rjray.org    Powered by Blosxom
 

Licensing:
This work licensed under a Creative Commons License:
creativecommons.org

Friends:
+ raelity bytes
+ paul e. [LJ]
+ Rain Graves
+ gnat [use Perl;]

Syndication feeds:
# RSS 1.0 format
# Atom 0.3 format

My other sites:
- Silicon Valley Scale Modelers
- Book page for Programming Web Services With Perl

Other journals I read:
= DJ Adams
= rebecca blood
= Tim Bray
= Margaret Cho
= Warren Ellis
= Neil Gaiman
= Rafael Garcia-Suarez
= John Gorenfeld
= Lawrence Lessig
= Michael McCracken
= Jeff Vogel
= Norm Walsh
= Wil Wheaton

My journal at use.perl.org:
· Restless
· RPC-XML-0.57.tar.gz uploaded to PAUSE
· RPC-XML-0.56.tar.gz uploaded to PAUSE
· RPC-XML-0.55.tar.gz uploaded to PAUSE
· Forgive Me, Bretheren Monks
· Extry Extry: Winer Leaves the RSS Advisory Board
· RPC::XML 0.54 Uploaded
· The Books of Perl
· Good Intentions Don't Equal Good Results
· Errata Tracking Page for PWSWP
· Image::Size 2.992 Uploaded
· Props to Portland PM
· Lightning Talks
· OSCON, Tuesday
· OSCON Plans Now Set



» Blogs that link here

Powered by Technorati

We will never have true civilization until we have learned to recognize the rights of others. — Will Rogers

For Some Values of 'Revolutionary' 2005.01.03.06:03

Time Magazine has named President Bush their 2004 Person of the Year. On the magazine cover itself, it refers to him as "American Revolutionary". This just offends me to no end, in some ways moreso than the elections themselves.

We've just spent a year putting up with the dirtiest, most negative presidential campaign in modern memory. People played up the "Swift Boat Veterans for Truth" <cough> ad campaigns as though they were truth from above, despite the fact that no one in the ads served with Kerry. Then they turned around and hung Dan Rather out to dry over some memos whose origins couldn't be proven 100%, ignoring the many other stories about his lack of attendance at his ANG posting. Our standing with the rest of the world has fallen to all-time lows, as has the standing of our currency on world markets. At our current rate, we'll be neither the world's leading economy nor the world's leader in tech innovation within 5-10 years. Money is being taken away from AIDS and family planning, while being given to groups like the Rev. Moon's Unification Church or groups/people closely associated.

Revolutionary, indeed. The line between church and state is more blurred than it has been in probably 50 years or more. And there are clearly people out there who want that line gone. People who voted for Bush strictly on the grounds of his (loudly and frequently) proclaimed faith. People who would support the Alabama congressman who called for all books depicting or promoting anything to do with homosexuality taken from public libraries and destroyed. He got a private meeting with Time's PotY. Several, in fact.

People in general, and Time in particular, seem to have forgotten that this country wasn't founded by people like George W. Bush, Pat Roberston, Jerry Falwell or John Ashcroft. It was founded by people who left England to get away from people like George W. Bush, Pat Roberston, Jerry Falwell and John Ashcroft. Going backwards to that isn't revolutionary, it's de-evolutionary.

# [/politics]


Who Am I:
Randy J. Ray
Software Engineer

www·rjray·org
<rjray@rjray.org>

Buy my book!

cover
Programming Web Services with Perl


I've also contributed three chapters to:

cover
Computer Science & Perl Programming

Category quick-links:

Archive:

March
S M T W T F S
           
24 25 26 27 28 29
30 31          

2008
Months
Mar
Apr May Jun
Jul Aug Sep
Oct Nov Dec

Reading and Re-reading
Current
cover
· The Annotated Thursday: G.K. Chesterton's The Man Who Would Be Thursday, G.K. Chesterton, Martin Gardner
· The Feeling Good Handbook, David D. Burns
· Organizing From the Inside Out, Julie Morgenstern
· XML Schema, Eric Van Der Vlist
· BEEP: The Definitive Guide, Marshall T. Rose

High in the queue
· Silk, Caitlin R. Kiernan
· Coldheart Canyon, Clive Barker
· Idoru, William Gibson
· Shared Source CLI Essentials, David Stutz, Ted Neward, Geoff Shilling

Recently finished
· Planetary Vol. 3: Leaving the 20th Century, Warren Ellis, et al

Recommended favorites
· The Cowboy Wally Show, Kyle Baker
· Lost Souls, Poppy Z. Brite
· The Alienist, Caleb Carr
· Quarantine, Greg Egan
· The Authority: Relentless, Warren Ellis et al.
· Planetary: All Over the World and Other..., Warren Ellis et al.
· American Gods, Neil Gaiman
· Good Omens, Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett
· Neuromancer, William Gibson
· A Philosophical Investigation, Philip Kerr
· Say You Want a Revolution (The Invisibles, Book 1), Grant Morrison et al
· You Are Worthless: Depressing Nuggets of..., Oswald T. Pratt and Scott Dickers
· Cryptonomicon, Neil Stephenson
· Rising Stars : Born In Fire (Vol. 1), J. Michael Straczynski

Powered by Blosxom [Valid RSS] Valid XHTML 1.0! Valid CSS! creativecommons.org