Monthly Archives: August 2007

South Carolina Teen Queen for President

By now it is probably difficult to not have heard about that Teen USA beauty pageant in which Miss South Carolina answered the question of why one-fifth of the US population can’t locate the US on a world map in the most amazing and embarrassing fashion.

This fact alone in itself is not necessarily news-worthy – even though some might think so – but then, by comes Larken Rose and compares this pretty girl’s dribble with the dribble that is usually called political speech.

And that was news for me!

I probably could paraphrase Larken’s words but I just love his writing style and as he has given permission to do with his newsletters as I please – – so I just post it here.

My Fellow Americans,

Much amusement has been had over the recent incoherent, air-headed ramblings of Miss South Carolina during the recent Miss Teen USA pageant. (Actually, I feel a little sorry for her, since I highly doubt that her profound cluelessness was entirely her own doing. Usually it takes a lot of co-conspirators — teachers, parents, friends, etc. — to result in such extreme bimbo-ness.) For those who haven’t witnessed the gruesome event, when asked why a fifth of Americans couldn’t find the U.S. on a world map, Miss South Carolina responded with what sounded like the output of a random- word generator. (…[Ed.: here it is…])

Normally, words are used to convey thoughts between people. In her case, the words seemed designed to convey the ILLUSION of thought, but without much success. She was, no doubt, trained to include certain catch words and phrases: “I personally believe,” “such as,” “our future,” “Iraq,” “Africa,” etc. And she did. She just didn’t bother including anything in between, which might have formed an actual concept or idea.

But what disturbs me a lot more than that one display of ignorance – – – which is hardly unusual in modern America — is the fact that when people do EXACTLY what Miss South Carolina did, only with more confidence and steadiness, we Americans usually grant them unlimited power over us. These days the megalomaniacs — those who desire personal power and dominion over others — dupe most people without even having to make a half-decent effort. Consider, as a randomly-chosen example, the following clip of Barrack Obama:

Looking sincere and confident, he spends several minutes throwing out catch phrases which, taken as a whole, mean ABSOLUTELY NOTHING. If I have to watch someone spewing out words which convey no shred of thought, I’d much rather watch Miss South Carolina do it. Frankly, I’d also rather have her be the all-powerful ruler of the world than have what we have now, because no amount of good old-fashioned stupidity could ever do the damage which the love-of-dominion crowd does every day through its supposedly well- intentioned “solutions.”

In his sales pitch for himself, Mr. Obama spoke of wanting a “different kind of politics,” and wanting to see the “change and progress that we so desperately need.” He pretended to sympathize with the common folk who face concerns about health care costs, pensions and college bills, and said that partisanship was preventing people from “working together in a practical, common sense way.” (Actually, “GOVERNMENT” is what prevents that.) He said he wanted us to “come together around our common interests and concerns as Americans.” He said that engaged citizens working together can accomplish extraordinary things, and that he has great hope for the future, because he believes in you. Isn’t that sweet?

So what did we learn from all that? We learned that Mr. Obama knows how to echo the same meaningless rhetoric that all politicians in all countries throughout all of history have used. When’s the last time you heard a politician say, “Ya know, I don’t much care about your stupid concerns. You’re a bunch of worthless twits who couldn’t wipe your noses if not for government. I have no intention of changing the system at all, I just want to be the one in charge of it for as long as it lasts, before the poop really hits the fan and this whole silly charade comes crashing down”? (Come to think of it, I might vote for someone who said that.)

And I picked Mr. Obama’s stupid ramblings at random. The same could be said about the rhetoric of anyone else in government: Hillary, McCain, Giuliani, Bush, Kerry, Gore, Cheney, and so on, ad infinitum. EVERY politician in Washington (with the possible exception of Ron Paul) spews the same meaningless drivel, and it WORKS–as demonstrated by the fact that they’re STILL THERE.

So before you laugh too loudly at poor Miss South Carolina, who merely sought to win a pageant, look how many of your fellow Americans are eager to give unbridled power, over everyone and everything in the country, to people who do nothing more than parrot the same old meaningless catch-phrases that tyrants have used forever. The ignorance of Miss South Carolina doesn’t hurt anyone but herself. The ignorance of the American voters, on the other hand, results in the robbery, extortion, harassment, terrorization, assault, wrongful imprisonment, and/or murder of MILLIONS of innocent human beings. And those same voters have the gall and hypocrisy to laugh at Miss South Carolina. Amazing.

Sincerely,
Larken Rose

Maybe I’m allowed to expound on one of Larken’s thoughts. If – just IF – we would become able to recognize dribble as dribble whatever the form, we also might be able to see that instead of Hillary Clinton we elect Lauren Caitlin Upton for president and have at least something nice to look at during the speeches.

Pink Floyd Twenty Years Later

Pink Floyd albums where very early members of my album collection, and they were plentiful. It all started in college where some smart marketer started to sell music albums for sometimes up to 25% cheaper than the going price in music stores.

At this time of growing up, hanging with friends, drinking beer and listening to music, being cool, Pink Floyd was definitely one of the favorite musics. The right stuff to totally space out.

Running into a video of  a Pink Floyd concert from 1988 on YouTube today brought these memories back and for all of you who like their music, here is what I found…

Believe it or not, up to now I never listened to the lyrics of the songs except some snippets that you could not miss, like “Teachers, leave us kids alone” from The Wall.

That shall be remedied today with the lyrics of the song above,  “On The Turning Away”

On the turning away
From the pale and downtrodden
And the words they say
Which we won’t understand
“Don’t accept that what’s happening
Is just a case of others’ suffering
Or you’ll find that you’re joining in
The turning away”
It’s a sin that somehow
Light is changing to shadow
And casting it’s shroud
Over all we have known
Unaware how the ranks have grown
Driven on by a heart of stone
We could find that we’re all alone
In the dream of the proud
On the wings of the night
As the daytime is stirring
Where the speechless unite
In a silent accord
Using words you will find are strange
And mesmerized as they light the flame
Feel the new wind of change
On the wings of the night
No more turning away
From the weak and the weary
No more turning away
From the coldness inside
Just a world that we all must share
It’s not enough just to stand and stare
Is it only a dream that there’ll be
No more turning away?

Blows your mind, doesn’t it?

And, by the way, I still have those vinyl albums.

Michel Gondry Solves a Rubiks Cube with his Nose

I never heard of Michel Gondry before, so when I saw the title “Michel Gondry Solves a Rubik’s Cube with his Nose” on YouTube I was not particularly intrigued. But I knew the Rubik’s Cube even though I never owned one myself and thus never spent the hours on hours to solve the puzzle.

But the idea of solving this puzzle with the nose – hmmm – that has becoming attention-grabbing.

So I looked …

… and I was fascinated, but instinctively I felt there was something wrong with that. I could feel it in my bones there was something not quite kosher.

And sure enough, thanks to the distributed intelligence of the internet I found the information I had a gut feeling to exist.

This video is a fake!

There you have it! And learn that not everything you see on the internet is true.

Anarchy and Owning Yourself

I believe that anarchy is a scary thing for many people. But if we look at some of the dictionary definitions we are getting a bit smarter.

One definition we find here is simply “a state of society without government or law.” This is pretty neural.

But then we also have “political and social disorder due to the absence of governmental control.” This is a rather interesting definition for a dictionary because it packs the conclusion that there will be disorder if there is no government control. This definition surely reflects the idea of many members of our species, so maybe the definition has a place in a dictionary.

Another definition is a bit more matter of fact: “a theory that regards the absence of all direct or coercive government as a political ideal and that proposes the cooperative and voluntary association of individuals and groups as the principal mode of organized society.”

The wildest one, and the one that probably most of us have in mind: “confusion; chaos; disorder.”

As my son is growing up fast and it seems time to put this seed of criticism of government into his heart. Recently I had noticed the need to really question what this government is actually good for.

Do I need it to put up stop signs on each intersection in our very quiet neighborhood with no accidents? No, not really, it just makes me use more gas because I have to stop the car completely and then accelerate again while before I could just roll slowly by that intersection. But then again, I suppose somebody had some money left in his budget and needed to get rid of it otherwise it would be cut the next year – or something to that effect.

And when I was thinking about all those interesting aspects of government versus no government, who comes to the rescue?

Larken Rose!

I have posted several of his email letters here on these pages (with his permission) and I just have to do this again. It will be lengthy as even Larken had divided his thoughts on the subject into three parts, but I will put them all together here in one post for you to enjoy.

The series of his email letters carries the title:

Opening the Cage – Part 1:

Dear Subscriber,

If one accepts the fundamental truth that each of us owns himself, and ponders all the things which logically follow from that simple concept, the way the world looks suddenly changes drastically. Concepts like “government,” “law,” “authority,” “countries,” and so on, fall apart like a house of cards. Because that scares the heck out of people, however, many go to great lengths to DENY that they own themselves. The ramifications are just too weird, and too scary, for most people to even think about.

Here is just one example:

I own me. Imagine that the me I own is standing ten feet south of the border between Montana and Canada, looking at the nifty scenery. While I stand there, some people way over in Washington think they have the RIGHT to rule me: to impose taxes, regulations, commands, requirements, prohibitions, and so on, which (they think) I am obligated to obey. But I own me, and they don’t, so I have exactly ZERO obligation to obey any of their proclamations and legislation.

(I do, however, have an obligation to refrain from doing anything which would impinge upon someone ELSE’S self-ownership, such as robbing, defrauding, murdering, vandalizing, assaulting, and so on. But that obligation does not come from any “legislation,” nor could any “law” or “rule” alter that obligation one bit.)

Now, if I step over that imaginary line, into Canada, then a DIFFERENT set of megalomaniacs imagine themselves to have the right to tax me, regulate me, command me, control me, and so on. (In fact, they also think they have the right to prohibit me from stepping over the line in the first place.) Their claim is equally bogus: I own me no matter where I am. What I am obligated to do doesn’t depend one bit upon who thinks they have the right to rule me. None of them do.

That being the case, what is the significance of that border to me? What difference is there between one “country” and the next, if I actually own myself? Yes, what might HAPPEN to me in different places will be different (many foreign megalomaniacs are a lot more overtly vicious to the noncompliant than the ones here), and what the people there will think, and how they will behave, will be different, but what I am OBLIGATED to do, and obligated to REFRAIN from doing, doesn’t change one bit.

Some people have asked me, without borders, how could we have a country? I gave them the disturbing answer: we shouldn’t have a country. No one should. (Please don’t be so silly as to read that as an agreement with the “New World Order” fascists.) Today, “countries” are defined solely by WHICH group of megalomaniacs claim the right to rule a certain piece of dirt. Sure, cultures and places are real, and I can see feeling a loyalty or attachment to that. But imaginary lines drawn by people who believe they own me? Why on earth should I care about that?

When I walk from the place in Montana, to the place that looks exactly the same in Canada, what did I leave behind? Why should I feel any differently? What actually changed? Did morality CHANGE, because a different set of tyrants claim to be in charge here? Unless you think that politicians outrank nature, the universe, or God (or whatever you believe to be the origin of right and wrong), the “law” cannot possibly ALTER morality. If I still own me, what difference does a “border” make?

Again, people often go flying off to all sorts of tangents when faced with these concepts. They start pontificating about what we need, what works for society, all the nasty things that will happen if we don’t all bow to an authority, and so on. But again, I’m just talking about what IS. If I own myself–and I do–what possible meaning can “countries” have to me? I might like a group of people, or a place, or a culture, but that is NOT what a “country” is. (I bet everyone on this list can think of a LOT of places in the U.S., and a LOT of people in the U.S., who they feel no attachment to and no comradery with.)

The path to accepting freedom is really disturbing to almost everyone (it sure was to me), which is why most people desperately fish for an excuse for NOT going down that path. “THERE WOULD BE CHAOS! WE NEED GOVERNMENT! DEATH, MAYHEM, ANARCHY!” But no such dire predictions or emotional tantrums can alter the painfully simple logic involved: either I own me, or I am the property of someone else. And if I simply accept that I own me, the world looks like a VERY different place.

The feeling is exactly like that of an animal that has been in a small cage all its life, suddenly being shown a vast expanse of open wilderness (like Montana, for example). Unfortunately, most caged animals, when they catch a glimpse of freedom, cower into the back corner of their cage, and snarl and whimper until the door is shut again.

How about you?

Part 2:

Once again, let’s peek out the open door of the “authority” cage, and see what there is to see out in the world of “I own me.” It’s drastically different from how the world looks from inside the locked cage. “Countries” are but one concept that falls apart once we accept that we own ourselves.

In his autobiography, Frederick Douglass (former slave) described how a lot of slaves back in those days were completely convinced that slaves are what they SHOULD be. Many, if not most, would even look down upon any slave who would be so despicable as to try to run away. To the radical like Mr. Douglass, however, who realized that no amount of whips, chains, or cages could change the fact that he rightfully owned HIMSELF, the world looked drastically difference. To him, the supposed “owner” was the enemy–an evil thief committing both assault and theft on a daily basis.

The world looks very different depending upon one’s ideas about who he belonged to: himself or someone else. In hindsight, most of us look back at that time and sympathize with the lawless, disobedient “slaves” who were willing to break the LAW in order to assert their rights to be free. But most people refuse to accept the same principle as it applies today.

It was not too many years ago that, when I heard the term “law enforcement,” it had a positive connotation for me. The cops were the good guys, enforcing “the law” against those nasty criminals (defined as anyone who disobeys the “law”). However, now that I realize that I own myself, and that the same is true of every other individual, “police” appear to me as what they really are: people who commit evil far more often than they commit good. I’m not talking about when they break the law, which happens often, too– I’m talking about when they enforce an immoral, unjustified “law,” which is MOST of the time. The number of “laws” which simply formalize the use of inherently justified defensive force (such as “laws” against theft, murder, assault, etc.) are far outnumbered by the so-called “laws” which ADVOCATE theft, murder, and assault.

(Warning: If you like your view from inside the cage, you may not want to continue reading.)

I own me. You own you. Every person owns himself. If some guy wants to fry his brain, it is HIS to fry. So long as he doesn’t go around messing with someone else’s self-ownership–whether out of malice or negligence–NO ONE has the right to use force to stop him from frying his brain (though we have every right to try to talk him out of it, to call him a moron, etc.). And calling violence “law” has NO bearing on whether it is justified.

When someone hiding behind the label of “authority” or “law enforcement” forces his way into someone’s home, with the intention of catching the homeowner with an unapproved LEAF (e.g., marijuana), in order to drag that person away and put him in a cage for several years, the leaf-smoker has the absolute right to use any means necessary, including killing the intruder (the “cop”), to protect himself.

The same holds true of the victims of ALL non-defensive “law enforcement.” For example, Ed and Elaine Brown up in New Hampshire have the absolute moral right to use any means necessary, including deadly force, to prevent the authoritarian thugs from taking them hostage and putting them in cages. Even if they were guilty of the “crime” of “tax evasion,” which I believe they are NOT, the Browns would still own themselves, and still have the absolute right to defend their self-ownership from thieves and terrorists, regardless of whether the theft and terrorism is “legal” or not.

Surely I’m not defending the “cop-killer” mentality?! Actually, I am doing precisely that, when the so-called “cops” are the ones doing the robbery, assault, or kidnapping. Despite how radical that may sound, it was not at all an usual attitude among those who started this country. The Declaration of Independence says that the only legitimate purpose of government is to protect the unalienable rights of the individual, and when it “becomes destructive of those ends,” it is both the right and duty of the people to overthrow it and start over. Here are a few other radical things Thomas Jefferson, author of the Declaration, also said:

“No man has a natural right to commit aggression on the equal rights of another, and this is all from which the laws ought to restrain him.”

“The legitimate powers of government extend to such acts only as are injurious to others.”

(In other messages I’ll explain why even “legitimate government” is impossible.)

And when “government” force is used, not to defend those rights, but to infringe upon them, then what? Then, according to me and Thomas Jefferson, we have the right to FORCIBLY RESIST. Oddly, almost everyone agrees, when they’re talking about some “authority” they DON’T worship, but they believe it’s the ultimate blasphemy to suggest the same regarding the “authority” THEY bow to. For example, it was ILLEGAL in 1940’s Germany for the various “undesirables” to hide from the Nazis. Those who did were law- breakers; those who found them and dragged them away were “law enforcers.” And those “law enforcers” all deserved to have their damn heads blown off. And us modern Americans don’t mind saying that out loud, and in public. How about Stalin’s “law enforcers”? How about Mao’s? How about the “law enforcers” of King George III? We dang near deify the lawless, traitorous rebels who resisted George’s laws, and don’t mind at all the idea of his “law enforcers” getting gunned down. Heck, we have a big celebration about
it every July 4th.

How about today? When thugs and terrorists put a MILLION people in cages for possessing a SUBSTANCE, who should we be cheering for? It depends who owns the individual. If each individual owns himself, then those horrible “drug dealers” are the GOOD GUYS, and the “cops” are the BAD GUYS. (If the drug dealers happened to also have committed a REAL crime–the kind with an actual victim–like theft or murder, then they are the bad guys, too, but NOT because they had some “illegal” stuff.)

I warned you, if you accept the idea that you own yourself, the way the world looks changes drastically. Most people don’t like to think, and don’t like to face disturbing truths, so they look for excuses to REJECT the idea that they own themselves. They revere “authority” and “the law”–superstitions which serve as a sort of philosophical crutch to help people not have to think and judge for themselves. Again, they see the open cage door, and they back away from it, thus guaranteeing their perpetual enslavement, in body and mind. (Those people then vigorously and passionately argue in favor of their own enslavement, which I find rather depressing.) But some of us choose something else. It’s called freedom.

Part 3:

(Note: Regarding my last message, don’t confuse rights with abilities. Even when completely justified, having a shootout with the cops is almost always hazardous to one’s health. My prior message wasn’t a suggestion; it was a statement about moral justification. As long as most people insist on believing that the collective owns them–via “government”–it will be really dangerous to be one of the crazies who thinks he owns himself. The other sheep don’t take kindly to those who resist being fleeced.)

Almost everyone is a part-time collectivist. Most people have a few things which THEY want imposed on everyone else via “authority,” but when something they don’t like is imposed upon THEM, they get all self-righteous and indignant about it. Well, to paraphrase (and slightly mangle) the “golden rule,” if you don’t want other people doing it to you, DON’T DO IT TO THEM!

If I go around randomly killing people, others have the right to stop me by force, not because they own me, but because they own THEMSELVES, which logically implies the right of self-preservation. But if I’m not stomping on someone else’s self-ownership, NO ONE has the right to use force to control me. If I want to smoke pot (I don’t), have a rifle (I do), wear women’s underwear (I don’t), eat cheeseburgers (I sometimes do), marry an aardvark (I don’t), say nasty things about politicians (I do), or hit myself in the head with a baseball bat (I’ve felt like it on occasion, but haven’t yet), no one has the right to forcibly stop me. And calling the control “law” makes exactly NO difference to whether the control is justified. If the “government” doesn’t OWN me, it has exactly ZERO right to do a thing to me, unless it’s defending someone ELSE’S self-ownership (in which case, anyone would have the right to stop me).

“Of liberty I would say that, in the whole plenitude of its extent, it is unobstructed action according to our will. But rightful liberty is unobstructed action according to our will within limits drawn around us by the equal rights of others. I do not add ‘within the limits of the law,’ because law is often but the tyrant’s will, and always so when it violates the right of an individual.” [Thomas Jefferson]

Sadly, people rarely think from principles, so they play both sides of the fence. Your average “liberal” will holler about his rights to smoke pot if he wants to, and then turn around and advocate the robbery of almost everyone in the country, in order to fund things HE likes (art, welfare, whatever). Meanwhile, the average “conservative” insists that he has a right to own firearms and drink his beer, but wants the “law” to forcibly stop someone else from doing LSD.

“Boo hoo! My rights are being infringed!” Well, if you’re advocating that anyone ELSE’S rights be infringed, serves you right! If you think it’s just fine for the “legal” thugs to kick down doors, drag people away, and put them in cages, because they had a LEAF the politicians don’t approve of, then when those same thugs rob and control YOU, don’t whine about it. Or, to quote a far more eloquent expression of the same sentiment:

“No man can put a chain about the ankle of his fellow man without at last finding the other end fastened about his own neck.” [Frederick Douglass]

Sadly, things are discussed in terms of legislation so often these days that most people have a hard time differentiating between “That’s a bad idea” and “That should be illegal.” There are LOTS of choices people make that are stupid or dangerous (physically or otherwise)–everything from eating too much junk food, to snorting coke, to skateboarding, to sitting in front of a computer too much (that’s me), to sleeping around, to watching too much TV, to drinking too much beer–the list goes on and on. Acknowledging that you have no right to use VIOLENCE to stop those things is worlds away from saying you CONDONE such choices. But if you want to be allowed the responsibility to make your own choices, and you don’t want to be a complete hypocrite (and a fascist), you have to also allow other people to make choices you think are stupid.

My advice: Treat everyone as if he owns himself. Because he does. Don’t advocate that he be forced, “legally” or otherwise, to do ANYTHING, except for refraining from infringing on someone else’s self-ownership. And if you do advocate using non-defense force, don’t pretend to believe in freedom; and when you then find such unjustified force aimed at YOU, you damn well deserve it.

Sincerely,
Larken Rose

How to Blog

I have to admit that Ming in his article ‘I see, therefore I blog’ indeed got deeply philosophical.

That inspired me and caused me to think about the ideal way of communication with the world around us. As a scientist I have the mantra that you don’t throw away any data, bad as it might be. Therefore we first of all need to collect all information. It might not be here quite here yet, but with some tera byte memory sticks it should be possible to record everything that goes on around each of us.

That’s the pure raw data. Then we can certainly annotate and tag elements in this data flow. I can review and comment on a situation I just experienced, thus getting a very fresh witness account. Or I can go back later, cuing through the recordings and adding tags like today I do with del.icio.us.

So far, all data is private, very private.

Then comes the decision what do I open up to whom. One tag is certainly something like ‘friends only.’ This would be equivalent to the private profiles on MySpace – first you have to become a friend before I open up to you.

At the other end of the spectrum would be ‘World’ – this is going out onto the widest distribution. pretty much what are todays web pages, and as with web pages, there are good ones and there are bad not so good ones. We can even enter the eBay effect at this point and attempt to charge for content, probably some private currency which at one point will have an exchange rate with the government money.

I have to use the opportunity here to show one example from last category under ‘good ones.’ This is one whirlwind of a video blog…

WebbAlert Video Blog
Webb Alert (no more)

I probably get all the tech news Morgan Webb tells about through other channels but it is still well worth the download and time to watch this expressionist – expressionist because of such lively expressions during her presentation that I just have to live all the stories with her. Beside this she was rated the 51st sexiest woman in the world in 2007 by the readers of FHM. 51st does not seem to sound much, but…

Hmmm, Ming, some form you might consider as a medium for your next generation blogging – Ming Alert – wondering though how you could beat that ’51st sexiest woman’ thingy.

Ritalin and Parenting

While driving down the 101 here in Los Angeles I noticed the following sign…

Ritalin and Parenting

… and it made me think.

NO – Come on! There is no such sign in Los Angeles – – – yet!

But you can find bad surprises in places where they are really surprising – – huh?

Anyways, I want to tell about an old friend of mine. A friend I had hung out with during the last year of high school and most of the college days, and I thought we really knew each other well.

Me moving to the US of A interrupted that friendship somewhat, but meeting each other after both our divorces and a few year of hardly hearing from each other, the spark was there again immediately and we could talk as if no time had passed when we met on one of my visits to Germany.

But I went back to California, we both got married again and had kids – OK, our wifes had. Then it was his time to visit us here with the whole family.

During on of our long talks he told me that his daughter had become so difficult in school that she was now on ritalin. That blew my mind! I mean I hear all those bad stories about our school kids being drugged into obedience but I had never met any such kid. I guess because my reality is so that this stuff does not enter it. But then the only first degree of separation person to introduce me to ritalin is my old best buddy from the college days.

I guess our realities did develop into different directions. Even though I don’t really think in his case it was a replacement for parenting because he was and is a loving father. He must have gotten some really bad information, and that’s the danger of it, that if you are not actively looking for the correct information and trust ‘experts’ you might be traveling down the wrong path.

I know how that is!

The Man Who was Too Lazy to Fail

will code for foodRobert Heinlein in his “Time Enough for Love” tells the story of the man who was too lazy to fail. The basic idea behind this story is that if you fail in something you want to do, you have to do it over again – double the work – thus not the right thing for a truly lazy person.

I remembered this story when the article A Guide to Hiring Programmers: The High Cost of Low Quality crossed my desk. A little bit of an excerpt…

I was invited to a wonderful dinner party (I swear it wasn’t too spicy Sarah!) with some St. Louis Perl peoples this week while I’m here on business. At one point we were talking about hiring programmers, specifically Perl programmers.

We agreed on the following:

  • Finding good programmers is hard in any language. And that a good programmer can be as effective as 5-10 average programmers.
  • Average pay rates between equivalent programmers are out of sync and are based more on the language used than the skill of the programmer.
  • You don’t need to hire an expert in language X, you can and should look for expert programmers that are willing to learn language X. An expert can easily cross over from being a novice in any language in a matter of a few weeks.
  • You should seriously consider allowing your expert developers to telecommute full-time. Restricting your search to programmers who live in your area or are willing to move limits the talent you can acquire. Arguments regarding “face time”, productivity, etc. can easily be nullified when you look at how some of the largest and most successful Open Source projects such as Linux, Apache, and Firefox are developed by individuals rarely living in the same time zone or even country.

That is something I could agree with as well!

On the hand I had been always very curious why many bosses want bodies in the shop. It’s highly inefficient and certainly does not raise the morale or anything in this arena.

On the other hand I can see that if there is a boss who does not really understand what is going on wants at least something he can measure and understand. And I am able to see that this could be a bunch of busy bodies in the cubicled office space.

Now, if you are in this business for a while you know that being busy is counter-productive in the field of programming. Maybe during the time when you type in some program the impression of a busy programmer is appropriate. But what is the percentage of time where a good programmer actually types some original code?

Five percent – four – less? Certainly not more.

We are talking about good programmers here, just to make sure. The not so good one will be typing a lot more because he will re-invent the wheel every time the task is a bit different. The good one will re-use already tested code. It might take him a while to find it – a time during which he might be looking lazy to a manager, but this the time where he is, in effect, 5 to 10 times more productive than the low quality programmer.

I remember this one guy – forgot his name, and if I did not would not tell anyways – was a little weasel, always busy running around and typing like a maniac. When he finally left, pretty much everything needed to be re-done.

And to imagine that he got paid nearly the same money I did!

It is, and I can truly appreciate this, very difficult for a manager to determine what is and what is not a good programmer. My principle has been “Let me show you!’ and that has worked very well during the days when I hired myself out as a labor slave.

I either offered to work a month for free but then asked for so much money that I made up for that loss, or I negotiated a deal where the contract amount was rather low, but a big bonus was to be paid if all the requirements of the slave master were met in time and on budget.

To close one more little excerpt from the above article…

What is an expert programmer?

Experience is key, but not necessarily in ways you might imagine. Time in the saddle, with a particular language is not as important as diversity of experience. Someone who has worked in several disparate industries, a generalist, is often a much better developer than one who has spent years in the same industry. There are exceptions to this, but in general I have found this to be the case. Bonus points if your developer was a systems administrator in a former life.

Some of the best developers I know were originally trained as journalists, mathematicians, linguists, and other professions not normally associated with software development.

Hunger Makes Me Mad

I noticed many years ago, when wandering through London with a few friends, that I was getting more and more grumpy. First I did not know why, but then realized that I was just getting very hungry and just needed food.

The situation was easily remedied, we had some lunch and I was my usual happy self again.

Notice the same now with my son, he also can get very grumpy when hungry (or tired for that matter).

But today something reached my mailbox that makes me angry on a totally different level. I did my due diligence on the story to make sure it’s not an urban legend and I found it to be true by all the sources I looked at. But you do your own investigation.

So, here is the brutal shocker…

Pulitzer Prize 1994

This picture was taken by Kevin Carter 1994 during the Sudan famine. It won him the Pulitzer Prize. It depicts a starving child during the Sudan famine, crawling to the United Nations food camp located a kilometer away. The vulture is waiting patiently – as vultures do –  for the child to die so that it can have a meal. No mercy here – it’s what nature does, right?

This picture shocked the whole world.  It is not known what happened to the child, including the photographer Kevin Carter who left the place as soon as the photograph was taken. As the story goes, three months later he committed suicide due to depression.

When we did not want to finish our food as children we often heard our parents lament that there are children in the world dieing of hunger but it never really sank in – after that picture it finally has!

But now back to the anger I feel about this hunger – it’s because the cost of a few days of the Iraq war, invested in a little bit more constructive ways, could probably handle problems like this on the whole planet easily.

Imagine, there is still a debate if the US should withdraw from Iraq!

Steve Eley Ordered Me to Have Fun

Escape Pod Science Fiction Podcast… and I did – again!

Let me explain. Steve Eley is the mastermind behind a podcast called Escape Pod. Weekly he offers science fiction stories as a podcast and I hardly ever miss one of the stories, although I sometimes lag several podcasts behind the current story. The reason being that it’s a podcast, right?

I usually fire up my iTunes once in a while (when I run out of stories on my smart-phone), and download new content onto said smart-phone.

One more element then has to come into play for me to be able to actually listen to the podcast – I have to be in the car going somewhere. Today was such a day, and a good one. Ninety minutes drive back from the mountains, late, the son sleeping in the back so that I could plug in those ear phones and work on my mp3s on my phone.

I got nearly two shows done, Escape Pod 115 –Conversations With and About My Electric Toothbrush all finished and Escape Pod 116 two thirds done.

The story “Conversation With and About My Electric Toothbrush” was really surprising and enjoyable. The title gives away most of what this story is about and I will tell no more about the funny twist because I want you to go check it out yourself.

OK, the epilogue of that  show also announces that bloggers like me can get prizes that Steve gives away to those who blog about Escape Pod, but this is really not the reason for this blog post – even though it might have been the straw that broke the camels back.

Looking at the Escape Pod website again also reminds me that I really should donate to the site – it would be only just for all the enjoyment I get out of it, but maybe I can do even better by advertising on his site for one of my commercial sites.

One reason for the generally above quality of the stories presented is that the author is actually paid for his story. Obviously this created a cloud of much better stories than those submitted by authors who just want to be published, not caring if they will be compensated for their effort. I actually submitted a story once and it was fortunately rejected, creating the incentive to work on my writing.

Daisy Air Rifles Since 1886

Daisy Air Rifle Poster

I got this in an email – forgot from whom, but thanks anyway – and I just had to share it.

I can imagine that this statement “Daisy Air Rifles: Keeping Kids Off Your Lawn Since 1886!” is one of those little things that will forever change the way you look at a specific subject – in this case for me the “Since xxxx!”

Another mind altering was that Nike Slogan – Just Do It! which is still affecting me immensely.