I didn’t just vote for Mitt Romney in 2008, I donated to his campaign, asked others to donate, and volunteered at phone banks, fundraising events, the national call day in Boston, and at the Nevada caucuses. I’ve met him several times. I drank the Romney root beer (someone actually made some) and I have a Mitt Romney bobblehead. I even dressed up as Mitt Romney for Halloween 2007.

Mitt strikes me as exceptionally bright and a truly good man. We could certainly do worse than to have Mitt Romney as our president. And despite what we sometimes hear, I think I’d rather enjoy getting (root) beers with Mitt Romney. I found him to be plenty personable and warm.

However, I’d like to explain how I came to support Dr. Ron Paul. It’s been a really satisfying journey, and I’m far more enthusiastic about my candidate now.

In 2008

In retrospect, I didn’t have strong reasons for supporting Mitt Romney. I usually said something like, “Well, he’s a very successful businessman and has an incredible resume of turning around failed companies.” To be fair, his resume is far better than most candidates’. But I couldn’t say much more than that.

My response to many political issues was “it depends on the situation.” That’s what Mitt Romney often says, and that’s what most politicians say (I’ll consult the generals on the ground, I’ll gather together the experts, I’ll pull in my czars, etc.)

It doesn’t have to be this way. I came to learn that we can be guided by consistent political principles. The common thread in these principles is liberty.

From 2008 to 2012

Over the last 4 years, I studied a lot.

• I read Ron Paul’s Revolution and End the Fed.
• I re-read the Constitution for the first time in years.
• I read George Washington’s farewell address.
• I read Murray Rothbard, Peter Schiff, Ayn Rand, and Reason Magazine.
• I listened to the CATO Daily Podcast.
• I watched YouTube videos from Judge Napolitano, John Stossel, Tom Woods, and LearnLiberty.

Scales seemed to fall from my eyes. The principles I learned were coherent and satisfying. A bunch of topics “clicked” for me: macroeconomics, monetary policy, business cycles, political influence and lobbying, civil liberties, war, and foreign policy. Not that I know a lot, but these all make much more sense to me now.

I came to discover that liberty is a unifying principle. We can agree to live in a free society without having to agree on anything else. A free society is one that protects life, liberty, and property. The purpose of liberty is to allow us to develop “virtue and excellence”. Heaven to me is to live with family and friends in a state of complete autonomy as virtuous individuals, living correct principles because we want to.

A Few Observations

The two parties are isomorphic

Our two parties are philosophically isomorphic, meaning having the same “shape”. (It’s a large shape!) Both parties say, “I believe in letting you keep some of your liberty, but I can’t let you have liberty in areas that go against my morals.” A Democrat might say this about policies meant to stop poverty. A Republican might say this about policies meant to stop drug use. The problem isn’t in the intentions — both sides mean well — but in the use of coercion to attempt to bring about the desired results. You may have noticed that our “war on poverty” hasn’t eradicated poverty and our “war on drugs” hasn’t eradicated drug use (far from it.) We spend so much energy debating these differences, and the policies don’t even work! The better path is for individuals to learn and live correct principles, learning for themselves to take care of the poor and to avoid drugs for intrinsic reasons.

And that’s just the philosophy. In practice, the two parties aren’t just isomorphic, they’re nearly identical. Both parties break their own principles and are becoming increasingly like each other. For example, the Republican party is said to be the party of free markets and no social programs (anti-Solyndra and anti-Obamacare), but Bush signed the TARP bailout and the Medicare prescription drug benefit. The Democratic party is said to be the anti-war, pro-civil liberties party (anti-Iraq war and anti-Guantanamo), but Obama hasn’t closed Guantanamo, initiated a new war in Libya, and signed the NDAA bill that allows indefinite detention of Americans with no trial. Notice that neither party follows its own principles and both parties are very similar. (Can you name something you dislike about Bush or Obama that the other didn’t do?) Both are increasingly statist (in favor of a growing state).

Liberty is a set of the best principles from both parties (what they say not what they do), and would mean the reversal of the large, near-identical parties we now have. Ron Paul has consistently taught this liberty message for 30 years.

Video: The two parties are “two wings of the same bird of prey”.
Video: “It appears people now recognize that Obama is a 3rd term for Bush”
Video: Romney, Gingrich, and Santorum are all the same

The problem with a powerful, messianic presidency

Both parties have a similar attitude toward the presidency, seeming to say, “If I can just get my candidate into the presidency, all our problems will be solved.” The Democrats said “Obama will bring Change and Hope.” Republicans say “Mitt will bring a Bain-style Turnaround.” The president is ascribed an almost messiah-like quality.

If we think our president will solve our problems, we’ll give him any amount of power. Later, when the presidency changes hands, the power accumulates, and the presidency becomes more and more powerful over time. The Founders didn’t intend for the presidency to be powerful. It’s not correct to think of the president as the CEO of the country; he’s not supposed to “run” the country. We simply need a government that will protect principles of liberty, and then we can live our lives and solve our problems.

Ron Paul says “I’m not running for President because of the things I want to do, I’m running because of the things I don’t want to do. I don’t want to run your life, I don’t want to run the economy, and I don’t want to run the world.” Source

Instead of an attitude of “our president will save us,” we should change our own attitudes toward the proper role of government. We should be leery of the mindset that fixing our country is about finding the right candidate, not about making changes in ourselves. The concept of liberty requires you to make some changes in your own mindset: I won’t fear terror. I won’t expect something for nothing. I don’t need government to enforce everything I believe. I’ll work. I’ll be self-sufficient. I’ll take care of my family and the poor around me. The change needs to happen in us.

Ron Paul and Mitt Romney Are Not the Same

The Republican party of today has drifted from traditional conservatism — free markets, small government, and the Constitution. I wouldn’t have believed this in 2008, but unfortunately Mitt Romney is more typical of today’s drifted Republican party, while Ron Paul is more typical of traditional conservatism. In fact, this is where Ron Paul shines; he has consistently advocated the principles of traditional conservatism. Here are a few issues on which Mitt Romney sides with today’s Republican party and on which Ron Paul sides with traditional conservatism and liberty:

Monetary Policy and the Federal Reserve

It’s hard to find an economist who thinks price-fixing is a good idea, and conservatives are against central economic planning. However, our interest rate (the price of money over time) is centrally planned and fixed by our central bank, the Federal Reserve (also called “the Fed”). This means that the price of money, which is half of every financial transaction, is centrally planned. If you believe in free markets, you should take issue with this!

The temptation is strong for government to lower interest rates too far, print too much money, and use it to pay for large programs. No matter what political side you’re on, the devaluing of our currency via the Fed is probably being used to pay for programs you disagree with (domestic social programs or war or foreign aid, etc.) Without the Fed, the U.S. government could only spend what it could borrow or tax, like a state or city government, so we’d have to have some serious conversations about what we really want from government. With the Fed, we’ve been able to postpone that conversation, and it comes at the expense of savers (disproportionately elderly) and the low- and middle-income.

Ron Paul is the only candidate even talking about The Fed. Ron Paul’s book End the Fed was one of the most eye-opening books I’ve read in the last few years.

I know you’ll be tempted to think, “Mitt’s a smart guy; if he’s not worrying about this, it must not be a problem.” Fight that temptation.

Video: Tom Woods on inflation, deflation, and money
Documentary: Money, Banking and the Federal Reserve
Lecture: U.S. Monetary Policy in 2012

Capitalism / Bailouts

Republicans rightly defend capitalism. However, without a correct understanding of capitalism, there’s a growing tension between populist movements like Occupy Wall Street, some of whom mistakenly think capitalism is to blame, and Republicans, some of whom think their opposition to OWS is the defense of pure capitalism.

The liberty message makes a distinction between capitalism (free markets) and corporatism (certain businesses being favored by government.) Corporatism is also called crony capitalism.

Much of what Occupy Wall Street considers wrong about capitalism is actually instances of corporatism — large banks or defense contractors or auto manufacturers receiving special contracts or bailouts or favors from government. In pure capitalism, you can’t get rich without selling something that someone wants. In corporatism, you can get rich by receiving a bailout or contract from government.

Ron Paul is the only candidate I see making the distinction between capitalism and corporatism. Mitt Romney, like most politicians, says he is in favor of capitalism, but has occasionally disregarded his own principles and favored corporatism including bailouts for large companies.

Video: Top 3 Common Myths about Capitalism
Video: Makers vs. Takers at Occupy Wall Street

The Sixth Amendment

On Dec 31, 2011, President Obama signed a bill allowing the indefinite detention of American citizens. This contradicted the 6th Amendment, “the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury.” The ACLU said, “We are extremely disappointed that President Obama signed this bill….” The president said he had “reservations” but signed it anyway. This seems to contradict who Democrats thought their president would be.

Mitt Romney said he would have signed the same bill. Romney said “Obama won’t abuse it, I won’t abuse it, and we simply need to elect presidents that won’t abuse it.” If you follow that logic, then we could safely grant ALL power to the presidency and then simply elect presidents who won’t abuse it. In my mind, that’s not how the 6th Amendment works.

Ron Paul, who introduced a bill to repeal the above bill, falls on the side of Thomas Jefferson, who said, “I consider trial by jury as the only anchor ever yet imagined by man, by which a government can be held to the principles of its constitution.”

Foreign Policy / Foreign Aid / War

Ron Paul’s foreign policy is to trade with all, maintain diplomatic relations with all, and give no foreign aid to any. Sometimes he’s called an “isolationist”. Mitt Romney’s foreign policy, on the other hand, is like all the other candidates’, designating some countries as special friends and others as enemies.

The foreign policy George Washington outlines in his farewell address more fully agrees with Ron Paul.

“The nation which indulges towards another a habitual hatred or a habitual fondness is in some degree a slave. It is a slave to its animosity or to its affection, either of which is sufficient to lead it astray from its duty and its interest.

“So likewise, a passionate attachment of one nation for another produces a variety of evils. Sympathy for the favorite nation, facilitating the illusion of an imaginary common interest in cases where no real common interest exists, and infusing into one the enmities of the other, betrays the former into a participation in the quarrels and wars of the latter without adequate inducement or justification.”

Again, fight the temptation to say within yourself, “Things have changed; the world is a different place.” Ask yourself, if these are true principles, should we not live by principles?

Ron Paul’s policy is that wars should be declared by Congress, started, fought, and ended, and that we should go to war when there is imminent danger, not as a preventative measure. Mitt has shown a propensity to side with most politicians (from both parties) in favor of pre-emptive wars and nation building. Ron Paul makes the distinction between defense spending and military spending, the implication being that much of our current military spending doesn’t contribute to our defense and may actually endanger us.

Here, the troops are on the side of Ron Paul: active-duty military donate more to Ron Paul’s campaign than to all other Republican campaigns combined.

Text: George Washington’s farewell address
Video: Tom Woods on changing his mind on Ron Paul’s foreign policy
Video: You Like Ron Paul, Except on Foreign Policy
Video: Tribute to our Troops
Video: CIA Chief Endorses Ron Paul
Video: 10 years of foreign policy predictions by Ron Paul
Video: Ron Paul’s “What If” speech
Video: The Golden Rule applied to foreign policy
Opinion: Which GOP candidate would the Founders support?

FAQ / Objections

But Ron Paul is too far left / too far right

The modern left and modern right offer a false dichotomy; they’re actually very similar. Ron Paul offers something actually different.

But I’m a moderate

The liberty message includes the best principles of both the left and the right. (Too often, moderatism or bipartisanship is simply agreeing to give up your principles mutually and leads to the large, homogeneous parties I mentioned above.)

But I’m a liberal

The liberty message has several positions that should appeal to liberals: pro-peace, anti-war, pro-civil liberties, anti-drug war, anti-bailout, anti-cronyism. In fact, in all of these listed issues, Ron Paul is a stronger candidate than even President Obama, who has gone against these principles he said he supported.

But I’m part of the 99% / Occupy Wall Street

See my section above about capitalism and corporatism.

But I’m apathetic

Perhaps you’re sick of politics because it seems like nothing ever changes. See my section above about the two parties being the same. The liberty message is real change.

But Ron Paul is unelectable

Did you know that only Ron Paul and Mitt Romney are on all states’ ballots? Gingrich and Santorum are not. In head-to-head polling against Obama, Mitt Romney and Ron Paul are in a statistical tie. Gingrich and Santorum trail by 10-12 points.

But Mitt Romney is articulate and looks presidential

I don’t dispute this. Ron Paul has even said he wishes he were better able to deliver his message. However, if Mitt Romney and Ron Paul are in a statistical tie against Obama, and Mitt’s outward appearance is so much better than Ron Paul’s, what does that say about the message?

But Ron Paul is too radical

Compared to whom? Ron Paul is indeed very different from other GOP candidates, but he’s very similar to the Founding Fathers. The Founding Father might have considered Romney, Gingritch, and Santorum radically different from how they envisioned government.

But Ron Paul is an isolationist

Are you sure? Which candidate is in favor of trade with all nations? Which candidate, on the other hand, is in favor of “preventative” wars and economic sanctions?

But Ron Paul will never get Congressional support for his policies

Ron Paul’s message is about changing opinions about the role of government. For example, he wants to eliminate the income tax. I’ve never heard him say that he wants to eliminate it immediately and plunge us into more debt. He wants the people to have different expectations about government so they no longer want the programs that require an income tax.

But Ron Paul wants to eliminate the Department of Education, Department of Commerce, etc.

The liberty message requires a new mindset that separates wanting some objective from requiring that a federal agency provide it. Eliminating the above departments doesn’t mean actual education or actual commerce would disappear. (There’s no Department of Happiness, no Department of Optimism, no Department of Entrepreneurship, etc.. We don’t need a department for every worthwhile cause.)

But life with a President Ron Paul would be a wild, godless, anarchy

The proper role of government is to protect life, liberty, and property. Ron Paul says the purpose of liberty is to allow us to pursue “virtue and excellence”. Law doesn’t produce virtue; that must come from inside of us, by our learning and living correct principles. We won’t legislate our way to an ideal world; we’ll get there by learning and teaching correct principles.

But I’m in favor of Buddy Roemer / Larry Lessig / Campaign Finance Reform

It’s noble to seek to remove the influence of money in politics, but campaign finance reform is like plugging holes in a bucket; if money wants to talk, it will find a way to talk. This isn’t the root of the problem. The larger government gets, the more reason there is to lobby for favors. The smaller government gets, the less reason there is to lobby for favors. In my mind, all Buddy Roemer supporters could live in their ideal world by joining the liberty movement and voting for Ron Paul. Ron Paul is already running a campaign free of large corporate donations because the liberty message doesn’t accept corporatism. (Buddy’s other large issue, banking reform, is also solved by restoring capitalism, not corporatism, to the banking sector.)

A Word to my Mormon Friends

I happen to be a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (a “Mormon”), the same faith to which Mitt Romney belongs.

While I think there’s a strong case for Ron Paul solely on policy issues, I think the case gets even stronger if we include LDS sources.

In 3 Nephi 3:20-21, we find the case against pre-emptive war. To me, this makes the case for bringing troops home from all over the world and strengthening our forces at home. When you hear politicians talking about attacking Iran preemptively, re-read this scripture and replace “the robbers” with “Iran” and see how it sounds.

20 Now the people said unto Gidgiddoni: Pray unto the Lord, and let us go up upon the mountains and into the wilderness, that we may fall upon the robbers and destroy them in their own lands.

21 But Gidgiddoni saith unto them: The Lord forbid; for if we should go up against them the Lord would deliver us into their hands; therefore we will prepare ourselves in the center of our lands, and we will gather all our armies together, and we will not go against them, but we will wait till they shall come against us; therefore as the Lord liveth, if we do this he will deliver them into our hands.

Many of our scriptures speak of the importance of agency, the freedom to choose. These seem to imply that free exercise of conscious is a virtue worth granting to everyone, even if they do things with which we disagree.

“Every man may act according to the moral agency which I have given unto him” (D&C 101:78)

“Satan sought to destroy the agency of man” (Moses 4:3)

“We believe that no government can exist in peace, except such laws are framed and held inviolate as will secure to each individual the free exercise of conscience, the right and control of property, and the protection of life.” (D&C 134:2)

“A man may act as his conscience dictates so long as he does not infringe upon the rights of others.” (David O. McKay)

We are also taught, “Principles compatible with the gospel are found in the platforms of all major political parties.” Despite hearing this repeatedly, in the past I was often too quick to think of my party as having all the truths and the other party as having none of the truths. The cable news shows frame the parties this way, in absolute terms. However, if it’s true that “principles compatible with the gospel are found in…all major political parties”, which of the other party’s principles do you accept? Once I started looking through a lens of liberty, I was able to easily see true principles in both parties (in what they say, not in what they do.)

Video: 1. Our problems come from the breakdown of the family and our own values, 2. Government is a reflection of the people, 3. The purpose of liberty is to allow the pursuit of “virtue and excellence”.
Video: Christ is a God of peace
Video: Is libertarianism compatible with Mormonism?
Audio: Is libertarianism compatible with Mormonism?

One of the Christmas traditions in my parents’ home is a small family “program” on Christmas Eve. My dad asks us each to share a quote, scripture passage, or other thought related to Christmas. I had recently been listening to Coldplay’s latest album Mylo Xyloto. I was struck at the similarity between the album’s last song, Up With the Birds, and a talk by Jeffrey R. Holland.

Coldplay (my emphasis):

The birds they sang, break of day
Start again I hear them say
It’s so hard to just walk away

The birds they sang, all a choir
Start again, a little higher
It’s a spark in a sea of grey
…
Might have to go where they don’t know my name
Float all over the world just to see her again
But I won’t show or feel any pain
Even though all my armour might rust in the rain
A simple plot, but I know one day
Good things are coming our way

Jeffrey R. Holland:

Don’t you quit. You keep walking. You keep trying. There is help and happiness ahead–a lot of it…. You keep your chin up. It will be all right in the end. Trust God and believe in good things to come.

I was asked to speak in church a few months ago and spoke on the topic of attention and distraction. Here’s the outline of my talk, delivered Aug 28, 2011 in Boulder, CO. By the way, I consider this a very positive topic — the opportunity to direct our attention and feel more peace and flow — not a negative topic about simply avoiding the “perils” of distraction.

Define attention: “your treasure”

You have a limited amount of time. You have even less attention because attention is the subset of your time during which you’re awake, alert, and have energy. Therefore, attention is more valuable than time. How you spend your attention constitutes what is important to you.

“For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also” (3 Ne 13:21)

• Where does your attention go?
• Which people get your attention?
• Which projects and causes and acts of service get your attention?

(The week after I presented this talk, Jason Fried wrote a great post on this concept: “Your Attention Please”.)

Technology can be a source of distraction

NYT Article: “Keep Your Thumbs Still When I’m Talking to You”

• Story of people at dinner at tech conference.
• Putting away your phone was like holding your breath.
• Once one person caved to distraction, all caved.
• “Mutually assured distraction”

WSJ Article: “When Twittering Gets in the Way of Real Life”

• “Sometimes, it’s like you’re here and you’re not here,” Joe said to me. “Your mind and soul are in cyberspace, and all we’re left with is the husk.”
• “Sometimes, I mindlessly find myself logging on to Facebook and staring at photos I have posted of my children when I just as easily could be staring at the real thing. I’m not proud to admit that.”
• “It’s incumbent upon me to find a way to consume less — and, more importantly, let it consume less of me.”

What we consume consumes us.

David A. Bednar: “Things As They Really Are”

“Please be careful of becoming so immersed and engrossed in pixels, texting, ear buds, twittering, online social networking, and potentially addictive uses of media and the Internet that you fail to recognize the importance of your physical body and miss the richness of person-to-person communication. Beware of digital displays and data in many forms of computer-mediated interaction that can displace the full range of physical capacity and experience.”

We’re here on earth to have a mortal experience with a body, with presence, with real people.

Distraction is the enemy of attention

• “I am persuaded that two of the greatest sins of our busy and hectic generation are distraction and preoccupation.” (David A. Bednar)
• “We need to frustrate…distraction by identifying what is critically important in our lives. We must give the cream of our effort to accomplish those things. Where there is limited time or resources, this pattern may require that some good activities be…set aside.” (Richard G. Scott)
• “Does the use of various technologies and media invite or impede the constant companionship of the Holy Ghost in your life?” (David A. Bednar)
• “Each of us should be careful that the current flood of information does not occupy our time so completely that we cannot focus on and hear and heed the still, small voice that is available to guide each of us with our own challenges today.” (Dallin H. Oaks)

When we allow some moments of our life to be quiet, peaceful moments, God can speak to our hearts through the Holy Spirit. My prayers are best when I take more time to listen in between what I say. I sometimes feel prompted to pray for something I hadn’t previously considered. We might pray for A, B, C. God may actually want to give us B, C, D, E, F, G, H. If we don’t listen, we may miss those extra things He wants to give.

Dallin H. Oaks: Focus and Priorities

We have thousands of times more available information than Thomas Jefferson or Abraham Lincoln. Yet which of us would think ourselves a thousand times more educated or more serviceable to our fellowmen than they? The sublime quality of what these two men gave to us–including the Declaration of Independence and the Gettysburg Address–was not attributable to their great resources of information, for their libraries were comparatively small by our standards. Theirs was the wise and inspired use of a limited amount of information.

The truck story, ibid.:

Two men formed a partnership. They built a small shed beside a busy road. They obtained a truck and drove it to a farmer’s field, where they purchased a truckload of melons for a dollar a melon. They drove the loaded truck to their shed by the road, where they sold their melons for a dollar a melon. They drove back to the farmer’s field and bought another truckload of melons for a dollar a melon. Transporting them to the roadside, they again sold them for a dollar a melon. As they drove back toward the farmer’s field to get another load, one partner said to the other, “We’re not making much money on this business, are we?” “No, we’re not,” his partner replied. “Do you think we need a bigger truck?”

We don’t need a bigger truckload of information, either. Like the two partners in my story, our biggest need is a clearer focus on how we should value and use what we already have.

Because of modern technology, the contents of huge libraries and other data resources are at the fingertips of many of us. Some choose to spend countless hours in unfocused surfing the Internet, watching trivial television, or scanning other avalanches of information. But to what purpose? Those who engage in such activities are like the two partners in my story, hurrying to and fro, hauling more and more but failing to grasp the essential truth that we cannot make a profit from our efforts until we understand the true value of what is already within our grasp.

Today I needed to password-protect a Redmine installation. I’ve typically used mod_auth_mysql for similar projects, but Redmine uses a salted password format that’s incompatible with mod_auth_mysql. So, I turned to Apache/Perl authentication, a first for me (I rarely touch Perl) and was able to make it work.

1. Install mod_perl, and the DBI, MySQL, and Digest (SHA1) Perl modules.

   $ apt-get install libapache-dbi-perl libapache2-mod-perl2 libdbd-mysql-perl libdigest-sha1-perl
   

2. Copy Redmine.pm to the appropriate Perl location.

   $ cd /path/to/redmine
   $ mkdir -p /usr/lib/perl5/Apache/Authn
   $ cp extra/svn/Redmine.pm /usr/lib/perl5/Apache/Authn/
   

3. Perhaps I’m not using Redmine’s projects/members/permissions correctly, but I had to patch Redmine.pm to get it to work for me. I greatly simplified the SQL statement used to authenticate a user. There’s no sense of permissions; it’s simply a yes/no for authenticated users.

   --- Redmine.pm	2011-11-12 17:33:10.000000000 -0700
   +++ Redmine.richardkmiller.pm	2011-11-12 17:37:26.000000000 -0700
   @@ -148,16 +148,11 @@
      my ($self, $parms, $arg) = @_;
      $self->{RedmineDSN} = $arg;
      my $query = "SELECT
   -                 hashed_password, salt, auth_source_id, permissions
   -              FROM members, projects, users, roles, member_roles
   +                 hashed_password, salt
   +              FROM users
                  WHERE
   -                projects.id=members.project_id
   -                AND member_roles.member_id=members.id
   -                AND users.id=members.user_id
   -                AND roles.id=member_roles.role_id
   -                AND users.status=1
   -                AND login=?
   -                AND identifier=? ";
   +                    users.status=1
   +                AND login=?";
      $self->{RedmineQuery} = trim($query);
    }
   
   @@ -336,11 +331,12 @@
      }
      my $query = $cfg->{RedmineQuery};
      my $sth = $dbh->prepare($query);
   -  $sth->execute($redmine_user, $project_id);
   +  $sth->execute($redmine_user);
   
      my $ret;
   -  while (my ($hashed_password, $salt, $auth_source_id, $permissions) = $sth->fetchrow_array) {
   -
   +  while (my ($hashed_password, $salt) = $sth->fetchrow_array) {
   +      my $permissions = ":commit_access";
   +      my $auth_source_id = 0;
          unless ($auth_source_id) {
    	  			my $method = $r->method;
              my $salted_password = Digest::SHA1::sha1_hex($salt.$pass_digest);
   

4. Configure and restart Apache.

   <virtualhost *:80>
       ServerName example.com
       DocumentRoot "/var/www/sites/example.com/public"
       RailsEnv production
   
       PerlLoadModule Apache::Authn::Redmine
   
       <directory "/var/www/sites/example.com/public">
           AuthType basic
           AuthName "Private Area"
           Require valid-user
           PerlAccessHandler Apache::Authn::Redmine::access_handler
           PerlAuthenHandler Apache::Authn::Redmine::authen_handler
           RedmineDSN "DBI:mysql:database=my_database;host=localhost"
           RedmineDbUser my_db_user
           RedmineDbPass my_db_password
       </directory>
   </virtualhost>
   

By the way, I’m running Ubuntu 11.10 (oneiric), Apache 2.2, MySQL 5.1, and Redmine 1.2.2.

I can empathize with the Occupy Wall Street protestors, but my perception is that many of them misunderstand the cause of their pain. They naively blame capitalism; they should blame corporatism.

Corporatism is the alliance of government and business. It happens on the left (think Solyndra), and on the right (think military-industrial complex), in the Federal government (think bipartisan bailout of GM) and in local government (think Utah naming April 5, 2010 “Cafe Rio day”.)

Corporatism is pro-business. Specific businesses get government subsidies, above-market-rate contracts, or special recognition.

Capitalism is pro-market. The consumer decides whether to favor GM or Ford; Cafe Rio, Costa Vida, Bajio, or Chipotle.

I loved Phil Windley’s post today on how Occupy Wall Street and the Tea Party, though they seem like polar opposites, actually share a disdain of corporatism and ought to work together to fight it.

Image source: James Sinclair

I’m working in a Starbucks today and, as usual on the road, used SSH and SOCKS to browse the Internet securely, but today I decided to take it a step further and automate the process with a shell script. Here’s the script, for what it’s worth:

#!/bin/bash
disable_proxy()
{
        networksetup -setsocksfirewallproxystate Wi-Fi off
        networksetup -setsocksfirewallproxystate Ethernet off
        echo "SOCKS proxy disabled."
}
trap disable_proxy INT

networksetup -setsocksfirewallproxy Wi-Fi 127.0.0.1 9999
networksetup -setsocksfirewallproxy Ethernet 127.0.0.1 9999
networksetup -setsocksfirewallproxystate Wi-Fi on
networksetup -setsocksfirewallproxystate Ethernet on
echo "SOCKS proxy enabled."
echo "Tunneling..."
ssh -ND 9999 MYHOST.macminicolo.net

Instructions:

1. Save this to a file. I saved it to “/Users/richard/bin/ssh_tunnel”.
2. Make it executable and run it.

   $ chmod a+x /Users/richard/bin/ssh_tunnel
   $ /Users/richard/bin/ssh_tunnel
   

3. It creates an SSH tunnel to my dedicated server at macminicolo.net and routes Internet traffic through that server.
4. Hit Control-C to quit. The proxy is disabled. No need to fiddle with Network Preferences manually.

UPDATE March 18, 2011: I haven’t tried it, but Sidestep appears to be a free Mac OS X app that will enable SSH tunneling automatically when you connect to an insecure network.

Your home Internet router gives you some protection against direct attacks on your computer by keeping your home network safely encapsulated. Each of your home computers can access the Internet (this is called NAT), but no outsider can access your computers directly. Outsiders only see the router. However, sometimes you want your computer to be “fully” online. Enter the “DMZ” feature of your router. Your router’s DMZ allows one of your computers to be fully exposed to the Internet (for better or worse).

Reasons to enable your DMZ:

• Access your files while away from home.
• Serve web pages from your computer.
• Make BitTorrent transfers faster. BitTorrent transfers are usually faster when your computer is directly exposed to the Internet.

For my work at FamilyLink.com, I develop directly on my local machine. While working on our Facebook application, I need to allow Facebook servers to directly access my machine. (When you use a Facebook app, you’re accessing Facebook’s servers and Facebook servers are, in turn, accessing the developer’s server via a callback URL. While working on our Facebook app, Facebook directly accesses my local machine.) This requires me to open my machine to the DMZ.

Reasons not to enable your DMZ:

• Your computer is more likely to be hacked
• Your private data is more likely to be accessed

If you enable your DMZ, know which services are enabled on your machine and which files and data are being shared. There may be files you’re comfortable sharing on your local network that you wouldn’t want to share with the world. Only enable the DMZ as long as necessary.

Enabling the DMZ can be a pain — logging into your router and navigating to the correct setting — so I wrote the following Ruby scripts to make it easy. The first worked with the Linksys router I had. (I believe it was a WRT54G.) To use, fill in your router’s IP address and password, and your computer’s hardware address, then type “linksys_dmz.rb on” or “linksys_dmz.rb off” at the command-line. The script looks up your computer’s hardware address in the table of local IP addresses so the IP address can safely change from time to time.

#!/usr/bin/env ruby
# linksys_dmz.rb

router = '10.1.1.1'
user = 'admin'
pass = 'your_password'
hardware_address = '00:23:6C:00:00:00'

leases = `curl -su #{user}:#{pass} http://#{router}/DHCPTable.asp`
leases.scan(%r{'([^']+)', hardware_address}) do |m|
  ip_address = m[0].strip.to_s
  last_digit = ip_address.split('.').last
  if $*[0] == 'open' || $*[0] == 'on'
    post_values = "submit_button=DMZ&change_action=&action=Apply&dmz_enable=1&dmz_ipaddr=#{last_digit}"
    print "Opening DMZ to #{ip_address}\n\n"
  else
    post_values = "submit_button=DMZ&change_action=&action=Apply&dmz_enable=0"
    print "Closing DMZ\n\n"
  end
  `curl -su #{user}:#{pass} -e http://#{router}/DMZ.asp -d '#{post_values}' http://#{router}/apply.cgi`
end

Last year I switched to Verizon FIOS, which came with its own wireless router, so I had to write a new script. Again, fill in the password, then type “verizon_dmz.rb on” or “verizon_dmz.rb off” in Terminal. (This script assumes a 10.1.1.* network. Change it to 192.168.1.* if that’s what you have.)

As a side note, the Verizon router was a bit of beast to automate. It uses a hashed signature to try to enforce JavaScript-enabled browsers. Writing this script required using TamperData, Charles Proxy, and a lot of trial and error to discover which POST data were necessary.

I use this script to open the DMZ before working on our Facebook app, then I close it when I’m done for the day. Eventually, it’d be nice to find a way to enable the DMZ remotely — maybe via email or something.

#!/usr/bin/env ruby
# verizon_dmz.rb

require 'rubygems'
require 'mechanize'
require 'digest/md5'

user = 'admin'
pass = 'your_password'

localhost = `ifconfig`.scan(/inet (\d+\.\d+\.\d+\.\d+).*broadcast 10.1.1.255/).join
router    = localhost.gsub(/\d+$/,'1')

begin
    agent = Mechanize.new
    page = agent.get("http://#{router}:81")
rescue Exception
    abort "Unable to connect to Verizon Router! Check the IP address."
end

form = page.forms[0]
auth_key = form.fields.find {|f| f.name == 'auth_key'}.value
form.fields.find {|f| f.name == 'user_name'}.value = user
form.fields.find {|f| f.name == 'md5_pass'}.value = Digest::MD5.hexdigest(pass + auth_key)
form.fields.find {|f| f.name == 'mimic_button_field'}.value = 'submit_button_login_submit%3A+..'
form.method = "POST"
form.submit

post = {
    'dmz_host_cb_watermark' => '1',
    'dmz_host_ip0' => localhost.split('.')[0],
    'dmz_host_ip1' => localhost.split('.')[1],
    'dmz_host_ip2' => localhost.split('.')[2],
    'dmz_host_ip3' => localhost.split('.')[3],
    'active_page'  => '9013',
    'mimic_button_field' => 'submit_button_login_submit%3A+..',
}

if $*[0] == 'open' || $*[0] == 'on'
   post['dmz_host_cb'] = '1'
   puts "Opening DMZ to #{localhost}"
else
    puts "Closing DMZ"
end

agent.post('/index.cgi', post)

Following up on my previous Kynetx post, here’s a demo of how FamilyLink.com and Kynetx could reveal your relatives on WordPress blogs:

I’ve been playing around with Kynetx.com technology. I think it has a lot of cool potential for helping FamilyLink.com users see who their relatives are across multiple websites.

For example,

• What if you could see your FamilyLink.com relatives directly in Facebook?
• If you knew which LinkedIn users were your relatives, would you be more likely to do business?
• If you knew which Twitter users were your relatives, would you be more likely to follow them?
• If you discovered that a comment on a political news story with which you strongly disagreed was from a relative, would you be more careful how you responded?

Here’s a demo video:

One of my first web development projects and biz partnerships with Brian Stucki was Provo411.com. We were roommates at BYU and conceived of a website where students could share events — parties, concerts, football games, etc. We were already in our beds for the night when the idea came, but we couldn’t go to sleep before buying the domain. I think it was the first domain I ever bought. It was September 2002.

I developed a calendar in PHP and wrote a few scripts to scrape byucougars.com and retrieve the sports schedules. I also developed a WML app so Brian and I could add events to the calendar from our pre-iPhone mobile phones. I recall being at a party in south Provo, in a former dental office, and using my Nextel phone to add the party to Provo411. If you go back far enough, you can see events on the calendar. My brother Alan did the artwork.

I always wanted Provo411.com to have a course schedule alert system. Perhaps students would pay $3 to receive an email or SMS alert when hard-to-get classes had an opening. It shouldn’t have been hard technically, but the publicly available course catalog isn’t updated in real-time. I could have scraped the authenticated course catalog on Route Y, but BYU might have objected and it’d be a fragile business model.

My brother Michael recently came home from his mission and started school at CSN. The business classes he wanted were full, so I put the old “course schedule alert” idea to the test with some new tools — Ruby and Mac OS X’s speech. Here’s what I came up with:

#!/usr/bin/env ruby

# a list of course call numbers to check
call_numbers = %w{ 46405 46407 46409 46411 46415 46413 53252 53254 53256 53258 53260 53262 53268 53270 53272 53274 46423 46435 53276 46443 }

# auth_token obtained via Firefox+TamperData while my brother logged into CSN
auth_token = "123456789012345"

say "Checking"

call_numbers.uniq.sort.each do |call_number|
    c = `curl -si -d CONVTOKEN=#{auth_token} -d AUDITT=N -d CALLT=#{call_number} -d CONTINUE=Continue "https://bighorn.nevada.edu/sis_csn/XSMBWEBM/SIVRE04.STR"`
    print "Call number #{call_number}: "
    if (c =~ /<p class="p5">([^< ]+)<br\/>/m)
        if $1.strip.empty?
            puts "May have openings\n"
            3.times {say "Michael, class number #{call_number} may be open!"}
        else
            puts "#{$1.strip}\n"
        end
    else
        puts "could not find message"
        say "Help. I cannot access the C S N website."
        return
    end
    sleep 5
end

# Ouput an audible message via Mac OS X's speech function
def say(message)
    `say "#{message}"`
end

We set this to run every 15 minutes on the living room iMac, and we turned up the volume. Every 15 minutes we could hear “Checking” from the computer. A few hours later we heard the script announce that a class had opened up. Michael, I’m still waiting for my $3.

My friend Cam has started a cause called Fight the New Drug (FTND). That “New Drug” is pornography, and their approach parallels the fight against tobacco.

This is about changing the messaging. For example, if smoking is a way to rebel against authority, then parents and medical experts saying Don’t smoke! only reinforces the rebellion. But if smoking is succumbing to executives at Big Tobacco, then smoking isn’t a form of rebellion at all, it’s a form of conformity. What rebellious kid wants to conform to Big Tobacco executives? That’s the message of The Truth campaign.

Fight the New Drug

Imagine a similar change of messaging around pornography: Pornography isn’t glamorous, it isn’t sexy. Love and romance without pornography is glamorous and sexy. By making the negative externalities of pornography more visible, it would become less appealing. While organizations like CP80 and Lighted Candle Society fight the supply-side of pornography, FTND fights the demand-side.

I’m very excited about this approach.

Mary Eberstadt at Stanford’s Hoover Institution calls pornography the “new tobacco” and said:

Yesterday, smoking was considered unremarkable in a moral sense, whereas pornography was widely considered disgusting and wrong — including even by people who consumed it. Today, as a general rule, just the reverse is true. Now it is pornography that is widely (though not universally) said to be value-free, whereas smoking is widely considered disgusting and wrong — including even by many smokers.

Can we change minds again?

Columnist Kathryn Jean Lopez said:

…I’ve been flashing back to something Traci Lords once said: “I have to thank Ed Meese for saving my life.” At 18, her career as a porn star ended in a federal raid. How many Tracis are on a computer near you today? And who else is porn harming? It’s a question that our society — which in its rhetoric and culture says it cares about women and children and lives and love — needs to grapple with. If Eberstadt’s comparison is right, the time [is] coming. The shrugs will cease. Yet I hope the turnaround comes, not because the government has made porn highly inconvenient, but because we have decided we want something better. (Smoking Is Out, Porn Is In.)

Seth Godin said you can’t fight an ideavirus (“pornography is okay”) by “challenging the medium in which it spreads.” Instead, you must counter “one ideavirus with another one.”

You don’t counter racism by making the act of uttering racist statements against the law. You do it by spreading an idea (racism is hateful, wrong and stupid) that keeps the racist from expressing his ideas because all his friends will shun him if he does. (“Thinking about this war”.)

Here is some of the FTND messaging, paraphrased:

1. Educate people about the negative effects of pornography and let them choose their pornography involvement for themselves. We do not contest the legality to produce pornographic material.

2. Just because it’s legal to smoke cigarettes, doesn’t mean it’s healthy. Similarly, porn can have devastating effects on you and your loved ones.

3. Although pornography consumption can lead to powerful addictive behaviors, we don’t contest people’s right to view it.

4. People need to be educated about the negative effects of pornography on individuals, families and businesses.

5. We fight against the demand for pornography. Through education, we believe people will no longer want to use porn and those with addictive behavior will seek help from professionals.

6. People addicted to porn often feel they have no options. We’re letting people know that they have a choice.

7. We want to infuse more sexiness into the world. Two committed people together — that is sexy. A lonely, addicted person sitting in front of a computer is not sexy.

Please make a $10 donation to FTND to become a “fighter”. Ten dollars from 1,000 people is better than $10,000 from 1 person. The money will be used to develop messaging campaigns to fight the demand for pornography. This will be a grass-roots movement to make pornography unpopular.

I’ve put in my $10 and I’m hoping many, many more friends will as well.

Have you ever wished your iPhone would ring only when certain people call? Here’s how to do it:

1. Download the “Silence” ringtone here: silence.m4r
2. Copy this file into the Ringtones section of your iTunes. (Click to enlarge.)
   
   
3. Sync your iPhone with iTunes to load the ringtone.
4. On your iPhone, change your ringtone to “Silence” (under Settings -> Sounds -> Ringtone). You’ll no longer hear your phone calls.
   
   
5. For each person whose calls you still want to hear, change his or her Custom Ringtone to something audible: Click the name in your contact list, choose Ringtone, then choose something besides Default
   
   

Now you can screen calls in your sleep. Because Sunday afternoons are for napping.

UPDATE (Apr 14, 2011): I haven’t used it, but MrNumber.com appears to be an interesting service for identifying phone numbers belonging to telemarketers and blocking them.

For all the iPhone users out there: You probably know you can take a snapshot of whatever you see on your screen:

1. Briefly press the top and front buttons at the same time.
2. The screen will flash white and you’ll hear a “snapshot” sound.
3. A picture of your screen is now in your iPhone “Photos”.

I’ve found it extremely helpful to make screenshots, and I do it all the time. Here are a few reasons:

Remember an Interesting Part of a Podcast

If I’m driving and hear something I like in a podcast, I make a quick screenshot of the playback screen. When I get back to my computer, I can return to that spot in the podcast and take notes.

Save a Point on a Map

Sometimes I want to “bookmark” a location on the map before looking up something else. A screenshot is a fast way to do this.

Save a Website Address Without Interrupting Your Reading

Sometimes when I’m reading in Google Reader, I want to save the location of an article to read later. (I don’t want to leave Google Reader immediately because it has to entirely reload when I return.)

If you hold your finger on a link for a few seconds, a menu will popup with the address of the link. Sometimes I simply save a screenshot of the link, then hit Cancel and go back to my reading. Later I read the items I saved in my screenshots.

Screenshots can help you practice “ubiquitous capture” — capturing all notes, thoughts, and ideas, as they come to you, so you don’t have to keep them in your head.

The New York Times recently asked, Do We Need a New Internet?

…there is a growing belief among engineers and security experts that Internet security and privacy have become so maddeningly elusive that the only way to fix the problem is to start over.

A new Internet might have more security, less anonymity.

As a new and more secure network becomes widely adopted, the current Internet might end up as the bad neighborhood of cyberspace. You would enter at your own risk and keep an eye over your shoulder while you were there.

Stanford’s Clean Slate Project intends to “reinvent the Internet” to “overcome fundamental architectural limitations,” including security.

I’ve previously asked, Is the Internet broken? One place it might be broken is in the ability for parents to protect their children, and interested people to protect themselves, from pornography.

If the university most associated with the invention of our current Internet is willing to reexamine its underpinnings and reinvent it, more incremental changes like CP80 or Larry Lessig’s H2M seem worthy of consideration.

Of course, anonymity can be a virtue. Anonymity allows seekers to learn about a new religion in a low-pressure way or protestors in Iran to orchestrate protests.

The tech-savvy, often libertarian-leaning people you find at Slashdot.org tend to dismiss proposals like CP80, considering them antithetical to the nature of the Internet. I like that one Slashdot user offered a thoughtful counterproposal: “The people who want a ‘cleaned kid friendly Internet’ can establish an alternate port where such a thing would be delivered….” (read more)

I think Bill Cosby’s adage applies: “I brought you in this world, and I can take you out.” We built the Internet. If it’s not suiting us well, we can change it. I think the Internet has already been a great tool for good, and will continue to be, but I don’t mind considering proposals that might improve it.

Following up on what motivates us to work and create, I want to point out a few cases of “Galtism” in current events.

(As background, John Galt is a character in Atlas Shrugged who leaves society when it stops rewarding his ingenuity and hard work.)

First, a letter from Jake DeSantis, an executive vice president at A.I.G. who resigned after the company reneged on its bonus contracts after it became politically unpopular:

As most of us have done nothing wrong, guilt is not a motivation to surrender our earnings. We have worked 12 long months under these contracts and now deserve to be paid as promised. None of us should be cheated of our payments any more than a plumber should be cheated after he has fixed the pipes but a careless electrician causes a fire that burns down the house. (Jake DeSantis, “Dear A.I.G., I Quit”, Ny Times, March 24, 2009.)

Second, some musings on “what happens when government regulation makes it more expensive to bill for medical services than providers receive”:

More and more of my fellow doctors are turning away Medicare patients because of the diminished reimbursements and the growing delay in payments. I’ve had several new Medicare patients come to my office in the last few months with multiple diseases and long lists of medications simply because their longtime provider — who they liked — abruptly stopped taking Medicare.

This scenario is not academic. The health systems in Canada and the UK have shortages of doctors, especially specialists…which is why it takes months to get testing and diagnosis even for serious illnesses.

Among P.J. O’Rourke’s well-known lines is “If you think health care is expensive now, wait until you see what it costs when it’s free.” The full speech is worth reading:

Freedom is not empowerment…. Anybody can grab a gun and be empowered. It’s not entitlement. An entitlement is what people on welfare get, and how free are they? It’s not an endlessly expanding list of rights — the “right” to education, the “right” to health care, the “right” to food and housing. That’s not freedom, that’s dependency. Those aren’t rights, those are the rations of slavery — hay and a barn for human cattle.

There is only one basic human right, the right to do as you…please. And with it comes the only basic human duty, the duty to take the consequences. (P.J. O’Rourke, “The Liberty Manifesto”, May 6, 1993.)

I recently read Mind the Gap, an essay by Paul Graham on wealth, industry, and incentives. It’s almost 5 years old now, but it seems timely as our nation appears to be on a road toward socialism.

Wealth is not money. Money is just a convenient way of trading one form of wealth for another. Wealth is the underlying stuff—the goods and services we buy….

Where does wealth come from? People make it. This was easier to grasp when most people lived on farms, and made many of the things they wanted with their own hands. Then you could see in the house, the herds, and the granary the wealth that each family created. It was obvious then too that the wealth of the world was not a fixed quantity that had to be shared out, like slices of a pie. If you wanted more wealth, you could make it.

This is just as true today, though few of us create wealth directly for ourselves…. Mostly we create wealth for other people in exchange for money, which we then trade for the forms of wealth we want.

If you suppress variations in income, whether by stealing private fortunes, as feudal rulers used to do, or by taxing them away, as some modern governments have done, the result always seems to be the same. Society as a whole ends up poorer.

You need rich people in your society not so much because in spending their money they create jobs, but because of what they have to do to get rich. I’m not talking about the trickle-down effect here. I’m not saying that if you let Henry Ford get rich, he’ll hire you as a waiter at his next party. I’m saying that he’ll make you a tractor to replace your horse. (Emphasis added.)

Similar ideas can be found in a monologue from Francisco d’Anconia, the wealthy mine owner in Ayn Rand’s book Atlas Shrugged.

“Money demands that you sell, not your weakness to men’s stupidity, but your talent to their reason; it demands that you buy, not the shoddiest they offer, but the best that your money can find. And when men live by trade—with reason, not force, as their final arbiter—it is the best product that wins, the best performance, the man of best judgment and highest ability—and the degree of a man’s productiveness is the degree of his reward.

“…you will see the rise of men of the double standard—the men who live by force, yet count on those who live by trade to create the value of their looted money—the men who are the hitchhikers of virtue. In a moral society, these are the criminals, and the statutes are written to protect you against them. But when a society establishes criminals-by-right and looters-by-law—men who use force to seize the wealth of disarmed victims—then money becomes its creators’ avenger.

“When you see that trading is done, not by consent, but by compulsion—when you see that in order to produce, you need to obtain permission from men who produce nothing—when you see that money is flowing to those who deal, not in goods, but in favors—when you see that men get richer by graft and by pull than by work, and your laws don’t protect you against them, but protect them against you—when you see corruption being rewarded and honesty becoming a self-sacrifice—you may know that your society is doomed.

“If you ask me to name the proudest distinction of Americans, I would choose—because it contains all the others—the fact that they were the people who created the phrase ‘to make money.’ No other language or nation had ever used these words before; men had always thought of wealth as a static quantity—to be seized, begged, inherited, shared, looted or obtained as a favor. Americans were the first to understand that wealth has to be created….” (Ayn Rand. Atlas Shrugged. pp. 411-14. Emphasis added.)

This week I read The Leader in Me, Stephen Covey’s new book about teaching the Seven Habits of Highly Effective People to elementary school students. Schools in North Carolina, Alabama, Illinois, Guatemala, Singapore, and elsewhere have successfully incorporated 7 Habits into their curriculum.

As an outsider to education, what most interested me were the chapter on teaching effectiveness principles in the home (chapter 10) and the following thoughts on curriculum.

Parents, teachers, and business leaders recognize that simple transmission of facts is no longer a sufficient education, as it may have been many years ago. This is what makes teaching effectiveness principles so attractive. Principles and habits transcend facts.

While factual information remains a key factor for survival in today’s world, it is no longer sufficient. With the massive spread of the internet and other digital resources, facts that at one time were closely guarded trade secrets and only available from the top universities can now be accessed in most every nook and cranny on the globe at the click of a mouse. As a result, many of the so-called elite professions that once required extensive schooling are today being passed on to computers or to people at far lower education levels and wages across the planet. Factual knowledge alone is thus no longer the great differentiator between those who succeed and those who do not. (Stephen R. Covey. The Leader in Me. p. 7)

What’s needed, in Mr. Covey’s opinion, is a greater emphasis on “meta” skills such as being proactive, setting goals, resolving conflicts, and listening well. (I previously wrote about “intellectual self-sufficiency”, which I believe is one of these meta skills that is larger than other academic skills.)

Perhaps we could teach better by teaching less:

“It is time to recognize that the major flaw in the de facto curriculum of American public schools is not that schools do not do enough, but that they attempt to do too much. Even though American students have fewer school days each year than their Asian and European counterparts, they are expected to learn far more curriculum content. Confronted with a curriculum that is ‘a mile long and one-half inch deep,’ teachers have become preoccupied with ‘coverage.’ They feel unable to teach for student mastery of knowledge and skills because of the race to cover content. One of the most meaningful steps a school can take to promote significant improvement is to develop a process for identifying significant curriculum content, eliminating non-essential material, and providing teachers with time to teach the significant curriculum.” (Richard DuFour and Robert Eaker. Professional Learning Community. p. 165. Quoted in The Leader in Me. pp. 197-198.)

“U.S. mathematics textbooks address 175 percent as many topics as do German textbooks and 350 percent as many topics as do Japanese textbooks. The science textbooks used in the United States cover more than nine times as many topics as do German textbooks and more than four times as many topics as do Japanese textbooks. Yet German and Japanese students significantly outperform U.S. students in mathematics and science.” (Robert J. Marzano. What Works in Schools. pp. 26-28. Quoted in The Leader in Me. p. 198.)

I’m not saying these are magic answers for education, or even that they’re new, but I thought they were interesting. As the internet makes it easier to connect with people and access any information, I see wisdom in learning and teaching better personal effectiveness skills.

Eric Hoffer said, “It is the learners who inherit the future. The learned usually find themselves equipped to live in a world that no longer exists.”

One of my pet peeves is a request in the form of an incomplete “if” statement, e.g. “If you could get me that report by 2:00 PM.” Maybe it’s just me, but the programmer in me thinks that “if” clauses are always followed by “then” statements.

This made Steven Pinker’s talk on language and thought very interesting to me. Why do we speak like this?

Language as a social interaction has to satisfy two conditions: You have to convey the actual content. You want to express the bribe, the command, the promise, the solicitation, and so on. But you also have to negotiate and maintain the kind of relationship you have with the other person. The solution, I think, is that we use language at two levels: The literal form signals the safest relationship for the listener, whereas the implicated content–the reading between the lines that we count on the listener to perform–allows the listener to derive the interpretation which is most relevant in context….

The simplest example of this is in the polite request. If you express your request as a conditional–”if you could open the window, that would be great”–even though the content is an imperative, the fact that you’re not using the imperative voice means that you’re not acting as if you’re in a relationship of dominance where you could presuppose the compliance of the other person. (Steven Pinker, The Stuff of Thought, 14:06-15:10.)

Just in time for Valentine’s Day, Truman Madsen has a similar thought on the language husbands and wives use with each other:

Now, a woman who is a woman delights in being thought a woman. She is “romance conscious,” and in the deeper sense love-anxious most of the time. The language she understands includes a lot of little (and in the opinion of many husbands, disgustingly trivial) things…the tender touch, the kiss good-by, the kiss hello. A morning of robust yard work is not as eloquent to her as the quiet smoothing of little hurdles, the gallantry of an open door, helping her with a chair or a coat and these mean a hundred times more to her feelings of response than the salary you bring home. Having an eye for the new dress or even the old one, saying the word, however inept or inadequate, about this salad or that gravy, remembering and repeating utterly trivial sentiments and events which no grownup man can remember unless he wants to, no woman can forget even if she tries.
…
Universally, woman is made rich by the man who knows that these touches mean everything. This language speaks to her being. She will respond to it and give.

Now, turn to the man. A man who is a man delights in being thought a man. He is “authority conscious.” The language he understands includes a lot of little things, the language of her listening even to his nonsense, the language of biting her tongue instead of lashing with it when his decisions are finally made, the uninterrupted phone call, the restraining of curiosity, the controlling of the disposition to inquisition. (A wife who insists on knowing nothing will eventually have everything, but the wife who insists on knowing everything will eventually have nothing.) The man understands the language of flexibility in a wife who respects his final decisions (even the decision of not to decide), or even so trivial a matter as when we leave the party. The man comprehends the exhilaration of a woman who, when his delays bring him home late, offers a brighter welcome instead of a dismal doghouse.

Universally, a man is responsive to these little matters which mean everything to him. He will rise to them and give in kind.

It is easy to say that we should prize other languages. If a man brings home the bacon and doesn’t complain at the wife’s food, and shows sympathy for her lot, then why all this emphasis on the romantic sizzle? “If I don’t like your cooking, I’ll say so; otherwise you are doing fine,” said one. On the other hand, if the wife works day and night to tend his kids, to keep his home, and put up with him, then why all the childish emphasis on the authority sizzle? Does a woman have to pander to this desire of a man to have the last word?

Well, it may be strange, as some cynics say (a weird kind of insecurity which mature people ignore), it may even seem ridiculous. But the cost is so little and the results so vast that it is tragic to work against the grain. You can’t speak without speaking a language. And this language is magic. Why not master it and speak it? (Truman Madsen, Four Essays on Love, pp. 56-58.)

In a podcast this week, I learned about Sermo, a private social network where doctors can share knowledge with each other. Seems like a good idea — let doctors submit and “rate” treatments for various diseases, Web 2.0-style*, like Digg or YouTube. (This is for fellow doctors only, not like WebMD.)

I suggested Sermo to my father (an ophthalmologist), but he was skeptical. He said each patient is different and many situations are unique. Sometimes patient comfort or reducing risk are more important than treating the disease. Sometimes “subjective” elements like fear or hearsay affect which treatments a patient will accept. How can these complexities be reduced to a simple, Web 2.0 “vote”?

Overview of Sermo

That’s not to say doctors aren’t taking advantage of the Internet. My father subscribes to the American Glaucoma Society’s emailing list and has found it helpful. He said glaucoma specialists from around the world share stories and experiences. When a doctor tells a story he can share more detail, and the listening doctors can interpret and apply the story to their own patients. The collective intelligence in these stories can’t be reduced to a simple thumbs up/thumbs down vote or a star rating. (That’s not to say that this is Sermo’s model — I don’t know — or that my father won’t still try it.)

The book Made to Stick explains the importance of story-telling for transmitting information. A Xerox repairmen told his co-workers, over a game of cribbage and in precise detail, how he and his partner spent 4 hours repairing a photocopier that gave them a misleading “E053″ error message. Here’s why:

Why do people talk shop? Part of the reason is simply Humanity 101–we want to talk to other people about the things that we have in common. Xerox repairmen work with photocopiers, so they talk about them. But that’s not the only factor at play here. For example, the storyteller above could have shared the general arc of the story without the details. “I had a real bear of a problem today–it took me four hours to get to the bottom of it. I’m glad that one’s over.” Or he could have leapt straight to the punch line: “After hours of hassle, I traced the problem back to a measly burned-out dicorotron. How was your morning?”

Instead, he tells a story that’s much more interesting to his lunch partners. It has built-in drama–a misleading code leads two men on a wild goose chase until they uncover, through lots of work and thought, that the problem is simpler than they initially thought. Why is this story format more interesting? Because it allows his lunch partners to play along. He’s giving them enough information so that they can mentally test out how they would have handled the situation. The people in the room who weren’t aware of the misleading E053 code have now had their “E053 schema” fixed. Before, there was only one way to respond to an E053 code. Now, repairmen know how to be aware of the “misleading E053″ scenario.

In other words, this story is part entertainment and part instruction. Shop talk conveys important clues about how to respond to the world. It teaches nurses not to have blind faith in heart monitors. It teaches copy repairmen to beware of the misleading E053 code. (Made to Stick by Chip and Dan Heath. pp. 207-208, my emphasis.)

* I’m using Web 2.0 in the classical sense, the way Tim O’Reilly defined it to mean the aggregation of collective intelligence, not the popular connotation of brightly colored websites with rounded corners.

Among important cognitive skills is “learning to see ‘nonjudgmentally’–that is, to see what is happening rather than merely noticing how well or how badly it is happening,” according to The Inner Game of Tennis. I read it earlier this month. The author, Tim Gallwey, is a long-time tennis coach who teaches the importance of developing cognitive skills for improving in tennis or any other activity.

When you hit a bad forehand and curse yourself, the part of you doing the cursing is “Self 1″ and the part of you who hit the shot is “Self 2.”

The key to better tennis–or better anything–lies in improving the relationship between the conscious teller, Self 1, and the natural capabilities of Self 2. (p. 10)

Soon after reading the book, a talk by Kathy Sierra was queued on my iPod and she happened to mention The Inner Game of Tennis. She said, to become a better performer, tell the dumber part of your brain (who Tim would call Self 1) to “shut up.” Cut out the noise and the “chatter.”

Back to Tim:

No matter what a person’s complaint when he has a lesson with me, I have found that the most beneficial first step is to encourage him to see and feel what he is doing–that is, to increase his awareness of what actually is. (p. 25)

…a great deal of technique can be learned naturally by simply paying close attention to one’s body, racket and ball while playing. (p. 54)

The process is an incredibly simple one. The important thing is to experience it. Don’t intellectualize it. See what it feels like to ask yourself to do something and let it happen without any conscious trying. For most people it is a surprising experience, and the results speak for themselves. (p. 80)

It would be useful to all tennis players to undergo some “sensitivity training” with their bodies. The easiest way to get such training is simply to focus your attention on your body during practice. (p. 89)

Luann Udell has found it helpful to use a Wii Fitness Board in her physical rehabilitation (Wii-habilitation). The Wii system gives her immediate feedback on her balance, improving her proprioception. (Proprioception was a new word for me. It refers to our sense of the position of our body. For example, through proprioception we know the location of our tennis racket even when it’s behind us on a backswing.)

I’m hopeful about the potential for President Obama to be Teacher-in-Chief.

I did not vote for President Obama. I strongly dislike much of his agenda, including the expansion of abortion rights, the “creation” of jobs by government fiat, and the expansion of government to which he alluded in his Inaugural Address.

However, President Obama’s apparent popularity affords him the opportunity to be “Teacher-in-Chief.” The Presidency of the United States is a great platform from which to teach. I think it’s been squandered by presidents who think that they must do something, when it may be enough to teach something.

If President Obama uses this opportunity–the popularity he’s built–to teach correct principles, he’ll do far more good than could be done through any new government program. As long as he has listening supporters, he should teach economics, personal finance, debt-avoidance, self-reliance, service, industry, and more.

For example, I liked this from his Inaugural Address:

Our journey has never been one of short-cuts or settling for less. It has not been the path for the faint-hearted, for those that prefer leisure over work, or seek only the pleasures of riches and fame. Rather, it has been the risk-takers, the doers, the makers of things — some celebrated, but more often men and women obscure in their labor — who have carried us up the long rugged path towards prosperity and freedom.

Not this:

The question we ask today is not whether our government is too big or too small, but whether it works — whether it helps families find jobs at a decent wage, care they can afford, a retirement that is dignified. Where the answer is yes, we intend to move forward.

We don’t need a president who pretends he can give us what we need. We need a president who will inspire us to work for those things ourselves. I believe this may be within President Obama’s power. Don’t waste it, Mr. President.

(For an interesting read, see Chris Knudsen’s thoughts on President Obama.)

With a combo of free Mac applications, you can record and save voicemails from your mobile phone.

You’ll need to install the following Mac applications:

Skype. You’ll use Skype to make a call to your mobile phone and listen to your voicemail. Though the app is free, you’ll need to buy Skype Credit to make a “Skype Out” call to your mobile phone.

Audacity. You’ll use this free application to record your phone call.

Soundflower and Soundflowerbed. This free system extension will connect Skype to Audacity. It’s like a laundry chute for audio; you can direct audio from any application to another. It does this by adding a pseudo “device” to your list of audio devices in System Preferences.

Instructions:

1. Open Audacity, then Audacity Preferences. In the Audio I/O section, change the Recording device to Core Audio: Soundflower (2ch).
2. Open Skype, then Skype Preferences. Under the Audio tab, change Audio Output to Soundflower (2ch).
   
3. Open Soundflowerbed in your menu bar, then under Soundflower (2ch), select Built-in Output. Soundflowerbed allows you to monitor the audio passing through Soundflower, like having a window into the laundry shoot to watch clothes that fall past.
   
4. Back in Audacity, click the Record button to begin recording.

   

5. In Skype, make a call to your cell phone. When your greeting begins playing, press the sequence of keys that accesses your voicemail (probably the asterisk key followed by your password.) Listen to your voicemail as you normally would. Then hang up.
6. Switch back to Audacity and click the Stop button. You should see the zig-zaggy waveform of the message you just recorded.
   
   
7. Click the Audacity cursor directly before your message. (You can find out where this is by using the Play and Stop buttons.) From the Edit menu, choose Select then Track Start to Cursor. Push the Delete key on your keyboard. This will remove extraneous audio before your message.
8. Click the Audacity cursor directly after your message. From the Edit menu, choose Select then Cursor to Track End. Push the Delete key. This will remove extraneous audio after your message.
9. Choose Export from the File menu and save your voicemail. You can email it to a friend or save it in iTunes.

My aunt recently started a blog: Great Books for Children. In her ambition to become a published children’s author, she felt compelled to start a blog but was hesitant. She considered blogs to be the “junk mail of the Internet” and didn’t want to “stoop” to blogging. I think she’s off to a fine start.

The following email was meant to persuade her to think more highly of blogging, at least considering it a neutral publishing medium with the potential to garner an audience:

1. People should consider your blog a great resource, a bookmark worth keeping, something worth talking about, not a glossy brochure for you as an author.

2. The Internet allows you to connect with an audience despite not having a publisher. If you produce great work, you’ll attract an audience. This is called micro-celebrity:

• 1,000 True Fans by Kevin Kelly
• Clive Thompson on the Age of Microcelebrity: Why Everyone’s a Little Brad Pitt

3. Cory Doctorow is a sci-fi writer who released his entire book online, got an audience, then got a publishing contract. How could a publisher turn away a writer with an existing audience?

• Giving It Away

4. Do you know the Nie Nie story? It’s the blog of a young Mormon woman who was in a plane crash earlier this year. Her blog has a huge audience. This is an awesome article in the NY Times:

• After Blogger’s Plane Crash, Virtual Becomes Personal

5. Blogging can be grand. Play the medium to your advantage by including pictures and video. Don’t think it’s a lesser medium.

6. Some of my favorite posts on blogging:

• What Makes for a Good Blog? by Merlin Mann
• Write Like a Blogger by Seth Godin
• How to Get Traffic for Your Blog by Seth Godin
• Why You Should Blog by randfish

7. Bookmarks on publishing:

• Advice for Authors by Seth Godin
• How to Sell Your Book, CD, or DVD on Amazon by Kevin Kelly
• 10 Questions with Seth Godin, author of Permission Marketing, Purple Cow, and The Dip
• Secrets of book publishing I wish I had known by Mark Hurst

I spoke at WordCamp Utah at the end of September on using WordPress as a Content Management System (CMS). Here are my slides:

WordPress as a CMS

UPDATE: Rocky Mountain Voices has a video of my presentation.

I was in Moab this weekend with my family and our motel had free wireless Internet. I used SSH and a SOCKS proxy to create a secure tunnel to my iMac at work. This allowed me to browse Gmail and Facebook securely.

Here’s a screencast on how to create an SSH tunnel and browse securely in Safari and Firefox:

Here’s a full-size video:
How to browse securely with SSH and a SOCKS proxy (full size video)

These are the basic steps on a Mac:
1. Open Terminal. (In your Applications/Utilities folder.)
2. Type “ssh -D 9999 username@example.com”, replacing “username” and “example.com” with the actual username and address of your remote machine. The remote machine will need the SSH service, or Remote Login service, turned on.
3. Open System Preferences -> Network -> Advanced tab -> Proxies.
4. Turn on the “SOCKS Proxy” and enter “127.0.0.1″ and “9999″ in the fields. Click OK and Apply.

Now your Internet connection will be tunneled through a secure connection to your remote machine — a poor man’s VPN.

WordCamp Utah is a 1-day conference all about WordPress, to be held in Provo, Utah, on September 27, 2008. Speakers will include WordPress founder Matt Mullenweg, WordPress guru Alex King, both visiting from out of town, and several local personalities including Cameron Moll, Thom Allen, Ash Buckles, and yours truly.

I’ll speak on using WordPress as a Content Management System, demonstrating that you can use WordPress software to power your website even if it’s not a blog. At our nonprofit foundation, we use WordPress to power over 40 non-blog websites.

This should be a great conference for any blogger, Web developer, or Web publisher. I’m excited to hear each of the talks.

More information: WordCamp Utah (signup)