illuminati1113

On Google on Privacy

2009-12-09T12:31:00.000-08:00

I'd largely retired this blog some time ago but this is important enough that I felt that I should write about it in detail and this is as good a place as any to publish it. This article from the Register highlights the blatant disregard for user privacy that Eric Schmidt, the CEO of Google expressed recently. The exact quote:

If you have something that you don't want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn't be doing it in the first place."

In a sense he's right: secrets hurt and if you have something to hide, it would be a good idea to examine why one has something to hide in the first place. But that is beside the point when coming from one of the single largest information aggregators on the planet, one that collects and provides all kinds of information including a lot of information that many users don't realize they collect.

The thing that everyone who uses Google's services in any capacity needs to be aware of is this: Google tracks your every move. It's worst if you have a Google account (and you do, if you use any of the following: Gmail, Youtube, Google Reader, Google News, Blogger, Google Docs, and more) because they have a name to associate every detail of your activity with. but it's also a problem if you merely use Google's products anonymously. Google like every website records your IP address along with your activity which enough to find out who you are, and where you were at the time you visited Google. If you use Gmail, Google knows every mail you've sent or received through your account. If you use Youtube, Google knows every video you've posted, every video you've viewed and every comment you've made under your name or otherwise.

People have been bitten by the Internet privacy leak many time before, including Eric Schmidt, who blacklisted CNN's online news service CNET, for publishing unfriendly information about him that they got from Google.

The reason all this is important is because of Google's unique place in the industry. All corporation, no matter the size, whether they are web-based or not are capable of violating the privacy and trust of their clients (Facebook is another serious wildcard for example) but Google corporate motto is "don't be evil," and has earned for itself a place of respect and trust among web corporations by nearly always shining by comparison. For example has for the longest time been one of the most significant and vocal supporters and funders of open sourced software and as a result has contributed greatly to the technological advancement of the Internet, even in ways that do not directly benefit Google (or benefits its competition.) Google produced many high-quality products which it gives away nearly for free, many that the general public didn't realize existed, or could be used in such a way. Google is the shining white knight of the Internet.

Because of this, Google, and it's various websites have grown to extend to nearly every portion of Internet and dominate nearly every field in which that they participate. Blogger a popular blog network, and the one on which you are probably reading this post, is owned and maintained by Google. Youtube is also owned (but not managed) by Google. Together with Google search and Google news, these make up a large portion of information disseminated by the Internet. Think back to the previous national election: which man won the presidential election? The man who's campaign made the most effective use of Internet media, including Youtube videos and political blogs. Think further, when people want to learn about a current event such as a political event, where do they turn? As often as not they use Google to search for information about it. The fact of the matter is, Google is coming to more and more dominate where we get our information. With rise of the Internet, and especially with the collapse of print media, Google is becoming, more and more, the gateway for politics business and current events. I'm not claiming that Google has, or will, even ever will consider, abusing its position, but what I am saying is this: Fast is coming the time that if Google did abuse its position in this way, we wouldn't even be able to know.

As it stands, Google has abused it's position in a number of less egregious ways in the past. Among Google's abuses:

Violating on a grand scale International Copyright law protecting authors

Deliberately censoring search results to cater to certain political interests

Chronic negligence towards vendors and consumers using both Adsense and Google Checkout services

Despite these problems, as far as huge multinationals go, Google is positively benevolent (compare them to the scum sucking IP abuser that is Monsanto.) However Google has proved itself at times to disregard the public Interest for it's own profit and as acquired such power that such abuse could have far-reaching effects and could ruin careless or merely ignorant individuals who have otherwise done nothing wrong. I'm not suggesting people boycott Google, (though that's become a more popular option with some) far from; given Google's increase in power, it is more important than ever to remain involved. What I am suggesting is that people become aware of how their data is used online and how the large companies that control a large portion of the Internet (Google, Facebook, Amazon, Microsoft, Yahoo!, etc.) can and sometimes do abuse their power. Remember:

Defend your privacy

Always cross check your sources

Don't trust monopolies, even the good one

One final note: As many of my friends and family know, tend to count myself as a Libertarian. However, unlike many such 'Libertarians' I do not do so because of a faith in the magical properties of the free market to preserve liberty and economic justice and prosperity. While I do believe that the free-market of far superior in both areas to the tyranny of the masses or the tyranny of the few that result from both Socialism and less ambitious 'welfare state' systems, I believe that defense of liberty against tyranny lies neither strength nor weakness of the state or corporate interests, but at the resolve and ability of the individual to defends his rights against the incursions of powerful parties whether they be states or monopolies. I am above all an individualist and as such I strongly recommend every individual to be ever mindful of his rights. If it should happen that your rights are never infringed, it mean not that you wasted your time in defending them, but that you did a sufficient job.

Thank You
Andrew Stine

money money money

2009-11-18T10:35:00.001-08:00

watch it go

Posted via email from astine's posterous

The Air Conditioner is Broken.

2009-04-26T15:28:00.003-07:00

As in the title. My A/C is down and I don't know how to fix it. Also, I 'm too lazy to ask. It's 93 degrees in my apartment last I checked and I'm opening the windows and doors in order to cool. Summer came early and it's hotter inside than outside. Fun day.

Plans for the Future

2009-03-30T18:44:00.000-07:00

I think that my plans are a little more firm now than they were two days ago. At least one thing is now certain: I'm going back to school. In the short term this means NOVA. I already have a number of credits with them so I think I might be able to get my associates over the summer. After that George Mason seems like a good bet.

What should I do while taking classes? I'm not positive. I have enough money to live at least through the summer without working, but if I can find a way to supplement my income I think it will be for the best. Finding another job as a software developer would be good, but I'd probably not have enough time to study if it was full time. My folks have a whole list of ideas from substitute teacher to administrator that they thing that I could get and would be good at. If they're sufficiently part-time, they could be good work. Personally, I'd like to pass myself off as a independent developer, and if I'm not planning on trying to live off the money I make, this might work. I'd also like to work more on my startup project, but that might have to take a backseat projects with more immediate promise. We'll see.

So I got laid off.

2009-03-27T12:05:00.000-07:00

Not laid, laid off. There is a difference.

So, anyway, IBM decided that I was too expensive to keep in my current position and decided to let me go. I'm not too worked up about this. It's not like I cared for IBM that much. They offered great services and benefits for their employees but they are also a little restrictive. I always felt like big brother was watching me, and long time IBMers seem to all have this forced enthusiasm that scares me.

I have a number of options. IBM gives me a 30 day grace period with which to look for a new job within the company before they severe my employment and wash their hands of me. which would be nice if it weren't that it was giving a couple thousand others the same grace period to apply to the same jobs. Apparently the odds are better if I'm willing to move to another country. There's also an outplacement service of which I intend to take full advantage.

More importantly, I think, is that this affords me an opportunity to shift gears a little. Up to this point I've been running on inertia. What I've always really wanted to do was found a company of some sort and be my own boss. Failing that, getting a degree, (eventually masters) in CS or similar always seemed like a worthy goal. When I got out of school, I was offered, almost by accident, an entry level position at IBM despite lack of any prior experience or training. The job had expansive benefits, flexible our, and plenty of pay for my needs so I thought I'd be a fool not to take it. I figured I'd say with the company for a year or six months and accrue some savings and experience before striking it out on my own.

Of course, then the depression hit and with so many of my friends out of work I felt that I should be thankful for having such a nice job. Almost felt guilty for anting to do something else. Also, given the economy, leaving just seemed like a bad idea. So, even though I strongly wanted to leave I didn't and just stuck with it because it was by far the easiest and safest option. I kept putting off my goals. And then I got laid off. So now I have no excuse. I wasn't a moment too soon.

So now I'm going to bill myself as a freelance software engineer or a startup guy. On that note, I kind of wish IBM had notified me a day or two sooner. I've been working on a project in my spare time and I had hoped to turn it into yet another dot-com idea. I even went so far as to apply to startup school. The application, though, was due the day before IBM let me go and I know I would have put more effort into it if I ad known I would be laid off soon. It's too bad, really, but in the grand scheme it's rather trivial.

So my course of action next? It's hard to say. I'll certainly apply for more jobs within the company, but I don't know that I even want them. I'll make sure that I take advantage of the time I still have my health insurance to get those health appointments that I've putting off. I've enough savings to live for a few months at least if I'm cheep so that's probably enough time to establish myself as an independent businessman if at all possible. Or I can find another company.

It seems the future's bright and getting brighter.

Exercise

2009-03-19T17:22:00.001-07:00

I think that I've discovered the secret to sticking to an exercise routine: Laziness. Seriously.

I find that every time I take up an exercise routine, whether it be jogging, lifting, swimming, regular calisthenics, whatever, I end up quitting because I get bored. I usually start off strong, make progress in the first week or two and find that to keep up my rate of success, I have to increase the workout time until it just gets too boring to finish. It's not the physical exertion that gets me, its the time that I have to spend doing something that doesn't stimulate my mind. That's saying something because my mind isn't something to be proud of. Eventually, the exercise just seems like too much of a burden and after a few excuses every day, I just leave it off like I'd never started.

However, this time I've figured it out: Instead of focusing on improving, I focus on getting it out of the way. I run for a few blocks and stop, every weekday. I figure insufficient exercise is better than none. So, if I put in insufficient time into my workout, but consistently do it, I'm better off than I was before. It's working so far: I've been at it since December. Better yet, I've doubled me distance and kept it under the same time I was at the start. I do it every day and treat like a chore and now it's part of my routine, something I would notice if I quit.

So when folks tell you that laziness is a vice, or that you should turn your daily chores into fun things, you can cite this as a counterpoint.

2009-03-17T08:37:00.000-07:00

A post on American Papist today give us this perspective on the Brazilian Abortion/Excommunication case.

Never mind the fact that the whole controversy is ridiculous as excommunication for abortion has been automatic for a very long time, what really got me was this quote:

The Vatican lives in a dream world where every child is a wanted child.

Right, because only wanted children deserve to live. It's just like how only ones without down-syndrome and other genetic diseases deserve to live.

She goes on:

You naughty Catholics shouldn't be having sex unless you're planning to procreate!

Well, yes. Duh. That would certainly solve this problem:

About five million women a year are hospitalized for complications due to unsafe abortions.

The Catholic Church isn't living in a dream world; it just hasn't given up doing the right thing, like nearly the entire rest of society.

Spring has Sprung

2009-03-07T10:55:00.000-08:00

I woke up this morning with the realization that Winter was over. I looked around at everything, and it was all different: The sunlight, the air, even the bed I lying in was somehow different. I got up and said hello to everyone, did some some reading, ate some food, until I stuck my head out the window and realized why everything seemed so much like Spring: I sneezed. That's right, my hay-fever is acting up and that means Spring is here. Older folks can predict the weather with creaks in their bones; I can detect the Spring with an itch in my nose. I think that I'd better enjoy it before it gets too bad.

The Good Dr.

2009-03-05T18:27:00.000-08:00

Last Saturday, Sheila put in touch with a Dr Thursday. Apparently I had expressed interest in starting up a Catholic school of the liberal sciences (Something for which there is quite a need,) she had mentioned it to him, he had already thought of the idea and was interested in my interest, she mentioned this to me, and I expressed an interest in meeting him. Anyway, she give me his email and him mine, and now I'm reading Chesterton, Newman, and Jaki and seriously discussing the prospect of building a university. I'm twenty-two, have a BA in politics, and am totally unqualified for the job.

This Dr Thursday (It's not his real name just in case you could guess,) has a crazy amount of energy. Despite my being the younger party he seems to be the more youthful, which is something. I've never actually read any of Cardinal Newman before, but now I am and so far I'm quite impressed with what he has to say.

In conclusion, things are just beginning so there is no conclusion.

Funny Story

2009-02-25T19:12:00.000-08:00

I was short on gasoline the other day as I headed out to work so I stopped at the gas station and discovered that my credit card was declined. Thinking it was a fluke, I tried again, but to no avail. Needing to get to work, I though nothing of it and drove off. On the way back, I tried again, at a different station, thinking that the problem might have just been the pump, but no, by card really was declined. Concerned, I called the bank and asked what was up, and was informed that card had been compromised and was replaced. They'd send me the replacement three weeks ago, but I never realized it's been sent.

I get a lot of mail from my bank. It's mostly just paper reports telling how much I'd spent that week. They also send a number of ads and occasionally something important appears amongst the letters. Of course, seeing how most of the mail I get from my bank is useless to me, I tend to ignore it and put it in my "will get to it later" basket. It got so convenient throwing my mail into an easy basket, that I soon got used to throwing all my mail into the basket, save for the odd handwritten note. Needless to say important things can be missed this way.

So I picked up a giant pile of mail, put it on the floor, and began to page through it looking for the credit card that I knew must be in there. I eventually found the credit card, but not before making an interesting discovery. You, my Internet connection recently went out a few weeks ago and I've been trying to figure out what happened. None of the correspondence I sent attempting to figure out what had happen made it through, and thinking the provider, a local company, had simply flaked out on us, I was about to simply switch providers.

Well, I discovered a letter, dated from at least a month ago, informing me that the local company which had been providing Internet service, was now owned by the city, and that my bill for January was due a few weeks ago. I just now sent the payment. Go figure. Teach me to ignore my mail.

Oh, I also discovered a debit card.

2009-01-30T15:07:00.000-08:00

A pro-life ad of very fine quality:

Considering that Planned Parenthood's original mandate was to reduce the black population and influence, this seems all the more relevant. Too bad they pulled it.

on 'Injection'

2009-01-08T11:28:00.000-08:00

In response to someone who, once upon a time, was wrong on the Internet:

I'm sorry, there seems to be a confusion. When I speak of 'spending,' I'm not worried so much about concrete public works projects, (which need to be judged on an individual basis,) but Keynsean 'injection.' The former is a problem, only when it finds it's justification in the later.
Public transportation (the 'tube' is a metro or subway right?) is a classic example of an industry which has a good argument for public maintenance. It is high investment with low returns, but clearly beneficial to the public.
Injection, however, is the process of increasing the demand in hopes of stimulating an increase in the supply. The problem is, that if there is no demand to begin with, then growth in this area is meaningless. For example giving subsidies to the Big 3 will help them produce more cars, but if nobody wants Big 3 cars, then we are waisting our time, and, depending on how the subsidies are raised, worse, potentially creating bigger problems.
The problem with spending like this is that the money must come from somewhere. The other problem with it is that it doesn't have to come from anywhere at all. I'll explain: All governments have two sources for funds (private institutions have analogues, but for simplicity's sake we'll ignore those,) taxes, and credit expansion. Taxes remove wealth from the economy, and, when spent, redeposit it elsewhere. Ignoring bureaucratic expense, this is a simple wealth transfer. It necessarily results in a loss of demand elsewhere. Unless the subsidized service is genuinely needed, (consumers just can't generate enough demand on there own to entice the supply to meet their needs, ie., they can't afford food,) this usually results in a net loss for consumers.
Credit expansion, or rather, inflationary spending, which today is fueled primarily by credit expansion, (they don't actually print the money anymore) is a different beast. Wealth isn't explicitly removed from the economy, but the signifiers of wealth, credit, whether it be actually currency or low interest loans (ie bonds, subprime mortages,) are introduced. In a perfectly responsive economy, the value of the money would instantly go down and the net effect would be the same as the tax option. In reality, it takes a while for people catch on to what is happening. The long term effect is still a wealth redistribution, but in the short term there is the illusion of greater wealth and a corresponding increase in spending and decrease in savings. This results in a transfer of investment from capital goods (factories) to consumer goods (Sponge Bob toys.) Part of this increase is a reduction in unemployment. The problem with this, is that it is temporary, and necessarily carries a backlash with it: when people realize that their wealth didn't actually increase, they'll find that they have spent more than could afford on goods that don't offer a return on investment. (Credit expansion, in my opinion, is one of the causes of consumerism and all it's evils, but that's not important here.)
The Keynsian system capitalizes on the temporary illusionment of people to create a system of slow credit expansion, not to grow industry, but to reduce unemployment and to increase the perceived quality of life. The way this works is that the government works with the banks (In America, this works through a combination of the Federal Reserve bond market, and secondary markets in Wallstreet and in real estate,) to create a small and steady rate of credit expansion, the idea being that the rate will be too small fro people to notice and for the economy to adapt. It was acknowledged even then that, this was unsustainable in the longterm, but this concern was dismissed. Keynes is famously quoted as saying, "We are all dead in the longterm."
When this was first attempted in the US, it worked for several decades. Employment dropped through the fifties and sixties, and increasingly monolithic and monopolistic corporations did well with the support of government funds. In the seventies, the market finally adjusted and there was a spike in unemployment and a recession. In order to fix the situation, an increase in spending was necessary. In addition to a few partial fixes to the system, Reagan introduced a a lot of new, inflationary, spending, which eclipsed previous spending. In combination with massive growth in Wallstreet, which began to should more of the responsibility in inflation (Tthe government isn't the only entity capable of inflationary spending,) the effect was eventually recovered.
So now you have a better picture of what I mean when I say that spending must increase. I don't mean that you just have to spend more wealth, which is possible in a growing economy, but that you have to spend a greater and greater percentage of the economy. You don't just keep inflating the money supply, you increase the rate at which you inflate the money supply, which, empirically, is unsustainable.
If it were possible for a government, or firm, to increase the amount of wealth provided to an economy your system would work. However, the government only redistributes wealth in this way, or borrows against the future. if we had some guarantee the fund would be invested wisely, this would be no problem. However, Keynsian injection, which is what is implied by the term 'stimulus,' nearly guarantees the opposite. Money is pushed into the economy at random and people, believing that they are richer than before and can afford it (not realizing that they are borrowing against the future,) buy a new television instead of insulating the house. Done on a grand scale over time, and you have a greater portion of the mess that wee are in now.

Santa Claus

2008-12-22T07:21:00.000-08:00

Nicholas, in Dutch and the familiar, is Claus. That's pronounced with an 'ou' sound, as in 'sound.' The word for Saint is Santa. So, when the Dutch came to America, their traditions of Saint Nicholas, were transliterated as Santa Claus. It is from the Dutch tradition of Saint Nicholas that we get the modern Santa Claus. This brings me to my rant: His first name is not 'Santa.' 'Santa,' is a moniker, a title, like 'mister.' It means 'saint.' Likewise, 'Claus' is not a surname; It's his given name. It's like 'John,' or 'Chuck,' or 'Frankie.' He is not 'Mr. Claus.' Likewise, there is no 'Mrs. Claus.' Looking for Mrs. Claus is like meeting Saint George and asking where Mrs. George is. So that is nonsense and people should really just stop. They won't, but that's my rant for today.

Busking

2008-12-02T12:07:00.001-08:00

Ok, it's been a while since my last post, but I've been rather busy. There's been work, X-Collegiates, and various side projects on which I'm always working. These include: finally getting the wireless working to a satisfactory level in the apartment, as well as setting up a nice Squid cache and a music player and reworking my website's code-base. Most recently, I've embarked on an enterprise of moderately greater ambition.

The linked-to website is currently just a place holder, but the description should tell you what it's about. Essentially, the idea of cold asking for money on the Internet has always fascinated me. I know that it has worked spectacularly well in the past, albeit, intermittently. So, I felt I might create a project to help folks with it. Think: MySpace with a PayPal sticker, only more attractive. There seems to be a big demand, (and given the worsening economy, an increasing demand,) so I shouldn't have too much trouble getting it off the ground. I'm actively working on it and a proto-type should be up in a few weeks.

Up and coming: no guarantees.

Poetic

2008-09-30T20:37:00.000-07:00

This is what happens when you screw with the financial system:

It seems that the banks which were supposed to safeguard our financial system are so confused about what constitutes a safe investment that they need to hire on new personnel. Why they are advertising through the local classifieds and not simply picking one of the hundreds of economists that would love to do the job is beyond me. However, it still seems that fate has a sense of humor.

Cold Weather.

2008-09-26T14:38:00.000-07:00

I don't know why, but the new cool autumn weather is making me nostalgic. For what, I don't really know, but it's actually kind of nice. It conjures up a certain sense of remembrance without actually burdening me with the actual memories.

I suppose that's the story of my life, really. Everything reminds me of something, but I can never remember what. I'm always thinking: "Ooh! This is like the time when... I don't remember."

It's weird the things I forget: words (I spent two minutes just now trying to remember 'nostalgic'), Christmas, birthdays of family, names of people I've just met and people I've known for years... At least once a week I forget the key to the office and I always kick myself for forgetting it.

I used to try to keep schedules, but I usually forgot to do them within a week. It's like a live in a perpetual present, knowledgeable of past and future, but unable to really connect with either.

Of course, I know what the really problem is. I don't get enough sleep. At least I think that's the problem, I can't really remember...

Anyway, this was supposed to about the nice autumn weather, which, in addition to being reminiscent of some forgotten, yet pleasantly melancholic memory, is also a very nice change from the constant, oppressive, cheeriness of the Summer. What's a little rain if it doesn't give you an excuse to relax inside and forget about all of your troubles.

XCollegiates

2008-09-12T14:43:00.000-07:00

No, it's not a porn site. Yes, we did get asked that question.

What it is is John, Sean and mine, new 'podcast.' It's really a blog with audio recording embed in the posts, but we'll fix that sooner or later, but for now, we're just getting started. We discuss everything from politics to philosophy to video games to film and of course we're always open to suggestions.

Check it out at XCollegiates.

Website

2008-08-14T19:06:00.001-07:00

What about it? It's received a face-lift since I last mentioned it, that's what.

Check it out.

The Omnipotence Paradox (or: Why Hackers are like God)

2008-08-14T11:22:00.000-07:00

So much RSI has been induced by this conundrum over the years that it's almost a shame to bring it up again. But it's an important stumbling block so it needs to be spelled out. Essentially, the argument is a very simple reductio ad absurdum against the concept of an omnipotent entity, usually directed at the Judeo-Christian God. The way it works is simple:

God is omnipotent (meaning that he can do anything.)
God therefore must be able to conjure an act which He is incapable.
quod erat demonstrandum:
God is not omnipotent.

There is a derivate of the argument, specific to particular interpretations of the omnipotent being, particularly those which insist on this being being omnibenevolent and omniscient in addition to being omnipotent. This argument generally goes like this:

God is omnibenevolent (and therefore wills the abolition of pain and suffering)
God is omnipotent and omniscient (and therefore can prevent all pain and suffering)
There is pain and suffering.
quod erat demonstrandum:
God is either not: omnibenevolent, omniscient, omnipotent or some combination thereof.

Together, these two arguments make up the core of any argument against mainstream theism. Now, the first argument can be settled with a very obvious observation, that the ability to handicap oneself does not make one handicapped. And so, the notion that an omnipotent deity could handicap itself, does not make it any less omnipotent at this current moment. However, this observation fails to answer the second argument with any satisfaction and completely misses the core of the misunderstanding.

The core of this misunderstanding is pretty simple. Our words do not mean what we think they mean. Our problem , of course, is with the word 'omnipotent.' The colloquial understanding of the word is this:

Omnipotence:
- The ability to actualize any cognition.

That is, can do anything we can think of, regardless of any inherent contradiction, which in fact incorrect. The real meaning is more subtle. This is to be expected, seeing as the word is an import from Latin, A language which is usually more precise in modern times than English. Naturally, omnipotent comes from the Latin roots: 'Omni' and 'Potens,' meaning 'all' and 'power' respectively. When combined, they mean something akin to "power over all things." Thus omnipotence is a reference not to what the entity can do, per se, but what the entity has power over. Hence, a better understanding would go thus:

Omnipotence:
-Absolute control over all of reality, in whole and in part.

This definition, while superficially sounding very much the same as the previous definition, actually suggests a much different relationship between omnipotent entity and the rest of reality. In the former definition, the deity acted more like an abstract will, arbitrating existence from a purely idealistic standpoint. The second definition, however, establishes omnipotence as, not some kind of innate property of the omnipotent, but as a relationship of the omnipotent to reality.

----------

Up to this point, this argument has been exposited before, many times. (Hence the RSI.) One can check Wikipedia for a good discussion of the issue in great philosophical depth. Normally at this point in the explanation, one uses some kind of analogy, and I'm no exception. However, my analogy will be a little different. Instead of Lewis's wonderfully eccentric painter, I've got a megalomaniac hacker (in the positive sense of the word).

You'll see how this works: A computer is a tool for automation and abstraction. It contains a world unto its own in which arbitrary sequences of boolean values are assigned meanings. All kinds of meanings mind you: meanings such as '4,' 'addition,' and 'kill neighbor,' are all valid. By merely mapping values to an underlying set of instructions and formats designed to hold any kind of information imaginable, one can literally simulate any kind of world. Freed from the constraints of physical matter, computers can simulate all kinds of worlds possessed of any kind of laws and with any variables set. With respect to these worlds, the creator, (in this instance a hacker,) is omnipotent.

Let's look at this omnipotence. A hacker can create a world which mirror our own:

(setf 'one 1) (setf 'two 2) (setf 'three 3) (setf 'four 4) (setf 'five 5) etc...

So that the world's behavior mirrors our own:

(+ 'two 'two) => 4

Or he can create a world which is different:

(setf 'one 5) (setf 'two 4) (setf 'three 3) (setf 'four 2) (setf 'five 1) etc...

And so create bizarre aberrations:

(+ 'two 'two) => 8 (+ 'five 'four) => 3 etc...

Or they can even change the rules at their most fundamental level:

(defun + (&rest rest) (reduce #'- rest))

To remake reality in any arbitrary fashion desired:

(+ 2 2) => 0

Indeed, with the proper tools and knowhow, the hacker can even change the value of any variable, and redefine and function, at runtime. With respect to the little simulated computer people and their simulated computer world, he is god, and this is what we mean by omnipotent.

There are some things, however, that our hacker cannot do. He cannot, for example, make the simulation run faster than a certain point due to physical limitations of the computer. This doesn't affect his omnipotence however; he still has absolute control over the nature of his simulated world, this a limitation of the world in which he it a part. His control still holds, but it seems that there is a sort of meta law to which his law must conform. The hacker may create a world that is subject to any rules he chooses, but he may not in doing so violate any laws to which he himself is subject.

We can thus apply this perception of omnipotence to a supposedly omnipotent entity: The great hacker who created the great simulation in which we are but objects. He controls the fabric of our universe, but cannot violate the fabric of his own. We thus see how omnipotence is not impossible, just over ambitiously defined.

But, we haven't really gained anything from this. We've removed one of the difficulties in approaching the concept of an omnipotent being, but at the same time, we've removed the chief advantage: that an omnipotent being provides a Occamian explanation for reality (this, in fact is very similar to the first application of his so called razor.) That is, it is easiest to explain all of reality as coming from a single principle, and this principle is most easily described as some sort of demiurge, which would necessarily be omnipotent in the manner described by this definition.

Fortunately, this problem is simple to escape. Even if we assumed the hacker had a magical computer which was freed of all physical limitations and he himself was freed all physical limits as well, there would still be limits on his actions. Those come not from any limits placed on the machine or scientist externally but those stemming from the scientist himself. Even if we were to pull out all of the stops, he would still be limited by his own imagination. In this hypothetical, the hacker could define function '+' such that it meant division, multiplication, addition, and subtraction all at the same time and in exactly the same context without distinction, except that that concept would be meaningless to him. He himself is unsure of what that would mean.

Does he mean?:

(defun + '((lambda (&rest rest) (reduce #'/ rest)) (lambda (&rest rest) (reduce #'* rest)) (lambda (&rest rest) (reduce #'+ rest)) (lambda (&rest rest) (reduce #'- rest))))

Or does he mean?:

(defun + (&rest rest) (reduce #'/ rest)) (defun + (&rest rest) (reduce #'* rest)) (defun + (&rest rest) (reduce #'+ rest)) (defun + (&rest rest) (reduce #'- rest))

In fact, there is no way to express it because the scientist, being human, has no conception of what something to be multiple things at the same time without distinction would mean.

In the same vein, an omnipotent demiurge is bound by its own nature. Anthropomorphizing it, it is bound by its goals, logic, thoughts, and imagination. If creating a simulation of a certain nature necessarily implies that that simulation posses a certain attribute which necessarily leads to a certain consequence, then the demiurge simply cannot both create that simulation and avoid that consequence. A hacker simply cannot create a process that both unceasingly conses and unceasingly accesses. It is not just physically impossible, but non-nonsensical.

And so, we come to the concept of 'god.' He is a hacker, living in a world where there is nothing but himself, and has chosen to create a simulation, (necessarily) of himself. This simulation, in order to be true to life, must include things like 'wills' and 'intellects,' and so, even though the great hacker in the sky is omnipotent, he must sacrifice a certain amount of control lest he contradict his own intent. To create a willful creature whose actions are predetermined is a contradiction. This concept, just like the '+' function mentioned earlier, has no meaning and our omnipotent hacker, like the any regular one, cannot do something which has no meaning.

Tarmac

2008-07-27T16:24:00.000-07:00

I said I'd post about it and here I go; this is about my return journey from NY. My last day there began fun; I couldn't find my passport. I spent the day looking it. Of course it was in my bag the entire time in the side pocket where I put it, but that didn't stop me from getting the entire maintenance crew involved in the search.

By 5:30 PM, it was time to leave, as my flight was scheduled for around 6:30, so the guys at the front desk rung up a cab for me. I realized as I was waiting that I was short on cash for the cab, and so went to the ATM, which wouldn't take my pin. I wasted ten minutes of my life trying to figure out if the machine was broken or my card. The cab arrived around 15 minutes later and the ride was rather restful except for the knowledge that I didn't have enough money for the ride. When I arrived at the airport I asked for a moment so the I could the airport ATM. After visiting every single corner of the airport except for the one with the ATM in it I finally found it, and found out that I couldn't find my card. Of course I went back to the cab to ask if the cabbie had seen it, which she hadn't. I rung up the hotel, but they didn't have it either. I knew that somebody was lying, but I couldn't tell who and was forced pay with my corporate amex. It was the amex's virgin run. I cancel my credit card and a new one will be shipped soon.

After all that, I still wasn't late for my flight, which had been delayed until 7:30 PM. It was then 6:30. I took my time and went through security. They threw away my soda but that didn't matter much. As I sat down, I realized that I was unbelievably anxious to get home. The minutes ticked by slowly and every minute the plain didn't arrive was really, really unpleasant. It finally did arrive around 7:15 and they let us board at 7:30 as promised. Everyone got on board quickly and things settled down, and just as the plain was making for the runway we were told we would have to wait. It had something to do with the weather. So, for about an hour and a half we watched as private jet after private jet took off. It was around 9:00, it was dark, and we were next on the runway to take off when we were told that there would be no more flights into DC because of the weather thereabouts. So I climbed out of the plain, went inside, and waited in line for about an hour as so that I could get information when I might yet be allowed to leave for home. It was of course next morning at 6:30 AM, a good twelve hours after I was supposed to leave in the first place. It was too long to wait in the airport, but too short a time to actually get a real night's sleep. It was also really late. Fortunately, some of the folks I'd chatted with in the ticket line were in the same bind as myself and were able to help in finding a hotel for the night, A place with a 5:30 shuttle to the airport. I paid for the stay with the amex and went to bed around midnight.

At 5:00 the next moring I got the wakeup call and showered, which was a good thing because I stank. What wasn't a good thing was that I didn't have any clean clothing. I hadn't expected the trip to last as long as it did and so, despite my shower, I still managed to smell. I was just in time for the 5:30 shuttle. Security, as I discovered, was much busier at 5:30 AM than at 5:30 PM, and I had a time getting through. However, the plain was on time, and managed to leave on time as well. Teh morning felt bright and clean after that and as I passed through my front door, I collapsed on the floor.

Then I recieved an email that my boss was wondering why I wasn't at work and wanted me in as soon as possible.

cult

2008-07-22T20:03:00.000-07:00

Corporate training in bullshit. Today I wrote my 'values' down on a sheet of paper and symbolically thrown it away in favor of the company's values. I did a lot of other crap like that as well; it felt like I was in public middle school. After all, who cares about how many things three stupid letters could stand for?

The older, mean more senior, individuals seemed to take to it very naturally. They've either already been brainwashed or they've just become cynical enough to just play along. I can't decide which. I was hoping for some genuine information about how deal with the bureaucracy, how to enhance my prospects, and how to adapt to the corporate culture.
I found out about the last one all right. I'll be glad to get back into my little cube in a couple days. Doing actual work will be a nice change.

Update:
I've finished my second day of class now, and after a messy trip home (later post,) I'm still of the same opinion. I'm finding that being part of this larger corporation mean actually believing its propaganda and ad campaign. Lord knows that had to watch it. I think that the most alarming part is that it all felt like kindergarten. We've played games, stood in circles, voted with stickers, drawn with our left hand, all of which insulting our (or at least my,) intelligence. If people are dumb enough to seriously fall in with this, how do thy expect them to do the work that they are expected to do? I don't know. Maybe I just need to look into another job.

God is Class

2008-07-11T10:29:00.000-07:00

According to Aquinas, God is the entity whose essence is its existence.

This is all fine and dandy of course, except for one thing: nobody has any idea in Hell what it means. Which is too bad. However, for the narrow segment of humanity known as "Java Programmers," I have a solution. If the world were written in Java, God would be Class. That's right, God is the class Class. Not only that, but he is the static self instantiation of that class (a singleton class if you will.) Though, this doesn't quite get there. Being that Java is only a partially OOP language, God is also Object, and java.exe, but that's taking the analogy a little further than it needs to be taken.

Another Wedding

2008-06-27T12:49:00.000-07:00

It would seam that Jen and Joe are now married. That's another two down; something like eight to go.

Anyway, it was fun, and the first time I'd seen everyone since graduation. The afterparty was almost as much fun as the main event. Hopefully we'll see everyone again sometime soon.

It seems that I have graduated.

2008-05-14T09:50:00.000-07:00

And so it does. This Saturday I received my diploma. No honors, but I did get a 'politics certificate,' which basically means I fooled Dr. Way into thinking that an office job had something to do with politics. (It did actually, I turned it into a thesis, but thats another story.)

I had some fun mulling about afterwards saying goodbye to folks, and then when home. I think I spent about an hour pouring over my regrets, and then got over it. Which is a bit better than what happened when I gradated high-school. So College clearly wasn't a total waste. Maybe I got more out of it than just a little more stoicism, but I'll see it when I get to it.

Feeling a bit ill, and realizing why I don't usually drink, beer, I went to bed a bit early, and slept for a full twelve hours. Since then I've been busy about moving. It seems that life just keeps moving ahead. I think I've finally given up trying to slow it down.

Working at a Three Letter Firm

2008-05-05T10:12:00.000-07:00

So I had been working as an intern at local consulting company for almost two years when it got acquired by certain three letter firm this past winter. My boss went through a hell of a lot of effort to help me maintain my job and I greatly appreciate his effort. I'm now an employee of a big three letter firm with job security to spare. Still, I'm beginning to wonder if he should have bothered.

When we first started transitioning to the larger institution it seemed like it might a little 'fun.' We would have access to better equipment and billions of dollars of resources from some of the most advanced technological department around the world. This much proved true. My new Thinkpad T61p is top of the line and beats the hell out of that fie year old Dell POS I had been using previously. We also now get free downloads of advanced new software that would cost us thousands to purchase otherwise, a free on-line repository of technical books and direct contact via email to some of the most brilliant minds in the industry. It's really quite spectacular to work for a company that makes over three billion a year on patent claims.

However, there is a dark side and this dark side can be summed up in one word: "bureaucracy." That's right, this place is unbearably bureaucratic. I don't just mean that you have to wait in lines. I mean that EVERYTHING is bureaucratic, from HR to IT, even the software is bureaucratic. To give you an idea of how this works, I'll give you an example:

This firm, of course, suffers greatly from the 'not-invented-here' mentality. This, of course, I expected, licensing issues can be a problem and anyway, you have more control over that which you produce yourself. So, naturally, any non-internal solution (read software) that you want included in your project, must be approved by a central committee. This committee likes to take its time, no surprise. This is easy to deal with, just use as little external software as possible. This shouldn't be a problem, being a huge international firm, we have homegrown versions of everything. We rarely ever need to use the foreign version.

Unfortunately, there is a little snag. The homegrown versions don't work. Or they do, but they work poorly, or they just don't work in the want we want them to. Non of this is surprising, though perhaps it should be. Really, since the solutions don't work, all we have to do is submit bug reports and let the projects fix themselves. This is where it begins to get hairy.

Instead of a traditional bug reporting system, we, the this three letter firm, are required to fill out a PMR. Thats right, a paid maintenance request. Every sub organization in this firm is required to pay every other sub-organization for internal support. Again, this is not surprising, clearly it helps management and finance get a clearer picture of how resources are being allocated. What is the problem is the sheer number of steps required to submit this PMR. Let me recount them:

1. Naively send an email asking the other department for help in using their software after reading their intranet page which clearly requested that you email them for support.

2. Receive a curt reply three days later asking that you fill out a PMR anyway.

3. Research for two days in the company intranet how to do this.

4. Dial a number based on the information you find and find out that you need a special internal customer number. The guy on the phone gives you an address to request the number from.

5. Send a request for an internal customer number to the address given to you.

6. Receive a reply telling you that in fact, this was not the correct method for requesting a number. Instead, you are supposed to download a special application, which gives you a sheet to fill out with information about your line of business and sends itself to a guy in South America is isn't actually an employee of the three letter firm.

7. Spend two days downloading and installing the application and figuring out how it works and what information to input.

8. Accidentally send you're application to some guy in corporate who has absolutely no connection with your line of business.

9. Send the application to the correct guy and wait three days to approve your request and send you a number which you can use.

10. Fill out a request form for internal customer support.

11. I don't know, I haven't gotten this far yet. Step 10 was last week.

Seriously, it took me two weeks for me to get my department a number so that we could purchase internal support. Seriously, this is something that should have happened before transfer of trade ever occurred and should have been handled by individuals much further up the tree that myself. This is ridiculous. It should not be so complicated to just get basic work done. We've literally had to delay key features to later releases because of fiasco. With kind of inefficiency, it's amazing that they stay in business. I am seriously considering just dropping out and starting a competing firm based. With just three other guys, I could probably provide a more efficient service that this three letter firm. Or, maybe I'm just naive, or disgruntled, or something. Not that it really matters. I have a meeting with my boss today about my prospects here at the three letter firm. They had better be good.

Edit: I have since gotten through to the engineers on the other side. It seems that during the time I spent attempting to get through, the engineers managed to fix the problem. After about two minutes of back and forth with the tech, I managed to resolve the issue by simply downloading the latest build.

RSS for Dummies

2008-04-30T09:27:00.000-07:00

This post is for my friends who I've been nagging for months, but still don't want to figure out RSS or Atom feeds. It's about what, precisely, they are and how to use them to browse the Internet, not how to write them or incorporate them into your website.

Most of the websites which you visit have content that changes. Every blog, webcomic, newsite, photosharing site, Youtube variant, or MySpace clone that you visit as content which changes on a regular basis, and you visit each of these websites on a regular basis to keep up with that content. You visit each of them in sequence, waiting for them to load, to see if they have anything new. Sometimes they do, sometimes they don't. Sometimes your friend's blog has a new post, sometimes it doesn't, but you don't know until you've checked. You have to check every single site you patronize and if that's a lot of sites, you could spend a lot of time browsing the Internet, hours even. It can eat into you life. It's even worse if you have a slow connection and each page you visit takes a long time to load. It's simply not an efficient way to get things done.

What would be nice, is if you could have a program that would check each of your favorite websites for you, and tell if they've updated or not. Or, even better, download the changes for you so that you don't have to. Well, if something seems like it would be a good idea, chances are someone has already invented it, and this is no exception. RSS and Atom feeds are a very simple means of accomplishing this, and they are widely used.

The way RSS works is this: It is a little bit of code,

<?xml version="1.0"?><rss version="2.0">   <channel>      <title>Liftoff News</title>    <link>http://liftoff.msfc.nasa.gov/</link>      <description>Liftoff to Space Exploration.</description>      <language>en-us</language>      <pubDate>Tue, 10 Jun 2003 04:00:00 GMT</pubDate>      <lastBuildDate>Tue, 10 Jun 2003 09:41:01 GMT</lastBuildDate>      <docs>http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss</docs>      <generator>Weblog Editor 2.0</generator>      <managingEditor>editor@example.com</managingEditor>      <webMaster>webmaster@example.com</webMaster>      <item>         <title>Star City</title>         <link>http://liftoff.msfc.nasa.gov/news/2003/news-starcity.asp</link>         <description>How do Americans get ready to work with Russians aboard the International Space Station? They take a crash course in culture, language and protocol at Russia's <a href="http://howe.iki.rssi.ru/GCTC/gctc_e.htm">Star City</a>.</description>         <pubDate>Tue, 03 Jun 2003 09:39:21 GMT</pubDate>         <guid>http://liftoff.msfc.nasa.gov/2003/06/03.html#item573</guid>      </item>      <item>         <description>Sky watchers in Europe, Asia, and parts of Alaska and Canada will experience a <a href="http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2003/30may_solareclipse.htm">partial eclipse of the Sun</a> on Saturday, May 31st.</description>         <pubDate>Fri, 30 May 2003 11:06:42 GMT</pubDate>        <guid>http://liftoff.msfc.nasa.gov/2003/05/30.html#item572</guid>      </item>      <item>         <title>The Engine That Does More</title>         <link>http://liftoff.msfc.nasa.gov/news/2003/news-VASIMR.asp</link>         <description>Before man travels to Mars, NASA hopes to design new engines that will let us fly through the Solar System more quickly.  The proposed VASIMR engine would do that.</description>         <pubDate>Tue, 27 May 2003 08:37:32 GMT</pubDate>         <guid>http://liftoff.msfc.nasa.gov/2003/05/27.html#item571</guid>      </item>      <item>         <title>Astronauts' Dirty Laundry</title>         <link>http://liftoff.msfc.nasa.gov/news/2003/news-laundry.asp</link>         <description>Compared to earlier spacecraft, the International Space Station has many luxuries, but laundry facilities are not one of them.  Instead, astronauts have other options.</description>         <pubDate>Tue, 20 May 2003 08:56:02 GMT</pubDate>         <guid>http://liftoff.msfc.nasa.gov/2003/05/20.html#item570</guid>      </item>   </channel></rss>

usually saved in its own file on a website which specifies all of the websites's recent changes. It contains a list of the changes, plus, usually, the content of that change. Each of a newsite's recent articles are often listed in an RSS file and often the articles themselves are saved there as well. The website maintainer is responsible for keeping the RSS file, called a feed, up to date, but this is usually done for him with whatever program he uses to maintain the site.

A program, called an aggregator, can now check the website for updates, by simply looking for changes to the feed. If there are changes, it can then download them and notify the user. All that is needed to get it to do this is to be provided with the URL of the feed.

Most websites which use feeds have a little link or buttons on the front page which shows you this.

You simply right click on the button or link, select 'copy link,' and paste it into your aggregator.

In addition, some browsers, such as Mozilla Firefox, can tell if a website has a feed attached to it and it will tell you with an icon in the address bar:

Of course, in order to do this, you will need an aggregator. Fortunately, there are many options. The easiest is just to use an online service such as, Bloglines, Google Reader, Live.com, or Yahoo. You simply sign up, enter the feeds you want, and instead of having to visit multiple websites, now you will only need to visit one. The advantage of an online reader, is that is works no matter what machine you connect from, it will always be available. Also, it will update whle your computer is unpowered, so it will always be up to date, even if you've just turned on your machine.

There is also the option of using an aggregator installed on your own machine. popular aggregators include:
NewzCrawler - RSS News Feed Reader
FeedDemon - RSS News Feed Reader
Omea Reader - RSS News Feed Reader
You can also work is in with your browser with browser extensions.

Using an aggregator to read RSS feeds on can save you hours on the Internet. Considering that it only takes a few minutes to set one up, it is well worth your time to use one.

Some more Subship

2008-04-20T22:30:00.000-07:00

I've put the latest version of subship in a public repository on Github so it will now be current with whatever work I'm doing. This will make it much easier to update. From now on, I'll store all of my projects this way.

On Catholicism and Fascism.

2008-04-10T14:01:00.000-07:00

I think that it's funny that so many people associate Catholicism and Fascism in a way that demonstrates complete isolation from reality. If you want a working example, just check out Jack Chick's tracts. You can take a look at his understanding of the Holocaust. Needless to say that these kinds of accusations are baseless and ridiculous, and prey upon people's ignorance. Weird conspiracy theories surrounding the Church are in vogue today with books like the De Vinci Code and such, but most people know better than to take more than a tongue in cheek perspective on it all. However, there are a few...

This is a brief conversation I had recently on the YouTube:

Random crazy dude:

It doesn't matter if you went to these places. The fact of the matter is they jesuits have trained all of our top military officers, lawyers, judges and many rulers around the world. Like the king of Jordan, the president of the Philippines, Clinton was Jesuit trained and many CIA. that's just to name a few. You're either very dumb or you're purposely being deceptive.

Myself:

Bullshit. If you knew the first thing about Catholic or Jesuit ideology you would realize how stupid this is. The Supreme Court Justices, for the most part, are about as 'Catholic' as Voltaire.

Crazy Dude again:

I was raised Catholic. Beside that, the Justices are extremely catholic. Do a LITTLE research before you go around trying to say what's what. Why do you think torture is allowed? or the patriot act in effect which is very similar to hitler's enabling act? you're out of your mind. Fascism and catholicism go hand in hand. always has.

To be fair, I didn't really give him much of an argument. With the character limit and tiny print, it would seem that YouTube is designed to encourage unintelligent conversation. You could be a genius, but you'll sound like an idiot on YouTube.

HOWEVER, I couldn't just let this stand. It's too stupid, and stupidity is contagious. Especially on YouTube. So I'm going to go through each of his points and refute them one at a time:

Annoying is his claim that the Supreme Court is controlled by the Catholic Church. Ignoring the fact having Catholics on the court doesn't make it 'Controlled by the Church', (if it was mostly Jewish, would the court be 'controlled by the Zionists?'): Just because people claim they are Catholic doesn't make it so. In fact many so-called Catholics today are polluting the ground that they walk with with their absolute denial of Catholic social teaching. For example, take Chief Justice Roberts, who openly supports Roe vs. Wade and abortion rights despite longstanding condemnation by the Church: CA, Humanae Vitae, and even the document itself.

Then again, Roberts is a minor case. Justice Kennedy supports both abortion and gay rights, which, of course, are also against the teachings of the Church: ToB.

Clearly neither of these people are very strong Catholics if they can't seem to support basic Catholic social teachings. The Church has explicitly demanded an end to Abortion, Contraception, and Homosexuality, and places where Catholics are the majority seem to have movements that support this; take the Philippines for instance. But not in America. She seems to lack control over here. I'll ask you a simple question: How can an entity that is unable to do something as simple as get rid of abortion, something that a thin majority of American's actually want, be said to be secretly in control? I'll do you a favor and answer the questions: It can't.

I could go on all day about that but it's not even the weirdest claim. The notion that "many" leaders of the world being Catholic proves that their is some conspiracy is definitely weirder. There are a lot of Protestent Rulers as well, also secularists, Muslims, Buddhists, and many others. Are there secret undergrounds for these as well? I doubt it. It's not like he even sites interesting examples: King Abdullah of Jordan and Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo of the Philippines, like they have so much power or influence. The Jesuits may as well declare themselves in charge of Djibouti; it would do them as much good. More so actually, Jordan is the least powerful nation in the entire Middle East save Lebanon (which is by far more 'Catholic,' btw.) The reason he chose these countries, of course is that traditionally Catholics countries like Spain and Austria are no longer the shining examples of 'theocracy' they once were. The traditional powerhouses of the Church are now as secular as the rest of Europe which says something about the effectiveness of this Jesuit underground.

And there's the implication that Bill Clinton's time at Georgetown makes him 'Jesuit Trained,' (whatever that means,) completely ignoring the fact that Georgetown is the quintessential example of a once good Catholic university turned bad and anti-Catholic: check and check.
Seriously, the claim is goofy.

But the worst, of course, is the link to Fascism:
"Why do you think torture is allowed?" - Well it's not because the Pope approves of it.
"or the patriot act in effect which is very similar to hitler's enabling act?" - It probably has something to due with precedent. (Note the assumption that Catholicism had something to due with Hitler. Its funny considering that he forced a Concordat on the Church to prevent priests from being sent to gas chambers...)
"you're out of your mind." - This might be true... but its not because of my opinions of the Church.
"Fascism and catholicism go hand in hand. always has." - And that's it. Such a strange assertion considering Giovanni Gentile and Mussolini both explicitly rejected the role and the Church in public affairs and were both excommunicated. It's also odd considering that while the Church is a 2000 year old institution, Fascism was a short lived political fad of the 1920s and 30s that sought to supplant classical liberalism. It's also odd considering that the Hegelian philosophy of the Fascists explicitly contradicted several Church teachings by identifying the end of man with the state.

The fellow seems to think that because he was "raised Catholic," that it makes him knowledgeable about the faith, but I can assure you, thousands of 'Catholics' are raised every generation who know nothing about the faith. By nothing, I mean that they don't even know what the Eucharist is and they think that celibacy is a 'Sacrament.' So, his claims are pretty baseless.

Besides the whole concept of a global conspiracy is pretty cool. If I even had a hint of this thing I would be on board right away. I mean seriously.

But enough of this. Arguing with someone on the Internet is a waste of time. As Randall Munroe would put it:

Thesis

2008-04-01T23:05:00.000-07:00

I'm about two thirds of the way through my rough draft of my thesis. I'd have about 10 pages to go if I we worried about page numbers. It's due in Front Royal at about 5 o'clock tomorrow. I wonder if I'll be able to turn it in without crashing on the highway. We'll see.

Subship pt. 2

2008-03-13T12:36:00.000-07:00

Ok, It's been a little while but I've been busy. No, I've not been busy on my thesis or work; I've been chasing important things, like tiny mini-video games. Specifically, I've been working on implementing my subship game. I've nearly completed the primary engine and I'll upload the source code in a little while so folks can try it out. It's written in lisp so you'll need an instance of Clisp to run it in or something similar. It runs through an overly simple command-line interface so it will seem rather crude, and it is (not as crude however, as the current AI.) However, this is not the final cut. I plan to implement a clean interface in JavaScript and place the engine in a CGI script so that I can implant the game in my homepage. I also have a scheme for designing rather more sophisticated AI algorithm and come mid summer it should be pretty cool.

In other news, I did finally begin writing my thesis. I'm not so sure what has taken me so long; it is probably my innate tendency to procrastinate. It seems like it might be easier than I thought, at least the first chapter will be. All I have to do is echo the same things OSS advocates have written about ad nauseam and add my own clarifications and qualifications. I hope to get it done in a reasonable amount of time.

Thank you and God Bless.

Voting

2008-02-13T19:21:00.000-08:00

I went out and voted in the primary just the other day. It was a bit of an adventure.

The sky was dark, the roads were icy, I had to get off of work early to take care of a few errands. The errands took longer than I thought, and when I was done, found that I needed a new tank of gasoline. As I pulled into the gas station and got out of my car, I realized that I was missing my credit card. I panicked and raced back to the house to get it. I turned over all the furniture, checked all my drawers, looked through all the pockets in my laundry only to find that it was in my wallet the whole time. I raced back to the gas station, braving the icy roads and heavy rains, carefully peering out of the window to see thing lane lines. I filled the tank as rapidly as possible and went off to look for the nearest polling place.

That's right, I went off to look for a polling place. I had no idea where one might be save that it was probably at one of the dozens of public schools in my area. I thought that it would probably be obvious. I was wrong. I drove around several blocks peering through the rain in vain and ended up at home at around six thirty, not having voted and having no idea what to do. The polls closed at seven.

I took to the internet and googled 'Manassas Park Polling Place,' and instantly a dozen entries popped up, all from two-thousand-six. I was disheartened. In a last ditch effort I looked up my email archives and discovered in a long lost mass email the secret: Go to the state website. Duh. In two minutes I had the location and was out the door. When I got there, there was a big sign telling voters where to park. I went in and it was nearly empty. There was no line. The people manning the election were friendly and in under a minute I had my 'My vote counted,' sticker on my windshield. I needn't tell you for whom I voted. (It was for Reagan.)

American Idol Sux

2008-02-02T20:12:00.000-08:00

I'm not going to spend a lot of time on this. Suffice to say, I think that American Idol is the essence of what is wrong with Western culture today. It's not so much the show itself, which is nothing more than an especially shallow talent show, as its inherent narcissism and its obscene omnipresence.

I don't watch the show, save rarely, primarily because I simply don't care for the kind of music it presents, so I really can't complain about the show itself. But what I hate is how it has became such a pervasive cultural presence. So much so, that otherwise respectable new sources will actually report on it. The show will air, someone will get voted off or something similar, and the news which comes on right after will report on it. As if I really needed to know. They could be reporting on the war, the election, the stock market, or something with even the slightest bearing on my life, but no, American Idol was more important.

Everything about the show is self aggrandizing. The theme music, the 'contestants', the judges, that queer host, everything, and the media treats it as if the self aggrandizement is to be believed. Its as if American Idol really were the greatest development in American culture, ever. Even it's title signals what I hate about it. It's that word 'Idol' juxtaposed with the word 'American.' As if this were what American's idolized: a bunch of vapid idiots belting out songs written by people far more talented. And the media eats it up. And the rest of the world thinks we're idiots. What a shame.

Against Ron Paul's supporters

2008-01-22T09:28:00.000-08:00

Now, this might seem an odd subject line to those who know me. I am in fact a very big supporter of Ron Paul and his bid for presidency. I admire the man greatly and agree with nearly his entire platform. I am especially enthralled with the pure grassroots campaign that has lit itself into a wildfire. It's things like the that demonstrate that there is still hope for our country. However, I have to take issue with some of the means that some of his supporters are employing to express their support of the man.

What I am talking about is a zealousness that I believe is beginning to hurt the credibility of the campaign. While things like spamming internet polls and Digg, helped in the beginning to create an awareness of Dr. Paul, they increasingly give the impression of a sheep with a mob-mentality. This then gives people, including media people, an excuse to simply disregard the Ron Paul support altogether. Over dedication may cause us to lose everything.

To help provide a better understanding of what I am talking about, I will reference a certain event that happened a while back that was related to me by my brother who goes to West Point. West Point, as you should know, is one of the United States' military academies (Arm to be specific.) At the academies they encourage a certain group mentality as a rule and for good reason, any military that is not governed by individual egos is not likely to be very effective. On the battlefield, this group mentality is essential, and highly effective; in the civilian world however, it leads to a certain interesting consequences.

Among these is the incident that my brother related to me not long ago. Dave Matthew's band had placed an offer that members of any college or university could vote on the band's website for their own college as the location for the band's next performance. The idea behind this, of course, was to appeal to the greatest number of fans. Now, not every cadet is a fan of Dave Matthews band, but at least a few firsties are, and they determined that West Point would be the place for Dave Matthew's band to perform. They voted and pressured their peers into voting as well. Very soon it became clear that this was a competition the West Point was involved in and it became a question of loyalty amongst the cadets vote in the competition. When Annapolis got involved in the same thing, any one who didn't vote risked getting hazed. As a result, nearly every cadet at West Point voted, some twice, to get a band for which not all of them cared.

The contest ended with West Point in the lead, followed closely by Annapolis and the Air Force Academy. Civilian colleges followed these by a significantly wider margin. When the band actually showed up, the turnout was actually quite a bit smaller than the vote count would have lead one to believe. Whereas at civilian colleges, only actual fans of the band voted, at West Point, everyone voted whether they liked the band or not, and this inflated the actual support for the band represented in the vote.

Needless to say, this certainly hurt civilian fans' of the Dave Matthews Band opinion of West Point. Many of them grumbled and complained and at least one of them made the mistake of saying something he really shouldn't have. He unfortunately caught the attention of the cadets and it quickly became a question of loyalty to email him and tell him what they thought of him. Some cadets figured out his contact information and quickly spread it around. Now, there are around 4,000 undergraduates at West Point, most of whom sent this fellow two or three emails. Many of them also called him or sent him conventional letters. This amounts quite a lot of hate mail. I have assurances from my brother that this is quite typical of how the cadets conduct business.

Now don't get me wrong, this is a good mentality for a military to have. It makes for a stronger and more functional fighting force, but you don't have to be a sociologist to determine that it leads to some very significant PR issues in the civilian quarter. Personally I think that sacrificing a few concerts is a small price to pay for a strong national defense. However, when applied to a political campaign, this kind of PR problem means the world.

When ABC, or NBC, or CBS, or whatever news group places a poll on their website, they are looking for the opinion of the regular followers of the website. Regular users tend to vote and leave. A good number of Ron Paul supporters however, vote, and then email all their friends, notify everyone in their Meetup groups, contact known supporters on Facebook, until just about every supporter of Ron Paul has had a chance to vote in the poll. The result is inflated results that the newsgroup just disregards. What's worse is when the Ron Paul supporters vote in his favor even when the situation does not warrant it; for example: voting him the clearest speaker at a debate when speaking is clearly his greatest weakness (I get the impression that he is trying too hard to express too much at once, and is thus succeeding in communicating less overall.) It's similar with Digg, where articles that even briefly mention Dr. Paul in a positive light get boosted to the top. As one anonymous forum goer once said, "I despise Ron Paul and his army of diggers." Clearly these tactics are winning detractors, not supporters.

Other problems occur when supporters pounce too quickly on objectors in forums and message boards and as a result, instead of winning over a convert, as they could if they were more judicious with their comments, they instead earn an enemy who will now likely vote for Romney or McCain just to spite them. This is hurting the cause.

In short, while I see signs of promise, libertarianism, constitutionalism, traditional liberalism are on the rise and and people are starting to see through the empty promises of statism, this particular expression of that is not going to help, either in the short or in the long run. Ron Paul supporters, chill out, before you screw things up for everyone.

8 Oc

2008-01-15T12:38:00.000-08:00

I think that the 8oClock Chaplet is dead. (The blog not the people.) This is too bad. It was the highlight of my summer 2005. In '06 it was less important but the regular stream of info about life was quite nice. By '07 it seems, we've kind of fallen apart.

In my opinion, it has mostly to do with marriages and proposals. It seems that everytime someone got involved in something serious, they disappeared. Not in real life, but in blog and elsewhere on the Internet. It seems that as our responsibilities have grown, our ability and interest, in 'keeping up' has waned. As I said, this is too bad, but it was bound to happen sooner or later, so I'm fine with it.

However, I am unwilling to let this testament to a lot of growing up and community just die. So I plan to compile it. Details will be ironed out in later. I think I will send out some emails to people to see if they want to help.

Facebook sux

2008-01-11T13:38:00.000-08:00

I agree with this guy:

You've been marketed to!

Though, of course, the thing I like least about Facebook is not the commercialism. That I expect. Even the increasing garishness and intrusiveness of the ads doesn't bother me as much as the thing I hate the most. That thing I so hate is the whole collection of incredibly stupid 'applications.'

For those who don't use Facebook, and those who just like to have things explained to them, an 'application' is a little php program that a Facebook user can subscribe to and become a user of. The user then usually receives some kind of applet to embed in his Facebook profile which he and other users of the 'application' can use to do whatever it is that the application was written for them to do.

Not all applications are annoying. Some are provided by Facebook itself. Most notable is the 'Wall' application which allow users to communicate simply by writing comments on each other's profiles. There are others provided by third parties that are also useful, such as the 'What I'm Listening To' application which uses my Last.fm profile to display the music I listen to on my profile page. Also, a number of political applications as well.

A few goo exceptions aside however, the vast majority of Facebook 'applications' are trivial, annoying, ugly, and viral. My least favorite are the ones that are simply rehashes of things that Facebook already provides. For example, all those variants of the 'Poke', such as 'SuperPoke', 'X me', etc. Not only so these provide merely trivial and mostly irritating 'improvements' on the original, they also fail to supersede it in any meaningful way. You can't really get rid of the original and the new one can't be used with the old at all. So what you end up with are two, nearly identical, confusing, 'applications,' taking up space on one's profile. Then some decides to pick up twelve of these and you have no idea how they want to be contacted.

About as bad are the zombie/vampire/xmonster apps which do nothing but score you based on how many other chumps you can get to take up the same app. So, they're like tacky ugly pyramid schemes that people, for some reason, choose to join with no promise of getting rich. Similar, are the quiz games that automatically invite all of your 'friends' to take the same quiz and attempt to beat you. Of course, to do this you have to 'join,' and give away all of your private info, which is probably the worst thing about all of this. Any asshole with a passing knowledge of PHP can coax literally thousands of suburban college and highschool kids into giving away their private info for next to nothing. It's telemarketer/spamer's wet-dream, and it's amazing they can get away with it.

Not that Facebook is without its uses. It's certainly more efficient than the amalgam of blogs, message boards, email accounts, and instant messengers that we would use other wise. It certainly makes it easier to find and keep in contact with friends and acquaintances. But the concept of the place just feels like so much bullshit that I sometimes wonder whether it is worth it. Seriously.

Subship

2008-01-09T07:30:00.000-08:00

I've come up with an idea for an interesting alternative game of battleship. I call is sub-hunt. Each player only has one piece each, either a sub or a destroyer and each only takes up one square. The player's pieces start out several squares away from each other facing random directions. The players cannot see the location of their opponent's pieces unless told. The players then take turns. On his turn, a player has one of three options: move, attack, or up-parascope/ping. If a player chooses to move, he can move in any direction, exactly one square, or remain in place. If he chooses to attack, he must announce the location and orientation of his piece aloud. Then, depending on whether he is the sub or the destroyer, his opponent signals whether he was hit or not. If he is the destroyer, the sub is hit if it occupies the same square as the destroyer. Else, if he is the sub, the destroyer is his if it stands in the current path of the sub. Hits can be tallied for a win. If the player chooses to ping/up-parascope, both players must then announce their locations.

A quick example game:

Whatsay a game starts with this position:
/ - - - - - \
| * * * * * |
| * s * * * |
| * * * * * |
| * * * d * |
| * * * * * |
\ - - - - - /
Neither player is aware of the location of the other player.

Assuming it is the destroyer's turn first, he can move, attack, or ping. Let's say that he moves:
/ - - - - - \
| * * * * * |
| * s * * * |
| * * * d * |
| * * * * * |
| * * * * * |
\ - - - - - /
Still, neither player is aware of the location of the other player.

Now it is the sub's turn and he has the same options. Let's say that he up-parascopes:
/ - - - - - \
| * * * * * |
| * s * * * |
| * * * d * |
| * * * * * |
| * * * * * |
\ - - - - - /
The map is the same, but both players have to tell the other where their piece is.

It's the destroyer's turn and he moves:
/ - - - - - \
| * * * * * |
| * s d * * |
| * * * * * |
| * * * * * |
| * * * * * |
\ - - - - - /
At this point, the destroyer still knows where the sub is, but the sub only knows where the destroyer has been. He can guess where the destroyer has just moved to, and he knows where the destroyer could not have moved to, but he doesn't know for sure. There are exactly nine square where the destroyer might be. The sub is currently pointed in the 4:30 direction (down and to the right.) This covers two of the possible squares so if the sub chooses to fire, he has a two in nine chance of hitting the destroyer:
What the sub knows: The sub's chances:
/ - - - - - \ / - - - - - \
| * * * * * | | * * * * * |
| * s . . . | | * s . . . |
| * * . . . | | * * + . . |
| * * . . . | | * * . + . |
| * * * * * | | * * * * + |
\ - - - - - / \ - - - - - /

So, the sub has one of two choices, either fire and hope to hit the destroyer, or move, and hide from the destroyer. Our sub decides to hide and moves down one:
/ - - - - - \
| * * * * * |
| * * d * * |
| * s * * * |
| * * * * * |
| * * * * * |
\ - - - - - /

This would continue until one or the other scored enough hits on the other to constitute a win.

Home... Again.

2008-01-04T13:26:00.000-08:00

Ok, I'm home again. I just spent week-long vacation down in Texas with my grandparents. Their Internet was out so I couldn't post anything while there, but it wasn't like I had much time to do so anyway. Anyway, I'm back, and working again.

I'd like to thank anyone who prayed for Maggie; she is doing better.

Anyway... here's to the meat of this post:

I've been seeing a lot of this lately. It's kind of funny.

I'm back, for now.

2007-12-21T05:51:00.000-08:00

A few things. First, I'd like any one reading to please pray for Maggie McGurk. The young daughter of a few friends of my parents is sick with leukemia. Not only that but the family is also busy taking care of a newborn, Francis, who is actually traveling between families asked to help take care of him. We were taking care of him until just a few days ago but since we're leaving for Texas this Christmas we relinquish responsibility.

Second, it would seem that I'm back from school. Actually, I been back for about a week now, I've just been very busy, for a very long time. Now that I'm back however, you might see some activity here and maybe on my site (I know) as well. We'll see. I have modest plans.

That's it, it seems. I had something else, but I cannot seem to remember it... I give a more complete update later if I have the time.

I'm Tired

2007-10-09T18:20:00.000-07:00

It's halfway through the semester and I've decided that I'm tired. It's not the workload that's getting to me, but my inconsistent schedule. It seems that waking up at 7:30 and 11:30 on alternating days is bad for my internal clock. Very bad, it seems. Which is unfortunate because I have a midterm at 8:30 tomarrow. I may not be able to handle it.

Alls well however. I'll go to bed in a little bit and get some rest. I've studied, so I'm not afraid of the test.

Back at School again.

2007-09-05T20:46:00.000-07:00

I'm back at school, and already fully involved in my classes. I don't have much time to write for now, but rest assured, I'm going to keep busy.

Some more with Mr. Powell.

2007-08-08T14:52:00.000-07:00

Actually, it's not the same debate anymore. This time we spent a good deal of time discussing 'usury,' and it's presence in the modern world. As you can imagine, Mr. Powell as a convinced Distributist, comes down very critically on the banking industry and on the practice of accepting interest on borrowed money. I, of course, am of a very different stance. Because the debate was entirely in the comment line of a post on his blog this time, I'll refrain from copying the replies here and instead just post a link to the original post with the comments. The debate does eventually shift back to the China discussion but we achieve a much better understanding, I believe, this time. Enjoy.

M.A.D. and software

2007-07-30T18:57:00.000-07:00

This is an interesting post from a blog by a man named Jeff Atwood, which I read on regular basis. The comparison of software patents to the Cold War arms race I find particularly interesting coming from a Windows developer who is literally immersed in the Microsoft universe. Considering that Microsoft is one of the biggest offenders in the patent race, this is rather significant.

It's long been a common claim that software is unpatentable because, essentially, it is just a series of mathematical algorithms, which, by law, are already unpatentable. Despite this, many companies, from IBM, to Microsoft, to Oracle, to Sun Microsystems, all engage in the patent war so that they can avoid having to pay for patents. While it would seem that this would work out, it doesn't, because many small vendors and developers can't afford to compete in the patent war, and so become the slaves of much larger corporations. Many have to take up partnerships to avoid getting sued and to have access to many necessary patents. This is of course anti-competitive and damaging to the free market as more and more power is consolidated into the hands of a few mega-corporations.

An even bigger loser that Jeff fails to mention is Free and Open Source software. Projects like Linux, Apache, MySQL, XOrg, and Open Office simply have no budget or legal framework for dealing with patents or competing in the patent race. In fact, innovations entered into open source projects, are generally, by definition, unpatented. So when Microsoft levies the 235 patents against Linux as mentioned beforehand, how are the Linux distros supposed to fight back? They have no patents against Microsoft, and no central head to or body with which to fight. Of course, this could prove to be in Open Source's favor, should Microsoft's patents pass an inspection (unlikely), who would they sue? Redhat? Novell? Anyone or all of the millions of individuals who contributed to it over the years? With supporters like IBM, HP, Dell, Google, and Sony (just to name a few,) could Microsoft really win?

While Free and Open Source software is resisted on many fronts in the industry, particularly by Microsoft, it seems to have been embraced by the community as a whole, at least on some level, and is here to stay. not even Microsoft can wipe it out. The reason is that Free and Open Source software is here to stay is that it is just that, free. While Microsoft may one day decide that IBM can no longer use or buy Windows, nobody can ever stop IBM from using Linux, or BSD. Not only that, but Linux will alway be free of charge. Deep in their hearts and pocketbooks, the executives at IBM realize that this is for their good and so they support Linux. Google too, and Dell, and HP, and everyone else. Freedom is infectious and good for everyone.

I think there is a lesson here. Perhaps Free and Open Source software could inspire companies to end the patent wars? Could the government finally recognize the futility of software patents? Could we finally recognize the futility of patents? Could we finally do away with copyright? The last one may be a bit too optimistic at this time, but the time will come, when everyone realizes that open and collaborative development creates better quality at a lower cost and encourages creativity rather than inhibit it. Someday, people will wake up, and we'll no longer have to use creativity as a weapon and will be able to exit the arms race that is the Cold War of the market.

EmaVics

2007-07-26T14:50:00.000-07:00

This article on Emacs and Vi made me happy. For those of you not in the know, Emacs and Vim (Vi) are very fancy text editors used *nix operating systems. They're sort of like Notepad on steroids.

The whole debate behind these two programs is older than the Internet and many older and otherwise mature people will get in fights over them. By older, I mean folks in their fifties.

Even so, they are both very popular and millions of html pages, perl scripts, rc config files, c programs, and poems have been written with either. I use Vim.

I now have a website.

2007-07-23T16:41:00.000-07:00

I've purchased a domain and some temporary hosting. The reason for the hosting, even though I have a perfectly fine server set up on my own computer is that my dad's router is in the way. It is set to use dhcp, and I need static IPs to access the server behind it. It's for the best anyway because I can't connect my computer to the net at school anyway. Come December I may buy my own connection and host my own stuff, but until then I'm stuck.

Anyway, the site is www.alternativehollywood.com. There isn't much there yet, just a placeholder page, but I'll be adding stuff in and out as I mess with php and cgi scripts.

Bike broke... so sad.

2007-07-15T10:34:00.000-07:00

My bicycle literally fell apart as I was riding it today. It was just under a year old and I didn't ride it all that much except during the summer, but it still fell apart. Basically what happened, but as I rode it across a relatively busy intersection, the gear which held the chain warped outwards, causing the chain to slip loose and carve itself into the plastic casing of the gear system. The chain irretrievably wedged itself in the casing and got stuck, causing my foot halt in place and rest of my body to lurch forward in a most uncomfortable manner. I had to call for ride home.

Fortunately, I have the car for the next week. Don't know what I'll do after that.

I raced the Train... On a BIKE!!!

2007-07-12T19:53:00.000-07:00

Seriously, I have to cross the tracks every day on my way to and from work on my bicycle and on the way back I happened to have a run-in with a train. It happened like this: The tracks are near the bottom of a very large hill so I approached them at full-speed, bouncing up and down on the saddle as I hit the bumps on the sidwalk. As I neared the tracks I heard the sound of an engine and realized that a train must be approaching. I slowed at first, but then noticed that the barriers weren't coming down so the train must not be near yet, or it was stopped; the crossing was just by a commuter train station, so trains often pause there near the crossing. I continued, but, just as I was crossing tracks I heard a loud horn bellow out, and the warning bells began to ring. The barriers came down just as I passed them and the train came roaring by behind me. I was able to stop at the bottom of the hill and watch it pass.

So, from now on, I'll be able to say that I once raced a train on a bicycle. I bet not many people can say that.

Riding through an Ocean

2007-06-28T09:04:00.000-07:00

Riding a bicycle on a warm, humid day is like pedaling through a warm ocean. The breeze, which should cool you, slows you down and it becomes difficult to breath as the water droplets, suspended invisibly in the air, threaten to asphyxiate you. Sweat beads upon your skin like warm glue and attaches your clothing, especially those clothes closest to you, to yourself in uncomfortable and awkward positions. In addition, you begin to smell like something someone left out for a long time and your presence becomes intolerable. Worse yet, adding water to your forehead and 'keeping yourself hydrated' are of little avail as lack of water isn't the problem. It's the opposite.

It's not merely the heat that's the problem. If it were merely hot, then sweat would evaporate and cool you off, as would the breeze, and drinking water would be far more beneficial. However, sweat works by evaporation. The heat on your arms and forehead are absorbed into the drops of sweat which then expand into water vapor and life into the air around you, taking the heat with it, leaving you cool, dry, and devoid of stickiness and stench. But, with the humidity, and water already floating through the air, the sweat can't evaporate and merely beads on the skin, useless, sticky and smelly. With humidity, even a little warmth can seem like heat wave as you're body's natural cooling ceases to function.

When I lived in Albuquerque the weather was nice. It was dry and sunny almost every day. It was hot, very hot, but you didn't feel it because there was no humidity. So long as you drank lots of water, you would be fine the whole day long. When it did get humid it was more like a nice change: it was cooler than usual (typically due to clouds) and your hair was a little nicer than normal.

Now I live in Virginia and it seems like we pick of a warm breeze from the sea on semi-weekly basis. Most of the day's are okay, but enough of them are just miserable. I ride an hour to work and an hour back again and I'm soaking wet within the first ten minutes of either. The change of clothes at work isn't even enough to keep me from smelling bad the whole day through. It's a nasty experience and I honestly hate it.

Could be worse though. I could live in Florida. That is a miserable state.

God Bless.

I need to get out.

2007-06-20T12:19:00.000-07:00

Well, this weekend anyway. If I don't, I'll probably end up painting my computer... again. That's right, I painted my computer last weekend and I'll do it again if I can't find something better to do. I came home and thought, what if it were red! And now it is red. Come monday it will have ornate stenciling and sooner or later I will end up pulling one of these! That is unless I get out.

In other news, I returned Mr. Sloan's books this sunday. For those who don't know, Mr. Sloan is an elderly ex collage (WestPoint) professor who has litterally hundreds of books that he is willing to loan to almost anyone who is interested. They are principly on Russian history and military history but he has most of the essentials on general history, philosophy, literature, etc. He has a very nice collection. Anyway, back in March, I asked to borrow some books on the battle of Borrodino for a paper and he loaned me a mountain of texts and atlases up to my thigh and tutored me on the entire Napoleonic campaign into Russian without my needing to ask (or consent really). Anyway, I got an A- on the paper and returned the books just this sunday. My. Sloan was waiting for me when I showed up, eager to discuss the paper my schooling and his library, and wouldn't let me leave without my borrowing another book. I'm now reading "The Shield of Achilles." If anybody lives in the area and is looking for a hard to find book on the topics of Russian of Military history (or any other really) you should give Mr Sloan a call. It'd make him happy and you'd probably win out as well.

Also, my brother is heading back to West Point this weekend. He's been home almost a month, which appearently is the longest break in the history of the Military Acadamy. It's always nice to have him around, but he gets on my nerves eventually so its also nice to see him go. He reads this, but if he doesn't like my writing about him he can just take another look at ******.**. If you don't know what I mean, consider yourself lucky.

It just clicked. Ryan & Maria's wedding is this weekend. I know what I'm going to be doing. See ya'll there.

Of houses and foundations

2007-06-13T16:35:00.000-07:00

I've taken to rising my bike to work again and had a little jolt thrown at me. I was riding home and as I approached the corner of Manassas Drive and whatever road that is that the Central Library is on, I noticed that it wasn't as shady as it was when I would go past it last year. I also didn't remember the huge concrete block sitting in the lot there. I looked a little harder and notice that the concrete block was somewhat house-shaped and surmised that it was the foundation of what used to be house. A moment later it hit me: There was a house there last summer! Someone tore down the house on the corner of the street! And, all the trees along with it!
I sat there for a moment in astonishment. Then the light changed and I crossed the street to the convenience store where I ordered a Gatoraid. I believe it was an orange Gatoraid. Gatoraid really is nice when you're hot and thirsty. I know I changed the subject but I really don't want to talk about the house anymore. God Bless.

I build my new computer... yay!

2007-06-03T16:09:00.000-07:00

Actually, I built it a week ago. But I'm just now getting to the way I like it. I chose an Intel C2D processor instead of the AMD one and it has a nice NVidia i650 chipset. That is, one from Intel's latest line of multi-core processors and NVidia's second rate motherboard chipset line (nearly as good as the i680 but a fraction the cost). My actual processor is an E4300 which is dual-core at 1.8 GHz but I overclocked it to 2.5. It could go to 3.0GHz without much trouble but I didn't see the need.

It's nice so far. I installed some pretty. As soon as I can find my camera I'll add some pictures and screenshots to this post.

-edit
Having trouble with camera, but here are the screenshots:

Yet more debate with Mr. Powell.

2007-05-30T10:06:00.000-07:00

This is my most recent respond previous to the one I am composing now. This is about where we stop debating the same old point and try to go deeper into the discussion.

Before I put I up though, I've received a request for and explanation of the debate. So, here it goes. In Chine, which we know is responsible for most of the manufactured goods which we now enjoy here in America, the average factory laborer receives less for his labor than the average American in an equivalent job even after the cost of living is factored in to the equation. In some cases, this situation is even worse and the living and working conditions the people live in are deplorable and are something that hasn't existed in America since the 19th century.

This is because of China's substantially weaker economy and and disastrously misguided economic laws. This leads to the situation that these people have no real choice but to take up these poor jobs and live in squaller. They are in fact better off with our business because the other options are substantially poorer. I believe that Mr. Powell and I agree on all this up to the point.

Mr. Powell holds that because of these poor conditions, American businesses that do business with the Chinese and buy Chinese goods should be held accountable for the wellbeing of the factory workers. He believes that laws should be passed that prevent us from buying any Chinese goods made by people in under a certain standard of working and payment. He maintains that we should pay more than the supply and demand price simply for the sake of the Chinese laborer.

I, on the other hand, believe that so long as we do not cause the poor conditions of the Chinese laborers by doing business with them, we are no more culpable for their condition than we would be if we just stayed home. Furthermore, because our business is beneficial, though not benevolent, their is no way that refusing business could be a moral imperative. More importantly, I believe that the demands of charity should not be conflated with the rigors of business and that doing so detracts from either. I believe we are obliged to show charity to the Chinese (among others) but artificially high wages does not constitute this.

I may be being unfair to Mr. Powell's position as I am more wedded to my beliefs than his (well duh...) but you can email him to ask him personally if you really feel like it.

Anyway, without further ado, here's my response:

Hello, again Mr. Powell, Nice to hear from you. I'm sorry for the delay but it took me a while to get my argument together. You'll have to excuse any mistyping in this letter. I don't have my glasses and I frankly cannot see the screen in front of me.

In my previous letter you divided my argument into three points and proceeded to argue each of those points. I'll follow those same three points in this reply.

1) You present my opinion as such:
While poor working conditions and/or human rights abuses are always
regrettable, they are the business of the government overseeing the
location, not corporations on the other side of the world, far less
consumers. Home Depot does not mandate insane workweeks or weekly
finger loss; they pay Chinese businessmen to perform a service. How
the businessmen perform this service is their responsibility, and that
of their government, not ours.

This is not quite correct. In fact, I don't consider a factory with poor working conditions to be an abuse of human rights so long as the people who choose to work there do so of their own free will and without coercion, force or deception. My point is, that Home Depot, Walmart etc, could pay people to taste test poison, but so long as they did not coerce people into it they are not at fault, or rather, they did not abuse them. They are not responsible for inflicting any harm on these people. Any responsibility that said businesses my have would be that they did not explicitly go out of their way to provide charity for said people. But in this, they would be no more responsible than the rest of society.

With the example of you're horrid factory, again I see nothing wrong necessarily of a factory with poor working conditions. People choose whether or not they work there. You attempted to make the point that something like that would cause outrage in modern society; but i pointed out that outrage would never occur because nobody would work there. This is not a non-answer. The only reason such a factory would be considered so horrid and outrageous by modern society is because society is used to and has access to much better. The same conditions that would make such a factory seem wrong would also prevent it from being relevant. In a world where worse conditions were the norm, nobody would say anything.

So my position is this: Unless American companies take an active role in harming the Chinese people, (and owning and managing factories whose employment is not coerced does not count,) they not at fault for anything. Any further responsibility comes from the mandate of charity, which applies to everybody not just buisiness owners and which this new bill does not help.

2) on our role
I asserted that low wages are the result of market forces and that we could not artificially lower the wage without a monopoly. You had this to say:
'MUST' be due? Every time? I still don't see why you can't have
an economy where all the major employers simply choose to underpay. If
they all choose to pay such low wages, there may as well be a
monopoly. Maybe a Henry Ford will come along who'll pay higher
wages and change the economic landscape...but maybe not. If not,
people aren't forced to work by government law; only by that physical
law about having to eat.

You, seem to attribute low wages in China to a conspiracy among the American companies that own factories there. Given that hundreds of American companies own factories in China and there are thousands of factories besides, this seems very far fetched to me. Generally, the need for secrecy would be preeminent and all it would take is one to break ranks and the entire conspiracy would break apart. All it would take is one employee to break silence, and the American public would hear about it (Think Watergate.) A conspiracy of this sort is untenable.

Also, it is easy to prove that the low wages aren't due to a conspiracy but to market forces. In this case, surplus. There is a greater supply of labor than demand and this drives the price for labor down. Hence, the low wage and poor working conditions. With the decrees in labor due to the improvement in the Chinese economy (due in turn to influx of American capital), prices for labor are going up and working conditions are improving. Clearly there is no conspiracy to keep the Chinese poor because if there was, this would not happen.

In response to my criticism of your island example:

Of course, the example's extreme for the sake of clarity. Perhaps it's
not worth defending the specifics; my point was that you can have a
rising GNP while average wages are static or even sinking. It wasn't
exactly a business plan.

Your example isn't extreme, it's simplistic to the point of speciousness. The example creates a situation which simply does not exist in the real world and does not accurately represent the situation of our discussion. It's simply not relevant.

Not if the employers had lunch together and agreed it was more
advantageous to them both to keep wages low. There wouldn't be laws
against this sort of collusion if it had never happened. (And in real
life, too, not just on desert islands.)

Yes, this happens, but not in the case we are describing so it is irrelevant.

I'm afraid I cannot accept that wages always magically rise to the
productivity level of the employees. I see where it works in theory,
but I don't see where it always works inexorably in practice. There
seem to be too many variables. For instance, there is no way an
employee who produces a shirt that sells for $15 or so in J. C.
Penney's hasn't produced more than 25 cents or so worth of wage. (Not
exact figures here, but the real figures are something like this for
many a factory overseas.)

Factor in cost of capital (factories), shipping, marketing, distribution, management (not just management wages, but also expenses), legal fees(you don't have to do anything wrong to incur these), accounting, investments (needed to keep any company afloat) and that $15 dollars 25 cent gap narrows pretty rapidly. The CEO's earnings in an average business is just chicken scraps compared to the total expenses that the company faces on a yearly basis. It's not simply corporate glut as some people imagine.

How wages are determined generally in the same way in all markets. Wages are an investment. Each increase in wages increases the supply of workers (Better wages, benefits, conditions make jobs more attractive.) (See attachment "labor supply") Each added worker increases productivity. The increase in productivity is call Marginal Worker Productivity. The more workers there are, the smaller this gets. The reason is that productivity is a function of labor supply and capital. f(k,l)=a(l^b)(k^c) where f(k,l) is productivity, l is labor, k is capital, a,b and c are constants where b+c=1. The ratio of b/c determines whether it is a capital or labor intensive enterprise. What this function shows is that productivity is increased when both labor and capital is increased, but when one is increased without the other the return on investment reduces sharply. (It's hard for seemstresses to produce if there aren't enough needles to go around and more needles aren't any good if there aren't enough seemstresses to use them.) So, in a system where capital is constant, increase in labor yeilds increasingly small returns on investment. (See attachment "Productivity") The derivative of this is the Marginal Productivity of labor increase. (See Attachment "Marginal Productivity"). Now, an enterprise cannot spend more than it produces or else it would operate at a loss. Now let us overlay the Labor Supply over the Marginal Productivity (See attachment) The higher the wage is set, the more workers there are but also the less each worker producess. Wage is set at equlibrium when marginal worker productivity is equal to the wage. This is also where companies are at there most productive. To increase wages and employment one must increase capital, thus changing the Marginal Productivity and increasing the equilibrium wage. If one forcibly increases the wage (ie, through minumum wage or something similar to the new bill) employers are forced to artificially reduce the number of employees in order to increase the marginal worker productivity and keep it above or euqal to the wage. The new difference between labor supply and actual employment is now unemployment.

Basically what this shows is that any attempt to artificially increase the wage will cause unemployment and increase the labor supply, thus undoing all the good of before. How this relates to the real world:

Domineos Pizza guys don't get paid much more than they would if Dominoes were a much smaller corporation, partly because of the high employee turnover rate (which increases the Marginal Cost of Labor (the amount that it costs to employe another person which is factored into wages from the employer point of view)) and partly because the capital in the pizza delivery buisiness is only so efficient (one guy can only deliver so much pizza,) but Dominoes provided many low level, temporary jobs and employs hundreds of thousands of people nationwide, helping many, many, students pay their way though school.

Thomas Monaghan makes so much money, not because he cheats pizza delivery guys of their just desserts but because his company employs hundreds of thousands of workers a year and supplies them with the necessary capital to produce and deliver. His salary takes a miniscule amount off the top of each pizza. Mr. Monaghan's employees make many times more per pizza sold than he does.

(To do the math, suppose every pizza Dominoes sold was $10 and that Mr Monaghan made exatly 500 times more than the average employee. Whatsay there are exactly 100,000 employees and each sold one Pizza. Lets discount capital, investments and all expeditures save salaries. So Dominoes thus has $1,000,000 to spend on employees so Tom's salary plus 100,000 times the salary salary of the average worker equals $1,000,000 so T +100,000W=1,000,000 but T = 500W so 100,500W=1,000,000 so the average workers salary is $9.95 and Tom's is $4975.12. That might seem like a lot, but it's only 5 cents a pizza, 5% of the entire enterprise. Now assume that every employee sells twenty pizza's, a far more likely number. The company budget is $20,000,000, T+100,000W=20,000,000 T=500W 100,500W=20,000,000 W=$199.00 and T=$99502.49 he is still only making 5% of the earnings increase the number of employees now to 500,000 T+500,000=100,000,000 T=500W 500,500W=100,000,000 W=$199.80 T=$99900.10 only 1% of the final product, one cent per pizza. So, the larger and more a company produces, the less a huge CEO salary 'sucks' from the little guy and the greater a percentage of the money that can be invested in the 'little guy.' After a point, CEO greed maxes out. Company management is more a way of life than a job, they do it because they enjoy it. They don't increase the salary because they simply have no personal use for the money and the money is reinvested in the company. So it is rediculous to target CEOs in this way. Mr. Monaghan is as necessary for the selling of each pizza as is the employees but they collectively actually garner a larger percent of the profit than he.)

This also means that any attempt to increase the minimum investment in employees in China will also create unemployment. A similar situation happens with American unions. Unions regularly demand increases in wages and benefits.In order to do this, they have to stop non-union workers from taking the union jobs while the unions go on strike. The greatest conflicts in the union conflicts in previous half of the century were not between workers and companies but between workers and workers. Unions had to enforce their strikes through intimidation. After the unions got their payraises and benefits, the companies could afford to employ fewer people and so unemployment increased. If you've ever seen the movie "On the Waterfront" you have an idea how it looked. Just a year ago, GM had to lay off thousands of employees because it could no longer afford to employ them. American unions forced wages up and GM (and Ford but not so badly) had to compensate. GM used to be the crux of the American economy and the largest producer of automobiles in the world. Now it's second fiddle to Toyota, a Japanese company (A country with the opposite problem of the States) and well known for it's crappy cars. GM tried to compensate for a while by cutting costs and reducing automotive quality (it's in GM's interests to remain large and employ as many people as possible so as to produce as much as possible) but it could only hold out for so long and ultimately succumbed to economic pressure. A similar thing is happening to Airbus right now. When wages are artificially jacked up, unemployment increases, productivity decreases, overall pay decreases, and wages have a much more difficult time rising naturally. The same will hold true in China.

You Say:
Nor do I mean to ignore all the other good folks, such as
shareholders, bankers, politicians receiving campaign donations, and
so on, who all too often take a grotesquely high share of other
people's work. The CEO's just an easy fellow to start with.

Not to mention lawyers! Actually, these people aren't taking advantage of other peoples labor. Shareholding and banking are both either not as profitable as some people think (I've actually looked into them with a practical mindset), very risky, or laden with fraud which is illegal. Corrupt politicians and lawyers are able to make so much money through deception which is wrong. Neither implies a weakness in the ability of the market to set a just wage. They just demonstrate the nearly universally held fact that the market can only exist with the absence of fraud, theft and coercion.

You say:
Economies are not pure mathematics; in real life, humans can be greedy
and can figure out ways to make employees work for a pittance while
pocketing more than their fair share of the profits. It may be that a
truly free market is the best mechanism for minimizing this
phenomenon, or it may not, but the general tone of your conversation
so far is that the iron laws of economics almost always prevent this
from happening in real life. CEOs are just magically worth millions a
year, and this is proved to be so simply because shareholders are
stupid enough to pay them this.

Economics is based on sociology and used mathematics to quantify and describe human behavoir. You seem to be under the impression that economics teaches, using abstract math that may or may not apply to a particular situation, that the market always functions in a certain way regardless of human action. This is not the case. no serious economist will claim that the market prevents fraud. In fact, most economists will claim that the market can only function in the absence of fraud, theft, and other crimes. The math and theories I present so far will only function with the absence of these. However, high margins are bad for buisiness. The specific kind of fraud that you describe is unlikely on such a grand scale. Buisiness prospers more when its members are honest. When a CEO consumes more than he produces (more than his own Marginal Productivity) the company loses. In general, owners of new enterprises in the United States must take no profit in the first five years if they have any hope of success. Even large companies have this problem. Corporate pork is one of the worst things that can happen to a company. Enron went out of business and collapsed internally long before anybody suspected that the owners were crooks. Successful company's CEOs are usually only paid a very small fraction of the total annual budget. (Some are even more than modest, there is a growing trend towards dollar CEOs. Steve Jobs of Apple Computers makes only a dollar a year he pays for his living through savings and continues to work primarily for the sake of the company.) Business management, if it wants to keep afloat, does not have as much power as you seem to think it does. Also, even though fraud and conspiracy do exist, you generally have to prove it's existence before you can morally do anything about it. It's not right to counter crimes that you only suspect exist. Also, the proper way to counter this kind of wrong is through laws and law enforcement, not economic incentives.

Maybe it'd help me understand your position better if you gave an
example of what you consider to be economic injustice. Some crime,
present or past, that was perfectly legal at the time, but still
unjust.

OK, I'll bite. Imminant domain in my home state (VA). Large companies including but not limited to Coca-Cola co. are capable of get local and state imminant domain empowered entities to disposses private citizens of their land for the sake of the large companies. The reason being that the larger companies pay far more in taxes. Disposessing private citizens of their property is an eggregious injustice. I, however, simply cannot accept the notion that wages people accept voluntarily can in any way be unjust.

Also I believe that jacking up wages so some people can earn more money while the rest have to remain unemployed and the consumer suffers (not drastically in this case) is also unjust. So this boycott is unjust.

3) Directly dealing with the topic in question: The Boycott bill.

You say:
But let's focus on the anti-sweatshop bill. Were such a
bill enforced, we clearly would have efficacious action!

You'll need to prove this.

You say:
Ah, but why would there be less *potential?* There's all the potential
in the world if they're willing to treat workers as human beings. The
report I cited pointed out that the factory in question had been
willing to make all kinds of changes to accomodate its U. S.
client--in how they *packaged.*

If you force people to raise wages you'll have the same effect that I mentioned earlier.The changes in packaging also hurt and set the company back and didn't help (but hurt) the employees.

These changes must have cost something, but the factory was willing to
do it to keep the client. Now, if the *entire U. S. clientele*
suddenly threatens to pull out unless minimum working conditions are
met--will all these entrepreneurs, managers, etc., simply throw up
their hands and refuse to cooperate? Some might, maybe, but *all* of
them? Most of them?

No, they'll raise wages, lower employment and production,and reduce their total benefit to both the Chinese and US economies.

The bill isn't saying, "No more Chinese goods." It is saying, "What
you do with your workers is your responsibility, but if you want us to
buy from you, you not only have to package the product properly, you
have to treat your workers with a minmum of respect. We have those
laws in our own country, and we don't deal with businesses who treat
their people like slaves."

The said laws in the US don't help much over here either. They are mostly feel good laws and we can afford them largely because our economy is so good that conditions wouldn't be so much different if they didn't exist. (It's also interesting to note that black urban people used to be much better off before the factory jobs they used to depend on were outsourced in the 70s and 80s so that companies could avoid said labor laws. Communities like Harlem which were once extremely prosperous are now ghettos infested with crime and crack dealers. A crappy factory job is better than no job at all.)

You say:
But this bill isn't just for China; it would apply everywhere.

Still won't help.

You say:
Again, with this bill, we'll purchase plenty of goods--that aren't
produced in horrific conditions.

.
No we won't. Either price will increase and thus demand will decrease, or supply will decrease. Either way, we'll purchase less. Unless you count 'any large amount' to be plenty but the more we purchase, the better off they will be so I don't buy this.

You say:
Since they would also be worse for the management, perhaps the
management would avoid this scenario by complying with demands for
minimum humane working conditions.

No, less total wealth will be given to the Chinese. Some select few will be better off but the rest will be unemployed.

In order to increase the worker wage, one must increase the Marginal Productivity. To do this, one must either cut back on employment or increase amount and quality of capital. To increase capital, one must increase production and to increase the production one must increase the number of employees. To increase the number of employees, one must raise wages but to equilibrium . Equilibrium is the point where wage equals Marginal Productivity. It is the point of maximum employment and maximum productivity, both of which are good for companies, employees, consumers, and employers. This is not to say private greed won't cause fraud or coercion or theft and disrupt this, but it is very unlikely to happen in the manner you describe, and short of that, the bill you propose can only hurt matters.

You say:
But if the price was lower in Vietnam, you'd take your business
there. Which might very well close the factory in China. Right? That'd be
business.

If the reason the price in Vietnam was lower than in China was because the Chinese economy improved (as is the case now), it is because the Chinese no longer need the jobs as much as the Vietnamese. They can now be barbers and software engineers or whatever new job that drives wages up.

You Say:
So it seems our only responsibility here is to never stop buying from a
particular factory on moral grounds. But we can do it to save money.

It depends one what you mean by moral grounds. I don't see Chinese wages as a moral issue in this situation. At least not as a case of injustice. (There may be a good case made for charity here, where the American consumer, who is the real beneficiary of the lower wage, not so much the company which serves the consumer's interests, could give out of his excess wealth to impoverished Chinese and others who are in dire need.But I don't believe this is a case for economic sanctions.)

You say:
But by now I've put way too many words into your mouth. Thanks again
for writing.

Just a few! You're welcome, I enjoy the debate though I think I'm spending too much of my time on it.

Andrew Stine.

I have to apologize, but the attached graphs aren't going to be shown here. They are however, only visualizations and really only make sense if you understand the equations behind them. I'll see if I can let my explanation stand by itself.

Home again, Home again jiggidy jog

2007-05-18T10:48:00.000-07:00

Back from school. My best semester yet with respect to grades, at lease one A and two A- course grades so far. I don't know about the other three, but I don't think I did worse than a B in any of them.

In other news, I'm already back at work again doing the exact same thing I did last year. Except this summer, I get credits. 6 of them and a near guaranteed A. I feel good. It's been fun so far and I've been productive. We might migrate our entire build structure from Ant to Maven in the near future. If you don't know what that means, don't worry about it. It's a little technical.

I'll be building myself a new computer over the summer. It's be an AMD Am2 socket with an NVidia nForce SLI chipset. A 2.1 GHz AMD64 X2 will be the processor and and graphics card is a GeForce 8600GT with 256mg of memory. It should be pretty nice with lots of room to improve and wasn't all that expensive. The entire system was under $800, which is only two weeks of work for me and it should remain current with only minor upgrades years to come.

I'm going to try to resume conversation with Mr. Powell soon, I've been posting pieces of our conversation at a slow pace, but the last actual email I sent him was over two months ago. I had to stop because of school, but now I should have some more free time.

Also, a note to anyone who reads this, It's been a long while since I've received a comment. I know my friends read this, I've seen you. I'd still write even if nobody read or commented but it's nice to know that somebodies listening. Even more, I like reviews on my ideas and opinions. If you agree, say so; if I'm an idiot, inform me so I can mend my ways. Even if you have no opinion, some partial thoughts would help.

And finally, I want one of these. An eight core processor with 32 simultaneous threads seems to be about the coolest thing ever. The hardware JVM seems kind of fun as well, even if it's only really good for servlets.

Internet Radio

2007-05-02T18:52:00.000-07:00

If you've seen this website, or have received a certain e-mail from Pandora, of late, then you know that webcasting is in trouble. The CRB (Copyright Royalties Board) recently announced the results of certain hearings and plans to raise royalty fees on internet radio 3 to 15 fold of the next few years. If this goes through, then services such as Pandora, Shoutcast, Last.fm as well as thousands of smaller stations, will have greater difficulty in running their already weak businesses.

As an avid listener to Last.fm (you can even see my charts on this blog), I find this distressing. Recently, over 200,000 people petitioned congress, and were able to delay the bill. In addition new legislation, the Internet Radio Equality Act, has been proposed so that congress will set the price and prevent the CRB from raising so high. This is being hailed as the way to save internet radio.

Any blow to the CRB's and SoundExchange's (the entity that collects the royalties, gives a portion to copyright holders, and keeps the difference) control on pricing is a good thing in my book. Allowing government entities to control pricing in any one industry is form of corporatism and is a very very bad thing. However, this particular legislation, Internet Radio Equality, misses the point in my opinion and is merely replacing one tyrant with another.

The problem is government control. The purpose of copyright laws is to use government to artificially create a market for creative works. Anyone with a smattering of understanding of economics knows, however, that markets will form of their own accord to fulfill a demand and don't need government price mandates. The government believes that it needs to garauntee monopoly privilages to creators of intellectual works to ensure that said works are created. This, however, has led to an ever escelated debate as to the extent of this monopoly and more and more government has stepped in to form a compromise.

This gives us entities such as the CRB and SoundExchange which are centralized intermediaries with government backing, who perform all business in the range of royalties collection without regard either the copyright holders or users of copyrighted works. That is, in an artificial market, a giant corportist entity as been built which is allowed control of nearly the whole industry, which is a problem.

With the new bill, congress threatens to step in and take matters into it's own hands. Or, in other words, congress plans to replace the corporatist entity with itself, so we'll have socialism instead of corporatism, which is about the same thing.

What we need to do is abolish copyright laws and do away with the need for this kind of legislation altogether. Then webcasters can purchase the music directly from the artists, publishing companies can purchase books directly from authors, etc, etc, and we can do away with SoundExchange, syndicates, the RIAA, and all other middlemen who tax the production of creative works far more than it need be.

Another from Mr. Powell

2007-04-18T17:38:00.000-07:00

I'm way behind on this so here is Mr. Powells response to my last response.

Dear Mr. Stine,

Thanks for writing back! And thanks for your patience. I always enjoy
these discussions, but I can't always get to them as quickly as I'd
like.

I confess I did not read the link you provided, only because I
think it's important to work out our somewhat limited discussion
first, rather than going on to greater questions of whether or not the
"free market" as a whole is "good" for the poorer classes of China.
As I understand it, we're talking about whether we Americans have any
responsibility to the people who produce goods for us in other
countries, in this case, China. There's the obvious question of
whether Home Depot has a responsibility, since it's inspecting the
factories and paying them to make things. Then there's the nearer
question of whether we, as consumers, have any responsibility to learn
about working conditions elsewhere, or at least act on the information
when we get it.

This is a simpler question than whether in general it's better
or worse for Americans to pay Chinese to do any work for them. I don't
think the "big picture" of us helping the GNP rise really addresses
the question of particular sweatshop conditions.

So let me see if I state your position right, and please correct me if
I'm wrong.

"(1) While poor working conditions and/or human rights abuses are always
regrettable, they are the business of the government overseeing the
location, not corporations on the other side of the world, far less
consumers. Home Depot does not mandate insane workweeks or weekly
finger loss; they pay Chinese businessmen to perform a service. How
the businessmen perform this service is their responsibility, and that
of their government, not ours.

"(2) In fact, our role is entirely beneficial; we put money into the
Chinese economy that would not otherwise be there. Low as the wages
may be, they are wages from our money, and if we stop paying these
factories, those wages will vanish. (3) Any boycott or even the threat of
a boycott, such as this pending sweatshop legislation, is likely to
have one effect, and one effect only: less money into the Chinese
economy, and thus less money trickling down to the poor who want to
work.

Is that about right?

Now, let me try to respond to this, and hopefully I'll cover the
points you recently made as we go.

(1) Our responsibility. Last time you wrote:

> Which is hardly the responsibility or the fault of western factories,
> which is my point. Westerners don't force anybody to work in their
> factories; these people are merely invited to apply.

Yes, I agree with you that we do NOT have responsibility for the
misdeeds of foreign governments. In fact, we aren't even talking about
Western factories, but Chinese factories whose primary
or only clients are Western corporations.

Still, the question remains: what IS our responsibility?

That is why I posed the hypothetical question of the horrid factory
down the street.

> The standard of living is much higher in the United States than in China,
> largely because of the huge wealth of the nation. It wouldn't be possible
> to run such a factory because we are so well off.

Hmm. That seems a bit of a non-answer. The point is whether it would
be RIGHT to shop at such a place, not whether it could happen. (In
reality there are, on American soil, plenty of illegal immigrants
working vast farms for rather ridiculous wages, the fruits of which
end up in the produce aisle, but perhaps this is illegal it doesn't
count as the 'free market'.)

I hoped that by making it down the street, rather than out of sight in
China, it would make that morality question more urgent. So what
do you think? IF there were a factory down the street with equivalent
working conditions to that described in the report I posted online,
identical in every respect except adjusting the low wages to our cost
of living, (half our minimum wage, maybe, instead of half China's)
would it be all right to shop there?

That's what I'm getting at. We aren't responsible for China, but we
are responsible for profiting by their labor.

(2) Our role.

First, a bit about wage slavery.

> The reason you need a monopoly is simple. Without it, people always have a
> choice. They could always move to the factory with slightly better
> conditions and the original factory would have to improve conditions to
> bring back the workers. This means that the low wages and poor conditions
> must be due to pressures beyond the employer's control, ie. lack of
> productivity (employees can only be payed what they produce) or something
> else. The term "slavery" implies that someone is forcing someone to do
> something and they have no choice but without a monopoly on labor, the
> employer clearly cannot force people to work for them.

"MUST" be due? Every time? I still don't see why you can't have
an economy where all the major employers simply choose to underpay. If
they all choose to pay such low wages, there may as well be a
monopoly. Maybe a Henry Ford will come along who'll pay higher
wages and change the economic landscape...but maybe not. If not,
people aren't forced to work by government law; only by that physical
law about having to eat.

> Actually, this rasies the question of how the millionaire (by which I
> assume you to mean someone with an income of $100,000,000 per year) makes
> all that money a year with so little labor.

Of course, the example's extreme for the sake of clarity. Perhaps it's
not worth defending the specifics; my point was that you can have a
rising GNP while average wages are static or even sinking. It wasn't
exactly a business plan. :)

> It is also interesting that you chose an example where there was a
> monopoly on employment. What say there were two competing millionaires and
> six people in the labor market. An employee would merely have to threaten
> to work for the other guy and his employer would be forced to raise his
> wage lest he be outproduced by his rival.

Not if the employers had lunch together and agreed it was more
advantageous to them both to keep wages low. There wouldn't be laws
against this sort of collusion if it had never happened. (And in real
life, too, not just on desert islands.)

> In this way, the wages would be forced up to the productivity
> level of the employees (past which wages cannot rise unless the
> employer is willing to go into loss.)

I'm afraid I cannot accept that wages always magically rise to the
productivity level of the employees. I see where it works in theory,
but I don't see where it always works inexorably in practice. There
seem to be too many variables. For instance, there is no way an
employee who produces a shirt that sells for $15 or so in J. C.
Penney's hasn't produced more than 25 cents or so worth of wage. (Not
exact figures here, but the real figures are something like this for
many a factory overseas.)

> In the case of American CEOs, they are far more essential to the company
> than the average employee.

By picking on CEO compensation, I don't mean to deny that higher
skills deserve higher compensation. I'm all for paying masters more
than the apprentice. Just not 500 times more. Even if it does take
Thomas Monaghan and no one else to make Domino's so big, does Domino's
*need* to be so big? Are the pizza drivers automatically better off,
paid more, less likely to be laid off, because they work for such a
huge corporation? Anyhow, if there are any such benefits, are they worth
that ratio of compensation?

Nor do I mean to ignore all the other good folks, such as
shareholders, bankers, politicians receiving campaign donations, and
so on, who all too often take a grotesquely high share of other
people's work. The CEO's just an easy fellow to start with.

Because more of these profits should stay with the employees.

Economies are not pure mathematics; in real life, humans can be greedy
and can figure out ways to make employees work for a pittance while
pocketing more than their fair share of the profits. It may be that a
truly free market is the best mechanism for minimizing this
phenomenon, or it may not, but the general tone of your conversation
so far is that the iron laws of economics almost always prevent this
from happening in real life. CEOs are just magically worth millions a
year, and this is proved to be so simply because shareholders are
stupid enough to pay them this.

It almost sounds like there's no such a thing as economic injustice
(or stupidity), only developing countries that need a higher income so
they can get a higher GNP so everything will get better.

Maybe this is the crux of the matter. If there is such a thing as
economic injustice, it means there are people who, right now, can be
paid more and treated better *without* the business failing to turn a
profit. It will be a smaller profit (maybe), but everyone will keep
making a living, management included.

But if, as you seem to suggest, no one really has a choice, and what
generally looks an awful lot like slave labor is just what it takes to
turn a profit in that particular niche of the economy, then I can see
why you disagree with me. These people *can't* be paid more; they
*have* to have filthy bathrooms and crowded dormitories and horrid
diets and machinery that chops off a finger or two a week. If you fix
any of those problems, the expense will collapse the business; there
simply isn't any excess profit anywhere to divert to such charities.
Not even the income of the factory managers, or the managers of Home
Depot, or the American consumers demanding cheap products, or the
governments taxing the incomes of them all. Nope. Not a dime to spare.

Hmm. There are so many lovely kinds of injustice in the world; surely
there must be a bit of it in the economy? :)

Maybe it'd help me understand your position better if you gave an
example of what you consider to be economic injustice. Some crime,
present or past, that was perfectly legal at the time, but still
unjust.

Because if there is economic injustice, and if, for example, this
Chinese metals factory is practising it, then isn't Home Depot
profiting by it when they import the brackets and sell them so
cheaply? And don't we profit if we buy the stuff so cheaply?

(3) A boycott/threatened boycott.

Whether or not the individual consumer ought to refuse to buy "Made in
China" is one question, and the efficacy of this decision can
be debated. But let's focus on the anti-sweatshop bill. Were such a
bill enforced, we clearly would have efficacious action!

>
> If these
> factory bosses are raising wages in response to labor shortages,
> mightn't they do the same if threatened with losing the U.S. market?
>
> Actually, it might make matters worse. Generally, when there is less
> potential in the market for a particular item, the company produces less
> of it.

Ah, but why would there be less *potential?* There's all the potential
in the world if they're willing to treat workers as human beings. The
report I cited pointed out that the factory in question had been
willing to make all kinds of changes to accomodate its U. S.
client--in how they *packaged.*

These changes must have cost something, but the factory was willing to
do it to keep the client. Now, if the *entire U. S. clientele*
suddenly threatens to pull out unless minimum working conditions are
met--will all these entrepreneurs, managers, etc., simply throw up
their hands and refuse to cooperate? Some might, maybe, but *all* of
them? Most of them?

The bill isn't saying, "No more Chinese goods." It is saying, "What
you do with your workers is your responsibilty, but if you want us to
buy from you, you not only have to package the product properly, you
have to treat your workers with a minumim of respect. We have those
laws in our own country, and we don't deal with businesses who treat
their people like slaves."

> The factories can be moved to nations where the
> restrictions don't apply and nothing is solved and the Chinese are worse
> of than before.

But this bill isn't just for China; it would apply everywhere.

> However, by purchasing more Chinese made goods, the factory owners have
> incentive to increase production and the increased need for labor will
> cause wages to rise.

Again, with this bill, we'll purchase plenty of goods--that aren't
produced in horrific conditions.

> Moreover, by cutting
> China's income by refusing to trade with her, will reduce the local market
> for goods and labor and thusly hurt the Chinese employees. Their
> conditions will be even worse than before.

Since they would also be worse for the management, perhaps the
management would avoid this scenario by complying with demands for
minimum humane working conditions.

And if they didn't, if they refused, we stopped buying, the factory
closed--well, what's our responsibility then? It almost sounds
like I think we have a responsibility to refuse to fund the production
of goods produced with so much suffering, whereas you think we have a
responsibility to...keep buying no matter what?

Really? But if the price was lower in Vietnam, you'd take your business
there. Which might very well close the factory in China. Right? That'd be
business.

So it seems our only responsiblity here is to never stop buying from a
particular factory on moral grounds. But we can do it to save money.

But by now I've put way too many words into your mouth. Thanks again
for writing.

God Bless.

FAIR USE Act of 2007

2007-04-04T16:26:00.000-07:00

Those who read my blog are aware that I maintain copyleftist views. So it should come as no surprise that I am higly critical of DRMs and laws persecute technology just because it can be used in a way currently contradictory to the law. I specifically speaking of the DMCA. All sorts of otherwise fine and legitamate activities have been shut down because of this act. This is why I support the FAIR USE Act of 2007. Almost a decade later, we now have a bill that will lighten many of the gravest abuses that the DMCA was prone to. Technologies like TiVO and iPod will no longer be under threat of lawsuit and we will be more free to use the machines and media that we purchase as we see fit and not as one of the big five media companies see fit. I encourage anyone reading this to write to their representative in support of this bill. You can easily do this by visiting this website.

Thank you and God Bless.

On Individualism

2007-03-27T11:58:00.000-07:00

This is an article I working on for the Rambler. It is far too long and will have to be trimmed but I'm submitting it anyway. I'm putting the full text, unedited, here for reference sake and so people will have a place to read it if they want to. It's somewhat of an independent train of thought for a Christendomer, which makes it a great case point of its own thesis. Enjoy.

In defense of Individualism

- 1: A doctrine that the views of the individual ought to be ethically paramount;
- 2: The conception that all values, rights and duties originate in the individual
- 3: A theory maintaining the political and economic independence of the individual and stressing individual initiative, action and interests
--Miriam-Webster 9th New Collegiate Dictionary

This word “individualism,” is not commonly spoken at Christendom. When it is, it is usually spoken of as some sort of enemy, the philosophical antithesis of all things Christendom, all things Catholic. “When individualism started to take charge during the Enlightenment it was the beginning of the end for Catholic culture,” and “It's this modern individualism that's the cause of all of society's corruption,” are not uncommon things to hear Christendomers say. I however hold a different view. I believe that the greatest threat to modern society, and to Catholicism in particular, is a lack of individualism.
My argument is a simple one: Individualism is a necessary element of the human character. Imagine if you will, a young man named Johnny. Johnny lacks initiative, his own sense of judgment, any cares, interests, or values not established by the group or (what he understands to be) a higher authority. Johnny sounds pretty boring doesn't he? Put Johnny in a good Catholic bubble like Christendom and what does Johnny do? He goes to mass receives the sacraments, and pursues good wholesome studies; the environment drives him to do this. Put Johnny in a vacuum by himself and what does he do? Probably nothing; there is no-one to tell Johnny what to do. Now put Johnny face-to-face with modern society, modern criticism, modern corruption. What does he do now? That's right, Johnny conforms. He adopts society's values, beliefs, behaviors. Given that a large portion of modern society believes in abortion rights, secularism and sexual liberation, he'd likely adopt these beliefs. Now, what if Johnny was raised in a good Catholic bubble like Christendom but then left and entered modern society to live and work. Johnny has spent his entire life till now in a good environment absorbing good values but now his values are in conflict with his environment. Previously Johnny practiced his faith but then it was easy. Now it will be hard. He will have trouble standing up to society and its criticisms. He will either live miserably unable to justify himself to society or cave to society's pressures. This because Johny lacked initiative, his own sense of judgment, any cares, interests, or values of his own. In short, it is because Johnny is formed solely by the group. He is not an individual.
Now, this may seem like an extreme example. After all, Johnny as I described him does not seem like a real person. He is an automaton. Virtually everybody in the world has his interests, beliefs and values of his own. At least here at Christendom we have people interested in art, philosophy, politics, even math and science and often they pursuit these things on their own with no outside pressure. But on deeper examination this is a real issue. According to a Gallup poll people tend to lose their faith in college. The transferal to college is the place where most children leave the instruction and support of their parents and leave to survive on their own. It is where they, for the first time, are left to their own devices to face society and its criticism of Catholicism and they cave, they surrender. This is not just an issue with people who go to secular schools but also with those who go to good Catholic places like Christendom. In general, about a quarter of the graduating at Christendom remains around Front Royal and in the Christendom community. Front Royal and the Shenandoah Valley have by far the highest percentage of Catholic residents than any other region of Virginia. When people graduate, often they never enter the world; they are uncomfortable anywhere else but Christendom. Christendom is one of the few places in the world where their values won't be questioned, where living as a Catholic isn't opposed but encouraged by the group. This is also a problem at many other conservative Catholic colleges. The problem is that Christendomers lack individualism; they are too dependent on the community of Christendom College, too dependent on the group.
The problem is even more significant than that however. The motto of Christendom College is “To Restore All Things In Christ.” This implies and I was lead to believe that it meant that Christendom's mission is ultimately to convert the world, to bring this secular society back to Christ. If Christendomers don't go out into the world and make actual contact with secular society, how can it possibly convert it? It cannot. All over the country Catholics are in retreat. In Florida just this past year, Thomas Monaghan founded Ave Maria-ville, a place where Catholics can live free of the pressures of the secular world. Homeschooling is on the rise (not a knock on homeschooling, being myself a former homeschooler, but only and attack on when it is used as a means to avoid actual contact with society.) Graduates of good Catholic colleges are finding employment primarily at other Catholic colleges and educational institutions or in small companies in low paying jobs owned by a few enterprising graduates. Catholics are failing in their duties as citizens of this world. Organizations, such as the Legion of Mary, as good as they are, are being used as a replacement for actual individual contact with secular world. Conversions are not won primarily through door to door activity but through but through the example that Catholics set forth, particularly the example that personal Catholics friends and associates set. People are impressed by individual example and if the individual example that Catholics set is one of weak personal faith and conviction, or one that doesn't exist because Catholics have retreated and failed to even exist as friends and associates to these people. Catholics are slowly but surely, retreating from the world on a personal level and this is the primary cause of the failure of our Church to grow through conversion.
I maintain that the solution to this problem is the influx of a new wave of individualism in conservative Catholic thought and mentality, or at least in the Christendom mentality. But what is individualism? Contrary to popular opinion (around Christendom anyway) individualism is not synonymous with selfishness. On the contrary, a philosophy that emphasized selfish behavior and attitude would likely be called selfishism. Individualism focuses on individual behavior, which is a different thing altogether. The definition from the Miriam Webster Dictionary at top of this article, particularly the second and third definitions, provides a better understanding of what I am talking about. For the sake of this article, Individualism is the belief that all rights, duties and values originate in the individual and as a result all action and initiative originate in the individual. This is a two part definition and I will need to deal with both parts separately.
The first part, “Individualism is the belief that all rights, duties and values originate in the individual,” comes from the fact that all human society, from the largest nation to the smallest commune, is composed of individuals. The individual is the base unit of all society; even the family, the smallest self sufficient unit, cannot exist without individuals. A father commands and leads his family but his leadership if for naught without the individual cooperation of its members. Ultimately, every decision made by man is up to the individual. Whether it be to cooperate with and conform to those around him, or to 'go against the flow' and do differently. A ruler may issue a tax, but it is up to each and every individual in his realm whether to pay it or refuse and suffer the consequences. The Catholic Church may issue a decree but it is up to the individual whether to accept it on the Church's authority alone, on his own reason, or to reject it in whole or in part. This is a basic consequence of human free will. Thus, society, and all it's attributes, are reducible to the individuals that make it up. As a result, duties must be individual because the duties of society must be reduced ultimately to the duties of the individuals in society. Similarly, all rights and values are individual. This first part of the definition is a fact of life.
The second part of our definition, “All action and initiative originate in the individual,” is a consequence of the first part. If all action of society is reducible to the actions of the individuals who make up society, then clearly all human action is individual action. For anything to happen in society, individuals must decide to do so. Even more so, actions must originate in individuals. Society does not decide to go to war, individuals decide that society should go to war and other individuals then choose to cooperate with that decision. Thus for anything to happen in society, individuals must first make the decision to act. Often this means a governing body coming to a decision, but just as validly private individuals can make the decision. What must happen is that the decision must then be agreed upon by the other members of the society. A governing body has more tools to encourage the other members to come to agreement (the threat of force being primary) but a private individual is still able to garner support if he is intrepid and aggressive enough. If the enough of the society comes to agreement, then action ensues. The remaining members of society who not agree can either conform, refuse to contribute, or actively counteract the action, whatever it may be. This pattern is observable in both obvious societal action (the declaration and fighting of war) and in more general societal movement (The general adoption of the television.) The point is that societal action begins with individual decisions and initiative. Someone must first make the decision to act and people must make the decision to follow.
Now, in general, humanity can be divided into two kinds of individual. This is no clear division of humanity and in fact, the vast majority of humanity can be described as residing somewhere between the two types. These two types are: independents and conformists, that is, those who tend to make decisions independent of the decisions of others and those who base their decisions on others. To be more precise, one type keeps his will his own while the other allows his will to be directly influenced by others. Now, the first type does not necessarily make decisions regardless of the views of other but any affect that the views of others have on is are mediated by his own reason and emotions. The latter's dependence on his peers arises out of a number of reasons including man's conformist tendency or mob mentality which in turn is due to many reasons including personal indecisiveness and man's social aspect. (Basically, maintaining the views and values of a certain group is useful for advancement within the group and gaining the approval of other members of the group.) So, while one man's decisions are rooted in himself, the other man's decisions are rooted in others. Now, as I said before, it is highly unusual that anybody to be wholly one type or the other. The vast majority create their opinions and actions through both their own independent thought and on the views of others.
Individualism recognizing that all action and thought originates in individuals, emphasizes independence as a virtue. This is both, independence of intellect and independence of action. Because, people can either rely on themselves or others for their world views and action, they can either be the cause of public opinion and societal action or the result of it. Basically, all public opinion and societal action originates people acting as independents and is carried out by people acting as conformists. So, independents set the world stage; they create society, determine its course; they are the ones who determine whether the world goes to God or the Devil. So, if all atheists are independents and all Catholics are conformists, society will be given to the atheists. Contra wise, if all Catholics are independents and all atheists are conformists, the world will go to the Church. Thus, it is obvious that to be independent is a moral imperative for any Catholic. If independence is necessary for conversion and the spread of the faith, then how can anyone in good conscience be a conformist? The simple fact is one cannot.
Is it any wonder why the Catholic Church, and indeed, conservative Christianity in general is in such dire straits today? Young Catholics grow up being told such and such about their faith and they never question it or try to understand it. They merely accept it.
“Do you believe God exists?”
“Yes.”
“Do you believe God loves you?”
“Yes.”
“Do you believe the Church is the source of the truth?”
“Yes.”
“Why do you believe this?”
“I don't know.”
Is it any wonder why this person fails to win any converts? Is it any wonder why he is given to weird Catholic fringe movements? Is it any wonder why he is more likely to be converted to Mormonism, Buddhism, or Atheism than he is to convert one of them to Catholicism? How is anyone supposed to take him seriously? Even more important, how is he supposed to take himself seriously? When he reaches some secular institution and is confronted by all sorts of 'freethinking' people, how is he going to react. He may be in the right, but he does not know know that. All he knows is that the 'freethinkers' seem to have a better understanding and greater personal conviction than he does. He will either withdraw his religion to his local Church and avoid public expression of faith and confrontation of his cherished beliefs, or he will join the 'freethinkers' and follow them. What he will not do is look deeper into his faith and the issues raised and in so doing deepen his understanding and faith and hopefully present a good representation of what Catholicism is. He will not because he was raised not to.
How many have seen this happen, to people they know? How many people know someone of weak faith who will not admit to being a Catholic in public? How many people know someone who lost their faith in college or in the workplace? How many know someone whose faith goes no deeper than a weekly, wishy-washy sermon by a wishy washy priest? How many are hesitant to face the secular world and believe it to be unconquerable, impossible to convert, or so impossibly hostile to his faith that he fears it and would rather spend his life on a farm in a social bubble and teach impressionable Catholic youth to do the same thing? I personally doubt that there is one Christendomer who does not know at least one of these.
Now imagine, if every Catholic was raised, and encouraged to question his faith and learn about it. If he was encouraged to look into such questions as the existence of God, relationship of science and faith, and other similar questions; If he were encouraged to study, not only the Catholic side but the secular, the protestant, and the Muslim sides; If he were encouraged to do this on his own and to take initiative in these studies, would he not be much more prepared to answer such questions, to respond to such critics and to do so with intellectual certitude and authority? I do not simply mean the practice of some soft Catholics of taking there children to different denominations and asking them to choose their own faith, or the practice of ignoring the teachings of the Church entirely in favor of one's own judgment. I mean more. I mean the provision of more than the basics of Catechism, the encouragement of a broad range of study, and most importantly, the encouragement of individual initiative in this study. If this were to happen, the Catholic Church would take the offensive, and perhaps the secular, protestant, and Muslim world would be placed again on the retreat.
Would this mean the loss of faith of some people? Probably. Would this lead to a rise of 'alternative' (ie. heretical) theologies within the Church? Likely. But would the faith, conviction and influence of those who remain, rise dramatically? Definitely. People lose their faith every day, and odd theologies seem to be at an all time high, but conviction and firmness amongst the faithful is something severely lacking. Now is not the time for timidity and reactionary behavior but offense and all offensives garner casualties. The ranks must be strengthened and the weak weeded out (or rather let go) because they compromise the cause. This is what must be done If the Church is to once again take the offensive on the intellectual and social spheres of the modern world.
Now, I've highlighted and demonstrated what I believe the be the problem, I've posited what I believe to be the solution, I've given a simple rational explanation for my belief, and I've presented how I believe this solution would help and how it should happen, all the while descending into more and more rhetorical and demagogic language. Now, I hope you will independently view and consider these ideas, compare it to whatever body of knowledge you already possess, and act upon your conclusions without being prompted by a like minded authority or friend. Thank you for your patience and God Bless.

More on the free market in China.

2007-03-18T13:38:00.000-07:00

Mr. Powell (link here)has done me the favor of converting our conversation to HTML markup for the sake of posting on my blog. He has also given me access to the comments section of his blog so now I can respond directly to articles he writes. I thank him for this.

Also here is my response to his counter response:

Dear Mr. Powell,

Nice to hear from you.

> It would seem that because people traveled so far just to get sweatshop
> jobs that they are better than the alternative, no?

Unfortunately, that only speaks poorly for the alternative. In fact,
your links were great, they shed a little light there. For instance,
the NYT article pointed out:

Government policy is playing a role in creating the coastal labor
shortages. Trying to close the yawning income gap between the urban
rich and the rural poor in China, the national government last year
eliminated the agricultural tax, and it also stepped up efforts to
develop local economies in poor, inland and western provinces, which
have mostly been left behind.

Perhaps some people, at least, were leaving their homes because of
intolerable taxation. There are precedents.

Which is hardly the responsibility or the fault of western factories, which is my point. Westerners don't force anybody to work in their factories; these people are merely invited to apply.

> Wage slavery can only exist where someone holds a monopoly on
> employment. With hundreds of companies owning factories in China,
> this is not the case.

Maybe we're using the term differently; the point is, if people will
work under such intolerable conditions, there must be some severe
external pressure at work, severe enough to be at least analogous to
that which keeps people enslaved. I don't see why you need a monopoly;
all you need are the majority of factories having the same deplorable
conditions. That's how it worked when Dickens wrote *Hard Times*, that's how
it works today.

The reason you need a monopoly is simple. Without it, people always have a choice. They could always move to the factory with slightly better conditions and the original factory would have to improve conditions to bring back the workers. This means that the low wages and poor conditions must be due to pressures beyond the employer's control, ie. lack of productivity (employees can only be payed what they produce) or something else. The term "slavery" implies that someone is forcing someone to do something and they have no choice but without a monopoly on labor, the employer clearly cannot force people to work for them.

Incidentally, the second article's report of a rising GNP and per
capita income in China proves very little regarding working
conditions. As you know, if a millionaire on a desert island employs
three people for 1 cent a year, the per capita income is about
$250,000.01. Nor is the example frivolous, when even in the U. S. the
compensation for an average CEO is hundreds of times that of the
average worker. Imagine the ratio in a country where people get paid
cents a day.

Actually, this rasies the question of how the millionaire (by which I assume you to mean someone with an income of $100,000,000 per year) makes all that money a year with so little labor. Chances are that this millionaire's contribution to the enterprise is far more valuable than his employees. Otherwise, with such a small labor market, It is unlikely that he could coerce them to perform anything for such a small amount, all they would have to do is refuse to work until he gave them a better wage.

It is also interesting that you chose an example where there was a monopoly on employment. What say there were two competing millionaires and six people in the labor market. An employee would merely have to threaten to work for the other guy and his employer would be forced to raise his wage lest he be outproduced by his rival. In this way, the wages would be forced up to the productivity level of the employees (past which wages cannot rise unless the employer is willing to go into loss.)

In the case of American CEOs, they are far more essential to the company than the average employee. While an individual pizza cook can be replaced easily, it's unlikely that Dominoe's would be nearly as big as it is today without Thomas Monaghan. Leadership is simply more valuable than individual effort. Otherwise, it would be impossible for them to coax such large salaries from their employers (CEOs are actually employees, not owners. In huge coorperations, such a Apple or Walmart, ownership is usually in the hands of a board of shareholders who hire and fire CEOs at their discretion somewhat like a major league Baseball coach.)

With increased productivity of the Chinese nation and the greater wealth of the nation as a whole, means there will be more job opportunities. With people making more money, no matter how much a minority, there will be a larger local market and thus more job opportunites. Only a few people can really afford a Porsche but that minority is enough to provide employment for everybody at Porsche. Also, with a rising wealthy class with more varied and sophisticated tastes will likely encourage an increase in the variety of jobs, many of which of much higher quality.

Now, the NYT article indicates that many factories are being forced to
improve their conditions because of labor shortages. This is a recent
development, but it's great. Of course it would be wrong to blame
foreign buyers like Home Depot for *all* China's internal
problems--merely another variation on imperialism. Still, we can take
responsibility for our part in the mess, and that's the point of
restricting imports from sweatshops. You may believe this would only
discourage more factories, but what is this belief based on? If these
factory bosses are raising wages in response to labor shortages,
mightn't they do the same if threatened with losing the U.S. market?

Actually, it might make matters worse. Generally, when there is less potential in the market for a particular item, the company produces less of it. Because of the reduced production there is a reduction in need for labor and consequently wages drop. Basically, because there is less need for labor, the company can relax and focus on attracting only the most destitute. Thus conditions can worsen and wages decrees. Or, alternatively, The factories can be moved to nations where the restrictions don't apply and nothing is solved and the Chinese are worse of than before.

However, by purchasing more Chinese made goods, the factory owners have incentive to increase production and the increased need for labor will cause wages to rise. Generally with the huge population which China has, demand will have to rise pretty high before a real dent can be made which is partially why conditions are still so poor. Moreover, by cutting China's income by refusing to trade with her, will reduce the local market for goods and labor and thusly hurt the Chinese employees. Their conditions will be even worse than before.

Lastly, there's the question of whether it's moral to knowingly buy
the fruit of such horrid labor. If the factory described in my article
was down your street, and the people were living in the same
conditions, an average of 5 of them losing fingers each month, getting
paid the U. S. equivalent of those wages...would you go to the gift
shop?

The standard of living is much higher in the United States than in China, largely because of the huge wealth of the nation. It wouldn't be possible to run such a factory because we are so well off. There is always an alternative, ie, Burger King. This is the reason that the national wealth of China needs to be increased. With a higher GNP, more and better jobs will be available and Chinese workers will be able to better than these factories. Something that is already happening.

Thanks again for writing! No obligation to write back, of course, but
I'll welcome any further thoughts you have.

Bill Powell

--
_______________________________________

Adventures of an Ex-Suburbanite

www.billpowellisalive.com

_______________________________________

In conclusion I would like to leave you with something I found a while ago and found fascinating. Basically this is a curriculum for a program that teaches the benifits of the Free-Market for poorer classes and it uses China as its key item of study. It is worth takeing a look at.

Andrew Stine

Some more free market discussion.

2007-03-16T13:52:00.000-07:00

I mentioned oh, last month that I might be able to publish this discussion I've been having with Mr. Bill Powell (his blog here) just as soon as I received permission from him. Well, I finally got through and he gave me to go ahead. I think I'll post one letter at a time for simplicity's sake.

I already linked his post and my initial response. Here is his counter-response

Dear Mr. Stine,

Thanks for your note! Sorry it's taken me a bit to respond.

> It would seem that because people traveled so far just to get sweatshop
> jobs that they are better than the alternative, no?

Unfortunately, that only speaks poorly for the alternative. In fact,
your links were great, they shed a little light there. For instance,
the NYT article pointed out:

Government policy is playing a role in creating the coastal labor
shortages. Trying to close the yawning income gap between the urban
rich and the rural poor in China, the national government last year
eliminated the agricultural tax, and it also stepped up efforts to
develop local economies in poor, inland and western provinces, which
have mostly been left behind.

Perhaps some people, at least, were leaving their homes because of
intolerable taxation. There are precedents.

> Wage slavery can only exist where someone holds a monopoly on
> employment. With hundreds of companies owning factories in China,
> this is not the case.

Maybe we're using the term differently; the point is, if people will
work under such intolerable conditions, there must be some severe
external pressure at work, severe enough to be at least analogous to
that which keeps people enslaved. I don't see why you need a monopoly;
all you need are the majority of factories having the same deplorable
conditions. That's how it worked when Dickens wrote *Hard Times*, that's how
it works today.

Incidentally, the second article's report of a rising GNP and per
capita income in China proves very little regarding working
conditions. As you know, if a millionaire on a desert island employs
three people for 1 cent a year, the per capita income is about
$250,000.01. Nor is the example frivolous, when even in the U. S. the
compensation for an average CEO is hundreds of times that of the
average worker. Imagine the ratio in a country where people get paid
cents a day.

Now, the NYT article indicates that many factories are being forced to
improve their conditions because of labor shortages. This is a recent
development, but it's great. Of course it would be wrong to blame
foreign buyers like Home Depot for *all* China's internal
problems--merely another variation on imperialism. Still, we can take
responsibility for our part in the mess, and that's the point of
restricting imports from sweatshops. You may believe this would only
discourage more factories, but what is this belief based on? If these
factory bosses are raising wages in response to labor shortages,
mightn't they do the same if threatened with losing the U.S. market?

Lastly, there's the question of whether it's moral to knowingly buy
the fruit of such horrid labor. If the factory described in my article
was down your street, and the people were living in the same
conditions, an average of 5 of them losing fingers each month, getting
paid the U. S. equivalent of those wages...would you go to the gift
shop?

Thanks again for writing! No obligation to write back, of course, but
I'll welcome any further thoughts you have.

Bill Powell

I'll publish more of the discussion at a later date. Enjoy.

Also, coming soon, a controversial article!

God Bless.

OK, Cupid, Politics Test

2007-03-02T12:36:00.000-08:00

I took this test a while ago but didn't publish the results. It seems that a lot of my friends are now publishing results from it so I decided to follow suit.

You are a
Social Liberal
(66% permissive)

and an...
Economic Conservative
(81% permissive)

You are best described as a:

Libertarian

Link: The Politics Test on OkCupid Free Online Dating
Also: The OkCupid Dating Persona Test

So far, I'm the only one in my quadrant. The test seems to be based on sound theory though, as it pinned me down nicely, right on ol' TJs shoulder. However, seeing that socialism is integral to several forms of fascism (ie, National Socialists), it seems odd that there should be such a wide gulf between them on the chart. I can see how it might work though.

edit: I believe that the 'totalitarian' section ought to be subdivided into 'authoritarian' and 'totalitarian' sections. I've always understood the term 'totalitarian' to refer to an extreme system which demands dedication of the whole self to the state. The 'totalitarian' section on the graph covers far more ground than that. I think that 'authoritarian' would be a better descriptor for those nearer the center of the graph.

Some Free market discusion.

2007-02-28T20:40:00.000-08:00

I've been engaged in an ongoing debate with Bill Powel from Bill Powell is Alive, on the practicallity on a theoretical level of a new bill to restrict trade with China to products not manufactured through 'sweatshop' labor. It began as a response to a post on his blog attacking the brutality of Chinese factories and lauding the bill. I, of course am against the bill on the grounds that it will only hurt in in the long run.

Here a link to his post.

I wish the conversation was made available through the comment's section of his blog but, alas, I cannot comment on Mr. Powell's blog. The debate has transcribed instead through E-mail. I don't know if Mr. Powell would appreciate my publishing his mail that he sent me but I will publish my first response to his post:

It would seem that because people traveled so far just to get sweatshop jobs that they are better than the alternative, no?

Anyhow, proof that the further influx of the free-market is helping China here, and here. Wage slave indeed. Wage slavery can only exist where someone holds a monopoly on employment. With hundreds of companies owning factories in China, this is not the case.

As to that bill, I believe a restriction on imports would do more to discourage the building of factories in China period rather than improving their conditions. This would hurt China (and its people) far more than any inhumane factory conditions.

With Mr. Powell's permission I'll publish the entire rest of it because it's gotten pretty interesting. Until then, I hope you enjoy.

God Bless.

Illness

2007-02-22T19:44:00.000-08:00

I've not posted in a while. I've been at school. I've also been sick. I had a fever all yesterday, but still had to drive all the way into DC for a class. Fun. Nice that it's warming up finally though.

A Movie.

2007-01-05T10:03:00.000-08:00

Ok, a few weeks ago I was about to post something about the movie Apocalypto I had just seen. But I wanted to check what the reviews were on the movie before I wrote a review myself. I ended up finding a slew of stuff slamming the movie with ridiculous nitpicking and accusations while at the same time missing the obvious flaws and majors goods. I felt compelled to address all of this and pretty soon overwelmed myself and didn't post anything. I'm going to try again and this time I'll keep it simple.

First off, the basics. The movie, made by the now infamous, Mel Gibson, is about the Mayans and human sacrifice. The thesis was to show how human sacrifice was likely one of the key causes of the downfall of the Mayan civilization. It tracks a would Mayan sacrifice victems escape from sacrifice and flight to freedom. It grabbed my attention from the start and held it. It was very exiting, very gory, very suspensful, and a little raunchy at parts.

The Mayan civilization is portrayed as violence obsessed and corrupt. Their entire civilization is dying fallen victem to famine and plague while they attempt to ward off disaster by appealing to the god's (mainly the sun god) through human sacrifice. They hunt through the outlying villages and kidnap populations which they then sacrifice through the removal of hearts and decapitation. The mass graves resulting from the sacrifices were the cause of the famine and plague. Throughout the movie there is discussion of a prophecy or something similar fortelling the fall the Mayans. The movie ends with a vision of the Spanish arriving in the new world heralding in change and an appearent fullfilment of said prophecy.

Most of the people complained about the negative portrayal of the Mayans in the movie. They complained that the Mayans were an advanced people with an advanced calander and that there is no evidence of mass sacrifices or corruption, or famine, or cruelty, etc. Unfortunately, there's no evidence to the contrary either. The downfall of the Mayans is a mystery and no one really knows what happened. Most of their writtings are lost. All that is left are huge temples, some architectural art and murals, and their impeccable calander. This calander is often cited as evidence that the Mayans were 'advanced' (whatever that means) and thus incapable of such things as mass sacrifice. However, the Nazis possessed some of the most advanced tech in the world but they still massacred the Jews during the Holocaust. Technology is not necessarily a sign of civilization. So in short, because nobody really knows what happed to the Mayans, it's not a stretch to imagine that it happened this way. Eitherway, is is known that the Mayans sacrificed people the way protrayed at least to some extent. So I don't think that Mr. Gibson is necessarily wrong here.

The second thing people complained about was that use of the solar eclipse in the movie to impress the Mayans and frighten them was an inaccurate cliche of Messoamericans used to make them appear stupid and uneducated. This is a cliche and it annoyed me somewhat too. I believe that the first use of this cliche was not in reference to a Messoamerican civilization but to medieval Europeans in the book A Conneticut Yankee in King Aurthor's Court where it was meant to make the (Catholic) medievals look stupid and ignorant. It's attribution to Messoamericans is not illogical because they did worship the sun. However, we know that the Mayans were able to predict eclipses and so they would not have been surprised at them. So it would seem that eclipses could not have caused the stir that they did. However (again), a probable reason (I think) that the Mayans learned to predict eclipses was because they worshipped the sun and such eclipses did frighten them. If the eclipse was central to their religion it is highly likely that they would learn to predict them. So it is not unfeasable that the Mayans would be greatly affected by the eclipse, only that they would be surprised. Then again, some of the Mayans in the movie didn't appear very surprised. Those priests seemed to be ready for it. Perhaps only the priests knew how to predict the eclipses and they used this knowledge to control the people? I've seen this explaination in other reviews and it seems sufficient to me. It's still a cliche (I saw it coming way ahead of time), but not necessarily inaccurate and it definately helped the plot move along.

Most of the rest of the complaints were kind of nitpicky. For example, that very few of the actors were actually Mayan and that many were Mexicans, North American Indians, South American Indians, etc... Oh please, I wonder how many of those 'Greeks' in Troy were actually 'Greek,' or how many of those 'Italians' in Amadeus were 'Italian?' If Natalie Wood can pass for a Puerto Rican in Westside Story Mel Gibson can employ a few Mexicans and pretend they're Mayans. There is a such thing as suspension of disbelief, especially when the cast calls for dozens, if not hundreds, of Mayans, a race of whom there are few left and who live in country not known for it's acting venues. Similarly with the pronunciation of Mayan, which people also complain about. It's a language that very few people speak and if we can tolorate Julia Roberts in Micheal Collins or Harrison Ford in K-19:Widowmaker (Both of which feature Liam Neeson, hmmm...) we can tolate the mispronunciation of a language that none of the actors speak. The same also with the inconsistency of the timeperiod of the art, movies have traditionally gotten this wrong, so why should we complain here?

Now for my complaint, which everybody seemed to miss. The Mayan civilization as pictured collapsed 4 centuries before the first Spaniards ever reached America. That's right, there is no way on God's green earth that Spaniards could have come to end the Mayan civilization. It was already gone when they arrived. End of deal. Major historical inaccuracy destroys most of the movie. What more is there to complain about?

This is not to say that I didn't appreciate the semi-positive portrayal of the Spanish arrival in Messoamerica. After movies like El Dorado where the Spanish are presented as bloodthirsty, gold-hungary, sociopaths, this was a relief. Many people seem to have this notion that it's a new 'revelation' that the Spanish came to America for gold and not for God. Not only is this view not new but very old, but it isn't entirely correct. The Spanish were out for discovery. They wanted to expand their influence and create new trade routes. In the process they hoped to spread their faith and to become wealthier in both knowledge and matter. When it became known that the inhabitants of the Carribean were largely undeveloped indiginants, many of whom practiced canibalism, the Spanish Governement adopted a policy of conquest and assimilation, a policy that has been pretty normal throughout history. The people of America, whether they liked it or not, were declaired Spanish citizens. For the most part, this conquest did not involve torturing natives and asking where their gold was. This did happen but it was the exception, rather than the norm. Our current image of the sociapath Spaniard comes from Elizabethan England when war and bad relations between England and Spain lead to the widespread acceptance amongst the English of any negative proganda against Spain. With regard to the New World and the Americas, the highly exadgerated account of the Spainsh activist, Bartolomé de las Casas, who protrayed examples of unseamly torture and ridiculous sadism on the part of the Spanish. This picture completely ignored that hundreds of real heroes among the Spanish (mainly religious) who really did champion the rights of the natives of America. These negative images entered the textbooks and legitamized an extremely negative portrayal of the Spanish that has been far more damaging in the long run than any negative portrayal of the Mayans. Although the Spanish rule over the Mayans was hardly virtuous and rarely benevolent, they were not the sadistic, gold-hungry monsters often portrayed. To say that they came for gold and not for God is by far an oversimplification.

That said, Mr. Gibson would have done far better to feature the Aztecs as opposed to the Mayans in this movie. First of all, the Spanish actually did overthrow the Aztec empire and a picture of them as a herald of change for the Aztecs would have been quite accurate. Also, the Aztec practice of human sacrifice is far better documented than the Mayan and we do know that they practiced in mass similar to the image in the movie. In addition, considering that it only took Hernando Cortez less that 3,000 men and less than a year to conquer the entire Aztec empire of hundreds of thousands of people, it would not be farfetched to say that weakness, decadence, and political instability due to the Aztec practice of human sacrifice was largely the cause of their downfall. All in all, it would have made more sense and probably would have recieved less criticism.

Wow. What a rant.

In addition-

-The special effects were transparent.
-The first few minutes were rather raunchy but did establish the characters well.
-The Mayan warchief was probably one of the coolest villains I've seen in a long time.
-Mel Gibson does focus way to much on gore. It's no secret that he has a fixation.
-The protagonist recieves a deep stab wound to the stomach. After a day and a half of constant running it is fully healed. Thus stretched my credulity a little too far.

And that's what I think of that movie.
Next week: The Good Sheperd Ahhh.

God Bless.

Shelley the Republican

2006-12-15T09:08:00.000-08:00

This is an interesting site. Entitled, "The Freedom Blog," it purports to be an opinion blog for a conservative republican thinktank. It appears, however, to be a group of people merely posing as far-right, religious conservatives. They exaggerate every redneck stereotype imaginable: militarism, paranoia, theocratism, technical illiteracy, intolerence, etc... The opinions they express are a clear parody of right-wing opinions. This ordinarily would mean nothing to me; there are many websites like this. However, the fact that people posting on the site appear to actually believe the charade is alarming. How many are pretending I cannot say, but it gives conservatives a bad name. This is something I resent.

God Bless.

Ownership

2006-12-07T10:22:00.000-08:00

I posted an 'essay' a month or two ago where I expressed some copyleft ideas and proposed a thesis against the notion of copyright. I made sure to mention that, although I liked the idea, I saw some obvious difficulties that would need some more explaination. I'm going to try to modify and further develope my ideas by exploring the notion of ownership in general.

Before I continue, here is the previous article: Music.

I am, in general, a follower of Lockean ideas. As such, I am a firm beleiver in the labor theory of ownership (not the labor theory of value.)I will explain: At the start, no human is entiteled to anything except himself. No rock, tree, or animal is his. The material world is not owned by human beings but be God. (Or, by nobody if you're an Atheist; functionally they are the same.) Labor, in my opinion, is a part of own's self. By infusing something with my labor, I infuse it with a part of me. The labor came from me so it is mine and an extension of myself. So I come to own by working.

So, take a rock. This rock is unowned. Now suppose I owere to break that rock until it had a sharp edge. I have now put labor into that rock; I have infused it with a piece of myself. The labor in the rock now belongs to me and, insomuch as the rock is inseperable from that labor, it belongs to me as well. My labor is owned by me because it comes from me; it is an extension of myself. What does not come from me is not owned by me. The rock, per se, is not owned by me, the labor in is owned by me and for some to do something with the rock imply a vandalism or trespassing on my labor, essencially an attack on myself. This, I believe, is the nature of ownership.

Let's apply this to intellectual property. Let us suppose someone creates a song. For now it is in that persons head. This song is the property of that person. It is the property of that person because of the labor that went into it. More particularly, the labor that the person has put into the song is his. Now suppose this person sings this song and I hear it. Now suppose I repeat the song. Have I trespassed against this persons property? No, because I have not touched his labor. The song still exists in his head exactly so I have neither vandalized nor trespassed against that labor. His singing of the song is also the same, I didn't affect his singing. So my storing the song in my head and singing it outloud does not constitute stealing.

Here's the reason. Our friend's labor went into a two instances of that song, the one in his head, and the one he sang. Those two instances are his; I'm not permitted to affect them. But, I couldn't if I wanted to anyway. His labor didn't go into the instance in my head or the instance I sang. MY labor went into those. I listened and formed the song in my head and I sang, so those instances are MINE. Our friend has no claim to them. Now, the common presupisition, is that our friend owns the form of the song or the idea of the song, hence the phrase, "intellectual property," but this is ridiculous. Our friend's labor did not go into this form because the form pre-existed his labor. Any student of Plato knows that the forms are eternal and trancend there material counterparts. Our friend did not create the form for that song. He created the song using it's form. So did I. The potential already existed. Our friend merely discovered the potential for the song and actualized it. I did the same thing in another instance.

Now one may bring up the objection of dependence. Our friend 'discovered' the song, all by himself, but I only listened to him and sang what I heard, thus I profited from his labor. By this logic, I would 'owe' our friend something because I benefited from him; because I recieved something from him, the help from his singing, He deserves something from me, say money. This is wrong however. He cannot demand payment for something he did without my consent. Neither can a man on the street and wash my window without my permission and expect a payment, nor can this man sing and expect me to pay him, even if I go so far as to repeat his song. Just because one person benefits from anothers labor doesn't mean that the first owes the latter anything. I could clean up my front lawn it might make the neighborhood nicer than if I did not, but I would not then be able to demand from the neighbors payment for the rise in property value.

So, our friend is in no position to complain if I copy him and sing 'his' song, or if you copy me and sing the 'same' song, or, if one person at a time, the song is spread all over the world. He is not, by right, owed royalties.

One cannot own a form. On cannot own a form because it is intangable. As I said before, one only owns that which comes from his own person but one cannot inject his labor into an intagible form. One can merely affect the things that possess said form and change them. For this reason, the notion, of 'intellectual property' is an oxymoron.

Home again, home again jigidy-jig

2006-12-06T06:05:00.000-08:00

Ah... Back to work. I've come home from Rome and gone back to my old job for the summer. As cool as Rome was, the busyness of the big city, all the tours, and school in general, got to me. Here at work I can browse the internet and listen to music while I wait for things to install. When hard work does happen, it usually doesn't involve bustling about or memorizing things (I don't like either very much.)

In other news, I visited the campus the other week. Seemed dead but then it was a Saturday. Everybody is usually out and about on Saturday. From my conversation though, with my friends After they returned from their errands,)it appeared that the campus life has been unusually lackluster while we were in Rome. This is in part, I believe, that is was the wild half of the junior class that went to Rome and the seniors have, well, succumbed to their studies. The new freshmen class is appearently kind of a dull crowd as well. Ta'well, We'll fix all that next semester.

Hmm... here I am complaining about how busy and exhausting Rome was and at the same time condemning the campus for being dull and inactive. Being a comparative stick-in-the-mud to a lot of my friends... not getting out that much... expressing a prefference, no matter how slight and qualified, for an office job over exploration in an ancient European city... I really shouldn't be complaining about the students being quiet and unenergetic. Though that's not the case. I enjoy excitment. I enjoy excitment a lot, even in large doses. It just kinda has to be on my time. There are times for robbing banks and times for chillin' by the fire. Just 'cause fun things don't always happen when I'm in the mood doesn't mean all I do is be a bum.

Hmm... on second thought, nobody really accused me of dullness. So I wonder where that came from? I don't know. I'm also kind of neurotic for those not aware of this fact so maybe I'm just in a self-critical mood.

Oh well.

Hee Hee Hee

2006-11-30T10:38:00.000-08:00

Some more things...

2006-11-17T05:05:00.000-08:00

Here's a list of things I've done since my last post:

Gone to Austria and back,
Gone to Krakow, Poland and back,
Recieved a tour of San Pietro br D O'D
Visited the Gesu and the rooms of St. Ignatious
Lots of other cools stuff.

I'll talk more later.

Some things...

2006-11-02T10:08:00.000-08:00

We went to the Catacombs this morning. This was probably one of the coolest things I've ever done. First off, it was nice to get out the the city for a bit. Italy is realy nice place in the country side. Even the suburbs, which is where the Catacombs are, are nice. We had a tour (in English) which was pretty cool. The graves were empty, but this was one of the few times in my life that I can say that the place felt holy. It was as if the souls of the martyrs still inhabited the place. The notion is ridiculous of course, they'd be in heaven now, but something intangable, yet sacred, was left behind. We had mass down there. It was incredibly crampt just as it would have been 1600 years ago. It was so tight I was pressed right up against the altar, two feet from the consecration. That's the closest I've been to one ever, which is pretty cool.

These past few days november weather has just started. It's gotten very cool out all of a sudden, in contrast to the nearly constant sunny, warm weather. I like summer weather but the cool air has been a bit of a break. I warm October is just too much for me. (Wow, I've been in Italy too long. I almost spelled October ottobre. Yeesh.) Besides, even though I usually act pretty indifferent to them, I miss the autumn colors. Maybe the trees that they have here and there will change color before we leave. That would be nice.

Sean & Sydeny made themselves tacoes with some food and spices from a higher-end grocery store. It was a special treat for them and they let me have one, which was very nice of them. It's been a long while since I've had Mexican food. The hot sauce wasn't as good as what we get back in the States but it was a nice break from all the pasta.

Clair, Anne Terese, and I went to Termini (which is kind of like Grand Central Station for Rome.) to check out car rentals. We got one for the weekend for about 150 Euro, which isn't much at all. The three of us, along with possibly Beth, are going to head north tomarrow and shoot for Austria. We have no sleeping accomidations so I'll probably be sleeping on the ground along the way. This'll be an adventure. Wow, only one more free weekend after this one and it's booked for Poland.

Wow, only a month left in Rome. I've been here for two. It'll be nice to get home, but at the same time... I'll miss this place. I've gotten accustumed to the city and I'm learning the language. I can understand most of the bilboards and graffiti. Give another three to four months I'll probably be able to converse with the locals, but I'll be gone before then and I'll forget my Italian. I'll definitely visit again someday, if at all possible, no doubt about that, but it probably won't be for as long as this, and I definitely won't be able to pick up where I dropped off with the language. Oh well. This has been an awsome ride and it will be a long time before I think I'll finally process everything I've seen.

Just... Wow.

God Bless.

Wow... Didn't expect that.

2006-10-27T09:58:00.000-07:00

When you post comments on fringe, third party websites you don't usualy expect a response... But when I signed the guestbook of the CFPA's website, I got quite a response. It was Sean's idea to sign it so I take no responsibility.

Here was what I posted:

I'm a devout Roman Catholic and I appreciate your appearent devotion to traditional christian values. However, I object to your missuse ofthe Cross of Jerusalem as a nationalist symbol.

The Knights of the Holy Sepulchre defended Jerusalem for the sake of keeping pilgrimages to Jerusalem open to all Christians. They took a vow to the Holy Church which transcends nationality (hence the term 'Catholic' which means universal.) In your descriptive pages you espouse a nationalist patriotism to the United States which, while commendable, is seperate from the charism of the Knights whoes symbol you use. To honor these great knights, whoes order still exists, I would ask that you reconcider your primary symbol.

Thank you.

And here's what I got:

Dear illuminati11_13,

We are sorry to disappoint you but the CFPA will never give this symbol up, we've had it for too many years. The Knights of the Holy Sepulchre use a Jerusalem cross with four smaller crosses inside of it, we do not, also the Knights do not have a monopoly on the Jerusalem cross and neither does the Catholic church.

Our Cross was used by Engelbert Dollfuss a Catholic and an Austrian Nationalist
(www.dollfuss.org) and it was used by the Crusaders who fought the Moslems who are still our enemies. Our Party envisions a day when there are Christian Falangist Parties throughout the World and all concerned Christians, regardless of race and nationality, are united under the crutch cross to defend our civilization against the Islamic hordes who seek to destroy us.

We do not misuse the crutch cross but there are others who do (www.falange1.com/misuse.htm) but that will not stop us from using it either. You are not the first person to try and get us to drop that cross as our symbol....they say "it looks too much like a swastika" or "it looks like a neo-Fascist or a neo-Nazi symbol" etc. It sure seems like a lot of people don't like us using it, that's good, it'll make them remember us. Thank you for signing our guestbook but we'll keep our cross just the same.

Patricio Bridges, Director, CFPA.

Below are the spelling errors you left in our guestbook:

appearent is spelled apparent
borring is spelled boring
missuse is spelled misuse
reconcider is spelled reconsider
seperate is spelled separate
whoes is spelled whose

Wow. I got the director. There's a picture of him on their website in what appears to be paramilitary garb. I'm glad he can spell because I had no idea that 'whoes' was really spelled 'whose.' In my defense, I've been sleep deprived for the past week studying for midterms. Spelling errors are a part of life for me. I'm not going to fight them on their use of the Jerusalem Cross; I don't have the time or will. Besides, I have little real fear that they will be able to corrupt it's meaning in the public mindset. I think I'll go to bed instead. I have a splitting headache...

I'm tired.

2006-10-23T16:19:00.000-07:00

I'm tired right now. I'm a little tired of Rome right now. I'll see if I can go Spain during the next free weekened. I found tickets to Valencia at a reasonable price. Right now I'm going to bed. I can't really see straight right now.

Goodnyte.

news...

2006-10-17T11:27:00.000-07:00

We all went to the papal audience last week.

I visited Churches on friday. Saw the original OLPH and St. Charles Borromeo's heart.

There is a really good Chinese food restaurant off of Mary Major.

Four new Saints got cannonized Sunday. The mass was awesome.

The philosophy midterm was today. They was fun.

Whew!

2006-10-12T11:02:00.000-07:00

I just fixed my blog, sort of... Seems that half of the template got deleted. I created a new generic blog and replaced the missing parts of the old one with the coresponding parts of the new. The blog now loads again. I'll fill in the missing profile stuff later.

A Copyright Casualty

2006-10-01T10:27:00.001-07:00

Cleanfilms.com is no more. Clean films is/was a DVD rental website similar to Netflix but they edit the DVDs that they rent so that they are free of profanity, nudity, and excessive violence. The goal of this is to make films that would otherwise be unsuitable for certain audiences available for everyone. This is a good service that my family has used for several years now and has made renting movies much less of a hassle. Cleanfilms is/was a good company.

Now, it is a violation of copyright laws to edit and rent movies for any reason. Granted, Cleanfilms didn't rob the motion picture association of any money; they kept an original copy of every DVD that they rented out. But, someone in Hollywood didn't want people editing their movies. It seems that there is a right to present smuck to American families, uncensored. Cleanfilms was sued by the motion picture industries and was forced to go out of business. We, once again must subject our families to unpleasant material. This is a travesty.

Why was this done? Copyright law, huge and complicated, grants obscure privilages to the 'creators' of intellectual works and this includes the ability to prevent extension or modification. Basically, some folks in Hollywood decided that they didn't like people privately modifying their viewing experience and took action to prevent it. It has been decided that the artistic falue of smut in movies was important and that it would be a crime to remove it, even if it remained intact in other copies.

This is rediculous. Media outlets shouldn't have that much control over 'their' production. When you 'purchase' a movie, piece of music, etc., it should actually become yours and you should have the right to do with it as you wish. As it is, I don't own my DVDs, or my CDs, those are owned by the companies that produce them. When I 'purchased' those I really only purchased a license. I have no rights over them. I resent this. It destroyed Cleanfilms, an honest company. This shouldn't be. Copyright should go.

Siena.

2006-09-30T15:56:00.000-07:00

Ok, here's my take on Sienna: Where Florence was dirty, Sienna is clean. Where Florence felt hostile, Sienna is friendly. Where Florence was expensive everywhere, Sienna is reasonable. Where Florence felt dangerous, I feel safe in Sienna. Where everything closes in Florence at night, Sienna comes to life.

Sienna is probably my favorite Italian city so far. It's clean, friendly, and very attractive. It's central piazza is actually very relaxing and a comfortable place to rest. It's Duomo has the most beautiful interior of any Church I've seen so far. Florence's Duomo was the most attractive on the outside, but the inside was stark and bare and ruined with random monuments which I didn't like at all. Sienna's was unified, ornate, and attractive, and those inlaid marble floors (which we just happened to see during the uncovered season) where a sight to behold. I've never seen anything quite like it.

Sienna is kind of like Assisi in that it has two sections of the town. It has the old town which is up on the hill and still resembles a medieval city, and it as the new section which surrounds the old one and is where most modern business takes place. The old section seems to dedicated mostly to tourism, pleasure trips, and consumer commerce. People do still live up there, but I don't think that there is any business left but shops. It is like old-town Manassas that way.

The Piazza Il Campo in the center of the old town is kind of like New York's time square. It's the center of everything and used to be the center of government for the town. All the best and most expensive shops on Il Campo and people from everywhere gather there to relax or shop or whatever they're up to. It's very nice usually. There's an outdoor chapel there that the people made in obedience to a vow made during the plague. Mass is celebrated there during the day so the shopkeepers on Il Campo don't have to leave there stores and stop work to attend mass.

Il Campo is also the location of a famous Siennese horse race that is held twice a year. Sienna is divided into 17 neighborhoods or contrada who compete for prestige in the race twice a year. They pick their jockeys and the horses are chosen by lots. They race three times around the square. The race is very fast and very cutthroat. The winning faction celebrates for months with parades and flag waving. They've been doing this for 800 years and it contributes to the neighborhood pride which contributes to the nice atmosphere that Sienna presents.

Another thing that contributes to this atmosphere is that Sienna is a very religious town, at least when compared to Florence or Rome. The entire city is dedicated to Our Lady nd nearly everything is named after her. The Siennese are proud of the fact that they have two homegrown saints and a Eucharistic miracle (which I got to see up close.)

In conclusion, Sienna is very nice and I wish that I had longer than one and a half days to explore it.
God Bless.

Florence is famous.

2006-09-30T15:55:00.001-07:00

Here's my take on Florence: The people are cranky and everything is expensive. You have to pay to get into the Churches and the museums and the insides are rather ugly. On the outside Florence's Duomo is the most beautiful church I've ever seen but on the inside it's disappointingly ugly. The river has rats that are over a foot and a half long and Sam has the picture to prove it (no seriously, he has a picture of huge rat!) The entire city is very dirty and graffiti is everywhere, even more so than Rome. The sheer number of shady characters on the streets, along with human feces on the sidewalk and queer smells, make me shiver in my shoes. The only nice things are obvious and expensive tourist traps.

The entire city feels as if it has seen better days. In the past, Florence has been popular tourist destination. It seems as if the entire city adjusted to make most of it's money from tourism. After this, I guess they just let other business stop in favor of a tourism based economy. This, of course would put a lot of people out of jobs and encourage other incomes, like begging, pickpocketing, and illegal street vending. Everything in the city feels like it was nice at one time, but not anymore, everything is dedicated to the tourists. Our hotel for example, feels like it was once very nice but now seems to be more of a hookup joint, a shame.

Then again, I may not be being fair. The weather has been mostly bad for my first impression, and we were prepped with some pretty negative stories about how people were being constantly raped in Florence. To be fair, the shopkeepers have been mostly friendly and seem to value my business. Nothing bad has actually happened here, and the Church of S. Miniato was an awesome Benedictine, Albine monestary chapel. The museums are cool even though the lines are long. So Florence, take it or leave it. So Florence, not the nicest place I've ever been, but the museums and the Churches make is a worthy place for a visit.

I did NOT need to see that.

2006-09-30T15:55:00.000-07:00

The Uffizi Museum in Florence. The Uffizi is Florence's famous museum. It's where all the famous Michaelangelos, Raphaels, Leonardos & so forth are kept. There are also a lot of ancient Roman sculptures. I've decided that these sculptures are way too much wank for me to handle. Nearly every statue has one. Even the ones that don't need one have one. Heck, even a few statues that I might otherwise mistake for female have them. I don't know why this is, I don't want to speculate why. It just grosses me out. It's really unpleasant. Most of he paintings were nice though.

So Beautiful.

2006-09-30T15:54:00.000-07:00

Wow. I'm in Assisi at the moment and I can honestly say that I wish you could see what I see right now. Assisi is an extremely picturesque little town built on the top of a mountain. At the very top is an old castle which defended it in medieval times. Assisi started as an old Roman town an it still has the old temple of Minerva at the center. It has been since converted into a church. I'm staying near the top of the mountain in a hostel and just a block down the road is an absolutely gorgeous view of the valley behind the town. Another block or two away is the old castle from which you can get a view of Assisi and almost the whole valley surrounding. Many of the buildings here are centuries old and have merely been adapted for the modern world. My room for example, has electricity but no right angles. Most of the town is made from this pink stone that is mined in the area.

The house where St. Francis was born is no longer standing and in it's place is the Chiesa Nuova. The room where St. Francis was born along with with his old habit is preserved there. The Basilica of St. Claire houses the original cross that spoke to him. The chapel of San Damiano, which St. Francis rebuilt, is still intact along with the convent that St Claire founded at the spot. We visited the chapel earlier today. The Basilica of Santa Maria degli Angeli is built around the chapel of St. Francis' old community. The old chapel building is still inside and has frescoes painted onto the outside now. The descendants of the rose bushes that he rolled in and which lost their thorns are growing on the grounds of the Basilica.

The walk to the top of the mountain is arduous, but definitely worth it. I doubt I've ever seem any view so awesome and the air was so incredibly clear. It's cool to think that St. Francis once looked upon a similar view when he left the city to go to his hermitage and pray. Definitely. Assisi is awesome.

Home Sweet Rome

2006-09-30T15:51:00.000-07:00

Or should it be "Rome, Sweet Home?" I don't know but I'm glad to be back. After traveling through Assisi, Florence, and Siena, I'm glad to be back. I wrote down some thought while I was gone; I'll post them all in a moment.

Off we go.

2006-09-19T00:29:00.000-07:00

Tomarrow we leave. No, not for home, but for Assisi and Florence. We'll still be in Italy, but it will be a nice break from the Romani. These Romani, well, there grumpy, angry fast and loud. They're like New Yorkers who speak Italian and don't wait in lines. They don't respect your personal space, they either avoid your gaze or glower at you, and there as likely as any to rob you blind. Not even on mopeds do they respect your space. And of course, you have to watch how their guys are eyeing your ladies. You have to watch very carefuly.

Don't get me started on the Gypsies. I've already been threatened by them.

Of course, they're not all bad. I've meet some very nice ones. Mostly buisiness proprietors who need my buisiness. I get the impression that line between buisiness and friendship is not a strong in Italy as it is in other countries. Better to hire your friend to do a bad job than a stranger to do a good one. If you want to keep someones buisiness, make friends with them so they will be obligated to you. It is a mentallity that has its advantages and is sometimes duplicated, though frowned upon, in America. A small college on the Shenendoah seems to have this going on. So I don't fault them for this. It makes life more pleasent for us anyway.

Anyway, tomarrow we'll go to Assisi. Assisi should be quiet, and we won't have to deal with Romani or Gypsies... A nice break. Florence will be a big city again so I don't know, but Assisi should be nice.

So freakin annoying!

2006-09-18T12:58:00.000-07:00

I've decided to make a minor change to this blog. When I started, I was titling posts with single words. At first this just fit the individual posts, then I thought it was kind of nifty and a little artzy so I decided to keep it up. Now it has sort of become a religion and I've used single word titles even to the detriment of my posts. I've decided to stop this. Not only is it very limiting, I'm going to run out of words soon, but Coldplay does it with there songs. Coldplay is so freakin annoying! (Their ok at first, but they get old real fast, especially how they're so overplayed on the radio.) So that's it. Just a minor change. Hope nobady enjoyed the old title scheme too much.

Arrivederci...

2006-09-10T13:22:00.000-07:00

Here's a brief presentation I whiped up with a Google Earth image and the GIMP to give a little better of an idea of my life in Rome around the Vatican:

(You'll need to click on it.)

City

2006-09-07T08:43:00.000-07:00

Ok, I've been in Rome over a week now and I still haven't posted. Part of the reason is because I've been mostly just too busy to post until the last few days and to make a proper update would take far more time than I have. However, I can plagerize myself with this letter I sent my parents. Enjoy:

Hello everybody! It's me Andrew and I'm in Rome. Classes start tomorrow. I haven't been able to contact you as much as I'd like because this hotel's Internet server is a little iffy. I doing well though.
Rome is like a combination of NYC and DC. It's got the crime, violence and graffiti of both cities, the living arrangements and denseness of NYC, and the ubiquitous monuments of DC.
Food here s really cheap if you stay away from the tourist traps. You can a dozen eggs for 2 Euro's and several kilos of pasta for about 15 centos. This is good because even though we have dinner as a class seven meals of the week, that still leaves seven where we're on our own (breakfast doesn't really count because the Romani have cappuccino or espresso for for breakfast. ) They give us enough money to buy food for ourselves so I haven't had to visit a bancomatic yet. I've learned enough Italian to go shopping and to use the metro.
The University of Southern California is taking up residence in the same hotel we are. Between the two school's, we take up most of the residence. Most of the Californians seem friendly but, they're well, Californians. The faculty has arranged a party so that the two schools can get acquainted. We'll see what happens.
I think that it's funny that the Christendom students are permitted to drink whatever they want, whenever they want (within reason,) so long as it's not in the apartments themselves. This is extremely lenient especially since the terrace and top of building which we pretty much have to ourselves doesn't count as an apartment. The Californians are under strict orders to remain sober.
I've been able to make it to daily mass so far. Confession is offered nearly 24/7 depending on the chapel/church/basilica you visit. San Pietro is enormous and can have several masses going on at once it seems. The church just down the street (There's one on every street,) I heard offers mass every hour, on the hour, several day's a week. Everywhere we go we discover another chapel or monestary or something similar. We found what must be the only protestant church in the whole city. We looked inside, it was ugly.
We can't drink the water out of the taps here but this is fine because we can always go to one of the fountains which are filled using the old Roman aqueducts. They're clean though the city's modern plumbing apparently isn't.
A well, that's what I have to say. Goodbye for now. It's getting late and I have classes in the morning.

Rome

2006-08-29T09:33:00.000-07:00

So I'll apologize for yet again being slow in posting. I have some good excuses, and a lot to talk about, so that should make up for it.

My family was out of town on vacation the past week. We were up in the Poconos mountains having fun. We got cheap lodging on an Army depot because my dad's retired Army (Ah, the fiscal benefits of US Army membership...) The depot was eerily empty, which was nice for a vacation but would have driven me insane if I'd been forced to live there. I might have killed myself for fear of isolation.

Oh that's right, there was no internet connection so I couldn't post. That's my excuse for that week.

We had fun though. We went hiking in SOME state park whose name I can't for the life of me remember. The map said that if we went the long way it would take several hours for anyone but experienced hikers. We made it in two hours with two kids as young as 7 and 10 with no real problem. It would have taken longer if we took my mother. She's terrified of heights and turned back at the first hill. She waited in the car while we walked. She didn't seem to mind, though; a book to read can make time fly sometimes.

We also went boating. Rented a canoe and paddled around a small lake. It was a far cry from the white water rafting we had planned, but it was cheaper and the little one's complained less.

And then we went home. We stopped by the Christendom campus on the way back to see if I could find a few things that I lost the year before. It turns out that they empty the lost and found out every year. Oh well, it was just my backpack, scientific calculator, cd player, headphones, three cds, air-soft gun, memory stick, and the semester's entire collection of notes, nothing big.

The last several days I've been really busy. Like many of my friends I'm going to Rome tomorrow and shan't be back until December. I've been packing and cleaning out my room. I had to disassemble two of my computers and put them on a shelf, monitors, keyboards, routers and all. My little one (The new one) I'm taking with me I've put in my backpack and have been avoiding taking it out. The only reason I'm able to post now is because this is my last day of work and I'm waiting for a SQL command to finish executing. (I thought Oracle was supposed to be fast, four hours for one command, yikes.)

So that's my excuse for this week.

I did make it to the Chorus premiere Sunday night. I arrived late (not that late) and left without being able to say many significant hellos but I did make the movie. It was pretty good. I liked it. I think the repeated flashbacks were annoying and confusing but otherwise Mike and Colin did a really good job. I'm glad to have helped out in what little way could.

The 27th was also my little brother's birthday. He turned eight. My sister and went out and bought him a little handheld Tetris game for his birthday. He liked it more than I thought he would.

I found out that 27th was also my boss's birthday (actually my boss's boss's birthday but let's not get technical.) I wished him happy birthday and he informed me that if I ever wanted to work here again there would be a desk waiting. Am
I smart or what? Actually, I get the impression that in spite of all my worrying, I've actually impressed people. I'm a lowly intern actually working on the main project and I worry I can't pull my weight as well as people paid five times as much as I. Or maybe they're just being nice because I'm from Christendom. Half of the people here are from Christendom. Either way, it turned out well. Life seems to treat me better than I deserve. Ah well.

And, In conclusion, I'm off to Rome. As I've already said, I'll be there for three months. Most likely I'll be able to post when I'm there because my hotel room will have a dedicated (complementary) connection. I'll sure have enough to post about while I'm there. In addition to the sights and sounds of the city and the rest of Europe, I have some new thoughts on copyleftism that I'd like to publish. We'll see what happens. I should be pretty busy while I'm there. Classes, travels, exploring, all should take up a lot of my time, so I can't promise anything. Life is looking good though.

God Bless.

Ownership

2006-08-17T09:05:00.000-07:00

OI!

2006-08-16T11:42:00.000-07:00

I should have posted a few days ago. A number of things have happened that are worth noting.

First is I finally got both a new computer. It's a 10.6" screen, yeh, that small. I've always wanted a compy that was actually portable. I use it on the couch! Nice.

I also purchased an ethernet switch so I can use more than one of my many computers on the internet at once. (I just realized that I have 4 computers!)Got one for my dad too so we don't have to switch cables in and out at the wall all the time.

My family visited my brother this weekend. For those who don't know, he's attending West Point. It's been at least 12 years since I've been there. I remembered the Church, my old school and some of the other buildings. It all seemed so much smaller than it used to be... but of course I was so much smaller back then.

My brother, Harry, has changed dramaticaly in the few weeks that he's been there. He eats more, talks more, and no longer lurches the way he used to. On the whole he seems happier, though he is definitely worn out. I asked him to give us some 'knowledge' and was promptly greeted with "THERE's 110 DAYS UNTIL ARMY BEATS THE HELL OUT OF NAVY!" so I can see he's learning. He told lots of stories about hazing. That seems to be one thing for which West Point is good. He named his loose thread 'Fred.'

So that's it. I'm tired and in need of sleep. So maybe I'll rewrite this later so that it makes sense. More likely I'll just sleep in.

God Bless.

Bicycle

2006-08-09T08:26:00.000-07:00

I've been riding my bicycle to work. It's only an eight mile ride (16 round trip,) so it's not bad. At first it was unpleasant but after you a little excercise and the record heat wave subsides it becomes real pleasant.

I leanered some new things because of this. For starters, I learned that Wednesday is garbage day, and that there is actually a wide variety of smells that garbage can give off, all unpleasant. I learned that it is permissable to park a bicycle in an office. I learned I learned that it is harder to ride a bicycle on soft grass than rocky gravel, that is, until you fall off. I also learned that some roads are bidirectionally downhill (or uphill.) I also, learned that it is in fact possible for me to lose weight without getting a haicut. I even learned that if I'm more than an hour late in getting home, my mom will go out looking for me and that I should call before visiting the library on the way home.

I didn't ride my bike yesterday. I hitched a ride here with my mom and was forced ride home with Bennett Ellis (my boss.) Like a lot of employes where I work, he's a Christendom grad. He's from back in the early 90's. Appearantly, the attic of Caeli used to be the old 'student center.' Then they walled in the pavilion but that didn't work. This is why the faculty was so intent on making the new one so nice. Hm. I didn't know that before.

Anyway, I'll ride my bicycle home from now on so I can avoid such epiphanies in the future. Well, just kidding.

God Bless.

500

2006-08-08T14:34:00.000-07:00

Hey, my blog just capped 500 views. Granted, a third or so of those were just me checking for comments, but still. Besides, I didn't start counting until the summer began so it's really above 500 views.

Either way, this is a landmark. I think I'll replace it with a mall.

God Bless.

Lab

2006-07-29T08:12:00.000-07:00

Here's a picture that I drew of myself at work. Yes, I'm in a room full of servers. The tower that I'm standing next to holds the machines that my department uses to run builds and test instances of the database. They're Dell machines, but what can you do?

Anyway, What I'm dong in the picture is making an 'image' of one of the machines. What this means is, I'm making a copy of the hard drive so that, if later we screw it up beyond repair, we always have a 'save point' to return to. It's not hard, but it takes forever and gives me an excuses to wonder around the server room and check out the equipment, which is always a nice change from the desk.

Work

2006-07-26T09:03:00.000-07:00

Here I am at work right. I've just been asked to create 'sanitized,' and 'normalized' copies of our current test databases for the sake of backups and testing. Like most of my tasks so far, its a task that is way above my head. Most of my tasks so far have been. I've had to ask my co-workers for help in figuring out how to do most of the things I have to do. I've also relied quite a bit on Google to help me find the info I need. I feel sometimes that my presence in this company is more of a burden than a help. I'm not capable of nearly as many tasks as my co-workers and I have to lean on them a lot for help. Of course, I'm not paid nearly as much as them either.

Hmm. It seems that every one of my assignments is meant as a learning experience. "Here, do this and get familier with the database." "Here, do that and get familier with the webapp." I don't actually help much, but I learn a lot about the technology, a whole lot. In fact, if I'm still here after a year, I may be almost caught up with the rest of the company in how everything works. This may be the reasoning behind the assignements I get. "The more he learns the more useful he will be." Unfortuneately I'll only be here for another month or so. All this experience they're giving me had better pay off soon or they'll have waisted a lot of time on one intern.

Another thing (related) that concerns me is how they always compair me to the old intern from the last few years. It's usually in relation to something he knew but I don't know. He knew Perl. I don't know Perl. He knew NSIS. I don't know NSIS. He knew Oracle. I don't know Oracle. It's not like I'm unskilled, I know C, C++, Java, UNIX, MySQL, Ant, and CVS, but, asside from Java and CVS, they don't use any of these things in the office. CVS, I learned more about here than I knew previously.

My skills grow by the day however. I'm able to be more helpful with everything I learn. I suppose I shouldn't expect my abilities to match the professionals anyway with almost no formal education in any of this. But I still wish I could do more to pull my own weight. This is a cool job and I like doing it but if I can't be productive at it, (ie., not using up more resources than I'm worth by not knowing how to perform the tasks I'm assigned,) how can I justify my presence here? I can't. And, more importantly, the company can't either, and jeapordizes my ability to get retain the same job. I just hope that the only reason I have this job (or that they're taking a teaching approach rather than a using approach,) is because my dad knows my boss. That would really suck. I mean, beyond all reason, that would be a huge letdown.

Though, maybe if they let me come over Christmas break, I'll be more able to help right off the bat with all this knowledge I've accumulated over the summer. Come next summer I'll up there with the big boys more helpfull than ever. But that depends on me coming back, which in turn, depends on my doing my job. Which reminds me, I have a task that is well over my head to complete I really ought to get to it.

God Bless.

Router

2006-07-23T18:40:00.000-07:00

I need one, or a switch will do. Both of my computers are feeding of the same LAN connection so when one is connected to the net the other if out of commission internet-wise. I set my other computer to download and recompile the sources of most of it's software without thinking about how long it would take. Almost two days is too long to go without internet. I blog infrequently enough but I missed two whole ideas because the computer was offline. I'm going to have to play catch up on all of my friend's blogs if any of them updated. Not to mention how far behind I've gotten on my forum discusion's. Most importantly, I still need to fill out my time-card for this week for work or I'll be getting angry e-mails again this monday.

So I think I'll get myself a router. Maybe this one:Router! While I'm at it I'll get myself a KVM switch, that's be handy. Of course I shouldn't forget my new computer:Compy. I should actually purchase it as soon as possible so that I have it ready for Rome. Come to think of it, I also ought to get a new camera.

Yeash. I'm not a spendthrift by any means, (actually I'm cheap,) but something tells me I might run out of money before the semester even begins. Not to mention the kind of money I'll end up spending in Rome. I've finally got a really good job this summer and it pays pretty well. It seems the more I make, the less I have. My dreams grow with my paycheck: DREAMS=k*PAYCHECK where k>1. The cynical can substitute wants for dreams. After all, a good router doesn't seem like much of a dream.

Pirates.

2006-07-18T06:06:00.000-07:00

I saw the new Priates of the Caribean movie this past weekend. Like the previous, it was a very entertaining, very tongue in cheek type of movie. I liked Davy Jones. A pipe smoking squid man is always fun.

A warning to those who haven't seen it, they're pulling a Matrix with this one. They're taking a successful film and imediately turning it into a trilogy. The setup for the sequal is almost jarring. You will leave wondering what happens next. I can promise that.

Sibs

2006-07-07T11:03:00.000-07:00

My little brother and sister are picky eaters. This is something that seems to run in the family but, just the other day, these two took it to a whole new level.

The entire family attended the holy hour and mass at St Andrew's Parish and when we left (at around 7:30) we realized that it was too late to prepair dinner. For this reason, we decided to go through a fast food place to get something to eat. Upon hearing this, Christopher (8 years old) exlaimed, "McDonald's hurray!" Going out to eat for him, particularly at a fast food place, is a big treat for him. Bridget (10 years old) responded similarly.

When we got to the restaraunt (we decided on Checkers) we noticed that the chicken was spicy, and knowing that Bridget and Christopher don't like spicy chicken, we ordered ten hambruger for the entire family. Also not wanting Bridget and Christopher to eat only french fries, we didn't get any.

The wailing began immediately. "No french fries!" "No chicken!" "Only hamburgers with icky mayonnaise and mustard!" They let themselves get so excited about having fast food that when they found that the actual food they were getting wasn't to their taste, it came as a blow.

When we got home they recived their hamburgers and were instructed to eat the because they weren't getting anything else. "Ick! Mustard, Mayonnaise, Tomatoes, Onions, Pickles." "Just scrape those things of with a knife." "But, the mayonnaise and mustard have already soaked into the bun and tainted the burger! The taste can't be gotten rid of by just scraping!" "Here let me show you." And, we took a knife and scraped the contents of their hamburger off, just for their convenience. "Ah, but we told you, the mayonnaise and mustard are still in the bun."

With that, Christopher went and got a napkin and wiped his hamburger clean. He cleaned both buns and both side of the burger patty and only when he was satisfied that their was no mayonnaise or mustard left, did he add ketchup, and eat the burger.

Bridget, not to be out done, through away her bun along with the rest of the topings, and washed her sole burger patty with water. That's right, she washed it with water. She soaked it thoroughly, and dried it off with paper towels. She then ate her burger patty with nothing on it, and went to bed having eaten nothing else for dinner.

It was this last act that surprised me most. Picking, napkins I expected, but washing a burger with water is the fanatical thing I believe I have ever seen. At least with regard to food.

God Bless.

Listening

2006-07-02T20:10:00.000-07:00

People who know me really well (That is, probably no one,)knows that when I was younger I was quite a prune. I held some very conservative opinions. For example, I didn't actually believe in freedom of religion. This was due in large part to a series of youth groups and homeschooling groups that were well, very conservative. Over the past six or seven years I have changed quite a bit.

This brings me to the other day. I was listening to music one night over the internet (Yahoo is a load of fun.) over my very nice computer speakers. My dad comes down the stair to basement where I was and caught me listening to some classic rock. He looked at me for a moment and tells me how when I was younger I would criticize him for listening to the very same music. He acte3d genuinely surprised that I listening so such music commented that I had changed. Then he went upstairs.

When I was little and we rode in the car my parents would always put on the oldies stations. We would listen to Don Mclean, the Eagles and everybody else all of the time. For some reason, while I was in middle-school, this changed. The music was replaced with talk radio. Rush Limbaugh and Micheal Savache would me all we ever listened to. As time went on, they got replaced with NPR and the classical chanel. This continued to a point when I thought my parents had changed. It seemed to me that they didn't like music anymore, or that, all they wanted to listen to was the jazz and classical music. I always wondered why this had happened, until the next morning.

A week ago, the basement had flooded due to heavy rain. We spent days moving the furniture and lifting the carpet to remove the wet padding and we needed to go to the hardware store to buy som foam rubber to replace the old padding. That morning, (after the night my fathe came down the stairs...) my dad and myself got in the car to go to the Home Depot a few blocks away. On the radio was Aerosmith's Walk this Way. At first I thought nothing of it... I usally don't notice things right away, that's just who I am... but then my dad mentioned how what a relief it was to be able to listen to music in the car without having to deal with me criticizing it.

Then, and only then, did it occured to me, my parents had stopped listening to music on the radio because of me! Not only did they stop listening to music, but they kept it up for years! Even more ironic, I've been listening to anything and everything for quite a while now. I just never listened to any of it around my parents because I was afraid that they might criticize what I was listening to! After all, all they seemed to like was NPR and classical music.

So there it is. At least five years of misunderstanding cleared up in less than a minute. The most intrigueing part is this: I think my father is just a little more proud of me to find that I no longer accuse the Eagles of hypnotizing people to commit adultry. So this is pretty cool.

God Bless.

Care

2006-06-28T18:17:00.000-07:00

In the unlikely event that somebody cares, I have a headache the size of Montana right now...

Smack.

2006-06-26T20:23:00.000-07:00

I smacked a car at the post office today. I was backing out of a parking spot when I felt a slight thud. It long to realize that I'd just bumped into another car. They were trying to slip by me when I was backing out and guess I didn't just didn't see them when I checked behind me. The dude inside was pissed. He had his entire family with him and was swearing at me for not paying attention.

Luckily it was only a slight bump, just a little shared paint. They drove off before we could swap info. I drove off after I was sure they weren't coming back. I felt sorry for hitting the guy's car, but I think I had the right of way. They weren't there when I started backing. and must have bee going pretty fast to have gotten beind me.

Oh well... They disappeared so I guess it doesn't matter. But, it was still a little scary: What if I had bee going faster? I don't know. It could have been bad, but it wasn't. It turned out fine so I'm glad. Oh, so glad.

Freedom1

2006-06-25T10:39:00.000-07:00

I am going to attempt to make the case for 'Christian Libertarianism.'

As most of the readers of this blog ought to know, I am a Roman Catholic. As such, I have certain beleifs about God, morality, and the way things ought to be done. For starters, I beleive abortion and contraception to be grave moral evil. I also believe that people who don't choose to believe in God, recieve the Sacraments and exhibit a moral lifestyle will likely go to Hell after they die. I believe that everyone should be a practicing Roman Catholic as myself and should live a life directed by faith. In general, people should get used to the family life, and should show respect for the Priesthood. People should give charitably even out of their own need to others less fortunate than themselves. I hold these ideals and many more about the way people should behave and society should be organized, but there is one thing that I think is most important and would otherwise go overlooked: It all must be done through free will or it is of no merrit. God demands that we give ourselves freely to Him and coercion is not free. It is for this reason, and this readon above all others, that I am against an authoritarian or populist government.

Thus ends the first portion of this case I will continue it a little later.

Rain

2006-06-24T20:52:00.000-07:00

When Martin Luthor was making a long trip through the woods a storm struck. Rain poured from the sky and lightning and thunder struck and boomed all over. The storm so scared Luthor that he promised to be a monk if he made it through. When I first heard this story I condemned him for his haste.

It was storming earlier today very hard. Looking at the storm it seemed as if God was angry, roaring at the earth and threatening me destruction. I've been through lightning storm before (of course), but this one struck me. I no longer really blame Luthor as much as I used to. I can see why he was scared and why he would make such a hasty promise, in the middle of the country with no shield against such a storm. I kind of feel sorry for him now. He actually went through with his promise.

Scary

2006-06-18T12:10:00.000-07:00

That was kind of scary. My younger brother just admitted that he was drunk on vodka. He's still drunk as I'm writing this. He impulsively just struck my younger brother really hard. I had to lock him out of the room. Now he's begging me not to tell dad. This won't go over well. My family has a history of alchoholsim. My grandfather whom I've never met had a huge problem with this before he died. My dad has always worried that my brother reminded him of his dad. I'm a little worried here. Just a little.

Poem

2006-06-16T07:05:00.000-07:00

Some come here to sit and think...

Just kidding. But here's the product of some early morning bordom:

In the end it will all be clear,
Why on earth God put us here.
But until the day on which I die,
I'll have to settle on wondering why.
But it's no so bad and I'll not complain,
Because life is good all the same.
So why should I end my time on earth,
This wondrous place of my happy birth,
Just to find out why I was there,
And end the reason for me to even care?

Spring

2006-06-10T20:15:00.000-07:00

Every spring my great aunt Anne who lives in Alexandria in VA. hosts a picnic on her front porch. I was there last week and I noticed that she didn't seem very well. I didn;t know that she was dying. The viewing was today and the funeral will be tomarrow. We have reatives from out of town staying with us so that they can attend the funeral. This makes me sad. Oma has been having serious back touble recently and she still hasn't given up smoking. I wonder if she'll be next. It's going to be wierd not having Aunt Anne around. I would be even wierder not having Oma. It will happen eventually as it happens to everybody but you just get so used to having people around that you could never imagine a would without them. I don't no. Maybe I shouldn't worry, but I do.