In a recent blog entry I mentioned that Islam appears to have begun life as a mildly schismatic Christian sect. In the comments on that entry someone called for sources. Here is what I know about this: (First, a note on my general background: I am neither a Christian nor a Moslem, and in fact… Continue reading Mohammed was a Christian
Nuke ’em for Christ
Pat Robertson, the same paragon of Christian virtue who has opined in the past that Wiccans like me should be burned alive the way they used to in the good old days, just created an interesting dilemma for me by suggesting that the State Department should be nuked. As a pagan anarchist, I’m completely uninterested… Continue reading Nuke ’em for Christ
No Flies On The U.S.
In his recent article Flypaper: A Strategy Unfolds, Andrew Sullivan trots out some confirming evidence for the theory that the U.S. is pursuing a “flypaper strategy” in Iraq — encouraging the Islamist terror network to fight American soldiers there so they won’t be attacking American civilians here. Mr. Sullivan’s analysis is plausible. Plausible enough that… Continue reading No Flies On The U.S.
If Guns Are Outlawed, Outlaws Will Use Crossbows
This happened about 15 minutes from where I live: Police in West Chester are looking for an assailant they believe used a crossbow to shoot a pedestrian from a passing SUV. The victim, a restaurant worker who was walking home along High Street early Sunday morning, was shot in the stomach with a 16-inch hunting… Continue reading If Guns Are Outlawed, Outlaws Will Use Crossbows
Statism — Love It Or Leave It
For many years I’ve been seeing proposals for implementing libertarian reforms that look superficially appealing and plausible, but on closer examination run hard aground either on some pesky reality of politics as it is or the extreme difficulty of waging a successful revolution. Since I’m a libertarian, you may well imagine that I find this… Continue reading Statism — Love It Or Leave It
One year later…
One year ago today, the World Trade Center fell in flames. And that very day, just a few hours after the event, I wrote the following: QUOTE BEGINS Some friends have asked me to step outside my normal role as a technology evangelist today, to point out in public that a political panic reaction to… Continue reading One year later…
An Open Letter To Darl McBride
Mr. McBride: Late yesterday. I learned that you have charged that your company is the victim of an insidious conspiracy masterminded by IBM. You have urged the press and public to believe that the Open Source Initiative and the Free Software Foundation and Red Hat and Novell and various Linux enthusiasts are up in arms… Continue reading An Open Letter To Darl McBride
Brother, Can you Paradigm?
I just read an interview with my friend Tim O’Reilly in which he approvingly cited Thomas Kuhn’s “The Structure of Scientific Revolutions”. There are some books so bad, but so plausible and influential, that periodically trashing them in public is almost an obligation. The really classic stinkeroos of this kind, like Karl Marx’s Das Kapital,… Continue reading Brother, Can you Paradigm?
The Myth of Man the Killer
(An updated version of this essay lives here.) One of the most dangerous errors of our time is the belief that human beings are uniquely violent animals, barely restrained from committing atrocities on each other by the constraints of ethics, religion, and the state. It may seem odd to some to dispute this, given the… Continue reading The Myth of Man the Killer
Hacking and Refactoring
In 2001, there was a history-making conference of software-engineering thinkers in Snowbird, Colorado. The product of that meeting was a remarkable document called the Agile Manifesto, a call to overturn many of the assumptions of traditional software development. I was invited to be at Snowbird, but couldn’t make it. Ever since, though, I’ve been sensing… Continue reading Hacking and Refactoring
A Taxonomy of Cognitive Stress
I have been thinking about UI design lately. With some help from my friend Rob Landley, I’ve come up with a classification schema for the levels at which users are willing to invest effort to build competence. The base assumption is that for any given user there is a maximum cognitive load any given user… Continue reading A Taxonomy of Cognitive Stress
The Delusion of Expertise
I learned something this weekend about the high cost of the subtle delusion that creative technical problem-solving is the preserve of a priesthood of experts, using powers and perceptions beyond the ken of ordinary human beings. Terry Pratchett is the author of the Discworld series of satirical fantasies. He is — and I don’t say… Continue reading The Delusion of Expertise
Fascism Is Not Dead
Fascism is not dead. The revelations now coming out of Iraq about Baathist atrocities lend this observation particular point; Saddam Hussein was able to successfully imitate Hitler for three decades. Baathists using similar methods still run Syria, and elsewhere in the Islamic world there are militarist/authoritarian tendencies that run uncomfortably close to fascism. Recent events… Continue reading Fascism Is Not Dead
Some Christmas cheer
Some deeply warped Christmas humor here . Now, this Santa might get me the presents I really want. Like, say, a custom-tuned Baer .45 semiauto. Or Liv Tyler, fetchingly attired in nothing but a pair of Arwen ears. I actually did get a really peculiar Christmas present from a stranger this morning. It was a… Continue reading Some Christmas cheer
Away from Keyboard
I’ve on hiatus for a bit while I wrap up my next book, The Art Of Unix Programming. Blogspot comments
Sneering at Courage
One of the overdue lessons of 9/11 is that we can’t afford to sneer at physical courage any more. The willingness of New York firemen, Special Forces troops in Afghanistan, and the passengers of Flight 93 to put their lives on the line has given us most of the bright spots we’ve had in the… Continue reading Sneering at Courage
Social Security and the Demography Bomb
A friend of mine, Russ Cage aka Engineer-Poet, comments on my essay Demographics and the Dustbin of History: People used to have children to take care of them in their old age. Social Security took care of this by socializing the benefits, but all of the costs still fell to individuals; worse, taking time out… Continue reading Social Security and the Demography Bomb
Demographics and the Dustbin of History
Karl Zinsmeister’s essay Old and In The Way presents a startling — but all too plausible — forecast of Europe’s future. To the now-familiar evidence of European insularity, reflexive anti-Americanism, muddle, and geopolitical impotence, Zinsmeister adds a hard look at European demographic trends. What Zinsmeister sees coming is not pretty. European populations are not having… Continue reading Demographics and the Dustbin of History
Today’s treason of the intellectuals
The longest-term stakes in the war against terror are not just human lives, but whether Western civilization will surrender to fundamentalist Islam and shari’a law. More generally, the overt confrontation between Western civilization and Islamist barbarism that began on September 11th of 2001 has also made overt a fault line in Western civilization itself —… Continue reading Today’s treason of the intellectuals
When to shoot a policeman
A policeman was premeditatedly shot dead today. Now, I don’t regard shooting a policeman as the worst possible crime — indeed, I can easily imagine circumstances under which I would do it myself. If he were committing illegal violence — or even officially legal violence during the enforcement of an unjust law. Supposing a policeman… Continue reading When to shoot a policeman