Insert Ben Franklin "Security and Freedom" quote here

The two historical Americans I hold in highest regard are Ben Franklin and Mark Twain. Ben Franklin made more of his talents and circumstances than arguably any person in the history and pre-history of humanity. Mark Twain was the most brilliant American writer to ever put ink on a piece of paper. The world could be a much better place if they came back and contributed their impressive talents again.

I'm loathe to utter a cliche, but sometimes a cliche is so fundamentally apropriate that it demands to be used. Ben Franklin once said something to the effect that those who are willing to give up a measure of freedom for the sake of security deserved neither.

Enter stage right: The New York Times. As I'm sure most of the domestic readers of this piddly little blog know, the NYT recently disclosed a program used by the Bush Administration to sift through massive amounts of bank records looking for some kind of information about terrorist spending. If you think I'm going to launch into some kind of tirade about the legality of this program, think again. A stoned, semi-retarded, one-legged frog can understand the fourth ammendment.

Enter stage left: The Insane Right-Wing Posse. The calls for jihad from the likes of Bill O'Reilly, Ann Coulter, Michelle Malkin, etc. would have been deafening if they weren't blunted by the fact that most people know that these folks are batshit-crazy. To hear them screaming about it, you'd think that the "Gray Lady" was running a terrorist hostel in the middle of Manhattan. Even the inbred politicos got into the act, calling for a McCarthyesque investigation of the newspaper. Even the president popped his head out of the little bubble universe where he normally resides to chastise them. And just as soon as it started, it went away. Apparently this program wasn't quite so classified as they would like us to believe. Turns out the President has been talking about this program for quite some time now, when it is politically expedient to do so, of course.

Do you ever get the feeling that the leaders of our country might just be overmatched by the terrorists? It's kind of like watching a chess match between two equally confident, yet clearly unequal players. Is there a reasonably intelligent person out there who doesn't realize that the terrorists are smart enough to actually be operating under the assumption that their financial affairs were being scrutinized and were taking steps to hide from that kind of detection? These guys are clearly crazy, but not dumb.

This administration seems to be operating under the dubious assumption (one of many) that freedom is not compatible with security. The Insane Right-Wing Posse trumpets this misconception at every turn. According to the powers that be, you simply must give up some level of freedom to achieve some level of security. I'm sure whats left of their hearts are in the right place. Unfortunately, their brains are in the wrong place. This thinking is the hallmark of three types of people: The intellectually deprived, the intellectually lazy and the intellectually dishonest. This administration seems to favor the doctrine of least resistance. They seem unwilling to take the effort to create policies that protect both freedom and security. I know they aren't stupid, most of them anyway. Why is it that instead of expending the effort to safeguard one of the things that makes America great they expend even more energy trying to hide what they're doing?

Nice Little Video About Atheism

Think atheists are bad and add nothing to society, take a gander at this:

Atheism

Winding down

Just finished the busiest semester I've every had, seven finals in three days to cap off a class schedule that looked more like a full time job.

Indications are that my grades will be okay. There might even be a nice surprise or two. Not that anyone reading this gives two pulls and a squirt.

Next up, in five days I will be taking two summer classes to meet the math requirements for the computer science degree.

So what am I gonna do during my five whole days of summer vacation? Play video games. I've had Baldurs Gate since it came out almost a decade ago and I have never gotten very far with it. So maybe I'll give it a try for the next few days. Then there is always The Movies and Restaurant Empire.

Lots of options for this old college student, yesiree.

An Incredibly Sad Song

The Green Fields of France

Well, how do you do, Private William McBride,
Do you mind if I sit down here by your graveside?
And rest for awhile in the warm summer sun,
I've been walking all day, and I'm nearly done.
And I see by your gravestone you were only 19
When you joined the glorious fallen in 1916,
Well, I hope you died quick and I hope you died clean
Or, Willie McBride, was it slow and obscene?

Did they Beat the drum slowly, did the play the pipes lowly?
Did the rifles fir o'er you as they lowered you down?
Did the bugles sound The Last Post in chorus?
Did the pipes play the Flowers of the Forest?

And did you leave a wife or a sweetheart behind
In some loyal heart is your memory enshrined?
And, though you died back in 1916,
To that loyal heart are you forever 19?
Or are you a stranger without even a name,
Forever enshrined behind some glass pane,
In an old photograph, torn and tattered and stained,
And fading to yellow in a brown leather frame?

The sun's shining down on these green fields of France;
The warm wind blows gently, and the red poppies dance.
The trenches have vanished long under the plow;
No gas and no barbed wire, no guns firing now.
But here in this graveyard that's still No Man's Land
The countless white crosses in mute witness stand
To man's blind indifference to his fellow man.
And a whole generation who were butchered and damned.

And I can't help but wonder, no Willie McBride,
Do all those who lie here know why they died?
Did you really believe them when they told you "The Cause?"
Did you really believe that this war would end wars?
Well the suffering, the sorrow, the glory, the shame
The killing, the dying, it was all done in vain,
For Willie McBride, it all happened again,
And again, and again, and again, and again.

Get back to me when you have the cure for cancer

The exercise in mediocrity and shallowness that is the university newspaper is doing a series of articles about the different religious groups and organizations around campus. In the inaugural column they are talking about something called BASIC. Basically (hehe) it's a nice little organization that exploits the fragile situation that many freshmen find themselves in. They target these kids and get them to show up to the lame meetings with the retarded "christian" rock band (an oxy-moron if I ever heard one.) Some get the hell out, some stick around for the food and punch, some get sucked in.

Anyway, the part that got my attention was one kid at the end equated his evangelism with "sharing the cure for cancer." No. No. Shit no. It's not the same as a cure for cancer. If one was so inclined, one could make the argument that evangelism is the exact opposite of disseminating a cure for one of the biggest killers in this country. How much human misery has sprouted from evangelical religion* in the past few thousand years? How many people have been killed, raped, beaten, tortured, etc. in the name of the spreading the word of the christian god?* How many cultures and lives have been ruined by missionaries and their backers? If anything, evangelism is running a close second to money as the root of all evil.

Not to mention that these freaky uber-nuts are just plain fucking creepy. "Do you have a personal relationship with the lord?" If I was interested in one I would have surrendered my spiritual cherry to him a long time ago. Piss off, nutjob. And don't come back until you actually got the cure for cancer.

* Disclaimer: Yes, I realize that there are countless folks who count themselves as christians who don't cause all that much trouble. If you are one of this vast, near invisible, silent majority I recognize that you are not evil and/or schizophrenic. Willfully delusional, maybe. But not evil.

Four Down, Three to Go

So I probably won't be getting any hits from Antarctica, but last year, against all odds I triumphed with at least one hit from each of the populated continents (science teams and penguins don't count does not a populated continent make.)

Will I make it repeat? Can my infrequent, mostly not all that insightful, captain obvious blatherings cause enough people from far-away places to stumble on my little corner of the internet looking for naked pictures of Sabine Ehrenfeld and/or Pamela Anderson?

Only time will tell.

Ben Franklin was a blogger

Waaay back in the day there was a young, slightly chubby fellow going to and fro amongst the streets of Philadelphia. He showed up one day with enough money to buy a couple of bits of bread and went about finding work as a printer. Eventually he managed to get his own printing press and started circulating bits of printed paper on his own. He became a renowned man for many reasons, none of which would have come about if he hadn't started self-publishing his own newspaper.

Close to one hundred years later, another young man from Hannibal, Missourri set out to make his fortune. When he was a teenager he helped his brother to print a self-published newspaper, often contributing humorous anectdotes when a few extra inches of print were needed. He made his way out to the west coast and made a scant living writing about the shenanigans of the silver rush towns in Nevada. He also became a renowned man, but without his journalism, he would have just been another riverboat captain.

Granted, these were men of extraordinary talents. Some would say that they are among the best men who have ever lived, men who really do only come about every century or so. Would you even want to live in a world that was not enriched by the contributions of these great men? What if they had lived in a world where they would have been excluded from their seminal occupations because they didn't have a degree from a good college? Would their stars have shined nearly as brightly if they were not allowed to partake in that profession because other, larger newspaper companies filled to the brim with degreed men and women from those "good colleges" were able to squeeze them out not by the quality of their product, but by the sheer bulk of the resources at their command?

I don't even try to count myself in the same league as anyone who does journalism for a living or even just likes doing it. But I do know what's right. Before a person from one of those prominent news companies with the degrees from the "good colleges" looks down their noses at a blogger, before they proclaim that bloggers are not qualified or entitled to breathe the same rarified air that they breathe or enjoy the same legal protections that they enjoy, they should think about this: Every last one of them has a job, every last one of them got to study journalism, every last one of them EXIST only because someone without that degree from a "good college" self-published a bit of printed paper on their own.

It's all a wash in the end

"For every person that offends you with their vulgarity, there is a person who is offended by your stodginess."

Latino Heat - Rest In Peace

Yesterday, Eddie Guerrero passed away. For those that don't know the name, he was an elite professional wrestler and his loss is the equivalent of a shot to the testiculars, with brass knuckles. For what it's worth, my thoughts are with his family.

Eddie belonged to a very rarified group of wrestlers. He wasn't the largest, he wasn't the quickest and he wasn't the best-connected when it comes to the politics of the business. Eddie had the thing that most wrestlers will never get, the total respect of the fans. The kind of respect that can only be earned by complete dedication to the fans. You get that respect not be being the next big thing, not by being the biggest guy in the company, you don't even get that respect by being the most charismatic and certainly not by being the bosses son (or son-in-law). You get that kind of respect by going out every day and throwing yourself into your role with abandon. By giving everything you've got every night, sometimes twice a night. You earn that respect by giving the best performance of your life every night, regardless of that nagging pain in your knee, regardless of that cold, regardless of the fact that you haven't seen your kids in two weeks, regardless of the fact that the booking committee is trying to bury you. You get that respect by never phoning it in. By giving the same performance whether your opponent is Bret Hart or Doink the Clown.

Eddie Guerrero was a master of his craft who gave everything to the fans every night of his too short life and the fans loved him for it, even when they hated him.

Large and in charge

Not dead.
More to follow, sometime.

Awww, fuck it.

Jesus fuck all, I'm tired lately.

I need to lay down and read a book. After I finish the laundry.

Java vs. C++: Computer Science Death Match

In my Computer Organization course the Java and C++ people are thrown together in the same classroom leading to an interesting dynamic.

Have you ever observed car people? Not race car drivers or generic commuters. The people who have invested a disturbing amount of their identity in the brand of car they drive. The ones who identify themselves as a [insert brand] men and women. These are the people who have the Calvin pissing on the [insert car brand] logo on their rear window. They form little clubs where they presumably talk about how great their chosen brand is. They make up clever anagrams of their anti-brand (i.e. Fucked-Over Rebuilt Dodge or Found On the Road Dead. The Chevy anagrams escape me right now.) Never mind any objective measure of how well these brands do their basic job, getting a person or group of persons from point A to point B. They have their favorite brand and they will spend their life pissing on the brands that aren't.

The same kind of behavior has emerged among my CS compatriots. Keep in mind that we are all first year CS students. At best, there are some of us who could qualify as garage inventors, self-taught programmers who have written code that works without any of the intricacies involved in the discipline. Programmers writing code that cracks walnuts with a sledgehammer, so to speak. So the whole discussion is laughable because none of us really know what we're talking about. But this is my blog, so I'll offer my opinion because I can.

First, the overarching opinion is that it's a useless debate. We don't know a fraction of the programming languages that are available and widely used. While the Chevy and Ford people are pissing on each other, the rest of the world is driving Honda and Toyota. One glance at Dice.com will show you that most employers want people who program in languages that are !Java && !C++.

Being a Java programmer only by virtue of the Java section fitting into my schedule, I don't have much of a horse running in this debate. I know that I'm going to end up learning a broad range of programming languages and will probably not be working in Java or C++ in the job world.

That being said, from a market perspective, Java is beating the crap out of C++. Go to Dice.com and search jobs. On any given day Java will show up at least twice as much as C++ in job requirements. While the nascent game programmer dreams of writing the next big hit for the X-Box/Playstation, the lion's share of work in the field is in maintaining code for insurance companies. Of course as I stated earlier, job requirements for languages that are !Java && !C++ are greater than both put together.

While Java and C++ are slap-fighting in Computer Science classrooms all over the country, the rest of the world is driving Honda and Toyota.

The first pill costs 400 million. Every pill after that costs 20 cents.

When I switched my major from Public Administration to Computer Science last summer, I had a sneaking suspicion that my natural tendencies would ultimately work against me. I could have called in a public administration degree, but part of the problem was that it was so un-challenging that I COULD call it in.

So, on the advice of my SO, I made what I hope is the final switch of my 15 year (on again-off again) romance with college life. Now I'm a computer science major (BA) and I'll be taking my last core class next semester.

I must say that the major to this point has engaged me like nothing else I've tried in college. I have always thouroughly enjoyed solving problems (but not math) and even when I sit and stare at a screen for five hours mulling over a project, I can maintain focus and sit for five hours to think about a single problem.

But then my natural tendencies kick in. I am a procrastinator and a bit of a message board addict. As a result, I don't always start my projects in a timely fashion. There always seems to be one more freeper to slay at the message boards. There is always one more board to check. So I find myself doing something like this, rather than writing the frames and panels for a simple notebook.

Then you throw in a good amount of stubborness and I'm not very good at asking questions when I'm stuck. I prefer to just sit there and think about the problem. This bit me in the ass last week, when I had to change a whole bunch of code to get my project to work right. Then ten pm the day before it was due, I saw the solution and had to restore it all back. (I'm not yet in the habit of version control.)

My natural tendencies cost me a letter grade last semester when I didn't get a project turned in. It killed my almost perfect homework score and I ended up with a B that should have been an A. Anyway, that's enough procrastination for now. The SO is coming home and I need to get on this.

I just have to make a run through the boards/blogs one more time. :)

Later

What pisses me off about the True Believers (tm)

I'm sitting here trying to articulate what irritates me so much about the True Believers ™. I don't think it's because they're inherently bad people. I'm confident that if we sat down and avoided religion entirely we could have many hours of constructive discussion on just about any other topic. But every time they bring up religion, it just rubs me a little bit raw.

I thought it was the inherent arrogance (or smugness, if you will) that comes part and parcel with religious thinking. But that's not really it. Because I'm equally as arrogant and I don't annoy myself that often or that consistently. It's the insistence of the theist to piss on my shoe and tell me it's raining. That's what pisses me off the most about theists (but especially christians.)

Especially the so-called liberal ones. They are the most intellectually dishonest people that you're likely to meet because they hide their arrogance behind the idea of religious pluralism, all the while sniggering behind your back that they feel sorry for you not being a card-carrying member of their cult (or sub-cult). At least the Robertson's and the Falwell's have the balls to tell you to your face that they think they are better than you (even if they don't buy the bullshit they sell.) They may be dishonest about other things, but at least they're upfront about what they think of you.

Listening to a christian bitch about being oppressed is like listening to a white male complain about reverse-discrimination. If they didn't act like such bastards all the time, maybe the minority groups wouldn't need special protection from them.

So knock off this "pluralism - up with people" crap because I don't buy it and neither do you. If you really thought that all religions were of equal weight, you wouldn't cling to the christian god so tightly. Gilded bullshit smells just as bad as the plain bullshit.

Johnny Cochrane, Terri Schiavo, Karol Wojtyla: They always come in three's

So what does a high powered criminal attorney, a living mummy and the most powerful religious figure in the world have in common?

They are now all wormfood. As of about ten minutes ago, I suppose.

Any Similarity Between My Values and Christianity is Purely Coincidental

I had an encounter with a religio-goober recently that reminded me of something I was told years ago. When I was seventeen, I worked as a telemarketer. One of my co-workers was a Baptist deacon and was an all around nice guy. One day he told me that I live by the word of god and I didn't even know it.

At the time I wasn't as acutely aware of my identity in religious matters, so I just went along with it.

Now I'm here more than a decade later and I'm thinking about values and religion. As I've said before, outside of some isolated reading assignments, I wouldn't know the bible from the satanic bible. I've never been compelled to read the bible and I certainly can't conjure up any coherent memories of my "church years". I know about Jesus Christ in the same way that a 65 year old farmer in Montana would know about Darth Vader.

I'm not a criminal. I don't kill, rape, or steal. I do my best to not annoy the people around me or cause troubles. I don't even go out of my way to kill bugs. I just try to be a decent guy.

When I hear some evangelical nutbag talk about the only thing keeping humanity from a display in hedonism and other forms of anti-social behavior is the fear of god, I have to shake my head and give a chuckle. First, the claim isn't even true. Humanity has managed to engage in those behaviors regardless of whether a mystical threat of whatever the hell it is is hanging over their head or not. Hedonism and anti-social behavior has been a staple of human society since there was a human society. It doesn't matter what the superstition dujour is. As a matter of fact, religion has aided and abetted this kind of stuff since it's inception. Do you really think that Pat "Blood Diamond" Robertson really believes the shit that he sells to the rubes every Sunday morning? Are those predatory pedophile priests that get bounced around from church to church, committing their crimes over and over again really afraid of hell? Apparently the threat of hell isn't quite the deterrent that we've been told it is.

Secondly, why does there have to be a god involved at all? It seems to me that empathy is a much stronger value than fear will ever be. Why let my decisions be guided about whether I'll get to go to heaven, when just helping people out in a tough situation because you feel for them is a far more nobler cause? We can all be good human beings and make the world we live in NOW a better place if we stop worrying about a pretend stick and carrot and just try to have empathy and compassion for the people we share the planet with? Who knows, maybe the only thing preventing us from making a real heaven on Earth is religion.

I Love You, But We Only Have Fourteen Hours to Save the Earth

You know what the world doesn't have enough of? Bad sci-fi with bombastic soundtracks. True, this trend pretty much died with Freddie Mercury, but isn't there some big-voiced distinctive singer out there that can lend their talents to the new generation of Flash Gordon clones?

The Contented Atheist

This afternoon I was walking between buildings on campus and I saw a sign up for a "talk". The headline reading "There Are No Happy Atheists".

That got me thinking. Am I happy? I realized that in general I'm not really happy. I have the capacity for happiness. From time to time I am afflicted with a case of happy. But happy is not my baseline state. Hell, I wouldn't want to be happy ALL the time. Sounds like way too much work.

If I had to pick an emotional state as my baseline, it would have to be content. Some times I'm more content than other times. If I'm reading a good book before bed, I'm content. If I'm scrambling to finish a homework assignment at two in the morning, I'm less content. And all the times that I have been happy or sad, sky-poppa had absolutely nothing to do with it.

Happy, Sad, these are emotions that I suspect are not designed to be experienced perpetually. I'd say that anyone who does is likely the victim of some mental disease.

To answer the question, at any particular moment there are at least a high a percentage of happy atheists in the atheist demographic as there are happy theists in their demographic.

As always, I don't care what superstition you want to entertain. All I ask is for you to leave me out of it.

Democratic Leadership Council (aka Democratic Failure Junkies)

I imagine we'll not see the likes of a Bill Clinton again in my lifetime. A man who could sell you a shit sandwich and have you ask for seconds. The kind of politician who can't help to succeed just by the sheer force of his personality. Whether you love him, hate him or have no emotional response whatsoever, you can't deny that the man was nearly a force of nature.

Which makes the flailings of the terminally ill Democratic Leadership Council all the sadder. They've managed to convince themselves that the formula that worked for Bill Clinton can work for anybody. In their sad little minds, Bill Clinton won because of THEM, not him. Poor bastards.

Don't believe me? How successful has anyone BUT Bill Clinton been employing the "triangulation" strategy? Since the ascendency of the DLC, the Democratic Party has lost the House and Senate. They've abandoned countless races on all levels in favor of electing national candidates. They've adopted a "defensive" strategy in their own strongholds, taking serious challenges in places where they should be winning easily.

And what has it gotten them? Not much. Nearly nothing since Bill left the stage. Sure, Hillary made a decent showing in the Senate, but how far would she have gotten if she wasn't attached to Bill?

So now the DNC is being forced to evaluate themselves. At first it looked like it would be a case of more of the same. The DLC wonks insisting that the party had to move a little farther to the right to compete. Of course that's the fatal flaw in the "triangulation" strategy. When faced with opponents that take two steps back every time you take one step forward, you eventually find yourself completely away from your principals. But then a curious thing happened.

As a phoenix rising from the ashes, Howard Dean has emerged as the grassroots favorite to take over Terry McAulliff's job. A candidate that the DLC can't stand, mostly because he's proven the DLC wrong on a lot of fronts. He proved that Dems don't need to pander to the same special interests that give more money to Republicans anyway. He proved that Dems can win even in deep red districts. One of his Dean Dozens gave Tom DeLay his first serious challenge EVER. Most of all he's proven that the grassroots can and will do wondrous things for anyone that will respect them enough to listen to them. Unlike the other candidates, he refused to disappear (Hell, John Edwards was gone almost immediately after being named Kerry's VP choice.) and he worked his ass off to do more for Kerry than the other seven candidates combined. Sure, he didn't win the primaries, but before all is said and done, he may be the one that emerges to "turn the worm" for the Democratic Party.

And the funny thing is that the DLC doesn't seem to be able to do anything about it. They can't find ANYONE who even wants to give him a serious challenge. They tried to rewrite the rules to force Dean into the back room while a DLC crony remained the public face (until they found out they didn't have the votes.) The DLC, through their utter incompetence has made themselves near-irrelevant. They piss and moan about what needs to happen and everyone else just kind of looks at them like you'd look at a dog who just farted.

Of course, Howard Dean has been the frontrunner before and lost it at the last minute. So anything can still happen. But I think that the rank and file, the folks who write the small checks and walk the neighborhoods and work the phone banks know what's up and they have a pretty good idea that the DLC doesn't necessarily have their best interests at heart.

It will come to a head February 12th, so stay tuned faithful readers.

Extreme Testing and Bad Memory

So I'm taking an intermediate programming class and my professor has decided that this semester we'll be trying something called "test driven design". Basically, you write the tests for your program before you actually write the program.

I have to admit that it does help me find the problems in my programs much easier and I can tweak it bit by bit to get the results I need. The problem is that I have one of the worst memories you're likely to encounter. So it's even more confusing to keep track of what the hell I'm doing.

I didn't know there was a Happy Days reunion.

I wonder how much value TDD will ultimately have. It doesn't seem to be the kind of thing that will help you develop large programs, but what the fuck do I know?

Later, Bastiches.