Douglas L. Ross - My Personal Reflections

I read this rather sad article today about the Reader's Digest declaring bankruptcy and it made me think of my father. He was born and raised in rural Kentucky and was a bit dyslectic. As a result I don't think they taught him how to read properly. Consequently, reading was difficult for him his whole life and in his youth he was not well read at all. Reader's Digest was a godsend for my Dad because it was short, to the point, easy to read in larger type, and with content that was interesting, timely, educational, often inspiring, and nearly always wholesome. The Reader's Digest became an indispensable part of his life and practically the only thing he ever read besides the Bible. He read every issue cover to cover and sometimes more than once. He was so attached to it that he just could not bring himself to throw out the old issues he had read. Our house was always littered with stacks and stacks of past Reader's Digest issues. I have to admit that although I'...

It's amazing how many people are talking about Black Swans. Even the immanent former IBM strategist Irving Wladawsky - Breger is talking about them and citing Nissim Taleb . Meantime, Taleb is working on "domesticating the unknown."

For anyone interested in really "big questions" and what some of the worlds best thinkers are saying about them here is an interesting series from the John Templeton Foundation: John Templeton Foundation : Life's Big Questions : Archive

Prof. Wing at Carnegie Mellon coined the term "computational thinking." The term is actually a bit difficult to describe. Personally, I don't think even Prof. Wing has captured it's essence in a pithy phrase yet. For those who are familiar with computer science this definition resonates. Computational thinking involves solving problems, designing systems, and understanding human behavior, by drawing on the concepts fundamental to computer science. Computational thinking is really about applying what mankind is learning by working with computers to the everyday problems of society. I particularly like the historical analogy that Prof. Wing uses to describe the potential significance of computational thinking. The analogy is to the invention of the printing press. The printing press had a profound affect on societal development by enabling wide spread dispersion of reading, writing, & arithmetic skills, and resultant development of problem solving, design and human...

According to professor David W. Galenson there's hope for us old guys who still want to make a contribution to society. I was listening to Dr. Galenson's lecture at an event where an organization called Civic Ventures was awarding The Purpose Prise to a group of baby-boomers who, unlike me, were taking on society's biggest challenges. It was inspiring. One of Galenson's insights that I thought was particularly interesting was this idea of two fundamentally different approaches to innovation; one the deductive "flash of brilliance" sort and the other the painstaking, gradual, cumulative, inductive sort that comes with the wisdom of a lifetime experience. He speaks of those of us in the later category feeling "stupid" in their youth at not being easily able to learn by the deductive method. This was my experience exactly and its somehow very encouraging to learn that I'm not alone.

I recently bought a Kindle from Amazon via my Amazon account. (It's Amazon's amazing new wireless e-book that uses electronic ink, really cool. And worth the 4 week delivery backlog when I got mine earlier this year.) I love the concept of potentially hundreds of books, blogs, daily newspapers, etc. just showing up (for a small fee to Amazon & partners) on my Kindle when I get up in the morning. I also love having nearly infinite degrees of freedom in directing the Kindle's wireless delivery service (initially free) to send me just the stuff I want. The Kindle'e product hardware is still rough dispite it's $500 price tag (e.g. the Kindle freezes up quite frequently and has to be rebooted manually) but by and large it's worth the price. But, the Kindle is also a little dangerous. It enables easy access to certain online media (books, DVDs, CDs, etc.) via the "Kindle Store" which is a subset of the real Amazon store. The Kindle store has been modifie...

It's probably not statistically significant but it's still really sad that Francis Collins' beautiful little book "The Language of God" is only ranked #181 on Amazon and Richard Dawkins' anti-God rant "The God Delusion" is ranked in the top ten at #9. The other statistic that's interesting is that Collins' book has been "reviewed" by about three times as many Amazon readers as Dawkins' book, and many of those reviewers are critics. Seems like the anti-God crowd either reads more [which I doubt] or is less tolerant than the people of God whom they accuse of being intolerant.

I recently heard the presentation that Sam Harris made at PopTech in 2006. I haven't read his book "The End of Faith" but I think I got the gist of it from his speech. Basically religious belief is fantasy, those who practice it are stupid and ignorant, and worse yet religion is dangerous [to the point where Harris actually advocates making religon socially and morally wrong] because it's fantasies undermine logical scientific reasoning and ultimately lead to [are basically the cause of] war, poverty, environmental disaster, etc. On the other hand, the Christain Science Monitor pointed out that German philosopher and secularist Jürgen Habermas wrote this in 2004 in his essay "A Time of Transition" Christianity, and nothing else is the ultimate foundation of liberty, conscience, human rights, and democracy, the benchmarks of western civilization. To this day, we have no other options [to Christianity]. We continue to nourish ourselves from this source. Ever...

The United States Inequality and the American Dream Economist.com For a modest little British "newspaper" as they love to call themselves, The Economist has uncanny insight into the American psyche. They've hit the nail squarely on the head once again with their June 17th focus on "Inequality and the American Dream." As though The Economist was really the World's conscience [as perhaps it is] they set out three conditions that must be met in order for inequality to not be inherently wrong as many on the left have argued: "...first, society as a whole is getting richer; second, there is a safety net for the very poor; and third, everybody, regardless of class, race, creed or sex, has an opportunity to climb up through the system." To me they have omitted the most important condition that makes America unique. That is, the strong sense of right and wrong derived from our Judeo-Christian heritage, and the moral principles which guided the formation...

For those who are interested in the religion versus science debate, this wonderful book by Ted Peters and Martinez Hewlett is a must read. The book offers a survey of the broad history of the subject from; Darwinism and the later day neo-Darwinian idological inferences of materialist philosophy, to diesim, creationism, intelligent design and finally to "Theistic Evolution." The authors come down firmly on the side of Theistic Evolution which is basically a realistic "reconciliation of Christian Faith and evolutionary biology." They place various points of view about Theistic Evolution on a continuium via an analysis of how each deals with five defining questions; Deep Time, Natural Selection, Common Descent, Divine Action and Theodicy. And they conclude with a bold and "constructive proposal" for a "future-oriented theology of creation and its concomitant understanding of the human being as God's created co-creator."