Nathan Key

I'm in the middle of interviewing for some professional positions this week and so instead of my usual rants about PP&R, I wanted to share the transcript of a conversation I shared with a blog site this morning. I'm not sure when they're actually going to post this, so I'll just put it up here for you to read and link to it later when they post it...

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Total Blog Network: So, what's the deal with your blog?

Nathan Key: My blog primarily focuses on topics that have some sort intersection between philosophy, politics, and religion. I usually create a provocative topic, weave my own opinion within it, and then ask some questions to generate discussion.

TBN: A lot of people "blog with a purpose." What are you trying to accomplish?

NK: I think there's really three main reasons I blog. The first is because I'm an extrovert which means that I need to externalize my thoughts in order to really think through them. The public nature of a blog is a great forum for that so I don't drive my wife crazy.The second reason is because I like to engage other minds. I find that blogging attracts response (especially when it's done provocatively) and thus, I've been able to read through the comments of others and continually keep my own opinions in check through the input of others. Third, I think blogging is a great way to hone my writing/critical thinking skills. I try to write something every weekday (Mon-Fri) so that I actively engage that balance between creative and analytical thinking which is necessary for writers to wrestle with.

TBN: You're blogging on your own site now rather than one of the blog generators like wordpress or blogspot. Why is that?

NK: I used livejournal for a while and it was a great experience, but I was a little disappointed when advertising began to pop up on my site. So, eventually I moved the blog over to my personal website where I house some short stories and essays I've written. It was a hard move because while it's nice to have everything all in one place, I had a three year history with livejournal, and you feel like you're betraying a friend when you abandon a site.

TBN: What do you blog about most?

NK: It depends on what I'm thinking through. I try to limit my blogs to something related to philosophy, politics, and religion. Obviously this past year (2007) it leaned a little more political because of the Presidential elections, but I try to keep a good balance between all three topics.

TBN: What are the worst blogs out there?

NK: Blogs that aren't really blogs make me angry. Lately, I've seen a few that are actually money-making scams made to look like blogs. I think it's deceptive and it brings down the whole industry.

TBN: What are the top 5 tips you'd share with a new blogger?

NK: First, stick to a main topic. Blogs that are about "everything" usually aren't about "anything" and if you decide to write about everything under the sun, you'll only find readers who happen to like your take on life (basically, that limits it to your mom).

Second, try to be consistent. I learned this from reading webcomics. The ones that updated predictably M-W-F or T-Th or once a week I'd follow because I learned when they were going to update and began looking forward to a new comic. The ones that updated randomly or rarely- I usually dropped because I never knew when the next update was coming and I eventually stopped checking back.

Third, promote RSS/e-mail feeds and teach others how to use feed-readers. When someone is using a feed reader or subscribes to your blog through e-mail, they'll probably keep coming back to your blog.

Fourth, if the title isn't interesting, no one's going to read the post. Keep the title relevant, but also provocative.

Fifth, don't expect other people to read your blog if you're not reading other people's blogs. Get out there and read posts from people who write about the same (or similar) things that you do. Comment on their blog and link back to your own. It's a great way to make friends (and enemies) and also hone your own ideals.

TBN: What are some things you would NEVER blog about?

NK: I don't know that I'd limit myself by saying that I'd NEVER blog about something- but as I've gotten further and further into my career as a blogger I write less and less "Dear Diary" type things. I don't think most people really care about what I did today, so I rarely write about everyday things unless they directly tie-in to something I'm learning about philosophy, politics, and religion.

TBN: A lot of people start blogging for the purpose of making money. Are you making money by blogging?

NK: I started blogging before I knew you could "make money" blogging, so I didn't really get into it because of the money aspect. However, even though I don't put ads on my blog in order to make money, I think blogging has made me a better writer & thinker. And because I'm better at both of those, it's also made me more valuable to organizations who need writers and thinkers- so in a sense I'm making money from blogging because it's a developmental piece to my own skills and abilities.

TBN: What mistakes have you made that you could warn others about?

NK: In my early days as a blogger, I had absolutely no direction. I eventually learned to limit myself to topics I knew about rather than trying to blog about my personal life or about random things that no one cared about.

TBN: OK, one final question- they say that the best way for writers to start the day is with a good breakfast, what do you think?

NK: Who is "They?" Well, I guess I agree. I had Golden Grahams and a cup of coffee this morning, and I can't think of what I'd be like without some sort of recharge like that.

I'm all about democracy, so here's a chance to participate with me!

I put up a new header this morning with mixed results... I'm using the pen and ink and scribbles because it says WRITER to me, but apparently some people think the one I have up right now is a little too FRANK MILLER / SIN CITY / Friday the 13th. I'm open to change, so here are some additional mock-ups for your consideration.

Vote for your favorite by leaving a comment.

This is going to be a short post today because I spent most of the morning creating a new graphical header for my website (do you like it?).

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Earlier this week, I was asking around for potential blog topics and one of my Facebook friends suggested '2012.' For some reason I drew a blank, wondering if he meant the movie 2010: The Year We Make Contact. Yes, I'm a nerd. I automatically assume that everyone is thinking in Sci-Fi terms, shoot me. Soon I realized that he really meant the year of the next US Presidential Election and I couldn't help but wonder if maybe this guy wasn't happy with Obama's ascent to the White House?

Needless to say, I thought about it over the past couple of days and I realized that term limits, and elections are strangely tied to faith and hope. This guy is really looking forward to 2012 because it's a do-over. He gets another chance to cast his vote and change the system to something more in line with what he wants.

Whether we like the person in office or not, since we don't elect Senators, Governors, Representatives, and Presidents for life, we have an innate understanding (at least in this country) that power and influence are temporary. That means that we can always have faith and hope that things will get better- we can always elect someone else in a few years. There's always another chance to make a difference and change the course of history.

What about you..

Do you like term limits?

Whether you voted for Obama or not, are you looking forward to 2012 when you can cast another ballot?

Are you filled with a bit of hope that power is temporary?

Prelude: When I was in elementary school, I can recall some horror stories that were related to me by well-meaning adults who were concerned about the violence and satanic influence of Role Playing Games. They were certain that anyone who threw the 12 sided die was going to end up on a murder streak one day because they were giving their soul to the Devil.

15 years passed and then there was a new enemy: Violent Video Games

* * *

The first game I played with any sort of violent content (other than Super Mario Bros where Mario would squash evil turtles and spit fireballs at Koopas) was Wolfenstein 3D. It gave me headaches because the motion on the screen was a little jumpy and my eyes hurt because I often forgot to blink. Now, it was a really innovative game when it came out, but it almost seems arcane compared to the sort of graphic generators gaming developers are using to create hits like Halo and Call of Duty.

And game play wasn't nearly as popular as it is today. I think there were only a handful of other kids in my class who had a PC and maybe a handful more who had an NES (or a SNES). Gaming wasn't something that was "cool." It was something that the socially awkward gravitated toward. The kind of kids who were verbally abused and teased by all the other kids in school.

So, to pin violence in kids directly on violence in video games may have been a bit of a stretch 10-20 years ago when I was growing up. It may have been violent video games that caused Columbine and other school shootings- but it could have been that these kids had suppressed anger issues from years of abuse by other children and suddenly they snapped.

Since the video game industry is only about 30 years old, there's hasn't been an awful lot of research on the effects of gaming, but limited studied have shown that non-violent video games are actually a positive influence on children (assuming that video game play is restricted to a few hours per week).

Positives include:
- Introduction to computer technology.
- Practice in following directions.
- Practice in problem solving and logic.
- Practice in use of fine motor and spatial skills.

Violent video gaming, however, is another story. Early studies are showing that violent games really do have an impact on aggressive tendencies. In fact, one study I found showed that in adolescent boys, the least aggressive gamers who play violent video game are more prone to violent aggression than the most aggressive boys who don't play any video games.

(The only flaw I find in the study is that there's a possibility that those with a predisposition to aggression may be the ones who are also playing video games, but the fact remains that whether it's descriptive or prescriptive- violent video games are at the very least associated with violence if not an agent of aggravating violent tendencies.)

There's some good news about violent video games, however. The gaming industry has been rather quick to respond to early research and they put a rating system in place even before the FCC got involved after the Columbine Shootings. The industry realized that they would have to self regulate or the government would step in and "help" them regulate their material. So they came up with a rating system (E, for everyone; T, for teen; M, for mature; etc.) and refuse to sell games with violent content to minors. Secret shoppers have found that they are compliant with their own regulations about 80% of the time which means that they're pretty close to the compliance percentages among tobacco, alcohol, and firearms (all of which have state or federal regulations regarding age).

That said, my question for today is this:

Does the Gaming Community (violent video games in particular) need a government regulator / watchdog system to ensure that minors are not purchasing mature content?

Feel free to discuss.

"Sometimes I think the surest sign that intelligent life exists elsewhere in the universe is that none of it has tried to contact us."
- Calvin (from "The Indispensable Calvin and Hobbes)

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OK, it's good to note that no government funds are currently going toward SETI (Search for Extra Terrestrial Intelligence), a project housed at the giant skyward pointing radio dish in Puerto Rico. But I wanted to put this Calvin and Hobbes quote up there because it pertains to space exploration and our interest in the skies.

Look, I love NASA.
I like watching shuttles take off here in Florida.
I'm glad that we have an astronaut program.

But I wish we'd stop spending money on it. I don't really think that we need to be funneling our national resources into shuttle launches and space races when we're in the middle of a financial crisis, multiple wars, infrastructure problems, and political corruption scandals that are leaving our country on the edge of bankruptcy.

I don't want the NASA guys to be out of work or anything, but I'm pretty sure the private sector should be the ones funding space exploration rather than the US government. I mean really- other than sending missiles into space for national defense purposes, there's not much that we can do up there that qualifies as a rational Federal Expenses. It's science experiments. It's peering into the wide open spaces of the universe to discover if there is some sort of life form out there.

It's science.

And though I don't want to slow science- since when is it the government's responsibility to fund science? Especially when there are other bills to pay.

Washington?
Please axe the space program. For now anyway.

Alan Moore is one of my favorite writers. He penned a bunch of my favorite comics and a movie based on his book WATCHMEN is about to be released into the theaters in a month.

Here's the film site: http://watchmenmovie.warnerbros.com/

I don't usually blog about comics or movies, but seeing as WATCHMEN is just about the most important comic in history (and also because it's super philosophical/political) I'm going to remind readers that they should either pick up a copy of WATCHMEN at their local bookstore or check out the film when it hits theaters.

Here's some viral marketing from YouTube:

This book/film is almost more relevant today than when it came out because we're living in a new age of Global Terrorism and we've been practically enslaved by the fascist "protections" that have been introduced with the Patriot Act and other fly by night legislation that's been enacted over the past eight years.

Good luck ending that, President Obama!

Here's one of the official trailers for the film. Enjoy!

This morning, President Obama will be mandating paycaps for CEO's who are taking bailout money. Obama told CNN the other day that these companies have "...got responsibilities not to live high on the hog..."

Opinion One

What a great move! Why in the world should a failing bank who are taking loans from the government be paying their top level executives more per year than the President of the United States of America? It seems only right that if they need bailouts and loans that they shouldn't be riding around in luxury and taking big salaries when the people who work for them are having their jobs cuts out from under them.

How can they sleep at night taking millions of dollars from a company that is bordering on bankruptcy? Where are their ethics?

It's about time Obama stepped in and curbed their greed.*

*note, this only applies to banks and corporations taking government funds- the rest of the businesses that are able to remain financially viable can pay whatever they want to their CEO (and rightfully so, for when you make money without federal assistance no one should tell you what to do).

Opinion Two

Does President Obama want to ruin these companies?!

Doesn't he understand that the companies who need to attract the best and brightest talent are the ones who are on the brink of failure? It's hard enough to recruit top leadership for a failing venture without salary caps- but who in their right mind is going to want to jump on a sinking ship and turn things around for little to no financial reward?

It's ludicrous to expect these businesses to be able to retain the sort of leadership they need for such a small amount of money.

Yes, it's true that $500,000 seems like a lot of money to those of us who won't make that over the course of the next 10 years, but in the CEO world that's nothing. It's almost an insult.

This is the worst move possible because it squashes the ability of these companies to recruit good leadership. In the end, bad leadership will ruin these companies faster than spending a few million on visionaries who have what it takes to make these companies profitable again.

What do YOU think?
1. If companies are taking public funds, should they place paycaps on their executive team?2. Does the President even have the right to impose paycaps?3. Do paycaps make things fair, or will they make it harder to become financially viable?

"You have to have your story in line so that people will say, 'That's interesting and I need you for my company.' " - Eric Bell (job hunter)

::borrowed from CNN.com::

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One thing that I love about the postmodern approach to business is that companies are becoming less and less interested in the facts and figures that you bring to an interview and more intrigued by the story you're in. For much of this century, which perhaps marks the heights of modernism, the best resume with the most data about performance increases and numbers was the one who got the job.

Some typical interview questions would have been:
How many sales did you bring in for company x? How many people did you manage? Are you familiar with the _______ style of management? What's your six sigma belt? How far did you go with your education?

These days, however, most employers are more interested in your work narrative. They want to know if the story you're in matches up with their own organization. They're concentrating on your behaviors rather than your numbers.

They now ask questions such as:
Tell me about a time when you had to build rapport with someone under difficult circumstances? Tell me about a time when you disagreed with a decision that was made by a manager or supervisor? What do you do to ensure that your time is managed well? What sort of personal development have you done over the past year?

What does this mean for interviewees?

It means learning a different sort of skill set when it comes time for an interview. It means being able to take the facts and figures and weave them into tales of your work life and your personal life. It means approaching each question with a story that captivates and intrigues the interviewers. It means learning to put the human narrative and basic human truths into their experience and skills. The one who is able to do so is the one who is going to get the job.

Let's face it, companies aren't simply looking for numbers and figures any longer. They're looking for someone who is going to be a integral part of where the organization is headed- someone whose story matches with the story they're in.

This meme is really interesting, but I wanted to explore it through questions rather than through my own expressed thoughts. The premise is to make your own photo like one of the artist inspired works regarding President Obama. But the result is that I've seen people who voted for Obama and people who voted against him creating these little things.

SO:

Does making your own Obamicon mean that you support him?
                                             -or-
Does it mean that you just like the style of his campaign poster?
                                             -or-
Does is mean that you merely want to follow the latest internet trend?
                                             -or-
Does it mean you want to capitalize on something cool / trendy?
                                          -or-
Does it mean that you simply have too much time on your hands?

Anyone want to take a stab at what you think this meme is all about? Why do YOU think so many people are creating these?