Even by the standards of New Jersey

 

On Tucker Carlson's show last night (1/28/2022), he referred to Congressman Tom Malinowski (D-NJ) as "not the sharpest knife in the drawer" and topped it off with "even by the standards of New Jersey."  I laughed so hard I was afraid I was going to have a bladder leak.  That is such a funny line that from now on, whenever I have to rip some stupid idea, I'm going to characterize it as such "even by the standards of New Jersey".

That opening monologue, by the way, was one of Carlson's best.  If you'd like to review it, it's at TCT 2022-01-28

 

Karl Popper on 'Tolerance'

 

"Unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance.  If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them.

"In this formulation, I do not imply, for instance, that we should always suppress the utterance of intolerant philosophies;  as long as we can counter them by rational argument and keep them in check by public opinion, suppression would certainly be unwise.  But we should claim the right to suppress them if necessary even by force;  for it may easily turn out that they are not prepared to meet us on the level of rational argument, but begin by denouncing all argument;  they may forbid their followers to listen to rational argument, because it is deceptive, and teach them to answer arguments by the use of their fists or pistols.

"We should therefore claim, in the name of tolerance, the right not to tolerate the intolerant."

 

In His Image and Likeness

 

Both Judaism and Christianity teach that humankind is made "in the image and likeness of God", but what that means, exactly, has always been something that has puzzled me.  What does that mean?  Since God is a spiritual being (I suppose), God has no 'image' for us to be made 'in'.  Alternatively, a spiritual being may be able to assume any image at all, but that makes the claim even more mysterious.  It could simply mean that we are created as spiritual beings ourselves.  In that vein, someone once responded to the statement: 'you have a soul', with: "You do not have a soul.  You are a soul; you have a body",  which I thought at the time was a very perceptive observation.

What if that original claim, that we are made in the image and likeness of God, is a promise rather than descriptive?  Instead of 'every man a king', perhaps we are working our way toward 'every man a God'.  Galileo famously quipped

"I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use and by some other means to give us knowledge which we can attain by them." 

Since then, scientific knowledge and talent have grown by leaps and bounds at an ever-increasing velocity.  Moore's Law is a rule-of-thumb among the IT profession that posits 'technology doubles in 14 months'.  Were Benjamin Franklin asked 'how long does it take for technology to double?' he might have said '25 years'.  Carl Sagan would have answered '4 years'.  Now we say '14 months', and there is some speculation that it's now less than Moore's boast when he first made it.  In other words, progress is increasing exponentially.  At some point, the answer may become 'Well, it just did!'.  Our surgeons now do operations that, just a few hundred years ago, would have gotten them burned at the stake for witchcraft.  Clarke's Third Law (Arthur C., not me) stipulates that "any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic".  The frontier of our knowledge is advancing so fast that we can envision a world in which Captain Jean-Luc Picard can command his wall unit to produce Earl Grey tea, hot, and fully expect that the requested product will appear in seconds, and that travelling from the Earth to the Moon is done not with loud, noisy, complex, and expensive rockets over the course of a week, but by stepping into a matter-transporter and being beamed there in the blink of an eye.

What if we are made in the image and likeness of God because God expects us to be like Him, to fashion ourselves into the Gods He gave us the capacity to become?  Perhaps being God is a lonely situation and He would enjoy having others of His kind — made in His image and likeness — to keep Him company... as soon as we earn the privilege by figuring out what that entails.

 

The Presidential Race — 2024

 

I am not a Republican.  I am not a Democrat.  I am a Libertarian.  In fact, I am a radical Rothbardian Libertarian.

Given that, I now propose a radical suggestion for winning the 2024 Presidential race.  For the Republicans.

Donald Trump cannot do for the GOP what he did in 2016.  He is 'old news'.  If he runs for President, although he has an elevated chance of winning, he has no chance of doing good things for the Republican Party as a whole.  But there is a slate that would radically transform the political landscape forever, and in a positive way.

If Governor Ron DeSantis of Florida can be cajoled into abandoning Florida for national office, he could not possibly choose a better running mate than Tulsi Gabbard (D-HI).

"OMG!" someone just gasped, "what kind of moron would suggest a Democratic Vice-President for a Republican President?"

That person does not know that in the early days of this nation, the candidate with the most electoral votes was declared 'President', and the runner-up was declared 'Vice-President', and their party was not considered.  It is a fairly recent modification that a 'slate' of President+Vice-President ran conjoined, and electors were pledged not to a candidate, but to a pair of candidates.

I have seen Ron DeSantis at work, and I approve his methods.  There is no one else within the GOP whose evident philosophy I approve more than the erstwhile Democratic Congresswoman from Hawai'i.  Were a DeSantis-Gabbard team sent to Washington, there could not rise against them any plausible opposition.  The GOP certainly would not.  The Democrats' only ploy would be to eject Gabbard from their party, cutting off their collectivist noses to spite their collectivist faces.

Pass the popcorn.

—==+++==—

Update (10-11-2022):  Aw, crap!  Tulsi Gabbard today announced that she is leaving the Democratic Party because of their abandonment of all the principles (!) that she thought they were committed to.  So, there goes DeSantis' chance to make history.  If he gets the GOP nomination in 2024, it would still be a good idea to tag Tulsi as VP.

Career Reflections

 

It was 50 years ago today, November 1st, 1971, that IBM began paying me to write programs.  I often call that one of the smartest business decisions I ever made — transferring from accounting to systems.

I only worked for IBM's Field Engineering Information Systems (FEIS) unit for another almost-eight years, before leaving to do contract programming at IT&T and American Can Co., leading to a permanent job with Aramco in Houston, Texas in August of 1981.  By 1984, due to Aramco deciding to Saudi-ize the workforce, I reconnected with IBM and moved to Florida's Suncoast.  Gruesome details on that journey, should you wish to revisit them, can be found on this blog at Life after IBM and Dave Boyd and the STSS.

It has been, all things considered, a very pleasant, productive, and profitable 50 years, and I'm still glad I did it.

 

The Four Laws

 

News media are reporting that actor Alec Baldwin yesterday fired a 'prop gun' on the set of the movie 'Rust' (now filming) killing a crew member and injuring another.  Reporters are calling this 'an accidental shooting'.

Let's be clear about one thing — if we are clear about nothing else:  there is no such thing as 'an accidental shooting'.  There are 'intentional shootings' and there are 'negligent shootings'.  There are no other categories into which to place any shooting.

What makes this ironic is that Alec Baldwin is rabidly anti-gun.  He is said to be deeply distressed over the so-called 'accident'.  Unfortunately, this is a perfect example of the principle that those who are anti-gun rarely-to-never know anything at all about guns.  What a shame, then, that with but a very little serious investigation on Baldwin's part, he might have positioned himself to avoid killing his co-worker, but the anti-gun crowd are ignorant and they like it that way.  They don't want to know anything about guns.  Guns are yukky.  Who needs to know anything beyond that?

BANG!  You're dead.

Alec Baldwin should be deeply distressed that his intentional ignorance has now resulted in a negligent homicide.

Preliminary investigation suggests that something, perhaps a bullet from a prior use, was still lodged in the barrel and when a blank cartridge was fired from the gun, it provided enough pressure to dislodge the (old) bullet.  As with so many other such incidents, it wasn't just a single error that caused tragedy;  it was several points of failure, any one of which, with but a little care, would have prevented a needless death.

There are four 'laws' of gun safety — often attributed to Col. Jeff Cooper — that, if followed religiously, will completely eliminate death-due-to-negligence:

1. Treat every gun as if it is loaded.
2. Never point a gun at anything you aren't ready to destroy.
3. Keep your finger off the trigger until you have decided to shoot.
4. Know what is behind your target, because you will miss.

These all seem, on brief reflection, to be so intuitive that no one should have to be taught them, yet multiple failures yesterday took another innocent life.  Some crew member picked up that gun to give it to Baldwin, but they didn't check to see if the action was clear, as you would for any gun you suspected was loaded.  Alec Baldwin didn't check, either.  Baldwin then pointed the gun in an unsafe direction, put his finger on the trigger, and fired.

This wasn't 'an accident'.  This was a crime.

 

Winter Driving

 

I just spent a pleasant few hours watching YouTube videos of horribly inept drivers (not) coping with winter weather.  It caused me to wax nostalgic.

During my years at IBM, I had the good fortune to be paired with a grizzled old-timer named Dave Boyd.  Dave, by then, had over 30 years as an IBM employee, many of those in 'systems' having written the first AutoCoder syllabus and then taught the first AutoCoder class.  He was a true 'Renaissance Man', and it would not surprise me one bit if he actually fit Robert A. Heinlein's definition:

A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, and die gallantly.  Specialization is for insects.

Among many other things, he was a 'German car nut', owning, at one point, a 2L Porsche 914, a 1.8L Porsche 914, a Porsche 356 that he had lovingly restored to showroom condition, a BMW 2002, and a Volkswagen.  He used the 914s to race gymkana on frozen Lake Winnipesaukee NH each winter, and cherished his nickname, 'Iceman'.

He taught me many valuable lessons, not the least of these being 'how to drive in winter'.  One day he asked me "What steers a car?" and I replied "The steering wheel, of course!"  Dave smiled as he shook his head side to side.  "No, the rolling wheels steer the car.  A wheel that isn't rolling is either stopped or sliding."  I was reminded of that as I watched cars from Michigan to Arkansas zipping down icy hills, all four wheels locked-in-place and careening into other cars, some moving, some not.

Mr. Miyagi advised Daniel-San

Best brock is 'no be dere'

and the best way to avoid crashing into another car because of icy conditions is to stay home that day, but if you must be behind the wheel on a snowy or sleety day, remember this:  when you press down on the brake pedal, you stop the wheels from rolling and you stop them from steering, but you don't overrule Newton's First Law: an object in motion tends to remain in motion.

The same lesson applies when you're going through a tight turn on dry pavement: if you step on the brake pedal, you have just offered to pay whatever penalty the laws of physics charge.

Only the rolling wheels can steer a car.