China. Democracy. For:@twitter. No Politics « Ooga Labs. We see politics in startups as a disease – once it takes hold, it can spread through the company until it kills. So we have a No Politics rule. There are really just two things we do to prevent the disease of politics. First, don’t hire people who are political by nature. You can usually spot them in an interview by asking what they liked or disliked about people they worked with in their prior jobs. Second, “expose to daylight” any comment or idea that seems like it’s political. In my experience, there are typically three main reasons people don’t say something directly to one person that they will say to another. 1) I’m scared of his/her reaction. 2) It’s not going to do any good, anyway. 3) It doesn’t help me, and it may hurt me if I say something.
To overcome the fears people naturally have to be honest with each other, you have to show people that it turns out OK when they expose these ideas to sunlight. In Praise of Idleness By Bertrand Russell. Like most of my generation, I was brought up on the saying: 'Satan finds some mischief for idle hands to do.' Being a highly virtuous child, I believed all that I was told, and acquired a conscience which has kept me working hard down to the present moment. But although my conscience has controlled my actions, my opinions have undergone a revolution. I think that there is far too much work done in the world, that immense harm is caused by the belief that work is virtuous, and that what needs to be preached in modern industrial countries is quite different from what always has been preached. Everyone knows the story of the traveler in Naples who saw twelve beggars lying in the sun (it was before the days of Mussolini), and offered a lira to the laziest of them.
Before advancing my own arguments for laziness, I must dispose of one which I cannot accept. One of the commonest things to do with savings is to lend them to some Government. All this is only preliminary. Eight People Sipping Wine in Kettering (part 1 of 6) Rough Type: Nicholas Carr's Blog: Rise of the wikicrats. « My, what a friendly ad | Main | Virtualization gets personal » August 23, 2007 It's over. The Deletionists won. "It’s like I’m in some netherworld from the movie Brazil, being asked for my Form 27B(stroke)6," writes the media scholar and long-time Wikipedian Andrew Lih. He's describing what it's like these days to contribute to Wikipedia, the "encyclopedia that anyone can edit. " Lih recently noticed that Wikipedia lacked an article on Michael Getler, a reporter who now serves as ombudsman for the Public Broadcasting System.
Lih added a brief entry - a "stub," in Wikipedia parlance - assuming that other contributors would flesh it out in due course. It is a very short article providing little or no context (CSD A1), contains no content whatsoever (CSD A3), consists only of links elsewhere (CSD A3) or a rephrasing of the title (CSD A3). Lih's reaction: "What the… what manner of… who the… how could any self-respecting Wikipedian imagine this could be deleted? That is a terrifying thought. Following the Dollars: Map Political Campa. FactCheck.org - Annenberg Political Fact C. SECESSION.NET. The Center for the Advancement of Capitali.