This Blog Has Moved!

Hi everyone. I’ve decided to move my blogs to self hosted WordPress blog websites. I decided that self hosting gives me more control, and I really wanted to split my art posts out from my author/philosophy posts into two separate blogs!

For my art and designs, please re-subscribe to http://tricksplace.com/

I’ve also opened a Zazzle store, which I decided will be the medium to display my doodles, drawings, and art on TricksPlace.com. I’ve been using a lot more color for them but also using the normal black and white line art designs you’ve been accustomed to. I think Zazzle is pretty neat and I love the idea of my designs being printed and “out there” somewhere in the world.

If you’d like to see a piece of artwork not on a product, just let me know.

For my author, philosophy, and writing blog-posts please subscribe to http://trickslattery.com/blog/

Anyway, thank you to all my subscribers or people that have visited my site in the past and commented. I really appreciate it. I’m still subscribed to many of you and still reading your blogs and viewing your art.

‘Trick

5 Other Worldly Pet Doodles for your FREE use!

I added 5 new doodles to my website for your own personal (free) use: one legged stripe billed bucky bird, nest top jak, frog dog, alien pet walk, and orkie doodle.

Visit: www.TrickSlattery.com/freedoodles

*** Also, check out my Wednesday Guest Exhibition on “i know i made you smile”. Thanks Carl, you rock!

Reminder: I will add new doodles to this site as I sketch ’em up. Please let me know if you use one, I am always interested in seeing how my doodles are being used.

I have also uploaded my doodles to a deviant art gallery if you prefer to view them there or want to comment on a specific doodle.

Also, don’t forget to join my emailing list.  Don’t worry, it is infrequent, non-spammy, and will let you know about cool content I add to my site.

And as always thanks for stopping by. 🙂

Follow @TrickSlattery

Yowzer!!! 5 New Wacky Doodles for your Free Use!!

I added 5 new doodles to my website for your own personal (free) use: fuzzy owl bug, gob pixie, no idea, acrobatic whatchits, and warrior mouse.

Visit: www.TrickSlattery.com/freedoodles

Reminder: I will add new doodles to this site as I sketch ’em up. Please let me know if you use one, I am always interested in seeing how my doodles are being used.

I have also uploaded my doodles to a deviant art gallery if you prefer to view them there or want to comment on a specific doodle.

Also, don’t forget to join my emailing list.  Don’t worry, it is infrequent, non-spammy, and will let you know about cool content I add to my site.

And as always thanks for stopping by. 🙂

Follow @TrickSlattery

Mandatory Critical Thinking Classes Please!

Critical Thinking classes should be mandatory for all schools, starting at an early grade. Right now the top four mandatory subject categories are Math, Science, English, and Social Studies. Five if you include Physical Education. All important, of course.

Critical thinking is, however, equally as important as any of these others. Currently it is only taught at higher level education, usually as an elective.  Because it is placed on such a low priority for most education systems, irrationality runs rampant. People are unable to discern propaganda, bias, distortion, and misinformation from the truth. They are unable to analyze information provided to them, no matter how skewed the information is.

And many of these people are intelligent in every other topic. Because it is not a requirement for most majors, a person can run the gamut of courses and entirely miss a single course on critical thinking.

There is a reason people believe in things such as alien abduction, big foot, homeopathy,  conspiracy theories, horoscopes, the nonsense purported in chain emails, and so on. Smart people! They just were never taught how to disseminate, analyze, and scrutinize information given to them.  They were never shown how to discern fallacies, how to question their own thinking, and the basics of language based logic. They were never informed of standards to acquire knowledge and why some standards are more consistent and reliable than others.

The lack of critical thinking skills does not just lead to benign thought, but thought that derives ones philosophical, ethical, and political viewpoints. Critical thinking not only benefits the student, but also the community at large. For a democracy, critical thought affects our policies  and practices. What we support and do not support.

The education system, in the U.S. at least, is riddled with problems. This is just one example of one of those problems that has huge implications.

What do you think? Should such courses be mandatory? Let me know why or why not in the comments below. 🙂

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Sorry I have not posted in a while. Had a big move from the US to Canada and my scanner died as well. Now that I am relocated and I have a new scanner I will hopefully have some time to doodle, ramble, and post. In the meantime here is a ‘lil doodle I whipped up:

back seat driver

Don’t forget to visit my site at www.TrickSlattery.com.

5 Winged Beastie Doodles for Your Free Use!

I added 5 new doodles (winged creature theme this time) to my website for your own personal (free) use: humbat dragon, winged daymare, caterfly daisy, flying desert vulpix, and skyhorse.

Visit: www.TrickSlattery.com/freedoodles for all my doodles. Check out deviant art gallery if you prefer to view my doodles there or want to comment on a specific doodle.

Also, check out my Guest Exhibition on Ink. Anette, the blog writer/owner (of Ink.), picked out 15 of my doodles that she thought fit and created an exhibit for my work. Is that cool or what? If you aren’t following her you may want to check out the site and follow. Lots of fun, artsy stuff.

Reminder: I will add new doodles to this site as I sketch ’em up. Appreciate a link back if you use my doodles on your site or blog. I love to see the creative ways they are used and would rather have them spread everywhere than just sit on my site collecting digital dust – so if you used one for something fun, let me know.

If you want to be kept up to date on any new doodles that I add in which you can use for free, subscribe to my blog.

Also, don’t forget to join my emailing list.  Don’t worry, it is infrequent, non-spammy, and will let you know about cool content I add to my site.

And as always thanks for flying by. 🙂

Follow @TrickSlattery

“Using Wikipedia? – You Fool!” (In Defense of Wikipedia)

“You  quoted Wikipedia?  Hah! I can now dismiss everything you have to say. Wikipedia is not a reliable source silly person. Everyone knows that!”

Ever hear that one or something like it? I know I have. Not directed at me, but at others. And it always bothers me.

I agree one should never cite Wikipedia as an academic source or as direct evidence of a claim.  But that doesn’t mean one can just dismiss a point being made that links to Wikipedia. Wikipedia is an excellent explanatory resource; one of the best on the Internet. It is a great source of information, and for the most part reliable.

Some people seem to think that, because one should not “cite” Wikipedia as academic evidence for the validity of a claim, that Wikipedia is unreliable, should not be used, or should not be pointed to.

They misunderstand the difference between primary /secondary sources, and tertiary sources that point to primary and secondary sources. Tertiary sources condense or consolidate primary and secondary source material into one place.

All encyclopedias are the latter, tertiary sources (though some have elements of secondary sources). The point here is that NO encyclopedia should be used as an academic source or for absolute evidence of a claim.  On the other hand quoting an encyclopedia is fine if the information is pertinent and has explanatory power. No one would complain if they were asked to read something from Encyclopedia Britannica or some other encyclopedia.

This brings me to the validity of Wikipedia compared to other encyclopedias, and this is where I disagree with the person who dismisses Wikipedia off-hand.

Wikipedia themself say they are not a credible or authoritative source for a research paper citation, etc.  But again, this is simply because they are a tertiary source, which should only be a starting point for research.

The biggest factor that gets some people to automatically dismiss Wikipedia: It can be updated by anyone.  Anyone! Someone that is crazier than a loon wearing high heels on Sunday can update a Wikipedia article.

So let’s go over the ups and downs for this. It certainly has its downsides, but I would suggest the upsides override them. Take another encyclopedia for example. For such an encyclopedia, the information is gathered and put together by a group of people who work for the company (ie. Encyclopedia Britannica). It is researched, checked by a much smaller group than Wikipedia, and is just as susceptible to faulty information.

Wikipedia, however, is open to a much larger group of editors – the public. This includes people who are actual experts for any given Wikipedia article.  If some joker hops on and makes a false change in an article, it will quickly be looked at by others and fixed. In many cases an almost instantaneous process.

Per Wikipedia: “Every day, hundreds of thousands of visitors from around the world collectively make tens of thousands of edits and create thousands of new articles to augment the knowledge held by the Wikipedia encyclopedia.”

Unlike static encyclopedias, this allows for a flow of ever-changing and improving  information. This is a good thing.  The continual editing of Wikipedia articles , over time, “generally results in an upward trend of quality and a growing consensus over a neutral representation of information”.

The downside is, for starting Wikipedia articles, they may not be of quality as of yet. But the longer an article exists and the more hands in updating the information and citations, the better and more reliable it gets. This is a new media source that brings knowledge and access to knowledge to the table that no other encyclopedia does.

For those that claim it is unreliable, well, if they actually go to the bottom of any Wikipedia page they will usually see a list of citations and links that they can follow and research the actual source of information, if they were so inclined.

Wikipedia is information sharing at its best, and people need to think before they knock it down for short comings that are more that made up for. I say support Wikipedia. It is one of the best sites on the web.

Follow @TrickSlattery

6 Bugs ‘n Bots Doodles for Your Free Use!

I added 6 new doodles (bugs ‘n bots  theme this time) to my website for your own FREE use: termite rider, spider rider, fly flier, ladybug rider, caterpillar surfer, and grasshopper controller.

Visit: www.TrickSlattery.com/freedoodles

If you use a doodle please link back or credit. Also if you do something cool with one or more of my doodles let me know.  I recently noticed, while browsing my name on Google to see where I come up, that someone from Sweden used a few of my doodles for a short iPad story thingy. I have not translated what it says and cannot even download it, but thought it cool that someone on another continent actually found and used some of my doodles.

If you want to be kept up to date on any new doodles that I add (which you can use for free), subscribe to my blog.

I have also uploaded my doodles to a deviant art gallery if you prefer to view them there or want to comment on a specific doodle.

Also, don’t forget to join my emailing list.  Don’t worry, it is infrequent, non-spammy, and will let you know about cool content I add to my site.

And as always thanks for hopping, flying, or crawling by. 🙂

Follow @TrickSlattery

10 Tips to Convince Others of Your Reasonable Beliefs

Hold a belief that you really feel strongly about? Think it important to share your knowledge about something you have given a whole lot of time, effort, and thought to?

Below are some tips on assisting others to causally align with your strongly held, reasonable beliefs:

1) First and foremost, believe in what you are trying to convince others of, but don’t try to convince others just because you believe it. You want  people to align with something that you  find true or most likely true, but you want to have strong reasoning to support that truth (or likely truth) first. If you are unable to reason out your belief, and instead believe it due to an entirely psychological response or indoctrination, you may have some searching of your own to do before you should try to convince others of your position.

2) Lay out the groundwork for what you are trying to convince others of. You could have a perfectly logical structure to your argument (it could be entirely “valid”), but if there is not agreement on the premises that the logical argument is built on, the argument is meaningless. If a premise is wrong, your argument is not sound. Explain where your grounding comes from and why it should be granted.

3) Don’t be ambiguous with your word use. Clarify, clarify, clarify! If your belief is based on a word that you cannot clarify to yourself, maybe you shouldn’t try to change the minds of others until you understand the very word you are using. Try different words out instead. Some may make your point a whole lot clearer.

4) Don’t be insulted if people do not understand the case you are making. People have minds that have developed differently than your own. Do the best you can to understand which points of yours they are not grasping and try to put those points into different terms. Don’t be stuck explaining in the same way over and over if the person cannot parse the way you are explaining it.

5) Be careful not to be drawn into a drama debate. These kind of debates are unproductive. If communicating online, avoid turning into a debate monster. Rwaarrr.

6) Point out flaws in another persons reasoning, but do so tactfully. A good way is to, whenever possible, try to counteract your recognition of their flawed reasoning with something good they are saying. “I really like what you said here, but perhaps you could clarify for me this other point because it appears to me that it may conflict with X.”

7) Use analogies to help others relate to your points, but do not rely on analogies alone. They are of great use as clarifying tool but are not stand alone arguments. Also, be careful of faulty analogies that add in excess unnecessary baggage which skew a point in a direction it would not take if not for the excess baggage.

8) Don’t limit yourself to words. If you are a visual person with some artistic inclination, use that to your advantage.  A picture or drawing can help a person comprehend where you are coming from.

9) Watch out for fallacies in your argument. A single fallacy in the right place can strip all of the soundness from your position.

10) Last but not least,  don’t be a jerk to those you cannot convince. It is quite difficult to immediately go from viewpoint (A) to opposing viewpoint (B), no matter what kind of awesome case is given for (B). A change of beliefs takes time – sometimes days, sometimes weeks, sometimes years, and sometimes even decades. Sometimes you giving your case is just one tiny event that can lead another on the path to a change of mind. Consider it a long term process.

And sometimes your own mind might even change. Feel strongly about beliefs that are supported with evidence and sound reasoning, but do not close yourself off to new information that may arise. It is possible you have missed something along the way. You can strongly hold a position and still be humble.

Let me know what you think and your experiences with trying to change minds? Were you successful? Has anyone ever changed your mind? If so, what worked best?

Follow @TrickSlattery

5 New Animal-ishy Doodles For Your Free Use!!

I added 5 new  (Animal-ishy) doodles to my website for your own personal (free) use: cat-like humanoid, headphone pup, ratty rat, remote birdie, and one I created for an older blog post a while back which I thought should be up for your use – chipmunk.

* I also colored another one of my older line drawings using photoshop and a Wacom tablet, …  just for the fun of it: winged fawn (color).

Visit: www.TrickSlattery.com/freedoodles

Reminder: I will add new doodles to this site as I sketch ’em up. If you use an image don’t forget to link back to my site. If you want to be kept up to date on any new doodles that I add in which you can use, subscribe to my blog.

I have also uploaded my doodles to a deviant art gallery if you prefer to view them there or want to comment on a specific doodle.

Please join my infrequent emailing list if’n you are so inclined.  It is non-spammy, and will let you know about awwwwesome content I add to my site.

Later 😉

Follow @TrickSlattery

Eeeek Trolls!!! 5 Troll Doodles for Your Use.

I added 5 new doodles (Troll theme this time) to my website for your own personal (free) use: fancy troll, bird troll, internet troll, cartoon troll, and beer drinking troll.

* I also colored two of my line drawings using photoshop just for the fun of it: dragon, fancy troll.

Visit: www.TrickSlattery.com/freedoodles

Reminder: I will add new doodles to this site as I sketch ’em up. If you use an image don’t forget to link back to my site. If you want to be kept up to date on any new doodles that I add in which you can use, subscribe to my blog.

I have also uploaded my doodles to a deviant art gallery if you prefer to view them there or want to comment on a specific doodle.

Also, don’t forget to join my emailing list.  Don’t worry, it is infrequent, non-spammy, and will let you know about cool content I add to my site.

And as always thanks for stopping by. 🙂

Follow @TrickSlattery