Ethical Investing

I had a thought about ethical investing. Instead of investing in ethical companies, perhaps one could turn over ones proxy votes to an ethical organisation, who would use this conferred power to try to bring about more ethical behaviours within existing companies.

Big companies often divide and conquer -- large share blocks owned by principal stakeholders rule the day, while smaller investors are divided and unheard. Unifying minority opinions through an ethical proxy could improve their power greatly.

Cheers,
-MP

Tony Abbott ... conservative, pro-life, and unexpectedly reasonable interfaith ...

I'm just going to quote.

"It can be a shock to find calls for sharia law in Australian places of worship.

"Still, it would be a big mistake to dismiss this as 'un-Australian' rather than to begin the kind of engagement that eventually made Christianity less bloody.

"Indeed, talking to the more hardline Muslims, rather than ostracising them or shouting them down, could be one of the greatest services Australia can render to the wider world.

"Why shouldn't the Muslim version of the Enlightenment and an Islamic doctrine of the separation of church and state be fostered in Australia? Especially as the task is so urgent."

I couldn't have said it better myself.

Cheers,
-MP

Attention

It has come to my attention that "Attention" is currently being overloaded with a new meaning. One of my sometimes-readers, Alex Barnett, also works in software and is interested in this thing he calls Attention.

Well, it's an interesting concept. Attention according to wikipedia boilds it down to concentration on one thing, like listening to a single conversation at a cocktail party.

Every day, we are selective about what we pay attention to -- usually this is predominantly decided by our physical location. We see what is in front of us, we hear what is near us, we taste what we eat. At work we pay attention to people who contact us, or people from whom we need something.

Our attention is mostly directed by (1) our physical surroundings, (2) our current goals, desires and intentions, and (3) manifestations of things into (1) and (2). By manifestations, I mean for example an arriving email, telephone call, etc. There is attention-pull and attention-push.

When our goals and desires take up all our time, or while our physical surroundings are very interesting, or there are many manifestations, our attention gets mostly used up. Sometimes, however, we realise that manifestations are preventing us from pursuing our goals, desires and intentions, or that our physical surroundings are also affecting them.

We may then be said to have a higher-level goal to modify have such surroundings and manifestations that best enable us to fulfil our goals, desires and intentions.

Alex, when discussing attention, is primarily concerned with manifestations. How do we improve their quality? How can we more quickly locate information on the web? How can we get better news, more interesting emails, etc? Can technology help us achieve these aims?

He lists a number of sources of information which he believes could /inform/ our beliefs about what information sources are best to pay attention to. He includes: Tag clouds, wishlists, reading lists, book catalogs, blogrolls, RSS / OPML lists, contacts, social networks and buddy lists, photo collections, photostreams, playlists, music collections, bookmarks, blogs, game lists, community memberships, calendar entries, video collections and lists, favourite places and social guides and subscription lists.

All of these things are, in effect, a kind of /expression of preference/. How is it that we can improve the quality of manifestations based on our preferences?

Cheers,
-T