October 2006 Archives

From Purple Avenger and Rantings of a Sandmonkey:

The story is as follows for the those of you who didn't hear about it: It was the first day of Eid, and a new film was opening downtown. Mobs of males gatherd trying to get in, but when the show was sold out, they decided they will destroy the box office. After accomplishing that, they went on what can only be described as a sexual frenxy: They ran around grabbing any and every girl in sight, whether a niqabi, a Hijabi or uncoverd. Whether egyptian or foreigner. Even pregnant ones. They grabbed them, molested them, tried to rip their cloths off and rape them, all in front of the police, who didn't do shit. The good people of downtown tried their best to protect the girls. Shop owners would let the girls in and lock the doors, while the mobs tried to break in. Taxi drivers put the girls in the cars while the mobs were trying to break the glass and grab the girls out. It was a disgusting pandamonium of sexual assaults that lasted for 5 houres from 7:30 PM to 12:30 am, and it truns my stomach just to think about it.

This dovetails neatly with a certain incident in Australia that happened recently involving a lying, ass-covering imam and a bout of mysogeny and gang rape. Gang rapes and rape in general are, according to the anecdotes among observers of Europe going through the roof there, and then you have things like this case in Cairo and the repeated problems in Australia among its Muslim immigrants.

To all this I say... what did any non-Muslim expect? This is a religion that defers blame for sexual sin from the men onto the women. That is an integral part of why women are pushed to "be modest" in the first place. There is no culture of individual responsibility for the men here, and you cannot blame the "breakdown of the family" or poverty for this. Hell, as that imam from Australia shows, it's probably a case of "like father, like son."

Others:

QandO.

Now that we all agree, what do we do about it?

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- A quarter century after the Reagan revolution and a dozen years after Republicans vaulted into control of Congress, a new CNN poll finds most Americans still agree with the bedrock conservative premise that, as the Gipper put it, "government is not the answer to our problems -- government is the problem."

The poll released Friday also showed that an overwhelming majority of Americans perceive, correctly, that the size and cost of government have gone up in the past four years, when Republicans have had a grip on the House of Representatives, the Senate and the White House.

Discretionary spending grew from $649 billion in fiscal year 2001 to $968 billion in fiscal year 2005, an increase of $319 billion, according to the Congressional Budget Office.

Things like this simultaneously make me hopeful for America's future and despise the Republican Party. What this CNN poll shows is that the Republicans could run on a solidly fiscally conservative agenda and probably win hands down without the pork--but they do it anyway! That right there shows where the true heart of the entrenched leadership of that party stands.

Which... brings me to that age old talking point: the Democrats would be worse. How so? I want to see "respectable" Republicans like Hugh Hewitt go on the air, quoted saying that we will end up with bonafide Socialism with state ownership of the means of production if the Democrats win which is the only thing that would be substantially worse than what we have today.

But we all know the commentariate won't do that because it would simultaneously accomplish a few things for the Democrats. It would expose the few differences between them and the Republicans, make the Republicans' supporters look stupid and out of touch, and make more people question how much the Republicans have actually done.

As I said here, drawing lessons about morality from nature is stupid and naive. Each animal raises its children, mates, feeds, etc. in a slightly different way. Some of the differences can be pronounced in an extreme way. There is literally so much diversity that you can't come up with a universal rule, which is what we're really looking for. That's what everyone who wants to be able to stand up and confidently say "that's wrong" really wants.

The reason that the philosophers of the Enlightenment looked to nature was simple ignorance. The average child with a Discovery Channel-level education has come across enough material (even if they didn't fully absorb it) to know how pointless it is to try to divine moral truths from nature. You simply cannot do it because morality is not something like the laws of physics that nature offers up for empirical reproducibility. There are many modes of behavior, radically different, that have quite valid roles for a particular species, but not others, so the only thing we could get would be moral relativism in its purest form.

Yes, yes, you can come up with your own moral code, but the people who feel the need for morality are really looking for something universal. Sadly enough, something as intangible, ephemeral and self-serving as a moral code you made up is about the last thing that can be called universal. One could make a better case for household deity universalism.

Naturally there are those who get self-righteous about these things and say stuff like "are you saying atheists cannot be moral?" By even asking that question you are assuming moral universalism, and the truth is that two people cannot be equally 100% right while being polar opposites on an issue that implies objectivity.

I will answer that question for the secularists like this. If you do not believe in moral universalism that exists independent of nature and man's opinion, then no, an atheist cannot be moral. I cannot be moral. No one can be moral because morality doesn't exist! It's like pointing to a mechanical law that doesn't exist! Without a universal, revealed morality, morality cannot be said to exist as a law of life (if not of nature as well) because it exists only in the minds of each man, woman and child and even then only as something that is at least partially uniquely experienced. To say then, "can an atheist be moral" would make no more sense than to say "is an atheist bound to the Third Law of Quantum Superpositioning Flatulence."

If you don't understand the question, then either you are mentally incapable of groking it or you just don't want to face the ugly truth. Restated one more time, when someone comes up with their own theory of morality, it's like coming up with their own pet theory of gravitation. You cannot have two equally 100% true laws of gravitation. It stands to reason that if we are going to say "aha! That's the moral choice" then we ought to have some sort of universal truth on what is moral the way we have a law of gravity. If we cannot agree, and each stubbornly cling to our opinion (which is still not fact), then we ought to simply acknowledge the ugly fact that there are no moral truths at all.

He may not be using 1984 as his playbook, but Camille Paglia is pretty sure that George Bush is taking cues from Noam Chomsky:

What else? Yet another folly -- creating more generations of hatred against America. The feckless behavior of the Bush administration has been a lurid illustration of Noam Chomsky's books -- which I've always considered half lunatic. Chomsky's hatred of the United States is pathological -- stemming from some bilious problem with father figures that is too fetid to explore. But Chomsky's toxic view of American imperialism and interventionism is like the playbook of the rigid foreign policy of the Bush administration. So, thanks very much, George Bush, you've managed to rocket Noam Chomsky to the top of the bestseller list!

The neocons that have surrounded Bush have made no bones about their desire to build an empire. While more blunt that the majority of them, Ben Shapiro more or less made it abundantly clear where he (and by extension, those who share his neoconservative views), stand with respect to America's imperial adventures. Let's call a spade a spade here. The neoconservatives are bonafide imperialists who are so archetypal for the modern era that they could easily win first prize for Liberal Democrat Boogeyman Of The Year. They would be rightfully regarded as a gross caricature if they did not so precisely resemble the criticism leveled against them.

Now, the thing about Bush is that he embodies what his enemies fear or are frustrated by. He embodies the fears of the liberals: (superficially) religious, seemingly stupid, easily manipulated, prone to cowboyish blustering with no substance behind it while stealing half of their issues and rampaging around the world like a bull in a china shop. For his right wing enemies, he is easily manipulated, effectively liberal on the majority of his domestic issues, won't listen to his base (even lashes out like a frou frou cocktail-slurping suburban yankee yuppy that is so popular with conservatives), has a half-assed foreign policy and basically acts like a feckless lunatic with a single track mind.

I think she really gets to the heart of the Democrats' institutional problems with this:

The Democrats have to start fresh and throw out the entire party superstructure. I was bitterly disappointed after voting for Ralph Nader that he didn't devote himself to helping build a strong third party in this country. When the American economy was still manufacturing based, the trade unions were viable, and the Democrats stayed close to their working-class roots. But now the Northeastern Democrats, with their fancy law degrees and cocktail parties, have simply become peddlers of condescending bromides about "the people."

It is ludicrous to believe anyone who claims to be a "man of the people" and yet lives the life of the average Democratic (or for that matter, Republican) politician. The average person's perspective is simply too different for them to have any claim to say "hey, I'm like you." Were it me who were rich and running for office, I'd never give into populist tendencies. My slogan would be: "MikeT because leaders run countries better than suckups." If challenged on why I don't kiss babies, glad hand the masses and act like "just plain folks" I'd simply say, "do you want a Senator or a Sycophant?"

Blaming the victim and separating Christianity from Islam at the same time:

THE nation's most senior Muslim cleric has blamed immodestly dressed women who don't wear Islamic headdress for being preyed on by men and likened them to abandoned "meat" that attracts voracious animals.

In a Ramadan sermon that has outraged Muslim women leaders, Sydney-based Sheik Taj Din al-Hilali also alluded to the infamous Sydney gang rapes, suggesting the attackers were not entirely to blame.

While not specifically referring to the rapes, brutal attacks on four women for which a group of young Lebanese men received long jail sentences, Sheik Hilali said there were women who "sway suggestively" and wore make-up and immodest dress ... "and then you get a judge without mercy (rahma) and gives you 65 years".

Could that harshness toward brutal rape have anything to do with our "antiquated" religious traditions in the West based on Judao-Christian scripture? Possibly...

25 But if out in the country a man happens to meet a girl pledged to be married and rapes her, only the man who has done this shall die. 26 Do nothing to the girl; she has committed no sin deserving death. This case is like that of someone who attacks and murders his neighbor, 27 for the man found the girl out in the country, and though the betrothed girl screamed, there was no one to rescue her.

28 If a man happens to meet a virgin who is not pledged to be married and rapes her and they are discovered, 29 he shall pay the girl's father fifty shekels of silver. [a] He must marry the girl, for he has violated her. He can never divorce her as long as he lives.

One can quibble with the fact that it places a much harsher punishment on rapes against betrothed and married women, but the fact is that the Mosaic Law, despite feminist hand-wringing about the evil patriarchy, explicitly notes that women a woman says "no," that there "is no sin against her." Do I need to be more blunt? The Bible says, "when she says no, she means no, and if she is betrothed or married, you Mr. Rapist get stoned to death." Think about that one for a second. If a woman clearly sells "hell no," her attacker gets unceremoniously executed. Terminated with extreme prejudice by the religious patriarchy no less.

The problem, though, is that there is a kernel of truth in what this Muslim asshat has to say about women, and is that a woman who dresses provocatively in public stands a good chance of getting unwanted attention from evil people. Such is life, and a woman who wants to minimize the risks should weigh the desire to look sexy (or slutty, depending on the outfit) with the possibility that she's going to attract unsavory attention. But... that would be expecting too much out of many of these girls who, to paraphrase one I knew, said that they should be able to walk down the street nude without getting raped. I should be able to pet a tiger or wolf without fear of losing my hand...

And apparently many Muslim men consider themselves to be truly inferior to other types of men if this is the standard that so many of them hold themselves to WRT women:

The sheik then said: "If she was in her room, in her home, in her hijab, no problem would have occurred."

He said women were "weapons" used by "Satan" to control men.

"It is said in the state of zina (adultery), the responsibility falls 90 per cent of the time on the woman. Why? Because she possesses the weapon of enticement (igraa)."

And this is where Jewish law shows its superiority to Sharia. The Mosaic Law recognizes that adultery can only happen between equal partners, and that is why the part of the Mosaic Law that precedes what I quoted, calls for the execution of both partners, not primarily the woman. Again, God's law says "it takes two to tango, so two people get busted." You can disagree with the punishment, but you can't disagree with the fact that the Mosaic Law says clearly that a man is not at all blameless for his role.

Read the rest of the article because you've gotta see how much this guy backtracks after many embarrassed, more westernized Muslims come out against him.

As I side note, I wonder what the Judao-Christian religious punishment for something like this would be:

LAWRENCEVILLE, Ga. -- An immigrant from Africa has gone on trial on charges alleging he circumcised his 2-year-old daughter with a pair of scissors to avoid bringing shame on his family.

My guess is that it would be execution for the father considering the special place that children have in Judao-Christian teachings and law, not to mention the violent, sexual nature of the crime.

Every so often you see the tech press come out with some commentary on how to reform IT training to make it better or more competitive. Invariably it involves pushing away from the fundamentals of Computer Science toward "the here and now." Take this for example. The author suggests that the real problem is that students need to be taught how to bring value to a business.

The problem is that the very reason we have the suits in charge of the business is to figure out how to "leverage" (I hate business speak) engineers to bring value. If business schools aren't teaching their students how to work with skilled people from a diverse set of professions, what the hell are they teaching them in terms of being good business leaders? That's what I want to know. The engineer's job is to take the business' defined needs and translate them; the businessman's job is to understand what his needs are and be able to define and articulate them to his diverse team of workers.

This is why I don't trust business schools. Outside of the more specialized degrees like accounting, they are just there to provide a more respectable frat boy-friendly environment than a liberal arts college. The mistakes that you frequently see these college edumacated idiots making with skilled workers illustrate that, such as firing senior engineers because they're too expensive and replacing them with a legion of junior engineers.

As a junior software engineer, allow me to be the first to say that I am the last one in my profession you want to designate as the tech lead or give the work of the senior guys to, and I'm not being lazy. Experience is worth the cost in virtually any profession out there, and you simply cannot take someone with two years of college experience and expect them to handle the work of a ten to twenty year veteran. That's like expecting a fresh recruit to shoot like a grizzled special forces veteran, but sadly that is precisely how a lot of business people think experience works in any skilled profession or trade. I know from experience, I had an offer letter from a major company for a senior development position in J2EE coming out of college (and I turned it down).

If you want to fix the Computer Science curriculum to make engineers more flexible, here's an overview of what I suggest based on my undergraduate experience from 2001-2005.

• Require six credits of project-based programming classes every semester, all three and a half semesters, after the first semester. Oh I'm sorry, did you want to major in Russian literature on the side? Not our problem. You will be required to code in teams and alone every semester once you have the fundamentals.
• Require that as seniors they take a six to nine credit hour class, their only CS class, where they meet with a prospective client such as another department in the university or a buisness, and they build a complex project for them based on their needs.
• Require students to learn several languages and use them interchangeably for their fundamentals classes such as data structures and algorithms classes.

In practice, such a curriculum would look like this if I were to design it:

• First semester:
  • CS101: Beginning Programming with Python
• Second semester:
  • CS102: Multi-Paradigm Programming with Python, LISP (or Scheme) and C
  • CS103: Data structures and Algorithms(taught simultaneously in C and Java)
• Third semester:
  • CS201: Computer Architecture with Assembly Language
  • CS202: Software Engineering I - Fundamentals and Design Patterns
  • CS203: Network Programming in C and Java
• Fourth semester:
  • CS204: Software Engineering II - Intermediate
  • CS205: Advanced Network Programming with Java
• Fifth semester:
  • CS301: Software Engineering III - Architecture
  • CS302: Database Development and Administration I
• Sixth semester:
  • CS303: Database Development and Administration II
  • CS304: Maintanence Programming I in Fortran, C++ or Ada
• Seventh semester:
  • CS401: Maintanence Programming II in Fortran, C++ or Ada
  • CS402: Compiler or Operating Systems Design
• Eight semester:
  • CS403a: Requirements Gathering
  • CS403b: Project Planning
  • CS403c: Senior Project
  • CS404: Independent Studty Review of Four Languages Learned of Student's Choice

I found this while reading over Gizmodo before going to bed. Check it out, it's an interesting bikini top for women, well, apparently large breasted women anyway. It has no straps, but it stays on just fine without signs of any normal suction cups or anything like that. Weird, but definitely cool.

What other religion in human history causes this sort of reaction--over its mere existence?

A Christian pastor in India is being treated for injuries following an ambush into which he was lured by several Hindu youths, according to officials with The Voice of the Martyrs, the Christian aid organization that reaches out to persecuted Christians worldwide.

The report said Pastor Bhadikar Barshi was on his way to a regular service at his home in the Barshi region of Maharashta state when two youths approached him recently.

"Asking him to join them in a prayer for a friend who had been suffering from a sickness over the past 15 years, the young men walked alongside the pastor for some time," the report said.

Then, a Hindu mob launched the ambush.

The more stories like this that you read, the more difficult it is to take seriously the Christians who passively whine about "persecution" in the United States. Unlike Germany, we are free to continue homeschooling our children to keep them safe from a hostile school environment. We aren't systematically harassed and abused by the government. We still have it good in this country, compared to the rest of the world, whether we would like to admit that or not.

For those who think that our "religious right" is bad, Hindu nationalism makes ours look like a hippie gathering.

Update: Read this and tell me that we have it so bad here. Much of what we call "persecution" in the United States is just the result of a weak skin that keeps people from standing up for what they believe in. Compare that to what "pencil" went through, and you will see the difference.

In Cathy Young's latest Reason commentary on Islam and women, this really stuck out in my mind:

The veiling debate is a case in point. No amount of rhetorical sleight of hand can disguise the fact that the full-face veil makes women, literally, faceless. Some Muslim women in the West may choose this garb (which is not mandated in the Koran), but their explanations often reveal an internalized misogynistic view of women as creatures whose very existence is a sexual provocation to men.

I once had a Muslim acquaintance say to me that the logic behind the veil was modesty because men are sexually tempted by women. For my money, this one issue brings out the fundamental contradiction between "multiculturalism" and "pro-women" tendencies in the feminist movement. Nothing more clearly captures the inherent dichotomy between multiculturalism and asserting the rights of women, and holding evil men accountable than this view of women and sexual sin.

Perhaps it is the stark realization that in the prevailing, even if not totally scriptural, Islamic view of women, feminists find the most potent manifestation of everything that keeps them awake at night, wringing their hands in fear of the patriarchy, that keeps them eerily silent on Islam and women. The only options they have left to them are to either admit that christianized Western culture is demonstrably superior in its treatment of women or admit that there is nothing even close to their ideal (which is tantamount to admitting total defeat).

Wherein it is discovered that anyone who uses "think of the children" is probably an extreme sexual deviant:

Eight lion statues with bared anatomy will have to find a new kingdom.

The statues guard a children's water-fountain park and sit across from what will soon be Arizona's largest cineplex in Glendale, just north of the new University of Phoenix Stadium.

The concrete beasts are depicted raising their rear ends in the air, each hovering over a terror-stricken ram in what some perceive as a sexually suggestive pose. The lions' tails are swished to the side, leaving their, er, pride in plain view.

As part of the next remake of the Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, Aslan will be presented as a metrosexual eunuch with a poodle cut so as to avoid any possibility of having to explain what a penis is for (as if little kids had absolutely no idea before). Seriously, folks, you can't make this stuff up because on in modern America would it really happen like this. If you don't believe me, check out this quote from the Vice Chairwoman of Preventing Vice and Promoting Virtue:

Glendale Councilwoman Joyce Clark said the statues aren't appropriate for a family park. "I can see children getting an instant lesson in the birds and the bees, which maybe their parents wouldn't want them to have," she said.

So there you have it. We are now officially scared of our children being exposed to lion penises indirectly lest they develop a fondness for farm animals. Is there any doubt that these "for the children" morality crusaders are some of the sickest, most twisted members of our society? These people need to seriously profiled by the police. Well, I guess in their defense, since elephants have been known to rape rhinos, it could have been a lion-on-ram gay porn statue as opposed to something as mundane as a mere mauling.

Charles Cooper seems to think that Web 2.0 is synonymous with "rip-off" and on some level, I can't say that I disagree with him. Just his opening example:

Pardonnez-moi? Yes, you read it right the first time. A European court last month agreed with a group of regional publishers in Belgium that accused Google of ripping off their content. The court ordered Google to remove text summaries of the newspapers' articles, along with Web links to the publishers' sites.

Not very much was made of the decision on this side of the pond. Investors shrugged off the news and continued to send Google's stock ever higher. Google subsequently cried foul and said it would challenge the ruling. No surprise there.

The problem with his using the Google News example is that it is the only major example of potential copyright infringement which provides some sort of clear benefit to the copyright holder. See, Google doesn't place ads on Google News so the advertising revenues stay with the media companies that host them on their websites. For many outlets, Google News is a powerful way to get exposure online, which is something they desparately need since the web is a lot less hospitable to newspapers.

YouTube on the otherhand has the potential to be a tremendously nasty hot potato for Google. Copyright holders that have been injured by distribution of their goods on YouTube are no doubt going to be very interested in carving up a little piece of Google if things don't get fix--fast. And these two examples are where things get cut and dry. Google News has no ads, YouTube does; Google News loses money, YouTube tries to make money, but fails.

My prediction is that Google will within the next year make YouTube a very sanitized service that will ultimately kill off a lot of its appeal to the public.

A good example of why I am proud to be a Southerner:

Sheriff George Payne said, "Historically, we don't release the names of victims like this, and they're victims involved in shootings. But they wanted to do that to tell their story so the rest of the public knows that this is America and we're not going to be intimidated by these thugs that think they can come to our homes and rob us or shoot us, and we're not just going be intimidated and roll over for them. Quite frankly, there was a gun battle there and she won the gun battle and this outlaw lost his life."

Compare and contrast that with the reaction to a few Muslims with box cutters. Box cutters. This elderly southern couple didn't take crap off of the violent criminal and defended their lives against him with extreme prejudice, the way it ought to be done. This is how you beat violent criminals and terrorists; you make doing their thing too costly to be worth it.

When the police shooting review board says the officer acted without authority or cause, you know it's a bad case. Ironically, it's also the perfect time for a prosecutor to decide to give the officer a free pass and special protection that a "mere civilian" would never get:

In a Nov. 21 report, the use-of-force board found that Wells was not in harm's way at the time and that Wells moved into the path of the car. The shooting was not necessary to prevent imminent death or serious injury, the experts said.

"There was sufficient time for Officer Wells to remove himself from in front of the vehicle at any point in the encounter," the report says. "There were no obstacles that would have prevented Officer Wells from escaping from in front of the vehicle."

"They can conclude all day long it's a bad shooting. But a bad shooting does not equate to a criminal shooting. That's really the bottom line."

To summarize what happened, the guy is parking possibly illegally, the officer jumps in front of his slow moving car and opens fire when the guy won't stop parking on the grass. Do I need to even point out what would happen in most areas of the country, probably even Tennessee, if a home owner came out with a handgun and starting shooting at a driver doing anything non-threatening to his or her life on their yard? The prosecutor wouldn't even realize that not prosecuting the homeowner was a legal choice!

Ah the double standard. It's just a case of bad judgement when a police officer does something potentially murderous and stupid, but when a normal person does it, it's invariably a severe criminal offense. Both sides look out for one another, you know.

Well, good news. I'm not a sociopath and my domain is now transfered over and working. If the Internet says it's true, that about does it for me.

Oh yeah, and in case anyone is actually interested, I have about 35-40 full pages of new fiction written. If and when MTProtect 2.0 comes out, I'll have about five or six chapters of content ready to put up in a set of password-protected entries.

You Are 52% Sociopath

You're not a sociopath, but you're very prone to antisocial behavior. Other people's opinions matter little to you. You live your own fringe life - for better or worse.

Hat tip: AnarchAngel.

Lazy law enforcement is at it again:

"Terrorists coordinate their plans cloaked in the anonymity of the Internet, as do violent sexual predators prowling chat rooms," Mueller said in a speech at the International Association of Chiefs of Police conference in Boston.

"All too often, we find that before we can catch these offenders, Internet service providers have unwittingly deleted the very records that would help us identify these offenders and protect future victims," Mueller said. "We must find a balance between the legitimate need for privacy and law enforcement's clear need for access."

It really comes down to this:

Law enforcement groups claim that by the time they contact Internet service providers, customers' records may have been deleted in the routine course of business. Industry representatives, however, say that if police respond to tips promptly instead of dawdling, it would be difficult to imagine any investigation that would be imperiled.

I have said it once, I'll say it again, this is just bad policy that dooms the online communications of millions. Anyone who even thinks "I have nothing to hide, so I'm fine" proves that they know nothing about the technology in question. Do you send emails that you wouldn't want others to see? Do you like the idea of every username and password you log into a website with being held in a log somewhere for up to two years? If so, this law is for you! See, anything you send over the net without encryption will be fair game for these laws. That means that anyone gets the logs, criminal, employee or law enforcement, can look at everything from your emails to your unprotected web accounts' (which are the norm) information.

So take one for the children because they are the future of America! Surely you have no problem with having your every username and password, every webmail message, every blog post, every instant message and every phone call recorded just in case law enforcement suspects you of something. Oh, but don't worry, they don't suspect you right now, they just want options for later if they need them.

Over the next day or so, I am switching hosting services so don't be surprised if things are a little broken with my blog. The DNS entries are in the process of being updated which will take about one or two days to propogate to most major ISPs. You have been warned.... *cue ominous drumroll*

Best. Political Quote. Ever!

The tree of liberty is dead. It has been shat upon by millions and millions of sheep, trampled by elephants and donkeys, and finally the pulp was sold by that lady with the blindfold and one tit hanging out for King George to write out "signing statements" upon.

I think that about sums it up on a level that I have hitherto not seen done so succinctly nor with such panache.

Thus spoke neoguru:

I believe the Holocaust did not happen and that Hitler was a Saint.

Why would most people think the above sentence were the ramblings of a raging idiot? But similar Christian lunacy does not deserve the same scrutiny. Your beliefs are no different than believing in the various Greek God that people used to believe in. They changed their beliefs because people like you forced them to think like you or find the end of a spear.

I know this was a waste of time but this is good practice for me. Arguing with a person that believes in the make-believe is like talking to a person in a straight-jacket that is convinced two plus two is seven.

To the rest of the sane world, we must separate ourselves from these crazy people. They have killed us in the past and they continue to kill us now. Soon you will have a choice.

Well, obviously he is entitled to his opinions about the veracity of Christianity, but let's consider how this guy illustrates how ignorant of early Christian history most secularists (especially "free thinkers") are. The Greeks were apparently converted at the point of a sword in this guy's mind, which goes completely against the history of the period where Christianity was an underground religion until Constantine allowed it to legally be practiced out in the open.

So, guru, want to explain how an underground religion, illegal under the most powerful government in the classical world, could en mass convert by the sword? Any pagan looking for protection would only need to go to the nearest Roman official to have it taken care of by the Roman Army.

The fact that the Roman government executed people for not converting to Christianity has no bearing on the religion itself. In fact, the vast majority of "church crimes" were throughout history carried out by secular government forces operating on behalf or under the guise of religion. It is ironic that people so quick to say "religion is the opiate of the masses" cannot grasp the corollary which is "religion is the ruse of the state."

While the true believers still insist that preventing rogue states from acquiring nuclear weapons, 30 more countries may be going nuclear. Doesn't look too good for the neocons, now does it? So what does Bush do about the issue of terrorism? He signs a new law allowing him to do all of the things he did surreptitiously. Hail to King George who can sign a law and make his troubles just magically disappear! Meanwhile, Israel, unlike America, is getting serious again about terrorism using the only proven means of fighting it: an invasion centered around self-defense, not nation-building.

Why am I not surprised that Amanda just doesn't get it?

Telling women just to abstain is wrong not just because it won't work, but mostly because it's mean-spirited and hateful to women. The best retort to abstinence is that women's increased freedom to have sexual pleasure without fear of pregnancy is a good thing. Abstinence-only arguments are, in essence, trying to say that pleasure itself should be punished. We need to keep anti-choicers on the defensive and ask them bluntly why they are opposed to women having pleasure, especially when it doesn't hurt anyone. Since there is not a single anti-abortion group that I've come across yet that supports contraception, this point is pretty unassailable. What is it about women having harmless fun that pisses them off so badly?

Wardle is right on about this-until people stop buying into the premise that sexual pleasure is somehow immoral in and of itself, they're going to be easily wowed by anti-choice arguments that assume that women should be punished for having sex. Of course, feminists have been making pro-sexual-pleasure arguments forever, so this post isn't chastising anyone for falling down on the job. It's just in this one area that I think we could spruce it up a little, by rejecting the -sex is inevitable- rejoinder and going on the offense with anti-choicers by asking why they think women shouldn't be free to enjoy sex if we want to.

I'd like to give her the benefit of the doubt that her mind is simply a weak one, rather than a blatantly dishonest one. Let's look at the issue of abstinence, shall we? Abstinence is hard, very hard, for a normal healthy adult to cope with, and I don't see any abstinence advocacy groups suggesting otherwise. In fact, I think it's pretty safe to say that they are acutely aware of how hard it is, considering how hard it is for them to convince anyone to be abstinent.

Abstinence has nothing to do with sexual pleasure except delayed gratification. It shouldn't take a degree in rocket science to figure that one out. There are no mainstream Judao-Christian groups that encourage sexual abstinence for its own sake, and throughout history, there have been no attempts by mainstream Judaism or Christianity to discourage sex inside of marriage except for ritualistic or health reasons.

When Amynda means "pro-sexual pleasure" arguments, what she really means is "arguments for sexual pleasure with consequences or restraint." This is because abstinence advocates and anti-abortion groups do not have any problem with her having sex out of principle, and they especially do not begrudge her her sexual pleasure. They simply have the audacious belief that there is a certain time in which these things should happen, and that that time is during a marriage.

Is it hateful to expect a woman to carry a baby to term? Well, if that be the case, then what about the legions of "liberated women" who still expect men to respond to the draft to fight a war--of any kind? Why is it that feminists like Amynda can find outrage in a woman being told to do something against her will with her body, but men are forced to bear the consequences of a woman's reproductive decisions at all times (even if she deceives him by falsely claiming to be on birth control)? Where is her principled commitment to the idea that if a woman chooses to risk getting pregnant, that she alone should bear the consequences of her decision since it was her body?

Oh but they want it both ways! She wants to be able to pick and choose, while forcing him to abide by her every decision. It's a thinly-veiled excuse to be a tyrant.

Women are free to enjoy sex, and I see a dearth of people calling for laws to change the legal situation. What Amynda is just bitching about is the fact that there are people who disagree with her. She can't enjoy getting laid until there is no one left who would say "that's not right" to her. Excuse me while I indulge in a bit of schadenfreude on that one. I think it is hilarious that she is so tormented by the harmless opinions of others because it is a problem entirely of her own making and indulgence. If you were strong, Amynda, you wouldn't be losing sleep over this.

This weekend was pretty intense compared to the last one. Saturday was kind of a blur starting with helping my girlfriend's mother get her Java project working for her operating systems class. Yes, Java in an operating systems class. I did my work in C the first time I took the class, which was with a terrible group assignment and my parents' divorce going full blast, and did part of the second one in Java because my partner didn't know enough C to be adventurous enough to write our pseudo file system in C. Well, anyway, her project was to write a thread pool. Yes, just a thread pool. What the hell does THAT teach that can't be summarized in a few bullet points on a lecture slide? I like Java, but it's really not appropriate to use for an operating systems class except at the end of the class and you want to illustrate OS concepts in higher level modern languages.

Two things coincided this weekend. First, my grandmother's 76^th birthday and the anniversary of my relationship with Rachel. We've technically been together for about a year and a half now, but didn't make it official until a year ago tonight. Things seem to be moving strongly now in the inevitable direction which is what both of us want very much at this point.

Tomorrow is going to be a day full of misery, pain and suffering. I have to call about a mild gas leak at my apartment, call my insurance about an accident that happened on Friday and make a doctor's appointment. Then, I have to go to a presentation that I have the sneaky suspicion will put me and many others in "interesting times" tomorrow. Things may be heating up big time with this one, and I'm glad that my involvement is only that of a code monkey on loan, not actually brought in all the way.

So... tomorrow's forecast is a 25% chance of light blogging with high chance of migraines followed by periodic mass murder in Halo 2.

You can't teach a dumb dog new tricks:

"Might it be so that we use the term and concept of user education as a way to cover up our failure?" he asked a crowd of security professionals. "Is it not somewhat telling them to do our job? To make them be a part of the IT organization and do the things that we are bound to do as a specialized organization?"

In Gorling's view, the answer to those questions is yes. In corporations in particular the security task belongs with IT departments, not users, he argued. Just as accounting departments deal with financial statements and expense reports, IT departments deal with computer security, he said. Users should worry about their jobs, not security, he said.

I understand when a random phishing expidition works because I have received some very convincing emails from phishers that nearly had even the email headers right. However, there is no excuse for people to just keep clicking on any link without even stopping to think about where it might take them. That's about as dumb as giving out your credit card number to everyone who calls you claiming to be from a charity (especially those ones claiming to be police charities).

No, people really aren't going to ever learn until the laws start to change to hold them accountable for when they don't even try to user their heads. We expect people to have a clue with how they drive their cars, how they keep their homes and many other things. Why should computers be any different? If you keep ignoring IT and spreading email worms, you should be fired as an incorrigible employee. If you keep falling victim to phishing scams, then you should have to pay the bank back.

Let's apply this standard to keeping yourself safe. It's precisely how the average feminist sees a woman's role in preventing violence against her. She shouldn't have to worry about the intentions and nature of a strange man she just met. She should be able to go wherever she wants without worrying. Well, that's great. Really great. Too bad security doesn't exist even in theory with this general attitude. The only solution is to create a culture of personal responsibility with respect to security.

The western governments arrest their own people for "racism", at a time when non-Roman Catholic Christians are through their deaths proving that our enemy only wants to rape and murder, yet we learn nothing from any of it. Our governments are more concerned with catching people breaking completely asinine laws and pushing ineffective security techniques like scanning phone registries for illegal behavior and relying on no-fly lists that have been proven to be worthless. The West is risking losing the fight against the global jihad because of detached bureaucrats and policies that have refused to yield to reality and public demand while accomodating the enemy's sympathizers domestically.

Sometimes you just can't help but wonder if there isn't a fifth column within the open source and free software movements aimed at their complete destruction and relegation to irrelevance after reading things like this. Really, it has almost ceased to amaze me how anal the GNU folks are about anything related to intellectual property that they cannot use without the slightest restrictions, unless they're the sort of restrictions that they actually approve of. So yes, I stole this parody (I assume) of the IceWeasel logo. Ain't it just cute? This is about as much attention as the Firefox developers should give this misbegotten project, though I've gotta hand it to them. They chose a good name to tweak the Firefox project with.

James Joyner does a decent job with the issue of conservatives being "left out" with many of the new Web 2.0 services, but I don't think the situation is as dire as he (or especially Michelle Malkin) think that it is. The web is full of stories of Google being arbitrary and capricious in its dealings with others. Google News caught flack for allowing the Neo-Nazi StormFront group to remain indexed, but proceded to purge itself of conservative bloggers. Ironically, it was presumed that the latter offended the sensibilities of Google News' administrators.

I am, I must admit, a little bit confused as to why the social networking craze is considered relevant to politics. What is stopping PajamasMedia from starting their own network? It's not like there is any sort of shortage of social networking sites that would love to take on more users who are disatisfied with another network that is being arbitrary toward their viewpoints.

The YouTube issue doesn't bother me in the least because it is a free service, and thus there was no contractual obligation for them to provide that service to Michelle. Her fanboys can cry and pound their pillows all night about the unfairness of it all, but there is nothing stopping her from uploading her video to her own blog, at her expense, in a mainstream format like MPEG-1, Windows Media or even DivX if she's so inclined, and using an <embed> tag to do it herself. The only issue is cost because a 5MB video shown to just 1,000 visitors would chew up a lot of bandwidth, and bandwidth is rarely cheap.

Now, I full recognize the issue that search engines provide a lot of readers, heck, a lot of mine come Google. However, that should not make conservative and libertarian bloggers worry because these visitors are probably not going to make or break your blog.

The point that James brought up about Blogger deleting those blogs is a good example of why I stopped using Blogger not long after I got started about three years ago. It doesn't provide you anywhere near the level of control that you would get from running your own hosted package, with a reputable hosting service that has a direct buyer-seller relationship with you. If my host arbitrarily pulled my blog, I could actually email them and demand in writing to know why they did that and might have some legal recourse. Blogger? Fuggedaboutit!

And... just to be a bit of a stickler. Web 2.0 is a marketing term that describes a collection of technologies and methodologies, not popular uses of the web. It's built on AJAX on the client side with DHTML for dynamic web interfaces and relies on either a sleak JavaEE/ASP.NET or LAMP backend. GMail is a great example of a Web 2.0 interface with its dynamic interaction with the user. Now, wasn't that educational?

The sisterhood is almost always quiet when the rape is of a non-white woman by members of the Religion of Peace (of the Grave):

The teen, living in El Mahala Al Kobra, about 60 miles north of Cairo, disappeared from a public bus on Oct. 2, when a team of Muslims drugged her and threatened her with rape if she refused to embrace Islam, described by its supporters as a "religion of peace."

Her parents were notified via text message that, "The girl is not accepting easily, but she will embrace Islam for sure." Another said, "Take the rest of your daughters and leave the city, or you will lose them one by one."

As previously noted, white feminists have the curious habit of becoming anti-racist apologists for mysogeny and violence of all sorts against women when a member of the Religion of Peace (of the Grave) or a generic pigmentally-enhanced male is the culprit. The next time you see Take Back the Night, remember that it really means "Take Back the Night for White Women and Token Minority Women Who Agree With Us."

They don't feel comfortable criticizing these men because it would do several things:

• Explode the myth that the average woman in America has it that bad, especially middle and upper class white women.
• Make a direct, nearly lethal blow against multiculturalism because they would have to admit that there are distinct cultural differences that lead to women being brutally abused in many area of the world.
• Cause them to have to admit that they been the very apologists for violence against women that they rant and rave about ceaselessly.

Making modern day lepers out of people who have already done their time:

LOUISVILLE - With a deadline of today looming, a judge declined to block enforcement of a new state law, clearing the way for some sex offenders to be forced from their homes.

U.S. District Judge John Heyburn II ruled Tuesday night after a 90-minute hearing on the law, which imposes new restrictions on how close sex offenders can live to schools and other places where children congregate.

Heyburn said it wasn't yet clear whether the law would bring irreparable harm to those who are forced to move. "Law enforcement officials retain the discretion to enforce the new statute in a humane and sensible manner, considering all relevant factors," Heyburn wrote.

So far, only Texas seems to have actually started the process of creating a just method for dealing with dangerous sex offenders. How about that? They put two and two together and think that maybe, just maybe, if they're so dangerous that soccer moms would consider making modern day lepers out of them, that they're too dangerous to ever be let out after a repeat offense! Hell, the penalty for the first offense, 25 years, is so high that the odds of them making it through prison that long are slim considering the nature of their crime and the jailhouse dangers it brings with it.

The part that I find most bitterly ironic about this is that it bars sex offenders from going anywhere near churches because kids congregate there. This is not only not a state issue, but but the general public has no right to dictate to any church or other religious institution who they can accept for spiritual help and services.

Democratizing the raping and pillaging of the productive classes:

This case originated as part of a whistleblower action brought under the Federal Claims Act. Former PeopleSoft employee James A. Hicks, who filed suit in the U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland, will receive $17.7 million of the settlement, as provided for under the statute. Under the Federal Claims Act, whistleblowers can sue on the government's behalf and can garner some of the proceeds of any settlement or judgment.

You've gotta hand it to them, the feds sure do know how to really get the people involved in the workings of government sometimes. Just think, you too could quit your job, sue the hell out of a company "on behalf of the people" and end up able to retire several times over!

Man, you know that you have strong libertarian sentiments when you read an article like that and the most outrageous thing in the article is that private citizens can sue on behalf of the public and keep a chunk of the loot for themselves. Back in the day they used to call that by a myriad synonyms for villainy and corruption, but today it's just called revenue collection.

It keeps getting better and better:

Russia has promised to send troops to defend the Georgian separatist regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia if Georgia attacks them.

Sergei Ivanov, the Russian Defence Minister, said: “Our peacekeepers are there, and there are many Russia citizens there, as well as in Georgia.

“If the Georgian leadership attacks . . . if ethnic cleansing and genocide starts there, Russia will not stay on the sidelines.”

Sometimes you have to stand in awe of how the Russians are so openly hypocritical. Ooooh evil American imperialists! We'll show them, we'll try to reclaim half a dozen ethnic groups that finally broke away from our iron grip when the Soviet Union fell apart! I think the United States should send a bunker-buster bomb bouquet as a house-warming present to the Georgians for when they reclaim that territory and Russia comes knocking at their door.

After making up an additional 4.5 hours, I decided to take today off and man it's been worth it so far. Nothing like being free to go out and do whatever you want to do and can afford when everyone else is having to work 9-5 or whenever core hours are. I've been with my girl all day, since she actually got the day off as a holiday, and so blogging and all that will be slow... but I leave y'all with this to think about.

The next time that someone tells you that you are selfish for being a capitalist and not feeling like you have to support your fellow man by sheer fact that he lives, consider this. Why are all collectivist arguments driven toward those who are most likely to tear down the system? If collectivists truly cared about the poor, they wouldn't support universal this or that because it would be abused by that 1% that is incorrigible. The deserving poor are always screwed over by the undeserving poor. Why is it that we give Medicare coverage to those who could afford it if they gave up cable, beer, cigarettes, internet access and got maybe just one cheap cell phone?

Think about that.

You know... I was going to write up a more serious post tonight, but I caught this on Digg and it just struck a real chord with me. Read the whole thing, it's worth it even if you've never even seen code, let alone written some:

Sunnyvale, CA - Fred Munk yesterday lost his job for excessive perl programming. Munk was hired for categorization and review of links to pornographic websites for Yahoo's Erotica department. He allegedly spent more time programming perl-scripts than looking for porn.

"He was fired for gross laziness" reports Diane Vice, Yahoo's Director of Consumer Porn. "I mean, it's okay to use company resources for fun stuff for fifteen minutes after lunch, to stimulate digestion by whipping up some nifty regular expression or obfuscating the break-condition in a for-loop, but this Munk-guy has a serious productivity problem. I told him get some professional help, but Fred didn't listen and continued to churn out code during work hours -- compulsively, obsessively, just sick!"

Munk responded, "I'd be pounding out some hot code and then the boss would come by and I'd have to quickly switch to Jenna Jameson taking it from behind. I needed quick fingers, but I wasn't quick enough. She kept catching me with Emacs open."

Well, in their defense, you probably are an unredeemable deviant if you can comfortably code in Perl for eight hours a day...

You read things like this and you realize how irresponsible the mainstream media actually is. It astounds me sometimes how blatantly idiotic, elitist and out of touch most of the major news outlets are, but only only because they serve as an indicator of how things are in the rest of society. Their size naturally implies that there are a lot of people are so clueless that they would actually buy that crap.

The mainstream media is, in my opinion, the greatest obstacle to "liberty and democracy," not the protector. Ask yourself this, if you disagree. Why is it that the media never reports on police malfeasance unless it's racially motivated? Does no one think that perhaps that focusing on this only serves to ignore the fact that it is a problem that isn't exclusive to racial minorities? How can there be informed debate except among people who already care and research these topics, if the media presents a strongly biased, one dimensional view?

They are contemptible because they lack the mental strength to reason abstractly while offering up superficially sophisticated horse shit that masquerades as informed opinion with its finger on the pulse of cultures that they only know at all through the importing of a few foods from their homelands. Don't let any of that bother you as you write about how, parlance aside, the Parisian proletariat is as viciously hateful of all pigment-enhanced "others" as the white trash of Dixie. Is there any difference between lashing out at a bus full of bystanders with a Perrier bottle filled with flaming gasoline and peacefully refusing to give up your seat to a white person? I leave that to you, gentle reader.

Despite their purported powers of reasoning, they cannot get out of the past. Like a heroin junkie they need their next civil rights fix. Sacre bleu, mes ames, zere ees a deeferenze between Montgomery Alabama in 1950 and Pawee in 2006? Zat eez heresee!

I have already put in about 5 hours of overtime this pay period and am closing in on having almost an entire day off on Monday since I quit the caffeine OD that was the story of the last two to three years of my life. It may sound stupid, but I can now actually get up and go in the morning with only 7 hours of sleep and be fine during the day as long as I keep my blood sugar up. The whole thing was so subtle that I didn't even realize how messed up I had gotten. This time at work, which is spent in part due to long meetings in the afternoon, is why the blogging has been light.

I've written a lot of new fiction material, but it's not going to be published on my blog until MTProtect 2.0 is out and I can hopefully get it installed. IMO, this new stuff, about 20 pages of new material, is a hell of a lot better than my first attempts at writing. I think the stuff before got me used to actually building and sustaining scenery in my mind. The new stuff, Billy, if you're still hanging around from time to time, is so far actually in some ways darker than my old fiction.

Last thing that comes to my mind is that I have been using Jython at work for a lot of stuff that I do for my support work now. No, it's not that type of support call. I'm often getting assigned development support calls that involve me debugging a client's use of our software. I've been using a lot of Jython for the stuff that I have been supporting full time. It's an awesome implementation of Python. Every Java object is accessible to Jython, but you have most of the goodies of a full-blown Python interpretter and bytecode compiler. If you know anything about writing code, especially with Java or .NET, you'll appreciate this:

import javax.swing
x = javax.swing.JFrame("My Frame")
x.setSize(500,500)
x.setVisible(1)

And the best part is that there is a Jython compiler that compiles your Python scripts to Java objects and bundles them so you can script in Jython and safely deploy onto a Java virtual machine on any OS.

Life is getting fun again, and now that the caffeine fog is out of my mind, I'm starting to actually get it in order.

In Britain, wounded veterans now have to fear for their safety as the religion of peace threatens them when they're at their weakest. A little more mundane, but just as vile, a Turkish Muslim man tore down a 9/11 tribute to a police officer who died as a first responder on site. In Iraq, a whole police brigade has been pulled from duty over allegations that it has been supporting some of the death squads causing problems in Iraq. The civility that these people show is just breath-taking, isn't it?

I would be all for writing these people off as moonbats of the Muslim persuasion, if there were some sort of organized and forceful opposition to them. If there were, you would have conservative Muslims who would be genuinely insulted by these anti-social losers and wouldn't hesitate to hold them accountable. The conservative Muslim silence, though, is deafening, in as much as it makes the explosions and miscellaneous violence of the true believers ring more clearly.

At what point do non-Muslims say to the collective "moderate Muslims" that they have two choices: vocally and powerfully stand up against the jihadists or be counted among their sympathizers? I think the time for that is starting to come sooner rather than later, and it is clear that many normal Europeans are starting to feel that way.

The dutch seem to be showing a lot more intelligence about the ultimate end of democracy than we do:

A democracy, it was argued by some, needs teeth, even if that means that democratic choices could somehow - a clear mechanism was of course never offered - be rejected. It was both interesting and surprising to see the nation’s eminent historian, H.W. von der Dunk, float the idea of a 'qualified democracy' where citizens would have to pass a certain test before they could be eligible to vote.

Universal democracy only makes sense if you seriously believe that there are no fundamental differences in the way that people at different standard deviations of intellect see the world and can relate to it, or you believe that government is not the legal institutionalization of force. It's amazing that people can turn on the TV and see so many blithering idiots in entire segments of society and believe that they deserve the right to wield political power over the rest of society. The Dutch seem to be starting to be able to grasp this at some fundamental level; they're starting to realize that assimilation-resistant Muslims won't vote for the same Netherlands as the natives will.

When you give someone the right to vote, you are giving them a small measure of power to control every aspect of the government around you. Unlike most Americans, the average Dutch citizen is starting to realize that they don't want their country to be controlled by people who don't share their values.

I have been trying to muster some sort of care about Rep Foley, but I just can't. He serves as too good of a reminder of a truth that I have come to fully embrace: you cannot rely on men to do the work of God. The man was a crusader for putting pedophiles and other such people away in prison. He basically was attacking the very sort of people that he was, which leads one to wonder whether it was either an act of repentance or whether it was simple misdirection. My guess is the latter, not the former.

One of these days, religious conservatives will actually start to believe their own rhetoric and realize that Jesus Christ really is the alpha and omega of America's salvation. They'll stop trusting people like Foley who think that a few more good works, a few new laws and a rigid heart will make things work better this time. Worked like a charm at keeping Israel safe in God's arms.

Call me cynical, but I just shrug when I see nonsense like that gambling ban, especially in light of this case. It's not going to address the fundamental spiritual issues, which are something that you can't explain to people who don't know them in their soul.

So, on Wednesday I got serious about basically quitting caffeine consumption except through normal things like the occasional soda or cup of tea. It was a nightmare for the first few days, but this weekend it really started to pay off. I didn't know how much my body was really dependent on it and how much it was weighing me down physically and mentally. I was not only seriously functional without any coffee after 9 hours of sleep on Saturday (after a week of 6-7 hour nights), but I have felt great this weekend.

Through the past few years, my caffeine consumption went up from a few cups of regular coffee a day to several shots of espresso a day and then sometimes several cups of coffee. At least twice the normal caffeine intake for most people. Screwed me up royally, and ironically, I've found a beer or Smirnof Ice to be a great way to stave off the headache and anxiety if done at the right time of day. I'm only surprised because I'm a reasonably big guy, and I wouldn't have expected it to have that much of an impact on caffeine withdrawl since one beer normally has no effect at all on me.

Energy level? I actually feel good and it's freaking me out. I am not going to quite drinking strong coffee, but I'm going to limit it to sci fi fridays and maybe one a day over the weekend from now on. Then, only one shot of espresso. The withdrawl made me halfway psychotic and I sure as hell ain't going back to that, so who knows. I will probably end up just going to one a week on Friday or Saturday.

It ain't over yet or anything, but it's a good ways to being over which is what matters.