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Friday, June 20
Friday Fun Link - The Last Lecture (June 20, 2008)
by
Jason
on Fri 20 Jun 2008 11:57 PM CST
I think I first heard about "The Last Lecture" via a book request we got at the library. The Amazon page for the book has more info including a couple video clips explaining the background and significance of this particular Last Lecture.
A bit more searching revealed that the full video of the original Last Lecture presentation at Carnegie-Mellon University is on YouTube (of course). It's an hour long clip but if you watch the first couple minutes, there's a good chance you'll want to watch the whole thing. Monday, May 26
Kiva.org
by
Jason
on Mon 26 May 2008 10:09 PM CST
Kiva is a web site that helps facilitate micro-credit loans to entrepreneurs around the world. (As always, Wikipedia has more information about this organization if you're interested.)
Shea got a Kiva gift certificate as a Mother's Day Gift and is helping two people: Ruth Celenia Santana Morales who sells clothes and jewelery in the Dominican Republic and Umedjon Nurov who raises beef cattle in Tajikistan. One of the coolest things about the site is that once the loan is repaid (the loans have a 99.7% repayment rate) you can either withdraw it or turn around and loan it to someone else. I first heard about Kiva via the Bill Clinton book, Giving: How Each of Us Can Change The World. There are various other organizations out there that are similar to Kiva but which have different approaches and cater to different needs, groups, countries and so on. Heifer International is one I heard about via Cenobyte for example. Thursday, May 15
The Four Generations In Your Workplace
by
Jason
on Thu 15 May 2008 10:37 PM CST
As I may have mentioned before, the younger me would probably punch the older me in the mush if he could see how much management theory I'd be reading (and enjoying
 ) at this point in my life. To me, one of the most interesting aspects of management theory today is the interplay between different generations. This article has one of the most succinct set of definitions that I've seen for the defining characteristics for each of the four generations that are currently in the workplace. Wikipedia also has a comprehensive chart listing every American generation going back to 1843 based on the work of Strauss and Howe. Their theory is that there are four generational archetypes that repeat sequentially - Prophets, Nomads, Heroes and Artists. Interesting stuff. Thursday, April 10
10 Things Every Adult Should Know
by
Jason
on Thu 10 Apr 2008 09:36 PM CST
So I've had this list of "10 Things Every Adult Should Know" kicking around for a few weeks, never sure when to post it. I really like a lot of what the guy says...
8. You have no right to be proud, unless you did it yourself. That goes for anything from racial pride to patriotism. Your race, gender and nationality are fucking accidents of birth. Being proud of something you got stuck with when mamma squeezed you out is stupid. You have a right to be proud of your own personal accomplishments, and perhaps those of your children (if you were actually a good parent, and your kids didn't succeed by sheer bloody-mindedness alone). That's it. Your parents fucked, Mom got knocked up, and ~9 months later, there you were. Race, gender and nationality handed to you out of some cosmic lottery machine. Fuck your white pride, black pride, national pride, and all the horseshit that goes along with it. ...but the obsession with anal sex (two of the ten items, three if you count the one about "if you have sex, you will get pregnant" as some sort of subtle pro-anal message, are about bum sex) sort of takes away the impact of the foul-mouthed but otherwise accurate points in the other 7/10 of the list. (via Reddit though I've long since lost the link to the thread with comments.) Friday, March 21
Friday Fun Link - Atheists and Anger (March 21, 2008)
by
Jason
on Fri 21 Mar 2008 02:37 PM CST
Continuing my trend of posting contrarian viewpoints on major Christian holidays, here's a piece on why atheists get angry and frustrated with believers.
(But I am glad to have a long weekend so thanks for that and the chocolate eggs, Jeebus!  )Thursday, March 20
Chris Dixon Memorial Scholarship (and some thoughts on a random death in the oil patch)
by
Jason
on Thu 20 Mar 2008 07:22 PM CST
It was an incredible shock to hear of the passing of LIS PhD student, Chris Dixon, last summer. (In a freaky coincidence, this happened right in the middle of my posting the eulogies I've given for my grandparents over the years.) In my post about Chris' death, I wrote about how little I'd been exposed to the death of people close to me in my life, at least so far, but that I knew this would inevitably change as I grew older.
Then, last Sunday, my mother-in-law kept the weekend's paper specifically to show me the obituary of a woman who was a resident of my hometown of Indian Head. It turned out that I didn't know that woman but looking over the obituaries, a different name caught my eye. It took me a second to place her but it turns out it was the woman who wrote up our mortgage when we moved back to Regina from Calgary in 2004, dead at 49 of ovarian cancer. As I frequently do, I began composing a blog post in my head based on this chain of events. I thought about how I would talk about the way that we pass in and out of other people's lives - sometimes having a large impact, sometimes leaving a small reminder, sometimes only as a passing acquaintance, meant for some singular purpose before carrying on down our own paths. The core idea for that post shifted quite dramatically a couple hours later and not in a good way. When we arrived back in Weyburn last Sunday, I had noticed a bunch of cars parked outside the neighbour's house. The neighbours were a young couple who had just moved here from Alberta last fall so this gathering seemed a bit out of the ordinary since they didn't really know many people yet as far as we knew. He was busy in the oil patch and she was a stay-at-home mom with a young boy who was a year and a half old. When I arrived at my in-laws', I also couldn't help but notice that one person getting out of a vehicle appeared to be carrying in some food. It could be nothing but that's also a potentially ominous sign for people in rural Saskatchewan (does that happen elsewhere? When someone dies, the family is bombarded with visitors bearing food?) I thought to myself, "oh, it must be a dinner party." I mentioned it when I went inside and my in-laws had noticed the vehicles next door too - their theory was that the couple had joined a church and were being welcomed with a party. This explanation seemed as forced as mine was and reflecting now, I think we were all trying to avoid the most obvious explanation - something really bad had happened to one of the parents or worse, their son. A few hours later, I was downstairs when the doorbell rang. I heard my mother-in-law say "Oh no, oh my God". I raced upstairs to find the elderly lady that the couple were renting the house from had come to tell us that the father, Spencer, had been killed in an accident in the oil patch. His truck had been by an oil tanker that had failed to stop at a yield sign on a grid road. I stood there in shock as a jumble of thoughts cascaded through my head. Only in his mid-20's, he was so young...his wife alone now...their son without a father...the evil fucking stupidity of the oil patch...no family or friends nearby...how I'm complicit by owning oil stocks...Pace tugging at my leg, unaware of what's happened...how this young couple had moved here to create a life for their family...that all gone in an instant...the greed that makes men work 16 and 20 hour days every day for weeks on end...the warning I got from a branch librarian before coming home on the grid road right near where the accident happened..."Be careful at any crossroads - the oil trucks don't stop"...hearing last summer that Shea's uncle was calling in any semi-truck that whipped past his farm, sometimes even chasing them down...how I'm complicit because I hope that they find oil on Shea's parents farm only a few miles from that uncle (and maybe twenty miles from where the accident happened)...the controversy about our premier admitting that he lets his 14-year-old daughter drive on grid roads, something we've all done growing up in Saskatchewan but something I would never let Pace do on the grid roads in this area now. I thought back regretfully on the fact that I'd only had a couple interactions with Spencer and his family. Soon after he moved in (he came out first to get settled before his wife and son joined him a few months later) I stopped by one day when he happened to be outside just as I was getting off work. We had a brief chat, talking about our respective backgrounds and how we came to be where we were. We compared notes on being new parents. At one point, I mentioned that I was a librarian and he asked where he could buy books in town (blowing all my "rig pig" stereotypes to hell in one brief sentence.) We went our separate ways promising to get together with our wives and sons for supper or drinks sometime. Then, last Christmas, knowing they were going to be in Weyburn alone, my in-laws invited them over for Christmas Eve. They came over and we had another nice visit, comparing notes on living in Alberta v. Saskatchewan, holiday memories, tips on raising an active boy and the usual mundane chit-chat that happens as strangers get to know each other. Shea and I could've and should've made more of an effort to spend time with them and now, of course, never having done so, is when we realise that. Getting wrapped up in your own lives, your own worries, your own lack of time to make that effort seems so petty and stupid in retrospect. And so, as the reality that you're still here sinks in at a moment like this, you make the resolutions - I'm not going to do that anymore. I'm going to make an effort to reach out to people. I'm going to spend more time with my own family. I'm going to live healthier, eat healthier, do more, be more. I'm going to live. And you say all that with the knowledge that it's all smoke and that feeling will disappear in hours or days, like the feeling that you have when you leave a theatre after an inspiring movie like "Stand By Me" or "Dead Poet's Society" or whatever. Then you're back to worrying about the stupid shit like what mark you got on that assignment that's worth 5% of your final grade. Or some off-hand comment a co-worker made that you keep replaying in your head. Or that you didn't get a full eight hours of sleep because your son is teething. So yeah, life goes on except when it doesn't and the single most brutal kicker for me in this whole situation is a line that Spencer said during our first conversation on his driveway. Pace was still small, maybe only a month or two old and his son was around the age that Pace is now. He said, "You know what? I love being a dad and there's not a day that my little guy doesn't make me laugh." That's all a VERY long tangent to say that recent events have made it hit home *very* hard that no matter how long you live, life is very short. The blog that Chris Dixon's wife has set-up is called "Carpe Diem Chris" and as I mentioned above, it depends on my daily cynicism level as to whether I believe I truly am seizing the day or not. But no matter how I feel, I do believe that the memorial fund for Chris is the perfect way to celebrate the life of a great person and whether you knew him or not, I hope you decide to make a donation. Every dollar counts whether you give $5 or $50 or $500. I'm going to make a donation and I don't want to take anything away from Chris but I'm going to think of at least part of it as being in memory of Spencer who during that first conversation asked me "Where do you go to get books in this town?" and laughed because he hadn't already thought of it when I replied, "How about the library?" If you've read this blog long, you know that I like to see connections in everything and also to see things come full circle. While I was at FIMS, Chris gave me a couple of his old textbooks and, no matter how I pushed, would accept nothing more than a cup of coffee for them. He told me to pass the favour along to someone someday. I like to think that, indirectly, by helping make this scholarship a reality, someday a future FIMS graduate will be able to convince a rig worker or someone else you might not normally think of as a reader to visit the library for their own books. Mission accomplished. Here's the announcement about Chris' Memorial Scholarship:
(I knew the scholarship was in the works but thanks to the Canuck Librarian for being the first to let me know it was officially a go!) Friday, January 4
Friday Fun Link - Edge Annual Question (Jan 5, 2008)
by
Jason
on Fri 04 Jan 2008 11:10 PM CST
Each year for the past ten years, the Edge Foundation has asked leading intellectuals and thinkers, from Brian Eno to Richard Dawkins to Tim O'Reilly for their thoughts on a particular question.
The 2008 question is "What have you changed your mind about? Why?" You can also find an archive of previous questions such as... 2007 - "What Are You Optimistic About?" 2006 - "What Is Your Dangerous Idea?" 2005 - "What Do You Believe Is True Even Though You Cannot Prove It?" ...going back all the way to 1998. And it appears that they're now producing books based on the question so if you're doing any collection development for your library, you might want to consider purchasing them. Tuesday, December 25
Merry Christmas Everyone! (A Message From Santa Claus)
by
Jason
on Tue 25 Dec 2007 10:01 AM CST
I told the story in a recent post about how the person that clued me in about Santa Claus was also the same person that first made me doubt the existence of God.
So I thought the picture below was appropriate for today, even though I know that posting this picture today is sort of the equivalent walking into an Irish bar on St. Patrick's Day and pointing out that St. Patrick didn't drive the snakes from Ireland. (Or coming up to me on the opening day of the NHL season and saying that the Flames suck - which admittedly they do, based on their last two OT losses. And which reinforces my point that we all need to look at the hard cold truth behind any statement or belief!) So anyhow, Happy Yule everyone and, whether you're a believer or not, here's hoping Santa brought you a copy of "The God Delusion" as a gift (or your local library brings it to you as a hold) as it's probably the single best book I read in the last year!  Thursday, December 6
Wall Street to Costco: "Stop Treating Your Employees So Well"
by
Jason
on Thu 06 Dec 2007 09:24 PM CST
If you're doing your Christmas shopping over the next few weeks, why not consider Costco aka "The anti-Wal-mart"?
Their unique practices as a retailer - paying employees a living wage, offering generous benefits, customer-friendly return policies - has led to low employee turnover, a wealthier clientele in general and continued growth while competitors such as Wal-mart, Target and others see stagnant growth or even declines. Costco's corporate culture (like others such as WestJet, Google and so on) reminded me of a blog post I read recently which said that, in essence, the entire history of management theory comes down to two schools of thought: Here are a selection of Costco related stories that have been posted on Reddit if you want to read more about one of the world's most effective, successful retailers. Sunday, November 11
John Wellington "Wally" Peet (1919-2007)
by
Jason
on Sun 11 Nov 2007 01:59 AM CST
 Five Things Grandpa Peet and I Talked About During Pretty Much Every Conversation We Ever Had 1. The Stock Market 2. The Price of Oil 3. The Blue Jays 4. The Weather 5. The Stock Market I was honoured to give the eulogy at Grandpa Peet's funeral this year, him having passed away only a week after Pace was born. Needless to say, that was a time of the highest of highs and lowest of lows of my entire life, all within a period of a few days. The funeral was a decent affair as far as these things go - fairly light on the overwrought rhetoric and sombre tone that marks so many funerals but with a couple unique moments I'll never forget. One was right at the end when three couples that Grandpa and Grandma used to dance with regularly, waltzed right out of the chapel where the funeral was held to Anne Murray's song, "Could I Have This Dance?".  I knew in advance that this would happen and thought it would be the part of the funeral where I'd be most likely to get emotional. But it was such an uplifting, happy way to end that instead, any tears I had were (strangely at the funeral of your last living grandparent) tears of joy - a fitting final tribute to a long, well-lived, successful life. The other moment that I didn't expect to affect me much ended up hitting me much harder than I ever thought it would. It was when some members of the local Royal Canadian Legion stood to perform a tribute to my grandfather - something that apparently happens at the service of any deceased member of the armed forces. One member read "The Ode of Remembrance"... They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old; Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn. At the going down of the sun and in the morning We will remember them. ...and then, as "The Last Post" bugle call played over the speakers, one by one, six different Legionnaires marched to the front of the chapel, saluted, marched to a wreath that the first person had placed and pinned a poppy to it, returned to their spot, saluted again, then returned to their seat. I'm not a complete pacifist but if you know me, you know that I lean pretty strongly that way. So as I said, it was a bit of a shock at how much this brief ceremony affected me. It made me realise that my grandfather had done things in his life that I likely would never have to (partly because he did them when he did). It reminded me how different our lives had been, not just that he had been to war and I hadn't but just how different our entire experiences of being alive were even though we were born only fifty-odd years apart. It affected me because I knew the reason I was able to get the job that I did right out of library school was because a young man with a value set very similar to my grandfather's had chosen to go to Afghanistan out of a sense of duty to his country with all the risk that entailed rather than contentedly sitting at a desk in Weyburn Saskatchewan, buying books and supervising a network of rural library branches. And it hit me because, as each of those octogenarians marched, slowly but with purpose, to the front of the room, I thought what it must be like to do this ceremony for yet another one of their deceased comrades, knowing how close to the end of their lives they were as well and what it would mean to our society to lose this generation. A bit more about one of these points which I also touched on in the eulogy I read that day - what a stunning relevation it was to realise that my grandfather and I had both been in England as young men in our 20's - him as a soldier risking his life as a tank driver in the Netherlands, me as a student who, because of what he and so many others did during the war, was able to visit the Netherlands during my time in Europe as a carefree tourist with not a care nor concern in the world. This is an extremely hard thing to admit on a public blog but I don't wear a poppy in November. This is partly because I feel that if you show support for one cause, you should show support for all of them that you believe in, partly because of my feeling towards wars (even just ones) in general (I think of the hypocrisy of people saying "I'm against the war but I support the troops") and partly because of my inherent resistance to anything which 99.9% of the population partakes in as the ultimate form of peer pressure and conformity. Are those good reasons? I don't know. Have I ever worn a poppy? Yes. Could I wear one next year? Maybe. Would I feel like a hypocrite if I did? Ask me when I do. Do I slip money into the bins where they sell them? Sometimes. Do I think about what Remembrance Day means each and every year? Probably more than many people who slip that poppy on like a politician's smile. In fact, I usually shed a tear or two on Remembrance Day in my own private way. It's just that today, those tears will be more directly meaningful than they ever have been before. I'll end the way I started... Five Things My Grandpa Peet and I Rarely Talked About 1. His experiences as a tank driver in Europe during WWII 2. What It Was Like For Him Growing Up On the Prairies in the First Half of This Century 3. How He Met and Fell In Love With My Grandma 4. Politics, Religion and Philosophy 5. His Dreams, His Hopes, His Fears Throughout His Life But we did talk about each of these things at least a bit during his life and for that, I am grateful. And more than anything, those are the things I will remember today. |
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