Green bike

I thought this was an interesting dichotomy. A bright green bike vs the dark Crowne Plaza in the background.

Today is the first day of a new chapter in my life.
I’ve just travelled from Adelaide to Sydney and am about to take a leap of faith. I’m about to bet all my money and 3 months of my life on my own skills and ideas.

I’m an entrepreneur and web developer. I’m also a photographer and film maker. Because I’m both is one of the reasons I have to make such a leap. Because I need to focus.

The Points

The Goal : Create a collaborative community fostering platform built around the concept of Multipath Interactive storytelling.

The Problem : When in the Adelaide Films on the Fly office I am surrounded by people (like Sunny Wu, Amy Campbell and Tim Standing) who are talking about and making films. Mainly short films.  This means that I also talk about and make films. I am (well was until very recently) the South Australian chapter co-ordinator for the Zeitgeist Movement. I also worked part time at ANAT, the Australian Network for Art and Technology, as their Technology Officer. All that together means I had no time to program the web platform.

The Solution : I’m in Sydney! I’m maxing out my credit cards, emptying my savings, pulling in lots of favours so that I can get a chair, desk and access to wireless Internet, plus somewhere to sleep for 3 months. The office I’ll be at also has other web development companies there, allowing me to be surrounded by people developing for the web… So I’ll be focused on web development.

Being Prepared

I’m armed with a netbook, a laptop, a massage cushion (to relax my back after those long nights programming) and a culmination of 2 years worth of ideas and concepts compiled into a 70 page master design document.

We’ve also got a starting point, an alpha prototype that is almost worth showing to people, hopefully by the end of the week I’ll be posting some more screenshots and video, asking for feedback.

Background

I run Films on the Fly. A small startup company that myself, Sunny Wu and John Willanski created a couple of years ago.

John’s no longer a part of the company as he’s been busy with his own stuff. Sunny does a lot of the video editing and we work together on the ideas generation and filming. Amy Campbell started as an aspiring actress and 3 quarter lawyer that came along to the 2nd Linkr film making workshop. She’s now my girlfriend, the general administrator/organiser and has recently done the directing for The Remainderman.

The Questions

I have a lot of questions for my future self. The two main ones being :

1. Is the world ready for this?
2. The other being, Am I ready for this?

The Films on the Fly platform that I want to create can go a lot of different ways and become a lot of different things. It might only work as a WordPress plugin, or it might work best as it’s own platform. Because we are trying to foster multiple collaborative communities, I’m expecting that we’ll need our own platform. The other side of things is that Films on the Fly is also looking to change part of the education, entertainment and economic paradigms. Not easy tasks.

On the flip side. I don’t know if I can do it.
I’ve worked at a service station, in the Air Force Reserves, done 2 years of Uni, spent 3.5 yrs on the Internode helpdesk and 16 months as the Technology Officer at ANAT. I’ve also gone through the MEGA (Mobile Enterprise Growth Alliance) course which taught be about entrepreneurship… and is how the directors first met, and where FotF and Multipath was born, out of what was Kino Portable and the Non-Linear Narrative concept. More recently I also attended most of the Innovate SA Investment Attraction course. I’ve spent the 2 years between MEGA and now learning everything from distributed, scalable computing and various programming techniques, including lean startup and testing-driven-development, through to management using intrinsic motivation, the biological processes of human behaviour and much more.

But… Can I hack it? Will I end up spending all my time watching TV shows and chatting on Facebook, or will I actually create a web platform that customers can not just use, but enjoy, love. A platform that people (almost) can’t live without.

Check out the www.filmsonthefly.com, www.kublermdk.com and w00t.filmsonthefly.com blogs to learn more about the  journey that I am taking.

One of the extensions I’ve come to love is Facebook Photo Zoom. It lets you put your mouse over a small image (e.g someone’s display pic) in Facebook and it’ll show a full sized (or as close to it as your screen will support) image.

Download Facebook Photo Zoom for Google Chrome or Firefox.

Update : Another great Firefox extension is Download Flash and Video, which allows you to easily download YouTube videos, plus the Extended Copy Menu which lets you copy as plain text (great for pasting into other documents without the crazy formatting that you sometimes get).

Other recommended Firefox extensions :

• Tab Mix Plus : Adds advanced control over how Tabs are used in Firefox. I love the ability to protect tabs, plus set it up to always opento the right and focus on the right tab on close. Makes it easier to deal with many, many tabs.
• Xmarks Sync : If your like me then you’ve got multiple computers then you’ll know how annoying it can be to syncronise bookmarks between your different installs of Firefox.

Extensions for Web Developers

• Firebug : Firebug is great for inspecting elements and the DOM, checking jQuery expressions, making live CSS, HTML and Javascript changes, viewing the console logs, etc..
• DOM Inspector : A plugin for Firefox which is similar to Firebug.
• Colorzilla : It’s amazing how often I need to find the right colour. Using Colourzilla I can use the dropper to work out what another colour is, use the colour wheel to select my own colour and easily copy the # or RGB colours for my CSS files.
• Screengrab : Ever wanted to make a screenshot of a WHOLE page even though it was say 8 times longer than the screen? Now you can! I often use Screengrab to save screenshots at the end of the Scrum sprint (Friday’s) so that I can see a history of the sites I’ve been working on and their evolution.
• WebDeveloper : This should be on every web dev’s toolbar. Whilst doing a number of features similar to Firebug it’s still incredibly useful, especially when trying to test the page with javascript disabled (or disabling those damn right click restrictions on certain sites). I usually like the inspect element tool when trying to write jQuery selector expressions, although sometimes also use Firebug or Google Chromes built in inspector.

Got some more Firefox or Chrome extensions you think should be on the list? Comment or email me.

This is my call to all programers who use, and especially those that make installer programs.

SHOW THE README FILE AS THE APPLICATION IS INSTALLING, NOT AFTERWARDS!!!

If it takes me 5mins to find and download the app, then 2mins to go through the installer and another 5mins to actually install the program, then before that 5mins at the end you could have easily opened up the readme file and showed the user something possibly interesting or required. At the moment only once the application is installed does the readme file get briefly flashed up to the user, who, wanting to actually use the program closes it and everything else down.

The biggest problem was when I went to install Nero 7. It took NEARLY AN HOUR, and at the end of it they opened up the readme. To me it’s just a bad waste of users time.

If you want to go another step then how about using the installation time to actually show something interesting and useful. Some computer games kinda do this, but not to the full extent they could. With the dual/quad core, 2GB+ ram, NVida/ATI graphics card nature of most computers these days it would be easy to show tutorial information as the program is installing.

Imagine this : As you are waiting for a big program to install it actually shows you a screencast of how to use the program. A getting started  guide, or even a trailer.

Note : With Steam and the prominence of Internet download/preloading this issue isn’t such a big issue for computer games, but some apps could still do with an updated installer.

Target Audience : Ubuntu Linux admin guru’s trying to install Ventrilo (i.e geeks)
Document : An example /etc/init.d ventrilo file

Well, it looks like having an automatically starting ventrilo server on Ubuntu isn’t as super easy as I’d hoped, unless I’m missing something stupidly wrong.
Thankfully I’ve already made an init.d file for a complied version of PureFTP (which I’ll post soon).

Firstly, go to the Ventrilo website, and download the server application, then upload it to your server. Some basic setup details are available here.

Let’s assume you’ve uploaded the ventrilo server file to the directory you are currently in.

Installing Ventrilo (assuming it was just uploaded to the server).

mkdir /usr/installed
mkdir /usr/installed/ventrilo
cd /usr/installed/ventrilo
gzip -d ventriloServer.tar.gz && tar -xf ventriloServer.tar
rm ventriloServer.tar ##Removes the zip file
touch /etc/init.d/ventrilo ##Create the startup script file
chmod ugo+x /etc/init.d/ventrilo ##Set file permissions
nano /etc/init.d/ventrilo ## Write/configure the startup script. Note that you can use vi, or what ever editor you like

You can tweak the server settings by editing /usr/installed/ventrilo/ventrilo_srv.ini
You can manually test Ventrilo by running /usr/installed/ventrilo/ventrilo_srv

Now copy the custom Ventrilo startup script from below, tweak it as required (e.g if you installed to a different directory), and write it to /etc/init.d/ventrilo
File : /etc/init.d/ventrilo

#! /bin/sh
# Copyright (c) 2009 Michael Kubler
# All rights reserved.
#
# Author: Michael Kubler, 2009
#
# /etc/init.d/ventrilo

### BEGIN INIT INFO
# Provides:          Voip
# Required-Start:    $network
# Short-Description: Ventrilo daemon, Providing Ventrilo voice support
# Description:       The Ventrilo server provides a server for Ventrilo clients to connect to

### END INIT INFO

cd /usr/installed/ventrilo/
# /etc/init.d/ventrilo: start and stop the Ventrilo daemon

export PATH=”${PATH:+$PATH:}/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/sbin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:”
VENT_BINARY=/usr/installed/ventrilo/ventrilo_srv
VENT_COMMANDS=”-d -f/usr/installed/ventrilo/ventrilo_srv”
PID_FILE=/usr/installed/ventrilo/ventrilo_srv.pid

## Set Colours (For a more interesting output)
BRIGHT_WHITE=”\033[1;37m"
WHITE="\033[0;37m"
GREY="\033[1;30m"
#RED="\033[0;31m"
RED="\033[1;31m"
BRIGHT_RED="\033[1;31m"

# Check for missing binaries
test -x $VENT_BINARY || { echo "$VENT_BINARY not installed";
if [ "$1" = "stop" ]; then exit 0;
else exit 6; fi; }

. /lib/lsb/init-functions ## A file that contains some useful functions, esp the logging stuff used in the script below.

case “$1″ in
start)
log_begin_msg “Starting Ventrilo daemon : ”
echo -e “${WHITE}\c”
if [ -s $PID_FILE ] && kill -0 $(cat $PID_FILE) >/dev/null 2>&1; then
echo -e “${RED}WARNING : Ventrilo daemon already running. It will NOT be started.”
echo -e “${WHITE}Suggestion : Try using ‘/etc/init.d/ventrilo reload’ instead\033[;37m"
log_end_msg 1
exit 0
fi
start-stop-daemon --start --quiet --pidfile $PID_FILE --exec $VENT_BINARY -- $VENT_COMMANDS
ES=$?
echo -e "${WHITE}\c"
log_end_msg $?

;;
stop)
echo -e "${BRIGHT_WHITE}\c" ##NB : The \c prevents a new line char
log_begin_msg "Stopping Ventrilo daemon : "
echo -e "${RED}\c"
start-stop-daemon --stop --pidfile $PID_FILE
ES=$?
rm -f $PID_FILE
echo -e "${WHITE}\c"
log_end_msg $ES
;;
restart|reload|force-reload)
echo -e "${BRIGHT_WHITE}\c"
log_warning_msg "Stopping Ventrilo daemon : "
echo -e "${RED}\c"
start-stop-daemon --stop --pidfile $PID_FILE
ES=$?
rm -f $PID_FILE
echo -e "${BRIGHT_WHITE}\c"
log_end_msg $ES
log_warning_msg "Starting Ventrilo daemon : "
echo -e "${WHITE}\c"
if [ -s $PID_FILE ] && kill -0 $(cat $PID_FILE) >/dev/null 2>&1; then
echo “${RED}Ventrilo daemon already running according to $PID_FILE”
exit 0
fi
start-stop-daemon –start –quiet –pidfile $PID_FILE –exec $VENT_BINARY — $VENT_COMMANDS
ES=$?
log_end_msg $ES
echo -e “${WHITE}\c”
;;
*)
log_success_msg “Usage: /etc/init.d/ventrilo ${BRIGHT_WHITE}{start|stop|reload|force-reload|restart}${WHITE}”
exit 1
;;
esac
exit 0

You should now be able to start, stop, and reload ventrilo as you are used to with other apps.

e.g

/etc/init.d/ventrilo start
/etc/init.d/ventrilo stop
/etc/init.d/ventrilo restart

However it won’t automatically startup on boot. You have to run one last command to get that running.

update-rc.d ventrilo defaults

DONE!
You now have a Ventrilo server that you and your friends can connect to.

Please note : The free version of Ventrilo only allows for 8 people to connect, and their purchasing licensing is very restrictive (you have to purchase a minimum of 1000 slots). I’d suggest looking into Teamspeak, or Mumble instead.

Linkr Logo

Do you have an interest in making ‘interactive’ films?
Have you ever wanted to revise or expand upon other peoples’ stories?
Would you like to learn how the internet can be used to create narratives?

If so, then come along to the free Linkr information session at the Mercury Cinema, where you will be introduced to the concept of ‘Multipath film-making‘.

Multipath film-making is a new and exciting way of thinking about interactive production which encourages community-based, collaborative storytelling. Think Choose Your Own Adventure, but with video!

This information session will explain how Multipath film-making works, as well as look at the current state of online video exhibition plus recent trends in distribution, such as viral marketing.

The presentation will be beneficial to actors, directors, producers, scriptwriters – in fact, anyone interested in creating online content and/or making films in the 21st century.

To further encourage the Multipath interactive storytelling concept, a series of Linkr film-making workshops will be run at the MRC in early 2010, details of which will be posted to the mailing list.

For further information, and to register your interest in participating in the workshops, visit the linkr website or email linkr@filmsonthefly.com, or even the Facebook event.

For another mailing list I’m on (the Zeitgeist Movement) I’ve started doing a Regular Info email. Basically every week or so I’ll send out some information about a topic. I’ll then edit it to be a bit more generic for release to the net. Hopefully some people will find it useful.

Topic of the Week : Intrinsic vs Extrinsic motivators

Video (A must watch)- Dan Pink, on Motivation

http://www.ted.com/talks/dan_pink_on_motivation.html

The video, will make you understand why money is no longer a great motivator in a world that is becoming increasingly complex, and requires more creativity and education.

From Wikipedia :

Intrinsic motivation comes from rewards inherent to a task or activity itself – the enjoyment of a puzzle or the love of playing. This form of motivation has been studied by social and educational psychologists since the early 1970s. Research has found that it is usually associated with high educational achievement and enjoyment by students. Intrinsic motivation has been explained by Fritz Heider’s attribution theory, Bandura’s work on self-efficacy , and Ryan and Deci’s cognitive evaluation theory. Students are likely to be intrinsically motivated if they:

• attribute their educational results to internal factors that they can control (e.g. the amount of effort they put in),
• believe they can be effective agents in reaching desired goals (i.e. the results are not determined by luck),
• are interested in mastering a topic, rather than just rote-learning to achieve good grades.

Extrinsic motivation comes from outside of the performer. Money is the most obvious example, but coercion and threat of punishment are also common extrinsic motivations.

In sports, the crowd may cheer on the performer, which may motivate him or her to do well. Trophies are also extrinsic incentives. Competition is in general extrinsic because it encourages the performer to win and beat others, not to enjoy the intrinsic rewards of the activity.

Social psychological research has indicated that extrinsic rewards can lead to overjustification and a subsequent reduction in intrinsic motivation.

Extrinsic incentives sometimes can weaken the motivation as well. In one classic study done by Green & Lepper, children who were lavishly rewarded for drawing with felt-tip pens later showed little interest in playing with the pens again.

Once you understand how people are motivated, and what is the best motivator to use in a given situation, you start to realise that a lot of people are depressed and annoyed at their work. It’s usually because they are being motivated the wrong way or are being pushed into repetitive and demeaning jobs.

As someone starting up a creative web development company I am interesting in following something similar to the way NetFlix are doing it, which is also similar to how Google operates. Although I don’t know if Netflix also have 20% time, like Google and 3M have. That is, an employee can use 20% of their time to work on their own project. Gmail, and the Ventalin Inhaler have both be produced

If you liked the above, you might like Dan Ariely’s talk about not being in control of our decisions. A great presentation that I think anyone who sets prices of products, or has ever purchased anything should look at (i.e everyone).

Some other up coming topics include :

• Viral marketing
• Cradle to Grave vs Cradle to Cradle (renewable vs finite resources)
• The tipping point (as the concept relates to weather)
• Renewable Energy
• The triangle problem (and why you can’t always see things that are right in front of you)
• Visualising some amazing Statistics
  
• Basics of Psychology
• Basic history of the US financial system
• Moore’s Law and ubiquitous computing
• Examples of science and technology for automating jobs.

If you have any topics you’d like me to cover, or would like to cover yourself, just let me know

So,  with my Birthday being a week away I’ve had a couple of people ask me what I want for a Birthday present.

It seems that once you reach a certain age people just default to buying you books or chocolate unless they know what you actually want. Or maybe in a world of Amazon wish lists, society is changing?

Anyway here is my current ‘to buy’ list. These are things that I want to buy, once I have the money.

• 20-30 pairs of identical black socks (medium-large size?). The idea being that I won’t have to worry about matching my socks. Ever.
• A bottle of Galliano (the yellow one, not the liquorice). Great for making cheesecake drinks.
• An LED light panel for the video camera (e.g this one, or this one). Has to have it’s own battery (i.e not be powered by the camera) and a fairly decent light output. Although these usually cost like $300-$500, which makes me sad.
• A SATA DVD Burner (or two). Mine don’t seem to be working, so I’ve been using my Laptop’s, which isn’t the best, and would be really expensive to replace. This is reasonably important as I’ve got to burn 150 odd DVDs in the next month or two.
• A bottle of Silver Shadow. Cause yes, Men like to smell nice too, and I like to smell like Silver Shadow.

I’m sure there’s more, but I simply don’t have the monies, nor direct need. Although a gift card for Amazon, or Adorama (send to mdkknd@gmail.com) is always welcome. Especially with the current almost 1 to 1, AU->USD exchange rate.

–
Michael Kubler

This post contains a cut down version of what is available here.
Please, if you are at all interested in recognising and stopping Evil, I suggested you view the full information.

Searching for Evil

AN EXAMINATION OF THE NATURE OF EVIL AND ITS PERSISTENCE

Recipe for Evil
1. Overidentify with a cause.
2. Elevate personal goals over concern for human consequences of decisions.
3. Lack empathy.

The Face of Evil : Osama Bin Laden

Children usually see evil in one-dimensional terms. Evil is demonical. Evil comes in the form of warped or sadistic individuals bent on attacking God, motherhood, the flag, or in the case of Lex Luthor and Brainiac, Superman.

For many people today, Osama Bin Laden is the face of evil. He is seen by most Americans as the diabolical leader of a global terrorist conspiracy and the perverter of “true Islam.” He is seen as the evil one behind the killing of thousands of innocent civilians in the World Trade Center. Evil here is personified.

Some people have a notion of evil that is less personalised that media suggests. Evil in the case of a member of the German Eisatzgruppen shooting a civilian is focused on the evil act rather than the evildoer. The case forces us to confront the reality of evil: if killing innocent civilians in the name of a fanatical ideology isn’t evil, what is?

Jewish theologian Martin Buber considered the nature of evil in his classic work, Good and Evil. Buber argued that evil is not, as it is commonly understood, the opposite of good: “It is usual to think of good and evil as two poles, two opposite directions, the antithesis of one another…We must begin by doing away with this convention.” Buber argued that whereas good comes from a dedication to walking the moral path, one falls into evil through an absence of attention. One must work to be good, but one happens to be evil.

Hannah Arendt, in her often-quoted account of the trial of Nazi Adolf Eichmann, Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil, wrote: “The deeds were monstrous, but the doer was quite ordinary, commonplace, and neither demonic or monstrous.” Arendt concluded that Eichmann, far from having the desire to prove a villain, sent thousands to their deaths merely because of “a lack of imagination.” His only motive was personal advancement: “he never realised what he was doing.” Arendt wondered whether “the activity of thinking as such, the habit of examining and reflecting upon whatever happens to come to pass, regardless of the specific content and quite independent of results…could ‘condition’ men against evildoing.”

Judge Richard A. Posner of the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals is recognised as the leading intellectual of the judicial branch. Posner wrote on the subject of evil in an essay (reviewing Ingo Muller’s book, Hitler’s Justice) entitled “Courting Evil” in The New Republic. Posner agreed that the German judiciary did evil because it “was so immersed in a professional culture as to be oblivious to the human consequences of their decisions.” Posner wondered, provocatively, whether American “prosecutors who pursue marijuana growers, sellers of dirty magazines, and violators of arcane campaign financing regulations are inappropriately using their offices in much the same manner as did prosecutors who earlier brought charges against Germans for ‘dishonoring the race.’” Posner urged judges against being “eager enlisters in the popular movements of the day.”
ITEM: THE INCARCERATION RATE IN THE U. S. RANKS HIGHEST AMONG INDUSTRIALISED NATIONS….FORMER DIRECTOR OF THE FEDERAL JUDICIAL CENTER, JUDGE WILLIAM SCHWARZER, SAYS: “NO INDUSTRIALISED COUNTRY IMPOSES SENTENCES OF COMPARABLE SEVERITY.”
Evil exists within our legal system. But evil laws, policies, and decisions are not the same as injustices. Whenever an innocent person is convicted of a crime, there is an injustice. Wrongful convictions are not always the result of evil, however. Wrongful convictions sometimes occur without anyone doing anything wrong (e.g., as a result of a victim’s mistaken identification). Neither is a bad law or policy necessarily evil. Bad laws result from a miscalculation of costs and benefits (given the complexity of the world, such miscalculations are common). Prohibition might have been a bad policy, but it was not an evil one.

Evil is something different.

Evil in our legal system often results from overidentification with popular causes (often an “ism”) of the day–especially ideological causes that treat mankind as specimens or lead to “us versus them” mentalities. When overidentification with a cause is coupled with elevated concern for personal goals–often the career goals of the government actor or actors–over consequences to others, the chances for evil further increase. A third factor that increases the likelihood of evil is a government actor’s low level of empathy for the persons adversely affected by his or her action.

Some Quotes Regarding what Evil is

Evil is an absence.
–Plotinus

Evil is “lack of direction.”
–Martin Buber

There is “a strange interdependence between thoughtlessness and evil.”
–Hannah Arendt

Evil results from “the indifference to the human consequences of decisions.”
–Richard Posner

Some Examples of Evil in the American Justice System

Injustices might not be evil; Bad laws might not be evil laws.

Case 1: Mandatory Minimum Sentences
Richard Anderson was a forty-nine year old longshoreman in Oakland, California. Anderson had no criminal record and a reputation after twenty-four years on the docks as a reliable worker. Anderson’s troubles began when he was waved down on an Oakland Street by an acquaintance. The acquaintance asked Anderson to drive him to a Burger King a few miles away, and Anderson complied. At the Burger King a federal agent posing as a drug customer went to Anderson’s truck and picked up the 100 grams of crack that Anderson’s acquaintance had with him. Anderson was tried before a jury on charges of violating federal drug trafficking laws. The jury concluded that Anderson knew he was driving his acquaintance to a drug deal.

The Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1986 provides for a mandatory penalty of ten years without the possibility of parole for those participating in a transaction involving over fifty grams of crack. The Act focuses on the weight of the drugs; a person’s prior record or degree of participation in the crime is irrelevant.

United States District Judge William Schwarzer imposed the ten-year minimum prison term on Anderson. Schwarzer fought back tears as he said to those assembled in his court-room: “We are required to follow the rule of law . . . [b]ut in this case the law does anything but serve justice. . . . It may profit us very little to win the war on drugs if in the process we lose our soul.”

Case 2: Zero Tolerance & Asset Forfeiture
Kevin Hogan and a crew of three headed for Alaska in a $ 140,000 fishing boat he had just purchased in Washington. The boat developed engine problems along the route and was forced to stop briefly in Canada for repairs. The Canadian stop was reported to customs agents in Ketchikan, who searched the boat. The search revealed that one of Hogan’s three crew members had 1.7 grams of marijuana in his jacket. Customs officials acknowledged that Hogan knew nothing about the marijuana aboard his boat, the Hold Tight.

Under the “Zero Tolerance” program initiated less than two months earlier, even small amounts of drugs could result in arrests and forfeitures of property. Customs agents decided to seize Hogan’s boat. Hogan had planned to use the boat during Alaska’s twenty-four hour halibut season later that month. The halibut catch could have netted Hogan the $ 40,000 he needed to pay the mortgage on the Hold Tight. Hogan said as a result of the seizure, “I stand to lose it all in this deal,” referring to everything for which he had worked during the prior fifteen years. In Hogan’s hometown of Homer, Alaska, more than 1,000 people signed petitions supporting Hogan. The city council passed a resolution urging that Customs officials show “some sense of proportionality” in the Hogan case.

The Customs Service expressed its position in a letter written by John Elkins, acting director of the Service’s regulatory procedures and penalties division in Washington, D.C., to the Customs Service’s Anchorage office. Elkins said that it is not enough to warn crew members of the drug program, as Hogan said he had done. Elkins contended that Hogan was negligent in not detecting the marijuana: “It is our view that Kevin Hogan was, as owner and master, responsible for the actions of crew members.”

Case 3: Project Looking Glass

“Project Looking Glass” the name given to a U.S. Postal Service investigation designed to uncover purchasers of child pornography. Unfortunately the over zealous nature of this operation caused people like Robert Brase, a farmer in Nebraska to order videotape showing minors engaged in sexually explicit conduct. Brase had been married for ten years and was the father of two children. He had no criminal record, and there was no evidence that he had ever sexually abused children. The only child pornography discovered was the tape received from the U.S. Postal Service which was sent as part of the sting operation.

On October 22, 1987, a grand jury in Omaha indicted Brase for allegedly receiving by mail a videotape showing minors engaged in sexually explicit conduct. Eleven days later, Robert Brase drove his pickup truck to a seldom-used county road nine miles from Shelby and shot himself. Brase was one of four persons indicted in the government sting operation to commit suicide.

Case 4: The “Significant Injury Test”

Due to the high numbers of court cases from prisonsers regarding indecent treatment the Fifth Circuit (part of the legal system dealing with court cases regarding prisoners) adopted a significant injury” test which stated that as a docket control measure it would only deliberate on cases where there was permanent injury or one requiring hospitalisation.

While the significant injury requirement may assist the Fifth Circuit in controlling its caseload, it also has the effect, as the United States pointed out in its amicus brief, of allowing torture, so long as it leaves no lasting marks. For example, it would permit the use of the “Tucker Telephone,” a hand-cranked device that was used in Arkansas prisons in the 1960s to administer electrical shocks to sensitive parts of the body. So long as the resulting injuries were neither permanent nor required hospitalization, prisoners would be fair game under the Fifth Circuit’s test.

Case 5: The Kelly Michaels Case
Kelly Michaels worked at a day care center in New Jersey. On a visit to a doctor’s office one day, one of the children at the center said, as his temperature was being taken rectally, “that’s what my teacher does.” Soon the boy’s teacher, Kelly Michaels, found herself the subject of a criminal investigation.

Investigators repeatedly interviewed three and four-year-olds, suggesting through their graphic and disturbing questions that the children had been sexually molested. The suggestions finally worked: children who initially denied that they were abused in any way finally said that they had been. Children try hard to find answers that please adults. One child said that Michaels “made us eat boiled babies,” another said that “she put a sword in my rectum,” and a third said that she “played piano naked.”

Kelly Michaels was charged with sexually abusing twenty children. Parents wearing “Believe the Children” buttons packed the courtroom for the trial. Journalists played the new daycare horror story for all it was worth. A jury convicted Michaels. She spent the next seven years of her life in prison.

The trouble was Kelly Michaels was 100% innocent.

Third of May, 1808

Reducing the Amount of Evil

Evil won’t go away. We can, however, reduce the frequency and severity of its occurrence.

Empathy: The Enemy of Evil

Empathy is an “act of great sophistication” necessitating the imagination of the beginning, middle, and possible end of another human being. It has variously been described as a “capacity,” a “behaviour,” a “mode of observation,” and as “an information-gathering activity.” Websters International Dictionary defines empathy as “the capacity for participating in or vicariously experiencing another’s feelings.”

Researchers believe that empathy is developed at an early age through the repeated pairing of a child’s feelings with the feelings of caregivers. The capacity can be further developed throughout childhood. In his 1995 book Emotional Intelligence, Daniel Goleman identifies empathy as one of the five “domains” of emotional intelligence. He looks forward to the day that “empathy will hold as valued a place in the curriculum as algebra.”

Empathy jars us out of thoughtlessness and forces us to consider the human consequences of our actions. It causes remorse. It is the great enemy of evil.

Empathy levels vary between individuals and between cultures. Empathy levels are determined in part by genetics and are in part a function of culture. Measured levels of empathy, according to anthropologist Ronald Cohen, are highest in North America and Europe. Lowest empathy levels are reported in regions with loose family structures, large family size, low levels of affluence, and high child mortality rates–factors that reduce opportunities for (or discourage) close parent-child bonding.

In general, people empathise most readily with persons whom they share common characteristics. (Some writers have identified empathy as the “source of racism” because of evidence suggesting that people have higher levels of empathy for others of the same race or ethnicity.) Literature, film, art, and good education are capable of deepening and extending outward–and that’s the key–the reach of our empathy as they help us understand our common humanity.

Increasing levels of empathy is one tool for fighting evil, but there are others as well.

Ways of reducing the amount of Evil

1. Promote tolerance through free speech.
Protecting the speech we hate makes us more tolerant people in general–and tolerant people are less inclined to develop the “us versus them” mentality that is often associated with evil.

2. Pay attention to consequences.
Easier said than done, but a constant focus on the human consequences of decisions–a thoughtfulness–is the most important key to avoiding evil.

3. Reduce career incentives that lead to an underweighing of human consequences.
For example, prosecutors should be rewarded based on how well they serve justice, not on their won-loss records.

4. Facilitate interaction between legal decision makers and the persons affected by their decisions.
The more interaction that occurs, the greater the opportunities for empathy to develop and for the human consequences of decisions to be fully weighed. Expand the discretion to be lenient.

5. Facilitate the development of empathy in homes and in schools.
Promote strong families and encourage new programs in schools to develop the pragmatic art of living well.

6. Choose heroes wisely.
Hold up those who have served justice, not those who have achieved fame or financial success.

7. Maintain a dogmatic belief in objective value.
The central values of western civilisation–mercy, truth telling, respect for parents and elders, duties to children, justice, equality, magnanimity, reverence for life–should be accepted, not questioned.

TED TALK : Success is a continuous journey

Richard mentions these as the main points for success

• Passion
• Work
• Focus
• Push
• Ideas
• Improve
• Serve
• Persist

http://www.ted.com/talks/richard_st_john_success_is_a_continuous_journey.html