I'm an environmentalist, so I like the idea of reducing consumption. It's almost an axiom of economics by now that eduction leads women to have less children, thus reducing a nation's consumption.
But at some point, all nations will be developed. China's citizens are now "getting their car", and soon there will be millions more from Africa "getting their car".
I feel like I tell lies as a part of my job in social work. With more frequency than I'd like.
This is more pronounced at the summer camp I work with, since we work with children. I'll talk about that, but I experience a similar feeling of "I'm being patronizing right now" when working with adults at my workplace.
At camp, we lie to campers for many reasons.
When I was in grade 12, my entire class went to a leadership camp day. We did team building and group exercises. I'm not sure what kind of leadership I did. The student council stayed behind for 2 or 3 more days to do more leadership training.
Now that I'm a camp director, I'm responsible for staffing a leadership camp of my own. For two weeks a summer, 16 teenagers learn to be leaders. They do team building, a canoe trip, and learn a lot about the style of leadership Jesus used.
I've used Ubuntu on a daily basis since version 8.04 in 2008. I used to follow the new releases religiously, reading up on the new features and getting excited. I used to install beta versions, then moved to installing the version on the day it came out, then to waiting a month after release. Nowadays I use LTS releases only and I wait the extra month.
I have a problem with moral outrage.
On the one hand, I often believe in the causes people are outraged about. On the other, I get so sick of the way they treat the causes as God's own truth. Let's pick an example cause: people being angry because they want a higher minimum wage.
I think the best salespeople truly believe in what they're selling. So it's a good thing that people really believe that there should be a higher minimum wage. On the other hand, the argument that a higher minimum wage would lead to less jobs has its merits too.
I just found out about "Parkinson's Law", which simply stated says that "work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion". Students, take note! You could spend hours in the library procrastinating on Facebook and saying you don't have time to hang out with your friends, or you could hang out with your friends and then do the work on a deadline and get it done decisively.
One of the things I noticed when I started university was that my peers started signing their emails like this
Jane A. Student
Honours Bachelor of Aviation and Biochemistry
Class of 2020, part time student
jstudent@uwaterloo.ca
There is a lot of hilarity hidden inside this signature, and most of it isn't mine.
Why do people love titles so much? Probably has to do with identity, grumble, grumble, grumble...
People love complaining about YouTube comments, and I do too. I disagree with lots of people in YouTube comments.
People also love hating democratically elected leaders; which is their right. Among the people I know, it's common to hear people saying "Stephen Harper doesn't do anything right" or "Rob Ford should never have been elected". I'm not really in a position to evaluate these claims and probably agree based on what I know.
Beer is a vice, so I shouldn't feel particularly proud of drinking it. But I feel a certain kinship to those with vices. Drinking beer isn't pleasant, on first glance. It can be bitter and literally tastes like poison.
Last night I watched some videos from the "Kids React" series, which is a great way to see what people are thinking. Kids are getting their ideas from others and recombining them in their brains just like I am, they're just more up front about it and say it in simpler words.