Thought That Came Unbidden

OK, I admit it: I’m a geek. It may not be making a big splash in the rest of the web world but I’m fascinated that Amazon.com would redesign their site with no notice or fanfare. It’s not the first time; they’ve done it before with the same eye toward navigational consolidation but it will be interesting to see how long this new design lasts. After putting so many options in front of people for so long (screenshot of the old site (will open a popup window)) I suspect that they’ve condensed too far.

Usability geeks of the world, unite!

…or does everyone who flips through The New Yorker looking for the cartoons without reading any of the articles feel like a pervert?

I’ve been thinking a lot about competence lately – what it means to be competent, and why it’s so important to me to be seen as competent.

In the U.S. the legal definition of competence in a criminal trial generally hinges on the answer to one very simple question: did the defendant understand the difference between right and wrong at the time the crime was committed? Growing out of this question is the implication that if the defendant could judge his or her action as right or wrong the defendant is capable of understanding that wrong actions have punitive ramifications. Competence in a working environment speaks more to the denotative definition of the word: able, fit, possessing specific skills. I don’t think, though, that even together these means meanings manage to express the connotative definition of the concept.

Many of the people most important to me place a high value on competence, but not just the simple flavor of competence that doing something like changing a light bulb evidences. Cleverness and the ability to see not just that the light bulb needs changing but why it would be better to use this type of light bulb versus that type of light bulb is highly prized. Being able to see through specious arguments to find the true root cause of a problem is a mental competition that my family has engaged for certainly my entire life. Smarter, faster, and better has always been the message as I grew up – and continues to be the message in professional and personal relationships – and it’s right in line with the family’s traditional motto.

Competence means not only being more highly skilled, but also confident in that skill. It means knowing you have the abilities to call upon at any time, and that you’ve tended to those abilities so that they are sharp and honed (or that you’re so “good” in the first place that you can call on a skill you haven’t used for a decade and still have it respond as if you’ve used it every single day). But even this definition, I’ve realized lately, doesn’t encompass what it truly means to be competent as an adult.

Yes, it’s being able, having the ability to do things and make judgments, but competence is more than that. It’s also being able to judge when you, having the ability to do something, should stand back and let someone who is struggling with a task complete that task himself and when you should offer your assistance.

Basic competence – the acquisition of skills – seems like such a simple thing, doesn’t it? So why then, is it so hard to achieve? Why is it that Americans have moved from rewarding achievement into a model where prizes are given simply for showing up?

Got a phone call from my friend C. yesterday (was so good to hear from her!) and during our chat she told me she was visiting some friends of hers who had heard of me.

Do what now?

Turns out these friends of hers read in one of the fan fiction realms in which I write (yes, I write fan fiction; it’s fun) and think I’m “a good writer.”

Always nice to hear something like that.

Of course, I don’t suppose I should be surprised by this. I mean, after all, I can get to Desmond Tutu in two and Demi Moore in three. The older I get the more convinced I am that there are only about 5,000 people in the world and they just keep moving around.

Maybe I’m paranoid, but am I the only one who thinks all of the furor over Newsweek’s recent retraction is a diversion?

In case you’ve been under a rock, in its issue dated May 9, Newsweek published a small piece in their “Periscope” section which stated that American guards at the detention camp at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba were using a number of extreme tactics to get terror suspects to reveal information, including, at one point, flushing a copy of the Qur’an down a toilet.

Do you notice the way everyone has seized on the religious infraction, has seized on the lack of respect for Islam that desecrating that faith’s holy book would evidence?

Do you notice the way everyone is ignoring that first part about the guards using extreme tactics to get terror suspects to talk?

Do you notice the way everyone is ignoring the fact that we’ve been holding people prisoner, some for going on three years now, without charging them with anything, cut off from communication with the rest of the world, including their legal counsel?

Maybe I’m paranoid. Or maybe, just maybe, the Emperor’s naked.

• BBC:
  • Newsweek withdraws Koran report
  • Press unmoved by Newsweek retraction
• New York Times:
  • Newsweek Retracts Account of Koran Abuse by U.S. Military (may require registration)
• Google News Search:
  • Sorted by relevance