Discussion and Democracy

“…our democracy is in danger of being hollowed out. In order to reclaim our birthright, we Americans must resolve to repair the systemic decay of the public forum. We must create new ways to engage in a genuine and not manipulative conversation about our future…Americans in both parties should insist on the re-establishment of respect for the rule of reason.”
—Al Gore, from The Assault of Reason in Time Magazine

I started this blog after the 2004 election with a purpose to “write to create context for another to think.”

Whether it is morals, politics, technology and industry, or every day life, each of us has both a right and obligation to participate on the public forum. Thank you, the reader, for taking some of your time to be a part of this conversation.

Ed Finkler agrees with me

From Pro PHP Podcast:

Q: What do you think are the three largest failings of PHP and Security?

“I agree with some things that Terry Chay has said about this: that the things that tend to make PHP insecure also tend to be the things that make PHP easy to work with.”
Ed Finkler, PHP Security Expert, CERIAS

Thanks Ed. 🙂

Listen to the podcast. It’s a realistic assessment of the state of security in PHP.

[Some comments after the jump.]Continue reading

This happens way too often

“It hurts me to confess it, but I’d have given ten conversations with Einstein for an initial rendezvous with a pretty chorus girl… And how often, standing on the sidewalk involved in a passionate discussion with friends, I lost the thread of the argument being developed because a devastating woman was crossing the street at that very moment.”
—Albert Camus, “The Fall”

Reading too much…

“Sara would read anything you handed her…She read upon waking, sitting on the toilet, stretched out in the backseat of the car…If there was nothing else she would consume all the magazines and newspapers in the house—reading, to her, was a kind of pyromania—and when these ran out she would reach for insurance brochures, hotel prospectuses and product warranties, advertising circulars, sheets of coupon. Once I had come upon the spectacle of Sara, finished with the volume of C. P. Snow while only partway through on of the long baths she took for her bad back, desperately scanning the label on a bottle of Listerine.”
—Michael Chabon, “Wonder Boys”

I can relate.

This leads to the famous line in the movie: “She was a junkie for the
printed word. Lucky for me, I manufactured her drug of choice.”

True Trucker

Toyota ultimately decided to pursue customers it calls “true truckers.” True truckers aren’t ordinary pickup owners; rather, these men are the Platonic ideal of truck-driving authenticity. They might work on the ranch or the construction site; they might fish for bass every weekend. “They’re the taste makers, the influentials,” Ernest Bastien, a vice president of vehicle operations, told me in San Antonio. “I think all consumers are influenced by professionals. The professional uses a certain tool, and then they want it, too.”
—Jon Gertner, “From 0 to 60 to World Domination, The New York Times

A body is meant to be seen…

Seen while getting some brandy for my apples…

A body is meant to be seen…

A body is meant to be seen…
Safeway, Sunnyvale, California

Lumix DMC-LX1
unprocessed raw
1/13 sec @ f/2.8, iso 200, 6.3mm (28mm)

“Like the starlet, a bottle of good Merlot is generally soft, sensuous, and uncomplicated—offering the ripe, jammy fullness of a fine Cabernet Sauvingnon without its complexity or tannic backbite. It is the wine equivalent of Monroe’s sultry, dulcet voice signing “Happy birthday, Mr. President.”—not intellectually engaging but a delight nonetheless.”
—Mark Oldman, “Oldman’s Guide to Outsmarting Wine

Hmm, sounds a lot like my conference talks. Which, coincidentally, are about the only time I get to drink merlot.

[more random thoughts after the jump]Continue reading

Torture as a negotiable virtue

“A civility that considers torture a negotiable virtue is a civility long past redemption.

I will take my values real but rough, and leave ‘values’ of a David Broder or David Brooks where they lie — abandoned in the name of centrist balance, hollowed from disuse, weakened so as not to offend or provoke.

I would rather face God with this voice than the other.”
—Hunter, commenter on “Why I’m mad: An open letter to David Broder from a fellow journalist” defending “vituperative, foul-mouthed bloggers on the left”

The linked article, from Will Bunch, a senior writer for the Philadelphia Daily News, is also a great read.Continue reading

An unlikely vehicle

“Ned Lamont is an unlikely vehicle. It’s always unlikely people who turn history. It must be God has a funny sense of humor. In my imagination, I see the meeting in heaven when they say it’s time to really deal with this war: ‘We need a messenger to send to the Democratic Party.’ And an angel says, ‘I got this guy in Connecticut, a real goofy, rich Greenwich, Connecticut, white guy who in Harlem would be like Gomer Pyle. Let’s make him the candidate.I can see everyone falling down laughing. And look where we are this morning. I tell you one thing: I don’t think Joe Lieberman is laughing. No matter how this night ends, he ain’t laughing. They’re gonna have to rethink the whole centrist strategy. Democrats everywhere are going to have to rethink their strategy. It’s just amazing.”
—Reverend Al Sharpton, quoted in “The Kiss of Death

I think this quote because God has a sense of humor.Continue reading

Which side of history will you be on?

“This is about honest government. This is about preserving our civil liberties. This is about separation of church and state. This is about competence. Anyone that doesn’t have grave doubts about this administration after these past six years is not interested in anything but power.

This is a defining moment in American history. Which way are we going to go? Are we going to let our fear of terrorism turn us into something our forefathers would not recognize? Or will we come to our senses and realize that we have faced much more dangerous threats in the past and we survived without giving up all of our civil liberties?

Which side of history will you be on?”
—Proud Liberal, comment on Balloon Juice

The most powerful weapon in the United States

“Our most formidable weapon is not our military strength, but rather our democratic ideals… It therefore seems oxymoronic that we would embrace a strategy that requires that we toss aside that strength in order to engage in a conflict on the terms we claim to abhor from our perceived enemies.”
—Byron Williams, “What is the Real Strength of the United States

This argument centers around the basic question of whether our legacy is that of our democratic ideals and sense of justice, or if we will follow the trajectory of all empires. These arguments seem more powerful to me because they are couched in moral terms, not just practical ones.