My QOTD

Google'd this and couldn't find it, so I hereby lay claim to coining the following phrase:

"Successful organizations start with people, and end with management."

Pun *intended*. :)

Things I Think God is Teaching Me Right Now

1. He can be trusted to provide for me and my loved ones; I cannot.
2. He is the source of joy and peace; my circumstances are not.

Christian Pole Positions

1. Cloaking a judgemental spirit in the guise of concern for God's holiness.
2. Turning a blind eye to sin for the purpose of being loving.

In my experience, almost all Christians will naturally fall into one of the two above camps. But the two greatest commandments help us in our battle against these nature tendencies.

Loving our neighbor restrains our judgemental attitudes and creates a desire to extend grace, while love of God reminds us how he has loved and forgiven us.

Likewise, if we love our neighbor, we will certainly not, by our silence, implicitly call the evil they are doing "good" and thereby encourage them to incur more judgement from God (and yeah, God is gonna judge you - even those of us who he won't ultimately condemn). And of course, loving God creates a humble zeal for his holiness.

Authenticity

Authenticity is touted greatly these days, even (or especially) in Christian circles. I wonder if the folks doing the touting know of this word's history within existentialist thought? I also wonder if Christians are confused about the meaning of the term and just simply think of it as a synonym for sincerity, which *is* a Christian virtue?

Random House defines sincere as "free of deceit, hypocrisy, or falseness; earnest". But authenticity is defined as "not false or copied; genuine; real". While the absence of falseness is common to the meaning of both words, I think there's a subtle but important difference between the two. Sincerity implies moral conformity, e.g. "I am sincere in making this statement". Authenticity connotes "I am what I am portraying."

To which I say, "What if you're an authentic Jerk?"

Happiness and Joy

I could be wrong, but it occurs to me that happiness is the intersection of positive expectation and actual experience, while joy is the submission of all expectation to Ultimate reality.

Thoughts Shared with Market Research Firm

One of the market research firms that covers the information industry (OK, the only one that does) sent out a pricing survey today and, among other things, asked for what an ideal content license/contract might look like. Here were some of my thoughts:

1) Content clearly priced per unit (e.g. per full text document) for easy comparison to other vendors and providers.

2) Volume discounts increasing in logical increments until "enterprise" access - i.e. unlimited across an organization - is reached.

3) No "evergreen" contracts designed to "trick" customers into renewing.

4) Clear, yet unobtrusive watermarking of every fulltext download with the following information:

"'Vendor/Platform Name' Content Provided by 'Sponsoring Library's Name'. Licensed for use by 'User Name' of 'Org Name' on 'Date'. Distribution to non-licensed individuals prohibited by law. Your colleagues may access a licensed copy of this document at 'OpenURL Link to Document'.

This would a) Help eliminate copyright and licensing violations related to electronic subscriptions, b) Remind executive sponsors and consumers of content that it isn't 'free', c) Reduce the need for vendors to hedge their positions by baking-in 'X' amount of unauthorized usage into their pricing models, d) Eliminate the need for expensive DRM schemes which frustrate sponsors and content consumers.

Certainly not an exhaustive list, but I think these changes would make a big difference...