Anyone who cannot cope with mathematics is not fully human. At best he is a tolerable subhuman who has learned to wear shoes, bathe, and not make messes in the house.

—Lazarus Long


Archive for July, 2002

Right back at ya, Captain

Monday, July 29th, 2002

Last Saturday morning in San Diego I had breakfast with Steven den
Beste, the redoubtable captain of U.S.S. Clueless. One of the
side-effects of that meeting was a long
critique of open-source development. Herewith my response.
Steve and I agree on the scaling problem that has pushed software
development efforts to the ragged edge of what is [...]

Run Silent, Go Feep

Sunday, July 21st, 2002

Warning: The following blog entry provides way more than the
recommended daily allowance of geeking. If you don’t have a serious
propeller-head streak, surf outta here now before it’s too
late.
I’m mainly a software guy, but occasionally I build PCs for fun.
Design them, rather; the further away I stay from actual hardware the
happier it usually is for everybody. [...]

The Non-Portability of Barbecue

Thursday, July 18th, 2002

(Originally titled: Travelling in Texas)
I was on the road in Texas last week, addressing Linux user groups in
Dallas and Austin. I always enjoy visiting Texas. It’s a big, wide-open
place full of generous people who cultivate a proper appreciation of some
of my favorite things in life — firearms, blues guitar, and pepper sauces.
And, of [...]

Diet Considered as a Bad Religion

Wednesday, July 17th, 2002

A current New York Times news story, What If It’s All Been A Big Fat Lie, entertainingly chronicles the discovery that low-fat diets are bad for people. More specifically, that the substitution of carbohydrates like bread and pasta and potatoes for meat that we’ve all had urged on us since the early 1980s is [...]

Winning the War Against Terror

Wednesday, July 3rd, 2002

(Final essay of the series.)
In previous essays in this series, I have described
Islam as a warlike and bloody religion subject to periodic fits of
violent fundamentalist revival. I have analyzed the roots of Islamic
terror in the Koranic duty of jihad, and elucidated Osama bin Laden’s
goal as nothing less than the destruction of the West and [...]