Friday, December 26, 2003

Howard Dean An interesting sort of take-back-America-for-the-people (sounds like democracy, doesn't it?) is that of Howard Dean. It's not that I agree with everything Dean has to say, but I sure like how he's going about saying it and how he's garnering support. 12:50:50 PM    comment []

More on Dave Winer Dave was one of the early programmers working on outliners. Outliners, or a formal method of hierarchical organization, is the way the Mac OS or Windows let's us find documents and applications on our computers. Certainly Dave can explain it better than I can. See his piece on outliners. Sister Mary Something-or-Other made me do outlines back in elementary school. I hated them! Now I see them as much more useful. I used Dave's outlining software More to put together in about 15 minutes a presentation with overheads on diagnosing and treating foster children. Pretty incredible. Thanks Dave. --John 9:18:59 AM    comment []

Boxing Day, 12/26 Ten years or so ago my parents took my son and I to the Bahamas on the 26th of December, Boxing Day. I heard the day got its name from folks giving each other presents--apparently in boxes--on the day after Christmas. Martin Seligman, past president of the American Psychological Association (APA) and the person responsible for the term "learned helplessness" in the study of depression, has now taken a more upbeat approach to the field of mental health. He calls the goal "authentic happiness" and sees it as part of "positive psychology." See his site for more information and several online tests--a nice shift from the man who spent 30 years studying depression! On Boxing Day I think of it as his gift to us. I've been thinking in recent weeks how my education and experience in mental health over the past decade has been geared to what's wrong and what we can't change. I've been shifting my own emphasis back to what's right and what we can accomplish. Thanks, Dr. Seligman, for changing your approach to "positive psychology." --John 8:58:17 AM    comment []

Knowledge Management David Gurteen does what he call's "knowledge management." Very interesting. David's site gave me the link (I lost) to Dave Winer's Userland which I used to access year's ago because of the useful material there. Dave was very involved in the development of outliners which in some respects gives us the ability to organize our computers, web sites and forms of communication such as papers. --John 5:12:48 AM    comment []

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