Month: August 2008

  • Defense of Marriage

    In November California will vote on whether to overturn the state court’s decision to permit homosexual marriage. I personally will vote to support the court, against the proposal. However, I think the whole issue is basically a mistake. The government should not be in the business of legitimizing marriage. Currently marriage comes with a set…

  • Abolish Syntax

    Although I can’t find it now, I think it was Dan Bernstein who said somewhere that programs should avoid syntax when possible. Using syntax means permitting syntax errors. Avoiding syntax means making syntax errors impossible. Even if it wasn’t Bernstein who said this, you can see the idea in action in things like his tinydns…

  • Raising Meat

    I’m a vegetarian for moral reasons. Animals raised for meat in this country are in general treated horribly (I think every meat eater should have some familiarity with factory farming of animals, since I think one should understand the consequences of a lifestyle one chooses). One question I’m occasionally asked is: is it OK to…

  • Tae Kwon Do

    My daughter, who is six years old, recently earned her yellow belt in tae kwon do. I practiced tae kwon do for eight years, stopping about fifteen years ago with a second degree black belt. I didn’t encourage my daughter to take it up, but she knew that I had done it in the past…

  • Persuasion

    Many years ago I believed that if people could just discuss issues calmly that they could resolve them. I no longer believe that. I now think that the best one can reasonably shoot for is that everybody will agree that the other people are not idiots. The basic problem is that people don’t change their…