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gazette
Issue # 210 (03-17-2004)
Get Over it ? |
| Johnny's Ramblings |
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That was a quick month, wasn't it? A lot has gone on, both online and off in the last 30 days or so that bear some discussion. Let me start rambling right away on a pretty polarizing issue... the conservatives among you refer to this as "The Defense of Marriage Amendment," while those on the other side of the political spectrum are using the phrase "Banning Gay Marriages act of 2004." Don't be frightened, I don't want to talk about this issue directly (well, I do... but I won't...). Rather, I want to use this as an example to illustrate a few points. This is a pretty hot topic here in the United States right now, and very much like abortion, capital punishment, and who really won the 2000 election, there is no middle ground at all. You're either all the way for it, or all the way against it. Can you think of anything on the Internet that bears the same sort of outright "Yay or Nay" attitude from people? Should SPAM be illegal, or should it be simply another cog (albeit annoying) in the economic machine? Do pop-up windows really cost money, or are they, too, just the wheels of commerce in (constant) motion? Is SEO, on any level, really ethical? Is your HTML actually your property or is it open source? I'm sure that you, just like me, had answers to those questions before you even finished reading them. I had the same immediate reaction when the whole gay marriage thing first hit the news a few weeks ago. I had a preformed opinion, and what I saw simply confirmed it for me. But, the debate didn't die, and suddenly the issue was not as cut and dry as I originally figured it to be. In fact, the public debate spurred an internal debate, which is quite a change for someone as hard-headed as I usually am. I wasn't so sure at first if the change was a welcome one or not, but I decided to go with it, and see where it took me.
I found that in examining the marriage issue, I was given reason to re-examine my belief system, to both challenge and reaffirm my faith, and to do some serious interspection. What's a right and what's a privilege? What's right and what's wrong? Fair or not? Wow! I gave myself the chance to take a step back and really look at the issue top to bottom, and put myself in the shoes of all the parties involved... the mayor, the people wanting to be married, the priests that are going nuts, the President and the wanna-be. Everyone's saying what they think they ought to, but none of them really hit the heart of the matter. After a few weeks of thinking about it, I did. No, I'm not going to share my findings with you, that's not the purpose of this article. What's important, is that I gave myself the chance to disagree with myself, and really examine the issue without blinders on. Regardless of what I discovered in that time, the important thing is that I did discover something. I encourage you, and challenge you, to do the same. Not with the marriage issue, but in everything that you have to deal with (such as the questions I asked earlier). Take a step back and really examine your current opinion, and for grins, challenge yourself a minute and play some devil's advocate. You might not change your mind, but you'll have a much greater appreciation for the issue as a whole, and maybe, just maybe, you'll approach your SEO and design work with the related concerns of both the search engines and your clients involved in your process, and not just your bottom line. |
Read the Johnny's Ramblings section from the Last Issue or in the Following Issue
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