Clueless Blog

2010-12-06T10:03:00.001-05:00

Back in the day, you could sue a railroad for soiling the laundry you hung out to dry. This extension of property rights was cut short, though, by the advent of something called Industrial Policy that we had to have to compete with France and Britain.

We need to back out of that. Trying to centrally manage the optimal tax strategy is never going to be as environmentally responsive as extending private property rights into our rivers, oceans, and air. Imagine being able to sue the farmers for their phosphate and pesticide pollution of your mile of river. Imagine being able to sue oil companies for polluting your cubic mile of ocean, while protecting it from "drive by" fishing. Imagine evil corporations having to buy easements from you in order to dump their pollution into your air or water or food.

Creating laws always creates unintended consequences and groups with a special interests in maintaining them. Look at how entrenched ethanol subsidies are, even though we now know what havoc they reek on the environment and economy. Naturally extending property rights into the Commons will marshal all kinds of motives, not just the noble ones, towards the goal of greater stewardship of the environment.

Statistics Competition: Chess ratings - can we do better than Elo?

2010-08-03T12:22:00.000-04:00

Statistics Competition: Chess ratings - can we do better than Elo?

Chinese report documents human rights disaster in the United States : Indybay

2010-04-26T11:35:00.000-04:00

The United States is the only country in the world that claims to be superior in every aspect, especially in human rights, and that lie is again exposed, this time by a report from China on the United States, all from US sources. The US is in fact a backward cesspool, the most backward country in the industrialized world.

The Cultural and Spiritual Legacy of Fiat Inflation - Jörg Guido Hülsmann - Mises Institute

2010-04-18T21:13:00.000-04:00

These effects are 'especially strong among the youth. They learn to live in the present and scorn those who try to teach them ‘old-fashioned morality and thrift.’ Inflation thereby encourages a mentality of immediate gratification that is plainly at variance with the discipline and eternal perspective required to exercise principles of biblical stewardship—such as long-term investment for the benefit of future generations.'

High fructose corn syrup worse than sugar? | The Money Times

2010-03-27T14:17:00.000-04:00

High fructose corn syrup causes more fatness than table sugar, says a new study from Princeton University.

Study Finds High-Fructose Corn Syrup Contains Mercury - washingtonpost.com

2010-03-27T14:15:00.000-04:00

Almost half of tested samples of commercial high-fructose corn syrup (HFCS) contained mercury, which was also found in nearly a third of 55 popular brand-name food and beverage products where HFCS is the first- or second-highest labeled ingredient, according to two new U.S. studies.

JSConf.US 2010 -- Swashbucklin' JavaScript!

2010-02-17T05:49:00.000-05:00

JSCONF is currently sold out. We are working with sponsors and speaker proposals to attempt to make more seats available. For more details please read, The Soon-To-Be Awkward Moment in our blog.

Please do not panic, there will be plenty of time to panic after speakers and parties have been announced..

Great... I'm in the DC area, in the April 17 & 18 time frame, I need to get up to speed on JavaScript, AND IT'S SOLD OUT!!!! :-(

Critical Issues Commentary: Colossian Heresy Part 1

2010-02-04T11:32:00.000-05:00

Bondage to the stoicheia comes in forms that are cleverly disguised as religious means of freeing oneself from their influence. Those who are caught up in contemporary “spiritual warfare” teachings should take notice. The forces of darkness are all too willing to have themselves be the object of such battles — they may even inspire the means and techniques. They evidently like all the attention in as much as it keeps our attention off of Christ and what He has done, once for all.

Academics fight rise of creationism at universities | World news | The Guardian

2010-01-28T12:35:00.000-05:00

A growing number of science students on British campuses and in sixth form colleges are challenging the theory of evolution and arguing that Darwin was wrong. Some are being failed in university exams because they quote sayings from the Bible or Qur'an as scientific fact and at one sixth form college in London most biology students are now thought to be creationists.

Christopher Blizzard · HTML5 video and H.264 – what history tells us and why we’re standing with the web

2010-01-25T20:18:00.000-05:00

Christopher Blizzard · HTML5 video and H.264 – what history tells us and why we’re standing with the web:

"The truth is in the tests: you can still build a web browser, spider, client, web server, image editor, a JS library, a CSS library, an HTML editor, a web publishing system, commerce system – anything that is based on fundamental web technologies – without asking anyone for permission. This is a fundamental reason why the web has spread everywhere. Because everyone had the chance to add to the mix.
It’s worth saying twice. Anyone can create technology or services on the web and they don’t have to ask anyone for permission to do it. This is why we’ve had billions of dollars of investment and a fundamental shift in the way that western society acts and communicates – all in the course of a very short period of time."

Is Owning a Dog Worse than Owning an SUV? - GOOD Blog - GOOD

2009-12-19T20:36:00.000-05:00

Is Owning a Dog Worse than Owning an SUV? - GOOD Blog - GOOD: "New Scientist took a look at the relative carbon impact of owning a dog (or cat, or hamster) and owning an SUV like a Toyota Land Cruiser. The results, plotted in the chart above, may surprise you."

Gateway Pundit

2009-12-13T21:31:00.000-05:00

Gateway Pundit: "Jimmy Carter: Abuse of Women Including Genital Mutilation is the Fault of Catholics & Southern Baptists"

The Fiction Of Climate Science - Forbes.com

2009-12-06T16:49:00.000-05:00

The Fiction Of Climate Science - Forbes.com:

Al Gore thought he might ride his global warming crusade back toward the White House. If you saw his movie, which opened showing cattle on his farm, you start to understand how shallow this is. The United Nations says that cattle, farting and belching methane, create more global warming than all the SUVs in the world. Even more laughably, Al and his camera crew flew first class for that film, consuming 50% more jet fuel per seat-mile than coach fliers, while his Tennessee mansion sucks as much carbon as 20 average homes.

RIA CFML Flex Flash: Do Coldfusion programmers need to be object oriented gurus?

2009-09-04T14:36:00.000-04:00

RIA CFML Flex Flash: Do ColdFusion programmers need to be object oriented gurus?:

Interfaces for the most part are for compile time error checking and CF is not a compile time language, not at our level it isn't.

Software Is Hard

2009-08-03T10:41:00.000-04:00

Software Is Hard:

The developer is God of a virtual world, and it's hard work being God. Not a sparrow falls unless someone writes the code to make it happen, and that code is likely to touch the physics system, the sparrow AI, the effects systems (if you want the sparrow to go splat)--and that's not even getting into the dependencies on art and design!

Violent video games linked to child aggression - CNN.com

2009-07-27T09:42:00.000-04:00

Violent video games linked to child aggression - CNN.com:

In every group, children who were exposed to more video game violence did become more aggressive over time than their peers who had less exposure. This was true even after the researchers took into account how aggressive the children were at the beginning of the study -- a strong predictor of future bad behavior.

Jordan Chandler “I Lied for my father, i’m sorry Michael” | Fresh News

2009-07-08T06:28:00.002-04:00

Jordan Chandler “I Lied for my father, i’m sorry Michael” | Fresh News:

I made a promise to an old friend to tell the truth when Michael will die and that’s what I’m doing.

All American Investor: Real Unemployment Jumps to 16.8 Percent (Statistics, Graph)

2009-07-03T10:45:00.000-04:00

All American Investor: Real Unemployment Jumps to 16.8 Percent (Statistics, Graph):

If you read the U-6 you learned the real rate of unemployment is 16.8 percent versus 10.3 percent in June 2008.

DON'T GET THAT COLLEGE DEGREE! - New York Post

2009-06-30T12:20:00.000-04:00

DON'T GET THAT COLLEGE DEGREE! - New York Post:

The four-year college degree has come to cost too much and prove too little. It's now a bad deal for the average student, family, employer, professor and taxpayer.
A student who secures a degree is increasingly unlikely to make up its cost, despite higher pay, and the employer who requires a degree puts faith in a system whose standards are slipping. Too many professors who are bound to degree teaching can't truly profess; they don't proclaim loudly the things they know but instead whisper them to a chosen few, whom they must then accommodate with inflated grades. Worst of all, bright citizens spend their lives not knowing the things they ought to know, because they've been granted liberal-arts degrees for something far short of a liberal-arts education.

China Bans Gold Farming -- InformationWeek

2009-06-29T22:09:00.000-04:00

China Bans Gold Farming -- InformationWeek:

Trading virtual goods for real money has been banned in China, putting hundreds of millions of dollars in economic activity at risk.

Bailout Costs vs Big Historical Events | The Big Picture

2009-06-19T14:47:00.000-04:00

Bailout Costs vs Big Historical Events | The Big Picture:

The bailouts managed to spend far in excess of nearly every major one time expenditure of the USA, including WW1&2 (omitted from graphic), the moon shot, the New Deal, total NASA budgets (omitted from graphic), Iraq, Viet Nam and Korean wars — COMBINED.

Kristen Schofield's Blog: Analysts at Gartner Praise CF

2009-06-17T20:02:00.000-04:00

Kristen Schofield's Blog: Analysts at Gartner Praise CF: "Mark Driver recently published a Gartner analyst note on ColdFusion which recommends that agencies and companies continue their investment in CF, as it has a strong future with Adobe and is continuing to grow its market."

The Beatles Rock Band - “The Beatles” - Passion Pictures

2009-06-17T12:51:00.000-04:00

The Beatles Rock Band - “The Beatles” - Passion Pictures

The New Socialism: Global Collectivist Society Is Coming Online

2009-06-03T06:31:00.000-04:00

The New Socialism: Global Collectivist Society Is Coming Online:

I recognize that the word socialism is bound to make many readers twitch. It carries tremendous cultural baggage, as do the related terms communal, communitarian, and collective. I use socialism because technically it is the best word to indicate a range of technologies that rely for their power on social interactions. Broadly, collective action is what Web sites and Net-connected apps generate when they harness input from the global audience. Of course, there's rhetorical danger in lumping so many types of organization under such an inflammatory heading. But there are no unsoiled terms available, so we might as well redeem this one.

java, javascript, actionscript, coldfusion Job Trends | Indeed.com

2009-06-01T21:37:00.000-04:00

java, javascript, actionscript, coldfusion Job Trends

java jobs - javascript jobs - actionscript jobs - coldfusion jobs

Unemployment numbers worse than projected | Les Jones

2009-05-13T10:06:00.000-04:00

Unemployment numbers worse than projected | Les Jones:

The actual numbers aren’t just worse than the rosy picture Obama painted for a world after his magical stimulus took effect. They’re worse even than the doomsday scenario he outlined if Congress didn’t pass his stimulus plan.

So let's get this straight. We are currently doing worse, having "done something", than the worst predicted outcome if we had "done nothing". Tell me again how letting the markets operate without interference was a certain path to disaster?

This result of market interference was predicted by most Austrian economists, as was the entire boom/bust cycle.

Freddie Mac CFO David Kellermann found dead - Apr. 22, 2009

2009-04-22T16:43:00.000-04:00

Freddie Mac CFO David Kellermann found dead - Apr. 22, 2009: "David Kellermann, 16-year veteran of mortgage finance giant, was named acting finance chief in September. Death was apparent suicide, police say."

An interactive map of vanishing employment across the country. - By Chris Wilson - Slate Magazine

2009-04-17T12:02:00.000-04:00

An interactive map of vanishing employment across the country. - By Chris Wilson - Slate Magazine:

The economic crisis, which has claimed more than 5 million jobs since the recession began, did not strike the entire country at once. A map of employment gains or losses by county tells the story of how those job losses first struck in the most vulnerable regions and then spread rapidly to the rest of the country. As early as August 2007, for example—several months before the recession officially began—jobs were already on the decline in southwest Florida; Orange County, Calif.; much of New Jersey; and Detroit, while other areas of the country remained on the uptick.

1,500 farmers commit mass suicide in India - Asia, World - The Independent

2009-04-16T07:38:00.000-04:00

1,500 farmers commit mass suicide in India - Asia, World - The Independent:

Bharatendu Prakash, from the Organic Farming Association of India, told the Press Association: 'Farmers' suicides are increasing due to a vicious circle created by money lenders. They lure farmers to take money but when the crops fail, they are left with no option other than death.'

Adobe Flex

2009-04-04T10:34:00.000-04:00

Adobe Flex:

Adobe Flex Builder 3 software is currently available for free for software developers who are affected by the current economic condition and are currently unemployed.
Program eligibility:
To receive the product under this program, you must attest to the fact that you are currently unemployed and that the software will be used only for your personal use not for any production or commercial purposes.

2009-03-30T15:37:00.003-04:00

There is a cycle in the history of money that has been repeating itself for thousands of years. This is its modern incarnation:
1) The money monopoly creates so much liquidity that the interest rates are pushed below market values.
2) This causes malinvestment on the one hand and a negative savings rate on the other.
3) Innovations happen in the credit market as usual, but the regulatory agencies are only preventing the kind of innovations that happened during the LAST boom, so this optimizes the credit market to the unnaturally low rates.
4) A credit crises ensues as firms discover that there is not the large supply of credit to finish their long-term capital endeavors that the interest rate led them to believe.
5) The stock market starts reflecting the re-evaluation of capital based on the actual state of the credit market.
6) The malinvestments are dealt with by laying off workers and other, even more heinous, ways.
7) People and their pundits generally blame whoever they were most jealous of during the boom.
8) Regulatory agencies are rewarded for their failures with more money and power and regulate to prevent the kind of credit market innovations that happened during this last boom period.

The thing to do would be to make a great table with quotes in each cell for each period of the last few panics/depressions/recessions. You could even include quotes from various people describing these eight steps, as this has been written about for hundreds of years. But it is true that there is only one thing we learn from history: that we learn nothing from history.

Tax Topics - Topic 357 Tax Information for Parents of Kidnapped Children

2009-03-24T06:13:00.000-04:00

Tax Topics - Topic 357 Tax Information for Parents of Kidnapped Children: "You may claim a kidnapped child as your dependent if the following requirements are met"

Welcome to AnandTech.com [ Article: The SSD Anthology: Understanding SSDs and New Drives from OCZ]

2009-03-19T15:27:00.000-04:00

Welcome to AnandTech.com [ Article: The SSD Anthology: Understanding SSDs and New Drives from OCZ]:

Ever play World of Warcraft? What we’re looking at here is the amount of time it takes to get from the character selection screen into a realm with everything loaded. This is on a fully configured system with around 70GB of applications and data as well as real time anti-virus scanning going on in the background on every accessed file.

WoW Enter Realm Time in Seconds
Intel X25-M 4.85 s
Western Digital VelociRaptor 12.5 s

The world’s fastest hard drive gets us into the game in 12.5 seconds. The Intel X25-M does it in under 5.

	WoW Enter Realm Time in Seconds
Intel X25-M	4.85 s
Western Digital VelociRaptor	12.5 s

Philip Slater: Another Spectacular Failure: The War on Drugs

2009-03-19T05:20:00.000-04:00

Philip Slater: Another Spectacular Failure: The War on Drugs:

If all drugs were decriminalized and taxed tomorrow--all but marijuana made available only through a doctor's prescription, with clinics for the supervision of addicts--the following events would immediately take place:
Billions of dollars would flow into federal, state, and local coffers.
The drug cartels in Mexico, Colombia, and elsewhere would collapse.
The Taliban would be de-funded.
The expensive 'war' on drugs would end, saving more billions.
Nonviolent prisoners could be released and retrained, saving more billions, and creating useful, tax-paying citizens.
The crime rate would drop, and police would be freed to perform more useful functions.

You can add to this Jesus' dictum that "it is not what enter into the mouth that defiles the man, but what proceeds out of the mouth, this defiles the man." Think of all the evil thoughts, murders, thefts, false witness, and slanders that have been perpetrated in the War on Drugs. (I am probably going to be slandered myself from some neo-con just for writing this. :-)

Can You Buy a Silicon Valley? Maybe.

2009-03-18T10:48:00.000-04:00

Can You Buy a Silicon Valley? Maybe.:

Startup founders are mostly hackers, and hackers are much more constrained by gentlemen's agreements than regulations. If they shake your hand on a promise, they'll keep it. But show them a lock and their first thought is how to pick it.

Gojko Adzic » QCon London 2009: Is software engineering?

2009-03-18T08:03:00.000-04:00

Gojko Adzic » QCon London 2009: Is software engineering?:

Talking about the scientific methods and verification, Hoare mentioned assertions and tests in the engineering practice as examples that can help it become more stable and produce stricter specifications. While answering a question related to TDD and using tests as specifications, Hoare said that an inverse approach is more meaningful for him, that a “specification is nothing but a generalized test”.

There’s a new power in America – atheism | Andrew Sullivan - Times Online

2009-03-15T16:35:00.000-04:00

There’s a new power in America – atheism | Andrew Sullivan - Times Online:

American Christianity may be stronger in some pockets, but it is dumber too. In the end, in the free market-place of ideas and beliefs, that will count.

The coming evangelical collapse

2009-03-10T20:07:00.000-04:00

The coming evangelical collapse: "The integrity of the church as a countercultural movement with a message of 'empire subversion' will increasingly replace a message of cultural and political entitlement."

2009-03-09T07:53:00.001-04:00

Dissecting The Mobile Phone Plan Markup | Shrinkage Is Good:

Mobile phone companies provide the basic service of transferring information, whether that be in the form of phone calls, text messaging or internet data plans. However, the method in which they charge for these services is not so basic. By coupling various services into packages and failing to disclose specific details, these companies make it difficult to understand exactly what you are paying for, and exactly how much you are paying for it. With messaging and phone calls, both the sender and the recipient are being billed, doubling the charge on the transfer of the same data. When we took a look into exactly how much data is being transferred, and how much it is costing the customer, we found that each service is each being charged at relatively high and largely different rates.

The reason that messaging is 412,500 times more expensive per gigabyte than your standard ISP has to do with the over-regulation (and subsequent regulatory capture) of the phone carriers.

Music That Makes You Dumb? | BeatCrave - Music Blog, MP3 Downloads, Videos, News, Giveaways

2009-03-06T07:02:00.000-05:00

Music That Makes You Dumb? | BeatCrave - Music Blog, MP3 Downloads, Videos, News, Giveaways

CalTech grad student named Virgil Griffith has conducted an interesting (albeit somewhat unscientific) study relating music preferences with SAT scores. While SAT scores are criticized for not accurately determining intelligence, the results show that the “smartest” students’ favorite musician is Beethoven, with an average SAT score of 1371, and at the other end of the spectrum is Lil’ Wayne, with an average score of 889.

Other bands at the top of the scale are Counting Crows, Radiohead, and Sufjan Stevens. Check out the full image of the results after the jump:

Surprisingly, no style of music stands out above the rest, but rather most bands fit within the 1000 to 1150 score range. Another question is whether music can be legitimately associated with smarts.

Does intelligence choose the band? Or does music define how smart we become? Where do your favorite bands appear? Do you think that music can make you dumb?

Among the Inept, Researchers Discover, Ignorance Is Bliss

2009-02-26T07:32:00.000-05:00

Among the Inept, Researchers Discover, Ignorance Is Bliss:

On the humor test, in which participants were asked to rate jokes according to their funniness (subjects' ratings were matched against those of an 'expert' panel of professional comedians), low-scoring subjects were also more apt to have an inflated perception of their skill. But because humor is idiosyncratically defined, the researchers said, the results were less conclusive.

NOTE TO SELF: Add "idiosyncratically" to the super set of "subjectively".

2009-02-21T07:58:00.001-05:00

Does anyone play Team Fortress 2?

2009-02-05T16:23:00.001-05:00

The Next American Revolution: Main Street vs. Wall Street -- Seeking Alpha:

The impetus for the French Revolution can’t be summarized in a blog post, but there were two core elements that strike me as perfect parallels for the ongoing lack of judgment among some elites south of the border. I’ve always thought that average Americans shared many of the ideals of The Enlightenment, particularly equality and freedom of the individual.

We need an Austrian Revolution, not a French Revolution.

Reducibly Complex » Blog Archive » The Worst Argument Against Evolution Ever

2008-12-31T17:33:00.000-05:00

I think there is a false dichotomy of ways of piecing together complicated things: 1) by independent random events, and 2) by intelligent design. In reality, there are a whole spectrum of ways. It’s a matter, then, of working your way from all design to no design by small increments using recognizable examples. The examples must all be of an artificial kind. (Maybe we are talking about abiogenesis instead of evolution, in which case the complicated thing is some nucleic acid.)

bookoutlines / Predictably Irrational

2008-12-30T08:34:00.000-05:00

bookoutlines / Predictably Irrational: "Market norms drive out social norms."

2008-12-16T13:40:00.000-05:00

Aegisub: If programming languages were religions...: "If programming languages were religions..."

2008-11-16T17:01:00.000-05:00

Financial Crisis, Housing Crisis, Recession, Budget Crisis, What It Means to Your Financial Planning | Personal Finance Blog, Online Money Management, Budget Planner and Financial Planning -:

Almost overnight, the talking heads went from perpetuating the euphoria of investors to rushing to pronounce the economy dead. Last year, when lenders started dropping like flies as foreclosures rose and margins were called, the problems of Wall Street became more and more apparent, and lending guidelines were tightened to the point that many individuals were stuck in their time-bomb loans, and thus began a vicious cycle. But what led to this? Here is a visual guide to help you understand the events leading up to the bailout.

2008-10-30T13:40:00.000-04:00

Knuth: Recent News:

Leading banks and investment funds have been foundering, because of bad debts and lack of trust; and other, less well-known kinds of fiscal chaos are also on the horizon. For example, due to an unfixable security flaw in the way funds are now transferred electronically, worldwide, it is no longer safe to write personal checks. A criminal who sees the numbers that are printed at the bottom of any check that you write can use that information to withdraw all the money from your account. He or she can do this in various ways, without even knowing your name --- for example by creating an ATM card, or by impersonating a bank in some country of the world where safeguards are minimal, or by printing a document that looks like a check. The account number and routing information are all that international financial institutions look at before deciding to transfer funds from one account to another. (See, for example, Grant Bugher's comments.) More and more criminals are learning about this easy way to acquire money, and devising new schemes to conceal their identities as they steal the assets of more victims.

2008-10-16T16:18:00.000-04:00

Israeli bestseller breaks national taboo : Information Clearing House - ICH:

Dr Shlomo Sand argues that the idea of a Jewish nation – whose need for a safe haven was originally used to justify the founding of the state of Israel – is a myth invented little more than a century ago.

An expert on European history at Tel Aviv University, Dr Sand drew on extensive historical and archaeological research to support not only this claim but several more – all equally controversial.

In addition, he argues that the Jews were never exiled from the Holy Land, that most of today’s Jews have no historical connection to the land called Israel and that the only political solution to the country’s conflict with the Palestinians is to abolish the Jewish state.

2008-10-12T16:05:00.000-04:00

FT Alphaville » Blog Archive » Kemp: “The United States is now, in some very general sense, bankrupt”:

Whether they like it or not, China and the other reserve accumulators are going to take a hit as a result of the crisis. If their mortgage-backed bonds are not written down, the alternative is that the US Treasury issues a huge pile of new debt, driving up yields and cutting the value of their existing stock of Treasuries; China and other countries have to continue accumulating even more US government paper – increasing their already high exchange rate exposure – or risk catastrophic losses on their current bond holdings; the US tries to devalue its way out of the problem, boosting exports but harming China’s exports; or the US tries to deflate its way out of the problem, cutting government spending to reduce borrowing requirements, but pushing the economy into a deep recession that would also cut imports and hence China’s growth rate.

2008-10-12T15:00:00.000-04:00

Hanged for being a Christian in Iran - Telegraph:

Eighteen years ago, Rashin Soodmand's father was hanged in Iran for converting to Christianity. Now her brother is in a Mashad jail, and expects to be executed under new religious laws brought in this summer.

2008-10-10T09:26:00.000-04:00

McClatchy Washington Bureau | 10/07/2008 | Latin leftists gloating over 'Comrade' Bush's bailout: "Manuel Sutherland, a senior official in the Caracas-based Latin American Association of Marxist Economists, said that Bush has become a fellow traveler."

2008-10-06T09:24:00.000-04:00

The party's over for Iceland, the island that tried to buy the world | World news | The Observer:

This crisis has been a heavy blow. And many people should have a bad conscience for what has happened. Someone should be prosecuted, they have sucked Iceland dry, taken the money and ran, and left us totally in the shit. People I know who have gone to the UK or the US to study have found their grants worthless, they are stranded.

It looks to me like these guys are going through the same scenario: they are perplexed that their smartest could be so stupid all at the same time, and are turning their jealous gaze in that direction, looking for a scapegoat.

2008-09-24T08:54:00.000-04:00

Good ideas and lies - Paul Krugman - Op-Ed Columnist - New York Times Blog:

If Paulson can’t be honest about what he himself sent to Congress — if he not only made an incredible power grab, but is now engaged in black-is-white claims that he didn’t — there is no reason to trust him on anything related to his bailout plan.

2008-09-24T08:31:00.000-04:00

From the 2008 Republican Platform: "We do not support government bailouts of private institutions."

2008-09-17T17:15:00.000-04:00

Edge: WHAT MAKES PEOPLE VOTE REPUBLICAN? By Jonathan Haidt:

A Durkheimian ethos can't be supported by the two moral foundations that hold up a Millian society (harm/care and fairness/reciprocity). My recent research shows that social conservatives do indeed rely upon those two foundations, but they also value virtues related to three additional psychological systems: ingroup/loyalty (involving mechanisms that evolved during the long human history of tribalism), authority/respect (involving ancient primate mechanisms for managing social rank, tempered by the obligation of superiors to protect and provide for subordinates), and purity/sanctity (a relatively new part of the moral mind, related to the evolution of disgust, that makes us see carnality as degrading and renunciation as noble). These three systems support moralities that bind people into intensely interdependent groups that work together to reach common goals. Such moralities make it easier for individuals to forget themselves and coalesce temporarily into hives, a process that is thrilling, as anyone who has ever "lost" him or herself in a choir, protest march, or religious ritual can attest.

2008-09-01T09:02:00.000-04:00

Interactive Frequency Chart - Independent Recording Network

2008-08-28T06:57:00.000-04:00

The Blomsma Code - Hug a developer!

2008-08-24T05:40:00.000-04:00

Portal to Maya Underworld Found in Mexico?:

A labyrinth filled with stone temples and pyramids in 14 caves—some underwater—have been uncovered on Mexico's Yucatán Peninsula, archaeologists announced last week.

2008-08-14T16:21:00.000-04:00

Using Photographs to Enhance Videos of a Static Scene on Vimeo: I will never trust video again.

2008-08-06T08:43:00.000-04:00

When you say "Fiscal Conservative", do you mean Bill Clinton with his $200+ billion surplus - that kind of conservative? - or do you mean Ronald Reagan with his $200+ billion deficit - that kind?

2008-07-30T20:26:00.000-04:00

Andrew Powell's ColdFusion, Flex, Java, and AJAX Blog:

My personal approach has become to to let ColdFusion do what it does best, and no more. No AJAX generation or any of that silly UI stuff. Leave that to the AJAX frameworks, or Flex, or whatever your UI is going to be on the front-end. That's what the UI tool was designed for, CF wasn't. Let CF focus on three things: Getting data into and out of RIA front-ends, rendering HTML with dynamic data, and providing services that Java and .Net cannot provide (more on that in a bit). Beyond that, let Java, .NET, or whatever do the work at the model layer.

2008-07-25T08:53:00.000-04:00

Who Said It: Bush or Batman? | Indecision2008 | Comedy Central:

Can you guess which of these quotes -- provided by Philadelphia sketch group, Secret Pants -- belong to our president, George W. Bush, and which belong to Batman from his 1960s TV series?

2008-07-21T18:17:00.000-04:00

Study: IT jobs will drop in 2009:

Sharp reductions likely in contract staff, professional services and hardware, and almost no investment in cloud computing

2008-07-17T16:59:00.000-04:00

Bush: 'Our Long National Nightmare Of Peace And Prosperity Is Finally Over' | The Onion - America's Finest News Source:

January 17, 2001 | Issue 37•01 | WASHINGTON, DC–Mere days from assuming the presidency and closing the door on eight years of Bill Clinton, president-elect George W. Bush assured the nation in a televised address Tuesday that 'our long national nightmare of peace and prosperity is finally over.'

2008-07-06T06:37:00.001-04:00

Jesus in China: Christianity's rapid rise -- chicagotribune.com:

Unlike their parents, these young Christians are coming of age at a time when Christianity is slowly shedding the stigma of illegality. Western religion even has a touch of glamor because of high-profile converts in recent years. Retired Olympic soccer goalkeeper Gao Hong is a Christian, as is television actress Lu Liping and pop star Zheng Jun.

2008-07-03T08:56:00.000-04:00

Ron Paul’s Campaign For Liberty » Blog Archive » Something Big is Going On:

Printing dollars over long periods of time may not immediately push prices up–yet in time it always does. Now we’re seeing catch-up for past inflating of the monetary supply. As bad as it is today with $4 a gallon gasoline, this is just the beginning. It’s a gross distraction to hound away at “drill, drill, drill” as a solution to the dollar crisis and high gasoline prices. Its okay to let the market increase supplies and drill, but that issue is a gross distraction from the sins of deficits and Federal Reserve monetary shenanigans.

2008-07-02T07:41:00.000-04:00

Tutorials:Getting Started with jQuery - jQuery JavaScript Library:

We have a clean separation of structure (HTML) and behavior (JS), just as we separate structure and presentation by using CSS.

2008-06-28T06:45:00.000-04:00

Overcoming Bias: Evolving to Extinction: "So praise not evolution for the solicitous concern it shows for the individual; nearly all of your ancestors are dead. Praise not evolution for the solicitous concern it shows for a species; no one has ever found a complex adaptation which can only be interpreted as operating to preserve a species, and the mathematics would seem to indicate that this is virtually impossible. Indeed, it's perfectly possible for a species to evolve to extinction. Humanity may be finishing up the process right now. You can't even praise evolution for the solicitous concern it shows for genes; the battle between two alternative alleles at the same location is a zero-sum game for frequency."

2008-06-17T18:27:00.000-04:00

The Lancet: "Artificial colours or a sodium benzoate preservative (or both) in the diet result in increased hyperactivity in 3-year-old and 8/9-year-old children in the general population."

2008-06-14T09:57:00.000-04:00

Apparently no one on the Internet has heard of an anal trill with egressive colon air. My 11-year-old thinks it's hilarious.

2008-06-09T04:56:00.000-04:00

charles hugh smith-Obama and McCain: One Political Junkie's View: "The nation is on the precipice of harrowing fiscal insolvency; most of its citizenry are in denial, plain and simple, about the government's inability to pay all the entitlements and payroll and interest which has been promised. Like spolied children, they don't want to hear about sacrifice; they feel entitled, victimized, resentful, and afraid they're not going to get what's coming to them--a volatile, dysfunctional cocktail of emotions which will not endear them to the 'parent' who has to explain reality and insist on some discipline."

2008-06-08T14:47:00.000-04:00

The Texas Governor: Bush Would Use Power of Persuasion to Raise Oil Supply: "WAYNE, Mich., June 27 2000: Gov. George W. Bush of Texas said that if he was president, he would bring down gasoline prices through sheer force of personality, by creating enough political good will with oil-producing nations that they would increase their supply of crude."

2008-06-03T07:39:00.000-04:00

mental_floss Blog » 15 Reasons Mister Rogers Was the Best Neighbor Ever: "Mister Rogers seems to have been almost exactly the same off-screen as he was onscreen. As an ordained Presbyterian minister, and a man of tremendous faith, Mister Rogers preached tolerance first. Whenever he was asked to castigate non-Christians or gays for their differing beliefs, he would instead face them and say, with sincerity, “God loves you just the way you are.” Often this provoked ire from fundamentalists."

2008-06-02T06:20:00.000-04:00

Richard Baxter: Biography and Much More from Answers.com: "Baxter exemplifies some of the deepest impulses of seventeenth-century nonsectarian Puritanism."

2008-05-08T11:18:00.000-04:00

Gamasutra - Designer's Notebook - "The End Of Copyright": "The lawsuits, the spyware, the DMCA: these are the death struggles of an outdated business model. It’s the modern-day equivalent of throwing the Christians to the lions in an effort to discourage Christianity. It didn’t work for the ancient Romans and it won’t work now."

2008-05-06T09:26:00.000-04:00

My non-native English speaker friend made a pretty subtle grammar mistake:

The Bugzilla_Bug_1246.cfusion.war.zip has been moved in cfmx.ear folder on staging, Please check and let's know if it worked.

Grammar Nazis will tell you that "let's" is just a contraction of "let us" but they are wrong - it's really the difference between "shall we" and "will you":

Please check and let's know if it worked, shall we?

vs.

Please check and let us know if it worked, will you?

Each is asking permission, but when contracted together, the asker is grouping themselves with the one they are asking.

2008-04-23T17:21:00.000-04:00

Want to Remember Everything You'll Ever Learn? Surrender to This Algorithm: "I find myself thinking of a checklist Wozniak wrote a few years ago describing how to become a genius. His advice was straightforward yet strangely terrible: You must clarify your goals, gain knowledge through spaced repetition, preserve health, work steadily, minimize stress, refuse interruption, and never resist sleep when tired. This should lead to radically improved intelligence and creativity. The only cost: turning your back on every convention of social life. It is a severe prescription."

2008-04-22T09:23:00.000-04:00

I can’t believe I’m praising Tcl: "Is there something more distressing than the development of development tools for the mass market of a single developer? Can a programmer have a weakness more pathetic than the tendency to solve easy generic meta-problems when the real, specific problems are too hard? Is there software more disgusting in nature than plug-ins and extensions for a butt-ugly base system?"

2008-04-18T12:16:00.000-04:00

YouTube - Imogen Heap - Just For Now (live at Studio 11 103.1FM): This is Imogen Heap singing acapella "Just For Now" (from her album "Speak For Yourself") at the Studio 11 for Indie 103.1FM on September 2006. This kind of acapella performance needs its own name. She is filmed building a multi-track recording on the fly. Nearly every sound she makes is recorded into a number of looping tracks which are turned on and off to build the next stanzas of the song. Her instruments are a microphone, stand, and a multi-track recording device. She's taking it to a new level - hence the need for new vocabulary.

2008-04-12T21:04:00.000-04:00

Swedish spruce may be world's oldest living tree | Science | Reuters: "Scientists have found a cluster of spruces in the mountains in western Sweden which, at an age of 8,000 years, may be the world's oldest living trees."

2008-03-08T15:52:00.000-05:00

Telecom Immunity: Barebones Congressional Felony: "The Constitution does not say, 'We don't like ex post facto law, but Congress can go ahead and pass it, and then let the courts sort things out.' The Constitution says, 'No ex post facto law ... shall be passed'."

2008-03-08T07:40:00.000-05:00

California parents who don't have teaching credentials no longer can home school their children, according to a recent state appellate court ruling. Next they'll be saying that if you don't "state credential" yourselves as day-care workers, you can't mother your pre-schoolers.

2008-03-03T10:12:00.000-05:00

The Federal Reserve's rescue has failed - Telegraph: "But this is not a normal downturn, subject to normal recovery. Leverage is too extreme. Bank capital is too eroded. Monetary traction eludes the Fed. An 'Austrian' purge is under way."

2008-02-27T15:38:00.001-05:00

Pensito Review » Poll: 93% of Muslims Worldwide Condemn 9/11 Attacks - 0% Approve of Attacks on Religious Grounds: "It is advantageous to George Bush and the fear-mongers who run our government to ascribe the terror attacks to the Muslim religion. The reality is, Osama bin Laden and his ilk are conservative political extremists who, like rightwing extremists in the United States, justify their hate-filled political agenda with narrow, self-serving interpretations of mainstream religion beliefs."

2008-02-19T15:04:00.000-05:00

Cute puppy plays chess

2008-02-13T14:44:00.001-05:00

Congress has given the Bush Administration a "letter of marque and reprisal" authorizing them to search, seize, or destroy specified assets belonging to The People. This stops short of act of war, though I may consider it piracy.

2008-02-13T06:18:00.000-05:00

A message from The People to the Feds: let the airlines protect their own property - you kill people when you try it.

2008-02-07T09:49:00.000-05:00

Casting Crowns @ Mullins Center

2008-01-21T06:51:00.000-05:00

Here's a great example of SQL Injection:

http://riaa.com/news_room.php?resultpage=9&news_year_filter=2007%20UNION%20ALL%20SELECT%20BENCHMARK(100000000,MD5('asdf')),NULL,NULL,NULL,NULL%20--

The new years filter URL variable is not cleaned up before it's put into the SQL. Notice the double dash closing off the rest of the SQL from messing up the injection.

2007-12-01T04:31:00.000-05:00

I had a dream that went like this: We (my wife and kids and I) were sitting in someone's living room. Except there was no furniture and the plaster walls were crumbling and it was unevenly lit by candles and flashlights. But you could see that the walls were white and there were no unlit corners.

The room was shaped like an "L" and there were small groups of 1-5 people each, sitting on various mats and towels. I knew it to be a religious gathering as there were a few other members of my church sitting to my left and there was an expectation that we were going to start worship.

But we were uncomfortable with this Quaker-style gathering and talked nervously among ourselves. I knew the pastor didn't think highly of these undirected affairs but he wasn't there.

I was sitting right at the corner of the elbow and noticed to my right this West Asian family - A father, mother, and a few children. One of the teenage sons started singing this unfamiliar devotional song. His whole family joined in (his mother sung it in her native tongue) and we were able to hum along.

An attitude of worship filled the room. To my left, a woman from our church was discussing it with my wife, when the father stood up to give a homily. (As he wasn't able to see that the women were still talking I had to motion to them to silence.)

This little sermon came in a voice heavily accented and out of lips of an unfamiliar color, but from it I came to know a few things: that we were being persecuted for our faith and that this little family had more experience in that department than all of us put together.

And our smug superiority just left us as we recognized the true spiritual leadership among us, (though I doubt this would've happened if the pastor or any of the elders were there.)

2007-11-19T15:17:00.000-05:00

Hi Guys!

I am unable to get the extended Latin letters my Polish users are typing into my html form fields to insert correctly into my MS SQL Server table columns.

As a test, I created a little form:

<form
action="#CGI.Script_Name#?RequestTimeout=300"
method="post"
accept-charset="iso-8859-1,utf-8"
><input type="text" name="Alphabet_Sample" size="50" maxlength="50"></form>

and I copied a "word" containing all the derived Latin letters of the French, Polish, and Spanish alphabets into my clipboard:

áàâąæćçéèêëęíîïłńñóôœśúùûüÿźż

and pasted it into the text field and hit the enter key.

Now these characters display correctly in the text field, and even display correctly in the "Form Fields:" and "SQL Queries" Debugging Information output on the next page. This is what is happening to the "word" server side:

<cfif IsDefined('Form.Alphabet_Sample')>
<cfset This.alphabetSample = Trim(Form.Alphabet_Sample)/>
<cfelse>
<cfset This.alphabetSample = ""/>
</cfif>
<cfif Len(This.alphabetSample)><cfquery
name="InsertAlphabetSample"
datasource="#This.dataSource#"
>
-- line 24
INSERT INTO Collation_NVarChar_Fields (
SQL_1xCompat_CP850_CI_AS,
SQL_AltDiction_CP1253_CS_AS,
[snip]
Polish_BIN,
Traditional_Spanish_BIN
)
VALUES (
<cfqueryparam
value="#This.alphabetSample#"
cfsqltype="CF_SQL_VARCHAR"
/>,
<cfqueryparam
value="#This.alphabetSample#"
cfsqltype="CF_SQL_VARCHAR"
/>,
[snip]
<cfqueryparam
value="#This.alphabetSample#"
cfsqltype="CF_SQL_VARCHAR"
/>,
<cfqueryparam
value="#This.alphabetSample#"
cfsqltype="CF_SQL_VARCHAR"
/>
)
</cfquery></cfif>

I'm inserting it into an nvarchar column of every possible collation. Heroic, no? Just to prove it should work, I can launch SQL Enterprise manager and paste my "word" into each one of these columns, save the edit, and it displays correctly.

Yet this is what it looks like in each column:

áàâ?æ?çéèêë?íîï??ñóôœ?úùûüÿ??

In other words, all the letters with the ogonek, kreska, bar, or dot diacritics turned into question marks. Basically all the Latin-2 (ISO 8859-2) stuff. You know, the characters that cannot be mapped using the "Cp1252" character encoding. (If this rant can display html entities I think they would be ą, ć, ę, ł, ń, ó, ś, ź, and ż)

So, all the address labels for stuff shipping to Poland, etc. are ruined. Changing the web pages charset to <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8" /> has no effect. Adding accept-charset="iso-8859-1,utf-8" to the form tag has no effect. And obviously changing the SQL columns to any collation whatsoever has no effect.

So, how do I get the extended Latin letters that my Polish users are typing into my html form fields to insert correctly into my MS SQL Server table columns? Any ideas?

Thanx

Dave

2007-11-18T19:54:00.000-05:00

GTD Wannabe » Blog Archive » Inspired by the Printable CEO, 2007 Edition

2007-11-07T16:16:00.000-05:00

Software Engineering Proverbs

2007-10-30T08:04:00.000-04:00

People Are Human-Bacteria Hybrid: "More than 500 different species of bacteria exist in our bodies, making up more than 100 trillion cells. Because our bodies are made of only some several trillion human cells, we are somewhat outnumbered by the aliens. It follows that most of the genes in our bodies are from bacteria, too."

2007-10-21T07:26:00.000-04:00

sketch_071017b : Built with Processing:

Guided evolution. There are 9 random trees created in the population. Click on the applet and hover. If you click on the lower half of the tree it's moved to the middle and 8 variations -- children -- are grown. It's genes are passed down, but not exactly. All of the children resemble but are different from their parent. If you click on the top of the tree you can watch it grow again. Go to the blog post if you'd like to comment.

It's better to select from multiples of eight variations by clicking the trunk of the middle tree. The surprise is that most children are just twigs.

2007-10-15T15:12:00.000-04:00

The Future of Web Startups:

The greatest value of universities is not the brand name or perhaps even the classes so much as the people you meet. If it becomes common to start a startup after college, students may start trying to maximize this. Instead of focusing on getting internships at companies they want to work for, they may start to focus on working with other students they want as cofounders.
What students do in their classes will change too. Instead of trying to get good grades to impress future employers, students will try to learn things. We're talking about some pretty dramatic changes here.

2007-09-11T11:14:00.000-04:00

FIRST THINGS: A Journal of Religion, Culture, and Public Life:

In the history of Christian theology and spirituality, there have been many accounts of divine darkness, with a host of different implications. It is an ancient doctrine, emphasized by apophatic theologians and mystics, that God dwells in inaccessible light, a light so searingly absolute that it cancels out all images and ideas we may form of Him, veiling the divine glory in a dark “cloud of unknowing.” This tradition owes much to the Christian Neoplatonist Dionysius the Pseudo-Areopagite and his liturgically inspired vision of ascent to the divine throne; as such, it says more about divine transcendence than about human desolation.

2007-09-09T18:48:00.000-04:00

get Bush out of office: "just so you know"

2007-09-08T20:05:00.000-04:00

How to Feed Yourself for $15 a Week ∞ Get Rich Slowly: "Never eat out. I couldn’t have bought more than four or five meals for my $15 weekly food budget, and that’s assuming the cheap breakfast place that had meals for $2.95 a plate. I needed to get at least 16 meals out of that $15, so there was no room for the luxury of eating out."