29. October 2009 by admin.

…and by that I mean a RIGHT as an ENTITLEMENT, as opposed to a WRONG or a LEFT.

I learned this in college, in an excellent class called Political Philosophy. As much as I would love to mention the professor’s name, I don’t have his permission to do so.

One of the most memorable concepts that came from that class was our discussion on developing a theory of rights.  A theory of rights must do four things to be a full theory.

1: give a name to the right being defined

2: Identify who has that right

3: Identify by what virtue or value the group in #2 has that right, and

4: Identify the responsibilities placed on others as a result of the group in #2 having that right.

This is going to be an excellent exercise for many of you who think you have rights but others think you don’t. You need to be able to articulate WHY you have that right and WHAT IT CAUSES OTHERS to have to do or not do.   One example is the Bill of Rights enumerations. We have the right to, for example, assembly (#1).  WE THE PEOPLE OF THESE UNITED STATES have that right (#2). We have that right as an unalienable human right granted by our Creator (#3). You may have to dig beyond the Constitution to support that, I can’t remember which document I read that tied that right back to the Declaration. And for #4, the responsibility placed on others is to step back and let us assemble, to not interfere with our assembly.

An additional ideal in a theory of rights is the understanding that one person or group having a right must never infringe on any other rights of any other person or group.  So our right to assemble peaceably must not infringe on the right of any other group to assemble peaceably, or to do any other things that we as a society acknowledge as being rights.The claim of a “right to healthcare” fails to identify #4 to any satisfaction.  However, I will entertain any and all attempts to do so.

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25. October 2009 by admin.

How many things do you have going on right now?  How many things do you typically have going on at any given time?  During a typical workday, how many programs are open on your computer desktop? Is dinner cooking, laundry in both the washer and dryer, and a conversation occurring on the phone or with your kids? It may surprise you to find that you’re not doing all that at once.  And don’t take offense, but you’re not physiologically capable of doing it all at once.

Neither is your computer. You may have several programs open at once, but the processor in the guts of the machine is still handling instructions in the order it receives them. Even with the dual-core and quad-core processors built into the current  generation of computers, there are limitations as to how many and what type of activities can be conducted simultaneously.  If you’re curious about the nuts and bolts, this website has an explanation that comes pretty close to plain English: http://www.wisegeek.com/what-is-a-dual-core-processor.htm

Most of us live our lives in a single-core scenario, even if we don’t want to admit it.  Instructions must be processed in a queue, and that queue may also include decisions, actions, and conversations. You may, for example, be on the phone and reading email "at the same time."  Face it: you will miss a few words of the conversation if you read each word of the email. Or you will merely scan the email for important words or phrases so as to not miss anything important in the conversation.  But it is simply not possible to pay adequate attention to the phone conversation to catch every word while genuinely reading the email.  You cannot carry on two separate conversations simultaneously.  You will switch back and forth between them, but you will not give them both your full attention at the same time. Having said that, it is possible to engage in one activity that requires a great deal of attention and another that requires almost no attention. Examples of this: stirring a pot of soup on the stove while conversing with the children about homework; raking leaves while you converse on the phone.

That which we call "multitasking" is a lot like the physical act of juggling.  Juggling has a lot less to do with how many objects you have in the air than it has to do with what happens to each object as it lands in your hand.  Juggling isn’t so much about great catches as it is about great tosses.  You must toss each object into a place in the air where it will predictably end up in nearly the same spot. Your hand must, of course, also end up in nearly the same spot, but that’s much easier to accomplish than the toss.   I have not been able to accomplish a series of good tosses. I am physically inept at juggling.  With practice, and a great deal more patience than I normally exercise, I may be able to juggle three objects one day. "Multitasking" has started making more sense to me since I found the parallel to juggling.  The tasks I face at any given time cannot all be accomplished at once.  I have to select the most important objects and weigh them, then decide what to do with them. Each must end up in the air for a time.  And each will land, and hopefully each lands in my hand.  As it lands in my hand, I decide what to do with it: does it go back up into the air, or can it take it out of the mix, or do I need to hand it to someone else?You don’t need to freak out if you cannot multitask all the priorities in your day.  Handle each appropriately, or decide to set it aside. Toss into the air carefully.I promise you, no matter how good you think you are at "multitasking," you’re nowhere near as good as your computer, and even your computer does it all one item at a time.

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