Archive for February, 02005
Blogging with LaTeX = Goodness
Monday, February 7th, 02005Using LaTeX in WordPress. Brilliant!
Easongate
Monday, February 7th, 02005The Easongate blog has been created in light of Eason Jordan's recent statements at the World Economic Forum in Davos, where he accused American servicemen of intentionally targeting and killing journalists in Iraq. These are serious charges that should not have been made without supporting evidence, which he did not provide. American servicemen and women are risking their lives daily and it is wholly inappropriate for a man of his stature and influence to make baseless claims in front of an international audience. As an experienced journalist, he fully understands the impact of his words and the effects on his audience. Mr. Jordan has a past history of making such statements.
Update 02005-02-11:
Joe Scarborough's Real Deal:
"Eason Jordan defamed the U.S. Military behind closed doors to the worlds elite."
"Eason Jordan should be fired"
Update 02005-02-11:
Jordan resigned today. The blogosphere is powerful indeed!
REST and Ruby on Rails
Sunday, February 6th, 02005Roy Fielding's Ph.D. dissertation, Architectural Styles and the Design of Network-based Software Architectures, which focuses on the rationale behind the design of modern Web architectures, is worth reading.
Ruby on Rails is worth playing with. See Rolling with Ruby on Rails.
Cookin’ It Up
Sunday, February 6th, 02005
Thirtyone Years Old Today
Saturday, February 5th, 02005I, like most, am subject to the passage of time.
First I was 28, then I was 29, then I was 30.
Today, I'm 31 years old, and you still refuse buy me any of the stuff that's listed in my extensive Amazon.com wish list.
Social Security Privatization
Thursday, February 3rd, 02005I'm strongly in favor of the privatization of Social Security and was very happy to see the President spend so much time on it in his speech last night.
The Cato Institute's Project on Social Security Privatization has lots of good reading on the subject. Google for more (including arguments against privatization).
If I can find the time, and someone doesn't beat me to it, I'd like to create a user-friendly web application that would let you input your past, current, and projected future Social Security contributions and then graph what social security promises to do with your money vs what the market can deliver. This information could be a very power force for change, if presented in an intuitive fashion to a large number of people on the web. Maybe it could have lots of easily tunable knobs: inflation, rate of return, investment type, etc. Maybe it could have a number of pre-computed scenarios. Whatever - even the simplest version would slay.
There's already fairly broad support for at least partial privatization, but I think the support could become overwhelming, if people had easy access to the numbers that show how incredibly better off they'd be with private savings accounts. I've run the numbers for myself, and the results are astounding. I'd like the rest of America to be able to easily do the same.
Democrats may find this blurb about how Clinton wanted social security privatized to be interesting reading.
Update 02005-02-04 8:34pm: I've just watched the President on C-SPAN in a Florida town meeting. He rocked the Social Security reform agenda out of the park. The ownership society is upon us.
Update 02005-02-07 9:43am: George Bush is channeling President Clinton.
Update 02005-04-05 1:12pm: Patrick Ruffini beat me to the punch with his Social Security Reform Calculator.
Gnome/Mono/Beagle Demos
Wednesday, February 2nd, 02005Nat Friedman put together these demos of cutting-edge Gnome/Mono/Beagle tech. They're worth viewing, if you're interested in the future of the desktop and human/computer interaction. A flash player is required.
Awesome stuff. The demos were made with vnc2swf, which is a very cool tool my itself.
Ayn Rand Centenary
Tuesday, February 1st, 02005
