the life and times of Joshua Landis

Quit Coddling Your Kids

noreply@blogger.com (Joshua) — Mon, 09 Jun 2008 18:06:00 +0000

I read an article today from "The Art of Manliness" - actually most of their articles are a great slap in the face. Anyway this article was called "Quit Coddling Your Kids".

I know that I'm not a parent yet, but I found it to be something good to starting thinking about - especially this excerpt:

Such a problem exists because many young people have never had to earn the things they've enjoyed. They expect the good things in life to naturally flow into their lives

The whole fifth point is excellent:

5. Make them work for what they get

Many young people today are swimming in debt up to their ears. They feel entitled to the things it took their parents 30 years to acquire. Such a problem exists because many young people have never had to earn the things they’ve enjoyed. They expect the good things in life to naturally flow into their lives.

If children are not given responsibilities and work as a young age, it’s harder to instill the ethic when they’re older. You’re doing your child a great disservice if you buy every stinking thing they want. Sure, it’s easier to just buy them the $10.00 toy just to shut their tantrum up. But all you’re doing is conditioning them to the idea that if you whine enough, you’ll get what you want.

By encouraging your children to work for what they get, you’ll be teaching them valuable skills that they will carry with them the rest of their life. Not only will they develop an appreciation for work, they’ll learn valuable money management skills, responsibility, and initiative.

During the early 1900’s kids were working 60 hours a week in factories and coal mines. While it was a deplorable situation, it shows that kids are capable of taking on far greater tasks than parents today are willing to give them. They may no longer have to break slate, but they can at least clean the bathroom and mow the lawn.

I'm no advocate of child labor or child coal mining, but I think it's a good idea for a child to have some sort of responsibility. If someone is just given everything their whole lives and never earns a thing, then they will appreciate nothing.

The Gospel of Consumption

noreply@blogger.com (Joshua) — Tue, 06 May 2008 15:46:00 +0000

We can break that cycle by turning off our machines when they have created enough of what we need.

I read an amazing article on consumerism / social justice / democracy / economics this morning:
http://www.orionmagazine.org/index.php/articles/article/2962

Rather than realizing the enriched social life that Kellogg’s vision offered us, we have impoverished our human communities with a form of materialism that leaves us in relative isolation from family, friends, and neighbors. We simply don’t have time for them. Unlike our great-grandparents who passed the time, we spend it. An outside observer might conclude that we are in the grip of some strange curse, like a modern-day King Midas whose touch turns everything into a product built around a microchip.

New Addition

noreply@blogger.com (Joshua) — Mon, 21 Jan 2008 16:02:00 +0000

Behind the Desk

noreply@blogger.com (Joshua) — Wed, 28 Nov 2007 17:43:00 +0000

I saw this comic yesterday and thought of all these days behind the computer

(you can click it to enlarge and go to the wetherobots website)

The Adventure

noreply@blogger.com (Joshua) — Fri, 24 Aug 2007 14:49:00 +0000

You see things vacationing on a motorcycle in a way that is completely different from any other. In a car you’re always in a compartment, and because you’re used to it you don’t realize that through that car window everything you see is just more TV. You’re a passive observer and it is all moving by you boringly in a frame.

On a cycle the frame is gone. You’re completely in contact with it all. You’re in the scene, not just watching it anymore, and the sense of presence is overwhelming. That concrete whizzing by five inches below your foot is the real thing, the same stuff you walk on, it’s right there, so blurred you can’t focus on it, yet you can put your foot down and touch it anytime, and the whole thing, the whole experience, is never removed from immediate consciousness.

—Robert M. Pirsig (Robert M. Pirsig, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, 1974, HarperCollins Publishers Inc., New York)

All morning Pirsig’s words have been rolling through my thoughts as Pennsylvania’s early August winds blow over my body. The air is still crisp with the past evening’s rain, and at these speeds my denim jacket keeps me comfortable enough through the shade of the Valley Forge forest lines. I’ve never been one for highways, but inevitably the trees will subside and I’ll need to find a bridge out of this state. The Blue Route is a pleasant enough experience, but just as August is known as prime beach weather it’s also known as prime construction season. If only this was California and lane-splitting was legal, then the next two hours wouldn’t have to happen this way.

My left hand feels numb with the grab and release of the clutch, and my legs feel the weight of hovering inches above the pavement. The noon sun is now overhead and any chill that was left in the air has long since subsided to the heat. Two men in a beat up green pickup in the next lane start some superficial conversation. Their windows are down, and I hear old country music coming from the radio. Somehow I feel more of a connection to them than to the temperature controlled coffins full of people on cell phones.

In time the traffic subsides and rush of the New Jersey air is on my face and in my lungs again. The road it weather worn and I can feel the buckle of the pavement every few yards, and soon I can taste the salty bay breeze on my lips. There isn’t much to say about these roads that can be understood with reading. Everything feels different on the back of a motorcycle. I could stumble around to find the right words, but none would do justice to the actual experience.

The evening is spent Oceanside, but my mind remains on the road. When I’m not on the highway my thoughts are of the next adventure, and when I’m on the highway my thoughts are on the rest of the world. I have a sense of peace when all I have is time to think without the distraction of radios or conversation.

The morning sky looks ominous, but the trip home has to be made eventually. Within the first few minutes of the trip the sky starts spitting intermittent drops of rain, and within the hour the sky has opened wide. The next three hours become a blur of cold rain. Every bend in the road felt like the last, and my mind was too numb to think of anything more than the last 5 miles of the trip. Over and over again I play what the last leg of the trip would look like. I can feel myself getting out of these drenched clothes and into a warm shower. These thoughts play over thousands of times and seem to be all that keeps me going.

I can’t describe what those last 5 miles actually felt like – they were more euphoric than I ever could have imagined, and that warm shower…I don’t think anything ever felt so beautiful.

New Music

noreply@blogger.com (Joshua) — Thu, 16 Aug 2007 18:47:00 +0000

Oh the anticipation:
Bruce Springsteen's 'Magic' set for October 2 Release

Sammy

noreply@blogger.com (Joshua) — Wed, 31 Jan 2007 19:08:00 +0000

An addition

noreply@blogger.com (Joshua) — Mon, 13 Nov 2006 14:30:00 +0000

A Brief Discussion of RSS and Web Syndication

noreply@blogger.com (Joshua) — Mon, 07 Aug 2006 15:30:00 +0000

RSS is a three letter acronym that currently stands for Really Simple Syndication - you can read more about it from the Wikipedia.

Web feeds provide web content or summaries of web content together with links to the full versions of the content, and other metadata. RSS, in particular, delivers this information as an XML file called an RSS feed, webfeed, RSS stream, or RSS channel. In addition to facilitating syndication, web feeds allow a website's frequent readers to track updates on the site using an aggregator.

RSS makes reading blogs a lot easier. Lets say you read 12 different blogs. Well, each day you could check each of the 12 bog sites to see if there is a new post, or you could add the sites’ RSS files to an aggregator. With the second option each day you would check your reader and it would let you know which blogs have been updated since the last time you checked. The RSS file for each site is updated each time the site owner posts something new.

Certain sites (like Blogger, Livejournal) will create these files for you automatically. For example the rss file for my Blogger site is:

http://blog.jlandis.org/rss.xml

and most are stored as:

http://yourbloggername.blogger.com/rss.xml

You will notice that some sites have these images associated with their page:

Those picture indicate that the site has an RSS feed.

There are a number of aggregators available: google search can provide a nice list. I currently use Google Reader (I tend to like google, and I already use their GMAIL service).

Now, to confuse things even more some sites use ATOM syndication. You once again can read up on it, but basically it can does the same thing RSS, but with a slight variation.

Something new

noreply@blogger.com (Joshua) — Thu, 22 Jun 2006 20:10:00 +0000

Welcome to the reinvention of my blogging experience. Right now it may feel like fitted button down shirts and newly pressed pants, but that tends to come with the territory. My previous blog was disconnected, slightly juvenile, and overly melodramatic - generally in life when I make a change it is a stark one. In time this will become the worn blue jeans you wear every other day and the softest cotton shirt you’ve had for years. Maybe I took that analogy alittle too far, this is only the internet. I’ll try my best to avoid pretentious self-inflated garbage and just write my thoughts and experiences.

My favorite quote from Robert McAfee Brown always inspires me to write:

"I submit that beyond all rewards...we write because we want to change things. We write because we have this [conviction that we] can make a difference. The 'difference' may be a new perception of beauty, a new insight into self-understanding, a new experience of joy, or a decision to join the revolution"