Yesterday I submitted my first ever fiction piece for publication. I doubt it will get accepted (it is my first submitted piece, after all), but I figured I should try.

Writing non-fiction is easy for me, but fiction is harder. Much harder. However, as any good writer knows, there are three rules to writing: write, keep writing and write more.

I generally have interesting ideas, but my characterization skills are a bit weak and I'm not terribly good at establishing the setting and atmosphere. To rectify that, I have am working through some writing exercises and thought I would share one with you.

The exercise is to pick up a book at random (preferably one you do not know), pull one sentence out of it and, without referring to the context, write keep writing from that sentence, without stopping, three times, each time taking off in a different direction. The sentence I read at random was:

"A man called Bruno seems to be their most colourful victim. Perhaps he chattered with angels too, so to speak."

So let's see how I handle this.

( Playing With Bruno )

Last night I went back to my old house in Ealing Broadway and picked a a few remaining things, got my deposit back from the landlord and hurt my back -- again -- by being stuck standing and stooped over on an overcrowded bus for half an hour. By the time Greg and I got home, I was in a poor mood, so I bought a bottle of Bruichladdich (whiskey) and Greg and I just sat, smoked, drank and chatted the remainder of the evening away. And that's when, without warning, I said:

I once knew a girl so stupid she had her eustachian tubes tied and now she can't hear her baby crying.

It was intended as a joke and I've no idea where it came from (I think I made it up on the spot and it's not particularly funny), but that's the strange way my mind has been working lately. In fact, plenty of strange things (words) are rummaging around in my brain. The other night, while washing the dishes and doing laundry, I walked over to my computer, opened it up, and wrote a seven page short story. It all just poured out of me. It's rather bizarre and I've no idea what's going on but I expect that stress from having so many things to juggle is part of it. I won't complain about it getting me writing again. I'll just go with the strange flow for now.

I sometimes write about the economics of software development because it's an important thing for software developers to understand, but due to a recent post here, I've decided to write about the reverse. No, I'm not talking about economics software, but rather, the lessons that software development can bring to economics.

( You can take your dogma and ... )

I read quite a bit, but I don't usually mention the books I read. When I started reading The Book Thief, I thought to myself "this is beautiful. I'll write a review of this book."

I can't. I don't remember the last time a book made me cry. I don't remember the last time I've read a book this achingly beautiful. It should be the last gasp, the final masterpiece, of an old writer, knowing he can do no more. Instead, the inside front cover has a handsome young man, incongruously smiling, staring back at me.

When I was younger, I used to fantasize about traveling back in time and writing the books I've read and receiving the acclaim and money for them. A small part of me would feel guilty for this intellectual theft, but I could never steal this book. Markus Zusak has written a masterpiece.

Since I sometimes need to explain to Leïla what various English words mean, or clarify fine points of grammar (something which I appear to be spectacularly unsuccessful at), I find myself thinking about the English language more. For example, I know what a matron and patron are, but while I know the word patronize, I've never heard the word matronize.

As it turns out, "matronize" really is a word, but unlike "patronize", it appears to have no pejorative connotations, unlike the masculine form of said word. Once again, men are reduced to second-class citizens.

/me whistles innocently as he strolls away.

Real incident. Fake names.

                 FADE IN:

                 INT. OFFICE - AFTERNOON

                 In a typical, non-descript office, sits OVID and his boss,
                 ALLEN.  In walks BILL, the IT director with a substantial
                 bandage over his nose.

                                          OVID
                              I gotta ask.  What the hell happened
                              to your nose?

                                          BILL
                                        (smiling)
                              Well, a developer wasn't getting his
                              work done.

                                          OVID
                              So you took a swing and he kicked your
                              ass, huh?

                                          ALLEN
                              Ovid, I think you need lessons in basic
                              anatomy.

                                          OVID
                              Depends on where his head was.

Once again, I still have my job, but Lord knows why.

(That's a screenplay format, in case you're wondering.)

In computer science there is a search algorithm known as the drunkard's walk (known boringly but diplomatically as a "random walk"). It's a long story, but basically, imagine an infinite city where you can only head north, south, east and west. In in an infinite amount of time, will a drunk leaving a bar and always heading in a random direction every block get back to his bar? Two or fewer dimensions, yes, the drunk will always return to his bar. In three or more dimensions, all bets are off.¹

The last drunkard's walk I took in real life was on the south bank of the River Thames. Not the Thames River. The River Thames. You've probably heard about the Mississippi River. You've probably heard about the Amazon River. You've probably not heard about the Thames River. You see, the Thames River is a river in Ontario, Canada. The "River Thames", however, flows through London. It is not the "Thames River".

I suspect this is a holdover from the year 1066, when William the Conqueror, the Duke of Normandy (for Americans: Normandy is in France), strolled into England, shot an arrow through the king's eye and moved into his flat, hoping no one would notice. That's why, even to this day, we refer to shooting an arrow through someone's eye as "the Battle of Hastings." Thus, France ruled England, French became the official language, and the English taught the French how to surrender. Today it's estimated that 40% of modern English is derived from the French language. That's why if you pronounce a polysyllabic word with a French accent, it's often the same word in French. For example, the word "imagination" in French is imagination, though presumably without the italics. This led to _sister_madly_ visiting France and trying to describe American jelly as full of "preservatives". Regrettably, the word she used was preservatif. This is the French word for "condom". Had she been referring to KY Jelly, everyone would have nodded like a savant and made passes at her.

Getting back to the "River Thames", the French have the habit of referring to the noun first and the adjectives just show up late to the party. You do not have a red car. You have a car red (la voiture rouge).² It takes English speakers a bit to get used to, but really, it makes sense. You hear the important information up front and the less important information gets skipped if the speaker is momentarily interrupted by, say, a guillotine.

Frankly, I've never quite understood the guillotine. In the 18th century France, the Enlightenment was more popular than Starbucks. Then the French decided the best way of spreading their enlightened principles was via the guillotine. For a while, it seemed like being French was synonymous with being guillotined. Prodded on by Maximilien François Marie Isidore de Robespierre, a name sure to lead to fits of giggles today, the French "Reign of Terror" spread and beheadings became a popular spectator sport. They enlightenedly guillotined their King, they enlightenedly guillotined their probably innocent queen and, in a fit of real enlightenment, they finally, and ironically, guillotined Maximilien François Marie Isidore de Robespierre.

Regrettably, this little drunkard's walk is in three dimensions (as I'm moving forward in time), not two, so I won't be able to neatly wrap this up by returning us to the Thames (or discussions of search algorithms), but I'll leave you with this little tidbit: in the US, friends often ask if it's "too early" to order beer at lunchtime. In the UK, this is a silly question. If you want beer, drink beer. If you don't want beer, don't drink beer. I wanted beer, so I had it. Then I hopped on LJ after returning to my hotel room and hence this slight diversion from whatever else you were doing.

And what shall I do with my evening? Beer, I think. Perhaps upon the Thames.

1. And if you know anything about the math behind this, you know I did a hell of a lot of hand-waving. Shut up. My friends in music, photography, bookbinding, and many other areas simplify their explanations, too. Otherwise, I'd feel like an idiot when they try to explain things.

2. Unbeknownst to many Christians, the Sabbath is not on Sunday. It's Friday sundown to Saturday sundown (or simply Saturday to some). Sunday is what's actually known in Christianity as "The Lord's Day". The Catholic Church claims they transferred the solemnity of the Sabbath from the Sabbath to the Lord's Day and any Christian church whose worshipers rested on Sunday were implicitly acknowledging the authority of the Catholic Church. By the same token, I suppose that anyone who refuses to refer to the "River Tames" as the "Thames River" is still acknowledging that France rules England.

"Where you from, mate?"

"The U.S."

"'Ere on holiday?"

How he missed the first 'h' and caught the second is one of those mysteries of English speech that I still can't figure out. Like cricket, it's something that Americans are Not Meant to Understand.

"No, I live here in London."

"What're you doin' in the hotel, then?"

"I sort of live here. It's a long story."

( Food, drink, and the pursuit of sheep )

I just stumbled across something I wrote a long time ago and, if you'll pardon the hubris, I think it's probably one of the single most important things I've written.

Communication is more than just saying words that are technically correct.

For technically minded people who tend to use extremely technical terms to people who may be less technically minded, I find that there are four reasons for this:

1. They're oblivious.
2. They're trying to bluster their way through something they don't understand.
3. They're trying to be overly precise.
4. They're trying to say something other than what they're saying.

For those who are oblivious, I feel bad for them. They often genuinely fail to realize that they're boring the other person to tears. They don't appreciate other's viewpoints and sometimes think the other person is "stupid" because they can't remember the difference between OpenBSD and FreeBSD. Barring an epiphany on their part (and possibly very supportive friends who will help let them know when they're doing this), there's not much which can be done for them. They fail to communicate because they don't know their audience. (If you're not technically minded, ask me to describe "traits" at some point. I can probably do it in a way you sort of understand even though it's such a new software practice that many programmers don't understand it.)

The blusterers are simply offensive. These are the people who simply won't admit to not knowing something. They often use bluster to impress others without realizing that, with a few exceptions, they fail miserably. They fail to communicate because they offend or annoy their audience. Blusterers are often very easy to spot.

Being overly precise was my great failing for a long time. I still have this problem and need to rein it in. Even if my target audience understands what I'm saying, I often find that by filling in too much detail, my audience either can't remember everything I said or they seize on a minor point which distracts from what I was actually trying to communicate. People with this problem fail to communicate because their audience can't remember the main point or get distracted from it. One does not sip from a fire hose.

For those who are trying to communicate something other than what they're saying, it's dangerous. Sometimes they're trying to intimidate those they are talking to. Sometimes it's a strategy to deliberately put off those who they are talking to. Sometimes they're just playing politics. Regardless of their reasons, they're dangerous. Those who say one thing and mean another, unless it's explicitly made clear that they're using a parable or something similar, are simply duplicitous. Once this tendency is recognized, they fail to communicate because they can't be trusted.

With all due respect to my technically-minded friends, sometimes we're a pain in the ass to be around.

Bored. Bored, bored, bored.

Lying in bed in my flat, getting annoyed that the flu has gotten progressively worse.

Bored.

I got out long enough to get more drugs and a couple of new books to read and barely made it back home.

Bored.

So when I'm shut in like this, I get stir crazy. Fortunately, the standard model human comes with a built-in "Little Voice" to keep you company. This is the Little Voice which says things like "it's beer goggles, dude, you'll hate yourself in the morning," and then laughs uproariously the next day, chanting "I told you so" over and over.

Other times it will say helpful things like "if you ask her for her phone number she'll probably stab you in the left eye with a stapler and laugh while the vitreous fluid dribbles down your cheek."

That's usually followed by an awkward pause in the conversation while I try to figure if you can really stab someone with a stapler.

So today, Little Voice decided to try and help me be less bored by offering suggestions on what I could do to distract myself. Did it suggest that I do more packing for London? No. Did it suggest that I answer some email I'd been neglecting? No. It said "cut your hair".

Now it's just fucking with me.

Obviously I can't go anywhere to get my hair cut because I'm reasonably certain stylists charge extra if you vomit on them while they're trimming your bangs. No, Little Voice was honestly meaning I should cut my own hair. Of course, this is about as stupid an idea as you can get, but Little Voice said "just put your electric clippers on their max setting and rub them all over your head. It'll be fine!"

Somehow, a few minutes later, I found myself with clippers in hand. Being this bored and stir crazy leads one to do really, really stupid things.

I took the first swipe out of my hair -- no turning back now -- when the obvious problem hit me: I only own one mirror. I have no way of knowing what the back of my head is going to look like. A short while later I found myself holding my toaster behind my head for a second mirror and trying to figure out how the hell I cut my ear with safety clippers.

It took a ridiculously long time and I'm still trimming ends that I missed. I hate you, Little Voice.
( OK, enough already. I added photos )

You know that book I helped write? Well, to my surprise, it's been translated into German. I'm doubly surprised that the German edition is being offered on the Japanese Amazon.com.

To kill or not to kill, that is the question.
Whether 'tis more profitable in the wallet
To declare war for outrageous reasons,
Or to take arms against a sea of Muslims,
And by killing, end them. To suffer peace
No more; and by a peace to say we end
The uncertainty of a thousand unspent freedoms
That man is heir to -- 'tis a consumption
Some politicians wish. To have peace,
And with peace, perchance to dream. Ay, there's the rub,
For with peace what dreams may come,
When we have given over our liberties
Which must give us uncertainty. There's the vision
That makes security such an ephemeral thing.
For who would bear the danger and risks of dignity,
Th'leader's vision, the prophet's hope,
The pangs of yearning to be free, the law's concern,
The insolence of aspiration and the spurious
belief that sovereignty is worthwhile,
When he himself might suffer enlightenment,
By mere contemplation? Who would this uncertainty bear,
To worry and to fret under a dangerous light,
But the dread of those we have provoked,
The unknown humans who provoke us in turn,
And no reconciliation will be returned,
And makes us bear the hate we have,
Rather than to acknowledge the heart of others?
Thus conscience does make fools of us all,
And the stalwart cry of resolution,
Covers over the pale cast of thought,
And enterprises of loudness and action
With this regard turn morality aside,
And lose the name of decency.

Some of you may have heard of the infamous Black Perl poem. This poem, written for Perl 3, appeared on April Fools day, 1990 on Usenet and was purportedly from Larry Wall, though as I recall, the headers were forged. However, it's for such an older version of Perl that it hasn't been able to compile for years. So I tweaked it. It still doesn't do anything, but it compiles.

BEFOREHAND: close door, each window & exit; wait until time.
     open spellbook, study, select it, confess, tell, deny;
write it, print the hex while each watches,
     reverse "its length", write again;
     kill spiders, pop them, chop, split, kill them.
          unlink arms, shift, wait & listen (listening, wait),
sort the flock (then, warn "the goats". kill "the sheep");
     kill them, dump qualms, shift moralities,
     values aside, each one;
          die sheep, die, reverse system
          you accept (reject, respect);
next step,
     kill next sacrifice, each sacrifice,
     wait, redo ritual until "all the spirits are pleased";
     do it ("as they say").
do it(*everyone***must***participate***in***forbidden**s*e*x*).
return last victim; package body;
     exit crypt (time, times & "half a time") & close it,
     select (quickly) & warn next victim;
AFTERWORDS: tell nobody.
     wait, wait until time;
     wait until next year, next decade;
          sleep, sleep, die yourself and
          rest at last

And from a friend of mine, Sparky, for whom I wound up rewriting this because of a couple of misconceptions of his (email reprinted with permission):

---

I was at a dive bar tonight. They had a poetry reading, open mic. and allowed non-original poetry.

I got on the net and looked up Black Perl.

I read the version at http://internet.ls-la.net/comppoems/black-perl.html. (with full attribution of course)

BROUGHT DOWN THE HOUSE!

Before the read I asked, "Show of hands, how many here are computer programmers?". No hands went up. Then, "How many people here have heard of the programming language 'perl'?". A couple of cheers from the crowd.

I then told the crowd, "perl stands for 'Practical Extraction and Report Language', or, as those who actually program in the language call it, 'Pathologically Eclectic Rubbish Lister'"

After explaining that the following poem was written by the creator of perl, I explained, "This poem is NOT written in English. It is written in the programming language 'perl' ", and read.

It won two awards, Best Nonoriginal Poem, and Best Poem of the night. I won Best Presentation. Kudo's to Larry, he made me look good. ;-)

After the reading I was approached by a person who said that the peom couldn't possibly compile. I invited him to download perl from ActiveState and download a copy of the poem written for the version of perl that he downloaded and test it for himself. He told me, 'That was a great poem and poems do not compile'. Then came the Zen moment, I said. 'That poem is not a poem'. From one atheist to another, I swear to GOD that is what I said!

He is probably still blinking. ;-)

---

I hugged Roger and Carolee goodbye last night. Due to scheduling difficulties, I might not see them before I leave. In fact, I might not see them again. The night before, I hugged Silke goodbye. That was tough. I love Silke dearly and she's a wonderful friend but I might not see her again, either.

A few days ago, I filled my car with gas, realizing that it was the last time that I was feeding this loyal beast. At just under 100,000 miles, she's never let me down. I've cared for her tenderly and fixed her few ailments and she's rewarded me by taking me hither and yon without complaint. Now I'm selling her to Schwern and it almost feels like betrayal.

I just bought my last bag of coffee beans over here. I walk by buildings and wonder if I'll see them again. I don't remember going through this years ago, when I moved to Amsterdam. But then, I wasn't a regular blogger at the time and this pseudo-memory wasn't available to me.

Unlike my rather disastrous adventure in Amsterdam, I've prepared carefully this time. All of the legal "t"s and "i"s are crossed and dotted. I've carefully built a solid resume, continuously improved my craft and blogged relentlessly with the intent of keeping my name out there. I volunteered for the Perl Foundation, wrote articles and, by a curious stroke of luck, have my name on the cover of a book.

It's not blind luck, though. Lady Luck has keen eyes and if you keep working at something, breaks come your way from time to time, so long as you're paying attention. And I have. Years of dreaming and always keeping this possibility in the back of my mind have paid off; I'm moving to the UK. I'm also getting rid of most of my possessions and have already started thinking about how my retirement will work out, decades from now. That will probably be my next big goal.

But what's a goal? Why do we have them? Many folks think that their purpose in life is to achieve their goals. They're wrong. Once you achieve your goals, then what? Is it time to die? No! They have it backwards. Their goal in life should be to follow their purpose and each person's purpose is to understand their driving needs and pursue them with integrity.

My driving needs are adventure, learning, and challenging assumptions (rebellion, if you will). Those are a dangerous combination and if I didn't know what they were, I'd still follow them, but perhaps in an unhealthy manner. How many people, not consciously understanding their driving need for adventure wind up cheating on a spouse? If they consciously knew that adventure was so important to them, there are plenty of ways they could satisfy this need without being dishonest.

Others have different driving needs. Some need security or comfort (and not in the Maslow's Hierarchy sense) and find themselves too timid to take risks. Others have a driving need for justice and that, particularly when combined with a sense of adventure or rebellion, can lead them to do stupid things. Witness the Earth Liberation Front.

So my needs for adventure and learning have led me to pursue moving to Europe with a focus which has surprised me. It took me years to find my brother; it's taken me years to move to Europe. Anyone familiar with me knows that I'm often not a good "long-term project" kind of guy. I have a huge library of partially read computer books. I have tons of unfinished software projects on my computer. I have a screenplay I should rewrite but probably won't. But somehow I've pulled it all together enough to relentlessly pursue Europe.

The beast of my purpose, however, is only temporarily sated. It's gorging itself on the prospect of new adventure and learning but my rebellious streak is a separate creature altogether and it's one I've not entirely tamed. If anything will be my downfall, it's the latter.

I have just over a week left in the US and most of that time will be spent with Sean and Lil, the two people in my life who mean the most to me. They're both brilliant and wonderful people and leaving them is going to be the most difficult part of all of this. I don't mean that to slight the others who are close to me, but without Sean and Lil, gallivanting off to a new life would be much easier.

I'll keep blogging and letting people know what I'm up to. I'll read your blogs and keep track of your lives. I'll miss all of you -- a phone call or a blog entry isn't the same -- but I'll make new friends, too. Life is going to get very interesting soon.

I'm not going to talk about intelligent design proponents. I'm going to call a spade a spade and refer to them as creationists. Let's just get this straight: there is no "intelligent design". There are creationists who explicitly embrace God and ID proponents who lie and pretend that religious zealotry is not what's behind their campaign of deceit. Of course, I'm sure that God doesn't mind a little intellectual dishonesty to prop him up, right? Clearly the ID folks have realized that faith ain't enough, praise the Lord!

This is not to say that all who believe in Creation are liars. There are many well-meaning people out there who sincerely and devoutly believe in the story of creation and there are more folks who are swayed by the creationists arguments because the creationist campaign of lying and their very selective use of information has created a propaganda machine that politicians can only envy. However, when you look closely at the creationist claims, most of it boils down to one thing: evolution supporters don't know everything, therefore they're wrong, praise the Lord!¹

It's tough to find a better example of how far we are willing to go to lie to ourselves. It's tough to find a better example of the self-deceit we are willing to engage in when we can accept such a specious argument. And it's tough to keep a straight face while listening to it. So I won't. Praise the Lord!

( Creationists want to eat your babies )

Why is it that all of my friends who've seen "Brokeback Mountain" are quick to say that it's not a great film? They all say it was "good", but not "great". I suppose it's a subjective thing.

Me? I cried when I watched it. Really. It had a tremendous impact which I found very compelling. Yes, it had gay cowboys, but that's not the point! Why does everyone seem to miss that? It's about the conflict between those who chase their dreams and those who forgo them to remain "safe" and gay cowboys are a jarring image to illustrate that. It's a perfect metaphor for what we can aspire to as compared to what we settle for. Everyone else just sees gay cowpokes.

I was really moved by the film. tmonsta was there and she held me at the end as I cried. I know, it sounds silly to say something like that and I confess to feeling a bit awkward about writing that, but to say anything else about my reaction would be lying. Admittedly, given that I'm moving to the UK, it could be that the movie touched a nerve in me, but the point is the same.

( Spoiler alert ... )

There seem to still be a few folks who are a little unclear about what "civilization" entails, so I'm going to break it down into small, bite-sized pieces to hopefully shed a little light on the subject.

Ogg, Trogg, and Badnarik are three cavemen, living in their little cave. Part of the reason this situation has worked out is because, after due consideration, they've agreed not to kill and eat one another. They won't steal one another's clubs or loincloths and, perhaps most importantly, they've realized that the free rider problem of public goods is pretty tough to hide when there are only three of them.

Now this situation has worked out fairly well when one day, Trogg is screwing around and falls off a cliff and gets hurt. Ogg immediately goes down to help him and Badnarik, after a bit of consideration, does the same. They help Trogg back to the cave and after a good night's sleep, are relieved to discover that Trogg is sore, but relatively unhurt. No harm has come of this unfortunate incident, but Ogg and Trogg were pretty miffed that Badnarik was hesitant. It seems that Badnarik was relaxing in the shade and didn't think it was fair he had to get up and help Trogg back to the cave.

A few months later, a deep freeze sets in and wipes out Trogg's garden. Ogg has a bit of extra food saved, but not enough to feed Trogg. Badnarik is in the same position. However, if both Ogg and Badnarik chip in, Trogg can be fed. At this point, Badnarik has had enough! "That's socialism!", he grunts!

Despite their limited language, Badnarik, through a series of grunts and elaborate hand gestures manages to explain that he's in favor of lowering taxes, slashing bureaucratic regulation of business, and charitable -- rather than government -- welfare. In short, Badnarik views their three-man cave as a de facto government and because government welfare is compulsory (unlike charitable welfare), it is the equivalent of theft. Badnarik has always viewed Trogg as being a shifty, lazy sort of individual and he doesn't care if Trogg starves to death.

Ogg grunts "This is our cave. Love it or leave it."

The problem that Badnarik faces is one of democracy. If two out of three cavemen vote in a laissez-faire system, that's OK. That's how democracy works. If two out of the three cavemen vote to help one another out in times of need, that's OK too. That's how democracy works. (Hint: socialism is an economic system. Democracy is an electoral system. Don't get this wrong or you'll look like an idiot).

It's fine for people to voluntarily vote to help one another. Yes, there are those who will be upset that the majority didn't vote their way and it's OK to try and convince others to change their mind, but helping someone when they're down is not theft! When the majority of people vote for something, that's democracy, not theft.

Naturally, in a world of more than six billion people, the situation is a little more complicated than this. Communism's fatal flaw is that it kills incentive to produce, so productivity plummets (socialism has the same flaw, but not as severely). There's also the previously mentioned free rider problem. If someone is willing to abuse a system, they can siphon of resources that should rightfully go to those who really need help. Identifying abusers of a system is considerably more difficult when populations explode.

Ogg's "love it or leave it" comment is also worth considering. People (rednecks and conservative types, typically) sometimes say that about America. Of course, sometimes loving a country means that you want to stay and make it better. That's OK. The US is a democracy, remember? We're supposed to be allowed to dissent. (Don't pitch the "this US is actually a republic" argument unless you can clearly explain how splitting this hair effects things).

"Love it or leave it" also fails on another ground: what if there is no other cave? While many Americans want to limit or even eliminate immigration (both legal and illegal), many other countries are doing the same thing. Very few people are in a position to leave, so telling them that leaving is their only recourse is foolish, despite what Billy Joe and friends seem to think. You disagree? Find me a country where the majority of people here would actually want to live in and can legally emigrate to. Seriously, find me one. Many folks would love to hear it.

So what's the clear solution to these problems? There is none. Society has grown too large and too complex for a "one size fits all" solution. Solutions necessarily entail compromise, though some fail to recognize this. We need to live together, play together, work together, and not steal one another's clubs. The failure in thought that many have today is that they are insisting upon passive measures to help society. Refrain from killing. Refrain from stealing. Refrain from active measures that will cause harm.

Passive measures are not enough in a society as large as what we have. We need some active measures, too. When Trogg falls down a cliff, go down and help him. If Trogg is starving, feed him. You know what three of the most successful active measures the US has undertaken to help folks are? Social Security (it did and still does exactly what it was originally intended to do), the Interstate Highway System and the Rural Electrification Act. All three of these programs have had huge benefits for the US economy and not one of them could be successfully handled by private firms because in the short run, there's no profit in many of them. In the long run there are huge profits but it's tough to divert those profits to individual firms.

Naturally, there are plenty of other government programs (education, anyone?) which have reaped huge benefits and others which have been dismal failures. That's the nature of these things, but we muddle along somehow. Though the US clearly has many areas in which it needs to improve, from an economic standpoint, we have succeeded magnificently (on the large scale. Individually, it's often a dismal failure).

So that's your intro to civilization. Badnarik isn't happy with our success model, somehow confusing choosing to help one another with theft, but it's worked. There are those who would cheerfully abandon active government measures to help one another, thinking that the bigots and Christian Taliban in this country are going to open up their pockets to help those they don't like, but that's not what we've voted for and if you disagree with how we voted, that's OK. But saying that how we voted is tantamount to theft is saying that democracy is theft.

By the way, no other cave wanted Badnarik, so he stayed. When he finally fell down a cliff, Ogg and Trogg grudgingly carried him back to the cave and applied a splint to his broken leg. They still think he's an asshole, but an agreement is an agreement. Badnarik, oddly enough, didn't protest the help.

Reason #213 not to move back to Texas: Texas, my home state, has recently decided to crack down on drunk driving. How are they doing this? By arresting drunk people in bars.

Yup. That's right. They're sending undercover officers to bars and if you're drunk, you're busted. Never mind that you have a designated driver. Never mind that you live a few blocks away and were going to walk. Never mind that it's a hotel bar and you're staying in a hotel room. They're taking you down.

You think that's funny? Yeah, it is, but it pales in comparison to my follow-up link: seems the Texas officials are surprised that people are upset with this idea.

Sadly, this is not the worst case of government cluelessness and micromanagement I have seen.

There's a meatpacking company in Kansas that ships meat to Japan. However, Japan had a beef with the beef, if you will, and halted shipments unless all slaughtered cattle were tested for BSE (mad cow disease). This Kansas meatpacking company, irrationally wanting to stay in business, agreed. Well, until the US Agriculture Department threatened them with prosecution if they tested all of them. Read it for yourself. You won't believe it.

Just to complete the "government idiocy" trifecta, I have to slaughter one of my own sacred cows: NASA. You've probably never heard of Maciej Ceglowski¹;, but his infrequent blog posts are phenomenal. He's funny, intelligent and most damningly, writes far better than I do. I hate him. But I do urge you to read his essay about the space shuttle program. If you yearn for the space program to fulfill its potential, this essay will leave you on the verge of tears. There's no funny summary or pithy pullquote I can grab to wrap this up, so just go read it, OK?

1. For you hard-core geeks, Mssr. Ceglowski wrote a brilliant rebuttal to Paul Graham's famous Hackers and Painters essay.

This Saturday, I'll be at Powell's Books with a bunch of other Perl authors (for those who don't know, my real name is Curtis Poe). I find this amusing for a few reasons. First, the other authors who will be there are better known and respected than I. Second, my book isn't even out yet (and I'm only third on the cover -- I contributed less than the others). Third, and this is the biggie: no one told me I was going to be there.

Last night I received an email from one of the coordinators. He was trying to plan things, wanted photos for flyers, etc. That's when I found out I was on the list. Surprise! I don't mind since I'll be free on Saturday, but I admit that I'm caught a bit off guard.

And since I'm a geek, I must confess that I noticed something interesting about the Powell's Web site. It's probably a bad interesting and not a good interesting, but then, I don't know the technical reasons for the decision.

Let's a take a look at one of their hyperlinks:

<a href="http://www.powells.com/biblio/0596100922">Perl Testing: A Developer's Notebook</a>

Hmm, what's that number in the URL? The link goes to this page and that number is featured prominently. It's the ISBN of the book. The use of that number immediately struck me as a potentially bad decision because you don't want to use identifying information for links like this. When new editions of books are put out, the ISBN number sometimes change (and they definitely change when a different publisher puts the book out). _sister_madly_ points out that The Great Gatsby has been reissued so many times that it has many, many ISBNs.

I suppose they did this because you can easily link to a specific edition of a book. This is handy if there's a new edition you want to highlight. However, what happens if you have 20 ISBNs for a book, you have books in stock for 19 of those ISBNs but not for the ISBN you linked to? What if the book was published before ISBNs were introduced? (1966) Worse, what if an ISBN needs to be changed (perhaps it was entered incorrectly or the book is recalled and reissued)? Then the ISBNs on the Web site might need to be changed in multiple places rather than a single place in the database. If the hyperlink had simply used a non-identifying ID (a UUID or a database ID with an optional ISBN for a "default" edition), these problems would simply go away.

Of course, it's quite possible they've considered and eliminated all of these problems, but I strongly suspect they didn't (because I see mistakes like this all the time). If they did anticipate these problems, they probably had more work to do since they use identifying information in the first place.

It looks like it's finally official and I can publicly announce it. I'm listed as one of the authors of Perl Hacks, with chromatic and Dr. Damian Conway. Oddly enough, I hadn't expected this. When a call for contributions went out, I just contributed a bunch. O'Reilly contacted me out of the blue and asked if I wanted my name on the cover. Interesting way to become an author, eh?

(To forestall the obvious question: yes, there are royalties, too)