A life in words

  • Young Tsarnaev

    There’s your bomber. You’re looking at the face of the kid the Boston paramilitary police were hunting for. By the time they found him hiding in a boat, his brother had been killed in a firefight. Children of one of imperialism’s most brutal conflicts, five thousand miles from their parents, drifting in a place not…

  • A Nerdly, Software-Engineering-ish, Computer-Sciencey Approach to the Gay Marriage Debate

    Gay marriage is a proposed change that’s hoped to be an optimization. Advocates say that the current system (society) is sub-optimal in that a particular sub-system (marriage) is not sufficiently general (same-sex couples aren’t allowed to participate). Let’s say marriage is a function by which a man and a woman are combined to create an…

  • Re: Anonymous

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nSrDRnqpMCY So Anonymous (quintuple slogan: “We are Anonymous, We are legion, We never forgive, We never forget, Expect us.”) is at it again, defacing the DOJ sentencing website (including the above video) and threatening release of Justice Department secrets. Gotta say the production quality on the video is surprisingly good. The voice sounds like a…

The common and continual mischiefs of the spirit of party are sufficient to make it the interest and duty of a wise people to discourage and restrain it. It serves… to distract the public councils and enfeeble the public administration. It agitates the community with ill-founded jealousies and false alarms, kindles the animosity of one part against another, foments occasionally riot and insurrection [and] opens the door to foreign influence and corruption….George Washington, Farewell Address