Bjorn Tipling

Hillary Clinton made this promise to potential voters:

“There are a lot of people who wanted to end this election before you had a chance to vote,” she said, with her husband at her side. “I’m ready to go to bat for you if you’ll come out and vote for me.”

What a disingenuous sentence. This is one of many reasons that explain why I support Obama over Hillary Clinton. That sentence right there. It has nothing to do with gender or race. What in the hell is she promising? Let’s examine it.

A) People want to disenfranchise your vote.
B) Vote for me.
C) I will then make sure your vote counts.

She might as well just say “Your vote only counts if you vote for me”. It is the message she has conveyed this entire election when after courting Iowa and Wisconsin, and the people that walked in ice cold weather to vote for her, she didn’t even thank them. It is the message she conveyed when she argued that caucus states do not matter. If things went her way the only states that should be counted, are the states that voted for her.

I wasn’t lying when I said I would begin to respond to the stupid arguments made on political blogs. Red state may close its comments to think-a-likes, but I can respond right here.

In a post named “Barack Obama is Either Stupid or Willfully Ignorant“, Redstate author “Erick” makes the following argument:

Barack Obama is either stupid or willfully ignorant because he thinks that Iran doesn’t pose the same threat the Soviet Union once raised.

Erick then points out a loose connection between Iran and Hezbollah’s 1983 attack on US Marines in Lebanon.

The bombing by Hezbollah resulted in a tragic loss of US servicemen lives. However the use of an inexpensive carbomb by an organization that probably has less trained men than the Rhode Island National Guard hardly qualifies it to be a threat comparable to the level of an international superpower with tens of thousands of nuclear weapons, millions of professional soldiers, advanced military technology and winner of the space race. It certainly does not warrant the use of qualifiers like ’stupid’ and ‘willfully ignorant’ which are a product of the authors irrational anger and not a consequence of critical logic.

You sir, Mr. ‘Erick’, fail. You fail on so many levels that your keyboard license ought to be revoked.

That is all.

For a while now, I have been following political blogs. I am left of center ideologically but I like to read different points of view. I am especially interested in conservative blogs. I find that I already agree with many of the things that are said in liberal blogs, and it feels a little too much like everyone agreeing with one another without considering alternative opinions. Sometimes conservative blogs have a point. Lately though, more often than not their arguments make little sense. While I am no Cicero, I think you do not have to be very smart to see that many of the arguments on conservative blogs lack fundamental logical structure. Liberal blogs probably also have this problem, and if I see it I will call it out. Some of worst blogs are Hot Air, Michelle Malkin, and Red State. The unfair and untruthful attacks made on politicians I prefer upsets me. The manner in which my ideology is attacked upsets me.

Why do I care? I have noticed an interesting phenomenon on news meme trackers such as memeorandum and blogrunner. Meme trackers follow popular topics and their discussion across blogs and news sites. What I have noticed is that there is little overlap among ideologically differentiated blogs in discussions. For example, a news topic that causes an uproar on the right and is discussed to the point that it makes it to the top of a memetracker is often only discussed by conservative blogs. The same occurs for popular topics on the left. Conservative and liberal blogs don’t seem to acknowledge each others existence. Sometimes when a popular issue is discussed by both conservative and liberal blogs, there is no cross reference. The ideological gap is never crossed, and these sites never debate each other. Points are never refuted, arguments are never examined.

I think this is a bad thing. These blogs only respond to arguments made by politicians and TV pundits and old media, such as newspapers and television networks. One consequence of this is that blogs, looking to gain influence in politics and achieving some success at it, are implicitly acknowledging that their own medium is not significant enough to respond to. The other consequence is that, much like on conservative radio shows, arguments are made without any controls for validity, accuracy, logic. Unlike conservative radio shows, however, the arguments are in print. Because they are in print, these arguments can be examined and rebutted.

I may choose to participate in taking in an in-depth look at what I think are terrible arguments. In the past I have made some political posts in favor of Obama. There will probably be more political posts in the future. Some of the current audience for this blog may not want to read what I will write in the future. I may also begin to increase the amount of posts I publish. Some of the places where my blog is being tracked, such as code4lib and netlamers, might want to look at whether or not they want to continue to follow me. It wont hurt my feelings if anyone unsubscribes. I feel that in the past I have limited what I have been willing to say because of concerns for those that read my blog.

I am not going to ‘hold back’ anymore. I have a lot I want to say and respond to.

I really like programming. My education isn’t in computer science though. I have an anthropology undergraduate degree and a masters in library science. Maybe I took a wrong turn somewhere because I didn’t feel comfortable about my math. I work as an engineer now, but a recent experience has led me to believe that I’m not skilled enough for my choice of career.

So I am going back to school. I took precalculus in college and did well, but I know I didn’t have a grasp on the fundamentals enough to move forward. In high school I had a lot of problems where I lived at the time and just wasn’t able to excel. So I’m going to start over.

I’m going rebuild my math fundamentals. I have signed up at San Jose’s City College and will register for summer classes in Geometry and Intermediate Algebra. Just a refresher. Some have suggested why not read a book or learn online, and my answer is that I need the structured discipline a classroom environment provides.

My goal is to continue to take math classes until I can begin taking computer science courses, with the hope of transferring into San Jose State for a second Bachelors in computer science. I predict this will take more than a few years. But ultimately I will benefit.

The spam was getting out of control. Maybe Jaiku will send me an invitation.

So I’ve been working on a little paste bin project for the new Google App Engine. I am having a ton of fun. It just feels great to be a part of something so cool, and it being in Python! Man I hope Python developers represent and put some cool stuff up.

Edit: Oh, also my app is in the app gallery.

It’s just awesome you know because it’s for developers and I’m a developer and I made something. I stepped up. You know what I mean. I’m making the time, I’m putting something together and having a blast.

Of course that paste bin needs a lot of work. I made it open source and you can view the code for it here: PyBin.

Hosting the app on Google, and hosting the source code on Google too! Every time I svn up, it stores it on Google’s server, which is great because if my drive dies, all my work is safe. I plan on spending a lot more time on this, and I got two other ideas.

Paul Krugman recently wrote about economic rescue plans from the three presidential contenders McCain, Obama, and Clinton. He had this interesting sentence in there:

“Mrs. Clinton, we’re assured by sources right and left, tortures puppies and eats babies.“

I’ve been thinking about this since he wrote it. It’s silly right, kind of funny?

I gave it much thought. Yes, ridiculous, eating an infant, I’ve gone of the deep end. Clearly my opinion of Hillary Clinton is absurd.

Let’s entertain my fancy. Imagine in August, just before the convention in some dark room the final small group of undecided super-delegates gather along with our esteemed senator from New York in secrecy. They bring her to a table with a defenseless baby, and they offer her their votes if she eats the tiny newborn.

Guaranteed the Democratic party nomination, right there, served on a silver platter. What would my imaginary and twisted version of Clinton do now?

Not eat the baby and lose? This cute little thing? She’s shocked obviously. This isn’t right, but who would believe her? The delegates have all sworn to deny the indecent proposal. What if she just killed it without eating she suggested jokingly, and nervous, not really committing but hinting at a serious willingness. I mean what’s a baby when the country is at stake? She doesn’t even know the parents, or the newborn’s name.

What else would go through the mind this supremely evil version of my imaginary Clinton? Would she be revolted at the thought of having to eat the baby, or be horrified for the sake of the baby’s safety? She asks if maybe she could torture a puppy instead? She’s told no. It’s baby eating time; these faceless, secretive delegates want nothing less.

Maybe at this point my evil version Hillary would try a hint of emotion to see if should get one of the people around her to break from the rest. You know, maybe try a tear or two.

It’s absurd. And it took me thinking this scenario through and writing it down to see how absurd it was. Hillary Clinton isn’t evil. Ambitious? Yes. But is she a bad person? Forget the eating infants silliness, but consider the question. I think the answer is no.

I experienced some kind of breakthrough. I find her ‘antics’ throughout this primary distasteful and I find it hard to reconcile this with what I think is a well respected person, liked by many. My overall opinion of her seems to be tainted by irrationality. I can’t form a conclusion about her because I no longer can trust my intuition.

That Krugman thinks highly of her adds to my conundrum. I can’t just blindly resent anyone who backs her. Why can’t this primary be over already. I’m tired of it.

I’ve always respected Krugman, and his positive opinion of Hillary has been ad odds with my own. I’ve veered between disliking him and considering his opinion.

Photo Source

I am not a fair-weather supporter. I gave serious consideration to who I support and why. I didn’t decide who I support based on a tv commercial and I didn’t base my support on some comments about a debate. I based my decision on who the candidates are as people. I considered where they came from, I considered what they’ve done with their lives. I considered their ability to lead. I congratulate Hillary Clinton on her success today, but I continue to support Barack Obama. I know he would make a great president. I think all three top candidates would make good presidents, so all in all, I’m not unhappy with our future.

…the first season on Xbox Live. The overall premise of a town isolated by a nuclear war should be interesting, but when an entire episode centers around the local town library burning down…can’t say I’m hooked. A lot of little town drama filtered through bad writing, and not the best acting, and not a lot of info on what’s happening outside of the town. The interesting parts are about five minutes at most in each show. This is one show that should have stayed canceled. I’m still watching it though.

You might want to reconsider. Take a look at these confused rules about what you can’t do with your facebook application. Here’s a great example:

Present a user with a subsequent friend invite page if the user has already clicked a Facebook-rendered Skip, Cancel, or Skip This Step button, unless the user explicitly selects to invite friends from a page that offers more than just the friend invite option. If the application presents the user with a friend invite page that does not include a Facebook-rendered Skip, Cancel, or Skip This Step button, the application must offer some navigation option to leave the friend invite process, and the application must never present the user with a subsequent friend invite page unless the user explicitly selects to invite friends from a page that offers more than that single option.

What? What if I make a friend-invite page that has a partly Facebook-rendered Skip button that has no other options other than the option to Cancel via a non-Facebook-rendered Withdraw button, which then leads to a Facebook-rendered Cancel page with and without options to not invite none of your friends provided that you hit the Facebook-rendered Skip this step three times previously? What then?

They might want to ease up on the explicit micro-managing and institute some more general ‘best practices.’ I think making a Facebook app can add value to a service or website if you have users asking for it, or if you can plainly see a benefit. Personally I think Facebook applications have gotten out of control, and I see the need to regulate, but there are better ways to do this.

I’ll let Facebook have the last word on this.