The Great Divide
Recently, I wrote that nothing tells you more about a person than how they choose to divide people. Sometimes this is done on the basis on wealth, status, popularity, race, gender, choice of religion, or a variety of other factors. Usually it's a combination thereof. This might make people curious: how do I, personally, choose to divide people? This is a fair question; as much as I like to talk in the abstract on here...
On the Shame and Joy of Being a Male
"Though it cost all you have, get understanding." -Proverbs 4:7 I've spent the last couple of months trying to get to the heart of who I really am. This is a difficult journey for anyone. In this relatively short (albeit intense) period of time, I've come to a simple truth. The cornerstone of my own psychopathology is this: I'm ashamed to be a male. This has caused difficulty in my relationships. It's eloquent in its...
Women in Technology
This is a rallying cry you hear quite often: that we need more women to enter technology-related fields. I made a joke about this a couple of years ago on Twitter. Naturally, I was just being silly on there; I personally have no problem with more women entering the field...but pushing for women in tech, as an endgame, seems arbitrary, and can definitely be problematic in its own right. I recognize this as being a massive problem. Women...
Digital Undersharing
In the early days, when I first started writing on here, I believed that a blog was meant to be something impersonal. I tried to leave the focus on my ideas, to make the content of what I saying center stage, and only to refer to myself to the extent that it was able to help me in conveying my point. I modeled what I was doing after what I saw others doing. Most popular...
In Defense of Altruism
"Are you seeking great things for yourself? Do not seek them." -Jeremiah 45:5
"Birds of a feather flock together." -common proverb
"Don't say I didn't warn you." -Taylor Swift
The best argument against acting purely out of your own self-interest is simple; if that's who you choose to be, then you'll invariably be drawn to other people who share this characteristic. And ultimately, those people are not going to care about you.
Advice to High Schoolers
If you were to stick me on a pulpit in front of a multitude of kids in high school and let me speak to them for a couple of minutes, here's roughly what I would say: I'd like to talk about the one aspect of adulthood that affects just about everyone: employment. As much as you might dislike a lot of the work you're doing in your classes now, you're all smart enough to know...
Don't Know Much About History...So Don't Romanticize It
In middle school, I had a friend who absolutely hated the popular culture in the United States and the members of his own generation that had embraced it. In particular, he focused on the effect of music. This was in the middle of the 1990's, shortly after Kurt Cobain had decided to recuse his spirit from our world. He felt that the 1960's had been the ideal decade for our country, when the Beatles reigned...
Autism and the Human Spectrum
I learned earlier this week that today is Autism Awareness Day. This means that today, among other things, we're all encouraged to wear blue. Several global landmarks will be lit up by blue lighting. A couple of years ago, I traveled around the country to various cities to attend startup competitions. I wanted to get a sense of how the entrepreneurial culture varied from city to city around the United States, meet like-minded programmers and...
Redundancies
I received word from a former colleague yesterday that the company I just left about a month ago went through a round of layoffs. While this doesn't come as a complete surprise, that does little to lessen the emotional blow. I know that two people with whom I worked very closely for the past two years, people I greatly respect, got the axe. I decided to take my sabbatical for personal reasons, but I knew...
Chicken and Egg
"No one can come to the Father except through me." -Jesus, John 14:6
"No one can come to me unless the Father has enabled them." -Jesus, John 6:65
Christian scripture gives us an infinite loop. Next time someone asks me if I've accepted Jesus as my savior, I'll simply quip that I tried once, but it crashed my heart.