Geert Wilders’ film was posted on LiveLeak today, until it was pulled after threats were made to LiveLeak staff.

Here is a copy someone put on Google, but who knows how long that one will last…
More below the fold…

d) Assume that the execution speed of your application was unacceptable due to the length of time the JIT process takes. Give me a possible solution and why this solution is worth exploring.
Shoot the senior software engineer of the JIT compiler team. This will show the other developers that we mean business.


The death toll due to political unrest after a close election and tribal animosities in Kenya close to reaching 700. To put that into perspective, it would be roughly the equivalent of 6000 people in the US. (using ciafactbook 2007 population figures)

Let’s hope our R and D tribes don’t get too pissed off at each other come November…

The U.S. is considering whether the $600,000,000 dollars we give to Kenya every year is worth the investment. Says a Kenyan government spokesman:

“The government of Kenya will not be blackmailed,” he said. “We are able to support ourselves.”

It’s easy to support yourself when you have authorities murdering protesters in the street.

Foreign Aid gives power to foreign government, not foreign people.

L.A. Police are upset at unreasonable searches in their financial records.

Tomorrow I have my first class at Daniel Webster College. I think I should buy a coffee mug, or maybe a sweatshirt to show off my school pride.

It’s a 18 credit .NET certification that will take a year or so to complete. Employer paid continuing education for the win!

Or anything else for that matter, it surely will hold it’s value better than the dollar.

Moody’s is warning that the U.S. Government’s credit rating is in long term danger.

Our next President (I’m going to to go ahead and safely assume it will be Obama or Hillary) is promising around $180 Billion in additional outlays to a budget that is already $163 billion in the red. Steve Chapman at the Chicago Tribune has the audacity to ask how they plan to pay for it. Answer: bend over.

Here is our Comptroller General tsk’ing for about 8 minutes:

Of course, there is no crisis. Everything is fine. No need to worry. Health care service provided by others is somehow an individual right and the government can provide it for free by taxing corporations and I’m so evil for wanting Grandma to dumpster dive in her retirement. WHO WILL PAY FOR THE ROADS?!

Also, just thought I would throw the following out there so the rest of the internet can write me off as a crank and sleep well at night. Social Security, Universal Health Care, food stamps, et al are morally abhorrent. Forced virtue is not virtue. A system built upon forced virtue can not produce a virtuous end. I despise the altruistic pathos that give rise to these abortions of logic. Virtue implies choice. To care for the poor and the weak is the responsibility of society, not government.

Required reading: Bastiat’s The State. An english translation here.

I have lost my reputation forever! I am looked upon as a man without heart and without feeling - a dry philosopher, an individualist, a plebeian - in a word, an economist of the practical school.
But, pardon me, sublime writers, who stop at nothing, not even at contradictions. I am wrong, without a doubt, and I would willingly retract. I should be glad enough, you may be sure, if you had really discovered a beneficent and inexhaustible being, calling itself the State, which has bread for all mouths, work for all hands, capital for all enterprises, credit for all projects, oil for all wounds, balm for all sufferings, advice for all perplexities, solutions for all doubts, truths for all intellects, diversions for all who want them, milk for infancy, and wine for old age - which can provide for all our wants, satisfy all our curiosity, correct all our errors, repair all our faults, and exempt us henceforth from the necessity for foresight, prudence, judgment, sagacity, experience, order, economy, temperance, and activity.

Charlie is very persistant.

One of these days his bluff will be called and congress will pass one of his national draft bills.

There are quite a few libertarians with buyers remorse right now. To be fair, the contrast between Paul and the GOP candidates is enough to blind almost any one. Libertarians today have a historic case of political blue balls, as it were. A gentle paleo-conservative southern politician with libertarianish leanings comes along, whispers something about liberty and well…

Kip Esquire has been saying it from the beginning. Though I couldn’t fault desperate political libertarians for lining up in the rEVOLution.

My red flag moment was his statement that our individual rights come from The Flying Spaghetti Monster Raptor Jesus God in one of the debates. This is problematic for me because I have seen no credible evidence for the existence of a god. A simpler explanation makes more sense, and has been used. That is, we own our own bodies, individual rights follow from that property right. It’s simple, it’s nice, and you need not resort to undetectable supernatural entities.

Also, the fervent anti-Mexican immigration hearkens back to the days when American populists feared the Asian and Irish ‘invasions’. Turns out, immigration was a good thing for this country in the past, I fail to see why it isn’t now. In any case, his argument that immigrants drain welfare services is an argument against welfare services, not immigration. They took our jerbs!

He gets a pass among many for his abortion stance. He wants to throw abortion back to the states, and I agree, that would be the only political solution to remove the issue from the federal level. There are a few anti-abortion libertarians out there. I’m just not one of them. I can’t bring myself to send a woman and her doctor to jail for life (it is first degree, premeditated murder right?) because she aborts a zygote. Which brings me to federalism…

My views on Federalism are mixed. I think it looks like a better idea in Ron’s head than it does mine. I think our current society’s views on the nature of government pretty much ensure we would have 50 little tyrannies rather than 50 laboratories for democracy. Even New Hampshire banned property owners from allowing smoking in their establishments. Live Free or Die, my ass.

There’s also the war on christmas bullshit he espoused just a few years ago…

And now, the newsletters. I like the take David Boaz makes.

Yet despite the above, his views on American empire, the soundness of money and ending the drug war has been enough for many libertarians to overlook the fact that he is a conservative and NOT a libertarian. I echo Kip’s worry:

The worst nightmare of those of us who never drank the Ron Paul Kool-Aid is coming to pass. Those political mainstreamers who do not share in this movement-that-Paul-did-not-create, the liberals and conservatives who prior to this presidential campaign had barely heard of an “isolationist / neoconfederate / 95% of all blacks are criminals / bring back the closet / Lincoln started the Civil War / the WHO invented AIDS / conspiracies everywhere” fervor now have — thanks to Ron Paul — a name for it: libertarianism. So, on top of having to laboriously explain ab initio that I am a “small-l libertarian,” I apparently will forevermore have to pre-emptively declare that I am a “small-l, Non-Paul libertarian.” Splendid. Ron Paul has, quite simply, wrecked libertarianism for at least a generation. And, unlike Barry Goldwater, his legacy will never be rehabilitated.

At this point it does not matter if Ron Paul is a racist or a homophobe. It is clear that he implicitly endorsed those newsletters when they were bringing in money for him from racists and homophobes.

When one makes their bed with the pigs, they shouldn’t be surprised to wake up with flies.

I saw this one on tv a few days ago:

… a lot.

Things are progressing. I have a one bedroom apartment to move into. It’s a few blocks away from downtown Nashua and about three miles from my job. It’s also across the street from a big grocery store and a gym that I’m pretty sure that I’ll join if I can afford it. If not I still have my bike trainer and free weights. I have a few goals I want to reach this Winter.

The kitchen is small, but that’s ok because I don’t see myself having dinner parties. The oven/stove is tiny, but again, I’m not cooking for anyone but me. There are hardwood floors in the bedroom and rather new carpeting in the living room. The bathroom is an ok size. There’s a clawfoot tub in there which plays into my sense of false nostalgia rather nicely. No tiles anywhere, which is a plus since I hate scrubbing grout.

Also, new(ish) windows! No more drafts! Oh, glorious new day! I didn’t see any nicotine buildup on them, so the at least the last tenant wasn’t a smoker.

My landlord seems to take Live Free or Die as his motto, which is neat. We both lamented New Hampshire’s new smoking ban the last time I saw him.

I’m driving there this Saturday. My last day here is Friday. It’s been a weird week. I’m going to miss bits and pieces of this place.

To all my Michigan readers, have fun with all that less money!

So I’m now a (very) Jr. Software Engineer at PSNI in Nashua, NH. That’s exciting.

I’m looking at a room for rent and a one bedroom apartment tomorrow. That’s also exciting. You know what is expensive? Nashua rental prices. At least, more expensive than Detroit city.

Things have been hectic and things are being planned at the last minute. Operating like this gives me anxiety.

You all should feel special as this post cost me $10. Access to Starbucks WIFI ain’t cheap.

More later, maybe.

I think I’ll keep it, as long as all the contrast doesn’t burn anyone’s retinas out.

There are still things that need to be fixed. I broke the archive by month drop down menu. As always, it’s best viewed in Firefox.

It’s not anything bad either!

Job interview #2 is in New Hampshire later this week. I fly out Thursday and fly back on Friday. Out of state interviews are fun!

Houssein A. Zorkot, a 3rd year med student at WSU, was arrested earlier this week.

[Zorkot] was allegedly armed with an AK-47 assault rifle and dressed in black clothing with camouflage paint covering his face when he was arrested Saturday in Hemlock Park.

Here is his awful website. I think that even Muhammad would be ashamed of his decisions in web design.

Here’s a gem he added to his gallery the day he was arrested.

Dally in the Alley is Saturday. I’m going to drink a lot of Ghettoblasters, listen to a lot of local bands, visit the guys in the libertarian party tent, and hopefully buy some art if Julie is there. It’s going to be a good time.

Larry Craig. It’s too bad he won’t let himself come out of the closet. To be that old and to have lived a lie for that long just seems really sad to me.

Even sadder are all the GOP legislators calling for him to resign. It must be for being gay, I suppose. It can’t be because he abused his power in trying influence the cops. Every politician abuses their power. It’s what they do. One politician calling out another for abusing power or breaking a law would be as hypocritical as… espousing “family values” and then going trolling for blow jobs in a mens bathroom.

I’m really digging the web comic xkcd lately.

Also, who knew that music from Iceland was so good?

I went to see No End In Sight on the one screen it was playing on in all of metro Detroit last Saturday.

I will echo what others have said. The movie did do a wonderful job showing the ineptitude of the Bush Administration. However, one could certainly be forgiven if they came away with the idea things in Iraq would be A-OK had different decisions been made. The movie only briefly tells us of the manufactured case for war and then jumps right into the mistakes of the Iraq occupation planning. I was expecting an anti-war film, but what I got was a sense the director thinks things would have been fine had the State Department or the U.N. handled the occupation.

I don’t know where I heard it first, but Hayek does not stop at the water’s edge. It is impossible to centrally plan a economy domestically, and it is just as impossible to plan the economy (and everything else) of a country on the other side of the globe. Iraq’s GDP in 1989 was 60% oil exports (pdf). No new Marshall Plan can help Iraq because the human capital is just not there to create a diverse economy. The Ba’ath party was the way to a good job under Saddam, not skill, desire or proficiency.

I’ve digressed. The U.S. government, nor any other government for that matter, does not care about the Iraqis. It’s always been about the oil.

Bill O’Reilly (How does he still have an audience? Who are these people?) reviews The Bourne Ultimatum.

I don’t know what to say really. It’s the kind of movie review I would expect from an 18 year old authority worshipping Republican in a Film 101 class. Not only does he get several plot elements completely wrong, he spends most of the rant criticizing the supposed political belief of the actors.

However, he[Bourne] turns on the CIA, so they must kill him.

Uh, no. The CIA turns on Bourne. That’s been the point of all three movies.

Guess what? There’s a waterboarding scene in the flick. What a coincidence!

Unless Bill saw a unreleased version, there was no waterboarding. They held Bourne’s head underwater in a tub during a training flashback, but there wasn’t a single scene of waterboarding. All these years of talking about torture and Bill O’Reilly doesn’t even know what waterboarding is?

The director of the movie, Paul Greengrass, told the Times of London that he purposely tapped into the mistrust the world has of the USA. In my opinion, Mr. Greengrass has used his skills as a filmmaker to create a slick propaganda package that will make him millions of dollars.

The world mistrusts the US and the CIA for many, many good reasons. If you’re going to criticize Greengrass, get him on the use of that damn shaky cam. To make a movie portraying the CIA as our angel protectors would be more like propaganda than any of the Bourne movies.

Barack Obama recently spoke at a United Church of Christ convention. His message was a ridiculous one, as messages given in churches tend to be. There has been much gnashing of teeth, mine included, over the Religious Right’s take over of the GOP. There was a neat little idea a few hundred years ago that Religion ought to have no influence in the sphere of government. I still think it’s a good idea, though it seems the Senator from Illinois doesn’t agree.

According to Mr. Obama, the problem is not that some religious people brought Religion to the Right, the problem is that their god is not the right god. The right god is, of course, his god.

His god is the one, of course, that loves gays and minorities and social justice and single payer health care and rainbows and lollipops.

I don’t know what sickens me more. The pandering to the lowest common denominator (”Look! I believe in god too!”), or the blatant reshaping of christianity to fit one’s political objectives.

In my opinion, unless you think god was just, you know, doodling when he wrote (or spoke, whatever) the old testament, you can’t just throw it out. If you need to call yourself a christian, then you have to believe that homosexuality is a sin. You have to believe that god made the world in seven days. You have to believe that eating shrimp is a sin (Leviticus 11:9-12), as well as eating a bloody steak (Genesis 9:3-4). Why would a god create mankind, with our feeble minds and appetite for power, and then throw a book of loosy-goosy metaphors at us? No, if you believe that the bible is the word of god then you have to accept exactly what the damn thing says. If you don’t like it, grow a pair and denounce the whole thing.

“The case, however, is, that the Bible will not bear examination in any part of it, which it would do if it was the Word of God. Those who most believe it are those who know least about it, and priests always take care to keep the inconsistent and contradictory parts out of sight.”–Thomas Paine, “The Tower of Babel,” The Prospect, 24 March 1804

“All national institutions of churches, whether Jewish, Christian, or Turkish, appear to me no other than human inventions set up to terrify and enslave mankind, and monopolize power and profit.”–Thomas Paine, Age of Reason

“Christianity neither is, nor ever was a part of the common law.”–Thomas Jefferson, letter to Dr. Thomas Cooper, February 10, 1814

“In every country and in every age, the priest has been hostile to liberty. He is always in alliance with the despot, abetting his abuses in return for protection to his own.” -Thomas Jefferson, letter to Horatio G. Spafford, March 17, 1814

“What influence, in fact, have ecclesiastical establishments had on society? In some instances they have been seen to erect a spiritual tyranny on the ruins of the civil authority; on many instances they have been seen upholding the thrones of political tyranny; in no instance have they been the guardians of the liberties of the people. Rulers who wish to subvert the public liberty may have found an established clergy convenient auxiliaries. A just government, instituted to secure and perpetuate it, needs them not.”–James Madison

I could go on, but you get the idea. Jefferson, or any of the other founders, wouldn’t even be able to get elected as dog catcher in today’s society.

I’ve lost my USB drive and my phone has been broken for about week. I’m really not looking forward to replacing any of those things.

Jeff Goodell has a nice article in Rolling Stone. He does a good job of ripping the ethanol subsidies apart and looking at the political process that creates such a boondoggle.

The confusing bit is his conclusion. He wrote twenty two paragraphs detailing the inadequacies of ethanol as a fuel, the lobbying of Archers Daniel Midland and the politicians selling the idea to the public. Then he writes this:

In the end, the ethanol boom is another manifestation of America’s blind faith that technology will solve all our problems. Thirty years ago, nuclear power was the answer. Then it was hydrogen. Biofuels may work out better, especially if mandates are coupled with tough caps on greenhouse-gas emissions. Still, biofuels are, at best, a huge gamble.

So… Technology will not solve our problems, but government mandates will?

My interview with Monsanto was last Tuesday. I arrived via a dingy DC-9 and a thirty dollar cab ride down Lindbergh Boulevard. It started off with an hour of me almost writing a program to model a widget packaging system. I say almost because I spent most of the time answering the questions of the developer watching over me. It was essentially an exercise to make sure I knew object oriented programming. All in all it went ok. At least, that’s what the developer said.

Next came the technical interview. I was expecting a bunch of technical questions like, “What is the difference between abstract classes and interfaces?” Instead the questions were more general and seemed to be designed to determine how deeply steeped in technology I was.

After the second set of interviewers left two more entered for the follow-up interview. This interview was directed at what kind of environment I would like to work at and what I knew about Monsanto. I made them laugh, twice. I suppose that’s either good, or incredibly bad.

Then, they put me in a taxi back to the airport.

Did I get the job? Probably not, it’s been a week. They’ve been interviewing people for a month. I’m not going to stand head and shoulders above anybody. Unless they’re short. I’m certainly not going to wow anyone with my personality. Unless they’re dead. It was all worth it though, they paid my expenses and now I have some new interview questions to prepare with.

{edit 7-27-07} The nice HR lady called to say they chose some one else. She did say that I should apply to other positions at the company, though.

Not the greatest of weekends in Detroit.

Also Saturday, a 9-year-old boy and girl were injured by buckshot from a gunshot blast after a man fired a weapon outside an Avery Street home where the children were sitting on a porch.

This one happened in my neighborhood. I don’t shed any tears for gangsters shooting gangsters, but it is sad when innocents get caught in the crossfire. Except for the kids who were injured by a mental case with a shotgun, all the other shootings this weekend were drug related.

Said the Police Chief:

“I want people in Detroit to say we don’t want to take this anymore,” said Bully-Cummings. “We have to get involved.”

I appreciate the sentiment, but no amount of involvement is going to do anything to stop violence related to the drug trade.

I made it through the second phone interview, now I have a third interview. This time it will be face to face in St. Louis. They’re going to have me write java while they look over my shoulder. I really can’t think of anything that would make me more nervous, unless snakes were also somehow involved.

via nothirdsolution…

Grab the nearest book.

1. Open it to page 161.
2. Find the fifth full sentence.
3. Post the text of the sentence along with these instructions.

Don’t search around looking for the coolest book you can find. Do what’s actually next to you.

mine:

But if, on the other hand, the supply of metal should increase nearly in the same proportion as the demand, it would continue to purchase or exchange for nearly the same quantity of corn, and the average money price of corn would, in spite of all improvements, continue very nearly the same.

The Wealth of Nations, Volume 1.

I’m at my parents house, my Mom found The Wealth of Nations at a garage sale and thought I might want it. Thanks Mom.

I have a phone interview with Monsanto at noon today.

I’m pretty nervous.

[edit 12:29pm] Despite my brain freezes, I did well enough to move past HR and now have an interview with a manager next week.

It seems that every economic forecast for the state of Michigan pushes back recovery further and further. The latest by Comerica’s chief economist is no different.

1) I graduated in May. I’m slightly upset at how cheap my WSU diploma looks. I digress, considering how close I was to just dropping out after I left MSU, I’m pretty happy right now.
2) I’ve been drinking Budweiser. To be fair, it was a million degrees in my apartment before I installed the air conditioners. Who wants to drink a Belgian Ale when you’re dripping with sweat? Daniel at CrookedTimber has my back on this one.
3) A while ago the following thought popped into my head: “Wait a minute, I don’t even like Detroit.” Still, I’m having a hard time leaving.
4) I bought a 90 year old concertina. This will be yet another instrument I’ll learn how to play “Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star” on and then shelve.
5) I wrote my own blog using php and mySQL. Web development used to be fun. I’ve been missing that ever since I moved to WordPress. I’ll be switching over in a few weeks.