What's the problem with posting comments to pending articles?
What's the problem with posting comments to pending articles?
Aha! Even my jaded tastes found this new trend interesting...
cbbrowne: Welcome back!
Anti-Americanness in Europe
A good antidote to the idea that lots of people express that
the European and American paths are now separating is
Eric Alterman's article in The Nation
USA Oui! Bush non!. The general gist I take from the article (and agree with) is
that while the Bush administration has done a lot of harm
to relations between the US and Europe in the short term, the
harm done doesn't go very deep since it reflects the views
of a relatively small elite in the USA, and there are
enough reserves of goodwill to repair the damage, on both sides of the Atlantic, when the Bush administration is gone.
Postscript
I don't suppose there is any chance that mitnick
is genuine? Reflects rather badly on the advogato trust metric in
any case...
W.r.t our ongoing and inconclusive argument about static vs. dynamic typing, I'd like to say that dynamic types make it harder for machines to make these assertions, and they do not discipline programmers to make these substitutions, compared to static types, but my objection to static types is that they achieve these goals at a high price in the complexity of program construction in cases that occur rather frequently.
Orwell unsainted
Some kind advogatan pointed to me an interesting
story
of
disillusionment with Orwell. Unfortunately I've forgotten
who that is and it is not on recentlog any more: please
email, whoever it is.
Postscript: Google finds it: it was wlach.
The Null Hypothesis for overcertification
It's been commented already that fxn
has certified a lot of people, but I don't think it has
been commented on just how good his certifications are.
Since there is some concern here to the effect that there
are too many undeserved master certifications, can I
suggest the null hypothesis that a master cert is an
overcert if fxn rates that person Journeyer or less?
I have found a few people I think deserve Master that
he certs Journeyer or less, but I haven't yet found any
counterexamples to the converse.
More politics
I can't seem to control my urge to put politics in my
diary entries, so... Excellent no-nonsense analysis in the New York Times by
Dilip Hiro: A couple of minor quibbles - firstly, the
Kurds are not a tribe, they are a colonial construct made
from several disinct peoples (with different languages) by
the British, secondly, I think the risk of an
Iran-like revolution in Iraq even with the caveats is overstated. Still, I think the conclusion I think is right - America will probably be generally liked in Iran if it doesn't stay too long in Iraq, and doesn't misuse Iraq as a pawn in its Middle-East strategy. Hard to figure out what the ever-secretive Bush administration actually plans to do.
Lastly, what is the attraction of lifelong socialist George Orwell for "leftist"-hating neoconservatives? A google search with leftism orwell turns up mostly neo-con sites: an extreme example is this neo-con warblog (complete with usual run of confused anti-arab hate speech), which has an Orwell quote close to the top-left hand corner of its root page. It's not just idiots like these people, intelligent neo-conservatives like Christopher Hitchens think they can wrap themselves in Orwell without any awarenes of how absurd they make themselves. The path from bad taste to intellectual dishonesty is a short one...
Postscript: yet more politics
An even more ironic abuse of Orwell is this neo-con weblog, I can't resist citing it:
I submit that Leftists of today should be defined less by their belief that inequality should never exist, but instead on the basis of a belief that ``superiority'' should never exist. All modern leftist beliefs flow inexorably from this view, including the most reprehensible opinion of them all: moral equivalence.(a criteria that Orwell clearly satisfies, so Orwell is just the sort of "leftist" this neo-con condemns)
In sum, a leftist proclaims that superiority should never exist, but in brilliant Orwellian fashion, once they are sure everyone else believes superiority is forbidden, take the mantle of leadership upon themselves, a one-eyed man among the blind, and use the lower classes' belief in self-gain ironically against them. Once everyone else believes in equality, the narcissistic leftist believes their own natural superiority will rise above the sea of commonality to lead their homogenous flock toward grazing.(aha! Orwell is invoked as an authority to condemn the immorality of the class of leftists to which he belongs. Simply the most wonderful pompous ignorance, I think I will congratulate the author...)
If logic is true, what is it true in virtue of? Is it true that if "The moon is made of green cheese and I am a Sophist" is true, then "The moon is made of green cheese" is true as well? If so, why? We can say: explanations have to end somewhere, so reasonable people just accept logic as being true. Perhaps, but that doesn't help us to see that logic is a system of truths, rather than just a useful technique.
I think that logical axioms are a bit similar to what Joseph Campbell thought about myths. Campbell said that myths were stories or assertions that we tell each other, not because we believe them, but because they help us create a framework of understanding between us. It isn't important whether myths are true or not, and maybe the best myths are obviously absurd, what matters is that lots of people know them and can use them as reference points when communicating and thinking of ideas that they would otherwise be at a loss to express. Logic I think is rather the same, except that it is important with logic that logic doesn't lead us into falsehood: logic must be, as Tarski put it, truth-preserving.
Media Quality
One of the threads that I have found interesting here on recentlog is discussion of news sources. If discussion of
political views proper causes more heat than light, perhaps
discussion of which are the better news sources is more
productive? Here's a suggestion: post links to the two or
three most interesting articles on Iraq you have read this year; my choices would be:
Continuing in this vein, I'd like to recommend this book review by Orville Schell of Eric Alterman's "What Liberal Media", a rebuttal of conservative arguments that the USA media is dominated by leftists, conveniently summarised here. Alterman also runs one of the most interesting political blogs, altercation.
Postscript: Patriotism and Dual-loyalties
Well, I couldn't resist it for long: I am going to break my short-lived resolution not to write any political soapbox messages, and weigh in on
a political issue. At the moment there is a lot of fuss
being made in the USA about groups of citizens with
"dual-loyalties", especially Jewish Americans whose
patritoic feelings for the USA are "compromised" by their
feelings of loyalty to Israel, so they advocate pro-Isreali
policies that are not in the USAs best interest. I think
this is a pernicious idea. Feelings of affection for
your country and fellow citizens are a good thing, so to
that extent I think patriotism is a virtue (those who doubt that patriotism is ever a good thing should read what George Orwell has written on Reverse Nationalism), but
"absolute loyalty" to your country is an evil, rightly
condemned by the infamous phrase "my country right or
wrong". Divided loyalties are good: when one feels ones
loyalties to different groups pulling in different
directions, this should be a call for rational reflection
and introspection. Most importantly, we should cultivate
a sense of feeling for mankind in general, the virtue that
Goethe called seeing yourself as a "world-citizen" above
that of the citizen of any nation. The virtue of loyalty
to what is good in your nation should be tempered by
a feeling of shame for the particular evil deeds that each nation is guilty of.
mglazer: Your definition of pattern (ie. " A pattern is matching elements repeated within the same string. ") doesn't specify if "testest" contains 1 or 2 occurrences of the pattern "test", which can potentially lead to subtle bugs.
davidw: Good luck with the move!
Thought for the day
Is today a good day to die?
I'm thinking about the ultimatum the gang of four have put to the UN, and the innocent victims war that would result from a war in Iraq. Perhaps more good than evil will be done by the coming conflict, but to revel in it, I think, is in the very worst taste.
Politics Free Zone revisited
cmm and raph both replied to
my last diary entry, both being rather less positive about the community standards here on Advogato than I was. A couple of points:
While I'm thinking about the almost-certain-to-come conflict, this article at the London Review of Books is about the best article I have read on the divisions created by the conflict. Raph gives this article at interesting-people.org high praise: I have some reactions to it, but they will have to wait until I have more time.
Proof of Correctness Wars
This ACM
article from last summer is required reading for the
now rather dormant discussion on web-based proof assistants.
I think it might already have been mentioned here on advogato, but it makes good points and I think folks
interested in the issues might benefit by looking over it
again. Serious point: I think if the not-too-clear ideas
going around about web-based proof assistants come to
something, then we will be revisiting this debate again.
Not so serious point: Dijkstra's halo doesn't look so firm
in this retrospective.
Postscript
fxn pointed out only ACM Portal users can access the above article: I'd be grateful for any pointers to non-crippled URLs of the text.
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