Nappi Sight

The two-party winner-take-all nature of the american political system makes the stakes unnecessarily high.  When a loss means you’re party is shut out of executive power entirely for four years, and it doesn’t matter whether you lose by only one vote, or get no votes at all, the stakes are high. The prospect of no power, no influence, no seat at the table, no agenda advanced, humiliation and ostracism amps up the pressure to win at all costs.  This election demonstrated this so clearly. The republican party was destroyed. A week ago, the Republican party as we know it was destroyed. There were to be massive recriminations, soul searching, blame and finger pointing.  They were headed for final defeat once and for all.  No wait, the democratic party was destroyed. This week, the Democratic party was decimated. Its now lost, leaderless, with less power than they’ve ever had.  There needs to be recriminations, soul searching, blame and finger pointing. They have been devastatingly an

This is a strange, strange election. Its always risky to talk about politics, but we are witnessing a national derangement, so I might as well act deranged. I’ve long hated political false equivalence, and I’ve essentially given up on the media as having any capability of providing objective information, performing deep and thorough analysis or acting with integrity.  I find pretty much any mainstream news outlet to be purveyors of gossip, shallow ‘facts’ and sensationalism.  I get my news primarily from those that mock that news (if I pay attention at all).  We live in an era where every election is a 50/50 toss up.  For as long as I could vote, it hasn’t seemed to matter who the presidential candidates are. We either love our candidates straight down the middle or we hate each others candidates straight down the middle.  And you might have been able to make a compelling argument that that is because of party platform differences, the electoral college, the economy or some version o

Batman vs Superman was a disappointment.  The best part of the movie was the trailer for Captain America: Civil War.  The movie was dull, retelling again the Batman origin story. It took forever to get anywhere.  The character motivations were unclear.  Why was Batman so angry, and Superman such a sad sack?  Even worse than that, was the fact that the entire movie took place in the dark and the action scenes were so close-up that you couldn’t even follow it.  I’m not even sure what the bat mobile looked like. By contrast, I just rewatched Captain America: The Winter Soldier.  That movie was cool, fun, humorous, and took place in daylight.  The audience could actually see the action.  There’s definitely a huge difference in tone between the Marvel movies, that took seemingly dull characters like Cap and Thor and made good movies, and the joyless Dawn of Justice.  If they can’t make Batman and Superman interesting, I’m not sure there’s much hope for Aquaman.

One point Sam Harris has made many times is to discredit the notion that religious adherents don’t really believe what they say they believe.  I’m definitely guilty of that misconception, I’ve always felt that nobody actually believes their religious doctrines, not really.  There may be elements and features of the belief system that are believed, and they might enjoy wishing some of it were real. But in their heart of hearts, everyone doubts. Sam has repeatedly hammered home that that is simply wrong.  There are true believers and they can be dangerous.  A true belief in paradise is what allows for suicide bombers. While watching Vikings and the Last Kingdom , I have noticed how much the clash of civilizations in those shows is about the clash of religions.  The characters are constantly tormented trying to discern the desire of their particular gods and how to conduct themselves so as not to upset them, or win their favor.  Each character interprets experiences in the context of th

I finally watched Race to nowhere now that its available on Netflix. I had been interested in it since it came out but for some reason it was hard to locate.  I’m always interested in criticisms of the American education system which I think puts the wrong emphasis on obedience and busy work. So I was sympathetic to the documentaries main thrust, homework is excessive and of limited educational value.  However, the movie was essentially anecdotal.  It tells the stories of few families, and blames school work on suicide and mental breakdowns of children. It also seems mostly localized to fairly uniform California communities.  There was one reference to scientific evidence that suggests that after approximately an hour homework efficacy drops.  Other than that, there was virtually no scientific or statistical evidence to support their claims.  No evidence correlating homework and overscheduling and suicide or mental health issues.  No scientific studies comparing different educational

Watching Aliens the other day reminded me of how futuristic video conferencing was at one point in science fiction.  It seemed reasonable that when the technology became available it would be the predominant means of communication.  Yet texting (and messaging, and tweeting) seem way more popular. It says something about human nature that we prefer terse, disconnected, asynchronous communication over rich real-time interaction.  Maybe its one way that we’re holding on to our eroding privacy.  We’re only revealing the bare minimum information required in order to communicate.  When I send a text you don’t know where I am, how I’m dressed, who I’m with, my facial expression, my tone of voice, anything really.  Its also one way. I just get to say my part, without reaction or interruption. But I guess the exchange of brief cryptic textual utterances lacked enough cinematographic impact to find their way into the imagination sci-fi movie makers.

Short TED talk, which identifies the root cause of lost productivity and employee disengagement, corporate complicatedness. yves morieux as work gets more complex 6 rules to simplify

I recently watched the first three seasons of Vikings .  It was referred to me by a friend who also watched and loved Sons of Anarchy.  I have to give him credit in that he sold it to me based on the similiarity between Jax and Ragnar.  There is definitely something very similiar about the two shows and main characters.  Vikings is sort of like medieval SOA, though less silly than SOA.  I’ve also watched part of The Last Kingdom , which is kind of the flipside of Vikings in roughly the same time period.  The Last Kingdom isn’t bad, but the characters are more compelling and story lines more interesting in Vikings.  I’m not a fan of shows where there are no likeable characters, and The Last Kingdom is shaping to be like Breaking Bad in that way. Nobody to root for. I’ve also recently watched Marco Polo , another historically based show.  The three of them are periods and cultures I knew little about going in, so they are at least as interesting because of the historical context as th

When I saw Strengths based Parenting recently published, it reminded me of a post I had written but never published back in 2013.  So here it is: There’s a lot of literature, career advice, self help and other sources that suggest in order to improve you need to identify weaknesses and work on them.  In fact, in most corporate environments there’s a whole review processes geared toward identifying weakness and developing plans for overcoming them.  I’ve always had mixed feelings about this emphasis on overcoming deficiencies.  If you are trying to achieve a certain goal and lack the skill to get there, then addressing those shortcomings makes sense.   But if your weakness is in an area you aren’t interested in and not in the path toward a goal you do care about, then it doesn’t make much sense to invest the time to improve.  And frankly you probably won’t be that motivated to improve anyway. A while back I did some reading by Gallup , specifically the Strengths Finder , and took their