Earlier this summer, I wrote a couple of articles about parks for two terrific websites. I’ll let you judge whether the articles themselves were terrific.
Parks and Recreation, Comment Online
A Biblical Basis for Parks, ThinkChristian.net
Enjoy!
This post – “On Google, and Evil” by John August (HT: Daring Fireball) – got me thinking. August writes about being offered to write a screenplay focused on Google’s “Don’t Be Evil” motto, but his suggestion that the founders “become evil despite themselves,” a la Animal Farm, goes nowhere. One example of Google’s evil is their search results, increasingly heavy on search-engine-optimized junk sites:
How do these content-grinders make money? Largely through Google ads. It’s created a situation in which inferior search results make more money for Google. Yes, they still want to organize the world’s information, but it’s become easier to see the gray text after it: “…so we can sell ads next to it.â€
Here’s the thing that occurred to me: Google doesn’t need to sell ads anymore. It simply doesn’t. It now has enough money to, well, retire.
Google currently has over $33 billion cash on hand. If they took even half of that and endowed a foundation, it would instantly be the 2nd largest foundation in the US. With a little bit of creative accounting and off-loading some assets, it could even become the largest foundation in the world. Google could then get out of the sordid advertising business and focus on organizing information and, er, not being evil. Maybe they could even get their Books project cleaned up.
Of course, there are issues with this. They would have to cut staff – though that might be a good thing, freeing up all those bright and ambitious engineers to go do their own things. It would remove the profit motive from their work, so there’s the danger of becoming complacent if they aren’t sufficiently motivated by their mission. And there’s the whole nonprofit transparency thing, though that pales in comparison to Sarbanes-Oxley.
So – will the next stage of Google’s evolution be as a nonprofit? I doubt it, but it’s a fun speculation.
Or, at least, my favorite current fantasy series. A few weeks ago, I picked up The Red Wolf Conspiracy by Robert V. S. Redick from my local library. I was looking for something decently distracting to read after being terribly disappointed by the third Thomas Covenant series, and Terry Pratchett had given Redick a very nice blurb, so I figured, “What the heck.” I read through the first one, checked out the second in the series as soon as it was available, and now anxiously await the 2011 release of the third.
What’s so good about the books? Well, the original and interesting concept certainly helps — more on that in a second — but the writing is what I really appreciate. A major part of my frustration with the new Thomas Covenant series was the overwrought writing style and the lack of distinction between a large cast of characters. Redick’s epic contains at least as many characters, maybe more, but they’re so well-imagined and visualized, there’s never a problem keeping them straight. I also never feel like I’m reading about American suburbanites in an exotic land — they truly seem like people from completely alien cultures.
As for the concept, Redick certainly echoes great fantasy and sci-fi novels, yet there’s no one fantasy world that seems to be the model. Further, most of the series (thus far) is set on board a massive ocean-going merchant ship, the Chathrand, a centuries-old vessel, the last of its kind remaining from a long-passed Golden Age. The first two novels take place in “the North,” made up a large continent, divided between two rival empires, and numerous islands and archipelagos. Humans share the world with several other intelligent species, such as the faerie-like ixchel, the glow-in-the-dark flikkermen, and a growing number of “woken” animals that have gained sentience. Once, centuries before, commerce and traffic flowed between the North and the South, but a mysterious “Worldstorm” destroyed that existence and cut the world in half.
Redick’s world is also a delight. Well-conceived, diverse, richly textured, the world feels like a unified whole with a full history. Redick doesn’t pursue languages like Tolkien — who could? — but language and culture play a central role in the story. The main character, a young sailor named Pazel Pathkendle, has been magically gifted with the ability to learn any language upon encountering it once. Divisions between nations, tribes, cultures, tongues, etc., form a central theme throughout.
I haven’t even touched on the plot yet. I won’t say more about the book, except that I’m waiting for the third book eagerly.
Comment is a great magazine “equipping and connecting the next generation of Christian leaders” – and I’m not just saying that because they published an essay of mine. I think you might like it. Here’s the opening paragraph:
In the political conflicts between right and left, evangelical Christian faculty are often in danger of being squeezed in the middle. Not only are they frequently out of step with the academic political mainstream, but the strong connection between evangelicalism and conservative politics outside the academy can make them seem like a “fifth column” to their more liberal colleagues.
Read the whole thing, if you’re interested in more. Here’s the link:
Emergent Man
Ah, yes, another article proclaiming that smart people are liberal. Elizabeth Landau of CNN reports on a soon-to-be-published article by evolutionary psychologist Satoshi Kanazawa that claims higher IQ is associated liberal politics and religion, as well as “sexual exclusivity” (a.k.a. monogamy).
I haven’t seen the article (it’s not available yet), but there are a couple of problems with the simple equation “smart = liberal.” First, notice how “liberal” is defined:
The study takes the American view of liberal vs. conservative. It defines “liberal” in terms of concern for genetically nonrelated people and support for private resources that help those people. It does not look at other factors that play into American political beliefs, such as abortion, gun control and gay rights.
Strange definition. In America, conservatives favor the use of private resources to help people. As far as the “genetically nonrelated” issue, I have no idea what that’s supposed to mean. Part of the problem here – as with most discussions of liberalism and conservatism – is that the terms can mean many different things. Continue reading
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