Ryan vs. Dorkman

If you haven't already seen the Ryan vs Dorkman light saber duel yet, check it out. It is excellent.

Enjoy!

Global Warming Myth

Check out The Great Global Warming Swindle. It's long but interesting.

While you're at it, plug into Google this search criteria: "environmentalism new religion". When I did it, I got 1.2 million hits.

Joel on Software

Techies and rational epistemologists, check this out—
www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000018.html. A colleague brought the article by Joel Spolsky to my attention. Spolsky is sharp!

His article's first paragraph covers the basic pattern of abstraction. At the same time, it shows the danger of abstracting without anchoring your abstractions to reality—i.e., you get "really vague and nobody really knows what they're talking about any more."

Spolsky does a good job of clearly summarizing the type of nonsense that is commonly inflicted not only on good programmers but also laypeople trying to purchase their services.

My favorite excerpts follow:

That's one sure tip-off to the fact that you're being assaulted by an Architecture Astronaut: the incredible amount of bombast; the heroic, utopian grandiloquence; the boastfulness; the complete lack of reality. And people buy it! The business press goes wild!

It's nice that we can use XML now for the format on the wire. Whoopee. But that's about as interesting to me as learning that my supermarket uses trucks to get things from the warehouse. Yawn. Mangos, that's interesting. Tell me something new that I can do that I couldn't do before, O Astronauts, or stay up there in space and don't waste any more of my time.

P.S., I'm impressed enough with Spolsky to add his article archive to my list of favorite links.