June 12, 2008
A Great Photo
I'd say that this is one of the most amazing photos ever taken.
Posted at 20:25 in Random Links, Science & Skepticism by Eric
April 27, 2008
Scalia On Torture
I like Lesley Stahl, but I wish she would have presented Justice Scalia with a better argument on why torture could be considered "cruel and unusual punishment."
Isn't the obvious argument that it's punishment for not giving the torturer the information he or she seeks? Either in the case that the person tortured has the information but is unwilling to give it, or doesn't have the information and can't make something believable up?
Posted at 22:51 in Progressive Politics by Eric
March 1, 2008
What I've Been Up To Lately
February, despite the extra day, sure went quick. At the end of January, I was in San Francisco attending the Association of Alternative Newsweeklies annual Web Conference. Before the conference I was starting to feel sick, but during the conference I somehow got better. Then, a few days upon return to Tucson, I relapsed and spent most of the rest of the week with a fever, coughing and generally feeling miserable. Then, a week after finally getting over that bug, I wound up getting sick again; this time it was something intestinal.
I'm all better now, but the point of bringing up being sick for too much of February is that it's not conducive to productivity. At the AAN Web Conference we announced our new product, and the good news is that everyone wants it. But the bad news is that everyone wants it yesterday, and it's something that we've only just announced, not something we can start selling. (It's also not a boxed product, but rather an improved framework for developing and maintaining our customers web sites. As such, there will be a non-insignificant amount of setup work and time to get a client's site into the new framework.) So I wish February didn't have to go quite so quick, since there's quite a bit of work still to be done.
I wasn't too much involved with the development of this product before the conference, but I have been since. I'm glad I am, because I'm pretty darn excited about it. In addition to allowing clients to more directly manage the layout, style and functionality of their sites, it should help cut down the amount of development time we spend on doing site redesigns and allow new employees get up-to-speed quicker. That's important, because there is already enough for a new developer to learn, considering we have both a proprietary abstracted database layer (Gyrobase) and proprietary programming language (<ev>).
Speaking of <ev>, that's what I've been spending just about all my free time working on improving. Currently, the language's parser and evaluator are written completely in Perl. While you might think this is a recipe for slowness — an interpreted language running on top of an interpreted language — it actually holds up reasonably well. But that's not to say there isn't lots of potential for improving performance, there is.
So, I've spent many nights and weekends in January and early February creating a compiler and virtual machine for <ev> written in C. In 2007 I had spent a weekend here and there writing an <ev> parser in C, mostly for the purpose of being a syntax validator. But it's secondary purpose was to be the basis for this compiler and VM I'm now writing. It's actually come quite a way. For instance, it successfully compiles and runs code that sets and displays variables. Though there's still many more months of work ahead to get it to interact with the massive amounts of Perl code that would be impractical to re-implement in C, plus support for loops, conditionals, and math operations.
Truth be told, this compiler/VM has become a bit of an obsession. When I discovered that a compiler and a VM weren't really such complex things and were well within my abilities to write, I haven't been able to stop thinking about how to go about implementing them for <ev>. And it's actually been a lot of fun.
Posted at 15:20 in Life Stuff, Computers & Technology by Eric
January 21, 2008
Martin Luther King Day
A selection from Martin Luther King's Letter from the Birmingham Jail:I had hoped that the white moderate would reject the myth concerning time in relation to the struggle for freedom. I have just received a letter from a white brother in Texas. He writes: "All Christians know that the colored people will receive equal rights eventually, but it is possible that you are in too great a religious hurry. It has taken Christianity almost two thousand years to accomplish what it has. The teachings of Christ take time to come to earth." Such an attitude stems from a tragic misconception of time, from the strangely rational notion that there is something in the very flow of time that will inevitably cure all ills. Actually, time itself is neutral; it can be used either destructively or constructively. More and more I feel that the people of ill will have used time much more effectively than have the people of good will. We will have to repent in this generation not merely for the hateful words and actions of the bad people but for the appalling silence of the good people. Human progress never rolls in on wheels of inevitability; it comes through the tireless efforts of men willing to be co-workers with God, and without this hard work, time itself becomes an ally of the forces of social stagnation. We must use time creatively, in the knowledge that the time is always ripe to do right. Now is the time to make real the promise of democracy and transform our pending national elegy into a creative psalm of brotherhood. Now is the time to lift our national policy from the quicksand of racial injustice to the solid rock of human dignity.
Posted at 00:01 in Progressive Politics, Random Links by Eric
January 11, 2008
DailyKos Scares Me
I mean that in the best possibly way though. I've posted my first substantive diary there this evening. In two short hours my thoughts on skepticism and Kucinich's recount of the 2008 New Hampshire presidential primary generated 80 comments and 19 people voted to put it on the recommended diary list. That's a lot of eyeballs for something that only took an hour and a half to write.
Posted at 21:48 in Computers & Technology, Progressive Politics, Random Links, Science & Skepticism by Eric
January 6, 2008
McCain Tries to Scare Up Some Votes
McCain has a web-only ad that uses footage of a terrorist bombing to scare people into voting for him in the Republican primaries. Tim Russert confronted him about it on this morning's Meet The Press:
Despicable.
Posted at 22:39 in Progressive Politics by Eric
December 30, 2007
Bring Out Your Base!
Looks like this is what the Arizona GOP is planning to bring their xenophobic base out to the polls in 2008:
Rep. Russell Pearce, R-Mesa, says he is introducing measures this legislative session to:
- Deny regular birth certificates to babies born in Arizona unless at least one parent proves citizenship.
- Expand the state crime of trespass to cover anyone in the U.S. without authorization.
- Require proof of legal presence in the U.S. to register a vehicle or get a title.
- Deny workers' compensation benefits to undocumented workers injured on the job.
- Bar local policies that prohibit police officers from checking the immigration status of those they encounter.
Pearce is not taking any chances the measures will be rejected by Democratic Gov. Janet Napolitano, who previously vetoed a trespass bill and similar proposals. All are being drafted so if they pass the Republican-controlled Legislature they go directly to the ballot.
The fact that that first provision is meant to deny citizenship to people born within the borders of the United States — and therefore unconstitutional under the 14th amendment — won't prevent the legislature from allowing this proposition go to the ballot. They've proven that they can't be trusted to uphold the Constitution.
Posted at 09:55 in Progressive Politics by Eric