I wanted to check and see if you're still willing to assist with Project PM. Although it was clear from your e-mail, and particularly your choices of anecdotes, that you're considerably put off by my thinking regarding what I expect (and hope) to happen over the next few decades and how Project PM and similar efforts can assist in bringing it about, I don't know the extent of your objections. My best guest is that you're disinclined to work with me further. If that's the case, I have a request - would you explain your objection more specifically, either by phone or e-mail, and give me a chance to try to convince you to continue with us?
Although I have a number of people who are willing to serve in the roles that we discussed, I'd prefer to have you doing so. For one thing, you were particularly enthusiastic about our goals and seemed particularly interested in the manner in which the blogger network is specifically designed to achieve some of the more specific of these, and thus are particularly likely to contribute new ideas both big and small.
More importantly, the fact that you've already objected this strongly to what you apparently see as a crucial flaw in my thinking shows you to be particularly inclined to go with your own determinations. That makes you potentially very useful to me as an advisor and similarly useful to the project itself were you to serve on the legislative network. Hopefully, pretty much everyone who joins will be an independent thinker to some unusually great extent, but even so, many may be inclined to agree with me on most things simply because they've already made such determinations or because I'm able to convince them that my view is reasonable. I maintain regular contacts with several of my politic enemies - conservatives of various sorts, mostly - because adversarial criticism can be very valuable, particularly on those rare occasions when it happens to be correct; I was able run a correction recently and thus keep my readers better-informed than most simply because I was alerted to a new development by one of the most intellectually dishonest and fascist-by-sentiment of popular warbloggers, and the development happened to be both relevant and accurate.
Having said all of that, I think I have a reasonably firm understanding of your objection, and likewise think that I could convince you to carry on with Project PM in spite of it - and, of course, you'll have the chance on this occasion and forever after to convince me that I'm wrong or silly or akin to a bunch of self-important anarchists of the sort you've come across or whatever your exact position is on this. At any rate, I would greatly appreciate it if you were to discuss it with me. You certainly don't owe me the chance to try to convince you of anything, but as you acknowledge the importance of what we're trying to do, certainly it would be worth a few minutes more of your time to make sure that you're skipping the chance to help for the right reasons.
All in all, I'm very intent on having you work with me, and would like a chance to convince you to do so.
Groovy. I wouldn't need you to do anything of a more clerical nature than this stuff, and don't worry about getting it incredibly organized or anything; I mainly just wanted to get all of these messages out of my inbox and get everyone's name, contact info, and skill sets all jotted down in one place for now.
Thanks,
Barrett Brown
Brooklyn, NY
512-560-2302
On Fri, Apr 9, 2010 at 11:13 PM, Jacqueline Plavier <JPlavier@msn.com> wrote:
Hi, Barrett -
No one's called me Jac in twenty years. Just don't call me Jackie. I'll answer to almost anything else.
I'm just confirming that I got the emails and I'll see if I can set-up some sort of organizational system.
You asked about skills earlier and I thought of a couple of things that you might want to know. I'm not really good at design. I'm a fine artist who paints mainly nudes. My knowledge of anatomy is quite solid. Anyone who experiences seizures while viewing genitalia should use caution if he or she googles my name. In architecture school I struggled in the design courses but had the best grade in the structures class. I can use many of the common graphics programs, so if you need something in a pinch I can probably do it, but graphic skills are common and many people are better at them than I.
Natively, I'm strong in spatial abilities, math and that sort of thing. In terms of experience, I'm strong on language skills. I've taught English abroad and my French is very good. I've taken university level classes at Laval, a French speaking university. They were the regular classes in art history, math and physics, not classes for people learning French. I've helped French speaking academics put their papers in English. Unfortunately, I'm not good enough to do English to French translation.
I'm really, really weak in clerical skills. You need to know this.
Lately, I've been looking in to returning to school for a second bachelor's in computer science/math.
I've taken classes in drawing comics, although nothing I've drawn has ever been published.
In most contexts I'd mention that I write well, but that's probably redundant in this case.
In order to get by, I've done a lot of things: interior decoration, surface decoration, trompe l'oeil, drapery, grant writing, modeling. There are one or two other things I'll keep to myself for now, but you can say I've had a colorful life.