Friday, January 30, 2015

Thursday, January 29, 2015

Some links I don't want to lose: How to hack infocom

Not saying that this is entirely a legal document, but there's a manual for that http://xlisp.org/zil.pdf and (marked Infocom Confidential!) http://xlisp.org/zip.pdf and finally http://cowlark.com/vbcc-z-compiler/

The necessity of precise terms dealing in diversity

A wonderful article on terms in the neurodiversity sector, makes me wonder if similar terms could be useful in corporate diversity initiatives. A single individual cannot be diverse. They can be divergent from a norm, but not diverse. You need a group of people for diversity, more than one, likely more than two, depending on the minority you're trying to reach. I keep harping on how "Corporation X doesn't need more physical diversity, we need more neurodiversity". I hope the link above in this article explains a little by what I mean about that. But I think that there is some significant overlap between the two. A kid who has to drop out of high school to work to feed their family in the inner city may easily have as much engineering talent as the person whose family was able to support them through to a PhD; and the kid who due to autism was unable to talk until age 25 and who barely squeaked through school with a 2.0 GPA, may have hidden skills and talents that will give us the next great leap along Moore's law. This to me counts for far more than what color a person's skin is or what gender they are. Note how I avoided any sort of physically descriptive language in the above- this is not just PC, it's making a point of how we should recruit a more diverse workforce- entirely blind of the physical attributes, or lack thereof. High Tech runs on brains, not brawn. On intellect, not beauty. And it is not a person's looks that the next innovation will come from.

Saturday, January 24, 2015

Is "Once Gay Always Gay" merely nazi propaganda?

Where Our Modern Malaise Began | The Christian Review:



'via Blog this'



The strange connection between "immutable" sexual orientation and the German need to exterminate the excess population.

The view of economics from Hell

Under the Bridge: Human Economics is a very interesting, semi - anonymous work in the same vein as Screwtape



Edit 2, link fixed. No longer anonymous.

Wednesday, January 21, 2015

Work on the Gluttony, ignore the Despair

But the problem with that is, the Despair causes thoughts of wanting to give up, and Gluttony is an extremely comfortable and slow form of suicide. I must break out of this cycle.

Monday, January 19, 2015

Friday, January 16, 2015

I may not always agree with the politics at Intel

But when it sets its mind on a solution, this company can do wonders. A little under four months ago, a baby girl lost her life at Jones Farm in a tragic accident. Today, Intel released a product that will greatly help preventing such accidents in the future. What a Great Place to Work!

Somehow, I don't think those in the Midwest are convinced

This just in my e-mail from CNN:
2014 was Earth's warmest year on record, a U.S. weather agency announced today, with average temperatures 0.07 degrees Fahrenheit above the previous high.
The National Climatic Data Center, a division of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, noted the average temperatures over land and oceans were higher in 2014 than any year since 1880, when record-keeping began.
This past December also had the third-highest average global land temperature -- out of any December in the past 135 years -- at 2.45 degrees Fahrenheit above average, according to the same agency.


The problem with climatology is that it deals in averages, and local conditions may not fit averages. I think the midwesterners who were dealing with temperatures down to -50 F in December *might* find this data hard to believe.

Thursday, January 15, 2015

It is not useful to attempt to heal division by creating new division.

It is ridiculous to pretend that anything other than sheer brainpower should count in high tech for hiring or firing anybody. If you need affirmative action in your high tech company, then it is highly likely that your hiring managers have forgotten that NOTHING aside from brainpower counts.

Monday, January 12, 2015

I have a dream

That one day my son will be judged on the content of his character, not his report card or the color of his skin.

Tuesday, January 6, 2015

Prudential Judgement

The defense given, on both the left and the right, for ignoring Church Teaching is often "Prudential Judgement"- that is the judgement of the prudent. But the meaning of the word "prudent" has changed over the centuries. Prudent today often seems to mean selfish- it certainly means self-sustaining. But this was not always so.

In the world of contraceptive mentality, having a small family today is prudent, for it means that everybody in the family can be fed. 200 years ago this was not so; having a large family was prudent, because it increased the likelihood that the whole family would be pulled out of poverty by one of the many children striking it rich. Thus, 10 children in a family was not uncommon, and was an investment in the future, not the wasted money that it appears to be today.

Likewise on the other side of things, almsgiving before Ayn Rand was seen as a prudent measure; for he who closes his ears to the pleas of the poor will one day cry out himself in need, and have nobody around to hear.

Thus I say, those who cry out for prudential judgement in support of sexual or fiscal hedonism, are in fact not exercising prudential judgement, because they themselves are not prudent.

Saturday, January 3, 2015

Is it really the war between the sexes, or the war among the sexes?

I don't often link to the New York Times so you know when I do, it's something really special. Polling data doesn't match the current political parties and idealism. Those of us who vote in the 2%, based on morality, already knew that.
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Oustside The Asylum by Ted Seeber is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.
Based on a work at http://outsidetheaustisticasylum.blogspot.com.