Entries in Life

Or so says Kuro5hin. That article links to Creating the Innocent Killer which has a pretty good analysis of Card’s novels. I’ve read and enjoyed a few of these, but I tend to read pretty innocently — I let the text speak for itself and don’t try to find subtext — so reflecting on the novels with this article in mind is helpful. I was disturbed by the “surprise” ending to Ender’s Game — that a child’s game was responsible for the destruction of an alien race — but I didn’t really think about it till now. Especially disturbing is this:

“I don’t really think it’s true that ‘the road to hell is paved with good intentions.’” Card stated in a 2002 interview. “Good people trying to do good usually find a way to muddle through. What worries me is when you have bad people trying to do good. They’re not good at it, they don’t have any instinct for it, and they’re willing to do a lot of damage along the way.” The import of this statement is that there are some people who are good before they act, and some others who are bad before they act, and that goodness or badness is exhibited in their actions. These “bad” people can’t do good, and “good” people can’t do bad.

(I just read that last sentance to and she said “Yep, George Bush can’t do bad because he’s good.”)

Christian groups’ boycott of P&G worked. I’m surprised. I thought boycotts don’t work. Especially boycott’s against commodity companies like Proctor and Gamble. (The article quotes Hutcherson as saying that a boycott of Microsoft is possible. Surely that wouldn’t work… would it?)

You reap what you sow when it comes to customer service. Which is why users of open source turn into maintainers or creators of source: because it’s what the “customer service reps” do. They treat users as co-maintainers. And a user will get a lot closer to a solution if he shows that he’s done his footwork first. Of course, this doesn’t work for everyone, but the iterative process means that Linux is rapidly approaching the point where users who don’t want to be that involved don’t have to dig so much to use the operating system. Sixteen or seventeen years ago, I had my first exposure to Emacs in the suggested editor that was bundled with Coherent. I next used it in Lucid Emacs on the Sun workstations in my computer science labs in college. From then on, in fits and starts, I’ve used emacs for most of my hacking. These “fits and starts” have gotten so bad that I’ve managed to get committer access to the Emacs CVS repository. In fact, until the past six months I was using it to read email and RSS. I’ve been re-thinking this and, when someone contacted me about problems with weblogger.el, I re-discovered what makes Emacs so fun is not its polish, but it humane interface. That, and its hackability. So, I’ve switched back to Emacs for editting my weblog and am already implementing some great new features in the emacs of my mind.

Boing Boing continues to be an interesting diversion, but I don’t trust it. For example, they posted a link to something I thought was common knowlege “Clams, mussels and oysters are … vehicles for … disease” Hmm… Maybe I lived in New Orleans too long and heard too many stories about hepatitis an other nasty vermin in the oyster supply. It leaves me wondering “This is news?” Walk into any oyster bar, and you’ll see signs all around that warn you that you could get very sick there. So, maybe it is only news to people who’ve only fantasized about the mythical aphrodisiac power of oysters.

Derf has almost the same take on Star Wars that I do. I don’t remember seeing the movies at all until the re-mastered trilogy came out. So, after I saw those, I didn’t see what the big deal was with, say, Jar Jar.

Bad acting and poor storytelling. Star Wars is filled with it.

While Dan thinks Marriage: A History might be interesting (as the review notes “Can marriage be saved?”), Julie Leung talks about what it takes to make a successful marriage: a good grasp on reality. Or, as I would put it, you’re both intimately acquainted with each other’s faults, but decide to love anyways. The book review hints that marriage (as a legal entity) may change or disappear and I’d say good riddance. It’s nice that marriage has legal recognition, but legal recognition does not a marriage make. At least, I don’t view marriage as just a convenient legal structure. But many people seem to. That, or they want government to “recognise” their commitment. I’m not sure I understand why people want that recognition from the government, or why our government should want to give it. Alexis and the kids have run through all the Little House on the Prarie books. I wonder if they’d be interested in some real pioneer stories? “It was 20 years ago today that I raised my right hand, swore to ‘Preserve, Protect, and Defend The Constitution of the United States’, and went into Basic Training at Ft. Jackson, South Carolina.” (with counterpoint) “Does the filesystem case make you feel less comfortable than the database case?” Well, you’re wrong, then! Emily Oster, the woman who’s baby talk inspired Narratives from the Crib has shown that the gender imbalance in Asia isn’t as bad as was previously thought. Fortune on the DIY economy. I guess this is like what the maker of Cajun-in-your-pocket did (self-marketing) going mainstream. Why do we trick, deceive, and lie to others? Because it works! Earthlink has an R&D department? They’re doing IPv6 on Linksys? Wow! I didn’t think I was supposed to take them seriously. (via)

“Why all the theatrics?” “I’m BENDING LIGHT!” — howtoons.net Learn the ways of the Farm; Trust your Peelings “Never, ever, ever buy bonds at retail from a full-service broker. Especially municipal bonds.” — Joel Spolsky “One way to show this difference is to say that Debian is to Linux distributions as McDonalds is to hamburgers.” — Debian is Different

Every time I saw someone in my baby-ridden neighborhood struggling with a $300 car seat, I felt a smug satisfaction at understanding, thanks to Levitt, that car seats really don’t do much to keep kids safe. It’s having the kid in the back seat, rather than on your lap up front, that makes the big difference. The “extra” safety of the 19-point restraint system in the 80-pound carrier is, statistically speaking, nominal at best. It’s a rare joy to be able to out-smug the obsessive parents in the Strollerville section of Lincoln Park.

— Outsmugging the Smug (via the Freakonomics Blog) How Old Media Can Survive In a New World — from the Wall Street Journal Coal Mining is for Beautiful People — from jwz I could be totally off-base here, but what’s happening in Albuquerque Real Estate could also explain what is happening in New Orleans real estate (as well as elsewhere). Some Europeans (where the real estate bubble is even worse than in the states) are buying U.S. properties. Is it possible that arbitrage is feeding the bubble? “Tags I say! Tags are the rightful home of the most hallowed Universals of noun-ness: from cars to coffee pots to chalk to cheese.” — The biggest shock to received wisdom since the irrational human acceptance of the 404

Blue-tooth-enabled Linux-powered un-manned flying swarms

Ben Hyde talks about a “community tool shed” which is a variation of something I’ve often thought about. He explains why everyone has their own snow blower, lawn mower, weed wacker, etc. and gives hints on how to solve the problem:

One way to solve this problem is to insert a middleman. He can then obscures who paid what. Community activists often fill that role. They keep the secret. If that information got out the whole project would fall apart. If you want to kill a community activity just force the contribution levels of the various participants out into the open!

The use of a middleman is interesting since it is Centralization when the current fad is decentralization. I just discovered Ben Hyde, so the first post of his I read included this:

It isn’t clear to me exactly how much [C. Peter] Wagner is still tied into the Vineyard moement. I wish I knew because I find him to be a scary character. He’s very, ah, pragmatic: “… we ought to see clearly that the end DOES justify the means. What else possible could justify the means? If the method I am using accomplishes the goal I am aiming at, it is for that reason a good method. If, on the other hand, my method is not accomplishing the goal, how can I be justified in continuing to use it?” (C. Peter Wagner, “Your Church Can Grow – Seven Vital Signs Of A Healthy Church”, 1976, pg. 137. – emphasis in original)

One can choose to view chance selection as obvious evidence that there is no God, as Dr. Richard Dawkins, an evolutionary biologist and uncompromising atheist, might argue, or to conclude instead that God chooses to work through natural means. In the latter case, the overwhelming evidence that natural selection has determined the evolution of life on earth would simply imply that God is “the cause of causes,” as Cardinal Ratzinger’s document describes it. The very fact that two such diametrically opposed views can be applied to the same scientific theory demonstrates that the fact of evolution need not dictate theology.

School Boards Want to ‘Teach the Controversy.’ What Controversy? (Ok, I realize I’m posting a lot of excerpts today…. forgive me.)