ThoughtsOnThinking

Business Processes Quote, and Frank Patrick

"hmmm...searching for "business process" jobs on indeed.com yields 99% SAP-related stuff - don't they know not every process is automateable?" - Frank Patrick

Amen to that. 

Frank's a sharp guy; been watching him on and off from across the continent for a few years now (has it really been that long?).  He's also looking for work (that engages his skills, and pays him money...).  Maybe give him a look if you're in the market for such things and based out of New Jersey.

Distraction and Focused Attention, In Its Early Stages

From a comment on a currently-getting-lots-of-traffic political post; part of a tangential thread re: Canadian vs U.S. education, etc:

Our biggest problem in the US in that respect  

...may simply be the superabundance of distraction in which we drown our kids, much of it centered around celebrity but also every other conceivable form of distraction.  We hypercaffeinate them, feed them nothing but flour and sugar for breakfast (and the flour may actually be worse than the sugar), overexpose them to inane cartoons and speech-compressed AM radio (a form of caffeine in itself), "center" them with mindless twitch-n-jerk gadgets, and all that kind of thing.

What I notice very quickly when I visit Canada is that the young and youngish people I encounter as cashiers, video store clerks, etc., are not just smarter but a lot calmer, too.  They can have a conversation in the present moment and actually focus on it.

 

I can't speak to the conversational presence or calmness of Canadian youth, nor do I care that much about the topic of the post itself... but I think this commenter nailed it when it comes to drivers behind the frequently missing-in-action attention spans of modern youth.

I hear that somewhere out there in television-land (I don't watch much), there are actually ads now for vehicles that have not one, but two passenger compartment DVD players, to help sedate (or intoxicate -- from the Latin intoxicre -- literally "to smear with poison, inside") the young souls traveling in back.  Yikes...

Thoughts On Code, Post 1

We are coming to realize that computing is not like any single other thing people do—it’s a little like science, mathematics, engineering, a little like art, architecture, writing, horticulture, and a lot like a long, unplanned journey.

...

Research requires a kick, at times, to get the soul dancing.

            - Richard P. Gabriel

Thoughts On..... Water?

For those days (nights) when thinking feels overrated.... 

Proof that humans are crazy.  (...or at least proof that the ones that produce testosterone are...)

YMMV