An open letter to Java programmers and Evolutionists:

Evolutionary theory is generally expressed in terms of the principal of Survival of the Fittest. Survival of the fittest, of course, states that the goal of organisms is to survive and thrive.

Our tendency to do the above stated is unfortunate, and is furthermore an indication of our limitated capacity to be precise in our scientific discourse

Survival itself, being a principal of Naturalism and Evolution, clearly supersedes the potentially infinite set of principles that could govern evolution completely by random chance. It’s not that survival IS the goal, or even that survival is SUPPOSED to be the goal, but rather that, because the things that ,by completely random chance, have traits favoring survivability will tend to survive, survival APPEARS to be the goal when processed by the human mind.

Things like goals are constructs of the intellect. The intellect, we are told, has evolved over time in such a way as to aid our survivability. To the extent that the capacity to develop and utilize the concept of a goal has aided our survivability, it should be included in the evolutionary lexicon – BUT TO NO GREATER EXTENT. The concept of goals in a non-incarnate process are present because they are injected into the reality by the observer of the reality, not because they are fundamental to or contained within the nature of the reality.

This rather reminds me of the inversion of control (IoC) design pattern.(AKA Dependency Injection). Thinking of survival as a goal as akin to having object A instantiate object B and then use it’s services. Object B is inextricably linked to object A, because object A is in complete control of object B’s creation, formation, and deletion. So, evolution in this scenario is heavily influenced by the goal of survivability.

IoC states that we are to use a setter method to place a reference to an instance of object B within object A. Therefore, class B is being superimposed on class A by some observing or controlling entity, and class A, while using public methods of class B, has very little control over it from an object lifecycle standpoint. This is akin to the observer (a human scientist) superimposing the goal of survivability on the process of evolution, which has no such goal, knowledge thereof, nor concern there-for.

And, then there’s my firmly held position: You’re all hosed. Do you people have nothing better to do than think? WTF?

Joe

On Morning wood

Yep – I love Morning Wood.
The band.

Fix you (Cold Plat) also an extremely good video.

Excellent post concerning wikepedia and open source

Click Title for link...

QUOTE: "Letting the light in is not anarchy. A demand of consensus is not mob rule.
It's the scientific method in action."

Dollar General Saves Christmas

A series of unforunate expendatures related primarily to my home and vehicles has led me to a sorry state of affiars. Specifically: of having only $480 to spend this Christmas. I must admit that I'm amaized at how much Christmas $480 WON'T BUY.

If you're like me, you hear $480, and think, "Hey, that's a lot of money."
Au Contraire. In the Christmas scheme of things, $480 is a pittance. It's barely worth mentioning. It's a feeble drop in the gaping maw of a devouring capitalist bucket.

Bless God for Dollar General, which I'd like to think feeds on the detritus of corporate evil as opposed to making executives fat on the blood of the working poor. I was able to buy my children toys which they are going to GENUINELY ENJOY for very little $$$. Niiiiiiiiice. :)

Add to the the 60% off jewelry sale at ShopKo, and I'm good, baby. I'm good.

http://www.lemonysnicket.com/index.cfm
http://www.dollargeneral.com/
http://www.shopko.com/index.jsp

Brilliant - the churn continues

If I have to learn one more way to bit-fiddle , I'm going to bloody-well rampage.

Grrrrrrrrr.

Twisted Transistor (KORN)

We're like barbequeue. We're all different meats, but we're smothered in the same sauce.
Yeah.

Veterans Day

First, we all owe our veterans a big thank-you. I think that the vast majority of people who populate the US would agree to this.

I believe that we also owe our veterans an apology. Americans at large have been so concerned that they not appear unpatriotic or anti-soldier, that we have allowed ourselves to be lead down this descent into Iraqi madness.When did not supporting a war and not supporting our troops become synonymous?I don’t support the war in Iraq precisely BECAUSE I support my friends in uniform.

I understand the invasion of Afghanistan. Sending my friends there to fight and die is a terrible price, but I get it.

Sending my friends to Iraq is WRONG. It’s an irresponsible and evil way to spend PEOPLE.

Defending the position:
Let’s go back in time a bit, to just after 9/11. The US is hot and heavy in Afghanistan, and trying to catch Bin Laden.Even if we assume that Iraq has WMD, it still doesn’t make sense to invade Iraq. Militarily, we are unprepared to take on a second front in the "War on Terror", and it will quite obviousely stretch us WAYYY to thin. (I saw this coming. Why didn’t the “professionals” who are supposed to run things?) More importantly (from a military goals perspective), it will pull troops and resources away from our primary objective, which is the capture of OBL.

I’ve spent the last 8 years or so (still in the context of just after 9/11) listening to George Bush the senior & Colin Powel (much respect to both) expound on all of the really good reasons that they didn’t go all the way to Baghdad in the first place. And you know what? Those reasons still apply.

At best, the invasion of Iraq was incompetence. At worst, it’s the Rich settling personal scores or reaping personal gain with the blood of the poor (again).

Add to that the judgments that we can make in hindsight, and it the whole thing fails to pass any sniff-test you’d like to give it.
I support my friends. I support our troops. This war is Crap.