Unless, it is my idea!
If it is someone else's idea and it's been around for awhile, I might be able to consider it and adopt it as my own.
That's why I hated the idea of going to school until I had enough time considering how my older sister and brother did with it to decide that it was OK for me too.
That's why so many people are outraged with proposed Healthcare reform until they take the time to learn what might happen.
That's why I was skeptical about the idea that God had sent a new messenger for this day until I had about a year to study the Baha'i Faith and learn who Baha'u'llah was and consider for myself if I believed that He was who He said.
I cut myself off if I am unwilling to consider and learn about new ideas, no matter the source. If I cut myself off I am apt to become afraid, afraid of these new ideas, the loss of my old ideas, and the loss of familiar ways.
Loss creates an occasion of grief, which has five steps. Baha'u'llah wrote of journeys that traversed seven valleys or four valleys. Grief is like those journeys, you can get caught in one of the stages or move slowly through them one by one or cross them all in the blink of an eye.
Today, some have created great fear amongst the people. These people have passed through Denial and arrived at Anger. Anger is where they are residing. Why? Perhaps they refused to consider the new ideas and are caught clinging to the old ideas that are being swept away with the crumbling of the old world order. Angry people do things and say things that they later regret. But they do not stop the change.
Angry people do not stop to ask, "where are we going." Yet that is a very important question. The answer lies in the writings of Baha'u'llah, 'Abdul-Baha, Shoghi Effendi, and The Universal House of Justice. A study of this material is a journey, with many stages. Each person experiences the journey their own way. But it is the process of independent investigation of truth that keeps the journey safe, safe for the world.
Friday, August 14, 2009
Tuesday, August 11, 2009
The Change is Coming.
And it is the change that we all have been waiting for, some of us even praying for. But it might not happen this year or next. You see, we are in the middle of it and it will just take awhile to complete.
People from all walks of life have begun to realize the kinds of things that are happening. Followers of the Baha'i Faith have a leg-up, but that's no protection from the winds of change -- they blow on all alike.
David C. Korten is an author from north-west American conservative roots who has woken up. His book The Great Turning, building on his previous titles, When Corporations Rule the World, and The Post-Corporate World, goes into great detail to describe, from human the side, the growth and maturation of mankind. It is important information to understand as it is an analog to the teachings of the Baha'i Faith.
Baha'u'llah, whose Revelation poured forth from 1852 to 1892, revealed spiritual truths and the implications for the material world. Government must treat its citizens as a trust from God. The equality of men and women, the balance of the masculine and the feminine qualities of character. How the world order will be funded through the Right of God. The need for world peace. And on and on.
Korten has reviewed the history of mankind and now, over 100 years later, in the voice of one man among many, recognizes and expounds many of these principles. Though he does not mention if he has ever met Baha'is or heard the message of Baha'u'llah during the times he lived in the third world, he is an example of the power of the Revelation of Baha'u'llah.
Baha'is understand that the world will turn. And here we can read from a well versed, human observer that the signs are evident.
People from all walks of life have begun to realize the kinds of things that are happening. Followers of the Baha'i Faith have a leg-up, but that's no protection from the winds of change -- they blow on all alike.
David C. Korten is an author from north-west American conservative roots who has woken up. His book The Great Turning, building on his previous titles, When Corporations Rule the World, and The Post-Corporate World, goes into great detail to describe, from human the side, the growth and maturation of mankind. It is important information to understand as it is an analog to the teachings of the Baha'i Faith.
Baha'u'llah, whose Revelation poured forth from 1852 to 1892, revealed spiritual truths and the implications for the material world. Government must treat its citizens as a trust from God. The equality of men and women, the balance of the masculine and the feminine qualities of character. How the world order will be funded through the Right of God. The need for world peace. And on and on.
Korten has reviewed the history of mankind and now, over 100 years later, in the voice of one man among many, recognizes and expounds many of these principles. Though he does not mention if he has ever met Baha'is or heard the message of Baha'u'llah during the times he lived in the third world, he is an example of the power of the Revelation of Baha'u'llah.
Baha'is understand that the world will turn. And here we can read from a well versed, human observer that the signs are evident.
Thursday, March 05, 2009
What we need is more Insurance.
Especially during this economically troubled time, we need Food Insurance.
It works like this. For $X per month you will be able to go to the grocery store and buy the food you want, but instead of purchasing the food, all you will have to do is show your insurance card. Then at the end of the month the insurance company will send you a statement showing how much you really own the grocery store.
Of course you will be able to purchase higher or lower deductibles and different levels of co-pays and out-of-pocket maximums. And then at the end of each year, the insurance company will tell you how much it will cost to participate in the plan for the next year. Why these plans might even become part of expected employer paid perks.
Now it will never do to have the consumer deal directly with the farmer, nay not even with the grocery chains. No more than for people to deal directly with doctors or their practice groups. There must be a new layer. Now this layer will add to the GDP, it will make money -- certainly it must be paid for all the grocery purchases that it reconciles. And it will provide many new jobs for clerks and managers and executives and boards of directors. These companies will go public and sell stock for our retirement plans. They will be able to stand up to the larger chains, forcing them to provide cheaper products.
When christenings, weddings, wakes arrive and we are not in a position to afford them at the moment, we will have our food insurance to depend on. Oh, I feel better already. How about it?
It works like this. For $X per month you will be able to go to the grocery store and buy the food you want, but instead of purchasing the food, all you will have to do is show your insurance card. Then at the end of the month the insurance company will send you a statement showing how much you really own the grocery store.
Of course you will be able to purchase higher or lower deductibles and different levels of co-pays and out-of-pocket maximums. And then at the end of each year, the insurance company will tell you how much it will cost to participate in the plan for the next year. Why these plans might even become part of expected employer paid perks.
Now it will never do to have the consumer deal directly with the farmer, nay not even with the grocery chains. No more than for people to deal directly with doctors or their practice groups. There must be a new layer. Now this layer will add to the GDP, it will make money -- certainly it must be paid for all the grocery purchases that it reconciles. And it will provide many new jobs for clerks and managers and executives and boards of directors. These companies will go public and sell stock for our retirement plans. They will be able to stand up to the larger chains, forcing them to provide cheaper products.
When christenings, weddings, wakes arrive and we are not in a position to afford them at the moment, we will have our food insurance to depend on. Oh, I feel better already. How about it?
Thursday, January 22, 2009
Spam, Ham, PHP, and Bayesian filtering
Most of the time I just want to google a package concept, find it and employ it.
When I had a task of analyzing free form text answers into a set of categories, I first remembered a project to do just that written 30 years ago using Snobol 4. Well this time, I've got the whole web, PHP and MySQL. Then I though of bayesian filters (as used in spam filters.)
Google showed me a simple implementation in PHP and starting from there... Well really, I didn't want a spam filter (that would be a filter whose object was to identify stuff that you don't want) rather I wanted ham filters to identify what I did want (slightly semantic, but with all the identifiers giving the wrong voice in the program, it became intolerable. I also wanted a gang of filters that operated in sync with each other.
The categories for the answers might be: Positive, Suggestion, Negative, Neutral, and Other (spam?). So I created a code (small integer) for each category and augmented the database tables to include this code. Now when you decide that an answer is Positive, you also decide that the answer is NOT any of the others. The operations of learning and unlearning (when you change a code) cycle through all the codes and insert the new answer as Ham or as Not Ham.
Consulting the filters to determine the coding for a new answer amounts to evaluating all the filters and taking the largest rating -- unless none of them produces a significant answer, then I initially assign it to the last code. The web page allows users (marketers, they probably are) to view all answers in a given code (plus all the unverified codes) and see if any are miscoded and if so, change them.
Do you need this too? Give me a shout.
When I had a task of analyzing free form text answers into a set of categories, I first remembered a project to do just that written 30 years ago using Snobol 4. Well this time, I've got the whole web, PHP and MySQL. Then I though of bayesian filters (as used in spam filters.)
Google showed me a simple implementation in PHP and starting from there... Well really, I didn't want a spam filter (that would be a filter whose object was to identify stuff that you don't want) rather I wanted ham filters to identify what I did want (slightly semantic, but with all the identifiers giving the wrong voice in the program, it became intolerable. I also wanted a gang of filters that operated in sync with each other.
The categories for the answers might be: Positive, Suggestion, Negative, Neutral, and Other (spam?). So I created a code (small integer) for each category and augmented the database tables to include this code. Now when you decide that an answer is Positive, you also decide that the answer is NOT any of the others. The operations of learning and unlearning (when you change a code) cycle through all the codes and insert the new answer as Ham or as Not Ham.
Consulting the filters to determine the coding for a new answer amounts to evaluating all the filters and taking the largest rating -- unless none of them produces a significant answer, then I initially assign it to the last code. The web page allows users (marketers, they probably are) to view all answers in a given code (plus all the unverified codes) and see if any are miscoded and if so, change them.
Do you need this too? Give me a shout.
Friday, January 09, 2009
Target Advertising
Advertising in closed groups is difficult because the group is closed, no one wants spam, and because often advertising equals spam, no one wants advertising. Yet everyone also wants to know, when they want to know.
In this respect a portal is often the best choice, a single place where members of the group can go to find advertising. Well isn't that just like the yellow pages books? Pretty much, except that access is limited by paying for the advertising. This paying question is one of the issues that the open community Craigslist.com deals with.
In order to provide a portal for the small group, that is free, I have created the experimental site http://BuyFromBahais.com. It serves a place where other Baha'i businesses and artisans may post ads about themselves with links to their own sites. It is searchable and able to serve, like the yellow pages, as the place to start looking for products or services that are provided by Baha'is.
Interesting challenges always occur in public facing web sites. Spammers, both human and computer, arrive to see what fun they can have at your expense. Therefore it must be made difficult for this to happen and there must be a remedy when it does. The ability for the community to flag offending ads allows many eyes to participate in the monitoring of the web site.
Users may upload an image along with each ad they post. In addition, each user may upload a banner ad, that will be displayed on the top of the web site from time to time.
Initial users are being invited to post ads by virtue of other announcements that they have made. Thus testing will proceed with motivated users.
In this respect a portal is often the best choice, a single place where members of the group can go to find advertising. Well isn't that just like the yellow pages books? Pretty much, except that access is limited by paying for the advertising. This paying question is one of the issues that the open community Craigslist.com deals with.
In order to provide a portal for the small group, that is free, I have created the experimental site http://BuyFromBahais.com. It serves a place where other Baha'i businesses and artisans may post ads about themselves with links to their own sites. It is searchable and able to serve, like the yellow pages, as the place to start looking for products or services that are provided by Baha'is.
Interesting challenges always occur in public facing web sites. Spammers, both human and computer, arrive to see what fun they can have at your expense. Therefore it must be made difficult for this to happen and there must be a remedy when it does. The ability for the community to flag offending ads allows many eyes to participate in the monitoring of the web site.
Users may upload an image along with each ad they post. In addition, each user may upload a banner ad, that will be displayed on the top of the web site from time to time.
Initial users are being invited to post ads by virtue of other announcements that they have made. Thus testing will proceed with motivated users.
Monday, July 07, 2008
Yet Another Must Read
YAMRing on...
Late author Jane Jacobs, native Pennsylvanian, well known Greenwich Village, New Yorker, 'street fighter', has written several book in this millennium that provide the vocabulary and images for understanding what our 'leaders' are doing to dismantle the old world order.
The new world order is being incubated even as we speak by the Baha'i world wide community. The part of the equation that no one knows is what the transition point will be, how great the change of slope will be or when it will occur.
Late author Jane Jacobs, native Pennsylvanian, well known Greenwich Village, New Yorker, 'street fighter', has written several book in this millennium that provide the vocabulary and images for understanding what our 'leaders' are doing to dismantle the old world order.
The new world order is being incubated even as we speak by the Baha'i world wide community. The part of the equation that no one knows is what the transition point will be, how great the change of slope will be or when it will occur.
Thursday, January 24, 2008
Song Titles
I've had some thoughts for song titles, now if only I can write the lyrics and then sell them!
Hollar, if you are interested...
There Are Just Four Kinds of Love
If Justice is Best Beloved How is Truth the Most Important Virtue
these would be in the Bob Dylan style, very wordy, half spoken.
Hollar, if you are interested...
There Are Just Four Kinds of Love
If Justice is Best Beloved How is Truth the Most Important Virtue
these would be in the Bob Dylan style, very wordy, half spoken.
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