Since we're giving our opinion on things completely unrelated to the post, here's what I think: Your comment shows exactly the kind of Internet snark I wish I could find absent in a community. This is exactly the kind of unsolicited criticism I think few people would make in real life conversation. Even your edit has this kind of condescending superiority-complex tone. You give the impression that you care about the quality of conversations on Hubski, but I think this is exactly the kind of dogmatic authoritarian nonsense that drives people away from the discussion. Personally, I think vague questions sometimes provoke the most interesting responses, and I enjoy them on occasion.

I think you make a valid point about the post, but I don't think your opinion on the matter is necessarily canon, and I think you might do well to reconsider your tone.

That's really interesting. There's just something very discomforting about being watched by strangers with recording devices. People can watch us just with their eyes, and we might not give it much thought, but if they're recording it we get antsy, even if we aren't doing anything we would be embarrassed about or really need kept private. We all feel it. What's up with that?

What makes you so sure? I think that in the current climate people are just comfortable with who is pointing cameras at them. Once these cameras are really ubiquitous and in the hands of people who they do not trust, the laws on filming in public will at the very least be brought to the public's attention. We're not talking about constitutional rights here, so anything is subject to change. Except of course for our right against unlawful search (4th amendment)

And what batteries will be powering these always filming google glass headsets? I would love to get them in my laptop!

No I don't think Glass will change the scene much. Of course battery life will limit the filming capacity of the headsets and so will the need to speak or tap the headset to begin recording.

Interesting. I agree, of course, that you should ask as a matter of courtesy, but it will be interesting to see how the legal aspects of these activities evolve as more and more obvious recording is happening around us on a daily basis.

It seems to me that people are perfectly fine with being recorded as long as the recording is being done by a trusted authority. We see cameras all the time in banks, parking lots, street corners, airports, retail stores, etc., and nobody gives a damn. But as soon as the camera is in the hands of an individual who might post on youtube, the gloves come off.

The guy in this video was recording video mostly in a really aggressive way. I'd be more interested in seeing how people react when faced with cameras in the hands (or on the faces) of people with whom they're already interacting with naturally, i.e. during a retail transaction, personal conversation, etc. I'm not sure how anyone would go about experimenting with that, but it would be interesting to see something like this without the obvious deliberate intent to aggravate.

Thanks mk.

Hmm. So why isn't this youtube link embedding properly?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?annotation_id=annotation_185703...

Good, but I liked this article a little better. http://www.newstatesman.com/laurie-penny/2012/12/note-nice-g...

I always thought it was "Ma Bell" as in "Mother Bell". "Maw" makes it sounds like a cavernous toothy mouth intent on devouring everything in its path, which on reflection actually seems curiously appropriate.

Sounds like everyday introversion to me dude.

This sounds good.

Why do all the students look like white bread mid-western males? ...oh this is Brigham Young University. God, those haircuts. Looks like he's lecturing to an ROTC class. Here's a good book to read: "Under the Banner of Heaven" by Jon Krakauer

Good advice. Thanks, good post!

I don't know the answer, but I think that if a business jades its employees to begin with then reversing it will be an uphill battle. You won't be starting at ground zero with them; it will take extra and sincere effort to turn their minds.

I'm just musing, but I think that maybe there will always be people who are stuck in an industry or profession that they aren't particularly passionate about. The video called autonomy, mastery, and purpose essential factors of motivations, and that rings true for me, as it probably does for most of us. Did the video have anything much to say about passion? No. I think that people who work a job they don't care about are normal, healthy people. Not all of us will love our job. But I think that if you can find a way to give them those three factors of motivation, then they will work harder and your business will be more successful; and, not only that, but they will be happier and more satisfied with their lives. How awesome would that be?

Thank you for posting. I'm a terrible listener, so that was really helpful.

I dislike criticism of the space program, especially those arguments calling it a waste of time and resources, because they fail to follow the chain of benefits strung behind every shuttle launch and probe. Just type the words "benefits of space program" into a search bar, and you'll be confronted with lists upon lists of technologies which either wouldn't exist yet, or wouldn't exist at all if it weren't for the needs and priorities of NASA and other space agencies. Private individuals do not have the same resources and, more importantly, the same motivations as programs funded by public money, and consequently their reach will fall short.

I am also disturbed by the modern perspective on time. Science is a process that consumes decades, centuries even, before its fruits are ripened. Often, what seems useless today will be the bedrock foundation of technologies that we simply could not live without tomorrow. I just pulled up a quote from Michael Chabon that resonates:

"I don’t know what happened to the Future. It’s as if we lost our ability, or our will, to envision anything beyond the next hundred years or so, as if we lacked the fundamental faith that there will in fact be any future at all beyond that not-too-distant date. Or maybe we stopped talking about the Future around the time that, with its microchips and its twenty-four-hour news cycles, it arrived. Some days when you pick up the newspaper it seems to have been co-written by J. G. Ballard, Isaac Asimov, and Philip K. Dick. Human sexual reproduction without male genetic material, digital viruses, identity theft, robot firefighters and minesweepers, weather control, pharmaceutical mood engineering, rapid species extinction, US Presidents controlled by little boxes mounted between their shoulder blades, air-conditioned empires in the Arabian desert, transnational corporatocracy, reality television—some days it feels as if the imagined future of the mid-twentieth century was a kind of checklist, one from which we have been too busy ticking off items to bother with extending it. Meanwhile, the dwindling number of items remaining on that list—interplanetary colonization, sentient computers, quasi-immortality of consciousness through brain-download or transplant, a global government (fascist or enlightened)—have been represented and re-represented so many hundreds of times in films, novels and on television that they have come to seem, paradoxically, already attained, already known, lived with, and left behind. Past, in other words.

This is the paradox that lies at the heart of our loss of belief or interest in the Future, which has in turn produced a collective cultural failure to imagine that future, any Future, beyond the rim of a couple of centuries. The Future was represented so often and for so long, in the terms and characteristic styles of so many historical periods from, say, Jules Verne forward, that at some point the idea of the Future—along with the cultural appetite for it—came itself to feel like something historical, outmoded, no longer viable or attainable."

That quote was pulled from an article posted here: http://longnow.org/about/

The Long Now is an interesting project in and of itself, relevant to the discussion. Anyway, I appreciate your link to the poem, but I think that the man is short-sighted. Yes, we are spending resources on things that do not help us short term, but need I really explain why long term planning is important to human success?

Ha! My god, I thought I was the only one. I also make ridiculous attempts to lower my sound profile for no reason at all, although I suspect it comes from an as yet unextinguished childish desire to one day become a ninja.

Am I the only one who found it odd that he goes on and on about the values of silence and rest on the Quiet Car from all the background noise and distractions, then proceeds to listen to music on his headphones on the Quiet Car?

P.S. I liked the article, actually came in here intending to post it. Thanks.

I see. So when you explained that you weren't going to "go through and list, line-by-line, the religious status of all 200 charities for purposes of brevity", you were being sincere, not snide. I find it hard to believe that you seriously thought that I expected that of you, and thus needed to explain that you wouldn't. I think you were being snide. But that's okay, I won't let it bother me.

And the whole purpose of 501c3 organizations is to cut taxes on organizations that serve a public benefit. All 501c3 organizations serve a demonstrable public benefit but one. Guess which. And you can't fall back on the charity thing again, because even if churches to support a great deal of charity that is not at all their primary purpose, and much of their tax-free dollars are spent on building luxury churches and mega-salaries for their pastors.

Thank you also for condescending to tell me what I do and don't understand. I have stated up front that I am, as you say "ignorant" of 200 years of this republic's legislative history. I have about as much knowledge of legislative action as the average layperson. I understand very clearly how you believe that taxation should be interpreted as prohibiting the free exercise of religion. What I am saying is that I, as a layperson, am not certain that taxation necessarily must be interpreted as prohibiting the free exercise of religion. And what I am saying is that if the courts of this country have seen fit to weigh the issue at all, then it must not be quite so clearly, so explicitly, so definitely written as you say it is. The language sounds a bit loose to me, and I can see a couple ways of looking at it. But again, I am not a lawyer or a politician, and I am unversed in the subtleties of law and the language used to express it.

At the very least, it seems to me that the amendment says nothing about forcing other citizens to pay for the benefits that religious organizations enjoy from the government, such as, again, fire departments, etc. (a point I made earlier). We could go on, but honestly, I'm starting to lose interest. As you say, nothing I can do about it anyway. Too deeply ingrained in our culture and, as you pointed out, legislative history. I will continue to pay money I worked hard to earn to support some stranger's Sunday pastime, and he will continue to regard that as my personal obligation.

I only counted 8, but of course, that's why I was asking. And of course I don't expect you to go through all 200 line by line, but thanks for the snide comment. And even if churches to contribute to charity, so what? There are many secular organizations contributing on your list as well, with difference being they pay their taxes like all the rest of us.

At any rate, you did a good job here acknowledging everything I acknowledged by way of concession in my previous post, but failed to respond to each of my challenges. First, although it's true, as your reference supports, the supreme court has upheld an interpretation of the constitution that frees churches from taxation, it is obviously not explicitly written in the constitution, and thus we may as a society choose to interpret it differently in the future, no?

And again, your statement about atheists worshipping the state is nothing but smear.

Aside from his confusion regarding tax exemption v subsidies, which I confess I am not very knowledgable about either, the rest stands up to any test of logic. And the author makes the point that churches benefit from government services such as firefighting, etc., that the rest of us have to pay for. So in a sense, they are indirectly receiving what you might call a "subsidy", since they are being handed free service.

And I personally don't give a shit what the "Founders" intended for churches, as I sure as hell don't feel I should be personally obligated to set aside a special place for someone else's god. I'm sure the founders had many backwater ideas that haven't stood the test of time and progress. After all, we all know how many of them felt about women and slavery.

I perused the list of charities you posted. Most of them did not sound like religious organizations to me. Am I wrong? But even if they are, what about the thousands of other religious organizations who are doing very little to support charity. And what about the author's suggestion? Why not have churches separate their charities from their spiritual rituals? We could just tax those who like to spend their time performing rituals, and leave their charities out of it. Just like all the rest of us, hey?

And then we have this. “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” I am not a lawyer or even well versed in law. But I am not so sure that this means that churches are guaranteed freedom from taxation. And even if it does, I think that it presents a glaring flaw in our constitution, as exception to civic duty is clearly unfair to any but those who benefit from it. Even if that statement should mean that we can't tax religious organizations, why shouldn't superrich individual pastors have to perform their duty to their country? And what does that say about those who use their faith to take advantage over their neighbor?

It is not about punishment, artifex, it is about fairness. The author never suggested to leverage penalties against churches, instead he is suggesting they carry their share of the burden.

What's with the dig about atheists worshipping the state? Clearly a sweeping generalization and unfounded. Bad form.

So I think that when we learn that IQ is rising on average, as a couple of these writers mentioned, it is a valid indicator that our societies are definitely making some kind of cognitive progress. Precisely how and why they have been improved is less easily understood.