What about an organization which regularly flies ordinary[1] individuals to Washington[2] to meet with their elected officials while in session?
I tend to believe that, in the US at least, most congressmen are not overtly corrupt; rather, SIGs and political news organizations exert influence by drowning out other, often more reasonable or correct sources of information. A steady stream of meetings with constituents may serve to re-ground politicians in a way that's faster and arguably more genuine than trying to cut through a wall of special-interest noise by throwing up our own wall of special-interest noise, no matter how much wiser we believe our (individual and collective) positions to be.
It also seems a relatively inexpensive strategy to test.
[1] That is, who spend most of their time in non-political activities.
Wow, that looks great. Totally missed it when searching for precedents.
I can still see myself using a preprocessor when dealing with small-to-moderate chunks of JavaScript, since it's so easy to drop into an existing framework, but I'll definitely be checking out Coffeescript for any larger JS applications.
At the risk of being accused of "cheating", I recommend attention
medication. I am very smart, and did exceptionally well in school, but
found myself unable to take even "start small" tasks to completion when not
faced with an absolute, completely immutable deadline (and even then, I
still handed in papers days late). I tried methods found in books, tried
adjusting diet and routine, tried altering workplaces, went as far as
trying to do work without an internet connection (!) -- nothing.
This had nothing to do with motivation. I believed strongly in open source software, and loved to code small projects, but never finished anything. I enjoyed writing, and tried no less than 5 times to start a blog. I started building electronic circuits like headphone amplifiers but abandoned them halfway through soldering. No matter how much I wanted or tried to get stuff done, it just wouldn't happen.
A year and a half ago I started taking Vyvanse, which is essentially a
slow-release amphetamine salt compound. Since then, I've completed an
excellent and productive internship at Apple, shipped two major releases of
Quod Libet (an open-source music library application), and am actually
making progress on a sprawling thesis, three things I would never have
imagined being able to do before. I've even seen a difference socially (I can
have conversations that are important to others but meaningless to me without getting bored) and emotionally (I no longer
feel like a failure or a waste of potential).
Other people have posted many great suggestions, and by all means, try
them. But also talk to a qualified psychiatrist that you trust.
"Borrowing" is essential for communication. We're using words right here that other people (well, civilizations) have standardized. At a certain level of granularity, all content is borrowed.
A more useful question might be, "what's the largest proportion of a work you have ever borrowed?"
I tend to believe that, in the US at least, most congressmen are not overtly corrupt; rather, SIGs and political news organizations exert influence by drowning out other, often more reasonable or correct sources of information. A steady stream of meetings with constituents may serve to re-ground politicians in a way that's faster and arguably more genuine than trying to cut through a wall of special-interest noise by throwing up our own wall of special-interest noise, no matter how much wiser we believe our (individual and collective) positions to be.
It also seems a relatively inexpensive strategy to test.
[1] That is, who spend most of their time in non-political activities.
[2] Or your capitol of choice.