I accept the DesignStaminaHypothesis which suggests that you need to pay attention to good technical practices if you want to develop software effectively. So a movement that gives these issues attention is important. But there also lies a danger, that by focusing too much on technical issues the craftsmanship movement will underplay the equally vital role of customer communication.

v interesting breakdown of profile pictures on a dating site

"five open supersecrets" about bloggers:
1. Not everyone has something valuable to say.
2. Few people have anything original to say.
3. Only a handful of people know how to write well.
4. Most people will do almost anything to be liked.
5. "Customers" are always right, but "people" aren't.

On the one hand, while it’s probably not enormously important whether most people have a handle on the mind-body problem, a democracy can’t make ethics and political philosophy the exclusive province of cloistered academics. On the other hand, I look at the online public sphere and too often tend to find myself thinking: “Discourse at this level can’t possibly accomplish anything beyond giving people some simulation of justification for what they wanted to believe in the first place.” This is, needless to say, not a problem limited to philosophy. And I think it may contribute to the fragmentation and political polarization we see online, which are generally explained in sociological terms as an “echo chamber” effect or “groupthink.”

straw man arguments take an argument, make it extreme, and then show how it is wrong. the point is to build a straw man that doesn't really represent the criticism, and is easier to knock down since it is so extreme. apparently obama is very skilled at this