politics

Yesterday I noticed a couple of announcements for London social media events in the fall: a Twitter 101 TechAlliance Breakfast Club on October 14 starring @billdeys, @ericablonde, and @titusferguson a social media [un]conference for the arts community promoted by @adamcaplan, @titusferguson, and @billdeys (from what I understand at this early stage — let me know if I [...]

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The Young in Politics

by Brian on 08-12-2009

in canada,civics,london

Who’s responsible for the “inspiration deficit” in Canadian politics? Why of course,  blame the young: The young reject the political status quo, as they should, but they are too lazy to do anything about it. Most of the under-25s don’t even bother to vote. Instead of fighting for change, they wallow in their vanities and [...]

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The Best Disinfectant

by OpenConceptual on 07-14-2009

in commentary

This morning I realized I was a little unfair to Glen Pearson in my last post at BrianFrank.ca. I excerpted a bit of his blog as a jumping-off point, but the rest of my post didn’t really have much to do with what he wrote. I kind of left it hanging there as if he didn’t [...]

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Just sort of a brainstorm here, following up on some of my relatively more youthful attempts to outline what this is all about: Draft Enterprise Model The Practice of Theory The other day I jotted down a few points — trying to distill the underlying mission of this amorphous enterprise. It has a few different [...]

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Pragmatism: From Philosophy to Politics

by OpenConceptual on 07-04-2009

in reading

Read Carlin Romano’s piece for The Chronicle of Higher Education, “Obama, Philosopher in Chief” (via aldaily). The article includes a number of useful references for further study (if you haven’t read them already). Adding to Obama’s speech in Cairo (as well as at Buchenwald and Omaha Beach), here are some key books mentioned: Kwame Anthony Appiah, [...]

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I’m absolutely enthralled by this, both emotionally and intellectually. My passion is driving me to reason that we’re in the midst of one of history’s great moments. Historians a century from now will yearn to imagine what it was like to actually experience these changes (I mean the large-scale shifts). Let’s not squander this. We’ll [...]

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Regarding Leadership

by Brian on 06-05-2009

in business,civics,global

I can’t see the merit in complaints that Obama’s Cairo speech “didn’t set out any concrete new policies.” The last thing the Israel-Palestine conflict, for example, needs, is more policy-for-the-sake-of-policy… “Look: concrete action: a new treaty!… a new accord!… a new roadmap for peace!” What Obama has done is established a background, or foundation on [...]

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Why I Have Principles

by Brian on 04-11-2009

in belief,civics,science

Principles are intellectual landmarks for orienting our actions and decisions as well as our opinions of others. Principles aren’t to be upheld at all costs; principles are provisional, to be upheld until they don’t work anymore — then broken and reformed… In fact, what we believe are our principles may not be (or probably aren’t) the [...]

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I feel obligated to write about this because it squats squarely in my basket of interests, touching on politics, belief, science, ethics, media… If I didn’t post something about this I’d be signaling gross indifference to the enterprise of blogging. Concern in the science community shouldn’t be surprising. By comparison, while we don’t expect the agriculture [...]

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Pakistan and Complex Conflicts

by Brian on 03-16-2009

in global

We tend to reduce faraway conflicts by figuring out who’s the good guy and who’s the villain, then working out the rest of the narrative around those simple distinctions. And more often than not we decide who the good and bad guys are based on how we associate them with particular good and bad guys [...]

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Vertigo Years

by Brian on 02-27-2009

in civics,economics

What a first decade for a century! Even before Wall Street collapsed as the speculation bubble burst there was uncertainty everywhere: the United States was embroiled in the invasion of another state, suicide terrorists threatening (and succeeding) to assassinate heads of state, globalization extending into every market, untold millions of people seeking comfort in consumerism, [...]

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Moral Exemplars

by Brian on 02-23-2009

in art,business,civics,science

I won’t get into preaching here. I think we each oughta be responsible for finding our own heroes and moral exemplars (if that’s not already being too preachy of me). Unfortunately even that might not even be within easy reach. There’s an article in the March Weekly Standard called “The Age of Irresponsibility” by Matthew [...]

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