Claude Code was the end result of all you fools who lost in Space Invaders
Haddon Township, NJThe Stream
The most recent 100 posts
100 entries
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Slipper Guy
When I was home all the time because of the vid I turned into a slipper guy. A big part of this was I work in the basement which just has a concrete floor. Also I could take the trash out. Plus the whole Mister Rogers thing of coming into the house swapping the jacket for a sweater and the dress shoes for tennis shoes is appealing. But I will add now sitting in the lounge putting my feet up on the adjacent chair in just socks is also lit.
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From POTS to TOTS
My father’s “Programming on the Side” company and my own love of solving hard problems have me wondering about building an objective, principle-based system of troubleshooting.
Read the article 3 min
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Bière de taille homme
Du les deux magots en Paris
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The Typefaces of Amiens
In Amiens there is an enormous cathedral that is very impressive but walking around the city there was some crazy typeface choices for signage but nothing beat the comic sans especially where you can see it stretched to fit the space in the word Pharmacie.
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Dziadziuś
My Grandfather was on the third wave at Utah Beach on June 6, 1944: D-Day he was a Staff Sargent in the 359th Infantry Regiment and was awarded the Silver Star, The Bronze Star, and other honors during his service. It’s long been a goal of my mom’s to make a visit to this place where he fought before he was married and had children. Just today we were able to do that and visit Utah Beach, Pointe du Hoc, Omaha Beach, an Omaha Beach museum, and The Normandy American Cemetery and Memorial for the Flag lowering ceremony.
I’m glad I got to be there for this and given the threat to my Dziadziuś’ life in WWII I’m glad I got to be at all.
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Overload Fitness
I’ve been training here with John Parr for 7 years. I’ve just recently gotten my diet right and am down 42 lbs since February and I’ve never been stronger. Including that 18 year old football player I used to be. He definitely recovered faster than me and had better close range and low contrast vision. But I highly recommend SuperSlow training with John.
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Fawn on a Lawn
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Image Flow
If this works I have a full mobile blogging post system for posting images and additional comments using shortcuts, Cloudflare Images, Drafts with a custom Action, GitHub, and GitHub Actions
Let the images start flowing down the makeshift trash can slide!
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Back in Blog
I know posting about blogs in your blog is boring and annoying. But I must say I’m excited to have this system working and to be building myself a little ecosystem of tools that I can use to post to it. Since I’m relying on GitHub Pages for the hosting of this and GitHub actions to process and build it I’m now adding an Action to Drafts to let me post stuff very easily.
My real goal here is to try and get some of the connection value I used to get out of Blogs and Twitter way back in the day. I know a ton of people continued writing their blogs and I’m hoping to re-enter that space with my boring takes.
I know this is a big mess, and probably there was no reason to use Angular other than I wanted to learn it. And I know there are broken links and posts everywhere and Blogs are dead, etc, etc. But I don’t care about any of that. I’m enjoying coding a side project. I know I’ll learn from it and I’m enjoying at least the prospect of some connection.
So I moved this off of SquareSpace. They were fine, but I wasn’t motivated to use it. Instead now that I have ownership of so much of the data and machinery in my Rube GoldBlog that I’m excited about it. If you have an interest in telling me I spelled something wrong, or the way I’m using typescript is terrible. (See the code here: mclazarus/logicaldisconnect) or any of the other things you’re dying to correct me on, simply tell me on The FediVerse. I hope to eventually support comments in this angular app, maybe they’ll post to Fedi or something. You can find me here: @mclazarus@jawns.club.
This post is what I call a two-fer. I post something and I also find out of the Drafts Action I wrote to post it works. If so I’ll be able to quick post from Drafts from my phone and that will be super fun.
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HALT LOAD
The first post on the rebuilt blog celebrates HALT LOAD, the mainframe boot milestone from my 1996 Unisys co-op that earned the team ice cream and a cynical coworker’s “milk and cookies” quip.
Read the article 3 min
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On the surface he looks calm and ready …
After sixteen years at CoreDial and its sale to BCM One, I’m feeling a little lost and deciding to build my own platform for sharing ideas that I’ll own.
Read the article 6 min
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Auspicious
A letter from an eighth grader who repairs Game Boys and shares his work on YouTube pulled me out of a year of online negativity and reminded me what the internet is good for.
Read the article 3 min
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The Planner Business
Michelle has started as a travel agent with Mickey’s Dream Vacations, and since agents are paid commission by the vendor, using one costs you nothing and buys expertise.
Read the article 2 min
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Looking back
I’ve mostly avoided looking at this for years. I assumed the neglect would make me feel bad. But I enjoyed paging through a few of the things I’ve written. And since social media seems to be a disaster lately but I still want an outlet for this sort of self-indulgent stuff I think I’ll try using this again.
Heck maybe I’ll even fire up an RSS reader too. I used to really enjoy the Internet.
Wonder if Alli & Ash will help me by updating the logo and making some other drawings.
Alli doodled the drawing to the left in about 30 seconds to try out my new pencil and iPad. She didn’t give me permission to post it but hopefully she won’t mind.
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Improvement and Reflection
I chase improvement everywhere but neglect reflection, and flipping through Christmas photos and videos made me want a regular, purposeful way to organize my thoughts and memories.
Read the article 1 min
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Lights out twenty fourteen
I’d have liked to put a nice highlight reel together for 2014 and talk about my big plans for 2015. I’ve had plenty of highlights and I have plenty of big plans but I didn’t take the time to examine them and write it out.
The last year especially has felt extremely hectic at times and I think one of the things I’ll focus on in the beginning of 2015 is trying to minimize that. To drop the comfort of busy and be even more ruthless in my priorities. And finally to regularly reflect on how things are going.
I’ve had a great twenty fourteen. Twenty fifteen will be great too.
Lights out!
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Ninety in the books
I finished my 90-day health kick down 31 pounds, from 254 to 223, and after a plantar fasciitis flare-up I’m taking a week off the gym before aiming for 190.
Read the article 2 min
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Objectivity of the bystander
Watching a coworker’s brutal 27-hour plan and a boss’s collaborative question go badly, I see how stepping out of the line of fire makes thinking and communicating clearer.
Read the article 2 min
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Ruthless 39 of 90
Thirty-nine days into my ruthless health plan of seven hours of sleep, tracking every meal and gym six days a week, sleep has been the biggest win.
Read the article 4 min
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More Audible Recommendations
A friend and co-worker who probably recommended half the books on my list put up a list of Audible sale recommendations of his own. Go check it out.
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Audible SciFi Sale recommendations
For fellow Audible listeners, here are my picks from the sub-$7 Super Sci-Fi Sale ending May 10, 2014, from Heinlein and Bujold to a Piper-versus-Scalzi Fuzzy showdown.
Read the article 4 min
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Delicious Time
I have always taken Heinlein’s “everything in excess” to heart, but I’ve realized that the management part of my job isn’t bringing me joy and it’s time to do the work I love.
Read the article 7 min
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Overdelivered
Write a story about the unbelievable speed of Amazon delivering a book.
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Bums Rush
Rushed by work and family, I caught myself jumping to conclusions in email and on Twitter, and I’m resolving to slow down and ask questions before assuming people I disagree with are idiots.
Read the article 2 min
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Fighting regulation and winning
Any startup facing an existential threat from regulation should remember these stories. The laws of the land are not laws of physics: they can be changed.
Jason Crawford’s article is a good read to inspire you that some fights can be won. Or discourage you that the creative people trying to make awesome things often have to waste their time and energy fighting regulations that should not exist.
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The Unremarkable Bisy Backson
I don’t think this is a great article, You Can Be Busy or Remarkable—But Not Both. But when I read it—after a tremendously busy day—it struck a chord. Plus I couldn’t resist a title reference to the Tao of Pooh after seeing the guy referenced in the article was some dude named Tao.
I read something that said being lost is not about not knowing where you are, but giving too much focus and anxiety to where you are not. I don’t have any idea what the origin of this was, maybe some quote in my High School yearbook.
I think often the sense of anxiety that accompanies being busy is about knowing all the things you aren’t doing and letting that fill up your mind. Or allowing your mind-reading of other people’s expectations to dictate how you feel about your life. These things all are awful ideas.
Anyway I’m feeling a inspired to spend a more of of my time trying to relax, be realistic, and have some fun.
Update: I read what I wrote and was completely confused, so I reworded some things. See I was tremendously busy yesterday and my brain doesn’t work anymore.
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Reflection on beginnings
I enjoyed Michael Lopp’s article An Introduction to You, specifically this part:
We are in an incredible hurry building important things and have no time for nuance. We’re impatient. We’re busy. We want everything to move faster, so we make huge, comforting assumptions and slap easy to understand labels on complex concepts.
Though I’ve been thinking little about the idea of oversimplifying and therefore over or under estimating the contribution of a new employee. Rather the quoted section made me think about how much is often missed in the “incredible hurry” when building products and the systems and processes to support a business.
It would have resonated more with me if he had written the exact same article but if it were not about an employee, but a new technology being integrated into the same busy-worshiping company culture.
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Fitting in
The Radio Flyer wagon that carried my little girls to the park four years ago still fits us all, bigger kids and X-Men games included.
Read the article 1 min
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Better all the time
Eight years and four months into parenting, a night reading X-Men with Ashley and Watership Down with Allison confirms to me the trend has been upward all along.
Read the article 1 min
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Terrors and Virtues
One of my favorite podcasts spent their whole show talking about this article.
Get comfortable with the idea that you won’t know what’s good until it’s already happened.
It’s a very good article on working when you don’t have any idea what your doing.
It’s convinced me that I should be listening to the whole back catalog of Radiolab.
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10,000 Words a Day
A great example of someone paying close attention to reality while experimenting with changing their way of working to achieve success they didn’t believe possible.
Definitely worth a read.
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Don’t Think Again
Creative energy is limited, so I stop reinventing how I do repeatable work: build a reusable process, and after each task spend five minutes asking how to make it better next time.
Read the article 5 min
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Leaving work at 5:30
A few interesting things in this article.
I don’t advise playing the game Sheryl Sandberg was playing trying to look like she was working more than she was, but I certainly understand the pressure.
Also really liked the idea attributed to Marrisa Meyer.
If you resent the fact that you don’t eat dinner every night at 8 then you will get burnout and your work will not be as good.
The fact is you can only do so much so you have to ruthlessly prioritize. And if you resent the fact that you can’t do everything with unrealisticly high quality you’ll just invite more pain and anxiety.
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On Trying
There are alternatives.
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Must Be Nice
Here is a story that illustrates exactly the type of work decisions that led to this site. Daniel’s article focuses on the lack of empathy in the person who questions his start time. I do think her reaction was unjust and I also think the young heroic Daniel took a physical and emotional beating that is better avoided.
I completely understand the need to continue working on an active problem—especially when all the distractions are gone. But I suspect he probably paid for that hard work in more ways than being insulted by a co-worker.
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Disconnect the Batphone
I tell the story of a lone hero engineer who fixes the crisis at 2:37 AM and gets grilled instead of thanked, and argue that needing heroics is a sign of a sick company.
Read the article 4 min
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Step up
A sign at the Franklin Institute food court, “Please, step up and help yourself,” turned into a reminder to me that your days should be what you want and only you can change them.
Read the article 2 min
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Choices
Habits run on autopilot, so to change one I set a standing order to notice it, then ask “What Would I Do?” as my heroic, values-driven self.
Read the article 3 min
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Sprint for Health Millstone
Eighty-six days from my goal, avoiding sweets and grains has been easy because I vividly imagined two futures, one strong at 55 and one in a hospital bed.
Read the article 5 min
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Tomatoes for strength
Three weeks of the Pomodoro Technique have structured my days and improved my productivity, and the push-ups I do during the five-minute breaks are making me stronger.
Read the article 2 min
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I’ll sleep when I’m dead
Sleeping little to get work done only brings that day closer; after studying Paleo sources, I found that a full night’s sleep gives nearly super-human clarity and energy.
Read the article 2 min
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The game of life
I’m committing to get under 200 pounds, starting with 210 by vacation from 238 today, by eating no sugar or grains, playing hard, weighing in daily and writing about it.
Read the article 2 min
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Making Plans
For a while now I’ve been trying to do a lot of things and getting many accomplished, but really want some focus on less things that I make tangible progress on. And so I am looking to set myself some constraints in order to actually get things where I want them to be. A few vague plans I have are to ship a game this year. Actually I’d like to ship two games, but I am still floundering in the beginning stages of understanding and putting together a basic 2D OpenGL game engine. So my plan is to have a rough beta version of something that at least works by my birthday. Then I can set a new goal for shipping it. That should help give me some focus.
Also along that front I’m thinking I should blog consistently about the things I do and learn while working on the game so it forces me to really solidify my understanding.
I’d also like to really get my health to a better place. On Saturday Allison’s karate school, East West Karate, had a class for parents of new students to learn a few basics so we can experience some of what they are doing first hand. It really made me miss my training. Now I haven’t been to the gym or done any serious workout in months so I’ve been sore now for two days. But on top of that I’ve gotten the best nights of sleep that I’ve had in recent memory due to actually using my body a bit.
So I’m considering joining their adult classes. As I’ve already earned a black belt, they would allow me to wear it to their school and help me have an accelerated version of their curriculum. But I have mixed feelings about that. I did work hard and earn it, but I am severely out of practice and wouldn’t want to embarrass myself or the school who awarded me my black belt by showing up there next week. Also I’d want to do it only if I really am sure I’m committed to it. So I’m thinking I’ll set myself a target of June to get myself into better shape through a concentrated training program at the gym, and probably 2 or 3 days a week run myself through some exercises trying to recall and practice some of the martial arts skill that I had earned through hard work and let slip away.
Also I have plans to attend a Thinking Directions pilot class in New York City on Saturday from noon — 3, and I’m also very excited about that. I’ll have to see if I know anyone in New York that wants to grab dinner before I catch the NJT back to Trenton.
BIG THINGS COMING YOUR WAY! WATCH OUT!
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One Calendar to rule them all
A MobileMe Calendar upgrade broke my Rube Goldberg calendar sync, and the simpler replacement, Google Calendar direct to phone and BusyCal, works better and leaves me wondering what MobileMe is still for.
Read the article 2 min
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AC Sludge
A puddle by the basement air conditioner cost me an evening of repairs and exposed how overcommitted I’d become, resentful of emergencies that were my own duty.
Read the article 3 min
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Other People
A keynote’s simple suggestion to do code reviews together got me to send my TargetDate app source to Ryan Grier and plan to integrate it with his MyCntdwn.
Read the article 2 min
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John Galt League update
It’s been two weeks since the last update. I’m happy to report that the Rearden Steelers are 2 - 0 in that time bringing me to 7 - 0. My wide receivers are carrying me having huge games, and typically I’ve been helped by my opponent not having a great week. This past week my opponent The Washington Oppresors scored 97, but I went off with 114. So it seems my team plays to the level of the competition. So a whirlwind tour of the rest of the league:
Culver City Conmen
Ran into the Buzzsaw of the Rearden Steelers in week 6 and despite the despair of having played me still managed to get 43 points out of Darren McFadden the next week and a win.
Sedalia Sea Monkeys
Diana has been on a tear! Two wins and I think most importantly defeated Paul’s Geekpress Generals handily this past weekend. I imagine that Chez Hsieh was a battleground and it’s probably better for Paul that he lost.
GeekPress Generals
Paul has somehow coaxed Greg Jennings into consistent play two weeks in a row, however he managed that he deserves to have won the championship. Also if I failed to mention it, he lost an epic matchup to Diana.
Dr. Ego Spengler
Mike’s team won in week 6, but more importantly he lost in week 7. Leaving literally nothing on the bench he was crushed by Amy’s Gentlemen, who was so confident in her ability to win she taunted her opponent by starting Arian Foster while on a bye and still scored 109 points!
Portland Agents Of Fortune
2 weeks, 2 wins, good team management nothing left on the bench and big scores. I’m hoping this trend doesn’t continue.
KC Money Barons
Got the big first win of the season. I think Corey has aspirations of going 7 - 6 the hard way. Considering I’ll probably lose my next 6 we can finish the season tied!
Washington Oppressors
Dwayne Bowe showed up!
Connecticut BNS Brawlers
Too many Cincinnati players to win, even if they keep scoring points. Marvin Lewis has suffered from this problem for years.
Fairport Diehards
Ugh, 79 points left on the bench this week, and a ton last week. Sometimes fantasy is just like that.
Philadelphia Freeloaders
The last two weeks they’ve let their opponents score too many points. Work on it!
Virginia Gentlemen
Amy can’t lose a game when she scores over 100 points. Unfortunately when she scores under 100 she tends to lose by 6 points or less.
Next week
I promise to write stuff going forward on some schedule. And I suspect it may be somewhat useless but I’ll enjoy it, and that’s what counts.
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iPhone: Game On
A weekend at the Voices That Matter iPhone developers conference made my lifelong dream of writing games, begun on a TRS-80 and a C64, finally look achievable.
Read the article 7 min
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Resolve
After a stressful year of what felt like going crazy, I recovered by checking my own thoughts against reality, and now old stressors look as harmless as Boggarts.
Read the article 5 min
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John Galt League Week 5 re-cap
A timely and per my wife’s criticism a bit spiced up recap of the JGL action from week 5. Philadelphia Freeloaders (3-2) 86, Virginia Gentlemen (2-3) 85
In a matchup where Vince Young outscored Matt Schaub by 13 points and Mike Tolbert outscored Arian Foster by 5 points there is no other way for it to end except by being decided by 1 point. The worst part for Amy, manager of the Gentlemen, is that if she had not started a Defense she would have won the match. But I agree that the Rams looked to be a great start against the Lions.
Fairport Diehards (3-2) 85, Sedalia Seamonkeys (2-3) 78
And Diana’s Seamonkeys get exactly what they want out of Ray Rice, finally, but when your second leading scorer is your Kicker it’s hard to finish with the W. And running into an on-again Chris Johnson and hated (by me) Cowboy QB who was racking up points playing from behind meant that Tom Stone’s Diehards took the win. Both teams can look at the high bench production and play that age old Fantasy football game of second guessing yourself.
Connecticut BNS Brawlers (3-2) 77, GeekPress Generals (3-2) 58
The Brawlers victory gives me the opportunity to talk about my favorite subject and that is me winning fantasy football games. Because his victory and mine came in lockstep due to the huge day by Malcom Floyd which necessitated a huge day by my QB. Paul’s Generals who have been solid all season, had the typical fantasy week where almost nothing goes right which was capped by Aaron Rodgers going down with a concussion at the end of the game.
Dr. Ego Spengler (4-1) 69, Washington Oppressors (1-4) 53
The good Dr. Spengler led by Mike King has been the most consistent JGLer over the past two years. But this is ridiculous to get a victory where the top scorer is TE Marcedes Lewis with 17 is illegal, and I plan to use my commissioner powers to correct this miscarriage of Justice. However I will insist that John Britely’s Oppressors still retain their loss as well due to the fact that he snagged LeSean McCoy on waivers on Sunday morning when I am the one who’s supposed to have the best player on my favorite team. Unfortunately for the Oppressors in the best possible week to defeat the Ego got nothing from their team.
Portland Agents Of Fortune (2-3) 109, Culver City Conmen (2-3) 88
In true fantasy football fashion the Conmen have a solid week from many of their starters even with 4 players on BYE, but still manage to run into a team that had an even a better week. As Brian Reich’s Agents managed to put together huge numbers despite starting my least favorite Manning. Yes I must admit Cooper is my favorite Manning.
Rearden Steelers (5-0) 99, KC Money Barons (0-5) 74
I am considering changing both of my daughters names to Philip Rivers as his consistency this season is the main reason I am 5 - 0, also a timely Falcons pickup before last weeks games helped me quite a bit here. All I can say to Corey and his Money Barons is the winner of the league last year had a losing record, so anything can happen. Also to illustrate this I’m 1 - 4 in the fantasy league my brother runs.
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John Galt League Week 3 and 4 recaps
Now working to finally catch up on my fantasy recaps I got through weeks 3 and 4 and am making a personal vow to get week 5 in early this week. Week 3 recap
Virginia Gentlemen 116, Culver City Conmen 109
In week 3 the Conmen put up a solid 109 with good performances from most of their players. Only the Patriots D (1) and Matt Forte (3) underperforming. Unfortunately their opponent the Virginia Gentlemen had great performances particularly 31 from Adrian Peterson who ran all over the Lions. Here the Conmen were handed their first loss. This was the Gentlemen’s first win.
Fairport Diehards 106, Connecticut BNS Brawlers 73
A huge game by Anquan Boldin, and great performances by Romo and Chris Johnson vaulted the Diehards to a win over the Brawlers despite their Cedric Benson’s big week and Mike Wallace having a huge game down in Tampa. The Brawlers unfortunately left Peyton Hillis on the bench for his huge game not having to share any carries with Jerome Harrison and LeSean McCoy had his worst game of the season so far.
Sedalia Sea Monkeys 65, KC Money Barons 51
The Money Barons continue to have a hard time manufacturing points where Colston, Celek, DeAngelo Williams and Steve Smith (Carolina) are all not producing consistent with where they needed to be drafted. Drew Brees is the only bright spot this week as the Barons fall to 0 - 3. The Sea Monkeys get a huge game from Dustin Keller and manage to scrape together enough points to top the Barons bringing them to 1- 2.
GeekPress Generals 114, Portland Agents Of Fortune 66
The Generals put up big performances from Collie, Mendenhall, Rogers and the Steelers Defense to post huge numbers in week 3, which was more than enough to top the Agents of Fortune who aside from Michael Vick and Steven Jackson couldn’t get anyone else in double digits. The pair of Calvin Johnson and Larry Fitz who strike fear in the heart of fantasy opponents continue to frustrate.
Washington Oppressors 75, Philadelphia Freeloaders 59
The Oppressors had solid performances from Turner, Charles, Bowe and Cutler riding the Chiefs 3 - 0 record and overcoming a bad outing by their Bucs defense to their first win of the season. The Freeloaders who grabbed the Chiefs defense and were rewarded by a good game were hurt by their reliance on the Houston passing game and Schaub, Walter and Andre Johnson that didn’t post big numbers this week.
Rearden Steelers 105, Dr. Ego Spengler 92
In a high scoring matchup the Steelers got good performances from Rivers, Maclin, Bradshaw and their newly added Cardinals D, to offset strong performances from Peyton, LT and DeSean Jackson. Luckily the Chiefs were able to hold Frank Gore down to 14 points and help the Steelers to their 3 - 0 record and hand Dr. Spengler his only loss.
Additionally the Steelers are 3 - 0 against doctors this season.
Week 4 The First week of byes, which leads to all sorts of scarcity and fun in trying to decide who to start or pickup.
GeekPress Generals (3 - 1) 87, Culver City Conmen (2 - 2) 79
In week 4 the Conmen had a solid performance from their Defense but put up goose-eggs from the Moss tandem at WR as Washington had success running on my Eagles and had no reason to even look at Santana and Randy was on the outs in New England. Two zeros in a line up when playing a consistently solid GeekPress Generals usual spells disaster and this week it made the Conmen fall to 2 and 2.
Philadelphia Freeloaders (2 - 2) 66, Fairport Diehards (2- 2) 57
Oddly the second game of the week where a team posted nil from the wide receivers, but in this case they managed to win as the Freeloaders got solid performances from Mike Tolbert, Matt Schaub and Zack Miller. And the Diehards were only able to get double-digit points from Flacco and Ryan Matthews as Denver was able to hold Chris Johnson to only 4 points
Virginia Gentlemen (2 - 2) 106, Connecticut BNS Brawlers (2 - 2) 74
And you can tell it’s a bye week as yet another team manages to post a pair of zeroes, but even more impressively the Gentlemen still manage to put out 106 points as they are the top scorer this week. Helped by a combined 56 points from Antonio Gates and Arian Foster (who took 1 quarter off for missing a team meeting). The Brawlers who did have some solid performances from Carson Palmer and Peyton Hillis but also had the misfortune of running into the 2nd highest scoring team in the league.
Sedalia Sea Monkeys (2 - 2) 90, Washington Oppressors (1 - 3) 46
The Sea Monkeys continue to get good performances from Dustin Keller and finally their other players posted some solid numbers as well as they finally hit on a QB that was going to give solid numbers as Sanchez put up 14 and Reggie Wayne and Joseph Addai turned in good weeks. The Oppressors hurt by byes and missed updating their lineup and started the out Pierre Thomas and Shiancoe on a bye only managed 46 points and Jay Cutler was absolutely manhandled by the Giants posting a -3.
Dr. Ego Spengler (3 - 1) 76, KC Money Baroons (0 - 4) 70
Spengler riding a huge game by LT against the Bills was able to hang on for a 6 point victory over the Money Barons who were hurt by an oddly ineffective Drew Brees at home against the Panthers and Steve Smith who went out with an injury.
Rearden Steelers (4- 0) 92, Portland Agents Of Fortune (1 - 3) 63
MJD finally put up some big numbers to justify his pick at #3 overall, and got consistently good numbers from Philip Rivers and Roddy White putting together another solid game to go to 4 - 0. The Agents of Fortune got a huge game from Calvin Johnson but Vick going out with an injury held him to two points and Mike Sims-Walker continues to disappoint with a 0 point week.
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John Galt League Week 2 Recap
Due to working past 2 AM two times in the past week, really throwing off my sleeping schedule not to mention the impact such things have on my family life my recreation time was severely impacted. But I managed to stay focused and put out a recap before week 3 got underway (barely). Rearden Steelers 86 GeekPress Generals 84
In the closest game of the week the Steelers got strong performances from Philip Rivers and Roddy White for the second straight week and are concerned about MJD who managed only 2 points and 12 for the season. The Generals got solid performances from most players although the Rodgers to Jennings combo has yet to really pay off. This came down to the Sunday night matchup between New York and Indianapolis, where both Dallas Clark and Austin Collie scored TDs for the Generals but it wasn’t enough to overcome Ahmad Bradshaw’s points helped by a Brandon Jacobs benching for an awful run followed by a temper tantrum where his helmet ended up in the crowd.
Dr. Ego Spengler 90 Sedalia Sea Monkeys 64
While the Sea Monkeys got many solid performances, they had no outstanding performances and are having a real problem at Quarterback with Kolb injured and now benched in favor of Vick and Garrard having a very rough game at San Diego. The good Doctor Spengler got huge games from from Gore, Manning and DeSean Jackson which offset some lesser performances by the rest of his squad putting him over the top.
Portland AgentsOfFortune 98 Virginia Gentlemen 92
In a close matchup this week the Gentlemen had good numbers across the board hurt by poor QB play from the veteran Favre who is finally showing his age against an underrated Miami Defense. Unfortunately the Gentlemen this week’s third highest scorer had the misfortune to face the AgentsOfFortune who were this weeks second highest scorer. Helped by my favorite team, the Eagles, who are apparently unable to tackle anyone when Stewart Bradley is off the field which gave Jahvid Best a huge 40 point week. Also cashing in on that Eagles v. Lions game Calvin Johnson finally scored a TD that counted helping the Agents to a big win.
Philadelphia Freeloaders 106 KC Money Barons 42
The Freeloaders rode Houston’s massive game against the Redskin’s where Matt Schaub and Andre Johnson combined for 50 points. Also worthy of note is the Freeloaders had Kevin Walter on the Bench who also had a giant game and those three players combined would have been enough to beat 4 other starting lineups this week. The Money Barons had the game that nightmare game that every fantasy owner can count on, where nothing goes right. Totaling only 42 points for the week and going into Monday night (with 2 players left) had only 18 points. They did have a few solid performances and I expect they’ll turn it around going forward.
Culver City Conmen 68 Fairport Diehards 54
The Conmen improved to 2 - 0 on the season despite the tough game their patriots had in New York. Putting together a handful of good performances and Darren McFadden trying to answer critics with a big game was enough to top the Diehards who had a tough week with nobody in the starting lineup finding the end zone and Chris Johnson being held in check by the Pittsburgh defense.
Connecticut BNS Brawlers 83 Washington Oppressors 75
The Brawlers are another team that cashed in on the Eagles-Lions game where LeSean McCoy went off racking up 30 points and making up for a handful of low scoring Bengals in his lineup. The Oppressors fall to 0 - 2 despite some good performances from Jay Cutler, Dez Bryant and seeing Shiancoe and Pierre Thomas be real workhorses for their teams.
Transactions
The Steelers were frustrated by their 2 - 0 record on the waiver wire this week being unable to grab Tolbert or the Dolphins Defense due to the waiver priority enjoyed by other savvy owners who snagged these players. A few teams worked the waiver wire to bolster their teams, I think the top one being Tolbert who looked solid in Ryan Matthew’s absence and whoever owned Michael Turner last year will know the dreaded high-ankle sprain is not an exciting injury for a top RB on your team to have.
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John Galt League Week 1 Update
I am the commissioner of the John Galt League, a Fantasy Football league for Objectivists. It’s Diana Hsieh’s league and this is my second year as commissioner. While it was enjoyable last year I did little more than remind people of deadlines and schedule the draft. I decided to try and squeeze a little more value this year by writing up a review like this periodically thinking my increased involvement in the league would make it a bit more competitive and fun, hopefully for everyone. Week 1 Recap
My Steelers pulled out a 73 - 61 victory over Diana’s Sea Monkeys while I was sleeping but Phillip Rivers was going strong, overcoming a solid WR showing by the Sea Monkeys but zeroes from the injured Wells and Kolb who left early held them back in the lowest scoring match of the week.
The reigning champs the Geekpress Generals managed to be the only team that broke three digits even with posting a zero from Darren Sproles as they defeated the Virginia Gentlemen 110 - 79, an inconsistent performance from the Gentlemen’s starters and drawing a tough matchup put Arian Foster’s monster week to waste.
Peyton Maning was playing from behind all day and was forced to throw which helped push Dr. Egon Spengler ahead of the Philly Freeloaders 77 -73 who despite a great performance from Miles Austin but had too few players find the end zone in week 1.
The Fairport Diehards benefited from the Jets CB Daryl Revis, first in having his defense post big numbers but in forcing Flacco to look away from Mason and find Anquan Boldin for a high scoring week netting him 87, the Agents Of Fortune couldn’t keep up, as too many top guys didn’t deliver and they only managed 69 points.
The BNS Brawlers and Money Barrons fought the tightest contest of the week each getting some solid performances but a low scoring opening NFL game meant Brees couldn’t come up wtih the numbers to overcome Palmer’s garbage time stats playing from behind after getting blown out by New England, the Brawlers won 78 - 76.
Finally the Culver City Conmen had some huge plays out of Matt Forte, and lots of points from his beloved Patriots which gave him more than enough to overcome the Washington Oppressors, who suffered the biggest injury of the week losing Ryan Grant for the season. Despite some solid performances from Jay Cutler and Pierre Thomas the Conmen prevailed 93 - 72.
Week 2 News and Preview
Despite the fact that the commissioner forgot to send a waiver reminder a few teams put in claims, the Agents of Fortune snagged Vick for a favorable matchup and The Oppressors laid claim to Brandon Jackson the expected replacement for his lost Ryan Grant. Next week get your waiver claims in Wednesday night because early AM (ET) ESPN will process claim requests based on priority order.
Most of the match-ups (based on current lineups as of 10:30 PM on Friday) are fairly even based on the ESPN projections except for the BNS Brawlers and The Oppressors where the 0-1 Oppressors are currently favored by a whopping 59 points.
So everyone get your lineups in, check your injuries and enjoy week two of the John Galt League.
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Time Tracking
Tired of finishing days unsure what I’d done, I treated my missed project goals like any customer problem and set out to track exactly where my time goes.
Read the article 3 min
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The funny
A tweet or facebook status update was too short and unformatted to capture this and I had to write it immediately. Michelle was singing to the girls after the most packed day at Disney. (started at Animal Kingdom around 9:30 and finally got back to the Pop Century resort at 10:50 after seeing Fantasmic).
Ashley stops Michelle singing saying, “Wait! You forgot to put Minnie in my song.”
Michelle: “I put her in, I said Mickey, Minnie, Donald, Daisy and Pluto”
Ashley: “Oh! I thought you meant Pluto the planet.”
Allison: (immediately and with obvious exasperation) Ash, Pluto’s not even a planet!"
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Bicycles Are Fun!
Allison sums up this beautiful day.
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Strap in
Quite a robust urinal apparatus. Seen at Stockton College at the
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What’s True
Listening to Leonard Peikoff’s podcast #83 I really enjoyed the closing of his answer to someone who wrote to him, essentially, I agree with many of the principles of Objectivism but disagree with Ayn Rand on two ideas (I think it was architecture as art and something to do with her view on women), am I still an Objectivist? He said:
So I hope you don’t think of: this and this and this is required for [Objectivism] … I wouldn’t even think about what’s required for Objectivism.
Just think about “what’s true?” And then if Objectivists don’t believe it, it’s tough on them. You could say, Objectivism is good but it has this mistake.
You can’t think, with the idea that the answers are in the back of the book given by Ayn Rand.
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Goals not Rules
The best employees want to know what they’re trying to accomplish rather than what they’re supposed to do, so I argue you should give resourceful people goals instead of rules.
Read the article 2 min
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MobileMe’s apprentice
After upgrading to iPhone 3.1 and Snow Leopard, my calendars multiplied and drained the battery; the cause was subscribed iCal calendars, and here’s the cleanup.
Read the article 2 min
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Quitting Doctors
My children’s beloved pediatrician is closing her practice, and while I can’t blame ObamaCare for hers, I explain why more government in healthcare will push doctors out.
Read the article 3 min
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Strict Filtering
I like to think about things. I can spend hours trying to find the right way to solve any problem from serious to silly. This is one of the reasons I’ll let myself get caught up in an email black hole. As I was this morning. Responding to or dealing with the tasks inside each email like it’s the only thing in the world to work on is extremely silly as it takes the email and any embedded tasks completely out of context. So I am writing this to remind myself, that email isn’t my job, it’s a tool that is crucial in the small part of my job that has to do with communicating with others. And to turn Strict Filtering back on in front of the tasks I choose to work on. Also the strict separation between doing the tasks embedded in my inbox and the task that is processing my inbox.
It really shouldn’t take me more than 15 minutes to empty the email inbox. I should rifle through each message spending about 30 seconds to read, decide if it’s actionable, what I’m going to do about it and file the action reminder appropriately. If it’s an email that is longer than 30 seconds to ready, I can decide if I am ever going to read it and file the reminder to read it somewhere.
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Fantasizing
I’m in four fantasy football leagues this year. One is the real deal, the league I’ve been in with my wife for what seems like 3 or so years every year, but undoubtedly it’s been at least 7 years, the TMCFL run by my brother, on a site that is getting increasingly crappy since being acquired by an NBC Sports affiliate.
The other is the John Galt League, where I am the acting commisioner, brought together by the common fact that we all are fans of Diana Hsieh’s blog NoodleFood.
I also have played in Ryan Grier’s league for the past few years where I tend to be terrible.
And finally as always I picked up a Yahoo public league in order to practice drafting before the TMCFL, although given the awesomeness of the ESPN mock drafts I may stop that after this year.
I am currently fantasizing the fame, fortune and prestige of winning both the JGL and the TMCFL as I watched my Eagles whup an overmatched Panthers and noticed my top pick in both of those leagues, Adrian Peterson, racking up the points. I am now convinced that he will score at least 3 touchdowns every week and I will dominate all of the competition.
Stay tuned for too frequent updates of my fantasy prowess or complete silence if my team collapses into disarray.
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Hanging with the Phanatic
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flagging acknowledged as harmful
The White House asked citizens to report neighbors spreading fishy healthcare information, so I reported myself, and I explain why that matters and why healthcare is not a right.
Read the article 2 min
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Environmental vulnerability
Keith Lockitch sidesteps the climate science debate to ask what makes us vulnerable to storms and disasters, and finds that capitalism’s wealth and energy are the answer.
Read the article 2 min
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Overload and a Coke
My mental stack for sub-tasks is finite, and an overwhelming urge to do anything else turns out to be what happens when a simple task spawns too many hidden requirements.
Read the article 5 min
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Upgrading software
My brother’s blog had a spam problem because someone exploited his ancient WordPress 1.5 and hid the filter, so upgrading fixed both and reminded me to patch old sites.
Read the article 2 min
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Finding Inspiration
Becoming depressed by the increased destruction of individual rights by the government is quite easy these days. The fact that the current administration is violating contract rights, firing the CEO of a corporation, and forcing banks to take bailout money among many other examples of statism are all very ominous indeed. To continue this trend, today, I received an email from Senator Casey singing his own praises for his role in the further meddling with the credit markets.
As is typical when I receive such self-glorying proclamations from my elected representatives I take a moment and compose a letter responding to them and encouraging them to uphold individual rights as an absolute as is the necessary and only purpose of a rational and moral government.
I began writing my response somewhat lethargically but when I organized my thoughts it brought to mind a particular passage from Atlas Shrugged which provided the fuel to complete task. I decided then to look it up and to share it here.
I could say to you that you do not serve the public good–that nobody’s good can be achieved at the price of human sacrifices–that when you violate the rights of one man, you have violated the rights of all, and a public of rightless creatures is doomed to destruction. I could say to you that you will and can achieve nothing but universal devastation–as any looter must, when he runs out of victims. I could say it, but I won’t. It is not your particular policy that I challenge, but your moral premise. If it were true that men could achieve their good by means of turning some men into sacrificial animals, and I were asked to immolate myself for the sake of creatures who wanted to survive at the price of my blood, if I were asked to serve the interests of society apart from, above and against my own–I would refuse, I would reject it as the most contemptible evil, I would fight it with every power I possess, I would fight the whole of mankind, if one minute were all I could last before I were murdered, I would fight in the full confidence of the justice of my battle and of a living being’s right to exist. Let there be no misunderstanding about me. If it is now the belief of my fellow men, who call themselves the public, that their good requires victims, then I say: The public good be damned, I will have no part of it!
Hank is the man!
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Ruining the Meal of Productivity with Snacks
Small tasks keep winning my big block of time while the hard, interesting problems starve, because I dread being interrupted partway through them.
Read the article 4 min
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Sanction of the Victim
It’s a shame that the great business producers continue to sanction completely irresponsible government. Read this in Warren Buffet’s annual report for Berkshire Hathaway, Inc. “Whatever the downsides may be, strong and immediate action by government was essential last year if the financial system was to avoid a total breakdown.”
Since we all know that sacrificing the strong to pay for the mistakes of the weak and then pretending there wasn’t an underlying problem always fixes everything.
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Knowledge or Grades
Students and their parents chase grades and diplomas as magic stamps, getting cause and effect backwards, when the point of school is the knowledge the grade only measures.
Read the article 4 min
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Ari Armstrong is planning a demonstration that it is possible to eat a healthy diet on a food stamp budget. Low-Carb Diet, Food Stamp Budget. He is doing this not only to show that increases in the food stamp program are unnecessary, but in full protest of the entire program. This not only protests the evil of redistribution of wealth, but will prove useful to those who think are honestly trying to eat a healthy diet on the smallest imaginable budget. I look forward to tracking his choices closely as I could use some inexpensive ideas.
As a side note tomorrow will be a full month since I committed to greatly reducing refined carbs in my diet and I have lost 11 lbs. This is with never finishing a mealy hungry and with my only extra exercise being a few lunch time walks, going to the gym one time and some snow shoveling.
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Feed Formerly Broken
Apparently my feed has been broken since Sometime in November. At that time I upgraded wordpress, and possibly related was the merging of FeedBurner and Google. Anyway It should be working now. So for the 3 or 4 people who follow the feed, you will be delighted to know that I have been making an effort to add content regularly. And strangely you have a little bit of catching up to do. Unless you follow my tweets, then you probably already read all the posts.
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Economics
I’ve received word of a promising new blog focused on economics from an Objectivist point of view called Simply Capitalism. It could prove a nice counterpoint of reason to the cacophony of shrill demands for increasing governmental control in our economic lives. Subscribe to their RSS feed and see for yourself.
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Destruction and Praise
Local newspapers praise the new administration’s stimulus and call for more oversight, when government meddling is what caused the mess, so I wrote two pieces to answer them.
Read the article 2 min
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By The grace of Gaia
PepsiCo’s scramble to count its carbon emissions ahead of government mandates shows what I take to be environmentalism’s one mortal sin: producing life-sustaining food.
Read the article 1 min
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Small bit of SEC Insanity
Listening to a story about the SEC persecuting Apple because Steve Jobs is in poor health on the WSJ daily read, They compared it to a situation with HP where a director resigned. According to the article, “Under securities laws a company needs to disclose the reasons if a director leaves over a disagreement about company policy.” Is the persecution of a company about a sick CEO or for the specific reasons behind a high level persons resignation an example of the “atmosphere of deregulation and deference to industry” I’ve been hearing so much about?
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Eating to sustain life
After reading Gary Taubes, I cut refined carbs and most vegetable oils, eat meat and vegetables, and lost six pounds in a few weeks without ever feeling hungry.
Read the article 3 min
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Parenting and Thinking
Two ideas from positive discipline, assume positive intent and obedience is not a virtue, plus Jean Moroney’s Thinking on Paper, shape how I parent and plan.
Read the article 2 min
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Voting and thinking of the children
Tonight I had a discussion on voting with Allison. She asked me what it meant. I explained, “It’s like when mommy asks you if you want cereal or toast for breakfast, and when you pick one that is voting for it.” She said, “Or pancakes?” I said, “sure, or picking pancakes over the other choices.” I then added the democratic majority wrinkle. I explained, “If 10 people were asked to vote, and you said you wanted pancakes, but the other 9 wanted toast, then you would all have to have toast.” She said, “I wouldn’t like that.” I said, “Sometimes I don’t like it either.”
Michelle had talked with her earlier about voting and told her about my decision to not vote for any of the Presidential candidates. So she said, “Mommy said you didn’t vote for one.” I told her, “If you had to vote for food, and you had to pick tomatoes or sausage (two things she doesn’t like) which would you pick?” She said, “I wouldn’t vote for either.” And neither did I.
In other news the barbie lamp won in a historic vote, defeating fish by a narrow margin of one vote and “play games on iPhone” defeated “go to sleep now” by a similarly narrow margin.
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“A government of laws, and not of men.” -John Adams This statement rang out loud and clear to me when I saw the Extent of Federal Regulation made concrete, here. What John Adam’s statement makes clear is the essential fact in a proper government that the law must be knowable and objective not subject to arbitrary whims of arbitrary men. This does not mean 25 feet thick of books of regulations, and 6 feet of laws. When both are being added to at a rate of thousands of new laws and regulations per year, you have a situation where it is not possible to know in a single lifetime what is *permissible* action in a *free* society. I do not advocate anarchy, rather objective law. It is impossible to have objective law when every action could require months or years of research to determine if it is punishable by the state. This of course is only the Federal regulations. Every state and town has their own collections of law books. The solution, stop and repeal. The obvious starting point for repeal is any and all regulations that handcuff industry. And stop all of the regulation mills. There are many government agencies that issue *Rules*. Congress has delegated it’s law making responsibility to faceless, nameless, and unaccountable bureaucrats.
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2008 Election Essentials
Dr. Leonard Peikoff, friend and intellectual heir to Ayn Rand, publishes a podcast approximately every other week. Despite the fact that he generally refuses to talk publicly about narrow political questions, he took some time in his October 20 podcast to discuss the current batch of candidates. He managed in a few sentences to say the obvious about each of the candidates in a way that would be funny if one of these gangs wouldn’t be the head of the Executive branch of the United States of America on January 20th. > I think McCain comes across as a tired moron. Obama as a lying phony. Biden as an enjoyably hilarious windbag. And Sarah Palin as an opportunist struggling to learn how to become a moron a phony and a windbag.
He gave some additional brief commentary as to why none of the Presidential candidates is fit to take office. If you think there is still some reason to choose one over the other but aren’t sure which you may want to listen, it could give starting points for further investigation.
I decided some time ago that I will not vote for any presidential candidate. It was with that decision in mind that Dr. Peikoff’s statement takes on a tragic humor and does cause me a brief chuckle.
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Greenspan
Today Alan Greenspan stated, “Those of us who have looked to the self-interest of lending institutions to protect shareholder’s equity (myself especially) are in a state of shocked disbelief.” He’s shocked? That’s surprising. He, himself, wrote about the result of government intervention in the economy, in Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal. Maybe he should pick up a copy and try and understand his role in the destruction.
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Network Neutrality
A comment I left on David Reed’s pro-neutrality blog, held for moderation, makes a neat object lesson: network operators own their networks just as bloggers own their comment sections.
Read the article 4 min
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Columbus Day
A day late, but here is my thought on yesterday’s holiday. Ninety men in three small ships sailed west from Europe for over a month, when dawn came on October 12, 1492, the sun rose on a new world. Columbus, the motive power behind this expedition, was a man of independent mind that challenged the authority of the “experts” and of the whole world. He discovered America, bringing European civilization to our shores. A critical and historic event that sowed the seeds of what was to become the freest and most prosperous country ever, the United States of America.
When thinking of yesterday, I remember the greatness, the courage, the independent judgment of a man.
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Familiar sentiment
“The time is past when the notion of economic self-seeking and unrestricted use of profits made can be allowed to dominate…. The economic system must serve the nation.” This could have been written in any editorial recently, and certainly a similar sentiment was spouted on Capitol Hill in the past weeks. But it is a quote of the Nazi Minister of Economics in the book The Omnious Parallels.
With the economic controls and the sacrifice of individual rights to the nation, we are putting a motor on our drift from freedom to fascism.
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The joy of focus
Today I forgot to eat breakfast and got moving very late because I was immersed in what I was doing. Spending so much time being interrupted and allowing myself to be interrupted I had started to forget the pure and simple joy of focused, productive work. I intended to try and achieve that state as often as possible. I need to blow off a few meeting reminders, phone calls and the like. It’s good for the soul.
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Inevitable Result
After the bailout passed and the market kept falling, I argue the problem is government intervention in the economy at all, not too little of it too slowly.
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Writing to government representatives
Since sincere letters to Congress get form letters back, I answered Senator Casey’s bailout reply with sarcasm, thanking him for the lovely round number of ten trillion.
Read the article 3 min
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Football Sunday Mission Accomplished
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Swinging for speed
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What is this?
Any idea what this is used for?
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EPA preparing to control everything
The EPA’s own greenhouse gas rulemaking notice admits that regulating emissions would reach homes, schools, farms and the food supply, and I see an unprecedented expansion of its authority.
Read the article 3 min
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The government as Robin Hood
I start with a thought experiment about who really pays taxes and argue that taxing the rich punishes the productive, since nobody has a right to wealth others must create.
Read the article 4 min
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Growing Up
Today I was really hit by the fact that one of the hardest parts of parenting isn’t even in the same building as cleaning up bodily fluids or going upstairs to “fix the covers” for the 3rd time in 15 minutes.It’s in encouraging the push for independence, and growth.
My wife sent me a snapshot of Allison before running her to her first day of pre-school. And I felt quite a strong bit of emotion. I am still not sure if it is reluctance, fear, sadness, joy or all of them pushed together.
Happy first day, Allison!
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Parody vs Real Life
I defy you to explain to me the difference between Barack Obama’s sentiment, “We may not agree on abortion, but surely we can agree on reducing the number of unwanted pregnancies in this country.” And the one uttered by Kang in Treehouse of Horror VII, “Abortions for some, miniature American flags for others.” American politics is not even trying to hide the fact that their words are absolutely meaningless and they are just trying to unlock the right combination to get elected. Playing a high stakes crossword puzzle.
By the way, please don’t interpret this as support for the Republicans. Their allegiance with the Religious Right is an outright attack on the first amendment and until they renounce this partnership I cannot even consider supporting their candidates.
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Intellectual Activism and Cultural Change
After deciding to spread good ideas, I tried letters to the editor, online comments and pushing GTD at work, because bad ideas thrive in an intellectual vacuum.
Read the article 2 min
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When no politicians agree with you
Voters pick the candidate who shares one value, then defend the whole platform like sports fans, and I argue that joining a gang this way makes the rest of your ideas a non-factor.
Read the article 5 min
