GNP is the wrong metric for the job.

Our leaders are using the GNP as the leading indicator that they are doing the right thing for us economically. Here is what Robert Kennedy said about the GNP.

The gross national product includes air pollution and advertising for cigarettes and ambulances to clear our highways of carnage. It counts special locks for our doors and jails for the people who break them. GNP includes the destruction of the redwoods and the death of Lake Superior. It grows with the production of napalm, and missiles and nuclear warheads... it does not allow for the health of our families, the quality of their education, or the joy of their play. It is indifferent to the decency of our factories and the safety of our streets alike. It does not include the beauty of our poetry or the strength of our marriages, or the intelligence of our public debate or the integrity of our public officials. It measures everything, in short, except that which makes life worthwhile.

There is an alternative metric out there called the GPI or Genuine Progress Indicator which makes things like war and pollution negatives on the scorecard, as they should be. It also makes things like volunteer work, and raising children positives on the scorecard, as they should be. While US GNP has steadily increased over the years our GPI peaked in 1980 and has since gone down. It is time our leaders measured themselves against a better metric.

A bunch of F*in Amateurs

I'm not sure who pays for Newsweek magazine to be delivered to my house, but it comes once a week. As mail goes I rate it just above the junky coupon magazines that fill my mailbox, but just barely. Tonight I found myself reading an article by Steven Levy in the March 26th issue entitled "Invasion of the Web Amateurs". It was a mild attack on Andrew Keen who is a staunch critic of Wikipedia, You Tube, and any other amateur/community generated media. Keen is convinced that the Internet is killing our culture. Levy summarizes Keen's argument like this "In Keen's view, sites like Wikipedia, along with blogs, YouTube and iTunes, are rapidly eroding our legacy of expert guidance in favor of a 'dictatorship of idiots.' Reliable sources of information (like Encyclopedia Britannica, your local newspaper and even your beloved newsweekly magazine) are under siege from an explosion of self-appointed writers whose collective output, charges Keen, is garbage."

One of Keen's main messages is that we must be careful of who created what we read, listen to, and watch. Anyone who isn't an expert should be silent so we can better hear the melodious sound of experts informing and entertaining us. So how do we define an expert? Can I trust Encyclopedia Britannica's writers are expert? Can I trust my local paper's writers are expert? All sources are going to have mistakes. All writers have their own agendas. And in the end I have to trust some source somewhere. The real decision is to trust or not.

Keen argues against trusting this new media, and maybe he can make a case for the old media and the so called experts being reliable, but they aren't magnitudes more reliable. And old media was more susceptible to being controlled by powerful individuals and companies. The Internet levels the playing field. There are ten so-called idiots with the facts for every one expert. My advice is listen to the idiots. Get good at determining who has the facts. Do your research. Neither idiot nor expert will put one past you.

Keen is now on my list of idiots to ignore. I'm on my way to Wikipedia to fact check all the articles he has contributed. By the way, here is a link to the Wikipedia entry on Keen and (ironically) a link to his blog.

Rails Fixtures not working as advertised

I'm on Rails 1.2.2 and according to the rDocs if I have loaded a fixture called books I should be able to access a hash called @books. Like this:
class BookTest < Test::Unit::TestCase

fixtures :books

def test_alternate_fixture_access
assert_equal 'War and Peace', @books['war_and_peace'].title
end

end

Line 132 of fixtures.rb tells me that I can do this. I guess this is

Moustaches for fun and charity

How awkward it is to wear an undeveloped moustache! As it slowly emerges from the rest of the stubble on my face it becomes a point of embarasment. Am I relapsing into adolescence? I look like someone who belongs in a lineup. People are afraid to make eye contact. Yet I soldier on through these hard times toward a gloriously full moustache that I am growing for charity in 826 Chicago's Moustache-A-Thon. This event isn't much different from a race where you sponsor a runner, but instead of sponsoring the hard work of some ambitious runner, people sponsor the strange patch of hair growing absent mindedly beneath somebody's nose. I highly recommend visiting the website so you can see pictures of the contestants, get the highlights from the "weigh-ins" (where we all get together to parade our moustaches for the judges and discuss the triumph and folly that is a new moustache). I would also appreciate any donations you make on my behalf. I know my moustache isn't much to behold right now, but with your support I might become the 2007 Mustache champion of Chicago, which puts me right behind the sausage king of Chicago on the list of who's who in Chicago. Time out Chicago recently did a piece on the Moustache-A-Thon which will be running in the next couple weeks. Check it out! You can look forward to a quote about my invisi-stache (the bane of the blonde moustache grower's existance) and who knows what else.