool stuff for Windows rather than learn OS X.
So at this point I was now doing "serious work" (programming) on my Windows PC, and starting to buy other productivity software for Windows as well. This trend continued for a few years as more and more of my "serious work" was getting done on Windows and less and less on the Mac until, about 3 years ago I reached a point that the only thing I was still doing on the Mac was reading Email. One reason I stayed in that state for so long as that people don't bother to write viruses for the Mac, so I felt safer using my Mac as a "firewall" to protect my windows machine.
The last straw appeared as I set up this blog. LivingDot (which hosts this site) is a very nice and very flexible web hosting service. I can do just about everything through a convenient web interface. Most of the interface is OS-neutral; but there was one small advantage for Windows – when you created a new Email address, it was able to automatically configure Outlook to use it. So, as I created the various Email addresses for this and other blogs, it was easier to set them up on Windows than Mac, and since I had a lot else to worry about, I took advantage of that.
The result was I was reading all of my "stevenanne.net" Email addresses on Windows, and only my old Email addresses on Mac. Since all of the important action was on these new addresses, I found myself getting lazier and lazier about reading the Email on the Mac – often going days at a time before I bothered to boot my Mac and check mail.
Well, I finally gave up.
Tonight I transferred over my 120 Megabytes of archived Email from Mac to Windows, and shut down my Mac, perhaps for the last time. After 21 enjoyable years, there will soon no longer be a Mac computer on my desk at home. It's been fun; but while I don't believe ALL good things come to an end, this one certainly has.
Farewell Macintosh, you've been a god friend.
Posted by Steven at 09:41 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)
August 11, 2005
Thoughts : Modern Myths and Loss of Control
A couple days ago I blogged on what myth patterns may be starting to evolve in our modern society. I mentioned two story patterns that seem to be getting repeated: The Frankenstein myth (man loses control of technology) and the Reluctant Hero myth (someone is given great power and struggles with the responsibility that implies).
I've continued thinking about these and have an additional observation: I claim both of these myths are about loss of control.
In the Frankenstein case, this is obvious – someone builds some piece of technology and literally loses control of it. It reflects societies' concern that, thanks to technology, things are changing too fast for them. Life is becoming too complex too quickly and no one is in control.
I think the Reluctant Hero myth is related to this. Such myths start with an individual expecting to live a normal life. They know what to expect and therefore have some degree of control over their lives. Then, suddenly, their life is changed and they are expected to become "a hero". To the character, the expectations of being a hero mean they have lost control over their lives, and the story comes out of their struggle against this loss of control.
Based on demographics of TV show audiences, this kind of story tends to be particularly popular with young adults. Perhaps modern society no longer adequately prepares individuals for adulthood, and faced with the sudden expectations places on them when they enter "the real world", they find they can relate to such myths.
So, is "loss of control" the central theme of modern myths? This is too few data points to make such a claim; but it is an interesting point to consider. It is certainly a distinctly "modern" concept to worry about. In most ancient cultures there was never an assumption that an individual was ever in control to begin with, it was always fate or "the gods" who were in control. To tell stories about people losing control would never have occurred to someone in those cultures. Yet in modern society we believe we should be in control of our lives yet face a world in which we often aren't. So perhaps we look for myths that at least express that confusion, and at best provide some context for knowing how to deal with it.
Posted by Steven at 10:16 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
August 15, 2005
Books : Soren Kierkegaard
I generally find reading philosophy to be rather unenlightening. A lot of effort is spent creating definitions of words that often bear no resemblance to everyday use, and then there are long passages using those words were you constantly have to perform complex substitutions based on the definitions to understand what the author intends. It always strikes me that there must be some way to say all this in much simpler terms.
My suspicion is that through the ages philosophy has been maintained as a kind of religion of hidden truths (like the ancient Gnostics) where the obscurity of the dialog is meant to keep out those who have not been invited into the secret mysteries. Either that, or it is an attempt to make it all sound harder than it is so people believe philosophers actually do hard work. (I consider myself a philosopher of sorts; but make no pretence that thinking about these things is hard – only time consuming).
Having said that, I believe I have found a philosopher that I not only enjoy; but I even agree with – The early 19th Century Danish Philosopher Soren Kierkegaard, a "proto-existentialist". He has a lot of humor in his writing (dry, ironic humor, but humor nonetheless), and his frequent use of stories to illustrate his points shows that he actually wants people to understand what he is saying. Even the titles of some of his works ("Concluding Unscientific Postscript") show that he does not take himself as seriously as other philosophers.
The sense you get reading his works is that he's a man who was driven to understand the world he lived in, and wrote about his thought as a means to clarify his own thinking, not to convince or impress other people. I suspect if he lived today, he would be a blogger.
As I said, I not only find him a good read; but I also find he and I have come to many of the same conclusions.
Kierkegaard was a Christian; but his focus was on an individual's relationship with God and not with the rules and rituals of the established church (which he viewed as corrupt – his most scathing attacks were on "Christendom" (vs. "Christianity" which he believed in)). He spent a lot of time considering the conflict between Abraham's willingness to sacrifice Isaac as something which objectively was murder; but within Abraham's subjective relationship with God was the pinnacle of righteousness. I believe that Kierkegaard's solution – that in the end one is only responsible to your own relationship with God, not to what others think – is technically correct; but must be evaluated in a context of how one becomes certain of your own relationship with God, lest we justify people who go off and commit random acts of violence because "God told them to".
Furthermore, Kierkegaard is credited as having started the line of thought which under Sartre became known as "existential philosophy". For all my reading, I remain unclear on what existential philosophy is (beyond the useless "it's was Sartre taught"); but I have often accused of being an existentialist, and many of the works of writing and film I enjoy are also so categorized. I certainly understand the drive for meaning/significance that motivates these works, and have experienced the abject angst/dread they describe when one's place in the universe becomes unclear. To exist without meaning would to me be the highest horror one could experience. To Kierkegaard, this angst was the process by which one transcended the merely aesthetic to achieve an ethical life and eventually establish a relationship with God which he viewed as the true purpose of religion.
Posted by Steven at 11:49 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
August 18, 2005
Life : Crunch Time
Sorry for the lack of posts this week. I'm in a crunch time at work, and the few working brain cells I have at the end of the day do not appear to be enough to compose more than this meager comment. There is some light at the end of the tunnel, so hopefully I will be back to my normally inane/profound self soon.
Posted by Steven at 06:43 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)
August 27, 2005
Life : On the bright side
One of the less pleasant tasks in software engineering (a task which has occupied most of my last two weeks) is debugging someone else's code. Generally you end up spending a lot of time tediously single-stepping through code, or instrumenting the code with debug-prints to gather information about what was happening just before things went south. Since the point at which a problem gets reported is when it gets serious enough to impact people, it is often the case that the actual flaw in the code occurred much earlier and you must back track the problem (A went bad because B was already bad because C had the wrong value because someone calculated D wrong five minutes before A). This kind of back-tracking is always time consuming drudge work; but a necessary aspect of debugging.
But there are moments…
There are times when you look at a problem and without looking at the code you say "Hmmm. For this code to work, there must be a loop somewhere that does E, and in that loop there must be a test F and inside that test the code must do G, H, and I. And if someone did G and I inside the test; but did H outside the test, then the code would behave exactly like it does now". Then you go and look at the code and sure enough, H is outside of test F, and you have found the bug by pure deduction – no single stepping, no debug prints, no back-tracking.
I tend to think of these as "Sherlock Holmes Moments". For me, the joy of occasionally finding bugs by pure mental effort is great enough that they more than compensate for the drudgery of pursuing the rest of the bugs "the hard way". I've had 3 of these Sherlock Holmes Moments these last two weeks, and it has made all the difference.
Posted by Steven at 09:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)
Life : Not as young as I was
These past 2 weeks have provided yet another (unwelcome) reminder that I am not as young as I used to be. There was a time when working 60 hour weeks was normal for me, and I even recall doing a 78 hour work week without breaking much of a sweat.
Two weeks ago as part of this push I did three 12-hour days in a row and was totally exhausted at the end. Some of it, I have to admit, is that I am not in as good physical shape as I once was; but since my job does not require much physical exertion, I'm not sure that can explain it all.
What I do observe is that it takes me longer to mentally relax after work than it used to. It used to be that given 45 minutes of distraction after work and I'd be mentally ready for anything. Now it is taking hours to get my brain to calm down. When I work right up until it is time to sleep, this means I tend to sleep less well (although I seem to get amazing dreams if/when I do reach REM state).
Ah well, there are too many other things I enjoy in life to spend that much time at work anyway.
Posted by Steven at 09:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)
Life : The crunch is over
My crunch at work has finished (actually there are 2 more deadlines coming up over the next month; but barring surprises we appear to be ahead of the curve right now). So, I hope to resume normal blogging (whatever that may be).
Posted by Steven at 09:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
August 29, 2005
Thoughts : Extrapolation of human nature
Philosophers, as a whole, look for the "universal truths" of the human condition. The problem is – how do you know when something really is universal, as opposed to just common among philosophers?
Consider the proposition: people have an innate desire to find meaning for their lives – to find some context (religion, family, nationalism, invention, whatever) greater than themselves which makes their own existence meaningful. This is a position taken by a great many philosophers, although the significance of that desire has been interpreted in a variety of ways.
My question is – how does one decide if this is in fact a universal?
Obviously the philosophers who have come to this conclusion feel such a need (otherwise they would provide their own disproof); and since more than one have taken this position (including some who view this as a bad thing), it is clearly not an isolated behavior. Let's say a philosopher talks to a great many people, and discovers that while most folks say "I've never really thought about it", those that have thought about it agree with the observation. Can one then extrapolate from those conversations that the desire to find meaning is a human universal?
Or….
….instead, have you discovered that there is a subset of the population who thinks about the human condition (philosophers by inclination if not occupation), and that this subset has an innate desire to find meaning for their lives; but that most people don't spend time thinking about such things and really don't care if their lives have meaning? How can you tell?
I have come to the conclusion that one is not ready to consider deeply the universals of the human condition until one understands our differences.
I believe it is clear that there are fundamental differences in how people respond to the world – that there are a great many things which are not universal. Many models have been developed to categorize people into "personality types" – the Four-Temperaments model, the Myer-Briggs model, the Enneagram model, etc. All of these models define ways in which people are different. While I believe the spectrum of human behavior is too complex to allow people to be put in nice neat boxes, I do think these models are useful for understanding the ways in which we differ and it is only by having a deep understanding of our differences that we can successfully sort out those things which are in fact universal.
I believe to jump ahead and start looking for universals without an appreciation of these differences is like looking for someone in a funhouse maze of mirrors – it is easy to get confused by all of the reflections.
Posted by Steven at 09:46 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)
