Eclectic Amateur

Arrgh!

That’s two posts that Blogger has eaten!

Evangelize with the Dark Side!

Karen Marie Knapp reveals her teenage encounter with Darth Vader evangelism:

“I find your lack of faith … disturbing“.

(expletive deleted)

U.S. Source: N. Korea Says Has Nukes

(via Antiwar.com and the morning news …)

The Post headline is slightly misleading; according to the sources, N. Korea has admitted to having a nuclear weapons program, not to having live nukes. Still troubling, though … especially since our president has put his and the nations credibilty on the line regarding the “axis of evil” and WMD.

And I can just think of one word that describes trying to wage war and occupy territory in Central Asia (Afghanistan), the Middle East (Iraq), and East Asia (N. Korea) simultaneously:

Hubris.

“Unschooling”

Last Sunday, the Ann Arbor News ran an article Skipping school with mom and dad’s help about some local “unschoolers”. They had many nice things to say about Clonlara School also. (Clonlara supports off-site students — in other words, on paper you look like a private school student, you just happen to be educating at home.)

I’m ambivalent regarding “unschooling” — we tend to lean toward that camp, yet I do think that some structure and guidance is necessary. And I’m impressed by what I’ve read so far about homeschooling with a classical curriculum (mainly The Well-Trained Mind).

Ob. Geek Stuff

I love my new job. For the first time in I-don’t-know-how-long, I actually got to spend the bulk of the day programming. And lo, it was fun to get code that worked at the end of it all.

Of course, soon I’ll be back to abstract design, requirements, test cases, etc. It’s a dirty job, but somebody’s got to do it.

Observations for the day:

• Java is still evil, but I’m getting a taste for it anyway.
• Eclipse is incredibly cool, although it needs more “for dummies” documentation.
• Java and XML actually do play together almost as nicely as advertised. If you ignore the part about beating your head against a brick wall until it all starts to make sense first …
• SAX is very, very nice. Once you figure out how to actually get it to parse your document at all, that is — but after that, it was a piece of cake to use, even for a Java novice like myself.
• Oh, and JUnit rocks. Don’t program in Java without it.
  

In the “I can’t believe this isn’t a parody” department, I was just handed one of those little restaurant-style sugar packets. In large type, it proclaims “Pure Cane Sugar”. In slightly smaller type underneath, it advises “Sugar Contains no Fat”.

Now you and I have, I hope, this advantage over all those clever new philosophers, that we happen not to be mad.

— Philosophy for the Schoolroom

After a great off-peak field trip, you can go to McDonald’s with the other homeschoolers and no one orders their kids a Happy Meal®.

Reason #5 to Homeschool:

You can take your field trips whenever you want, and avoid the crowds.

Therac-25

The Therac-25 accidents may count as the deadliest software/engineering design fiasco to date. (What? You’ve never heard of it? Neither have most people.)

For a serious treatment of what went wrong, you can read Nancy Leveson’s report or just do a Google search.

For a more warped and twisted perspective, here are the South Park kids paying a visit to a Therac-25 installation.