Another Conversative Perspective Worth Reading

www.professorbainbridgec.com

Again, anyone who knows me will realize what my political views are. More importantly, I believe it is important to read for yourself the views expressed by those you agree with and especially those who you may disagree.

I came across Professor Bainbridge's blog completely by accident. I was reading reviews on alternative history books by Harry Turtledove. One of the reviews stuck out from the rest I had read up to that point which was written Professor Bainbridge. I went on to read some more of his reviews on corporate law texts and decided to visit his blog.

Good reading & writing. Agree or Disagree, what is important is to have each side of each side of each issue be presented in a thoughtful, coherent, rational and objective fashion (at least, as objective as possible). I always try to find the good arguments for each side of our political issues. Not the usual three to five paragraph op-ed piece, but actual arguments with references, footnotes, and original sources of data cited. Naive...I know.

Each side of our various political debates seems to be dominated by the Uber-Partisians. It is time for the name calling, baiting, sound bytes, half-truths, and electioneering to cease and time for serious thoughts, debates, and discussions on the serious topics facing our respective nations.

Where have I been?

As some of you have noticed, I haven't been posting as often as usual. Well, no good reasons, just oddly, I got very frustrated with the Blogger software and its complete lack of performance. It actually got quite unnerving.

I understand better than most how difficult it is to make web & internet applications run. It is exceptional difficult to make them run fast all of the time. Because of this understanding, I tend to be very tolerant of minor performance issues as well as the occasional outage.

Blogger.com was just terribly slow or inoperable for much of December. At least, for me, despite having a very good high speed connection at work and a solid DSL link at home.

Was it just me or Blogger.com, I don't know, but I intend to investigate.

I will keep you posted.

Let's Pass on the Inaugural Celebration!

A recent article in Citizen-Times got me to thinking about the money our government spends to celebrate itself. I have always thought the inaugural Celebrations were always a bit excessive for my tastes but perhaps I could be convinced that they were even needed at the beginning of a new President's first term. However, I have always felt the these types of celebrations of a sitting president's second term was wasteful and redundant especially considering our current and increasing national debt, tens of thousands of service members in combat areas overseas constantly in harm's way, returning veterans and their families who need our support and Indian Ocean tsunami tragedy.

I intend on writing our Vermont congressional delegation and expressing my opinion that we should forego the celebration and get back to work on the urgent and immediate problems at hand.

If you support these inaugural celebrations, you should write your congressional delegations and tell them.

Whatever your thoughts or opinions, you should participate in the various political processes in a respectful & thoughtful manner.

Linux Advocacy

Linux Advocacy by Joe Shaw is a good article on general technical advocacy. However, I will suggest that it is a good overview of advocacy in general.

Real Player/Real One ... Yuk!

I have been truly disappointed in Real Player/Real One. I find the "free" Real Player installation to be akin to malicious "AdWare".

This blog Link has a comprehensive article and summarizes my thoughts and feelings on the whole "Real Player" issue. If WinAmp can do this without being malicious or annoying, why can't Real One? In many ways, Real One is becoming more like Microsoft every year which is the ultimate irony considering Real One's history.

I will not miss AG John Ashcroft

The Ashcroft Raids

AG John Ashcroft's use of "preventive detentions" in the fight against terrorists yielded zero convictions out of almost 5000 detentions.

I will not miss AG John Ashcroft.

The Quest for a Recumbent Bicycle

My quest continues. On the back of a jeep, I spied a Burly Cantos recumbent bicycle. Its design peaked my engineering interest & eye. Simple, direct, and lazy...I like it. The Burley company is quite interesting as well. I am not sure if I will buying a recumbent soon, but I will certainly be looking at Burley recumbent bicycles.