Family update

I haven't posted any pictures of family lately, so here's one with me and the three kids (and our dog).

Things are good.  My two oldest are best friends spend hours every day playing with each other.  They are both taking swimming lessons and progressing well.  The 4-year old is enjoying his Montessori school where he is learning to read and write, learning his numbers (up to 29 by himself, and up to 100 with help), and plans on inventing the first train that can go into space.  My 3-year old daughter is also enjoying the Montessori school.  She's starting to learn phonics and greatly improving her hand-eye coordination well enough to trace letters.  Her teacher calls her the perfect student - always finishing her projects, always helpful, and always respectful of the teacher and other students.  My soon to be 1-year old is developing his little personality, walking, loving real food, and just a bundle of joy.

EMU Ethos week

Yesterday I attended the final luncheon for our College of Business Ethos week.  While I have a number of thoughts on the purpose and effectiveness of the week, today I'll talk about the last speaker, Robert Bobb, the emergency financial manager of the Detroit Public Schools.  Mr. Bobb started his talk off on the right foot with a quote from Aristotle.  But, as I expected, the majority of his talk was a mixed bag.  He mixes Aristotle's ethics with Christian philosophy (through St. Thomas Aquinas) and tries to justify Faith, Hope, and Charity.  He then tries to tie these Christian values with our Ethos statement virtues of integrity, honesty, trustworthiness, respect, learning, and work ethic.  Given the impossibility of the challenge, it is not surprising that the speech was disintegrated and difficult to follow.

He made some interesting points about organizational transparency (which reminded me of Diana Hsieh's discussion of privacy) that I need to think more about.  He also made some blatantly biased observations when discussing Aristotle's Rhetoric and his notions ethos, pathos, and logos. During this discussion, he claims that the Tea Party uses pathos - emotional appeal - to convince people of the dangers in Obama's policies.  While I do not deny that some in the Tea Party have used occasional emotional appeals, it is not their primary means of persuasion.  But consider Obama's use of individuals without insurance, with severe financial problems, and with medical problems requiring large amounts of money to cure.  The intent is clear - to make people feel sorry for that poor soul and vote them some money.  That is clear pathos.

But overall, I was impressed with Mr. Bobb's attempt to address ethical philosophy and explain its role in our decision-making.  Even if he misses the mark, the approach is one that too few people attempt. 

ObamaCare is Medical Malpractice

I am completely and unequivocally against the health care bill.  The government already accounts for 50% of the medical payments through Medicare and Medicaid.  If there is a problem with health care today, why look further than the single largest payer? 

Gus van Horn made a great observation:

If more people held the view that knowledge is integrated, and all of it is ultimately based on the facts of (objective) reality, we would, furthermore, have near-rioting by now by a public well aware that if this is how Congress wants to run our medical sector, this is also how it will ultimately make our health decisions for us...

Fight this bill.  End it here before our health care is completely corrupted by Congress.  Doctors, not congress, should be the final arbitrators on what procedures are best for their patients.  Anything less is medical malpractice.  Congressmen and women are not doctors.  They should stay completely out of the health care decision-making.

For more excellent coverage on philosophic, economic, and practical problems with ObamaCare, I fully endorse the writings at We Stand FIRM, run by doctor Paul Hsieh.

Mind mapping software

In the last couple weeks, I've been looking at a couple different mind mapping software programs.  Today, I've downloaded PersonalBrain.  Its said to compliment David Allen's Getting Things Done personal productivity practices.  I can see potential once I get things set up. 

Things I like:

• I can tie to-do lists with short-term and long-term goals.
• Ideas can be linked by relationships, not as a strict hierarchy like some mind maps.  For example, I can have low level tasks linked to several high level goals.
• Lots of flexibility in how I want to structure the map.  So I can use it for my research projects, for classes, for goals, for home life, etc.  
• I can tag concepts, label concepts, attached documents, add notes, set due dates, and run reports.
• This may give me the ability to tie research projects to specific attached articles, along with article authors, and see the relationships between authors, articles, and my research.
• I could also use it to map concepts used in classes to help ensure a proper hierarchy of knowledge is followed.

Things that may be a problem

• If I use this for personal productivity, I need a way to quickly develop to-do lists and tie them to goals. While the website claims this can be done, it is not intuitively obvious to me how to set that up.  If I can't figure that out, this software will be largely useless.
• Lack of portability.  I want the program on my cell phone so that I can add things as soon as I think of them, where ever I am.  This may require some alternative system that I can use to capture thoughts, which I later add to the Brain.
• Calendar does not sync with Google calendar.
• The time it will take to enter all my thoughts into the theBrain may be a bit much.  I hate spending hours and hours entering information if I do not get any value out of it, or if the value gained is not worth the effort.

I'll try it for a couple weeks and see how it goes.  If anyone has any experience with this software, I would love to hear your comments.

Music and engineering

I am wowed by the synchronicity displayed in this video.  Very cool.  I love to see man's mind in action.