Election 2008

I have seen the future of US leadership and the future is Barack Obama.



Well I hope it is anyways. There are a variety of compelling reasons why Obama may not win the 2008 presidential election

• he lacks political experience
• he is black (clearly no southerner nostalgic for days of Jim Crow is going to vote for him)
  
• his intelligence will alienate the simpletons who voted for Bush and are fond of aphorisms like the terrorist hate us because we are free
  

Despite all of these reasons why Obama will fail to win the election I have never been so excited about a presidential candidate as I am about Obama.

We all know that being atheist is political suicide so it is no surprise to find out that Obama is a devout Christian. What is a surprise is to hear him speak about atheists (he uses the term secularist) without denigrating them. I am a devout atheist and I find it frustrating that my beliefs are not just marginalized but frequently denigrated by those with strong faith in Christianity. Barack Obama is a man who truly understands the tolerant and inclusive motivation behind separation of church and state!

I urge you to listen to his podcasts (most are 5 to 7 minutes long) and decide for yourself what you think of the man. For me, I've decided that this is the man I want to be my country's next president. If, after hearing him speak and reading about his position on the issues, you decide that he is the best choice for president then please make a campaign donation.

Because I feel strongly that Barack Obama is the best man for the job of U.S. president I signed up for a recurring monthly donation to the Obama presidential campaign. Even if he loses the general election (or even the primary election) the country will gain much from having a well funded Obama campaign participate in a debate of the issues facing our country.

Color or Black and White?

Color or Black and White?
Originally uploaded by funkyj.

The same photo in black and white. What do you think of the color, contrast and brightness of these photos?

Color or Black and White?

Color or Black and White?
Originally uploaded by funkyj.

a color photo of my Go board...

The whole shebang

The whole shebang
Originally uploaded by funkyj.

This is all of the Go stuff (books, go boards, stones) I have amassed and kept over the years. I bought my first Go set circa 1988.

To be or not to be ...

To be or not to be ...
Originally uploaded by funkyj.

My nephew Christian contemplating existence

Houdini

Houdini
Originally uploaded by funkyj.

My sister went out to the back yard to smoke and found houdini here had gotten himself stuck in the patio table.

Goth training

IMG_1444
Originally uploaded by funkyj.

I'm studying to be a dark brooding goth guy. In addition to dying my hair black, painting my face white and dressing in black I'm also spending a lot of time in grave yards to connect with my inner mortality.

UPDATE: I got an F on this gothic homework assignment because I forgot to desaturate the picture to black and white (DOH).

Canon 50mm F1.8 II

IMG_1265_1
Originally uploaded by funkyj.

blah blah blah

Man's Best Friend

Man's Best Friend
Originally uploaded by funkyj.

The human face is a bit washed out here because when I turn the brightness down I lose detail on the dog.

I look forward to eventually learning how to use GIMP (I haven't bought photoshop yet) so I can fix problems like this. (blending 2 copies of an image using a transparency mask -- I know the general principle but the details of how to generate the desired mask are not clear)

All processing was done with DPP

Breakfast Time at Zachary's

Zachary's
Originally uploaded by funkyj.

Z's is one of our regular breakfast stops. If you drop in for a bite I highly recommend the 'Junior Mess' or, for the truly famished, 'Mike's Mess'.

Who are the people in the picture? I don't know...

First steps

First steps
Originally uploaded by funkyj.

I've had my 350D for less than a week. I still barely know how to use the thing (beyond treating it as an overpriced point and shoot).

I shot this in RAW mode, cropped it and converted to JPEG (no manipulation in DPP).

Evil Doers

I have a new blog called Evil Doers.

This blog was born out of a conversation with an acquaintance of mine I shall call "Pat".

In this conversation I made the hyperbolic claim that "Walmart would gladly render the entire continent of Africa uninhabitable by polluting it with plutonium if this would greatly increase their share holder value". I explained that this wasn't a literal truth (Walmart is not in the plutonium disposal business) but was meant to represent the fact that corporations regularly and knowingly make choices that result in human rights abuses (including torture and murder) and horrific damage to the environment. Pat objected to this characterization of powerful corporations and asked me to back up my claim with specific examples.

Evil Doers is my attempt to provide these specific examples. It is a laborious task to document even a single case with a moderate level of detail so I will add entries to Evil Doers slowly.

Here is a bit more clarification on my viewpoint.

• large corporations are powerful.
• The consequence of an entities actions are in proportion to the power they wield. The powerful are capable of both greater good and greater evil than the weak.
  
• Powerful entities have a greater ability to insulate themselves from the responsibility of their actions.
  

The phrase "power corrupts" does not mean that every corporation or person that is placed in a position where they can wield power without accountability will behave badly. What it means is that if you consistently put people in positions where they wield power without being held accountable you are guaranteed that someone will eventually abuse their power. The greater the power and the less the accountability the higher the probability of abuse.

Corporations have a greater tendency to evil than ordinary individuals because large corporations are far more powerful and have greater means to avoid accountability than an ordinary individual. Consequently we must treat large corporations (and other powerful entities) with much greater suspicion that we treat our neighbors.

"Syntactic sugar causes cancer of the semicolon" -- Alan Perlis

I'm reading Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs, which MIT Press has kindly made available on line. Here is a tasty nibblet from the preface to the first edition:

Our design of this introductory computer-science subject reflects two major concerns. First, we want to establish the idea that a computer language is not just a way of getting a computer to perform operations but rather that it is a novel formal medium for expressing ideas about methodology. Thus, programs must be written for people to read, and only incidentally for machines to execute. Second, we believe that the essential material to be addressed by a subject at this level is not the syntax of particular programming-language constructs, nor clever algorithms for computing particular functions efficiently, nor even the mathematical analysis of algorithms and the foundations of computing, but rather the techniques used to control the intellectual complexity of large software systems.

As a hobby I've been learning Common Lisp. Several folks in the comp.lang.lisp newsgroup have recommended SICP to folks who desire to improve their knowledge of the theoretical underpinnings of Lisp, so here I am.

It all started when someone in c.l.l asked "why does lisp need the 'apply' function?". As an exploration of this question I attempted the impossible task of implementing Lisp's 'apply' using Common Lisp macros and the 'funcall' function. If you resort to also using the 'eval' function then it is possible to define 'apply'. Of course having to resort to calling 'eval' is a terrible price to pay. This is why Lisp defines 'apply' as a primative. (it is trivial to define 'funcall' in terms of 'apply' -- you don't even need to use macros much less 'eval'. To wit: "(defun funcall (fn &rest arg) (apply fn rest))").

BTW, for you folks who don't know Lisp, Lisp macros are very powerful. The macro system provided by the C language preprocessor is nothing compared to lisp macros. Lisp macros are more powerful than C++ templates. If you haven't studied Lisp it is hard to conceive what Lisp macros are capable of.

little red book

little red book
Originally uploaded by davebarber.

Hey everybody, I just discovered this wonderful book of wisdom!

I highly recommend you (and all your friends) request this book via interlibrary loan.

NEW BEDFORD -- A senior at UMass Dartmouth was visited by federal agents two months ago, after he requested a copy of Mao Tse-Tung's tome on Communism called "The Little Red Book."
[...]
The student, who was completing a research paper on Communism for Professor Pontbriand's class on fascism and totalitarianism, filled out a form for the request, leaving his name, address, phone number and Social Security number. He was later visited at his parents' home in New Bedford by two agents of the Department of Homeland Security, the professors said.
The professors said the student was told by the agents that the book is on a "watch list," and that his background, which included significant time abroad, triggered them to investigate the student further.
(read the rest of the story at SouthCoastToday)

I gotta run now, I'm off to the library to request a copy of Mao's most excellent little red book.

2005 Dec 24 Update:
Apparently this story is a hoax. damn, I requested my little red book for nothing.

Hey Dubya, nice job keeping an eye on those "terrorists"

I feel much safer knowing that those radical militant quakers and dangerous anti-nuke activists are being spied on.

Earlier this week NBC News exposed the existence of a secret Pentagon database to track intelligence gathered inside the United States. The database including information on dozens of anti-war protests and rallies particularly actions targeting military recruiting.

The list included: counter-military recruiting meetings held at a Quaker Meeting House in Lake Forth, Florida. Anti-nuclear protests staged in Nebraska on the 50th anniversary of the U.S. atomic bombing of Nagasaki. An anti-war protest organized by military families outside Fort Bragg in North Carolina. And a rally in San Diego to support war resister Pablo Parades. The Pentagon database described all of these events as threats. (continue the article at Democracy Now)

Good thing we're going to renew Patriot Act. I feel safer knowing that, when some crazed anti-war protester plans to set off a dirty bomb in Chicago, the military will be there to nip it in the bud. Yes, we should definitely take the advice of Georgy, Rummy and Dick and trust our government. Yep, those old post-Nixon restrictions on domestic surveillance are definitely antiquated.

What with all the dangerous war protestors, Quakers, anti-nuclear loonies and radical militant librarians we should probably just cut to the chase and bypass the Patriot Act by delcaring martial law until the War on Terrorism has been completely won (tm). The only way to protect our freedom is to destroy it.

Hopefully this seditious blog entry will be redacted by party censors soon seeing as how I'm probably blabbing state secrets by restating publicly accessible information.

Seen on Usenet

Remember usenet? That was the internet when I was a wee laddy. Here is an interesting quote I read in a usenet newsgroup today:

On the other hand: Lisp looks like a theoretical
optimum. It has a minimalistic way of structuring
hierarchical data, it has a minimalistic way of
expressing program structure as hierarchical data,
it has a minimalistic way of automatizing
writing program snippets. In this light it is
very well possible that a sufficiently advanced
civilization has Lisp, just as it is entirely possible
that it has a Go-like game. It would be a next
to impossible incident if this civilization had
a Chess-like game or Java because both are much
more arbitrary than Lisp or Go. Who knows how
well those extra-terristial Lispniks do in convincing
their compatriats adopting the language? Maybe
the first signal from space-alien will be a
flame-war between Lispniks and members of the
extra-terrestial equivalent of the ruling Java-mainstream.
(Tin Gherdanarra ...@gmail.com>)

Waiting for the bus

Waiting for the bus
Originally uploaded by funkyj.

I experimented with taking the 'highway 17 express' bus and the lightrail to get to work.

It was an interesting experiment. If I take the bus that arrrives at just the right time to immediately catch the light rail then I can get to work in about 1 hour 45 minutes (not including the trip between home and the bus stop). The commute by car takes 50 minutes. Uh yeah.

Cafe Baklava

Cafe Baklava
Originally uploaded by funkyj.

I asked this friendly waiter if I could take his picture and he kindly obliged me.

A few seconds after this picture he got suspicious of my motives and began asking me "WHY DO YOU WANT TO TAKE MY PICTURE?" over and over.

I may be wrong but this place has the feel of a family owned restaurant -- people who have a vested interest and care about the business are working here.

Oh, the food was very good and reasonably priced. A good place for an afforable lunch.

Gmail is on the fritz.

Apparently some (much?) of the email I've sent from gmail the past two days has been diverted to /dev/null. It appears that I'm receiving email at gmail just fine but sending is a problem.

It would be much nicer if gmail would at least let me know when I can't send email as opposed to silently failing (as it currently is). Oh well, here is a black eye for google.

Yum

IMG_2135
Originally uploaded by funkyj.

what a tasty looking slug