Interesting: Thomas Sowell makes a convincing case for voting for Arnold, and a man ships himself home in a wooden cargo crate.
If you’re wondering where the real content is, I’m busy with my job, grad school, and a introduction to Objectivism that I’m writing for the meeting tomorrow. I’ll be sure to link it here when I’m done with it.
If you’re a regular reader of my blog, you know that I got a job last week. There’s a very good chance that my boss/coworkers visit this site, so I’ll do my best to refrain from slandering any of them — not that I have any cause to. Actually, my mom reads my blog whenever I don’t answer the phone, and if I don’t moderate my comments for her, I doubt I would for anyone else. (Don’t worry mom, last week’s hangover was the first time in a long while – I can’t afford that much alcohol very often.)
Anyway, I will be doing hardcore .Net programming at work, and extending and applying what I learn at home as well. My homepage, which was originally created in plain html, converted to php, then converted to asp, then converted to .Net, and finally converted back to php, will probably be converted to VB.net and then C# as I apply my new knowledge to this site. Although I find LAMP to be a better solution in many cases, .Net offers power and features that are unmatched by any other solution. (If you’re interested in a comparison of the two, check out Microsoft’s take on MSDN. Although the disadvantages of .Net are mysteriously left out, the superiority of .Net as a platform is made very clear.)
In any case, I am looking for potential projects that I can use as a learning experience for .Net. If you would are looking for someone to design your interactive non-profit website, let me know, and I might do it gratis.
Finally, all those wanna-be 1337 h4x0r’s have a search engine of their own .
(Props to Tim for the link)
Yahoo reports that Abbas has resigned as prime minister and Arafat is once again in charge of the terrorist support organization known as the PLO. Has the “peace process” failed? Are more attacks on Israel forthcoming?
I think that the “resignation” is a positive turn of events in Israel’s war against terrorism. Despite the pretence of change in the Palestinian leadership, Abbas was never in charge of the PLO. He has been Arafat’s close confederate for many years and is just as responsible for the terrorism the PLO has carried out as Arafat. When Bush made it clear to Arafat that he would refuse to deal with him, Arafat chose his right-hand man as a puppet through whom he expected to prolong his hold on power. My guess is that Abbas was so impressed with the respect he got from Bush and Sharon, that he let his position go to his head and crossed Arafat. In an attempt to gain legitimacy, he supported a truce between Israel and the three main terrorist organizations (Hamas, Islamic Jihad and the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades) that was doomed from the start. In retaliation, Arafat used his control over the terrorist groups intensify the attacks on Israel, ending the “truce,” and dispelling any pretense that Abbas was in charge of the PLO or able to control the terrorist groups under Arafat’s leadership.
Abbas’ ouster benefits Israel because Bush cannot pressure Israel to negotiate with any more terrorists, at least not until Arafat chooses another collaborator to present as his “successor.” With Abbas out of the picture, Israel can resume its badly-needed hunt for terrorist leaders. If its attacks are to be successful however, they must not be tainted with the same timid uncertainty and moral compromising as America’s attack on Iraq. As Mike pointed out, during the latest failed attack on the head of Hamas, “the attack failed because Israel used a smaller bomb to avoid harming civilians.” Israel may have saved a civilian life or two, but by failing to kill the leader of Hamas, it has virtually guaranteed that dozens of innocent Israeli civilians will die. If he wants to win the war, (and that’s what it is) Sharon must learn to stop apologizing for civilian casualties and defend Israel with the same uncompromising and unrelenting attitude as those who wish to destroy it.
Wired has an article on “A Support Group for Spammers” if you’re into that stuff. If you hate spam as much as I do, I recommend one of the server-side filtering tools, such as SpamAssassin. It filters out over 99% of spam when properly configured. If your ISP doesn’t provide you with a proper spam filter, ask me, and I’ll give you a free full-featured @freecapitalists.org or @objectivismonline.com email account.
Check out Harry Binswanger’s editorial The Ten Commandments vs. America. I think Harry’s theme is a good way to point out the contradictions between Christian and American values. That and the quotes on the Religion vs. America page @ ARI. It’s scary how many otherwise intelligent people claim that “America was not founded on a principle of separation of church and state.” (If you read the Monday’s op-ed in the Batt, you know who I’m talking about.)
Btw, the editorial started as a post on the HBL listserv. At $10 a month, the subscription is a bit pricey for a college student like me, but the high quality of the content is hard to beat.
Socialist healthcare policies are bankrupting doctors and killing untreated patients. If you believe that doctors should not be made slaves to bureaucrats and patients, support Americans for Free Choice in Medicine.
Not satisfied with forcing flush-twice (or thrice, if you’re in CA) toilets on unsuspecting Americans and creating numerous toilet smuggling outfits along our borders, enviro-wackos are pushing the “dry flush” variety to developing countries . These monstrosities start around $2000 and closely resemble the unsanitary, disease-ridden, unheated, and putrid outhouses our ancestors had to use before the invention of flush toilets. The new variety “improves” on that design by forcing you to regularly empty the toilet — presumably on your crops. After all, we wouldn’t want to deprive ringworms and other assorted parasites of their “right” to continue infecting us.
(Props to Tim for the link.)
Going along with the theme of my previous post, I would like to review the progress of this blog, and perhaps inspire some of my readers to start their own (and feed my already super-sized ego.) I started blogging 16 months ago to improve my writing, thinking, and web-design skills. 595 entries later, the blog has been far more successful than I expected. My literary abilities still need much improvement, but there have been many tangible results. Traffic has grown from nil to 2155 unique hits and 5364 visits this August. Google and Blogshares count 75 and 44 links to my homepage, respectively. When the value of incoming links is measured, my site is in the 644th place (with .0082% marketshare) among the Blogshares top-valued blogs, placing it in the top 1% of blogs by any standard. The success of my homepage has inspired me to start several other sites, and several people to start their own blogs, some of which may soon outpace mine in traffic. Many of my sites are growing at near-exponential rates, which makes me excited for the future and worried about how much it will cost me to host everything.
Although I blog primarily for myself, I appreciate all the tips and comments I get. My fall schedule will allow me little time to read the news and surf the blogosphere, so I’ll be even more dependent on your submissions. To help my marketing efforts and test my new polling script, please let me know how you came across my site.
Tomorrow, I start my first full-time semester in grad school and my first “serious” job. I don’t consider these events very important in themselves, but in a way, tomorrow is the first day of the rest of my life. Unlike my liberal arts education, the classes and the job I have now are aimed at preparing me for my future vocation and formerly tentative musing about my future have been replaced by a clear focus on where I want to be, and what I must do to get there.
During the four years of my undergraduate education, I went through a process of intellectual discovery and application of my knowledge to my values and goals. I think that skipping the usual “rebellious teen” phase made my exposure to the vast variety of influences on campus more earnest and open-minded. For good and bad, my passion for ideas took me from one group to another as I sought to find people who shared my view of the world. For various periods, I was a webmaster of the Aggie Democrats, my corps outfit, the Aggie Libertarians, the Aggie Review, and then the Objectivist Club. I saw the consequences of corrupt philosophies firsthand and I finally found one that made sense. I am just beginning to integrate my philosophy with my life; and while the details have yet to be filled in, I am certain of my values and of my goals. I know who I am and what I want to become. In the words of Ayn Rand, I am “a being of self-made soul.”