links for 2009-07-25

The competenance of a programmer.

"The game generally started with a question, cycled through my beliefs, and ended with “because. . . .” Soon it was ending in just “. . . .” I took a class called “The Problem of Religious Diversity” that quickly had me believing that just about any belief system could be true and that no one could prove anything. It never occurred to me until then that people who believed something other than Christianity had the same reason for believing their faith as I did for believing mine." Nice essay about one person's search for answers of faith.

"But Synergy’s vivacious hubbub reminds me that LSD is not necessary to put aside our normative values to feel the glowing pulse of the world. And though I never indulged in substances during my stay, I understand now that no amount of peaceful deliberation or delusional ideation will ever mitigate the revolting brilliance of the human experience."

"Back in February, Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-TX) voted against the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act in part because she said the bill “doesn’t actually stimulate.” Today, however, in an early move in the 2010 Republican primary for Texas governor, Hutchison attacked incumbent Gov. Rick Perry for turning down the very stimulus money she believed would do nothing for the economy."

"So this was my business plan: We'd start out as a plain-vanilla Web consulting business. We'd look for situations in which we had several clients asking for the same basic thing. Then, using consultants who weren't currently working on gigs, we'd build an application to suit the group's needs. Over time, this product could be licensed far and wide. Eventually, the software side of the business would eclipse the consulting side of the business. That was the theory. Sounds good, right?" Fun story of Fog Creek.

"Carlos Diaz de Leon, one of the five men and a leader in the protest, claims that about 12:30 a.m. June 29 he and four others were at Chico's when two of his friends kissed, prompting a private security guard to use an anti-gay slur in Spanish and to call police, who cited a statute on homosexual conduct declared unconstitutional six years ago." Unbelievable.